Bridge to Retirement White Paper

8/3/2019 Bridge to Retirement White Paper

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/bridge-to-retirement-white-paper 1/15

The S.W.A.N. Bridge to Retirement

Create a Stable Financial Bridge to Retirement …Free of Income Taxes,

Stock Market Risk and Sleepless Nights

By Shawn Moran



Important Disclosure Notice: This material is not intended as specific tax, investment or legal

advice. The hypothetical illustrations referred to herein are simplified for discussion purposes

and are not guaranteed. The concepts discussed may or may not be applicable or appropriate

for you in light of your unique circumstances. We recommend that you seek the counsel of yourtax, legal and financial advisors as it applies to your particular situation. All rates of return

quoted are hypothetical. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Investing involves

risk, including the loss of principal.. Insurance products are offered through Westport Insurance

Group, LLC, a licensed West Virginia insurance agency. Any guarantees in an insurance product

are contingent upon the claims paying ability of the issuing insurance company and upon you

abiding by the terms of the contract. Life insurance products are long term financial products

with penalties for early surrender and should only be purchased with the long term in mind.

Discussions pertaining to tax treatment in these articles simply reflect our understanding of

current tax laws as they apply to the subject at hand. Tax laws are subject to change. Consult

your accountant.

For Agent Use Only. Not approved for use with clients.



Preface

What exactly is wealth? The way that our culture continues to define it is that

whoever dies with the most toys is the winner. Do you remember ScroogeMcDuck from the old Donald Duck cartoons? His idea of happiness was being

able to literally take a bath in his huge pile of money. That image of wealth may

be what Madison Avenue wants you to have, but my viewpoint is that true

wealth is something very different than just a big pile of money.

At the end of the day money is nothing more than paper with green ink on it.

It is what that money represents and what it can do for you that show its true value. It

represents all of the hard work, discipline and sacrifice over the many years that it took you to

accumulate it. It represents what it can do to help you to live the life that you want to live, to

care for the people that you love, to create a legacy that will live on long after you are gone.Money does not in itself make us happy, but it does allow us to live life on our terms and to

make a difference in the lives of those we love.

The work that I do and the ideas in this short book are designed to bring financial stability and

peace of mind to your financial world so that you can worry less and live more … To generate

income on a tax free basis so that you can live the retirement that you have always wanted to

live … To create a legacy for those you love that will be meaningful and lasting. That is wealth in

the truest sense of the word.

Shawn MoranFounder and President

Westport Wealth Management, LLC

Westport Insurance Group, LLC



Building a Stable Bridge To Retirement

My wife and I love to travel, and one of our favorite places to travel is San Francisco. This

beautiful “city by the bay” is one of the most beautiful places in the United States, with its

rolling hills, old fashioned street cars and the fog rolling in off of the water. One of the central

attractions of San Francisco is the Golden Gate Bridge. Built in 1937, it is an engineering marvel.Over the years it has survived all that nature has thrown at it, from the pounding waves of the

ocean, to the high winds that come in off of the water and the earthquakes that are a fact of

life in San Francisco. To ride across the Golden Gate Bridge is a great experience … you are able

to enjoy the spectacular views without having to worry if the Bridge will support you in getting

to the other side.

Contrast the Golden Gate Bridge with the Tacoma Narrows

Bridge. Built in July of 1940, it was hailed at the time as the

longest suspension bridge in the world, at 7392 feet. Unlike the

Golden Gate Bridge, however, the Tacoma Narrows was not built

to last. Poorly engineered, it would sway violently from side to

side when you were riding across it, every gust of wind creating a

moment of terror. It lasted all of 4 months, for in November of

1940 it collapsed, unable to withstand the elements.

Planning for retirement is a lot like building a bridge. We start with where we are right now and

we put a plan in place that will get us to where we want to go … across the bridge into a

comfortable retirement. That bridge may be very long for those who are 30 years from

retirement or very short for those who are only a few years away, but the principle is the same

… we want our bridge to be able to survive whatever unexpected things are thrown at it. So

many retirement plans today are built on bridges like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. If the windsof increasing tax rates kick up, or an earthquake of market loss hits, the Bridge will collapse

along with hopes of a comfortable retirement. The goal of SWAN (Sleep Well At Night) Planning

is to engineer a bridge to retirement that can survive those kinds of events and give you the

confidence and the peace of mind that retirement for you can be a promise and not just a pipe

dream.

