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2026 Predictions
240 Plays2 months ago
In this vibrant episode of the Uncommon Wealth Podcast, hosts Phillip Ramsey and Cody Kowalski delve into the year-end wrap-up, reflecting on 2025 while setting their sights on an optimistic and strategic 2026. This episode is packed with insights into market trends, financial advisory transformations, and personal achievements. As listeners are invited to hear about the integration of AI and automation to enhance client relations at Uncommon Wealth Partners, you'll discover how innovation continues to drive business success. Cody Kowalski, a promising financial advisor, joins Phillip Ramsey to forecast S&P trends, discuss upcoming financial strategies, and provide a fresh look at personal and professional growth.
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Transcript
Uncommon Wealth Podcast Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Everyone dreams of living an uncommon life and the best asset you have to achieve your dreams is you. Welcome to the Uncommon Wealth Podcast.
00:00:12
Speaker
We're going to introduce you to people who are living uncommonly. We're also going to give you some tools and strategies for building wealth and for pursuing an uncommon path that is uniquely right for you.
00:00:25
Speaker
Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of the Uncommon Wealth Podcast where I'm your host, Philip Ramsey, and I have an amazing guy with me. His name is? Cody Kowalski. Holy cow, the numbers skyrocket as soon as he says his name. That's right.
00:00:37
Speaker
All right. This is our end of the year podcast. This is a fun one for me to do. It's nice just because we get to reflect on what happened last year. ah We also get to listen to last year's podcast because we always do predictions, predictions on what we think is going to happen this year with the market. You kind of nailed it. Well, last year I did. That's right. Spoiler alert.
00:00:56
Speaker
um But last year had Aaron Kramer on. which was fun to listen to. Hope he's doing well. He now has left the practice. He's doing his own thing with another practice, actually.
Reflecting on Last Year's Success
00:01:06
Speaker
And then Haley Phillips is another person that has took off and is doing a different deal, living her best life. And so now I have Cody Kowalski. And whenever he's on, seems like numbers go up. Seems like we go up. So it's just ah it's a wise business decision from my perspective. but Also, last year i was a little sick and under the weather, so my voice sounded like trash.
00:01:27
Speaker
Worse than it normally Sounds great Well, I don't know. You know how you just hate your voice, how it sounds? Yeah, yeah totally. Totally. But totally. Here we are. So we're going to talk about last year. We're going to talk about from our business. We're going to talk about it from a market perspective. We're going to give predictions for next year. um And then we're going to just see how, maybe even like things that we're excited about for next year, things that we we're excited about this year. I always like to start this podcast with somebody within the practice So you can get a different perspective. So, Cody, my first question is, good or bad, 2025, hit me.
Achieving Growth and Integrating AI
00:02:01
Speaker
What area? Any perspective. Any area. Yep. Markets rocked it. That was great. We're loving that. It's great when you sit down with clients and you're like, your portfolio, it's great. It does make our job easier. It makes our job great. So keep doing that. But what do you think about Uncommon Wealth, good or bad? Uncommon Wealth, yeah.
00:02:19
Speaker
I think it was a huge, uh, growing pains for sure. Growing pains, but, uh, the changes are definitely for the better. um looking forward, we have a lot of super fun stuff coming and in value ads and try finding ways to like every quarter, uh, just send out deliverables that are showing value to our clients or even walking them through in our meetings.
00:02:39
Speaker
That's changed a bunch. We've really streamlined a bunch of processes and made things way more efficient, which is great. yeah Um, and Yeah, really trying to dive into how to make two people go a long ways to keep people efficient and see what's next. So it was a great year. It was. I agree. Great, great year. Although if I would have told myself last year what was going happen this year, I'd be like, ooh, that'd be terrible. It's going to be a rough year. don't want Yeah, right. Right. And yet. what the Lord did through that has been life-giving and changing and amazing.
00:03:12
Speaker
We just had to look at it a little different perspective. And I love how God's kind of changed my paradigm to what I thought it once was, what I thought I was growing it to until where we're at now, um which is really cool.
