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Business
Strategies built for business owners, from key person coverage to buy-sell agreements.
Business emergency reserves: how much cash your company needs
A business without cash is one bad month from trouble. How to size a reserve, where to keep it, and how insurance and credit lines fit around it.
Choosing a business entity: sole proprietor, LLC, S corp or C corp
The legal form of your business shapes your taxes, your liability and how you pay yourself. A plain-language guide to the main choices, with the 2026 rules that matter.
Business overhead expense insurance
If you get sick or hurt and cannot work, your business bills keep coming. Overhead expense insurance pays them for a while, so there is a business to come back to.
Business valuation basics: what your company is really worth
Your business may be your biggest asset, but its value is not a number you pick. The three main valuation approaches, what moves the price, and why the number matters for buy-sell, estate and insurance planning.
Buy-sell agreements after Connelly (2024)
How co-owners plan for a death or exit, the main ways to fund it with life insurance, and what the 2024 Supreme Court case changed.
Buy-sell funding options in depth
A buy-sell agreement is only as good as the money behind it. Cash, loans, installment notes, sinking funds and insurance compared, with how each holds up when an owner dies, becomes disabled or retires.
Cash balance plans for high-earning owners
A cash balance plan can let a business owner save and deduct far more than a 401(k) alone, often over $100,000 a year. How it works, what it costs, and the commitments it brings.
Using cash value as business capital, honestly
Some owners use permanent life insurance cash value as a source of business funding. How policy loans can help, what they really cost, and when a bank loan or plain savings is the better tool.
Funding employee benefits on a small-business budget
Small businesses compete for people too. The tax-favoured benefits a small employer can offer in 2026, from health reimbursements to group life and retirement plans, and how to fund them.
Key person insurance
How a business protects itself if it loses the person it depends on: valuing that person, the 101(j) rules, and how the money is taxed.
Non-qualified deferred compensation (NQDC) explained
NQDC plans let a business promise key people extra retirement pay beyond 401(k) limits. How they work, the Section 409A rules, how employers fund them, and why the promise is only as strong as the company.
Paying yourself as a business owner
Draws, salary, distributions and guaranteed payments: how owners actually get paid, how each is taxed, and how to set a steady personal paycheck from uneven business income.
Section 162 executive bonus plans
A simple way for a business to reward key people with a life insurance policy they own: single bonus, double bonus, REBA, and the tax picture.
SEP, SIMPLE and Solo 401(k) compared for 2026
Three retirement plans built for small businesses, side by side: who can use each, how much you can put in for 2026, the costs and the catches.
Split-dollar life insurance basics
Split-dollar is an agreement to share the cost and benefits of a life insurance policy, usually between a business and a key person. The two main tax regimes, how each works, and the trade-offs.
Succession planning timelines: a 10-year runway
Most owners leave their business once, often with little notice. What to do 10, 5, 3 and 1 years before an exit, so the business has value and someone to run it.
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