SWANs Plug Leaks Before They Fill Buckets

Imagine that you were about to watch a horse race, and you had to pick the winner between

two of the horses. One of them was called Old Nelly and the other was named Secretariat. Boththe horses had good track records, but Secretariat clearly had performed better in the past.

Armed only with that information, undoubtedly you would choose Secretariat, the horse with

the better performance history, to be the winner. The problem is that there was one more vital

piece of information that you were not aware of.

You see, Secretariat was actually at a distinct disadvantage, for while Old Nelly had a jockey

riding him who weighed 85 pounds, the horse that you were betting on was being ridden by a



man who had just retired as an offensive lineman for the Green Bay Packers to begin his second

career … as a 320 pound jockey.

Like in horse racing, investment decisions should be based in part upon performance history,

but not on performance history alone. Like the 320 pound jockey who inevitably dooms his

horse to mediocrity, a financial world that is weighted down by excessive fees, taxes andexcessive risk can doom an investor to a very disappointing financial future and a needlessly

stressful financial present.

In the pages that follow, we will explore ways to strategically put your jockey on a diet. So much

of the emphasis in today's investment world is based entirely upon performance, about filling

your financial bucket with as much money as you can as fast as you can.

Unfortunately, the bucket most of the time has leaks that drain it almost as

fast as you fill it. By plugging the leaks first, more of your money will continue

to work for you and as you will soon see, by eliminating the “lost opportunity

cost” of the money that had needlessly been pouring through easily repaired

holes in your financial bucket, you can create profoundly more wealth in your

lifetime without having to take on the level of risk (and stress) you otherwise would have

needed to in order to achieve the same level of wealth.

Lost Opportunity Cost

Lost opportunity cost can be the most significant factor in your building a future that will give

you the level of financial autonomy that you seek for yourself and the type of legacy that you

desire for those you love. Lost opportunity cost is defined simply as what the money that is

being lost by pouring out the holes in your financial bucket would have grown to over time had

it not spilled out to be lost to you forever. One economist put it this way: “The opportunity cost

of using resources in a certain way is the value of what these resources could have produced if

they had been used in the best alternative.”i

Not to get off on an anti-smoking commercial here, but one way to illustrate lost opportunity

cost (and perhaps persuade a young person not to smoke) is to consider that if a young man

started to smoke 2 packs of cigarettes a day at age 20 at a cost of $4 per pack, he will have

spent a total of $131,400 on cigarettes by the time he was 65. If, however, he would invested

the money he spent each year on cigarettes in an investment earning an average of 6% interest

per year, he would have had a total of $673,054 at retirement age. If the investment would

have grown at 7% per year he would have had $926,976, and at 8% a total of $1,290,257. Idon’t know about you, but those numbers might be a more powerful stop-smoking tool than a

nicotine patch!

In our financial lives the impact of lost opportunity cost can be even more profound. Money

that is needlessly loss to things like unnecessary taxes and unrecovered market losses has a cost



far greater than the money that was lost. The real impact on your financial future is what that

money would have done if it had been left in your account to grow.

Let's look at an example. Bob and Jane have $100,000 that they leave alone to grow a 6% rate

of return for 36 years, bringing their $100,000 up to $800,000 in value.

Unfortunately, it is not quite that simple. Because of lost opportunity costs, money rarely is

able to grow to its full potential. If along the way Bob and Jane are paying investment fees and

taxes as their money grows, they not only experience the outflow of fees to their broker and

taxes to the IRS, they also lose the value of what those lost dollars

would've grown to over time. For instance, if they would've paid a 5%

upfront sales charge of $5000 to their broker when they invested their

$100,000, 36 years later their account would've only grown to $760,000.

Their total fee was $5000, but they're lost opportunity cost was another

$35,000. As you will see in the pages that follow, a $35,000 lost

opportunity cost from just one fee is small potatoes compared to many of the other common

leaks in your financial bucket that I will help you indentify and then help you to plug. If they

were paying taxes in a 33% bracket and using investment proceeds to pay the taxes each year,

their $100,000 in 36 years would have grown to only half as much … $400,000. It wasn’t just the

taxes paid that hurt them so badly … it was what those tax dollars would have done had they

been left alone to grow rather than being shipped off to the IRS.

In the pages that follow we’re going to look together at two of the most devastating lost

opportunity costs that are dramatically eroding your wealth and how you can recapture those

costs and put them back to work for you: taxes and stock market losses.

