For a trailblazing tomorrow, start planning today
Retirement Trailblazer Advisory & Solutions Suite
Blaze a bright trail in retirement
You’re most likely in your 50’s or 60’s and you can see a time coming to settle on the foundations you’ve built, and prepare a legacy for those you care about.
Now is the time to strengthen your retirement foundations and ensure your golden years retain their sparkle, and you remain prosperous and independent throughout.
Start planning today for a prosperous tomorrow.
The WestStar Network’s firms and advisors have great experience in helping pre-retirees and those in retirement to prosper in their golden years. We do so by creating and executing on a plan for dependable income regardless of what the world delivers, and by addressing issues like health insurance, tax efficiency and long-term security.
Advice to build retirement dreams on
When we sit down to talk “retirement” with a client for the first time, we’re not surprised to find that many are heavily mortgaged and have significant costs and repayments to meet.
When we ask them “when would you like to retire?” they answer, “Yesterday.”
We’re used to being asked questions like:
- How much am I worth?
- How long will it take to secure my family’s future before I retire?
- How can I earn enough to cover my obligations and live well in retirement?
- How do I protect my income from a crash? How long must that cushion last?
- What impact will rising health insurance costs have on my ability to retire?
Our financial advisors can help you answer these and many other questions, as we bring focus to the key areas of your retirement prosperity.
WestStar’s 360° retirement planning approach
Our holistic approach to retirement planning has helped many retirees assess their preparedness, define their goals and timelines, and pursue them with confidence and clarity. We like to call this “The WestStar Way.”
The process is mapped out on a personalized Retirement Roadmap, with a dashboard that makes progress toward your goals transparent.
The sigh of relief from our clients when we show them how all of their hard work can get them to their goals is always a special moment.
The “WestStar Way” is a journey of five deliberate steps.
- Discovery Assessment
- Analysis & Evaluation
- Considerations & Opportunities
- Implementation
- Ongoing Guidance, Mentoring & Coaching
Blaze a bright trail in retirement
Your Navigator Roadmap is a strategic plan that defines your personal goals and key outcomes, pinpoints priorities and maps the steps to reach your milestones.
It also serves as a communication tool that articulates our strategic thinking in a clear, understandable and actionable way. The question it answers is “how do I get there from here?”
Not only will you see your future through enlightened eyes, but you’ll also have a personal WestStar Financial Advisor in the navigator’s seat beside you, providing the tools you need and co-managing the journey.
WestStar’s Navigator Roadmap makes a complex journey simpler, easy to follow and perfectly clear.
“I thoroughly enjoy getting to know my clients on a personal level, walking alongside them, and helping them to live with a peaceful financial confidence.”
Sam Gullette, Certified Financial Planner®
Our technology & tools will put you in the driver’s seat
Your Navigator Roadmap is a step-by-step plan that will route you to your goals in the most efficient way possible.
Beneath the dashboard lies a simulator that measures your plan in multiple scenarios. With Navigator, we can measure your probability of success through these simulations.
It’s an incredible tool that brings your overall prosperity into focus: investments, risk, savings, Social Security income, pension information, life insurance, and more.
Your roadmap is robust, essential to what we do from the start, and strategically reviewed as you blaze the trail towards retirement and beyond.
A typical journey with WestStar covers 4 steps.
Discovery Assessment | Analysis & Evaluation | Considerations & Opportunities | Implementation
1. Discovery Assessment
We truly look forward to meeting you, introducing ourselves, and getting to know you.
We’re ready to answer all of your questions and explain how we make blazing a confident retirement trail possible.
In our discovery assessment we consider your dreams, goals, fears, concerns and constraints. These findings inform our evaluation, analysis, and planning approach.
2. Analysis & Evaluation
Our task begins with mapping your goals, constraints and spending needs over time. Your age, family dynamic and life expectancy play significant roles in our modelling.
We will analyze your financial situation, including your cash flow, asset values, loan balances, job security, caring for aged parents, and factors like college educations and financial support to help your kids achieve independence.
We assess your retirement income sources – like pensions, 401(k) and Social Security. We provide a deep analysis of the claiming options available to you. For some, this may mean us working in concert with your tax advisor to deliver unified advice.
We roadmap this process on your Navigator Dashboard, that makes progress transparent.
“Retirement is a singular event that brings many clients much anxiety and for good reason. Some decisions, once made, cannot be reversed. I help clients make the best decisions, directly related to their specific hopes, dreams, and fears. My CRPC® (Certified Retirement Planning Counselor) designation helps me dive into the specific solutions for retirement planning.”
Mike Smith, Financial Consultant
3. Considerations & Opportunities
Social Security, Health Insurance & Medicare
We find that most of our clients were paying too much in taxes. By taking your Social Security in the right way, your Medicare premiums could be halved. Optimizing your Medicare and Social Security can free up money to cover a host of living expenses.
