Emotional Balance Sheet with Paul Fenner

Hosted by Paul Fenner

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Episodes

277

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Oct 2026

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About the show

Welcome to the Emotional Balance Sheet, the financial planning podcast for senior-level professionals raising kids in school or college and tired of stitching together four different specialists to run your financial life. Each conversation tackles the planning conversations real families are having: education costs, retirement timing, equity compensation, career transitions, estate coordination, and the emotional weight that lies beneath it all. I am your host, Paul Fenner, Certified Financial Planner®, Enrolled Agent, and founder of TAMMA Capital. I have four kids, including a set of triplets. TAMMA Capital is a private family office that brings financial planning, tax, and investments under one umbrella. To schedule a conversation, visit www.tammacapital.com or email pfenner@tammacapital.com.

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60 recent

November 5, 2026Episode 2637 min

If the Earnings Stopped Tomorrow

Work with Paul: Schedule a 30-minute conversation What would actually land in your account if you could not work for a year? Most of us carry an answer in our heads, a percentage we were quoted on a first day somewhere, and most of us have never once confirmed it. The largest asset your family owns is not your portfolio. It is the income still ahead of you, and the coverage protecting it is usually the one number nobody checks. In this episode, I walk through what group disability coverage actually pays once you look past the headline percentage. Why sixty percent of base is not sixty percent of your income, how the monthly cap quietly catches high earners, and what taxes do to the benefit on the way in. I use my own situation as a solo practitioner and the pattern I see in dual-income households, where two separate plans were each set on a busy day and never read as a pair. While open enrollment is still open, pull your benefits summary and write down three numbers: your replacement percentage, your monthly cap, and whether the benefit is taxed. Multiply the cap by 12, set it beside what your household spends, and see how close they land. Connect with Paul If you're a working parent juggling a senior-level career and a growing family, and you're tired of coordinating four different advisors to run your financial life, I offer complimentary 30-minute conversations. Schedule one here . For resources discussed in this episode, visit tammacapital.com/podcast . Follow Paul on LinkedIn . Resources Featured in This Episode: Your Paycheck is Not Your Safety Net Two 401(k)s and Nobody Watching What Happens When the Gap Is Zero

October 29, 2026Episode 26247 min

A Bench of One

Work with Paul: Schedule a 30-minute conversation What if what makes your financial life feel precarious isn't the market or you, but the simple fact that you're carrying every decision alone? I sat down with Chris Hastings, who runs the software behind my back office, for a conversation that started on partnerships and wandered everywhere good conversations do. We got into a golf scramble and why one solid drive changes the whole hole, a Morgan Housel idea about room for error, and why a solo firm is really a bench of people you can pick up the phone and call. Then I turned it toward the families I meet most often, those running two careers and a full roster of professionals who have never once spoken to each other. Here's the one thing to try. Write down every financial professional you pay, and next to each name, the last time any two of them actually talked about your situation. That blank column is the work. Connect with Paul If you're a working parent juggling a senior-level career and a growing family, and you're tired of coordinating four different advisors to run your financial life, I offer complimentary 30-minute conversations. Schedule one here . For resources discussed in this episode, visit tammacapital.com/podcast . Follow Paul on LinkedIn . Resources Featured in This Episode: The Price and Pressure to Create Perfect Memories The Financial Cost of No Margin You Have a Coordination Problem, Not an Investment Problem

October 22, 2026Episode 2616 min

The Two Weeks You Can't Plan For

Work with Paul: Schedule a 30-minute conversation What would actually happen if, for two weeks, the person who runs your household's money simply couldn't? In this episode, I get into the single point of failure almost every dual-income household carries and never sees: one person holds all of it: the logins, the deadlines, the relationships, the whole operating picture. It works fine, which is exactly why nobody touches it. A market drop announces itself. This one sends no alert, right up until the moment you need it and it isn't there. Create one page your spouse could run the house from. Four things on it, about an hour to build, and the single point of failure becomes two. I walk through exactly what goes on the page, and why capable on a normal Tuesday is not the same as capable under a deadline with no map. Connect with Paul If you're a working parent juggling a senior-level career and a growing family, and you're tired of coordinating four different advisors to run your financial life, I offer complimentary 30-minute conversations. Schedule one here . For resources discussed in this episode, visit tammacapital.com/podcast . Follow Paul on LinkedIn . Resources Featured in This Episode: The One-Page Form Most Busy Parents Miss You Have a Coordination Problem, Not an Investment Problem What Happens When the Gap Is Zero

