Retirement Strategy
Instrumental Wealth guides you through retirement planning risks and designs a customized retirement strategy that minimizes tax and maximizes certainty.
7 Key Retirement Planning Risks
- Longevity: People are living longer which brings the risk of outliving your retirement savings.
- Market Volatility/Sequence of Returns: Poor or flat market performance, especially early in retirement, can significantly impact how long your money will last.
- Inflation: The consumer price index increases over time which effects future purchasing power.
- Taxes: Being able to have control over your taxes in retirement is key. Most people are told they will be in a lower tax bracket when they get to retirement. Most people don’t realize there is a required minimum they need to withdraw from a 401k or Traditional IRA. This can wreak havoc in retirement. This can cause capital gains taxes to increase, and Medicare premiums and taxes to skyrocket—to just name a few consequences. Having the proper plan in advance can help reduce or eliminate tax surprises.
- Health Care: Medicare covers only a portion of health care expenses, and costs are rising.
- Long-Term Care: 50% of people age 65 or older require long-term care in their lifetime. These services are not covered by Medicare, Medicaid, or health insurance.
- Leaving a Legacy: Now is the time to plan for your loved ones, or charity.
6 Key Retirement Planning Strategies
- Diversify not only the type of assets you own, but also diversify the tax-status of those assets. By having a combination of taxable funds in conjunction with tax-free funds, you can take full advantage of the lower tax rates while avoiding some of the issues that come with a high income such as high Medicare premiums, higher capital gains tax rates, and the net investment income tax.
- Properly diversify your assets from an investment perspective to better enable your retirement plan to weather future market volatility.
- Include a safe bucket of money in the plan that grows in a tax favored status to minimize the impact of taxes and prevent you from having to draw down your market-based assets after they suffer a decline.
- Ensure the risks that would be detrimental to your retirement plan. We utilize industry leading tools to hedge against these negative risks and maximize your confidence in the plan.
- Ensure that at a minimum, your basic living expenses can be covered with a guaranteed fixed income source. This will make sure that no matter what happens you do not have to rely on your family for financial support.
- Discuss the various estate planning techniques with you and help you understand what would currently happen to your assets if you pass away. We can also help you contact a licensed estate planning attorney to get the necessary documents drawn up if needed.
