Retirement Readiness Kit

Here in our Retirement Readiness Kit, you’ll see a variety of content to help you get started with your retirement planning.

You can interact with the content at your own pace, in any order you please, or follow the steps we’ve outlined. Once you’ve reviewed all of the materials, you can request any of our complimentary assessments at the bottom of the page. We look forward to helping you get ready for retirement.

Step 1: Educate: Test Your Retirement IQ and Learn What You Don’t Know About Retirement

We’ve put together a Retirement Readiness checklist and quiz that can help show you how ready you are for retirement and find any gaps in your current retirement plan. The quiz questions provide a quick and basic assessment of your financial readiness for retirement. Your Retirement Advisor advisor’s are uniquely skilled in helping you address these tough, but necessary questions. Knowledge is power.

Ultimate Retirement Readiness To-Do List

Take the Retirement Readiness Quiz

Step 2: Take an Inventory of What You’ve Got

In our Your Retirement Advisor planning system, we start by getting you organized and taking an inventory of your assets, income and expenses as a key part of discovering if you have enough of the “right stuff” to last throughout retirement. The Multi-Discipline Retirement planner below allows you to get a snapshot of all the disciplines in your retirement plan in one place and what you’ve got in each area. The planner becomes the catalyst for completing your full retirement plan.

Get Organized with the MDR Retirement Planner

Step 3: Analyze: Determine if Your Savings & Income Will Last

The most important area to focus on in retirement readiness is determining if your savings and income will last a potentially long retirement. Life and retirement are about making the right decisions. And there’s no shortage of critical decisions to be made about your retirement. Informed decisions are the most impactful on your financial security. In the analysis step, you’ll want to research, gather the data, and assess the options for making sure your income lasts throughout retirement. It’s also extremely important to consider and calculate the retirement risk factors we all face, such as longevity, volatility, and taxes, to name a few. If you ignore any of these factors in your analysis, your portfolio could be significantly impacted.

You can use the calculators below to get a general and basic idea of what you’ll need and how you’re progressing, but a sophisticated Retirement Efficiency Assessment, performed with technology tools by a retirement specialist, will provide the most reliable information.

The Social Security timing tool is also a good, basic tool, but again a more sophisticated analysis is required to aid with tax planning and also must be integrated into your whole retirement analysis.

Retirement Efficiency Assessment (REA)

Step 4: Strategize: Build Your Retirement Plan

Once your analysis has been completed, the next step is to review various strategies and build your retirement plan. Planning for income distribution in retirement is COMPLETELY different from the accumulation phase of your life. Your portfolio will have a completely different set of goals and strategies. A reliable plan will address these KEY strategies:

1. Portfolio Optimization: How to suitably invest retirement assets for growth, while minimizing portfolio volatility and preserving principle?  Learn about Retirement Portfolio Design and Optimization for Retirees
2. Maximize Social Security: When to apply for Social Security to try to maximize income benefits? Learn more about the 15 mistakes to avoid in claiming your Social Security
3. Minimize Taxes: How to eliminate your tax burden in retirement? Learn about the critical importance of taxes in this guide

You can learn about all the other “retirement optimized” strategies you’ll want to consider for you plan, including:

• Mitigating Risks: How to mitigate key risk factors that can sabotage your retirement: Learn about common retirement risk factors
• Income Distribution: What’s the appropriate income distribution method to utilize, which reflects each client’s individual needs?

Learn about the value of all the Multi-Discipline Retirement Strategies in this white paper

or

Check out our Retirement Strategies Masterclass below

Step 5: Retirement Planning Isn’t Easy…Get Help from a Hybrid “Retirement” Advisor

While retirement planning is imperative, it certainly isn’t easy. The accumulation phase of your life is easy compared with retirement. There’s so many more considerations and issues to address in retirement. While you can certainly undertake retirement education and be your own advisor, we recommend that you make the investment in working with a hybrid “retirement” advisor who has the experience and know-how every retiree needs. The investment is much more afforable than you think, potentially saving you thousands and thousands of dollars in bad decisions. Not just any advisor will do.

Why you should work with a hybrid retirement advisor

Step 6: Find out if you’re ready for retirement (i.e. if you’ve got all your ducks in a row)

To help you get started on your retirement plan (or to get a 2nd opinion on a play you already have), we offer a complementary “Am I Ready” 30-minute discovery call with our co-founder Brian Saranovitz.

Watch the video below to meet Brian and hear about what he’ll discuss on this call with you. And then complete the form in the green box below to request your call.