Our goal is to ensure that when our clients retire, they feel comfortable and confident in their retirement. This confidence is mainly due to their years of saving, investing, and maintaining discipline as it relates to financial well-being. Deferring their earnings in a tax-advantaged way, keeping a diversified investment allocation in good and bad markets, auto-saving through the months and years, and living within their means.
Now that they have achieved the milestone of retirement, usually, more questions will arise which often require the guidance of other tax and legal professionals such as a CPA or estate attorney. It can become complex and finding the right answers for their situation can be difficult.
Just as we do in the other stages, we will walk clients through their tax, estate and charitable planning concerns while serving as the point person. We will coordinate and facilitate discussions for you which can save you both time and money.
What might you need to consider at the point of retirement?
- Understanding Your Income and Distribution Strategy – It’s important to have a handle on your expenses, so that your withdrawals can be planned strategically for the next 20-30 years. You do not want to pay unnecessarily more in taxes in higher brackets on extra money withdrawn. Know your Social Security benefits and the rules of Social Security, as well as the cost of Medicare and health insurance, so you can pull from your investment accounts with certainty. We want to make sure your investments are allocated appropriately for your income needs as well as situated to withstand volatility and inflation for years to come.
- Reducing the Tax Burden – Let us guide you through tax withholding strategies and diversifying your sources of income to meet different goals in the future such as taking discretionary travel funds from a Roth IRA or healthcare expenses from an HSA. Tax evaluations and having a plan for paying Uncle Sam through the course of retirement is more important than ever.
- Establishing Estate Plans – Now is the time to review your legal documents and have more involved conversations about your wishes after you are gone. Working together to outline and communicate your plans to family members is vital to the success of generational wealth creation. We can walk you through estate document review and establishing a trust if needed for the protection and control of assets post death.
- Defining your Gifting Goals – Looking to transfer wealth to family members or to give beyond to organizations which you want to impact. We can talk through these scenarios and build you a gifting schedule for now or later depending on your wishes. We can help you determine how to do it most effectively through annual gifts, QCD’s, Donor Advised Funds, or charitable trusts.
Maintaining your financial health and wealth during decades of retirement and into the future so as to exceed your financial expectations is what we have been doing for investors since 1984. Family wealth creation and transfer allows us to work with multiple generations while passing on the values of disciplined saving and investing.
