How it works
The five steps we use to answer your biggest retirement questions
Step 1: Understand Where You Stand
First, I review your complete financial picture: income, spending, taxes, investments, insurance, and estate documents. You'll know exactly where you stand.
Step 2: Identify Opportunities
Then I pinpoint the opportunities most likely to improve your retirement: lower costs, smarter allocation, Roth conversions, withdrawal sequencing, and Social Security timing.
Step 3: Build Your Retirement Strategy
Every piece feeds one integrated plan, stress-tested against thousands of market scenarios.
You'll see your probability of success and exactly which decisions move it.
Step 4: Implement the Plan
Plans don't create results. Implementation does — organized into the Four-Pillar Retirement Strategy: your Retirement Paycheck Plan, Retirement Resilience Plan, Lifetime Tax Map, and Estate & Legacy Plan.
Step 5: Continue Adapting
Markets, tax laws, and your life all change. Your plan should too.
We meet 2–3 times per year, with each pillar reviewed on a schedule — your paycheck and cash reserves, your portfolio and protection reserves, and your tax plan before year-end.
The Two-Stage Advisory Relationship
The 90-Day Retirement Roadmap
A defined, flat-fee planning engagement covering Steps 1 through 3. We test whether your retirement is sustainable, design your income and tax strategy, review your portfolio, and hand you a prioritized implementation roadmap.
Right for you if you want clarity and a clear set of recommendations you'll carry out yourself.
Implementation & Ongoing Wealth Management
Everything in the Roadmap, plus Steps 4 and 5: I take responsibility for carrying the strategy out through four coordinated pillars — a monthly retirement paycheck, a resilient portfolio with a written down-market plan, a lifetime tax map, and an estate plan that's checked, not assumed.
When you begin here, the separate planning fee can be waived.
Ready to see if you can retire with confidence?
Schedule a free initial consult, or see this process applied to a real scenario: Walter & Skylar's complete sample plan →
FAQs
Yes! I offer in-person meetings in Hawaii and virtual meetings nationwide. This works very well for those living on the East or West Coast who prefer to meet in the late afternoon or evening.
Yes, I am a fiduciary 100% of the time. To learn why hiring a fiduciary is SO important, check out this Investopedia article.
I use a two-stage process to help clients move from planning to implementation.
The 90-Day Retirement Roadmap is a defined, flat-fee planning engagement designed to answer your most important retirement questions and provide a prioritized course of action.
Implementation & Ongoing Wealth Management is an ongoing advisory relationship that includes the same planning work plus investment management, implementation, and continued guidance as life evolves. The separate planning fee can be waived when you begin here.
Some clients start with the Roadmap; others begin directly with the ongoing relationship.
Masuda Lehrman Wealth is a fee-only, commission-free fiduciary financial planning firm. The only compensation I receive is directly from my clients.
You can read more on my pricing page.
I believe in goals-based strategic asset allocation: your retirement plan dictates how your portfolio is built, not a generic risk questionnaire.
Low-cost passive investing should be the default for most people. Research consistently shows that higher-cost active management tends to underperform its benchmarks over the long term.
Client accounts are held at Charles Schwab, where I manage portfolios with institutional rebalancing tools, coordinate withdrawals, and implement tax strategies like asset location and tax-loss harvesting when appropriate.
