Retirement Distribution Strategies

The financial rules that helped you get to retirement will not serve you very well in retirement.  The operative principles are longer accumulation and rates of return.  Rather, the things that will determine your retirement success will likely be the sequence of returns, the rate of withdrawal from your portfolio, and how long you live in retirement.  Recent studies suggest that to generate the same amount of retirement income as previously thought, most people will need to accumulate significantly more prior to retirement or utilize strategies that involve actuarial science, something that has been largely missing from the retirement savings equation since pensions fell out of favor beginning in the 1970's.  To put it simply, it's no longer about accumulation; it's about income.

Retirement distribution planning involves coordinating all of your available resources: Social Security, pensions and other guaranteed sources of income, IRAs, 401(k)s, investment portfolios, annuities and more to determine the most efficient way to produce the needed after-tax income with the least amount of risk. This analysis looks at the particular features of each financial tool and factors in how each stream of income would be taxed, the risk involved, how it protects against inflation, etc. during retirement and how it is passed on to your heirs. It is a very complicated process, very much like the gears of a mechanical system all working together to create the most amount of work with the least amount of effort. Resources that may not be needed to generate income can then be utilized for other purposes such as discretionary spending and generational wealth transfer.