Zizzi Investments, LLC

Zizzi Investments, LLC Fee-only Investment Management, Financial Planning, and Retirement Plan Consulting.
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Inflation is brutal.It's what feels so daunting to the next generation that hasn't yet had the chance to accumulate asse...
06/08/2026

Inflation is brutal.

It's what feels so daunting to the next generation that hasn't yet had the chance to accumulate assets.

In an economy built on inflation and an expanding money supply, owning assets isn't optional if you want to preserve and grow wealth.

You can either complain and fall further behind. Or you find a way to live on less than you make and start investing.

Since 1971 when we went off the gold standard, $100 invested in the S&P 500 grew to roughly $32,000 with dividends reinvested.

Productive assets, businesses, of which the stock market is simply a passive form of ownership, have produced the strongest long-term returns.

Meanwhile, a dollar today has only about 12% of the purchasing power it had in 1971.

Real assets such as real estate, gold, and silver have also outpaced inflation over the long term.

What this chart doesn't show is that both stocks and real assets have gone through decade-long stretches of disappointing returns.

That's why going all-in on any single asset class can be risky. Diversification works well to preserve wealth and smooth spending.

For the real estate crowd, leveraged rental real estate has often produced returns comparable to the stock market. But I consider this an active or productive business.

Not the easy "passive income" strategy many promote online.

We've helped several real estate professionals improve outcomes by adding liquidity, diversification, and tax planning alongside their rental real estate holdings.

They're not competing strategies.

For many investors, they work best together.

In one post - Robert Kiyosaki doesn’t touch stocksIn another post - He advocates for a strategy of buying a stock and se...
06/06/2026

In one post - Robert Kiyosaki doesn’t touch stocks

In another post - He advocates for a strategy of buying a stock and selling covered calls on it.

So which is it?

This is why you shouldn’t trust marketing influencers who make their money off engagement farming and don’t actually follow their own advice.

Lying to people but calling it marketing is still just lying to people.

06/05/2026

The most interesting number to me in the jobs report this morning:

A 22,000 decline in employment in financial activities. By far the biggest loser.

The sector is now down 107,000 jobs since its peak in May 2025.

That category covers multiple industries, but it's interesting to see this decline while the stock market continues to push higher.

May 2025 also happens to be around the time many large brokerage firms and insurance company stocks peaked.

My view is that there are two forces at work.

First, higher interest rates continue to squeeze margins on deals that were financed with cheap debt.

Second, firms are beginning to realize that AI will expose how little value some parts of the financial services industry actually provide.

Not all of it, of course. I think great advisors, planners, and operators will remain valuable.

But a lot of administrative work, product distribution, and information gathering is becoming increasingly commoditized.

Stepping back, the overall May jobs report was another strong one.

March and April payroll numbers were both revised higher.

The data continues to suggest we are nowhere near a recession when it comes to employment.

Combined with ongoing capital spending on AI infrastructure and higher oil prices, the picture still looks more like inflationary growth than economic contraction.

The future is never certain, but historically stocks have tended to perform well in this type of environment.

Brandon Turner, a popular real estate influencer, and former social media star of the Bigger Pockets podcast, lost $15,0...
06/02/2026

Brandon Turner, a popular real estate influencer, and former social media star of the Bigger Pockets podcast, lost $15,000,000 million of his investors money in a real estate deal that went south.

He wrote a post disclosing the details of how the deal went south and now it's removed from his accounts, but the damage is real.

There is no such thing as investing with "no money down" or "low money down."

It even says it in his book title. "Creative strategies using OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY."

The money has to come from somewhere.

There is always risk involved.

Number one rule of investing.

Understand what you are buying before you invest.

05/22/2026

I sat on a Trump accounts webinar this week for CE credit and still the same conclusion as before.

Setting up an account makes sense to be able to receive these three free types of contributions:

- $1000 pilot contribution for newborns (born 2025-2028)
- Gifts from outside donors (like the one the Dell family pledged)
- Employer offering a contribution

However, other forms of savings options for kids still offer more advantages in most cases.

- 529 Accounts
- UTMA (Custodial Accounts)
- Brokerage account in the parents name
- Custodial Roth IRA if they have earned income

I love the concept of helping parents to jumpstart investing for their kids, but other account types still win out in most cases.

If you are self-employed and relied on the now expired enhanced ACA credits, I'm curious to hear how it has changed your...
05/21/2026

If you are self-employed and relied on the now expired enhanced ACA credits, I'm curious to hear how it has changed your healthcare strategy??

For this year, this is the planning startegy for our family below.

The ACA cliff for a family of five in our area is $150,600.

