\u00a0More money, more problems? Yes and no.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even with the criticism leveled at the 401(k) plan industry, it has helped baby boomers accumulate massive retirement wealth. Many spent years doing what they were told: maxing out contributions and leveraging tax-deferred, compounding growth over decades. After years of strong (if volatile) market returns, affluent boomers\u2019 account balances are sky-high. So, too, is the amount of risk they face in retirement, raising the demand for tax-savvy decumulation and longevity planning. Forward-thinking advisory firms are taking note.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a big group of baby boomers out there who have found themselves sitting on $3 million, $5 million or even $10 million in net worth, much of it in retirement accounts,\u201d said Debbie Taylor, Carson Group\u2019s chief tax strategist. \u201cEven a decade ago, they couldn\u2019t have dreamt of reaching balances like these. They\u2019re not trained on how to unlock these gains and manage this wealth through their retirement.\u201d<\/p>\n
It turns out that many advisors aren\u2019t either, having been solely focused on the accumulation question. That\u2019s why firms across the industry are investing in tax planning<\/a> capabilities, including Carson<\/a> and its AI platform, affectionately named Steve. To Taylor, it\u2019s an extremely exciting time to be a tax expert, and one thing is very clear: desirable clients are going to vote with their feet.\u00a0<\/p>\n A Modern Tax Planning Strategy\u00a0<\/p>\n Taylor\u2019s own firm was formally acquired by Carson Group in 2024, and while it wasn\u2019t the largest deal by any means, Taylor Financial\u2019s specialized tax planning capabilities were expected to make a big difference for both advisors and clients.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s so exciting about this moment is that the technology has progressed far enough to allow us to be so much more efficient,\u201d Taylor explained. \u201cThe old way required advisors to move between three or four different platforms to manually gather client data, and then you\u2019d have a 15-column spreadsheet that you used to generate a thoughtful tax recommendation. Totally not scalable or profitable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n What used to be manual and time-consuming is fast morphing into a fluid, efficient planning process for both the advisor and the client across the industry. Rather than simply deferring taxes, the goal is to consider both the accumulation phase and the distribution phase at all times, coordinated at the household level.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ante Up. \u201cThis type of planning is becoming table stakes for the wealthy baby boomers that many firms want to serve,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cThey\u2019re facing large RMDs, they have big questions about estate planning and they don\u2019t know how to structure their income. Distribution planning is so critical, but many firms aren\u2019t giving it the attention it deserves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0More money, more problems? Yes and no.\u00a0 Even with the criticism leveled at the 401(k) plan industry, it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[19603,28,147,530,1666,21217],"class_list":["post-578550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-baby-boomers","tag-business","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-retirement","tag-tax-planning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}