Who I Serve and How I Help My Clients

Change is a challenging thing. There are fairly regular life changes like starting a new job or moving to a new home—perhaps out of Chicago and into a great suburb like Naperville. And then there are changes like retiring that you make only once in your life (hopefully). While retiring comes with a lot of important financial decisions and steps, it can be intimidating and stressful to hand over the retirement reigns to a financial professional if you’ve managed your money your entire life. 

That stress is compounded by the fact that most people view working with a financial advisor as a long-term commitment. Once you sign on the dotted line, you’re in it for the long haul. That’s not necessarily the case—there are plenty of folks who change advisors at some point. But I can certainly understand the sentiment behind it, especially because of the number of people who have had the same “financial guy” for decades. 

Between what I hear from clients and what I hear from the financial advisors I’m connected with, I know the start of a relationship with a new financial advisor can be fraught with questions, especially if you’ve never had a financial advisor before. So I wanted to write a piece to tell you a little about the people I work with, and how I approach helping them plan for their retirement future at Retirement Portfolio Partners. This won’t answer all of your questions, but I’m hoping it’s the starting point of building your confidence in the decision to seek guidance as you look toward your retirement. 

Who We Serve

There are lots of financial advisors out there. And many advisors work with all types of clients at all stages of their lives. That’s a feasible option for larger financial advisor firms, but I know my limitations as a smaller firm; I can’t be everything to everyone. 

So instead of focusing on working with anyone who comes to me, I put my energy toward two specific groups of people and their one central need: building a financial plan for retirement. Hence the name Retirement Portfolio Partners. After all, your retirement portfolio includes a lot of things (not just money) and is the basis of your life after you’re done working. But we’ll get to that in a bit. 

For now, let’s dig a little deeper into these two main groups I serve. 

Still Planning for Retirement

The people I serve in the ‘Still Planning for Retirement’ group can be a variety of ages. As a friendly reminder, you don’t have to work until 65 if you have the means to retire. If you can retire in your mid-40s, all the power to you! 

With that in mind, this group isn’t united by their age, but by the fact that they are closing in on making the retirement decision. You may not be thinking about making the retirement move tomorrow or even this year, but your retirement is likely within five years if you’re in this group. It is likely even closer than that. But the decision and the logistics are certainly on your mind. A common question people in this group ask themselves, or their spouses, is, “How much longer do I have to work?” 

If this sounds like you, you’re in the right place. 

Retiring Soon or Already Retired

Your retirement decision may also be a lot more immediate than what I just described above.

You may be right on the retirement precipice ready to make the leap to your retired life. Or, like a lot of folks in the Chicago area, you may be pseudo-retired and spending parts of your year in more forgiving climates than the Midwest. You also might be fully retired. Regardless of which of these three subcategories (or a combination thereof) you fit into, you fit squarely into the group of people I help on a daily basis as a financial advisor and Certified Financial Planner™. 

You may have the misconception that building a financial plan for your retirement needs to be done before you retire. Planning ahead can certainly be helpful, but you don’t have to forego a retirement plan just because you’re already retired. The fact is that you may spend as much, or even more, time retired than you did in your working years, especially with constant advances in science, technology, and medicine. So even if you’ve already ridden into the proverbial sunset, I’m giving you permission to circle back to pick up a roadmap for your retirement years. 

How We Help

Now that we’ve established the two key groups of people I work with here at Retirement Portfolio Partners, I want to briefly cover how it is that I help folks like you. There are lots of financial components to retiring, so this isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list by any means. These are simply the main areas to address. 

Creating A Comprehensive Financial Plan

This seems rather obvious, but it bears mentioning and then repeating. A comprehensive financial plan is arguably the most important part of planning for and into retirement. Think of it as the foundation upon which your retirement house sits. 

You’ll likely hear the term ‘comprehensive’ thrown around quite a bit by financial advisors. So what does it mean? It’s taking every aspect of your financial life (both the quantitative and qualitative components) and bringing them all together. For the sake of continuing the house analogy, it’s gathering everything under one roof. It’s only with all of that information that you can make decisions big and small about your financial future. 

On a smaller level, it’s understanding what your goals might be in retirement and charting the path to get you there. Do you want to live somewhere warmer in the winter? Do you want to travel internationally? Do you want to pass along wealth to younger generations in your family? Taking all of these individual items into consideration is a piece of building the entire picture. 

Retirement Income & Expense Projections

This portion of the retirement equation is where the quantitative components come into play. As part of the comprehensive financial plan, you’ll want to understand if the life you want to live in retirement is realistic and possible under your plan. 

How much will you have on a monthly and yearly basis? How much will you spend on a monthly and yearly basis? And how will those income and expense streams change over the course of your retirement? 

To chart both of these items, we’ll also uncover where exactly the retirement income comes from. This can be a particularly nebulous idea when it comes to retirement. It sounds silly, but it’s a very real question that I help clients answer regularly. Where does the money come from? Sure, there’s Social Security. But what about other income sources? How do you get the money out? And how much do you take? 

These are the types of questions we help you address. 

Helping You Understand Your Path to Retirement

If you’re already retired, then this portion may not apply to you directly. But if you still haven’t made the big decision, then this is a critical question you’re likely thinking about. When is it you should retire? And how do you go about making it happen? 

This again ties back into the two areas above. Through our comprehensive financial planning and retirement income and expense projection, we’ll be able to build possible models for your future. There are so many factors to weigh (more than we can cover in this article without it becoming a novel), and there are multiple outcomes for every situation. You may retire from the job you’ve had for years and move into retirement territory without fully retiring. You may retire from a full-time job and work part-time. And you may retire from your full-time job and take up a hobby that turns into a job. 

Whatever direction it is you’d like to go, we can help pave the financial path along the way. Through our planning process, you’ll be equipped to make the financial decisions that you feel are the right ones for you. 

I know we just covered quite a bit of ground in this piece. So if you have questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. You can send me an email at ebarnes@retirementportfoliopartners.com, or you can visit our website to schedule an appointment. 

About the Author

Erik Barnes, CFP®, is a fee-only financial advisor serving clients locally in Naperville, IL, and the surrounding Chicagoland area and throughout the U.S. He is a member of XY Planning Network, a group of fee-only financial advisors who focus on serving those in Gen X and Gen Y, as well as NAPFA, Fee-Only Network, and the Financial Planning Association. Erik has worked in financial planning for 20 years and takes great pride in helping clients on the road to retirement. When he’s not building financial plans, you can find Erik tinkering with his fantasy football roster or checking out one of the many food spots in Chicagoland.