Retirement Planning
Long before retirement even hits our radars, we’re planning what type of education, skills training and professional designations we’ll acquire. We also spend a lot of time planning which industries are the best place to work in, and which employers to work for. Once employed, we carefully strategize our every career move, so that we progress to the top of the ladder in our respective fields.
Sadly though, while we focus most of our efforts on all these plans, we often forget to plan for “life after work”!
Why Retirement Planning is Important
Everything we do – from choosing a career to managing career progressions at our employers – is presumably so we and our families and dependents can have a better life. But if we fail to plan for “Life after work”, all of the plans and effort we put into our working lives, could be jeopardized.
What will retirement look like? Are we spending too much? What if we’re not saving enough? How frequently should we be saving? Could we run out of money in retirement? Are we investing in the right places? How much will we need in retirement? Will Government and Employer pension plans cover us through retirement?
If we don’t plan for retirement, we’ll never be able to prepare for it. And an ill-prepared retirement is bound to be one filled with financial stress and chaos!
What We Can Do For You
For our clients, retirement planning doesn’t start at retirement. It starts much before! Our Retirement Planning service takes a long-term view of your financial wellbeing. Our retirement planning approach is designed to help you make informed decisions over time. We use a long-term, goals-based process to help you evaluate your options and build a plan that aligns with your priorities.
Here’s what we do for you as part of our Retirement Planning service:
- Your personalized retirement planning strategy: Everything we do for you centers around four pillars - Helping you plan to strive for your financial goals prior to retirement; Planning to help you evaluate sources of retirement income; Putting strategies in place to help manage risks and prepare for unexpected events; Planning for your legacy.
- Understanding your goals: Through a highly personalized approach, we understand what your retirement goals are.
- Analyzing where you are at: To plan a meaningful retirement, you need to know where you currently stand. We’ll help you build an in-depth financial inventory to use as part of our retirement planning process.
- Developing the plan: Remember all those questions you had on your mind – largely unanswered? Well, we’ll work with you to create a retirement plan designed to address your key questions and priorities. We’ll help you model retirement income needs and evaluate how different savings and investment strategies may impact your plan. If projections indicate a potential shortfall, we’ll discuss options that may help address it.
- Implementing the plan: As you move closer to retirement, we’ll work closely with you to help implement the plan in a phased and orderly manner. The goal of our Retirement Planning approach is to support an organized transition into retirement through periodic reviews and coordinated next steps.
- Supporting you make decisions on pensions and benefits: Our retirement planning professionals are available to support you as questions arise. We can provide education and planning support regarding pension and benefit options and how they may fit into your overall retirement strategy. For benefit eligibility or program-specific decisions, we encourage clients to consult the applicable plan administrator or government agency.
- Looking out for you in retirement and beyond: Our Retirement Planning service isn’t done yet – not by a long shot! We can discuss how topics such as healthcare costs, insurance needs, charitable giving, and estate considerations may affect your retirement plan, and we can coordinate with your tax and legal professionals as appropriate.
- Ongoing reviews: Our Retirement Planning service is designed to support an ongoing relationship, with periodic monitoring and review of your retirement strategy. We’ll continue to monitor and review your retirement plans, and consult with you frequently about any changes or updates needed to address your evolving retirement lifestyle needs.
