Nerd's Eye View

Executive Summary Tax-loss harvesting can be an effective way to reduce investment income in a taxable portfolio, by selling positions at a loss and reinvesting the proceeds in similar securities (but not identical ones, to avoid wash sale rules negating the loss) – which creates a loss for tax purposes that can offset gains from elsewhere in the portfolio, while keeping the portfolio funds still invested and able to participate in any further market upside.

Executive Summary Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 494th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast! My guest on today's podcast is Kristin Harad. Kristin is the founder of Full Advisor Coaching, a marketing and coaching firm for financial advisors.

Executive Summary 2026 has been another rollercoaster of a year to start, as the onset of the Iran War triggered a sharp selloff of nearly 10% in the first quarter, only for us to witness a 15%+ rebound in the subsequent two months, forcing advisory firms to both once again manage their early-year expenses, while meeting an uptick in demand for client conversations to navigate through the market volatility.

Executive Summary Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that the RIA industry (including both consumer-facing "retail" RIAs and larger asset managers that have investment advisory businesses) notched record highs for assets under management, total clients, and non-clerical employment in 2025, while the total number of RIAs grew for the 13th consecutive year.

Executive Summary When building a financial planning firm (or any business), there is a tension between personalization and optimization. On the one hand, as a business owner, one ostensibly has the right to create their own rules and only do the work that is most fulfilling to them.

Executive Summary Business owners have long been a popular target clientele for financial advisors; successful firms with strong profitability created an advisor opportunity to help business owners diversify their wealth (into the advisor’s managed accounts), to propose tax shelters (to offset business income), and to secure the value of the business with life insurance (to fund buy-sell agreements or estate liquidity).

Executive Summary Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 493rd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast! My guest on today's podcast is David Mozeika. David is the founder of TOMORO, an RIA based in Red Bank, New Jersey, that oversees $350 million in assets under management for 600 client households. What's unique about David, though, is how he approaches financial planning from a cash flow perspective, treating income as an asset to be distributed based on a client's goals.

Executive Summary Joining your "professional association" has long been a standard for professionals. Doctors have the American Medical Association. Lawyers have the American Bar Association. Upon completing a profession's educational and licensing requirements, membership associations are a typical next step on the journey of professional development.

Executive Summary Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that a survey of financial advisors by CFP Board found that respondents had a median income of $195,000 in 2025, with CFP professionals having 11% higher income than their peers (after controlling for a variety of factors), and that median pay can move significantly higher along with an advisor's years of experience and the number of individuals they manage.

Executive Summary The traditional view of financial planning is that advisors are experts, who learn a specialized base of technical knowledge (e.g., CFP certification), and leverage that knowledge to collect information about clients' current situation and future goals and craft recommendations about what course of action clients can take to get from here to there.