For high-income earners and affluent families, retirement isn’t merely a financial endpoint — it’s a transition best met with foresight, precision, and the seamless integration of wealth, tax, and lifestyle planning. Yet even among financially successful individuals, the question “Am I on track?” arises more often than you might expect.
The answer rarely lies in a single number. Traditional benchmarks can offer reference points, but true retirement readiness for those with complex financial lives often depends more on the strategic positioning of assets, the clarity of income objectives, and the ability to adapt across evolving personal and market dynamics.
In this post, we attempt to examine key elements of retirement strategy through a practical lens:
- What retirement may realistically cost given your lifestyle and goals
- Age-based savings checkpoints and how to view them in context
- What’s within your control and how to optimize it
- What to prioritize if you’re not where you hoped to be.
Whether you are ahead, behind, or evaluating your next chapter, this may be a timely opportunity to recalibrate with intention.
- Reframing Retirement Costs: Lifestyle-Driven Planning
For affluent households, the traditional “income replacement” model of retirement planning often fails to capture the full picture. A more relevant starting point might be lifestyle design. What does the next chapter look like for you? Philanthropy, travel, legacy building, supporting family, or launching new ventures?
Try these steps to get a better sense of your retirement income needs:
- Clarify current cash flow needs. Understand the full scope of your household expenses today, across both essential and discretionary categories.
- Anticipate lifestyle shifts. Retirement often begins with an uptick in spending as previously deferred priorities, like traveling the world or buying a second home, finally come to life.
- Project housing transitions. Will you relocate, pay off a mortgage, or invest in additional properties? Housing transitions can have both lifestyle and tax implications.
- Build in optionality. Flexibility is typically a strategic advantage. We recommend your plan accounts for the unexpected, such as healthcare needs, family support, or market volatility without sacrificing long-term objectives.
- Are You on Track? Interpreting Benchmarks in Context
Standard savings benchmarks by age can provide helpful context, but for high-net-worth families, the deeper question is not whether you’ve saved “enough,” but whether your assets are positioned optimally for tax efficiency, liquidity, and multi-decade sustainability.
To put this into perspective, it’s useful to consider some widely accepted age-based savings targets as a starting point for evaluating progress. For example, JP Morgan’s Guide to Retirement estimates that for a 40-year-old individual with a current household income of $300,000, the retirement savings checkpoint is approximately $600,000. At age 50 with the same income level, the estimated checkpoint rises to $1,240,000. The model assumes a steady 10% savings rate, 2.4% inflation and a diversified portfolio of 60/40 equity to fixed income pre-retirement; 40/60 in retirement.
While these metrics serve as useful markers, we do not believe they should drive decision-making in isolation. Many individuals with substantial portfolios may still be over-concentrated in tax-deferred vehicles, exposed to sequence-of-returns risk, or lacking coordinated estate and tax planning, all of which can significantly impact outcomes.
- What’s Within Your Control and Where to Focus
Market outcomes, tax policy, and economic shifts are beyond any investor’s control. What sets apart strategic retirement planning is the discipline to focus on what is within your influence and the foresight to attempt to align it with long-term objectives.
What You Can Optimize:
- Savings strategy: Incremental increases in contributions, particularly when paired with custom planning strategies, can significantly accelerate progress.
- Asset allocation: Aligning investment strategy with time horizon, risk tolerance, and income needs is foundational to a portfolio’s sustainability.
- Asset location: The placement of assets across taxable, tax-deferred, and tax-exempt accounts can drive significant tax savings over time.
- Spending structure: Identifying sustainable withdrawal strategies, especially during early retirement, can protect portfolio longevity.
Strategic Planning
From our perspective, effective retirement planning requires strategic attention to several key factors. While market returns are uncertain, you can attempt to build a more resilient portfolio through diversification and disciplined rebalancing. Using conservative assumptions for inflation and taxes and testing your plan against a range of scenarios can help protect your long-term purchasing power. Since policy changes, such as adjustments to Social Security or required minimum distribution rules, are likely over time, we recommend our plan be flexible enough to adapt thoughtfully rather than react under pressure.
