Beyond Risk and Safety
A book about retirement, written for the people actually living it.
A Different Framework for Retirement
The traditional 60/40 portfolio worked when bonds provided reliable income and genuine downside protection. But today's environment requires a different approach.
In Beyond Risk and Safety, I outline why categorizing money by purpose — income versus growth — creates more durable retirement plans than traditional risk-based allocation.
Most retirement books are written by financial planners, for financial planners. They focus on the numbers — Monte Carlo simulations, safe withdrawal rates, asset allocation models — as if retirement were primarily a math problem.
Beyond Risk and Safety takes a different view. Retirement is a math problem, but it's also a psychological one. The decades-long habit of saving doesn't switch off when the paychecks stop. The fear of running out of money doesn't disappear because the spreadsheet says you'll be fine. And the choices that look optimal on paper — Roth conversions, claiming Social Security at 70, holding bonds in a taxable account — often collide with what people are actually willing to do.
This book sits between the financial planning literature and the behavioral reality of retirement. It's for pre-retirees and retirees who've done the saving, want to understand what their money is actually going to cost them in taxes and decisions over the next thirty years, and want a framework that accounts for both the math and the human running it.
What You'll Find Inside
- The Income-Growth Portfolio framework — and why most retirement portfolios get the structure backwards
- The Gap Years between 65 and 72 — the planning window almost no one uses well
- Why the standard advice on Roth conversions is incomplete, and what to look at instead
- IRMAA, RMDs, and the embedded tax liability most retirees don't see coming
- The psychology of spending down a portfolio you spent decades building
About the author
Phil Gaudiano is a CPA who works almost exclusively with pre-retirees and retirees. He runs Sagatax in Northern Virginia, advises on retirement income strategy through Potomac Assurance, and writes The Pensioner's Paradox, a newsletter on retirement tax planning.