Retirement Planning Strategies
Retirement planning is an art and science, but above all, it’s a strategy. See how you can identify the retirement planning strategy for your situation and recruit a dream team to help execute it.
Exploring Your Path To Retirement
The most essential retirement planning strategy is the simplest: identify what’s important to you and discuss it with the ones you love. This is a step many people skip. What are your financial goals for retirement? How do you plan to use your time? What kind of companies would you never want to invest in?
Every retirement strategy will fail if it’s not tailored to what’s important to you. Your advisor should get to know you and understand your values so they can help you design a strategy that fits.
Does your spouse agree with the values you outlined in the previous section? Have you talked about it? If you are married, your plan for retirement will be a compromise. But compromise doesn’t have to be painful. Our proprietary approach to values-based financial planning helps couples navigate difficult conversations skillfully to develop a retirement plan where everyone wins.
Act Your Age
Adjusting your risk profile as your retirement date approaches is an essential strategy for retirement planning. A 45-year-old should have a different risk profile than a 62-year-old. A financial advisor can help you adapt your strategy as you progress through different life stages.
Don’t Retire From. Retire To.
Working 5 days per week (or more) for decades can wear you down. Retirement from a lifetime of hard work is a tempting objective. But that won’t be as fulfilling as retiring to the next phase of your journey.
A positive goal for a retirement filled with joy, purpose, and meaning carries more weight than the promise of being done with work. It’s easier to sacrifice to accomplish your positive goal.
Many clients come to OneAscent Wealth for help with a financial retirement plan. But an even more critical resource deserves your attention: your time. You’ve worked hard your whole life to create freedom in your post-work years. How will you use that freedom? Travel? Leisure activities? Or is there a cause you want to give your time to?
The most fulfilled retirees we work with have a sense of purpose about how they use their time in retirement. That usually includes activities you enjoy AND time spent serving others. No matter how you plan to use your time, OneAscent Wealth can help you develop a financial plan to support your goals.
Line Up The Dream Team
The best playcaller on earth can’t score without players, and retirement planning is similar. Your strategy will only be as good as the team you put together.
Planning for Retirement
Financial Planner
Your financial planner is your dream team’s quarterback. They are the experts in understanding your financial goals and coordinating the team to accomplish your goal.
Accountant
Accountants approach your wealth and income from a tax liability perspective. You are most likely to minimize your tax burden when your financial planner and accountant work closely together.
Planning Your Estate
Executor
If you don’t name an executor, the court will. We recommend naming an executor and communicating this decision to the entire team.
Beneficiaries
Have you named your beneficiaries? Do they have accurate expectations about how you’ve planned to allocate your estate?
Estate Lawyer
The estate lawyer ensures the paperwork is in place to equip your executor to carry out your wishes quickly and legally.
Legacy Coach
The legacy coach is the missing piece in most estate plans. Significant wealth is as likely to be a curse on future generations as it is to be a blessing. And wealth only represents part of the legacy you will leave. A legacy coach helps design your legacy to ensure your loved ones receive a blessing and a curse, and they facilitate communication so there are no difficult surprises when you can no longer clarify your intentions or desires.
Create Your Strategy
If you aren’t satisfied with your retirement plan, it’s time to recruit a team to design and carry out your optimal retirement planning strategy. We’d like to say, “put us in, coach!” Schedule a visit to get to know each other and identify the retirement planning strategies for your situation.