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What is financial fitness? A better way to measure your money

Financial fitness is a simple idea: it's not how much money you have, it's whether your money is working for the life you want. Net worth measures the size of your pile. Financial fitness measures whether that pile is actually doing its job — covering you month to month, protecting you when something breaks, and building toward what's next. For most of us, money stopped being a once-a-year conversation a long time ago. There are more decisions now, spread across more accounts, over longer lives. Should you buy the house or wait? What do you do with the RSUs that just vested? Are you actually okay, or does it just look that way? Physical fitness gave us a way to talk about the body. Mental fitness gave us a way to talk about the mind. Financial fitness is the same move for your money — a clear, honest read on where you stand. Net worth is one number, and it hides a lot. Two people can have the exact same net worth and be in completely different shape. One has three months of expenses in

What is a money person? The plain-English alternative to a financial advisor

The short version: a money person is a smart, warm friend who happens to be good with money and explains it like a person, not a bank. Practically, it's a second opinion on your whole financial picture — cash, debt, tax exposure, concentration, and the goals you're working toward — that tells you in plain language what to look at first. It's not a traditional advisor managing your portfolio for 1% a year, and it's not a coach cheering you on. It's the honest read a good advisor's first meeting would give you, without the fee or the asset minimum. It's the role Ed Wealth was built to play. Strip away the label and a money person does four concrete things: Just as important is what it doesn't do: it doesn't take custody of your money, it doesn't sell you products for commission, and it doesn't pretend a forecast is a promise. It's a second opinion: it shows you the structure and lets you decide. People reach for four different things when they say "I should talk to someone." They're not

Money Guides

Your RSUs Just Vested. Here's What a Money Tool Surfaces First.

You just had a big RSU grant vest. Congratulations — and now the awkward part: a six-figure pile of your own company's stock, a vague sense you should "do something," and no one actually telling you what. An advisor, a spreadsheet, and a piece of software each handle this moment differently. Here's what a modern money tool surfaces in a moment like this — using Ed as a worked example — so you can decide what kind of help actually fits. You connect your brokerage and bank through read-only aggregation, so the tool can read balances but can't move a dollar. Ed's framing is simple: precise about your money, blind to your identity. Instead of sorting your lattes into categories, Ed opens on a single Financial Reality Check — a read on whether your money could survive a bad month. For a lot of high earners, that one number lands harder than any budget, because it answers a question the other apps never ask. (If the Reality Check is the numbers side, your money type is the behavior behind th

Lump sum or dollar-cost averaging? What the math actually says

If you've got a pile of cash to invest and you're stuck between putting it all in today or feeding it in slowly over a few months, here's the short answer: the math says invest it now. Vanguard's research found that a lump sum beat dollar-cost averaging roughly two-thirds of the time. The reason is boring but powerful. Markets go up more often than they go down, so time out of the market usually costs you. But "the math" isn't the whole story, and anyone who tells you it is has never watched their own money drop 15% the week after they invested it. There's a real, rational case for spreading it out. It just isn't the case most people think. The logic is almost too simple. When you hold cash waiting to invest it "at a better time," you're betting the market will be lower later. Sometimes it is. But most of the time it isn't, because stocks and bonds have historically out-earned cash. Vanguard studied this directly in a 2023 paper. Looking at rolling one-year periods from 1976 to 2022, i

Is the 4% rule still safe? How long your money really lasts

Short answer: yes, for most people the 4% rule is still a sensible place to start. But it was never meant to be a set-and-forget autopilot. It is a starting dial. Understand what it actually promises and you will worry less, spend more comfortably, and avoid the trap most retirees fall into: dying with far more money than they ever needed. In 1994, a financial planner named William Bengen ran a simple experiment. He took every 30-year retirement window in U.S. history back to 1926 and asked: what is the highest starting withdrawal rate that would have survived all of them, including the worst? His answer, published in the Journal of Financial Planning, was about 4.15%. Rounded down, that became "the 4% rule." A few years later, three Trinity University professors ran a similar test and confirmed it. Their 1998 study found that a balanced stock-and-bond portfolio withdrawing 4% (adjusted for inflation) survived 30 years in 95% to 100% of historical periods. Push it to 5% and the success

Are you actually behind on retirement savings?

