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Retirement Planning
You’ve been saving for retirement for decades and have worked hard to get here. That’s why we make your retirement our priority.
We provide retirement services that include advice about matters like estate planning, family legacy planning, Social Security, and income tax planning to help you maintain your lifestyle after retirement.
Our planning also addresses two of the biggest concerns retirees face: making assets last through a longer life and navigating the challenges of market downturns.
We follow a disciplined, rules-based approach that’s designed to manage risk and help keep your retirement plan on track.
Investment Planning
We believe the best portfolio is one you can stay invested in with confidence. That means balancing growth opportunities with strategies that help reduce risk, especially during market downturns.
Our approach is disciplined and rules-based, designed to limit exposure to large drawdowns while keeping clients invested in strong, long-term trends.
We build portfolios with carefully selected ETFs screened for quality, liquidity, and competitive expense ratios. When appropriate - individual stocks.
Our investment planning is guided by a disciplined, rules-based process called CoreGuard™. CoreGuard™ is designed to help clients participate in market growth while paying close attention to risk as conditions change, with the goal of managing downside exposure during more challenging markets.
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Tax Planning & Distribution Strategies in Crystal Lake
Taxes may affect your retirement income, and differently than you might expect. Tax planning for retirement means looking at your finances, current and future, under a new light.
For most of your working years, you’ve been earning and saving. When you retire, that likely transitions to spending, where the tax implications can be completely different.
Some critical considerations include: How taxes on Required Minimum Distributions could affect your cash flow. How the timing of your Social Security benefits could increase your taxes. How taxes affect your Medicare benefits. How the IRS taxes your various types of income.
Unexpected post-retirement taxes can catch you off guard with costly fees that cut into your retirement savings. That’s currently a real risk, and one you may avoid with effective tax planning for retirement. Don’t wait until you’re retired to plan ahead.
Estate Planning
Planning for retirement can be a joy. Imagine what you can do now that you have the time - the places you’ll go, the people you’ll see.
You worked hard for your savings; now let’s make sure those savings work for your family. Retirement planning is a serious business, but it’s a personal one, too. At Piershale Wealth Management, we’re here to help you with what you’ve built, so you can spend less time worrying about your accounts and more time with the people you love..
You should have a proper estate plan in place to help provide for your family and ensure that your wishes will be carried out. Then you can relax and enjoy your retirement.
We can help you with estate planning for retirement as part of our comprehensive approach to retirement planning.
After all, our goal is to offer you financial peace of mind, and that includes peace of mind regarding your legacy.
CoreGuard™: A Disciplined Investment Process
CoreGuard™ is a high-quality portfolio of ETFs. It follows a disciplined, rules-based investment process designed for retirees and those nearing retirement. It is built to participate in market growth when conditions are favorable while maintaining a structured approach to managing risk as conditions change.
The process uses low-cost ETFs and ongoing trend monitoring to help keep portfolios aligned with areas of the market showing sustained strength. When markets are healthy, CoreGuard™ stays invested and follows those trends. When conditions begin to deteriorate, the process shifts toward a more defensive posture, with the goal of managing risk during prolonged market declines.
How CoreGuard™ Manages Risk
CoreGuard™ is built around a simple idea: market trends tend to persist - until they don’t. By continuously monitoring market trends and leadership, the process seeks to stay aligned with stronger areas of the market while avoiding prolonged exposure to areas that are weakening.
As trends begin to lose strength, CoreGuard™ follows a defined, rules-based approach to adjusting portfolio exposure. These adjustments are designed to occur gradually and deliberately, rather than reacting to short-term market noise or emotional headlines.
Why Avoiding Large Losses Matters
Large market losses require disproportionately large gains just to recover. For example, a portfolio that declines by 30% must gain more than 40% simply to return to its prior value. Losses of this magnitude can be especially challenging later in life, when time and flexibility are more limited.
CoreGuard™ is designed to help limit prolonged drawdowns by responding as market trends begin to weaken. While no investment approach can eliminate losses entirely, managing downside risk may help preserve capital, support long-term compounding, and contribute to more stable retirement outcomes over time.
A Disciplined Process - Not a Prediction
CoreGuard™ does not attempt to predict market tops or bottoms, nor does it rely on forecasts or headlines. It follows a structured process that responds to how markets are actually behaving over time.
The objective is not to avoid every decline, but to apply discipline and consistency through both favorable and challenging market environments. CoreGuard™ emphasizes process, not predictions, helping investors stay invested during strong periods while managing risk when conditions begin to change.
Like all investment approaches, CoreGuard™ may experience losses, particularly during rapid or volatile market movements.
Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. All investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principal. Asset allocation and diversification do not ensure a profit or protect against loss in declining markets. The CoreGuard™ process is a disciplined investment strategy, but like all investment approaches, it cannot eliminate the risk of market volatility or loss.