Critical Outcome 1:
Tax Savvy

Many people approach retirement with little to no tax planning. During working years, they focused on minimizing taxes each year by increasing their pre-tax contributions to retirement accounts. They assumed their tax bracket in retirement would be lower. While this may be true for some, our experience is that the higher the net worth of a retiree, the lower the likelihood of a lower tax bracket. This problem is exacerbated if a large percentage of net worth is in tax-deferred accounts.

Other retirees established Roth IRAs to reduce taxes in retirement, but have not done the analysis to determine if Roth Conversions should be considered, and what other tax minimizing strategies are available.

Only rarely do we meet a pre-retiree who has an understanding of tax diversification and has worked over years to build each of the three tax buckets: the pre-tax bucket, the after-tax bucket, and the tax-free bucket. A key step in our unique planning process is a comprehensive retirement income analysis that focuses on minimizing lifelong tax. Our goal is to build the most efficient, longest-lasting, tax-optimized retirement income stream.

Some clients are able to get to a zero percent tax rate at some point in their retirement.

While our practice is keenly focused on tax minimization strategies, Charles W. Rawl & Associates, LLC does not provide tax or legal advice. We provide proactive financial planning advice and work closely with your tax and legal professionals to implement the plan.

Critical Outcome 2:
Income Maximized

Generating retirement income has rarely been as difficult as in this environment. Why?

Simple planning themes like the “four percent rule” or estimating “safe withdrawal rates” will fail to maximize lifelong income. This requires specialized planning that, like tax planning, ideally begins years before retirement.

During your working years, you updated your income plan on a regular basis, though you probably didn’t think of it that way.

You worked hard to move up the ladder and get promoted. You may have gone back to school to get another degree or designation to increase your earning potential. Or perhaps you changed companies to increase your income. But in retirement, that income external driver doesn’t exist anymore.

While being tax savvy helps us to maximize income, that alone is not enough. Our comprehensive retirement income analysis pinpoints multiple income-maximizing strategies.

Becoming Income Maximized ensures that you have legacy left. Income that lasts past your final day, to get through the finish line, not just barely to the finish line.

With a legacy left, we want to make certain it is passed on to heirs and/or to favorite causes, as efficiently as possible.

Critical Outcome 3:
Risk Managed

In the working years, people are exposed to all kinds or risk: redundancy and downsizing, businesses failing, economies collapsing, and mortgages being put under pressure or stress.

In retirement, we face an entirely new set of risks, including

• sequence of returns risk,
• inflation risk,
• longevity risk and healthcare risks,
• not to mention tax risk!

While being risk managed may seem obvious, many retirees and pre-retirees don’t fully understand all types of risks, nor the magnitude.

Most do not know how to measure the risks they are taking, nor how to comprehensively manage the risks.

With three decades of experience in financial services, encompassing commercial banking, insurance, and investment industries, and a background in financial due diligence, Charles W. Rawl has a unique perspective that delivers high value to clients.

We keep our eyes on the market from all three of these perspectives and diversify portfolios with alternative and tactical strategies, and legal and tax structures, to integrate the investment and income plan with the estate plan.

How Do We Get There?