Probably not as behind as you think. If you're in your 30s or 40s, saving a little while you raise kids and pay a mortgage, that isn't a personal failure. It's the normal shape of a saving life. The math that scares people, the "you should have three times your salary saved by 40" kind, is a rule of thumb, not a law. And the years that do the heavy lifting for most people haven't even started yet. You've seen the benchmark: 1x your salary saved by 30, 3x by 40, 6x by 50, 8x by 60, and 10x by 67. That's Fidelity's set of savings milestones, and Fidelity itself calls them "aspirational" goalposts you likely won't hit on schedule. They're built on a tidy set of assumptions: you start saving 15% at 25, you invest heavily in stocks, you retire at 67. Change any one of those and the whole staircase shifts. So when someone at 42 with one salary's worth saved feels like a failure, they're comparing their real, messy life to a smooth line drawn for a person who doesn't exist. The honest read is

Why you feel broke on a good income (and how to fix it)

If you earn well but still feel broke, it's almost never the coffee. It's the two or three big fixed decisions eating your cash flow (housing, cars, and every raise you spent instead of banked) that leave nothing at the end of the month. The fix isn't tracking pennies. It's controlling the spending rate on the few categories that dominate your budget, then banking half of every raise. A high salary and a tight month are not a contradiction. In the LendingClub paycheck-to-paycheck survey, 44% of people earning more than $100,000 a year said they had little or nothing left after paying their bills. That's not a small unlucky group. That's nearly half of high earners. And it stacks up fast. The Federal Reserve's 2024 survey found that 37% of adults couldn't cover a surprise $400 expense with cash. Some of those people are on good incomes. A big paycheck doesn't automatically buy breathing room. How you spend it does. So if the number on your offer letter looks great and your bank balance

Should you pay off your mortgage or invest? (the honest math)

The short version: paying extra on your mortgage is a guaranteed, risk-free return equal to your interest rate. So the real question isn't "mortgage or market" — it's whether your mortgage rate is higher or lower than what you can reliably earn elsewhere, after tax and after risk. In 2026 that math has flipped. With 30-year rates near 6.5% and top savings accounts around 4%, prepaying a 6.5% mortgage is a ~6.5% guaranteed return that cash can't touch and even stocks can't promise. But there are three things you should do before you choose either. Every extra dollar you put toward your mortgage principal earns you a guaranteed return equal to your mortgage rate. Pay down a 6.5% loan and you've locked in 6.5%, risk-free, for the life of that dollar. No fund does that. So line it up against the honest alternatives: When your mortgage rate is above what cash pays and close to what stocks might pay with real risk attached, the "boring" move — paying it down — is quietly one of the best risk

How Much Does a Financial Advisor Cost? (+ the Free Alternative)

The short version: most financial advisors charge about 1% of the money they manage per year — roughly $3,000 a year on a $300,000 portfolio, whether or not your situation changed. But "1%" hides four very different fee models, plus fund costs and commissions underneath. The number that actually matters isn't the percentage; it's the all-in cost in dollars, over years. Here's how to work that out — and what to do if you want clarity without paying 1% a year to get it. Almost every fee structure is a version of one of these: The 1% AUM model is the default you'll meet most often, and it's worth understanding exactly what it costs, because the percentage framing is designed to feel painless. One percent sounds like a rounding error. In dollars, it isn't. On a $300,000 portfolio, 1% is about $3,000 every year — a fixed cost that doesn't shrink in a year when nothing about your plan changed. Hold that account for 20 years and you've paid at least $60,000 in direct fees alone, before you ev

Is a financial advisor worth it? Advisor vs robo vs money person

The short version: a financial advisor is worth it when your money has real complexity — a business, concentrated stock, an estate, a divorce, or turning savings into retirement income. There, a fee pays for itself. But most people don't have a complexity problem; they have a clarity one, and paying 1% of your assets a year — about $3,000 on a $300,000 portfolio, every year — is a lot to pay for reassurance. You have three tiers to choose from: a human advisor (~1% of assets), a robo-advisor (~0.25%), and a money person — a flat-fee second opinion that doesn't grow as your savings do. Start with the honest case for paying. A good advisor earns their fee when your situation is genuinely complex: selling a business, a big block of company stock or options, an estate with kids, a divorce, a windfall, or building a retirement-income plan with real moving parts. In those moments, one right call can save you many times the fee, and the job becomes picking a good one (that's how to choose a f

Do You Actually Need a Financial Advisor? (An Honest Test)

The short version: you need a financial advisor when your money has genuine complexity — equity comp across several employers, a business sale, an estate with kids involved, a divorce, a sudden windfall, or a retirement-drawdown plan with real moving parts. If your situation is closer to "I earn well but somehow feel behind," that's a clarity problem, not a complexity one, and hiring someone to manage your money for about 1% a year is an expensive way to solve it. Here's how to tell which one you have. Almost everyone reaching for an advisor falls into one of two camps, and confusing them is where money gets wasted. A complexity problem is when there are real moving parts that interact: decisions where a wrong move costs far more than any fee. Selling a company, exercising stock options with a tax bill attached, splitting assets in a divorce, planning how to draw income across a 30-year retirement. Here, a good advisor earns their keep. A clarity problem looks different. Good income, a

