Perrotto Private Wealth

"If I had invested [X] instead of buying [Y], I'd be a zillionaire today."

This is an unserious trend taking over personal finance right now. So I decided to actually run the numbers.

The chart below uses real S&P 500 total-return data. If you had taken roughly $6.25 a month, the price of a toilet paper budget, and invested it from 1993 through today instead, that $2,500 would be worth about $21,596. An 8.6x return.

So the meme is technically right. You see versions of it everywhere. The guy who sold Nvidia 20 years ago to buy his wife's engagement ring. The Bitcoin pizza story. It is provocative, it is funny, and it does make a fair point about compounding.

But here is what it leaves out.

The hindsight problem. There is no guarantee you would have held for 33 years. Look at the green line: to end up at $21,596 you had to sit through the dot-com crash, 2008, and the COVID drop without selling once. Most people did not. The chart shows the reward and hides the discipline.

The cost of living. An engagement ring, dinner with friends, or basic hygiene are not "lost gains." They are the components of an actual life. You cannot reinvest every dollar you ever spent and still be a person.

The takeaway: these charts are useful for showing how compounding works. They are useless for making real decisions. "Shoulda, coulda, woulda" is a terrible way to manage money or live. Learn, adjust, move forward.

And to be clear: keep buying toilet paper. Maybe even double ply.

Day one of the NAIFA Congressional Conference in DC. Tomorrow I meet with Senator Schumer's team, Senator Gillibrand's team, and representatives from across New York.

The biggest takeaway from today: Congress has figured out how to raise taxes without calling them taxes. They do it through fees, and one of the clearest examples is IRMAA.

IRMAA is the income-based surcharge on your Medicare Part B and Part D premiums. The more you earn, the more you pay. Since 2012-2013, the surcharge has grown 4.6 percent a year on average. Last year it went up 5.9 percent. This year, 9.1 percent. No vote. No tax bill. No headline.

If you are a high earner approaching 65, or already on Medicare, this matters. A one-time income event (a Roth conversion, a business sale, a large capital gain) can push you into a higher IRMAA bracket two years later and cost you thousands in surcharges you did not see coming.

This is the kind of thing that does not get covered on the news but shows up in your bank account. Planning around it is part of the job.

Heading to DC next week to lobby with NAIFA. Here is what is actually on the table right now that could affect your taxes, your retirement, and your health coverage.

Taxes. Congress is in the early innings of writing a new tax bill. Ideas being floated include indexing capital gains to inflation, eliminating carried interest, restrictions on private placement life insurance and certain estate planning trusts like GRATs, and making last year's provisions permanent (Trump Accounts, tax-free tips and overtime, the senior deduction, and the deduction for interest on American-made auto loans, all of which currently expire at the end of 2028). Various "tax-the-rich" proposals are also in the mix, including taxes on unrealized gains and wealth itself, though those are unlikely to move this year.

Retirement. Early work is underway on what is being called SECURE 3.0. One bill I am watching, the LaHood-Panetta bill, would simplify the rollover process when you leave a job and make it easier to allocate part of your 401(k) to lifetime income annuities.

Health. ACA premiums are spiking and both parties know it. Republicans want to redirect ACA subsidies into HSAs paired with high deductible plans. Democrats want to expand the subsidies directly. How this gets resolved will change what affordable coverage looks like for self-employed clients and small business owners.

Most of this will get hashed out next year, especially depending on how November goes. But the groundwork is being laid now, and some pieces (capital gains indexing, the HSA shift) could move sooner.

This is why advisors show up in DC. Policy written without input from the people who actually sit across from clients tends to miss how it works in real life.

Being a financial advisor has taught me that success is rarely just about money.

The people around you matter. A lot.
Too many people are surrounded by enablers disguised as friends. People who avoid hard conversations, validate every impulse, and normalize destructive habits instead of holding each other accountable.

Real friendship tells the truth. Real friendship wants better for you.

The quality of your relationships eventually shows up in your finances, marriage, business, health, and family life.

Nobody drifts into a great future accidentally. And nobody gets there surrounded by people afraid to be honest.