As Your Partner, We…
Are always available to you.
Have a question or passing thought? We’re reachable 6 days a week.
Advise in your best interest.
As a fee-only, full-time fiduciary, we don’t earn commissions. Our advice is based on your needs alone.
Strive to simplify things for you.
We oversee your financial details, so you can focus on living your life.
Fee-Only Retirement Planning Built for the Transition
Many retirement plans fail in the first five years. We call that the Transition TrapTM. Here is how we plan around it.
The Transition TrapTM: Why Many Retirement Plans Fail in the First Five Years
The Transition TrapTM is the five-year window around retirement where the rules that built your wealth stop working and the rules that protect it haven't started. It can be the most dangerous stretch of your financial life.
The accumulation phase rewards patience, contribution, and time in the market, while the distribution phase often punishes them. Sequence-of-returns risk replaces volatility tolerance. Tax efficiency on every withdrawal replaces tax deferral. Longevity risk replaces growth risk. Cerulli Associates research found that only about one in five heirs keeps the financial advisor who managed their parents' wealth.¹ The pattern repeats around retirement itself.
Why Many Retirement Plans Use the Wrong Playbook
Most advisors know the accumulation playbook: max the 401(k), buy and hold, time in the market, ride out the dips. That playbook built your wealth. It is the wrong playbook for what comes next.
Distribution flips every assumption. Sequence of returns matters more than average returns. Tax efficiency on every withdrawal can matter more than tax deferral. Longevity matters more than market timing. And the accumulation playbook generates a steady paycheck for the advisor while the math quietly fails the client.
Fee-only retirement planning means the work is the planning, not the asset gathering.
What Fee-Only Retirement Planning Looks Like
Retirement-specialized planning is not a portfolio review with planning bolted on. It is four ongoing disciplines — income, tax, investment, and estate — each on a dedicated quarterly meeting.
The structural answer is the Quarterly Planning System: four themed meetings per year, never more than 90 days from the next structured review. Required Minimum Distribution windows, Roth conversions, Social Security timing, and tax-bracket management each have their own clock. The cadence keeps every dimension current.
Pricing follows the same principle: the flat-fee membership is separate from the management fee. You evaluate the planning before you move a single dollar. No commissions. 100% fiduciary on every recommendation, always.
Income Solutions: Equities for Growth. Individual Bonds for Income.
A 30-year retirement needs both engines. Equities carry the growth load against the inflation that erodes a fixed paycheck across decades. Individual bonds carry the income load — built bond-by-bond, with known coupons and known maturity dates, designed to lock in five to seven years of retirement income that does not depend on equity-market swings.³
In 2022, when interest rates spiked, bond fund NAVs fell sharply because funds had to mark holdings to market while individual investment-grade bonds held to maturity through the same period, paid as scheduled. The mechanism has a name on its own page: the Maturity Ladder. Built carefully, it gives a retiree a five- to seven-year runway of income that lets the equity portfolio recover on its own schedule.
See where your retirement plan stands
The Retirement Evaluation is a free gap analysis. Two-step process: a discovery phone call and then an overview of your current retirement situation, which we review and then deliver a personalized evaluation. We walk you through what is working, where you have exposure, and what to do next. The findings are yours regardless. Free of charge.