Start Your Retirement Planning Today!
Whether you’re 15 or 50 years into your career, it’s never too early to start retirement planning.
As you prepare to retire, consider the following questions:
- What are your lifestyle goals for retirement?
- What are your retirement income needs?
- How much risk are you willing to take to meet your financial objectives?
- Do you have the right investment time horizon?
- How will withdrawals and inflation affect your portfolio?
- What investment strategies will set you up for success?
- Do you know the expected return of your assets?
- Are you taking too little or too much risk?
- Do you find yourself neglecting tax diversification?
- Are you taking advantage of benefits like stop-loss guarantees, tax-free withdrawals, and flexible withdrawals?
Your retirement plan is one of the most crucial financial plans you’ll make in your life, and it is an ongoing process. If done thoughtfully, you can be confident that you’ll have a comfortable, secure, and fun retirement.
On the flip side, underplanning can cause major stress and hamper your quality of life down the line.
Fingerprint Financial Planning™
At Prosperity, we’re committed to learning your Financial Fingerprint™ before making recommendations about products and services.
JUST ONE CONVERSATION CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOR THE BETTER
We’ll spend 30 minutes getting to know you—your situation, needs, and vision—then offer a strategic plan to reach your goals.
The first step to retirement planning is setting your sights on your big-picture goals. From a broader financial perspective, you can design your retirement plan around a combination of these categories:
Avoid running out of money
This is a universal retirement goal—as well as the number one retirement fear.
A solid retirement plan can help you feel more confident in living comfortably in retirement without running out of money.
Maintain quality of life
You’ve worked hard, saved your money, and now you’re ready to enjoy the fruits of a long and productive career.
We understand that it’s your goal to maintain, or better yet, improve, your retirement lifestyle.
Protect wealth and legacy
Legacy planning involves the transfer of wealth and assets from you to your heirs or to philanthropy.
Depending on the size of your estate, this plan may be very simple or very complex.
What are your retirement income needs?
The next step to retirement planning is figuring out your post-retirement spending plan. It’s critically important to be realistic and thorough when projecting how you plan to spend your money.
After outlining your retirement spending strategy, you can start to define the required size of your retirement portfolio.
Consider all possible outlays that can easily be overlooked or underestimated, such as:
- Whether your mortgage is paid off
- Whether you want to buy a second home
- Whether you want to fund your children’s or grandchildren’s education after retirement
- Whether you want to help your children buy their first home
- Unforeseen healthcare expenses
- Travel, golf, and hobby expenditures
Do you have the right investment time horizon?
Your investment time horizon is an estimation of how long your assets need to last. This is commonly based on your life expectancy, but you also need to account for dependents, such as a younger partner.
This graph illustrates your probability of living to a specific age if you’re 65 years old today. We recommend that you factor in the longest realistic time horizon that you’re likely to face. As time progresses, it’ll become increasingly difficult to make up for poor retirement planning.
Your investment time horizon will be affected by two costs: distributions and inflation.
It’s a common error to underestimate the impact of distributions and inflation.
- Distributions can affect the long-term revenue potential of your investments.
- Inflation can erode the value of your investments, especially if your portfolio is heavily weighted toward fixed-income products like bonds.
If not properly accounted for, distributions and inflation can decrease your purchasing power over time.
How can I minimize the retirement tax hit?
As a retiree, you will likely rely on a few different sources of income; most commonly, these are Social Security benefits, distributions from IRAs and retirement plans, and funds from savings and other investments. Unfortunately, you’ll still continue to pay taxes in retirement. Luckily, there are ways to minimize what Uncle Sam takes from you in your golden years.
ESTABLISH RESIDENCY IN A TAX-FRIENDLY STATE.
Alaska, Washington, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nevada, Texas, and Florida levy no personal income tax. New Hampshire and Tennessee don’t tax wages, only interest and dividends, but both are set to eliminate those taxes soon.
Moreover, states are federally prohibited from taxing residents on retirement benefits earned in a different state. For instance, earning a pension in California or New York and relocating in retirement to Florida or Texas avoids state tax on this income.
AVOID OR POSTPONE RMDS.
If you are at least 72, you aren’t required to pay taxes on required minimum distributions (RMDs) from your IRAs and other retirement accounts if you transfer the funds to a charity. Your IRA trustee or custodian must transfer the funds directly to an IRS-approved public charity, and you must receive written acknowledgment from the charity for your contribution. There is a $100,000 annual limit per individual. If you are married, each spouse has a separate $100,000 limit.
We help you plan ahead for RMDs from IRAs and other retirement accounts, Social Security, and Roth IRA conversions. We’ll find your best combination of taxable and tax-advantaged income streams taking into account the tax disparity between capital gains and qualified dividends, regular income and tax-free accounts.
CONSIDER DEFERRED ANNUITIES.
You can postpone the need to take RMDs by investing in a special deferred annuity. You can use up to $135,000, but no more than 25% of your account balance, from your IRA or 401(k) to buy a qualified longevity annuity contract (QLAC) within the retirement account. Funds allocated to the QLAC are exempt from RMD calculations.
