Madison Partners

If you are turning 65, the Medicare decisions you make in that enrollment window can ripple into other parts of your financial picture, including how much you pay in premiums based on income, and how those choices interact with when you claim Social Security. Missing your initial enrollment window can also mean permanent late penalties.

This is general education, not personalized Medicare or insurance advice, your insurance agent and advisor can help you think through the timing together. Questions about how this fits your broader plan? A fiduciary advisor can help you work through it.

Beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance policies do not follow your will, they follow whatever form is on file, sometimes signed decades ago. A divorce, a remarriage, or a new grandchild can all change who you meant to leave assets to, without a single word in your will changing.

It is worth checking those forms every few years, especially after a major life change. Coordinating this kind of detail with your CPA and attorney is exactly the kind of thing a fiduciary advisor helps track.

Most people can name their biggest holdings. Fewer can say how those holdings actually move together. Two accounts can look diversified on paper and still carry the same underlying risk, depending on sector concentration, currency exposure, and how correlated the pieces really are in a downturn.

This is general education, not a recommendation for any specific investment. If you have not looked at your full portfolio this way, it might be worth a second look.

Many retirees are surprised to learn Social Security itself can be taxed. Depending on your other income, up to 85 percent of your benefit can be subject to tax. What decides this is called provisional income, a mix of your adjusted gross income, tax-exempt interest, and half your Social Security benefit.

Where you land can depend on choices made years earlier, like how withdrawals are timed. This is general tax education, not personalized advice, so pair it with guidance from your CPA or tax advisor. Save this if Social Security taxation is new to you.

Tax loss harvesting sounds complicated, but the idea is simple: selling an investment at a loss to help offset taxable gains elsewhere in your portfolio. The details, like timing rules and which accounts qualify, are where it gets more involved, and mistakes there can undo the benefit. This is general education, not a recommendation to buy or sell any specific investment. If this is a strategy you've heard about, your advisor and CPA can help you understand whether it fits your situation.

We have some news.

Madison Partners has been named one of America's Top Financial Advisory Firms 2026 by Newsweek.

Out of more than 16,000 SEC-registered advisory firms evaluated nationwide, only 1,000 were selected. The ranking, produced by Newsweek and Plant-A Insights Group, scored firms on asset growth, client retention, advisor expertise, breadth of services, and freedom from conflicts of interest.

We don't take this lightly.

This recognition reflects the way our team shows up for clients every single day. It reflects the phone calls with your CPA to make sure your tax strategy and investment plan are actually talking to each other. The coordination with your attorney when estate documents need to match what your portfolio is doing. The regular check-ins that keep your plan current instead of sitting in a drawer.

It reflects a belief we've held since day one: that real financial planning means looking at your whole financial life, not just your portfolio.

To our clients, thank you for trusting us with something that matters this much. To our advisors and team members across the country, this is yours.

If you've been thinking about whether your financial plan is getting the attention it deserves, we'd love to have that conversation.

https://www.themadisonpartners.com/madison-partners-newsweek-top-financial-advisory-firms-2026/

2026 ranking based on data from Sept. 2020–Sept. 2025. Created and tabulated by Plant-A Insights Group and published with Newsweek. Madison Partners did not pay for consideration or selection and paid a post-selection licensing fee to use the award logo. This recognition does not guarantee results and is not a current or former client endorsement of Madison Wealth Partners.

Join us in giving a warm welcome to Derick Ansah as he joins the Madison Partners team! 🎉

Derick, we’re thrilled to have you on board and excited for the knowledge, dedication, and fresh perspective you bring to our team. As we continue to grow, we know you'll play an important role in helping us serve our clients and strengthen our mission. We’re looking forward to working alongside you and celebrating all that's ahead.

Welcome to Madison Partners!

There is a window many pre-retirees do not realize they are sitting in.

After a career of high earnings, income often drops in the final working years or in the gap between retirement and when Social Security and required minimum distributions begin. For some households, that gap means temporarily lower tax brackets.

That lower-bracket window can be an opportunity to do things that would have cost more earlier: converting traditional IRA funds to Roth, realizing appreciated assets at lower capital gains rates, or filling a bracket deliberately with income that would otherwise be taxed more heavily later.

None of these moves is right for every situation. Each has tradeoffs and depends on your full financial picture. But the window is real, and it tends to close quietly.

A coordinated plan catches it before it does.

Save this if you are within ten years of retirement.

Questions about your own bracket picture? A fiduciary advisor can help you think it through.

Five questions that can shape your tax picture for decades. Most people never ask them.

A quick translation:

- Account types: Traditional accounts give you a deduction now and tax you later. Roth accounts tax you now and give you tax-free growth. The mix matters enormously depending on where rates go and when you need the money.

- Roth conversions: Moving money from traditional to Roth triggers tax now, but can reduce future required distributions and leave heirs a cleaner inheritance.
- Withdrawal order: Drawing from accounts in the wrong sequence can quietly push you into a higher bracket or increase Medicare premiums.

- Asset location: Holding tax-inefficient investments in tax-advantaged accounts and tax-efficient ones in taxable accounts is one of the more overlooked planning moves.

- Coordination: Tax planning and investment planning done in separate silos tend to leave money on the table. A plan that connects both tends to be more efficient.

None of these is advice for your specific situation. All of them are worth a conversation.

Share this with someone who has not had that conversation yet.

Claiming Social Security at 62 gets you money sooner. It also locks in a permanently reduced benefit.

The math in plain terms: claiming at 62 rather than 67 (full retirement age for most people born after 1960) reduces your monthly benefit by roughly 30 percent. Waiting until 70 increases it by roughly 24 percent above full retirement age. Those percentages stay with you for life and affect any survivor benefit your spouse may receive.

Whether waiting makes sense depends on your health, your other income sources in the gap years, and your household's overall plan. It is not automatic that later is better. But for people in good health with other resources to draw on, the longevity math often favors patience.

The decision is permanent. It is worth modeling before you make it.

Follow Madison Partners for plain-English retirement planning.