Cedarwood - Financial Planner: Barrett Evan

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Cedarwood - Financial Planner: Barrett Evan

Faith. Family. Freedom. Fulfillment. Securities offered through Commonwealth Financial Network®, www.FINRA.org / www.SIPC.org.

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05/28/2026

Lately I keep having the same conversation.

Someone comes in -- good income, responsible, does all the right things and when we get to the part where we look at the full picture, there it is.

A pile of cash sitting in a bank account. Just sitting there.

And when I ask about it the answer is usually some version of the same thing.

"I just haven't gotten around to it." "I'm waiting until things calm down." "I don't really know what to do with it."

I get it. I really do. Doing nothing feels safe. But doing nothing has a cost too...it's just a quieter one.

Here's what I usually introduce in that conversation.

The three bucket strategy.

Bucket one is your safety net. Cash you need access to. Emergency fund. Short term expenses. This one stays liquid.

Bucket two is your medium term money. Maybe you need it in three to five years. This one works a little harder but stays relatively stable.

Bucket three is your long term growth engine. This is where time and compounding do the heavy lifting. This bucket doesn't need to be touched for years...and that's exactly what makes it powerful.

Most people are living entirely out of bucket one. And buckets two and three are just empty.

If you've got money on the sidelines and you're not sure what to do with it .....that's exactly the conversation we have every day.

Let's sit down. ☕📈

05/14/2026

One of the most misunderstood phrases in financial planning.

Risk tolerance.

Most people hear that and think it's a personality test. Like you're either brave or you're not. Aggressive or conservative. And whatever box you check on a questionnaire when you open an account....that's just who you are.

That's not really how it works.

Risk tolerance isn't one thing. It's two things that people constantly confuse for each other.

There's your ability to take risk — what your actual financial situation can absorb if things go sideways. Timeline, income, expenses, other assets. That's math.

And then there's your willingness to take risk — how you feel when your portfolio drops 20% and the news is bad and your stomach is in knots. That's psychology.

Both matter. And they don't always match.

I've sat across from people who could absorb a lot of risk on paper but couldn't sleep at night when markets got choppy. We've also sat across from people who felt fearless about investing but whose financial situation quietly demanded a more conservative approach.

The goal isn't to find out how much risk you can stomach. The goal is to build a strategy that you can actually stay in when things get hard.

Because the best portfolio in the world doesn't work if you panic out of it at the wrong moment.

That's the conversation worth having. And it starts with more than a questionnaire.

05/12/2026

Had a conversation this morning that I have pretty regularly.

Someone sitting on a decent chunk of cash. Checking account. Maybe a basic savings account earning next to nothing. And they had no idea there was a better place to park it while they figured out what to do with it.

So let's talk about that.

If you're holding cash — an emergency fund, money between investments, proceeds from a sale, whatever it is — where it sits matters.

A traditional bank savings account is paying somewhere around 0.5% or less at most big banks right now. A high-yield savings account or money market fund? Somewhere in the 4-5% range depending on where rates are.

On $50,000 that's the difference between $250 a year and $2,000 a year.

Same money. Same liquidity. Dramatically different outcome.

Now.....is this a life-changing strategy? No. But it's the kind of thing that adds up quietly in the background while you're focused on everything else. And it's one of those moves that takes maybe one conversation and one afternoon to set up.

We're not talking about locking anything up. We're not talking about taking on risk. We're just talking about not leaving money on the table for no reason.

If you've got cash sitting in a place that's barely working for you....that's worth a five minute conversation.

05/11/2026

Yesterday was Mother's Day.

And I'll be honest....it's got me thinking about the women who walk through our doors every single week.

Mothers who are trying to figure out how to retire without becoming a burden to their kids. Mothers who just lost a spouse and are suddenly making financial decisions alone for the first time. Mothers who are still working, still grinding, still putting everyone else's financial future ahead of their own.

They come in with spreadsheets. They come in with shoeboxes full of statements. They come in with a yellow legal pad and a list of questions they've been sitting on for six months.

Every single one of them is trying to do right by somebody they love.

That is not a small thing. That is everything.

I also don't take lightly that I get to work alongside some incredible moms every day...women on our team who somehow balance the weight of this work with the weight of raising a family. I don't know how they do it but they do it with a lot of grace.

To every mom who's quietly doing the hard financial work for her family.....the planning, the worrying, the sacrificing....we see you.

The Cedarwood Family is what it is because of MOMs.

05/08/2026

Watched a local high school team play last night. Great program. Good kids. And they had one of those nights where nothing went right.

They've got a game two tonight.

It made me think about one of the best rules I ever learned as a coach.

