Most MLB players know the number six. Six years of service time gets you to free agency. That number gets talked about constantly. Agents track it. Teams manipulate it. Players build their entire early career around it. The number that doesn't get nearly enough attention is 43. Forty-three days of MLB service time is the threshold that determines whether a player walks away from professional baseball with a pension benefit for the rest of his life, or walks away with nothing. I've spent my career working with professional baseball players on exactly this. I've had the conversation too many times where a player or his family asks whether he qualified for the pension, and the answer comes down to a handful of days. That's a conversation nobody should be having after the fact. This guide breaks down everything MLB players and their families need to know about the MLB pension, how it works, and what it's actually worth. What Is the MLB Pension? The MLB pension plan dates back to 1947. It is the longest-running pension plan in professional sports and one of the best employer-sponsored pension plans in the country. The plan is negotiated through the Collective Bargaining Agreement between MLB owners and the MLBPA. Every player who qualifies receives a monthly payment for the rest of his life. The word "qualifies" holds a massive amount of importance. For more information on how the pension works, be sure to check out our piece, Everything You Need To Know About MLB Pensions How Qualifying Works: The 43-Day Rule To receive any pension benefit at all, a player must accumulate at least 43 days of MLB service time. Service time counts when a player is on the active 26-man roster or the MLB injured list. Days spent in the minor leagues do not count. Forty-three days equals one quarter of a full year of service. A full year is 172 days. The pension builds in quarters. Each quarter a player earns adds to his lifetime benefit. The plan maxes out at 40 quarters, or 10 years of service time. Here is what the pension is worth at full retirement age (62) based on 2026 figures: MLB Service Time Annual Pension Benefit (Age 62) 43 days (1 quarter) $7,250 per year 172 days (1 year) $29,000 per year 5 years $145,000 per year 10 years (maximum) $290,000 per year These numbers increase every year. The MLBPA projects an annual cost of living adjustment of approximately 1.8%, which means a $100,000 pension benefit becomes $101,800 the following year. At Moment Private Wealth, we run specific calculations for each player on when it makes the most sense to start taking pension benefits based on their full financial picture. To hear it another way, head over to YouTube and listen to how it all works Turning a Signing Bonus Into Generational Wealth. Early Access at Age 45 Players do not have to wait until age 62 to collect. The pension can be accessed as early as age 45, but taking it early comes with a permanent reduction. A player with 10 years of service who waits until age 62 collects $290,000 per year. That same player who starts taking it at 45 collects approximately $91,500 per year. That's a $198,500 annual difference. The right answer depends on a player's overall retirement plan. There is no universal rule. But it is a decision that needs to be made with a full picture of everything else in place, not in isolation. Health Benefits: A Separate Threshold The pension is not the only benefit tied to service time. Health coverage is a different calculation entirely. A player earns access to the MLB health care plan the moment he is added to the 40-man roster. That coverage is active while he is in the league. After four years of MLB service time, a retired player has the option to stay on the MLB health plan in retirement. The player pays the premiums himself, but the plan itself is one of the best available anywhere. For most retired players, it is significantly better than anything they could find on the open market. Health care is one of the most overlooked post-career expenses in athlete financial planning. Four years of service time changes that picture. What 43 Days Is Actually Worth Over a Lifetime Players sometimes hear $7,250 per year and think it's not that much. Run the numbers. A player who earns one quarter of service time at age 25 and starts collecting at age 62 has 20-plus years of payments ahead. With the 1.8% annual COLA adjustment compounding over that period, the lifetime value of a single quarter of service time is well into six figures. Multiply that by two quarters, three quarters, or more. Every day of service time has a dollar figure attached to it. Less than 10% of MLB players ever reach the 10-year maximum. That makes the value of every quarter even more important. Most players are building a partial pension, and the difference between 10 quarters and 14 quarters is not a small number over a lifetime. The Survivor Benefit: A Decision Most Players Aren't Ready For When a player retires and begins the pension election process, one of the most important decisions he makes is whether to elect a survivor benefit. The survivor benefit allows a portion of the pension to continue to a surviving spouse after the player's death. Electing it reduces the player's own monthly payment in exchange for that continued protection. This is not an automatic election. A player has to choose. And very few players are walking into that decision with a proper plan in place. The right choice depends on the player's age, health, overall financial picture, and family situation. It is one of the most consequential long-term financial decisions a retired player makes, and it needs to be handled with care. The Pension Is One Piece of a Larger Plan A pension is not a retirement plan. Even at $290,000 per year, the pension alone is not enough to sustain the lifestyle most players build during their career. And for players who collect well under the maximum, it is even more important that the rest of the plan is built correctly. At Moment Private Wealth, we work with MLB players on income planning, tax planning, risk management, estate planning, and investment management. The pension fits into all of it. We look at when to take it, how it interacts with other income sources, and what role it plays in a player's overall retirement picture. For more information on how we work with our athlete clients, make sure you read The Moment Guide To Financial Planning For Professional Athletes Someone has to be thinking about all of this before the career ends. What Players and Families Should Be Doing Now Know your service time number. Your agent has it. If you don't know it, that changes today. Understand the threshold you're chasing. If a player is at 30 days of service time, everyone around him should know that 43 is the target. Don't wait to build the plan. Whether a player hits the minimum threshold or 10 years, the financial planning conversation needs to start before the career is over. Get the right team in place. The agent handles the contract. The attorney reviews it. The financial planner, as a CFP, builds the plan around it. If those three aren't working together, things fall through the cracks. That is exactly how we work at Moment. We coordinate directly with a player's agent and CPA so nothing gets missed. If you are an MLB player, a minor leaguer working toward the big leagues, or a parent trying to understand how all of this fits together, schedule a call with our team. At Moment, our mission has stayed the same since day one. To build the firm we wanted for athletes. One with a singular focus on the people we know best. Get in Touch With An Advisor Frequently Asked Questions Here are some answers to questions I received frequently about this topic. What counts as MLB service time toward the pension? Days spent on the active 26-man roster and the MLB injured list both count. Days in the minor leagues do not count toward MLB service time. Can a player collect the pension before age 62? Yes. Players can begin collecting as early as age 45 with a permanently reduced benefit. The full benefit is available at age 62. The right timing depends on each player's full financial picture. What if a player never played a full season? If a player accumulated at least 43 days of MLB service time, he qualifies for a pension benefit. The amount is smaller than players with more service time, but the lifetime benefit is real and worth planning around. What is the pension worth at the minimum threshold? In 2024, one quarter of service time (43 days) earns a player $6,875 per year at full retirement age of 62. That amount increases approximately 1.8% per year with the COLA adjustment. What is the survivor benefit and how does it work? The survivor benefit is an optional election that allows a portion of the pension to continue to a surviving spouse after the player's death. Electing it reduces the player's own monthly payment. This decision should be made with proper planning, not defaulted into. How does Moment Private Wealth help MLB players with this? We work with players to understand their service time, calculate their pension benefit, and build a complete financial plan where the pension is one piece of a much larger picture. We also work directly with agents and CPAs so everyone is aligned and nothing falls through the cracks. *Moment Private Wealth offers information on tax and estate planning that is general in nature. Tax and Legal advice are not provided by Moment Private Wealth. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific legal or tax situation.

You want to pay for your kid's college. That's clear. What's not always clear is how, or which account, you should be putting the money into in the first place. Most parents default to whatever they've heard of first. Sometimes that's a 529. Sometimes it's a custodial account. Sometimes it's just a savings account sitting somewhere earning almost nothing. The problem is the wrong account can cost you tens of thousands of dollars in taxes, financial aid, or both. In this blog, I'm going to break down the two main college savings vehicles, how they compare, and critically, every legitimate way to get money out of a 529 when the time comes. If you're approaching a business sale, the year of the exit may be the best opportunity you'll ever have to fund your child's education. Read our guide on liquidity event planning here. First, Let's Talk About the Problem College costs are not slowing down. The Consumer Price Index tells you what everyday goods cost. College costs its own version, and it runs hotter. Tuition has historically increased around 5% per year. What costs $50,000 per year at a private university today could cost $80,000+ by the time your 5-year-old is 18. Saving money in a low-yield savings account is not a plan. It's falling behind on purpose. The accounts below were built to fix that. The Two Main Options: 529 vs. UTMA The 529 Plan A 529 is a tax-advantaged savings account built specifically for education. You invest the money. It grows. You pull it out for qualified education expenses and pay zero federal taxes on the growth. That's the core deal, and it's a good one. Missouri residents get an extra bonus: you can deduct up to $8,000 per year, or $16,000 if you're married filing jointly, from your Missouri state income taxes for 529 contributions, and because Missouri has "tax parity," that deduction applies to contributions to any state's 529 plan, not just Missouri's own MOST plan. You stay in control. The money is yours. And the account never expires. The UTMA (Uniform Transfers to Minors Act) A UTMA is a custodial account held in your child's name. You manage it until they reach adulthood, then it's legally theirs to do whatever they want with. No restrictions on what the money is used for. No qualified expense rules. Total flexibility. But that flexibility comes at a cost. Taxes: In 2026, UTMA earnings above $1,350 are taxed at the child's income tax rate, and earnings above $2,700 are taxed at the parent's income tax rate. This is called the "kiddie tax," and it limits how much you actually benefit from your child's lower rate. Financial aid: This is where it really hurts. On the FAFSA, parent-owned 529 plans are assessed at 5.64% in the expected family contribution calculation. UTMA accounts are considered student assets and assessed at 20%. Put simply: if your student has a UTMA account with $20,000 in it, it's assessed as though 20% will go toward college costs, reducing financial need by $4,000. A 529 with the same $20,000 would only reduce need by about $1,128. That's not a small difference. Over four years, the wrong account could cost your family tens of thousands in aid eligibility. Control: With a UTMA, the child gains full control at age 18 to 21, depending on the state, and can use the money for any purpose. You cannot change the beneficiary. The money is theirs, period. So Which One Wins? Here's the honest answer: it depends on what you're trying to accomplish. And in most cases, having options is better than going all-in on one account. A lot of families do both, a 529 for education savings and a UTMA for everything else. The 529 handles the tax-advantaged, education-focused bucket. The UTMA gives you flexibility if life goes sideways or your kid needs money for something outside of school. That combination can be a smart approach, and it's one worth having a real conversation about. If the money is definitely going toward education, the 529 wins on taxes and financial aid, it's not close. But locking every dollar into an education-only account isn't always the right call either. The best plan is usually one that gives you flexibility. Every Way to Get Money Out of a 529 This is where most people stop reading, and where the real planning lives. Most families know you can use a 529 for tuition. Far fewer know about the other exits. 1. Qualified Education Expenses (The Standard Route) This is the one everyone knows. Withdraw money for qualified expenses and pay zero federal tax on the growth. What counts in 2026: For college and post-secondary: tuition, fees, room and board (if enrolled at least half-time), books and required supplies, computers, software, and internet access used for school, and trade or apprenticeship programs. For K-12: starting in tax year 2026, the annual limit for K-12 expenses is $20,000 per student. Qualifying expenses now include tuition, books, tutoring, homeschool curriculum, test fees, vocational training, and educational therapies including support for learning differences like ADHD. For credentialing programs: 529 funds can now be used for qualified postsecondary credentialing expenses, including tuition, fees, books, supplies, and equipment for recognized credential programs. 