Retirement Planning with a CPA Perspective
Retirement Planning for the Wealth You’ve Built.
You’ve built the assets. Now the question becomes how to turn them into the retirement you want while keeping the years ahead in view.
Retirement changes the job of your portfolio. The focus shifts from accumulation alone to coordinating income, withdrawals, cash reserves, taxes, and investment risk. We bring your accounts together, evaluate what you expect to spend and where income will come from, and help determine how your portfolio can support your lifestyle while the rest of your wealth remains invested.
Ruth Grogan’s perspective as a CPA informs how we consider retirement income, taxes, withdrawals, account sequencing, and investment decisions together, rather than one at a time.
Based in Naples, providing retirement planning to investors and retirees throughout Southwest Florida, with clients also served in New York and New Jersey. See our locations.
Can your wealth support the retirement you have in mind?
Retirement readiness is less about reaching one magic number than about whether several pieces of your financial life work together. These are some of the questions where our conversations usually begin:
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| What will you spend each year? | Spending determines how much your portfolio may need to provide and for how long. |
| Which income is dependable? | Social Security, pensions, and other recurring income reduce what must come from your investments. |
| How much cash do you want set aside? | A reserve can help cover near-term spending without requiring investments to be sold during a market decline. |
| When will withdrawals start, and from which accounts? | Withdrawal timing, account order, and required minimum distributions can affect taxes and how long assets need to support you. |
| What large expenses are ahead? | Housing changes, family support, healthcare, travel, or other major expenses belong in the plan from the beginning. |
Turning Wealth Into Retirement Income
We map your expected spending against dependable income such as Social Security, pensions, and other recurring sources, then determine what the portfolio may need to provide. From there, we work through practical decisions: how large a cash reserve to maintain, how frequently investments may need to fund spending, and which accounts should generally be drawn from first.
Withdrawal sequencing can have tax consequences. Required minimum distributions, realized gains, account type, and other factors may affect the order in which assets are used, so we consider those decisions alongside the investment strategy and coordinate with your CPA when tax advice is needed.
Managing Investment Risk and Sequence-of-Returns Risk in Retirement
A major market decline just before or early in retirement can have an outsized effect when portfolio losses occur at the same time withdrawals are beginning. This is often referred to as sequence-of-returns risk.
We look at how much of the portfolio should remain invested for long-term growth, how much should be held more conservatively for nearer-term needs, how concentrated individual positions are, and how much liquidity your retirement plan requires.
No allocation eliminates investment risk. The goal is to take a level of risk that your financial circumstances can support, and that you understand well enough to stay with through difficult markets.
Coordinating Your Retirement Accounts
Most retirees hold several types of accounts, and each may play a different role. A taxable account can provide flexibility, a traditional IRA may eventually create taxable withdrawal requirements, and a Roth IRA may serve a different long-term purpose. We evaluate the accounts together rather than making decisions about each one in isolation.
If you have a 401(k) or other former-employer retirement plan, a rollover is not automatically the right answer. We can compare leaving the assets in the existing plan, rolling them into an IRA, moving them to another eligible employer plan where available, or taking a distribution, considering factors such as investment choices, costs, services, protections, taxes, and your broader strategy.
Reviewing Your Retirement Plan Over Time
Retirement planning is not a one-time calculation. Markets change. Spending changes. Tax rules, health, family needs, and your own priorities can change as well.
For investment management clients, accounts are monitored on an ongoing basis and formally reviewed at least quarterly. We encourage an annual review meeting to revisit the broader retirement strategy, and you can reach us directly whenever your circumstances or priorities change.
What Retirement Planning Includes, Limitations, and Fees
Retirement planning is part of our broader financial planning work. Initial planning is included for prospective investment management clients, with ongoing planning integrated into the advisory relationship.
Standalone financial planning is also available as a one-time $2,000 fixed-fee engagement for clients who want a financial plan without ongoing investment management.
A retirement plan is based on informed assumptions, not guarantees. Markets, inflation, tax law, spending, longevity, and personal circumstances can change over time. We do not provide tax preparation or legal advice, and we coordinate with your CPA, attorney, or other professionals when appropriate.
Retirement Planning Questions
Do I need to be retired to work with you?
No. We work with people who are approaching retirement as well as people who are already retired. Starting several years before retirement can provide more time to evaluate savings, investment risk, retirement income, taxes, and the timing of major decisions before withdrawals begin.
Can you tell me exactly how much I need to retire?
No single number can guarantee a successful retirement. We can estimate what your expected spending may require based on assumptions about income, investment returns, inflation, taxes, longevity, and other factors, and show how the result changes when those assumptions change.
Do you help with Social Security or Medicare decisions?
Yes, at the planning level. We incorporate expected Social Security income and discuss how claiming timing may interact with your other income and retirement withdrawals. We can also incorporate expected healthcare and Medicare costs into the retirement plan, while final eligibility, claiming, enrollment, and coverage decisions should be confirmed with the Social Security Administration, Medicare, or the appropriate professional.
Do you help with required minimum distributions and withdrawal sequencing?
Yes. We consider required minimum distributions, taxable withdrawals, Roth assets, taxable brokerage accounts, realized gains, and other income sources when evaluating where retirement spending may come from. Because these decisions can have tax consequences, we coordinate with your CPA or tax professional when tax advice is needed.
What happens if markets fall early in my retirement?
Market declines cannot be eliminated, but retirement planning can account for the possibility. We consider cash reserves, near-term spending needs, portfolio concentration, investment risk, and how much of the portfolio needs to remain invested for longer-term goals rather than relying on a single allocation for every dollar.
Who will I work with?
You work directly with the firm’s principals. Jonathan leads investment research and portfolio construction, while Ruth Grogan, CPA, brings a CPA’s analytical perspective to planning and account review. You work directly with Jonathan and Ruth throughout the relationship; planning and portfolio decisions are not handed off to a separate retirement-planning or relationship-management team.
