Retirement Planning

For many people, retirement is their single largest financial goal and something they dream of throughout their lives. Retirement planning can best be described in three parts:

 

1. Pre-Retirement Planning

Throughout our career, we make a variety of decisions that will affect our retirement. The type of career you enter, the employer you choose to work for (and their benefits), your savings rates, and how you invest your savings are just some of the decisions that will impact retirement.

When building a financial plan, we ask you to envision the type of retirement you want. When will you retire? What kind of lifestyle do you want at that time? We then make recommendations to help achieve that goal, accounting for aspects such as taxes and inflation along the way. We then review and update this plan regularly to make sure you're on track.

2. Retirement Transition

Once you feel that you're ready to retire, there is a transition period. During this time, we review your retirement plan in great detail to make sure it will support the lifestyle you want. There may also be a transition period at work, if your employer asks you to train your successor. For some people, this means easing into retirement by reducing hours or switching to a part-time job. We also look to rebalance your investments, if necessary, and analyze Social Security or pension plans to determine your ideal time to start claiming benefits. 

3. Retirement!

Of course, after all this planning is retirement itself! But the planning doesn't end with your retirement party. We continue to monitor your portfolio, assist with cash flow management (determining how much to withdraw to meet your needs, and from which investments/accounts), and track requirements such as Required Minimum Distributions.