2. Your Kid Gets a Scholarship This is the one most parents have never heard of, and it matters. If your child receives a tax-free scholarship, you can withdraw an amount equal to the scholarship from the 529 without paying the 10% penalty. You'll still owe income tax on the earnings portion of that withdrawal, but the penalty is waived. So if your kid earns a $25,000 scholarship, you can pull $25,000 out of the 529, pay ordinary income tax on the earnings, and keep the rest. The money doesn't disappear. It just changes form. This exception also applies to fellowships, employer education assistance, and attendance at a U.S. military academy. 3. Roll It Into a Roth IRA This is the rule that killed the biggest fear about 529s. For years, parents worried: what if my kid doesn't use it all? Now there's a clean answer. For distributions made after December 31, 2023, unused 529 funds can be rolled into a Roth IRA for the beneficiary. The rules: The 529 must have been open for at least 15 years. The lifetime rollover limit is $35,000. Contributions made within the prior 5 years cannot be rolled over. The rollover is subject to annual Roth IRA contribution limits, $7,500 in 2026, or $8,600 if age 50 or older, and the beneficiary must have earned income at least equal to the rollover amount. Open a 529 when your child is born. If they get a full ride or take a different path entirely, those funds, after 15 years, can become a retirement account head start. That's a powerful outcome either way. 4. Change the Beneficiary You don't have to cash anything out. You can change the designated beneficiary to another member of the family with no tax consequences. Oldest kid gets a scholarship? Move the money to the next child, a grandchild, a niece, or nephew. You can even move it to yourself for a graduate degree. The account doesn't lock you in. It travels with your family. The Bottom Line College funding isn't a one-size-fits-all decision. But it is a decision — and making it by default almost always costs you money. The 529 remains the most efficient vehicle for most families. Better tax treatment. Better financial aid impact. More control. And more ways out than most people realize. But pairing it with a UTMA for flexibility is a strategy worth considering, depending on your goals. The earlier you start, the more time your money has to work. A few hundred dollars a month invested at birth looks completely different by the time your kid is 18. Want to see how this all fits together? Watch our full breakdown on college funding strategies on YouTube, here. If you are looking for a financial advisor, watch our YouTube video on 10 questions you should ask when interviewing a financial advisor. Get in Touch With An Advisor Frequently Asked Questions Here are some answers to questions I received frequently about this topic. Can grandparents contribute to a 529 without it hurting financial aid? Moment Private Wealth serves clients as a fiduciary 100% of the time. What happens to the money inside the DAF after I contribute it? Under the updated FAFSA rules that took effect in 2024, grandparent-owned 529 distributions no longer count as student income on the FAFSA. This was a major change. Grandparents can now contribute directly or even own their own 529 for a grandchild without the financial aid penalty that existed under the old rules. How are you different than other financial advisors? We are specialists in working with professional athletes and entrepreneurs. We limit the number of new clients we take on. This allows us to provide unparalleled value and highly personalized service to professional athletes. We work as a team to service our clients. We believe in building a team of “A” players. This ensures our clients receive world-class tax, estate, insurance, and investment strategies. We focus on educating first, then executing. What if I have multiple kids? Do I need a separate 529 for each one? No. You can open one account and change the beneficiary as needed. Many families fund a single 529 and shift it toward whichever child needs it most. You can also split an account or open separate ones per child; there's no rule requiring one approach over the other. How do you work with other members of my team? We believe in the power of the team. For most of our clients, their team consists of Moment Private Wealth, an accountant, an attorney, a banker, and an insurance specialist. We help our clients build out their team of individuals or work with existing partners that the clients have. Our goal is to ensure every family has a team of experts to protect their interests. *Moment Private Wealth offers information on tax and estate planning that is general in nature. Tax and Legal advice are not provided by Moment Private Wealth. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific legal or tax situation.

Most financial plans are built for steady-state living. Consistent income. Predictable expenses. A runway you can see clearly ahead of you. But for business owners and entrepreneurs, life rarely stays steady. It accelerates. It pivots. And sometimes, it hands you a number with more zeros than you expected, on a timeline you didn't plan for. When that happens, the decisions you make in the next 90 days can define the next 30 years. Here's what you need to understand about three of the most wealth-defining moments a business owner will face. Business owners must work with a qualified financial team that specializes in planning for exits and large windfalls. The Major Contract or Windfall You land the deal. The contract is signed. The wire hits. And suddenly, you have more cash sitting in your operating account than you've ever had, with no clear playbook for what to do next. This is where most business owners make their first mistake: they treat it like income instead of capital. A windfall isn't a paycheck. It's a one-time event that carries one-time tax consequences and permanent allocation decisions. How you deploy that money, and how quickly you do it, matters enormously. What to consider: The timing of a large payment can push you into a higher tax bracket or trigger the net investment income tax. If the contract spans multiple years, there may be structuring opportunities worth exploring before money changes hands. And once it does, liquidity management, investment allocation, and business reinvestment all need to be sequenced deliberately, not reactively. A plan built before the wire is worth far more than one built after. The Business Exit Selling a business is the most complex financial event most entrepreneurs will ever go through. It's not just a transaction. It's a tax event, a liquidity event, a life event, and an identity event, all at once. The financial stakes are real. Depending on how the deal is structured, how long you've held the business, and what entity type you're operating under, your tax liability can swing by millions. Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) exclusions, installment sale elections, Opportunity Zone reinvestments, and charitable vehicles like a Charitable Remainder Trust or Donor-Advised Fund are all levers that only work if they're in place before the deal closes. Most of the best tax strategies require a 6-to-12-month runway. They don't work retroactively. What to consider: Pre-exit planning should start well before a letter of intent is signed. That means understanding your cost basis, your holding period, your deal structure preferences, and your post-exit income needs. It also means coordinating your wealth advisor, CPA, and M&A attorney as a team, not as three separate conversations. The goal isn't just to maximize the sale price. It's to maximize what you actually keep. As financial advisors , we ensure all business owners families are involved in the planning. The Tax Exposure That Comes With Both Whether you're managing a windfall or navigating an exit, taxes are the through-line. Most business owners think about taxes once a year, in April. The ones who build real wealth think about them all year long, and especially before major events, not after. Here's the reality: proactive tax planning is one of the highest-ROI activities a high-earning business owner can engage in. Not because it's complicated. Because it's early. Entity structure, retirement contributions, deferred compensation arrangements, investment account location, charitable giving strategies, these are all tools. But they have to be deployed in the right sequence, at the right time, to be effective. What to consider: If your income has changed significantly, or is about to, that's the moment to reassess your entire financial picture. Not just this year's return. Your structure, your strategy, and your timeline. The Common Thread Business exits. Windfalls. Tax exposure. These events are different in their details, but identical in one critical way: they reward preparation and punish procrastination. The business owners who come out ahead aren't always the ones with the best deals or the highest numbers. They're the ones who had a plan before the moment arrived, and a team that knew how to execute it. At Moment, we work with entrepreneurs and business owners at exactly these inflection points. If a major event is on your horizon, or already in motion, let's talk before the window closes. As financial advisors we run yearly analyses on the all the options for business owners. If you are a business owner or want to learn more about this topic, schedule a call, and talk with a Moment founder. For more on planning for a windfall or business exit: 10 questions you should ask when interviewing a financial advisor. Get in Touch With An Advisor Frequently Asked Questions Here are some answers to questions I received frequently about this topic. When Should I start tax planning before selling my business? Most high-impact strategies require a 6-to-12-month runway minimum. Some — like QSBS qualification — need years. The worst time to call a wealth advisor is after the LOI is signed. The best time is before you've started conversations with buyers. If you're already in diligence, there's still planning to do, but the menu shrinks fast.. What is a QSBS and how does it reduce taxes on a business sale? Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS), under IRC Section 1202, can let founders of qualifying C-corps exclude up to $10M (or 10x basis) in capital gains from federal tax on a sale. The rules are strict: the company has to be a C-corp at issuance, you have to hold the stock for at least five years, and the business has to meet the active trade/business and asset tests. It's one of the most powerful tools in the code — and one of the most commonly missed because owners didn't structure for it years earlier. Whats the difference between a windfall, a major contract, and a business ecit from a tax standpoint? A windfall is typically a one-time event taxed in the year received. A major contract may span multiple years and create structuring opportunities (deferred comp, installment arrangements, entity-level planning). A business exit is a capital event — often taxed at long-term capital gains rates — with its own toolkit (QSBS, installment sales, Opportunity Zones, charitable trusts). The biggest mistake is treating all three the same. They aren't. Can I avoid capital gains tax by reinvesting proceeds from a business sale? Not avoid — but defer and reduce. Opportunity Zone funds allow you to defer capital gains by reinvesting proceeds into a Qualified Opportunity Fund within 180 days, with potential basis step-ups and tax-free appreciation if held long enough. Installment sales spread the gain across multiple tax years. Charitable Remainder Trusts can defer gains while generating income. None of these are silver bullets — they're trade-offs, and they only make sense in the right situations. Should I take an installment sale or a lump sum sale when I exit? Depends on your tax bracket, your cash needs, and your trust in the buyer. A lump sum gives you certainty and immediate liquidity. An installment sale spreads the tax hit across years and can keep you out of the highest brackets — but you're taking on credit risk from the buyer and locking up flexibility. This is a deal-by-deal analysis, not a default answer. What's the difference between selling a C-corp and an S-corp? Significant. C-corp sales can qualify for QSBS treatment, but generally face double taxation on asset sales (corporate + personal). S-corp sales avoid double taxation but don't get QSBS. Asset sales vs. stock sales create different outcomes for both sides. Most deals are negotiated around these tax realities — which is why entity structure matters years before a sale, not weeks. Do I need a seperate CPA, attorney, and financial advisor for a business sale? Yes — but they need to work as a team, not three siloed conversations. A typical exit involves an M&A attorney for the deal mechanics, a CPA running tax projections, and a wealth advisor coordinating the post-sale plan. If those three people aren't talking to each other, money leaks. The advisor's job, in our view, is to be the quarterback making sure nothing falls through the cracks.' Why should I consider hiring Moment Private Wealth? Great question! But first, let us explain why you shouldn’t hire us. If you’re looking for an advisor who will pitch shiny object investments or be a “yes man” you are in the wrong place. Why? Because we believe in being truth tellers and only giving advice that we take ourselves. The investments, strategies, and planning we do are all things our advisors do with their own money. If you are an athlete or entrepreneur interested in things like lowering your tax bill, investing smarter, and finding a trusted partner, we might be a good fit. *Moment Private Wealth offers information on tax and estate planning that is general in nature. Tax and Legal advice are not provided by Moment Private Wealth. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific legal or tax situation.

