Income built to last, designed around your specific numbers.
Turning what you have saved into income that holds up across a 20- or 30-year retirement is a different problem than growing savings in the first place. It calls for a different architecture.
A situation I see often
The picture his advisor was painting. A retired dentist in Torrance came to me about a year after he had sold his practice. He was sitting on roughly $2 million in sale proceeds plus another $800,000 in retirement accounts, and his advisor at the time was telling him to put the entire pile into a balanced portfolio and draw 4% a year. On paper, the math worked.
What the math didn’t account for: sequence-of-returns risk. He was planning to start drawing income immediately. If the market dropped 25% in his first 18 months of retirement — which has happened multiple times in living memory — his original 4% draw rate would have permanently impaired his lifetime income. The advisor’s plan was a market-expectation plan being asked to do the work of a contract.
How we restructured the picture. About a third of his asset base went into a fixed indexed annuity with a guaranteed lifetime income rider, which contractually produced his income floor for the rest of his life regardless of what the market did. The remaining two-thirds stayed in market exposure, growing the upside layer for travel, gifts, and legacy. His income trajectory became sturdier, and his market portfolio became less load-bearing.
Contracts and markets, each in their place
Expecting income vs. contracting for income. A 4% withdrawal rate is a historical observation, useful for planning but not a guarantee. A guaranteed lifetime income rider on a fixed indexed annuity is a contractual promise that doesn’t depend on any market in any given year.
Both have a place in a well-architected retirement income plan. Contracts cover the income floor — essentials, healthcare, taxes, and the baseline lifestyle that has to be there no matter what the market does. Markets cover the upside — travel, gifts, legacy, the variable layer that can flex with the year you are actually living.
Most retirees have this inverted. Their entire income stream is exposed to sequence-of-returns risk in the first decade of retirement — the period when one bad market can permanently impair their income for life — while their guaranteed income covers only a fraction of essentials.
What a Retirement Income Review actually does
30 minutes. Your specific numbers, walked through. Your essential monthly expenses. Your existing guaranteed income from Social Security and any pension. The gap between the two. Whether that gap is being met by portfolio withdrawals, an annuity income stream, or assumption.
You leave with a written one-page summary of where your income picture stands and the workable paths to close any gaps. No pressure to do anything you’re not ready for. No carrier I’m steering you toward.
If the tax-efficiency side of the plan is also open, the Financial Freedom page covers Roth conversion strategy, IRMAA exposure, and the structures that complement retirement income for the families who hold significant tax-deferred balances.