Retirement planning takes more than picking a date on a calendar; it takes a real strategy for income, taxes and healthcare. On this episode of Metcalf Money Moment, hosts Jeb, Ethan and Eric walk through the retirement clarity plan, covering Social Security timing, Roth conversions, required minimum distributions and estate planning essentials. They explain how to know when you can retire, why tax diversification matters and how a solid income plan protects your family for the long run ahead. If retirement is on your horizon, this episode offers a practical roadmap for building lasting financial security.

What you will learn in this Episode:

✅ Learn how to know when you can retire by weighing your needs, wants and inflation, then stress testing the plan with Monte Carlo analysis.

✅ Understand why tax diversification, Roth conversions and required minimum distributions determine how much of your retirement paycheck you actually keep.

✅ Discover how cash reserves, spousal benefits and a trusted financial advisor team come together to protect your income and your family.

Tune into the Metcalf Money Moment podcast for expert insights on wealth management and retirement planning! Join Jeb, Ethan, and Eric for practical Estate Planning strategies that you can implement to unlock financial clarity and confidence. Listen now to inspire your financial journey!

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Why a Retirement Clarity Plan matters for anyone nearing retirement

04:41 How do you know when you can retire

07:34 Ethan breaks down Retirement Income Planning, Cash Reserves and running a Monte Carlo Analysis stress test

12:53 Eric explains Tax Diversification, Roth Conversions and how Medicare and IRMAA Surcharges affect your budget

16:12 A closer look at Social Security timing, Spousal Benefits and coordinating claiming strategy

19:43 Jeb covers Estate Planning essentials, trusts, Beneficiary Designations and Qualified Charitable Distributions

25:58 Building your retirement team and why ongoing reviews keep your Retirement Paycheck on track

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

💎 A written estate plan, including Beneficiary Designations and updated account titling, protects your family far better than assuming things will sort themselves out.

💎 Long-Term Care Insurance and proper Inflation Planning keep unexpected costs from derailing decades of careful saving.

💎 A Donor-Advised Fund lets you take a tax deduction now while deciding later which charities receive your generosity.

DISCLAIMER:

This information is not intended to be a substitute for specific individualized tax or legal advice. We recommend discussing your particular situation with a qualified tax or legal advisor.

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Metcalf Partners - Website

Jeb Graham - LinkedIn

Ethan Hutcheson - LinkedIn

Eric Wymore - LinkedIn

Ep 2. Annie Burndrett Maximizing Your Philanthropy

Metcalf Money Moment, Jeb Graham, Ethan Hutcheson, Eric Wymore, Estate Planning, Retirement Planning, Social Security, Medicare, Roth Conversions, Required Minimum Distributions, Estate Planning, Tax Efficient Withdrawals, Long Term Care Insurance, IRMAA Surcharges

Now your hosts[00:00:30]

Ethan Hutcheson: We're doing. Yeah,

Jeb Graham: doing great.

Ethan Hutcheson: We're doing. Glad to

And what we wanted to kind of go through today is just [00:01:05] retirement planning, something that we call the re- the retirement clarity plan. Um, which is something, you [00:01:10] know, that basically we've kind of put together of, of checking all those boxes of, you know, when you [00:01:15] go from, uh, "Hey, I think I want to retire.

You decide to [00:01:35] retire, you retire, everything goes as it is. There's a lot of planning involved. Um, and [00:01:40] then I'll tell you, nearly one quarter... And this is a stati- a couple statistics out there, is that n- nearly one [00:01:45] quarter of workers recently pushed back their planned retirement date. Now, the reason for this is not [00:01:50] too surprising, but it's largely because of inflation, which we've had a lot of, uh, healthcare [00:01:55] costs, uncertainty around Social Security and Medicare, and basically just not [00:02:00] feeling ready to retire and prepared.

