Retirement Planning Resources
Discover our expertly curated articles, easy-to-use tools, and insightful videos: all designed to help you make smart decisions for your retirement future.
Retirement Planning Basics: Start Here
New to this, or just making sure you haven't missed anything? Start with our Pre-Retiree's Retirement Planning Guide, then dig into the cornerstone articles, tools, and videos below.
Featured Content
Biggest Expenses for Retirees & How to Minimize Them!
According to recent Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, retiree households spend an average of about $5k a month. Here are the biggest retiree expenses.
Article
Tax-Efficient Retirement Withdrawal Strategies: The Basics
Tax-efficient retirement withdrawal strategies—timing and choosing which accounts to access—can help you keep more of your retirement nest egg.
Article
How Much Money Do I Need to Retire?
Various approaches can help you determine how much money to save for retirement. We’ll explore these methods (and much more!) in this post.
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Essential Pre-Retirement Advice Video
If retirement is in your near future, be sure to check out this video! Receive practical tips on topics ranging from retirement savings and tax diversification to navigating psychological and emotional aspects of your golden years.
Getting Ready to Retire
The years leading up to retirement are where the biggest decisions get made — when to claim Social Security, how to cover healthcare before Medicare, and which accounts to tap first. Whether retirement is decades away or just months out, these guides walk you through getting ready, one step at a time.
The 24-Month Retirement Countdown: 13 Steps to Take Before You Retire
Find out why the final 24 months of your career can matter more than the first 24 years when it comes to planning for retirement.
Retirement Income and Withdrawals
Building a nest egg is only half the job — the other half is turning it into steady income that lasts. This section covers how much you can safely withdraw, which accounts to draw from and when, and how to protect your savings from a bad run of markets early in retirement.
How to Minimize Retirement Income Taxes
Retirement is expensive, so we went ahead and compiled a few oft-used strategies and tactics to keep more money in your pocket during your golden years.
How to Prepare for Retirement: A Pre-Retiree's Guide
Your roadmap for the 50s-and-60s stretch before retirement — a plain-English walk through the moves that matter most, from Social Security and RMDs to healthcare and taxes. One guide, the whole picture.
Where to Retire
Thinking about relocating in retirement? Where you live drives your taxes, cost of living, and lifestyle more than most people expect. These state-by-state guides lay out what to weigh — taxes, climate, healthcare, and more — so your next move works in your favor.
Retirement Calculators
Get a quick ballpark with our free calculators — estimate your retirement savings, investment growth, and net worth in a couple of minutes.
Retirement Savings Calculator
Estimate your potential retirement savings based on your current strategy.
Investment Return Calculator
Estimate the growth potential of your money.
Net Worth Calculator
Quickly and easily learn your net worth (the difference between what you own and owe).
Retirement Planning Terms to Know
Retirement comes with its own alphabet soup — RMDs, QCDs, the Rule of 55, IRMAA. Our glossary keeps the jargon from getting between you and a smart decision (bonus: you'll hold your own at the next dinner party, too).
Retirement
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The 4% rule is a strategy stating you should withdraw no more than 4% of your assets during the first year of retirement and then adjust withdrawals for inflation on an annual basis thereafter.
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An annuity is a type of insurance product giving investors a guaranteed stream of income, with money paid up front (via a lump sum or series of payments) then invested and later paid out per an agreed-upon time, amount, and timeframe.
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If you’re age 50+, you can save more money for retirement via “catch-up contributions” made to your 401(k) and IRA accounts above standard limits.
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The New Jersey Exit Tax is a misnomer as many people believe it’s an additional or special tax imposed when you sell your property and move out of the Garden State.
The truth is this is merely a prepayment of the estimated tax owed on the sale of your property, paid in advance (either before or at closing) and held in escrow. The tax is then settled when you file your state income tax return.
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A QCD is a direct transfer of funds from your IRA—payable directly to a qualified charity—and often used by investors seeking to avoid being pushed into a higher income tax bracket or prevent the phaseout of other tax deductions.
