Andrew, 40, runs his own consulting business. Sophia, 36, recently took a lower-paying job for work she found more meaningful. On paper, they were doing well: strong savings, a low mortgage rate, real momentum. What they didn't have was a plan built for what was coming next, a possible home upgrade, a first child, and a few gaps that wouldn't hold up if life got complicated.
We found real exposure hiding in plain sight: no life insurance for Andrew at all, disability coverage well below where it needed to be, and no estate plan in place, not even a will. On the tax side, Andrew's business was paying him a salary lower than what the IRS would consider reasonable, a real audit risk. We restructured it, opened a Solo 401(k) to let him shelter more income, and built out the estate documents from scratch.
Then we modeled what actually mattered to them: what happens to their timeline if they buy an $800k home and have a child in the next few years, versus staying the course. That single model turned a vague worry into a clear, specific number they could plan around.