Enhancing Efficiency with AI
00:03:24
Speaker
So let's start um just with some basic lines. So last year I predict, I predicted or wanted 20% growth in the company we actually had 8% growth revenue, which is honestly not bad for thinking about the different personnel changes.
00:03:42
Speaker
It just was a tough year through you know helping people make sure they're transitioning. i mean, when you lose when an advisor leaves and their book leaves, your growth's to go down. That's That's challenging. And last year we had Aaron's growth. Exactly. And then he left. And so like the fact that you had 8% and just you now is pretty, I mean, that's pretty good. It's pretty good. Yeah, so I agree. I think it'd be a lot higher all a sudden and done if things stay the same. so Expenses were the exact same as last year for this year, or for this point. So I have i do it weekly. I just do our expenses and revenue weekly.
00:04:14
Speaker
um We follow the EOS model. I'm sure you've all heard about if you guys are entrepreneurs. And so it's really easy for me to see what do we do last year. Well, the revenue was exact same, but I'm sorry, the revenue was up 8%, but my expenses were exactly the same, which is pretty big. And you've got to wonder, like well, you had personnel changes. Well, we got something else. and A building. A building. That's right. And so there were some expenses there, ah which we actually talked about last year. as We thought in 2025 we were going to step into a building. And that's kind of true. Yeah.
00:04:47
Speaker
What I was thinking, is maybe we'd lease a building, ended up buying a building, which is fun because that's sometimes the advice I'll give clients once they have a running business, a successful business. I'll say, hey, that successful business normally needs a brick and mortar building. Would that be something that you would want to step into real estate and purchase?
00:05:03
Speaker
We just kind of followed our own advice. Pretty sweet. That's right. Okay. So let's talk about... Our predictions of last year. So last year we thought there was going to be 20% growth or I wanted there to be 20% growth. um We have an office, which we nailed that. The other thing that I wanted to talk about was how we were trying to integrate AI and automation in our
Market Predictions and Future Outlook
00:05:26
Speaker
practice. And when we had ah kind of a full team, I will say, and things started changing, we had to look at our practice in a very different way.
00:05:36
Speaker
Cody had been life-giving in that of just like, how can we use AI and automation? in order to be more efficient and make that efficiencies grow for us in the remainder of 2026 and on, how do we more be more efficient? And ai allows us to do that. And yet, I feel like when you think about AI, you think about things that are very impersonable and what we'd like to do is use ai on the back end so we can be way more personable on the front end so we can have more react relationships with clients we can have better relationships we can actually be better face-to-face almost ask the question of what are the things that we want to keep people to people person to person yes and be like we're not letting ai touch those things but we're going to let it touch all the back end monotonous kind of day-to-day tasks and let's just make those super quick that we thought we needed people for. And now we don't. And so that's what we're talking about AI. We're making things way more efficient and not necessarily the face-to-face interaction or the things that are making us uncommon. yeah So when you hear AI and that we're implementing that, don't feel like we're going away from what we think is the most important. And even though we have an AI recap for our meetings, you know we still don't just want to blanket send that out. We want to make it personal. We want to change it. So don't think we're just going to get rid of all of our personableness. Totally. Because in that, like I feel like I add notes to the AI thing. It makes it way more fun. so For sure. If you ever get a recap from us.
00:07:00
Speaker
And Phillip, if you want Phillip as an advisor, it might be worth it just for his emails. Because they are something else. You've got to have a little fun. yeah What are we doing if we don't? They're great. They're awesome.
00:07:12
Speaker
Okay, so the other thing that we do is we try to take a snapshot of what the market did and what we predict the market's going to do in the future. um Last year, um i ah it was fun because Aaron predicted the S&P. We always just use the S&P. That's the easiest and it in index to track. um He thought it was going to grow 6.25%. I had a whopping growth of what I thought was going to be.
00:07:37
Speaker
And we were using the dates from December 2024 to December So not a total you know year but we're getting close.