Lost Opportunity Cost #1: Taxes

We are taxed today coming and going … coming, as we make our way through life and pay

income taxes, capital gains taxes, Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, sales taxes, and going as

we (or rather our heirs) pay estate taxes as the time of our death. (Our

founding fathers started a revolution around the theme, “No taxation

without representation. Perhaps with the estate tax we should make our

theme, “No taxation without respiration!”). I saw a bumper sticker once

that said well: “If 10% is good enough for God, then it ought to be good

enough for Uncle Sam.” While a 10% tax rate might be asking for too

much, it sure would be nice to pay less in taxes than we currently do. Everyyear it seems to get worse. Tax Freedom Day is the day each year we

would have paid Uncle Sam everything he was due if we paid the

government all of our taxes for the year before we could keep any of our own money. In the

year 2010, Tax Freedom Day was estimated to be April 9th

… meaning that you would've worked

the first 99 days of the year for the government and would have only begun to work for

yourself on day 100!ii



There are two types of people who complain about paying taxes: men and women. From our

founding fathers who got more than a little upset over a tax on tea, right up until the present

day, we Americans have always had an aversion to paying taxes. The question is, is there

anything we can do about it? The answer to that question is a resounding yes!

The famous US appeals Court Justice the Honorable Learned Hand once said, “There are twosystems of taxation in our country: one for the informed and one for the uninformed.”

iiiHow

much we pay in taxes as well as in lost opportunity cost on those dollars depends upon how

well informed we are about lowering our taxes and what we choose to do with that

information.

The problem that we have is that we are not only taxed at a high level now, but there is a very

good chance that we will be taxed at a higher level (perhaps much higher) by the time we are

ready to retire and access our money.

Government Spending and Drunken Sailors

I have thought recently that I would like to say our government is spending money like drunken

sailors but I would not want to insult drunken sailors. I read one estimate that an average

family of four has as their share of the federal debt a “credit card bill” of more than $120,000.

My wife and I just had a child. He owed more than $40,000 as his share of our country’s debt

the day he was born. The chart below shows where the trend lines are headed … straight up:

With debt going to record levels, we cannot help but wonder if our taxes are going to beshooting up in the future to help keep us from going the way of Europe as they continue to

teeter on the brink of financial catastrophe because of their high spending ways.



A Brief History of Taxes

It is hard to believe that there has ever been a time when there was no income tax, but the

federal income tax actually was not created until 1913. Since then, the percentage of our

income the government takes has been all over the map. As the chart below shows, the top

marginal tax bracket peaked at 90% during the Great Depression under FDR. President Kennedylowered the top bracket to 70% in 1960, with Ronald Reagan lowering it again in 1988 all the

way down to 28%. The top bracket grew to 39% under President Clinton, fell again to 35%

under President Bush and is due to rise again under President Obama.

As much as I would agree with you that we are taxed way too much today, the reality is that

taxes are considerably lower than what they have been historically. The average of the top tax

bracket since 1913 is in excess of 60%. In 2010, the top marginal bracket is 35%. When we see

deficits at an historically high level, combined with tax rates that are currently well below their

historical averages, there is legitimate cause for concern about how heavy a toll taxes will take

on us when we eventually retire and need to start withdrawing money from our retirement

accounts that have never been taxed before. If we can make our income in retirement tax free,we can eliminate that variable and plan for the future with far more confidence.

The 401k Tax Trap

For many Americans, the number one tool they are using to accumulate money for the future is

a 401(k). The money that they put into the plan each year comes off the top of their income,

creating a tax deduction. Typically, the first 3 to 5% of what you

put into the plan is matched by your employer, which is great.

What also seems great but creates huge future tax liabilities is

the fact that as the money grows over the years inside the planit does so without being taxed. When eventually you retire,

Uncle Sam steps forward and begins to claim his share.

Suddenly, the tax time bomb that has been ticking for years

explodes during your retirement years. With tax rates likely to

be higher in the future, the damage could be considerable.



A quick example. If you put $15,000 per year into a 401k and you were in a 30% tax bracket,

you would realize a tax break of $4500 each year. If you did this for 30 years from the time you

were 35 until you retired at age 65, you would receive a total of $135,000 in tax deductions.

With a 6% assumed rate of return, the 401k that you put the 15 grand a year into would have

grown to $1,257,025 by the time you retired. Remember now, none of the money has been

taxed yet. Uncle Sam has been patiently waiting, but he is about to come knocking on yourdoor!

