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Twelve questions about your own plan. The “not sure” answers are the useful ones.

Not a quiz and not a lead form. Twelve things that decide what a family keeps, each of which you can check yourself. If the answer to any of them is “not sure”, that tells you where an afternoon would be well spent.

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Questions
12
Data collected
None
Time
About two minutes

The plan check

Answer honestly. Especially the “not sure” ones.

On several of these, “not sure” is a perfectly reasonable answer. Nobody prompts you to review a beneficiary form, and there is no statement that tells you whether a trust is funded. It gets its own response, because not being able to tell is a different finding from not having one.

  1. Question 1 of 12

    Do you have a will, signed within roughly the last five years?

  2. Question 2 of 12

    If you have a trust: can you say which of your accounts and property are actually titled in its name?

  3. Question 3 of 12

    Have you reviewed every beneficiary designation (retirement accounts, life policies, annuities) in the last three years?

  4. Question 4 of 12

    Do you have a financial power of attorney, and a health care power of attorney with a living will?

  5. Question 5 of 12

    Could the person who would have to act find your documents and account list tonight, without you?

  6. Question 6 of 12

    Do you know, roughly, what share of your retirement accounts is owed in future income tax?

  7. Question 7 of 12

    Has anyone modeled your income and tax picture for the years between retiring and required withdrawals starting?

  8. Question 8 of 12

    Is there a decided order in which you draw from your taxable, tax-deferred and Roth accounts?

  9. Question 9 of 12

    Has anyone shown you what happens to your income and your tax bill when the first of you dies?

  10. Question 10 of 12

    Does the plan have a stated answer for a serious market drop in the first few years of drawing income?

  11. Question 11 of 12

    Is there a stated answer for how extended long-term care would be paid for?

  12. Question 12 of 12

    Do you have a written plan, not a performance report, that says what you draw, what the tax picture is, and what happens if one of you dies first?

0 of 12 answered

About these

Fair questions about a tool on an advisor’s website.

  • Does the plan check collect my information?

    No. It runs entirely in your browser, there is no form and no email field, and nothing is sent anywhere. Reload the page and it is gone. You can print or screenshot the result if you want to keep it.

  • Why is there only one tool?

    Because a calculator is only as good as the table inside it, and the ones we would need (county probate fee schedules, the IRS life-expectancy table, current brackets and IRMAA tiers, regional cost-of-care figures) change every year. An out-of-date table is worse than no calculator, because the output looks authoritative and you have no way to check it. Until each one can be built against a current source, the answer comes from a person who can check it against your actual numbers.

  • What do I do with a lot of “not sure” answers?

    Nothing alarming. Several of these questions have no easy way to check. No statement tells you whether a trust is funded, and nothing prompts you to review a beneficiary form, so “not sure” is a reasonable answer rather than an admission. What it tells you is which of the twelve is worth an afternoon, and every result links to the explanation.

If something came up

A gap you can name is already most of the way to closed.

A Clarity Map Session takes whatever the check surfaced and answers it against your actual accounts and documents. Free, 30 minutes, no obligation.

Book a Clarity Map SessionOr call (614) 408-0004

30 minutes · No cost · No obligation