Episodes

The Bonus Your Best Employee Doesn't Know They're Getting Every business owner has that one person. Not a partner, not family — just an employee who makes the whole place run. And every business owner has, at some point, faced the moment when that person gets a call from a recruiter. The instinct is to counter with a bigger number. The problem? A raise is just a number, and someone can always beat a number. What actually keeps a key employee in place is a reason to stay that a bigger paycheck ...

Every September, the insurance industry runs Life Insurance Awareness Month — and most of the advice sounds the same: buy term, protect your family, don't wait. That advice is correct. It's also, at best, half the story. Life insurance has two entirely different jobs depending on where you are in life. For a young parent with a mortgage and a new baby, it's the thing standing between "we'll be okay" and financial free-fall. For a business owner who's spent decades building something real, it's ...

73% of business owners who say they're ready to sell are missing at least one of the two numbers required to know if a sale will actually work. In this episode, David breaks down a new data study of 10,548 business owner assessments and lays out the Readiness 360 — the three questions every owner has to answer honestly before they sit across from a buyer. Are you personally ready to let go? Is your business actually ready to be sold? And does the math even work? What You'll Learn The two number...

Advanced Financial Basics Success is boring. That's not a knock — it's the whole point. The best tennis players in the world don't win with highlight-reel shots; they win by making almost every easy shot and missing almost nothing. Wealth-building works the same way. This week, David Chudyk, CFP®, breaks down BASICS — a six-letter framework covering the unglamorous, "advanced" fundamentals that actually move the needle for people who are already building real wealth. What BASICS Actually Stand...

Guest: Peyton Hoppes, ProVest Wealth Advisors (Spartanburg, SC) Episode Summary David sits down with longtime friend and fellow financial advisor Peyton Hoppes to talk shop. Peyton recently joined ProVest Wealth Advisors in Spartanburg, SC, where he and colleague Gabe are stepping in to take over the client relationships of a retiring advisor. The two dig into what they're seeing with clients day-to-day: how busy families in their "formation years" actually manage cash flow, the real differenc...

The Richest Corpse in the Graveyard If you ran out of money, when would it happen? For a growing number of retirees — paid-off home, pension, Social Security, a seven-figure portfolio sitting quietly in the background — the honest answer is probably never. And yet study after study shows this exact group is still the most hesitant to spend a dollar of it. In this episode, David uses a composite family — paid-off home, $3 million invested, pension and Social Security covering nearly all of thei...

Replay Episode — This one's a "blast from the past." David originally recorded this conversation in the last quarter of 2022, right in the middle of heavy recession fear and a rough year in the markets. He's bringing it back now because 2026 has had its own share of ups and downs, and the mindset underneath this conversation hasn't gone stale. Joining David is Mike DiJoseph of Vanguard's Investment Advisory Research Center, whose team studies why investors make the decisions they make — and how...

The Mid-Year Money Checkup: 9 Things to Check Before the Year Slips Away You change your oil every 5,000 miles or so. Nobody waits for the engine to seize up on the highway to think about it. Your finances deserve the same treatment — and we're right at the halfway point of the year, which is exactly the moment to pop the hood before a bunch of December deadlines sneak up on you. This episode is nine things, no long story, no single deep dive. Some apply if you're a business owner, some don't ...

I cut my own grass every week. I don't mind it — it's mindless, it's outside, I like the hour. Plenty of people I know, just as busy and just as capable, pay someone else to do theirs. Neither one of us is wrong. We just decided differently about where we want to spend that hour. Turns out we all make that same call, constantly, in every part of our lives — we just never name it out loud. This episode names it: the DIYer, the Partner, and the Delegator, and the honest question of which one you ...

Everyone's talking about the free $1,000 the government just dropped into Trump Accounts. Almost nobody's talking about the fine print — or the backdoor Roth IRA strategy hiding inside it. In this episode, David breaks down Trump Accounts, 529 plans, UGMA/UTMA custodial accounts, and custodial Roth IRAs side by side: what each one actually does, where the real catches are, and the one advanced move that could turn a modest Trump Account into a six-figure Roth IRA by your kid's mid-20s. The Numb...

On January 6th, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt stood before Congress and outlined four essential freedoms that every human being deserves. He wasn't talking about money. He was talking about human dignity. But in this episode, CFP® and fiduciary advisor David Chudyk reveals what those four freedoms look like when applied to wealth — and why the people who are truly, genuinely financially free have quietly built their own version of all four. This isn't a debt payoff episode. This isn't ...

About This Episode Here's something that almost never gets talked about in personal finance: most people are both overpaying for insurance and dangerously underinsured — at the same time. In this episode, David Chudyk, CFP® breaks down exactly how that happens, which gaps most commonly cost people everything, and the four-step annual insurance audit every wealth-builder should be doing. What You'll Learn Why insurance gets ignored — and why the industry is designed to let it happen The four ...

