Situation 2: Steve & Mary Jones

Steve and Mary Jones are husband and wife in their early 60s. They have been saving for retirement but have been wondering if they have the means to retire in five years and what retirement might look like for them.
 

Their main issue was:

• They needed to understand what retirement meant to them. Which not only included what they wanted to do, but also they needed to know how it would affect them financially. They needed to know how much money was needed to live the life that they imagined together in their later years.

How we helped them:

• By having deep discussions with them and helping them to identify exactly what their later years would look like, we were able to come up with an expectation of how much money they would need to fulfill their dreams.
• After doing a thorough analysis of their current and future cash flow needs based on the understanding above, we realized they could actually retire earlier if they wanted to.
• Being that they were not quite ready to retire, we helped them build out a strategy that allowed them to slowly decrease the frequency of their work for the next three years. This allowed them to work in the way they desired but also gave them more time to do some of the other things that were also important to them.
• As they realized that they had more than enough assets to fund their life goals, they began to have concerns that their adult child might spend down their inheritance quickly after they passed on. To solve this issue, we worked directly with their estate planning attorney to complete their estate plan to provide for their adult child over the child’s lifetime.

Ultimately, both spouses decided to retire and travel the world but continue to do consulting work in their industries to stay mentally sharp.