https://www.woodwealthgroup.com/

Robin Faulkner-Harrison, Financial Advisor - Wood Wealth Group, 404 N Street Suite 304, Rock Springs, WY (2026)

05/27/2026

Running a company is no small job. In fact, you have multiple jobs. Providing competitive group benefits to keep talent being one that can be extremely time consuming.

You could spend a lot of time calling the health insurance company to make updates and get new quotes, then dealing with compliance on a 401k, right before you call a third company to make changes on the group disability policy.

…but what if all of your group benefits had the same point of contact?

Wood Wealth Group and Alkali State Insurance Agency together now offer a full suite of group benefits including a retirement plan that fits the needs of your company, and several options for group insurance.

Let’s take one job off of your plate so you have more time to focus on the business you love.

Let’s work together to make your life easier, starting today!

04/21/2026

Whenever the news is freaking you out about the stock market…grab your phone, open the “stocks” app, pull up the S&P 500, and then set the chart to “all”.

It looks like this. I went ahead and circled the 2008 recession, covid, (which felt like the end of days) and the interest rate shock of 2022 (which felt very flat, but with groceries getting more expensive).

Liberation day and then the Iran war don’t even show up that well on it yet.

When financial advisors say we’re looking at the bigger picture, this is what we mean.

04/21/2026

Lately I have been having more discussions with several young people about a very tricky, unseen financial vulnerability. It’s enough to blow up the assumptions you’ve made about your future, and what you think you’ll accomplish.

This vulnerability is experienced predominantly by people who earn north of $150,000 each year in their household and put into retirement accounts.

The income is great. Saving for retirement is splendid.

The danger in it is that you are comfortable with the way things are.
You always have money to afford the things you need without too much thought because you always have money coming in.

You go ahead and buy more house than you had intended because the bank, looking at your current income and your debt to income ratio, says you can. Need new tires? Done. Without a thought. New carpet? Done. Spontaneous vacation? Possibly.

You’re earning enough money to cover everything you need and want; not accruing revolving debt. So what’s the problem?

It boils down to the fact that you’re still living paycheck to paycheck. By the time you get paid, you’ve already spent most of what you made last pay period.

It’s a nice problem to have because you’re not experiencing strain month to month because you can easily get what you need (and want).

Here’s the part where it breaks down:

• If something happens to your job, you immediately have no money. There is no (or very little) emergency savings in the bank.

• You likely have a bigger mortgage payment than what you’d have on a smaller income.

• You would likely lose your health insurance, and that could be expensive to replace.

• It probably feels like most of your money is going to bills, but you may not know exactly how much is going to bills. At $150,000, it’s not uncommon to see roughly $75,000+ just being spent, but not accounted for.

• You’re likely going to pull out of your retirement account to make ends meet, drawing down the balance of that account, its future growth, and accruing a massive tax penalty while increasing your overall tax liability.

And the big one:
• It is really difficult to alter human behavior at the drop of a hat. You’re used to your lifestyle. It’s going to really burn to attempt to dial back what you normally spend when something unexpected removes an income source.

The good news is: there are ways to save, invest, and grow your wealth in addition to your retirement plan, but without the restrictive nature of a retirement plan.

More good news:
• You may not be able to save as aggressively as you think.
• You have flexibility so that you can get to your money quickly if there is something you need to buy.
• You can be more ready if something does happen to one of your income sources so that you can cover expenses and protect some of your lifestyle while you look for similar opportunities.

It’s about adding a plan, not taking away the things you love.

04/20/2026

In one of the coolest meetings I had last week with some of the most awesome people, I got some pretty useful feedback. “I didn’t know if it was worth coming in with where we are right now.”

It was. We pegged down exactly how much mortgage they could handle in an emergency situation, even if the bank approves more.

Buying a house is actually a great time to come talk to me. Especially if you’re trying to coordinate that purchase with forward momentum of accumulating more wealth for emergencies, for kids, and for retirement.

A common misconception with getting a mortgage is- your debt to income ratio allows you to finance so much. Your credit score is nearly perfect, so it must be a good decision. After all, mortgages are relatively difficult to obtain so one would assume the bank wouldn’t qualify you for more than you should actually use.

There are other considerations though. The lender is looking at your present situation- current income (a 2 year history if you’re self employed), current debt to income, tendency to make payments, and assuming no emergencies that you would survive. If everything stays exactly the way it is, you’re able to pay back $###,###.xx

I can help you figure out what you can COMFORTABLY pay in your current situation, and test what scenarios might serve as a breaking point in your financial plan.
We can also discuss different things you might want to consider such as a slush fund for future repairs and maintenance that you MUST do eventually (and based on the house- how soon “eventually” will reasonably be.)

You might have some work to do before you’re a millionaire, but if you’re already on track for a comfortable future, I can help you to make sure your plans don’t get derailed.

04/14/2026

Are you going to be able to continue to enjoy your current standard of living in retirement for the rest of your life?

That’s the main question. That’s what everything else about retirement planning orbits.

04/10/2026

Inflation is one of the biggest eaters of money, and it happens quietly.
You’re paid the same amount, you put away the same amount, and you get your bank account back up to the same amount that you like to keep in there.
…but it spends more quickly. You’re left wondering- where did my money go?

One of my clients last week asked me to simulated absolute, total, unmitigated chaos and destruction to see what it would do to their trajectory. The closest I could come to that was to toggle my planning software to run absolute worst case scenario on every parameter, hit go, and see how they do.
This particular family does fine in all scenarios except the one where inflation runs away and return on investment is super low. That’s it. They were fine in every other disaster barring an actual apocalypse.

