Donald Durr – Financial Advisor
Protection, Growth, Income, Legacy
Despite the media practically begging people to think about their retirement, it can be a topic that many push from their minds. The idea of how you’re going to pay for all of your expenses once you no longer have a job can be enough to make anyone flinch. Of course, a failure to prepare doesn’t make the situation any better. If you’re inching toward your golden years, Fine Future Financial may be able to help you figure out the details.
How to Secure Your Retirement Income
No matter what kind of salary you make right now, the goal of retirement planning should be to replace it by the time you punch out on your last day. While you may not be able to replace every penny, a combination of your personal accounts, Social Security checks, and passive income (e.g., pension withdrawals, long–term rental properties, etc.) can help you get pretty close. You might even be able to supplement your income in a glamorous part–time job, like pouring wine in southern Italy.
When you choose to work with a boutique retirement firm, like Fine Future Financial, rather than a larger conglomerate, you get the benefit of working with a financial advisor who knows you. Don Durr understands how fixed index annuities, IRA rollovers, and investing can all come together to give you a stronger portfolio. Whether you’re concerned about how inflation impacts retirement income or want to learn more about how assets under management can help you increase your bottom line, Don can give you the answers you need in an uncertain world. He can show you how you can take care of yourself and your loved ones without scrimping.
Plus, the financial basics may be easier to learn than you think. It all follows a relatively simple formula:
1. Determine how much you can save and what you want your retirement income to be.
2. Allow your financial advisor to manage a portion of your money, so you can turn it into more.
3. Sit back and have the kind of retirement you always wanted.
Retirement Income Planning
Retirement income is widely agreed to be the “key” to a stable retirement. Retirement income planning is the art of tying all of your finances together, so you and your descendants have more than enough to get by. If you’re interested in how to plan your retirement income, talking to a professional can really help. They can essentially replace the paycheck you’re currently receiving every month, so you don’t have to worry quite as much about your savings account. If you want to know where to turn, Don, the financial advisor at Fine Future Financial can help you successfully navigate the landscape.
What You Should Know About Retirement Income
Whether you picture yourself on a beach or in a cozy cabin when you retire, the reality is that you’ll have some expenses. Not only will you have your own needs, but you also may want to provide financial support for certain things (e.g., property, education, etc.) regarding your children or grandchildren.
If you’re trying to guess “how much do I need to retire,” the answer isn’t as straightforward as it may seem. Even those who live the most modest of lives may have a health scare at some point. They may find themselves called to pay the tuition of a loved one—even when they didn’t plan on it before. Income planning will secure income from reliable sources, such as Social Security, pension withdrawals, or monthly rent from a long-term tenant. If your portfolio could use some fine-tuning, there’s no better place to turn than a boutique planning firm.
At Fine Future, you’ll meet with an advisor who understands your larger goals. They can help you clarify how you see yourself living by the time you retire, and how much you’ll need to budget. These professionals can offer you the peace of mind you’ll need as you edge toward retirement age. There are many uncertainties at this time of your life, but they don’t have to be quite as daunting when you can talk with an expert about them.
Assets Under Management
Assets under management is the process of bringing your tangible and intangible property under one umbrella. While it may sound simple, the process may be more complex than first meets the eye. Because your assets are likely spread out over a variety of platforms, it’s not always easy to keep track of them all. A financial advisor will take a full inventory and then start making strategic moves to organize, manage, and ultimately grow your wealth.
Assets Under Management Strategies
At Fine Future Financial, you’ll meet Donald Durr, a financial advisor who can tell you more about how assets under management services can apply to your holdings. Whether you have valuable art, stocks, property, a few retirement accounts, bonds, etc., it’s his task to map out how your assets relate to one another. He sees what can be done to leverage all of it to build the future you envision for yourself and your loved ones.
This financial service is often more important than people realize. Assets have a tendency to become invisible for a while. The first major purchase you make, whether it’s a share of a company or a rental property, can be a huge milestone, one that you compulsively track for months after you make the decision. Of course, by the time you make your 10th major purchase, the instinct isn’t as strong anymore. Most people end up pushing them to the side in favor of more urgent matters.
When the value of those assets changes over time, it can go largely unnoticed until it’s too late. If you haven’t looked at your assets in a while or they feel disorganized, a financial advisor can be the key to putting everything back in order.
Long-Term Care (LTC)
Your retirement can be whatever you want it to be, but this open–ended proclamation does come with a few warnings. No matter how healthy you are at the time of your retirement, you still want to plan for potential emergencies down the line.
If you need to stay in the hospital for a while, this will likely be covered by insurance. However, your treatment plan might not end there. It’s why you’ll want to plan for any additional expenses you might continue to incur after you leave. Planning that addresses LTC needs, like paying for in-home health or assisted living/LTC facilities, can be invaluable both financially and emotionally. LTC insurance can address such needs. There are also alternative cost-effective strategies that provide similar protection and benefit you whether or not LTC is ever needed.
