We’re two weeks out from the midterms, and I can feel it in the people around me. Shoulders tighten when the topic comes up. Breathing gets shallower. People either dismiss politics before the conversation starts or bring it up before we’ve exchanged a single nicety.
I’m not going to wax political in this missive. I am going to ask you to roll your shoulders back, take one deep breath, and turn your attention back to your own financial life.
There is no shortage of people willing to tell us what this election means. Pundits have opinions. Candidates have promises. Social media has certainty to spare. Around the dinner table, someone is usually ready to explain which candidate will rescue the economy and which one will destroy it.
A recent CFP® Board survey gave us a window into a quieter conversation. They asked 440 CFP® professionals what clients are telling them about affordability and the election.1 I trust that vantage point because financial-planning conversations reach places political polling rarely does. We know what clients earn, spend, and save. We know when they hope to retire. Over time, we learn which assumptions make them uneasy and which goals feel less secure.
These conversations seldom arrive as polished political opinions. They arrive as questions. Can I still retire when I planned? Will my children ever be able to afford a home? What happens if healthcare keeps getting more expensive? Am I still okay?
The survey’s answers revealed an uncomfortable pairing. Sixty-eight percent of the planners described their clients’ overall financial outlook as positive. Sixty-nine percent said those same clients had grown more concerned about affordability over the past year.1
Doing well. Feeling worried. Both can be true.
What are We Being Told to Fear?
Listen to enough campaign messaging and nearly everything begins to sound like a threat. Your taxes will rise. Social Security and Medicare will collapse. Healthcare will become unaffordable. The market will suffer. Entire industries will either thrive or disappear depending on who controls Washington.
Some of those risks are real. The useful work begins when we separate what can be measured today from what remains a campaign prediction.
Start with what people are already feeling. Consumer prices rose 3.7% over the 12 months ending in September. Shelter rose 3.2%; hospital services, 5.6%; energy, 20.4%; and gasoline, 34.2%.²
Some of those increases create a miserable month. Others have the potential to reshape a financial projection. Energy prices are volatile. Healthcare presents a more stubborn long-term problem.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services project national health spending to grow by an average of 5.4% annually through 2034, faster than projected economic growth of 4.1%. Medicare spending is expected to rise by 7.7% per year. By 2034, national health spending is projected to reach $9 trillion, equal to 20.6% of the economy.³
Run 5.4% growth forward for a decade, and the expense rises by roughly 69%. That belongs in a financial plan.
Could November influence any of this? Absolutely. Control of Congress affects what receives a hearing, what reaches a vote, and how much of the president’s agenda advances. Taxes, healthcare subsidies, Social Security, Medicare, federal spending, tariffs, and regulation could all be affected. Yet both Fidelity and Wells Fargo Investment Institute expect narrow margins and intraparty divisions to constrain major legislation.⁴ ⁵
TAXES
Congress can change tax rates, deductions, credits, estate-tax rules, and the taxation of businesses and investments. Those decisions can shape Roth conversions, charitable gifts, income timing, estate strategies, and decisions about realizing capital gains. They also require actual legislation.
Campaign proposals tell us what a candidate would like to do. Committee negotiations, congressional majorities, Senate rules, and the president’s signature determine what becomes law. Recent years have offered no shortage of tax provisions widely expected to expire, only for later legislation to extend, replace, or rewrite them. Fidelity points to temporary deductions and credits scheduled to expire beginning in 2028 as potential subjects of future tax legislation.4
Pay attention, certainly. But a campaign promise is awfully thin support for an irrevocable gift or a major tax transaction.
SOCIAL SECURITY & MEDICARE
The 2026 Trustees Report projects that Social Security’s combined trust funds can pay full scheduled benefits until the third quarter of 2034. If Congress made no changes, continuing revenue would cover 83% of scheduled benefits after that point.6
Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund is projected to pay full scheduled benefits until the second quarter of 2033, with continuing income covering 89% thereafter.⁶
Those are serious funding gaps, and the deadlines are close enough to influence today’s planning. Both programs would continue collecting revenue, leaving Congress with difficult choices involving taxes, benefits, and eligibility.6
“Social Security is disappearing” may be an effective headline. It is a poor planning assumption.
So, I test the exposure. What happens if we reduce the assumed benefit? Would a later claiming age help? Does Social Security materially affect this particular plan? That gives us something concrete to plan around.
INVESTMENTS
Markets may react to the election. They also respond to inflation, Federal Reserve decisions, corporate earnings, geopolitical events, consumer spending, and developments nobody has anticipated.
Tariffs, regulation, defense spending, and energy policy may have clearer consequences for certain sectors. Morgan Stanley Wealth Management nevertheless expects the business cycle, corporate fundamentals, inflation, interest rates, and artificial-intelligence investment to matter more to the broader market.7
Policy can help or hurt a particular industry. Turning an election result into a reliable instruction to buy, sell, or sit in cash is much harder.
