Planning for retirement can be overwhelming and stressful, but it doesn't have to be. Where do you start? What questions should you ask? When should you start planning? These are all natural questions that most if not all people have when they come and meet with John for the first time. Hear how John's process takes you step-by-step and you work together to build YOUR financial plan to give you the retirement you have always dreamed of! 

How much money would you need to have in your retirement account to feel comfortable saying you’ll never have to worry about money again?  Well, consider the case of retired NBA great Dwayne Wade.  He’s worth an estimated $120 million, and yet he tells Yahoo Finance he still worries about money. I guess maybe a little fear can be a healthy thing … but shouldn’t we reach a point in our lives where we don’t sit around worrying about whether we might run out of money? When you leave the 9 to 5, you leave the paycheck, so how do you replace that income? John talks about how he can help replace your paycheck! 

We’d all like to think that we have our retirement planning under control, but The Motley Fool says there’s always something that surprises people.  John shares some issues that might catch you off guard and explains how he can help you avoid making mistakes! 

Are you working with a financial advisor, or are you one of those people who tries to handle everything yourself?  CNN came up with a list of situations in which people would benefit from some professional guidance.  Can we go over a few of these, and maybe talk about how you could help? John talks about helping to replace your paycheck! 

Now that the $1.9 trillion stimulus plan is a done deal, there are rumblings that the Biden administration’s next move will be a big tax increase.  Morningstar asked IRA expert Ed Slott if it’s too soon for us to begin preparing for that possibility and he went on to say that – for some things – you can control your own tax rate.  How do we do that? 

John talks about how he will replace that paycheck when you retire and what he says to the naysayers plus John talks about what makes him passionate about what he does

President Biden has repeatedly told us that – unless we earn more than $400,000 a year – he won’t be raising our taxes.  But we know that he’s considering an increase in the capital gains tax, how would that would probably affect your retirement investment? 

 When you were in high school, did you ever forget the combination to your locker?  Well, that’s kinda what this first story is about – except that the consequences are much more serious:  The New York Times says people who own the digital currency Bitcoin have either forgotten, or lost, the passwords to $140 billion worth of the crypto-currency!  I think about stories like this whenever I see someone using one of those robo-advisors to manage their money.  Do those people have any way of getting that money back?

A new year brings the threat of new problems – created by Congress. With potential BIG tax changes coming our way under the new Biden administration, is there any way to protect our retirement accounts from Congress? 

Kiplinger says there are five more ages that are “special” for retirement planning - we go down the list! 

And, RMDs will be back this year.  Fortunately, the age requirement has been raised from the old 70-and-a-half to the new 72.  Hear why you might want to at least consider taking some withdrawals anyway.

Then, John talks about being in lower tax bracket in retirement and how you can even have a tax free retirement!