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Morgan Stanley’s head of financial planning on 4 steps you can take to start building generational wealth

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In an unpredictable world, a sound financial plan can help you take control and work towards building wealth regardless of your financial status today. 

It’s not just about managing money; a financial plan helps you define clear goals and make a strategy to get there. Having a plan helps you make more informed financial decisions, understand where each dollar is going and gain confidence that what you do with your money today also supports your needs in the future. 

The sooner you start planning, the more pathways open—giving you greater flexibility on your financial journey. If you’re not sure how to begin, know that you’re not alone: Pew Research found that just 27% of Americans express confidence in their ability to create an investment plan to build wealth.

Here’s how you can start:

  1. Understand the Benefits of Financial Planning

Financial Planning goes beyond budgeting and saving. It is about making sure your money supports the life you want across different phases. By identifying goals and understanding how different financial decisions fit together, planning helps you make smarter decisions, avoid common mistakes (like panic selling when markets are volatile), and significantly reduce financial-related stress and anxiety. 

Good financial planning helps you determine an ideal portfolio for your needs, manage risks in alignment with those needs, and adjust to navigate market fluctuations and inevitable changes in your life—such career moves, supporting family members or milestones like retirement. 

And the benefits do not stop with you. By protecting your financial future, a financial plan allows you to work towards securing a foundation for your loved ones. Through the planning process you not only have the chance to pass on assets, but also critical financial knowledge and best practices to empower future generations.

  1. Invest in yourself—and your family

Building intergenerational wealth requires a disciplined approach to investing in line with your risk tolerance. While all investments carry risks (including potential losses), there is a wide breadth of choices to explore as you build an investment portfolio. 

A good financial plan defines the optimal asset allocation for your situation, which is so important because data shows allocation drives 90% of a portfolio’s return variability (meaning performance). There are many investment options beyond stocks and bonds, such as real estate and alternative investments like hedge funds and private credit—which can all provide potential opportunities for wealth creation. 

In fact, our Global Investment Committee suggests that, when appropriate, alternative investments should make up to 25% of efficient client portfolios. However, alternatives require significant knowledge and expertise to manage effectively.

However you choose to invest, start as early as you can and keep adjusting your strategies to make the most of time and compound growth. Continue to educate yourself and consider making financial planning a family affair to help build long-term independence. 

  1. Prepare for Market Volatility

Market fluctuations and downturns are inevitable. A financial plan helps you stay focused on the bigger picture, better navigate emotional reactions and avoid common mistakes like panic-selling so you can protect what you’ve earned and continue to make progress.

For example, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management reviewed over 120,000 of our client plans and found that over 75% stayed on track even at the market’s lowest point during the 2020 market downturn. And for the plans that went off track, the vast majority only needed minor adjustments such as modest increases in savings, cuts in spending or a small extension of investment time horizons. 

Investing is a long-term endeavor. No matter how the economy ebbs and flows, a financial plan can help you maintain your confidence as you move forward.

  1. Seek Out Human Guidance Powered By Technology 

Truly effective financial planning requires both advanced tools that can integrate your personal financial information and human insight to map that data to your individual goals. Financial advisors offer critical thinking and emotional intelligence to help you navigate the complexities of financial decision-making, and they also have access to advanced technology that allows for modeling different scenarios, pressure testing your plan against market performance patterns and working to adjust your strategy as your life inevitably evolves. 

If it feels overwhelming, if you are not sure how to get started, or if you just don’t have the time, don’t worry. This is not a journey you have to take alone: There are professionals who are excited to help. Advisors can do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to financial planning and can identify what rate of return—and strategic asset allocation—is needed to help keep you on track. Remember, if your goal is to create intergenerational upward mobility, a little bit of planning can go a long way—especially when you get started early.

This material has been prepared for informational purposes only. It does not provide individually tailored investment advice. It has been prepared without regard to the individual financial circumstances and objectives of persons who receive it. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC (“Morgan Stanley”) recommends that investors independently evaluate particular investments and strategies, and encourages investors to seek the advice of a Morgan Stanley Financial Advisor. The appropriateness of a particular investment or strategy will depend on an investor’s individual circumstances and objectives.

