How We Help - Retirement Advocates

HOW WE CAN HELP

Complete Retirement Planning

The most effective tool in helping you achieve a successful retirement is a complete plan. Our plans go way beyond “how aggressive or conservative you want to be” and work to provide real clarity to people about what they have and how to best utilize their resources. We bring to bear our years of financial planning experience with thousands of clients to help create a plan that incorporates when and how to invest your resources, take Social Security, provide for medical expenses and prepare for tax consequences later in life. Our plans are truly a custom fit: want a plan with no advisor where you manage your money on your own? No problem. How about with all or none of your money in the stock market? We can do that as well. There are many ways to approach the challenge of retiring, so we view our job as helping you to find the method that not only works, but that you are comfortable with. We know that if you like your plan, you are more likely to stick to it, and that more than anything else will improve your chances of success.

Hassle-Free 2nd Opinion

Meeting for a second opinion on your finances can be a catch-22. On the one hand, you would like some reassurance that your finances are being managed appropriately. On the other, it is difficult to trust the evaluation from a third party when they are almost certainly interested in your business. In response, we developed our hassle-free 2nd opinion program. We will evaluate your position within the context of your overall retirement goals and compare that position to both a market benchmark and a plan we would recommend, giving you the clarity you need in order to make a well-informed decision. And you can have added confidence knowing that, as fiduciaries, we frequently recommend that those people whose portfolios help to achieve their retirement goals stay with their current advisor.

Fee Analysis on your current plan

How much are you paying (in dollars, not percentage) each year? Do you know? How confident are you in your answer? Our fee analysis is quick and easy to follow, and finding areas of your portfolio to pay less in fees is one of the easiest ways to improve efficiency and accumulation over time.

Annuity Examination

Do you have an annuity as part of your portfolio? Do you know why you have it, what it does or what it costs? Annuities can be immensely complicated and, unfortunately, are often pitched by salespeople posing as retirement planners as a high-leverage product built first and foremost to collect fees. We have nothing against certain annuities and often incorporate them into our plans, but it is important to determine whether the specific annuity you own is really helping you to achieve your goals.

Morningstar Investment Analysis

Morningstar is a leading investment analysis company used worldwide by investors. We will run an analysis using them as a third-party examiner and walk you through the report they provide step-by-step to help provide you with a clear sense as to what you own, how it performs in relation to the risk it is taking and how well each of the investments in your portfolio work together to limit volatility and increase the potential for account accumulation.

WealthGuarding Your Investments

Every portfolio could benefit from frequent monitoring that acts outside the context of your normal management and planning to help prevent massive life-changing losses. We use software called WealthGuard to help keep our clients informed when there are fluctuations in their account. We provide WealthGuard for free to anyone who wants it applied to any or all of their accounts. Aside from allowing us to see the balance of the account, it does not provide management authority or any other information to us – it is simply used to keep you informed to help you and your advisor avoid further loss from major market drawdowns. For more information on WealthGuard or to see how it works to help protect your account, please visit their website at WealthGuard.me.

Long-Term Care Preparation

While not everyone should purchase long-term care coverage, for some having the right plan in place can alleviate much of the anxiety associated with unforeseen medical needs. While a long-term care policy is the most complete approach, there are other options we can discuss with you.

Social Security and Medicare Planning

Social Security and Medicare do not exist within a vacuum. It can be easy to treat these sources of income and/or coverage as its own issue, without taking steps to make sure that it dovetails with the rest of your plan. Taking Social Security at the right time can help provide opportunity for your other assets to grow or help save you from having to pay unnecessary tax dollars later on in life.

Legacy Planning

Take steps now to ensure that your estate is transferred easily and efficiently to your beneficiaries and charities of choice with as little tax repercussions as possible.

We also provide a complimentary legacy planning tool to help you keep all your affairs organized. You can learn more about that by clicking HERE.