By Lindsay Mais
Retirement plans often need to balance many needs – from generating enough cash to supporting flexibility and maximizing after-tax growth potential, all in constantly changing environments. As a result, retirement strategies should be dynamic and evolving.
With proactive planning and foresight, you can help ensure you will be more likely to achieve retirement financial goals. Here are four strategies to consider.
1. Assess liquidity, longevity, and legacy – by examining these factors, you can start to assess your financial needs for retirement. Start with considering when you would ideally like to retire, what you would like to do in retirement, and if you plan to continue working part time, to assess what money is needed in retirement. Then consider:
- Liquidity: What are the assets you need for immediate needs? This can include holding cash, money markets, treasuries, and fixed income vehicles that can be more easily converted to address expenses, downturns, or to pursue new opportunities. Liquidity focuses on capital preservation. UBS recommends allocating three to five years of withdrawals in a liquidity strategy to weather most bear markets.
- Longevity: What might you need to sustain growth or handle transitions over the longer term? This can include savings, investments in equities, etc., to cover financial needs for the next two to 10 years. These assets are important to ensure a “buffer” to help protect against risks such as market volatility, unexpected medical expenses, and other longer-term expenses. Having access to longer-term assets is important to help overcome changing market conditions in retirement.
- Legacy: What is left that exceeds your expected lifetime spending needs and that you wish to leave for the next generation or to give back to others? In examining and determining your legacy strategy, you may want to consider timing donations for tax efficiency, while also supporting your philanthropic interests.
Timeframes may vary. Strategies are subject to individual client goals, objectives and suitability. This approach is not a promise or guarantee that wealth, or any financial results, can or will be achieved.
2. Assess taxes. In one’s early working years, investors should ideally be building a “savings waterfall” by putting money away in an emergency fund, retirement (401K, IRA, and other investment options), health savings (such as HSA), etc. In retirement years, investors may move to a “spending waterfall”, aimed at managing income taxes and improving tax efficiency from leveraging expected income, IRA, 401K, and taxable assets.
As you save for retirement, you may want to consider ways to help reduce taxes in your retirement as well. Saving with a Roth IRA is one way, as contributions are after tax and contributions and earnings in retirement are tax free. Consider updates in the Key SECURE 2.0 Act provisions in 2026 that enable employees to make pre-tax or Roth contributions of up to $36,500, depending on age. This includes the $24,500 employee contribution limit, plus $8,000 catch-up contribution for those age 50+ and a $4,000 “super catch-up” contribution for those 60-63 and in a participating plan.
Another strategy for investors is to consider opportunities to harvest capital losses or sell investments that have lost value to offset capital gains from other investments or income. A partial Roth conversion may also allow retirees and others to lower taxable income to stay in a lower tax bracket. Consult with your financial advisor and tax professional to see if this is an option for you.
3. Consider giving strategies – Consider your “legacy” in the short and long term. If you have assets available in your “longevity” bucket, you may want to consider charitable gifting to reduce income at the same time. The annual gift tax exclusion for 2026 allows gifts up to $19,000 per spouse per recipient per year, free of gift tax and without using lifetime exemption. The One Big Beautiful Bill introduces changes to charitable deductions in 2026, including that charitable contributions that exceed 0.5% of adjusted gross income (AGI) will be deductible, for those who itemize deductions. Cash gifts to qualified charities will also remain subject to a limit of 60% of AGI.
4. Confirm beneficiary designations – Make sure your intentions will be carried out for your partner, family, and yourself. Review and update primary and contingent beneficiaries on retirement accounts, insurance policies, and other assets. Outdated or missing designations can result in assets going to unintended recipients, delays from probate, or less favorable tax treatment. Review and update every few years.
These are just a few of many strategies to consider while planning for retirement. The start of the year is a perfect time to assess your individual goals and needs. Since every individual and their situation is unique, a financial professional can offer advice specifically on how you may be able to optimize finances in retirement and enjoy every day without financial worries.
Lindsay Mais is Financial Advisor and a Certified Financial Planner® professional with CBM Wealth Management at UBS Financial Services Inc. a subsidiary of UBS Group AG. Member FINRA/SIPC in Seal Beach. She can be reached at lindsay.mais@ubs.com.
The views expressed herein are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views of UBS Financial Services Inc. Neither UBS Financial Services Inc. nor its employees (including its financial advisors) provide tax or legal advice.
