Retirement Planning

You find your hidden passions, and we can find the rest!  Retirement planning is a long process that requires building your wealth ahead of time to maximize growth and minimize taxes.  You may have a qualified employer-sponsored plan, deferred compensation plan, individual retirement account (IRA), personal savings, or a combination of all of the above. We can help you create a plan for growing your retirement savings and for efficiently using these funds while you’re pursuing your retirement passions.

Qualified Employer-Sponsored Plans

This category includes 401(k)s, 403(b)s, pension plans, SEP IRAs, SIMPLE IRAs, and more. These plans have several tax advantages and employers often match your contributions to the plan.  However, they also have contribution limits and distribution rules. All of these features can be hard to understand.  We can explain.

Deferred Compensation Plans

You may have heard your employer toss around the words split dollar, executive bonus, stock incentive, and/or deferred compensation.  If you are a “key” employee of a business you may be part of a nonqualified executive compensation plan.  Employers use these plans to attract executives and give them worthwhile benefits.  Any plan in this category allows you to make additional salary deferrals to lower your current taxable income. We can help you stretch these retirement savings while minimizing the impact from taxes.

Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs)

IRAs are a type of savings or brokerage account. They are easily maintained, tax advantaged, and can be consolidated.  Some common types include: Traditional, Roth, and Rollover.  A Traditional IRA allows you to make tax deductible contributions and defer paying taxes on those contributions until you begin taking distributions. A Roth IRA allows you to make after-tax contributions, so both your contributions and distribution are not taxed.  A Rollover IRA is essentially a Traditional IRA, but it is funded by “rolling in” an employer sponsored retirement plan without any tax consequences. All or none of these accounts could be the right option for you.

Annuities

If you’re like the majority of working Americans today, you do not have a pension plan to rely on in retirement. If you are lucky enough to have access to an employer-sponsored pension, this guaranteed income still may not be enough to cover your retirement expenses. One way to make up for this gap is by creating your own “pension” in the form of an annuity. Annuities come in many, many forms from variable to fixed-indexed to immediate, but the important thing to remember is that none are one size fits all.

Personal Savings

All of the option above in addition to your Social Security income may not be enough to support your retirement goals.  That’s where your personal savings come in. These savings can take the form of a savings, money market, or brokerage account. We will help you figure out how much to save and how often you will need to save it in order to reach your goals.

Retirement planning is rewarding.  However, it has lots of rules and regulations.  You will want to know the when, where, and how.  We will help you plan and always check-in.  Once we’ve helped you grow your assets, you can take the time to enjoy them.