00:07:48
Speaker
um so that was kind of interesting um it ended up about 16.49% growth for the S&P. Now, that is amazing. And we've had a couple past years that have been also high.
00:08:03
Speaker
And so that, it was kind of cool just to be able to, so I was close. I won the lunch. Aaron's listening. Aaron, you owe me lunch, man. Because, you know, that's always the thing we bet on. And so this year, again, whatever we say, just the disclosure, this doesn't make anything. This is always for interpurpose, or for,
00:08:21
Speaker
entertainment purposes only, um and past results doesn't index future
Personal Milestones and Future Roles
00:08:27
Speaker
results. Thank you. That's right. So let's talk about what we think next year. The S and P is going to do right now. Let's say the numbers that we're using 6,834.
00:08:40
Speaker
uh, from December 24, December 19th, 2024. All right. We'll let, uh, Cody go first. Yeah. I think, I think we're going up. I want it to go up. It's good for our business. we make more money that way. We profit. You guys love it. i want it to go up. I think it's going to go up 12%.
00:08:57
Speaker
Double digits, double digits, not as much as this year, but still 12%. What do you think is is pushing that? Yeah, I think just this year, there was so much change with AI. We're really on the front lines. But I think the investors have seen that, and they've put a lot they've bought a lot of AI ah stocks, and those are high. And so I just don't think, I think they're goingnna keep going up, but I don't think they're going to go up as drastically as they did this year, just because they you know might be a little bit overvalued. Not
00:09:28
Speaker
I'm not as crazy as you're seeing probably in the news articles. Like, oh my gosh, we're in a bubble. This is is is terrible. But I think they might be a little overinflated. And so I just don't think it's going to grow nearly as much as this year.
00:09:40
Speaker
Okay, 12%. You heard it from Cody first. That's right. I'm going to say 7.5%. And here's why. I think we're going to be up. I think it's going to be a little more volatile. And everybody's hot on this AI thing.
00:09:53
Speaker
And they're thinking that that's over-inflating things. And it might be true, but what I think AI is doing is kind of what Uncommon Wealth Partners is is realizing is it's making us more efficient.
00:10:04
Speaker
So we might not be investing in AI tools, I think a lot of companies are. That's what makes people think there's a bubble there. What I think people are starting to understand is like AI is making their life more efficient so they can do things that matter the most. Again, that might be a personal thing, but that's what I think. So I think we're going up 7.5%. So at of the year 2026 or 2025, I'm 2026, end of the year December, I think it's going to be around 7,346%.
00:10:30
Speaker
i'm sorry twenty twenty six and a year in december i think it's going to be around seven thousand three hundred and forty six And Cody thinks it's going to be 7,654. And currently using 6,834. Great. there you And currently we're using six thousand eight hundred and thirty four great so there you go got and if You win. I have to buy you lunch, which has never happened before. You always buy me lunch. Yeah, but we never really... I just you know i always win our bets, so I feel like too bad to make you go lunch. But now you're in the big boy seat. Yeah, I'm paying for your lunch. Okay, so... At Smokey D's. what Okay. Deal.
00:11:03
Speaker
Deal. I'll remember. It's on record. right. so Sounds good. Let's talk about you and this next year.
Enhancing Client Interactions
00:11:09
Speaker
You've got a lot going on. Yeah. Going back to school. Yep. Graduated. Yeah, so...
00:11:14
Speaker
Um, that's right. student. That little sucks. Um, but you had to go back to school. I wish I could just stay here and hang out Phillip and do this cause it's so much fun. Um, but I'm going back to school in the spring and I guess this means I should be in personal finance cause my idea was to graduate in three and a half years cause you know, save money. I just got married. I got to pay for the wedding and all these things, which if you're thinking about getting married and young, just do it because they just start handing you stuff. They're like like, take my TV, take my freezer, take my bed. like You can have it all. So you make money if you get married young. But anyway, so I cut it to three and a half years, which meant that I'm going to take 21 credits in the spring.