So that's according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute as well. And [00:02:25] then another big one is that less than... And I think a lot of people have probably heard this before, but less than [00:02:30] half of Americans actually have calculated how much they'll need for retirement. [00:02:35] So what that is, is meaning people are essentially guessing whether they're ready.

And then more than two out of five workers don't know where to [00:03:00] go for retirement advice, which that one to me is shocking. Because I feel like there's a financial advisor on every corner, [00:03:05] so it should... You know, there, there's plenty of resources out there, right? Mm-hmm. When it comes to, to [00:03:10] figuring out how to get, um, retirement advice.

You could kind of go down the list, and [00:03:40] that's, that's literally probably the first 10 or 15 of 30 or 40 things that [00:03:45] they have to think about when they're going into retirement. And so, um, by the way, [00:03:50] that's all just kind of the numerical and, and the, the, uh, bucket list of [00:03:55] things you got to check off, but then there's also the whole, you know, emotional side of retirement, which is, [00:04:00] "Hey, what am I gonna do in retirement?

But today what we want to [00:04:20] cover is, is number one, is how do, how do you ever know when you can afford to retire? Um, [00:04:25] we're gonna talk a little bit about taxes, healthcare, and income planning, and then also, you know, after you get all that worked [00:04:30] out, what about protecting your family and kind of that next generation estate planning.

Ethan Hutcheson: You don't. That's the... You don't know. [00:04:45] It, it's, uh, it's a very loaded question and, and I, I'm sure you guys get the same [00:04:50] question all the time. You know, "Can I retire? When can I retire?" Et cetera.

Um, whether or not you both have $2 or $3 million, that doesn't matter either. It, it's gonna be different for everyone [00:05:15] based on goals, wishes, and kind of how you want retirement to look. Um, whi- which is [00:05:20] a, a very, very loaded question, 'cause some people think, "Oh, when I'm retired-" I'm going [00:05:25] to go sit on the beach and drink margaritas all day.

Jeb Graham: or, or the other one's you're gonna play [00:05:35] golf every day, right? And it's like, after about four days of golf, you're like, you realize number one, that game kind [00:05:40] of sucks, right?

Ethan Hutcheson: Right. Right. And then you're, and then, you know, winter comes. You can't golf in the winter, right? So you have all these [00:05:50] grandiose ideas. Well, w- we'll kind of take a step back on the planning process and [00:05:55] look at, work backwards a little bit.

And so kind of determining what your annual spend looks like, what are your needs, what [00:06:15] are your wants? What do you need to keep the lights on, food on the table, uh, and, and a roof over your [00:06:20] head? And then what do you want to do on top of that? Do you want to go on a $20,000 vacation every year, or do you just [00:06:25] want to take a plane trip to Atlanta once a year and come back to see your kids?

And historically, [00:07:00] over a 30-year time period, inflation's gonna be a little lower in the 2s, maybe two and a half to 3%. So kind of [00:07:05] figuring out longevity risk on the other side of retirement and how long you're gonna [00:07:10] survive, and will your assets make it the next 20 to 30 years? Um, and kind of [00:07:15] thinking about

We want to [00:07:35] review your income sources. There's a lot of questions around Social Security, where [00:07:40] it's gonna be here, whether it's gonna be decreased, what's gonna happen. That's a whole nother podcast topic that I [00:07:45] think we could put on the docket for next month or the month after. But Social Security, it, it's a [00:07:50] leg on the bar stool.

Is it gonna be from pensions? Is it gonna be from retirement withdrawals, [00:08:15] taxable account withdrawals? Do you have any, um, uh, rental property, or are you gonna go part-time work when [00:08:20] you're in retirement and turn a hobby into an income stream? So a, a lot of things to think about as, as far as [00:08:25] income's concerned.

How do I get my money?" Um, it's pretty simple on, on, on the ground [00:08:50] level. We, we set up systematic withdrawals that hit your checking account just like, uh, you, [00:08:55] you're still continuing to work. Every Friday you get paid. Every other Friday we kind of talk with our clients on, on how [00:09:00] they want to structure that.

