How We Help | Brighter Wealth Advisors

A Brighter Roadmap for a Brighter Future

At Brighter Wealth Advisors, we want you to shine — not just in the area of your finances, but in everything you do. We want you to be a light in your home, your workplace, your volunteer organizations and your community.

Our Brighter Retirement Roadmap™ is designed to help you fulfill your destiny. It’s designed to illuminate the path that best enables you to realize your dreams.

With education as its foundation, our planning process will help you replace the stress that sometimes accompanies retirement with the excitement and confidence that comes from knowing you are prepared to pursue your passions and goals. You will be fully equipped to make the most prudent decisions as they relate to your finances, taxes, health care and estate plan — in essence, your future. Backed by a Brighter Retirement Roadmap™ team that features a Retirement Income Certified Professional® (RICP®), tax advisor (CPA), specialized Medicare advisor and an estate plan attorney, you will be positioned for success in whatever endeavor you tackle.

We believe life is about what you give, not what you get. Using our Brighter Retirement Roadmap™, we give you our very best so you can give yours in all your pursuits.

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Brighter Retirement Roadmap™

Collect

Good plans start with good data. To ensure that we can best serve you, we ask that you gather a number of items that will be essential as we analyze your situation and build a retirement plan tailored to you. Items you likely will be asked to collect include recent investment account statements, current will and trust documents, a current copy of your Medicare card or health insurance card, a completed “Retirement Finance Profile” and “Asset Allocation Questionnaire.” Your information will be securely gathered by our Brighter Retirement Roadmap™ team via our encrypted client portal and held in confidence.

Analyze

Number crunching time. Behind the scenes our team will go to work. We’ll analyze your current investment portfolio’s risk vs. return, create your Tax Story™ to uncover any effective tax planning opportunities, consider alternative Medicare planning options, check your trust documents, and create a comprehensive version of your current retirement plan that assesses outcomes assuming you make no changes.

Build

Success is built one brick at a time. Armed with your data and analysis results, your Brighter Retirement Roadmap™ team will build three alternative versions of your plan that optimize for three key factors:

Timing (Social Security, Pensions, Retirement Date, etc.)
Tax Savings (Roth Conversions, RMD/Charitable Gift Strategies, etc.)
Risk Optimization (Investment recommendations, risk reduction strategies, etc.)

Compare

Having one option is not an option. Together, we’ll determine which plan is best for your unique situation, comparing your current plan with the three optimized plans. You also can request additional plans that include rental property investments, retirement date adjustments (earlier or later), spending adjustments or taking your pension as a lump-sum payment. Your Brighter Retirement Roadmap™ advisor will help educate you on pros and cons of each plan.

Implement

Today is another chance to get it right. Now that you and your Brighter Retirement Roadmap™ team have discovered your best path forward, it’s time to put your plan into action. Implementation will be facilitated by our administrative team and coordinated with your Retirement Income Certified Professional® (RICP®), tax advisor (CPA), specialized Medicare advisor and estate plan attorney to help ensure that you can live the brighter retirement you’ve long envisioned.

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Income Planning

The #1 concern of retirees today is the possibility of outliving their money.

Nowadays, people are living longer than ever before. It’s important to partner with a team that recognizes the structural differences of life phases; accumulation vs distribution. Proper income planning can help you feel more confident your money will be there when you need it.

Foundational resources for maximizing your retirement income include your Social Security Benefits and Pension Benefits. However, powerful supplemental resources might include; rental income, earned interest income from stocks/bonds/CDs, portfolio withdrawals, reverse mortgage income or annuity income.

Come see how the Brighter Retirement Roadmap™ Planning Process can help you maximize your retirement income for life.

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Portfolio Management

Investment decisions based on proven academic research, not emotions, automatically selects ideal positions geared towards reducing risk, fees, and taxes.

Our focus on conservative wealth management creates a client experience of custom tailored strategies & allocations that take into account their unique risk profile, investment objectives and tax qualification of their investments. In order to help preserve and grow wealth, our goal is to help avoid large market losses and shoot for consistency in various market cycles. Unique Separately Managed Accounts (SMAs), Bond Ladders and tactically managed portfolios equip our team to accomplish your investment goals.

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Tax Planning

“A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned”

Portfolio earnings are best when paired with tax savings. Both are needed to optimize and create a smart retirement plan.

Unique to Brighter Wealth is our ability to simplify complicated decisions so that you can make informed and understood decisions. Tax Planning is notoriously complicated and so we simplify this conversation through a simple tool called, “Tax Story”. This one page tool will enable you to see your tax brackets over time (working years, social security start years and RMD years) and empower you and your advisory team to make powerful tax planning decisions.

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Brighter Conversions™

Taxable-to-Tax-Free Account Transfer Strategy to maximize your lower tax brackets over time and reduce the risk of increasing future tax rates. Your Brighter Retirement Roadmap™ plan will include the following 5 step process: Understand your Tax Story, Identify Bracket Space, Define Acceptable Balances, Create Conversion Timeline, Execute Conversions Annually.

Brighter Giving™

Tax Advantaged Charitable Giving Strategy to maximize the tax benefits for pre-retirees and retirees alike. Your Brighter Retirement Roadmap™ plan will include the following 5 step process: Suitability Audit, Position Assets, Determine Amounts & Timing, Set up Transfers & Reporting, Annual Audit.