Tools
Free retirement income tools.
Three short exercises that turn a vague worry about running out of money into a number you can actually plan around.
Income gap worksheet
Add up your essential monthly expenses — housing, food, insurance, healthcare, transportation. Subtract the income that arrives whether or not the market cooperates, such as Social Security and any pension. What is left is your income gap, and it is the single most useful number in a retirement conversation. Everything else is a discussion about how to close it.
Down-market stress test
Take the portfolio you plan to draw from and ask what happens if a significant decline arrives in the first few years of withdrawals. Selling shares in a down year to cover living costs is what turns a temporary drop into permanent damage — the reason sequence-of-returns risk gets so much attention. Seeing the arithmetic is usually more persuasive than any sales pitch.
Contract comparison checklist
If you are already holding a proposal, compare it on the terms that are written into the contract rather than the illustrated ones: surrender period, rider fees, how interest is credited, and what happens to the balance at death. Bring your checklist to a call and we will go through it line by line.
These tools are educational and do not constitute financial, tax, or legal advice. Results depend on your own circumstances.