The studies measure accumulation: net returns, value added each year, more wealth. None of them measures how the money comes out, which is what decides a retirement: Roth conversion timing, the order you draw from accounts, when each spouse claims Social Security, and an income floor that holds when markets fall.
Is hiring a financial advisor worth it?
Robert agrees with the graphic’s conclusion. The research behind it is legitimate: Vanguard’s Advisor’s Alpha work, Morningstar’s research, the Russell study, and the behavior-gap studies showing that do-it-yourself investors trail the funds they own because they buy high and sell low. People who work with a competent advisor tend to do better than people who go it alone, and for most people a good one is worth the fee. The question that matters for a couple near retirement is: worth it for what?
What do the eight studies measure?
Every result on the graphic is the same kind of number: net return, value added per year, more wealth. Each one answers how to grow the pile, and for thirty working years that was the right question. The day you retire, the flow reverses. Money that arrived every two weeks now has to leave the pile every month for the rest of two lives, through a tax code and markets you do not control. Growing the pile is investment management. Turning it into income you will not outlive is retirement income planning, and the graphic measures none of it. The page on how a retirement income planner differs from a financial advisor sets the two jobs side by side.
What gets missed when returns are the measure?
Robert names three things he would look at with the two of you on day one.
Taxes
For most couples at this stage, much of the money sits in a 401(k) or a traditional IRA they have never paid tax on. Required minimum distributions start at 73, or 75 for people born in 1960 or later, and they come out whether you need the money or not. Between your last paycheck and the start of Social Security and RMDs, your taxable income can drop a long way. Robert calls that window some of the most valuable real estate in your financial life, because Roth conversions made there move money out of the tax system at a rate you chose. Miss it and you can spend the rest of retirement in a higher bracket than you needed to.
Which account you spend first
Two couples can retire with the same money in the same investments earning the same return, and one can run out years before the other. The difference is the order they drew from their accounts. Withdrawal sequencing coordinates that order with your tax bracket and your Social Security decision.
Social Security
Claiming at 62 against waiting can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars over a married couple’s lifetimes, depending on health, on which spouse earned more, and on the survivor benefit the second spouse may live on for a decade or more. You make that decision once. The Social Security timing guide covers the mechanics.
What is an income floor?
A layer of income that keeps paying whether the market is up 20% or down 30%. Robert builds it with tools that do not depend on the stock market: a bucket strategy that separates money you need in the next two years from money you will not touch for fifteen, and a bridge that funds your living costs so you can wait for the larger Social Security check. None of it is about beating the market. The aim is that a bad year in the market never decides whether you can pay your bills.
What should the two of you ask yourselves?
The answer depends on the job. If you are 10 or 20 years out and building the pile, an advisor who keeps you disciplined and invested can be worth the fee, and that is what the studies measured. Two to eight years out, Robert compares hiring an investment manager alone to hiring a gifted home builder to do your taxes. You need someone whose work is the income, the taxes, the sequencing, Social Security, the health care gap and the floor.
He asks couples to rate themselves from 1 to 10, where 10 means a written plan for income, taxes and Social Security that you both understand, and 1 means hoping it works out. Both of you should know the number. The largest gap he sees is one partner who runs the money and one who has never been brought into the plan. If you land below an eight, his retirement clarity call is 30 minutes on where you stand and what a written plan would change.
Common questions
- Which studies say an advisor is worth it?
- The graphic Robert discusses draws on Vanguard’s Advisor’s Alpha research, Morningstar’s work, a Russell study and behavior-gap research showing that do-it-yourself investors tend to buy high and sell low, among others. Each measures investment results during the years you are building wealth.
- When do required minimum distributions start?
- At 73 under current law, rising to 75 for people born in 1960 or later under the SECURE 2.0 Act. Once they start, the IRS sets the minimum you must withdraw from pre-tax accounts each year, whether you need the money or not.
- What is a bucket strategy?
- A way of separating the money you will spend in the next two years from money you will not touch for fifteen, so a market drop does not force you to sell growth investments to pay this month’s bills.
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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