Retirement Planning Tips from Lead Advisor Sierra Muecke

Retirement planning can be a complex and challenging endeavor, but it's also a crucial one. To help you navigate the complexities of planning and ensure your retirement years are as comfortable as possible, Sierra Muecke, our Founder and Lead Financial Advisor, shares her invaluable insights on retirement planning and Social Security benefits. With years of experience guiding clients toward financial security, Sierra's advice provides a clear roadmap for your journey to a worry-free retirement. She reveals her top tips for building a robust retirement plan, harnessing the full potential of Social Security, and avoiding common pitfalls.

What is your best tip for creating a great retirement plan?

Start early! In terms of both saving and planning. Getting to retirement is like climbing a mountain- the later you start, the steeper the climb to get to the top. Personally, I think the best thing you can do is open a Roth IRA as soon as you have earned income and make it a goal to max it each year. Having tax-free money in retirement gives you so much more strategizing power once you enter the distribution phase.

When it comes to planning for retirement, people often start their planning when they want to retire within the next year or two. I recommend starting to shift gears from the accumulation phase to the planning phase within 5-10 years so that we still have time to make adjustments and secure a solid and stress-free retirement.

What is your best tip for utilizing Social Security benefits?

There are strong opinions on whether to draw social security early or delay your benefit. If you are married, you might be able to get the best of both worlds by utilizing a hybrid strategy. Have the spouse with the higher benefit delay until 70 to ensure a guaranteed 8% increase and start collecting the other social security income right away. This can help protect the surviving spouse if one spouse passes away before the other in retirement, as the surviving spouse will get to keep the higher of the two social security incomes.

What is a common mistake you see with Social Security and how can you prevent it?

Assuming that retirement is synonymous with drawing social security. You can retire and delay taking social security, increasing your benefit by a guaranteed 8% per year, which is hard to find these days. I always recommend running a full social security analysis to explore all of your options for when to draw to make sure you are not rushing such an important decision.

*A Roth IRA offers tax deferral on any earnings in the account. Qualified withdrawals of earnings from the account are tax-free. Withdrawals of earnings prior to age 59 ½ or prior to the account being opened for 5 years, whichever is later, may result in a 10% IRS penalty tax. Limitations and restrictions may apply.

*The opinions voiced are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.