Beck Bode

Call Directions Website Contact the business

Beck Bode Providing highly personal investment guidance tailored to your financial and life circumstances

Providing highly personal investment guidance and wealth management tailored to each client’s financial and life circumstances.

Most planning gaps are not caused by bad professionals. They are caused by a system where no one sees the full picture a...
10/16/2026

Most planning gaps are not caused by bad professionals. They are caused by a system where no one sees the full picture at the same time.

This spring, Ben Beck, CFP® and Garrett Murphy, our Director of Tax Services, walked through three ideas worth revisiting before the year ends:
1. Find your effective tax rate: total tax divided by adjusted gross income
2. A Roth conversion has no dollar limit
3. The gold standard in retirement is a low AGI with high actual wealth

As Garrett put it, at a traditional CPA firm the information arrives in a pile in February and March. With Garrett in-house, planning can happen during the year.

The full replay is at the link in the comments.

10/15/2026

When does college planning actually start?

In Episode 2 of Nine Under Nine, Jim Bode plays Oakley Country Club with Eric Simonelli of Academic Admissions Advisors. Eric's answer: earlier than most people assume, closer to ninth or tenth grade than to senior year. Colleges look at grades nine through eleven, and by his count, most students end up changing their major along the way.

Watch the full episode at the link in the comments.

Thank you to Kandace Chapple and Michigan Girl for having us back at MiGirl At The Table in Traverse City on October 1.T...
10/14/2026

Thank you to Kandace Chapple and Michigan Girl for having us back at MiGirl At The Table in Traverse City on October 1.

Tammy Stoerkel, Beth Price, Bonnie Barley and Angel Costanza spent the luncheon at the Beck Bode table meeting the women of northern Michigan. If you went home with one of our totes, you already know the line: financial confidence never looked this good.

At the last luncheon, Tammy kept coming back to one message: money is a tool. It is never too early or too late to make a plan, and our Traverse City team is here when you are ready to start yours.

How do you define success without a plan?Ben Beck, CFP® and Jim Bode talked through why financial plans break, and kept ...
10/12/2026

How do you define success without a plan?

Ben Beck, CFP® and Jim Bode talked through why financial plans break, and kept coming back to intention. That is what the GPS, our Goals Planning Statement, is for. As Ben puts it, the first thing we do is define the goal, then build a date-specific, dollar-specific plan to get there.

The full conversation is at the link in the comments.

Five o'clock in the morning. February 20th, 2013.Ben Beck, CFP® and Jim Bode were sitting at Ben's kitchen table in Walp...
10/11/2026

Five o'clock in the morning. February 20th, 2013.

Ben Beck, CFP® and Jim Bode were sitting at Ben's kitchen table in Walpole, Massachusetts, going over a plan they had already committed to. They were about to walk into Merrill Lynch and submit their resignations.

Thirteen years later, Beck Bode has grown to 25+ team members across Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Michigan.

Every client relationship starts with a GPS. Ours started with a plan.

One swing, frame by frame. Swipe fast to play it.A good swing is a sequence, and so is a good plan. Ours follows a set o...
10/10/2026

One swing, frame by frame. Swipe fast to play it.

A good swing is a sequence, and so is a good plan. Ours follows a set order: discovery, your GPS, the plan, and only then the portfolio.

October is National Financial Planning Month. If you have been meaning to start, the link in the comments is a good first step.

Touring campuses this fall? Jim Bode has been through it. He wrote about the $50,000 mistake he almost made sending his ...
10/09/2026

Touring campuses this fall? Jim Bode has been through it. He wrote about the $50,000 mistake he almost made sending his first son to college.

Four lessons from that experience:
1. Start during sophomore year of high school
2. Visit during the academic year, when campus is active
3. Keep a focused list of 6 to 10 schools that truly fit
4. Remember that financial aid can be appealed

Then Jim took the conversation to the golf course. In Episode 2 of Nine Under Nine, he plays Oakley Country Club with Eric Simonelli of Academic Admissions Advisors, and their conversation keeps coming back to one idea: college planning and financial planning begin in the same place, and it is usually earlier than families expect.

Watch at the link in the comments.

Is indexed universal life insurance (IUL) worth it? Ben Beck, CFP® answers in his new piece: for the vast majority of pe...
10/08/2026

Is indexed universal life insurance (IUL) worth it? Ben Beck, CFP® answers in his new piece: for the vast majority of people it is sold to, no.

Three patterns Ben sees in products like IUL:
1. The fine print is the product. Insurance costs, caps, participation rates and other terms sit deep inside complex structures.
2. It is often sold on status. When Ben was shopping for term life insurance, an agent steered him toward whole life with this line: "Your wealthy clients are going to expect that you have this kind of planning in place for yourself."
3. The fees are hard to see. A friend of Ben's turned down a visible advisory fee while holding variable annuities full of costs he did not understand. As Ben puts it, "Emotionally, visible pain tends to feel worse than invisible pain."

His question for you: when was the last time a financial product was pitched to you in a way that felt more like a status symbol than a financial decision?

Read Ben's full piece at the link in the comments.

It is October, and baseball is on.When Ben Beck, CFP® was younger, his dad gave him a copy of The Science of Hitting by ...
10/07/2026

It is October, and baseball is on.

When Ben Beck, CFP® was younger, his dad gave him a copy of The Science of Hitting by Ted Williams. The cover divided the strike zone into 77 baseball-sized circles, and the lesson stuck: swing at the pitches in your sweet spot.

Ben's version for investors: "In investing, there are no called strikes. Nobody forces us to swing at anything." Or, as he puts it later in the piece, "The only time we get a strike is when we swing at a bad pitch."

Read Ben's full piece at the link in the comments.

Medicare open enrollment runs October 15 through December 7. It is the window to join, switch or drop a Medicare Advanta...
10/06/2026

Medicare open enrollment runs October 15 through December 7. It is the window to join, switch or drop a Medicare Advantage or drug plan for the year ahead, with changes taking effect January 1.

Three things worth knowing before it opens:
1. The dates
2. Your plan's Annual Notice of Change, which arrived in September
3. How your income affects your premium

That third one is where planning comes in. Social Security sets the income-related adjustment, known as IRMAA, from your tax return two years before. As Ben Beck, CFP® wrote this spring, traditional IRA distributions count toward it, while qualified Roth distributions do not.

Last week our Traverse City office hosted Coffee & Clarity: Medicare 101 with Alicia Ford of Ford Insurance Agency. If you missed it, start here, and save this for October 15.

Address

Dedham, MA
02026

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 5pm
Tuesday 8am - 5pm
Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 8am - 5pm
Friday 8am - 5pm

Telephone

+16172092224

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Beck Bode posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Beck Bode:

Shortcuts

Share

Category