Retirement Income Planning
Americans are living longer than ever before. In America today, retirement is a 25-year, a 30-year, a 35-year and in some cases even a 40-year vacation. How are you going to play for that vacation without the real risk of running out of money in the process? This is why income planning and having the proper safeguards in place is so important to your retirement life.
Retirement Income Plans are not just for the wealthy. A customized retirement income plan offers guaranteed lifetime protection against running out of money during your retirement years. A guaranteed retirement income plan helps bridge the gap between Social Security and essential lifetime expenses (mortgage/rent, basic healthcare, food, household expenses, utilities, debt payments, taxes and essential transportation cost), is part of a broader portfolio strategy. Having the peace of mind to worry less about expenses and budget more effectively, is one of the major benefits of guaranteed lifetime income.
Based on discussions between you and your financial advisor, you will know where you stand right now and where to make adjustments to help you achieve the financial freedom you desire with extra protection if you should live a long time. Since people are living longer today, we feel you need an efficient and effective plan tailor-made to your unique situation; one that is built to last your lifetime and beyond.
Asset Protection
Why Asset Protection? Our goal at Simplified Retirement Strategy is to help our clients protect their valuable assets from anything or anyone who can take them.
It’s important for us to help our clients understand how all of their assets are at risk of loss from various sources/creditors (a creditors is anyone or anything that can take your money at any time) and we show our clients how to protect those asset so they can’t be taken away.
A proper Asset Protection plan will have in place protection against 4 major creditors: Negligence lawsuits – The IRS (your #1 guaranteed creditor every year, and the need for tax-advantaged retirement strategies in your portfolio) – The Stock Market (is a creditor when you lose money in market downturns) – Long-term Care cost in retirement.
The #1 topic our clients want to learn about is how we can help them reduce their taxes – not to mention how much they dislike the IRS confiscating their life savings. While the IRS is everyone’s #1 guaranteed creditor every year, the stock market is arguably the largest consistent creditor.
Long Term Care
America is seeing a significant rise in the number of families dealing with Dementia and Alzheimer’s.
Who’s going to take care of a loved one when their spouse or adult children can’t? The cost of caring for aging family members in a Nursing Home, Assisted Living or Memory Care can have devastating effects on the family estate.
Here is a short 4-minute video called “The Wait” which really hits close to home for me and my family.
The cost of providing Long-Term Care for a loved one is one of the main reasons people run out of money in retirement… so dealing with LTC expenses is a form of Asset Protection planning. Insuring against Long-Term Care costs is an important decision to take into consideration in the context of your overall financial plan.
Traditional LTC insurance is prohibitively expensive for most – but there are alternative legal strategies and new hybrid life insurance programs that may be for appropriate for your individual situation.
Long-Term Care planning is one that gets overlooked the most – on average, 69% of people age 65 or older will need some form of Long-Term Care (according to www.longtermcare.gov). Don’t overlook it. It’s too important of a problem to ignore.
Our goal at Simplified Retirement Strategy is to educate our clients on how they can obtain some form of LTC coverage through different types of insurance strategies and little known government programs as part of an overall Asset Protection plan.
Estate Legacy & Trust Planning
The most important questions you need to answer:
What happens to you (and your assets) if you become incapacitated, or die, without having the proper estate planning documents in place to express your wishes as it relates to health care, financial, personal care, and wealth transfer documents?
We introduce our clients to a licensed attorney to assist our clients in creating those all-important estate-planning documents to help ensure their wishes are carried out when they are either incapacitated or no longer alive.
Online Educational Webinar:
My Team and I hosted a “Master Your Money” Educational Event with Black Belt Leadership and John Terry. This online video if an hour long but fully explains the benefits of a properly establish estate plan to avoid the long and costly Probate process.
I’m always looking out for ways to continue to educate and inform my clients, and I know you will find value in watching this educational workshop.
You’re also welcome to share it with a friend or family member who you believe may benefit as well. It’s one of ways you can introduce me and the SRS Team to others who may have a need for the services we provide.
Thank you for the privilege and opportunity to act as your financial advocate and guide. Your welfare and well-being are important to me, and I appreciate your friendship and trust.
Tax-Advantage Retirement Strategies and ROTH Conversions
Where do you think taxes are going?