October 15, 2026Episode 26032 min

How Two Careers Bury a Simple Decision

Work with Paul: Schedule a 30-minute conversation How many financial decisions have been on your list so long that you have stopped noticing them? For many of the busy, two-career families I work with, the honest number is higher than they would like, and the reason isn't what most people expect. Dr. Jennifer Dragonette is back on the show, and we get into why the decisions that weigh the most are usually the ones with no deadline attached. We talk about the difference between bills that clear themselves and beneficiary forms that sit untouched for a decade, why a household running two careers defaults to non-decision, and how naming that non-decision as a choice often finally loosens it. Then we get practical. Pick the one decision you have deferred longest, and do exactly one thing to it this week. Set the automatic transfer that ends it, or book the single meeting that starts it. One bite of the elephant, on the calendar. I also share a decision from my own life that looked questionable for a couple of years before it didn't, and what that taught me about separating the quality of a decision from an outcome I couldn't control. We close with one small question you can ask about the money decision you keep replaying, the one that finally lets you put it down. Connect with Paul If you're a working parent juggling a senior-level career and a growing family, and you're tired of coordinating four different advisors to run your financial life, I offer complimentary 30-minute conversations. Schedule one here . For resources discussed in this episode, visit tammacapital.com/podcast . Follow Paul on LinkedIn . Resources Featured in This Episode: Building Bridges in Relationships: The Impact of 'Yes And' on Understanding The Decisions You Keep Not Making Your Spouse's Retirement Plan and Yours Were Never Designed to Work Together

October 8, 2026Episode 2597 min

Give Compounding More Runway

Work with Paul: Schedule a 30-minute conversation What if the goal that feels impossibly far away is not asking for a better return, but for something you are quietly spending every year you wait? In this episode, I get into why the years your money compounds do more of the work than the rate you earn on it, and why a low, almost boring rate stretched over enough time gets you somewhere that looks like a leap from the starting line. I explore how doubling income shows how we can underestimate compounding. And I walk through what happens to a goal when you shorten its runway by even a few years. At the end, I give you a ninety-second exercise built on the rule of 72 that turns the cost of waiting into an actual number you can look at, instead of a vague sense that you really should get around to it one of these days. Connect with Paul If you're a working parent juggling a senior-level career and a growing family, and you're tired of coordinating four different advisors to run your financial life, I offer complimentary 30-minute conversations. Schedule one here . For resources discussed in this episode, visit tammacapital.com/podcast . Follow Paul on LinkedIn . Resources Featured in This Episode: Your Holding Period Matters Most Why Behavior Beats Spreadsheets Time: The Ultimate Roadblock to Financial Planning and How to Overcome It

October 1, 2026Episode 25810 min

Multiple Goals, One Paycheck

Work with Paul: Schedule a 30-minute conversation Which goal wins when your retirement account and your kid's college bill are both due at the same time? For most of the two-income families I work with, that question never actually gets answered. The 401(k) comes out of the paycheck automatically, so it always gets funded. The reserve and the college account require a decision every month, so they lose. Not because anyone chose them last, but because they were the only ones that required a choice. In this episode, I get into why sequencing your savings goals quietly starves the ones at the back of the line, and why lifestyle creep and the false comfort of two incomes make it worse. Connect with Paul If you're a working parent juggling a senior-level career and a growing family, and you're tired of coordinating four different advisors to run your financial life, I offer complimentary 30-minute conversations. Schedule one here . For resources discussed in this episode, visit tammacapital.com/podcast . Follow Paul on LinkedIn . Resources Featured in This Episode: Understanding the One Big Beautiful Bill Impacts for Parents During Their Building Years The Hidden Cost of Inflated Expectations Spending vs Saving: Tools for Couples to Align Money, Values, and Find Harmony

