How We Help
Our Professional
Financial Services
Retirement Income Planning
Wealth Management
Life Insurance
Maximizing Social Security
Tax-Free Retirement
Long-Term Care
Retirement Income Planning
Retirement income planning is a way for retirees to replace their income after they’re no longer receiving a paycheck. So, what does that look like in real life? The reality is that it looks different for everyone, with some people relying largely on their pensions and other people relying largely on Social Security. If you don’t want an imbalanced retirement income, as so many people already have, it can help to work with the right financial advisor.
A Short Guide to Secure Retirement Income
Secure income refers to any reliable revenue source that essentially mimics your paycheck. This can mean revenue from a part-time job if you decide to delve into a passion field like music or wine, rental checks from real estate assets, or stock dividends from your most lucrative investments.
Even without a financial advisor in their lives, most people will plot out some form of retirement income, even if that’s only from Social Security. However, when you work with a financial advisor, you can leverage your assets to start seeing how to plan your retirement income in the most efficient way.
How much do I need to retire? When this answer has so many contingencies, it’s hard to determine exactly how much you’ll need. The most common answer you’ll hear is a million dollars. This number is not only easy to remember, but it guarantees a fairly consistent income of around $40,000 to $50,000 per year during your retirement. Depending on your retirement age and your lifespan, a million dollars may not be a bad goal to aim for.
Of course, for most people, there’s a lot more to it than that. If you don’t want to watch your savings account dwindle, a retirement advisor can help you start putting your portfolio in order, so you don’t have to wonder about how you can both pay for all of your expenses and still have plenty to leave behind. If you’re looking for the best team in your area, Maplewood Financial Group is here to help!
Wealth Management
You can think of wealth management as a one-stop shop in the financial world. As you accrue assets, a wealth manager combines everything from estate planning to taxes to retirement income to manage and maximize your bottom line. The catch is that this very time-consuming task requires an expert who can take your wealth to the next level.
Why Invest in Wealth Management?
For the most part, wealthy people request these services because they simply don’t have the resources to devote on their own. Even if they did, they may not be able to reach the same level of success as a financial manager — particularly if they built their wealth in the business sector rather than the stock market.
If you have questions about how to better plan your wealth so you’re more than ready for retirement, a financial advisor can help you put them in perspective. If you have specific goals, like funding your grandchildren’s education or remodeling a run-down real estate property, you can talk about how everything from investments to insurance policies will help or hurt your goals.
If you’re looking for a boutique retirement firm, one where you’re treated like an individual rather than a name on a file, Maplewood Financial Group is here to organize, manage, and enhance your portfolio. With wealth management services, you can see how your wealth connects, particularly if your holdings are spread out across platforms, sectors, and asset classes.
A big part of wealth-building is planning for the unpredictable. While you may not know exactly what’s around the corner, you do know that there will be unexpected twists. Whether that’s a recession, sky-high inflation, or federal tax spikes, the right financial manager can help you stay on top of it all. Plus, they can give you the resources you need to carry out even your loftiest ambitions, whether that’s supporting the people in your life or building an even more impressive empire or assets.
Life Insurance
In the modern age, insurance is anything but a stable industry. The more natural disasters we see, the more carriers we see drop out of the race. Of course, when it comes to life insurance, the rules get a little different. While there’s still no predicting the future, the prep work you do to choose the right policy can make all the difference for you and your loved ones.
Why Get Life Insurance?
Most people understand that life insurance is a way to cover the financial burdens that are left behind after they pass away. Some people opt for term life insurance, otherwise known as a policy that has a built-in expiration date. If you opt for term life insurance, it’s likely because you want to cover your children until they reach a certain age and can financially fend for themselves.
Term insurance is exceptionally popular in the life insurance sector because the costs are typically extremely reasonable. For a mere pittance every month, you get coverage for your loved ones. The catch is that plenty of people sign up for term insurance only to realize that they would prefer a permanent policy. With a permanent policy, you not only cover the beneficiaries indefinitely, but you also have a potential savings safety net in case of a disaster.
When every insurance policy is laced with jargon and legalese, it’s easy for people to become overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices. It’s also easy to just choose a plan based on anything from price to convenience. But doing so can not only impact your dependents, it can also impact your own bottom line.
If you’re wondering how to choose the right life insurance policy for you, the experts at Maplewood Financial Group are here to help. Depending on your portfolio, taxes, and estate, it may make sense to take out a permanent life insurance policy with a reputable organization. With the right team, you can choose a plan that helps you prepare for whatever lies ahead.
Maximizing Social Security
Social Security is likely the most well-known social program in the US. Debuting several decades before Medicare, Social Security was designed to help people lead a dignified retirement — even if they didn’t have enough savings to cover their daily expenses. Today, things are different. But just because you can’t count on Social Security to fund your retirement, that doesn’t mean that you should ignore Social Security, either. In fact, with the right financial advisor, you might be surprised at just how far these benefit checks can help you.
How to Maximize Social Security
Maximizing Social Security starts with understanding the logic behind the program. Your benefits are based on you and your job history, so it’s important not to make assumptions about how much you’re entitled to. If you’ve paid into the system your whole life, the primary goal should be to take at least a portion back for yourself.
