Why We’re Different
If you haven’t yet noticed, we’re a little different, a little provocative and a lot more focused on retirement planning than the average Joe advisor.
Your Retirement Advisor Introduction Packet
No one has quite figured out how to pull ALL the pieces of retirement planning together until now. We bring a team of advisors together to make preparing for retirement easier (and more affordable) and living in retirement better than you imagined.
Geek IS the new chic in retirement planning. We love the math and science of retirement and use it as a basis for everything we do. We’re obsessed with education, research and technology. Find out why you want to work with a retirement geek.
We rely on something called Alpha to power our retirement planning strategies. Alpha is simply the measure of return or benefit above a given average. We can potentially improve your retirement outcome by implementing eight unconventional Alpha Efficient Strategies. The sum total of these Alpha increases gives you an Alpha Efficient plan that you’ll be hard pressed to replicate either on your own, or with any other advisors.
One of our priorities, is to offer unmatched value. You’ll be hard pressed to find another advisor who offers the combination of: a full complement of retirement services, delivered by retirement specialists, who follow an in-depth planning process at fees significantly less than the industry average. We don’t think you should have to choose between service, quality, solutions, expertise or fees. You can have it all.
The great Buddha describes the “Middle Way” as a path of moderation, between the extremes. This, according to him, was the path of wisdom. The Middle Way gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, and to enlightenment.
At Your Retirement Advisor we believe extremes can be bad, especially when it comes to retirement advice. Like Buddha, we believe that the Middle Way is the path of wisdom. The Middle Way as it applies to retirement advice strikes a balance between the extremes of investment advisors and insurance agents each pushing their biased viewpoint and a one size fits all approach to retirement and income planning. Regardless of your religion or your spirituality, the Middle Way is a great concept to apply in all facets of our lives and retirement. Learn more about our guidance
We believe the most reliable retirement outcome is attained by committing to our multi-step Educate, Plan, Implement, Confidence (EPIC) process in which you bring your dream, and we deploy plan to help you live it, together. This takes commitment and collaboration, but it’s an investment in knowledge and in understanding your retirement you won’t regret. Learn more about the process
Did you ever walk into a cute and cozy boutique and get a warm fuzzy feeling? It’s a completely different feeling than walking into Walmart. Well…we’re not Walmart. Or one of those big investment companies. We’re a retirement planning boutique where we know your name, your husband’s name, your birthday, why you like to garden and listen to Sheryl Crow, and what your hopes and dreams for retirement are. When you work with us we get to know you and your family on a personal level. We invite you into our lives as you welcome us into yours. It is these deep and long lasting relationships with our clients that is the basis of a successful planning partnership. It’s why we love being a boutique provider of retirement planning vs. a big, corporatey kinda place where you’re just an account number. Being a boutique also allows us to be much more nimble and flexible which means we can make changes quickly to process, strategy, solutions and outcomes.
We can work with virtually every investment and insurance company in the world to find you the absolute best solutions. We work with the big names: Fidelity, Vanguard, Nationwide, John Hancock, Allianz, but also boutique firms like us that offer equally good, but less known solutions: Athene, Integrity Life, Dodge & Cox Investments, and Thornburg.
Whether you’re trying to determine when you can retire, how to maximize your Social Security, how to allocate your 401(k), or determine if you need long term care insurance, we offer everything from individual, topic specific assessments, including complementary income projections, to full deployment of retirement plans. We can also review an existing plan to see if you have enough of the right stuff. We can do as little or as much as you need us to to help make preparing for retirement easier and living in retirement more prosperous. Learn more about our assessments
So we do work 7 days a week here at Your Retirement Advisor if necessary. One of our goals is to make reliable advice convenient and accessible and available from anywhere anytime. We’ve got this whole virtual Zoom thing down pat. You don’t need to be limited to the advisors in your immediate geographical area. Technology enables us to connect with you in a virtual, but still meaningful manner. We can Zoom into your home or office anytime…we love this format for getting your retirement done! So whether you live in Boston or Boulder, we can help you. See you in a Zoom call soon.
When you work with someone who has passion, you know it, it shows in everything they do. When you work with someone who has purpose, it shows in their results. When you work with someone who has personality, they make it enjoyable. Yes retirement planning is serious business (and you’ll always find us professional and on point), but we believe it should be fun too with a bit of humor and friendship in the mix. We take your success personally because Your Retirement Advisor is our life’s work and we’re excited to share our passion, purpose and personality with you. Listen in to hear YRA founder, Brian Saranovitz talk about his passion for work and life.
Our founders are baby boomers themselves so they’re facing the same challenges as many of you. We’re also old enough to know what we did wrong when we started out so we can guide those who are in the pre-retirement phase. We’ve been through the ups and downs of the markets with 30 years experience in the financial services industry, and we’ve worked with hundreds of people just like you helping them manage all phases of their financial lives. We now focus on retirement planning because to be honest, that’s where we see the greatest need and where we can have the greatest impact and personal satisfaction knowing we’re helping a lot of people have a more secure retirement. Learn more about our story
Here’s to being a pink duck in world of yellow ones, and remember fortune favors the smart, the bold, and the prepared (and sometimes luck helps too).
