At age 64, Sophia was a well-educated single, professional woman, who had worked in health care all her career. She had been with her company for a long time, but they did not treat their employees very well and she was discouraged with her work environment. “Can I retire and when” was her question?
She called for an appointment to discuss all aspects of her retirement, including health care plans, as well as financial guidance. She was apprehensive because she had seen three other retirement planners and was not happy with any of their solutions or advice.
When we met with her and started reviewing her situation, she was very typical of many of our first-time clients. Most of her retirement assets were in an aggressive 401(k), with high fees and exposed to market conditions. Sophia stated that this was one of her major concerns because her sister had planned to retire, but in 2001 she lost about a third of her 40l(k) in the 2001 market crash. Her sister wound up not being able to retire and had to work another 5 years. Sophia did not want that to happen to her.
She also shared that she had high credit card debt that was difficult to pay off and she wanted to create a plan to reduce or eliminate her credit card debt.
As we built her retirement plan, we included a solution for her health care, as well as a three-year plan to eliminate her credit card debt. With reassigning her retirement funds out of her 401(k) and into more stable financial products, she now had eliminated her fears of losing her hard-earned retirement funds.
As a happy final note, when she came in to sign her paperwork and contracts, she was pleased to report that her office was under new management and that her workplace environment had taken a change for the better. She was encouraged that with this positive change she might even work a few more years, shoring up her retirement finances.
As we reviewed her final plans, she got emotional in that she never thought she would be able to get to where she wanted to be for retirement. And now she was happy that she would even be able to afford to do some traveling in retirement!