Having let the account grow for 30 years, let’s now assume that you want the money in the

401(k) to begin providing for you in retirement, so you structure the account to pay you an

income for 30 years, from age 65 to age 95. Assuming a 6% rate of return, that would generate

for you an annual income of $86,152, with the account having a zero balance at the end of the

30 years. In a 30% tax bracket, you would pay $25,845 in taxes per year, with the total tax bill

after 30 years being $775,368. If taxes were to go up to 50% by the time you retire, the total tax

bill over your 30 year retirement would be $1,292,280.

Let that sink in a moment. To achieve $135,000 in deductions, you end up paying between

$775,368 and $1,292,280 in taxes. A tax deferred is not a tax avoided.

Let me ask you something. If you were a farmer, and you had the choice of paying tax on the

seed or paying tax on the crop, which would you choose? Obviously, the least expensive

alternative would be to pay tax on the seed … and this principle holds true whether you are a

farmer or an investor saving for retirement. Tax deductions on the purchase of the seed can

feel great at the time, but not so great when it comes time to pay the tax man when the harvest

comes.

One of the foundational principles of SWAN retirement planning is to seek predictability overuncertainty whenever possible. Many 401k savers are banking on tax rates being the same or

lower when they retire as they are now. I hope they are

right (I hate paying taxes!) but I fear that they have lit a

ticking tax time bomb inside of their 401(k) that may very

well blow up when they reach retirement age and need to

start withdrawing money … money that will not last nearly

as long or go nearly as far if Uncle Sam is taking a much

bigger share. For those who want to lock in today’s tax

rates and not worry about what they may be in the future, one alternative is to invest in your

401k only up to the point where your company matches your contribution (that’s just too goodof a deal to pass up) and then take the difference that you had been putting in the 401(k) and

reallocate those dollars to financial vehicles where withdrawals for retirement are tax free

(more on that in a moment).

Financial matters that are beyond our control can cause tremendous worry and stress, and

even a casual glance at the history of taxes shows how beyond our control tax rates can be.

Bringing greater financial predictability when it comes to the enormous lost opportunity cost of



taxes can be one way to help yourself sleep well at night as you look to your financial future. A

tax free retirement can go a long way towards a worry free retirement.

Lost Opportunity Cost #2: Market Losses

Many nest eggs end up over the years being broken due to losses incurredin the markets. People end up digging for themselves financial holes that

they never get out of. It has been said that the First Rule of Holes is that

when you find yourself in one, stop digging! Consider this “risk riddle”: If

you had $100,000 in a financial product that lost 50%, it would now be

worth $50,000. Since you lost 50%, what percentage gain would you need

to make back to where you had started? Many people will say that since they lost 50% they

would need to make 50% to get back to their starting point, but a 50% gain on $50,000 would

only get you back to $75,000. After a 50% loss, you actually need a 100% gain to get back to

your starting point! Remember what I said about what to do when you are in a hole? Stop

digging!

The promises that we buy into with our money are often not met by reality. Dalbar, a respected

research firm, did a study looking at what equity investors actually earned in the years from

1990 through 2009. So often we are told what the markets have done, but it is important to

consider first and foremost what our money has actually done for us. The Dalbar study found

that the S&P 500 Index was up an average of 8.20% during that time period, while the average

equity fund investor only earned on average 3.17%. The chart below shows the difference this

would have made on a $100,000 investment:

Due to poor investment decisions, fees and commissions paid on investments and bad decisions

made due to the emotional turmoil of the markets that cause us to buy when we should sell

and sell when we should buy, investors significantly underperformed the markets. Losses hurt

us not only in the short term when our account statements come in the mail, but also in the

long run with the lost opportunity cost of what those losses would have gained for us over the

years had they remained in our accounts and kept on working for us.



Build Your Moat Before You Build Your Castle

What is the solution? Well, a good starting place is to recognize that we need to pay attention

to the leaks in the bucket and not just focus on pouring more water (money) into our leaky

buckets.

Warren Buffett once said, “I look for economic castles protected by unbreachable moats.”

When Warren Buffet talks, people listen (at least the smart ones). Buffett is the world’s most

successful investor, having done so by avoiding short term hype and speculation and focusing

on long term value. He is also notoriously risk averse, with losses being something that he

works very hard to avoid. The way that wealth is pursued today is all about the latest growth

strategy, about building the castle. Buffett recommends an approach that in the days of Kings

stood the test of time for centuries: build your moat before you create your castle.

