Building a Wealth Management Plan at Any Phase of Your Life

You planned to retire early. Now the decisions you get to make once deserve someone who's made them many times.

Someone you trust thought we should meet. This is a deliberately small planning practice - fifty families, every one by referral - for pharmaceutical and corporate executives who spent a career inside one large organization and are retiring, or recently retired, before most people do.

This call is meant to be a conversation about whether we're a good fit, not a sales meeting.

Building a Wealth Management Plan at Any Phase of Your Life

In short, it is the strategy that meets your goals. An effective plan considers and balances your current needs with your short- and long-term objectives. It is unrelated to fads and trends and independent of the news cycle or political environment. Above all, it is personal.

Many people accumulate wealth after years of paying into one or more retirement plans, such as 401(k)s or IRAs. You may have other investments, including:

Daily priorities can get in the way of paying close attention to your wealth portfolio's performance. Perhaps market fluctuations or lifestyle changes have affected your accounts and preferences. We can help you manage your portfolio and build strategies for growth.

Most people who land here already know. Here's how to be sure.

• This may be for you if ...

You've spent most of your career inside one large organization -  a pharmaceutical company, a manufacturer, a corporate headquarters - and retirement is either a few years out or a few years behind you. Consulting, board work, or a part-time role may still be in the picture. Full-time isn't.

You planned to retire earlier than most, and you're on track or already there. Now you want the transition handled as well as the career was.

You have decisions in front of you, or recently behind you, that you only get to make once: pension vs. lump sum, deferred compensation timing, company stock, retiree medical, survivor elections. You want them made in the context of your whole financial life - investments, taxes, income, insurance, estate, and the legacy you intend to leave - not one account at a time.

You'd rather have one advisor who coordinates everything than a collection of accounts at institutions that don't talk to each other.

You take advice seriously. You want a plan, not a product, and you'd like your family to understand it too.

• This probably isn't for you if. ..

You're looking for someone to manage a single account while the rest of your financial life lives elsewhere.

You'd prefer to build your own plan and check in occasionally.

You're shopping advisors on fee. There are excellent low-cost options; this practice isn't designed to be one of them.

You want a big firm with a large staff. This practice is kept at fifty families on purpose, and every one of them arrived by referral. That's the model, and it isn't changing.

If the first list sounds like you, the next step is a conversation about whether we're a good fit - not a sales meeting.

Three steps. The first one costs you an hour and nothing else.

A good-fit conversation

You call, or a friend's introduction letter arrives with a book. We talk for an hour about where you are - already out, or a few years from it - and whether the way we work is the way you want to be served. If it isn't, we'll say so.

The plan

We build one coordinated plan for your whole financial life. If the pension, lump-sum, and deferred-comp elections are ahead of you, we model them. If they're behind you, we check them and turn to what's next: the Roth window, Social Security timing, coverage to 65, income while you're consulting.

The relationship

Reviews run on a schedule. A three-person team handles the operations so George's time goes to thinking, researching, and talking with you. Zoom for routine conversations; in person when it matters; family meetings when it's time for the next generation to understand the plan.

Even from the first conversation.

Whether the once-only decisions were made well.

Pension or lump sum. Deferred-comp timing. Company stock. Survivor elections. If they're ahead of you, what the modeling says. If they're behind you, whether anything needs to be adjusted around them

Whether your financial picture is coordinated.

Whether your investments, taxes, Social Security timing, and estate plan are working together - or quietly working against the legacy you intend to leave.

What whole-financial-life planning means.

Not just investments - a plan that accounts for taxes, income, insurance, and the estate and legacy decisions that determine what your life's work becomes

The Seven Decisions Merck Retirees Can't Undo.

If you're within a few years of retirement, this is the list to get right. If you've already retired, it's the list to check.

Each one is a choice you make once - usually on a form, usually with a deadline, usually without a second look. The guide walks through what each decision actually controls, the mistakes I've watched smart people make with it, and the questions to ask before you sign.

Pension or lump sum

The one most people decide on the pension calculator alone.

Deferred compensation timing

Elected years earlier; the tax bracket you land in is decided now.

Company stock and options

Concentration, cost basis, and the window that closes at separation.

Retiree medical and the bridge to 65

Coverage, cost, and what consulting income does to both.

Survivor and joint elections

Irrevocable, and usually made without modeling the alternatives.

The Roth window before RMDs

Often the lowest-tax years of a lifetime - and the shortest.

Social Security timing

Not a standalone decision. It depends on the six above.

He started inside the building. Then he built a practice small enough to actually know you.

George McReynolds, CFP®left a banking career because of a demographic chart - the one that showed where the boomers were headed and what it would mean for the next thirty years. He went back to school for it, became a financial planner inside Merck & Company's credit union, and went independent in 2001, the same year his first book was published.

Within a few years he was serving three hundred families with a staff of twelve - and getting further from every one of them. So he did what almost no one in this business does voluntarily: he shrank the practice on purpose, twice, until it was small enough to serve the way he intended.

Today the practice serves thirty-six families, with a hard ceiling of fifty. Every one of them arrived by referral. A good number came out of the same pharmaceutical and corporate world George started in, and made the same early-retirement decisions his clients are making now.

Managing the portfolio and sending the statements is where the work starts, not where it ends. We manage entire financial lives - the intersection of investments, taxes, Social Security timing, insurance, estate planning, and the hundred smaller decisions that connect them. Because in the end, this isn't only about funding your retirement. It's about what your life's work becomes after you - the legacy your family inherits, and the story it tells. That's what whole-financial-life planning means, and it's what six books, including The Longevity Trap, are built around.

years independent

of clients by referral

family ceiling- kept on purpose

books on planning, not products

Most recent: The Longevity Trap. First: Prosperity By Design (2001). The books are the clearest picture of how the practice works - the plan, never the product.

If someone you trust sent you here, they thought this was worth an hour of your time.

Ask about whether we'd be a good fit. Mention who introduced you. Everything discussed is held in confidence - including from the person who sent you.