Benjamin Arney

Name: Benjamin Arney
Address: 1104 S rock Street, Georgetown, TX, 78626, US
Telephone: +15126861080

Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Benjamin Arney, Financial Consultant, 1104 S rock Street, Georgetown, TX.

Helping high earners and retirees keep more of what they’ve built | Financial Planning Consultant | Follow for posts on taxes, retirement income, and wealth strategies.

08/28/2026

Nobody asks me about bond ladders. Everybody asks me about bitcoin. So here is the honest version.

I am not going to tell you to buy it or avoid it. I am just going to lay out both sides and let you decide.

Start with the dollar.

The federal government can create more of it. We crossed 40 trillion dollars in national debt this month.

Five years ago it was under 29 trillion.

More dollars chasing the same amount of stuff is how your money quietly buys less over time.

That is the entire reason this conversation exists.

Why people are bullish.

There will only ever be 21 million bitcoin. The supply cap is written into the code and there is no committee that can vote to raise it.

It lives on a blockchain, so ownership is individual and verifiable. You do not need an institution to hold
it for you.

It is scarce, portable, and divisible, which is why people reach for the phrase digital gold.

If you believe those properties make it a reasonable hedge against a currency that can be printed at will, that is a coherent case.

Why people are not.

It produces nothing. No earnings, no rent, no interest. Its value is entirely what the next person is willing to pay.

It has fallen more than 50 percent multiple times. Not over a decade. Over months.

If you hold it yourself, you are the bank. People have permanently lost coins to a forgotten password or a dead hard drive, and there is no customer service line to call.

And in the exact moments it is supposed to behave like gold, it has often traded more like a risky tech stock.

Here is the part that actually matters.

Every investment comes down to the same question.

Do you believe in the underlying asset? Not the story around it. The thing itself.

That question is not unique to bitcoin. It is the question behind every stock, every property, every
business anyone has ever bought.

If you believe in it, and a 50 percent drawdown would not shake you into selling at the bottom, then a small position is a decision you can actually defend.

If you do not believe in it, or you know that kind of swing would wreck you, then no amount of upside
makes it right for you.

Both answers are fine. Just make sure it is your answer and not somebody else's.

08/27/2026

Got to hear Matt Chandler speak this past weekend, and I brought Jack with me.

Daycare was full, so the two of us ended up in the cry room in the back. Jack is 15 months old and has opinions he likes to share at volume, so honestly it was the right call for everybody involved.

Watching through the glass with a toddler climbing all over me was not how I pictured that morning going. It also might be the version of it I remember the longest.

Chandler is one of my favorite people to listen to. You can feel his love for Jesus coming off of him when he preaches. There is nothing performative about it. He just clearly believes what he is saying, and it is hard to sit in a room with that and walk out unaffected.

I have also been working through his new book, Becoming Like Jesus, which walks through the Beatitudes in Matthew 5. The idea that has stuck with me most is that becoming more like Christ is not a straight line upward. It is highs and lows, and God uses both of them to do the shaping. That has been a good thing to sit with in a busy season.

Highly recommend the book if you are looking for your next one.

08/26/2026

When I was a kid I held onto $2 bills like they were gold.

I do not really know why. Something about them just felt rare. I had a few tucked in a drawer for years
and never spent a single one.

Saw a post from Simon, CFP about tipping with $2 bills and it unlocked that memory
instantly.

His point was simple. Hand someone a $5 and it is gone within the hour. Hand them a $2 and it sits in
their wallet for weeks because nobody wants to be the one to break it.

So I went to my local Chase and asked for a hundred of them.

The teller looked at me a little funny. They had them in the back.

I have been tipping with them ever since and the reaction is different every single time. People turn it
over. They ask if it is real. A couple of them told me they were keeping it.

Same two dollars. Completely different feeling.

I think about that with money in general. The amount is rarely what people remember. It is whether it
felt intentional.

Credit to Matt for the idea. I am stealing this one permanently.

08/20/2026

$180,000 to $310,000 in six years.

Savings rate went from 14% to 15%.

Three promotions. A relocation. A title he'd been chasing since his twenties.

And functionally the same retirement date he had before any of it.

Every raise got absorbed. Bigger house after the second one. Second car after the third.

None of it reckless, all of it permanent.

This is the trap for high earners specifically. You can out earn almost anything except your own lifestyle.

The fix is not spending less.

It's deciding where the next raise goes before it shows up.

08/19/2026

He was 58.

He could have stopped at 54.

Nobody had ever run the number.

He came in wanting to know if 62 was realistic.

We ran it. 62 was not just realistic, it had been realistic for four years.

He'd been saving aggressively since his early thirties, lived well below what he earned, and never once sat down with someone who could tell him what it added up to.

So he kept going. Because the number was fuzzy and everyone he knew was still working.

He was not behind.

He'd been done for four years and nobody told him.

08/18/2026

One of the best things soccer taught me is that the best player on the field loses all the time.

You can do everything right, be the most talented player out there, and still end up on the wrong side of a 1-0 scoreline. That's just how team sports work.

I hated that when I was younger. Now I appreciate it. It taught me to be a better loser, and it pulled my attention away from how I played individually and toward the people around me.

Check out how funny the timing of this photo was. Ironically, I scored 2 goals that game!

08/17/2026

$400,000 mortgage at 3%.

He wanted it gone before he retired.

It was the wrong first question.

I understand the instinct. Debt free feels like the finish line, especially if you grew up being taught that.

But the money he'd use to kill that mortgage was the same money that would have to bridge him from 55 to 59.5.

Pay off the house and he owns it outright and cannot afford to stop working.

Keep the 3% and he has flexibility, which is the actual currency of early retirement.

The goal was never no mortgage.

The goal was optionality. Sometimes those pull in opposite directions.

08/14/2026

$340,000 in a savings account.

For nine years.

He thought he was being careful.

He'd moved it there in 2016 after a scare and never moved it back.

Careful is the right instinct with the money you might need in two years. It's an expensive instinct with money you won't touch for twenty.

Nine years of inflation did more damage to that account than any market drop would have.

Sitting in cash feels like not taking risk.

It's just a risk that doesn't show up on a statement.

08/13/2026

$1.4 million in company stock.

Six years ahead of where he thought he'd be.

Sounds like a success story.

Until we looked at what it was attached to.

Every RSU vest added shares.

Every ESPP purchase added more.

He never sold a single one.

Not because he loved the company that much.

Because selling felt like a bet against his own employer.

He wanted to stop working at 56.

The problem was that his retirement date, his salary, his bonus, and 61% of his portfolio all depended on the same company having a good decade.

Concentration risk isn't a portfolio problem.

It's a timeline problem.

08/11/2026

I got to be in the stadium for Norway and Ivory Coast in the round of 32, and I'm not sure I can go back to watching on TV.

On a broadcast you see the ball. In the stadium you see everything the camera never bothers with, including numerous Norwegian rows (If you know, you know). The runs that don't get the pass. A defender forty yards from the play losing his mind at a teammate about spacing. Twenty thousand people inhaling at the same time before anything has actually happened.

I've watched this sport my whole life and I still picked up things sitting there that I don't think I could have picked up from a screen.

There's probably a version of that in a lot of areas. Some things you just have to be in the room for.

Address

1104 S Rock Street
Georgetown, TX
78626

Telephone

+15126861080

Website

https://www.raymondjames.com/goodwaterwealth

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