My sons’ soccer games used to provide me with informal investor focus groups. Roaming the sidelines, often with my father (and Nobel laureate economist), we fielded questions from parents about how to maximize their returns.

Today our kids are grown. Those encounters happen in other places around town. My fellow soccer parents are retiring, some earlier than planned, causing them to miss some of their potential peak earning years.

They are puzzled by the myriad decisions they face when approaching or in retirement, including choices about rollovers, Social Security filing, timing account withdrawals, required minimum distributions (RMDs) and Roth conversions.

In short, they need a decumulation plan. And that plan must benefit from decumulation technology that my colleague Steve Zuschin notes needs to be as powerful and responsive as Waze (or Google Maps or Apple Maps) are in helping drivers navigate to their destinations. 

People become vulnerable to costly mistakes as they face retirement. How will you steward them through decumulation?

First, stay in touch and urge financial plans be updated. Clients in their 50s think about retirement every day. And as they move closer to embarking on their next chapter, be sure to stay in touch on what they are thinking regarding their retirement. Often, they just need to talk to a trusted source. With so many issues to consider, they don’t fully understand the consequences of decisions—particularly when it comes to their tax situation.

Remind them that any change in their financial situation—job change, death, disability due to illness, divorce—should trigger a call to you. And most important of all, be sure to suggest you work with them to update their financial plans. The world has changed and their plan needs to consider the entire household portfolio, including assets held by spouses or partners (here’s why that’s important).

Technology can capture all their portfolio assets and beyond – real estate, insurance and annuity contracts, cryptocurrency. You’ll need all that information to chart their course until retirement and create a personalized decumulation plan.

Learn the practices that will allow you to deliver maximum income. Ask anybody about the risks in retirement, and they’re likely to say it’s outliving their assets because of ill health, inflation and longevity. Many are surprised to learn that taxes are, in fact, the most significant cost—and threat—to retirement income. 

Achieving “tax alpha” and maximizing retirement income demands consistently applying the following practices across a household portfolio:
1. Asset location—The most effective way to improve after-tax returns is in locating assets in the optimal accounts while maintaining the target asset allocation. This means, for example, locating tax-inefficient assets in tax-advantaged accounts, such as 401(k) plans or individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and tax-efficient assets in taxable accounts.

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