Recently retired

Clients: Dave (60) & Cathy (60)

Primary Goals: Determine if they have enough savings to stay retired, consolidate accounts a+ccounts/get organized, gift money to charities.

Background:

Dave and Cathy are no longer working, but not by choice. They decided a long time ago, after the birth of their third boy that Cathy would stay home with the kids and Dave would function as the primary earner by working to support the family. Dave was planning to work until he reached 65 so he didn’t have to buy private insurance before enrolling in Medicare. Unfortunately, Dave’s employer experienced difficulties during COVID which resulted in Dave and many others being let go.

Dave’s career was demanding so he decided to take a break, especially with the uncertainty during COVID. It’s been a few years now and Dave and Cathy are wondering if Dave, and possibly Cathy should go back to work or if they have enough saved to stay retired without changing their lifestyle.

Approach:

Dave and Cathy met with a few other advisors but haven’t decided to hire one for a few reasons, their primary concerns being: they felt that some of the advisors they met were more interested in selling a product rather than a service that would meet their needs, and they haven’t met an advisor that gave them enough confidence to stay retired without stress.

At Wyze Wealth Advisors, we put together a comprehensive Retire WYZE Assessment, which serves as the initial build of your living breathing retirement plan when you hire us as your trusted team of advisors. Our process is comprehensive and aimed at addressing your most important questions. We spend time gathering information and asking questions to gain a thorough understanding of your situation. We build your Retire WYZE assessment, present the assessment, explain our recommendations and share the assessment with you. We encourage all of our prospective clients to go through this process because it gives them the ability to test drive our services at no cost, decide if they are comfortable with our planning approach and investment philosophy, and gain confidence in our experience, education, and training it takes to meet their retirement planning needs.

Thorough fact finding, meticulous planning and our recommendations were able to benefit Dave and Cath in several ways:

1. Dave and Cathy had ample resources compared to their modest spending goals. We were able to confirm and show them why they can stay retired if they choose.
2. Dave was a big believer is “not keeping all of his eggs in one basket” so their investment accounts were scattered at many different firms. At first this gave Dave piece of mind but eventually the stress of keeping track of everything started to take a toll. We explained some of the most common misconceptions people have about the risks of keeping all of your investments under one roof. When Dave learned about the protections in place, it was a no brainer that consolidating his investments would serve as a major convenience. We consolidated all of their investments to our primary custodian, Charles Schwab and gave him access to our clients portal where all of his record keeping needs would be met in one place.
3. We developed a gifting strategy that will not only benefit the charities receiving the gift but also provide Dave and Cathy with tax benefits. Each year we review their investment portfolio and recommend whether they should gift cash or securities to maximize the tax benefit. Once Dave and Cathy reach age 73, we plan to start doing qualified charitable distributions from their IRA which will help satisfy their required minimum distribution and reduce their taxable income dollar-for-dollar on the amount gifted to charity.

Dave and Cathy decided not to go back to work. Instead, they spend their time with their grandkids, attending different church functions, traveling, and hosting family dinners every Sunday.