Retirement Planning

Long before retirement even hits our radars, we plan what type of education, skills training, and professional designations to acquire. We also spend a lot of time planning in which industries are the best to work and which employers for whom to work. Once employed, we carefully strategize our every career move, so that we progress to the top of the ladder in our respective fields. While we focus most of our efforts on all these plans, we often forget to plan for life after work.

Everything we do – from choosing a career to managing career progressions at our employers – is presumably so we and our loved ones can have a better life. If we fail to plan for life after work, all of the plans and effort we put into our working lives could be jeopardized.

There are numerous questions that typically arise when people think forward to retirement. What will retirement look like? Are we spending too much? Are we saving enough? How frequently should we be saving? Could we run out of money in retirement? Are we investing in the right places? How much will we need in retirement? Will government and employer pension plans provide enough income for us through retirement? Should we prioritize college savings over retirement savings or vice versa?

These are questions that, if addressed individually, can be confusing and in some cases conflicting. If you fail to plan for retirement, it may be difficult to fully prepare and address all of these questions in the best manner. An integrated financial plan can help you to answer these questions and build a road map towards the financial independence that you strive for in retirement.

For our clients, retirement planning does not start at retirement; it starts much before. Our retirement planning service takes a long-term view of your financial wellbeing. We use a life-cycle approach to make sure that your life after work is as well planned as your life prior to retirement. We help you to build a plan that will provide the confidence of financial independence before you decide to begin your journey in retirement.

Here’s what we do for you as part of our retirement planning services:

• Your personalized retirement planning strategy: Everything we do for you centers around four foundational pillars – 1) Helping you to achieve your financial goals prior to retirement; 2) Accumulating assets and building a plan to provide sufficient income during retirement; 3) Risk planning to protect you, your plan, and your assets from potential pitfalls that might upset a happy and independent retirement; 4) Legacy planning for those that choose to leave behind assets for their loved ones or charities.
  
  Understanding your goals: Through an intensely personalized approach, we understand your retirement goals. This certainly includes the amount of income you might need but also expands into lifestyle, family structure, healthcare, and all of the stages of life that your retirement journey may include.
  
  Gap analysis: To plan a meaningful retirement, you need to know where you currently stand. We will help you build an in-depth financial inventory. We will provide you with a clear picture of where you are in regards to meeting your goals and the steps necessary to bridge any gap that may occur.
  
  Developing the plan: Remember all those questions that you had on your mind? There may even be some that you did not know to ask. We will work with you to create a retirement plan that addresses each one of them. When we are done, you will better understand how each of the pieces fit together. We will help you determine the amount of assets that you will need to accumulate to generate the income required to fund your desired retirement lifestyle. We will also help you to understand what your current assets would be projected to grow to based on expected rates of return and your current savings rate. If there is a projected shortfall, we will help you design a plan to address it.
  
  Implementing the plan: We will coach you along the way in both meeting your savings goals and investing your assets to provide the necessary returns to meet your accumulation goals. As you move closer to retirement, we will work closely with you to adjust your investments from the accumulation stage to the income stage. We will also help you to address questions unique to the retirement stage including Social Security, healthcare including Medicare and long-term care planning, and distribution strategies to help you to minimize taxes. The goal of our retirement planning approach is to make transitioning into retirement as seamless and stress-free as possible.
  
  Supporting you to make decisions on pensions and benefits: We will be right there with you when you need advice on pensions and benefits whether through the government or your employer. This includes filing for Social Security, healthcare questions including Medicare and long-term care planning, and deciding on the best strategies when provided different options from employer pension plans.
  
  Looking out for you in retirement and beyond: Our retirement planning service has only just begun when you retire. To live a long and fulfilling retirement, you will need help with many other facets of your life beyond just generating retirement income – healthcare, insurance, legacy planning, and perhaps even charitable giving. We even work with many clients in later stages of their lives when they begin to transition financial responsibilities to family members. We will be there with you every step along the way.
  
  Ongoing reviews: Our commitment is for a long and enduring relationship with you. We actively monitor and review your retirement and investment plans and consult with you frequently about any changes or updates needed to address your evolving retirement lifestyle needs.