Every athlete knows what it feels like to play without a full team behind them. No film session. No position coach. No coordinator calling plays. Just individual talent trying to figure it out alone. That is exactly what most professional athletes are doing with their money. They have people around them. An agent. A CPA. A financial advisor sending quarterly reports. But nobody is in the same room, working off the same game plan, making decisions together. In this blog, I am going to break down what it actually means to have a financial locker room, why most athletes never build one, what it looks like when it is working, and how we help every client at Moment Private Wealth build theirs from the ground up. The Difference Between a Team and a Locker Room Having a financial team means you have people with titles. A financial advisor. A CPA. An insurance agent. An attorney. Their names are in your phone. You call them when something comes up. They each do their work. That is not a locker room. That is a group of professionals operating in separate lanes, making decisions with incomplete information, and hoping everything lines up at the end of the year. A locker room is something different. In sports, the locker room is where strategy gets communicated. Where everyone gets aligned before the game. Where the offensive coordinator knows what the defensive coordinator is working on, and both of them know what the head coach is thinking. Every decision that gets made on the field is better because of what happened in that room before kickoff. Your financial life needs the same thing. When your financial advisor knows what is happening on the contract side, your CPA knows what just got signed, your insurance agent knows what your attorney is structuring, and your attorney knows what your CPA is projecting, the decisions that come out of those conversations are not marginally better. They are materially better. The difference can be hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of a career. Most athletes never build this. Not because they do not care. Because nobody ever called the meeting. That is where Moment comes in. What We Actually Build for Our Clients At Moment Private Wealth, we are a multi-family office built exclusively for professional athletes. Income planning, tax planning and coordination, and investment management are core to what we do. But the most important thing we build for every client is the financial locker room. That means we own the coordination. We set the agenda. We pull the right people into the room. We make sure the CPA knows what is happening on the contract side, the insurance agent knows what the attorney is reviewing, and every decision any one of them makes is informed by what the rest of the team already knows. We intentionally limit the number of clients we take on so this level of coordination is possible for every person we work with. It is not a service we bolt on for our best clients. It is the foundation of how we operate with all of them. Our clients describe it this way. One client called it a team that works "hand in hand with every part of your financial team" and "feels like white glove service." Another said what he values most is how seamlessly the Moment team collaborates with his accountant, insurance agent, and other professionals to keep every part of the financial picture aligned. That is the locker room. And building it starts with understanding who belongs in it. The Starting Lineup Every financial locker room has four core players. Each one holds a different piece of your financial picture. The locker room only works when all four are in the same conversation. The Financial Advisor The financial advisor is the quarterback. At Moment, that is the role we play. We own the overall financial plan, we call the plays, and we are responsible for making sure every other member of the team is informed, aligned, and working toward the same outcome. If your financial advisor is not doing this, they are functioning as an investment manager. That is a narrower job, and it leaves the rest of your financial life uncoordinated. The CPA or Tax Professional Taxes are your single largest lifetime expense. Your CPA cannot be someone who surfaces in April and disappears until next year. They need to be in the locker room year-round, because the decisions made in March have tax consequences that need to be understood in March. By the time April arrives, the window to act has usually already closed. The Insurance Agent Most athletes are underinsured, overinsured in the wrong areas, or paying for coverage that does not match their actual risk profile. Your insurance agent needs to know what you own, what you owe, what you earn, and what you have built, so the protections in place actually reflect your life. A trade, a new property, a new business venture: any of those changes your exposure. Your insurance agent needs to know about all of them. The Attorney Your attorney covers estate planning, entity structures, business ventures, and any deal with legal implications. Estate documents are not a one-time task. They need to be revisited every time your life changes. And for a professional athlete, life changes fast and constantly. The attorney cannot be reactive. They need to be in the room. Please note: If you cannot name all four of these people right now, that is the first problem to solve. The locker room cannot be built until the starting lineup is in place. How the Locker Room Actually Works Once the right people are in place, the locker room needs to stay active. At Moment, we own that process for every client. That means regular communication across the full team, not just when something goes wrong or a deadline is approaching. The cadence looks different for every client depending on where they are in their career, what is happening with their contract situation, and what decisions are in front of them. Some periods are quiet. Others require the whole team in the same conversation every few weeks. What never changes is that someone is always driving it. At its core, every locker room conversation comes back to the same questions: Has anything changed in your life that the rest of the team does not know about? Are we on track with the plan we built? Is there anything coming up that the whole team needs to know about? What decisions have been sitting too long that need to be made now? These are not formalities. They are the mechanism that keeps the locker room aligned. They surface the information that would otherwise stay in a single lane and cause problems nobody saw coming. The best financial advisors for professional athletes are not just managing a portfolio. They are making sure the right people are talking to each other at the right time, so that nothing important gets missed and no decision gets made in isolation. What Happens Without One When the locker room does not exist, every advisor defaults to making decisions based only on the information in front of them. That is not negligence. It is human nature. Nobody coordinates unless someone builds the coordination. Here is what that looks like in practice. A player signs a contract extension in November with a significant signing bonus. His financial advisor does not know the structure until January. His CPA did not know to plan for it before year-end. The player overpays on taxes in a year where proactive planning could have saved him six figures. A player purchases a new property. His insurance agent finds out three months later, after the closing. The coverage gap in between was real, and so was the exposure. A player's wife gives birth to their second child. Nobody updates the estate documents. The beneficiary designations on the retirement accounts still list a parent from twelve years ago. A player sells an investment property. The capital gains implications were never modeled against his overall tax picture. He gets a number at year-end that nobody was prepared for. Every one of those situations is a locker room failure. And every one of them was preventable. The patterns that create these outcomes, including reactive decision-making, lifestyle creep, and financial teams operating in silos, are more common than most players realize. For more on how athletes end up in these positions, read The Lifestyle Trap: How Athletes Build Too Big, Too Fast. Why the Stakes Are Higher for Athletes Here is the part that most people outside of professional sports do not fully appreciate. The average MLB career lasts less than six years. NFL careers are shorter. Your earning window is a fraction of the decades that follow it, and the decisions made during that window determine what the next forty years look like. There is no margin for a poorly coordinated financial team. One missed tax planning conversation. One estate document that never got updated. One insurance policy that did not reflect your actual risk. One contract structure your financial advisor learned about six months too late. Those are not minor oversights. They are compounding problems that follow you long after the career ends. At Moment, we break every athlete's financial life into three phases: Foundation, Peak, and Impact. The locker room is what makes each phase work the way it should. For a breakdown of how priorities shift across each phase, read The 3 Phases of an Athlete's Wealth Journey. There are only three things you can do with money: save it, spend it, or give it away. The financial locker room is what makes sure you are intentional about all three. For the full picture on how we approach this at Moment, read The Moment Guide to Financial Planning for Professional Athletes. What Next? Most athletes have the people. They do not have the locker room. If your advisors are not in the same conversation on a regular schedule, working off the same game plan, you are leaving real money on the table and real risk on the field. At Moment, building that locker room is one of the first things we do for every new client. If you want to understand what that process looks like for your specific situation, schedule a call with a Moment Founder. Get in Touch With An Advisor Frequently Asked Questions Here are some answers to questions I received frequently about this topic. What is a financial locker room and why do athletes need one? A financial locker room is a coordinated team of core advisors, including a financial advisor, CPA, insurance agent, and attorney, who communicate regularly, work off the same information, and make decisions together rather than in separate lanes. Most athletes have individual advisors but no one running the coordination between them. That gap is where mistakes happen and money gets left on the table. What makes a financial advisor the right fit for a professional athlete? The right financial advisor for a professional athlete does more than manage a portfolio. They own the coordination across the entire financial team, keep every advisor informed and aligned, and make sure decisions are being made with the full picture in mind. At Moment, that coordination is built into how we work with every client from day one. How do you know if your financial team is actually working together? Ask a simple question: when was the last time your financial advisor, CPA, insurance agent, and attorney were all on the same call? If the answer is never, or you are not sure, that is the gap. The locker room only works when someone is actively running it. What if my advisors have never spoken to each other? That is where we start. When a new client comes to Moment, one of the first things we do is establish those connections and build the communication structure across the full team. Most of the time, the people are already in place. What is missing is someone who owns the coordination. Does a player need a large contract to benefit from this? No. Players earlier in their careers have the most to gain. The decisions made in the first few years, including savings habits, tax planning, benefit elections, insurance coverage, and estate basics, compound over an entire lifetime. We run this process for every client we work with, regardless of where they are in their career. *Moment Private Wealth offers information on tax and estate planning that is general in nature. Tax and Legal advice are not provided by Moment Private Wealth. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific legal or tax situation.

