Nearing Retirement
Spending with Confidence, Before Retirement
Mark and Susan’s Case Study
How One Couple Built a Plan to Enjoy Their Wealth While Protecting Their Future
This case study illustrates a common planning situation faced by many families. The individuals described are hypothetical and do not represent actual clients. Outcomes are illustrative and are not a guarantee of future results.
Executive summary
Many retirees worry about three competing priorities: spending confidently, minimizing taxes, and preserving assets for family.
In this case study, we walk through how a hypothetical couple used Monument Group Wealth Advisors’ Master Planning process to build a coordinated strategy for sustainable income, tax efficiency, and long-term legacy planning.
Through structured discovery — including a Dangers, Opportunities, and Strengths (DOS) exercise and the Success Questions — we helped the couple clarify their priorities, model sustainable spending, and design a tax-efficient withdrawal strategy. The result was not simply a financial plan, but an ongoing framework that allowed them to make decisions with greater confidence.
The question they wanted to answer
Mark and Susan’s question was simple to ask and hard to answer: how do we enjoy what we’ve built without putting our future at risk?
They want to travel, spend meaningfully on family, and use their wealth intentionally — while also managing taxes, market volatility, and longevity risk.
Turn uncertainty into a spending framework
We set an initial spending level together, with clear upper and lower limits that tell us when to increase or reduce it as markets move.
Where they felt stuck
Despite their strong financial position, they hesitated. Mark’s instinct was caution — avoid mistakes, especially around taxes and investments. Susan’s concern was different: don’t delay meaningful experiences while they’re healthy.
They weren’t stuck because they lacked resources. They were stuck because the decisions were interdependent — and they didn’t yet have a framework that tied everything together.
Mark and Susan“We had spent years building our savings and investments, but when it came time to start using it, we weren’t sure what was reasonable.”
Why this situation is so common
For much of their lives, their financial focus was straightforward: earn income, save consistently, and invest for the future. Over time, that discipline created a strong financial foundation.
But eventually, the nature of the challenge changes. Instead of asking how to accumulate more wealth, many families begin asking different questions:
- How much can we safely spend each year?
- How should we structure withdrawals across different accounts?
- Are we managing taxes as thoughtfully as we could be?
- Is our investment strategy still appropriate for this stage of life?
- How do we help our children without compromising our own independence?
Understanding what matters
We began with the Dangers, Opportunities, and Strengths exercise. Each spouse completed it independently before we met together, which helped clarify the risks to address, the opportunities to pursue, and the strengths already working in their favor.
Their concerns were highly aligned. Both worried less about overspending and more about spending too cautiously because they lacked confidence in what was sustainable.
They also shared clear priorities: travel while healthy, meaningful time with family, and supporting their children at the right moments. And they had strong underlying strengths — years of discipline, a solid foundation, and collaborative decision-making.
Building the Master Plan
With priorities clarified, we built a blueprint that aligned four areas:
- A sustainable spending strategy
- A tax-efficient withdrawal framework
- An investment structure built for this stage of life
- A thoughtful approach to family support and legacy goals
The analysis behind the plan
We stress-tested their plan across a wide range of market environments, incorporating inflation, taxes, and longevity assumptions. This analysis helped define a sustainable spending range with a margin of safety.
The plan is modeled through varied market environments, and the agreed upper and lower limits guide any change in spending while keeping the plan resilient over the long term.
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