September 24, 2026Episode 25710 min

Nobody Files an Exit Interview for Your Money

Nobody Files an Exit Interview for Your Money Work with Paul: Schedule a 30-minute conversation What if the most irreversible money decisions of your career all arrive in the same two weeks, while you are least able to think about them? This is the third and final episode in a series on where good financial habits stop being enough. Today I walk through a job change as the moment the whole balance sheet gets handled at once, on a deadline. I start with money I forfeited myself when I left a corporate career to start this firm. Then I walk through the four pieces that have clocks attached. Unvested equity you leave behind. Deferred comp that can pay out all at once. A rollover decision made in the first busy week. And the reachable cash that determines whether a gap between paychecks is manageable. This week a single page with four things on it, done before you are anywhere near a decision, so that if the call comes, the deadline only applies to the paperwork. Connect with Paul If you're a working parent juggling a senior-level career and a growing family, and you're tired of coordinating four different advisors to run your financial life, I offer complimentary 30-minute conversations. Schedule one here . For resources discussed in this episode, visit tammacapital.com/podcast . Follow Paul on LinkedIn . Resources Featured in This Episode: Accumulation Was the Easy Part What Happens When the Gap Is Zero

September 17, 2026Episode 25611 min

Accumulation Was the Easy Part

Accumulation Was the Easy Part Work with Paul: Schedule a 30-minute conversation What if the number you track every quarter tells you almost nothing about the shape of what you have built? Today I walk through an exercise instead of a story. Three columns on one page. Money you have already paid tax on. Money you will owe tax on when you take it out. Money that comes out without tax. Most families in their forties and fifties find one enormous column and two small ones. I explain why that happens, why it was decided by a payroll form rather than a plan, and why having balances in all three is about flexibility rather than tax rates. I also talk about where cash fits, and where my own page was lopsided for years. The takeaway this week is the page itself. Every account, in one of the three columns, with its balance. Then total each column and look at the three numbers side by side. Connect with Paul If you're a working parent juggling a senior-level career and a growing family, and you're tired of coordinating four different advisors to run your financial life, I offer complimentary 30-minute conversations. Schedule one here . For resources discussed in this episode, visit tammacapital.com/podcast . Follow Paul on LinkedIn . Resources Featured in This Episode: Navigating the Impacts of the One Big Beautiful Bill During the Empty Nest and Pre-Retirement Years Understanding the "Big Beautiful Bill": Balancing the Building Years - Taxes, Family and Financial Priorities Your Paycheck is Not Your Safety Net

September 10, 2026Episode 2559 min

Patience Has a Blind Spot

Work with Paul: Schedule a 30-minute conversation What if the most disciplined thing you do with your money is quietly working against you in one specific account? Today I walk through a family that had not touched their investments in several years. While that is highly unusual, what was not was our review of one of the spouse's equity compensation. The flat rate a company withholds at vest can sit well below what a high-earning household actually owes. And every vest quietly adds to the same position, which means holding is not standing still. Patience answers how long you hold something. It says nothing about how much of it you own. Pull up your most recent vest confirmation, find the shares that vested and the shares withheld for taxes, divide one by the other, and write that number down next to your marginal bracket to determine if you have a gap. Connect with Paul If you're a working parent juggling a senior-level career and a growing family, and you're tired of coordinating four different advisors to run your financial life, I offer complimentary 30-minute conversations. Schedule one here . For resources discussed in this episode, visit tammacapital.com/podcast . Follow Paul on LinkedIn . Resources Featured in This Episode: Your Holding Period Matters Most Understanding the "Big Beautiful Bill": Tax Changes That Impact Families Balancing Careers and Kids Staying the Course: How Long-Term Investing Builds Wealth Through Market Cycles

September 3, 2026Episode 2546 min

When Selling Means Admitting You Were Wrong

Work with Paul: Schedule a 30-minute conversation What are you actually holding onto when you refuse to let something go? What could it be costing you to keep hoping you'll be proven right? In this episode, I get honest about the three years I knew I'd leave my corporate career before I actually did, and why that's the same trap I watch families fall into when they won't loosen a single stock that's grown too big. I get into why this hits hardest for people who've done well, and why the real price of holding on is rarely the money. I leave you with one question to run on a single piece of your life, financial or not. If you were starting from scratch today, would you build this again? Not whether to sell. Just whether you'd choose it on purpose. Connect with Paul If you're a working parent juggling a senior-level career and a growing family, and you're tired of coordinating four different advisors to run your financial life, I offer complimentary 30-minute conversations. Schedule one here . For resources discussed in this episode, visit tammacapital.com/podcast . Follow Paul on LinkedIn . Resources Featured in This Episode: The Financial Story You Keep Telling Yourself The Greatest Story Ever Told Your Brain Is Writing Your Financial Story. Is It Telling the Truth?