Retirement GPS Radio (Senior Retirement and Income Solutions)

Here's the cruelest twist in retirement planning: the people most likely to get hit with IRMAA are the ones who saved the most. The harder you worked and the more you saved, the bigger the target on your back. This week we're talking about the IRMAA Ambush — what it is, how it finds you, and what you can do about it.

Think of the Retirement Red Zone as the 8 to 10 year window surrounding retirement — about 4 to 5 years before, and 4 to 5 years after.

On this week's episode of Retirement GPS Radio, we take you through 7 key estate planning elements to make sure you have checked off. 

When it comes to retirement income planning, the traditional Wall Street Advice - which based on a growth approach - often falls short. There are 8 truths or principles that don't work in Wall Street's favor when you retire and need your hard-earned savings to live on. So, Wall Street is not excited to share them. 

We will. 

Herein, we tackle the 4% rule, growth vs income approaches, the "retirement red zone", sequence of return risk, and more. 

More important than your asset allocation is your asset location. There are only 3 columns (categories) of financial vehicles:

Taxable

Tax-deferred

Tax-free

Before deciding what your allocation should be, you must decide where you want your assets to live. There is a perfect balance for each saver. In this episode, we dive into the advantages and disadvantages of each column, the proper uses of the assets that make up in column, and how to strategically transfer taxable and tax-deferred assets to the tax-free column.

Roth conversions aren’t about avoiding taxes — they’re about deciding when, how, and at what rate you’ll pay them. Too many people focus on the micro view: “How much tax will this cost me this year?” A better question is, “How will this decision impact my entire retirement?”

Strategic conversions can create decades of tax-free income, reduce or eliminate required minimum distributions, lower Medicare premiums and Social Security taxation, and provide insulation from future tax increases. Yes, there can be short-term friction — higher taxable income or temporary IRMAA surcharges — but for many households, those are time-boxed issues in exchange for long-term control, certainty, and tax-free wealth.

In this episode of Retirement GPS Radio, we dive into 5 high-level social security updates for 2026 and how they impact your social security decisions.

Through a case study, we explore how to make your social security potentially tax-free as well as leaving nearly 3X more to heirs while not sacrificing current life style.

When creating a retirement strategy, remember the acronym P.L.A.N.

Predictability - value predictability over potential

Low-correlation - strive include strategies and asset classes that do not require the market to perform in order for you to succeed

Alignment - ensure that each component of you strategy reinforces and compliments the others rather than (unknowingly) creating friction

Net-income - choosing tax-free/efficient strategies in place of tax-deferred/hostile strategies can be the difference between a retirement of plenty and one of scarcity

Also, follow along in our case study where we demonstrate P.L.A.N. in action and create 5 streams of tax-free income while increasing potential net-spendable income by 59%.

Major updates and impacts are happening in the retirement landscape. Social Security cost of living adjustments, Medicare premium increases, IRMAA surcharge increases, and new taxes. How are you affected, and how you best navigate the landmines? We also explore how create a guaranteed tax-free foundation of income throughout retirement that avoid social security taxation and IRMAA surcharges on Medicare.