Retirement Reimagined: Modern Strategies for Modern Retirees

For many clients, building toward a successful retirement is their most significant financial goal. But once you’ve decided to retire, what comes next?

Traditional retirement may conjure images of slow-paced days and unstructured leisure. For some individuals, that remains the ideal retirement. In today’s world, however, retirees are increasingly opting for lives of greater activity and action. 

At Badgley, we help our clients reimagine what their retirement can look like. Supported by a bespoke financial plan, clients can embrace their post-career life with clarity and purpose. While retirement may be the end of one chapter, it’s also the beginning of a new one.

Bespoke Retirement: Planning Your Ideal Future

Retirement is most often treated as a ‘hard stop.’ Retirees go from a rigorous work routine one week to an unstructured schedule the next. Although this approach is popular, thoughtful planning can allow individuals to explore a retirement transition that might suit them even better:

• Mini retirements. Similar to sabbaticals, mini retirements can be used to explore various post-career options throughout your life. You might take a year off to travel the world, pursue a passion project, or even just rest and recharge.
• Gliding retirements. In a gliding retirement, you gradually scale down your work volume, moving from a full-time commitment to a part-time role. This avoids the hard stop of traditional retirement, and you may find that working at a reduced pace is preferable to not working at all.
• Encore retirements. In an encore retirement, retirees embrace their ‘second act.’ Instead of retiring fully, you shift toward a new career path, most often in work that’s personally meaningful and fulfilling. 

Whatever form your retirement takes, your post-career years can be made more enjoyable when supported by a robust spending plan. While this may appear straightforward, putting it into practice often requires a significant mindset shift. 

Shifting Gears: Embracing the Distribution Phase 

The decision to retire is often the culmination of years of saving and investing. Enjoying retirement requires a deliberate shift from accumulation to distribution. Some retirees may be anxious about drawing down their investment accounts, but overly restrictive spending can lead to a stressful and unfulfilling retirement. 

At Badgley, we help our clients spend their retirement savings with confidence. Instead of imposing a restrictive and limiting budget on clients, we develop flexible plans that evolve in line with their needs and goals.

Through tax-aware planning, we look to build an income stream that can sustainably support their post-career years. 

Clients may be familiar with tax-loss harvesting. Our use of individual securities also lets us practice tax-gain harvesting—the practice of selling appreciated assets during years with lower tax rates. Moreover, strategic use of Roth conversions can reduce long-term tax obligations. We complement this planning with statistical analysis to confidently project future account values based on robust historical data. 

In the past, retirees may have been able to count on the security of a steady pension after a long career. Although defined benefit plans are less common than they used to be, thoughtful planning can still allow you to embrace and enjoy the distribution phase of your financial life. 

Giving While Living: Maximizing Legacy Impact

Under a traditional planning framework, the distribution phase is followed by a legacy phase. Retirees eventually leave behind their assets as generational wealth. In our view, there are good reasons to consider a stronger overlap between these two phases, with retirees embracing a ‘giving while living’ strategy:

• Longer lives. In the US, 65-year-olds have gained over four and a half years of additional life expectancy since 1950.^[1] With retirees living longer, the next generation may have already established a financial foundation by the time an estate is distributed. Lifetime gifts can ensure that the next generation has access to their inheritance when it can make the most impact.
• Living legacy. Making gifts throughout your life can allow you to personally enjoy and appreciate the impact of your legacy. Meaningful moments can be celebrated together, such as helping a family member purchase their first home.
• Tax advantages. Finally, giving while living can potentially come with tax advantages. Even though the estate and gift tax exemptions are combined at the federal level, few states impose a gift tax. This can make a significant difference in states with a high estate tax, such as Washington.

Many of these benefits apply to charitable giving as well. Strategies like Qualified Charitable Distributions can create a powerful integration between legacy and retirement, delivering tax savings alongside philanthropic impact. 

Conclusion: Designing Tomorrow Today 

In previous generations, there was often a single prescribed vision for what post-career life would look like. In the modern era, there are as many retirements as there are retirees. 

Badgley recognizes that there is no one-size-fits-all retirement. That’s why we combine a contemporary approach to financial planning with personalized guidance, enabling clients to discover the lifestyle that suits them. By integrating the distribution and legacy phases, we also ensure that this plan fulfills generational wealth goals. 

Whatever your retirement looks like, our team can help you build a plan that inspires confidence and supports your post-career vision. We invite you to reach out today to start the conversation. 

^[1] Social Security Administration, Life Tables for the United States Link