Many investors worry about how the outcome of the presidential election will impact their investments.

But there’s another risk financial advisors are focused on — public debt, according to a new survey from Natixis Investment Managers.

Most U.S. advisors — 68% — rank public debt as the top economic risk, while 64% of advisors worldwide said the same, according to the survey of 2,700 respondents in 20 countries, including 300 in the U.S.

“No matter who wins the election, they’re convinced public debt is going to continue to go up,” said Dave Goodsell, executive director of the Natixis Center for Investor Insight.

The term public debt is used interchangeably by the U.S. Treasury with national debt and federal debt.

The government has borrowed to pay expenses over time, comparable to how an individual might use a credit card and not pay off the full balance each month. The U.S. national debt is now more than $35 trillion and growing.

The next U.S. president and Congress will inherit that government spending dilemma, as well as looming trust fund depletion dates for Social Security and Medicare.

More individuals now believe they are on their own when it comes to funding their retirements, the Natixis survey have shown, according to Goodsell.

Experts say there are certain moves individual investors can make to limit the financial exposure they have to those broader risks.

“You cannot control what Congress is doing, but you can control how you plan, how you save, invest and react to the news,” said Marguerita Cheng, a certified financial planner and CEO of Blue Ocean Global Wealth in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Cheng is also a member of the CNBC FA Council.

To diversify, investors may consider both U.S. and international bonds, said Barry Glassman, a certified financial planner and the founder and president of Glassman Wealth Services. Bonds that have longer duration tend to come with more risks. Glassman is also a member of the CNBC FA Council.

For investors who worry the country’s debt may lead to slow growth, it can help to add international exposure to a portfolio, Cheng said.

At the nation’s top schools, including many in the Ivy League, acceptance rates hover near all-time lows.

“College admissions only ever gets more competitive and there’s a lot of stress from families about the stakes and how to get in,” said Thomas Howell, the founder of Forum Education, a New-York based tutoring company.

For some families, getting their child into a top school is an investment, and to that end there is almost no limit to what they will spend on tutors, college counselors and test prep.

Meanwhile, as the sticker price at some private colleges nears six figures a year, some students have opted for less expensive public schools or alternatives to a degree altogether. For those willing to pay for a four-year, private college, it should be worthwhile, the sentiment often goes.

“The value proposition of higher education is splitting,” Howell said, “it’s either a top school or a real value.”

For this crop of college applicants, it’s “top 20% or bust,” he added.

As a result, universities in the so-called “Ivy Plus” are experiencing a record-breaking increase in applications, according to a report by the Common Application.

The “Ivy Plus” is a group that generally includes the eight private colleges that comprise the Ivy League — Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton and Yale — plus the University of Chicago, Duke, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford.

To get into this elite group of schools, many families look for outside help to get a leg up.

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“The consensus is it’s only worth going to college if it’s a life changing college,” said Hafeez Lakhani, founder and president of Lakhani Coaching in New York. 

“What hasn’t changed is people with enormous resources willing to invest over $100,000, which is about 20% of our clients,” Lakhani said. “This might be the single largest thing they’ve spent on other than a car.”

Lakhani Coaching’s clients spend an average of $58,000 on counseling, but some have spent as much as $800,000 over the course of several years, according to Lakhani.

At that price point, students receive “essentially a ‘SEAL-team’ level tutor through almost every class,” he said. Lakhani was equating the academic support with the highest level of organization and execution that epitomizes the training of a Navy Seal, the special operation force that stands for sea, air and land teams.

Lakhani charges $1,600 an hour for his services, the top rate at his company, and still, families often choose to work with him over the less senior coaches there, some of whom charge about $290 an hour, he said.

Even if he charged more, that dynamic likely would not change, he added.

Parents often say, “it’s worth the investment,” he added. “That word investment comes up over and over again.”

At Command Education in New York, counselors meet with students weekly starting in eight or ninth grade. Families are charged $120,000 per year, not including the Standards Admission Test (SAT) or American College Test (ACT) test prep. By graduation, they’ve spent roughly half a million dollars.

Command caps the clientele at 200 students worldwide, mostly on a first-come, first-served basis, although they will turn students away if they don’t think they can deliver the desired outcome, according to Christopher Rim, the founder and CEO.

“At the end of the day, results are most important,” he said.

To be sure, the business of college counseling is growing year after year, driven in part by increased concerns about college’s return on investment, which is making these specialists a worthwhile expense, according to IBISWorld, a market research firm. In 2024, total revenue reached $3 billion.

Plus, the number of counselors available to students has been steadily dwindling for years. Currently, the national student-to-counselor ratio is 405 to 1, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

Those that can afford outside help do have an advantage.

Children from families in the top 1% are more than twice as likely to attend an “Ivy Plus” college as those from middle-class families with comparable SAT or ACT scores, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

“Higher education is an imperfect meritocracy,” Lakhani said.

However, the wealthiest students hailing form the country’s top private schools are primarily competing amongst themselves as schools look to build a diversified class.

“When you are applying from an affluent family, the people you are competing against are people in a similar bucket,” Lakhani said.

The irony is most don’t want to admit that they’ve received private help, even if they are fortunate enough to get it.

“Every parent wants to say their child does it on their own,” Rim said.

A study by Harvard University-based non-partisan, non-profit research group Opportunity Insights compared the estimated future income of waitlisted students who ultimately attended Ivy League schools with those who went to public universities instead.

In the end, the group of Harvard University- and Brown University-based economists found that attending an Ivy League college has a “statistically insignificant impact” on earnings.

However, there are other advantages beyond income.

For instance, attending a college in the “Ivy-plus” category rather than a highly selective public institution nearly doubles the chances of attending an elite graduate school and triples the chances of working at a prestigious firm, according to Opportunity Insights.

Leadership positions are disproportionately held by graduates of a few highly selective private colleges, the Opportunity Insights report found. 

Further, it increases students’ chances of ultimately reaching the top 1% of the earnings distribution by 60%.

“Highly selective private colleges serve as gateways to the upper echelons of society,” the researchers said.

“Because these colleges currently admit students from high-income families at substantially higher rates than students from lower-income families with comparable academic credentials, they perpetuate privilege,” they added.

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Millions of Social Security beneficiaries will benefit from the 2.5% cost-of-living adjustment for 2025, set to take effect in January.

With that increase, the maximum Social Security benefit for a worker retiring at full retirement age will jump to $4,018 per month, up from $3,822 per month this year, according to the Social Security Administration.

But while those maximum benefits will see a $196 monthly increase, retirement benefits will go up by about $50 per month on average, according to the agency.

The average monthly benefit for retired workers is expected to increase to $1,976 per month in 2025, a $49 increase from $1,927 per month as of this year, according to the Social Security Administration.

And by waiting from full retirement age up to age 70, beneficiaries stand to receive an 8% benefit boost per year.

By waiting from age 62 to 70, beneficiaries may see a 77% increase in benefits.

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However, because everyone’s circumstances are different, it may not always make sense to wait until the highest possible claiming age, Blair said.

Prospective beneficiaries need to evaluate not only how their claiming decision will impact them individually, but also their spouse and any dependents, he said.

“You have to look at your own situation before you apply,” Blair said.

Also, it is important for prospective beneficiaries to create an online My Social Security account to review their benefit statements, he said. That will show estimates of future benefits and the earnings history the agency has on record.

Because that earnings information is used to calculate benefits, individuals should double check that information to make sure it is correct, Blair said. If it is not, they should contact the Social Security Administration to fix it.