By Cheryl Winokur Munk
Many savers look upon retirement with anxiety, wondering whether the nest eggs they worked so hard to amass will be sufficient to last through their golden years. Assessing all of the variables that could affect that savings can seem overwhelming.
That is where good financial advisors come in. Although there are few guarantees in life, advisors can help clients financial craft plans that account for all sorts of developments -- healthcare expenses, market downturns, supporting adult children, disability, or the need to assist elderly parents -- and stack the odds in clients' favor.
"We're not necessarily trying to guarantee an outcome," says Andrew Jaffee, a wealth management advisor in the Charleston, S.C., office of Apollon Wealth Management. Instead, he says, the goal is to create plans that have sufficient flexibility to allow for tweaks and adjustments as situations change.
Here are five ways advisors are helping clients to maximize their retirement dollars so they don't run out of money:
Define what's important. Jaffee works with a married couple in their 60s who recently retired. With a net worth of about $10 million, they had a sizable nest egg, but they didn't have a clear picture of their balance sheet and cash flow, and what not having a regular income would mean to their standard of living.
One of Jaffee's first steps was to discuss their goals and motivations for their money. This led to additional conversations about longevity assumptions and things that were important to them, such as travel and charitable giving.
With this background in mind, Jaffee crafted a plan that included shedding some commercial real estate properties they no longer wanted to manage. They also decided to give their younger son a stipend and an apartment in one of their commercial properties where the son and his fiancée could live rent-free. Before Jaffee ran the numbers, they didn't realize they could afford to do these types of things, he says.
Pressure test uncertainty. Many clients are nervous about running out of money in retirement. That is why Sarah Wotherspoon, managing director and advisor in the San Rafael, Calif., office of Wealthspire, focuses on rigorous modeling of different possible scenarios based on clients' assets, liabilities, income, expenses, and unknowns such as longevity, inflation, taxes, market performance, and healthcare shocks. This helps allay clients' fears they'll run out of money, she says.
One client in her 60s expressed concern that she was "going to be living in a backwoods cabin eating cat food." Based on models that Wotherspoon created, the client is now planning to work for a few more years and keep close tabs on spending to help secure her finances.
Through modeling, Wotherspoon also helped a wife in her mid-60s and a husband in his mid-70s feel more comfortable in their decision to travel the world, which they did for eight years before the husband died unexpectedly. Several years later, the wife still has plenty of funds based on her life expectancy.
In another case, a client was particularly concerned about his wife passing away first, since a significant portion of the couple's assets were separate property and would be left to her children. To reassure him, she included in her model the possibility that markets would drop, inflation would be high, and that he would need long-term care for 10 to 15 years. In that scenario, it was clear that he would have to significantly reduce his expenses and sell the family home to access the equity, but he was reassured knowing he would still be able to live comfortably in retirement. Advisors shouldn't just tell clients they're going to be OK; they need to show them through modeling, Wotherspoon says.
Address the common stressors. Retirement can be a stressful time for clients because of curveballs life can throw, such as disability, inflation, an unexpected death, or the need to support aging parents. Barbara Heaton, a financial planner with Prudential Advisors in San Francisco, tries to build these significant what-ifs into clients' plans.
Providing financial support to adult children and grandchildren is something she has also been discussing more often with clients. Clients aren't confident that their children and grandchildren's generations will be as successful as they were because of uncertainties about the job market, the effect AI may have on future jobs, general affordability concerns, political unrest, and financial insecurity, Heaton says.
Traditionally, many parents have planned to back off support for children around age 25, but now they're mulling whether that's a sufficient assumption. These clients haven't necessarily changed their retirement plans, she says. "But they're watching it."
Focus on durability, liquidity, and tax efficiency. To help ensure clients don't run out of money in retirement, Geeta Brana, financial advisor at Geeta Brana Wealth in Holmdel, N.J., typically divides clients' assets into five to six buckets based on time horizon and risk. One bucket consists of a cash buffer to provide immediate liquidity over one to two years. Another contains assets that provide short-term stability over three-to-five years, such as Treasury bills, municipal bonds, and multiyear guaranteed annuities. A third bucket, meant for six to 15 years out, might be a 60-40 or 70-30 equity allocation, depending on the client's risk tolerance and income needs. The fourth segment, designed for use 15 years out, might include structured equity notes and buffered ETFs, which are designed to provide investors with downside protection against a specified percentage of losses. A fifth bucket typically includes high-quality stocks that aren't meant to be touched for 20 to 30 years. "I don't think equities should be ignored in retirement portfolios. It's a very important part to protect against inflation," Brana says.
Keep in touch. Peter Faust, senior wealth advisor at Tanglewood Total Wealth Management in Houston, stresses the importance of speaking regularly with clients to make adjustments to their plans, as needed. "It's really about trying to identify all the pieces on the chessboard," he says. "You're never going to know every move, but you do your best to come up with a strategy."
He offers the example of a retired married couple in their 60s who were taking frequent distributions from their account, so he reached out to discuss what was happening. He wanted to understand whether the additional need for more money was temporary or whether changes had to be made to their plan.
In this case, the couple needed a larger monthly draw for home improvements, trips, and gifts, but because it was still a reasonable spending rate for their situation, adjustments to the plan weren't necessary, Faust says. "Life's going to happen. But you have to have those conversations."
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March 23, 2026 14:59 ET (18:59 GMT)
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