Are You Ready for Retirement?
Whether you’re 30 years old or 60, you should be building retirement savings. Unfortunately, too many people don’t start to take retirement planning seriously until they near the end of their working lives. Happily, with expert advice from your personal retirement planner at Marin Wealth Advisors, you don’t have to figure out how to save for retirement on your own.
The best time to start saving for retirement is early in your career. The second-best time is right now. Are you ready to make a plan to protect your financial future? Marin Wealth Advisors is here to help.
Don’t Let Poor Planning Ruin Your Retirement
Retirement is a time to look forward to. Your golden years are the perfect time to enjoy travel, spend time with family, and pursue dream projects you don’t have time for now.
But fears about running out of money can fill your retirement years with worry. For many seniors, anxiety about running out of cash is greater even than the fear of dying.
At Marin Wealth Advisors, we start your retirement planning journey with education and information. As you work with your retirement planner, you’ll get the information you need to make the best decisions for your financial health today and in the future. A clear understanding of your financial situation and a solid plan to shore up your financial health will point you toward retirement with confidence.
A Personalized Approach to Retirement Planning
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to retirement. What’s best for you depends on your vision for that stage of your life. Do you want money to travel? Or is your retirement dream to live in a cabin by a lake or move closer to your grandchildren? At Marin Wealth Advisors, our goal is to help you create the financial foundation you need to live your dream in retirement, whatever it is.
Drawing on years of experience and training, a Marin Wealth Advisors financial planner can create a customized plan for you. Your plan will include investment strategies tailored to your needs, time frame, and risk tolerance.
Of course, life is full of the unexpected, and we’re here for that, too. We can help you update your plan as your circumstances, and goals shift over time.
Steps in the Retirement Planning Process
When you’re ready to start, your retirement planner will walk you through the process to help you make a realistic assessment of what it will take to meet your goals.
Define Your
Retirement Goals
The first step in our personalized approach is to help you chart out your retirement goals. In a collaborative session with a Marin Wealth Advisors financial planner, we will help you get clarity about your vision for your retirement. Then we’ll plot out the retirement savings you need to meet those goals, using some of the most comprehensive, well-researched thinking about retirement today.
Determine Your
Risk Tolerance
Certain investments come with higher risk but also the potential for higher returns. We will work with you to assess your risk tolerance and determine what types of investments fit your retirement needs. We can also work with you to rebalance your portfolio over time to meet your changing needs for investment growth vs. stability.
Figure Out Your Monthly Income
Requirements in Retirement
The amount you need to live comfortably in retirement depends on a variety of factors. These include:
- Whether you will have mortgage or rent payments
- The amount you’ll receive from other income sources, such as Social Security and employer pension
- Whether you’ll need to support children or other dependents
- What activities, such as travel or hobbies, you want to pursue in retirement
We will work with you to develop a picture of your ideal life in retirement to understand your financial needs better.
Create a
Holistic Plan
Retirement is only one aspect of your financial plan. While you save for retirement, you also need money for your life today, plus reserves to cover your pre-retirement aspirations.
That’s why we want to gain a deep understanding of your financial life before we build your retirement plan. That plan is an essential element of your larger strategy for managing your income and investments.
As we craft a plan to meet your goals, your retirement planner will consider other critical financial objectives you may have, such as paying for a child’s education or buying a vacation home. We see your retirement plan as one part of your whole life plan.
Craft a Retirement Plan That Fits Your Means & Your Needs
At the end of the process, you’ll have a plan to build retirement security that fits in your budget today. Your Marin Wealth Advisor will answer any questions you have so you can feel confident that you are taking care of your future and taking charge of your retirement.
Is a Stress-Free Retirement Possible?
Saving is the most critical factor in planning for retirement. The earlier you start, the more you will benefit from compounding. Over time, compounding can turn even a small initial investment into a larger nest egg.
When you make a retirement plan with Marin Wealth Advisors, we will help you understand how to maximize the amount you save over time. We work with you to review and optimize your savings and spending rates to help you align your retirement savings plan with what you need to support your life today, plus a comfortable retirement.
Get the Most Out of Your Retirement Savings
The SEC has calculated the effect of fees over 20 years on an investment portfolio of $100,000 and found that even small fees can have significant impacts. For example, a fee increase of just 0.25% led to an approximately $10,000 reduction in return, while an extra 0.75% could cost that investor $30,000.
Marin Wealth Advisors never charges commissions because we don’t think commissions should eat away at your investments. Our fee-for-service business model also ensures that your retirement planner picks investments with only your financial goals in mind. We want you to get the most out of your assets so that you can retire with ease.
Optimize Your Employee Retirement Benefits
The money you put towards your retirement isn’t your only source of potential retirement income. Your retirement planner will help you identify and maximize your employer benefits. Employer-sponsored plans such as 401(k), 403(b), or 457 and employer matching contributions are an excellent way to boost your retirement investment power.
Also, we will show you how other tax-advantaged plans such as IRAs and business retirement plans can help you build retirement savings. We’ll review your portfolio, looking at tax-advantaged and taxable accounts to help you allocate your assets where they’ll provide the most benefit for your retirement.
No, You’re Not Too Young to Think About Retirement
In your 20s and 30s, retirement can seem very far away. And as you climb the career ladder and check off life milestones such as starting a family or buying a home, saving for retirement may feel like an impossible stretch.
But the secret to smart retirement planning is starting early, even if you can’t afford to put very much into your retirement account. For example, if you open a retirement account with just $100 at age 25 and add $25 per month until you’re 65, you’ll contribute a total of $12,000 to the fund. Using a conservative estimate of 5% return, you’ll have over $38,000 by the time you reach retirement age. If you start when you’re 55 and save that same $12,000 over 10 years, you’ll have about $17,000 at age 65. So, starting early can make a big difference, even if your contributions are small at first.
No matter your age, a Marin Wealth Advisors retirement planner can help you invest in your future.
Planning for Longevity
Perhaps the biggest challenge of creating a financial plan for your retirement is that none of us know how long we will live. In general, people are living longer, and a long and healthy life should be a gift, not a reason for financial stress. But fears about running out of money can create severe anxiety for many seniors.
We want to relieve you of that pressure. Your financial planner will work with you to craft a retirement plan to accommodate your changing and evolving needs after you retire. We want to help you live well, into your 90s and beyond.
What You Get When You Work with Marin Wealth Advisors
Marin Wealth Advisors is one of the Bay Area’s top-rated financial planning firms. Our experienced financial planners have decades of experience assisting clients in building wealth to meet their life goals, including retirement planning.
We will recommend investment options that meet your needs, we’ll help you put your retirement plan in motion, and we’ll answer any questions you have about your plan.
Marin Wealth Advisors is a fee-only financial planning firm. That means we charge an hourly fee for our services, so you never pay a commission on your investments.
The Marin Wealth Advisors Fiduciary Promise
We at Marin Wealth Advisors practice placing our client’s best interests first. From this principle we commit to the following five fiduciary principles:
- We will always put our client’s best interests first.
- We will act with prudence; with the skill, care, diligence, and good judgment of a professional.
- We will not mislead you. We provide conspicuous, full and fair disclosure of all important facts.
- We will avoid conflicts of interest.
- We will fully disclose and fairly manage, in your favor, any unavoidable conflicts.