The first step in the process of creating a retirement income plan is to get to know each other better, both personally and professionally. You’ll have a bit of a head start since I’ve let you know a lot about me through this website. Just like when you visit a new doctor, the more they know about your lifestyle, your daily habits, personal history, things that are important to you, etc., the more appropriate their recommendations will be to meet your needs and desires. I’ll need to know your financial data such as Social Security statements, retirement account statements, marital status, current life and health insurance info, any mortgage or any other significant outstanding debt, expected inheritances, etc. But, I also want to know about what’s important to you, stuff like spoiling grandkids, golfing twice a week, a trip to Europe, or spending the winter months in Florida.

Once I have all your necessary info, I get to work on crunching the numbers and doing an analysis of your situation. I first create a benchmark of how all your retirement assets are currently positioned, and then I create a few recommended scenarios to choose from based on my findings. This usually takes one to two weeks depending on the complexity of your situation.

Once I have this preliminary plan prepared, we can meet again and discuss the results in detail. We can go over any questions you have, and talk about some of the trade-offs each option has. Once you understand the basic concepts and my recommendations, I want you to take a few days to think it over, talk it over with your loved ones, and maybe even pray about it. In the meantime, write down any questions that come to you, since there will likely be one or more things you don’t quite understand about the preliminary plan or things you didn’t get a chance to ask me about yet.

We will meet again after these few days and discuss your questions and concerns. If you like the plan as it is, then we’ll move forward with making the various changes needed to re-position your retirement assets in line with the plan. If you would like to analyze something a bit different, or maybe another “what if?” scenario, I can take another 3-5 days and work up another option. Once you’re comfortable with a plan that you agree on and want to move forward, we’ll go ahead and start positioning your assets accordingly.

We’ll meet to review the plan annually to discuss whether your needs have changed or if the investment performance has greatly outperformed or underperformed expectations. Generally the plan won’t need to be adjusted unless there is a fairly major change in one of these areas. If you’re currently in the decumulation phase where you’re drawing income from your retirement assets, I’ll give you a summary of your income profile for the year ahead which will include how much your total after-tax income will be and what sources you’ll be receiving it from.