00:11:53
Speaker
So Phillip needs my help. I also need to just pass. like I need to just get through school. My wife, she's also um ears pinned back. She's taking 21 credits. she's She's great. She's going to nail it. So we're doing that. So I got to graduate. And then, um, as soon as I get back to Uncommon Wealth Partners, I'm going to go get my CFP.
00:12:12
Speaker
And so that's going to be in March, which I'm super excited about. Um, and then, yeah, so that's kind of what's going on in my life about this upcoming year. Um, for sure. So graduate and get your degree and studying for a CFP. Yep.
00:12:26
Speaker
That's awesome. sure. Two things. We're excited for you to enter into the real working world. That's right. And that's why you can buy me lunch. That's right. Because next year, you'll have yourself a job. That's right. And a designation. Pretty sweet. And 21 credit hours is no joke.
00:12:41
Speaker
So Cody is going to be on and off if I need him. He's jumping in. But we are really trying to be proactive with our clients. So let's talk about that of what we're going to try to do moving forward. And we we call value ads for sure. um And let me just reference. I read a book.
00:12:59
Speaker
Matthew Jarvis' is Delivering Massive Value, and it was life-giving to me. It gave me kind of a roadmap on how I would like to serve our clients in a better way, more efficient, and pro proactive way. And so we're really adopting some of the strategies in that book, and one of was value-add. So we meet with our clients twice a year. That's kind of normal, but we've been very sporadic in how we meet people. And now we're going to just try to kind of push them into two specific times of the year. And in that's super exciting, one, for us, because it's organized. Two, it helps us create a process of how we meet with our clients and saying, you know, in this in the this time of year, we want to go through whether it's tax documents. And this year, you know, maybe we want to center more on guardrails, or that's another value add. So we're able to create kind of a system of how we want to meet with our clients so it's more scalable and then also it just helps us to be have our kind of stuff together and be like, we do this every year with this group clients, this client, this client, and so that's going great. Yeah, and so when you think about a less staffed
00:14:01
Speaker
operation you always think that you're probably going to get less interaction. And what we wanted to do is like, no, let's blow that out of the water. Let's have more interaction. Let's have more intentionality with our clients.
00:14:11
Speaker
Yet, let's do it more efficiently. yeahp And so we have a team of two now. And yet, I feel like we are right on pace with 2026 having more value than we've ever had because we're just more efficient. So that's super exciting to me.
00:14:25
Speaker
ah So in January, we're going to send ah out everybody kind of a tax document of what you can do 4C of tax documents coming in the door, which will be really good. First time ever we've done that. Usually people call or email, hey, is this all the tax documents? Well, now we're going to be proactive and and help you know which tax documents you're going to get Then we're going to go through beneficiaries. yup um Here are the accounts that we manage at Uncommon Wealth Partners. Here are the beneficiaries that we have.
00:14:51
Speaker
are you okay with that? do you want to change it? That'll be great. Uh, and then we want to make sure that we get everybody's tax documents, uh, tax returns in 2026. So we can do a little bit better like planning for that. That's right.
00:15:03
Speaker
The other thing that we've been working on and Cody has been really instrumental in this is guardrails. And, uh, you know normally when a retiree steps off into retirement land, they want to know how much can they start taking out of their big nest egg in order to make sure they have enough money at the end of the rainbow, but also enough money for them to live month to month.
00:15:21
Speaker
Um, and so we're just really thinking about this kind of strategy to maybe give people a little bit more income, um, which is always nice, but also protecting the longterm strategy of, of how much they have in their nest egg. Cause nobody wants to retire with no money or lose their money or have no money at the end of the rainbow. Yeah. So we're we're trying to figure out strategies in order to be more efficient. And then, so for the retirees, I they'll be excited about it. But also the people that haven't been retired yet, we want to project what their dollars amount will probably be in retirement and then show them kind of like, hey, if this projects and grows in this manner, this is the amount that we're kind of thinking of.
