If you give to your church, your alma mater, or causes close to your heart, the way you give can matter as much as the amount. In this episode of Ten Minutes Wealthier, Johnson Rhett and Kelly Jennings of Branning Wealth Management walk through three strategies retirees may use to give more tax-efficiently:

• Giving appreciated investments: why donating stock directly, rather than selling it first, may help you avoid capital gains tax
• Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs): how IRA owners age 70½ and older can give directly from their IRA, keep that distribution out of taxable income, and potentially satisfy their RMD
• Donor-advised funds and “bunching”: how combining several years of giving into one year may make itemizing worthwhile, while still supporting your charities on your usual schedule

The goal isn’t to change who you give to or how much. It’s to help your giving fit into the rest of your financial plan.

Wondering if Branning Wealth Management is the right fit for you? Find out here: Are We a Fit?

Music Credits: Original music composed and produced by Johnson Rhett & Jennings Duncan.

This episode is for educational purposes only and is not individualized investment, tax, or legal advice. Please consult your tax professional about your specific situation.

Jason also walks through the options lawmakers have to close the gap, why claiming early out of fear could be a costly decision, and how stress testing your plan can help you prepare for a range of outcomes.

Wondering if Branning Wealth Management is the right fit for you? Find out here: https://tally.so/r/OD9Lqa

This episode is for educational purposes only and is not individualized investment, tax, or legal advice. Projections are estimates and subject to change. Adapted in part from “Social Security’s Funding Challenge” by Martha Shedden, Rethinking65.

They cover:

• Is a safety-first approach too conservative? Why a bond ladder sized to your actual income needs can mean holding more in stocks than a traditional 60/40 portfolio.
• Maturing bonds vs. living off interest. How each rung of the ladder is matched to planned expenses, and why holding individual bonds to maturity matters in a year like 2022.
• Why not just use a safe withdrawal rate? The research behind the 4% rule, and why we plan around how retirees actually spend in the go-go, slow-go, and no-go years.
• Planning instead of reacting. Why we build for market downturns up front rather than making changes when headlines turn scary.

The goal isn't to outperform the market. It's a plan built so you don't have to ask the market for permission to retire.

Wondering if our approach is right for you? See if you're a fit: https://tally.so/r/OD9Lqa

Music Credits: Original music composed and produced by Johnson Rhett & Jennings Duncan.

This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not individualized investment advice. Examples are hypothetical. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal.

The Safest Investment Might Be the Riskiest One

Most people define risk as a stock market crash, red numbers on the news, a portfolio balance dropping for a few months. But on this episode of Ten Minutes Wealthier, Johnson Rhett and Kelly Jennings make the case that risk isn't really about volatility, it's about time horizon.

Johnson and Kelly walk through the three core asset classes, cash, bonds, and stocks, and explain why what feels safest today (cash) can quietly become the riskiest choice over time, while what feels volatile in the short run (stocks) can be one of the safest bets over a decade or more. Using real examples, including a simple thought experiment about investing in a friend's coffee shop, they break down concepts like inflation risk, interest rate risk, and the equity risk premium in plain language.

The big takeaway: the biggest mistake isn't picking the wrong investment, it's matching the wrong asset to the wrong timeline.

Kelly references a chart in this episode. You can view it here: Market Risk Slide

Music Credits: Original music composed and produced by Johnson Rhett & Jennings Duncan.

Educational content only, not personalized investment advice. Examples are hypothetical. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal.

If you're within five years of retirement, the questions start getting louder. When do I take Social Security? When can I actually retire? How much can I spend? What if the market drops right after I stop working?

Sam Buchanan, CFP®, and Johnson Rhett, CFP®, ChFC®, walk through three shifts that matter most in that window — and why the strategy that got you here isn't the one that carries you through.

In this episode:

Set it and forget it is no longer a strategy. A durable, hands-off approach works well during your accumulation years. Applied to your entire financial life as retirement approaches, it leaves the biggest questions unanswered — and most people aren't actually forgetting about it. They're thinking about it constantly.

Stop consuming, start planning. Reading another article or watching another forecast feels like progress. It isn't the same as having answers specific to your situation, your goals, and your tax picture.