Your WestStar Network Advisor will walk you through the process to find, deploy, and protect these savings.
Social Security Taxes
When your time comes to collect Social Security, tax efficiency is vital – up to 85% of your Social Security can be taxed. Our advisors will provide retirement income planning strategies to help you decide the best time to take benefits, and show you how to stay within tax brackets.
Inflation
Inflation is another concern in retirement finance, and one we carefully consider in our modelling.
Long-term Care & Disability Insurance
Building your retirement provision and a secure retirement income are two pillars of our financial planning. Protecting them against the financial impacts of disability, loss of income, and the cost of long-term care requires analysis and prioritization.
Long-term disability and long-term care Insurances are designed to return a percentage of your income lost due to disability, and cover a percentage of costs associated with care.
Protecting a significant portion of your income and safeguarding your provision will help you cover some (or all) of these costs if they are needed in your retirement.
In this way, your retirement provision and retirement income goals can be met, no matter what life throws at you.
By covering long-term care, we ensure that your provision is preserved to support your surviving spouse.
Investment Portfolio Management
When developing your investment strategy, we focus on your unique circumstances, goals, and values, instead of sales and products.
We will discuss any appropriate strategies, tools and products available before we implement a plan that reflects your risk tolerance, centers your downside protection, and fits your needs and goals.
“Retirement should be a journey to find purpose, and not be bogged down by financial stress and pressure. At WestStar we make clients feel comfortable in a protected environment, so we can get to the bottom of what keeps them up at night. Many fear losing the identity and security that their careers give them. I invite my clients to transfer their financial stress onto my shoulders and have one less burden to contend with.”
Mark Serafini, Financial Consultant
“At WestStar we help families and professionals become financially confident through comprehensive financial planning and customized investment management. By using data and analytics, and staying innovative, we help our clients make the most informed decisions, and truly pursue the lives they want. It’s all about decision-making and timely guidance.”
Kevin Chang, Financial Consultant
Downside Protection & Risk Tolerance
We assess whether your investment portfolio has enough downside protection if the economy hits a pothole and the market drops like it did in 2008. We keep a close eye on where you’re at in relation to your milestones and financial planning objectives.
We make certain that your investment strategies reflect your wealth, your risk tolerance, and your stage of life.
4. Implementation
Our open architecture affords us access to a wide spectrum of professional money managers, funds, and insurance solutions, from which we craft customized strategies that are readily understandable.
We create a financial plan that balances any loan repayments with your other financial priorities, and we guide you in executing upon the plan in concert with your tax and legal advisors’ instructions.
We design a retirement tax strategy that anticipates how and when to tap your assets to cover your personal expenses, anticipates the taxes you’ll face at various stages, and achieves your goal to pay as low a tax rate as possible.
Once we’ve selected and agreed on the most appropriate strategies to employ, we bring them all together in your Retirement Navigator Roadmap, with your priorities and milestones clearly defined.
We walk the journey alongside you to ensure that you can follow your roadmap with confidence, clarity and ease.
Other things we do to smooth your path to retirement
We help you to visualize the kind of life you’d like to live in retirement, and to anticipate and budget for the necessary expenses – everything from healthcare to a cabin on the lake.
We’ll help you balance your retirement goals with meeting your short-term expenses.
Getting your kids and grandkids through college.
Whether your children are living at home or not, you’ll still play an important role in guiding and preparing them for financial independence.
The plans we create balance any financial help your kids and grandkids may need with your own needs and security.
Our goal is to help you budget and prepare for new priorities and new financial freedoms as your children leave the nest, and help them to achieve financial independence.
Legacy Planning
Advisors throughout WestStar’s Network have helped their parents and many others blaze a new trail in retirement, and part of this is to plan for their legacies.
We understand that inheritance is not just about money, it’s about family values.
Creating a legacy you can be proud of requires real considered thought and careful planning.
Our goal is to help you prepare thoroughly.
- Ensuring all elements of your estate plan (including your will, living will, trust, and gifts) are addressed.
- Calculating or estimating the value of your estate, and helping you to determine how best to divide assets with your loved ones and preferred charities.
- Ensuring your values and wishes are properly conveyed to future generations along with your bequests.
Relationships built on trust
WestStar’s independent financial professionals and firms believe that trust is earned. Our relationships are real, honest and candid. We say what we do, and we do what we say.
Our personal touch and care are evident in all our relationships, many of which have served retirees’ and their families’ best interests for decades.
With us, you’ll always know where you’re heading, what paths to follow, which milestones to target, and how to navigate potholes in the road.
If that sounds like a relationship worth pursuing, then we would be delighted to partner with you on your trailblazing quest.