In days of old, a castle was protected by the moat that circled it. The wider

the moat, the more easily a castle could be defended, as a wide moat

made it very difficult for enemies to approach. A narrow moat did not

offer much protection and allowed enemies easy access to the

castle. Many of the castles of the middle ages were magnificent edifices,

rising high into the sky, towering over the landscapes that surrounded it.

Filled with riches (as well as the family of the King), they were the

centerpiece of the land that its King ruled.

The problem was that in the Age of Kings, uncertainty was everywhere, as invading armies were

a continuous threat. To build a castle that could not be defended would have been the very

height of foolishness. Wide, impregnable moats were the first priority. Once that circle of protection was in place, then and only then was it time to build the castle.

A good place to begin in building our moat is to protect our retirement from as much risk as we

can and to seek to have our retirement income be as tax free as possible.

A Financial Bunker For Scary Times

After all of the remarkable market turbulence of recent years, safe has become sexy again. The

talk around the water cooler in the 1990s was all about the latest dot.com stock that haddoubled in value overnight. In more recent years, the talk was about an incredibly growing real

estate market. Now, after the dramatic bursting of those bubbles, the conversation has finally

returned to where it always should have been … Where can I achieve my financial goals with

the least amount of risk and the highest amount of restful sleep?

In answer to this question emerges a financial tool that has been around for centuries and is

now being recognized anew for the powerful moat and castle building tool that it is:



permanent life insurance. Before you stop reading, let me warn you that what you think you

know about this type of financial product is probably very limited at best and very wrong at

worst. To be clear, properly designed and implemented, these products can become the

bedrock of your financial future … certainly it would be there for your family if you die, but it

also can also help to create enormous financial security for you, including a far more lucrative

(and income tax free) retirement.

Indexed Life

Indexed life is one type of permanent life insurance contract that I find especially appealing.

While providing a tax free death benefit to your family if something were to happen to you, it

also can build cash value over time that can be a significant factor in your enjoying a

comfortable retirement.

These products can be a way to enjoy some (but not all) of the bull

ride when markets are going up but not be mauled by a hungry

bear market when there is a downturn. The interest in the savings

component of indexed life links your interest to the upside of a

percentage of a market index without exposing you to the

downside. A common example (and this will vary from company to

company) is that if the S&P 500 Index were to go up in value in a

given year, you would be credited with all of the gains of that index

(not including dividends) up to a predetermined maximum,

currently around 12% per year. So if the index was up 15%, you would receive an interest credit

of 12% that year. If it were up 7%, you would receive the full 7%. If, however, the index were to

be negative, not only would your money be protected from loss, but you would receive someminimal gain in that year, typically around 2%. (That 2% would have looked awful good in 2008

when the markets were hemorrhaging money!). In the 25 year ending with 2009, this crediting

method had it existed the entire time period would have (with a 12% ceiling and a 2% floor)

earned an average interest rate of around 7.3% per year. Now keep in mind that there would

be the cost of the insurance deducted from those earnings, but if you had term insurance, you

would have been paying for life insurance coverage anyways. Now, you are making that

coverage more permanent and building economic security for yourself at the same time.

The Tortoise and the Hare

To look at this in a hypothetical manner to help you understand the concept of how interest is

credited, let’s look at two savers, Mr. Tortoise and Mr. Hare. We will assume that they each

began with $100,000 in 2000, with Mr. Hare being more aggressive, while Mr. Tortoise took a

more conservative approach like I have been describing. We will assume that Mr. Hare is able

to exactly mirror the results of the S&P 500 Index (remember from the Dalbar study that we

just talked about that most investors don’t come anywhere near matching the S&P 500 Index)



and that Mr. Tortoise earns up to 12% in the good years and no less than 2% in the bad years.

Here’s what might have happened under this scenario:

Year Mr. Hare Mr. Tortoise2000 -9.10% +2%

2001 -11.89% +2%

2002 -22.10% +2%

2003 28.69% +12%

2004 10.88% +10.88%

2005 4.91% +4.91%

2006 15.79%% +12%2007 5.49% +5.49%

2008 -37% +2%

2009 23.45% +12%

Total $88,727 $186,610

Mr. Tortoise

Although this is a very simplified illustration, the idea is simply that if you are willing to not earn

all of the upside in the good years, you can enjoy some protection on the downside. You may

not be hitting homeruns, but you would not be striking out either.

