Wisdom in All Areas

    • Retirement Income Planning: Forecast retirement income from Pension, Social Security, and withdrawals from investments.

    • Retirement Feasibility: Analyze your retirement to see if it may withstand the test of time and the unknowns.

    • Inflation and Cost-of-living-adjustments: Review gap between income and expenses over time and work to close that gap with investment withdrawals.

    • Lifestyle & Goals: Planning for travel, hobbies, and desired retirement activities.

    • Debt Management: Paying off or managing debt before and during retirement.

    • Tax-efficient withdrawal strategy: Understand the tax implications, order of account withdrawals, and manage required minimum distributions (RMDs).

    • Roth Conversions: Timing conversions strategically to avoid higher tax brackets.

    • Capital gains and investment tax strategies: Tax loss harvesting, long versus short term gains, and direct indexing strategies.

    • Medicare considerations: Avoiding high taxable income to avoid IRMAA surcharges.

    • Charitable giving: Donor-advised funds and qualified charitable donations (QCD’s)

    • Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB): Options and how it works in retirement for you. (And your family)

    • Federal Employee Group Life Insurance (FEGLI): Option A,B,C, and D. What is best for you now, and in retirement.

    • Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program (FLTCIP): Should you enroll, coverage amount, guidance when premiums increase.

    • Pension Survivor Benefit: What strategy makes the most sense for your family.

    • Federal Buyouts: Usually this requires a quick decision. We provide guidance if this may make sense for you.

    • Postponed vs deferred retirement: Guidance on what applies to you and potential ramifications of this decision.

    • Job Analysis: Does it make sense to entertain an outside job offer and limit your future benefits.

    • Wills, POAs, and Medical Health Directive: Ensure clients have the necessary documents on file and up-to-date.

    • Trusts: Review feasibility of trusts and the best Trust strategy for you.

    • Tax-efficient inheritances: Structure assets to avoid Federal, State, and Estate taxes.

    • Inherited IRA’s: Understanding tax implications and withdrawal requirements.

    • Beneficiary designations: Ensure account beneficiaries are titled correctly to avoid unintended consequences.

    • Probate avoidance: Structuring assets to bypass probate to reduce delays, legal fees, and court involvement.

    • Legacy and charitable giving: Establish trusts, donor-advised funds, or bequests to support causes you care about.

    • Understand Income Sources: Pension and annuities, Social Security, Retirement and investment account withdrawals, rental income, part-time work, etc.

    • Sustainable withdrawal strategy: 4% Rule, bucket strategy, and dynamic withdrawals.

    • Budgeting and Expense Management: Identify fixed vs discretionary expenses and their long-term sustainability.

    • Emergency and Contingency Planning: Maintaining a cash reserve for unexpected expenses.

    • Risk Tolerance: Retirement projection and questions to determine appropriate risk level for each client and their accounts.

    • Account-based Investment allocation: Allocation based on liquidity needs from each specific account, rather than a blanket approach.

    • Investment Strategy: Determine the best asset allocation strategy using low cost index funds and mutual funds where viable.

    • Tax-efficient Investment strategies: Review benefits of Roth IRAs, tax-loss harvesting, direct indexing, municipal bonds, and tax-deferred annuities.

    • ESG and Impact investing: Focused on environmental, social, and governance factors.

    • Risk Management – Evaluating insurance needs (life, health, long-term care) to protect wealth.

    • Long-Term Care Planning: Preparing for potential healthcare needs, such as assisted living or nursing care.

    • Federal Employee Group Life Insurance (FEGLI): Guidance during and for retirement

    • Filing Age: Strategy based on life expectancy and family history.

    • Spousal and Survivor Benefits: Optimal strategy based on age differential, life expectancy, and family history.

    • Divorced Spousal Benefits: Guidance on requirements to qualify and analysis of one’s own benefit versus the divorced spousal benefit.

    • Federal Employee Health Benefit (FEHB): Understand various plans and how FEHB works in retirement.

    • Medicare Decision: Understand Medicare Part A, B, C, and D and which options make sense for you. Medicare Part B specifically requires a lot of long-term planning to make the right decision.

    • TriCare (Military Health Benefits): Understand how this works with Medicare in retirement.