655 Metro Place South, Suite 440 · Dublin, OH 43017
Reserve your spot for our next webinar →Within a few years of retiring, or just past it
For decades money came in every month whether you thought about it or not. Then it stops, and every decision reverses. That reversal is the whole problem, and almost nothing about the advice you got while you were saving applies to it.
If this sounds familiar
Nothing below is a diagnosis. It is the list of things people in your position say out loud once they stop performing confidence about it.
You are fairly sure the order you draw from your accounts matters, and not sure what the right order is for you.
You have heard wait until 70 for Social Security. You have also heard that is wrong for some people, and you do not know which one you are.
You found out at your golf league, not from your advisor, that required withdrawals at 73 could push you into a higher bracket and raise your Medicare premiums.
When you call your advisor you get performance numbers. What you have never been handed is a written plan.
You lived through 2008 as an earner. You do not know what a 30% drop feels like when nothing is coming in.
Where it usually goes wrong
Each of these is a way the instruments actually behave. None of them requires anybody to have done anything stupid, which is exactly why they are so common.
01
A portfolio built to grow during your working years is rarely the right one for a stage where income, liquidity and risk tolerance have all changed. Reviewing its performance answers a question you have stopped asking.
02
Between the last paycheck and the first required withdrawal there are years when your taxable income is unusually low. That window is the single largest planning opportunity most retirees have, and an advisor who does not do tax planning has no reason to notice it.
03
Filing status changes, one Social Security benefit stops, and the survivor’s brackets narrow. It is the most predictable financial event in a marriage and the one least often planned for.
What we would actually do
Every plan runs through all five layers of PILOT, in the same order, every time. What changes by audience is what each layer is actually looking for.
Check whether your investments still match the job they now have, rather than the one they were bought for.
Work out where income comes from, in what order, and what it is taxed at, across the remaining decades, not this April.
Run the plan against a bad decade, a health event, and the death of either spouse first, so you already know what you would do.
Check that what you have signed and how your accounts are titled actually agree with each other.
Decide what a long-term care need would be paid from, and whether that is savings, a policy, or a plan to spend down in a particular order. This is the layer most retirement plans have no answer for.
Plain answers
The most valuable years for tax planning are the ones between your last paycheck and your first required withdrawal, so the answer is usually earlier than people think, often three to five years before you stop working. Once required distributions start, several options have closed permanently.
Most of the people we work with had one. The question is not whether yours is good at what they do; it is how much of your retirement is inside their scope. If your advisor does not touch your tax return or your estate documents, then two of the four disciplines have nobody’s name against them.
The Clarity Map Session: about 30 minutes, no cost, no obligation. You leave with a written picture of where your income comes from, what tax is owed on it and when, and whether your documents and titling agree. Whether you hire us afterward is a separate conversation.
Start here
A Clarity Map Session is 30 minutes, costs nothing, and produces a written picture of your income, your future tax bill and your estate documents. Whether you hire us afterward is a separate conversation.
30 minutes · No cost · No obligation
