An August 31, 2026 LendingTree study included one of those numbers so large it’s hard to fathom its sheer size: Americans age 65 and older who own homes could transfer roughly $17.2 trillion of wealth to younger generations over the next twenty years.1
What I’ve learned is that backpacking isn’t about adding comfortable, luxurious items to my pack. It’s about figuring out what you can remove without sacrificing the experience. Nobody reaches mile 15 wishing they had packed more stuff. The biggest gains usually come from eliminating the things that were weighing me down in the first place.
Financial planning tends to work the same way. When we’re building wealth, most of our focus is on accumulation. We spend decades adding. More savings, more investments, and more retirement accounts. And at some point, we’ve added so much that we’re not quite sure what’s in our “pack.”