Three years from retiring
“I have the balance. I have no idea what it actually pays me every month.”
You need a number, not a projection. Start with the income gap.
Show me how that worksRetirement income planning · Licensed throughout the United States
Turn your savings into a paycheck you can count on.
Three questions decide whether your money lasts: how you replace your paycheck, what happens if the market drops early in retirement, and who pays if you need long-term care. I help you answer all three — in writing, before you retire.
Derrick Loflin Retirement Planning Specialist · Host of the Your Wealth Path Show
Start here
What’s your monthly income gap?
Everything — housing, food, insurance, travel, grandkids.
Social Security plus any pension, for both spouses.
$3,100
a month your savings must produce
That’s $37,200 a year — about $930,000 over a 25-year retirement, in today’s dollars before inflation.
Get the Income Gap Worksheet
Simple arithmetic, not a projection. It ignores inflation, taxes and investment returns — which is exactly what we work through on a call.
Start where you are
Which one of these is you?
Almost everyone who calls me is standing in one of these three places. Find yours and skip straight to the part that matters.
Retired in the last few years
“I check the market before I check the weather. That is not how I pictured this.”
You are exposed to the order of your returns. Build a buffer.
Show me how that worksWatched a parent need care
“Mom’s nursing home went through their savings in four years. I won’t do that to my wife.”
You are protecting a survivor, not just an estate. Look at asset-based care.
Show me how that worksThe whole approach on one screen
Your savings have three jobs. Most plans only give them one.
A balance sitting in one pile has to be everything at once — your paycheck, your safety net and your legacy. Splitting it by job is the entire method.
What you’ve saved
401(k) · IRA · CDs · brokerage · an old annuity nobody has looked at
Job 1 · Pay the bills
A monthly income that arrives for life, sized to cover your essentials — mortgage, utilities, insurance, groceries.
Income annuity
Job 2 · Absorb the shocks
A pool that doesn’t fall when markets fall, so you spend from it in a bad year instead of selling investments at a loss.
Fixed indexed annuity
Job 3 · Protect the survivor
Money repositioned so it pays a multiple for care if you need it — and passes to your family if you never do.
Asset-based long-term care
And the rest stays put
Usually most of it. Still invested, still liquid, still yours — but no longer the thing keeping your lights on.
Untouched
One written plan you own
Every cost and every downside in writing — yours whether or not you work with me
Timing is most of it
Nearly every decision that matters gets made before you retire.
This is the reason people who wait end up with fewer options. Not because they did anything wrong — because the window for several of these quietly closed.
The retirement decision timeline
Free, no phone call required
Read first. Decide later.
Each guide is short, plain-English, and written to be useful even if you never call me. Pick the one that matches what’s keeping you up.
Worksheet
The Retirement Income Gap Worksheet
Fill in what you’ll spend and what’s already guaranteed. You’ll finish with one number: the monthly income your savings have to create — and three ways to create it.
Get the worksheetPDF · 8 pages · fillable worksheet
Guide
Protecting Cash Flow From a Bad Market
Why the order of your returns matters more than the average, how much a poorly-timed downturn actually costs, and how a buffer bucket keeps you from selling at the bottom.
Get the guidePDF · 9 pages
Guide
Paying for Care Without Draining the Estate
What care actually costs today, an honest comparison of traditional LTC, self-funding and asset-based coverage, and the questions to ask before you buy any of them.
Get the guidePDF · 11 pages
Instant download
Where should I send it?
You’ll get the guide by email in about a minute. I’ll follow up once to ask if it raised any questions. If it didn’t, tell me so and you won’t hear from me again — that’s a promise I keep.
The detail, if you want it
Here is exactly how each of the three works.
Real numbers, real trade-offs, and the catch spelled out before the benefit. Each has its own page — read the one that applies to you and skip the rest.
Problem 01 · Income annuities
Bridging the retirement income gap
Social Security and a pension rarely cover the bills. Here’s how to work out the shortfall and build a floor underneath it that pays for life.
Read this oneProblem 02 · Fixed indexed annuities
A buffer against market losses
Two retirees, identical returns in a different order, $439,906 apart after twenty years. Here’s why, and what a buffer bucket actually does about it.
Read this oneProblem 03 · Asset-based LTC
Protecting the estate from care costs
A private nursing home room runs $129,575 a year. Here’s an honest comparison of the three ways to handle that, including the one nobody explains.
Read this oneWealth Path on YouTube
Meet me before we meet.
Most people would rather size somebody up before they get on a call with them. That’s fair. Watch a few minutes first — you’ll know quickly whether I explain things the way you want them explained.
See every video on YouTube
New videos go up regularly. Subscribe and they show up in your feed instead of you having to remember to look.