Morgan Stanley offers a wide array of brokerage and advisory services to its clients, each of which may create a different type of relationship with different obligations to you. Please consult with your Financial Advisor to understand these differences, or review our “Understanding Your Brokerage and Investment Advisory Relationships” brochure available at https://www.morganstanley.com/wealth-relationshipwithms/pdfs/understandingyourrelationship.pdf 

Alternative investments often are speculative and include a high degree of risk. Investors could lose all or a substantial amount of their investment. Alternative investments are appropriate only for eligible, long-term investors who are willing to forgo liquidity and put capital at risk for an indefinite period of time. They may be highly illiquid and can engage in leverage and other speculative practices that may increase the volatility and risk of loss. Alternative Investments typically have higher fees than traditional investments. Investors should carefully review and consider potential risks before investing.

© 2025 Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC. Member SIPC.

03/2025 CRC #4320378

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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HP’s chief commercial officer predicts the future will include AI PCs that don’t use the cloud

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December 7, 2025

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Increased focus on “privacy and security” may open the door for AI-enabled devices rather than rely entirely on cloud computing and remote data centers. 

“In a world where sovereign data retention matters, people want to know that if they input data to a model, the model won’t train on their data,” David McQuarrie, HP’s chief commercial officer, told Fortune in October. Using an AI locally provides that reassurance.

HP, like many of its devicemaking peers, is exploring the use of AI PCs, or devices that can use AI locally as opposed to in the cloud. “Longer term, it will be impossible not to buy an AI PC, simply because there’s so much power in them,” he said. 

More broadly, smaller companies might be served just as well by a smaller model running locally than a larger model running in the cloud. “A company, a small business, or an individual has significant amounts of data that need not be put in the cloud,” he said. 

Asian governments have often had stricter rules on data sovereignty. China, in particular, has significantly tightened its regulations on where Chinese user data can be stored. South Korea is another example of an Asian country that treats some locally sourced data as too sensitive to be housed overseas. 

Governments the world over, and particularly in Asia, are also investing in local sovereign AI capabilities, trying to avoid relying entirely on systems and platforms housed wholly overseas. South Korea, for example, is partnering with local tech companies like search giant Naver to build its own AI systems. Singapore is investing in projects like the Southeast Asian Languages in One Network (SEA-LION), which are better tailored to Southeast Asian countries. 

Asian AI adoption

Asia is HP’s smallest region, but also its fastest-growing. Revenue from Asia-Pacific and Japan grew by 7% over the company’s 2025 fiscal year, which ended in October, to hit $13.3 billion. That’s around a quarter of HP’s total revenue of $55.3 billion. (HP’s other two regions are the Americas; and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.)

McQuarrie also suggested that there was an opportunity to be “disruptive” in Asia. While many business leaders have been eager to embrace AI, at least rhetorically, actual adoption is proving more difficult. A recent survey from McKinsey reports that two-thirds of companies are still in the experimentation phase of AI. 

But McQuarrie believed that AI adoption in Asia could be “just as quick, if not quicker,” than other regions. 

Asia seems to be more comfortable with the use of AI, at least when it comes to users. An October survey from Pew found that fewer people in countries like India, South Korea and Japan reported feeling “more concerned than excited” about AI compared to the U.S. 

When it comes to convincing more companies to adopt AI, let alone AI PCs, McQuarrie said the answer was to make AI functions as seamless as possible, so “that it doesn’t really matter whether you understand that you’re embracing AI or not.”

“What we’re doubling down on is the future of work,” McQuarrie said. “The future of work is a device that makes your experience better and your productivity greater.”

“The fact that we’re using AI in the background? They don’t need to know that.”



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Trump administration waives part of a Biden-era fine against Southwest Air for canceled flights

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December 7, 2025

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The U.S. Department of Transportation is waiving part of a fine assessed against Southwest Airlines after the company canceled thousands of flights during a winter storm in 2022.

Under a 2023 settlement reached by the Biden administration, Southwest agreed to a $140 million civil penalty. The government said at the time that the penalty was the largest it had ever imposed on an airline for violating consumer protection laws.

