Federal law says an ESOP has to let you start diversifying at 55. The Burns & McDonnell plan lets you start at 50, and raises the limit again at 55 and 60. What the plan's filings say about diversification, vesting, payouts, and why NUA does not apply. In this guide:

• What the plans' public filings report

• How the ESOP contribution and annual share valuation work

• When you are first allowed to diversify, and how much

• Five decisions worth getting right before you retire

• Answers to the questions employee-owners ask most

For most of the last few years, the deduction known as bonus depreciation was shrinking on a set schedule, and by early 2025 it had dropped to 40 percent. The 2025 tax law reversed that. Bonus depreciation is back to 100 percent, and for the first time it is permanent, with no phase-out date sitting on the calendar.

What follows is an overview of how the deduction works, the timing rules that determine eligibility, and why the rules are more nuanced than they may first appear.

If a recent statement showed up under a name you didn't recognize, you're not alone. Proper Planning & Wealth Management is independently owned — no private equity, no parent company deciding what name goes on your statement. Here's why that's increasingly rare in Johnson County, and the three questions every client should ask their advisor.

Most people treat their Health Savings Account (HSA) like a glorified checking account. Money goes in, a copay or a prescription comes out, and the balance hovers near zero by December. That is a missed opportunity, because the HSA is the only account in the entire tax code that gives you a tax break on the way in, on the way through, and on the way out. Used deliberately, it can become one of the most efficient retirement assets you own.

Here is how it works, and how a little discipline can turn a modest health account into a meaningful tax-free nest egg. The Triple Tax Advantage…

Over the years I have sat across from a lot of capable, intelligent people who manage their own investments. They tend to be successful in their careers, disciplined with their money, and genuinely engaged in their financial lives. And yet many of them are making the same quiet mistake. It has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with the order in which they do things.

They build a portfolio first and look for a plan later. The better approach runs in exactly the opposite direction. There are 2 ways to build a portfolio:

I work with a number of Garmin employees in Olathe and the Kansas City area, and one thing comes up again and again: Garmin offers one of the strongest benefit packages I have seen, and a lot of people are not capturing everything available to them. The good news is that fixing this rarely requires earning more or saving dramatically more. It usually just requires understanding how the pieces fit together. Here is where I focus when a Garmin employee sits down with me for the first time.

If you own a target date fund in your 401k or an S&P 500 index fund in a brokerage account, you probably feel pretty diversified. You own 500 companies. That's the entire point of indexing.

But the S&P 500 of 2026 is not the S&P 500 most investors picture in their heads. A handful of names are doing most of the work, and the gap between what people think they own and what they actually own has rarely been wider.

Here is what is going on, why it matters, and how to think about your own portfolio in light of it.

If you have been watching gas prices climb over the past few weeks, you are not alone. Conflict in the Middle East has disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman that carries roughly one-fifth of the world's oil supply. That disruption is filtering through to prices at the pump, grocery store shelves, and investment portfolios. Understanding why oil prices react so sharply to these events, and how this situation differs from tariffs or sanctions, can help you make sense of what you are seeing in the headlines.

With April approaching, taxes are top of mind for most people. But here is an uncomfortable truth: if the first time you think about your tax situation each year is when your CPA sends you a questionnaire, you are almost certainly paying more than you need to.

In our previous article, we touched on the idea that tax planning should be proactive, not reactive. Today, we are going to unpack that idea in detail and walk through several strategies that can meaningfully reduce your tax burden over time. Some of these are straightforward. Others are more advanced. All of them require planning well before April 15.

If you have ever sat down with a financial advisor and walked away with little more than a pie chart of your investment allocation, you are not alone. That experience is incredibly common, and it leaves a lot of people wondering whether financial planning is really worth the time and cost.

A real financial plan is a living, breathing strategy that connects every major financial decision in your life to a set of clearly defined goals. It is not a product someone sells you. It is a process you work through with a trusted advisor, and it evolves as your life changes.

Here is what that actually looks like in practice.