You shouldn't need a finance degree to understand your own retirement. The process below is built so that both of you can follow every decision, see why it was made, and pick the plan back up on your own if you ever have to.
01
A first conversation, not a pitch
The first meeting is about you, not about products or portfolios. I'll ask what's prompting the conversation now, what you're each worried about, and what retirement is supposed to look like once you're in it. Couples often discover in this hour that they've been carrying slightly different pictures of the same future, and that's useful to know before any numbers get involved.
You'll leave knowing whether I'm the right fit, what I'd tackle first, and roughly how long it would take to get to a complete plan. There's no preparation required and no obligation to go further.
What we'll talk about
When each of you would like to stop working, and whether that's the same answer
What you spend now, roughly, and what you'd like to spend later
What keeps you up at night about money
Who handles the finances today, and how that should work in the future
What you don't need to bring
Statements, spreadsheets or logins
A number in mind
Your spouse convinced in advance. The point is for both of you to decide together.
02
Everything on one page
Most households heading into retirement have their financial life spread across eight or ten places: a couple of old 401(k)s, an IRA, a brokerage account, a pension estimate in a drawer, two Social Security statements, insurance policies and a set of estate documents that haven't been read since they were signed.
We gather all of it once, and I turn it into a single picture of your household. That picture is the thing both of you will be able to read without me in the room, which is the whole point.
401(k)His, current employer
Old 403(b)Hers, two jobs ago
Rollover IRAConsolidated 2019
Roth IRABoth, modest
BrokerageJoint, concentrated
PensionEstimate from HR
Social SecurityTwo statements
InsuranceTerm, LTC quote
Estate docsWills from 2008
03
Decisions, in the right order
Retirement decisions depend on each other. When you claim Social Security changes how much you'll draw from your accounts in your sixties, which changes whether Roth conversions make sense, which changes your Medicare premiums two years later. Taken one at a time they feel manageable. Taken out of order they quietly cost money.
So we take them in sequence, and each one gets written down with the reasoning beside it. If you ever wonder why we did something, the answer is on the page.
1Retirement date, for each of you Sets the length of the gap years
2Social Security timing Usually the larger earner delays
3Withdrawal order Which account the paycheck comes from first
4Roth conversions Filling low-tax years on purpose
5Medicare and IRMAA Income two years back sets the premium
6Estate and beneficiaries So the plan survives either of you
04
Stress-testing the plan
Two retirees can earn exactly the same average return over thirty years and end up in completely different places, depending only on which years were the bad ones. A downturn in the first few years of retirement, while you're drawing from the portfolio, does far more damage than the same downturn later on.
The chart shows two portfolios with identical returns in a different order. Switch between them. A plan worth having assumes the bad sequence is the one you'll get, and shows you where the money comes from while it lasts.
$1.5 million, $75,000 withdrawn a year, same returns in a different order
05
Both of you, kept current
Plans drift. Markets move, tax law changes, a parent needs care, a grandchild arrives. We review together at least once a year, and I make a point of walking the less-involved spouse through where things stand every single time, in plain language, until it's genuinely boring.
I also ask every couple to keep one letter current: if something happened to me tomorrow, here's where everything is, who to call, what to claim and what not to touch. I'll help you write it, and we'll update it together each year.
I'm a Financial Consultant with Charles Schwab in Orlando, which means the accounts, custody and much of the planning technology sit on Schwab's platform. What you get from me is the person on the other side of it: someone who knows your household, picks up the phone, and keeps both of you in the loop.