I have spent years sitting across the table from athletes and their families. And if I am being honest with you, that seat has taught me more than any textbook, certification, or financial model ever could. I have seen athletes make life-changing money. I have also seen that money disappear faster than it came in. Not because athletes were careless or unintelligent. But because nobody sat them down early enough and told them the truth. So today, I am going to do exactly that. In this blog, I am going to outline the mistakes I have watched athletes and their families make over and over again and what I wish I could have told them before it was too late. These are my confessions as an athlete advisor. Confessions of an Athlete Advisor Confession #1: You Spent the Number on the Contract, Not the Number in your Account This is the most common mistake I see. And I see it constantly. You sign a deal, NIL, revenue sharing, a professional contract, and you see the number. A big, exciting, life-changing number. And naturally, you start spending to match it. New car. New clothes. Taking care of everyone around you. Living in a way that finally feels proportionate to all the work you have put in. I get it. I really do. But here is what nobody told you. That number on the contract is not what hits your bank account. By the time federal taxes, state taxes, and self-employment taxes are taken out, that headline figure can be cut nearly in half. Sometimes more. I have sat with athletes and their families who had already committed to a lifestyle they genuinely could not afford on their actual take-home pay. If you take nothing else from this blog, take this: The first conversation you should have with any advisor is simple. Here is what you are making. Here is what you are actually keeping. Everything else comes after that. Confession #2: The People Around You Are Not Always The Right People This one is harder to say. But if you are a parent or family member reading this, I especially want you to hear it. Athletes are loyal. You want to bring the people who believed in you before the money along for the ride. That is one of the things I respect most about the athletes I work with. But loyalty and financial expertise are not the same thing. I have watched athletes take financial cues from family members who loved them deeply but had no idea what they were doing. I have seen friends encourage spending that never should have happened. I have seen agents, talented at negotiating contracts, give financial advice that was completely outside their lane. None of those people had bad intentions. But intentions do not protect your financial future. The people in your corner need to be qualified to be there. Your mom loves you. Your best friend has your back. Your agent got you a great deal. None of that means they should be guiding your financial life. Building the right team...a financial advisor, a CPA, an attorney is not a betrayal of the people who love you. It is the most responsible thing you can do for yourself and for them. Confession #3: You Ignored Taxes Until It Was Too Late Tax season does not need to be a time of panic. Quite frankly, it has become one of the least stressful times of year for the athletes we serve on. Why? Because we are driving the bus forward all year, not just April 15th. Here is what most athletes do not realize until it is too late. NIL income, revenue sharing, and most forms of athlete compensation come in as 1099 income. Nothing is withheld. No automatic deductions. The government is not quietly setting aside their portion behind the scenes. That responsibility is entirely yours. So what happens? You spend what hits your account. All of it feels like your money. And then March comes around and you are staring at a tax bill that feels impossible. I have seen athletes have genuinely great financial years, real, meaningful income, and still end up in a hole because of a tax situation that was completely preventable. The solution is not complicated. Set aside a percentage of every payment before you spend a dollar. Make quarterly estimated tax payments. Work with a CPA who actually understands how athlete income is structured. But none of that happens if nobody sits down with you and has this conversation before the money starts coming in. These are table stakes and one of the most important things your NIL advisor should do for you. Confession #4: You Treated a Window Like a Salary This might be the most expensive mindset mistake I see in this business. Your earning window as an athlete is real. It is also finite. The average college career lasts four years. Professional careers end faster than most athletes expect. NIL deals shift. Revenue-sharing agreements evolve. Contracts expire. The income you are earning right now is not guaranteed forever. It is a window. And I have watched athletes spend through that window like it was a salary that would never stop coming. Lifestyle inflation. Zero savings. No investments. Just spending at whatever level felt comfortable in the moment, without any plan for what comes next. Then the window closes. The athletes I have seen come out of their careers in a strong financial position share one thing in common. They understood from day one that they were in a sprint, not a marathon. They treated every dollar they earned as an opportunity to build something that would last long after their playing days were over. You have an advantage that most people your age do not have right now. Time. And if you start investing early, Roth IRAs, retirement accounts, long-term investments, that time will do more work for you than almost anything else. Use the window. Do not just spend through it. If you don't believe me, we put together a video of how to turn an NIL deal into forever wealth. Confession #5: You Thought Your Agent Handled Everything Your agent is an important part of your team. A great agent fights for you at the negotiating table, knows the market, and pushes to get you the best deal possible. But I need you to understand what your agent does not do. They are not tracking your cash flow. They are not making sure your quarterly taxes are paid. They are not setting up your business entity, coordinating with your CPA, or mapping out your investment strategy. They are not sitting down with you to think through what the next 30 years of your financial life looks like. That is not a criticism of agents. That is just not their job. But here is the problem. I have seen athletes assume that because someone was working hard on their behalf, everything financial was being handled. They get to the end of a contract and realize there is nothing to show for it. No business structure. No tax plan. No investments. Just years of high income with no foundation underneath it. Your agent gets you to the table. Your wealth advisor makes sure what you earn at that table actually builds your future. Those are two very different jobs. And you need both. Final Thought I am sharing these confessions because knowledge is the greatest advantage I can give you. I have watched too many athletes, and their families, leave money on the table, or lose money they had already earned, simply because they did not have the right information at the right time. You have put in the work on the field. You have earned what is coming to you. Now it is time to make sure the financial side matches that same level of effort and intention. The athletes who get this right are not always the ones who earn the most. They are the ones who had the right people around them early, asked the hard questions, and made decisions based on reality, not just the number on a contract. You have worked too hard to let this be an afterthought. Get in Touch With An Advisor Frequently Asked Questions Here are some answers to questions I receive frequently about this topic. How does Moment Private Wealth help college athletes? Moment works to help athletes ensure they have the proper professional on their team first. The second step is helping educate athletes about what they should be considering. The third step is helping athlete implement the necessary strategies, planning, and investment to maximize their NIL earnings. How does Moment Private Wealth make money? We are only paid in one transparent way, by our clients. We receive no kickbacks or participate in any profit-sharing arrangements. Our fees are simple, transparent, and clear for our clients. How are you different than other financial advisors? We are specialists in working with professional athletes and entrepreneurs. We limit the number of new clients we take on. This allows us to provide unparalleled value and highly personalized service to professional athletes. We work as a team to service our clients. We believe in building a team of “A” players. This ensures our clients receive world-class tax, estate, insurance, and investment strategies. We focus on educating first, then executing. How do you work with other members of my team? We believe in the power of the team. For most of our clients, their team consists of Moment Private Wealth, an accountant, an attorney, a banker, and an insurance specialist. We help our clients build out their team of individuals or work with existing partners that clients have. Our goal is to ensure every family has a team of experts to protect their interests. Why should I consider hiring Moment Private Wealth? Great question! But first, let us explain why you shouldn’t hire us. If you’re looking for an advisor who will pitch shiny object investments or be a “yes man” you are in the wrong place. Why? Because we believe in being truth tellers and only giving advice that we take ourselves. The investments, strategies, and planning we do are all things our advisors do with their own money. If you are an athlete or entrepreneur interested in things like lowering your tax bill, investing smarter, and finding a trusted partner, we might be a good fit. *Moment Private Wealth offers information on tax and estate planning that is general in nature. Tax and Legal advice are not provided by Moment Private Wealth. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific legal or tax situation.

Most business owners think about charitable giving the wrong way. It usually looks like this: · You sell your business · You write a check to your favorite charity · You feel good about it Here is what it could look like instead: · You sell your business · You reduce your tax bill by tens of thousands of dollars · You keep giving to the causes you care about for years Welcome to the Donor Advised Fund, one of the most powerful and least understood tools in financial planning for business owners. A Donor Advised Fund, or DAF, is a charitable giving account that lets you contribute money or assets, take an immediate tax deduction, and then distribute that money to charities over time, on your schedule. The year you sell a business is one of the best times in your life to use one. I will explain exactly why. In this guide, I break down how Donor Advised Funds work, why a liquidity event is the ideal moment to use one, and what the 2026 tax rules actually say about the numbers. Before you think about giving, you need to make sure the sale itself is structured correctly. We break that down in our guide to planning a business exit. Donor Advised Funds Guide - How They Work The mechanics are simple. You open a DAF through a sponsoring organization, a 501(c)(3) like Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, or a community foundation. You make a contribution. From that point on, the sponsoring organization holds legal control over the assets. The gift is irrevocable. Here is the part that makes a DAF different from writing a check. You get the tax deduction the year you contribute. You decide when and where the money goes to charities. That separation, deduction now, distribution later, is what makes a DAF so useful in a high-income year. Now, why should you not fund a DAF with cash? That is almost always the wrong move if you have appreciated assets available. Here is why. When you donate cash, you get a deduction. That is it. When you donate appreciated securities, stocks, mutual funds, or other assets that have grown in value, you get two benefits at once. First, you avoid the capital gains tax you would have owed if you sold those assets yourself. The DAF sells them. Because it is a tax-exempt organization, it pays zero capital gains tax on the sale. The full value goes to charity. Here is what that difference looks like in real numbers: You bought $50,000 of stock years ago. It is worth $150,000 today. Option one: you sell the stock, pay capital gains tax on $100,000 of growth, which could result in $20,000 or more of taxes, and donate the remaining cash to a DAF. Option two: you transfer the shares directly to the DAF. The DAF sells them tax-free. You deduct the full $150,000. The charity receives the full $150,000. Same $150,000 position. You would then reinvest the cash you were going to donate to reset your cost basis. It's a great way to rebalance your portfolio in an efficient way while having an amazing impact. Why the Year You Sell Is the Right Year to Give The year you sell your business is likely the highest-income year of your life. Most owners focus entirely on that number, the sale price, the structure, the tax hit. Very few think about what that year means for their giving. It should be the most generous year of your life. Not just because you can afford it. Because the tax code rewards you for it in ways that never come around again. Here is the core idea. A charitable deduction has more value when your income is higher. If you are in the 37% federal bracket in the year of your sale, every dollar you deduct saves you 35 - 37 cents in federal taxes. The deduction does not change. The income does. And higher income means the deduction is worth more. The window is one calendar year. Once December 31st passes, the high-income year is gone. You cannot go back and take a deduction against income you already reported. The DAF contribution must happen in the same year the sale closes to offset that income. This is not a strategy you plan in January after the sale. It is a strategy you build before the deal is done. Here is what the math looks like in a real scenario. A business owner closes a $5,000,000 sale in October. Before the end of the year, they contribute $400,000 in appreciated securities to a DAF. They avoid capital gains tax on the appreciation in those securities. They deduct the full fair market value against the highest-income year of their life. The deduction saves them over $140,000 in federal taxes at the 35% effective rate. The $400,000 stays invested inside the DAF and grows tax-free. Over the next several years, they direct grants to the charities and causes they care about most. They gave generously. They kept more of what they built. And they never had to rush the decision of who receives the money. That is the opportunity the year of a sale creates. Most business owners miss it because no one tells them early enough. The Perfect Outcome The business owners I work with who get this right have two things in common. They planned before the sale closed. Whether it was a contribution of appreciated securities or private company stock, both strategies required action before the calendar year ended or the deal was signed. Once those windows close, they are gone. They gave on their own terms. A DAF lets you make a meaningful tax move in your highest-income year without rushing your charitable decisions. The contribution is committed. The deduction is taken. You can take months or years to decide exactly which organizations receive the grants. That is the real value of a Donor Advised Fund. You do not have to choose between smart tax planning and thoughtful generosity. You can do both. If you're approaching a liquidity event, start here! If you are a business owner approaching a liquidity event and want to understand how a donor-advised fund fits into your broader tax strategy, schedule a call with our team. Get in Touch With An Advisor Frequently Asked Questions Here are some answers to questions I received frequently about this topic. Are you a fiduciary? Moment Private Wealth serves clients as a fiduciary 100% of the time. What happens to the money inside the DAF after I contribute it? It stays invested and grows tax-free until you're ready to grant it. You are not just parking it in cash, you're giving it the potential to compound in the account. How are you different than other financial advisors? We are specialists in working with professional athletes and entrepreneurs. We limit the number of new clients we take on. This allows us to provide unparalleled value and highly personalized service to professional athletes. We work as a team to service our clients. We believe in building a team of “A” players. This ensures our clients receive world-class tax, estate, insurance, and investment strategies. We focus on educating first, then executing. How is a DAF different from just starting a private foundation? A DAF is simpler, cheaper, and faster to set up. There are no administrative costs, no annual filings, and no minimum distribution requirements. A private foundation offers more control and can pay family members to run it, but for most business owners, a DAF accomplishes the same charitable goals with far less overhead. How do you work with other members of my team? We believe in the power of the team. For most of our clients, their team consists of Moment Private Wealth, an accountant, an attorney, a banker, and an insurance specialist. We help our clients build out their team of individuals or work with existing partners that clients have. Our goal is to ensure every family has a team of experts to protect their interests. *Moment Private Wealth offers information on tax and estate planning that is general in nature. Tax and Legal advice are not provided by Moment Private Wealth. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific legal or tax situation.