- Feeling Behind? There Are Still High-Impact Moves
For those who feel “behind,” the path forward typically is not about urgency; it’s about leverage. High earners often have access to tools and strategies unavailable to typical retirement savers. We believe the key is to move with strategy, not haste.
Strategic Levers to Consider:
- Roth conversions: Consider timing conversions in low-income or market downturn years to create future tax-free income.
- Defined benefit and non-qualified plans: Particularly powerful for business owners or executives with variable income, these plans allow for significant pre-tax contributions.
- Catch-up contributions (2025 limits): Individuals 50+ can contribute an additional $7,500 to their 401(k), and up to $11,250 for those aged 60–63. IRAs offer an extra $1,000.
- Spending realignment: Strategic adjustments to discretionary expenses, even temporary ones, can restore momentum without eroding lifestyle.
For charitably inclined individuals, IRA assets can serve as a powerful giving bucket. Taxpayers aged 70 ½ or older may donate directly to qualifying charities through a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) and exclude the amount from taxable income in the same year (up to $108,000 in 2025). Once mandatory distributions begin – currently by April 1st following the year a taxpayer turns 73 – QCDs may be applied toward a taxpayer’s required minimum distribution. The combination of tax benefit and charitable impact can make QCDs a valuable planning tool. When thoughtfully integrated into a broader retirement strategy, QCDs may offer a meaningful way to satisfy required distributions, improve tax efficiency, and support the causes that matter most to you.
Planning Forward with Intention
While benchmarks can be a helpful starting point, meaningful retirement planning goes beyond one-size-fits-all targets. We believe it’s about aligning your wealth with the life you want to live and making sure your plan is built to adapt to the complexities and changes that real life brings.
At BSW Wealth Partners, we work closely with high-income and high-net-worth individuals to develop customized retirement strategies that attempt to integrate investment management, tax and estate planning, and lifestyle goals. Wherever you stand today, this is a moment to pause and begin planning with clarity, confidence, and purpose.
This publication provides general information that has been gathered in part from data resources created by artificial intelligence. Data generated through artificial intelligence is fallible and should be considered informational but not verified to be precise or factual for any specific circumstances. Any such information provided by BSW Wealth Partners should not be relied upon as legal or tax advice. This blog is created and authored by BSW Wealth Partners, Inc., a Public Benefit Corporation (“BSW”) and is published and provided for informational purposes only. The opinions expressed in the blog are our opinions and should not be regarded as a description of services provided by BSW or considered investment, legal or accounting advice. Certain information sited is from third-party sources and while we believe the information to be accurate and true to the best of our knowledge, we cannot guarantee its accuracy as there may be certain unknown omissions, errors or mistakes. Use of third-party information, including links, is in no way an endorsement by BSW. The views reflected in the blog are subject to change at any time without notice. Nothing on this blog constitutes investment advice, performance data or any recommendation that any security, portfolio of securities, investment product or investment strategy is suitable for any specific person. Please remember that past performance may not be indicative of future results. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and there can be no assurance that the future performance of any specific investment, investment strategy, or product (including the investments and/or investment strategies recommended or undertaken by BSW), or any non-investment related content, made reference to directly or indirectly in this blog post will be profitable, equal any corresponding indicated historical performance level(s), be suitable for your portfolio or individual situation, or prove successful. Not all BSW clients will have the same experience within their portfolio(s) and certain topics discussed in this blog may not apply to all clients or investors. Due to various factors, including changing market conditions and/or applicable laws, the content may no longer be reflective of current opinions or positions. Moreover, you should not assume that any discussion or information contained in this blog serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from BSW. To the extent that a reader has any questions regarding the applicability of any specific issue discussed above to his/her individual situation, he/she is encouraged to consult with the professional advisor of his/her choosing. BSW is neither a law firm nor a certified public accounting firm and no portion of the blog content should be construed as legal or accounting advice. A copy of BSW’s current written disclosure statement discussing our advisory services and fees is available upon request
