The stakes are high for your retirement plan. Your life’s savings are at risk and odds are you won’t have any second chances if you make a mistake.
This is why we start with a discovery process to uncover what you value so we can create tangible goals. Put another way, we need to know where you want to go before we figure out how to get there.
Once we know what your goals are, we back into how you can reach your goals without running out of money.
Sadly, too many people stay up late worrying about this question: am I making the right financial decisions? Am I going to run out of money? This is often because their retirement plan cobbled together without a coherent strategy pulling it all together. They have been given a plan that is so full of complex jargon and irrelevant details that nothing is ever done with it.
This is not right! If you are at this point in life, you have worked hard for too long to worry about running out of money and feel confusion about your retirement plan. You deserve to have the confidence and clarity you need so you can spend time with the people you cherish most, while doing the things that are most important to you.
With this much at stake, you shouldn't have pieced together a retirement plan on your own by guessing at the right answers to questions such as...
Am I properly navigating retirement income planning?
What the best way is to lower my lifetime tax liability?
Do I actually have enough money to retire?
These are questions we answer for clients every day. To answer these questions, we begin by assessing your cash flow. Cash flow is simply how much money is coming in versus how much money you are spending. Almost every other consideration falls into place based on cash flow.
So, we start by assessing how much retirement income your portfolio can produce. Again, answering this one question gives us the context we need to accurately make most of our other planning decisions.
Next, we look at when, if ever, you would need to adjust your income up or down based on your portfolio income.
Finally, we take these calculations and numbers and use them to determine how to invest your money. We use hard calculations, not emotions and feelings to invest on our client’s behalf (this is less common than you may think).
But the initial work or developing your retirement plan is just the start. A retirement plan is a living and breathing document. We use an advanced financial planning software to build your plan, track its success rate, adjust for life's unknowns, and communicate the results with you in plain English.
To summarize, our retirement planning process includes:
Improving and tracking the success rate of your plan
Turning your retirement savings into a reliable paycheck
Developing a cohesive investment strategy to reduce risk and improve returns
Ongoing tax planning to reduce your tax bill
Aligning all the moving parts of your financial life to create a successful retirement
At this point you may be thinking, this sounds great, but how do you actually do this? We use a variety of specialized financial planning tools to help develop your plan and provide you with the best advice possible. However, most financial planning and investment management is an abstract service that many people have a difficult time visualizing.
So, depending on this situation we may use one of the tools shown below to help you answer your most pressing questions and stay on track to meet your retirement goals.
Monte Carlo Example
In some instances, we use a Monte Carlo stock market return simulation to answer one question: “Will I run out of money in retirement?”
Retirement Income Guardrails Example
In other situations, we condense all of the complicated charts and graphs that most advisors use into one simple report called the Retirement Income Guardrails. This answers questions such as…
How much do you need to retire?
How much can I withdraw from my portfolio each month or year without running out of money?
Do you need to make changes to how you are invested?
Can I buy a boat or vacation home or pay for some other retirement goal?
If your portfolio is up or down, can you take more money out or do you need to take less out?
Conclusion
A good retirement plan should be simple, but that doesn’t mean it is easy. Retirement planning is a journey that requires careful planning, expert guidance, and a commitment to continuous improvement. By understanding what you value, we can create concrete goals. With these goals in mind, we create a personalized plan so you can have the confidence and clarity you need to retire with peace of mind.
Whether you are just beginning to think about retirement or are well on your way, it is never too late to take control of your financial future. I invite you to schedule a call and start your retirement planning journey with me today. Together, we can turn your retirement dreams into reality.