Income Planning
We turn TSP, 401(k), and IRA savings into income designed to last as long as you do — coordinated with Social Security, your pension, and VA disability.
For thirty years, money arrived on a schedule. You knew the date. You knew the amount. You built a life around it.
Then you retire, and that stops. What you get instead is a balance and a withdrawal form.
Nobody tells you how much you can take. Nobody tells you what happens if the market drops in your first three years. Nobody tells you what happens if you live to 95.
The standard answer is the 4% rule — withdraw 4% the first year, raise it with inflation, and you’ll probably be fine for thirty years.
Read that word again. Probably.
The 4% rule was never a guarantee. It was a historical success rate measured across past thirty-year windows, and the original research assumed you paid no advisory fee at all. Some of those windows failed.
And it leaves you carrying three risks personally:
Sequence risk. If your first few retirement years are a bear market, you’re selling shares into a decline to buy groceries. The portfolio may never recover, even if the market does.
Longevity risk. The plan works for thirty years. Nobody knows if you need thirty-two.
Fee drag. A 1% advisory fee on a $500,000 account is $5,000 a year — a quarter of a 4% withdrawal, gone before you see a dollar of it.
There is a different way to build the first layer of retirement income. It isn’t better for everyone. For a lot of people it’s better than what they’re being handed.
Social Security’s retirement trust fund is projected to run short in the fourth quarter of 2032. At that point, incoming payroll taxes cover 78% of scheduled benefits.
That’s a 22% cut, across the board, unless Congress acts.
Could they act? They have before. But you don’t build a retirement on the hope that Congress moves. You build one that works if they don’t, and gets better if they do.
Take a household drawing $48,000 a year in Social Security alongside $30,000 from savings.
| Social Security today | $48,000 |
| After a 22% cut | $37,440 |
| Lost every year | $10,560 |
| Lost every month | $880 |
| Over a 25-year retirement | $264,000 |
Note what that is and isn’t. It’s a 22% cut to Social Security — which for this household is about 13.5% of total income. Anyone telling you a 22% Social Security cut means losing 22% of everything is inflating the number, and the real one is bad enough.
$880 a month. Permanently. Beginning in a year you can already see from here.
The cut is one force. Inflation is the other, and it treats each piece of your retirement income differently.
| Income source | Does it keep up with inflation? |
|---|---|
| Social Security | Full COLA — then cut 22% in 2032 |
| CSRS pension | Full COLA |
| FERS pension | Diet COLA — CPI minus 1% when inflation runs above 3%, and no COLA at all before 62 |
| VA disability | Full COLA, and tax-free |
| Level annuity income | No adjustment. Loses ground every year. |
| Portfolio withdrawals | Can be raised — if the portfolio survives long enough to raise them |
Two rows there deserve a second look.
A FERS retiree loses ground on purpose. At 3.5% inflation and a 2.5% COLA, a FERS annuity keeps about 82% of its purchasing power after twenty years. Not from a market crash — from the formula working exactly as written.
And level annuity income doesn’t adjust at all. We say that plainly because it’s the honest cost of the guarantee, and because it drives how we build the plan: guaranteed income covers the expenses that don’t move, and money that can grow is what answers inflation.
It would be easy to read all of this as an argument against guarantees. It’s the opposite.
The 2032 cut lands on the layer you have no control over. You can’t negotiate with the trust fund. You can’t diversify away from Congress. Whatever Social Security pays you in 2033, that’s what it pays you.
Which is exactly why the layer you can control has to be built deliberately — sized to your real expenses, sized against a 22% reduction rather than today’s statement, and built knowing which pieces adjust for inflation and which don’t.
Most plans we review were built assuming Social Security pays what the statement says. That assumption has an expiration date on it, and it’s printed in a federal report.
The right time to plan for a 2032 gap is not 2032.
A Roth conversion answers one question: how do I owe less tax later?
An income plan answers a different one: how do I know the money doesn’t run out?
Both are good questions. They are not the same question, and the second one usually has to be answered first — because a conversion strategy built on top of an income plan that doesn’t work is a well-optimized way to run out of money in a lower tax bracket.
We’ll tell you which one you are. Sometimes that means telling you that you don’t need the thing you called about.
Most people are some of both. The order matters more than the label, and the order is what we work out in the first conversation.
The whole method, start to finish.
What do your fixed expenses actually cost? Housing, insurance, utilities, food, medical — the bills that arrive whether the market is up or down. This is a real number, not an estimate, and most people have never written it down.
Social Security. A pension, if you have one — including the FERS or CSRS annuity and the FERS Supplement. VA disability, which is tax-free and doesn’t count toward the provisional income that makes Social Security taxable. These are pensions. They already exist. We count them first.
Floor minus guaranteed income. That difference is the entire problem, and it’s usually much smaller than people fear — which is the first genuinely good news in the process.
We use a portion of your qualified savings to create guaranteed lifetime income covering that gap. Not all of it. The rest stays invested for growth, because guaranteed income is generally level and level income loses ground to inflation.
That’s the whole strategy, and it’s why we don’t put everything in one place: the guarantee covers the floor, and the growth money fights inflation. Neither one has to do the other’s job.
What we use, and what it costs.
The guaranteed income layer is typically built with an annuity contract carrying a lifetime income benefit. Here’s what that means in plain English, including the parts that cost you something.
What it does
What it costs
If someone shows you the guarantee without walking you through this list, you’re not receiving advice. You’re receiving a pitch.
If your money is in the TSP
Moving TSP money to an IRA opens up every strategy on this page. It also closes some doors, and one in particular gets missed constantly.
If you separate from federal service in or after the year you turn 55, you can take money from the TSP with no 10% early-withdrawal penalty. (Age 50, or 25 years of service, for law enforcement, firefighters, air traffic controllers, and CBP.)
That exception does not follow the money into an IRA. Roll out at 56 and you’re back to waiting until 59½.
You also give up the G Fund, which has no private-sector equivalent, and TSP’s institutional expense ratios.
Sometimes the right answer is to leave the money where it is, or to move only part of it. That’s a real conversation, and we have it before anything moves.
One more thing that gets people: if the TSP cuts you a check instead of sending it directly to your IRA custodian, they’re required to withhold 20%. To complete the rollover you have to replace that money out of pocket and wait until you file to get it back. Direct rollover, every time.
We’ll tell you which one you are.
This is likely a fit if
This is probably not a fit if
We’ll tell you which one you are. That’s what the first conversation is for.
Twenty minutes, your actual numbers, and a straight answer — including “you don’t need this” if that’s the answer.
Built for what’s next — starting with your next 30 years.
Disclosures
Smart Life Financial LLC is an independent insurance agency. Scott Borhauer, NPN 20016169.
Smart Life Financial is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or authorized by the United States Government, the Office of Personnel Management, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, or the Thrift Savings Plan.
Annuities are insurance contracts. Guarantees are subject to the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company. They are not bank deposits, not FDIC insured, not insured by any federal government agency, and may lose value in the case of early surrender. Product features, rider fees, surrender schedules, and income amounts vary by carrier, product, state, age, and issue date, and are subject to change. No specific product is recommended on this page.
This material is for informational purposes and does not constitute tax, legal, or investment advice. Rollovers, Roth conversions, and required minimum distributions carry tax consequences. Consult a qualified tax professional and attorney regarding your specific situation.
Smart Life Financial LLC · 8530 Eagle Point Blvd, Suite 100, Lake Elmo, MN 55042 · (952) 592-3900