Physicians and clinicians
You started saving a decade late and you are taxed like you didn't.
Training compresses a career's worth of saving into fewer years, at a marginal rate that punishes every inefficiency. Then a pension election arrives with a deadline and a set of options nobody walks you through.
The decisions
Where the money actually is.
Lump sum or annuity
The choice turns on interest rates at the time of the election, your health and longevity expectations, your spouse's situation, and what else funds your retirement. It is arithmetic plus judgment, and most people get one shot at it.
Multiple plan types at once
A 401(k), a 457, a cash balance plan, and a taxable account often run in parallel. Which one receives the next dollar depends on your bracket now versus later, and the answer changes over a career.
The Roth conversion window
The years between stopping clinical work and starting required distributions are frequently the lowest-tax years of a physician's life. Filling those brackets deliberately is worth real money.
Concentrated positions
Partnership interests, practice equity, or a single large holding accumulated over decades. Diversifying without triggering an unnecessary tax bill takes a plan and usually several years.
Disability and income protection
Your earning capacity is the largest asset on the balance sheet and the one most people insure by default. Whether existing coverage matches current obligations is worth checking.
Cutting back before stopping
Most physicians reduce hours before retiring outright. Modeling that transition (the income dip, the benefits changes, the bridge to Medicare) turns a vague intention into a date.
Kaiser-affiliated clinicians
Southern California, specifically.
We work with Kaiser-affiliated physicians on pension election analysis and the retirement transition. If you are weighing an election with a date attached, that is the conversation to have first, because the deadline does not move.
TradeWinds is an independent registered investment adviser. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by Kaiser Permanente, the Southern California Permanente Medical Group, or any employer or plan sponsor.
How we'd approach it
We model both branches of the election against your actual situation: the annuity stream valued against your longevity and your spouse's, versus the lump sum invested and drawn from under a range of market conditions, including bad ones. Then we show you the assumptions that change the answer, so you can see how fragile the conclusion is.
Most people find the decision easier once they can see which assumption they are really betting on.
The readiness assessment · free · 3 minutes
Where does your plan actually stand?
This is the same calibration we walk through with prospective clients. Nine questions, one to ten, across every part of a retirement plan. Nobody scores green on all nine — the useful part is finding out which of the reds you did not know about.
- 01
Your score, free
All 9 accelerators scored and color-coded the moment you finish. No email needed to see it.
- 02
The written breakdown
What each score actually implies and the order to work through them, in exchange for a name and an email.
- 03
Then a conversation, if you want one
Bring the scorecard. An advisor will have seen it before you sit down.