The reading room
Good decisions start with good information.
Interactive field guides, clearly written articles, planning calculators, and the vocabulary of financial protection — free to everyone, client or not.
The Social Security & Medicare field guide
Claiming ages, spousal benefits, Parts A through D, and the enrollment windows that penalize hesitation — six chapters you can turn like pages.
Open the guide →Prefer it in print?
Get the guide as a free PDF — instantly.
Enter your email and the download unlocks on the spot. Eight pages, no jargon, yours to keep and share with your spouse.
No spam — one useful guide, and nothing else unless you ask.
Unlocked. Your copy is ready — a duplicate is on its way to your inbox.
Download the PDF →The Medicaid & long-term care field guide
Who actually pays for care, the five-year look-back, what you can keep, and the spousal protections — six chapters you can turn like pages.
Open the guide → Guide Nº 3 · InteractiveThe life insurance field guide
Term versus permanent, the needs method for sizing coverage, riders worth having, and the beneficiary form that quietly outranks your will.
Open the guide → Guide Nº 4 · InteractiveThe retirement income field guide
Three tax buckets, rollover choices at a job change, sequence-of-returns risk, the withdrawal order, and where required distributions land.
Open the guide → Guide Nº 5 · InteractiveThe disability income field guide
Own-occupation versus any-occupation, elimination and benefit periods, what group coverage leaves out, and why who paid the premium decides the tax.
Open the guide → Guide Nº 6 · InteractiveThe property & casualty field guide
The six home coverage parts, replacement cost versus actual cash value, liability limits, umbrella coverage, and the exclusions people find out about too late.
Open the guide → Guide Nº 7 · InteractiveThe estate & legacy field guide
Wills, the beneficiary designations that override them, probate, revocable and irrevocable trusts, powers of attorney, and how titling decides the outcome.
Open the guide →From the article library
Understand it before you sign it
A rotating library of current, compliance-reviewed articles. Six worth your time right now:
The 2026 numbers every household should know
Contribution limits, brackets, and thresholds for the year — the figures every other planning decision sits on top of.
Read the article → InsuranceHow much life insurance is actually enough?
Ten times income is a rule of thumb, not a plan. The needs math we actually walk families through.
Read the article → RetirementYou have an old 401(k) somewhere
Leave it, move it, roll it, or cash it out — the four options at a job change, and what each one costs you.
Read the article → RetirementWhen should you claim Social Security?
Claiming early permanently reduces the check; waiting raises it. The household math behind the timing decision.
Read the article → MedicareThree Medicare mistakes that cost real money
Enrollment windows are unforgiving, and two of these penalties follow you for life.
Read the article → Long-term careWhat long-term care actually costs in Illinois and Nevada
Real local numbers for home care, assisted living, and nursing care — and what Medicare does not pay for.
Read the article →New articles publish weekly, monthly, and at year-end. Browse every article →
Tools
Twenty-nine calculators. Zero guesswork.
Start with our thirty-second retirement projection, then go deeper — our own calculator library covers everything from college funding to RMDs — all of it running right in your browser.
Plan the long game
The rest of the shelves
Newsletters, tax tables & more
Briefs & outlooks
Our weekly brief and monthly market outlook, written in-house.
ToolsCalculators
Twenty-nine of them — tax, retirement, insurance, and cash flow.
GuidesField Guides
Seven interactive guides — life, retirement, disability, property, estate, Social Security, and long-term care. Free PDF of each.
ReferenceGlossary
The terms that show up in every policy and plan document.
Glossary
The vocabulary of protection
The terms that come up in nearly every planning conversation — and in nearly every policy and plan document you will be asked to sign.
- Beneficiary
- The person or entity who receives a policy's benefit. Primary beneficiaries are first in line; contingent beneficiaries receive the benefit if the primary can't.
- Death benefit
- The amount a life insurance policy pays to beneficiaries — generally free of federal income tax.
- Elimination period
- The waiting period between a qualifying disability or care event and the day benefits begin. Longer elimination periods mean lower premiums.
- Premium
- What you pay to keep coverage in force — monthly, quarterly, or annually. Level-premium designs lock the rate for the life of the policy or term.
- Rider
- An optional provision added to a policy — such as a long-term care rider on a life policy — that extends or modifies the base coverage.
- Rollover
- Moving retirement money from one qualified account to another — for example, a former employer's 401(k) into an IRA — without triggering taxes when done correctly.
- Required minimum distribution (RMD)
- The amount the IRS requires you to withdraw annually from most tax-deferred retirement accounts, generally beginning at age 73.
- Actual cash value (ACV)
- Replacement cost minus depreciation. On an older roof or vehicle this can be far less than what it costs to replace the item — the single most consequential setting on a property policy.
- Annuity
- A contract with an insurance company that converts a sum of money into a stream of payments, often for life. Terms, fees, and surrender periods vary widely by product.
- Cash value
- The savings component inside a permanent life policy, which grows tax-deferred. Loans and withdrawals reduce the death benefit, and an underfunded policy can lapse.
- Contingent beneficiary
- The backup. If the primary beneficiary has died or cannot be located, the benefit passes here instead of falling into the estate.
- Deductible
- What you pay out of pocket before coverage responds. Some home policies apply a percentage deductible for wind or hail, calculated on the dwelling limit.
- Fiduciary
- A standard requiring that advice be given in the client's best interest. Not every financial professional is held to it in every interaction — it is a fair question to ask.
- Full retirement age (FRA)
- The age at which you qualify for 100% of your Social Security benefit. Claiming earlier permanently reduces it; waiting past FRA increases it until age 70.
- Guaranteed insurability
- A rider letting you buy additional coverage later without a new medical exam — valuable if your health changes after the original policy is issued.
- Liability coverage
- The part of a policy that pays when you are responsible for someone else's injury or damage, and defends you when you're accused of it. Capped only by your limit.
- Look-back period
- The window Medicaid reviews for asset transfers when determining eligibility for long-term care benefits. Gifts made inside it can delay coverage.
- Own-occupation
- A disability definition that pays if you cannot perform the duties of your occupation, even if you could work in another field. The more favorable standard.
- Probate
- The court process that validates a will and transfers what remains after debts. Public, and variable in cost and duration by state. Assets with a named beneficiary generally bypass it.
- Replacement cost
- Coverage that pays what it takes to replace an item with a comparable new one, with no deduction for depreciation.
- Sequence-of-returns risk
- The danger that poor market returns early in retirement, while you are withdrawing, permanently shrink the base that has to recover. The same average return in a different order produces a different outcome.
- Term insurance
- Life coverage for a set number of years that pays only if you die within that window. Nothing accumulates inside it, which is why it costs a fraction of permanent coverage for the same death benefit.
- Umbrella policy
- Liability coverage that sits on top of your home and auto limits and pays once those are exhausted — usually inexpensive relative to the protection it adds.
- Vesting
- How much of your employer's retirement-plan contributions actually belong to you. Your own contributions are always yours; employer money may take years.
- Waiver of premium
- A rider under which the insurer pays your policy premiums if you become disabled, keeping the coverage in force when income has stopped.
- Underwriting
- The insurer's evaluation of your age, health, and history to determine eligibility and pricing. Applying earlier — and healthier — almost always prices better.
Reading is free. So is the first conversation.