A couple who turned a modest $1,080 investment into $204,000 over three decades now stands at the threshold of retirement, unsettled by the prospect of tax law changes arriving in 2027. Their question — whether to sell before the rules shift — reflects a timeless human anxiety: the fear that what has been carefully built might be quietly undone by forces beyond one's control. The answer, as it often is in long-term investing, is that patience remains the wisest counsel, and that the change they fear does not reach back to touch what they have already earned.