Retirement Planning
“Do I have enough?” deserves a real answer.
Not a rule of thumb. A plan: your income mapped year by year, your taxes projected, your decisions made while they're still cheap to make.
The retirement window
Five decisions. Three of them on the government’s clock.
Made early, on your numbers, they tend to be cheap. Left to defaults, they get expensive quietly.
The healthcare bridge Retirement to 65
Social Security claiming 62 to 70
Withdrawal order, then RMDs 59½ onward
The other two decisions turn on your retirement date, not a statutory age. RMD age depends on your year of birth.
The income plan
Which accounts pay you, in what order, so the money lasts.
Social Security timing
When each spouse claims changes the lifetime math. Modeled together, before the default decides.
The healthcare bridge
Retire before 65 and the bridge years carry a real cost. Priced into the plan.
The tax-smart withdrawal order
Pre-tax, Roth and taxable in the right sequence, every year of retirement.
Pension and 401(k) choices
Lump sum or annuity, rollover or stay. Mostly one-time and hard to reverse.
Services are tailored to each client’s circumstances and engagement. Not all services described are provided to every client.
Tax coordination
Retirement decisions are modeled after tax.
Withdrawal order, Roth conversions and Social Security timing are checked against the same forward-looking tax projection.
Assumptions, tested
Stress-tested, not hoped for
A retirement plan is a stack of assumptions. We test the stack on your cadence, and adjust while the fixes are still small. The confidence that comes out isn’t optimism. It’s arithmetic that held up in the bad scenarios too.
The market doesn't cooperate
- Growth6.0% → 3.5%
- SequenceWorst years first
We watch: Does the income plan still clear every year?
Illustrative assumptions, shown to describe the process rather than to project a result. Your plan is tested on your numbers.
The stress test is one conversation in a continuous relationship: investments, taxes and estate work reviewed together, by the same team, on your cadence.
See the full relationship: Wealth ManagementFrom the MCF library
Keep learning
Questions
The questions pre-retirees ask first
How much do I need to retire?
There is no universal number, because the answer depends on what your retirement costs: your spending, not your neighbor's. The plan starts from what your life actually costs, maps every income source against it year by year and projects the taxes on each withdrawal, so the target you aim at is your number, priced from your numbers.
When should I start retirement planning?
About five years before your target date is ideal. The most valuable moves (Roth conversions, Social Security timing, the healthcare bridge) work best with runway. Closer than that, or already retired? Later still works. The decisions are still in front of you, and a plan helps you take them in a sensible order.
What about my company stock and equity compensation?
Concentrated stock, options and RSUs carry their own tax calendar, and the retirement window is usually when it comes due. We model exercises and sales inside your full tax projection and help you decide the timing on numbers, coordinated with everything else you own, rather than in isolation.
Do you coordinate with my 401(k)?
Yes. Your workplace plan is often the largest account you own, so we plan around it while you're still working: contribution levels, pre-tax versus Roth, the investment menu you actually have. When you retire, the rollover-or-stay question gets decided on the numbers, not by default.
Find out where you stand.
Thirty minutes with an advisor: your timeline, your accounts, your questions. No cost, no obligation.