You crossed $2M in revenue. That's not small. That's not starting out. That's a real business. But here's the part no one tells you: the team that got you to $2M can't get you to $10M. Most owners try to scale with the same CPA they hired in year one. The same attorney who set up their LLC. And no real financial advisor at all. Then a tax bill hits. Or an opportunity comes. And they realize, they're underbuilt. In this blog, we'll walk through the 3 core roles every $2M business owner needs on their money team, what each one should actually be doing, and the gaps to look for. Check out how more on how we do financial planning for business owners. Building Your Money Team When you started your business, you wore every hat. Sales, operations, finance, HR. That worked when revenue was $200K. At $2M, it doesn't. Your business is generating wealth faster than you can manage alone. The decisions you make on taxes, structure, and risk now compound for the next 20 years. Get them right and you keep millions more. Get them wrong and the IRS, a lawsuit, or a missed opportunity quietly takes them from you. A money team protects what you've built. Here are the 3 roles every $2M business owner needs. The CPA The CPA most $2M business owners have files taxes. The CPA you need plans them. That's the gap. And it's the most expensive one we see. Tax prep is a backwards exercise. It looks at what already happened. By the time your CPA sees your numbers in February, the year is over. Every strategy that could have saved you money has expired. Tax planning is the opposite. It looks forward. It asks what we can do this year to reduce next April's bill. Here's what a planning CPA does that a prep CPA doesn't: Meets with you quarterly, not annually Optimizes your salary vs. distributions split Coordinates retirement plan contributions (SEP, Solo 401(k), Cash Balance Plan) Manages depreciation strategy on equipment and vehicles Reviews entity structure as the business grows (LLC vs. S-Corp vs. C-Corp) Case Study — Sarah Sarah owns a $2.1M HVAC company in St. Louis. She's an S-Corp. Her CPA files her return every year, charges $1,500, and she figures everything is fine. We looked at her return. She was paying herself a W2 salary of $250,000 and taking $400,000 in distributions. That sounds reasonable on the surface. But she had no retirement plan, no Section 179 strategy, and her qualified business income deduction was being limited by her salary mix. We made three changes: Set up a Solo 401(k) with a profit-sharing component → $73,500 contribution Restructured her salary to $180,000 → unlocked a larger QBI deduction Section 179'd a $90,000 service truck purchased that year The result: $47,000 in tax savings the first year. Every year after, the Solo 401(k) alone shelters another $70K+ from current taxes. Her old CPA didn't do anything wrong. He just wasn't asked to do this work. So remember at $2M, you need a CPA who plans, not just a CPA who prepares As financial advisors we ensure that team coordination goes smoothly. The Attorney The attorney who set up your LLC is rarely the attorney you need at $2M. Most owners don't realize there are two attorneys you need on your team. The Business Attorney This is your contracts, partnerships, and operational attorney. They handle: Client and vendor contracts Employee agreements and non-competes Partnership and operating agreements Buy-sell agreements (the document most $2M owners don't have) The buy-sell is the one we see missing most often. If you have a business partner and one of you dies, gets divorced, gets disabled, or wants out, the buy-sell is what tells the surviving partner what happens next. Without it, you can end up in business with your partner's spouse, kids, or estate. The Estate Attorney This is a separate role. Estate attorneys handle: Your trust Your will Healthcare directives Financial powers of attorney Business succession inside your estate plan Most $2M business owners have an old will from when their kids were born and call it good. That document was built for a different version of your life. Case Study — Mike and Tom Mike and Tom own a $2.4M commercial landscaping business 50/50. They've been partners for 12 years. They have an LLC operating agreement from their attorney friend in year one. No buy-sell. No life insurance funding. No estate plan that mentions the business. Mike has a heart attack at 51. His widow now owns 50% of a business she's never worked in. She wants to be paid out. Tom wants to keep operating. They have no agreement on valuation, no funding mechanism, and no roadmap. It ends in litigation. The business sells under duress for 60 cents on the dollar. A buy-sell agreement, funded with $1.2M of term life insurance on each partner, would have cost them roughly $4,000 a year combined. So remember, your business attorney protects your operations, your estate attorney protects your legacy. They're different people, and you need both. The Financial Advisor This is the role most $2M business owners skip entirely. The thinking usually goes: "My business is my retirement plan. I don't need a financial advisor." That's a bet, not a plan. At $2M, you have three different pools of money: the business, your personal balance sheet, and your future exit. Each one has its own tax treatment, its own risk profile, and its own decisions. Without someone coordinating across all three, you're flying blind. A financial advisor at this stage isn't picking stocks. They're the quarterback. Here's what that means in practice: Comprehensive financial planning across business and personal Investment management for your personal portfolio Risk management, life insurance, disability, liability coverage Coordinating with your CPA on tax planning Coordinating with your estate attorney on succession Pre-exit planning when the time comes Notice three of those involve coordinating with other team members. That's the part no one else does. Your CPA doesn't talk to your attorney. Your attorney doesn't talk to your insurance agent. The advisor is the connective tissue. Case Study — David David owns a $2.3M digital agency. Revenue is climbing. He has a great CPA and a good business attorney. He manages his own investments through Fidelity. He came to us because he felt scattered. He had a 401(k), a brokerage account, an HSA, a Roth IRA, a SEP from a previous year, three life insurance policies, an LLC, and a personal umbrella that hadn't been updated in 6 years. None of these were wrong. They just weren't talking to each other. We built a single plan that consolidated his investment accounts, raised his umbrella from $1M to $5M (matched to his actual net worth), eliminated $14,000 in annual insurance premiums on overlapping policies, and aligned his SEP into a more powerful Cash Balance Plan strategy. Net savings and additional retirement contribution: $61,000 in year one. The work wasn't complicated. It was coordination. Nobody on his team was looking at the whole picture. So remember, the financial advisor's job at $2M isn't to beat the market. It's to make sure your money team is actually a team. The Bottom Line At $2M, you've built something real. The mistake we see is owners protecting their business with everything they have and protecting their wealth with whoever happens to already be in their phone. Build the team intentionally. A planning CPA. A business attorney and an estate attorney. A financial advisor who can quarterback all of them. That's how you keep what you've built. As financial advisors for business owners, we have experience being the "Quarter Back" of your team. Business Owners must work with a qualified financial team that specializes in working with business owners in this same situation everyday. If you are a business owner who needs a team quarter back, schedule a call, and talk with a Moment founder. Get in Touch With An Advisor Frequently Asked Questions Here are some answers to questions I receive frequently about this topic. When should a business owner build a money team? As soon as your business is consistently profitable. Most owners wait until they have a problem — a tax bill, a partnership dispute, a windfall. The right time is before any of those happen. How do I find a CPA who does planning, not just prep? Ask them how often they meet with clients during the year. A prep-only CPA meets with you in tax season. A planning CPA meets quarterly and brings strategies to you proactively. What's the difference between a business attorney and an estate attorney? A business attorney handles your operating agreements, contracts, partnerships, and buy-sells. An estate attorney handles your trust, will, and how your assets pass on. Different specialties, both needed. Does a $2M business owner really need a wealth advisor? Yes — and not for stock picks. At $2M, the value of an advisor is coordination across your CPA, attorney, and insurance. Without that quarterback, the rest of the team plays separate games. How much does a money team cost? It varies, but a typical $2M business owner pays $5K–$15K to a planning CPA, $2K–$5K annually to attorneys (less in quiet years), and 0.75%–1.25% of assets to an advisor. The savings almost always exceed the fees by a multiple. Can my CPA also be my financial advisor? Some are licensed to do both, but most aren't. More importantly, even when they are, the two jobs require different specialties. We rarely see one person do both at a high level. How often should my money team meet? At minimum, quarterly check-ins with your CPA and advisor. Annual review with your attorney. A joint call with the full team once a year is the gold standard — and it almost never happens unless your advisor schedules it. What if I already have these people but they don't talk to each other? That's the most common situation. The fix is bringing in someone whose job is coordination. The advisor role exists for exactly this reason. *Moment Private Wealth offers information on tax and estate planning that is general in nature. Tax and Legal advice are not provided by Moment Private Wealth. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific legal or tax situation.

Most people think the hardest part of building a business is getting it off the ground. And sure, that is brutal. The early days, the uncertainty, the moments where you wonder if you made a massive mistake betting on yourself. But after years of working with entrepreneurs, I can tell you that the financial mistakes I see most often do not happen in the early days. They happen after the business starts working. When the revenue coming in is real. When the stress shifts from "will this survive" to "how do I manage what this has become." That is exactly when the gaps in financial planning show up and when they are the most expensive. I have worked with entrepreneurs who built genuinely impressive businesses and still found themselves in a difficult spot personally. So here is what I wish more entrepreneurs knew before they needed to learn it the hard way. In this blog, I am going to outline the mistakes I have watched successful entrepreneurs make and what I wish I could have told them before it was too late. These are my confessions as an entrepreneur wealth advisor. Confessions of an Entrepreneur Wealth Advisor Confession #1: You Are Not Paying Quarterly Tax Estimates For most of your adult life, taxes were something that happened to you automatically. Your employer withheld the right amount on your W2. You filed in April. Maybe you got a refund. The system worked without you thinking much about it. When you own a business, that system no longer exists. Nobody is withholding anything. That is your responsibility. The IRS does not send you reminders about your future tax bill. The money hits your account and it all feels like yours, until it is not. What I see over and over again is entrepreneurs who had a legitimately strong year financially, and then watched a massive chunk of it evaporate in March because they had no plan for what they actually owed. And it is not just painful. It is penalizable. The IRS expects quarterly estimated payments throughout the year, and if you are not making them, you are paying extra for the privilege of being unprepared. Here is the shift that changes everything: Stop thinking about taxes once a year and start thinking about them every quarter. There are four dates you need to be paying those quarterly tax estimates on: April 15th June 15th September 15th January 15th These are non-negotiable. This is why you need to bring in a wealth management team who has actually worked with business owners and understands how income flows, especially in a company like yours. To summarize, you need to do the following: Run quarterly tax projections. Know your estimated liability. Set money aside before it gets absorbed into the business or your personal spending. Make the payments on a quarterly basis. This is one of the most fixable problems in personal finance for entrepreneurs. Confession #2: You Are Pulling Money Out of Your Business With No Real Strategy Here is something I have noticed about entrepreneurs. You are incredibly disciplined about how money moves inside the business. But when it comes to your own compensation, you are making it up as you go. Money is being pulled out when you need it based entirely on what the moment requires, not what a plan would suggest. I understand why this happens. It is your business and the money is yours. And in the early days especially, taking a formal salary feels almost beside the point when everything is being reinvested anyway. But here is what the absence of a distribution strategy actually costs you. You have no clear picture of what you are personally making. Your tax situation becomes harder to manage because your income is inconsistent and unplanned. And you end up making personal financial decisions like what you can afford, what you save, and what you invest based on a moving target instead of a real number. A deliberate distribution strategy means deciding in advance what you need, what the business needs to retain, and how to structure those distributions in a way that is efficient and sustainable. It means treating yourself like the most important vendor in your business, because in a lot of ways, you are. If you want more on this topic, check out this video that gives a real life example of what you can pay yourself as a business owner. Confession #3: Your Business Is Your Greatest Investment Most advisors will not tell you this. But it is the truth. Your business is not a liability to be managed around. It is not a risk to be hedged against. It is your greatest investment and it deserves to be treated like one. What I see too often is advisors who build a financial plan that exists almost entirely independent of the business. They manage the portfolio on the personal side, they do their job, and the business sits somewhere in the background; acknowledged but never truly accounted for. That is a failure of planning, not a feature of it. The advisor's job is to build around the business. To understand what it is worth, what it