Novak Financial Partners

06/16/2026

Most young families have life insurance.

Far fewer have the documents that actually protect their kids if something happens.

No will means a court decides who raises your children. No trust means your assets go through a slow, public court process before reaching your family.

Outdated beneficiary designations mean the wrong person gets the money, regardless of what your will says.

We put together a checklist of the five documents every young family needs and the two mistakes that undermine even well-intentioned plans.

Most young families put estate planning off until someday. Here are the five documents every family with minor children needs, why a trust beats a will alone, and the two mistakes that leave families exposed even after the paperwork is done.

06/09/2026

Your business is running well. Your personal finances? Less clear.

Too much cash in the operating account. No retirement plan in place. Quarterly taxes catching you off guard.

We put together a 10-point checklist for small business owners in 2026 so you can sanity check your setup in under 10 minutes.

A 10-point 2026 financial checklist for small business owners. Safe Harbor 401(k), quarterly taxes, S-corp salary, succession, and more — built for busy owners.

06/04/2026

The financial advice industry has a problem it doesn't talk about enough.

Most advice never gets implemented. A RAND study found roughly two-thirds of people who received financial advice didn't follow it.

The bottleneck in financial planning has never really been the plan. It's been everything that happens, or doesn't happen, after the meeting ends.

We've spent years building plans that are technically sound. The math works. The strategy is right. And still, the hardest thing isn't knowing what someone should do. It's helping them actually do it.

So we borrowed from someone outside the industry. James Clear's Four Laws of Behavior Change have quietly become the backbone of how we run client relationships.

Make it obvious. Meetings end with a specific written action. Not "think about your beneficiaries" but "log into your 401(k) by Friday and change your beneficiary to reflect your trust."

Make it attractive. Every recommendation gets anchored to something the client actually cares about, not a spreadsheet number.

Make it easy. We remove friction wherever we find it, walking clients through forms in real time instead of sending homework.

Make it satisfying. We track progress so clients can see their own momentum.
Vague advice dies on the drive home. Specific action survives.

Clear wrote that you don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

The work is building the system.

06/02/2026

Business owners have access to retirement plans with limits far above what W-2 employees can contribute.

A Solo 401(k) allows up to $72,000 in contributions in 2026. A defined benefit plan can go well over $100,000.

The right option depends on whether you have employees, how much you want to contribute, and the complexity you're willing to manage.

We broke down the four main plans and how to decide which one is the right fit.

Solo 401(k), SEP IRA, SIMPLE IRA, and defined benefit plans compared for 2026. Updated contribution limits, a side-by-side comparison, and a framework for choosing the right plan based on your business.

05/28/2026

Should you trust AI to manage your money?

We actually think it’s great.

Not because AI replaces what a great advisor does, but because it raises the standard for advisors.

We don’t spend time manually trading, rebalancing, or tax-loss harvesting anymore. Those hours used to pull us away from the work that helps clients most.

That frees up more time for the difficult part: helping clients connect all the moving pieces of their financial life. Financial decisions are rarely just math problems.

Roughly 80% of financial advice goes unimplemented. Giving the advice isn’t the hard part. Getting someone to act on it is.

Technology is making average financial advice more accessible. That’s a good thing. It also raises the bar for advisors.

From Robinhood's $250-a-year AI tool to Morgan Stanley's data-ingesting analysts, the money management industry is being quietly transformed.

05/26/2026

If you have 1099 income and a SEP IRA, you may be using the wrong retirement plan.

Solo 401(k) and SEP IRA share the same $72,000 limit. But Solo 401(k) gets you there with less income, allows Roth contributions, and allows for backdoor Roth contributions.

We broke down why Solo 401(k) tends to be the better tool for self-employed earners and how to set one up correctly.

Why a Solo 401(k) beats a SEP IRA for most 1099 earners. Higher contributions at lower income, Roth access, mega backdoor Roth, and the backdoor Roth IRA still works.

05/21/2026

If you make too much to contribute to a Roth IRA, you may think you are out of options.

You are not.

The backdoor Roth lets high earners contribute to a Roth indirectly, and it is fully legal in 2026.

We broke down how it works, when to use it, and the one rule that trips most people up.

Your income is too high to contribute directly to a Roth IRA. The backdoor Roth is the legal workaround. Here is how it works in 2026, the pro-rata rule explained, and step-by-step instructions.

05/20/2026

The Schwab CEO said last week that AI will be the "front door" for clients with less than $1M.

The industry has been moving this direction for years. A threshold that often feels arbitrary to consumers without the full context of their financial life.

To be clear: we're an AI-enabled practice ourselves. We use it every day to serve clients better.

But $1M in assets is still a substantial milestone, and there’s a lot of life and a lot of consequential financial decisions that come before it.

AI may serve a financially savvy investor really well. But depending on your situation, you may benefit far more from a CFP® professional who knows your goals, your blind spots, and the full picture of your financial life.

Headlines like this make us even more optimistic about the future of independent advisors: firms focused on delivering exceptional care, thoughtful planning, and personal relationships for a reasonable fee.

That’s the bet we made when we started Novak Financial Partners, and we feel better about it today than ever.

Schwab CEO Rick Wurster also said the firm was on a “multi-year” journey to bolster its workplace offerings, including retirement plan investments.