A weekly journal for retirees who plan to live more, and leave more. We write about how wealthy families turn savings into reliable retirement income, and we connect readers with advisors who can actually set it up.
Having a million dollars saved doesn't mean much if it only pays you forty thousand a year. The number that matters most near retirement isn't how much you've saved. It's how that money is set up to pay you back.
Index funds, bonds, a 401(k). None of these are wrong. They're just not enough on their own. The strategies that built Yale's endowment, or that anchor Ray Dalio's hedge fund, aren't secret. They're a way of pulling income from places that don't all go up and down at the same time.
There's a well-documented pattern in retirement: people with substantial savings tend to underspend. The typical retiree with a million dollars or more dies with most of it still in the account. That isn't usually for lack of wanting to spend it. It's that the plan they were using was built to prevent running out, not to figure out what they could actually afford.
These are the questions that determine how much you keep, how long it lasts, and what's left for your family.
Coordinating how income flows through accounts so the IRS keeps less of it.
When and how to claim, considered as a household decision, not an individual one.
Whether to do them at all, in which years, and how much to convert in each.
Avoiding the income brackets that quietly raise Medicare premiums for years.
Which accounts to pull from first, second, third, and why the order matters.
Turning a balance sheet into reliable monthly cash flow you can actually live on.
Long-term care, estate planning, and the choices that determine what gets passed on.
Spending in retirement isn't a fixed number. The right plan adjusts as the portfolio does.
Most of the advice you'll read says to wait until 70 if you possibly can. For plenty of retirees, claiming earlier actually produces more total income over the rest of their lives. How to figure out which side of the line you're on, and the questions break-even calculators don't ask.
Read the letterMost retirement software gives you one answer: do them in low-income years. The fuller answer is that conversions usually only pay off when your real goal is leaving more behind. For retirees mainly trying to fund their own lifetime, paying tax now to save tax later rarely beats just paying it later.
Read the letterSpending doesn't stay flat through retirement. It usually drops in your seventies and then climbs again in your eighties as healthcare costs rise. A plan built on a flat withdrawal rate misses both ends of the curve, and the amount it gets wrong is significant.
Read the letterA dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. Inflation makes that true on its own. In retirement, there's a second variable most calculations leave out, which is the number of healthy years you have left to actually use the money. How to factor your age in, and what changes when you do.
Read the letterUntil recently, the advisors who specialized in retirement income for wealthy families would only meet in person, and usually in a handful of cities. That changed quietly over the last few years. What virtual access to that kind of advisor actually means in practice, and the things it still doesn't fix.
Read the letterFor 25 years, Vanguard has been measuring what financial advisors actually contribute to client outcomes. Their research, updated most recently in 2024, finds that an advisor following established best practices can add up to roughly three percent in additional net annualized returns. Almost none of that comes from picking better stocks. It comes from the work most retirees don't think to count.
Source: Vanguard Investment Advisory Research Center, Putting a Value on Your Value: Quantifying Vanguard Advisor's Alpha® (2014, updated 2024). One basis point is one one-hundredth of a percent. The actual value added varies significantly by individual circumstance, and the figures above are estimates produced by Vanguard, not by Investors Journal. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
We don't manage your money and we don't sell products. We write a weekly journal for retirees who want better answers than the standard playbook, and we connect readers with advisors who can put those ideas to work.
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