Financial Services

At Freedom First Retirement Design our advisors use the best tools and strategies we have available to develop a solid retirement strategy.

You may be reaching a stage in life when you’re becoming more conservative about investing and money management. As you transition into retirement, it’s only natural to be concerned with mitigating risks to your assets. Market or investment risk is the one people think of first. Others include sequence of return risk, longevity risk, inflation risk, tax liability, and more. Fortunately, having a good financial plan enables you to combat all of them.

You may be reaching a stage in life when you’re becoming more conservative about investing and money management. As you transition into retirement, it’s only natural to be concerned with mitigating risks to your assets. Market or investment risk is the one people think of first. Others include sequence of return risk, longevity risk, inflation risk, tax liability, and more. Fortunately, having a good financial plan enables you to combat all of them.

At Freedom First Retirement Design we have a team of CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ certificants and Financial Advisors to help you construct the investment portfolio that we believe will best help you reach your goals. We act as fee-based investment managers using a combination of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETF’s, and annuities in concert together to minimize risk while maximizing potential cash flow.

Contributing to a 401(k) or a similar employer-sponsored qualified plan is a convenient and popular way to save for retirement. As of 2020, 60 million American workers were actively contributing to one of the country’s 600,000 plans. Plans are built to offer a tax-efficient way to accumulate savings for use in retirement income. You can contribute up to $20,500 in 2022 and $27,000 if you’re over the age of 50. If you can’t maximize your contributions, it’s smart to contribute the percentage of your salary that your employer matches. The match is tantamount to free money, and it can grow on a tax-advantaged basis right alongside your own contributions.
We’re living longer than ever these days, enjoying more years of retirement than our parents did. Longevity is great for those of us who stay healthy. Unfortunately, some of us will live with chronic conditions that will require spending more money for health care expenses and unskilled nursing care.
When milestones like retiring or paying for college are decades away, you might not feel any urgency to seek professional finance advice. A casual, do-it-yourself approach to financial planning may seem just fine. But it’s a very different story when major life events occur that require immediate financial decisions. The type of decision that can make or break your financial future.

Retirement Income Plans are not just for the wealthy. With a customized retirement income plan from Freedom First Retirement Design, your dreams and goals become the focus of your retirement.

For some people, a Roth IRA offers more advantages for retirement savings than a traditional IRA. Contributions to a Roth don’t provide immediate tax deductions; instead, you contribute after-tax dollars, and the money compounds on a tax-free basis. Withdrawals are tax-free as well, as long as you’re 591/2 and have owned the account for at least 5 years. There are no required minimum distributions, so you can keep this money growing throughout retirement and pass it on tax-free to your beneficiaries.
The first question people ask about Social Security is usually this: What’s the best age to claim benefits? The truth is there is no specific age that’s appropriate for everyone. Some retirees may be better off collecting Social Security as soon as they’re eligible for partial benefits at 62, while others may benefit more by waiting until they reach full retirement age (67 for anyone born in 1960 or later), and some may want to delay claiming until their benefit reaches the maximum at age 70.
If you’ve been contributing regularly to qualified retirement plans like 401(k)s and IRAs, you may be looking at a sizable nest egg as you approach retirement age. Unfortunately, you’ll probably have a significant tax liability too and could lose 25–30% of these assets to taxes. Millions of Baby Boomers are in this situation, so you’re not alone in wondering how this happened and what can be done.