Learn · Guides
Long-form guides
Deep-dive explainers on planning topics that don’t fit neatly inside a single Decide option. Every claim links to a primary source — IRS, Cornell LII, state codes, CMS, FEMA, peer-reviewed rankings. Educational only; not legal, tax, or medical advice.
Retirement
38 min read
A seven-dimension national matrix: tax climate, medical quality, housing cost, transportation, aging-in-place services, culture, and climate/disaster risk. Three ranked shortlists — value, premium, and climate-resilient — plus state-by-state snapshots for all 50 states.
Asset protection
34 min read
Fourteen portable planning vehicles mapped to their top-3 US situs jurisdictions. Which trusts and entities can legally sit in a different state from where the person lives, which cannot, and the federal guardrails that still apply. Setup steps for Virginia, West Virginia, and Alabama residents.
Business entities
51 min read
Restricted words ('trust,' 'bank,' 'insurance') that a charter gates, state-by-state formation mechanics for VA / WV / AL including Alabama's county-Probate-Judge quirk, out-of-state formation tradeoffs, DBA rules, the 2024–2025 FinCEN BOI saga, insurance stack for digital-first solos, veil-piercing hygiene, S-corp election timing, and a practical 8-step workflow for a VA solo founder.
Digital estate
37 min read
Twelve categories of digital assets — from cloud accounts and social media to crypto multisig and domain registrars — mapped to the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, state-by-state UEWA and RON adoption, platform legacy-contact setup (Google / Apple / Facebook / Microsoft), password-manager emergency access, crypto inheritance protocols, and a VA / WV / AL checklist.
Insurance
32 min read
Why 80%+ of affluent households carry umbrella liability coverage while <20% of the general population does. The asset-exposure math, what umbrella covers and excludes, sizing to net worth + 10× income, underlying-limits floors, cost benchmarks, a mass-market-vs-HNW carrier comparison, personal vs commercial boundary, LLC-stack integration, and VA / WV / AL statutory-floor notes.
Tax strategies
51 min read
The largest single US tax benefit available to startup founders and early employees: up to $10M or 10× basis (greater of) of capital gain federally excluded after a 5-year hold. Post-OBBBA 2025 tiered holding periods and $15M cap, eligibility for issuer and holder, stacking across spouses and non-grantor trusts, § 1045 rollover, disqualifying events, equity-comp interaction (ISO / NSO / RSU / SAFE / § 83(b)), and state conformity.
Estate foundations
34 min read
Beneficiary designations on non-probate accounts override the will. A typical family has 8-15 such designations. This guide walks the full account inventory, primary-vs-contingent mechanics, per stirpes vs per capita, SECURE Act see-through trust rules and EDB categories, ERISA preemption of state divorce-revocation statutes (Kennedy v. DuPont), § 2518 disclaimers, and a 10-step audit playbook.
More guides arrive as research is completed on additional cross-cutting topics (domicile audits, Medicaid-state shopping, digital estate planning, and others).