Who we help

• Ryan, 54, is a scientist at a local biotech company.
• Kate, 50, works for an architectural firm.
• Ryan has stock options and a 401k.
• Kate has a 401k at her current job and a rollover IRA.
• Ryan and Kate have 2 children that will be graduating college soon.

The Millers have never worked with a financial advisor before.  They have accumulated $750,000 in their retirement accounts and have almost $500,000 in shares of Ryan’s company stock.  Their kids are almost out of college and they are wondering how they are tracking for retirement.  In addition, they are exploring other options they might have financially including purchasing a rental property, retiring early, and helping their children to purchase their first home.

As part of their plan, we:

• Organized their financial picture.
• Developed a plan to strategically sell Ryan’s stock options to minimize their tax liability and help their kids financially.
• Ran retirement projections to show the additional steps they’d need to take to retire early at age 62.
• Ran through the pros and cons of buying a rental property, purchasing real estate through a private investment, or continuing to contribute to investment accounts.

• Jeff is 62 and works for a defense company.
• Andrea is 60 and is a nurse.
• Have 3 adult children.
• Both have company retirement plans.  Jeff has a military pension and Andrea has the option of taking a pension or lump sum in retirement. They are looking to retire in the next few years.

The Lees have both put in a number of years of service at their current positions and are looking to stop working as soon as they can so they can travel.  They are wondering how they will transition from a paycheck to living off of their investments as well as worried about a market crash before they retire.  Andrea also has the option of receiving a pension when she retires or getting a lump sum payment.  They are unsure of which option to choose.  They also don’t know whether or not to take Social Security at the first available time or to wait until a later date.

As part of their plan, we:

• Went over their goals for retirement and how much they would like to spend on living expenses and travel.
• Reviewed their pension and concluded they’d be better off rolling the lump sum into a diversified portfolio.
• Developed a plan to create a cash buffer in case of a market downturn before retirement.
• Detailed an investment withdrawal strategy that can sustain their lifestyle in retirement alongside a Social Security strategy which matched their overall income and tax situation.
• Developed a plan to convert a portion of their retirement savings to Roth IRA’s to create tax-free spending options in retirement.

• Andrew and Nicole are 68 and 67 and are few years into retirement.
• They have 3 kids and 5 grandkids.
• They have mostly been living off pensions and Social Security and are taking distributions from their retirement accounts.

The Smiths are a few years into retirement and have begun to explore other options for their finances.  The majority of their retirement accounts are with a broker they’ve been working with for some time that has begun to look at retiring also.  Although they liked and trusted the broker, they didn’t quite understand their investment strategy and thought they might have been paying too much in fees.  Their advisor did not really help with any kind of tax or estate planning/gifting strategies which are becoming more important to them.

As part of their plan, we:

• Reviewed their entire investment portfolio, showing them performance, fees, and the overall risk they are taking and concluded that they could invest more conservatively while still comfortably living their lifestyle in retirement. We also uncovered that they were invested in high-fee mutual funds and consolidated their accounts to a lower-fee, more conservative option.
• With the help of an estate planning attorney, we reviewed their estate plan and updated it to include strategies to gift some of their assets to the kids and grandkids via Roth IRA and 529 plan contributions.
• Worked with their adult children to understand the overall estate goals of the family as well as help them with their own individual financial plans.