Most retirement plans are built around one goal: accumulate as much as possible.
Accumulation isn’t a retirement strategy. It’s a starting point.
Accumulation gets you to retirement. Guaranteed income gets you through it. Most plans only solve for the first half.
I ran a poll on LinkedIn recently asking a simple question: what matters more to your retirement plan right now — growing your portfolio, or guaranteed lifetime income?
Half the respondents said guaranteed lifetime income. Only one in five said accumulation was their top priority.
Small sample. But it points in a direction that a much larger study confirms.
What the data actually says
The 2026 EBRI Retirement Confidence Survey found that 4 in 5 workers want guaranteed monthly income in retirement.
Not a bigger portfolio. Not more market exposure. A paycheck — one they can’t outlive, no matter what happens.
Yet most financial plans are structured almost entirely around accumulation. Save more. Invest more. Hope the market cooperates. There’s no guaranteed floor. No income plan. Just a balance that has to last an unknown number of years.
That’s not a plan. That’s a guess.
The three threats most plans ignore
Retirement income expert Tom Hegna has spent decades teaching advisors and clients what actually threatens a retirement plan. It comes down to three risks:
Dying too soon. Your family loses your income. The financial plan falls apart before retirement even begins.
Living too long. You outlive your money. The math that worked at 65 starts to fail at 82. Sequence of returns risk turns a good portfolio into a problem.
Getting sick. A long-term care event can drain a lifetime of savings in just a few years.
A portfolio doesn’t protect against any of those. A properly structured guaranteed income strategy can address all three.
#PaychecksAndPlaychecks — Tom Hegna’s framework
Tom Hegna calls it #PaychecksAndPlaychecks. The idea is straightforward — and it’s the right way to think about retirement income.
Figure out exactly what you need every month to cover your life. Guarantee that number for as long as you live. Anything above that? Let it stay in the market if that’s what you want. But the income floor is locked. You can’t outlive it.
We work backwards from your number — not forward from your balance.
The goal isn’t to spend everything down. The goal is to make sure you never run out, no matter how long you live. If you have more than you need guaranteed, the rest can ride the market. But we cover the floor first.
What this looks like in practice
For most clients, this means separating retirement assets into two buckets:
- Guaranteed income bucket — Fixed indexed annuities (FIAs) or properly structured life insurance designed to generate a predictable monthly income for life. This is the floor. Non-negotiable.
- Growth bucket — Market-based assets that can continue growing. Because once the income floor is covered, the pressure is off. These assets don’t have to do everything anymore.
The tools aren’t complicated. What’s missing in most plans is the intentional separation — treating income money and growth money differently, because they are different.
If you’ve been in accumulation mode
If you have money in a 401(k), IRA, or savings account with no guaranteed income plan attached — you have the first half of a retirement strategy.
The second half is figuring out your number, guaranteeing it, and structuring everything else around it.
That conversation usually takes about 30 minutes. It doesn’t cost anything. And it will tell you pretty quickly whether your current plan gets you through retirement — or just to it.
Ready to build the second half of your retirement plan? Book a 30-minute conversation at iul.solutions/contact
This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. Product availability and suitability vary by individual circumstances. Kurt Lytle is a licensed insurance professional. IUL.Solutions · 4701 Trousdale Dr., Ste 119, Nashville, TN · iul.solutions