Retirement Planning Services

Financial planning is about helping you organize your finances in a clear and actionable plan. It is a continuous service that helps you stay oriented on your goals. Generally:

• Clarifying your values and defining your goals,
• Benchmarking current reality,
• Creating action plans, and
• Implementing, reviewing, and updating recommendations.

Also known as financial independence, our retirement planning helps you plan for and achieve a day for when you can work as little or as much as you like. Ideally, we want you to have retirement income for life, with money leftover for a legacy.

• Improve and track the success rate of your plan,
• Turn savings into a reliable paycheck,
• Develop an investment strategy to reduce risk and improve returns,
• Ongoing tax planning to reduce your lifetime tax bill,
• Protect your legacy and establish an estate plan.

We work with you to determine the best fit Medicare plan for you and your family. Additionally, we review the Social Security claiming strategies that we believe will help you maximize your benefits throughout your retirement. 

The retirement income strategies we recommend consider the effects of taxes since different accounts create different tax issues. Your retirement income plan will account for all your income sources (and develop new ones) to help you pay less in taxes.

With surcharges for Medicare, and how much Social Security is taxed, it is possible to have a higher tax rate in retirement than when you were working. Our annual tax review includes:

• Analyzing tax returns,
• Analyzing Roth conversion strategies,
• Coordinating retirement income streams,
• Reviewing charitable giving strategies,
• Diversifying retirement saving accounts.

Risk management is all about protecting what is important. To us, this includes regular in-depth reviews of insurance policies, and making sure the right coverages are in place. It also means establishing an estate plan and putting in place a will, durable power of attorney, medical directives, and trusts (as needed). 

Our flat fee financial planning services do not include the day to day management of your accounts. However, we do make investment and retirement portfolio recommendations so that clients reduce risk, improve returns, and create a reliable income stream. When we make investment recommendations they are based on these principles:

• You do not have to beat the market to be a successful investor,
• Follow long-term investment ideals: reward requires risk, focus on total return, rebalancing matters, be patient,
• Diversify and keep costs at rock bottom levels,
• Be mindful of the effects of taxes.