On Point Finances ยท Los Gatos, California
The summit is halfway.
You spent thirty years climbing. Almost nobody plans the way down.
The climb
You already did the hard part.
Thirty years of contributions. Raises you didn't spend. A 401(k) you kept feeding through two recessions and never touched.
That was the climb. You made it. Most financial advice is still written for people who haven't.
The summit
Then the ground tilts.
Retirement gets sold as an arrival. It isn't. It's the moment you stop adding and start withdrawing, and quietly, every rule you followed on the way up reverses.
Growth mattered most on the climb. Order matters most on the descent.
On a mountain, the summit was never the achievement. Getting down is.
The descent
Four things go wrong on the way down.
None of them are about picking better investments. All of them are about sequence, time, and what happens when you can no longer add to the pile.
The order of returns
A poor market in your first few retirement years does damage that a good market later can't fully undo. Same average return, different order, very different outcome.
Living a long time
Life expectancy is a midpoint, so a large share of people live past it. For a couple the number that matters isn't either person's life expectancy, it's how long the second one lives. That is usually longer than a plan assumes.
Quiet erosion
Thirty years is long enough for inflation to matter a great deal. The income that feels comfortable at 65 still has to work at 90.
Health costs
The one expense that tends to rise exactly when income has stopped rising, and the one most plans leave as a rounding error.
The rope
What we actually do.
We're a licensed life insurance and annuity agency in California. That means we work with a specific set of tools, and we'll tell you plainly when they don't fit your situation.
- 01
Map the descent
What income you'll need, when it starts, and how much of it Social Security and any pension already cover. Most people have never seen this on one page.
- 02
Separate what can flex from what can't
Some expenses can ride the market. Property taxes, insurance and groceries can't. Knowing which is which comes before any product conversation.
- 03
Then, and only then, talk tools
Annuities and life insurance are built for specific jobs. If your situation doesn't call for one, that's a fine answer and you'll hear it from us.
We don't open with a product, and you should hold us to that. If a first meeting turns into a pitch, we got the order wrong.
The valley
And what's left at the bottom.
The plan doesn't end with you. What passes to a spouse, to children, to a cause, and how much of it survives taxes and delay, belongs in the same conversation as the income.
Base camp
Start with a conversation, not a pitch.
Thirty minutes. We'll look at where you are, what the descent actually looks like for you, and whether we're the right people to help. No cost and no obligation.