In 2022, our National Debt sits at over $30 Trillion and rising. That amount covers debt the government owes to itself in the form of commitments to Social Security and other government trust funds. As government, spending consistently outpaces revenue, and that today’s U.S. tax code, which expires in 2025, is based on artificially lower rates, and the hidden tax of inflation is raising the tax burden – the expectation is that taxes will go up. The increase in taxes will have a large impact on your tax bill in retirement.
Is it better to pay taxes NOW or LATER?
Whether you realize it or not taxes will be YOUR biggest expense in retirement. If that’s the case, then the simple solution is to put the proper safeguards in place as a hedge against rising taxes. We help our clients with Tax Efficient Planning to reduce their taxable footprint.
ROTH IRA
Our financial team will help you analyze if it makes sense to convert your 401k or your traditional IRA to a tax-free ROTH IRA, to create tax-free income for you and your heirs. By implementing a ROTH conversion, strategy you pay the lower tax rates today and you get the benefit of tax-free growth and tax-free distributions. In addition, because the distributions are tax-free, they do not count towards any taxation on your Social Security and Medicare benefits. This is definitely a discussion to have when we sit down together to review the options available to you.
Domestic Tax Shelter Strategy
Or maybe it makes sense for you to consider a Domestic Tax Shelter Strategy – a Living Benefit Plan under Internal Revenue Code Sec: 7702 which allows for tax-efficient planning with no contribution limits and which can also allow you to take advantage of tax-free distributions.
These accounts are similar to a ROTH account, but with more benefits that allow for: Tax-deferred Contributions – Potential for double-digit returns – Critical and Long-Term Care benefits – No limits on contributions or IRS age restrictions – Like a ROTH, provide tax-free, non-reportable retirement income.
If most of your money is in a 401k, IRA or 403b, you need to at least consider tax-efficient planning to offset the taxable liability you are going to be hit with when you start pulling money out of your accounts.
Simplified Retirement Strategy has been helping our clients with tax-free distribution planning since 2006… establishing a pre-emptive approach to protect your life savings and tax-free income planning is a big part of our practice to help our clients minimize their taxable footprint.
Investment Management
The Market is predictably unpredictable.
When you invest your money, you want two things to happen: you want your money to stay safe, and you want your money to grow. Most people prefer financial safety more then they desire growth with high returns.
Just like the currents of the oceans, the markets can rapidly shift and without warning. The secret to being defensive during bear markets and fully invested during bull markets, is to continuously monitor the factors that influence the markets, and then position the portfolio to take advantage of the markets’ current direction. Our fleet of Portfolios helps us navigate you through the unpredictable ebbs and flows of the global markets.
We believe investing success hinges on the integration between the investor’s unique circumstances and the prudent identification of long-term strategies that are positioned to achieve client goals with the highest probability of success. Therefore, our core strategy goal is to provide clients with adaptive portfolios built for all market conditions and resulting in reasonable risk-adjusted returns.
If you are nearing retirement, or already enjoying your retirement, we want to help you achieve your wealth accumulation, preservation, and distribution goals. We have a complete set of portfolio strategies from which you can build. Each strategy is inherently sensible and continuously measured, evaluated, back tested, and dynamically monitored to ensure your investing success.
As market conditions change, we maintain efficiency and adjust the portfolios to best fit their objective. Regardless of market conditions, we have a portfolio that will be a perfect fit. We are motivated not by how many assets we manage, but how many lives we improve.
Investment advisory services offered through Peace of Mind Planning, LLC, a SEC-Registered Investment Advisor. Peace of Mind Planning does not provide legal or tax advice. Peace of Mind Planning, LLC is not affiliated with Simplified Retirement Strategy nor any of its affiliates. Peace of Mind Planning, LLC and its Investment Advisor Representatives may only conduct business with residents of the state and jurisdictions in which they are properly registered or exempt from registration requirements. Insurance and annuity products are sold separately through Simplified Retirement Strategy. Peace of Mind Planning and its Investment Advisor Representatives, may not accept orders to affect purchase or sale transactions, accept funds, securities, or similar instructions via email or voicemail. Securities transactions and custodial services for Peace of Mind Planning are placed through TD Ameritrade.