Most of the money went toward compensation for travelers. But Southwest agreed to pay $35 million to the U.S. Treasury. Southwest made a $12 million payment in 2024 and a second $12 million payment earlier this year. But the Transportation Department issued an order Friday waiving the final $11 million payment, which was due Jan. 31, 2026.

The department said Southwest should get credit for significantly improving its on-time performance and investing in network operations.

“DOT believes that this approach is in the public interest as it incentivizes airlines to invest in improving their operations and resiliency, which benefits consumers directly,” the department said in a statement. “This credit structure allows for the benefits of the airline’s investment to be realized by the public, rather than resulting in a government monetary penalty.”

The fine stemmed from a winter storm in December 2022 that paralyzed Southwest’s operations in Denver and Chicago and then snowballed when a crew-rescheduling system couldn’t keep up with the chaos. Ultimately the airline canceled 17,000 flights and stranded more than 2 million travelers.

The Biden administration determined that Southwest had violated the law by failing to help customers who were stranded in airports and hotels, leaving many of them to scramble for other flights. Many who called the airline’s overwhelmed customer service center got busy signals or were stuck on hold for hours.

Even before the settlement, the nation’s fourth-biggest airline by revenue said the meltdown cost it more than $1.1 billion in refunds and reimbursements, extra costs and lost ticket sales over several months.



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Trump slams Democratic congressman as disloyal for not switching parties after pardon

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December 7, 2025

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Trump blasted Cuellar for “Such a lack of LOYALTY,” suggesting the Republican president might have expected the clemency to bolster the GOP’s narrow House majority heading into the 2026 midterm elections.

Cuellar, in a television interview Sunday after Trump’s social media post, said he was a conservative Democrat willing to work with the administration “to see where we can find common ground.” The congressman said he had prayed for the president and the presidency at church that morning “because if the president succeeds, the country succeeds.”

Citing a fellow Texas politician, the late President Lyndon Johnson, Cuellar said he was an American, Texan and Democrat, in that order. “I think anybody that puts party before their country is doing a disservice to their country,” he told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Trump noted on his Truth Social platform that the Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration had brought the charges against Cuellar and that the congressman, by running once more as a Democrat, was continuing to work with “the same RADICAL LEFT” that wanted him and his wife in prison — “And probably still do!”

“Such a lack of LOYALTY, something that Texas Voters, and Henry’s daughters, will not like. Oh’ well, next time, no more Mr. Nice guy!” Trump said. Cuellar’s two daughters, Christina and Catherine, had sent Trump a letter in November asking that he pardon their parents.

Trump explained his pardon he announced Wednesday as a matter of stopping a “weaponized” prosecution. Cuellar was an outspoken critic of Biden’s immigration policy, a position that Trump saw as a key alignment with the lawmaker.

Cuellar said he has good relationships within his party. “I think the general Democrat Caucus and I, we get along. But they know that I’m an independent voice,” he said.

A party switch would have been an unexpected bonus for Republicans after the GOP-run Legislature redrew the state’s congressional districts this year at Trump’s behest. The Texas maneuver started a mid-decade gerrymandering scramble playing out across multiple states. Trump is trying to defend Republicans’ House majority and avoid a repeat of his first term, when Democrats dominated the House midterms and used a new majority to stymie the administration, launch investigations and twice impeach Trump.

Yet Cuellar’s South Texas district, which includes parts of metro San Antonio, was not one of the Democratic districts that Republicans changed substantially, and Cuellar believes he remains well-positioned to win reelection.

Federal authorities had charged Cuellar and his wife with accepting thousands of dollars in exchange for the congressman advancing the interests of an Azerbaijan-controlled energy company and a bank in Mexico. Cuellar was accused of agreeing to influence legislation favorable to Azerbaijan and deliver a pro-Azerbaijan speech on the floor of the U.S. House.

Cuellar has said he his wife were innocent. The couple’s trial had been set to begin in April.

In the Fox interview, Cuellar insisted that federal authorities tried to entrap him with “a sting operation to try to bribe me, and that failed.”

Cuellar still faces a House Ethics Committee investigation.



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