Social Security

Every day, we make decisions that shape our financial future. Whether it’s deciding how to spend our time or choosing a career path, these decisions are a form of financial planning. Yet, one crucial aspect often goes overlooked: planning for Social Security benefits.

Unlocking the Potential of Social Security

Social Security can be a cornerstone of your retirement plan, providing a significant portion of your income in retirement. However, to fully leverage these benefits, it's essential to have a well-thought-out strategy.

Considerations for Maximizing Social Security:

  • Optimal Timing: Understanding the best time to start taking benefits can significantly impact your overall income.
  • Holistic Integration: Ensuring that Social Security works in concert with other retirement income sources.
  • Enhancing Benefits: Exploring ways to maximize spousal and survivor benefits.
  • Impact of Continued Employment: Assessing how working during retirement affects your benefits.
  • Tax Strategies: Develop approaches to minimize taxes on your Social Security income.

Without a strategic plan, you might miss out on opportunities to maximize your benefits, potentially jeopardizing your financial security in retirement.

Our Approach to Social Security Planning

At The Retirement Guys, we take a comprehensive approach to Social Security planning, ensuring that it is seamlessly integrated into your overall financial strategy. Here’s how we assist our clients:

  1. Understanding Your Needs: We begin by getting to know you and your unique financial situation. Our team conducts a detailed review of your goals, earnings history, and family circumstances to tailor our advice to your needs.
  2. In-Depth Benefit Analysis: Our agent analyzes your earnings record and projected benefits, identifying the best strategies to optimize your Social Security. We help you navigate complex scenarios, such as the impact of continued employment or changes in marital status on your benefits.
  3. Strategic Plan Development: With insights from our analysis, we develop a personalized Social Security strategy that addresses your specific concerns. You’ll gain a clear understanding of your benefits, the best claiming strategies, and how to maximize income for you and your family.
  4. Seamless Implementation: As you approach retirement, we guide you through the implementation of your Social Security plan, ensuring a smooth transition.
  5. Continuous Monitoring and Adjustment: We believe in an ongoing relationship, providing continuous support and regularly reviewing your benefits.

Social Security planning is an essential part of your financial journey. By making informed decisions and optimizing your benefits, you can enhance your financial security and enjoy a prosperous retirement. Let [Your Firm's Name] be your partner in navigating the complexities of Social Security, ensuring a strategy that supports your long-term financial goals.

 

Financial Planning

While many of us don’t realize it, we are constantly engaged in subconscious acts of financial planning. We plan how we can best invest the limited time we have at our disposal. Would the two hours we have best be spent visiting a friend at the hospital, or would it be better invested, say, by taking in that ball game? We do some longer-term planning too: Does it pay to invest the effort studying for a degree in Arts, or would we get a better return studying to pass the Bar exam?

So, why don’t we invest the time planning our finances?

Why Retirement Savings Accounts Matter

Selecting the right retirement savings accounts is crucial for a comfortable retirement. Starting early and choosing accounts that align with your retirement goals will make it easier to achieve your savings targets. Without the right accounts, reaching your retirement objectives can be challenging.

How We Can Assist You

As you embark on your retirement savings journey, you might have several important questions:

  • When should I start saving?
  • How much should I save?
  • What amount is needed for a “comfortable” retirement?
  • Which savings vehicle is best for my retirement?
  • How do I prioritize different savings options?

Our Financial Planning specialists are here to help answer these questions and guide you through your choices. We’ll help you understand which savings vehicles suit your goals and ensure compliance with contribution limits and distribution rules to avoid penalties.

Retirement Savings Accounts Overview

  1. Individual Retirement Account (IRA): IRAs are popular retirement savings tools that offer tax-deferred growth on your contributions. You contribute pre-tax dollars, and taxes are paid when you withdraw funds in retirement.
  2. Roth IRA Account: Roth IRAs allow you to contribute after-tax dollars, meaning withdrawals during retirement are tax-free. This account is ideal if you expect to be in a higher tax bracket in retirement.
  3. Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) IRA: SEP IRAs are designed for self-employed individuals and small business owners. They allow for higher contribution limits than traditional IRAs and offer tax-deferred growth.
  4. Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees (SIMPLE) IRA: SIMPLE IRAs are suitable for small businesses and require employer contributions, either through matching or non-elective contributions. They offer a straightforward savings option with tax-deferred growth.
  5. Traditional 401(k) or Roth 401(k) Plans: 401(k) plans, offered by employers, allow you to save pre-tax dollars (Traditional) or after-tax dollars (Roth). Employers often match contributions, enhancing your savings potential.

