Retirement Questions. Real Answers.

A commonly used benchmark is having 25x your estimated annual retirement expenses saved — this is based on the ‘4% rule,’ which suggests you can withdraw 4% of your portfolio annually with a high probability of not running out of money over a 30-year retirement. However, this is a starting point, not a complete plan. Your actual number depends on your other income sources (Social Security, pension), your expected expenses, your health, and your retirement timeline. A comprehensive financial plan gives you a far more accurate picture.

The traditional guideline is 4% per year, adjusted annually for inflation. More conservative planners suggest 3–3.5% given today’s longer life expectancies and lower expected bond returns. The right rate for you also depends on your other income sources — if Social Security covers a significant portion of your expenses, you may need to withdraw less from your portfolio, giving your savings more room to grow.

Ideally, high-interest debt (credit cards, personal loans) should generally be eliminated before retirement. Mortgage debt is more nuanced — in some cases, maintaining a low-rate mortgage and keeping assets invested makes more financial sense than paying off the home. It depends on your interest rate, tax situation, and liquidity needs in retirement. We can help analyze this as part of your comprehensive retirement plan.

A frequently cited benchmark is 8–10x your current salary saved by age 60. But this varies significantly based on your expected retirement age, lifestyle, and other income sources. Someone planning to retire at 65 with a pension and substantial Social Security income may need far less in savings than someone retiring at 60 with neither. We recommend building a personalized retirement income model rather than relying on generic benchmarks.

Some people can, though it tends to be a more demanding plan than retiring at 67. You may be funding three to five additional years from savings, claiming Social Security at a permanently reduced rate, and — the part most often missed — covering health insurance yourself until Medicare eligibility at 65.

That gap is frequently the deciding factor. Coverage for a couple in their early sixties can run to significant monthly premiums, which may be a meaningful drag on a portfolio in exactly the years when sequence-of-returns risk tends to be highest.

It varies widely by state, income and coverage level, and it’s often the largest unplanned expense for early retirees. Marketplace premiums generally depend heavily on your modified adjusted gross income, which means the way you draw income between retiring and 65 may directly affect what you pay for coverage.

That interaction — withdrawal strategy potentially affecting health insurance subsidies — is worth modeling deliberately rather than discovering at enrollment.

Your main options are: leave it with your former employer (easy but limits flexibility), roll it into an IRA (the most popular choice for continued tax-deferred growth and broader investment options), roll it into a new employer’s plan if you’re continuing to work, or cash it out (generally inadvisable due to taxes and penalties). For many retirees, rolling into a managed IRA on an open-architecture platform like Fidelity or Schwab can provide a combination of flexibility, investment access, and ongoing professional management.

An RMD is the minimum amount the IRS requires you to withdraw from your Traditional IRA or 401(k) each year, beginning at age 73 or 75 (depending on your birthdate under current SECURE 2.0 rules). The amount is calculated based on your account balance and life expectancy. Failing to take your RMD results in a 25% excise tax on the amount you should have withdrawn. Roth IRAs are not subject to RMDs during the owner’s lifetime.

A Roth conversion means paying income taxes now in exchange for tax-free growth and withdrawals later. This can be highly beneficial if you expect to be in a higher tax bracket in retirement, if you want to leave tax-free assets to heirs, or if you want to reduce future RMDs. The best candidates for Roth conversion are often in the “tax window” between retirement and when RMDs or Social Security begin. We can help model the long-term tax impact for each client individually.

Your 401(k) assets are held in a trust separate from your employer’s assets and are generally protected from employer creditors. They are not subject to your employer’s bankruptcy proceedings. This is one of the key protections of ERISA (the Employee Retirement Income Security Act). Your balance may fluctuate based on investment performance, but it cannot be seized to pay your employer’s debts.

The elective deferral limit is $24,500. If you’re 50 or older you can generally add a catch-up contribution of $8,000, for $32,500 total. If you reach age 60, 61, 62 or 63 during the year, the SECURE 2.0 enhanced catch-up of $11,250 may apply instead, for $35,750 — provided your employer’s plan has adopted that feature.

IRA contributions are separate: $7,500 for 2026, or $8,600 if you’re 50 or older. Source: IRS Notice 2025-67.

Yes, and for many people it’s worth considering. The limits are separate, so contributing to one doesn’t reduce what you can put in the other.

What your income generally affects is deductibility, not eligibility. If you’re covered by a workplace plan, the deduction for traditional IRA contributions phases out above certain income levels, and Roth IRA contributions phase out above others. You may still be able to contribute — it’s often the tax treatment that changes.

The simple version: pre-tax may make more sense if you expect to be in a lower tax bracket in retirement, Roth if you expect to be in a higher one or want tax-free assets to leave to heirs.

The honest version is that nobody knows their future bracket with confidence, which is a reasonable argument for holding some of each. Having both can give you more control over your taxable income in retirement — the ability to draw from a Roth in a year when an extra dollar of ordinary income would be expensive may be genuinely valuable.

It generally stays where it is until you do something with it. You can typically leave it in the old plan, move it to your new employer’s plan if that plan accepts rollovers, roll it into an IRA, or cash it out.

Cashing out is usually the costliest choice — the full amount typically becomes taxable that year, and under 59½ a 10% early withdrawal penalty generally applies as well. Old 401(k)s left behind and forgotten are extremely common; consolidating at least makes them visible.

This depends on your health, your other income, and whether you are married. If you are in good health and can afford to wait, delaying benefits past your Full Retirement Age provides an 8% annual increase in your monthly benefit for every year you delay, up to age 70. For a married couple, having the higher-earning spouse delay to 70 is often the single most impactful retirement planning decision they can make, because the higher benefit also becomes the survivor benefit.

