Insights

Insights on retirement, taxes and business exits

Plain-English writing on what happens to the money: retirement income, tax positioning, protecting principal, and turning a business into personal wealth.

• What Happens to Your 401(k) When You Sell Your Business?: Your attorney is handling the plan termination. Nobody is assigned to what it does to your own balance, your taxes, and your access before 59 and a half.
• How Much Monthly Income Does $1 Million Actually Produce?: Three ways to turn a lump sum into monthly income, what each one costs you, and why the biggest number on the page is not the best one.
• How Much Income Will Your Spouse Lose When You Die?: A four-minute subtraction most couples have never done. Here is what actually stops when the first spouse dies, worked through with real numbers.
• Why Did My Taxes Go Up After My Husband Died?: You are living on less and the bill is larger. Here is why that happens, and the form that can lower your Medicare premium after a spouse dies.
• Should You Pay Off Your Mortgage After Selling Your Business?: You just sold, and the mortgage feels like the obvious first move. Here is what paying it off actually costs, what it buys, and what to answer before you…
• How to Protect Your Surviving Spouse's Income in Retirement: When one spouse dies, the household loses a Social Security check and the survivor's tax bracket narrows. Here's what a couple can do while both are still…
• The First 90 Days After You Sell: What to Decide Now, and What to Leave Alone: The wire cleared. Now what? A plain walkthrough of what actually has to be decided in the first 90 days after a business sale, and what is better left alone
• The Widow's Penalty: Why a Survivor Pays More Tax: A surviving spouse loses income but often owes more federal tax. Here is the 2026 arithmetic, and what a couple can do while both are still living.
• From Accumulation to Distribution: The Retirement Shift: Saving and spending require opposite skills. What changes when you stop accumulating and start living off your portfolio, and how to prepare.
• Beyond the Business: Turning Success Into Personal Wealth: Most owners build one valuable asset and call it a retirement plan. How to tell whether your future depends too heavily on the business.
• Why Retirement Plans Fail: It's Not the Math: Retirement plans fail less from bad math than from decisions made under pressure. How to build one stable enough to think clearly.
• The Roth Conversion Window: Moving Money Before It Closes: The low-bracket years between an exit and RMDs are the cheapest time to convert. How the Roth conversion window works and when it closes.
• Sequence of Returns Risk: The Retirement Killer: Two retirees, identical average returns, very different outcomes. How the order of market returns early in retirement decides who runs out.
• The 401(k) Tax Deduction That Can Cost You Later: Deducting contributions now can mean a larger tax bill later. A worked example of how up-front deductions push taxes into retirement.
• How to Pass Money to Your Family Tax-Efficiently: Building wealth and transferring it take different skills. How gifting, step-up in basis, trusts, and beneficiary choices affect your heirs.
• Legacy Planning: What Happens to Your Money After You Die: Without a plan, taxes and probate decide what your family keeps. How beneficiary structure, titling, and tax rules shape what you leave.
• How to Withdraw From a 401(k) Without a Tax Hit: Withdrawal order can change lifetime taxes on a 401(k). How conversion windows, bracket management, and timing fit together in retirement.
• Why Business Owners Rethink the 401(k) Before an Exit: The 401(k) was designed for employees, not owners. Why business owners revisit retirement structure before a sale, and what changes after.
• RMDs Explained: The Retirement Tax Bomb at Age 73: Required minimum distributions begin at 73 whether you need the money or not. How RMDs affect your bracket, Medicare premiums, and options.
• 401(k) Downsides Nobody Mentions Until Retirement: Your 401(k) balance isn't all yours. How deferred taxes, RMDs, and bracket risk can shrink what you actually get to spend in retirement.

Harbor Point Advisors. Bozeman, Montana. (406) 539-3423. Serving clients nationwide.

Harbor Point Advisors is an insurance agency. Adam Stevens is a licensed insurance professional, license number 3004330767, NPN 22297129. Not a registered investment adviser or broker-dealer.