David spent 28 years in engineering management. Anne ran her own interior design practice for 20 of them. Together they'd built real wealth — a paid-off home, 401(k)s, a couple of IRAs, some stock from David's company, and savings scattered across accounts they'd opened at different times over the years.
The problem wasn't that they hadn't saved. The problem was that no one had ever looked at all of it together.
Where They Were
When they came to us, David was 52 and Anne was 50. They weren't in crisis. But they were starting to think seriously about what retirement actually looked like — and the honest answer was: they weren't sure.
- They had roughly $1.4M across eight different accounts
- Their asset allocation had never been reviewed as a whole — some accounts were aggressive, some barely keeping pace with inflation
- David's company stock made up 32% of their total portfolio — a concentration risk neither had fully registered
- They had no plan for when to retire, or what income would look like when they did
- Anne's business income was inconsistent, making it hard to know how much to count on
They were two people who had done a lot of things right — and still needed a map.
What We Did
We started by building a complete picture of everything they had. Not account by account, but as a single financial life.
From there, we worked through several key decisions together:
Rebalancing the portfolio. We restructured their combined holdings around a target allocation that matched their actual timeline and risk tolerance — not the default settings they'd inherited from old employer plans.
Reducing concentration risk. We built a plan to methodically diversify out of David's company stock over 18 months in a tax-aware way, avoiding the mistake of selling all at once and triggering a large capital gains event.
Retirement income modeling. We ran scenarios for retiring at 58, 60, and 62 — showing what their monthly income would look like in each case, factoring in Social Security timing, withdrawal sequencing, and Anne's variable business income.
Getting organized. We consolidated accounts where it made sense, established beneficiaries that had been overlooked, and set up a simple system they could actually maintain.
Where They Are Now
David and Anne have a retirement date they're planning toward — not hoping for. They know what they'll spend, where the money comes from, and what the fallback looks like if Anne's business slows down before they get there.
They still work with us on an ongoing basis. Every year we review the plan and make adjustments. Some years nothing changes. Other years — a market shift, a business decision, a health consideration — mean we revisit the strategy.
That's what the relationship is for.
Your situation will be different from David and Anne's. But if you find yourself with real assets and no clear picture of how they fit together — that's exactly where we start.