generates, where it is going, and what it would mean for your personal financial life if everything went right, or if something went sideways. And then to build a plan so strong around it that no matter where the business goes, your life does not change. That is the standard. Your business at the center, your financial plan built deliberately around it, and enough structure on the personal side that the outcome of the business does not determine the quality of the rest of your life. If your wealth advisor has never framed it that way, that is worth paying attention to. We put together an entire guide to Financial Planning for Business Owners. It is definitely worth checking out. Confession #4: There Was No Financial Plan That Existed Outside the Business Ask most entrepreneurs what their retirement plan looks like and they will describe their business. "I'll sell it someday." "It generates enough income to support us indefinitely." "The equity is the plan." Maybe. But that is a significant amount of your future resting on a single outcome you do not fully control. Valuations change. Buyers are not always there when you are ready. Businesses go through difficult periods. And even the most successful exits rarely happen exactly the way you imagined. What I have learned is that the entrepreneurs who feel the most financially secure, regardless of what happens with the business, are the ones who built something real on the personal side alongside what they built professionally. That means using the retirement vehicles available to business owners, many of which are genuinely powerful and genuinely underused (yes, we have a guide for that too). Solo 401(k)s. SEP IRAs. Simple IRAs. Defined benefit plans. These tools exist specifically for people in your situation and can move serious money into a protected, tax-advantaged environment every year. It also means having investments that are not tied to the performance of your business. Because when the business has a hard year, and most businesses do at some point, you do not want your entire financial life feeling it at the same time. The business is not your enemy here. It is your greatest asset. But it should not be your only one. Confession #5: Business Money and Personal Money Were in the Same Pile This one is more common than most entrepreneurs want to admit. Business expenses on personal credit cards. Personal purchases running through the company account. A general sense that since it is all your money anyway, the details of where it lives probably do not matter that much. They matter quite a bit, actually. When business and personal finances are tangled together, a few things happen. Your bookkeeping becomes a mess that costs extra to clean up at tax time. You lose the ability to accurately read what the business actually costs to operate. You create unnecessary exposure if the business is ever audited. And you make it almost impossible to get a real, honest look at your personal financial picture separate from how the business is doing on any given month. I have worked with entrepreneurs who genuinely could not tell me what they were earning personally. Smart, successful people who had simply never drawn a clear line between their professional and personal finances. The fix is not complicated. A dedicated business account. A clean, consistent way to pay yourself. Expenses that live where they belong. It is basic infrastructure, but it is the kind of infrastructure that makes everything else in your financial life easier to manage, easier to plan around, and easier to grow from. Final Thought I share these confessions because the entrepreneurs I respect most are the ones who want the full picture, not just the good news. Building a business is hard. Sustaining personal wealth alongside it is a different skill entirely. And most people never tell you that until something goes wrong. What I have seen is that the financial gaps rarely come from bad decisions. They come from missing information, the wrong structure, or simply nobody in the room whose job it was to connect the dots between the business and the rest of your life. That is the work we do at Moment Private Wealth. If any of what you read here felt familiar, that is a good reason to have a conversation before it becomes something you are cleaning up instead of planning around. Get in Touch With An Advisor Frequently Asked Questions Here are some answers to questions I receive frequently from entrepreneurs. How does Moment Private Wealth help business owners with taxes? Moment Private Wealth serves clients by running quarterly tax projections. Additionally, the firm works directly with your CPA to ensure all parties are on the same page, estimates are known and communicated to be paid in advance of deadlines. Can Moment Private Wealth help business owners with succession planning? Yes, this is part of creating a roadmap for your goals. Having first-hand knowledge of selling a business will allow you confidence throughout the process. Many business owners get one chance to sell a business. Having a firm that can help is key. What does your average client look like? Our clients are nearly all athletes and business owners. Our average client has a net worth greater than $5M. The strategies, solutions, and planning that we implement have a high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth client in mind. Can Moment Private Wealth help set up retirement accounts for me as a business owner? Moment Private Wealth uses Fidelity Investments as a third-party custodian for our client investment accounts. As a result, Moment is able to open IRAs, Solo 401(k)s and Defined Benefit plans and help manage those investments on your behalf. Why should I consider hiring Moment Private Wealth? Great question! But first, let us explain why you shouldn’t hire us. If you’re looking for an advisor who will pitch shiny object investments or be a “yes man” you are in the wrong place. Why? Because we believe in being truth tellers and only giving advice that we take ourselves. The investments, strategies, and planning we do are all things our advisors do with their own money. If you are an athlete or business owner interested in things like lowering your tax bill, investing smarter, and finding a trusted partner we might be a good fit. *Moment Private Wealth offers information on tax and estate planning that is general in nature. Tax and Legal advice are not provided by Moment Private Wealth. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific legal or tax situation.

Professional athletes face a financial reality most people never encounter. You earn life-changing money in a compressed window, you carry real risk of injury or sudden incapacity, and you operate in the public eye where privacy is constantly at stake. Those three factors together make estate planning one of the most important financial conversations you can have early in your career, not decades down the road. The right estate planning moves can help protect your family, your privacy, and your wealth across every stage of your career and beyond. The wrong setup, or no setup at all, can leave your loved ones navigating probate court, fighting over decisions, or losing a meaningful portion of your estate to taxes. In this blog, I am going to break down leveraging trusts and wills for professional athletes, including: Wills and what they do (and do not) cover Revocable and irrevocable trusts and where each one fits The supporting documents that protect you while you are alive The 2026 estate tax landscape and what it means for your wealth transfer plan For a broader view of how all of this fits together, see The Moment Guide To Estate Planning For Professional Athletes. Why Estate Planning Often Matters More For Athletes Many people put off estate planning because they think it is something to worry about in their 60s. For an athlete, that math can be backwards. You are often young, you may have outsized income, you sometimes have dependents earlier in life, and you typically have a public profile that can make your finances a target. You also face something most professionals do not: a real and ongoing risk of catastrophic injury. A torn ACL is one thing. A spinal injury, a traumatic brain injury, a cardiac event during a workout, or a serious car accident on the way to the stadium are all real possibilities that can put you in a hospital bed without the ability to speak for yourself. The numbers back this up. The NFL alone sees thousands of documented injuries every season. NBA and NHL players deal with concussion protocols on a regular basis. MLB pitchers face career-altering arm injuries every spring. None of these are death scenarios most of the time, but many of them are incapacity scenarios, which is exactly what good estate documents are built for. We cover the broader picture of how athletes can plan around these risks in The Moment Guide To Risk Management For Professional Athletes. Estate planning is not just about death. It is largely about control. Control over who manages your money if you cannot, who raises your kids if something happens, who has access to your medical decisions, and how your wealth moves to the next generation without potentially losing a meaningful portion to estate tax. Wills: A Foundation, Not The Full Strategy A will is often the baseline document in an estate plan. It generally does three things: Names who inherits your assets Names a guardian for any minor children Names an executor to wind up your affairs Here is what a will typically does not do, and this is where many athletes get tripped up. A will generally does not avoid probate. Probate is the court-supervised process of validating your will and distributing your assets. It is public, it can be slow (often 6 to 18 months, sometimes longer), and it can be expensive. For a professional athlete, one of the bigger concerns is that probate filings are part of the public record. Assets, beneficiaries, and dollar figures can become searchable. A will also generally does not control assets that already have beneficiaries listed (retirement accounts, life insurance, certain bank accounts). Those tend to pass independently of whatever your will says. A will also does nothing while you are still alive. If you take a hit in a game and end up in a coma for six months, the will sits in a drawer. The documents that actually carry you through that scenario are the ones we will get to below. **Please note: If you die without a will (called dying "intestate"), state law decides who gets your assets. That outcome rarely matches what an athlete might actually want, especially for unmarried players, players with kids from prior relationships, or players supporting parents and siblings. Trusts: Where Much Of The Strategy Lives A trust is a legal arrangement where one party (the trustee) holds and manages assets for the benefit of another (the beneficiary). Trusts can be private, immediate, and surgical in ways that wills often cannot match. For athletes, the right combination of trusts can help address several issues at once: privacy, probate avoidance, asset protection, and estate tax exposure. Revocable Living Trust This is often the workhorse trust for many athletes. You create it during your lifetime, you can typically change it whenever you want, and you usually serve as your own trustee while you are alive and capable. The benefits can include: Helping avoid probate for assets titled in the trust's name Helping keep your estate private since trust administration often happens outside of court Providing continuity if you become incapacitated, since a successor trustee can usually step in without court involvement That last point matters a lot for athletes. If you suffer a serious in-game injury and cannot manage your own affairs for weeks or months, a properly drafted revocable trust allows your named successor trustee to step in immediately and keep things running. Mortgage payments, business obligations, investment decisions, and family expenses can all keep moving without a court appointing a conservator. A revocable trust generally does not save estate tax on its own. Its role is more focused on privacy, control, and helping you avoid the probate process. Irrevocable Trusts Once an estate grows past the federal exemption, irrevocable trusts often come into play as a tax-planning tool. They can move assets out of your taxable estate in exchange for giving up the ability to change the trust later. Common structures include: Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust (ILIT): holds large life insurance policies outside your estate Spousal Lifetime Access Trust (SLAT): uses your exemption while keeping indirect access through your spouse Dynasty Trust: helps with multi-generational transfers Charitable Remainder or Lead Trusts: combine giving with potential tax efficiency Each of these has its own use case, and the right mix depends on your contract size, marital status, and long-term goals. We will dig into each of these structures in dedicated future posts. The Other Documents You May Need This is where many athletes have a gap in their plan. The trust and the will tend to get the attention, but the supporting documents are often what carries you through a crisis. If you get hurt in a game on Sunday and end up unconscious in a hospital on Monday, the trust does not help much. These documents can. For an athlete, the risk of needing these documents in your 20s or 30s is not theoretical. Every season brings examples of players carted off the field, players hospitalized after collisions, and players dealing with serious health events nobody saw coming. Damar Hamlin's cardiac arrest on Monday Night Football in 2023 is one example that resonated across pro sports. Many athletes benefit from having all five of these in place, with updates whenever life circumstances change. Durable Power of Attorney A Durable Power of Attorney (POA) lets someone you name (your "agent" or "attorney in fact") manage your financial and legal affairs if you cannot. The word durable is meaningful. A standard POA generally terminates when you become incapacitated, which is often the exact moment you need one. A durable POA usually stays in effect through incapacity. For an athlete, the POA can be drafted to cover real-world situations. If you are in a hospital bed after a serious injury, can your agent: Sign for your house closing? Manage your investment accounts? Handle your business interests, endorsements, and LLC filings? Negotiate with your team or insurer about disability claims? The document is often drafted broadly enough to cover these scenarios without being so broad that it creates abuse risk. Many athletes name a parent or spouse as primary agent. Naming the wrong person here is one of the more common and costly mistakes we see. This person can move money, sign contracts, and make decisions in your name. Choose carefully. Healthcare Power of Attorney The Healthcare Power of Attorney (sometimes called a healthcare proxy or medical POA) names who can make medical decisions for you if you cannot speak for yourself. This