Retirement Planning
Our CFP® Professionals will help you build a retirement strategy designed to support your family's lifestyle, goals, and legacy.
Retirement Planning for Life's Next Chapter
Retirement planning is about more than reaching a target account balance. The transition from earning a paycheck to relying on your investments, retirement accounts, pensions, and other assets introduces a new set of financial decisions and emotions. Many families discover that accumulating wealth and spending it responsibly are two very different challenges.
A well-constructed retirement plan helps answer one of the most important questions in personal finance: Will your money outlive you, or will you outlive your money?
At Praetorian Guard, we help individuals and families develop retirement strategies that integrate the various aspects of their financial life so they can make retirement decisions with greater confidence.
When Should I Start Planning for Retirement?
It's never too early to start planning for retirement. In fact, the earlier you start, the better. Starting during your working years allows you to take advantage of compounding, establish disciplined savings habits, and make adjustments while you still have time and flexibility on your side.
As retirement approaches, planning becomes increasingly important because decisions involving Social Security, retirement income, taxes, healthcare, and portfolio withdrawals can have a significant impact on long-term financial security.
You may benefit from retirement planning if you've ever asked yourself:
- When can I realistically retire?
- How much can I spend each year without jeopardizing my future?
- Which accounts should I draw from first?
- How should Social Security fit into my retirement income strategy?
- Will taxes reduce more of my retirement income than expected?
- How should I plan for healthcare and long-term care expenses?
- How do I balance retirement spending with goals for children, grandchildren, or charitable causes?
Whether retirement is decades away or just a few years from now, a thoughtful plan can help you make informed decisions and gain greater confidence in your future.
Retirement Income Planning
A well-thought-out retirement income strategy should allow you to check off your bucket list items while also considering life's unexpected expenses that inevitably arise. The factors that generally influence how comfortably this is achievable include the age at which you retire, your expected spending level, and the income sources available beyond your investment portfolio.
There are many aspects of retirement that Praetorian Guard advisors consider when building out your plan.
Retirement Account Withdrawal Strategies
We develop a coordinated distribution strategy designed to support spending needs while considering tax consequences and portfolio longevity.
Inflationary Impacts
We consider the critical role inflation plays on your purchasing power over the entire life of your retirement.
Asset Allocation Adjustments
We review portfolio structure, risk exposure, and asset allocation to support both growth and retirement income objectives.
Social Security & Medicare
We evaluate timing decisions and benefit elections to help integrate these government benefits into your broader retirement plan.
Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs)
We help prepare for future distribution requirements and coordinate them with your overall income and tax strategy.
Pension Income
We evaluate the role military retirement benefits or civilian pension incomes play in your overall income plan.
Legacy Planning
We help align retirement decisions with your goals for family members, future generations, and charitable organizations.
Why Work With Praetorian Guard?
As a fee-only fiduciary firm, our responsibility is to provide advice that serves your best interests. Our CFP® Professionals help client families evaluate spending decisions, investment strategy, tax considerations, retirement income sources, and long-term family objectives as part of a unified plan.
One of the most valuable aspects of our retirement planning process is the ability to model the impacts of decisions before they become reality. Using the MoneyGuidePro software, we build detailed retirement projections that allow clients to visualize how different choices may affect their financial future. Rather than relying on rules of thumb, you can see how your plan responds to real-world decisions.
Many of our client families enjoy what MoneyGuidePro calls the "What If?" exercise. What if you retire three years earlier? What if you spend more on travel during the first decade of retirement? What if you sell a business, delay Social Security, purchase a second home, increase charitable giving, or leave a larger legacy to your children? By testing different scenarios together, client families gain a deeper understanding of the tradeoffs involved and greater confidence in the decisions they ultimately make.
Our CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Professionals have many years of expertise modeling retirement scenarios. Learn more about our approach to retirement planning or schedule a consultation to discuss your family's situation.
Frequently Asked Questions
There's no single answer or rule of thumb since every family's situation is unique. We build personalized retirement projections that incorporate your assets, expected spending, taxes, inflation, income sources, and planning goals. We then stress-test multiple spending or retirement age scenarios with various market return projections to test the plan's durability over time.
Rather than a specific number, which can be difficult to stick to over a long period, we like to think of retirement spending as a "range", with upper and lower limits that help our client families stay on track. We determine an acceptable spending range by factoring your portfolio, income sources, tax situation, inflation, Social Security and Medicare, and other long-term objectives.
The optimal timing varies from family to family. Some families have multiple income sources in retirement and can afford to delay filing for benefits, while others may be more reliant on Social Security benefits. We analyze Social Security within the context of your broader retirement income plan to help determine which approach best supports your goals.
Yes. Retirement planning continues throughout retirement. Spending needs, tax laws, investment markets, healthcare costs, and family priorities can change. We help client families monitor and adjust their plans as circumstances evolve.
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