00:15:57
Speaker
And if your account moves up and grows past this number, we can start giving you more money. Exactly. Or vice versa, if it starts going too low, we have a bad year and it gets past this and we have to kind of send you less money. So there's always a plus and minus. The general premise is the 4%, the kind of traditional financial planner 4% rule, you take out 4% every single year and then you're to good. It's going to last you the whole time. The problem is that is that that was in a sense in the very worst you know market scenario that's that's ever happened in the past, the 4% rule would get you by. That's right. But the problem um is, is that most likely you're not going live to the most problematic market scenario when you retire. And so what we're doing is it's called a dynamic portfolio ah withdrawal. And what that means is that you know you can be taking this amount, say you're taking $4,000 out a month. And if your portfolio values go up, then you're going to take more out. And if they go down, they're going to take less out. And We try to really have a lot of gap there. So we're not going to, you know, every six months, Hey John, you know, we've got to change your portfolio income. Like, no, we're going that, but we want to do it, have a big gap. So it's not really ah abruptly changing your life, but if things went South, we know we'd be just fine because we can just reduce it by $500 a month or whatever that number
Innovative Strategies for Retirees
00:17:12
Speaker
is.
00:17:12
Speaker
That's good. and And for the history, what we've done is normally just ask our retirees, hey, how much cash flow do you need per month in order to live the way you want to live? yeah And we let them be the person that kind of gives us that number. And then we were like, okay, this is what we need to do. this is how we need to manage your accounts in order to make sure that you have that.
00:17:29
Speaker
um But now we're going to be a little bit more proactive in, hey, this is goingnna be strategic. And this is how much we can take out of this big nest egg that you've grown up. and maybe this is what you want to take out, but just so you know, like with our numbers here, you could be taking out more. And so it gives more flexibility. Like, Oh, okay. That's good to know. That's good.
00:17:44
Speaker
Uh, so a lot of good things are happening. Also podcast wise, um, we will have a physical building and we'll have a designated podcast area. So there are probably videos in the future of podcasts. So you can see our ugly mugs as we talk to our microphones. It'll be amazing. and maybe not maybe you can have like a challenge on there or like if i win then we got to shave your head so then when they they look at you on the video and they're like oh philip looks like a rat like deal uh yeah we'll be doing that um for sure i'll get i'll pick the competition oh my gosh you he always wins he wins all like we're gonna play disc golf oh man
00:18:23
Speaker
But anyway, it's been a great year. 2025 to have its up and ups and downs. And yet I feel like the Lord has, has met us where we've been at and then made us more efficient. I couldn't be more excited, but I'm always excited. So like people are going to be like, well, this is always Phillip, but I couldn't be more excited for the future. I'm excited to get you graduated. That's been something that's just weighs on you and then also give you that designation. So then you could fully focus on just clients and just growing things. And so that'll be exciting. and Thankfully, to get become an investment advisor representative, the Series 65 passed that recently. so Then able to actually serve as clients when starting in January. To trade get that done, for sure. But then the CFP just to further that along. It's a big deal. So, a lot coming in 2026, a lot happened in 2025, but I probably wouldn't have changed any of it, if I'm being honest, even the hard parts. You know, be joyful in the time of trials, which is one of my favorite Bible verses, and that's what happened. And so... No matter what 2026 brings, I am excited just to serve our clients the way that we have in an uncommon way, but also be more
Looking Forward to 2026
00:19:28
Speaker
intentional with those. That's right.
00:19:30
Speaker
Anyway, you've been listening Uncommon Wealth Podcast. I've been your host, Philip Ramsey, and with Cody Kowalski. Gotta love it. Until next time, go be in common, and goodbye 2025 and hello 2026. See ya. Bye. see yeah bye That's all for this episode brought to you by Uncommon Wealth Partners.
00:19:47
Speaker
Be sure to visit UncommonWealth.com to learn more about our services. Don't miss an episode as we introduce you to inspiring people who are actively pursuing an uncommon life.