On July 4, 2025 President Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a sweeping piece of legistlation which includes a number of substantive revisions and additions to the tax code. Matt walks through the highlights of the bill and how it affects retirees and business owners, including changes to social security income tax, bonus depreciation, short term rental tax treatment, and more.

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As he has mentioned in previous episodes, Matt Murphy partners with Commonwealth Financial Network for their broker/dealer and support services. It is much more than a business relationship, however; there are family ties as well! To that end, Matt invites Kyle Martin of Murphy Financial Group, a third generation wealth advisor and Matt's cousin once removed. Like Matt, Kyle grew up with a deep love for golf, which he got through his grandfather (and Matt's uncle) Ken Murphy. Kyle and his grandfather played together often in his youth, where he learned not only to appreciate the game but also how to build and foster lasting relationships on the course.

Kyle's grandfather Ken began his career in the FBI, but after starting a family quickly realized it wasn't where he wanted to be. So he jumped out on his own and blazed a trail in the wealth advisory space, where his natural inclination to friendliness helped him make connections and build trust with others. He soon joined the Medinah Country Club (outside of Chicago), where he realized he could both play golf and build realtionships for his business.

What Kyle learned from his grandfather on the golf course is that golf is a way to bond with others, and demonstrate that you were a reliable and trustworthy person. The course isn't a place to do business per se, but to show others you're the type of person they want to do business with, and that type of trust is built through earnestly befriending others and finding ways to help them -- not through assertive "selling." Kyle and the other advisors at Murphy Financial Group adhere to these principles today, striving to treat people right and be responsive to their needs, and serve as a model for how good financial advice and wealth advisory should be done.

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One of the old saws of the personal finance space is the "4% Rule," which states that in retirement, you can withdraw 4% of the value of your investment portfolio each year without risking running out of money by the end of your life (that is, your portfolio will continue to grow at a rate that offsets the amount you are withdrawing, such that it will never be drawn down to zero). If 4% of your portfolio is enough for you to live on, then congratulations! You can retire risk free.

There's a few BIG but's here, which Matt Murphy, CFP, walks through in this episode. The 4% rule was formulated based on a number of assumptions, including past market performance trends from a particular window of time (1926-1976) that have not held since, especially with the interest rate environment of the last 25 years or so. The 4% Rule also assumes you will be spending money in retirment in equal chunks, i.e. you'll spend the same amount of money at age 67 as you will age 87. This assumption disregards the fact that many people like to spend thier early retirement years traveling, remodeling their house, moving somewhere closer to family, or perhaps downsizing -- all of which involve significant one-time expenses.

There are many other problems with the 4% Rule that Matt walks through in the episode, but the important takeway is that retirement isn't about achieving a number -- it's about thinking through what you want to do with your life, coming up with a plan for how you will spend your money to make those goals happen, and then preparing for a variety of scenarios for when life inevitably throws a curveball in your wisdom years.

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