It all starts with a plan.
Everything below is a consequence of the plan. We do not lead with a product and work backwards to a reason for it.
Retirement Planning
Where does the paycheck come from once the paycheck stops?
Investment Management
How should the money be invested, and in which account?
Tax, Estate & Legacy Planning
Who receives what you built, on what terms, and after how much tax?
Business Succession
What happens to the business, and to the family, when you step away?
Every Plan Begins by Identifying Risk
While every retirement is different, the fundamental risks retirees face are remarkably consistent. The vast majority of retirees will encounter some combination of these six primary risks throughout retirement:
Not every retiree will face each risk to the same degree. Some may already be adequately protected against certain risks, while others may have significant exposures that could threaten the success of their retirement.
That’s why every plan we build considers all six—evaluating each through the lens of your goals, needs, priorities, risk tolerance, resources, and the retirement you want to create.
The risks present in your life—and the degree to which each needs to be addressed—help determine the planning strategies and solutions your plan requires.
If the plan tells us a particular risk is already appropriately addressed … if your current positioning cannot be improved … the answer may simply be to leave it alone.
Because the objective isn’t to find a reason to use every solution.
It’s to identify the risks that matter to you and determine which solutions your plan actually needs.
Most firms organize their website by product because that is how the industry is organized. The problem is that a product cannot tell you whether you need it.
A plan can. Before there is any recommendation, there is a set of answers: what the money has to do, on what date, for how many people, in what tax bracket, and how much loss the plan can absorb without breaking. Those answers are what dictate which of the disciplines below matter for you and, just as often, which ones do not.
That is also why the same conversation can end with “you do not need what we sell.” If the plan says the exposure is already covered, the honest recommendation is to leave it alone. Our process page walks through the three sessions that produce those answers, and our philosophy page explains why we approach each one from a beginner’s mind.
The disciplines, and what each one is answering
Retirement Planning
Where does the paycheck come from once the paycheck stops?
Turning a balance sheet into an income stream that survives markets, taxes, and longevity.
- Retirement Distribution Solutions: Turning a portfolio into income while managing sequence-of-returns and tax risk.
- Income Planning: The income floor beneath the plan, built before the market gets a vote.
- Long Term Care: Planning for extended care costs that Medicare was never built to pay.
- Social Security Maximization: Claiming decisions modeled across both lives, not chosen from a rule of thumb.
- Disability: Protecting the asset that funds everything else: your ability to earn.
- Medicare Planning: Enrollment windows, penalties, and the income surcharges most people never see coming.
Investment Management
How should the money be invested, and in which account?
Portfolio construction treated as a tax problem as much as an investment problem.
- Portfolio Design & Wealth Management: Asset location, rebalancing discipline, and what each account is actually for.
- Investment Approach: Defense and preservation of capital: how our discretionary models are managed.
Tax, Estate & Legacy Planning
Who receives what you built, on what terms, and after how much tax?
Coordinating titling, beneficiaries, documents and tax exposure so the plan survives you.
- Estate Planning: Titling, beneficiaries, and documents coordinated so the plan survives you.
- Life Insurance: Sizing and structuring a death benefit around the obligations it has to cover.
- Special Needs Financial Planning: Funding a lifetime of care without disqualifying means-tested benefits.
Charitable Planning
How do you give what you intended to give, at the lowest cost to the plan?
Structuring gifts so the charity receives more and the plan gives up less.
Business Succession
What happens to the business, and to the family, when you step away?
Treating the business as the largest, least liquid holding on the balance sheet.
- Business Owner Planning: Entity structure, key-person exposure, and the retirement plan the business itself can fund.
Other Side Asset Management provides investment advisory services and does not provide legal or tax advice. Insurance products, where discussed, are offered through licensed insurance professionals, and product guarantees are subject to the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company. Nothing on this page is a recommendation to buy or sell any security or to adopt any strategy; whether any discipline described here is appropriate depends entirely on your circumstances.
Let’s look at your position from the other side.
A conversation, not a sales pitch. Bring your questions; we’ll bring all sides of the story.
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