Retirement planning
The work changes depending on where you are. Deciding whether you can afford to stop is a different question from deciding which account to spend first, and both are different from managing a required withdrawal you never asked for.
Three stages, and the decisions in each one are mostly tax decisions.
One to three years from retiring
You have a number in your head and you want to know whether it holds. This stage is about turning the balance into an income figure you can actually spend, then testing it against the things that move it: taxes on the way out, health coverage before Medicare, and when Social Security starts. It is also the last stretch where a concentrated position in your employer's stock can be unwound on your schedule rather than under pressure.
Making the transition
The paycheck stops and you start setting your own taxable income for the first time. The years between your last salary and your first required withdrawal are the cheapest ones you will ever have, and what you do with them decides how much of your savings is still taxable at 75. Roth conversion sizing, withdrawal sequencing, and the claiming decision all land in this window, and they interact.
Already retired
Required minimum distributions arrive whether you need the money or not, and your bracket is set by withdrawals, Social Security, and thresholds that do not appear on any bracket table. This is where qualified charitable distributions, Medicare surcharge planning, and the filing-status change a surviving spouse faces do the most work, because each one is decided years before it shows up on a return.
Why the tax side keeps showing up
Every stage above turns on a decision that lands on a tax return: which account funds the year, how large a conversion to run, when the benefit starts, what a distribution does to a Medicare premium two years later. Running the plan and preparing the return together is what keeps those from being decided separately.
More on how the engagement works is on the services page.