One of the stranger things I’ve observed during the last twenty years is that many people become more anxious as they get closer to retirement.

That seems backwards. They have more savings than they did ten years ago. They know more than they did ten years ago. They have access to more information than ever before. Yet many are less certain about what they should do next.

I think I know why.

Retirement has it’s own language and it’s different than the language most pre-retirees speak. At the highest level, retirement is a totally different way of life; it’s a shift in dependency, a shift in freedom. You’re free to do what you want to do when you want to do it. And you’re free to create your own paycheck too. That’s the ‘gotcha’ in retirement. And that’s where this problem begins.

As retirement approaches, people begin gathering information. They read books, watch videos, attend seminars, and interview advisors. And then there’s the social media feed. One wrong search on social media and suddenly your feed is an assault from every influencer with a get rich quick scheme.

The issue is that the more information you see, the more conflicting answers there are. One person says take Social Security early while another says wait. One advisor recommends an annuity while another says avoid annuities. One says you need more growth while another says you need more safety.

Eventually the question becomes, “How am I supposed to know who is right?”

Questions like that indicate uncertainty and uncertainty creates anxiety. That’s where retirees become stuck because they are focused on the noise and not the signal.

Should I buy an annuity? Should I take Social Security now? Should I own more stocks? Should I keep more cash?

Those are important questions, but they are not the first questions.

The first questions are: How much money do I really need each month to survive & thrive? How do I convert my 401(k) into that income stream? How long will that income last? What could go wrong and if something does go wrong, what’s my plan-B?

It’s about the questions you ask. Ask the wrong questions and you could find yourself married to an insurance company product that over promised and under delivered while you still have 10 years of living left and no way to fund it.

Ask the right questions first and create a plan, then look for the materials to build on that plan. Tune out the noise.

Good planning can’t eliminate uncertainty. Markets are uncertain. Inflation is uncertain. Tax laws are uncertain. Life itself is uncertain.

What good planning can do is create clarity.

It can help people understand where they are, where they are trying to go, and why a particular course of action makes sense. Just as importantly, it can help them understand the tradeoffs involved so they can make decisions with confidence rather than guesswork.

There is also a human side to this that is easy to overlook.

A retirement plan is not simply a collection of investments. It is a framework for making future decisions. Confidence in that framework comes partly from the plan itself, but it also comes from confidence in the person helping you build it. People need to know that someone they trust (a fiduciary) understands the problem, understands the tradeoffs, and is genuinely working in their best interest.

That is one reason the fiduciary standard matters. Retirement is too important to be built around sales incentives, product quotas, or conflicts of interest a product salesperson brings to your table. That kind of trust matters because retirement is not a one-time decision. It is a journey that may last thirty years.

After twenty years of doing this work, I’ve come to believe that clarity is one of the most valuable things an advisor can provide. Not because clarity predicts the future. It doesn’t.

Clarity allows people to move forward.

And when people can move forward with confidence instead of anxiety, the retirement they’ve spent a lifetime preparing for can finally begin.