Retirement wealth management is a phrase that’s becoming increasingly prominent in certain financial circles — particularly as more and more Americans enter retirement age. But what exactly does “retirement wealth management” entail, and how can retirees optimize this crucial aspect of their financial lives in 2025 and beyond?
At Iron Point Financial, we believe retirement wealth management is all about effectively managing and safeguarding your wealth during your retirement years. For us, “effective” means we focus less on arbitrarily accumulating wealth and more on wisely distributing, protecting, and aligning it with the values you hold most dear.
Greg Liszka (CFP®, RICP®), President & Advisor at Iron Point Financial, captures the essence of this transition:
“We’re seeing many in the baby boomer generation transition into the next phase of life. There are lots of theories out there about what that means, but one of those breaks down retirement into three distinct stages:
(1) The “go-go years,” where you feel great, want to travel and see the world and the grandkids; (2) the “slow-go years,” where your grandkids will come to you; and (3) the “no-go years,” where you are happy to stay exactly where you are and transition into a time of rest. I think the key to aging well at each of those stages is to recognize that everything changes, and that you have to navigate that gracefully.”
Taking Greg’s cue, we’ll use our time today to discuss how adopting a phased, values-based approach to retirement wealth management could significantly improve both your financial outcomes and sense of personal fulfillment. We’ll draw on decades of research and add in our own hands-on insights after years of serving clients like you.
Retirement Wealth Management vs. Retirement Planning
Before we go any further, however, we reckon it’s important to clarify some terminology that can get confusing around this topic:
- Retirement Planning as a general practice involves setting goals, accumulating savings and investments, and strategizing during your working years to build a substantial retirement fund. It’s largely future-focused (sometimes taking place 10, 20, or even 30 years ahead of time).
- Retirement Wealth Management, on the other hand, is specifically concerned with managing your wealth after you’ve retired (or perhaps immediately before you retire). It’s a specialized field focused on how you withdraw assets, manage taxes, address healthcare costs, handle legacy planning, and ensure your resources are being distributed according to the values you care about in your next stage of life.
Simply put, retirement planning prepares you for retirement, while retirement wealth management guides your financial decisions throughout your retirement. There might be some overlap — e.g. your retirement planning could include a general overview of your retirement years, and the different practice areas you might want to think about — but generally, speaking, it’s a difference in specialization and the structure you use to approach each.
Here’s how Greg would sit down with a client new to retirement wealth planning:
“The first step is determining what they’re actually trying to accomplish in that stage of their life, so it’s a lot of goal-setting and definition. Then we walk through cash flow & tax planning, risk management to identify any problems, and then portfolio management, which is the crux of what we do: ‘How do we need to allocate? Where is all the money? Is it all spread out? How does it work together? Is there a better solution?’ Finally, we look at estate planning.”
In this way, we can tackle this next stage of your life journey from all of the major financial practice areas, as we help you to get into the best position possible to prioritize what’s important to you.
Why Values-Based Retirement Wealth Management Matters
Retirement wealth management doesn’t just have to be about numbers and returns—it can be about aligning your financial decisions with your core values and life purpose. When your financial strategies reflect what genuinely matters to you, we believe you are likely to experience deeper life satisfaction and confidence in your choices (and the research agrees).
Studies from the VIA Institute on Character, for instance, underscore the significance of living and making decisions aligned with your personal values. They have found that individuals who integrate their core values into their everyday choices report higher levels of life satisfaction, engagement, and overall well-being.
By applying this principle to retirement wealth management, you can help to ensure your financial decisions do more than just maintain a generalized standard of living—they can actively support the life you want to live and the legacy you want to leave.
Greg illustrates this personalized, values-based approach beautifully with a recent real-world example:
“I helped a client who had no children, who has done very well, and whose passion is for mules. They love mules. They have a little farm with several mules, and when they pass, we’ve set up a foundation to care for mules, so we’ll be giving out $50,000 a year to different mule rescues around the country. Just tell me your dreams! No matter what they are, we’ll figure it out.”
