Retirement Planning
Planning for your career path may start at an early age, or you may not fully know what you want to be “when you grow up” until later in life. Once you find your calling, your education, any acquired industry certifications / designations, the quality of your work, your career advancement opportunities and how you manage your career are focused on providing a good life for you and your loved ones. However, with all the effort you put into your career path and earning potential, are you applying equal effort on how to position yourself well for the next stage of your life after your working years?
Planning for transition to retirement should not begin right before you want to retire. Ideally, planning for your retirement should begin as early as your 20s or 30s. If you were to ask most anyone in their 50s, 60s or older, they would strongly agree.
Realistically, very few people start the retirement planning process that young. The majority of our clients come to us in their 40s and 50s. They have realized how fast 15-20 years goes by and now they are starting to see the retirement light at the end of their work life tunnel. No matter your age or your financial starting point, it is important to have a detailed discussion on your path to pursue your desired outcomes.
A customized plan helps you understand if you are on track, behind or ahead of where you want to be. Planning for retirement should not be a guessing game when deciding when to retire and “hoping” you can sustain 25-35+ years without the same type of steady income you had during your working years.
How We Can Help
- Understand your goals: Through a personalized approach, we spend time to learn about your ideal retirement picture. It may be quiet while doing some occasional camping and staying close to your kids and grandkids. It may include an interest in frequent travel, new hobbies, volunteering at different organizations, or turning a long-time hobby of yours into a small business to supplement retirement. Even if it’s somewhere in the middle, documenting those goals will help frame the components of your plan.
- Analyze your current position: To plan a meaningful retirement, you need to know where you currently stand. With your assistance in providing information regarding your current assets we will outline your current situation and show where you are in your progression towards your retirement goals. We will factor in your current debt, pay-off rate if you have a mortgage, contribution rates, historical averages on returns, historical inflation numbers, and your current outlook with additional things such as social security estimates, pension estimates and any other items to be considered.
- Develop your plan: Based your current position, desired goals, understanding your risk tolerance and time horizon to your retirement age we will then create a customized retirement plan. The personalized plan will help create clear understanding of your investments, what’s needed to fund your retirement lifestyle, review any areas of risk and address any shortfalls.
- Implement your plan: As each client comes to us at a different stage, we will work with you and communicate how to implement your plan, discuss different phases of implementation for each item, and we will work hard to monitor and keep things on track. Our goal is to do everything within our control to make your transition as seamless as possible. There is no greater joy in what we do than the day we get to make that call and say, “When you are ready, you are in a position to retire.”
- Support you in pension, benefit decisions and Social Security options: While fewer and fewer employers have pension plans and have replaced them with employee-driven plans like 401ks and 403bs, there are some employers who still offer pension plans to their employees. We are well versed in evaluating pension plans from unions, federal pensions, state pensions, and their associated options. Even if you do not have a pension, we can review various options surrounding Social Security benefits - when to take them along with any other strategies available to utilize. We’ll be here if you need advice on government or employer pension and benefits: when to apply, how to apply, what to do with your funds, and much more.
- Partner with you in retirement and beyond: A long and fulfilling retirement considers multiple facets of your financial picture: healthy distribution rates for your assets to sustain retirement years, reviewing which health care plans / options are available to you, evaluating areas of risk and how to address long-term care, wealth transfer, providing for a surviving spouse and beneficiaries, legacy planning, and charitable giving. We have experience with them all and will help you understand how to address them as well as consult any additional industry professionals with specific expertise to assist you.
- Provide ongoing reviews: We believe that the best way to build relationships is to have regular periods of interaction. Whether it is reviewing your plan, talking about the markets, the economy or simply checking in on things going on in your life. Our loyalty is not to your money, rather our loyalty and focus is on you. You are a valued individual we are blessed to work with and care deeply about our clients.
Let’s take the next step in creating a retirement road map for life after work.
