Retirement Planning: Is There a Magic Number or Formula?
by Sean Guldi, CFP®
According to the Pew Research Center, over the next 15 years roughly 10,000 Baby Boomers turn age 65 every day. This may not mean retirement for all of them, but the largest demographic cohort in our country will be a driving force that increases the need for Retirement Planning. Many of you are either in this stage of life already or are getting close to the next milestone in your life – retiring from the workforce. This can be a daunting challenge to face as you are bombarded every day in with advertisements promising to help you figure out what your “number” is, and selling you a “golden path” to retirement. The reality – like most things in life – is Retirement Planning is more complicated than one number or answer. Retirement Planning is a multi-faceted continuum of questions and trade offs that one faces over the course of a lifetime. B&C Financial Advisors is committed to our clients and part of that commitment is providing a framework and process for our clients to tackle retirement planning head-on.
We find the most important first step is to establish trust and confidence in your advisor and here at B&C Financial Advisors we are staffed with three Certified Financial Planner™ Professionals who are knowledgeable on this specific topic. We find the best way to help people is to have an intimate conversation about their ideas and feelings about retirement. Then we talk about more concrete goals and figures as they relate to the client’s desired retirement outcome.
Once we have the goals established we will work with them to gather data on their current finances – from retirement plans to investment accounts to mortgages, cash flows, and many other items. We then spend time using our experience and software to analyze this information and prepare a “current picture” of their retirement plan. We then go a step further and analyze various scenarios that may help evolve this “current picture” to the desired outcome of our clients. The scenarios are presented to clients in a planning meeting where we discuss and refine the plan. Finally, we will create an action plan for implementing the recommendations and for monitoring the outcomes.
We feel the last two steps – implementation and monitoring – are where many advisors fall short. We are committed to a high level of client service in regularly following up with clients and having continued discussions with them about their changing life circumstances. The plan is not set in stone, but built on a model of reciprocal communication whereby both the client and the advisor are fully engaged in the ongoing maintenance of the plan.
If you would like to find out more or take the first step towards establishing your Retirement Plan please call our office at 904-273-9850, send us an e-mail at [email protected], or go to our website http://bandcfinancial.com/contact-us/ and submit a request there.