How to Choose a Financial Advisor in 2026 (and Whether You Even Need One)

The short version: picking a financial advisor isn't about finding the "smartest" one. It comes down to three boring questions that actually predict whether you'll be treated well: are they legally a fiduciary, how do they get paid, and do you even need one yet. Get those right and the rest is noise. Here's how to run the check — and what to do if you want guidance but can't (or don't want to) meet a $250,000 minimum. Before you choose one, ask whether this is the right tool at all. A full-service advisor earns their fee when your situation is genuinely complex — a business sale, equity comp across several companies, estate planning, a divorce, a sudden windfall, or a retirement-income plan with real moving parts. But a lot of people reaching for an advisor don't have a complexity problem. They have a clarity problem: a good income, a few scattered accounts, and a nagging sense of being behind. That doesn't need someone to manage your money for 1% a year. It needs a clear read on where

How to redeem airline miles without wasting them

The single biggest mistake with miles is redeeming them for the easy stuff: gift cards, merchandise, seat upgrades at the gate. Do that and each mile is worth about one cent. Redeem the same miles for flights, especially long-haul or premium-cabin flights, and they're often worth two to five cents each, sometimes more. So the real skill isn't earning miles; it's not throwing away their value at the finish line. Here's how to actually use them. A mile has no fixed price; its value depends entirely on what you redeem it for. The way to judge any redemption is simple math: (cash price of the flight) ÷ (miles it costs) = cents per mile. If a flight costs $400 or 20,000 miles, that's 2 cents a mile, a solid deal. If a $90 flight costs 18,000 miles, that's half a cent, which is terrible; pay cash and keep the miles. Run this check before every redemption. It instantly separates a great use from a waste, and it's the one habit that makes miles worth having. As a rule of thumb, most major airl

Should you buy a house now or wait? How to actually decide

The honest answer: buy when you'll stay put for at least five years and you'll still have an emergency fund left after the down payment. Otherwise, waiting (and renting) is often the smarter money move, not the weaker one. "Rent vs buy" isn't a math problem with one right answer, and it's almost never really about timing the market. It's about your life, in three questions. Before the three questions, here's the mid-2026 backdrop — because "now or wait" usually hides a bet on rates and prices, and the data says that bet is a coin flip. The picture: mortgages are still pricey, prices have gone flat (more than half of the 20 big metros saw year-over-year declines in March), and the cheap-money era hasn't returned. So "buy before it runs away" and "wait for the crash" are both weak arguments right now. The whole "wait for rates to drop" plan rests on the Fed, and the Fed is split down the middle. In its June 2026 projections, policymakers were divided: 8 expected no change this year, 9 sa

Long-term vs short-term financial goals (and how to plan both)

The difference comes down to one thing: time. A short-term goal is money you'll need within roughly three years (an emergency fund, a trip, a wedding, next year's tax bill), so it has to be safe and reachable. A long-term goal is five-plus years out (retirement, a house down the road, a kid's education), so it can take market risk, because time smooths the bumps out. Get that match right and you've done most of the work. It's not the size, it's the deadline. A $2,000 goal you need in six months is short-term; a $2,000 goal you won't touch for fifteen years is long-term, and they belong in completely different places. This is the part that actually matters, and where people lose money without realizing it. Short-term money should not be in the stock market. If your emergency fund is in stocks and the market drops 20% the same month your car dies, you're selling at the worst possible time. Short-term goals go somewhere stable and accessible, and a high-yield savings account is the classi

How to set financial goals you'll actually hit

A financial goal you'll actually hit has three things a vague wish doesn't: a number, a date, and one automatic move that happens whether or not you remember it. "Save more" is a wish. "$6,000 in a separate account by next December, $500 auto-transferred on payday" is a goal. The gap between those two sentences is the reason most goals quietly die, and it has almost nothing to do with willpower. A real financial goal answers three questions: how much, by when, and what for. Drop any one and it stops working. "Pay off debt" has no number and no date, so there's nothing to aim at or measure, while "$8,000 of card debt cleared in 18 months" tells you exactly whether you're on track and the day you're done. The "what for" matters more than people expect. A goal tied to something real (a buffer so a bad month isn't a crisis, a deposit on a first place) survives the months when motivation dips. In our experience reading how people actually use a money tool, the goals that get abandoned are