Is that 5,000 [00:09:20] gross? Is some of that coming from your Roth? Is some of that coming from your IRA and, and brokerage accounts? [00:09:25] So a lot of questions to kind of navigate through there as well. Um, cash reserves are big. How [00:09:30] much do I want on the sidelines? Um, if got... I've got a $2 million portfolio, I don't want to have [00:09:35] $500,000 sitting in cash.

And again, it's, it's kind of differ-different from, from, from family to family. Um, [00:10:00] we did talk about, uh, the stress test for longevity. We, we run a lot of Monte Carlo scenarios for [00:10:05] our clients as well, where we build out a financial plan and then we, we hit a, we hit a [00:10:10] Monte Carlo, uh, analysis that runs, I think it's [00:10:15] 5,000 hypothetical, uh, uh, market return scenarios that say, that [00:10:20] say you're gonna be iterations.

Some clients are [00:10:45] 100% Monte Carlo, and some clients are 20%, uh, Monte Carlo, and, and they might require a little [00:10:50] more attention in, in figuring out, uh, some things to make sure their retirement's sustainable. [00:10:55] Um, big decisions that we see oftentimes are, [00:11:00] "Hey, I want to pay my home off before I retire," or, "I want to buy a new truck before I [00:11:05] retire.

Um, you might be averaging 8 to 9% in your portfolio over the last [00:11:30] 10 to 15 years, and you want to pay off a 2% mortgage, the math doesn't quite add up. So kind of [00:11:35] having those conversations and figuring out, does it make sense? Do I just want to keep paying [00:11:40] this and, and let my assets grow? And again, personal preference and it differs from family to family.[00:11:45]

Uh, it's a sleep at night thing for me. I don't want to have any debt going into retirement. I, I [00:12:05] get that the math doesn't really make sense, but it's something that I want to do." And that's okay. We'll-- [00:12:10] as long as you acknowledge that you understand the math equation behind it and why we don't recommend it, [00:12:15] we can move forward and still pay that mortgage off, and then it's our job to decide how do we efficiently do that.

So Eric, [00:12:40] talk to us a little bit about some of the, I don't know, expenses or what's the most expensive [00:12:45] thing and there's, there's a lot of things to think about from that perspective.

'Cause it's not exact- [00:13:00] it's not just what you earn in retirement, it's what you get to keep. And I think that there's a [00:13:05] big misconception out there that your taxes are gonna go down just simply because you're gonna stop working. [00:13:10] And through what we've come across in our experience, that might not be the case, [00:13:15] or not necessarily the case.

And we talk a lot about [00:13:45] diversification when it comes to investments. You know, investing in large cap, mid cap, [00:13:50] small cap, international bonds, uh, all that, all those sorts of things. Well, it's also [00:13:55] important to have tax diversification as well. And what we mean by that is just [00:14:00] having three simple buckets.

And then [00:14:40] obviously, there's gonna be years where that you want less, uh, because you might have a business that gets sold [00:14:45] or sold a second property or something else where there's just a large [00:14:50] income event and you're gonna wanna have places that you can go or to one of those other [00:14:55] buckets, uh, to receive that income, uh, that you just, you know, [00:15:00] just built.

And [00:15:35] yeah, you're going to pay taxes today, however, it could help you [00:15:40] avoid paying a much larger, much larger taxes, uh, later in life. [00:15:45] Um, and I think again, where you're converting, figuring out how much you can [00:15:50] convert, it's not about converting everything, it's about converting the right amount at the right [00:15:55] time.

Yeah, it's going to be around. I think the big question is, when should I [00:16:25] take it? You know, you can take it between ages 62 and age 70. [00:16:30] Um, there's all kinds of different things that go into play, and oftentimes we'll ask, you [00:16:35] know, "Well, tell us about your other income. What are your other income sources that you're going to have during that retirement [00:16:40] years?

