Retirement planning that both of you understand.

I'm Brad Peil, a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professional in Orlando. I help couples turn decades of saving into a retirement paycheck, make the tax and Social Security decisions that come with it, and make sure the person they love could pick up the plan tomorrow if they had to.

Start a conversation See two retirements side by side

Bradley Peil, CFP®, FBS® · Financial Consultant with Charles Schwab · Orlando, Florida The line is the working years. The shore is what comes after.

Who I work with

As retirement gets closer, the complexity goes up. Multiple accounts, a pension, Social Security, taxes, healthcare and estate decisions all start to intersect at once, and the households I serve tend to arrive at that intersection in one of four ways.

01 Couples preparing for, or living in, retirementYou've saved well, probably in more accounts than you'd like, and the question has shifted from "are we on track" to "how do we actually do this, and in what order."

02 Veterans and military familiesA military pension, VA benefits, the Thrift Savings Plan and Social Security each run on their own rules, and the Survivor Benefit decision deserves more than a form at out-processing.

03 Federal and government employeesFERS has three legs and a bridge, and the timing of your retirement date can change what you receive from each of them for the rest of your life.

04 People navigating the loss of a spouse or a sudden inheritanceVery few decisions need to be made in the first weeks, and a handful absolutely can't wait. Knowing which is which is most of the job.

Two retirements. Same couple.

Same savings, same spending, same markets. The only difference between the two timelines is a handful of decisions, made on purpose and in the right order. Drag across the years and watch the gap open. Then ask which of those decisions matters most for the two of you. That's the conversation.

Your age

Spouse's age

Saved so far, all accounts

Yearly spending in retirement

Social Security per month, both of you

The plan makes these decisions

Then life happens to both

By 95, the decisions were worth .

What this leaves out is most of the work: your actual tax return and state of residence, a pension and its survivor options, the house, your health and insurance, which investments you'd actually sell and when, and how the two of you will behave in a year the market falls. The illustration assumes a 60/40 portfolio, 2.5% inflation, 2025 federal brackets indexed for inflation, Social Security taxation and Medicare surcharge rules, required distributions from the IRS table, and that the survivor spends 75% of what the couple did. It's a way of seeing how much the decisions matter, not a plan.

The questions couples bring me

Scroll to move through them

How do we turn decades of savings into a retirement paycheck?

Which account the first dollars come from, and in what order, changes what you'll pay in taxes for the rest of your lives. It's the first decision we make together and it's rarely the obvious one.

Should we pay taxes now through Roth conversions, or possibly pay more later?

The years between your last paycheck and your first Social Security check are often the lowest-tax years you'll ever have, which makes them worth planning around rather than coasting through.

Is our plan built to withstand a serious market downturn?

A bad stretch in the first few years of retirement does far more damage than the same stretch later on, so a plan that's worth having assumes one is coming and shows you where the money comes from while it lasts.

If something happened to me tomorrow, would my spouse know what to do?

Not just where the accounts are, but who to call first, what to claim, what not to touch, and how the household's income changes when one Social Security check goes away.

How do a pension, Social Security, retirement accounts and investments all work together?

Each one has its own rules and its own clock. The plan is what makes them read as one income instead of five separate decisions.

How can we enjoy what we've built and still leave something meaningful behind?

Spending with confidence takes a plan that shows you what you can afford in plain numbers, rather than a guess that keeps you anxious every time the market has a bad month.

How we'll work together

Working with a planner shouldn't feel like being sold something. It should feel like finally getting everything on one page, and then having someone keep it current with you, year after year.

The whole process, step by step

A conversation, not a pitch

We start with what you're actually worried about, which is usually different from what the brochures assume. You'll leave the first meeting knowing whether I'm the right fit and what we'd tackle first.

Everything on one page

Accounts, pensions, Social Security estimates, insurance, the estate documents, the house. We gather it all once and turn it into a single picture both of you can read without me in the room.

Decisions, in the right order

When to retire, when each of you claims Social Security, which accounts to draw from first, whether Roth conversions make sense, how Medicare and taxes interact. Each decision depends on the one before it, so we take them in sequence.

Both of you, kept current

Plans drift. Markets move, laws change, grandchildren arrive. We review together, and I make a point of walking the less-involved spouse through where things stand, every time.

In many households, only one spouse fully understands how everything fits together. I believe planning should prepare both people, not just the portfolio.

Brad Peil

If you're approaching retirement or facing an important financial decision, let's talk.

A first conversation is just that. No preparation required, no obligation, and you'll leave with at least one thing worth doing regardless of whether we work together.