Protection (Defense)

Protection is the least exciting part of a financial plan and the part most likely to matter enormously exactly once. The right approach isn't insuring against every possible inconvenience — it's covering the handful of outcomes large enough to actually be catastrophic.

This track covers what's worth insuring against versus what isn't, why the commission structure behind whole life insurance tells you most of what you need to know about who it's really designed for, the fraud and identity threats that have gotten more sophisticated as more of daily life moved online, and the estate basics — beneficiaries, wills, the paperwork nobody enjoys filling out — that determine what actually happens to everything else once it's no longer a person's to manage directly.