Retirement Planning
A Retirement Plan Built to Last
Retirement shouldn't be built on speculation and best guesses. It should be built on a real plan. One shaped around your specific goals, built to hold up through market swings, rising costs, and shifting tax rules over a span of decades. The result: clarity, confidence, and real peace of mind.
What We Do
Know Your Number. Own Your Timeline.
The most common fear we hear from pre-retirees isn't about the market, it's uncertainty. "Am I actually ready? What if I retire too early and run out?" We start every retirement planning engagement with a clarity conversation, mapping your current assets, projected income needs, and target timeline, so you know your real retirement number instead of a generic estimate built for someone else's life. That number becomes the foundation for every decision that follows.
How We Build Your Income Plan
Once you know your real number, the work turns to building the plan around it. Here's how we turn clarity into an income strategy built to last. Each step builds on the one before it, moving from understanding your full picture to a plan you can actually rely on.
Clarity Conversation
We map your current financial picture, assets, income sources, expected expenses, and retirement timeline, to define your real retirement number and identify any gaps between where you are and where you need to be.
Income Architecture
We model your distribution strategy, sequencing withdrawals across account types, timing Social Security, and running Roth conversion scenarios to help minimize your lifetime tax burden.
Portfolio Alignment
We review your investment allocation through the lens of retirement income, not just growth, evaluating risk, liquidity, and asset location, which assets belong in which accounts to reduce drag and improve after-tax returns.
The Details That Often Get Overlooked.
Retirement planning isn't only about the accounts you're actively managing. It's also about the ones you've left behind, and the people you'll leave something to.
Bringing Old Accounts Into One Plan
Many pre-retirees reach out with a handful of old 401(k)s and IRAs scattered across former employers, accounts they haven't looked at in years. We review each one and help you decide whether consolidating makes sense for your situation, handling the paperwork and account transfers so nothing falls through the cracks along the way.
A Plan That Includes Your Legacy
A strong retirement plan accounts for more than your own lifetime. We coordinate with your estate planning attorney, including our own trusted partner at Peabody Law Firm, so your beneficiary designations, account titling, and overall plan reflect what you actually want to leave behind.
WHAT WE PLAN FOR
LIVIT
Longevity · Interest Rates · Volatility · Inflation · Taxes
LIVIT is our framework for the five variables every retirement plan has to account for. We build a strategy that holds up against all five, so you can actually live the retirement you've planned for.
L
Longevity
How long retirement lasts is unknown, and that uncertainty is real. Depending on what matters most to you, we often layer in vehicles built to pay lifetime income for as long as you live, and your spouse as well if you're married. No matter how long retirement lasts, or what's happening in the market, that income keeps showing up every month.
I
Interest Rates
Rates rise, rates fall, and your income shouldn't depend on which direction they go. We structure part of your plan to generate predictable income regardless of the rate environment.
V
Volatility
In retirement, market volatility isn't just about how your portfolio performs. It's about the "sequence of returns," and the order those returns arrive in. We plan for it with intention, structuring your withdrawals so a downturn early in retirement doesn't put your entire plan at risk
I
Inflation
A dollar today won't buy the same in twenty years. We build rising income into your plan from the start, so your purchasing power holds up as costs do.
T
Taxes
Where your money sits, and how it's withdrawn, can be the difference between keeping more or losing more to taxes. We structure both intentionally, not as an afterthought.
Retirement Planning FAQs
When should I start retirement planning?
The earlier, the better, though there's no single right moment. Many clients start a decade or more before retiring, while others come to us within a few years of their target date. What matters most is starting before the big decisions, like Social Security timing, need to be made.
Should I consolidate my old 401(k)s, or leave them where they are?
It depends on your specific plans, fees, and investment options, so we review each one individually rather than giving a blanket answer. In many cases consolidating simplifies things considerably, but we'll only recommend it if it's genuinely the better move for you.
How does Medicare and long-term care planning fit into my overall retirement plan?
Both are significant decisions with real financial consequences, and we help you think through timing, coverage gaps, and cost planning as part of your overall strategy. Learn more on our Insurance Planning page.
I have concentrated company stock or a deferred compensation plan with my employer. How do you help me navigate that going into retirement?
This comes up often. Concentrated stock and deferred compensation can trigger a major taxable event right at retirement. We build a strategy around that timing, whether that's a diversification plan, a tax-efficient selling schedule, or coordinating the payout with your broader income plan.
What's the best strategy for Social Security timing?
The right age to claim depends on your health, other income sources, and overall plan, not a general rule of thumb. We model out multiple claiming scenarios so you can see the real tradeoffs before deciding.
Your strategy starts here.
Take Control of What’s Next
A retirement plan built on guesswork is still just a guess. Let's replace the unknowns with an actual strategy built around your real number and the life you want to live. You'll work directly with Daniel and Rodney from the very first conversation, all the way through. Reach out today and let's start building your plan.
