Stages of Life: Accumulation, Distribution, Transfer & Preservation

Accumulation:

Wealth accumulators usually range in age from their 20’s to their 60’s. In our experience, the younger the family the higher the challenge in systematically implementing a savings plan. Usually what we see is multiple goals (meeting living expenses, savings for a child’s college education, contributions to a 401(k) plan, creating an emergency savings fund, buying life insurance and other circumstances) fighting for the same earned dollar.

The need for financial and investment planning is critical in the wealth accumulation stage. We assist our clients by finding the right balance for each family, creatively using single strategies that satisfy one or more of the goals with the same earnings dollar.

For our younger clients it is both important and urgent that a savings/investment plan be implemented at the earliest possible date. The compounding effect on invested dollars is significant when an investor starts to save in their younger years of life.

Click below for asset accumulation ideas based on your age group:

Transfer:

For many of us as we become grandparents our thoughts turn to gifting – making sure that our grandchild will have a head start towards a college education. Or simply we relish in the fact that helping our grown-up children provides us great satisfaction. In many cases we begin to explore the meaning of our legacy.

Transfers to others, our family and institutions, usually begin to occupy some of our thoughts – we try to answer: What is our legacy? What should our legacy be? Who do we care the most about? Where would our legacy do the most good? And so on. Our focus is to provide our clients with the means to achieve what they desire and to control the process of transfers to the next generation and to those causes which need to be served.

Distribution:

As we get older and near our retirement stage of life, our financial and personal goals change, often as a necessity of our circumstances. This is especially true once we make the decision to step through the doorway leading to retirement.

Once we retire our ability to generate a working income is usually diminished and we become much more reliant on pensions, social security and our savings; we refer to this stage in our clients’ lives as the distribution phase – we are no longer putting money into our savings; we are now taking some money every month to help us meet our expenses for the rest of our lives.

For many, giving up the ability to earn a working income represents a major identity shift – many of our clients are what they do and for many, this change into retirement represents a loss of control; usually this transition requires some adjustment time. Our focus is to make the transition as smooth as possible with the lowest fear factor possible. Our planning process is the means by which our clients stay in control of the decisions that need to be made and the priorities that need to be set.

Preservation:

Almost always outliving our savings is not an option any one of us plans for, quite the contrary. Our focus in our planning is ensuring assets last for a life time and beyond; more importantly, that the income from your savings increases sufficiently during retirement to keep up with inflation. We employ several strategies that help preserve the value of the assets, the income stream and most importantly, the growth of the income stream.

Here for You Every Step of the Way

Windsor would love to support you through all stages of life, from personal financial planning and wealth management services to retirement planning and investment opportunities. We’re here for you every step of the way. Contact us today to learn more about our services and how we can help.

Stages of Life