Author: Neil Gulino

How to Build a Retirement Withdrawal Strategy That Survives an Early Layoff

You can do everything the grown-up money columns told you to do, then still get blindsided at 54 by a layoff and a bad market showing up together like a pair of unpaid interns with access to your future. That’s why a retirement withdrawal strategy after a layoff in your 50s has to be different…
Required Minimum Distributions: What Workers 50+ Need to Plan For Now

Retirement planning has a bad habit of sounding tidy right up until the tax bill arrives. That’s especially true with RMD planning for workers over 50. You can spend decades doing the allegedly responsible things, build a decent 401(k) or IRA, and still get blindsided by the part where the IRS eventually wants its turn.…
My AI Has a Word for It: Confabulation

I have two AIs. Yesterday they took turns breaking my heart. I should explain the “two” part, because it sounds like a lot, and it is. One of them is the conversational one — the planner, the thinker, the one I talk to for hours about strategy and what to build next. The other one…
The Skills AI Can’t Replace in Sales, Finance, and Operations

If AI has been hovering over your job like a corporate weather alert, that reaction is rational. Sales teams are getting more software. Finance departments are getting more automation. Operations leaders are getting more dashboards and more promises that this time the software will fix everything. But “part of the work” is doing a lot…
What career coaches won’t tell you about AI and job security

You can tell the job market got weird when the same people who once told everyone to “network harder” now say the answer is a 12-week AI course and a better attitude. That’s not strategy. That’s panic with a Canva template. Career coaches AI job security advice usually skips the part that matters most to…
How to Write a Consulting Proposal That Wins Clients (Template Included)

Most experienced professionals have a resume reflex. A prospect asks what you do, and the instinct is to prove you have done serious work, for serious people, for a serious amount of time. That instinct is understandable. It’s also how proposals turn into autobiographies with a pricing page stapled on at the end. A consulting…
Best Online Course Platforms for Experienced Professionals: Teachable vs the Alternatives

If you’ve spent 20 or 30 years getting good at something, turning that expertise into a course is one of the more sensible online business ideas left standing. Not because it is easy. Nothing involving the internet stays easy for long. But because experience compounds, and course buyers still pay for shortcuts that save them…
Roth Conversion Strategies for Mid-Career Workers: What to Know Before You Convert

If you’re in your 50s, a Roth conversion can look like the rare financial move that actually gives you more control instead of less. That’s the appeal. You pay tax now, move money from a traditional IRA or 401(k) into a Roth account, and buy yourself tax-free withdrawals later. Clean, simple, done. Except it isn’t…
What AI Agents Actually Do to Sales, Procurement, and Operations Roles

You spent years getting good at the parts of work that don’t fit neatly on a checklist: spotting the shaky prospect, catching the supplier issue before it turns into a budget fire, noticing the process break that ruins a customer handoff three departments later. Now software vendors keep announcing “agents” like they invented judgment in…
What the SECURE 2.0 Act Changed About Retirement Planning in 2026

Retirement rules used to change slowly enough that a normal person could ignore them for a few years and still catch up over coffee on a Saturday morning. SECURE 2.0 ruined that arrangement. The SECURE 2.0 retirement changes 2026 workers need to care about affect how much can go into a plan, whether catch-up money…