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John L. Smallwood, CFP® Senior Wealth Advisor Securities offered through Regulus Financial Group, LLC, Member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through Smallwood Wealth Investment Management, LLC, an SEC registered investment adviser. Registration with the SEC does not imply any level of skill or training. Smallwood Wealth Investment Management, LLC and Regulus Financial Group, LLC are independent entities. Smallwood Wealth Management does not provide tax or legal advice and this is not intended as such. Individuals should always consult with a qualified tax or legal professional prior to making any decisions. Wealth, Simplified. Scan to Learn More. smallwoodwealth.com | Phone: 732-542-1565 199 Broad St, Red Bank, NJ 07701 Smallwood Wealth Management So ask the only question that matters: what is the final score of your game? Did a long-term care event drain the wealth it took fiy years to build, leaving your spouse with a fraction of what you earned? Did you leave a fortune behind but without instructions for who receives it, or how? A career that ends is a story about a player. A fortune that unravels is a story about a family. e players can see the clock. You can't. Play accordingly. No One Wins Alone Watch what actually happens on one of Hall's runs. ere's a designed play, a hole that's supposed to open, and he has roughly nine-tenths of a second to arrive at exactly the right spot. If he hits it on time and his linemen open the hole cleanly, he has a chance. If he's a step early, a step late, or the block up front breaks down, the run dies and almost none of that was in his hands alone. It's a team. Your wealth is a team, too. e culture celebrates rugged individualism, the do-it-yourself investor, brilliant and self-reliant. And you may well be brilliant at one thing. But brilliance in one position rarely means you're seeing the whole field: the tax picture, the protection picture, the estate picture, and the macro forces bearing down all at once. Scoring takes a whole offense. Protecting the score takes a whole defense. One player, however gied, can't do both. You Don't Get a Vote on the Weather Even the best team plays in conditions it can't control. ere's the equipment and the cleats ere's the turf, fast or slow. And there's the weather: wind that knocks down the deep ball, rain that turns sure hands into fumbles, snow that erases footing, heat that drains the legs by the fourth quarter. e teams that win in bad weather don't complain about it; they dress for it and adjust the play-calling. Your wealth plays in the weather, too. Inflation, interest rates, tax law, market cycles, the political and regulatory climate–you don't get a vote on any of it. What you can control is the equipment for the conditions: the account structures, the protective layers, the tax strategy, the vehicles built to hold up when the forecast turns. A plan built only for blue sky is the one that fumbles in the first storm. The Formula That Doesn't Change In more than three decades of working with business owners and high achievers, I've watched tremendous success collapse into ruin, and I've watched people with very little turn it into a great deal. Past performance guarantees nothing. Markets change, economies change, political climates and the facts on the ground all change. e real question is whether you're willing to hear new information or reject it because it doesn't match an old bias. Too much of the financial industry runs on exactly that: opinion and hearsay dressed up as certainty. Underneath all of it, though, one formula has never changed for me: maximum savings rate plus maximum protection equals full financial potential. at's the game plan that wins in any weather, in any quarter. So as your own fourth quarter approaches, get clear on the final score you want. en, ask whether you have the right players on the field, whether they're in the right roles, and whether your plan is built to finish. Because you don't get to see your clock. But you do get to decide, right now, who's on your team and how ready you are to play the fourth quarter. VUENJ.COM 95

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