Reframe what retirement is for. The magic number isn't magic. People with $500,000 and people with $10 million ask the same questions. Three questions worth sitting with before you set a date — including whether you're retiring toward something or away from something.

Build the retirement paycheck. Your portfolio's job changes when the paychecks stop. The only benchmark that matters is whether you're on track for your goals — not what the index did.

For more on how the income structure works, listen to Episode 2 on bond ladders.

Branning Wealth Management is a fee-only fiduciary firm with offices in Jackson, Mississippi and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, serving clients nationwide. Learn more at branwealth.com.

Music Credits: Original music composed and produced by Johnson Rhett & Jennings Duncan.

This episode is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment, tax, or legal advice. Consult your tax professional regarding your situation.

Most people walk into a wealth management firm expecting one thing: hand over the money, get high returns. Kelly Jennings puts that assumption to Johnson Rhett directly — and the answer surprises a lot of people.

In this episode, Johnson walks through what actually happens when you work with Branning Wealth Management: the two-phase structure of the Financial Planning Agreement and the Client Service Agreement, what the four-to-eight-week discovery process looks like, and why no portfolio gets built until the plan is in place. He also breaks down the three pillars of our Safety-First philosophy —> liability-driven investing, fee-only fiduciary structure, and goal-specific planning. He also explains the difference between fee-only and fee-based that most people have never had spelled out for them.

Kelly closes with a question worth sitting with: are you invested in a way that has you reacting to whatever Wall Street did today, or do you have a plan that dictates what you own?

Host: Johnson Rhett, CFP®, ChFC® & Kelly Jennings, CFP®, CDAA™ — branwealth.com

Music Credits: Original music composed and produced by Johnson Rhett & Jennings Duncan.

Source(s): FeeOnlyNetwork.com, citing The Wall Street Journal — of roughly 295,000 U.S. professionals offering financial advice, fewer than 2% are fee-only advisors operating under a true fiduciary standard. Figures vary by source and methodology and may not reflect current industry data. Branning Wealth Management does not independently verify third-party data.

Nine episodes in, it's time to introduce the people behind the plan.

In this final episode of Ten Minutes Wealthier: Essentials, Jason Branning introduces the full BWM team — advisors who bring deep expertise across retirement income planning, tax strategy, divorce and family transitions, athlete financial planning, aging, and business ownership. Every person was brought on intentionally, so that whatever situation a client is facing, the right expertise is at the table.

This episode also covers what actually makes BWM different — fiduciary, fee-only, evidence-based, and integrated — and who the Safety-First approach works best for. Including an honest conversation about account minimums and what it looks like to work with BWM at any asset level.

If anything in this series resonated, this is the episode that answers: what do I do next?

Host: Jason Branning, CFP®, RICP® — branwealth.com

Music Credits: Original music composed and produced by Johnson Rhett & Jennings Duncan.

This is the episode the whole series has been building toward.

The income floor. The tax strategy. Social Security. The growth portfolio. In this episode, Jason Branning pulls it all together — not as a recap, but as a picture of what it actually feels like when these pieces are working as one integrated plan.

There's a moment we see regularly with clients. Someone who has been carrying a low-level anxiety about retirement for years finally sits down with a plan that's fully laid out — and something shifts. Not excitement. Relief. The question they've been carrying for years — am I going to be okay? — finally has an answer.

This episode also includes five questions worth sitting with. If any of them give you pause, that's not a problem. That's a signal that there's work worth doing.

Host: Jason Branning, CFP®, RICP® — branwealth.com

Music Credits: Original music composed and produced by Johnson Rhett & Jennings Duncan.

Most financial advisors don't talk about this publicly. Not because it's secret — because it requires some explaining. This episode does the explaining.

Factor investing is the academic foundation behind how we build portfolios at Branning Wealth Management. Research by Eugene Fama and Kenneth French — Fama won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2013 — identified specific characteristics of investments associated with higher expected returns over long time horizons: the market premium, the size premium, the value premium, and profitability. In this episode, Jason Branning explains each one in plain language and shows how they translate into a real portfolio.

