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Keeping the shell stable until the next section bundle is ready.
This is where every Back40 engagement starts — not with a portfolio review, but with an income gap analysis. We map every dollar of income you'll need in retirement against every source you'll have: Social Security, pensions, rental income, part-time work, and any contractually defined income. Whatever isn't covered by reliable sources is the gap. Our job is to close it.
The traditional approach is to withdraw from a portfolio and hope the math works over thirty years. The Back40 approach is to separate essential income from market risk entirely. Your mortgage, groceries, insurance, utilities, and healthcare should never depend on whether the S&P 500 had a good year. That's what the income floor is built to do — pay regardless of market conditions and regardless of which spouse is alive.
We coordinate Social Security claiming strategy as a survivor benefit decision — not just an individual optimization exercise. We model what happens to household income when the first spouse dies: the Social Security drop, the tax bracket compression, the pension cliff. Every married-couple plan we build starts with that question. If the plan can't answer it clearly, it isn't finished.
Map every retirement income source against essential expenses. Identify the gap between what arrives reliably and what you need to live — then close it with structure, not hope.
Build a base of income that pays no matter what — sized specifically to cover essential expenses for both spouses, including the surviving spouse scenario.
Analyze claiming timing for both spouses through the lens of survivor protection. Delaying the higher earner's benefit from 62 to 70 can mean $372,000 in additional income for the surviving spouse over a 20-year widowhood.
For clients with defined benefit pensions: single-life vs. joint-and-survivor analysis with the math laid out. This is an irreversible decision — we make sure it's made with full clarity.
Best for households near or in retirement who want housing, groceries, healthcare, and core lifestyle spending covered before taking risk with the rest of the portfolio.