Investment Management Built Around Your Retirement Paycheck
THE YEARS BEFORE RETIREMENT MATTER MOST
If you’re within 5–10 years of retirement, your portfolio has a new job. It’s no longer just about growth or beating a benchmark — it’s about being ready to fund a reliable, tax-smart retirement paycheck you can actually live on.
Most investment management ignores that distinction entirely. We don’t. If you’re trying to understand what that shift actually looks like, the Retirement Transition Field Guide breaks it down in a practical way.
This is designed for:
— Pre-retirees roughly 5–10 years from retirement who want a clear, purposeful portfolio strategy — not a collection of accounts that happened to accumulate over time.
— Busy professionals who prefer a disciplined, evidence-based approach and want someone they trust handling the complexity while they focus on their career and their life.
— Couples who want their investments, taxes, and retirement income decisions coordinated in one place — with one advisor who sees the whole picture.
Why “Set It and Forget It” Stops Working Before Retirement
In the accumulation years, the strategy is simple: invest consistently, stay diversified, ride out volatility, let compounding do its work. Time covers a multitude of mistakes.
But in the 5–10 years before retirement and in the years immediately after — the math changes. A significant market drop at the wrong moment doesn’t just hurt your balance. It can permanently alter how much you can safely withdraw for the rest of your life. That’s sequence of returns risk, and it’s the most underappreciated threat to retirement security that most pre-retirees have never heard of.
This is the stage where generic portfolios, uncoordinated accounts, and DIY strategies start costing real money. Not in abstract percentage points — in years of retirement security.
PROBLEMS WE SOLVE
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A major market decline in the first few years of retirement — combined with ongoing withdrawals — can deplete a portfolio far faster than the historical averages suggest. We structure your portfolio to absorb early volatility without derailing your income plan, using bucketing strategies and asset allocation designed specifically for the distribution phase.
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“Moderate” and “60/40” are starting points, not strategies. Your ideal allocation depends on your specific retirement date, your income sources, your tax picture, your spending plan, and your actual emotional tolerance for watching a balance drop. We build portfolios around your real situation — not a generic questionnaire category.
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When your 401(k), IRA, Roth, and brokerage accounts are managed separately — or worse, ignored — you end up with overlapping exposure, unintentional concentration risk, tax inefficiencies, and no coherent withdrawal strategy. We look at everything together and manage it as a single coordinated portfolio.
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A portfolio without a retirement income plan attached to it is just a number. We build your investment strategy backward from your retirement paycheck — knowing exactly what the portfolio needs to produce, when, and from which accounts — so nothing is improvised later when it matters most.
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Concentrated positions in a single company — especially your own employer — represent risk that most portfolios shouldn’t carry this close to retirement. We help you reduce concentration strategically, with an eye on taxes and timing.
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The most expensive investment mistakes aren’t made by algorithms — they’re made by humans reacting to scary headlines. Having a fiduciary advisor you trust doesn’t just improve your plan. It improves your behavior during the moments when behavior matters most.
HOW WE MANAGE PORTFOLIOS
What Our Investment Management Actually Looks Like
Evidence-Based Portfolio Construction
We build low-cost, broadly diversified portfolios using stocks, ETFs, and asset class funds — grounded in decades of academic research on what actually drives long-term returns. No market timing. No speculation. No products that benefit us more than they benefit you.
Asset Location Strategy
Which investments go in which accounts matters a lot. Placing tax-inefficient assets in tax-deferred accounts and tax-efficient assets in taxable accounts can meaningfully improve your after-tax returns over time without changing your risk profile at all.
Retirement Income Alignment
Your portfolio structure is designed around your specific withdrawal sequence. We know which accounts fund your early retirement years, which ones are preserved for later, and which ones are earmarked for Roth conversion or legacy goals. Every holding has a purpose.
Ongoing Rebalancing
Markets drift. We rebalance systematically, capturing gains, maintaining your target allocation, and harvesting losses along the way so your portfolio stays aligned with your plan even when markets don’t cooperate.
Tax-Aware Management
Every trade we make considers the tax consequences. We coordinate investment decisions with your broader tax strategy, avoiding unnecessary gains, timing losses intentionally, and managing distributions with your overall tax picture in mind.
Technology You Can See
Your portfolio is held at Altruist, an institutional-grade custodian with full transparency. You have 24/7 access to your accounts and can see exactly what you own, what you’re paying, and how your plan is tracking — in real time.
Our Investment Management Process
Assess & Align
We start by reviewing your full portfolio picture, every account, every holding, every allocation, and assessing how well it’s positioned for the transition from accumulation to income. Most clients find gaps here they didn’t know existed.
Build & Coordinate
We construct a coordinated investment strategy across all accounts, aligned with your retirement income plan, your tax strategy, and your timeline. Every decision has a reason. Every account has a role.
Monitor & Adjust
Markets change. Life changes. Tax laws change. We review your portfolio on an ongoing basis — rebalancing, harvesting, adjusting — and connect every investment decision back to your retirement paycheck and your plan.
“Patrick has managed my investments for years, always listening to my goals and concerns. He is thoughtful, strategic, and a trusted partner I highly recommend.”
— Elizabeth L., Phoenix, AZ
Testimonials are provided by current clients. They are unpaid, may not be representative of all clients, and are not a guarantee of future performance or success.
Is Your Portfolio Ready for the Job It’s About to Do?
If you’re 5–10 years from retirement, now is exactly the right time to make sure your investments are aligned with your income plan, not just your risk tolerance checkbox from five years ago.
Let’s spend 20 minutes together to take an honest look at where you stand.