Staggs Financial Services

"Mommy, how do people save money on taxes?"

Not exactly the question I expected from our 6-year-old.

Lately he's been fascinated by what my team and I do every day. His second question:

• What does it mean to be a client?

We started with the basics.

Then yesterday, he decided he wanted a job.

So I put him to work in our home office scanning a small stack of non-sensitive documents. He took the assignment very seriously. Both hands on the scanner. Focused face. Lots of questions.

When he finished, I paid him $5.

You would have thought I'd handed him a winning lottery ticket.

He proudly carried that $5 around the house, showing everyone what he had earned.

“The doctor is worried she may have aneurysms in her brain. We need to move up the estate planning attorney conversation to tomorrow.”

A client we are calling Jennifer had her adult child on the phone. Jennifer is 83.

We began working together just two months ago. As we reviewed her finances, one thing became clear: her estate documents needed attention. She didn't have any.

She needed:
- Power of attorney
- Health care directives
- Will

It wasn't an emergency. At least, that's what we thought.

The plan was to address those documents after we finished organizing the rest of her financial life.

Then came the phone call. Suddenly, the timeline disappeared.

What we thought we'd have months to accomplish had to be done by tomorrow.

"Can I still retire at 50?"

That was the first question a PA-C client, whom we'll call Lesley, asked me after her employer changed its compensation structure.

Lesley didn't lose her job.

She didn't make a bad financial decision.

The rules changed.

One quarter, she hit her productivity metrics and earned an incentive payment. The next quarter, she missed the target and was told she would have to pay it all back.

Lesley thrives on consistency. Suddenly, income she thought she could count on felt unpredictable. It understandably worried her.

And if her compensation could change once, what would stop it from changing again?

On her drive home, one question kept running through her mind:

"Can I still retire at 50?"

She worried:

• Would her income become less predictable?
• Would she need to save more aggressively?
• Would she have to delay retirement?

So we ran the numbers.

What we discovered surprised her.

Even if she never earned another incentive payment, she was still on track for financial independence at age 50.

The difference?

She needed to be intentional about where future raises went and avoid increasing her lifestyle every time her income increased.

When she saw the plan on paper, her shoulders dropped in relief.

The compensation change hadn't ruined her future.

It just meant she needed a different roadmap.

If you're in Lesley's shoes, don't guess how it affects your future. DM me COMP and we'll schedule a 30 minute compensation change check to see how it impacts your financial future.

I've been adopted by a kitten.

I went out for a morning run and somehow came home with a tiny furry supervisor who followed me for three blocks making sure I stayed on pace. 🐱🏃‍♀️

There were other runners out there, but she didn't stop to visit with them. She stayed by me.

We've been checking Nextdoor, knocking on our neighbors' doors, and all the local community social media pages to make sure she doesn't belong to anyone else.

I'm not letting our kids name her yet as we're being very careful not to get too attached yet. (She's super cute. This is hard.)

At home, my family walks into a different room and finds the kitty on top of me purring and making biscuits.

We already are blessed with five ducks, a dog, and two children. I've told my husband for five years we'd never get another cat after losing our Evie baby. Now, looks like the joke is on me.

The Cat Distribution System works in mysterious ways.

His paycheck tanked from $15,000 to $3,000 by accident.

"I made my first financial mistake as a physician", said a client who we're calling Dr. Cushing, MD.

After graduating residency, Dr. Cushing set his contributions so high that he unintentionally slashed his take-home pay.

The goal was great. Maximizing the $24,500 in ROTH contributions will pay off in the long-run. However, the ex*****on needed to be tweaked. That $3,000 take home paycheck meant $6,000 less on student loans than he planned.

When he saw only $3,000 hit his account instead of the $15,000 he expected, his stomach dropped.

He wasn't thinking about Roth contributions anymore.

He was wondering how he was supposed to execute the plan he had worked so hard to build.

That's when he called us.

We adjusted his contributions to capture the 3% hospital match, added $12,000 back into his monthly cash flow, and kept his student loan strategy on track.

Now he is on track to pay off his about $400,000 student loans in two years.

“Should I move everything to cash?”

A physician asked us April 2026 after the war was announced and during a market downturn.

He wasn't retired. He didn't need the money next month. Nothing in his financial plan had changed.

What had changed was how he felt after weeks of relentless headlines and watching his account balance fall.

We sat down together and pulled up the plan we had built long before the volatility started.

As we walked through his goals, something became clear:

He still wanted the same retirement timeline.

He still wanted the same flexibility for his family.

He still needed his investments to support decades of future spending.

The temptation was to react to the turbulence; but, the better decision was to remain disciplined.

He stayed the course.

That conversation came back to me while listening to Amelia Rose Earhart speak.

Flying around the world in a single-engine aircraft required extraordinary preparation, but even the best preparation couldn't eliminate every headwind or pocket of turbulence.

Investing isn't much different.

Uncomfortable moments are inevitable. Having a plan before they arrive is what matters.

That's a lesson I see repeatedly among the physicians, PAs, and healthcare professionals my team serves.

As Amelia writes:

"Prepare for the headwinds. Navigate with intention. Brace for turbulence. And with practice, learn to love the turbulence."

"People don't do that."

That's what the Uber driver told my husband and me.

She was standing at our front door holding a bag of McDonald's: cheeseburgers, fries, and my husband's favorite drink. The address was ours. The order wasn't.

She kept trying to leave it with us. We kept explaining it belonged to someone else.

What surprised my husband and I was her surprise that we wouldn't take it.

A few weeks earlier, I had a similar experience in my business.

A new client, who we'll call Lisa, came to us looking for financial advice. There was a product we could have recommended that would have generated a larger commission for our team. Instead, we recommended a simpler and less expensive solution because it was the better fit.

We made $60,000 less. She made a better decision.

The funny thing is, I never felt like we were giving something up. Just like it never crossed my mind to keep someone else's cheeseburgers.

What stuck with me was Lisa's reaction. She seemed genuinely surprised. That's what I've been thinking about lately.

The Uber driver thought returning the food was unusual.

I thought it was standard.

It was 7 pm on a Sunday night and a client who we're calling Georgia, 55, from Missouri called our CEO Stephanie on her personal cell. She never calls on the weekend - especially not a holiday. Her husband passed away unexpectedly. She'd made a list and wanted to know which to do next. Monday we reviewed her estate documents and financial picture.

Now, she is left cash flowing his funeral. No one ever knows when the unexpected will happen. The best time to put protections in place is before they're needed.

DM "CHECKLIST" and we'll send you our Estate Planning Essentials Checklist. Let's make sure your estate avoids probate and isn't in court for 6 months - 1 year.

"I called to set up an education fund for my children and got told not to use the money on my nails," said Margaret.

This Missouri RN and Mom is upset. All she wanted was to do the right thing by her kids, provide for their education, and maximize state tax savings. Instead, she felt talked down to by a different advisor in town.

According to the Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development, Margaret and her husband can deduct up to "$16,000 for contributions made to a 529 education savings plan." That's a big savings for this young family. We've helped them seize these state tax savings.

With Margaret and her family, in less than a week, we had the account open, funded, and some of the money sent from the 529 plan to her children's schools.

Now, Margaret's youngest invited us to her birthday party.

I wasn't looking at a patient's chart.

I was looking at shelves of donated food.

As a financial planner, that's exactly why I shadow physician associates.

My team and I can learn a lot from reports, compensation surveys, and student loan statistics. But if we want to truly understand the people we serve, we need to show up.

Recently, I had the opportunity to shadow Robyn Yost, PA-C and Missouri Academy of PA member, at the MSU Cares Clinic.

One moment from that day has stayed with me.

We stepped out of an exam room and into what used to be another patient room.

Instead of an exam table, there were shelves stocked with food. Ozarks Food Harvest has donated easy-to-open meals and disposable utensils for what Robyn affectionately calls their "homeless friends."

Thank you, Robyn, for allowing me to spend the day with you and your team at Mercy's MSU Care Clinic