Financial Articles - Hobart Wealth

The Cost of Doing Nothing

November 10, 2026 | in Financial Planning

One of the more dangerous phrases in financial planning is, “We already took care of that.”

Sometimes that means the work really is finished. More often, it means we made a good decision three, five, or ten years ago and quietly assumed the answer would remain good forever. Unfortunately, insurance companies, tax laws, Medicare plans, investment markets, family circumstances and our own spending habits have not agreed to remain frozen in place for our convenience.

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Midterm Elections: Why Investors Should Follow Data, Not Headlines

November 3, 2026 | in Financial Planning, Investment Planning

The votes have been cast, and another midterm election is behind us. But if you’ve been following the news, you’ve probably noticed something.

The political noise hasn’t necessarily gotten any quieter.

Leading up to Election Day, we heard plenty of predictions about what might happen to the stock market depending on which party won or lost. Now, the conversation shifts to what the results could mean for the economy, government policy, and your investments.

Some headlines will point to opportunity. Others will warn of challenges ahead. But here’s an important question: Should political headlines really determine how we invest? History offers some valuable perspective.

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Social Security Has Been Here Before

October 28, 2026 | in Financial Planning, Investment Planning, Retirement Planning

A few weekends ago, Lizy and I packed up the car for what turned into roughly a ten-hour drive to Maryland for a cabin weekend with some of our friends from Washington, D.C. Emmy was asleep in the back seat, which created one of those rare parenting situations where you are grateful for the silence for about twenty minutes and then realize you still have several hundred miles of highway ahead of you.

Eventually, we reached the stage of a long road trip where just about anything qualifies as entertainment. So naturally, we listened to a Planet Money podcast about the looming financing problem with Social Security.

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Buy First or Sell First? A Slower Housing Market Changes the Math

October 20, 2026 | in Financial Planning, Investment Planning

For a long time, one of the easier assumptions to make in financial planning was that a reasonably desirable house, priced reasonably well, would sell reasonably quickly.

I am using the word “reasonably” three times because the housing market appears to be testing all three of them at once.

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Revisiting Annuity Income

October 14, 2026 | in Financial Planning, Investment Planning, Retirement Planning

There are moments in markets when two things that normally compete for attention become interesting at the same time. We happen to be in one of those moments now. The stock market has had a strong year, with the S&P 500 reaching another record closing high on October 6, 2026, while long-term U.S. Treasury yields remained above 5% as of October 7.[4][5] Neither of those facts tells us what happens next, and I would be suspicious of anyone who claims otherwise with great confidence. Markets have been humiliating confident people for centuries. But the combination does create an unusually interesting question for people who are already retired or close to it: if a portion of your portfolio has appreciated substantially, and today’s interest-rate environment can support higher lifetime-income payouts from certain fixed annuities than lower-rate environments, is this a reasonable time to review whether part of that money should be assigned a different job?

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The Debt Warning Light: Pay Attention, But Don’t Overreact

October 7, 2026 | in Financial Planning, Investment Planning

Many of you know this, but earlier this year I was involved in a car accident on I-485. Thankfully I walked away mostly unscathed and my two sons were not in the back seat. I was rear-ended, and my reliable, trusty red Honda Accord was totaled and officially laid to rest. So this became the year of getting a new car.
Thankfully, knock on wood, I shouldn’t have to worry too much about warning lights coming on in the new car anytime soon. But it did get me thinking about how we respond when one does. If a warning light comes on in your car, there are two bad responses. The first is to ignore it completely and keep driving as if nothing happened. The second is to panic, slam on the brakes, pull over, and assume the engine is about to fall out.

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Inherited Roth IRAs: What Happens After the Climb

September 30, 2026 | in Financial Planning, Legacy Planning, Retirement Planning

Hiking is a choice, which is something I occasionally have to remind myself of when I’m several hours into a long, arduous walk with friends, my legs are beginning to object, and I’m wondering why I voluntarily decided that climbing a particular mountain was a worthwhile way to spend a day. There is something inherently ridiculous about hiking when you stop to think about it. Most of our adventures amount to spending an enormous amount of time and energy finding the most inconvenient possible way to return to the exact same parking lot we left that morning, and somehow, we consider that a successful outcome.

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The Great Wealth Transfer Has a Real-Estate Problem Hiding Inside It

September 23, 2026 | in Estate Planning, Financial Planning, Legacy Planning, Retirement Planning

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

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The Trump Account Isn’t Really About the Free $1,000

September 16, 2026 | in Financial Planning, Retirement Planning

Since our daughter was born, Lizy and I have had plenty of conversations about what we should be doing financially for her. There are the obvious things, like saving for education, making sure our estate plan is updated, and generally trying not to spend an unreasonable percentage of our income on things she will outgrow in six weeks. But there is another question that comes up whenever grandparents, family members, or even we want to put money aside for her: where should that money actually go?

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The Market Never Stands Still

September 9, 2026 | in Financial Planning, Investment Planning

A couple of days ago, I was scrolling through Facebook when a post caught my attention. It showed the Charlotte skyline through a series of snapshots taken over the years. The first was from 1940, then 1960, 1985, 2006, and finally 2026.
I found myself stopping on each picture for a while.
Charlotte was still Charlotte, of course. But the changes were remarkable. Buildings appeared. Familiar landmarks changed and new ones took their place. The city grew upward and outward, and with every picture you could see another chapter of its evolution. What struck me most was how different the change looked when compressed into a handful of photographs.