is often a separate person from your financial agent, though they can be the same person if that fits your family. For athletes, this document can be especially important. Serious injury scenarios in pro sports often involve fast-moving medical decisions: Whether to airlift you to a specialty trauma center Whether to operate immediately or wait Whether to put you in a medically induced coma Whether to attempt a high-risk procedure Without a healthcare POA, those decisions may get made by default state law rules, which often default to a spouse, then parents, then siblings, in that order. If your family situation is complicated, the wrong person could end up in charge during the most important medical moments of your life. You may also want a healthcare agent who understands your wishes around things like return-to-play decisions, experimental treatments, and the kinds of injury recovery choices that come up in pro sports. A parent who has never thought about concussion protocols or orthopedic surgery options may not be the right call. Some athletes appoint a former teammate, a trainer they trust, or a family member who has specifically been educated on the kinds of decisions that can come up. Living Will (Advance Directive) A Living Will (also called an Advance Directive) spells out your wishes on end-of-life care. It addresses the questions nobody wants to think about: if you are on life support with little chance of recovery, do you want to be kept on machines? If you are in a permanent vegetative state, what level of intervention do you want? For an athlete, this document can do two important things. First, it can give your healthcare agent clear written guidance so they are not guessing in the worst moment of their life. Second, it can help remove those decisions from family conflict. The Terri Schiavo case is often cited as an example of what can happen when a young, healthy person becomes incapacitated without one of these in place. The family dispute lasted 15 years and went all the way to the Supreme Court. The reality is that catastrophic head and spinal injuries, while rare, are not unheard of. A document that clarifies your wishes ahead of time is a gift to the people who would otherwise have to guess. You can be as specific as you want. Some athletes include preferences around organ donation, religious considerations, and whether they want certain experimental interventions tried. HIPAA Authorization This one sounds bureaucratic, but it can be genuinely important. HIPAA is the federal law that protects the privacy of your medical records. The default rule is that even close family members generally cannot access your medical information without your written consent. A HIPAA Authorization is a separate document that names the specific people who can talk to your doctors, see your medical records, and receive updates on your condition. Without it, your healthcare agent may have decision-making authority but cannot easily get the information needed to make those decisions intelligently. For an athlete, this is also a privacy tool. You can authorize the people you want to be informed and deliberately leave others out. If you are dealing with a sensitive injury or condition you do not want leaking to the media, a carefully drafted HIPAA authorization can help control the flow of information. People to consider authorizing often include: Your healthcare agent and backup agent Your spouse or partner Your parents Your agent (the sports agent, in this case) Your team's medical staff, when appropriate *Please note: HIPAA authorizations can expire after a set period in some states. Building a reminder to review and refresh yours every few years is often a good idea. The 2026 Estate Tax Landscape The numbers can matter. As of January 1, 2026, the federal estate and gift tax exemption sits at $15 million per individual and $30 million per married couple. Amounts above those thresholds may generally be taxed at a flat 40% federal estate tax rate. The annual gift tax exclusion stayed at $19,000 per recipient for 2026, which means a married couple can give $38,000 per recipient per year to as many people as they want without touching their lifetime exemption. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4, 2025, made the higher exemption permanent and indexed it for inflation going forward. That removed the prior sunset that was scheduled to reduce the exemption significantly. The planning urgency that existed in 2024 and 2025 has cooled somewhat, but the strategies can still matter because state estate taxes (which apply at lower thresholds in many states) have not changed. For athletes, the higher exemption is helpful but does not change the underlying reality. A career-ending injury can also be a wealth-creating event if disability insurance pays out, and large insurance payouts can push estates over the exemption faster than people expect. Planning ahead for that scenario tends to be easier than scrambling after the fact. What Next? Do you have a will? A revocable trust? A durable POA, healthcare POA, living will, and HIPAA authorization? Has your plan been updated since you got married, had a child, or signed your last contract? If any of those answers gave you pause, your plan may be exposed. The good news is that estate planning for athletes is generally fixable, and the upfront cost is often small relative to what it can help protect. Moment Private Wealth works exclusively with professional athletes and coordinates directly with estate attorneys to help build plans that fit your career timeline. Get in Touch With An Advisor Frequently Asked Questions Do I really need a will if I am young and healthy? For most professional athletes with significant income, dependents, business interests, or a public profile, the answer is generally yes. Athletes also face an elevated risk of serious injury or incapacity, which is exactly what these documents are built for. Dying without a will often means state law decides who gets your assets and who raises your minor children, and the resulting probate is typically public. What happens to my estate plan if I am injured but not killed? This is where the supporting documents do the heavy lifting. A durable power of attorney, healthcare power of attorney, living will, and HIPAA authorization are what allow your chosen people to step in and manage your finances and medical care while you recover. Without them, your family may need to go to court to get authority, which costs time and money during an already difficult moment. Can a trust protect my assets from lawsuits or creditors? It depends on the trust. A revocable trust generally will not. Properly structured irrevocable trusts (including domestic asset protection trusts in certain states) may help shield assets from future creditors and lawsuits, though they generally will not protect against existing or known claims. The timing of when the trust is funded can matter significantly. Do I need a trust if my estate is under the $15 million exemption? Often yes, even if estate tax is not the main driver. Trusts can help with privacy, probate avoidance, incapacity planning, and control over how minor children receive money. For athletes specifically, the incapacity benefits alone are often enough reason to put a revocable trust in place. How often should I update my estate plan? A general guideline is every three to five years, and ideally after any major life event. That can include marriage, divorce, the birth of a child, a major new contract, the purchase of a home in a new state, a significant injury, or the death of someone named in your documents. Estate documents that are out of date can sometimes be worse than no documents at all. *Moment Private Wealth offers information on tax and estate planning that is general in nature. Tax and Legal advice are not provided by Moment Private Wealth. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific legal or tax situation.

Most business owners I talk to think they have two options when it comes to saving for retirement. A 401(k). Or a SEP-IRA. So they max one out, feel good about it, and move on. But there's a third option. One the IRS has allowed for a long time. One that can let high-income business owners shelter far more than a 401(k) ever could, every single year, fully tax-deductible. It's called a Cash Balance Plan, and most owners have never heard of it. If you're a business owner still building the foundation of your financial plan, start here. What Is a Cash Balance Plan The name says it all. You have a cash balance. You can see it. You watch it grow every year. It looks and feels like a 401(k), there's an account with your name on it and a real number inside it. But the IRS classifies it as a defined benefit plan, and that classification is what gives it power. Each year, your account gets credited with two things: a pay credit based on your compensation, and an interest credit at a guaranteed rate. Here's what that actually means for you. You, the business owner, make the contribution. Every year, you fund the plan out of your business. In return, your business deducts every dollar contributed. And your account balance grows at a guaranteed rate regardless of what the market does. How Does This Compare to a 401(k)? The IRS caps total contributions to a 401(k), including profit sharing, at $72,000 in 2026. With a 401(k), the IRS caps what you can contribute as an employee at $24,500 in 2026. Stack employer profit sharing on top and the total ceiling is $72,000, full stop. A Cash Balance Plan has no fixed ceiling like that. Instead, an actuary, a licensed math professional, calculates exactly what you need to contribute each year to hit your target balance at retirement. That number is driven by your age, your income, and your target. The older you are, the larger the required annual contribution, because you have fewer years to reach the goal. That larger contribution means a larger deduction for your business. For high-income owners who have already hit the 401(k) ceiling, that gap is where real tax savings live. What About Self-Employed Owners With No Employees? This is the first question most people ask, and the answer is yes. If you are self-employed with no employees, you can establish a Cash Balance Plan. IRS Publication 560 explicitly covers these plans for self-employed individuals. Your contribution is calculated based on your net earnings from self-employment, not your gross revenue. That number is what the actuary works from. Being solo actually works in your favor here. When a plan covers multiple employees, the IRS requires nondiscrimination testing, essentially proving the plan doesn't unfairly favor you over your staff. With no employees, there's nobody to compare against. No testing. Less complexity. A cleaner plan. Who This Is For This plan isn't for everyone, and being honest about that matters. It works best for business owners who are earning consistent, high income year after year and are age 45 or older. It tends to make the most sense for owners who have already maxed out their 401(k) and are still writing a large check to the IRS every April. The keyword there is stable. A Defined Benefit Plan requires consistent funding. If your income swings significantly from year to year, the mandatory contribution structure can become a problem rather than a benefit. This plan rewards discipline and penalizes inconsistency. If you have employees, plan design matters too. The rules around who must be included in the plan require a closer look before moving forward. What You're Signing Up For This is the part most people gloss over. Don't. You are required to hire a licensed actuary. The IRS mandates actuarial calculations to determine your contribution each year. This is not something you estimate yourself. The actuary tells you what you owe the plan, and you fund it. That funding is not optional. Once this plan is established, you must contribute consistently. If the plan's investments earn less than the guaranteed interest credit, you make up the difference out of your business. There is no skipping a year because revenue was down. There is no underfunding and catching up later. At Retirement When you're ready to stop working, you can roll your Defined Benefit Plan balance directly into an IRA. That means full control of your money. You choose how it's invested. You decide when and how much to take out. It moves out of the plan structure and into an account you own, just like any other IRA you've ever had. If you are an entrepreneur who is looking for a better understanding of financial planning, schedule a call, and talk with a Moment founder. For more on financial planning for business owners, check out this video on how business owners can save money on taxes. Get in Touch With An Advisor Frequently Asked Questions Here are some answers to questions I receive frequently about this topic. Can I set up a Cash Balance Plan if I already have a 401(k)? Yes. A Cash Balance Plan and a 401(k) can run at the same time. Many high-income owners run both simultaneously to maximize their annual deduction. Your actuary and tax advisor can help structure both plans together. How much can I actually contribute each year? There is no fixed number. Your annual contribution is calculated by a licensed actuary based on your age, your net income, and your target balance at retirement. The IRS caps the maximum annual benefit at $290,000 for 2026, and the older you are, the more you can contribute each year to reach that target. Who is the actuary and what do they actually do? An actuary is a licensed math professional required by the IRS to calculate your annual contribution. They look at your age, income, target benefit, and the plan's investment performance, and tell you exactly what you need to put in each year. You cannot estimate this number yourself. How do you work with other members of my team? We believe in the power of the team. For most of our clients, their team consists of Moment Private Wealth, an accountant, an attorney, a banker, and an insurance specialist. We help our clients build out their team of individuals or work with existing partners that the clients have. Our goal is to ensure every family has a team of experts to protect their interests. Why should I consider hiring Moment Private Wealth? Great question! But first, let us explain why you shouldn’t hire us. If you’re looking for an advisor who will pitch shiny object investments or be a “yes man” you are in the wrong place. Why? Because we believe in being truth tellers and only giving advice that we take ourselves. The investments, strategies, and planning we do are all things our advisors do with their own money. If you are an athlete or entrepreneur interested in things like lowering your tax bill, investing smarter, and finding a trusted partner, we might be a good fit. *Moment Private Wealth offers information on tax and estate planning that is general in nature. Tax and Legal advice are not provided by Moment Private Wealth. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific legal or tax situation.

