Merrill Lynch Clear㢠Living Your Best Life in Retirement Through Exploration of Life Priorities You have heard the statistics about aging and the litany of lectures, including from me, about preparing for aging. During a recent webinar, Merrill Lynch demonstrated a new tool that you might be interested in exploring. By the way, this is not an endorsement. My wife and I actually use Fidelity for retirement planning. Nonetheless, here goes. Merrill Lynch Clear㢠modernizes the process of preparing for retirement through:
- An exploration of seven distinct life priorities ÛÒ including health, home, family, finance, giving, work and leisure ÛÒ connecting the financial aspects of life in retirement.
- Deeper levels of education and insight about priorities and concerns through a series of videos, guides, seminars and other rich content to help people make informed decisions.
- Specially trained financial advisors with innovative tools to bring this approach and these resources together for clients throughout their lives, as needs and priorities change.
The framework is designed to better connect peopleÛªs lives to their finances through broader, more personally meaningful conversations with their financial advisors about their priorities. This exploration then leads to goal setting, the creation of an investment strategy to help pursue those goals, and making course corrections along the way. ÛÏRetirement today is a totally different experience,Û said Andy Sieg, head of Global Wealth and Retirement Solutions for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. ÛÏBaby boomers are living later life in ways no other generation has. This requires a bold new approach to helping people think about their lives in a comprehensive way, explore opportunities and challenges, and seek peace of mind.Û Among Merrill Lynch ClearÛªs unique tools is a series of iPad ÛÏDiscovery AppsÛ created to help facilitate deeper conversations between clients and advisors. The first apps in this expanding series focus on the exploration of life priorities, along with social security, health care, lifetime income and knowing your investment personality. These apps offer a dynamic approach to helping people consider retirement in ways they may never have before, using illustrations, educational resources, and interactive exercises to better understand priorities and allocate resources based on personal goals and circumstances. When announcing this tool, Merrill Lynch also named Cyndi Hutchins as director of Financial Gerontology, providing a resource to help advisors address the challenges that come with aging. The retirement website (www.ml.com/retire) has also been redesigned with actionable content and resources from Merrill Lynch and third-party experts to help clients navigate life in retirement. New content being introduced on an ongoing basis includes original articles, client and expert videos, webcasts and research on topics ranging from: Changing the Conversation About Retirement, Understanding Health Care Costs, The CaregiverÛªs Financial Guide, Sharing the Family Vacation Home, An Encore Education for Your Encore Career, Financial Guide for First-Time Grandparents and much more.