Wealth with Intention

You may be familiar with traditional retirement plans available to employees, but there’s a lot of confusion about retirement plans for self-employed or business owners. The great news is that if you are self-employed or own a business, you can create retirement plans for yourself and any employees you have. Having a retirement plan option for your employees can even benefit your business by attracting quality people who are in it with you for the long haul!

Either way, a huge advantage of having a retirement plan is that you’re able to begin saving for the future. The earlier you start saving, the better, but there is by no means a “wrong” time to start investing or contributing to a plan.

The Benefits of Having a Retirement Plan

Like I mentioned before, having a retirement plan could help you attract qualified employees who wish to stay with your company. This is true whether you have 2 or 200 employees.

Also, in the case of qualified plans and some nonqualified plans, a retirement ...

A self-directed 401(k) or 403(b) is an additional investment option to the traditional retirement plans offered by your employer. It might be available to you and you don’t even realize it. In those traditional plans, your employer pre-approves funds you can invest in, whereas a self-directed 401(k) or 403(b) allows for a little more flexibility in choosing what you can invest in.

Whether it’s you or someone outside your company’s organization, the option of a self-directed 401(k) could be great for you if you like having a little more say in where your money goes. It’s important to note that not all employers offer this option, so check with your organization to see if you’re able to participate in a self-directed brokerage of your investments.

Do you know what’s happening with your money? 

I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to who have no idea how their 401(k) is invested. It’s usually not managed well because they don’t know how to select their investments nor do they h...

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...

I started my career as a teacher. I'm also a mother of three, which means I'm around educators constantly, and a good share of my clients are teachers or school administrators.

Here's what I've learned in all those conversations: almost nobody knows what their 403(b) actually costs them. Not because teachers aren't smart about money. Because the fees are built into these products in ways that are genuinely hard to see.

Two things changed recently that make this worth revisiting. The 2026 contribution limits went up meaningfully. And the Social Security rules that penalized public employees for decades were repealed, which changes the retirement math for a lot of educators.