Welcome to Richards Financial Planning, LLC
Three reasons people retire
- A planned retirement
- Forced retirement due to less work
- A forced retirement for personal or family health.
There are three reasons people retire, and number three is why I founded Richards Financial Planning, LLC. First, in 2012, after twenty-five years of work as a securities broker and insurance agent, I was forced into retirement by illness. Another key point for me, I did not have a clean break from work, which is the case for many people. So some may refer to my situation as a partial or blurred retirement.
Notably, illness led me to reduce my workload to less than ten clients. To this day, I have never missed a step in servicing those clients. Some are businesses with retirement plans with many employees, and some are individuals. On the positive side, most of those have never known about my personal situation until now. I am sharing this now because my forced retirement led to starting Richards Financial Planning, LLC. As a result, the firm specializes in retirement income planning for individuals and businesses.
How many years will your income last?
Forced retirement is one of the most challenging types of retirement to experience. Most people are not financially ready to retire if they become disabled. For me, forced retirement was financially burdensome and psychologically draining. Under those circumstances, I had a personal disability plan that continued a portion of my income. Although, it did not take me long to realize that my disability plan would not provide for my wife and me through retirement. If I lived to be 90, that would mean that I would need to have 37 years of income. As a result, I needed to return to work.
Comparatively, if you are retiring, you should ask yourself the same question that faced me. If you retire today, how many years will your income last? And nowadays, you have to ask yourself how long your current income will sustain you.
For instance, if inflation is running at 8.5%, and it stays high, almost everything will cost twice as much in eight and a half years. Will your retirement income keep up with inflation? If that is your worry, I have a free worksheet to help you fight inflation. It is called the Easiest Retirement Budget Plan You can get it by clicking the button below.
There are no hidden fees
My experience in investments and insurance gave me a lot of insight into creating a financial plan. But my experience was from the perspective of selling products to solve financial problems. With this in mind, establishing Richards Financial Planning, LLC, is to solve financial problems for a fee. There are no hidden fees. If you want to see a simple explanation of our fee structure, visit our fees page
How society uses financial services today has changed. Consequently, not many people buy products to solve financial problems. Yes, financial products do solve financial issues. But the product is not where our retirement planning process starts.
We realize that you want solutions to your financial problems without regard to any financial product. Some people call that a fiduciary standard. To this end, our financial problem-solving process you’re your needs first. Then if financial products are part of the solution, the advice is provided for several alternatives to solve the financial problem. To this end, our services offer advice for a fee, not selling a product.
My financial service business model
All things considered, I realized that how I delivered financial services should change. I needed financial planning education using modern planning techniques. That was the genesis of Richards Financial Planning, LLC
My plan
Rather than sit at home and be disabled, I needed to continue serving the few clients I maintained. I made a plan for recovery. Plus, I made a plan to increase my financial knowledge.
By the grace of God, from 2018 until today, I have recovered about 80% of my ability to work.
Advanced Education
During that period, I enrolled in the Chartered Financial Consultant® program at the American College of Financial Services. It took me about three years to complete the ChFC® program with ongoing study. This program is an eight-course financial services program that prepared me to provide client-centric financial planning advice.
Retirement planning does have some pitfalls. I have experienced some of them and made adjustments to the pitfalls I have experienced. In addition, obtaining the ChFC® helped me learn better ways to help people plan for their retirement. Given these points, I created Richards Financial Planning as a business entity to provide advice to people who want to have a happy retirement.
My plan had flaws too
Usually, the space between illness and health is not a straight line in life. Needless to say, I have had some setbacks. But I have been patient and asked for grace where needed. In addition, I continue to build my finances and pay off the past debts that accumulated during my illness.
My experiences have given me a more realistic view of helping people plan their future retirement. My ordeals have taught me a few realities. For example, I have noticed that sometimes, the best doctors are those that have overcome personal illnesses. Along the same line, the best preachers are those that have not led a perfect life. Undeniably, I can attest that my problems have helped me see the financial difficulties people should plan to avoid in retirement.
If you’d like to learn more, click below to schedule a fifteen to twenty-minute conversation. Then we can discuss your questions and see if you feel you would benefit from our services.