Wealth with Intention

By Leah Hadley, AFC®, CDFA®. Last updated September 2026.

Every year comes with a headline that convinces investors this time is different. Right now it might be inflation that refuses to settle, a war that has pushed oil prices around, or a Federal Reserve that just raised rates. Whatever is at the top of the news feels like the biggest risk anyone has ever faced, because it is the one in front of you.

That feeling has a name. It is called recency bias, and it is one of the most expensive habits an investor can have. This is Part 1 of our Back to the Investment Basics series, and we start here because the other four basics only work if you can keep today's headlines from hijacking your decisions.

By Leah Hadley, AFC®, CDFA®. Last updated September 2026.

Year-end has a way of arriving before we feel ready for it. The holidays fill the calendar, work wraps up or ramps up, and money decisions get pushed to "after the new year." That is usually when small things slip through the cracks.

Most year-end advice is a tax checklist. Taxes matter, and we cover them separately in our Tax Tips for the End of the Year. This post is different. It is about the parts of your financial life that a tax checklist misses, like how your money actually moved this year, whether your plan still fits your life, and who is protected if something goes wrong. Think of it as a year-end reset you can finish in a few evenings.

By Leah Hadley, AFC®, CDFA®. Last updated September 2026. Rate and inflation figures are as of mid-September 2026.

Interest rates and inflation are back in the headlines, and if you have been wondering what they mean for your savings, your debt, and your investments, you are in good company. The financial press tends to treat every Federal Reserve announcement like a breaking-news event, which can make it hard to tell what actually matters to you.

This guide pulls together what used to be a three-part series into one place. It explains what the Fed's rate really is, how it connects to the rates you pay and earn, why inflation behaves the way it does, and what a sensible investor does with all of it.

By Leah Hadley, AFC®, CDFA®. Last updated September 2026.

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.

Right now you still have a little over three months and real options, which is why this is going up early.

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.

By Leah Hadley, AFC®, CDFA®. Last updated September 2026.

For many women, changing their name after divorce is one of the first tangible pieces of a new chapter. Some are eager to return to a name that feels like their own. Others keep their married name for their children, their career, or simply because it fits. Either way, the choice is yours, and there is no wrong answer.

If you do change it, the order you work in matters more than most people expect. Nearly every institution wants to see a name that already matches somewhere else. A mismatch between your Social Security record, your tax return, your employer, and your financial accounts can delay a refund, stall a rollover or transfer, and leave an old name on documents that should have changed. This guide walks through the steps in an order that keeps each one from stalling the next.

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.

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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
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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...

By Leah Hadley, AFC®, CDFA®. Last updated September 2026.

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

That is the 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 to 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...