The aim of our retirement income planning process is to develop strategies to potentially replace your working income with retirement income from other sources such as Social Security, investments, and part-time passion-driven work. To do this, we have three distinct steps: First, we’ll help you determine your retirement income gap. Second, we’ll assist you in creating your retirement income plan. Third, we’ll meet regularly to adjust and adapt your income plan.
As you prepare and then transition into retirement, one of the most formidable and difficult transitions is replacing your working income. For most of your life you’ve paid your bills, enjoyed vacations,and invested for retirement from your cash flow created through your professional career.
At retirement, you’ll need to transition to income that comes from a variety of other sources such as Social Security, pensions, investments, annuities, and more. Will it be enough to live on? How do you ensure you don’t run out of money?
Will you have an income gap? The first step in determining if you have an income gap is to identify your guaranteed sources of income through Social Security or other sources such as a pension. We can help you determine the optimal age to retire and when it’s best to take Social Security based on your specific situation.
Next, we determine the income that you need and want. What is the gap between your guaranteed income and your desired income? That is your income gap.
As we work with you, we help you to know where your income is coming from and when. Strategically, we draw down certain assets before others, often for the tax benefits. Bucket #1, your short-term bucket, holds your current guaranteed income sources (Social Security, pensions, annuities) and enough cash to make up any shortfall to guarantee your income for short term needs (generally for about 3 years).
Bucket #2, your mid-term bucket, holds conservative income and guaranteed strategies that we will grow and use to replenish bucket #1 at the end of the first three to six year period. Bucket #3, your long-term bucket, holds long-term legacy assets that are designed to participate more fully in market gains. Bucket #3 is usually subject to greater market risk than the other buckets and is often used during retirement for new cars, vacations, or other meaningful experiences.
- Understand Your Options for Social Security
- Identify Strategies to Minimize Retirement Taxes
- Clearly Uncover and Define Your Retirement Income Needs
- Isolate and Identify the Threats That Can Derail Your Retirement Income Plan
- Get a Realistic Snapshot of Your Retirement Income Gap
Our Institutional Partners
Over many years with hundreds of clients we’ve built a specific process that allows us to help you create and continually adapt your income plan so it stays relevant and effective. We call this our DREAM Experience.
To create your income plan, we start by sitting down with you in a Discovery session. This complimentary meeting allows us to get to know each other. It creates an environment for you to get to know our team and process and allows us to understand what you are trying to accomplish and see if our expertise would match your situation. Through additional meetings we collect the necessary data to have a complete understanding of your objectives and current situation, then put together an income and investment plan to get you where you want to go.
For clients who are implementing an income plan we meet regularly to assess and adjust your plan to meet new retirement plans or circumstances. These meetings often occur twice per year. For some of our long-term clients, we’ve met twice per year for more than twenty-five years.
The Definitive Guide to Retirement Income Planning
Our complimentary guide will walk you through how to transition from a monthly paycheck to retirement income.
