Retirement & Estate Planning
For families approaching or already in retirement, the questions shift. Building gives way to drawing income, and planning extends across the generations that will follow. Strategy West helps families navigate that shift with clarity and patience.
There is a quiet transition in a financial life when the work of building gives way to the work of stewarding. The portfolio that was once measured by what it could grow into is now measured by what it can reliably provide, and by what remains for the people who follow. That transition asks for different questions, and different patience. Our work is to help families ask those questions well, and to design plans that hold up across the decades that follow them.
Each addresses a different question that families approaching or already in this phase tend to ask. Together they form the spine of the work we do.
Markets fall and rise on their own schedule, never on yours. For a household still building wealth, a market decline is uncomfortable but not catastrophic. For a household drawing income, the same decline can be quietly destructive. Selling assets to fund living expenses during a downturn locks in losses that even a strong recovery cannot fully undo.
The Volatility Buffer is our response to that risk. It is a deliberate cash reserve, sized to a family's specific income needs, that funds living expenses through market declines so equity positions never have to be sold under duress. The portfolio gets to ride out the storm rather than fund it.
Capital that gets to stay invested compounds. Capital that has to be sold does not.
How the Buffer is sized varies with each household. Income requirements, the length of a comfortable reserve, and the family's overall risk tolerance all shape the structure. The aim is not a generic two-year cash position. The aim is a reserve calibrated to this family's specific cash flow needs and timeline.
In practice, the Volatility Buffer changes very little about how a portfolio looks. What it changes is what the family has to do during difficult markets, which is to say very little.
There was a time, within recent memory, when a working life ended with a pension. Parents and grandparents who spent decades at a single employer often retired to a steady monthly check that arrived for the rest of their lives. The pension was not a luxury. It was simply how retirement worked.
Today's retirees rarely have that. The accounts they have instead, Traditional IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s, TSPs, and other qualified retirement vehicles, hold the same purpose but ask the retiree to do all of the work of turning a balance into income. The market gives no monthly check.
What previous generations were given, today's families are asked to build for themselves.
The Self-Funded Pension Plan is our framing of the work that follows. We help families roll many of those qualified retirement accounts into structures designed to provide guaranteed lifetime income, the closest modern equivalent to the pension a previous generation took for granted.
The intent is not to replicate one specific income amount. The intent is to give the family the same quiet that a pension once provided. Predictable income, not dependent on market performance, freeing the rest of the portfolio for the other purposes the family cares about.
In the early decades of the last century, the Rockefeller family developed a set of long-term insurance and trust structures designed to pass wealth not only to their children, but to their grandchildren and the generations beyond. The structures were unusual at the time. They have since become foundational to how families with built wealth think about transfer.
The structures are still available, still legal, and still effective for families whose horizon is generational rather than personal. They are not appropriate for every situation, but for the families to whom they apply, they offer a degree of intentional transfer that no single will or trust can replicate alone.
What you have built becomes, at this stage, what you leave.
Our role in the Rockefeller Method is to coordinate, not to replace. The family's estate attorneys and CPAs remain the right experts for the legal and tax architecture. We work alongside them to make sure the insurance structures, the trust documents, and the family's overall financial picture are coherent and aligned to the same purpose.
The Rockefeller Method is one of the structures we help families consider when they want what they leave to last.
We begin by listening. Your goals, your concerns, your timeline, your family. Before any plan is drawn, we need to understand the people it is being drawn for.
From there, we assemble the picture. Accounts, assets, beneficiaries, existing trust and estate documents, the working relationships you already have with attorneys and CPAs.
With the picture clear, we design the plan. The Volatility Buffer, the Self-Funded Pension Plan, and the Rockefeller Method are each considered for their fit. Some apply, some do not. The plan is yours.
Once the plan is approved, we coordinate the implementation alongside your existing professionals. The structures are put in place. The accounts are moved or aligned. The plan begins.
We meet with you regularly, more often when life changes and less often when it does not. Plans are revised. Beneficiaries are updated. The structure is kept in alignment with the family it serves.
Retirement & Estate Planning
A Retirement and Estate Planning consultation begins with listening. Your situation, your goals, your family, and the people who follow.
