Being SMART about Tax-Aware Retirement
March 6, 2020
Since you’re here, you’re ready to start having a conversation about being SMART with your money. At Safe Money Partners we want to make sure our clients are SMART about their retirement planning.
Being ‘SMART’ means making certain our clients will enter retirement being able to:
1) Be debt free.
2) Maximize after-tax retirement income.
3) Protect their estate from unforeseen risks during retirement.
At Safe Money Partners we believe that most people would rather focus their planning efforts in the areas that will have the biggest long-term effect in their financial well-being: debt and tax efficiency.
Education and Cutting-edge strategies are the most important aspects of financial planning for my clients. My team and I have spent since 2016 traveling throughout the United States studying with the industry leaders in tax-efficient retirement strategies so that we could become the leaders in our hometown in this aspect of retirement planning.
1) Be Debt Free
Most people are on a fixed income in retirement. Even if they have significant assets to withdrawal from the fear of longevity makes them want to live on a fixed income. So debt of any kind can be scary. What does debt do if you allow it? Say your fixed-income only allows you to pay the minimums in retirement-the debt grows and grows and one day the minimum is too much for your fixed-income budget and you find that you have to tap into more of your retirement assets than you forecast doing.
When some of our clients come to us for financial planning we determine that we can make a bigger impact immediately by putting them into our award-winning debt elimination strategy. By becoming debt free you not only free-up your cash-flow you also improve your health, happiness and overall quality of life. Isn’t that why we are doing a financial plan? So you can live for a long time.
2) Maximize After-Tax Retirement Income
If you have two buckets of money, one with $750,000 in it and one with $1,000,000 in it. Which one would you want? Most people would say, give me the $1,000,000…but wait, I would want to know what the tax classification is of each. I only know what taxes are today, and I know that with all of the national debt we have in our country and the number of baby boomers who will be on Social Security and Medicare soon, I don’t want to have to ‘wait’ to find out what my tax bill is going to be every time I take money out of the $1,000,000 bucket. Our clients want two things usually: they want to save for retirement but they also want to be able to ‘live a good life now’. By setting up a retirement that will maximize after-tax money our clients are often able to have more money today to use because they do not have to account for the great unknown-the future tax rate.
3) Protect Your Estate From Unforeseen Risk During Retirement
As I get older I have become aware that I am not immortal – duh. Some day I am going to get sick, maybe even be unable to legally make decisions for myself or sign my own name. Without a doubt, someday I will die.
In our financial planning process we require our clients to commit to making certain they have proper documents in place such as a POA, Healthcare POA, a Will and/or a Trust. These may seem simple enough, but 90% of people we sit down with do not have them and the other 10% mostly have not had them reviewed in years. Proper estate planning saves our clients thousands of dollars but it saves the heirs from having to spend hours and hours doing the work that could have been done in a few meetings.
Safe Money Partners Can Help You
Safe Money Partners offers financial planning retirement planning services including:
Fee-only Divorce financial analysis-If you are contemplating divorce/separation, are in the divorce process or already divorced you deserve the opportunity to work with someone who has studied what the right, benefits, and entitlements are of someone in that situation. Let’s discuss what is important to you related to life after divorce and what planning looks like for you to still achieve your financial goals.
Fee-Only Financial Planning
Many people want to know if they are on the right track but they want to get that knowledge independent of the person who is managing their money, for whatever the reason may be. Let’s take a look at where you are right now in your planning vs where you want to and need to be in the future.
Roth IRA Conversions
If you believe taxes are going to go up in the future you may be one of the many people in American that want to convert your Qualified monies to a Roth IRA but are not sure how to do that. Let’s build a strategy to show you how to do that.
Social Security Maximization
Many people are still not aware that their Social Security may be subject to taxation during retirement. Jeff Mohlman, retirement income planning consultant, suggests you do a provisional income analysis of your overall retirement income to see how you will be affected.
Estate Planning
Are you in need of POAs, Wills, Trusts, or Planned Giving. We offer comprehensive Estate Planning from the basics (POAs and Wills) to help you decide what your legacy will be when you are no longer with us. For more information on how Safe Money Partners can help you, schedule your free consultation.
By Jeff Mohlman