Bert and Alethea

Bert is 33, an internal medicine primary care physician at $250,000 a year plus $30,000 of core faculty work. Alethea is 31, a speech language pathologist working 0.8 FTE on a school calendar at about $30,000. Household gross is about $310,000. They live in a small Midwestern town, about 90 miles outside a large city, in a home bought about a year and a half ago. Their first child is due in a couple of weeks, and they hope for a second.

The retirement machinery is switched on. Bert maxes his 401k and an individual HSA and puts $500 a month into an IRA. Alethea contributes 10 percent of pay to a 457b with a match, balance $35,000, maxes her own individual HSA, and puts $500 a month into a backdoor Roth. Another $800 a month goes to a taxable brokerage. The stated flows total about $51,000 a year, about 16.5 percent of gross. A family trust of about $60,000 arrives at age 40, earmarked for nothing yet.

The cash layer is half built. The emergency fund holds three months of expenses at Ally, stated plainly. Checking carries a $10,000 to $15,000 cushion. The sinking fund accounts for travel, a car, and home projects exist and have not been funded in a couple of years. Per Alethea's statement, Bert is not on board with the sinking fund structure.

Debt is one student balance and the house. The private student loans sit under $100,000, the exact balance not stated, and are being paid at $3,700 a month to a projected payoff in mid 2022. The physician mortgage opened at $342,000 with nothing down and stands at $335,000, at 5.125 percent. The credit card is paid in full monthly, and no vehicle or other debt is stated.

Protection is bought, with two dated exceptions. Term life is in force on both: his 30 year $2,000,000 policy at $1,365 a year, her 30 year $500,000 at $335 a year. Her disability pays $1,400 a month with cost of living, partial, and catastrophic riders at $80 a month. His disability costs about $120 a month, and Alethea states that he does not have the proper riders in place. An umbrella is present, its amount not stated. Malpractice type and tail are not stated.

There are no estate planning documents. A conversation with an attorney was started, and no documents exist. No guardian is named, with the first child due in weeks. And over the whole file sits the hosts' arithmetic: stated income in, stated expenses and stated saving out, and over $5,000 a month left unexplained, even counting every expense at the top of its stated range.

The Financial Health Assessment grades a household across the same seven frameworks and lands the total in a band. Bert and Alethea score 49, in the Corrections band. This household is scored on the attending rubric path.

The 3-Bucket Framework earns 5 of 20. Milestones earn 0, because the milestone net cannot be determined from what the intake states. The emergency fund earns 2 at a stated three months. Named lanes earn 0, because the hosts' calculation leaves over $5,000 a month unaccounted. Goals funded earns 3, with dollars flowing to retirement and taxable goals while the sinking and college goals sit unfunded.

The Physician Wealth Equation earns 12 of 14, the strongest framework in this file. The Debt Anchor earns the full 10: stated debt under $435,000 against about $310,000 of income is under 1.41 times income. Stretch saving earns 2 on stated flows of about 16.5 percent.

The Protection Stack earns 12 of 22: health and life at the full 4 each, disability at 2 because Bert's policy lacks proper riders and its own occupation status is not confirmed, umbrella at 2 with its amount not stated, and estate documents at 0 with a child due in weeks. Malpractice type and tail are not stated.

The Transition framework earns 4 of 10: cards and other debt at the full 4, because no consumer or vehicle debt is stated and the card is paid in full, and the loan strategy at 0, because the student loans are not paid off and no forgiveness plan is stated. The Tax Ladder earns 4 of 8, 2 for the pre tax, HSA, and backdoor Roth mix, and 2 for the two deliberate moves inside it, HSA maxing and the backdoor Roth conversions.

The Decision Filter earns the full 4 of 4 on five stated goals. The Lifestyle Guardrails earn 8 of 22: the Savings Floor at 6 on the stated rate, the leak at 0 on the unaccounted $5,000 plus, and wealth first automation at 2, because the monthly retirement and taxable flows run while the sinking funds are neither automated nor agreed.

Read the shape, not just the total. The balance sheet boxes a young attending household is supposed to ace are aced: anchor, accounts, term cover, a stated emergency fund. The missing points sit in the monthly layer and the dated layer, a leak with no lane and documents with a due date measured in weeks.

The first deep dive is the hosts' arithmetic. The hosts set the household's stated income against the stated expenses, the $3,700 student loan payment, and the retirement and taxable flows. Counted generously, at the top end of every range Alethea gave, over $5,000 a month remains with no stated destination.

The household's own goal frames why this matters. Goal three is to enjoy their money and save smartly without budgeting down to the penny. A household that does not track spending has to save automatically, off the top, so the untracked remainder cannot hurt it. That system is not in place. The flows run at about 16.5 percent, and the sinking funds that were built for exactly this purpose sit unfunded, with one spouse not on board.

The banking structure feeds it. The hosts' fix was structural: one bank, one checking account where both paychecks land, and the savings in named buckets at the same bank, so the month can be read in one place.

And they offered the shortcut for a household that will not budget at all: take 25 percent off the top the day income lands, route it to the IRAs, the debt, and the taxable account, and spend what remains without a ledger. It grades lower than real accounting, and the record scores the automation box on it as a partial step, not a finished system.

The second deep dive is the pair of Protection boxes that run against a calendar. The first child is due in a couple of weeks. Two items in the file were built for exactly this event, and neither is finished.

The disability policy is the urgent one. Bert's cover costs about $120 a month, and the caller states plainly that he does not have the proper riders in place. His own occupation status is not confirmed. This is the household's main income, insured by a policy its own household says lacks the proper riders. The fix runs through an independent agent.

The estate documents are the second one. A conversation with an attorney was started. No documents exist, and no guardian is named for the child due in weeks. The guardian decision made by two calm parents is a decision. Left unmade, it becomes a court's decision.

An umbrella is present, malpractice type and tail are not stated, and both sit behind these two in the queue. The prescription orders the stack by due date, not by premium.

Inside the 3-Bucket Framework, the milestone checklist tracks the markers an established household has already hit. This checklist earns 0 for Bert and Alethea, because the intake never states a milestone list the net can be computed from. The box pays only for stated milestones.

The rest of the bucket picture: the emergency fund earns 2 at a stated three months, named lanes earn 0 because the month's largest flow has no lane, and goals funded earns 3 of 6. The framework earns 5 of 20, and the shape matches the case: the reserves exist, the routing does not.

Three traced fixes, and the open items behind them.

Run all three traced fixes and the arithmetic is 49 plus 8, a score of 57. The gains are 4 for the estate documents, 2 for the disability fix, and 2 for automated pay yourself first transfers. A score of 57 out of 100 keeps the household in the Corrections band, with the dated items closed.

Maxed accounts do not close a month. This household maxes a 401k, two HSAs, and runs two $500 monthly IRA flows and a taxable contribution, and still cannot say where over $5,000 a month goes. Funding accounts is a savings habit. Accounting for the month is a different habit, and the score grades them in different frameworks on purpose.

The second lesson is about due dates. Most protection work can be done any month, which is why it gets done in no month. A baby converts two of those items into dated work: the guardian and the main earner's disability riders. The file that treats them as urgent before the due date is the file that does not have to treat them as an emergency after it.