Transition with confidence. Thrive in the next chapter.
Retirement Planning
Retirement isn’t an endpoint — it’s a change in the rhythm of your life, a shift from building to living, from accumulation to allocation. Our retirement planning services are designed to help guide you through that transition with clarity, structure, and purpose.
Why Retirement Planning Matters
After spending decades building a meaningful career, providing for your family, and growing your wealth, the focus shifts to preserving what you’ve built, creating dependable income, managing risk, and living fully in the years ahead.
Retirement planning ties together three critical themes:
- Income & lifestyle design: What will your cash flow look like when the paychecks stop?
- Risk management & sequence of returns: How will you protect your nest egg from market shocks, inflation, or unplanned expenses?
- Legacy & transition: How will you pass assets, values, or a business on to the next generation (or step back without losing control)?
With the right plan in place, retirement can, hopefully, become less about stepping away and more about aiming to continue to live with purpose, clarity, and balance.
Our Approach to Retirement Planning
Discovery & Vision-Setting
We begin by asking the real questions: What does “retirement” look like to you? Travel, leisure, purpose-driven work, or family legacy? We explore lifestyle expectations, income desires, timeline, and legacy wishes.
Situation Assessment
We map out your current financial picture: savings, investments, pension or business interests, real estate, tax posture, insurance, and legacy plans. We identify risks and gaps that could derail your plan.
Strategy Design
We build a customized retirement blueprint that aligns your assets, income streams, and risk profile to your retirement vision. That includes portfolio design, tax planning, withdrawal strategies (including Social Security or pensions), and a contingency roadmap.
Implementation & Coordination
We partner with you and your team — CPA, attorney, business advisors — to execute the plan. We assist in setting up investment structures, tax-efficient vehicles, insurance reviews, estate-planning updates, and withdrawal mechanisms.
Ongoing Review & Adaptation
We meet regularly (and more often as needed) to review progress, adjust strategies, reallocate as needed, and ensure the plan remains aligned with your life’s next chapter.
What’s Included in Our Retirement-Planning Service
- Retirement income modeling and scenario mapping
- Portfolio and withdrawal-strategy design to manage sequence risk
- Tax-aware planning for pre- and post-retirement phases
- Insurance and legacy-risk evaluations (long-term care, estate, business)
- Social Security and pension coordination (including timing strategies)
- Business-owner exit planning (if applicable) and wealth-transfer support
- Lifestyle expense planning and cash-flow alignment
- Ongoing monitoring, reporting, and proactive check-ins
Why Clients Choose Somerset for Retirement Planning
- Holistic & integrated. At Somerset, we don’t treat retirement in isolation—we coordinate investments, taxes, estate, and lifestyle.
- Relational & long-term. Your retirement advisor should feel like a partner — not just a planner. Somerset emphasizes the relational experience in our communities.
- Active and adaptable. We build living plans, not static documents. Somerset’s planning and investing are “living and dynamic”.
- Prepared for complexity. Whether it’s business interests, generational wealth, or non-traditional assets, we strive to handle layered retirements with clarity and structure.
Our CLARITIES process helps brings precision and structure to complex financial planning and retirement planning. Take our CLARITIES Quiz to see if our process can help your finances thrive.
Typical Client Scenarios We Support
We work with a wide range of communities to meet clients where they are.
- A business owner heading for exit, needing to structure retirement income and succession.
- A widow or divorcee transitioning into retirement.
- A professional moving from high accumulation to draw-down mode and seeking confidence in the decumulation phase.
- A couple in pre-retirement wondering how much they can safely spend and how they pass wealth to their children.
- A retiree who has already left the workforce and is seeking to refine investments, tax, insurance, and legacy in next phase life.
Retirement Planning Frequently Asked Questions
When should I start retirement planning?
Ideally, retirement planning begins long before you retire — often 10 to 15 years prior, but it’s never too late to create clarity. Even if you’re already retired, a coordinated plan can help optimize income, minimize taxes, and reduce uncertainty.
How do you help determine when I can retire?
We model different retirement ages and income scenarios to test what’s possible. By stress-testing your plan against market volatility and inflation, we help identify a timeline that balances freedom and security.
What if I don’t know what retirement will look like?
Many clients start without a clear picture. Through guided conversations, we help you define what a meaningful retirement means for you — financially and personally.
Do you manage investments as part of retirement planning?
Yes. Investment management is an integral part of your retirement plan. We design portfolios that reflect your income needs, risk tolerance, and time horizon, aiming to preserve capital and generate sustainable returns.
How do you help minimize taxes in retirement?
We use a combination of tax-efficient withdrawal sequencing, Roth conversion strategies, and coordination with your CPA to help make your income plan as tax-smart as possible.
What happens once I retire?
Retirement doesn’t mean the planning stops. We continue meeting with you to monitor your progress, adjust for life changes, and ensure your plan remains aligned with your goals and market realities.
If you or someone you know would like to participate in this study, please email
hello@somersetadvisory.com. We will publish our findings in mid-2024!
