Retirement income, taxes, Social Security, Medicare, investments, and your estate, handled together instead of separately. One advisor. One flat fee.
You have watched the videos. You may have run the numbers in a spreadsheet more than once. And you still are not sure what to do first.
The hard part of retirement is knowing what to do with the facts: in what order, in your particular situation. Take three questions almost everyone at this stage is carrying. When should I claim Social Security? Am I invested the right way for retirement? Should I do a Roth conversion, and if so, when?
None of those has a clean answer on its own. The right claiming age depends on your tax picture. The right investment mix depends on where your income will come from. The right year to convert depends on both of those. These are not knowledge problems. They are execution problems, and they are where a retirement plan either comes together or quietly comes apart.
A Roth conversion changes a Medicare premium. When you claim Social Security changes your tax bracket. Which account you draw from first changes how long the money lasts. Handled in separate rooms by separate people, these decisions work against each other. Handled together, they work as one. That coordination is the job. Everything below is what it looks like in practice.
Six kinds of work, one coordinated plan.
Turning what you have saved into a paycheck that lasts.
For thirty years the job was to save. Now the job flips, and nobody hands you a manual for spending down what you built. I map where your income comes from each year, and in what order to draw from your accounts, so it is tax-efficient and steady. Some of your spending is fixed and some is flexible, and your plan treats those differently.
How do I turn my savings into a paycheck that lasts as long as I do?
Year-round tax strategy, not a return filed in April.
Filing a return records what already happened. Planning changes what happens next. I look ahead at your brackets, at the lower-income years between leaving work and starting withdrawals, and at where a Roth conversion or a charitable gift fits. If you have equity compensation, that is a tax question, and it lives here. I coordinate with your CPA.
What can I do this year to pay less tax across my whole retirement?
A claiming strategy for your whole household.
The real question is when each of you should claim, how one benefit interacts with the other, and how the timing lands on your taxes and your Medicare premium. A break-even calculator ignores all of that. I treat your claiming decision as one piece of the income and tax plan.
When should we each claim Social Security, given everything else?
Covering the years before 65, and getting Medicare right after.
If you retire before 65, there is a gap to bridge before Medicare starts, and how you fill it affects your income plan. Once Medicare begins, the income you reported two years earlier can raise your premium through a surcharge called IRMAA, which catches many people off guard. I plan around both, and I factor in the cost of long-term care.
How do I cover health care before Medicare, and avoid overpaying after?
Portfolios built for the years you draw on them.
Glow manages the investments, because that is how the plan actually gets carried out. A plan only works through decisions made inside your accounts. Which account a withdrawal comes from. Which holdings sit in which type of account. Whether a conversion happens in November or January. Whether a rebalance would push your income over an IRMAA threshold. I can recommend those moves from the outside. I can only make them from the inside. The portfolios themselves are index-based and built for the withdrawal stage, so your money is positioned for how you are about to use it.
Is my money actually positioned for the way I am about to use it?
Making sure what you built goes where you want, with less friction.
I don't draft documents. I make sure the ones you have match your plan and each other. I check your beneficiaries, review how your accounts are titled, and confirm your insurance and any long-term-care coverage still fit the plan. Then I coordinate with your attorney so the legal work reflects the financial picture.
Will what I built reach the people I want, the way I intend?
I am not your CPA and I am not your attorney, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What I do is sit at the center of the plan and keep those professionals pointed in the same direction. I coordinate with the person filing your taxes and the person drafting your documents so their work fits together instead of colliding. If you do not have those people yet, I can help you find them.
A few positions I hold, each of which costs me something.
Most of the industry starts with the portfolio and bolts a plan on afterward. I start with your life, your income, and your taxes, and let that decide how the money is invested. The portfolio serves the plan, not the reverse.
It would be easier to hand you a binder and tell you it is handled. I would rather you know why each decision was made, because a plan you understand is one you will actually stick with when markets get loud.
I focus on the years around retirement, roughly within ten years of retirement through the early retirement years. Focusing there means the people I serve get depth instead of a little of everything.
I follow two proven planning processes. As a CFP® professional, I follow CFP Board's financial planning process, the standard process for full financial planning that keeps your whole picture in view. My RICP® designation adds the retirement income planning process, which goes deeper on the part that matters most as retirement nears: turning what you have saved into income that lasts. GLOW is how I run them together, so no part of your plan gets handled in isolation.
I gather everything and get clear on what you want.
1 Get the full picture
Understand your personal and financial circumstances.
