Five to ten years out, the spreadsheet stops working. The plan has to account for parents, kids, taxes, and what "enough" actually means.
No cost. No pressure. No obligation.
Most of the pre-retirees I talk to think the decisions start at retirement. They start five years before — and most of them are one-way doors. That's the gap this page is for.
— Jake Song
The decisions stack: Roth conversions, Social Security timing, healthcare bridge years, parents who'll need support, kids who haven't fully launched.
Each compounds with the others. Almost none of them are reversible. And most plans treat them as separate problems.
Pre-retirement
Where the plan gets built.
The bridge years
Income + healthcare to 65.
Roth window
The cheap-tax years.
Each of these gets its own thread in the planning. None of them get solved in isolation.
The number on the spreadsheet is half the answer. The other half is sequence risk — what happens if your first three retired years are bad market years. For families still supporting parents or launching kids, those obligations don't pause when you stop earning.
Worth knowing: retiring one year too late costs a year of life you can't get back. Retiring one year too early can cost a decade of compounding. Neither error is recoverable.
Tradeoff: more runway buys flexibility. More time off buys time itself.
Between retiring and Medicare at 65. Between retiring and Social Security at 67 or 70. The income side and the healthcare side both need a plan.
Worth knowing: ACA subsidies are based on the year's income, not last year's. The same low-income window that makes subsidies cheap also makes Roth conversions cheap. They compete for the same dollars.
Tradeoff: convert aggressively now and pay full marketplace cost. Or take the subsidy and convert later at a higher bracket.
The years between retirement and RMDs at 73 are the cheapest taxes you'll ever pay. Or the most expensive ones you'll miss.
Worth knowing: converting too aggressively overshoots your bracket. Not converting at all means RMDs at 73 push you into a higher bracket for the rest of your life — and Medicare premiums rise with income.
Tradeoff: taxes now at a known rate vs. taxes later at an unknown rate.
The monthly support, the eventual care, the foreign property no one's discussed — these are planning constraints, not discretionary line items. Most plans treat them as either.
Worth knowing: the conversation many first- and second-generation immigrant families inherit is about money flowing both directions at once — to parents, to kids, and back into your own retirement. The plan has to hold all three.
Tradeoff: support more now vs. preserve your own runway. The honest answer is usually "a little of both, modeled explicitly."
Beneficiary forms that contradict the will. Trusts written for a tax law that no longer exists. Foreign property nobody knew about until the inheritance came up. These are the cracks every estate plan has, and almost no one finds them in time.
Worth knowing: the goal isn't a perfect plan. It's one that doesn't create a family fight in the year after you're gone. That bar is lower than people think, and most plans don't clear it.
Tradeoff: control now (revocable structures, gifting strategies, conversations you've been avoiding) vs. flexibility later.
The conversation matters more than the spreadsheet.
— Jake
We won't look at your accounts. I won't ask for numbers. We'll talk about your situation — what's coming, what's keeping you up, who's in the picture. If it's a fit, we'll talk again. If not, you'll still leave with clarity.
Schedule a 30-minute callNo cost. No pressure. No obligation.
Not a pitch. Not a product conversation.
Someone five years out. Two kids, one still in college. Parents in another state who'll need more support next year than this year. No idea if retiring at 62 is realistic or aspirational.
By minute ten we're talking about parents, not portfolios. By minute twenty they've named the conversation they've been avoiding with their spouse. By minute thirty they have a shorter list of decisions — and a clearer sense of which two matter most this year.
What they don't have at the end of the call: a sales pitch, a follow-up sequence, or any expectation that we're working together. That part comes later, if it comes at all.
No paperwork. We talk about your situation, the family picture, what's keeping you up.
Still no documents. I walk you through how I'd approach your specific situation.
Now we look at documents — together. The written plan. Implementation. Quarterly check-ins.
Financial Advisor, McCune Whiteley
Austin-based. Korean immigrant, Queens-raised. Five years U.S. Air Force. Six years at MWWM. Series 7, 65, 66 · Life & Health · CFP® Candidate.
More about how I workFort Worth, founded 2009 by Cory McCune and Bret Whiteley. 300+ households through every market cycle since. I'm part of their team.
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Advisory cap.
If they cover the family-context work — parents, kids, foreign property, the Roth conversion math, the bridge years — probably not worth a switch. If they mostly manage investments, worth a conversation. The work is different.
Sooner is better, mostly because the Roth conversion window opens the day you retire. Five years out is plenty of runway. Two years out is tight. One year out is mostly about damage control.
That's sequence-of-returns risk — the single thing most pre-retiree plans handle poorly. The answer isn't to time the market (you can't). It's structural: a cash buffer for the first two to three years, a glide-path on equity allocation, and a draw-down sequence that pulls from the right accounts in down years. We'd walk through how your current setup actually handles it.
No. Numbers come later — after we've decided to work together. The first conversation is about your situation, not your accounts.
I'm typically paid 0.75–1.5% of assets I manage annually — lower end for larger and simpler engagements, higher for smaller and more complex ones. There's also a flat-fee planning option for clients who'd rather not work on an AUM model. We'd walk through every form of compensation before you engage.
The next step is a conversation, not a commitment. Thirty minutes. No statements. No pitch. If I'm not the right person, I'll tell you and point you somewhere better.
Austin, TX · Remote welcome