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Required minimum distributions (RMDs) are the minimum amount of money the IRS requires you to withdraw from specific retirement accounts, primarily tax-deferred accounts (e.g., traditional IRAs and 401(k)s) and generally beginning at age 73.
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A Roth conversion is merely a transfer of all (or a portion) of your balances from an existing traditional IRA, SEP, or SIMPLE IRA as you roll assets over into a Roth IRA.
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The rule of 55 is an IRS provision that allows workers who leave their job to withdraw funds from an employer-sponsored retirement account without incurring a penalty, though they must still pay income tax on withdrawals.
Key Age Milestones
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When you turn 50, the IRS allows you to make annual “catch-up contributions”: additional contributions you can make above standard limits to your 401(k)s and IRAs.
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As a general rule, you’ll trigger an IRS tax penalty of 10% if you withdraw money from your 401(k) (or 403(b)) account before age 59½. The rule of 55 allows anyone who’s been fired, laid off, or quits a job between age 55 and 59½ to pull money out of the most current 401(k) or 403(b) and skirt this fee (some public employees qualify even earlier).
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You can begin withdrawing money from 401(k) and IRA accounts without incurring a 10% early withdrawal penalty beginning at age 59½.
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While you can begin collecting Social Security at age 62, choosing to receive benefits before reaching full retirement age (the age at which you’re entitled to 100% of your benefits) means your monthly benefit will face a permanent reduction. The current full retirement age for those born after 1959 is 67.
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You generally qualify for full Medicare benefits upon turning 65—earlier if you have qualifying disabilities—based on your (or your spouse’s) employment record. Most people have a seven-month Medicare sign-up enrollment period, with this window beginning three months before you turn 65 and ending three months after your birthday month.
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At age 73 (age 75 if you were born in 1960 or later), you’re required to begin withdrawing funds from specific tax-deferred retirement accounts and must take your first required minimum distribution (RMD) by December 31 of that year (or by April 1 of the following year at the latest).
Top Financial Surprises in Retirement
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How exactly you withdraw funds from retirement accounts can significantly impact your tax liability. In choosing the right strategy, you can optimize your income and minimize taxes. Check out our article on tax-efficient retirement withdrawal strategies for more information about this.
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Medicare doesn’t cover all healthcare-related expenses and indeed has significant gaps, the most notable of which is long-term care as it provides only limited coverage for this in specific circumstances. Even if you qualify for Medicaid, for example, you may be restricted to facilities that accept payments from the program.
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The more money you make, the higher your Medicare Part B and Part D premiums.
What’s more, these surcharges, called IRMAA, are calculated based on tax returns reported from two years prior: meaning your 2026 income determines your IRMAA in 2028, your 2027 income determines your IRMAA in 2029, and so on.
The two-year lag can lead to unpleasant surprises when you first enroll in Medicare, especially if your income declines substantially post-retirement.
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While everyone has different reasons for downsizing later in life, many assume it’ll help finance a good chunk of retirement. Unfortunately, and as homeowners often reap less than what they initially anticipated when considering this plan, some are forced to make drastic changes to their envisioned retirement lifestyle accordingly. Here are some tips to ensure your downsizing expectations align more closely with reality.
Tax Planning: How to Avoid Paying Excess Taxes in Retirement
Retirees often overpay on taxes simply because the rules are confusing. This on-demand webinar walks through the moves that keep more in your pocket — withdrawal sequencing, Roth conversions, and sidestepping surprise Medicare surcharges. Watch anytime.
Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs)
Starting at age 73 (75 if you were born in 1960 or later), the IRS requires you to withdraw from your tax-deferred accounts — and missing an RMD carries a stiff penalty. These guides cover how to calculate them, avoid the penalties, and use strategies like QCDs to trim the tax bill.
Popular Questions
Find answers to common questions people ask us about retirement planning.
