Us - Clear Retirement Advice

LET'S BE CLEAR ABOUT WHO WE ARE

Your Retirement Wealth Deserves a Retirement Wealth Specialist.

Get organized and get confident about your current situation and about your future. Then stay organized and confident throughout retirement. It's much easier when you work with a firm with the experience and expertise to do it.

James Schwarz, CFP^®, RICP^®, MBA

At Clear Retirement Advice, clients have direct access to their Wealth Advisor for all of their financial planning and investment needs. A CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER^™ and a RETIREMENT INCOME CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL^®, Jim Schwarz is committed to learning what is most important to his clients before making any recommendations or taking any action. He then draws on decades of technical research and experience to design, implement, and maintain strategies to achieve those most important goals.

Experience

Jim attributes his achievements in Wealth Management to decades of research and experience, including leadership roles in finance departments at Fortune 500 companies. At Charles Schwab, he was honored multiple times for being in the top 1% in the nation in both advisor and manager roles, and he was responsible for over 20,000 households and over $13B in assets.

"Working for a large brokerage company, I was exposed to literally thousands of different financial advisors and advisor firms," says Jim. "I was able to see from an insider's perspective which strategies and services really added a ton of value for clients...and which did not." Seeing an opportunity to serve clients by combining the best-in-class strategies and services, he decided to start Clear Retirement Advice LLC.

Jim also saw that the most effective way to serve clients was to give more personal attention to fewer clients, and to narrow the advisor's focus to one type of client. For CLEAR, that focus is on people in or interested in retirement.

Focus

"I remember a day years ago when I met with two completely different clients. In the morning, the client I met with was young and recently engaged, and needed financial strategies to pay off student loans, buy a first home, and plan for potential children. In the afternoon, I met with a couple who had recently retired, and they wanted to know how to maximize social security, whether they should get long term care insurance, and how much money they could afford to gift to their family."

It became so obvious to Jim just how different it was to manage wealth in the "accumulation" phase of life compared to managing wealth in the "distribution" phase. "I knew that the only way to truly be an expert and to stay on top of all the latest research and best solutions was to choose a lane."

Jim chose the distribution lane as his sole focus, partly because few advisors specialize exclusively in it, and partly because expert help with retirement wealth is so crucial to the lives of individuals and families. "Compared to accumulation, distribution is a much more important puzzle to get right. We cannot afford to make major mistakes at this phase of life."

Passion

Jim's passion lies in helping clients overcome the financial challenges that come up at various times in retirement. These challenges include volatile markets, global events, inflation, coordination of various retirement income sources, investing, tax reduction, healthcare, wealth protection, and wealth transfer.

Jim has one over-arching goal: to make sure his clients feel secure about both their current situation and their future, so they can enjoy an independent and fulfilling retirement.

A lifelong learner, Jim is both a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER^™ (CFP^®) and a RETIREMENT INCOME CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL^® (RICP^®). He graduated #1 in his MBA class at USC Marshall School of Business where he also was a Teaching Assistant for MBA Finance, and he earned his bachelor's degree at Harvard University with an emphasis on microeconomics.

He volunteers as a Financial Educator through the Financial Planning Association^® to help under-served populations through its pro bono program. Jim lives in San Carlos, CA, and enjoys movies, tennis, singing (he has performed the National Anthem at 7 Major League Baseball games), and laughing with his wife Tracy and their three kids, Mary, Hayes, and David.

Key Partners

As a Registered Investor Advisor (RIA) firm, we gain access to institutional-class investments, research, technology, and security. Since we are independent, we are not limited in our choice of partners. And since we are a fiduciary firm, we must choose what we believe is best for our clients.

Investing. For over 35 years, Dimensional has implemented nobel-prize-winning economic research in real-world investments.

Operations. Morningstar integrates advanced technology systems, providing data and tools necessary to build and manage portfolios.

Service. Dedicated to working exclusively with independent Registered Investment Advisors and their clients, SSG provides the platform to trade and transfer investments.

Custody. Client assets are safeguarded at Pershing, a division of The Bank of New York Mellon. With over $26 Trillion in assets, BNY Mellon is the world's largest custodian.

Research. The Financial Planning Association^® is the principal professional organization for CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER^™ professionals.

Expert Practitioners

Complete financial health requires a complete financial team. With client permission, we manage the logistics of sharing documents and advice with other members of the team, ensuring each client gets best-in-class service in all of the major areas of Wealth Management. If a client is already working with an expert, we work directly with that expert. And if a client needs a referral in any area, we have a network of professionals ready to help.

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CPAs

Retirement can offer fantastic opportunities for tax reduction, if we implement the appropriate financial planning and investing strategies. An independent CPA is essential to make these strategies work.

Attorneys

We help our clients match their desires to give to family & charities with various Estate Planning techniques. Attorneys are invaluable as another set of eyes to advise and to draft the legal documents.

Insurance Specialists

The amount of medical, life, disability, long term care, property & casualty, and other insurance can change significantly in retirement. While each client has a unique situation, everyone needs objective advice.

Housing Specialists

At least once in retirement, everyone's housing situation changes. Downsizing, buying a 2nd home, moving to a community, or modifying a home to age in place all require advance planning and experts.

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