Skinner Wealth Strategies

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Skinner Wealth Strategies CFP® profoessional helping people age 50+ build tax-smart retirement income plans. Meet with me → https://skinnerwealthstrategies.com/meet-brian/

Integrating investments, Social Security, Roth strategies, and estate basics into one clear roadmap. Brian joined Waddell & Reed in 2009, and LPL in 2021 as a result of the two companies merging. A University of Connecticut graduate, Brian sustains his industry knowledge through continuing education, and has earned the CFP® mark and CRPC designation. As a financial advisor, Brian focuses on helping clients develop a comprehensive plan for all of their financial goals and concerns, and assists in implementing the actions needed to pursue those goals. Some of the areas he covers include: investment management, risk planning, and tax efficient accumulation and distribution, among many others. Brian's primary goal for his clients is to efficiently combine these pieces into one complete plan for the family.

10/26/2026

A $5,000 monthly pension at 60 only buys $2,700 worth of goods by age 80 at 3% inflation. The check stays the same. Prices do not. 💡 Most pensions and fixed annuities do not adjust for inflation. Social Security does, through its annual cost of living adjustment. For every other fixed income stream, the answer is to complement it with assets that have historically kept pace with inflation: stocks, commodities, and real estate. A fixed income stream is a foundation to build on, not a complete retirement plan.

Follow to learn more about retirement from a financial planner.

10/23/2026

You could be paying three times more for Medicare Part B than your neighbor for the exact same coverage. 💡 The standard premium in 2026 is around $200 per month. Cross certain income thresholds and it climbs to nearly $700 per person, plus a drug coverage surcharge. It is called IRMAA and it is based on your tax return from two years ago. By the time you get the letter, the income that triggered it cannot be undone. The only way to avoid it is knowing the thresholds before the income event happens. A tax return filed today is a Medicare premium decision for 2028.

Follow to learn more about a tax-aware retirement plan and how it affects your Medicare.

10/21/2026

Your 401k target date fund knows your birthday. That is basically it. 💡 Every person in the same fund with the same retirement year is invested identically, regardless of their risk tolerance, tax situation, or anything else about their life. And when you retire and need money, the fund sells everything proportionally whether the market is up or down. That means it could be selling your best investments at their worst prices with zero input from you. Target date funds are a reasonable way to save. They are not built for the withdrawal phase of retirement.

Follow to learn more about retirement income from a financial planner.

10/19/2026

One dollar of extra taxable income from two years ago could cost a married couple over $2,300 in Medicare premiums this year. 💡 Medicare has a surcharge called IRMAA based on your income from two years prior. It is a cliff, not a slope. One dollar over the threshold and the full surcharge applies immediately. Your 2024 tax return is what determines your 2026 Medicare premium. A Roth conversion or large IRA withdrawal you made in 2024 could be showing up as a higher bill right now. This is exactly why financial planning is about so much more than managing investments.

Follow to learn more about financial planning, income strategy, and how it relates to your Medicare.

10/16/2026

Research from Dalbar's 30th Annual Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior consistently finds that the average investor underperforms the broader market by 3–5% annually. The cause is not poor investment selection. It's behavior.

The pattern is well-established: investors tend to buy after prices have risen — when confidence is high — and sell after prices have fallen — when fear is at its peak. The result is a systematic return gap that compounds significantly over time. Over a 30-year horizon, the cumulative cost on a single portfolio can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The problem is compounded for retirees who are simultaneously withdrawing from their portfolios. An emotionally driven sale during a downturn doesn't just realize a loss — it permanently reduces the capital base available to participate in any subsequent recovery.

The intuitive response — developing better judgment about when to buy and sell — misidentifies the solution. Behavioral gaps persist not because investors lack intelligence, but because the emotional conditions during market stress are genuinely difficult to override in real time.

The more effective approach is a strategy with predefined rules: when to rebalance, which assets to liquidate first, how much to withdraw and under what conditions. A framework established during calm periods provides a decision-making structure that doesn't depend on emotional clarity during the worst moments.

Process beats willpower. Consistently.

Follow for more investing and retirement insights. 💼

Source: Dalbar 30th Annual QAIB Report

10/14/2026

According to MetLife research, half of retirees identify running out of money as their biggest fear. What's striking is how often that fear persists even among people who saved diligently for decades.

The issue is rarely inadequate savings. It's a skills gap that most retirement planning discussions don't adequately address: accumulating wealth and distributing it sustainably are fundamentally different disciplines.

The accumulation phase has a clear objective and a well-understood set of tools. The distribution phase is more complex. It requires coordinating taxes, healthcare costs, inflation exposure, Social Security timing, and investment strategy — all simultaneously, with no room to recover from significant errors and no defined end date.

Each of those variables interacts with the others in ways that aren't intuitive. A withdrawal decision affects tax liability. A Social Security timing choice affects portfolio draw-down rate. A healthcare cost spike affects both. Without a coordinated plan that accounts for these interdependencies, even a substantial nest egg can be depleted more quickly than projected.

The clients who navigate this transition most successfully are those who recognized early that the skillset required to build wealth is not the same one required to sustain it — and who sought out a plan designed specifically for the distribution phase.

Follow to learn more about making your money last in retirement from a financial planner. 💼

Source: MetLife, 2026

10/09/2026

Two retirees. Same savings. Same average returns. Completely different outcomes. Here's why. 📉
It's called sequence of return risk — and it's one of the most important retirement concepts most people have never heard of.

10/05/2026

I built my practice because I kept watching people approach the most important financial transition of their lives without anyone truly in their corner. 💡 Their CPA filed taxes but never looked ahead. Their advisor managed investments but never asked about healthcare or Social Security. Nobody was coordinating the pieces. I work with people ages 50 to 70 helping them turn a lifetime of hard work into a retirement they can actually enjoy without fear. Retirement planning is all I do, for every client. My goal is to give people the confidence to say it is okay to retire and actually mean it.

Schedule a call through the link in my bio.

10/02/2026

3 problems nobody warned you about before retirement that are costing you right now. 💡 RMDs force taxable income that raises your Medicare premiums, increases Social Security taxation, and affects your capital gains rate all at once. Your target date fund sells everything proportionally when you take a distribution with no consideration for market conditions. And most retirees have no one coordinating their tax bracket, Medicare costs, Social Security taxation, and state income tax as one connected strategy. All three are plannable. Most people just were never shown how.

For help solving these, schedule a call through the link in my bio.

09/30/2026

Losing a spouse is hard enough. The tax system makes it harder in ways most families never see coming. 💡 When a spouse passes away, filing status switches from joint to single, and single brackets are roughly half the width. The surviving spouse can be pushed into much higher tax rates even if their income barely changed. Add higher Required Minimum Distributions and a shift in how Social Security income is taxed, and the result is three compounding tax problems at exactly the wrong time. It is called the widow's tax trap. And it is plannable, but only before the loss.

To learn what you can do about it, schedule a call through the link in my bio.

Address

472 Wheelers Farms Road, Suite 305
Milford, CT
06461

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 5pm
Tuesday 8am - 5pm
Wednesday 8am - 5pm
Thursday 8am - 5pm
Friday 8am - 5pm

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