The moment the wire hits your account is rarely the "finish line" founders imagine. Instead, it is the start of a high-stakes transition from an operator to a capital allocator. If you sold your business for $10,000,000 today, the number on the screen would look significantly different than the number on the Letter of Intent (LOI). A $10M business sale typically results in a net liquidity event of $6.8M to $7.2M after taxes and fees. Success depends on aligning your post-exit active income such as earn-outs or consulting with a bucketed investment strategy. Your "liquidity number" must be calculated based on your specific lifestyle burn rate, not a vanity headline price. Selling for more than $10MM check out my youtube video for Ultra High Net Worth. Exit Planning for Business Owners In M&A, the "headline price" is a gross figure. Between that number and your bank balance stands a series of priority claimants. This sequence is known as the "waterfall." 1. Transaction Costs: The Price of Protection Selling an eight-figure asset requires a specialized team to defend your interests and ensure the representations and warranties you sign don't come back to haunt you. Investment Banking Fees: Most mid-market bankers work on a "Lehman Formula" or a flat success fee between 3% and 5%. For a $10M deal, this is a non-negotiable $300,000 to $500,000. Legal Counsel: Unlike general corporate law, M&A legal work is intensive. For a $10M transaction, expect legal fees to range from $50,000 to $100,000. This covers the definitive purchase agreement, disclosure schedules, and closing mechanics. Quality of Earnings (QofE): Sophisticated buyers will perform their own due diligence, but you should have your own "Sell-Side QofE" ready. This costs $30,000 to $50,000 and prevents the buyer from chipping away at your valuation during the 11th hour. 2. The Escrow Holdback: Your "Wait-and-See" Capital Buyers rarely pay 100% of the price on day one. They typically hold 10% to 15% ($1M to $1.5M) in a third-party escrow account for 12 to 24 months. This capital acts as a security deposit for any post-closing claims regarding the accuracy of your financial statements or unforeseen liabilities. Until this period expires, you cannot include this capital in your "investable net." The Tax Bite: Federal vs. Local Reality For a Missouri-based founder, the tax story is cleaner than in many coastal states, but the federal government remains your largest "partner." The Federal Burden Assuming the sale is structured as a stock sale and you have held the company for more than one year, you are subject to: Long-Term Capital Gains: 20% on the gain ($2,000,000). Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT): 3.8% ($380,000). Total Federal Impact: $2,380,000. The Entity Advantage Your business structure will determine your tax rate. Many states are passing laws where there is no income tax on pass-through entities. The most common are S Corporations and Partnerships. If you live in Missouri, where I am based, this is the case. Even though the top MO tax rate is 4.7%, if you sell your business, you pay 0% to the state of MO. While Missouri does tax capital gains at the standard income tax rate, many entrepreneurs can leverage the Missouri PTET (Pass-Through Entity Tax) or specific structural credits to minimize this impact. In most scenarios, you will keep significantly more of your exit proceeds than a founder in California or New York, where state taxes can devour an additional 10% to 13% of the deal. Want a complete breakdown of taxes for entrepreneurs...check out this blog here. Post-Exit Income: Are You Still "In the Game"? One of the most overlooked factors in portfolio construction is the founder’s ongoing role in the company. Most exits include a transition period or an "earn-out." The Consultant or Retained CEO If you remain as a CEO or consultant for 24 months post-exit, you are still generating active income. This changes the math for your $7M net proceeds. Active Income Coverage: If your consulting salary covers your $30,000/month lifestyle, your $7M portfolio can remain in "Aggressive Growth" mode. You don't need to draw from the principal, allowing the capital to compound uninterrupted. The Clean Break: If you walk away on day one with zero active income, your portfolio must immediately shift to a "Total Return" or "Income" focus. You now need the portfolio to replace your paycheck, which necessitates a more conservative, liquidity-heavy allocation. The Earn-Out Risk If $2M of your $10M deal is tied to an earn-out (future performance targets), you must treat that $2M as a "bonus," not a certainty. We advise founders to build their core lifestyle plan around the guaranteed cash at closing, not the potential upside of an earn-out. Portfolio Structure: The Three-Bucket Approach Once the net proceeds are clear, we move from "Business Risk" to "Market Risk." We organize the $7M net into three distinct buckets based on your time horizon and income needs . Bucket 1: The War Chest (0–7 Years) This bucket ensures you never have to sell stocks during a market downturn. It typically contains 24 months of lifestyle expenses in high-yield cash equivalents or short-term Treasuries. If you need $300,000 a year to live, $600,000 stays here. Depending on your need to take risks, we often see this War Chest balloon to 7 years. Why so much? There has never been a down period over 7 years, which makes it the ultimate safety net. Bucket 2: Growth Strategy (2–10+ Years) This is the engine of your wealth. It consists of a globally diversified portfolio of public equities and alternatives. The goal here is to outpace inflation and the "4% Rule." Tax Efficiency: For HNW individuals, we prioritize tax-loss harvesting and investing in assets that we control the tax bill. Your capital needs and monthly spending will be the biggest factor that determines how much cash in invested in this bucket. Bucket 3: The Aspirational/Legacy Bucket Now that your lifestyle is secured, you can afford to take "concentrated" risks again. This is where you put capital back into what you know: Private Equity & VC: Investing in the next generation of founders. Direct Real Estate: Cash-flowing assets with depreciation benefits. Angel Investing: High-risk, high-reward opportunities that don't threaten your core security. We don't want to risk money if we need for our lifestyle. These are assets that if they all went to $0 it wouldn't change our financial life. Take a deeper dive into how to construct your portfolio here. The Identity Shift: From Operator to Investor The hardest part of a $10M exit isn't the tax math—it’s the psychological shift. As a founder, you were used to having a high degree of control over your returns. If you worked harder, the company grew. In the public markets, you have zero control over the Fed or global supply chains. This "loss of control" often leads founders to over-trade or take unnecessary risks with their core capital. Our role as your CIO is to provide the discipline to stay the course, ensuring that the "10M Illusion" becomes a permanent, multi-generational reality. If you are an entrepreneur who is looking to better understand financial planning for a business exit, schedule a call, and talk with a Moment founder. Get in Touch With An Advisor Frequently Asked Questions: Selling Your Business for $10M Here are some answers to questions I received frequently about this topic. Are you a fiduciary? Moment Private Wealth serves clients as a fiduciary 100% of the time. How does Moment Private Wealth make money? We are only paid in one transparent way, by our clients. We receive no kickbacks or participate in any profit-sharing arrangements. Our fees are simple, transparent, and clear for our clients. What is the "4% Rule" and how does it apply to my exit? The 4% Rule suggests you can safely withdraw 4% of your portfolio annually without exhausting the principal. On a $7M net exit, this provides $280,000 per year. If your lifestyle costs more than this, you must either lower your expenses or find a way to generate active income post-sale. Do I pay the "Jock Tax" on my business sale? No. While professional athletes pay taxes in every state they play in based on "Duty Days," a business sale is generally taxed in your state of legal residence. This is why being a Missouri resident during an exit is a significant financial advantage. What happens to my 401k or company retirement plan after the sale? Depending on the deal structure (Asset vs. Stock), the buyer may "terminate" the existing plan. You can then roll those funds into an IRA, maintaining the tax-deferred status and giving you more control over the investment options. Should I use my exit proceeds to pay off my mortgage? This is a math vs. emotion decision. If your mortgage is at 3% and your portfolio is expected to return 7%, keeping the mortgage is mathematically superior. However, many founders prefer the "psychological clean slate" of being debt-free post-exit. We model both scenarios to see how they impact your long-term liquidity. How does QSBS (Section 1202) work for a $10M sale? If your company qualifies as a Qualified Small Business (QSBS), you may be able to exclude up to 100% of the gain from federal taxes (up to $10M). This is the "Holy Grail" of exit planning, but it requires the business to meet strict asset and industry requirements since its inception. *Moment Private Wealth offers information on tax and estate planning that is general in nature. Tax and Legal advice are not provided by Moment Private Wealth. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific legal or tax situation.

The 2025/2026 NBA season is in full swing. Organizations are preparing for a season they hope ends in lifting the Larry O' Brien Championship Trophy. Priority one is winning games on the court. But players can also win off the court by understanding their benefits as professional basketball players. In this blog, I am going to breakdown the NBA's Pension Plan. NBA Pension Plan The National Basketball Association offers one of the best products in all of sports. With star athletes and high-energy games, the NBA is must watch tv. But behind the scenes, there is a significant focus on ensuring players are well taken care of after their careers come to an end. The NBA and NBPA have put together a package to support their players after retirement. There has been a big push from modern-era players to enhance these benefits. One of these benefits is the NBA Pension Plan. Before I dive in, it is important to understand all your benefits. Navigating retirement as professional athlete is hard enough. Our team at Moment Private Wealth is here to help. The History of the NBA Pension Plan Back in 1965, the National Basketball Association realized it needed to provide its players with benefits found in other professional organizations. With the MLB (1947) and NFL (1962) offering its players pension plans, the NBA followed suit. It began with the creation of The Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) in 1957. The CBA was created thanks to a threat of strike by Boston Celtics star Bob Cousy who was unhappy with player benefits. Since then, the NBPA and NBA have worked closely to agree to terms and conditions for employment in the NBA. The latest update came in April 2023 and runs through the 2029-30 NBA season. NBA Pension Eligibility Requirements Understanding your eligibility is the first step in taking advantages of the NBA Pension Plan. A signed contract does not automatically mean eligibility into pension benefits. In the NBA, you earn benefits based on "Years of Service." While not overly complex, "Years of Service" refer to the number of years you receive for your time in the NBA. In order to earn a "Year of Service" you must be listed on the NBA Active or inactive List at least one day during the Regular Season. The catch is you have to earn at least three "Years of Service" to qualify for the NBA benefits. NBA Pension Benefits Now that you understand eligibility requirements, what are your pension benefits as a NBA player? Before outlining these benefits, it is important to understand the latest NBA adjustments to its retirement dates and benefit calculations. Below are the latest NBA adjustments as of February 2nd, 2024: Normal Retirement Date: this is the first of the month following a player's 62nd birthday Early Retirement Date: players can retire on or after the month following their 45th birthday, but before the normal retirement date Benefit Adjustments: monthly benefits will be updated annually. This is based on the maximum amounts permitted under the Internal Revenue Code. These monthly benefits will also adjust based on cost-of- living increases. With these updates, the amount you receive in your pension depends on three additional factors: Years of Service Average Salary Age While these amounts vary, the NBA has made it a priority to provide fair values based on "Years of Service" in the league. As of the latest agreements, the minimum monthly pension benefit for players at normal retirement age is set at $1,001.47 for each year of credited service. This amount will increase based on your "Years of Service" and the time you begin taking the pension benefit. It is important to consult an expert in athlete wealth management to fully take advantage of your pension benefits. Pension Benefits for Two-Way Players Making it on a regular season roster in the NBA is no easy feat. With 15 players on each regular season roster, it is possible players may make the roster one year and play on the G League roster the next. Or further, they may be on both rosters the same year. Each NBA franchise can sign three players to two-way contracts. This means players can participate at both the NBA and G League levels during the same season. If this happens to you, the NBA Pension Plan will be amended. This means, for each regular season during the term, a two-way player is considered to be on a roster if he is: On Active, Inactive or Two-Way List (on February 2nd of Regular Season); or On the Active List of any team for 50% or more of total Regular Season games during the year This amendment allows Two-Way Players to be eligible for pension benefits and will receive compensation for their contributions. What Next? Your hard work on the court has awarded you benefits well into your future years. Why not take advantage of them? There is no better time than now to ensure you have reviewed your NBA benefits, particularly your pension plan. At Moment Private Wealth, we review the benefits outlined in the Collective Bargaining Agreement on your behalf and are happy to answer any questions you may have. If you are in the National Basketball Association and want to better understand the NBA benefits, schedule a call with a Moment Founder. Not sure what questions to ask, check out this video on 10 questions you should ask when interviewing a financial advisor. Get in Touch With An Advisor Frequently Asked Questions Here are some answers to questions I received frequently about this topic. How does a player qualify for the NBA Retirement Plan? A player must have earned a minimum of three "Years of Service" to be eligible. Have I earned a Year of Service? Players need to be on the NBA Active or Inactive List at least one day during the Regular Season. Am I eligible for the NBA Pension as a Two-Way Player? Yes! As long as you meet the requirements outlined above, you are awarded the same benefits as if you were on the NBA roster. What age can players take the NBA pension? Players can start receiving their full pension at the age of 45. If deferred until 62, the benefit significantly increases. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ *Moment Private Wealth offers information on tax and estate planning that is general in nature. Tax and Legal advice are not provided by Moment Private Wealth. Consult an attorney or tax professional regarding your specific legal or tax situation.