Jake Murphy, FSCP - Financial Planner

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Jake Murphy, FSCP - Financial Planner Jake Murphy is a registered representative of and offers securities and investment advisory services through MML Investors Services, LLC. Member SIPC.

Helping healthcare professionals, business owners, and families make smarter decisions around cash flow, taxes, retirement, protection, and building more flexibility for the future. Supervisory Office: 201 King of Prussia Rd, Suite 501, Radnor, PA 19087. Tel:610-766-3000.

$475,000 saved. She wants to work less. They assume she can’t.Say a couple is in their early 50s with a mortgage that’s ...
10/21/2026

$475,000 saved. She wants to work less. They assume she can’t.

Say a couple is in their early 50s with a mortgage that’s almost paid off.

He’s happy to keep working full time.

She’d love to go from five days a week to three.

But they look at their savings and say, “We’re nowhere near ready to retire.”

So she keeps working five.

Here’s how that conversation could look with some numbers.

They bring home $9,000 a month:
$5,500 from him and $3,500 from her.

They spend $7,000, including a $2,000 mortgage payment, and save the remaining $2,000.

Once the mortgage is paid off, spending drops to $5,000. Property taxes, insurance and upkeep stay in the budget.

If three days a week brings her take-home pay to $2,100, they’d have $7,600 coming in.

That covers their $5,000 spending and leaves $2,600 to keep saving.

She’s working two fewer days. They’re still adding to retirement.

They’d need to confirm she can keep health insurance at three days a week or price coverage through his employer. And their savings still need to support them when he eventually stops working.

But now they have an actual option to evaluate, instead of assuming both schedules have to stay the same.

A shared retirement date can leave one spouse waiting years for a lighter schedule they could already afford.

A paid-off $500,000 house doesn’t automatically put you $500,000 closer to retirement.That equity is real. You spent yea...
10/20/2026

A paid-off $500,000 house doesn’t automatically put you $500,000 closer to retirement.

That equity is real. You spent years building it. And going into retirement without a mortgage payment can make a huge difference.

But say a couple has a paid-off $500,000 house and plans to stay there.

After Social Security, they still need $2,000 a month to cover their spending.

That’s $24,000 a year that has to come from somewhere.

Their house could double in value, and they’d still have that monthly gap.

They could sell, downsize, or borrow against it. Those are options, but each comes with costs and decisions. Downsizing means finding another place to live. Borrowing means adding debt.

And staying put still means paying property taxes, insurance, and repairs.

I understand wanting to count something you spent 30 years paying for. It absolutely belongs on your net worth statement.

But if you’re counting that equity toward retirement, there needs to be a plan for how you’ll use it.

“I could sell someday” is a pretty loose plan for covering bills that show up every month.

10/15/2026

They’d saved nearly $500,000 for retirement.

Now spending it scared them.

The couple was in their early 60s, with about $100,000 a year in guaranteed retirement income. But one spouse still felt uneasy about using their savings for travel.

After taxes, that was roughly $6,600 a month.

Their current spending was closer to $7,900, so there was a gap. But their mortgage was expected to be paid off, removing about $1,600 from their monthly expenses.

That would bring spending down to roughly $6,300.

Their retirement income could then cover their everyday expenses, with a little room left over. And they had nearly $500,000 invested to help fund travel and additional spending.

One spouse was still uneasy about using it.

I can understand that.

That balance represented years of putting money away. Watching it grow felt reassuring. Taking money out meant watching it move in the other direction.

And the mortgage payoff wouldn’t automatically erase that feeling.

The next step is putting an actual cost beside the travel they want to do. Then looking at how that withdrawal fits alongside future expenses, taxes and the cushion they want to preserve.

A $500,000 balance alone doesn’t answer those questions.

But a plan that shows what they can spend, what stays invested and when they need to adjust gives them something concrete to come back to.

After years of practicing how to save, spending can take some practice too.

$40,000 in savings. $35,000 toward the house. $5,000 left.You finally get the keys, and your bank account looks like you...
10/14/2026

$40,000 in savings. $35,000 toward the house. $5,000 left.

You finally get the keys, and your bank account looks like you’re starting over.

I met with a couple preparing to buy their first home. Their down payment was using most of their emergency savings, and rebuilding it was already high on their list.

Take a household bringing home $8,000 a month.

The new mortgage, taxes, and insurance run $3,000. Other spending takes another $3,500. They put $500 toward retirement.

That leaves $1,000 a month to rebuild savings.

Going from $5,000 back to $20,000 would take 15 months, assuming that entire $1,000 makes it into savings every month.

Before furniture, a vacation or before something breaks.

Your cash cushion can shrink right as you become responsible for everything that needs fixing.

The first time something leaks, you’re the landlord.

And I get it. You finally have a place of your own. You’d like to put something in it. Six trips to Home Depot somehow feel like part of the closing process.

But “we’ll build our savings back up” needs a monthly dollar amount and a realistic timeline behind it.

Otherwise, a house payment that fits can still leave you stretched for the next year.

When I look at a home purchase, I want to know what cash will be left after closing and how much room the new payment leaves to rebuild it.

You want to enjoy the house without wondering whether the next repair is going on a credit card.

“Oh, so YOU sell life insurance?”She’d just asked the guy next to me that same question.I was out last week when the dre...
10/13/2026

“Oh, so YOU sell life insurance?”

She’d just asked the guy next to me that same question.

I was out last week when the dreaded “What do you do for work?” started making its rounds.

He said insurance. She guessed life insurance. He explained that he worked in commercial insurance.

Then she turned to me.

