Wealth with Intention

After taking a closer look at interest rates in part 1 and inflation in part 2, we come to the heart of the matter: When interest rates, inflation, or both are on the rise, what should an investor do?

The big picture overview is that the team at Intentional Wealth Partners is continuing to deploy the same core principles and values we use to help people invest across time and through various market conditions. 

These include:

• Building and maintaining personalized investment portfolios of stocks, bonds, select alternative investments, and cash reserves
  
• Minimizing exposure to concentrated investment risks through global diversification
  
• Reducing the impulse to act on fear, excitement, and similar reactions to unfolding news
  
• Keeping an eye on tax ramifications and other costs

These core principles become even more important during increased geopolitical uncertainty and economic stress as they serve to guide you past any periods of doubt.

Future Uncertainty

With so much going on, there’s ...

In our last blog post, Understanding Interest Rates, we discussed how rising and falling interest rates can impact a healthy economy. In this post, we’re going to talk about inflation - what it is and how it’s affecting our financial plans.  This is a question that many investors are asking themselves these days and it’s important to understand if and how inflation has been contemplated as part of your financial plan.

How Is Inflation Measured?

Inflation is the rate at which money loses its purchasing power over time. As you might guess, there are many ways to measure this. There are various economic sectors, such as energy, food, housing, and healthcare, which can complicate the equation by exhibiting wildly different inflation rates at different times. There is ongoing debate over which figures are most relevant under what conditions.

There’s also today’s inflation rate, versus the rate at which inflation has changed or is expected to change over time.

For example:

• Measured by the U...

Part One: Understanding Interest Rates

If you’ve been concerned about rising interest rates, you’re not alone. With rates at historically low levels for so long, it’s something we’ve been preparing for for a while now. Still, it’s something we will continue to keep a close eye on and we want you to have a solid understanding of what this means to you. 

In March, The Federal Reserve raised its federal target funds rate by a quarter point. It was the first increase since December 2018, but it wasn’t a huge surprise. Fed Chair Jerome Powell had already said we should expect as much, with the potential for additional increases before the year-end.

Along with interest rates, inflation remains a related topic of conversation, not to mention the economic toll and humanitarian tragedy being wrought by Russia’s actions. Unfortunately, there is only so much we can do to alleviate the heartbreaking news coming out of Ukraine. 

But as a financial planner, I can at least help you put these related ...

Most year-end tax content shows up in late November, which is roughly the moment it stops being useful. By then your open enrollment window has closed, your charitable strategy is whatever you happened to do, and your only remaining move is writing a check.

It's August. You have four months and real options. That's the whole reason I'm publishing this now.

2026 is also a year where the rules genuinely moved. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act changed how charitable deductions work, raised the SALT cap, and reshaped a few things that were stable for years. Some of those changes take effect for the first time on this year's return. A plan built on 2024 assumptions will miss them.

If you grew up with a sibling, you likely learned about conflicts of interest the hard way. I remember one instance where my mom said we could split the last Oreo cookie and my brother gave me the half without the cream filling – I was mortified. In situations like that, you can see how easy it is for a decision maker to prioritize themselves over the other person. Technically there’s a number of ways to half a cookie, but finding a fair split is another matter.

When it comes to financial advisors, consumers are tasked with choosing someone who will treat them fairly and an important part of this is understanding inherent conflicts of interest.  

There are many, many titles in this industry: money coaches, financial consultants, advisors, brokers, planners, wealth managers, and so on. And since there aren’t legal requirements associated with using these terms, it can get confusing. To help sort it out, advisors have started to identify themselves by their pay structure rather than the...

Balance is a principle that works almost everywhere it is applied. A balanced nutritional program beats an unbalanced one. A balanced week beats a frantic one. Portfolios are no different, though the reason is more specific than the analogy suggests.

Diversifying across style, geography, and asset class has historically reduced volatility. That is not just a statistic on a page. A smoother ride is what makes it possible to stay buckled in when markets get rough, which is exactly where the consistency principle does its work. Balance, consistency, and courage are not three separate ideas. Balance is what makes the other two survivable, and the overview of all three principles covers how they connect.

The short answer

A balanced portfolio is not a hedge against being wrong. It is an admission, built into the structure of the portfolio itself, that nobody knows which asset class will lead next. Diversification does not improve your forecast. It removes your need for one.

• Last year's
...

Courage is the principle people picture wrong. It sounds like a bold move made at the bottom of a crash. In practice, it is almost always the opposite: sitting still while every instinct you have argues for action.

A historical perspective helps inform and guide investment decisions, and I have written about how that pairs with the investing principle of consistency. But perspective alone is not enough. Holding a disciplined position through uncertainty and fear takes something more, and that is where courage comes in. It is one of three principles we come back to constantly, and the overview of all three explains how they connect.

The short answer

Courage in investing is the willingness to keep following your plan when the market gives you every reason not to. It is rarely dramatic. It usually means continuing contributions during a decline, rebalancing toward what has fallen, and declining to move to cash because the news is loud.

• From 1980 through 2025, the S&P 500 fell by an a
...

Consistency is the least glamorous principle of investing and the one that does the most work. Staying invested through a downturn is not passivity. It is a decision, and for anyone with a meaningful portfolio, it is usually the highest-value decision you will make all year.

When you listen to financial news commentators, markets can feel capricious and arbitrary. Over the short term, that is fairly accurate. Over the long term, a handful of universal principles tend to govern results, and they guide every wealth management and investment decision we make at Intentional Wealth Partners.

The short answer

Investors who stay invested through volatility have historically captured returns that investors who move to cash do not. Over the 30 years from 1996 through 2025, an investor who missed just the 10 best days in the S&P 500 Index would have seen their return cut in half. Missing the 30 best days would have reduced the return by 84%. The best days cluster tightly around the worst ones...

Building wealth is rarely about one dramatic move. It's about a series of small decisions that compound, quietly, over years.

That's the whole idea behind a financial tip of the day. Instead of overhauling your entire financial life in a weekend, you pick up one habit at a time until the habits do the heavy lifting for you.

Below are 30 of them. None require a finance degree. Most take under an hour to set up. Read through, pick the two or three that hit closest to home, and start there.

Automate What You Can (Tips 1–5)

Willpower is a finite resource. Systems aren't. Every decision you can move to autopilot is a decision you don't have to make again.

Tip #1: Put recurring bills on autopay

Late fees are the most...