In Retirement

Congratulations you made it to retirement!

This is typically where planning gets tough. You worked your entire adult life building a nest egg. Now you’re tasked with turning your life savings into an income stream. Most Americans use volatile investments as the basis for their retirement plans. How do you create a stable income to replace your paycheck from an asset than is at its core unstable?

Retirement Income planning is dramatically different that asset accumulation. It shouldn’t be a switch that is flipped at retirement. There is no one solution. It’s take balance, flexibility and planning to coordinate your assets to create stable, consistent retirement income.

Americans consistently underestimate the amount of time they need to plan in retirement – the average American couple retiring at 65 should plan on income for at least 30 years. Inevitably, you and your advisor (including us) will get some of the assumptions made for your plan wrong. There are simply too many variables (health, markets, interest rates, inflation rates, taxes, etc., etc., etc.) Having incorrect assumptions isn’t the problem. The problem is not knowing which changes could break your plan. And having a solution for how to deal with those changes. The goal isn’t to predict the future – the goal is to protect your retirement income from as many of the things that could go wrong. Retirement is not Math. & Math is not Retirement.

So how do we make sense of all this?

First, we evaluate your plan. What is the plan for creating income? How stable is the income – what could negatively affect it? What back up plans do we have in place?

Next, we will need to stress test your plan. What changes break your plan? What are the different ways to solve for these potential breaks.

We control the things that are within your control to provide consistent, reliable income and minimize the threats to your plan. The key is creating financial balance and flexibility. Just like you needed to have flexibility to roll with the punches or take advantage of the opportunities during your working years, you need the same flexibility to deal with whatever life will throw your way in retirement.

Interested in reviewing a stress test for your retirement plan?