Traditional wealth management builds a diversified portfolio, monitors it, rebalances it and reports performance. A retirement strategy maps your income month by month, times Social Security for the household, models taxes before RMDs, bridges health care to Medicare and plans for a 30% drop in year two, so it can tell you whether you will be okay.
What does traditional wealth management do?
Portfolio management and growth. You build a diversified allocation, monitor it, rebalance it and report performance, and in traditional wealth management that is the job. Underneath every client conversation Robert has had sits the same unspoken question: am I going to be okay when I stop working? He says most traditional advisors and wealth managers cannot answer it, through no lack of goodwill. The work they do was not designed to answer it. Portfolio management is an important piece of retirement, and it is one piece.
What do new clients say when they see the whole plan?
Robert built his practice around a different question from how your portfolio should be allocated: what your retirement looks like, year by year, with your own numbers. The line he hears most from new clients, many of whom have had a financial advisor for a decade or more, is “Nobody has ever shown this to me before.” They mean the RMD projection, the tax picture, what Social Security timing does to household income over 20 years, and the Roth conversion window between retirement and the first RMD. These are smart, successful people who did everything right while they were accumulating.
What changes when you see the complete picture?
Robert names three shifts:
- You may be closer than you thought. In his experience, many people who believe they are four or five years from retirement are one or two years away. Their wealth did not change; nobody had run the numbers.
- You find a tax problem you did not know about. For a household with $1.5 million to $3 million in pre-tax accounts, he puts the difference between a considered withdrawal strategy and none at more than $200,000 in lifetime after-tax income. That is his estimate for the range, and your figure depends on your accounts.
- You feel a specific relief. Beyond having enough money, you can see what retirement looks like month by month and account by account. That clarity is different from a balance on an app.
Where should you start?
If you are within five to fifteen years of retirement and have never had the complete conversation, meaning income, taxes, Social Security, health care, IRMAA and legacy together, start there. Robert’s retirement income planning work covers each piece, and the Retirement Readiness Assessment shows where your plan stands in a few minutes. His 30-minute retirement clarity call is the next step when you want your own numbers on the table.
Common questions
- Is a wealth manager the same as a retirement planner?
- Not always. A wealth manager’s core job is building and managing a portfolio. A retirement income planner’s job is turning that portfolio into income: the withdrawal order, Roth conversions, Social Security timing and Medicare premiums. Some firms do both, so ask which one you are getting.
- What is an RMD projection?
- An estimate of the required minimum distribution your pre-tax accounts will force at 73, or 75 if you were born in 1960 or later, based on your projected balance and the IRS life expectancy table. It shows the tax bracket you are headed for while you can change it.
- How much can a withdrawal strategy be worth?
- Robert puts it at more than $200,000 in lifetime after-tax income for some households with $1.5 million to $3 million in pre-tax accounts, compared with having no strategy. The figure is his estimate for that range, and your own depends on your balances, brackets and timeline.
If the decisions on this page are ahead of you, the two of you can work through them with Robert Boeck before any of them becomes permanent.
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