Financial Advisor in Orlando, FL

Most of what you have saved may be sitting inside an employer’s plan.

There is the 401(k) or 403(b) you have funded from every paycheck. Maybe a pension you earned but rarely think about. Maybe another account you signed up for years ago and have not looked at since.

Then there is everything outside those plans: the house, a brokerage account, cash, college savings, and a paycheck that still has to cover today’s life while you save for the one ahead.

You may have fifteen years left to work and wonder whether you are saving in the right places. Or you may have just received an offer that could end your career sooner than you expected.

Those are different moments, but the work starts in the same place. We look at the benefits you have, the rest of what you own, and what you want the money to do. Then we build the investment plan to fit.

Your Benefits Are Part of the Plan

Workplace plans are easy to put on autopilot. The contribution rate you chose years ago may still be running. The fund you picked on your first day may still be the fund.

Meanwhile, your life changed.

Your income went up. Maybe you bought a house or had children. College became a real expense instead of a distant idea. Retirement stopped looking like something that happens to other people.

Now the questions are different. Should new contributions go to the Roth side of the plan or the traditional side? Are you contributing enough to receive the full employer match? How much of your account is tied to your employer’s stock?

Then comes the question that a retirement account statement cannot answer: how much should go into the plan and how much should stay accessible outside it?

That decision connects to college savings, the mortgage, taxes and the age when you would like work to become optional. It also affects what you would live on if you stop working before Social Security begins.

We work through those decisions together. Our guide to employer and government retirement plans goes deeper into how specific plans work. The broader approach is in retirement planning.

When the Company Puts an Offer in Front of You

For years, retirement may have been something you controlled. You chose how much to save and assumed you would decide when to leave.

Then a packet arrives.

It may describe an early retirement offer. Or you may have reached the point when a pension election has to be made. There is a form in front of you and a date on it.

The first question is not which box to check. It is whether you can afford to say yes.

That depends on what the offer pays, what you spend, how long your savings would need to carry you before Social Security, and how you would cover health insurance until Medicare at 65.

Then the pension has to fit into the same picture. You may be choosing between a monthly payment and a lump sum. The monthly option may pay for your life only or continue at a lower amount for your spouse. The survivor choice usually cannot be changed once payments begin.

Company stock can create another decision. How you take it out of the savings plan can change the tax you pay on it, so rolling everything into an IRA is not always the best first move. Our guide to net unrealized appreciation explains how that works.

We lay the choices next to each other before the deadline. The goal is to see what each choice means for the years immediately after work, the taxes along the way, and the income you expect later.

If you work at Lockheed Martin, our pages on Lockheed Martin retirement planning and the Lockheed Martin pension choice cover the plan details.

If You Work for a Hospital System

You may have spent years at AdventHealth, Orlando Health or another hospital system. There is a 403(b) with steady contributions. As your pay rose, you may also have been offered a 457(b), and you may carry a pension from earlier in your career.

Those accounts can sit next to each other on a statement and look like variations of the same thing. They are not.

A 403(b) works much like a 401(k). A 457(b) at a nonprofit employer is different. The money generally cannot be rolled into an IRA when you leave, and when it is paid out is set by the plan and the elections you made. Until it is paid, the money legally remains the employer’s. The IRS explains how 457(b) plans at tax-exempt employers work.

That can affect which account provides income first after you leave work. We map when each plan pays, how much, and what it does to your taxes. Our guides to Orlando Health retirement planning and AdventHealth retirement planning go further.

How the Portfolio Follows

Once we know when you will need the money, the investments have a job to do.

Money you expect to spend in the first years after work stops should not be taking the same risks as money you may not touch for fifteen years.

Pre-tax plans like a 401(k) or 403(b), Roth money and ordinary brokerage accounts follow different tax rules, so the same investment does not necessarily belong everywhere.

There is also the risk you already carry through your career. If your paycheck and part of your savings depend on one employer, we account for that when we look at the rest of the portfolio.

We start with what you already own. A portfolio does not need to look new to be right. If an investment still belongs in the plan, we do not sell it just to replace it with something we picked ourselves.

The plan starts the work. Our investment management finishes it.

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.

We begin with what is actually in front of you.

Maybe nothing is urgent. You simply want to know whether the pieces you have accumulated are pointing toward the same retirement.

Maybe there is a decision sitting on your desk with a date attached to it.

If you have a benefits summary or an offer letter, it helps to have it with you. We can spend less time reconstructing what you have and more time deciding what it means.

From there, we tell you what we see and which decisions come first. Your CPA and attorney keep their roles. We coordinate with them when the plan reaches your taxes or your estate documents.

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, just north of Orlando. Most of our work with clients happens by video or phone, which makes it easier to keep planning moving without unnecessary meetings. When an in-person meeting makes sense, we can meet by appointment at our Winter Park office at 941 West Morse Boulevard, Suite 100.

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: Michael Rivera / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped.