Financial Advisor in Clearwater, FL

Retirement may already be a few years old.

The paychecks stopped. The withdrawals started. You have been through good markets and bad ones, paid a few years of tax bills, and learned what retirement actually costs instead of what the spreadsheet said it would cost.

Now the questions are different.

Are you still taking the right amount from the right accounts? Are you paying tax now that could have been avoided or deliberately paid at a lower rate earlier? And if one of you lives into your late nineties, is the plan built for that too?

Or retirement may still be a few years away, and you are trying to figure out when you can stop working and how a collection of accounts becomes a paycheck.

Holland Capital starts with the whole picture: income, spending, accounts, taxes and the documents that say where everything goes. Then we decide what, if anything, should change.

A Few Years In, the Plan Is Still Running

The plan you made when you retired was built on what you knew then. A few years later, you know more.

You know what you actually spend. You know whether travel, a second home, family or health care took more of the budget than expected. You have seen what happens when the market falls while you are taking money out. And the balance in each account is no longer what it was on the day you retired.

Some changes are already on the calendar. Required minimum distributions start at 73, and at 75 for people born in 1960 or later. Once they begin, part of your taxable income is decided for you each year.

Higher income can also raise your Medicare premiums, which are based on your income from two years earlier. A large withdrawal or a year with a big capital gain can show up two years later on your Medicare bill.

None of that automatically means the original plan was wrong. It means the plan needs to keep up with your life.

We check whether the withdrawal amount still fits, whether the accounts are being drawn in a sensible order, and whether the years before required distributions leave room for Roth conversions or planned gains.

Then we set the plan up to be reviewed every year, not rebuilt every year. Our retirement withdrawal strategy guide explains how the order of withdrawals works, and retirement planning covers the rest.

Does Everything You Own Match What Your Documents Say?

The wills and the trust were signed years ago, maybe in another state. They sit in a folder.

Meanwhile, life kept moving.

An IRA was rolled over. An old account was closed. A new account was opened somewhere else. A house was bought or sold. A child married or divorced. Maybe grandchildren arrived. Beneficiary forms were filled out at different times, sometimes decades apart.

The estate plan on paper and the estate plan built into your accounts can slowly become two different things.

The beneficiary form on an IRA, a 401(k) or an annuity usually decides who receives that money, whatever the will says. An account left in your own name with no beneficiary may have to go through probate even though you have a trust.

So we build the list your attorney and your family will actually need. Every account and property, how it is owned, who is named on it, and where it goes. Then we compare that list with what your documents intend and flag where they disagree.

That exercise can uncover something as simple as an old beneficiary form. It can also raise a bigger question about which assets should eventually go to which people.

Many adult children who inherit an IRA must empty it within ten years, so a large traditional IRA left to a working child can arrive with a large tax bill. A Roth account or taxable investments may suit that child better. A charity pays no income tax on an IRA it inherits.

Your attorney drafts and changes the documents. We make sure the accounts line up with them. Our guide to estate distribution planning goes further, and larger estates are covered in estate and wealth transfer planning.

If You Own a Dental Practice

The practice may be the largest thing you own. It pays your salary, sponsors your retirement plan and carries the equipment loan.

At some point, it also has to become something else: an asset you sell, a practice you hand to someone else, or a business you gradually stop depending on.

You might sell to a group, bring in an associate who buys in over time, or scale back slowly. Each path produces a different amount of money on a different schedule.

Before choosing one, it helps to know how much you need to save outside the practice so retirement does not depend on a single buyer or a single price.

We look at the practice and the household together. Our page on financial planning for dentists covers the decisions in more detail.

Where Investment Management Fits

Once the income plan is set, the portfolio has a job.

The money you may need soon should not depend on what the stock market does next quarter. Money you will not need for a decade or more has more time to recover from a bad market. Money meant for children or charity may have a time frame that is different from yours.

The same investment can produce a different after-tax result depending on which account holds it.

So we start with what you already have rather than pretending every account arrived empty. Some positions may have large gains. Others may still fit the job they were bought to do. We do not sell something merely because we would have chosen something different if we were starting today.

From there, investment management carries the plan out, year after year.

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.

The first meeting is a conversation about where things stand. If you have your estate documents and recent statements, they help. If you do not, we start without them.

You do not need to arrive knowing what the problem is. Sometimes the first job is figuring that out.

Afterward, we tell you what we see and which questions need an answer first.

Your CPA and attorney keep their roles. We work alongside them so the tax return, the documents and the accounts all point the same way.

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 Florida office is in Winter Park. If you are looking for a financial advisor in Clearwater, we can work together without your adviser being down the street. Most meetings are by video or phone. When it makes sense to sit down together, we can meet by appointment at the Regus center at 29399 US Highway 19 North in Clearwater. Holland Capital does not maintain a branch office in Clearwater.

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

Photo: Andrew Heneen / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0, cropped.