Matt Smith, CFA®, CFP®

Calling all Rock Star attorneys!

@Rick_Ferri I charge a flat fee and disagree with you

When I write on X a single world equity index fund (VT) or ~65% total US stocks (VTI) and ~35% total international stocks (VXUS) is all the equity most people need to achieve their objectives, the pushback I get isn’t from individuals, it’s from advisers who charge high AUM fees.

@upinmontana @averagemoneymd From my experience, it’s often related to the idea that the team is expensive and the NWM stuff is not. I think a lot of people are uninformed victims but there’s an element that know better but go with it anyway

Why would your friend call to tell you he's meeting with an insurance salesman? At that level of income he should have a team of advisors who work together: Tax Attorney, CPA, Investment Advisor, Insurance Advisor. Their task is to understand his situation and provide answers to his problems and tax issues.

My best friend called me yesterday. Said he's meeting with an advisor from Northwestern Mutual. Said he's sick of paying so much in taxes and looking for options. Dual physician family - W2 jobs with combined income >$1 mil I just told him, whatever you do, do not let them talk you into a whole life insurance policy.

@Sandeman52 @Spiralout_one @maxpashman *before this last tax season. CAGR can get crushed without coordination, which is something planners can help with

@Spiralout_one @maxpashman I need a tax specialist after this last tax season. 🫠

@markcecchini “But the tax person you recommended said I shouldn’t do that. I want somebody more creative.”

For the love of god please get a legitimate attorney and an accountant involved before you do that

Stumbled upon a new favorite YouTube channel. This person is just destroying “tax hack” bs and I’m here for it! @TaxLeverage How to Write Off Your Car (Legally) youtu.be/sP_JY1VEhy4?si… via @YouTube

Some great insights here from Joseph Wang on box spreads. Box spreads can be a pretty compelling solution over other lending options in a significant number of situations. The complexity of putting together and executing the move has been a barrier to its use for a long time, but technology is very, very quickly eliminating (or at least, significantly reducing) those roadblocks. Simply put, I think you're going to see the use of these things explode over the next 5-15 years. And if their usage increases as much as I think it can, it has the potential to put a lot of pressure on custodians and other lenders to reduce their margin/SBLOC loans in order to keep them competitive. "Inside a tax-smart borrowing tool for risk-tolerant clients" financial-planning.com/news/inside-a-…

I spent a Houston freeze jiggling valves and hunting for non-existent filters because I thought I could outsmart a plumber with AI. 🥶 I failed. But I learned a massive lesson about opportunity cost and financial planning. concertplanning.com/blog/plumber

The new Trump Accounts launch 7/5/2026! 🇺🇸 Got a kid born between 2025-2028? You could be eligible for a $1,000 gov seed. But wait—they gain full control at 18. Is it better than a 529? Read the full breakdown: concertplanning.com/blog/trumpacco… #TrumpAccounts #FinancialPlanning #Investing

@DsrPrivate I’ve been gone for a long time and need to catch up. Have you posted/published anything on timing of when this level of vol hits?

@punt_rd Whoops! You covered that with Foo Fighters. My bad. My brain read “Dave Grohl”

@punt_rd …and Pat Smear, which deserves a mention!

Geezer Butler Lars Ulrich Sebastian Bach Foo Fighters Black Sabbath’s - ‘Supernaut’ In celebration of the anniversary of Black Sabbath’s masterpiece Vol. 4. The effect it had on generations of hard & heavy music fans & artists can’t be denied!

Not a good day to be a chore in the city of Houston

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing high earners that whole life insurance is what made Ultra-High Net Worth people rich

@gothburz Teach this underlying truth in every high school so kids can dispense with the idea that going in and making constructive, but painful changes in an organization will get them ahead in their career. This is how to play the game.

Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees. $30 per seat per month. $1.4 million annually. I called it "digital transformation." The board loved that phrase. They approved it in eleven minutes. No one asked what it would actually do. Including me. I told everyone it would "10x productivity." That's not a real number. But it sounds like one. HR asked how we'd measure the 10x. I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards." They stopped asking. Three months later I checked the usage reports. 47 people had opened it. 12 had used it more than once. One of them was me. I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds. It took 45 seconds. Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations. But I called it a "pilot success." Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail. The CFO asked about ROI. I showed him a graph. The graph went up and to the right. It measured "AI enablement." I made that metric up. He nodded approvingly. We're "AI-enabled" now. I don't know what that means. But it's in our investor deck. A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT. I said we needed "enterprise-grade security." He asked what that meant. I said "compliance." He asked which compliance. I said "all of them." He looked skeptical. I scheduled him for a "career development conversation." He stopped asking questions. Microsoft sent a case study team. They wanted to feature us as a success story. I told them we "saved 40,000 hours." I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up. They didn't verify it. They never do. Now we're on Microsoft's website. "Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot." The CEO shared it on LinkedIn. He got 3,000 likes. He's never used Copilot. None of the executives have. We have an exemption. "Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction." I wrote that policy. The licenses renew next month. I'm requesting an expansion. 5,000 more seats. We haven't used the first 4,000. But this time we'll "drive adoption." Adoption means mandatory training. Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches. But completion will be tracked. Completion is a metric. Metrics go in dashboards. Dashboards go in board presentations. Board presentations get me promoted. I'll be SVP by Q3. I still don't know what Copilot does. But I know what it's for. It's for showing we're "investing in AI." Investment means spending. Spending means commitment. Commitment means we're serious about the future. The future is whatever I say it is. As long as the graph goes up and to the right.

@PearlCreek Yes, one could

@ConcertFinPlan Seems like one could come to the opposite conclusion.

Your financial advisor shouldn't tell you not to pay off your student loans instead of investing because they'll lose money on the former. 🚫 That’s why Concert Financial Planning has ditched the AUM fee model. We are now 100% Flat-Fee. 🔹 Transparent pricing. 🔹 Agnostic advice (Cash? Real Estate? Stocks? We cover it all). 🔹 Built specifically for BigLaw complexity. Here is why we made the switch: concertplanning.com/blog/flat-fee

@conksresearch Adding this to my email signature

Few things enrage me more than complex insurance products being marketed as savvy investment solutions to retail investors. It is impossible for folks to appreciate how fragile and risky these products are from the deceptive policy illustrations used to sell them.

Does anybody know why @StateStreetETFs changed the ticker symbol on a nearly $100B fund ($SPLG to $SPYM)?

@DeepDishEnjoyer @xzqtit I think WSB guy was using American options and got early assignment. SyntheticFI is using European options so can’t be exercised early. Main issue should be liquidity upon setting up the box, but if that liquidity is gone we have much bigger problems.

@xzqtit like actual boxes, not whatever shit that retard on wallstreetbets was doing a few years ago

I just talked to someone who did this very same thing