The Midnight Rule.

No matter how bad the game went — or how good — you had to feel it. Process it. Let it sting or let it sink in. But when midnight hit, you moved on. You couldn't carry Tuesday's loss into Wednesday's practice. The next game required a clean mind.

That rule helped me more as a coach than almost anything else I learned.

And I think about it a lot in this business too.

Markets have bad games. Sometimes brutal ones. And the instinct is to either panic and make a move — or to ride the high and get reckless. Both are dangerous.

The investors who build real wealth over time aren't the ones who never feel it. They're the ones who feel it, process it, and then don't let yesterday's tape change a sound long-term strategy.

You're allowed to be frustrated by a down quarter. You're allowed to be excited by a strong one.

Just don't let either one make your decisions for you.

Midnight's always coming. Move on.

Happy Friday.

05/07/2026

Had a couple come in this week with a question we hear all the time.

They had some retirement savings sitting there. They had some loans eating into their monthly budget. And the math felt obvious to them..... just pay it off, breathe easier, move on.

But here's the thing about that math. It leaves a few lines out.

When you pull from retirement early, you're not just spending that money. You're spending every dollar that money would have ever earned. You're paying taxes on it. You may be paying a penalty on top of that. And you're doing all of it in the same moment you need it most.

We call it stealing from tomorrow to pay for today. And sometimes — sometimes — it's still the right call. But it's rarely as simple as it looks on the surface.

What we actually did was sit down and map out both paths. The numbers. The trade-offs. The what-ifs. And then let them make an informed decision instead of a frustrated one.

That's the work we do every day.

If you're staring at a similar question......retirement account on one side, a financial pressure on the other.....don't make that call in a vacuum.

Let's talk through it first. 👇

05/06/2026

Last night I watched LeBron James play a playoff game with my son.

The man is 41. Still doing it.

Here's a fun thought experiment.

If you had invested $100 the day of LeBron's first playoff game — April 22, 2006 — and then threw in another $100 every single time he won a playoff game after that?

That's 188 wins. $18,900 total invested. Spread out over 20 years.

In an S&P 500 index fund with dividends reinvested — that portfolio would be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $35,000-$40,000 today.

Not because you were a genius. Not because you timed the market.

Just because you started. And kept going every time he won.

Consistency compounds. In basketball and in portfolios.

LeBron's not done yet either. 🏀📈

05/05/2026

Most people treat Social Security like a finish line.

Hit 62. Take the money. Done.

Here’s why that decision deserves a lot more thought than that.

Every year you wait past 62 your benefit grows — roughly 6-8% per year up to age 70.
That’s not a small difference.

For many people the gap between claiming at 62 vs 70 is hundreds of dollars per month. For life.

The right answer depends on your health, your other income sources, your spouse’s situation, and your overall retirement picture.

There is no universal right age. There is only the right age for you.

And that’s a conversation worth having before you make a permanent decision.

Questions about your Social Security strategy? Drop them below. 👇🤘

05/04/2026

We threw a Frozen birthday party yesterday.

Snow themed decorations. Elsa & Anna cake. The whole thing.

She sat down with the face painter and had one request.

Cheetah.

Not a snowflake. Not a princess. A cheetah. Full commitment. Zero hesitation.

She is three years old and she already knows exactly who she is.

Honestly? That's the goal at any age.

Go Be You. Happy birthday (tomorrow) to my girl. 🐆🎂

05/01/2026

May 1st.

New month. Fresh start. The calendar just flipped and somehow it already feels different.

April was a full one. A lot of great client conversations. A Financial Literacy series that reminded me why I love the education side of this work. A tournament championship with a group of kids who earned every bit of it. A Man Year coin that's sitting on my desk reminding me to keep showing up for the things that actually matter.

It was a good month. I'm grateful for it.

But here's what I've learned about good months —
You don't coast into the next one. You carry what you built and you go again.
May has a lot ahead. Mother's Day. School wrapping up. Summer on the horizon. Kids' seasons hitting their final stretch. The kind of calendar that fills up fast and rewards the people who decided what mattered before it got loud.

So this is me deciding.

Faith first. Family close. Show up well for the people I get to serve. Keep building something worth being proud of not just professionally but personally.

That's the May intention.

Whatever this month holds for you....I hope you walk into it with that same clarity. Not a resolution. Not a goal on a whiteboard. Just a quiet decision about what you're going to prioritize when the month gets full and the choices get real.

Happy May everyone. Happy Friday.
Let's make it a great one. 🤘

Address

10156 Windy Pointe Drive
Temple, TX
76502

Website

http://www.cedarwoodfp.com/

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