Value-Added Services

  • Cost-Effective Solutions: We ensure your retirement savings accounts are the most tax-advantaged and cost-effective for your situation.
  • Rollover Guidance: If changing jobs, we provide advice on whether to Rollover, Stay, Move, or Cash out from employer-sponsored plans.
 

Medicare & Insurance Benefits

If there’s one thing certain about life – it’s the uncertainty that living it brings. The best laid plans can sometimes come to naught! Even though you may think you’ve covered all the bases, life sometimes has a funny way of throwing you a curveball when you least expect it.  Luckily, while you can strive your best to plan wisely and thoroughly, you can also hedge your bets against the unintended through prudent Insurance Planning. 

Why Insurance Planning is Important

Without proper planning, be it Investment Planning, Retirement Planning, or Estate Planning, you’ll likely not invest successfully, retire comfortably, or leave a meaningful legacy for your beneficiaries. And without a well-thought-out Insurance Plan, every one of those facets of a financial plan could be exposed to unforeseen risks. 

Good planning helps you identify and plan for all the risks involved in every aspect of your financial life. Thoughtful Insurance Planning helps mitigate the risks you can’t foresee or those that you are unable to plan around! 

What We Can Do For You

They say that some things are better to have BEFORE the need is felt – even if they are NEVER ever used. Insurance is one of those things. Rather than seeing insurance as an “expense”, most people experience it as peace of mind. That’s the essence of our Insurance Planning service. 

Our Insurance Planning service covers:

  • Comprehensive Review: We’ll review existing plans, if you have them, to ensure they continue to fit your needs. But if you don’t have an insurance plan, we’re here to advise and guide you on which plans make best sense for you and your family.

  • Home, Car and other asset insurance: It is our belief that you shouldn’t over-insure, but you should never un-insure or under-insure either. The type (and value) of your home, car and other assets will determine what insurance, and how much of it, you should buy. 

  • Death-event security: If you have people that depend upon you being around for many years to come, like your spouse/partner, minor children, aged parents, we’ll advise on what life insurance policies best meet your needs.

  • Retirement income through annuities: Sometimes, the best way to guarantee retirement income is the simplest – Annuities. Of course, these products vary in terms and pay-out options and conditions. Our experts will help make sense of it all!

  • Critical illness protection: You may be in the best of health now, but illness has a way of sneaking up on the fittest amongst us. Let us help you determine if you need to insure against a critical illness and, if so, under what terms.

  • Disability and long-term care protection: Accidents, at home, at work, during your commute, can leave you severely disabled and financially stressed. As can debilitating illness! We’ll help you insure against such unexpected turn of events.   

  • Travel insurance: Sometimes, even the safest of travel plans can turn into nightmares. Whether it’s an illness or accident overseas, a missed flight, lost baggage or natural disasters that interrupt your plans – if you are insured, you’ll likely be less stressed about dealing with the consequences. 

  • Health, dental and wellness insurance: With family and personal medical care becoming more expensive by the day, it may be prudent to cover yourself and your family through appropriate health insurance plans. 

  • Funding children’s education: Even though your children are of tender age, sometimes insuring their lives may make good sense in the long-term, especially in helping to pay for college or university. Paying just a few hundred dollars a month in premiums now, could result in a windfall payment by the time your child is of college or university-going age. We’ll help you decide if this is a good option for you by doing the math!   

  • Insuring estate and succession plans: When structured correctly, insurance can be a great estate planning tool as well, especially when it comes to shielding your beneficiaries from paying taxes or fees on their inheritance.  Partners in business may also use insurance policies as a great financial tool to aid in succession planning. We’ll help you structure an insurance plan that makes sense for your needs. 

*The cost and availability of life insurance depend on factors such as age, health, and the type and amount of insurance purchased. Before implementing a strategy involving life insurance, it would be prudent to make sure that you are insurable by having the policy approved. As with most financial decisions, there are expenses associated with the purchase of life insurance. Policies commonly have mortality and expense charges. In addition, if a policy is surrendered prematurely, there may be surrender charges and income tax implications.