Yes, but with caveats if you claim before your Full Retirement Age. In 2026, if you earn more than approximately $22,320 per year before your FRA, your Social Security benefit is temporarily reduced by $1 for every $2 you earn over that limit. Once you reach Full Retirement Age, you can earn any amount without affecting your benefit.

For someone who claims at their Full Retirement Age in 2026, the maximum monthly benefit is approximately $3,822 per month. For someone who delays to age 70, the maximum benefit is higher — approximately $5,108 per month. These figures are updated annually for cost-of-living adjustments.

A common sequencing strategy is: (1) taxable brokerage accounts first (to allow tax-advantaged accounts to keep growing), (2) Traditional IRA/401(k) accounts next (to manage RMDs and tax bracket), (3) Roth accounts last (for tax-free growth and no RMDs). However, this order isn’t always optimal — sometimes strategic Roth conversions during the early retirement years can significantly reduce lifetime taxes. Your advisor builds a specific drawdown strategy for your situation.

A retirement paycheck strategy combines Social Security income, any pension payments, and systematic withdrawals from your investment accounts in a coordinated way. Many clients set up a monthly or quarterly automatic transfer from their managed IRA to a bank account, mirroring the experience of receiving a paycheck. The goal is to ensure reliable cash flow while minimizing taxes and preserving portfolio longevity.

Sequence-of-returns risk is the danger that poor investment returns in the early years of retirement can permanently damage your portfolio’s ability to sustain withdrawals — even if long-term average returns are fine. If your portfolio drops 30% in year one of retirement while you are withdrawing 4%, you are selling more shares at low prices, leaving fewer shares to participate in the eventual recovery. We can help model and address risks like these through asset allocation adjustments, cash reserves, and a carefully structured income plan.

Sometimes. An annuity can convert a lump sum into guaranteed lifetime income, which may address the risk of outliving your money — often the thing that worries retirees most.

The trade-offs are real: you generally give up access to the principal, the income may not keep pace with inflation unless you pay for that feature, and costs vary considerably between products. Any guarantee depends on the claims-paying ability and financial strength of the issuing insurance company.

The question worth answering first is whether you have an income gap at all. If Social Security and a pension already cover your essential expenses, the case for an annuity may be much weaker.

There are broadly three approaches: insure against it with a long-term care or hybrid policy, self-fund by earmarking assets for the possibility, or rely on family and Medicaid, which has strict asset requirements.

Medicare generally does not cover extended custodial care, which is the assumption that catches most people out. Premiums for traditional long-term care policies tend to rise significantly with age, so the planning window often opens in your fifties and narrows after that.

Traditional IRA and 401(k) withdrawals are taxed as ordinary income in the year you take them. Roth IRA qualified withdrawals are generally completely tax-free. Taxable brokerage account withdrawals may be subject to capital gains tax (typically at a lower rate than ordinary income for long-term holdings). Understanding the tax character of each account type is essential to building a tax-efficient withdrawal strategy.

Key strategies include: using the tax window between retirement and RMD/Social Security age for Roth conversions; sequencing withdrawals to manage taxable income; tax-loss harvesting in taxable accounts; qualified charitable distributions (QCDs) from IRAs after age 70½; and holding tax-efficient investments in taxable accounts while keeping tax-inefficient investments in tax-advantaged accounts. These strategies work best when coordinated as part of a comprehensive retirement plan.

A QCD generally lets you give directly from an IRA to a qualified charity once you’re 70½ or older. The distribution may satisfy part or all of your required minimum distribution without appearing in your taxable income.

For someone charitably inclined who takes the standard deduction, this can be more tax-efficient than donating cash and attempting to deduct it, since the income may never land on the return at all. Consult your tax advisor about your specific situation.

Not necessarily, and assuming so is a common planning error. Once Social Security begins and required minimum distributions start at 73 or 75, taxable income can rise sharply — sometimes above what it was during working years, particularly for people with large tax-deferred balances.

The lower-income years are often the ones between retiring and RMDs beginning. That window is where much of the tax planning opportunity tends to sit.

Fee structures vary. At Scarborough, our 401(k)/403(b)/TSP management is a flat monthly subscription fee starting at just $49.99/month. Our 401k Manager service (BrokerageLink®) ranges from $79.99–$119.99 per month. Wealth management (IRA and brokerage management) is approximately 1% of assets per year. Our fees are fully disclosed and there are no hidden charges.

A fiduciary is legally required to act in your best interest at all times, as opposed to a suitability standard, which only requires that recommendations be ‘suitable.’ Scarborough Capital Management operates as a Registered Investment Adviser (RIA), which means we act in a fiduciary capacity when providing investment advice. This means our recommendations are driven by what is best for you — not what generates the highest commission.

You can verify any registered financial advisor or firm at FINRA’s BrokerCheck (brokercheck.finra.org) and the SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure website (adviserinfo.sec.gov). These free tools show registration status, credentials, and any disciplinary history. We encourage all prospective clients to check our background.

Less than you’d think. Recent statements for your retirement and investment accounts, your most recent Social Security statement, and details of any pension are generally enough to have a useful conversation.

What tends to matter more than paperwork is having thought about what you want retirement to look like and what concerns you about getting there. We can find the account numbers. We can’t guess the answer to that.

A fee-only adviser is compensated solely by fees paid by clients. A fee-based adviser is compensated primarily by client fees but may also receive commissions in a separate capacity, such as selling insurance or brokerage products.

Scarborough Capital Management is fee-based. Our advisors are also registered representatives of Independent Financial Group, an unaffiliated broker-dealer, and licensed insurance agents. In those separate capacities they can receive commissions, which we disclose in our Form ADV Part 2A and Form CRS. When we provide investment advice through our advisory services, we act in a fiduciary capacity.

The distinction matters, and any adviser should be willing to tell you which they are without hesitating.