DELAY SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS.
If you delay the receipt of benefits until age 70, you’ll earn additional credits to boost your monthly benefits at that time. The benefits are either fully tax-free or are included in your gross income at 50% or 85%, depending on your other income.
DON’T FORGET THE ESTATE TAX.
Consider our estate tax planning services to help you avoid the 40% tax rate that applies to taxable estates. By being mindful of the estate tax and structuring your gifts and bequests in a tax-efficient way, you’ll enjoy the largest amount possible to spend toward making your retired years the most memorable time of your life.
You have your ideal retirement vision in mind, and we’re here to help you get there. We’ll help you create an informed retirement strategy, including:
- Budgeting and cash flow forecasting well into your 90s
- Planning which assets to tap and when for income, tax-efficiency
- Investment risk and return targets that reflect your needs
- An estate plan that provides for your loved ones and establishes your legacy
- If you have a business – a succession plan that works for all involved
As life ebbs and flows, we can make the tactical moves and update your plan to match your goals and priorities along the way.
Proper planning is a huge factor in achieving your desired retirement lifestyle after years of working and saving. It isn’t just about building a portfolio—it’s about securing a happy and comfortable future.
If you have any questions or would like to learn more about Prosperity Financial Group, please fill out the form below and we’ll get back to you shortly. We look forward to hearing from you.
Book your complimentary consultation
We’ll help you make sure that your retirement strategy aligns with your current and evolving priorities.
Get in touch today to start the conversation!
What investment strategies will set you up for success?
No one is immune from the anxiety of retirement planning—not even high net worth individuals!
To fund a comfortable retirement, a successful investment strategy balances risk and returns. After you exit employment, you will depend entirely on your savings and investments, unless you have income-generating real estate or other passive assets.
Asset allocation is the strategic division of your investments among different asset classes (think stocks, bonds, real estate, cash, and cash alternatives).
Asset allocation is a risk-control measure; by diversifying your investment portfolio, you have more options for maximizing returns and minimizing risk. It’s the biggest determining factor in the kind of portfolio returns that you’ll see.
There is no one-size-fits-all recommendation when it comes to asset allocation. Different investors have different retirement plans, risk tolerances, investing styles, and financial goals.
You’ve heard it before: max out any employer-sponsored retirement plans, at least up to the company match.
When we meet with you one-on-one, we’ll discuss your investment knowledge and comfort level with choosing investments. We offer 401(k) investing support for all levels of investing experience, and we provide fiduciary advice based on your goals. If you’ve accumulated several 401(k) accounts over the course of your career, we can help you roll your investments into an IRA.
Our Fiduciary Advisors will provide guidance based on future income needs, unique financial conditions, and long-term trends — empowering you to make better investment decisions.
Annuities are long-term investments issued by insurance companies, designed to help protect you from the risk of outliving your income.
Annuities can be enhanced by riders. A rider is an enrichment that allows you to tailor your contract to suit your financial requirements, your comfort with risks, and even your medical conditions. Many riders are designed to offset some of the disadvantages in owning an annuity.
Annuities and riders are designed to help protect what’s most important to you. For example, what happens if you’re no longer working, it’s a bear market, and your investments aren’t doing as well as you had hoped? Through lifetime income riders and/or annuitization, you can minimize your total risk exposure with periodic payments that can last for life.
Life insurance can be a powerful addition to your retirement plan. It provides financial protection for your family — everyone should have it, especially if you have kids! Insufficient insurance coverage exposes you to greater financial risk — which can quickly lay waste to a large amount of accumulated wealth.
Term life insurance guarantees the payment of a death benefit if the covered person dies during a specified term. Policies can last from five to 30 years. They’re often a more simple option, and are more affordable than permanent life insurance.
However, permanent life insurance may work better for you if you’d prefer lifelong protection and a cash value component.
Both policies can be useful for estate planning purposes; for instance, you can leave money to your heirs or to charity. With the right life insurance strategy, you can safeguard the things you care about, while creating opportunities for your wealth to go further for the causes and people who mean the most.
Unlike most sources of retirement income, Social Security benefits are adjusted periodically for inflation.
Your Social Security benefit is based on two major factors:
- Your average earnings over your working career
- The age that you begin taking your benefits
The Social Security Administration has increased the age at which full retirement benefits become available: if you were born between 1943 and 1954, your full retirement age is 66. Full retirement age increases in two-month increments thereafter, until it reaches age 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later. If you can postpone your first payment til age 70, you’ll enjoy the full benefits that are as much as 8 percent higher.
BOOK A COMPLIMENTARY RETIREMENT STRATEGY SESSION
We’ll help you make sure that your retirement strategy aligns with your current and evolving priorities.
Distributions and inflation can eat away at investment returns.
That’s why positive total returns aren’t the only thing we consider when building your diversified portfolio—we also make sure your investments keep pace with inflation.
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