How soon can you retire? Your retirement is closer than you think. As you approach this new chapter in your life, the earlier you start thinking about planning for retirement is vital. Planning early for retirement lets you retire on your terms, meet your retirement goals, and leave a legacy that reflects the determination, wise decision-making, and leadership you’ve demonstrated throughout your life and career. It all starts with a lucrative retirement strategy.
Strategic Investment Planning
First things first.
Developing a tailored investment strategy is critical. It ensures you enjoy the retirement you’re looking forward to—your way. It aligns your investments with your unique retirement goals, anticipated needs, and hopes for your family’s future. This approach maximizes returns, mitigates risks, and provides peace of mind that your retirement planning strategy will work effectively and adapt to changes over time.
Within this strategy, you’ll identify high-yield investment opportunities worth the risk. Doing so gives you the potential to earn significant returns on your investments. However, as a pragmatic person, you know not every high-yield investment lives up to its 10-year growth forecast. So, any financially focused business advisor will recommend some diversification.
And here’s the thing:
You’ve spent your working years dedicated to growing a business (or several) in the industry you know. That laser focus is why you’re here with a high net worth today. However, since you plan to retire within 10 years, having a portfolio disproportionately invested in your business or industry would be ill-advised. If that industry collapses two years before retirement, what now? You must mitigate these risks by strategically exploring high-yield opportunities in other sectors and asset types.
This not only ensures you retire at the level you hope or anticipate. It protects you and your family after retirement—as it’s a given, the industries and assets you invest in will fluctuate.
Tax Optimization Strategies
You shouldn’t be paying more taxes than you have to, so it’s time to think about further minimizing your tax liabilities through legal methods. Anyone with a high net worth should consider a trust to reduce the impact of Illinois Estate Tax. Setting up an irrevocable trust allows you to remove some assets (including your business) from your taxable estate, lowering estate taxes. Trusts can also work as a generation tax-skipping strategy, but make sure you understand Illinois generation-skipping tax implications.
Leveraging the right tax retirement accounts you qualify for with a high net worth will further lower your tax liabilities when it’s time to draw on those retirement funds in 10, 20, or 40 years. So, it’s time to get a 401K audit.
Finally, the growth of existing retirement accounts and assets after retirement is critical to your retirement strategy, so if your retirement accounts force distributions, like the traditional IRA, it’s crucial to get the financial advice you need to redistribute assets to ensure both Tax-Efficient Asset Allocation and continued asset growth potential. Taking advantage of the IRS’ allowable catch-up contributions is just one way to work toward this redistribution.
Business Exit and Succession Planning
As you ask yourself how to plan for retirement, your business exit strategy should stay top of mind. Many business owners procrastinate on this until that retirement date is around the corner. That’s a big mistake.
You have an opportunity to Craft a Lucrative Business Exit Strategy. Don’t leave it to chance! Not only do you want to see your business continue to thrive into the next generation. Your family (or those you see as family) may inherit a legacy you’ve built. Set them up for success. and preserve the business to protect any ongoing investment income you receive from it.
So, how do you ensure a smooth leadership transition?
- Plan ahead. Retirement 10 years away, but the time is now.
- Strongly evaluate successors. Conduct a thorough and objective search and assessment process to identify the most qualified successor.
- Evaluate your financial systems and processes. Ensure you have robust and streamlined financial systems, including employee retirement accounts.
Wealth Management and Estate Planning
As you advance into retirement, a trusted financial team becomes an essential piece of the retirement planning puzzle. They manage your wealth and help you most efficiently transfer wealth and secure the future of the next generation.
Wealth and assets involve more than effectively managing your portfolios. It includes getting the most out of programs, resources, and risk-management tools to protect those assets. These can include:
- Social security
- Long-term care insurance, liability insurance, or other asset-protection resources
- Medicare plans
- Trusts to reduce tax liabilities
Your chosen Estate Planning Vehicle is essential here. In financial and legal terms, an estate planning vehicle is a trust you set up to benefit others (such as family) after you’re gone. You can establish a holding company for your business within the trust, which offers several benefits including:
- Liability protections
- Privacy
- Increasing tax efficiency by minimizing income, capital gains, or estate taxes.
- Enabling a more transparent and organized business transition by dictating how the business will be managed. If your financial systems are working, those should continue.
Financial Advisory for High-Net-Worth Individuals
To sum this up, wealthy individuals like you need to work with a team of professionals to develop a customized financial roadmap. The goal is to maximize wealth growth and preserve it within the next 10 years and post-retirement.
This demands Holistic Financial Advisory Services for Early Retirement from a financial advisor who doesn’t only understand estate planning and managing retirement portfolios. They know your business and how it works. They help you build streamlined financial systems now that safeguard the business post-retirement and your financial future.
At DHJJ, our team of Chicagoland area CPAs helps high-net-worth individuals craft lucrative retirement plans. We help wealthy clients strategically plan and implement a business exit strategy, including streamlined business financial systems that will stand the test of time, estate planning, minimizing tax liability, conducting financial audits, and becoming your retirement financial partner through ongoing advisory services. You should be retiring early. We can make it happen. Let’s talk.
