Retirement Planning

The following client scenarios are not specific to actual events and are not indicative of all client experiences. These examples are used to illustrate how an advisor at Achieva Wealth Advisors can potentially assist Achieva members with a variety of investment-related needs. Your results may differ substantially. We encourage you to seek personalized advice from qualified professionals regarding all personal finance issues.

Joanne is divorced, 62 and has been an elementary-school teacher for almost 40 years. Once this school year is over, she plans to retire. She can schedule time to meet with an advisor from Achieva Wealth Advisors to discuss how to make retirement a reality.

An advisor will begin by asking her about all her potential forms of income. They may include a pension, Social Security, any investments she made early in her career and her life’s savings. The advisor will also ask about her budget requirement to find out what her expenses and financial needs are, along with her aspirations for retirement. In Joanne’s case, she owns her own home and has no debt, so she just needs her income to pay for living expenses and property taxes. She is hoping to have enough extra to visit her grandchildren in New York several times a year.

With that information, her advisor will run an income analysis, looking at the strengths and weaknesses of her income situation and seeing how it can meet her budgetary requirements. This analysis will also look at the amount of funds she needs for short-term, intermediate-term and long-term over the course of her retirement.

The advisor will help her look into subjectives – things that she wasn’t able to think of that she doesn’t need now, but may down the road. The advisor can also help her budget for potential unexpected expenses like medical care. Because Joanne is single, the advisor will discuss planning for long-term care, in case something happens and she isn’t able to take care of herself.

Based on the examination, the advisor's goal is to help Joanne feel confident that she should be able to retire at the end of the school year. The advisor will set up a plan to help make sure her investments continue to work for her, monitor her assets over time and make any changes based on Joanne’s needs and the market. Now Joanne can just count down the days until the end of May.