We help you visualize your retirement possibilities
Common Questions We Help Answer
As your retirement years get closer, the most common questions become:
- Will I have enough monthly income to meet my monthly expenses?
- How do I maximize my Social Security?
- How do I pay for emergencies or other unplanned expenses?
- Will my retirement nest egg last throughout my lifetime?
- What is the impact of the SECURE Act on me and my heirs?
- How do I fund Long-Term Care?
- What will my tax situation be?
- (for Step Families) How do I protect my children if I’m the first to die?
Fee-Only Retirement Planning Services
Those in the post-55 age group are generally thinking about retiring in 5-10 years and have a whole host of different analyses that need to be performed to answer the questions above. We often call this the Decumulation or Distribution phase of retirement planning. This is time to explore your retirement possibilities, get serious about retirement planning with realistic goals, expectations and make any final adjustments needed to make your retirement plan a reality.
The model we use for retirement planning is well articulated in the article Main Pillars of Retirement Planning. Here is a summary of what our retirement planning includes:
Successful Aging
We provide a self-study guide that helps you determine if you are “retirement ready” and to help you optimize your personal satisfaction during your retirement years.
Income Planning
- Income and Expense analysis
- Income Gap analysis
- Social Security optimization
- Other Income strategies
Investment Planning
- Risk Tolerance assessment
- Asset Allocation
- Reducing Risk
- Reducing Investment Management fees
Healthcare
- Understanding Medicare options
Long-Term Care Planning
- Analyze Long-Term Care options
Tax Planning
- Understand current tax situation
- Roth Conversion analysis
- Evaluating withdrawal strategies to reduce tax burden
Estate and Legacy Planning
- Review of Will, Trust, Power of Attorney, Health Care Directive, and Medical Power of Attorney
- Review beneficiary designations on key accounts
- Project estate value
Retirement Planning Videos
Comprehensive Retirement Planning
Our software looks a broad range of retirement planning scenarios including different spending scenarios, multiple Social Security claiming strategies, and different investment portfolios. Using a Monte Carlo simulator, we can project the Probability of Success for a large combination of scenarios.
Watch this short video on the range of capabilities:
Also read a key Insights article on the SECURE Act of 2019.
Tax Planning in Retirement
Often overlooked is the most effective tax strategy for the spend-down of your assets in your retirement years. It makes a difference on what assets you spend first to minimize your tax liability. We can help you make the most tax-effective use of your retirement assets.
Watch a 1-minute video on the powerful tax planning features:
Also read a key Insights article on Retirement Tax Planning
Your Personalized Retirement Plan
The bottom line is, you have worked hard for the money you have and you want the best retirement that you can afford. Everyone’s situation is completely different. Our job is to navigate the complexity of retirement planning for you, show you various retirement scenarios, and make recommendations so you can have the best lifestyle possible.
This service offering will provide you with a written Plan with the various scenarios, recommendations, and an action plan for the implementation of the Plan. Similar to our financial planning services, your final Plan is available to you in a high-quality binder and also in electronic format for easy online access.
How to Get Started
You may use our scheduler to Contact Us for a complimentary “Get Acquainted” meeting. We ask that prior to meeting with us, you would complete some basic information to help us understand your current situation. Please visit our Financial Planning Process page and fill out the first questionnaire.
Risks During Retirement
You should also note that there are risks to any retirement plan. We recognize those and help you with a strategy to understand and mitigate those risks as best as possible. Some of the most common and most serious risks include:
- Sequence of Returns – This is the term used for when the stock market takes a serious correction or enters a bear market just before or during the first couple years of retirement
- Longevity – Running out of money too early
- Cash Flow – Dipping into long-term assets to make essential monthly payments may curtail your long-term investment goals, such as LTC
There are many other risks such as inflation, Social Security stability, and tax rates. All of these get factored into a “Stress Test” of your Retirement Plan projections.
Our Risk Mitigation Strategy
To help protect against market downturns as realistically as possible, we generally propose a “3-Bucket Strategy” for retirement planning:
- Income bucket to meet your monthly expenses
- Reserve bucket for emergencies and short-term cash “buffer”
- Investment bucket for your long-term expenses, such as Long-Term Care
If you would like to learn more about the age 55+ decumulation phase of retirement planning, you may read through our “Insight” articles and download two complimentary PDF publications found below toward the bottom of this page.
Relevant Retirement Planning PDF Resources
These complimentary PDFs are a deeper dive for those that are interested in this topic. Simply click on the images below to download to your computer.
“Engineering Your Retirement Plan” is a very detailed guide to developing a solid decumulation retirement plan. Designed for the engineer or technically-minded do-it-yourselfer. (55 +)
“Successful Aging” workbook for you and your spouse to work on together to help you determine your Retirement “Readiness.” (55 +)
Maximizing Social Security
Included in our comprehensive Retirement Planning is our Social Security Planning and Optimization service.