Most people have accumulation figured out. The hard part is the decades after the paychecks stop, when the decisions get more consequential and far less forgiving. The ARBOR Method™ is how we think through every one of them, together.
ARBOR is the order we think in. Every plan we write touches all five pillars, because in retirement they are not separable — a tax decision is a healthcare decision is a withdrawal decision. Firms that sell these as five services solve them one at a time, and the seams are where retirements get expensive.
Below is what sits inside each pillar, and then the part most people find most useful: how they pull on one another.
A paycheck for the years after your paycheck.
We model Social Security timing, pension elections, portfolio withdrawals and sequence-of-returns risk to produce an income strategy that flexes with your life — not a fixed withdrawal rate and a prayer.
Calibrated to your goals, not to a benchmark.
Asset allocation, rebalancing and tax-aware trading. Low-cost. Diversified. We manage the emotions as much as the money — because the largest risk to a retirement portfolio is usually a decision made in a bad week.
Tax strategy that sees the whole board.
Roth conversions, RMD timing, asset location, IRMAA thresholds, charitable giving, capital gains harvesting. Small decisions now, large differences later — coordinated with your CPA rather than around them.
What you will actually pay, and when, and why.
Medicare Parts A, B and D. Supplement versus Advantage. Gap coverage before 65, and long-term care planning for the years when it stops being hypothetical. Healthcare is the line item most retirement plans underestimate.
What outlasts you, and who it reaches.
Beneficiary design, trust coordination and generational transfer strategies. We work alongside your estate attorney to make sure the paperwork matches the plan — and that both match your intentions.
Pick the thing that is actually on your mind. Nothing in these chains is exotic — each one is the ordinary consequence of a single decision, and together they are the reason we will not answer a tax question without looking at the other four pillars first.
Illustrative only. These chains describe general rules — the two-year lookback on modified adjusted gross income that sets Medicare premiums, delayed retirement credits for claiming Social Security later, the different tax treatment of withdrawals by account type, premium credits calculated on MAGI, the ten-year window most non-spouse heirs have to empty an inherited IRA, and the step-up in basis that applies to taxable securities at death but not to IRAs. Rules change, none of this is a projection or a recommendation, and whether any of it applies to you depends entirely on your own circumstances. Nothing here is individual tax, legal, or investment advice.
Income, investment, tax, healthcare, legacy. Every plan touches all five, whether or not all five are urgent today.
Connect, Assess, Review, Engage. ARBOR is what we look at; C.A.R.E. is the order we look in, and the part that keeps going after the plan is written.
See the C.A.R.E process →For more information about the ARBOR Method™, or any of our financial services, schedule a call today. Investment Advisory Services offered through Authentikos Advisory, LLC, a Registered Investment Advisor.
