Turning the accounts into a paycheck
Which account you draw from each year, when you file for Social Security, how the pension election fits, and what monthly number all of that supports without running the balance down too fast.
A retirement plan built with your family in mind.
I’m Max Makhnyk, a fee-only financial planner in Spokane. I work with people in the last few years before and after retirement, and with widows and widowers figuring out what to do next. Most of my clients are in the Inland Northwest.
Max Makhnyk, CFP® · Founder, Averton Wealth
Where would you like to start?
Saving was the part with instructions.
Forty years of contributing to a 401(k) takes discipline, but it does not take much decision-making. You picked a percentage, picked a target date fund, and left it alone.
Then all the actual decisions arrive within about eighteen months of each other. File for Social Security at 62, 67, or 70. Take the pension as a single life annuity or give up income for a survivor benefit. Convert to Roth in the gap years or wait and let required distributions decide for you. Move the CDs or leave them.
Each one has a defensible answer for your household specifically. Most of them change the answer to the others. That is the whole job.
What the work covers
The window between retiring and RMDs
For most people the stretch between the last paycheck and age 73 is the lowest-income period of their adult life and the only time they have real control over their tax bracket. Roth conversions, gain harvesting, and withdrawal order all live here, and the window closes on a schedule.
Consolidating what accumulated
Two old 401(k)s, an IRA, the 457 nobody has opened since 2011, a brokerage account, and your spouse’s plan that neither of you has looked at together. Brought into one allocation that matches the income plan instead of five that do not know about each other.
Every plan includes the version where one of you is gone.
Not as a paragraph at the end. As a full second scenario with its own numbers: what the household income becomes when one Social Security check stops permanently, what the pension pays under the election you chose, and what happens to the tax brackets when the filing status changes from married filing jointly to single the following year.
The drop is usually larger than couples expect. A household living on $70,000 a year of combined Social Security and portfolio withdrawals can land near $48,000 for the survivor, before anyone adjusts anything. That figure is illustrative only and not a projection for any actual client, and your numbers will be different. The direction is not in question.
Most people find this out afterward, from whoever happens to be sitting across the desk that month. I would rather both of you see it while you can still change the inputs.
Who this is for
Most of my clients are somewhere in the last few years of working or the first few after stopping, with money spread across retirement accounts they have been feeding since the nineties. The rest are widows and widowers, usually a year or two out, once the paperwork is finished and the actual planning starts.
My working minimum for ongoing investment management is $250,000. Planning-only work has no minimum at all. If you have a pension election to make and $90,000 in a 403(b), a written plan may be the only thing you ever need from me.
Let’s Talk
Start with a conversation
The first meeting is a conversation. You’ll leave knowing whether I’m the right fit and what I’d actually do for you.
Schedule an introductory call