You have worked and saved your entire life with the goal of retiring. You wonder if you will be able to retire when you want to and if your assets will last as long as you will live.

At CPS, we help take the worry and complexity out of this process and provide you with a plan to take you through your retirement years feeling confident and secure in your financial management.

Retirement Income Planning is a comprehensive process that starts with your retirement goals and expectations. A successful Retirement Income Plan will put you in the best possible position to support those goals and expectations financially during your retirement, minimizing the risk that you will outlive your savings.

The uncertainty of retiring at a time when there are fewer guaranteed income sources, lower interest rates, and market fluctuations has people worried. Today’s retirement lifestyle is more active, more expensive, and we will likely live longer. There are some important factors to consider when making the decision to retire. When creating your personal retirement plan, here are some of the main variables we will consider:

• Your investment mix — You might think that once you reach retirement, investing solely in income-producing vehicles is the way to go, but you can’t forget about inflation. Even a low rate of inflation, such as we’ve had for a number of years, can seriously erode your purchasing power over time — which is why it is important to consider owning at least some investments that provide growth potential.
• Your withdrawal rate — We will help you calculate how much you can afford to withdraw from your investment portfolio each year without depleting it prematurely. Your annual withdrawal rate will depend on a few different factors — such as your projected longevity, your investment mix and your other sources of income.
• Your Social Security — You can start collecting Social Security benefits as early as age 62, but your benefits will be permanently reduced by up to 30% unless you wait until your Full Retirement Age (FRA), which is likely 66 or 67. However, your monthly checks can increase if you delay taking your benefits beyond your Full Retirement Age, up to age 70. If you come from a particularly long-living family, and you have sufficient income apart from Social Security, you might want to delay your payments to get the larger benefit amount.
• Your earned income — Just because you’ve retired from one career, it doesn’t mean you’ll never again earn some income. Many retirees take part-time jobs, do some consulting, or even open a small business. Whether you feel that you need to work, or you just want to work, the money you earn from employment can be an important component of your overall retirement income.

“Providing investment strategies to individuals and businesses for 30 years”