What happens if you call
Three steps, and you can stop after any of them.
Step 01
A 15-minute call
You tell me when you want to retire and what you’re worried about. I tell you whether I’m the right person to help. No cost, and no one calls you afterward if you say no.
Step 02
A retirement income review
We map your guaranteed income, your gap, your tax picture and your long-term care exposure. If you already own an annuity, we read the contract together and I tell you plainly what it does.
Step 03
A written plan you keep
You get the plan in writing, including what each recommendation costs and what its downside is. Implement it with me, implement it elsewhere, or put it in a drawer. It’s yours either way.
Who you’d be working with
Derrick Loflin
Eighteen years in this business taught me something most people find out too late: retirement isn’t one problem, it’s three. How you replace the paycheck. What happens if the market turns while you’re withdrawing. Who pays if you or your spouse needs care. Miss any one of them and solving the other two stops mattering.
So that’s the work I do, and it’s all I do. I build a floor under your essential bills with guaranteed lifetime income, so the mortgage and the groceries stop depending on a good year. I put a buffer between your spending and the market, so a downturn early in retirement costs you a vacation instead of a decade. And I reposition a portion of what you’ve already saved so a long-term care event doesn’t become your children’s inheritance.
Here’s what that looks like if you call. Fifteen minutes on the phone to hear what’s actually keeping you up. Then a review where we put your guaranteed income, your gap, your tax exposure and your care risk on one page — and if you already own an annuity, we read the contract together and I tell you plainly what it does and what it costs. Then a written plan, with every recommendation’s downside written next to it. The plan is yours whether or not you ever work with me.
Most of the people I sit with are five years either side of retiring. They did the hard part already — they saved. What nobody has given them is a straight answer to “what does this actually pay me, and what breaks it?” That’s the conversation I’m good at, and I say the same things across a kitchen table that I say on the radio. If something has a catch, I’d rather you hear it from me first.
- Focus
- Retirement income, principal protection, asset-based long-term care
- Licensed
- Throughout the United States
- On the radio
- 101 FM Panama CitySaturday & Sunday, 12–1pm
- 100.7 FM WFLA TallahasseeSaturday, 9–10am
- The show
- Your Wealth Path ShowWeekly, on air and on YouTube
- Experience
- 18+ years in retirement planning
Straight answers
The questions people are too polite to ask.
Do I have to move all my money?
No, and you shouldn’t. The whole idea is to guarantee the part of your income you can’t afford to lose and leave the rest working. For most people that means committing a portion of savings — sized to your essential monthly bills — and nothing more. If someone proposes moving everything you have into one product, get a second opinion.
Aren’t annuities expensive?
Some are. Variable annuities with multiple riders can carry several percent a year in combined costs. Fixed and fixed indexed annuities usually have no explicit annual fee — the cost is embedded, showing up as a cap on your growth, and as a surrender schedule if you need the money early.
Either way, “no fee” never means free. I’ll show you where the cost is, in dollars and in limits, before you sign anything.
How do you get paid?
[Derrick — confirm this wording. Draft: I’m paid a commission by the insurance company when a contract is placed. You don’t pay me a separate planning fee, and the commission doesn’t come out of your deposit. If you’d like to know what a specific recommendation pays me, ask and I’ll tell you.]
I already own an annuity. Is it any good?
Sometimes yes. Bring the contract and I’ll read it with you: what it credits, what it costs, what the surrender schedule looks like and whether the income rider you’re paying for is actually worth keeping. Plenty of times the right answer is to keep what you have, and I’ll tell you that.
Is a guaranteed annuity actually guaranteed?
It’s guaranteed by the insurance company that issues it — backed by that carrier’s claims-paying ability and its statutory reserves. It is not FDIC insured and not guaranteed by any government agency. State guaranty associations provide a backstop, but with limits that vary by state.
That’s why carrier selection isn’t an afterthought. We look at financial strength ratings before we look at rates.
I’m 58 and not retiring for a while. Too early?
It’s the best time. The decisions with the biggest effect — when to claim Social Security, how much to convert to Roth, whether to qualify for long-term care coverage while you’re healthy — all have to be made before you retire, not after.
Do you work with people outside the Gulf South?
Yes. I’m licensed throughout the United States, and most of my planning work happens by phone and video regardless of where a client lives. The radio shows are local to the Florida panhandle and Tallahassee; the practice isn’t.
No cost, no obligation
Fifteen minutes will tell you whether this is worth a longer conversation.
Bring one question — the one you keep circling back to. If I can answer it on the call, I will, and that may be the end of it. That’s a fine outcome.
Prefer email? Derrick@Wealthpathllc.com
You’ll be talking to me
Not a call center, and not a junior associate.