The Retirement Question Almost No Advisor Can Actually Answer

Why do couples with an advisor fear running out of money?

67% of Americans now worry more about running out of money than about death, according to Allianz Life’s 2026 study. Robert reads that fear as a signal. You spent 30 or 40 years accumulating, and nobody handed you a manual for the next 30. Most people who feel it already work with a financial advisor, and the fear stays. If that describes the two of you, the useful thing to ask is whether you are getting the right kind of help.

How many advisors specialize in retirement income?

Fewer than the service lists suggest. The American College of Financial Services’ 2026 Advisor Expertise Study found that among advisors who name retirement income planning as a top service, nearly 6 in 10 test at a basic or intermediate level in it. Robert is careful to say most of these advisors are good people working hard for their clients. Growing a portfolio and turning it into a paycheck are two disciplines with different math, and most advisors were trained, credentialed and paid through asset-based fees for the first one. Retirement income is something many picked up along the way. The difference is laid out in full on what a retirement income planner does that a financial advisor does not.

What decides whether your money lasts?

Robert calls the income plan the big domino: knock it down first and the other decisions get easier. It covers the age each of you claims Social Security, which can move a couple’s lifetime benefit by more than $100,000 (the Social Security timing guide works through it), and the order you draw from taxable, tax-deferred and Roth accounts. It also covers what happens to your income if the market falls 30% in year two of retirement instead of year twenty, and how Medicare premiums rise with income you reported two years earlier. None of that is a stock-picking problem. His practice builds the paycheck first and sets the investments around it.

Which two questions should you ask your advisor?

Robert suggests asking both of these:

1. “What is your process for retirement income distribution, as distinct from investment management?”
2. “Can you show me on paper what our monthly income looks like in a down market during our first five years of retirement?”

A long pause, or an answer that turns to portfolio performance, tells you something. Your advisor may be good at the job they trained for, and you may be asking the wrong specialist the right question.

What should you and your spouse ask each other?

Sit down this week and ask two things. If the market fell 30% in our first two years of retirement, do we know what happens to our monthly income? And have we modeled our income if one of us dies first, month by month, beyond the life insurance conversation? Robert calls that second one of the most loving questions a couple can ask, and an accumulation-focused advisor seldom raises it, because it is an income question.

A Retirement Income Roadmap answers both on one page: every source of monthly income, in a good market and a bad one, into your mid-90s. It is built from Social Security timing, withdrawal sequencing, a stress-tested income floor, the Medicare bridge and spousal what-if scenarios before anyone discusses how the money is invested. His 30-minute retirement clarity call is where that conversation starts.