Chris Brindle
I'm a Financial Planner and Investment Advisor for Sales Reps. I create financial content to help people live a better life without the stress that comes with variable income.
$17,700
The plan he’ll actually run + open enrollment, and one move before your Q4 check lands What to know Open enrollment is closing Most companies close enrollment in November, and the default is to roll last year’s picks forward. Before you click through, compare the high-deductible plan with an HSA against the PPO using what you actually spent on healthcare this year. If you’re healthy and can cover the deductible from savings, the HSA usually wins: the money goes in pretax and comes out...
eight weeks left
you might be writing a big check in april INTENTIONAL FINANCE Before December 31 + the Fed held, and mortgages are still above 7% Read time: 4 min Last week in the markets S&P 500: -0.6% on the week Nasdaq: -2.0% Dow: -0.9% 10-year Treasury yield: 4.94%, down from 5.00% Big tech dragged the indexes down. Investors balked at how much Alphabet and Amazon plan to spend on AI data centers, and Intel fell 29% on Friday after a weak outlook. The damage was narrow, though: about 64% of S&P 500...
april bill 🎯
you might already be behind and not know it INTENTIONAL FINANCE Your Commission Check Isn't Taxed Enough + the video where I show you why Read time: 2 min A client I'll call Pete sells heavy equipment, and last year was the best of his career: $350,000 and change. When tax time came, he found out he owed another $20,000 that he never saw coming. It rattled him enough that he missed the regular filing deadline. He filed an extension and planned to pay last year's bill out of next year's...
📊$170,000
you might be waiting on a number that was never meant for you INTENTIONAL FINANCE The $170,000 House Rule + the number I actually build before someone buys Read time: 5 min A post went around last week with a checklist for buying a house: stable income, a paid-off car, a credit card cleared every month, 20% down in savings, and $100,000 invested in stocks. Miss any one of those, it said, and do not go buy a house right now. It picked up 13,000 views and a lot of people nodding along. Then I...
$104,512
Harvey Mudd is $104,512. For one year. My whole degree cost less than that. INTENTIONAL FINANCE $104,512 for One Year of College Fifteen schools now cost six figures a year. Here's the order I'd fund a kid's education, and the account most parents get wrong. Read time: 5 min Harvey Mudd College will cost $104,512 for the 2026-27 school year. One year. Tuition, fees, housing, food, books, and the ride home at Thanksgiving. Fourteen more schools cleared six figures on the same list: Duke at...
57 became 61
The average millionaire's age just moved four years in one generation. INTENTIONAL FINANCE Nobody Gets Rich on Their Best Quarter The average millionaire in America just got four years older than a generation ago. If you're 27 and think you're behind, the math says otherwise. Read time: 3 min Picture a 27-year-old named Jake. Full-cycle AE, base plus commission, closed enough business last year to clear $210,000. He's got $38,000 saved already, which is a strong number for someone his age by...
backhanded gift
Boomers deferred the tax for 40 years. Their kids get 10 to pay it. INTENTIONAL FINANCE The Ten-Year Clock on Your Parents' IRA Boomers are sitting on $18 trillion in pre-tax retirement money. The SECURE Act decides how fast their kids pay the tax on it. Read time: 5 min Baby boomers are sitting on at least $93 trillion in assets, according to Visa's research team. That's more than Gen X and millennials hold combined. A large piece of that, somewhere between $18 trillion and $20 trillion,...
$408k to be "comfortable"
What it actually costs to live comfortably in San Francisco this year. INTENTIONAL FINANCE TODAY'S SPONSOR: MORNING BREW Spain beat Argentina 1-0 in extra time to win the World Cup this weekend. The players got the trophy. FIFA got something bigger: the governing body is expected to report roughly $15 billion in tournament revenue, blowing past its own $11 billion projection. A ticket to the final ran a median price of $10,835. Brands spent north of $857 million advertising during matches. A...
almost made a huge mistake
A routine check-in caught what tax season would have missed. INTENTIONAL FINANCE The $20,000 Write-Off That Almost Vanished A scheduled RSU vest almost cost my client the tax loss she was counting on. Read time: 3 min Quick note before we get into this one: there's an idea related to what I'm about to walk through, and I mention it at the end. Curious what you think, I'll ask once you get there. A client of mine at Nike was about to sell $20,000 worth of company stock at a loss. On its own,...
sellers need to know this
57,000 jobs added. 113,000 expected. Here's what it means for your Q3 pipeline. INTENTIONAL FINANCE What the Jobs Report Means for Sellers 57,000 jobs added. 113,000 expected. The gap matters more than the headline. Read time: 3 min 57,000 jobs added in June. The forecast was 113,000. That miss is only part of the story. The government revised April and May down by a combined 74,000 positions, which means the labor market added 131,000 fewer jobs over the last three months than originally...
I'm a Financial Planner and Investment Advisor for Sales Reps. I create financial content to help people live a better life without the stress that comes with variable income.