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Today’s solo episode takes a hard look at what’s really broken in the traditional wealth planning model—and why it’s failing so many investors. Dave Wolcott breaks down the flawed assumptions behind conventional strategies like the 60/40 portfolio, tax deferral, and one-dimensional public market investing. From the dangers of underestimating taxes, fees, and inflation, to the risks of outliving your money, Dave shares why relying on outdated financial advice may be sabotaging your long-term freedom.
With his entrepreneurial mindset and deep experience, Dave challenges listeners to think beyond Wall Street’s narrative. He introduces smarter, more efficient ways to build wealth—through strategy stacking, alternative investments, and a focus on control and legacy. If you’re tired of riding the market rollercoaster or wondering if you’ll have enough in retirement, this episode will give you the clarity to start thinking differently about your financial future.
How’s it going, everyone? And welcome to a special solo series of Wealth Strategy Secrets Of The Ultra Wealthy. I’m your host, Dave Wolcott. We get a lot of the same questions from our investors about infinite banking, tax efficiency, asset protection, strategy stacking, and how to actually build wealth outside of Wall Street. And we get it.
We know you’re busy. So in this series, I’m breaking down complex wealth strategy topics into short tactical episodes that you can actually use to build legacy wealth. Whether you’re just starting your journey or fine-tuning your portfolio, these episodes are designed to give you high-impact insights in just a few minutes. So let’s dive in. Hey, guys.
In today’s deep dive, we’re gonna cover what’s actually wrong with today’s wealth planning model. You’ve heard it from me before, but let’s talk about the actual specifics of why I think the conventional financial planning model is actually broken. Well, the biggest one is that they’re assuming that you should be in a typical split of 60% equities, 40% bonds, or some variation of that moving towards this accumulation theory that we’ve talked about, right, which is building up your net worth for some type of retirement in the future, and then you’re going to start pulling income off of that and hope you don’t actually outlive your money. Well, one of the biggest issues here is that we’re actually underestimating taxes, fees, and inflation. Financial advisors are always talking about deferring your taxes.
And so while that might actually help you today, is that helping you in the future? And one of the things I’ve always learned is I would rather pay taxes on the seed rather than the harvest. So if you have a hundred thousand going in, I’d rather pay taxes on that hundred thousand today than that million that it’s going to be in thirty-five years from now if I’m investing in anything. I would take my medicine today. Right?
And that is what’s going to help propel you, right, is by minimizing those taxes because taxes will today and in the future always be your biggest expense. And the one thing that I can be certain of is that taxes will likely be higher in the future than they are today, right? The second point here I wanna make that I think is really important in terms of this Monte Carlo simulation that’s made is that they are expecting that you’re pulling out 4% of your money. I believe the models have actually been reduced, nowadays, so it’s even less than 4%. But then they’re modeling it out based on actuarial tables and where your life expectancy is going to be.
So let’s say you’re an average male, you’ve got good genetics, and they age you out at age, you know, 89. Well, if you start withdrawing all of your capital, you know, and you hit age 89, and, you know, if you’re the high performer that I think you are, and you’re learning about all these regenerative technologies, like, you know, stem cells and biohacking and all the cool stuff that’s available out there, you may very well live another ten to twenty years. Well, are you gonna actually have capital? And I don’t know about you, but I don’t wanna be thinking about generating capital at the age of 90. Right?
So I think that’s actually a big risk that we want to be proactive with and start to put our capital to work in more efficient vehicles in a different strategy today. The other thing we should talk about is one-dimensional returns. Now I’ve talked about this before, and again, understand that if you’re investing in equities in the stock market, right, primarily, you are only hoping for stocks to go up in the future. Right? But we all know that they can actually go sideways, they can go down, but you’re really just hoping that they go up.
And the last time I checked, hope was not really a great strategy. The other point that’s interesting here as well is that the products are actually built for the masses. You need to understand that every time you’re buying stocks, mutual funds, bonds, all of these products, basically anyone can access these, and you’re paying retail price. When you invest in a direct investment, such as a syndication, into real estate or some of these private opportunities, you’re really investing at wholesale. So you’re actually going in, getting the best price you can for that asset because you have a direct relationship with the sponsor, and therefore, you and the sponsor have mutually aligned interests to win.
But in this case, right, Wall Street has a one-dimensional type of agenda, which is their own. So they don’t necessarily always have your best interests at hand. The other big thing where I think there’s a significant issue with today’s current conventional planning is that there’s just no control. Now I’ve spent too many nights in my life waking up, going to the gym in the morning and, you know, seeing all the flashing red on the screens because whether it’s, you know, tariffs, something that happened with geopolitics, you could have the best fundamentals of a stock, the best, leadership team in place, be in the best market segment, but there’s still just so much volatility that’s completely outside of your control. Now, if you understand that you and you leverage that, okay, that’s one thing, but I really got tired of seeing that.
And I like to invest in tangible assets that I can see, feel, and touch, and that I know I’m investing in for the long term. So, essentially, this model to me is really broken. And I challenge you to actually think about some of these assumptions that I’m making, because it’s really just common sense. I’ve really just approached this with an entrepreneurial mindset, trying to be really curious and ask questions about this and challenge the conventional norm of what’s out there. So, the more you learn, you will start to realize that there are pockets of others that have uncovered these things that don’t necessarily align with your interests or Wall Street’s agenda.
So hope that helps. Thanks for tuning in to our special solo series. If this episode sparked something for you and you’re ready to learn more, head over to holisticwealthstrategy.com and download a free copy of my book. You’ll also get access to our investor community where we share exclusive educational content, new opportunities, and resources designed to help you accelerate your path to freedom. And if you wanna take it even further, book a call with our team to learn about our virtual family office services or join our mastermind group where we go deep into building true generational wealth.
I’ll see you in the next episode.
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