Evaluate your current situation, both the numbers and how you feel about them.
2 Decide what you want
Identify and select your goals.
Identify and prioritize your retirement goals.
You come to understand where you stand and what your options are.
3 See where you stand and what your options are
Analyze your current course of action and the alternatives.
Estimate your retirement income needs, essential versus discretionary.
Identify your sources of income and assets in retirement.
Make a preliminary calculation of how prepared you are.
I build and coordinate the plan, then put it in motion.
4 Build and coordinate the strategy
Develop your financial planning recommendations.
Develop strategies for addressing any income shortfalls.
Consider your legal and tax issues.
Consider your retirement contingencies while developing alternatives.
Determine a strategy for converting your assets into income.
5 Agree on it and put it in motion
Walk through your recommendations together.
Put your recommendations into action.
Bring it all together, weigh the alternatives, and agree on your plan.
I stay with it as your life and the rules change.
6 Keep it on track
Monitor your progress and update as life and the rules change.
Review and update your income plan over time.
Step wording adapts the CFP Board 7-step Financial Planning Process and the RICP 10-step Retirement Income Planning Process into plain language, organized under the GLOW system.
It begins with a free intro call to see whether we are a fit, with no pressure either way. If we move forward, the next few weeks are discovery. I gather your accounts and documents and build the organized picture from the first step of GLOW. From there we move into planning meetings, where we work through your income, taxes, Social Security, health care, investments, and estate in a deliberate order rather than all at once.
By the end of the first ninety days you have a plan you understand, the first decisions are in motion, and you know exactly what happens next and when we will meet again.
Many advisors charge a percentage of the money they manage. As your savings grow, so does the bill, even when the work is the same. It also ties the person advising you to the size of your accounts.
A flat fee is based on the complexity of your plan instead. The work of coordinating your income, taxes, and decisions is what you are paying for, and that work does not double just because your balance did. You know the number up front, you can see exactly what it buys, and it stays predictable year to year.
There is no minimum term and no lock-in. You can end the engagement at any time, for any reason. Your accounts stay in your name at the custodian the whole time, so nothing of yours is ever held to keep you as a client. Staying should be your choice every year, earned by the work.
Glow's flat fee runs from $4,000 to $10,000 a year, starting at $4,000, billed quarterly. The exact number depends on how complex your situation is, not how much you have saved, and you will know your fee before you commit to anything. For comparison, a typical 1% fee on the money an advisor manages would run about $10,000 a year on a $1 million portfolio, and it climbs as your savings grow.
AUM pricing charges a percentage of the money an advisor manages, so the cost rises as your savings grow. A flat fee stays the same regardless of your account balance. With Glow, what you pay is tied to the work involved, not the size of your portfolio.
Billing on a flat fee lets Glow work with people who cannot transfer their investment accounts to an advisor, most often because the majority of their assets sit inside an active 401(k).
Fee-only means Glow is paid only by its clients, never through commissions or product sales. Fee-based advisors can earn both client fees and commissions, which can create competing incentives. Glow is fee-only.
The whole plan. Retirement income, tax planning, Social Security timing, health care and Medicare, investment management, and estate coordination, all coordinated together. There are no separate charges for individual pieces. It is also ongoing: I put the plan into action, monitor it and adjust as your life, the markets, and the rules change, and I am available for on-demand meetings whenever something shifts for you.
No. By default, Glow manages your investments, because that is how the plan gets carried out inside your accounts. But if you would rather keep managing your own, or you have accounts that cannot move, like a current employer's 401(k), that does not disqualify you and it does not change your fee.
Common, and not a problem. I advise on accounts that cannot move rather than managing them directly, and they still fit into the same coordinated plan.
No. I am not your CPA. I do year-round tax planning and coordinate with the person who files your return so the planning and the filing line up.
Good. I work with them. My role is to keep your tax, legal, and financial decisions pointed in the same direction rather than replace the professionals you already trust.
You are never locked in. There is no minimum term, and you can end the engagement whenever you choose (see Glow’s Form ADV for the notice details). Your accounts stay in your name at Schwab, and you can remove my access at any time.
Two things. The fee is flat and based on your plan, not a percentage of your portfolio. And the focus is coordination across every part of your retirement, in a deliberate order, rather than managing investments with a plan attached.
If you are thinking about retirement and tired of holding all these pieces in your head, let's talk. The intro call is free, there is no pressure, and by the end you will know whether this is the right fit.