Retirement income specialist David Michael Mares says the trouble with most retirement plans is not that anyone is doing poor work. It is that each professional is optimizing a different number, and every one of those numbers is correct inside the domain it belongs to.
A certified public accountant (CPA) works to reduce this year’s tax, an investment advisor works to grow the portfolio, while an attorney works to protect the estate. “They’re all doing exactly what they’ve been hired to do,” Mares says. Nothing in that arrangement asks whether the three objectives point in the same direction, and they frequently do not. Mares, Founder of Socius Wealth Management, has spent more than 20 years helping successful professionals prepare for retirement, and he finds most of them arrive with an accomplished team and a conflict nobody has been assigned to resolve.
Three Objectives, One Retirement
A conversion that raises this year’s tax bill can lower the total paid across the next two decades, and the professional measured on this year’s return has no reason to recommend it. A portfolio built for maximum growth can prove expensive to draw income from once withdrawals begin, and the professional measured on performance is not evaluating it for that.
Mares describes an orchestra to make the point. “Every musician may be playing beautifully,” he says, “but are they playing the same song?” Retirement is not a tax, investment, or a legal question. It is how those decisions combine to produce income a person will live on for 30 years, and no specialist has been engaged to answer that.
Preparation Looks Backward, Planning Looks Forward
Mares hears one reassurance more than any other, that a client’s CPA is handling the taxes. They probably are, and he separates tax preparation from retirement tax planning firmly. The compliance model is transactional, reactive, and deadline-driven. Most CPAs do outstanding work reporting what happened last year and complying with current law, which is technically the assignment.
Retirement planning asks what decisions made today could reduce the taxes owed over the next 20 or 30 years, and those opportunities have to be recognized long before any return exists. “We don’t replace your CPA,” Mares says. “We coordinate with your CPA.” The same holds for the investment advisor. The objective is not new professionals but a single direction for the ones already in place.
The Question Nobody Was Hired to Answer
When the paycheck stops, where does the next one come from? Most people spend three or four decades learning to earn a paycheck and another few learning to save. Very few have been shown how to produce income once the work ends. Retirement is not a matter of reaching an account balance. It is knowing where the income originates, how much survives taxes, and whether it will sustain the life a person built, which requires taxes, investments, income, healthcare, and estate decisions to be weighed against one another.
The coordinating role sits empty in most retirements because no deadline creates it. Every other seat was filled when something forced the issue, and competing objectives produce no notice, no filing date, and no symptom until the decisions are behind you. “You’ve spent your entire career learning how to save for retirement,” Mares says. “Now you need a plan for how to live from it.” To learn more about building a retirement income plan, reach out to David Michael Mares on LinkedIn.
