You know how important it is to plan for your retirement — but where do you begin?
A solid plan starts with estimating how much income you’ll need to fund your lifestyle after you stop working. That’s not always straightforward. Retirement planning isn’t an exact science: your needs depend on your goals, your health, your location, and your legacy plans.
That’s why at Rosefinch, we don’t rely on guesswork. We use Rosefinch Black — our advanced, integrated planning process that blends powerful financial planning tools with experienced cross-border wealth advisers — to help you map out your retirement with confidence.
Start with Your Current Income — But Don’t Stop There
A common rule of thumb is to plan for 60%–90% of your current income in retirement. This makes sense as a baseline — your current income supports your present lifestyle, so adjusting that figure to reflect reduced expenses (such as payroll taxes) provides a quick benchmark.
But this approach has limits.
If you plan to travel extensively, support children or grandchildren, or spend more on healthcare, your actual needs could equal — or exceed — 100% of your current income.
How Rosefinch Black helps:
We build a personalized income model based on your real spending patterns, factoring in both lifestyle goals and potential cost changes. This isn’t a back-of-the-envelope guess — it’s a dynamic plan that updates as your life evolves.
Projecting expenses accurately can be challenging, especially if retirement is still years away. Common retirement expenses include:
- Housing, utilities, and insurance
- Transportation and travel
- Healthcare costs and long-term care planning
- Taxes (income, capital gains, estate)
- Gifts, education, and legacy goals
- Leisure and lifestyle spending
And of course, inflation never stands still. Your expenses will shift year to year as life changes.
How Rosefinch Black helps:
We use MoneyGuidePro Elite and Nitrogen within Rosefinch Black to model both core and discretionary spending, stress-test your plan against inflation, and run “what-if” scenarios so that no cost creeps up unplanned.
Decide When — and How — You’ll Retire
The timing of your retirement is one of the most powerful levers in your plan. Retiring at 50 instead of 65 can mean funding an extra 15 years of living expenses. Longevity also matters: living longer is a blessing, but it requires a strategy to ensure you won’t outlive your savings.
How Rosefinch Black helps:
We use real data — including actuarial life expectancy estimates and cross-border tax considerations — to model different retirement ages. This allows you to see the financial impact of retiring earlier or later, helping you make informed, flexible decisions.
Identify Your Income Sources
Your retirement income may come from multiple sources:
- U.S. employer pensions or foreign pension schemes
- Social Security
- IRAs, 401(k)s, Roth accounts, brokerage accounts
- Annuities and insurance solutions
- Rental or business income
Cross-border complexities can make coordinating these streams difficult, especially for U.S. expats with overseas assets or UK pensions.
How Rosefinch Black helps:
We integrate your U.S. and international holdings into one coherent plan — accounting for tax treaties, currency risk, withholding tax drag, and PFIC exposure — so your retirement income strategy works across borders, not against them.
Bridge Any Gaps Early
If there’s a shortfall between what you’ll have and what you’ll need, there are many levers to pull:
- Adjusting savings strategies now
- Shifting investments to better match your risk and return profile
- Exploring annuity or income-guarantee solutions
- Working part-time during retirement
- Delaying retirement to strengthen your income base
How Rosefinch Black helps:
Our team doesn’t just identify the gap — we help you close it strategically through advanced modelling, tax-efficient investments, and smart insurance design.
Retirement is personal. There’s no universal formula that fits every household — especially when your assets, family, or future span multiple countries.
Rosefinch Black is built precisely for this complexity. By combining sophisticated technology with experienced fiduciary guidance, we:
- Model your retirement income and expenses
- Stress-test against longevity, inflation, and market shocks
- Integrate global assets and tax considerations
- Create a clear, flexible path to financial independence
Whether you’re retiring in the U.S., the UK, or abroad, we’ll help you plan with precision and confidence.
Let us help build a plan that’s as unique as your life — and strong enough to support your vision for decades to come.
Disclaimer: MoneyGuidePro Elite and Nitrogen are advanced software applications available to investment professionals to utilize with clients in preparing, monitoring and managing a client’s investments. Both software applications are provided by third party firms that Rosefinch has no affiliation with and for which no guarantee of suitability or investment performance is made.