 

Retirement Planning

Long before retirement even hits our radars, we’re planning what type of education, skills training and professional designations we’ll acquire. We also spend a lot of time planning which industries are the best place to work in, and which employers to work for. Once employed, we carefully strategize our every career move, so that we progress to the top of the ladder in our respective fields.

Sadly though, while we focus most of our efforts on all these plans, we often forget to plan for “life after work”!

Why Retirement Planning is Important

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

What will retirement look like? Are we spending too much? What if we’re not 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 cover us through retirement?

If we don’t plan for retirement, we’ll never be able to prepare for it. And an ill-prepared retirement is bound to be one filled with financial stress and chaos!

What We Can Do For You

For our clients, retirement planning doesn’t 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 ensure your “Life after work” is as well-planned as your life prior to retirement.

Here’s what we do for you as part of our Retirement Planning service:

  • Your personalized retirement planning strategy: Everything we do for you centers around four pillars - Helping you plan to achieve your financial goals prior to retirement; Planning to ensure you have sufficient income during retirement; Putting plans in place to safeguard your Nest Egg and yourself against potential catastrophes; Planning for your legacy.
  • Understanding your goals: Through an intensely personalized approach, we understand what your retirement goals are.
  • Analyzing where you are at: To plan a meaningful retirement, you need to know where you currently stand. We’ll help you build an in-depth financial inventory to use as part of our retirement planning process.
  • Developing the plan: Remember all those questions you had on your mind – largely unanswered? Well, we’ll work with you to create a retirement plan that addresses every one of them. When we’re done, you’ll not only know what you need (income) to fund your retirement lifestyle, and what your investments will generate; but you’ll also know how to bridge the shortfall – if any.
  • Implementing the plan: As you move closer to retirement, we’ll work closely with you to ensure the plans are implemented in a phased and orderly manner. The goal of our Retirement Planning approach is to make transitioning into retirement as seamless and stress-free as possible.
  • Supporting you make decisions on pensions and benefits: Our retirement planning professionals will be right there when you need them, with help and advice on pensions and benefits (Government or Employer): Whether to apply or not? When to apply? What to do with those funds…and much more.
  • Looking out for you in retirement and beyond: Our Retirement Planning service isn’t done yet – not by a long shot! To live a long and fulfilling retirement, you’ll need help with many other facets of your life – Health Care, Insurance, Charitable Giving and Legacy Planning. When you need our advice, our specialists will know exactly how to respond!
  • Ongoing reviews: Our Retirement Planning service ensures that we maintain a long and enduring relationship with you. We’ll continue to monitor and review your retirement plans, and consult with you frequently about any changes or updates needed to address your evolving retirement lifestyle needs.
 

Estate Planning

People spend a lifetime accumulating assets and building an estate with the intention of passing it on to their heirs or charitable beneficiaries. Without proper planning, a person’s death can create significant hardships on the people for which the estate was created. 

For an estate to be passed on to the heirs, there could be settlement costs, such as probate fees and death taxes.   In some cases, where the death taxes are substantial, assets may have to be liquidated in order to pay them. Also, the actual transfer of assets could be delayed by probate proceedings that are bogged down if there are any contestable assets. 

A sound estate plan can eliminate many of these problems that arise during the settlement of an estate and help you accomplish the following:

  1. Ensure that your wishes are honored when you are unable to manage your own affairs.
  2. Communicate your wishes and expectations precisely to your family and heirs
  3. Provide for your family’s financial security
  4. Provide capital to meet immediate liquidity needs for settlement costs
  5. Facilitate the timely distribution of assets by avoiding probate proceedings
  6. Maximize the estate for transfer by minimizing  taxes and expenses 
  7. Ensure that all beneficiaries are named in accordance with the most recent will or Avoid publicity by keeping the proceedings out of the public record.
  8. Conserve the estate so later generations can benefit.
  9. Leave a charitable legacy with a gift of assets or a trust.

Basic Estate Planning Arrangements

One of the primary objectives of an estate plan is to ensure that your assets are transferred in accordance with your wishes.  A qualified attorney can help you determine which estate planning arrangement will work best for you.