Um, [00:17:10] you know, spousal benefits come into play a lot in that because keep in mind, um [00:17:15] You-- if, if-- when your spouse passes, you get to select [00:17:20] the higher of the two benefits. Uh, so if you have [00:17:25] the ability to let one of the benefits grow quite a bit more by [00:17:30] delaying it, uh, that's a good strategy or that's a possi-possible strategy.

Um, kind of on the expense side that we see [00:18:05] is healthcare. You know, certainly that can surprise a lot of people. We get a lot of individuals that retire [00:18:10] before 65 that wanna know how they can bridge that insurance, health [00:18:15] insurance gap before Medicare begins. And I'll tell you this, we've got a lot of good [00:18:20] resources.

But there's a lot of decisions that need to be made, whether you go on [00:18:40] Medicare, Medicare Advantage, a supplemental plan, prescription plan. Again, [00:18:45] we need to, you know, get with one of our, our, uh, resources that can help us make-- help you make [00:18:50] those decisions. Um, and don't ever-- don't forget about IRMAA.

And that's why it's really important to look at Roth conversions, capital [00:19:20] gains, your retirement withdrawals, all of that should be coordinated and not just viewed [00:19:25] independently. So I know we spoke a lot there, and now we're, you know, passing on to, to, to [00:19:30] Jeb to kind of explain a little bit more.

And then there's, there's the kind of the [00:19:45] back end piece of this as well, um, that I think kind of comes [00:19:50] secondary to a lot of people when they're actually planning for retirement. But it's something that they need to think about, and that's [00:19:55] protecting your family, you know, in retirement as well as kind of how does this look for the next [00:20:00] generation when you're getting ready, uh, when you're no longer around, which unfortunately, they...

Um, but let's go through just a few things that, you [00:20:25] know, from a, from an estate planning and, and family protection standpoint we should talk [00:20:30] about as well. Um, number one is, is just your estate plan in general. Is... Do you have a will? Do you have a [00:20:35] trust, power of attorney, healthcare directive? Um, what I'll tell you is if you don't have an estate plan for [00:20:40] yourself, the state does have an estate plan for you.

Um, there's also new tools, and we actually have access to one [00:21:05] here, which is called wealth.com, where basically we can put together a full trust. So if [00:21:10] you're one of our clients and you don't have a will or a trust in place, there's officially no excuses anymore because we can [00:21:15] literally do it for you, um, and we can do it at a fraction of the cost of most [00:21:20] estate planning attorneys.

So if we put a [00:21:40] trust in place for you or, or your estate planning attorney puts a, a trust in place for you, it doesn't do [00:21:45] any good if we don't fund the trust, right? And that actually happens. People will put together a trust the... [00:21:50] and then they, they forget to actually move the assets to it, and then rename the beneficiaries on [00:21:55] their other accounts to have the trust as either the primary or the contingent beneficiary.

So everybody that has an IRA, someday you're [00:22:20] gonna turn, depending upon how old you are, either 73 or 75 years old, you're gonna have to start taking [00:22:25] big old chunks out of that IRA. They're gonna be taxable to you. Um, well some people, in part of their [00:22:30] estate plan, they also want to give money to charity, right?

What [00:22:50] that does, that allows you to take money directly out of your IRA, send it directly to a charity, [00:22:55] and if you do that, the, the entire amount that you send to the charity, up to a certain, uh, maximum threshold, [00:23:00] is completely avoided, uh, the, the, the tax is, is completely avoided [00:23:05] on that dollar figure. So that's a big one, but then also donor-advised funds.

Great one around here is the Kansas City, Greater Kansas City Community Foundation. You set up a donor-advised [00:23:40] fund. You gift money to that fund, and basically you get to take the charitable deduction in the year you [00:23:45] give it to the fund, but then you have no stipulations as to when you actually have to [00:23:50] gift it from that fund to the charity.

