Retirement Readiness Checklist

Income planning

• Do you know, within a few hundred dollars, what you will spend each month in your first year of retirement?

  A figure you would put in writing, not an estimate in your head.

• Do you have a written plan for which accounts you will draw from first, and why?

Tax planning

• Has your tax return been reviewed for retirement-specific opportunities in the last three years?

  Reviewed for planning, as distinct from prepared and filed.

• Do you know roughly what your taxable income will look like between the day you retire and the day Social Security starts?
• Have you evaluated whether Roth conversions make sense for you before required distributions begin?

Investments & risk

• Does your portfolio’s allocation reflect that you will soon be withdrawing from it rather than adding to it?
• Do you know how your plan holds up if the market falls sharply in your first two years of retirement?

  This is sequence-of-returns risk: the Retirement Transition Trap™ itself.

• Do you have a plan for health coverage between your retirement date and Medicare eligibility?

  Answer yes if it does not apply because you are already on Medicare.

Estate & legacy

• Have your will, beneficiary designations and any trusts been reviewed in the last three years?

  Beneficiary designations override wills, and they go out of date quietly.

Alignment

• Do you know exactly what you pay your current advisor each year, in dollars?

  Dollars, not a percentage.