We also believe we’re pretty lucky ducks because we:
Do what we love each and every day
Provide a unique and much needed service
Make a positive impact on society, and
Are living out our personal and professional dreams
As luck would have it, you’ve waddled onto our website. While you’re here take a look at everything that makes us different and see how these differences can help you retire with more confidence and comfort.
Our offices are located in Central and Eastern MA, however through the amazing power of the Internet we are able to work with people anywhere in the country. If you’re looking for a team of retirement specialists, and are comfortable starting a relationship with us via the web or phone, let’s talk.
Even if you already have an advisor you’re working with we invite you to take advantage of our assessments, which will give you a great 2nd opinion and an opportunity to raise the bar on him or her. We also invite you to take any of our e-classes and interact with all of the valuable content on our website.
When it comes to retirement planning, we believe the most important and best investment you’ll ever make is hiring a retirement specialist and educating yourself on the issues. It’s simply too important and too complex to be left to chance, to previous ways of thinking, or put off to another day. We’ll also make sure you stay on track and take all those important action items when you’re suppose to (like claiming your Social Security, converting to a Roth, purchasing a Long Term Care policy, etc.). Like everything in life, a goal without a plan is just a wish and by consistently making informed decisions and committing to and implementing a plan, you’re much more likely to succeed.
You’ll have your own retirement advisor who is licensed to offer balanced and objective investment and insurance solutions in whatever combination makes sense for you. We run many simulations and projections to help making smart, research-backed and data-driven decisions about how to make your income last throughout retirement. We also oversee other specialists as required for your unique situation: CPAs, estate attorneys and others.
No, you can interact with the content in our Learning Center, take a class, follow our blog posts. Or, you can request single Assessments to analyze individual components of your retirement plan or address specific concerns. You can also hire us to create your plan and either deploy it yourself or with another advisor, although we feel our guidance will allow you to improve your retirement outcome.
When you contact us, we’ll put you in touch with one of our affiliate advisors to get started. He/she will recommend that you commit to our 4-step meeting process as well as answering a few questions about your retirement goals and needs. After this initial discussion, we’ll decide together if we’d like to move forward to the first step in our retirement planning process.
Our Educate, Plan, Implement process requires that everyone we work with commit to the process. Together, we make decisions about your retirement and the outcome you seek. Then, with our guidance, we build your retirement to meet those goals, and continue to monitor and adjust the plan as your life unfolds.
Our planning service covers a series of strategy meetings and is priced at $2,500. Our assessments are priced separately depending upon the assessment you require. Our ongoing fees are 100% transparent and dependent upon your unique situation. However, we are proud to say that our fees are some of the lowest in the industry.
When you work with us on a retirement plan or assessment, you don’t have to move your investments over to us. When we reach the investment planning portion of our retirment planning process, we will do a portfolio analysis and suggest any re-allocation that will put you in a better position.
Us vs. the Other Guys
There’s about ~300,000 financial advisors in the U.S. And only about 1% are considered “retirement specialists.” How many do you think combine education, analysis, strategy, balanced guidance, research, technology and a disciplined process (plus all the other cool stuff about our services) to give you a better retirement outcome? Not many, if any.
Check out the chart below to find out what we’ve got over the other guys (and gals) who are providing conventional advice and solutions.
“Most advisors are investment-centric concentrating solely on managing investments and do not incorporate all the intricate retirement strategies that must be utilized to dramatically increase the probability of a retiree’s success”.
-Wade Pfau, PhD, American College professor and retirement researcher
Your Retirement Advisor vs. Conventional Investment Advisors
| Benefits | Your Retirement Advisor | Conventional Advisors |
|---|---|---|
| Unconventional Educate, Plan, Implement Process | YES | No |
| Hybrid fiduciary advisors – product/portfolio agnostic for a balanced solution (investments & insurance) | YES | No |
| Alpha Efficient Your Retirement Advisor strategy utilizing investments, insurance, and guaranteed indexed annuities | YES | No |
| Sophisticated tax analysis & income/Social Security optimization software | YES | N0 |
| Research-backed tax efficient withdrawal strategies to extend portfolio lifespans | YES | N0 |
| Low cost, flexible, transparent fee structure | YES | N0 |
| Personalized online or local guidance from passionate retirement advocates | YES | N0 |
| Full retirement plans, individual services or discipline specific assessments | YES | No |
Live an EPIC Retirement…We Can Help.
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Yes, I want to access the online Am I Ready? retirement kit.
Our online retirement readiness kit provides: how to guides, videos and retirement calculators. We’re here if you have any questions or would like any number of assessments.
