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Who Is This For
People crossing the line or already living beyond it
Who Is This For
People crossing the line or already living beyond it
01
Someone within a few years of stopping work, on either side of it.
02
A retiree whose portfolio now has to produce income rather than grow.
03
An executive or professional whose identity has been tied to their work for decades.
04
Anyone whose retirement is funded by a business sale or a liquidity event.
These situations usually involve several account types with different tax treatment, a withdrawal sequence that has to be decided rather than defaulted into, a gap to cover before other benefits begin, and a portfolio that has to survive a horizon nobody can predict.
Retirement is not a destination
The finish line is roughly the midpoint
Retirement is not a destination
The finish line is roughly the midpoint
Traditional retirement planning treats retirement as a destination. Earn, save, grow the portfolio, arrive. Every tool in the profession is built around reaching the line.
The line is roughly the midpoint. If retirement runs thirty or forty percent of a life, arriving at it solves the smaller half of the problem. The larger half breaks in two places, one financial and one not.
The hardest problem in finance
Accumulation is solved. Decumulation is not.
The hardest problem in finance
Accumulation is solved. Decumulation is not.
Accumulation is solved. Save consistently, diversify, keep costs low, hold through the bad stretches, let time do the compounding. The profession has worked this out thoroughly and most of it can be automated.
Converting that pile into an income that lasts an unknown number of years is not solved. William Sharpe, who won the Nobel for the work behind the capital asset pricing model and spent a career measuring financial risk, called decumulation the nastiest, hardest problem in finance. That is not a rhetorical flourish. His own analysis of the withdrawal question runs to six interrelated sets of variables, none especially difficult alone and close to impossible to combine.
Three risks land at the same time:
01
Longevity
You do not know how many years the portfolio has to support.
02
Inflation
You do not know what rising scosts will do to the income along the way.
03
Sequence
You do not know what order returns will arrive in once withdrawals begin.
That third one inverts everything people learned during their working lives. Through the accumulation years the rule is familiar. The further from retirement, the more room to absorb a bad stretch, and the closer you get, the tighter the guardrails. Cross the line and the logic runs backward. The early retirement years are the exposed ones, because a portfolio that has started paying out has lost the thing that used to rescue it, which was time. A poor decade at the start does damage an identical decade later would not.
Most retirement advice is subtraction
The other half never gets planned at all
Most retirement advice is subtraction
The other half never gets planned at all
The prevailing model says a good retirement is about pulling back. Less work, fewer obligations, fewer challenges, more comfort. Wind down and play it safe. Nearly every retirement page on the internet is a version of that, and it assumes that when you retire from a job you also retire from life.
What actually happens is that work stops and takes structure, status, daily purpose, and most of a person’s social contact out the door with it, and nothing was designed to replace any of it. The portfolio performs exactly as modeled. The person does not.
AVERAGE RETIREMENT
Subtraction
Wind down. Play it safe. Remove work and obligations without intentionally replacing the structure, purpose, challenge, and connection they provide.
BADASS RETIREMENT
Addition
More of what there was never time for. Harder things rather than easier ones. A life that receives as much deliberate design as a career did.
The alternative is addition. More of what there was never time for. Harder things rather than easier ones. A life that takes as much design as a career did. A client heard me describe it that way years ago and said it sounded like one badass retirement. The name stuck and the book came out of it.
Average Retirement is subtraction. Badass Retirement is addition. One is somewhere you go to wind down. The other is somewhere you go to live.
This is not for everyone and I do not pretend otherwise. Some people genuinely want the quiet version and they should have it, the same way I am never going to like sushi or jazz no matter who tells me I should. But across three decades of this work, the mistake I have watched retirees make is almost never aiming too high. They aim far too low, experience far too little, and there are no do-overs on this one.
If you already have the money handled
The target still matters
If you already have the money handled
The target still matters
Some people arrive with the financial side largely solved. Sufficient assets, sensible allocation, no urgent problem.
The work is different then, and it is mostly a question of whether the plan is being run for the right target. Whether the withdrawal sequence is efficient rather than merely adequate. Whether the portfolio is positioned for the early years specifically. Whether the plan accounts for the life being lived or only for the balance being preserved.
Is retirement being funded by an exit?
The sequencing and structure of the sale shape everything downstream.
What gets sorted first
Start with the life the portfolio has to support
01
What the portfolio has to produce, and for how long.
Not a return target. An income figure, in today’s money, that has to arrive every month for an unknown number of decades. Almost every other decision follows from that one.
02
Which account gets drawn from, and in what order.
Retirement accounts, taxable accounts, and tax-free accounts behave very differently once withdrawals start. The sequence is a decision with real consequences, and defaulting into it is the most common way to leave money on the table quietly and permanently.
03
Where the gaps are.
Health coverage before other coverage begins. The years before benefits start. The point where a survivor’s income changes. Plans built on today’s picture break on the specific dates when the picture changes, and those dates are all knowable in advance.
04
What the retirement is actually for.
This is not a soft question appended to the financial ones. A plan built to preserve a balance and a plan built to fund a specific life produce different portfolios, different withdrawal rates, and different answers about risk. Deciding that late means rebuilding.
What gets sorted first
Start with the life the portfolio has to support
01
What the portfolio has to produce, and for how long.
Not a return target. An income figure, in today’s money, that has to arrive every month for an unknown number of decades. Almost every other decision follows from that one.
02
Which account gets drawn from, and in what order.
Retirement accounts, taxable accounts, and tax-free accounts behave very differently once withdrawals start. The sequence is a decision with real consequences, and defaulting into it is the most common way to leave money on the table quietly and permanently.
03
Where the gaps are.
Health coverage before other coverage begins. The years before benefits start. The point where a survivor’s income changes. Plans built on today’s picture break on the specific dates when the picture changes, and those dates are all knowable in advance.
04
What the retirement is actually for.
This is not a soft question appended to the financial ones. A plan built to preserve a balance and a plan built to fund a specific life produce different portfolios, different withdrawal rates, and different answers about risk. Deciding that late means rebuilding.
What gets sorted first
Start with the life the portfolio has to support
01
What the portfolio has to produce, and for how long.
Not a return target. An income figure, in today’s money, that has to arrive every month for an unknown number of decades. Almost every other decision follows from that one.
02
Which account gets drawn from, and in what order.
Retirement accounts, taxable accounts, and tax-free accounts behave very differently once withdrawals start. The sequence is a decision with real consequences, and defaulting into it is the most common way to leave money on the table quietly and permanently.
03
Where the gaps are.
Health coverage before other coverage begins. The years before benefits start. The point where a survivor’s income changes. Plans built on today’s picture break on the specific dates when the picture changes, and those dates are all knowable in advance.
04
What the retirement is actually for.
This is not a soft question appended to the financial ones. A plan built to preserve a balance and a plan built to fund a specific life produce different portfolios, different withdrawal rates, and different answers about risk. Deciding that late means rebuilding.
The Book
Badass Retirement
A retirement should be designed around more than the absence of work. Badass Retirement is available now, along with a companion workbook.
The Book
Badass Retirement
A retirement should be designed around more than the absence of work. Badass Retirement is available now, along with a companion workbook.
About Robert
Three decades at the intersection of wealth and life changing events
Robert Pagliarini is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional with a doctorate in financial and retirement planning and a master’s degree in psychology. He is a partner and senior wealth advisor at Beacon Pointe Advisors.
He has spent more than thirty years working with people after the ground moves — sudden wealth, the sale of a business, retirement, and Heavy Money from an inheritance or legal settlement. He has written six books on personal finance. The work and the books have always sat at the same intersection. An event, the money, and the life the money has to support.