“I run a financial planning practice.”

“Oh, so YOU sell life insurance?” as she laughed.

I smiled and shrugged. “Yeah, sure. That’s definitely a part of it.”

And I’m proud to help people with that, too.

For a CRNA making $270,000, with a $520,000 mortgage and two kids in grade school. That paycheck is doing a lot of work.

What would your family need financially if they weren’t here to earn it anymore?

I understand the skepticism. People have been sold policies that didn’t fit their needs.

But insurance can be a small part of the work and still carry enormous consequences for a family.

So, yeah. That’s definitely a part of it.

I’m comfortable with that.

“Wait… you guys have a shared calendar?”I looked at Val like I had just discovered some secret relationship feature ever...
10/08/2026

“Wait… you guys have a shared calendar?”

I looked at Val like I had just discovered some secret relationship feature everyone else knew about.

Brendan Keane had mentioned the shared calendar he and his girlfriend use at their Summerween party last week.

Val immediately goes:
“Yeah, well, it’s because you have a Samsung.”

Yet again, somehow I’m the problem.

For the record, Samsung still clears Apple all day long.

Anyway, we downloaded TimeTree last night.

Within about 10 minutes my phone started getting hammered with notifications for weddings, dinners, school stuff, appointments, trips and everything else happening over the next few months.

Apparently I’m way busier than I realized.

I thought we were doing just fine with the occasional “Wait… when did you tell me about that?”

So I need to know:
Are Val and I actually the last engaged couple on earth to get a shared calendar?

A couple in their early 50s has about $460,000 saved for retirement and one of them still doesn’t know if she can afford...
10/07/2026

A couple in their early 50s has about $460,000 saved for retirement and one of them still doesn’t know if she can afford to go part time.

They’ve spent decades doing a lot of the right things.

They’ve consistently saved for retirement, avoided taking on much unnecessary debt and built a meaningful amount of equity in their home.

But one of the biggest questions they have has never really been answered:

“Can I work less?”

That decision has a lot less to do with hitting some arbitrary retirement number and a lot more to do with what happens when her paycheck gets smaller.

Once the mortgage disappears, how much does the household actually need each month?

How much will eventually come from Social Security, pensions and other retirement income?

Whatever is left is the amount their investments and continued work need to cover.

That’s the part they’ve never had mapped out.

They’ve spent years building the assets.

Now they need to know what those assets have already made possible.

A retirement plan tells you how much of your paycheck you can afford to give up.

10/06/2026

$500,000 doesn’t sound like an enormous retirement portfolio.

For one couple I work with, it may be more than enough for the job it actually needs to do.

Because once their mortgage is gone, they may barely need to touch it for regular monthly expenses.

Their retirement income picture looks roughly like this:

About $100,000/year coming in from Social Security, pensions and an annuity.

After estimated taxes, that’s around $6,500–$6,700/month.

Their current spending is roughly $7,800–$8,000/month.

But their mortgage is about $1,600/month and should be gone around the time they retire.

That brings regular spending closer to $6,200–$6,400/month.

Suddenly, the $500,000 portfolio has a very different job.

It doesn’t need to create their entire retirement paycheck.

It can help fund travel, larger purchases, unexpected expenses and give them flexibility when markets are down.

Now compare that with someone who has $1,000,000 invested but needs the portfolio to produce $70,000 or $80,000 every year just to live.

The bigger account doesn’t automatically mean the stronger retirement plan.

The amount your portfolio actually has to produce matters just as much as the amount sitting in it.

$25,000-$30,000 of part-time income can completely change when someone gets to leave full-time work.I’ve had a few conve...
10/05/2026

$25,000-$30,000 of part-time income can completely change when someone gets to leave full-time work.

I’ve had a few conversations lately with people approaching retirement who say some version of:

“I don’t need to stop working completely. I just don’t want to keep doing this full time.”

Take a 62 year old nurse who would be perfectly happy working two days a week instead of five.

Say she currently earns $120,000 and could still make about $30,000 working part time.

If her household needs $90,000 a year to live, the portfolio no longer has to replace a $120,000 salary.

It may only need to help cover a $60,000 gap before Social Security, pensions or other income start filling in more of the picture.

That’s a very different retirement problem.

And if the $30,000 from part-time work also covers travel and discretionary spending, she may be able to leave full-time work years earlier without feeling like every vacation is coming out of the portfolio.

We tend to frame retirement as:

Work full time until one day you stop completely.

There’s a lot of room in between.

Your real retirement date is the day full-time work becomes optional.

09/17/2026

$75,000 in savings.
A $750 auto deductible.
A $1,000 homeowners deductible.

Wanting to find more cash flow to save for an early retirement.

Picture a mid-career couple with a ~$700,000 home who wants to put more toward retirement and create the option to stop working earlier. Their cash flow is already pretty efficient, so we start looking in places people don’t usually associate with retirement planning. Insurance is one of them.

Auto insurance shifts from a $750 deductible to a $2,000 one.

Potential savings: ~$780/year

Homeowners insurance goes from a $1,000 deductible to $2,500.

Potential savings: ~$245/year

Combined, that's roughly $1,000/year back into their cash flow.

What changes is that they agree to take on an additional $1,250 if there’s an auto claim and $1,500 if there’s a home claim. With $75,000 already sitting in cash, those are risks they're financially capable of absorbing.

Their deductibles simply hadn’t caught up with their balance sheet.

Now that ~$1,000/year can be redirected toward the retirement goal they actually care about.

Address

30 S 17th Street, Suite 204
Philadelphia, PA
19103

Telephone

+14846634112

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