As a fiduciary financial advisor in Cape Coral, Holland Capital helps you plan retirement income, taxes and investments, and decide what to do with the cash from selling your last home. We work out what retirement here costs first, then invest to fit.
You may have retired a year or two ago. Or the date may already be on the calendar.
The questions are practical ones. How much can we spend each month? Which account should the money come from? When should Social Security start? And if the move left cash from the old house sitting at the bank, how much of it do we actually need to keep there?
We start with what retirement here costs. Then we work out what your income has to cover, what should stay available and what the rest of the savings need to do.
You Sold the House Up North. What Does Retirement Cost Here?
You sold the house in Ohio, or New Jersey, or Illinois. You bought in Cape Coral, maybe newer, maybe on a canal. The closing is done, the boxes are mostly unpacked, and there is a chunk of money left over, sitting in a savings account or a money market fund.
You meant to decide what to do with it. First you wanted to see what life here really costs.
That was a reasonable instinct. A new house in a new state brings bills you could not fully price from a distance. The property tax on a home you just bought is reassessed at market value after the sale, so it can be far higher than the last owner’s bill. Then come homeowners and flood insurance, a pool, a seawall, association dues if you have them. Florida has no state income tax, which helps. The other costs may not match what you pictured.
So the cash waits while you learn what the new life actually costs.
We start with a year of real spending, or our best estimate of it, and build the income plan from there. That tells us how much cash you need to keep available and what the rest of the money needs to do. Only then do we decide how it should be invested.
It also answers the question you may have been carrying since the move: did the numbers work? Our guide to retirement income planning goes further into building the income side.
Making the Savings Last
Social Security, and perhaps a pension, pay part of the bills. The rest comes from what you saved: an IRA, an old 401(k), a brokerage account, the bank.
How you draw on those accounts decides how long they last and how much tax you pay along the way. Taking everything from the IRA can make more of your Social Security taxable. Spending the brokerage account first can leave the IRA to grow into large required distributions later. A mix, adjusted each year, can do better than either.
We set a spending level you can sustain, decide the order of withdrawals, and check it every year against what the markets did. Our guide to retirement withdrawal strategy explains how that order is set. It sits at the center of our retirement planning work.
Investing Once the Spending Is Known
Once the spending and the reserve are set, the plan goes into a written investment policy statement: what the savings have to fund, how much risk they can carry, and how each account is taxed.
The portfolio is managed to that policy, for the best return after tax that the plan’s risk allows. Accounts you brought from your old job and your old bank can be combined or left where they are, depending on cost and convenience.
A home sale can leave you holding more cash at once than you ever have. We do not start by asking how quickly to invest it. We start by deciding what part of it your retirement plan actually needs to invest.
From there, we work from what you already own and change what the plan requires. Our investment management follows that policy from there.
Working with Holland Capital
Holland Capital Management is an independent registered investment adviser and a fiduciary. M. Chad Holland, CFA, CFP® works directly with clients and is responsible for the planning and advice.
Bring a recent statement from each account, your Social Security estimates and, if you can, a list of what you spent last year. If you do not have that last one, we will build it with you.
We will show you what the numbers say and what we would do first. If your will or trust was written in another state, we will list the questions to take to a Florida attorney, and we work alongside your CPA at tax time.
The first conversation is free. If there is work worth doing after that, we will define the scope and cost before you decide whether to move forward.
Our offices are in Charlotte, North Carolina and Winter Park, Florida. We work with clients in Cape Coral primarily by video or phone. When an in-person meeting makes sense, we meet by appointment at the HQ business center at 13379 McGregor Boulevard in Fort Myers, across the river from Cape Coral.
For clients whose investments we manage, accounts are held directly at Charles Schwab in the client’s own name. Holland Capital manages the investments but does not take custody of client assets. If a client ever needs in-person assistance from Schwab, the closest branch is in Fort Myers at 12580 University Drive.
We work with clients throughout Florida. You can see the other Florida communities we serve here.
Our what we do page explains how a planning engagement works.
RETIREMENT ENGINEERING™
The Order Matters
Five retirement decisions and why timing matters.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where Should the Money From Our House Sale Sit While We Decide?
Somewhere safe, easy to reach, and within insurance limits. The FDIC insures bank deposits up to $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each ownership category. A joint account and two individual accounts are separate categories, so a couple can have more than $250,000 covered at one bank if it is titled correctly.
Treasury bills and money market funds are other common places for short-term cash. They are not bank deposits and are not FDIC insured. The FDIC explains how deposit insurance works.
Do We Owe Tax on the Gain From Selling Our Old House?
Often not, or not much. If you owned and lived in the house for at least two of the five years before the sale, you can generally exclude up to $250,000 of gain, or $500,000 for a married couple filing jointly.
Gain above that is taxed federally. Your old state may also tax it, even though you now live in Florida, because the gain came from property located there.
When Should We Apply for the Florida Homestead Exemption?
You qualify if you own the home and live in it as your permanent residence on January 1. The application goes to the Lee County Property Appraiser, and the deadline is March 1 of that year.
The exemption reduces the taxable value of your home by up to $50,000, and part of that amount now rises each year with inflation. Once it is in place, the Save Our Homes rule limits how much the assessed value can rise each year, starting the following year. The Florida Department of Revenue explains the homestead exemption.
What Should a Fiduciary Tell Us About Investing the House Money?
Holland Capital acts as a fiduciary when providing financial planning and investment advice. With cash from a home sale, that means starting with what the money needs to cover, including a reserve you may never want invested.
Investing more of the cash with us would increase what we are paid. We tell you that before you decide how much goes in, and when.
Do We Need a Fiduciary Financial Advisor in Cape Coral Itself?
No. Most of the work, from building the spending plan to reviewing accounts, happens by video or phone.
When a meeting in person makes sense, we can meet by appointment at the HQ business center at 13379 McGregor Boulevard in Fort Myers, across the river.
Photo: David Wilson / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0, cropped.
