Getting Ready for Retirement:  Reducing Tax Liability and Increasing Confidence

Getting Ready for Retirement: Reducing Tax Liability and Increasing Confidence

Challenge:  When we first met these clients, they were paying significant amounts of taxes each year.  They were concerned about lowering their taxes so they could increase the amount of income available to them in retirement. 

Result:  Prime Wealth’s multi-disciplinary team helped them research tax-saving strategies while building their retirement plan.  We were able to devise an innovative strategy to allow them to dramatically reduce their taxes going forward, so they could relax and enjoy their retirement. 

Our clients, a couple in their late 50s, have been successful savers and investors.  As a result, they had a large amount of passive income from many sources.  As they were preparing for retirement, they found that their tax bills were eating up a large portion of that income.    With fewer deductions in the future, they were unsure how much that would impact their retirement income.  They were also concerned whether they could afford their current lifestyle long-term, which included a second home, frequent travel, and relatively high living expenses.

They had a CPA for years that they really liked, but he was too busy to do much tax planning, and their previous financial advisor didn’t seem confident about providing any other tax-reduction suggestions.

So they came to Prime Wealth for help.  We worked with them initially to get their entire financial lives organized and identify all assets and liabilities.  We also helped them come up with a social security filing strategy that made the most sense.  Then our multidisciplinary team sat down and brainstormed on how to reduce their tax liability while achieving their other goals.

We proposed a strategy that involved estate planning and insurance.  This allowed them to convert some of their currently taxable assets into ones that would be tax-free in the future.

We also helped them put part of their assets into structured products to help give them a base income that would be fixed and not vary.  In addition, we helped them come up with a budget to make sure their spending stayed within a range that would not impact their future goals.

Once implemented, we met with them periodically to prepare their taxes and look for additional tax planning opportunities.  All the while they have everything they need under one roof which keeps things clean and simple for them going forward.