Tom West

Too many portfolio plans operate like a permanent accumulation strategy without modeling out distributions.

It’s time to start thinking about your personal board of directors

From what I've been reading and watching—on diagnoses, inheritances, apologies that never come, and the dinosaurs that stuck us with aging

How to get emotional timing right so clients really hear your solutions

$25 million bought one family everything except a coherent approach to healthcare

One client shut down. Another tried to control everything. Both had to learn the same uncomfortable truth about who carries your life forward.

Why I took on a struggling senior with MCI

Add in the complexity of family dynamics and it often does not take much to turn a flurry of disagreement into an avalanche of mistrust and anger.

How AI exposes your thought process as you age—for better or worse

Dispatches from the Gen X front lines

And how to live and invest like the shot clock matters

Would you want to know if your cognitive decline was around the corner?

So let’s unpack these three problems and find a framework that enables us to move forward even when we’re not sure what we’ll encounter.

What we can learn from clocks, clouds, and Popper’s problems

How to avoid a mistake I see so many older couples make

When a parent pushes people away, isolation feeds on itself: loneliness turns to negativity, negativity repels help, and the village shrinks faster.

Kindness isn’t just a virtue–it’s a long-term investment

We are the generation that got a front-row seat to every American system slowly turning into a choose-your-own-adventure

They enable us to go forward the way we always have, avoiding uncomfortable questions or difficult decisions.

Many of us Gen Xers aren’t just thinking about our place—we’re also navigating place challenges with our parents.

4 steps that will help Future You show Present You the way to Better You

I have prompts in each section to help you get started, and doing this before you make a single resolution will help set you up for success in 2026.

Lenses for holiday reflection. And if you’re serious about aging well physically, financially, psychologically you need to make peace with all three.

Make it safe for the people you love to tell you if they’ve been scammed. Now let’s talk about why the mission matters

Closely at GoFundMe today, in many ways it’s an indictment of the giant holes in our personal and societal approach to planning for our well-being.

Despite the noise about a decline in giving, generosity hasn’t gone away. It’s evolved.

I always think of Eileen whenever I read some new proclamation about the human quest for longevity. I thought of her again when I read a new prediction

Which type of person you are, so you can see your blind spots better and work more effectively with advisors or anyone else helping you

At our first meeting she sat across from me, composed but clearly holding years of bottled up anger. Her words were unflinching

Why Halloween is the perfect time to visualize your demise and live better for it

We had arrived in Generational Purgatory for Gen X—my generation.

Many—perhaps even most of us—will age alone at some point. Not because we chose it, necessarily—but because life happens.

 How is it the same or different to put things off when you are older compared to earlier and relatively younger ages?

In the years following this conversation, he didn’t just try, but absolutely succeeded in asking for and accepting help from others.

The inevitable realities of aging. I know that as much as I love playing basketball, I eventually have to hang up my sneakers.

These programs are effective because they don't start by selling you anything. They start by solving your immediate problems.

Although I was confident I’d given him exemplary fiduciary-grade services, he and his wife ghosted without an exit interview.

How to protect your parents from more than a broken heart…without being the bad guy

What we can learn from the three-circle blind spot

When the age you dreaded becomes the age you are