By maxing two pre-tax 401k's and a family HSA the gross income number can rise to $208,350 without factoring any other deductions.

For next year we will most likely be looking to go off the healthcare exchange and move to a health sharing plan or direct plan.

For reference, if we paid full cost for our current exchange plan the premiums would be $26,803 and the deductible is $12,800.

I have dual citizenship in Italy, where health insurance is very low cost, but so far I haven't convinced my wife that early retirement to an olive farm or vineyard is the right move for us.

Have you ever made a hole-in-one? I haven't.As an amateur golfer, your odds of a hole-in-one are about the same as owing...
05/20/2026

Have you ever made a hole-in-one?

I haven't.

As an amateur golfer, your odds of a hole-in-one are about the same as owing federal estate taxes.

With the exemption now at $30 million for a married couple ($15 million per individual), only about 0.1%–0.2% of estates are expected to owe federal estate tax.

When I see permanent life insurance pushed to the masses because they may someday need “liquidity to pay estate taxes,” it gives me that uneasy feeling.

Kind of like standing on the tee box with houses on the left, water on the right, and thinking:

“This is not good.”

Now if you’re Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy or Nelly Korda, your odds of making a hole-in-one go up dramatically.

And those are the types of individuals who can genuinely benefit from permanent insurance as an estate planning tool.

But for most households, basic estate planning done well, proper titling, beneficiary designations, step-up in basis rules, and disciplined investing, will likely do far more in long the run than an expensive permanent insurance policy designed around a tax issue they will probably never face.

The problem is when rare edge-case planning strategies get marketed to the masses as normal.

I know there’s some selection bias here, but I can honestly say I’ve never had someone come to me already owning permanent insurance where the policy was truly designed and built around their long-term financial plan.

Prediction markets are trying to position themselves as the best of the worst vices for retail investors.The truth is al...
05/19/2026

Prediction markets are trying to position themselves as the best of the worst vices for retail investors.

The truth is all speculative activities are shown to consistently lose most people money over time.

If you are going to invest then invest.

If you are going to gamble then gamble.

But the worst thing you can do is think you are investing when you are actually gambling.

Trying to mix the two within one investment account or platform is a terrible idea.

If you need to scratch the itch to gamble or speculate.

Have a small separate account for it that's not going to blow up your whole plan.

“What if they don’t go to college?” causes a lot of families to miss the bigger picture on 529 accounts.1) Tax-free grow...
05/16/2026

“What if they don’t go to college?” causes a lot of families to miss the bigger picture on 529 accounts.

1) Tax-free growth if used for education. And “education” includes far more than just traditional college. Funds can be used for many types of post-secondary education and vocational programs.

2) They can also be used for K-12 private school tuition, up to $20,000 per year. Check your state’s conformity to the federal rules.

3) Here in Pennsylvania, we also receive a state tax deduction for contributions. Not every state offers this benefit, but PA does. In high tax states this can be significant.

4) We started our kids’ accounts young, which means they should satisfy the 15-year rule allowing up to $35k of unused 529 funds to eventually be rolled into a Roth IRA in the child’s name, subject to annual contribution limits.

5) With three kids, chances are high at least one of ours will use the funds. And 529s allow beneficiary changes among siblings if plans shift over time.

If one child ends up using more of the education funding than another, our plan is simply to equalize things later through gifts from our brokerage account.

I have no idea what education will look like by the time my kids are college age, but 529 accounts are a lot more flexible then most people realize.

We chose public school for kindergarten.

So for now those 529 funds are still compounding.

A lot of “bubble” talk is popping up again.But one feature of past market bubbles that’s largely been missing so far is ...
05/14/2026

A lot of “bubble” talk is popping up again.

But one feature of past market bubbles that’s largely been missing so far is a truly hot IPO market.

Since the S**C bonanza in 2021, the IPO window has been mostly shut.

That matters because late-stage private companies eventually need liquidity:

-Founders
-Employees
-Venture capital
-Early investors

Historically, when the IPO market reopens aggressively, it often becomes fuel for the next phase of a bull market.

Today, Cerebras Systems is expected to IPO.

And behind it is a growing pipeline of major private companies that markets are watching closely:

-SpaceX
-Anthropic
-OpenAI
-Dataminr
-Databricks

That doesn’t mean we’re not seeing speculation already.

We clearly are in parts of the market.

But true late-cycle bubble behavior usually broadens beyond just public mega caps into:

-Aggressive IPO issuance
-Retail speculation
-Easy capital raising
-Weak companies going public
-“Story stock” mania

I don't think we are fully there yet.

The reopening of the IPO market could be the mechanism that pushes markets into a more euphoric phase.

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Mechanicsburg, PA
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