Our Process
First, we need to get to know you and your unique situation, so we ask you about everything that will be involved in the process: your current income, lifestyle, how much you can expect to receive in pensions and/or Social Security, when you want to retire, how and where you want to retire, etc. We then look at what it will take to get you from where you are now to your retirement goals and develop a plan to get you to your financial destination – this includes taking into consideration everything from how much money you’ll need in retirement, to what kind of return you’ll need on your investments, as well as how much you’ll need to start saving and/or investing in order to achieve those goals.
Social Security
The Social Security strategy that will work best for you will depend on things like your income, at what age you plan to retire, and what other income you can expect to receive in retirement. At Envision, our retirement planning advisors will look at all these factors, as well as the current state of Social Security and the different strategies available to determine how you can best use Social Security as part of your retirement plan.
Taxes
When looking at how much money you have in your 401(k) or IRA, some retirement planners might take the total and tell you that’s how much money you have to spend in retirement. But at Envision, we look at it a little differently.
See, the money that goes into your 401(k) or IRA is tax free as long as the money stays in there, but once you start withdrawing from that account, you’ll have to start paying taxes on that money, just like you pay taxes on any other form of income (unless you used a Roth IRA, in which case money going into that account gets taxed, but money coming out of it does not).
Taxes are too important to be overlooked, which is why, at Envision, we take them into account when calculating how much money you’ll need for retirement, as well as which retirement strategy will be best for helping you reduce the taxes you’ll have to pay in retirement.
