Learn the best practices with 401(k) rollovers and what it means for a financial advisor to specialize in working with retirees.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is the best time to take your social security benefit?
• How is tax planning different in retirement?
• How should we address long term care?
• What about moving in retirement?
• How should we deal with the death of a spouse?
• What does sequence of returns risk mean?
• What are the main benefits of taking your 401(k) and rolling it into an IRA?

Key Lessons Learned:

Social Security

• Most financial advice says to wait until you’re 70 before you take Social Security because your benefit grows by 8% for every year you wait.
• If you have money saved up for your retirement, this may be bad advice.
• You shouldn’t take blanket advice, you must factor in your unique life experience and situation into your decisions about your retirement. 

Tax Planning

• As an employee, you have very little control over how much taxes you pay.
• You can control your taxes much more when you’re retired than when you were working.
• Depending on your financial situation, it’s possible to defer taxes to later in your retirement when you aren’t as active.
• It’s also important to manage your retirement income and taxes so minimize the amount of Medicare payments you make.

Long Term Medical Care

• Most people think that Medicare will pay for long term care, like nursing homes, which is not true.
• You need to protect your assets or buy insurance specifically with long term care in mind.
• The heart of investment planning begins with a retirement income plan that deals with bumps in the road in the future.
• There are many different implications of the death of a spouse, you will often be losing income while also paying more in taxes.
• You don’t want to be worried about money at such a difficult time in your life so you need to work with someone who can help you plan for this situation. 

Sequencing Your Returns

• It’s important to sequence the timing of your withdrawals from your portfolio. If you get low rates of return in the first few years of your retirement and your pulling money out, you’ll have to scale your income downwards.
• You can’t just look at the average rate of return of a portfolio.
• You need to work with someone who specializes in financial retirement planning who can help you avoid these financial traps.

401(k) Rollovers

• When it comes to the 401(k), the company is the client, not you. Rolling over a 401(k) into an IRA will give you more flexibility but it will depend on your unique financial situation.
• Working with the robo advisors is not necessarily bad, but they won’t be able to give you the same level of customized advice that a human financial advisor can give you.
• If you do the rollover correctly, you won’t pay anything in taxes and you can end up saving hundreds of thousands of dollars for your family.
• You should start with a financial plan that’s designed for your specific situation before thinking about investments inside an IRA.

Links To Resources Mentioned

Money Map Retirement Review

1-800-757-0436

Thank you for listening!