As a fiduciary financial advisor in Oviedo, Holland Capital helps you plan retirement, college costs, taxes and investments together while you are still earning. With our Florida office in nearby Winter Park, we build the plan first and invest to fit it.
These may be the busiest financial years you will have.
The income is good. So is the list of things it has to cover: the mortgage, the children, the cars, the activities, the college fund, the retirement accounts. And if both of you work, much of the financial life of the household still arrives separately, through two paychecks and two sets of benefits.
You make good decisions as they come. The real question is whether those decisions add up to the household you want fifteen years from now.
Retirement may be ten or fifteen years away. That distance makes it easy to put off. It also means the choices you make now have the longest time to work.
Holland Capital looks at the whole household first: what you earn, what you save, what you owe, and what you want to be true in fifteen years. Then we build the investments to fit.
Are You Saving in the Right Places?
You may already save a good share of what you earn. The harder question is where the next dollar goes.
Once both employer matches are covered, that dollar could go to one of the workplace plans, a Roth account, a 529 plan, a brokerage account or an extra mortgage payment. The answer depends on what the household already has and what you want the money to do.
Pre-tax contributions lower this year’s taxes, which is worth more in your highest-earning years. Roth money costs more today and can come out tax-free later. A brokerage account has no age rules at all, which helps if you want to stop working before 59½.
The college years sit in the middle of all this. While tuition is being paid, retirement saving may slow down. When the last bill is paid, a large part of your income is suddenly free. Those final years before retirement can be your strongest saving years, if the plan is ready for them.
We decide how much goes where, and in what order, so the next fifteen years add up to one retirement. Our retirement planning starts from that order.
Two Careers, Two Sets of Benefits
If you both work, you probably enrolled in your benefits separately because that is how your employers presented them. You each have a benefits package, and you each fill out the forms on your own.
One of you has a 401(k) with a generous match. The other has a plan with higher costs and fewer choices, or a pension, or no plan at all. One of you chose the Roth option years ago and the other never looked at it. Open enrollment happens twice, weeks apart, and each of you decides alone.
No one has put the two side by side.
When we do, the questions change. Once both matches are captured, which plan should get the next dollar? Should one of you save to the Roth side while the other keeps saving pre-tax? Whose health plan covers the family better? If one of you plans to stop working first, whose savings pay the bills until the other retires?
Social Security eventually joins the same plan, because when each of you claims affects what the household receives.
We build one plan for two careers. Our guide to retirement income planning for couples goes into how the pieces fit.
Investing the Household, Not Just the Accounts
Your money may be spread across two employers’ plans, a brokerage account and a 529. Each was probably invested on its own, often in whatever fund was the default.
Added together, the mix can look very different from what either of you would choose on purpose. Two target-date funds and a brokerage account can add up to much more stock, or much less, than the plan needs.
College is part of the same household plan. The dates when tuition may be due sit alongside the dates when you want work to become optional.
Those needs go into one investment policy statement for the household: what the money has to fund and when, how much risk the plan can carry, and how each account is taxed. We start with what you already own and decide which account holds what. Our guide to asset location explains that last step, and our investment management keeps it in place as markets and your jobs change.
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 start the first conversation with priorities. Stop working at 58? Help with graduate school? Buy a place in the mountains someday? The numbers come after.
It helps to bring both benefit summaries and your latest statements. You will hear what we see in the two sets of benefits and what we would change first. Your CPA and attorney stay involved wherever the plan reaches your tax return 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 offices are in Charlotte, North Carolina and Winter Park, Florida. We work with clients in Oviedo primarily by video or phone. When an in-person meeting makes sense, we 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.
RETIREMENT ENGINEERING™
The Order Matters
Five retirement decisions and why timing matters.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should We Save for College or for Retirement First?
A plan can do both, in a set order. College can be paid for with savings, current income, scholarships or loans. Retirement has no loan program.
One workable order is to capture every employer match first, then fund college savings to a target you have chosen on purpose, then add more to retirement. A 529 plan grows free of federal tax when the money is used for qualified education costs. The right split depends on your ages, your children’s ages and how much of college you intend to cover.
Do We Need a Financial Plan If We Already Max Out Our 401(k)s?
Saving the maximum answers one question: how much goes into those two accounts. It does not tell you whether that is the right place for the next dollar, whether the investments inside them fit together, or when you can afford to stop.
A plan connects the savings to a date and a spending level. The missing piece may not be the amount you save. It may be knowing what those savings will support.
What Happens to Our Health Insurance If One of Us Retires Before 65?
Medicare starts at 65, so an early retirement needs a bridge. The usual options are joining the working spouse’s employer plan, continuing your own coverage through COBRA for a limited time, or buying a plan on the insurance marketplace.
Marketplace premiums, and any help with them, depend on your household income. How you draw on savings in those years can change what you pay, so the health insurance and the withdrawal plan are set together.
What Does a Fiduciary Owe Us While We Are Still Saving?
Holland Capital acts as a fiduciary when providing financial planning and investment advice. While you are working, much of that advice is about where the next dollar goes: a 401(k), a Roth account, a 529 or the mortgage.
Several of those choices never touch an account we manage, and that does not change the advice. When a recommendation would add to what we are paid, such as moving an old 401(k) to us, we say so before you decide.
Do We Need a Fiduciary Financial Advisor With an Office in Oviedo?
No. Two working schedules are easier to fit around a video call than a drive, which is why most of our meetings happen that way.
When you would rather sit down together, we can meet by appointment at our Winter Park office at 941 West Morse Boulevard, the nearest Holland Capital office to Oviedo.
Photo: Connor Williams / Wikimedia Commons / Attribution, cropped.