A lot of people know what they care about, but they don’t necessarily know how that can translate into their financial arrangements — and that’s where Certified Financial Planners ® like us can help.
Core Components of Retirement Wealth Management
In our opinion, retirement wealth management in 2025 will require meticulous attention to four key areas in particular:
1. Income Management
Effective income management can help to ensure that your retirement savings last throughout your lifetime. This can involve strategic withdrawals from retirement accounts, optimizing Social Security benefits, pensions, and investment returns. The goal here is to balance your income needs with long-term sustainability.
2. Tax Efficiency
A critical yet easy-to-overlook aspect of retirement wealth management is tax planning. Strategically managing withdrawals from tax-deferred, tax-free, and taxable accounts can significantly impact your net income. By minimizing your tax burden, you could better protect your wealth and preserve key resources to support your values-based goals.
This topic in particular is something Greg has had several opportunities to speak on, given the complexities and haphazard nature of the US tax system:
“There are a lot of people, who, when they reach the age where they are forced to take distributions from their IRA, don’t need the money… but they still have to pay tax on it. So if they were going to donate that money anyway, then why not do it directly from their IRA, where there are no taxes?
Easy math: let’s say they were forced to take $10,000 and they’re in the 25% tax bracket… If, for example, they were going to give that money to the church, there would be $7,500 left over (if they funneled it through their checking account). But if they did it directly from the IRA, they can give them the full $10,000.”
There are plenty of other examples we could draw on here, given the unique intricacies of US taxation, but suffice to say, a little thoughtful advice could go a long way.
Read More: How to Be Tax Savvy
3. Healthcare and Long-Term Care Planning
It goes without saying that healthcare can be one of your largest expenses during retirement. That’s why intentional, experienced planning could help you to cover medical costs and potential long-term care needs, and could even protect you from financial shocks that would otherwise derail your retirement wealth management goals.
Read More: Does Long Term Care Insurance Pay for Assisted Living?
4. Legacy and Estate Planning
As Greg hinted at in a previous quote, it makes sense for the last part of your retirement wealth management strategy to clearly outline your intentions for what happens to your wealth when you’re gone. This could mean supporting family members, charitable causes, or other legacy goals aligned with your personal values.
Iron Point Financial's Fiduciary Approach
Beyond all of these core practice areas, there’s one other key feature of good retirement wealth management we want to highlight: the importance of working with a fiduciary. As Greg would stress with prospective clients interested in working with a professional retirement wealth manager:
“Being a fiduciary is all about communication. It’s about showing clients the math and providing different avenues to fulfill their needs. It’s our job to educate people as to the consequences of their decisions…”
When you work with a fiduciary, you can rest easy knowing they are legally bound to act in your best interests, which means putting your needs first… and keeping you in the driving seat. That’s the other key feature of the client-fiduciary relationship. As Greg describes it:
“At the end of the day, if the client gives an order, that’s it. Ultimately, they are the boss. If they give an order, it has to be executed.”
This is in contrast to some commission-based retirement models, where the people selling retirement products might care more about their bottom line than helping clients like you. With a fiduciary in your corner, that’s never something you need to worry about — as they will always prioritize your needs in the most transparent way possible.
Optimize Your Retirement Wealth Management Today
Retirement wealth management in 2025 demands more than a general financial awareness (helpful as that may be) — it can create space for purposeful alignment between your wealth and your personal values.
At Iron Point Financial, we care deeply about helping retirees align their financial strategies with their values, to help ensure that their wealth sustains not just their retirement lifestyle but their sense of meaning and personal fulfillment.
Are you ready to optimize your retirement wealth management in a way that truly reflects your story and the things you care most about? Schedule an appointment with Iron Point Financial today.
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Iron Point Financial is here to empower you to secure a brighter tomorrow. We operate physical offices in Grove City, PA and Greenville, PA.
We primarily serve residents of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and Florida but we also have security registrations for 22 other states across the continental USA.
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Disclosures
- All investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal.
- There is no assurance that any investment strategy will be successful.
