Do I Have Enough to Retire? Non-Guaranteed Income

In this series of articles, I’ve been outlining the Lord and Richards Roadmap?. Our roadmap is designed to provide you with a comprehensive, written plan to achieve a secure retirement and financial independence so you never have to return to work to pay for your lifestyle.

?

Every day, we work with people just like you who are planning for their future and may feel uncertain about current world affairs interfering with their portfolio and retirement. By helping you develop a written income plan, risk-management plan, healthcare plan, tax plan, and estate plan, we instill the confidence for you to move forward with your retirement. These written plans ensure you never run out of money before you run out of life and help you avoid financial devastation due to chronic illness, market downturns, etc.

?

Today, let’s zero in on the importance of a written income plan. Over the next couple of articles, I’ll dive deeper into what it means to have a plan that will inspire you and give you the confidence you need to retire on time. The timing isn’t the same for everyone; some business owners and employees intend on working until they have?to stop, while others look forward to the day they can step away from the daily grind to enjoy the people, places, and things they love. Wherever you land on the spectrum, our team would be delighted to walk you through our Lord and Richards retirement plan process and give you the confidence and security you need for your future.

?

What’s the purpose and value of a written income plan?

?

I previously discussed the importance of writing down goals to increase your likelihood of success. Additionally, a written income plan aims to answer the question, “Do I have enough to retire when I’d like to?” Some clients set goals with us to retire early, while others want to plan on a later retirement. The first step is allowing us to test your portfolio and its ability to last over your and your spouse’s lifetimes. To determine this, you must have a good handle on what you expect your expenses to be. This can feel daunting for folks preparing an expense report, but our team is ready to assist. We help you determine what it would require to live comfortably in retirement while fulfilling your goals, dreams, and bucket list.

?

Next, we must implement a solution to ensure you never run out of money before you run out of life. One of the steps in our process involves making projections. People often come to us either having done this on their own or through a well-meaning advisor or broker. The problem is that these advisors typically put together an over-simplified cash flow; they assume a consistent, static annual return—let’s say 5% to be conservative—and tax rate without diving deeper. In reality, this type of report isn't worth the paper it's printed on, as you can't count on things to stay constant.

?

At Lord and Richards, we project into the future utilizing real characteristics of your portfolio and test it based on the knowledge we've gleaned from the past about market declines and so forth. Our software runs, at minimum, 10,000 simulations to determine how your portfolio stands up against any variable, including market fluctuations, long-term healthcare costs, the passing of a spouse, and more. We leave no stone unturned so when we arrive at your probability of success, you can move forward with great confidence. We’ve conducted these simulations for many people, and they often are surprised at our model’s sharp contrast against more common static models that assume a consistent economic climate. Actual rates of return vary widely from year to year; rather than 5% every year, you may have 10% one year and -10% the next! Withdrawing during the down years accelerates your likelihood of running out of money.

?

In our following articles, I’ll talk about how to place some certainty under your feet. I encourage you to read the previous articles in this series that discuss developing a written risk-management plan and the Lord and Richards safety percentage: our promise that once we determine your downside risk level of comfort tolerance, we will strive to create a portfolio that will not breach the level. Our goal is to help provide you with a stable platform from which you can draw income. We want to utilize solutions and investments alongside your written plan to determine what to take from where and when.

?

In the next article, I’ll explain how to determine whether you have enough to retire and explore non-guaranteed income sources. In the meantime, our team at Lord and Richards would love to connect with you. We help people just like you every day live in retirement with great confidence that only our Financial Independence Roadmap? provides. We would love to get to know you. It begins with a simple phone call.

?

Investment Advisory Services offered through Lord and Richards Wealth Management, LLC, a Registered Investment Adviser.