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February 2026
Greetings!
It's the day after Presidents' Day. How are those New Year's intentions holding up?
If you're like most of my clients, the answer is complicated. Not because you lack discipline, you've built careers and businesses that required enormous discipline. But because even the most sophisticated investors fall into a particular trap: waiting for the perfect moment to act. The concentrated position you've been meaning to diversify when the stock climbs a little higher. The estate plan that's 90% done and will be finished when things settle down enough to have that conversation. The deferred compensation election you haven't optimized until you have more clarity about next year's income. The family business succession plan when the time feels right. It never feels right. That's not a character flaw. It's the perfection trap.
The Myth of the Clean Slate
Writer Oliver Burkeman puts it bluntly: you can never actually start fresh. The person trying to leave the past behind is someone who's been completely shaped by that past with the same habits, tendencies, and blind spots that got them here. Your financial record will never be spotless. No flawless portfolio, no perfectly timed decisions. Once you accept that, you will stop waiting for ideal conditions and start working with the actual conditions in front of you.
What This Means in Practice
The clients who make the most meaningful progress aren't the ones with the most ambitious January plans. They're the ones who face their actual situation: the real concentration risk in their portfolio, the estate documents that actually exist (not the ones they intend to create), the succession timeline that reflects reality rather than optimism.
This isn't about settling. It's about the only kind of change that actually compounds: concrete adjustments made to the financial life you have, not the one you planned to have by now.
Which is exactly why this month's topics are the ones most people have been deferring. The rest of this newsletter covers Social Security's 2026 changes that affect HNW individuals, portfolio concentration, and alternative investments. For each topic, ask yourself one question: what's one adjustment I can make to my actual situation, right now?
The accounts that need rebalancing, the planning conversations you've been deferring, the documents still waiting for a signature — this is the work. And there's no better starting point than exactly where you are.
Dream. Plan. Prosper.
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