Envision Retirement helps clients at different stages of their lives.

Retirement Planning is designed to help those who are still working because they enjoy their careers or feel that they still need to save more before retiring. Retirement Transition Planning is for those who will be retiring in less than a year and need to make a number of key decisions before leaving their careers. Retirement Management is an ongoing service to provide financial advice and support during the retirement years.

One of the fastest growing segments of our services is helping adult children cope with the challenges of aging parents who still have financial needs but are unable to be independent.

Retirement Services

Planning – people who are still working benefit from crystallizing their long term vision long before celebrating retirement. Most often we start working with clients on retirement planning as they shift into the empty nest phase. The big emphasis is getting clarity on how life will look now that children are not the primary focus

Issues include downsizing the home, decisions about vacation homes and determining where to live during the pre-retirement and retirement years. Long term dreams get sorted out and prioritized.

Often the process of refining the long term vision has a powerful impact upon clients (especially couples) which invigorates them to accelerate efforts toward preparing for retirement.

The balance of the planning work is to create the plan that enables a client to see what needs to occur to enjoy their lifestyle between now and when retirement occurs as well as during the retirement years. This includes developing an investment management strategy, appropriately managing risks (life insurance, disability insurance, long term care where appropriate) and creating the liability plan (usually deciding on how quickly to pay off the mortgage).

The value of the plan is the combination of having a plan to guide decisions as well as benefiting the enlightenment that results from having gone through the process.

Transition Planning – real decisions need to be made relatively soon. The job or business that created the income flow will need to be replaced by a combination of social security, pensions and distributions from assets. Risk tolerance changes and timing of withdrawals will require changes in investment portfolios. Pension distribution decisions will need to be made.

Sometimes real estate decisions will need to be made as it makes sense to simplify life, live closer to children and grandchildren, live closer to one’s passions or possibly experience life as a snowbirder.

Vision planning still will be incorporated as it is important to balance out lifestyle, risks and other goals to ensure long term sustainability and a sense of security in order to live a life of joy and not anxiety.

Retirement Management – the decision to retire has passed and many decisions have already been made so there is less emphasis on retirement planning and far more on retirement management. Investment and asset management needs to be kept on track and appropriate for the client’s current tolerance for risk as well as a changing economic world.

Many times investment portfolios designed for long term accumulation during the work years have not been adjusted for the retirement years. Sometimes the effort to reduce risk is too conservative and will also affect long term sustainability.

At some point during the Retirement Management period, the realization sets in that there are most assets than necessary to support a comfortable lifestyle for the remainder of one’s life. At that point, the focus shifts from safety, consistency and security to wealth transfer planning.

Care Planning and Management for Aging Parents – mom and dad cared for us, raised us and will always be our parents. One though, life is different. Health issues, physical or cognitive, arise and our parents can no longer be independent. Multiple issues arise. Increased care cannot and many times should not be provided by the family. Professional help can come in the form on home health care, adult family homes, assisted living communities or at some stage skilled nursing homes.

These forms of custodial style care are outside what Medicare covers. Sometimes our parents have planned properly for this type of event. Most of the time these issues arise suddenly and help will be needed to reposition assets to address the increased costs.

Issues will include how best to handle the timing and sale of the family home, timing and funding of improved care and the challenges of managing finances right after the loss of a spouse.

Complicating the issues of helping aging parents is how to effectively deal with a diverse set of siblings. We are very experienced with these issues and work with families to develop a management structure to enable efficient decision making and respecting the needs of serving parents as well addressing concerns of siblings.

We are also very experienced with the VA Aid and Attendance Benefit which provides an Improved Pension Benefit for war time veterans and/or their widows who need custodial care.

Tactical Services

Sometimes it isn’t necessary to implement a comprehensive planning strategy. Sometimes it is more important to deal with immediate issues which may evolve into long term planning later.

Here are some of the tactical services where we help our clients:

• 401(k) Rollover
• Substantial Inheritance
• Sale of Investment Real Estate
• Sale of Business
• Mortgage Planning & Analysis
• Life Insurance Needs Analysis
• Divorce