A financial advisor can’t change the rules of the system, but the right expert can show you how the regulations can benefit you. At Maplewood Financial Group, Kenneth W. Christian works with his clients to help them understand what they can do to get more from the program. More than just inputting numbers into a generic estimator, he gathers all the necessary facts and strategizes how to use them to your advantage.
Modern Social Security has undergone so many changes that it’s hard to see how the system can fulfill its original intention. Millions of people do rely solely on Social Security to pay their living expenses, but they do so out of desperation, not comfort.
With a financial advisor, you can combine Social Security with multiple other income sources, such as pension payments, rental property income, and stock dividends, so you don’t have to worry about diving into your savings every time you hit an unexpected expense. Plus, you can work with Christian to understand how everything from investments to taxes fits into your overall estate planning and wealth management strategies.
Tax-Free Retirement
When you’ve spent a lifetime paying taxes, it’s natural to assume they’ll remain a constant in retirement. But with thoughtful, tax-aware planning—especially strategies like Roth conversions—you may be able to significantly reduce the taxes you pay over time.
Rather than aiming for unrealistic “tax-free” outcomes, the focus is on managing when and how your income is taxed. By strategically converting portions of pre-tax retirement assets into Roth accounts, you can create future income streams that are tax-free, while potentially lowering lifetime tax liability.
This kind of planning can be especially valuable in retirement, when coordinating withdrawals, managing required minimum distributions, and controlling taxable income become increasingly important. A financial advisor can help you evaluate whether Roth conversions and other tax-aware strategies make sense for your situation, with the goal of keeping more of your wealth working for you and the people or causes you care about.
A thoughtful Roth conversion strategy may help you create more control over your future retirement income. Schedule a conversation to see whether a tax-aware retirement plan could help you reduce future tax exposure and strengthen your overall strategy.
Am I Eligible for a Tax-Free Retirement in Philadelphia?
Whether you’re eligible for a tax-free retirement comes down to a number of factors, including your portfolio structure and your general retirement goals. For instance, if you’re planning on testing the waters in real estate after you retire, you might roll your gains along with 1031 exchanges, so you can defer taxes until you’ve maximized your returns. Or, if you want to devote your life to philanthropy, you can open up a trust or foundation to start allocating your money where you want it most.
If you’re wondering how to have a tax-free retirement, Maplewood Financial Group is here to help you put the pieces together. With the right financial advisor by your side, you can learn more about which local, state, and federal tax codes can help (or hinder) your future goals. From there, you can get a better sense of which path is right for you. And, if you have big plans to leverage your assets, you can let your financial advisor take over the brunt of the grunt work.
There’s a lot to know about taxes these days, particularly when the powers-that-be often have conflicting priorities and very different ideas of what’s fair. With the right financial partner at your side, you’re less vulnerable to every given shift, and you’re in a far better position to live your retirement the way you’ve always pictured it. So, whether that’s doing your part to save the environment or exploring new investment opportunities, you don’t have to compromise your dreams.
Long-Term Care
With roughly 133 million Americans living with at least one chronic condition, the financial risk of a medical crisis is significant—especially when it comes to protecting your assets. Traditional health insurance typically covers hospital stays and doctor visits, but it often does not address the ongoing, day-to-day support many people need during recovery or as conditions progress.
Long-term care planning is designed to help prevent your savings from being depleted by these extended care needs. This can include services such as in-home assistance with meals, personal care, transportation, or companionship—costs that can quickly add up over time.
In some cases, newer hybrid long-term care insurance options—combining life insurance or annuities with long-term care benefits—may offer a flexible way to help safeguard assets while still providing value if care is never needed.
You’ve worked hard to accumulate the wealth you have. Don’t let a medical illness or extended care need force you to spend down your savings. Let’s talk about how long-term care planning may help protect your wealth, preserve your independence, and reduce the financial burden on your family.
Is Long-Term Care Insurance Worth It?
There are some retirees who have nothing but good things to say about this type of insurance. In fact, one study found that you typically pay around six times more during a recovery if you only have standard health insurance. As you might expect, though, this doesn’t tell the whole story. As the expense of incidental care rises, so does the cost of these policies. In addition, some carriers have looked for any excuse under the sun to try to skirt their responsibility.
In the best-case scenario, you wouldn’t need long-term care insurance — and you would still receive a portion of the policy’s worth. If you want to find a long-term care policy that works for you during your retirement, you can talk to a financial advisor about the pros and cons of different policies. In some cases, you may find that this insurance is not a good asset for you. While anyone can certainly suffer from a long-term injury, if you’re an otherwise healthy individual with a clean familial history, it may not be worth the sticker price.
For other people, though, they may find that long-term care is the only thing that saves them from cashing in their investments, savings, or real estate holdings. Or from having to make drastic decisions about their quality of life and wealth preservation. If you’re ready to start puzzling out the mystery, the team at Maplewood Financial Group can help you put long-term care in context with the rest of your portfolio, so you don’t make a decision you’ll regret.