Peter J. Nagle, a financial planner with Spruce Hill Capital LLC in Guilford, Conn., has a client, we’ll call Daniel, who was a successful corporate attorney who lost his job when the company was reorganized. The client and his wife, who had several million in investments, for awhile lived off of proceeds from selling his company stock and her income. They sold their large home and moved into a condominium.

Nagle advised them to take money from investments and delay Social Security until Daniel is 70, but he started taking benefits at age 65.

“There are emotional issues involved for those who are laid off involuntarily and it can make them want security in financial matters even more. Daniel wanted that base of income so he did not have to take from his investments, which he could have done,” Nagle says.

Others, like Elle Kaplan’s client, Jane, can follow a more accepted path. Jane, a publishing executive, was laid off at 62 with about $2 million in assets. She is spending about $125,000 a year in the near term and planning to spend less as she ages, says Kaplan, CEO and founding partner of Lexion Capital Management in New York City.

She will not take Social Security until she reaches 70 when the benefit is as large as it will get.

“But this approach is not formulaic; it is market dependent,” says Kaplan. “I saw people destroyed when they drew money from stocks in 2008 when they should have been drawing from fixed income to let the stocks recover. That decision will affect their retirement for the rest of their lives.”

“In Jane’s case, we are drawing from the taxable accounts and letting the power of compounding continue to work for the tax-deferred accounts,” she says.

Roth IRAs can also be used as a planning tool to pay taxes when the client wants, says Saul Simon, founder and president of Simon Financial Group in Edison, N.J. The firm is affiliated with Lincoln Financial Advisors.

Simon has a client who is a 64-year-old widow. She has about $1 million in assets, but no income other than unemployment benefits. She is living off some cash and liquid assets, but may soon have to tap unqualified accounts, Simon says.

“After that, if we take money from her qualified accounts we will roll it over into a Roth IRA so she will pay taxes on it now, when her tax bracket is very low,” says Simon. He has also made sure she has long-term-care insurance.

Taxes are also the prime consideration for a client of Brian Parker, managing director and co-founder of EP Wealth Advisors in Torrance, Calif. The client, John, was injured on the job and forced to retire before his goal of 65 years of age. Although John had nearly $2 million in his 401(k), much of it was invested in company stock.

Parker shifted John’s investments out of company stock and also took advantage of the net unrealized appreciation (NUA), which allows him to roll over the money to a taxable brokerage account and avoid taxes on the appreciation amount.

“We showed him that delaying his Social Security will improve his plan, which took some work, as he had the motto of ‘Take it while you can,'” says Parker.

Sometimes a client chooses retirement, but it is still not what was planned. A financial advisor at Morgan Stanley said he has a client who became so unhappy at work that he retired when he was 62 rather than 66, the age he intended to retire from his job. He has $1.8 million in assets and no debt.