Who we serve
A pension covers a permanent share of your expenses, so your portfolio only has to fund the gap. Households with one often need substantially less invested capital and can usually accept more growth in the later segments. But the election — lump sum or annuity, single life or joint — is effectively irreversible.
What this complicates
It is about which risk you would rather carry. Run against your actual spending plan, the two options often land closer together than people expect — and then the decision turns on your health, your spouse, and whether you want to leave the money behind.
If the payment never rises, its real value falls every year while your costs do not. The portfolio has to be built to make up an increasing difference, which is the opposite of how most people assume a pension works.
Marketplace premiums are tied to your taxable income, which means how you draw income in those years directly changes what your coverage costs. It is one of the few places where withdrawal sequencing has an immediate, visible price.
Why us
Pensions are still common across the Colorado Springs defense employers, so this is a conversation we have most weeks rather than once a year.
If you are nearby, you can come in and sit down with us. If you are not, we meet by phone or video call. Either way, when something changes, you reach someone who knows you.
Questions
It depends on how much lifetime income you already have, whether your spouse needs continuing income, your health, and whether leaving the money to someone matters to you. We model both against your real spending rather than answering it in the abstract.
Usually yes, and often by a lot. Pension income covers part of your expenses for life, so the portfolio funds only the gap. Two households with identical balances can have very different plans if one has a pension.
Through retiree coverage if your employer offers it, a spouse's plan, COBRA for a limited stretch, or the marketplace. Marketplace subsidies depend on your taxable income, so the coverage decision and the withdrawal plan have to be made together.
Most private pensions are insured by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation up to published limits. Coverage caps apply and vary by age, so it is worth confirming where your specific benefit sits relative to them.
Related
A pension you elect once. Accounts inherited through decades of mergers. A savings plan with room most employers do not offer. All of it worth more if you know what you are actually holding.
This is the window where the decisions are still reversible and the numbers are finally real.
This is the case the Next Phase Plan was built for — where every dollar of income beyond Social Security has to come from what you saved.
Thirty minutes to see where your income will come from. If we are not the right fit, we will tell you.