There is an amount of inflation that is healthy in our economy, but even that healthy inflation draws from YOUR buying power to make sure there are enough dollars to go around so our economic markets can grow without creating a gridlock in our currency.

The relationship between inflation and return on investment is meaningful because it’s the difference between saving cash- watching that cash buy less every year as prices increase, and growing your money quickly enough that you at least retain your buying power.

For retirement planning, knowing the relationship between inflation, your return on investment, and your bottom line can help you to determine how much you need to set aside to retire with the lifestyle you want to have, and also how much you need your money to continue earning after you retire in order to support the rest of your life.

Give me a call and we will review how inflation might impact your retirement.

04/10/2026

A lot of financial advice focuses on getting you to retirement. I focus on getting you through it.

04/10/2026

I help individuals and families approaching retirement turn their savings, investments, and income into a coordinated plan that aligns with real-world outcomes—especially after taxes. As a CFP® professional and an Enrolled Agent federally authorized by the U.S. Department of the Treasury to give tax advice, I provide structured, tax-aware retirement planning so clients can make confident decisions without relying on assumptions or guesswork.

04/06/2026

I remember graduating high school, and getting ready to go to college. I was excited to be an adult and have more autonomy, to accomplish goals, and to make my family proud!

I was so excited to learn new things, expand what I knew about the subjects that interest me, and figure out how I was meant to make an impact on the world.

The last thing on my mind was the cost and the future benefit of the degree I was getting versus others I was thinking about.
The government subsidizing college is a relatively new thing, and only now are we seeing the long term impact of massive student loan debt. Is it worth it? It can be. But students rarely get proper disclosure about how much they can expect to earn, or even what they will do if something happens and impacts their college education plans (like a family emergency mid-year).
Usually, the course of study one should take is presented to people who are barely adults as- Does this interest you? Get a degree in it!

Usually, there are at least a couple of different paths a student is thinking about when they’re signing up for college, and it can be so overwhelming to pick that it could come down to a coin toss.
When making that decision, it can help to consider the cost of the degree, the future benefit of the degree (how much your field of study is expected to grow or shrink as a profession in the coming years), as well as how much starting and median pay will be.
It can also help to know how much you may need to finance through a student loan vs how much will be paid through other sources (scholarships, grants and your family helping you).

I made a cost benefit activity worksheet parents can use with their high school juniors and seniors to help you guys pick a degree program and a school. You’d do one for each field of study you’re considering. It also asks you to consider why having that particular degree is important to you (are you driven by a desire to lead? Do you want to leave a mark on the world? Do you want to be the first in your family to get a degree? Do you want to make the big bucks and improve your financial position for future generations? Some other reason? They’re all valid).
It also shows you how to estimate cost for a four year degree. You can do one for grad school if you’d like, too.

It can also help to research where you would like to live, and how your chosen profession pays in that area and how much it is expected to geow

While the worksheet does not guarantee success, it can help aide you in picking between a couple of degrees, and/or the cost of those degrees at a couple of schools, so that you can get the most value out of your education. (For example, you can likely illustrate how much you’d save if you attend WWCC for a couple of years while living at home vs getting right into university at the University of Wyoming vs getting right into it at a university at another state).

I don’t recall having a tool like this, or anyone really asking me to think about it..but I figure it could be useful.

04/04/2026

Covid was the first major stock market selloff I really, truly paid attention to.

It was scary.

People were getting sick and passing away, the economy screeched to a grinding halt, and the selloff was so intense that the stock market deployed circuit breakers. (A circuit breaker is when they halt trading temporarily to give people a chance to chill out.) The supply chain was disrupted.

It seemed back then like this might be “the big one.” (There are sensationalists that say that every time by the way.)

We recovered. We haven’t gotten a sweet 12 year bull run again yet. But we recovered from that.

The reason I’m reflecting on this is- COVID was the first time I really paid attention to a selloff, but it wasn’t the first “bad times” I had ever lived through.

I was in college during 2008. Back then, of course all the real adults were alarmed by the housing market bubble pop, and it seemed back then that that one was “the big one”. Industry slowed down where I live, prices went higher, and it seemed scary back then, too.

We recovered.

I was in middle school during the dot com bubble pop. That one, I didn’t know much about at the time. Only in retrospect do I realize I lived through it.

If you’re under 30, putting away for retirement, saving your money and getting to work, you may be watching what is going on today and wondering- I always heard I should be aggressive. Is that still true right now? This looks really bad. A major trade route is essentially closed, oil is expensive and will drive the cost of everything up. How far can prices climb for my salary to still cover my expenses? Should I sell my investments and wait a little while? Should I buy more?

It’s scary. But I promise you, you’ve already lived through some rough times in the markets. This might be the first one you really paid attention to because now you’re the real adult, with a real future you’re really planning for. (Though you likely noticed Covid at the very least).

The big thing I want you to know about the markets if you are a young professional- volatility happens. It usually gets sensationalized, but we do recover. The default behavior of the economy is to grow. There are always new people being born, new industries developing, and new technologies changing old industries. You’ve already lived through some ideation of what is happening, and the recovery, and the growth to follow.

As far as how you should handle your money while this is going on? Or any other time? It depends on how to get your money to work its best for you.

Give me a call and I’ll help you get a financial plan together that will work under any market conditions. The first time you go through a slowdown/downturn/sideways volatility that you are paying attention to, it can be pretty scary. Once you’ve gone the rounds a couple of times, it gets easier, especially when you can be more confident because you know you planned for it.

Robin Faulkner-Harrison, Financial Advisor - Wood Wealth Group

05/27/2026

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