Tax Free Retirement Income

When it comes time to retire, money can be withdrawn from these accounts through contract

loans. Now these are not your typical loans. Why? Well, first of all, you don’t have to pay them

back. Secondly, they don’t have to cost you anything. On the better, more consumer friendly

contracts in the marketplace, if the insurer charges you for instance 5.5% interest on the loan,

they will also credit you with 5.5% interest on the money even though you have taken it out of

the contract. This effectively creates a no cost loan for you. Some contracts even give you the

option of allowing money that you have taken out by way of loan to have interest earned linked

to the S&P 500 index. In other words, if you were able to earn 7.3% interest on the money that

you have taken out by way of a loan that you were paying 5.5% interest on, you potentially

could be earning interest on money that you have already spent. Either way, the income thatyou enjoy in retirement would be income tax free.

The reason we would want to take the money out via a loan, is that by doing so the money that

we take out is not subject to income taxes, creating a tax free retirement income. If tax rates

are significantly higher when you retire (and with the way our government is spending money



these days, my guess is that tax rates may be a lot higher in a few years), your bridge to

retirement would be secure because you have created a potential tax free income for yourself.

Engineering Your Bridge

Ultimately, everyone’s circumstances are unique and how you engineer your bridge toretirement should reflect that uniqueness. That being said, if your goal is to create potential tax

free income for retirement without stock market risk exposure and to do so while at the same

time protecting your family from the hardships that would be caused by your death, an Index

Life policy (properly designed and implemented for you by a financial services professional) can

be a powerful tool in helping you to build that bridge.

So how is an Index Life policy engineered? Here is a summary for you of the major parts:

1. Premiums. This is the amount of money you

commit to pay for a certain number of years to fund

your plan. 2. Company Expenses and Cost of PureInsurance. This is money that comes out of your

“bucket of money” to pay the costs of the death

benefit on your policy. 3. Credits. This is the interest

you earn on the policy. In an index life policy, the

interest is linked to a percentage of the upside of a

market index, with guarantees against market loss on

the downside. 4. Cash Value Amount. As you pay

premiums and as you earn interest, this is the

amount of money that is accumulating that you could

eventually use in retirement. 5. Pure Insurance. This

is the difference between your cash value and your

death benefit. 6. Policy Amount. This is the deathbenefit that would go to your loved ones at the time

of your passing. 7. Policy Loan. This is a way for you

to withdraw money at retirement that is income tax

free. The loans can be structured where the amount

of interest you are credited with matches (or can

even exceed) the interest you are paying, making it a

“zero net cost loan.”

Final Considerations

Now, let’s be clear. There is no such thing as a free lunch. These products, although wonderful

tools to create a moat around our castle to protect us from market risk and from taxes, are longterm products. If you got in and then jumped out just a few years later you would pay a very

high early cost of surrender. These products are engineered to bring more value the longer you

own them and so they are by nature long term. Additionally, you must be healthy enough to

qualify for the life insurance, and have a need for the coverage. (Virtually anyone who has loved

ones has a need for life insurance!).



All of that being said, as a part of a diversified approach to retirement, Indexed Life can be a

valuable component to helping you hit the bulls eye of your financial goals and to sleep well at

night along the way.

Some suggestions for you. Do your homework. Study the NAIC

compliant illustration for the product you are considering. Understandwhat is guaranteed and what is not in the product. Read the excellent

NAIC Buyers Guide to Life Insurance to help you ask the right

questions. Work with a seasoned financial professional who

understands and can answer your questions. With all of that information in mind, look carefully

at indexed life as an option to help you build a bridge to a comfortable retirement … a bridge

that can help you withstand whatever is thrown your way.

I have over the years frequently reminded my clients that retirement is not a dress rehearsal. It

is a one act play. We only get one chance to get it right. Engineering a financial bridge to

retirement that can withstand the storms of taxes and the earthquakes of stock market

turbulence can go a long ways in helping you be confident that you will cross over to the

retirement side of the bridge and enjoy a retirement that will be full of both excitement and

restful sleep, as you spend your time worrying less about your money and more about what

adventure awaits you in the morning.

iE. Mansfield, Economics: Principles, Problems and Decisions. 1977.

iiwww.taxfoundation.org

iiiwww.ivdgl.com

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Bridge to Retirement White Paper