Everyone's Buying SPCX. Here's What Smart Investors Actually Do. SpaceX (SPCX) just completed the largest IPO in history — $75 billion raised, debuting up 19% on day one, now trading over 40% above its IPO price. The hype is real. So are the risks most people aren't talking about. CFP® David Chudyk breaks down the bull case, the bear case, what happened when WeWork, Peloton, and Rivian met peak hype, and — most importantly — the only question that determines whether any hot stock belongs in yo...

You've spent years building your business. But what if you've already crossed the finish line — and nobody told you? Most business owners spend their entire careers trying to reach financial freedom. But there's a specific, calculable threshold — called The Freedom Point — where the net proceeds from selling your business would fund the rest of your life without financial worry. And the uncomfortable truth is: a lot of owners have already crossed it. They're still grinding, still taking on risk,...

Someone in your life is giving you financial advice right now. They're confident. They say it like it's gospel. And they might be completely wrong. Not because they're bad people — but because they're handing you a prescription without doing the diagnosis. And in financial planning, that's how people end up behind where they should be. In this episode, CFP® David Chudyk dismantles four of the most repeated pieces of financial advice in America — the kind you've heard so many times you stopped q...

Retirement planning is not about retirement. That's the provocation David opens with — and he means it. This episode isn't another checklist. It's a ground-up rethink of what the 5-to-10-year sprint before retirement actually demands: emotionally, philosophically, and financially. Starting with a question no financial podcast has the nerve to ask — is retirement even a biblical concept? — David works through everything from the psychology of stopping work to the hard mechanics of income portfol...

The IRS actually built a legal way for business owners to pay their kids, cut their tax bill, and start building generational wealth — all at the same time. Most business owners have no idea it exists. And the ones who do usually aren't doing it right. In this episode, David breaks down the Hire Your Kids strategy from top to bottom — including the part most people skip — and adds two more powerful moves to set your kids up for financial success long before they need it. What You'll Learn in T...

The Psychology of Social Security The conventional wisdom says almost always delay Social Security until 70. New research says that advice is wrong for more people than you'd think — and the reason it's wrong isn't purely math. It's psychology. In this episode, David covers the 90-year history of Social Security, how it fits into a real retirement income plan, the four most overlooked risks of delay, and what the 2025 Trustees Report actually says about the program's solvency — including the n...

This week is National Small Business Week — and before we get into strategy, David takes a moment to do something he thinks doesn't happen nearly enough: genuinely honor the people who build and run small businesses in America. Because it's hard. Really hard. And the numbers tell a story that most press releases never will. Then, in true Weekly Wealth fashion, he makes the turn: Small Business Week celebrates the business. But nobody's talking about the owner's financial future. This episode fix...

EPISODE SUMMARY In this special annual episode, host and CFP David Chudyk steps away from financial strategy to do something he calls "the forbidden" — talk about himself. This episode is designed as a first step for anyone considering working with David as their financial advisor. He shares his background, his philosophy on money and life, who he works best with, and what makes his practice unique. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN IN THIS EPISODE David's origin story — growing up in New York and the money mi...

Your CPA Is Looking in the Rearview Mirror Tax preparation records what already happened. Tax planning changes what will happen. Here's the difference — and why it might be costing you tens of thousands of dollars a year. Nobody loves taxes. But the people who hate them the most are usually the ones overpaying. This episode is about closing that gap — using the exact same strategies that high-income earners and savvy business owners have always used, most of which your tax preparer has never on...

🎙️ Episode Summary Every generation thinks they had it the hardest financially. Boomers point to Vietnam and 18% mortgage rates. Gen X survived the dot-com crash. Millennials are buried in student loan debt. And Gen Z? They're lying awake wondering if AI is going to take their job before they ever cash their first real paycheck. Here's the thing — they're all right. And in this episode, CFP David Chudyk breaks down the REAL numbers behind every generation's financial story. The challenges. The...

Episode Description Most of us never got a formal money education — and the statistics show it. In this episode, CFP(r) David Chudyk breaks down exactly how to raise financially intelligent, grounded kids at every age — from toddlers to teenagers. Whether you're still building wealth or you've already made it, this episode is packed with practical, age-by-age strategies to make sure your kids don't become part of the next generation of financial statistics. David also tackles one of the hardes...

Most people have never stopped to ask themselves what they actually want their retirement to look like. They default to whatever their parents did, or whatever society tells them. In this episode, David walks through six retirement philosophies — and one uncomfortable reality that nobody talks about. None of them are right or wrong, but one of them just might be exactly right for you. 🙏 A Biblical Foundation: Work Is a Calling, Not a Curse Before diving into the philosophies, David lays a found...