Why us
Built for the part of retirement nobody else plans.
Plenty of firms will manage your investments, and most can tell you whether you have enough. Far fewer will sit with you on the harder question: enough for what? We built The Retirement Life for everything the statements don’t show: turning savings into a paycheck, protecting your options, and building a life you actually want to wake up in. You don’t need that figured out before we start. Discovering it is part of the work.
The waitlist is for Signature Retirement, our complete planning experience.
Lifestyle risk
Options are assets. Protect them like one.
The quiet risk in retirement isn’t a zero balance. It’s the picture shrinking one reasonable decision at a time: the smaller trip, the postponed gift, the second thoughts about the second home. Options accumulate and compound just like money. They also expire quietly.
So we plan for your options with the same seriousness we plan for your dollars: income guardrails that tell you when to adjust (and when you can spend more), protection that keeps a health event from rewriting the whole picture, and a long-term care conversation held early, while every door is still open.
Income guardrails
Small adjustments early instead of big ones late, and a clear signal when the answer is “you can spend more.”
Buffer portfolios and income risk management
Portfolios built to participate in market growth while limiting large losses, and income monitored so a bad stretch at the wrong moment does not set the menu. Buffer portfolio construction is exclusive to Signature Retirement Continuum clients.
Protection, placed and managed
Recommended and placed by the same team, then managed for the life of the contract, not handed off with a referral.
Long-term care, planned early
Long-term care planning while options are open and affordable, never as a crisis response.
The two different games
What got you here won’t get you there.
Saving for retirement rewards patience, autopilot, and not touching the money. Living in retirement demands the opposite: deciding what to touch, when, in what order, and for what. It is a different game with different rules, and it is the only game we play. Retirement isn’t our niche. It is the whole firm.
The one-call philosophy
One team, accountable for the whole picture.
Many advisors can only advise. When protection enters the picture, you get a referral and a goodbye. Here is the difference, plainly.
Investment and financial planning
- A typical fee-only advisor
- Strong
- The Retirement Life
- Strong
Protection planning
- A typical fee-only advisor
- Can recommend, cannot place
- The Retirement Life
- Full fiduciary recommendation and licensed placement
Carrier relationships
- A typical fee-only advisor
- None: no active appointments
- The Retirement Life
- Active: current market and current pricing
Ongoing policy management
- A typical fee-only advisor
- Not available
- The Retirement Life
- Rc, Deana, or Kelley manages for the life of the contract
Estate planning documents
- A typical fee-only advisor
- Referral, then it is your project
- The Retirement Life
- An add-on for our planning clients: prepared and reviewed by our partner firms' estate planners and attorneys, matched to your plan
Tax return preparation
- A typical fee-only advisor
- Not offered: find your own CPA
- The Retirement Life
- Included for Signature Retirement Continuum clients, through our partner tax firm, Vincere Tax, so strategy and filing agree
Fiduciary standard
- A typical fee-only advisor
- Investments only
- The Retirement Life
- Fiduciary on investment and planning advice as a registered investment adviser, and with Rc, the CFP Board standard across all advice, including protection
| What you need | A typical fee-only advisor | The Retirement Life |
|---|---|---|
| Investment and financial planning | Strong | Strong |
| Protection planning | Can recommend, cannot place | Full fiduciary recommendation and licensed placement |
| Carrier relationships | None: no active appointments | Active: current market and current pricing |
| Ongoing policy management | Not available | Rc, Deana, or Kelley manages for the life of the contract |
| Estate planning documents | Referral, then it is your project | An add-on for our planning clients: prepared and reviewed by our partner firms' estate planners and attorneys, matched to your plan |
| Tax return preparation | Not offered: find your own CPA | Included for Signature Retirement Continuum clients, through our partner tax firm, Vincere Tax, so strategy and filing agree |
| Fiduciary standard | Investments only | Fiduciary on investment and planning advice as a registered investment adviser, and with Rc, the CFP Board standard across all advice, including protection |
We are fee-based, which includes compensation from insurance placement, disclosed before you engage us, and explained in plain language whenever it applies. Fee-only advisors serve many people well; the difference matters most when protection is part of your plan.
The waitlist, honestly
Personal by design.
We are intentional about how many families we serve, so every client receives our full attention and our best thinking, and a relationship that never feels like an afterthought. Most financial firms are built around prospecting. Ours is built around the families already here. Growth happens on purpose, at the pace that keeps the experience worth having.
Asked and answered
The direct questions.
No, and we say that plainly. We are fee-based: our planning fee is flat and published, ongoing management is charged as a percentage of what we manage for you, and when we place insurance as part of protection planning, we are compensated for that placement. Every figure is on our financial planning page and disclosed before you engage us. The alternative is an advisor who can recommend protection but cannot implement it, which leaves you making one of your biggest decisions alone, with a salesperson. We would rather be accountable for the whole picture, and tell you exactly how we are paid at every step.
The plan tells you what your money can do. The coaching helps you figure out what it is all for: identity, purpose, health, and relationships after the paycheck stops. Rc and Deana are certified coaches as well as financial professionals, and the two disciplines run through everything: the first-meeting priorities exercise, the Unwrapping Retirement course, and the annual review.
Because this is personal by design. We are intentional about how many families we serve, so every client receives our full attention and our best thinking. And we would rather tell you the truth about capacity than promise attention we cannot deliver. The waitlist is for Signature Retirement, our complete planning experience.
See if we’re your kind of different.
Take the Picture Check, or put your name on the Signature Retirement waitlist. Either way, you will know exactly where you stand.