[00:24:15] You know, do you have too much, too little life insurance? Is it doing what we want it to do? [00:24:20] Uh, making sure that long-term care is covered, whether that's self insurance, you actually bought [00:24:25] insurance, or we do some sort of hybrid, you know, life insurance, annuity, long-term care type [00:24:30] situation. Um, but then also just, like, your home, auto, life, all that stuff, [00:24:35] make sure you have it, which most people, if you have a home and you have a mortgage and, you know, you have li- you, you obviously [00:24:40] have homeowners insurance 'cause they won't allow you not to.

You can [00:25:10] do that in a number of ways. You know, like when we use eMoney, that has a vault in there, a, an electronic [00:25:15] vault that we can put all your documents in there for you if you'd like. You know, [00:25:20] what I'll tell you is when we first started using eMoney, I don't know if you guys remember this, we started using eMoney, we were super excited [00:25:25] about that feature.

That has a bunch of files where you can place all of your important documents, your passwords, your [00:25:45] account information. You know, who to call, uh, to get, to get all the information, and who [00:25:50] are your beneficiaries and everything. So s- somewhere just centralized for your heirs to [00:25:55] have that And then, um, the, you know, lastly, what I would say [00:26:00] is, is who, you know, who's your team in retirement, right?

So that way, [00:26:20] um, we can really... You know, I, I think all those things really work together, [00:26:25] and, and you really need a team of people that are in tuned with what the other's doing to [00:26:30] have an effective, uh, retirement in that regard, to make sure that your, your taxes and your [00:26:35] CPA is in line with what your, your financial advisor's trying to do.

So, um, you know, I... And I guess lastly, I [00:27:00] guess we can kind of close out, guys, but, um, I will say, and this is true, and we, we always [00:27:05] talk bec- because when we work with clients, we have two different ways we do it, right? One of which is [00:27:10] just a, like, a one-time engagement, where we, we, we meet with a client and we kind of go through a plan [00:27:15] and then we give them the plan and they pay, you know, call it an hourly rate.

There's just... It's, it's an ongoing thing. It's, uh, [00:27:40] it's constantly evolving. Uh, so it's not a one-time event. It's something that's, that requires that [00:27:45] ongoing maintenance, and that's where doing reviews a couple times a year, uh, making... Seeing [00:27:50] what's changed, where you're at with the markets, all that sort of stuff is, is super, super important.

Ethan Hutcheson: I just think, you know, at the end of the day, just it's, it's not a one-size-fits-all. It, it, it [00:28:00] definitely is not. Um, y- just make sure you're, you're taking time and thinking about [00:28:05] this well in advance, right? It, it, you don't wanna think about retirement six months out from [00:28:10] retirement. You wanna have kinda everything in line, I would argue 20 [00:28:15] years out, you know, just in- Yeah

some cases. Yeah. We're- Um, because a lot of times you-

Ethan Hutcheson: right? Ex- exactly. No matter how old we are, and that's, that's the deal. Yeah. Yep. And, and there's multiple [00:28:25] cases I can think of where we're, we're starting to talk to a, a prospect or, or, or a, or a referral or [00:28:30] something of that nature where they say, "Man, I...

It's, it's time to really start buckling down. [00:28:50]

Jeb Graham: Yep. For sure. So well, thanks guys. [00:29:05] Uh, this was productive and, uh, this is Metcalf Money Moment Podcast signing off[00:29:10]

Disclaimer: Jib Graham, Ethan Hutcheson, and Eric Wymore [00:29:40] are registered representatives with and securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA SIPC. Investment advice offered through [00:29:45] WCG Wealth Advisors, a registered investment advisor. WCG Wealth Advisors and Metcalf Partners Wealth Management is a [00:29:50] are separate entity, entities from LPL Financial.

All performance referenced is historical and is no guarantee of future results. All [00:30:05] indices are unmanaged and may not be invested into directly