A record of key decisions — their rationale, and their consequences.
The record that makes the Wealth Operating Manual and the Annual Wealth Operating Review possible, not the other way around. Every structural decision, on the day it was made: why, under what assumptions, what was rejected, and — the field most advisors skip — what would change our mind. This is an illustrative sample for a fictional family.
A dashboard reports what happened. A note says what was decided. Neither answers the question that actually matters five years on: why did we think this, and what would have told us we were wrong? Four fields make that answer retrievable instead of remembered.
Why, in the family's own goals — not just what was chosen, but what it was for.
The rates, law, and facts on the day of the decision — exactly what quietly goes stale.
What was considered and rejected, so the ground doesn't get re-litigated from zero.
The condition that reopens this decision. This is the field that makes review an act, not a re-read.
Held personally, the $2.0M death benefit would have landed inside an already-$8M estate — pushing it further past the point where the family's liquid assets could cover a federal estate-tax bill inside the nine-month window. Routing it through an irrevocable trust removes it from the estate and creates a liquidity pool that arrives exactly when the return is due, instead of forcing a sale of the business or the concentrated stock under time pressure.
The federal estate exemption is cut materially, the death benefit no longer covers the projected estate-tax liability as the estate grows, or Tom's insurability changes.
The order, not the components, is what the outcome hinges on. Selling first and moving after leaves the full gain exposed to Illinois sourcing rules; establishing and substantiating Texas domicile well ahead of a closing shifts a material share of that gain out of Illinois' reach. The same sale, the same buyer, the same price — sequenced differently, it is a different tax outcome.
A buyer's timeline forces a close before residency can be defensibly established, Illinois changes its sourcing rules for a sold business, or the family's residency facts drift in a way that would fail a challenge.
A single employer now represents a large, involuntarily growing share of net worth every vesting cycle. Waiting for a "better price" turns a diversification decision into a market-timing bet nobody asked to make — and concentration risk compounds the way debt does: it doesn't announce itself until it matters. A programmatic, bracket-aware sell-down converts an emotional decision into a mechanical one.
The position's share of net worth moves materially in either direction, the company's risk profile changes, or a life event (the move, the sale) creates a lower-bracket year worth accelerating into.
The family will pass through at least one genuinely low-bracket window — around the Texas move and before the sale closes — and converting inside that window locks in today's tax cost on dollars that would otherwise be taxed at a higher marginal rate on withdrawal, decades from now, on a schedule the family doesn't control.
DR‑002's timeline shifts and the low-bracket window closes or moves, conversion rules or bracket structure change, or an unplanned high-income year collides with a planned conversion.
Gifting appreciated business interests ahead of a sale locks in today's — lower, pre-sale — valuation for gift-tax purposes, and the valuation refresh just completed makes this a genuinely live window. But the sale's terms aren't set. Deferring is a decision, not an absence of one: a gift made ahead of a firm price risks being unwound or second-guessed once the number is real.
The business sale's terms (price, structure, timing) are set — at which point this entry is superseded, not edited.
When the sale terms are set, DR‑005 is not overwritten. A new entry is opened, and DR‑005 is marked superseded — the original reasoning for waiting stays on the record, next to what changed.
Shown here only to make the mechanic concrete: once a firm sale price exists, DR‑005's original condition for waiting has been satisfied, and the deferred question becomes an answerable one. The family's actual record will read this way when — and only if — that happens.
This is not the Decision Dashboard. The Manual's Decision Dashboard looks forward — what's coming, and what to review before it happens. The Decision Register looks backward — what was already decided, and why. Read together, a household can answer the only question that actually protects it over time: does what we're about to do agree with what we already decided, or does something need to be reopened first?
See it in context: the Wealth Operating Manual · the Annual Wealth Operating Review · how the review runs.
The Operating Manual (rev. 06) — where each confirmed decision lands in the ledger.
The Opportunity Register — where matters live before they become decisions.
The Annual Review — where every open trigger is re-checked, yearly.
Nothing yet. Entries are never deleted; a reversed decision stays in the record, marked superseded by the entry that replaced it.