Then there's the question of risk. Most people think about risk as volatility — how much can I stomach? But in retirement, the right question is different: what decision could I make today that I would most regret later? That's called minimax regret, and it's a framework from decision theory that produces a very different kind of portfolio — one built for the best case and protected for the worst.

Host: Jason Branning, CFP®, RICP® — branwealth.com

Music Credits: Original music composed and produced by Johnson Rhett & Jennings Duncan.

Most people make the transition from accumulation to retirement without ever stopping to ask: what is my portfolio actually supposed to do now?

The answer changes everything about how you build it.

In retirement, your portfolio has a different job than it did during your working years. It's no longer just trying to grow — it needs to coordinate with your income floor, your tax strategy, and a time horizon that might stretch thirty years. In this episode, Jason Branning explains the Safety-First approach to portfolio construction: why the income floor is what allows the growth portfolio to actually grow, and the four principles that drive how we build it — global diversification, time horizon, equities as the engine, and costs.

John Bogle called diversification the only free lunch in investing. This episode explains what that means in practice — and what it feels like when the structure is actually working.

Host: Jason Branning, CFP®, RICP® — branwealth.com

Music Credits: Original music composed and produced by Johnson Rhett & Jennings Duncan.

For most people, Social Security is one of the largest financial assets they have — it just doesn't show up on a balance sheet. And the decision of when to claim it is permanent. Once you claim, you can't unclaim after the first twelve months.

So why do most Americans claim at the earliest possible age?

In this episode, Jason Branning walks through how Social Security actually works, why the break-even analysis most people use is an incomplete framework, and the five factors that actually drive a smart claiming decision: health and longevity, cash flow needs, the Roth conversion window, spousal coordination, and Medicare premiums.

One widely cited analysis found that the aggregate lifetime loss from suboptimal Social Security claiming across all Americans is in the trillions of dollars. For individual households, the difference between the worst and best strategy can be $100,000 or more. This episode is worth your time.

Host: Jason Branning, CFP®, RICP® — branwealth.com

Music Credits: Original music composed and produced by Johnson Rhett & Jennings Duncan.

In Episode 3, we covered the foundation — tax diversification across account types and asset location. Today we get into the actual strategies.

Roth conversions. Charitable giving around a business or property sale. The inherited IRA rules that changed in 2019 and what they mean for what your kids actually receive. And a real client example: someone living on $200,000 a year who owed zero federal income tax in 2025 — not by accident, but through years of deliberate planning.

There are far more tax planning tools available than any one episode can cover. This episode gives you a clear sense of what proactive tax planning actually looks like — and why it looks very different from filing a return once a year.

Host: Jason Branning, CFP®, RICP® — branwealth.com

Music Credits: Original music composed and produced by Johnson Rhett & Jennings Duncan.

Most people assume taxes get simpler in retirement. They don't. RMDs, Social Security taxation, and bracket surprises can add up to a tax bill nobody saw coming. In this episode, Jason Branning breaks down tax diversification, the three account buckets every retiree needs to understand, and why the difference between a tax-efficient retirement and a tax-inefficient one can be far more significant than picking the right fund. Plus — how one client living on $200,000 a year owed zero federal taxes in 2025.

Music Credits: Original music composed and produced by Johnson Rhett & Jennings Duncan.

What if your retirement income was already scheduled to arrive — on a calendar, matched to your life — regardless of what the market does? In this episode, Jason Branning explains bond ladders: what they are, how they work, and why no two ladders look the same. Your mortgage payoff, your car replacement, that trip you've been planning — all of it can be built into the structure. This is the income floor, and it's the most underrated tool in retirement planning.

Music Credits: Original music composed and produced by Johnson Rhett & Jennings Duncan.

Most people build their retirement plan around one assumption: that the market will cooperate when they need it to. In this first episode, Jason Branning, CFP®, RICP® breaks down why that's a fragile foundation — and introduces the Safety-First approach to retirement income planning that Branning Wealth Management uses with every client. If you've ever wondered what it would feel like to retire without worrying about what the market does tomorrow, start here.

Music Credits: Original music composed and produced by Johnson Rhett & Jennings Duncan.