Time and Money

The Time and Money presentation is a simple, quick way to start a retirement conversation with a client without needing to gather all of their financial information first.

If someone is asking questions like “Am I saving enough?”, “How much will I have at retirement?”, or “What happens if I wait a few years to save more?”, Time and Money can give you a quick visual way to explore those questions together.

Brian describes it as almost a “mini Financial GPS” for having a quick client conversation.

Start With a Few Basic Numbers

You only need a handful of assumptions to get started:

• Current age
• Current annual lifestyle
• Current annual retirement savings
• Amount already accumulated
• Accumulation rate
• Distribution rate
• Inflation rate
• Desired retirement age
• Life expectancy

For this demonstration, Brian uses a hypothetical 48-year-old with:

• Current Lifestyle: $125,000 per year
• Current Retirement Savings: $25,000 per year
• Already Accumulated: $765,000
• Accumulation Rate: 6%
• Distribution Rate: 5%
• Inflation Rate: 3%
• Retirement Age: 65
• Life Expectancy: 85

You can adjust any of these assumptions to fit the conversation you're having.

Quickly Identify a Potential Retirement Gap

Once the baseline information is entered, Time and Money quickly illustrates where the client's current strategy may take them compared with what may be needed to support their desired retirement lifestyle.

In Brian's example, maintaining a $125,000 lifestyle in retirement, adjusted for inflation, would require approximately $3.6 million at retirement.

Based on the client's current strategy:

Current annual savings: $25,000
Projected retirement assets: approximately $2.9 million
Estimated annual savings needed: approximately $42,000

That creates an immediate conversation.

The client has a plan and is already saving—but there may be a gap between what they're currently doing and what they're trying to accomplish.

What Happens If They Delay Saving?

One of Brian's favorite features is Delay the Savings.

A client may have plenty of reasons for putting off additional retirement savings:

“I've got college to pay for.”
“We've got a big trip coming up.”
“What if I just wait four years?”

Rather than simply telling them that waiting could hurt their retirement strategy, you can show them.

In Brian's example, delaying additional savings for four years increases the amount the client would need to save to approximately:

$65,000 per year

That's a significant difference compared with the approximately $42,000 needed if they begin now.

It creates a simple visual lesson about the relationship between time and money: the longer you wait, the more money may be required later to reach the same goal.

What If They Work a Few Years Longer?

You can also explore the other side of the equation.

What happens if the client says:

“I like my job. What if I work until 68 instead of 65?”

Simply change the retirement age and let the calculator illustrate the impact.

In Brian's example, working an additional three years significantly reduces the additional annual savings needed to reach the goal.

This allows you and the client to explore different options rather than presenting retirement planning as a single all-or-nothing answer.

Change the Assumptions and Explore

The real value of Time and Money is how quickly you can change the assumptions and see the impact.

You can adjust:

Savings → Retirement Age → Rates of Return → Inflation → Life Expectancy

and immediately explore how those changes affect the client's projected retirement picture.

For example:

• What if you start saving more today?
• What if you wait four years?
• What if you retire at 68 instead of 65?
• What if your desired lifestyle changes?
• What happens with different accumulation or distribution assumptions?

This turns a simple calculator into an interactive client conversation.

The Client Conversation

Time and Money isn't intended to replace a complete financial analysis. It's a quick way to help someone see whether there may be a gap worth exploring further.

A client may simply want to know:

“How much am I going to have at retirement?”

You can show them.

Then ask the more important question:

“Is that going to be enough to support the lifestyle you want?”

If there's a gap, you can begin exploring the different levers available to them—saving more, starting sooner, working longer, changing assumptions, or taking a deeper look at their overall strategy.

And you can do it without first collecting all of their financial data.

That's what makes Time and Money useful for a quick client conversation: a few numbers can quickly lead to a much bigger financial discussion.