Retirement Planning

The questions that actually matter

When can I stop working is really four questions. What will my income be, from which accounts, in which order? When should I claim Social Security, and how does my spouse's timing interact with mine? If there is a pension, do I take the annuity or the lump sum? And how much do I lose to taxes on every dollar I withdraw?

A good retirement planner answers these with projections, not rules of thumb, and stress-tests the plan against bad markets arriving at bad times. The sequence of returns in your first five retirement years matters more than the average return over thirty.

The New York factor

Retiring in Westchester has real tax texture. New York does not tax Social Security benefits, which surprises many people, but it does tax most other retirement income. Meanwhile the property taxes that felt manageable on a salary look different on a fixed income.

That is why so many Westchester retirees weigh a move to Florida or another no-tax state, and why the ones who do it well plan the domicile change carefully. New York audits departing residents aggressively. An advisor who knows this terrain can save you from expensive mistakes, and can just as easily build a plan for staying, if staying is what you want.

Roth conversions and the years before required distributions

The window between retirement and required minimum distributions is often the best tax-planning opportunity of your life. Converting traditional IRA dollars to Roth in lower-income years can reduce lifetime taxes substantially, but the math is specific to your situation and interacts with Medicare premiums and New York brackets.

This is specialist work. The advisors we match for retirement planning do these projections routinely, not occasionally.

How we match for retirement

We look for advisors whose practices center on retirement income, not advisors who mention it among twenty services. Credentials, fiduciary duty, and a clean record are verified as always; see our standard. Start with a short private inquiry.