How We Work

Our process is to guide you through a personalized journey to secure your financial future, starting with a thorough assessment of your goals, benefits, and current plans.

From there, we provide tailored recommendations, help execute your strategy, and monitor your progress to keep you on track every step of the way.

Step 1.
Assessment

We begin by learning about your goals, reviewing your CalSTRS benefits, determining your retirement savings gap, and restructuring any underperforming plans. We’ll also explore insurance, risk management, and estate planning.

Retirement Gap Assessment: Includes learning about your retirement goals, reviewing your personalized CalSTRS and/or CalPERS benefits estimate, determining your retirement savings gap, present supplemental savings plan options to fill the gap, and restructure underperforming older savings plans. 

Non-Retirement Wealth Building: It's important to build accessible wealth outside of retirement accounts. Educators may face penalties for accessing retirement funds before age 59.5 (55 if separated from service for 403(b)s). Funds accessible before retirement are crucial for big purchases, specific goals, or even early retirement.

Risk Management and Insurance: Protecting assets through appropriate insurance is vital. This includes evaluating life, health, disability, and long-term care insurance needs, especially since educators may have access to discounted plans through their benefits.

Estate Planning: Even without substantial wealth, every educator can benefit from an estate plan. Key components include:

  • Will or Trust: Directing how assets will be distributed.

  • Advance Healthcare Directive: Documenting medical treatment preferences.

  • Durable Power of Attorney: Appointing someone to manage financial and healthcare decisions if incapacitated.

  • Life Insurance: Providing financial security for beneficiaries.  Contemporary products such as Life Insurance Retirement products can act as a supplemental savings plan with living benefits and ability to structure tax-free retirement income.

Step 2. Recommendations

Next, we recommend steps that fit your financial picture—building emergency savings, optimizing your pension, rolling over older accounts, and taking advantage of voluntary benefits and tax-efficient insurance options.

Start early: The sooner you start saving, the more time your investments have to grow due to the power of compounding.

Build an emergency fund: Before investing, ensure you have an emergency fund covering 3 to 6 months of living expenses. This prevents unexpected events from derailing your retirement savings.

Pay down high-interest debt: Before saving more aggressively, eliminate high-interest debt, such as credit card balances. The guaranteed return from paying off an 18% credit card is better than almost any investment.

Consider "pension optimization": Understand your CalSTRS benefit formula and consider how career moves, such as pursuing leadership roles or advanced degrees, can increase your highest earning years and, therefore, your final benefit.

Maximize tax-advantaged retirement plans (403b, 457b, Roth 403b):  For 2025, the standard employee contribution limit for a 403(b) is $23,500.  Those aged 50 and over can contribute an additional $7,500 as a catch-up contribution, for a total $31,000.   Regular 403b contributions are made pre-tax which reduce your taxable income in the year of contribution, grow tax-deferred and are taxable when distributed at retirement. Roth 403b contributions are made after-tax, grow tax-deferred and distribute income tax-free.  

Roll over funds: If you have retirement accounts from previous jobs, you can roll them over into your tax-advantage retirement accounts (403b or Roth 403b) to consolidate your investments, potentially lower fees, structure investment allocations to protect the principal and unrealized gains in a stock market crash, and structure guaranteed income payments at retirement.

Enroll in the district’s Voluntary Benefit Plan that supplements health insurance coverage with direct cash benefits:

  • Optional Accident Insurance

  • Optional Hospital Insurance 

  • Optional Critical illness Insurance

  • Optional Cancer Insurance

  • Optional Disability Benefit Insurance 

Apply for permanent life insurance policy that provides:

  • Death benefit for beneficiaries in the event of pre-mature death.  Allows you to optimize CalSTRS pension benefit by not having to elect the modified benefit option that can reduce your pension benefit by thousands per month.  

  • Supplemental Retirement Income with tax-free payouts at retirement

  • Optional Living Benefits such as cash for long-term care or critical illness during working years or retirement years

Step 3.
Execute Plan

Finally, we help you put your plan into action—making your pension elections, fund new supplemental savings accounts, roll over previous retirement accounts, and review your progress every year to keep you on track.

  • Make pension optimization elections

  • Start or add to a 403b account 

  • Rollover funds from underperforming retirement accounts to 403b account

  • Fund a permanent life insurance policy

Step 4.
Monitor and Adjust

Each year, we meet to conduct a comprehensive review to ensure your retirement and protection strategies remain aligned with your goals.

  • CalSTRS Progress Report

  • Supplemental Savings/Retirement Plan Account Progress Report

  • Risk management policies review 

  • Review and execute any changes to Estate Plan

Let’s start with a conversation.

Schedule your retirement review today—free and no obligation.

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