Why We Exist
"The IRS already has a plan for your retirement. We can help you build a better one."
For high-earning households, federal income tax can become the single largest expense of retirement.
It is also the one number many households have never seen: the cumulative total, across every year that’s left.
That is where we begin.
Much retirement advice manages the risk you can see. Our planning is led by the one you can’t: the tax that arrives in pieces, year after year, until it becomes one of the largest expenses of retirement. Putting a number on that bill, while you still have years before required withdrawals begin to act on it, is the reason this firm exists.
What we believe
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Tax is the largest unmanaged risk in retirement.
Not the market. Not inflation. The tax that compounds quietly across twenty-five or thirty years.
Read the article — in review -
Volatility is the loud risk. The quiet ones do the lasting damage.
A down market recovers. A forced decision at the wrong moment does not.
Read the article → -
The second half of retirement is a different problem than the first.
Saving is a portfolio question. Spending is a tax-and-sequencing question. What got you here will not get you through it.
Read more → -
The years before required withdrawals begin may be the highest-leverage planning window of your life.
They are also the easiest to miss, because nothing forces you to look.
Read the article — in review
We are not the right firm for everyone, and we do not try to be. The households we serve best already sense that their largest retirement risk is the one no one has put a number to. If that is you, we should talk.
How this practice came to be
Todd Talbot spent the first sixteen years of his career at national investment and insurance companies, much of it training other advisors. Over those years, one gap kept showing up, along with the need it created. Households heading into retirement were getting sound investment advice and accurate tax returns. What few of them had was anyone measuring the tax bill across the whole of retirement, the way it actually compounds.
It isn’t anyone’s failing. It’s structural. A CPA prepares last year’s return. An advisor manages the portfolio. Tax software shows the current year. Each does exactly what it is built to do. None of them is built to assemble the one number that runs across all three: the tax due over the rest of a household’s life.
Red Mountain Financial opened in 2017 to do that work.
Where to start
A few no-cost ways in. Many people begin with the Diagnostic.
Retirement Tax Diagnostic™
One no-cost conversation, built on your own numbers. You see the federal income tax and Medicare surcharges your household is projected to pay across the rest of retirement, on the path you are on today. It shows you the number. What to do about it is the next conversation.
See your projected tax bill →The Retirement Map™
Where you stand against the dates that change your taxes: Medicare, the income lookback, required withdrawals. Your position, on one page.
Start the Map →Articles
The thinking behind the work. Roth timing, IRMAA, the widow’s penalty, and the lifetime tax bill, in plain terms.
Read the articles →Case Studies
How the math plays out for a household. Hypothetical examples, modeled the way we would model an actual plan.
See the case studies →Want to know who is behind the work, or how an engagement actually runs?
- Meet the team: who is actually doing the planning.
- How we work: what an engagement looks like, end to end.
Start with the Diagnostic.
A no-cost projection of your own numbers, walked through together. No obligation to go further.
See Your Lifetime Tax Bill →
Investment advisory services offered through Creative One Wealth, LLC a Registered Investment Advisor. Creative One Wealth, LLC and Red Mountain Financial are unaffiliated entities.
We do not provide tax or legal advice. Always consult with qualified tax/legal advisors regarding your own unique circumstances.
Licensed Insurance Professional. Provided content is for overview and informational purposes only and is not intended and should not be relied upon as individualized tax, legal, fiduciary, or investment advice. By contacting us, downloading booklets, or attending events, you may be offered a meeting to discuss how our insurance and other services can meet your retirement needs. The presenters of this information are not associated with, or endorsed by, the Social Security Administration or any other government agency.
Investing involves risk, including the loss of principal. No Investment strategy can guarantee a profit or protect against loss in a period of declining values. Any references to protection benefits or lifetime income generally refer to fixed insurance products, never securities or investment products. Insurance and annuity products are backed by the financial strength and claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company.
ARE-14063 | 22993
Talbot & Talbot, Inc. D/B/A Red Mountain Financial | 4000 Eagle Point Corporate Dr., Birmingham, AL 35242 | P.O. Box 383033, Birmingham, AL 35238
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