Buffetts will put his wife's inheritance here

Good afternoon. Weekends are for slowing down, so let's use twenty minutes of it wisely. There's a real difference between assuming your retirement plan works and actually checking that it does — today's issue is about that gap.

On The Money Today:

Let's get into it.

Warren Buffett spent six decades compounding wealth for Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. From 1964 to 2025, Berkshire delivered an overall gain of 6,099,294%. Buffett handed the CEO role to Greg Abel on Jan. 1, 2026, and remains chairman.

You might assume Buffett would want that trajectory to continue through his estate. But the Oracle of Omaha has a different plan.

In his 2013 letter to Berkshire shareholders, Buffett shed light on the directives in his will: "Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund."

"I do not think the average person can pick stocks," Buffett said at a 2021 shareholders' meeting.

That's where index funds come in. Instead of betting on individual companies, a fund tracking the S&P 500 gives you low-cost exposure to 500 of the largest publicly traded U.S. companies across a range of industries.

Buffett's advice is about as simple as investing gets: pick one low-cost fund and let it ride. You could do exactly that yourself in a self-directed brokerage account. The harder question is the other 10%.

Buffett's 90/10 split is reasonable advice for someone with decades left before they'll need the money. But the right mix looks different as retirement gets closer.

Bonds cushion your portfolio against market swings, and that cushion matters more once you no longer have decades to wait out a downturn.

Platforms like WiserAdvisor make it easy to connect with vetted professionals who can help you work out the right percentage of bonds for your age and goals.

Just indicate what you need help with and answer a few quick questions, and they'll match you with a vetted advisor in five minutes.

You can schedule a free, no-obligation call to see if their approach and pricing make sense for your situation.

Buffett picked one fund and one number. Yours might be a different number — but his simple plan is worth copying.

Wall Street has long used private real estate for tax advantages and cash flow that doesn't track the stock market. Now you can get into the same kind of deals through Lightstone DIRECT — one of the largest privately held real estate firms in the U.S., with $12 billion in assets under management, co-investing at least 20% of its own capital in every deal.

New Deal: OKC Outlets
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Retail (Open-Air Outlet Center)
Minimum investment: $100,000

OKC Outlets is a 394,280-square-foot open-air outlet center anchored by national retailers — the only one within 100-plus miles of Oklahoma City. It's 97.5% leased across 94 tenants, none representing more than 4% of revenue.

Lightstone's plan: hold steady cash flow now, upgrade the tenant mix as leases turn over. Get access to the full deal materials.

If you're in your 50s with a healthy nest egg and a target retirement date already circled, this one's worth a gut check. A 7% return and a decade of saving sounds like it should get you there.

But early Social Security penalties and the real cost of replacing 70% of your income can quietly eat into a number that looked solid on paper. Before you lock in your own exit date, see the exact math a financial advisor used to find the gap most people miss.

Nobody has to do anything wrong for this to happen to them. An agency miscalculation, a missed update to your file, a processing error — any of it can trigger an overpayment notice, and once it lands, the SSA can legally withhold your entire monthly check until the debt is repaid.

You get 90 days to appeal before the clawback kicks in automatically. Here's what actually triggers it, and the exact steps that can protect your check if a notice shows up in your mailbox.

The answer is: C) 1 in 3 — according to research on inheritance outcomes, roughly a third of people who receive a windfall end up with negative savings within just two years of getting it, often from a mix of overspending and poor investment choices.