Change in Washington rarely travels in a straight line from Election Day to a family’s balance sheet. And a financial plan will almost certainly encounter many versions of Washington along the way.
Which brings me back to the questions clients actually ask. Can I retire? Can I afford the life I am building? Will my family be okay?
Those questions are larger than one election. A good financial plan will need to answer them and many more.
Your Plan Will Outlive This Election
Election season distorts our sense of time. The next two weeks feel enormous because November 3 is right in front of us. A financial plan operates on a very different clock.
The Bahnsen Group generally models plans through age 100. For someone retiring at 65, that means preparing for another 35 years of spending, healthcare, taxes, markets, family changes, and, yes, politics. That retirement could span roughly 17 national election cycles: eight or nine presidential elections and about as many midterms.
Pew Research Center found that since 1969, only one presidency has maintained unified control of the White House and both chambers of Congress beyond the following midterm.⁸
Tax laws will be rewritten. Administrations will come and go. Interest-rate cycles will turn. Markets will rise, fall, and recover.
Through all that political turnover, investment history is remarkably stubborn. Vanguard examined data dating to 1860 and found no statistically significant difference in the performance of a 60/40 portfolio between presidential-election years and other years.⁹
None of that makes this midterm election insignificant. It remains one moment inside a plan built to carry someone through another three or four decades. November feels close. Age 100 does not.
Which leaves the question in front of us now.
Should You Change Anything?
Maybe. But first, tell me why.
Has something in your financial life changed? Or are you bracing for a prediction about what might?
Fear can turn tomorrow’s possibilities into today’s financial decisions.
Half of the CFP® professionals surveyed had watched clients make at least one potentially shortsighted decision in response to affordability concerns. Twenty-nine percent reported early retirement-account withdrawals; 23% saw necessary estate-planning updates delayed; 20% saw contributions reduced or eliminated; and 18% saw clients take on high-interest debt.¹ This is where worry gets expensive.
The planners favored a steadier response. Fifty-four percent recommended stress-testing the plan against a recession. The same share recommended building or rebuilding an emergency fund to a specific target.¹
I like those answers because they turn fear into something we can examine. What happens if taxes rise? If healthcare keeps outpacing inflation? If markets fall as retirement begins? If today’s tighter cash flow lasts another year? Run the numbers. Find the pressure point. Adjust where needed.
One final finding stayed with me. While 69% of the CFP® professionals surveyed expect the election to have no significant impact on their clients’ overall financial well-being, only 56% expect the election to leave their clients’ financial confidence unchanged.¹
Confidence can move before circumstances do. You may be worried about November, care deeply about the outcome, and remain uncertain about what it could mean for your taxes, healthcare, retirement, or investments.
Come back to your plan. What changed? What can be measured? Does the decision in front of you still serve the life you are trying to build?
Take another deep breath. Your shoulders were creeping up again.
Matt Gregory
Director, Planning
Trevor Cummings
PWA Group Director, Partner
Blaine Carver
Private Wealth Advisor
Brett Bonecutter
Private Wealth Advisor
SOURCES
- CFP Board. Expensive Today, Elusive Tomorrow: A Survey About Affordability and the 2026 Election, September 2026. https://www.cfp.net/-/media/files/cfp-board/knowledge/reports-and-research/consumer-surveys/expensive-today-elusive-tomorrow-2026-survey-report.pdf
- S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Consumer Price Index – September 2026, October 14, 2026. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm?d=20261014
- Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. National Health Expenditure Fact Sheet: Projected NHE, 2025-2034. https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-reports/national-health-expenditure-data/nhe-fact-sheet
- Fidelity Investments. How the 2026 Midterms Could Impact Your Money, October 7, 2026. https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/personal-finance/2026-midterm-elections-and-your-money
- Wells Fargo Investment Institute. 2026 Midterms: Policy, Politics & Portfolios, October 15, 2026. https://www.wellsfargoadvisors.com/research-analysis/reports/policy/2026-midterms.htm
- Social Security Administration. 2026 Annual Reports: A Summary of the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/TRSUM/
- Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. The Midterm Election Signals Investors Should Watch, September 23, 2026. https://www.morganstanley.com/insights/articles/midterm-election-market-impact-2026
- Pew Research Center. Single-Party Control in Washington is Common at the Beginning of a New Presidency, but It Rarely Lasts, February 3, 2021. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/02/03/single-party-control-in-washington-is-common-at-the-beginning-of-a-new-presidency-but-tends-not-to-last-long/
- Presidential Elections Matter, but Not So Much When It Comes to Your Investments, August 29, 2024. https://advisors.vanguard.com/insights/article/presidential-elections-matter-but-not-so-much-when-it-comes-to-your-investments