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Unfortunately, a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work when trying to calculate how much you’ll need to save for retirement as the answer ultimately depends on income, goals, and preferred lifestyle. Several retirement rules of thumb can help guide you, however.
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Yes, many retirement benefits are indeed taxable, but it all depends on the type of benefit and your individual circumstances.
Social Security benefits are sometimes partially taxable based on total income, for example, while traditional IRA and 401(k) withdrawals are generally taxed as ordinary income. Qualified withdrawals from Roth IRAs and Roth 401(k)s are typically tax-free, whereas pension income is typically taxable at the federal level (with some states imposing additional taxes).
Be sure to review the specific rules for each type of retirement benefit and consider your overall income when planning for taxes in retirement.
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You can have multiple retirement accounts if you’d like, with no legal limit to the number you can own. You might contribute to a 401(k) or similar plan via your employer, for example, while also personally maintaining one or more IRAs (traditional or Roth). Annual contribution limits do apply across all accounts of the same type, meaning having more isn’t advantageous in this regard.
Find out if you’re on track to retire—or the age when you can do so comfortably!
Introducing our “Am I on Track” service—$590.
If you’ve recently googled “retirement calculator” to learn whether or not you’re on track to enjoy the retirement you envision, you’re not alone; according to Semrush, a leading marketing insights company, web users perform over 100,000 monthly searches for this exact phrase.
If you’re like most people, however, you know a retirement calculator is far too simple a tool to answer specific questions such as “Can I retire at age ____ (fill in the blank)?” or “At what age can I confidently retire?”
This is precisely where our “Am I On Track?” service comes into play; we’ll collect your financials and gather insights on your retirement goals to churn out an actual score (from 0 to 100) indicating how likely you are to reach your retirement goals. Not on track after all? We’ll outline actionable steps to get you back on course.
Our “Am I On Track?” service comes fully loaded with the following benefits:
✓ Investment portfolio analysis — a review of your holdings, your risk level, your allocation, and the fees you’re paying.
✓ Tax return review — we read your most recent return for missed opportunities and tax-smart moves that strengthen your plan.
✓ Social Security optimization — we identify your optimal claiming age so you get the most from your benefits.
✓ Cash flow and gap analysis — a full look at money in and money out, with income projections that show whether your plan holds up.
✓ Your 0–100 retirement readiness score — one clear number showing how likely you are to reach your retirement goals.
✓ Personal scorecard — a visual snapshot of your net worth, and a baseline to measure your progress from here.
It’s all delivered as a complete retirement roadmap you keep — regardless of whether you decide to work with us.
See if we’re the right fit for you.
Prefer a different path?
The "Am I On Track?" assessment is the most direct way to get a personalized retirement readiness score and a clear picture of where you stand. But it isn't the only way to work with us. Here are three more options depending on what you're looking for. No assets required.
Hourly Consulting
Best for: a single specific question — like whether to do a Roth conversion, how to choose your pension payout option, or when to start drawing from your 401(k).
Pay by the hour, get a CFP® professional's read, no ongoing commitment.
VR360 Membership — $3,995/year
Best for: an ongoing relationship that integrates your tax planning, insurance review, and the rest of your retirement picture.
A flat-fee annual membership that includes tax planning, income tax preparation, an insurance review, estate-planning support (excluding attorney fees), identity-theft protection, and access to exclusive client experiences.
Financial Planning
Best for: a full written plan that brings income, taxes, Social Security, withdrawal sequencing, and insurance into one coherent strategy.
A defined engagement that delivers a personalized written plan you can act on.
See if we’re the right fit for you.
30+
YEARS
Helping families navigate complex retirement decisions
FIDUCIARY
Legally required to put your interests first — throughout the relationship, not just at the point of sale.
TRANSPARENCY
Clear pricing, no hidden fees, no surprises.
PROPRIETARY PRODUCTS
No proprietary funds. No incentives to push them.
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