“We’ll unpack why traditional college savings plans can quietly sabotage your future and how to use home equity and cash flow more efficiently—and even how business owners…can turn college funding into a smart tax strategy.”

“If you have filed the FAFSA and no one looked over it, it is the equivalent of writing your college dissertation without any edits.”

“We took the SAI from fifty thousand dollars and got it down to three thousand…It’s a hell of a lot more than just ‘oh, I’m going to take money and dump it into a 529.’”

“Help me reshift or rethink about what 401Ks mean to the individual, and entrepreneurship doesn’t just mean someone that owns a company with 150 employees. Business owners have a huge advantage in terms of what’s available to them and for tools, like tax tools, right? And so if you’re a solopreneur or you’re an independent contractor or you have a side hustle…you have something available, which is the 401K, because you are self-employed.”

“A lot of people think that $23,500 is the maximum you can put into a 401K. And the reality is, once you’re a business owner, you have this self‑employed income—you don’t need an entity, you just need to have self‑employed income. As long as you’re showing that income, you can unlock this 401K. But once you do that, now we’re talking $70,000 of contributions you can put into a 401K. And even on top of that…multiple six‑digit contributions that you can get into these things.”

“In reality, it’s a tax strategy. It just has to be looked at that way. And when you do that, it just unfolds more opportunity to help scale your business or to buy more franchises or whatever it is—buy real estate, things like that. It’s just knowing how to do that and finding the tools to do it that way.”

"Proactively gain clarity. So proactively ask yourself and probe your subconscious brain, but you could get there by just journaling actively every single day just for five minutes about what you imagine your retirement life to be. What you imagine pre-retirement to be. What you imagine, like ‘semi-retirement'. I always hear, ‘Should I retire or should I not?’"

"We all know there's more to life than money. There's more to joy and self-actualization and emotional and mental wellness than just having money in the bank. That's the top of the iceberg and below that are all these invisible factors that we don't plan for so the tangible is the money. But then there's so much more to life and retirement than just financial planning so there's purpose, passion, your sense of contribution, even your sense of freedom and flexibility, feeling relevant, sharing your unique gifts, that's one of my absolute favorites, your sense of belonging which is not just… fitting into like a club, it's literally like who you're aligned with, right? In these different elements throughout your life."

"Otherwise, you just end up in that retirement rut. It directs itself typically into depression and anxiety if you don’t direct it somewhere clear. And so rather than thinking of it as a hard stop, it’s more of where can I direct and reroute my learning? Because we already know that we’re capable of learning anything new, right? And so when we stop working, it’s not just that eternal vacation where we’re on break and we don’t need to learn and achieve anymore. You just need to figure out where you want to achieve and what that looks like."

“Of course it's important and we need it. But when the focus is overly on the money, we're missing a trick here. And the thing is, our lives are very important. We don't realize this until we have a rendezvous with death, which I had. And so when you have a rendezvous with death, you suddenly realize that time is crucial. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that every single day is a new life. It's a new beginning. Because we're not guaranteed to get up in the morning tomorrow. In fact, some of us may not make it to the end of the day.”
-George Jerjian

“I'm telling you, if you lie to yourself long enough, you believe the lie. And then the ego comes in. Now, here's the thing though. What nobody tells you is the minute you retire, your identity is compromised. So let me lay it out as to how this works.”
-George Jerjian

“Go to a country or a place that you've always wanted to go and explore. And you will see things about yourself and about your own life from a different perspective. And that changes how you see things and how you think. So coming back to your point, travel is really important, grandkids and family hugely important, but you can still do both now.”
-George Jerjian

“We have an epidemic where people are slipping, falling, getting dementia, all kinds of stuff. And let's just say that you end up in the hospital, because you're the one that pays the bills, right? So they say, oh yeah, I take care of my own bills. So you end up in the hospital for three months. You wake up in 90 or 120 days, and you hadn't made a single payment. And you haven't been able to tell anybody because you were out of it. What do you think about the lender, your favorite bank, what do you think may have happened or done to your house in the last 90 or 120 days?”

Matt Helton: “This is literally a mortgage on your home like everyone's had their whole life. Just a regular mortgage so the client still owns their house. They can still sell their house. They can still pass it on to their kids. There's no difference. The only real difference is instead of having to make a payment they have an optional payment, but that's the biggest misconception. They think that the bank is like buying their house out. No different. All the equity is still there. So a lot of people, what they'll do is because of that, they'll get some equity now because we can only lend low percentages. They may live in their home for 10 years. They'll still have equity. And then they sell their home and use the other part of the equity to move into an assisted living. So it's kind of a strategy. It buys some time because if you have that money, you can have in-home care come and help you.”

“Star ratings don’t tell the whole story. If a plan is below 4 stars in a market full of 4-plus options, benefits can get squeezed.” – Bob O’Connor

“Millions could lose coverage due to service-area reductions. Doing nothing is the worst option—know your Special Enrollment rights.” – Bob O’Connor

“People often chase extras, but the bigger question is: how stable is this insurer over time?” – Bob O’Connor