The Long and Short of Long–Term Care
Whether you get into an accident or you develop a serious or chronic disease, long term care policies and alternatives are written for any help you might need during an especially long recovery. Regardless of how airtight your health care plan is, it’s unlikely to cover the costs of a home-health aide or nursing home. If you need someone to help with routine tasks, like showering or cooking, you’ll be able to hire someone without having to worry if you can afford it. In fact, one study showed that people with this policy wind up spending about six times less than people who forgo it.
If you have questions about this type of protection, Don at Fine Future Financial can help. He can tell you more about everything from the costs to how it will affect your overall portfolio. Don can help you examine the pros and cons from different angles, so you can make the right decisions for your financial, emotional and physical health alike.
Life Insurance
Buying a life insurance policy can be pretty straightforward for some people. Whether they have one dependent or 10, they settle on a plan and then move forward with their lives. However, the reality is that insurance carriers run the gamut in terms of what they offer to customers and it’s not always clear which policy—out of the many available—will actually deliver the expected benefits in the way they were anticipated. The other major component of a life insurance policy is how it fits in with your larger financial portfolio. This is why it is important to have periodic policy reviews for yourself and your beneficiaries.
Term Vs. Perm
Fine Future Financial is a boutique planning organization that can help you protect everything you’ve worked to build. If you’re interested in life insurance, you have two basic options. Term life insurance is a type of policy that will expire after a certain time, with most people basing the expiration date on their children’s milestones.
So, one person might choose to have their insurance expire the day their youngest child graduates from college. Another person might decide to have it expire when their niece turns 25. Should you opt for this type of policy, it’s typically an affordable way to cover your loved ones until they can provide for themselves.
You can also look into permanent life insurance policies, also known as insurance policies without an expiration date. These policies are typically more expensive but can also come with a savings component to them. Should you need to use them for something in the future, like an unexpected expense, they can be wonderful assets to have.
There is no right or wrong answer. Don can tell you more about how to structure your life insurance in a way that will help you grow your holdings over time and give you his insights about which one will complement your assets, so you can rest assured you have more than enough coverage at the end of the day.
Maximizing Social Security
The Social Security program is nearly 100 years old, and it’s seen plenty of changes over the decades. Beginning in the 1930s, the system was designed as a safety net for people who might not have any other way to provide for themselves. Since then, it’s changed enough that people don’t necessarily view it that way anymore. In fact, many may assume that the amount they receive won’t cover very much of their expenses at all.
While no financial advisor would tell you to rely solely on this government program, there’s also no reason to downplay its importance to your larger portfolio. If you want to learn how to maximize Social Security, you should talk to someone who understands the legalese, as well as how you have personally contributed to it over the years.
Make the Most of Social Security
If you want to maximize Social Security, you first need to understand how the program works. The amount you receive isn’t just dependent on how much was deducted from your paycheck, it also has to do with your industry, the number of years you spent in your career, and your indexed monthly earnings. While the average check is about $2,500 per month, what you receive is based on your work experience. So, if you’re making assumptions based on what your neighbor receives, remember that their amount may have nothing to do with yours.
At Fine Future Financial, you can work with a boutique retirement firm that puts your needs first. Social Security can be an important component of your retirement income planning. It’s a check that you can rely on every month, and it can go fairly far to cover your daily necessities. No matter what you picture your retirement to be, Social Security can create a foundation to pay for different expenses. From there, you can use your savings, pension withdrawals, rental property checks, dividends, etc. to cover everything from utilities to unexpected emergencies. Don and his team can show you how to file to obtain everything you’re entitled to.
Efficient Tax Planning
As a general rule, most people think they’re filing their taxes as efficiently as they possibly can. Few people will admit that they’re overpaying the government, sometimes by thousands of dollars every year. However, the truth is that most people don’t realize what can be done to help them use their money more strategically. When you work with the right financial firm, you have the chance to scrutinize money that goes toward taxes. You can ask what can be done to minimize the government’s share while maximizing your portfolio’s share.
Strategic Tax Planning
The tax codes are long and arduous to read, but they’re also stuffed with plenty of opportunity when you know how to read them. This financial principle, one that can be found at Fine Future Financial, isn’t about stiffing the government, but it does ask that you not overpay the Internal Revenue Service when there’s no reason to do so. This may mean converting your IRA, calculating the amount of your Social Security taxes, or estimating the capital gains on your investments.
Tax planning can mean anything from opening a trust for your favorite charity to deferring taxes until a different year. Don can delve into the federal tax codes in search of how different laws can work to your advantage. Should the tax codes change, he’ll look for ways to optimize their impact, make adjustments to take advantage of new rules or take precautions to protect your holdings. There are a number of options that you have, and you get to make the final decisions with the help of a professional who knows what steps to take.
Even if you have the best accountant on the block, the reality is that they won’t be able to look at your holdings in the same way a financial advisor can. It’s the advisor who will assist you in crafting long– term decisions for your portfolio, so you’re as ready for your retirement as you could ever be.