Will

A will is a legal document drafted in accordance with state laws wherein the estate beneficiaries are named. A will is subject to probate which means that all assets are distributed under the supervision of the court. An executor is named in the will and is responsible for ensuring that the provisions of the will are followed.  Absent a will, the state becomes the executor of the estate and will name guardians and beneficiaries according to its laws.

Trust

A trust is a form of ownership that is set up by the estate owner to receive and hold title of the assets prior to their distribution to the heirs.  A trustee is designated to manage the trust in accordance with its provisions.  There are several different kinds of trusts, each designed to serve a specific purpose such as to avoid probate, minimize estate taxes, or manage the assets of the estate.

Titling Assets

There are several ways to title assets that will result in different methods of asset transfer.  A common form of asset title is Joint Tenancy which allows the asset to transfer, automatically and without probate, to the person named jointly in the title. 

Contractual Transfer

Assets such as life insurance and qualified retirement plans transfer by contract to named beneficiaries outside of probate.

Estate Planning Guidance

In many cases, a simple will can suffice as a way to ensure the desired transfer of assets and guardianship of children. Estates of a larger size or that contain illiquid assets such as real estate, may require the guidance of a qualified attorney to structure the most appropriate planning arrangement.  An estate planning attorney can also arrange your estate in a way that can eliminate any potential friction among heirs.  If the estate is of a significant size that might subject it to estate taxes, then an attorney can suggest arrangements that will minimize them. 

Estate tax laws change periodically as do the individual’s financial situation which can make an estate plan obsolete if it is not reviewed periodically.  A good estate planning team, consisting of an attorney, a trust administrator, a life insurance agent and an investment advisor representative, can provide the necessary guidance to ensure that your estate plan is current and operable.

For more information on planning your estate, contact us today.

 

Investment Planning

You and your family (partner, spouse) work hard to accumulate assets over a lifetime. The hope is that, when the time comes for you to leverage those assets, they’ll be there for you to benefit from. Our Investment Planning service is all about helping you manage your financial assets using a prudent and conscientious approach.

Why Investment Planning is Important

Individuals and families depend on the assets they accumulate over the years to sustain them later in life – in retirement or in the event of an unforeseen need. However, not everyone has the time to monitor and manage those assets. And even if you do have the time, you might not have the skills and patience to do so. Without diligent investment planning during your accumulation phase, you could leave your assets exposed to erosion, destruction, or depletion. The result: You might not have those assets (or a significant portion of them) in times of need.

What We Can Do For You

Our Investment Planning service covers:

  1. Determining your objectives: Not everyone has the same, or similar, financial objectives when embarking on accumulating their wealth. To manage your investments prudently, we first need to understand what your goals are for initially accumulating and subsequently using those assets.

  2. Helping you choose your optimal asset mix: There are literally hundreds of asset types that you can invest in, and as many ways to do so! Depending on your goals for asset use, we’ll help you choose the right asset mix that will most efficiently and effectively accomplish those goals.

  3. Assisting you in creating a strategic asset allocation plan (SAAP) and tactical asset allocation plan (TAAP): Successful investing is all about successful planning. We’ll help create both long-term (strategic) and short-term (tactical) asset allocation and management plans in line with the recommended asset mix.

  4. Building your portfolio: Today, thanks to DIY investing, anyone can create a discount brokerage account and start buying assets to include in a portfolio. However, that’s not the most efficient or effective way to create long-term wealth. Using the allocation mix agreed upon, we’ll build a results-focused portfolio of individual investments (Stocks, Bonds, Mutual Funds, ETFs, and Alternative investments) that will help you achieve your financial objectives.

  5. Managing and monitoring the portfolio: Unless you have the time and patience to dedicate to portfolio management, it can’t be done effectively. We know you have other things to do – such as living your life, so we’ll watch over the portfolio for you, making sure it never strays from delivering the objectives you desire.

  6. Measuring performance: We track the performance of your investments under our care and constantly measure how they are performing against industry-recognized benchmarks.

  7. Managing risk: Our Investment Planning strategy includes appropriate risk mitigation as part of this service. Where there are new risks to the portfolio, we’ll consult with you and propose timely and appropriate actions to manage and mitigate them.

  8. Reviewing, reporting, recommending changes, and revisions to the strategy: Our Investment Planning service is based on constant and open communication and collaboration with our clients. Through regularly scheduled reporting and conversations, we ensure that your investment plans are continually reviewed, revised, and updated to meet your changing circumstances.