Four jobs. One connected plan.
Most portfolios are built with one dial: more stocks for growth, fewer stocks for safety. But retirement risk does not come in one form. WG Plan uses four distinct levers because each one is designed for a different kind of problem.
Not four levels of risk.
Each lever exists because there is a job the other three cannot do. One pursues growth. One helps defend against the timing of market losses. One looks beyond public markets. One transfers risks that investments alone cannot solve. Your plan can use all four, some of them, or none in a particular category—the mix follows your household, not a model portfolio.
Start with the job each lever performs.
The right question is not simply “How much market risk can you tolerate?” It is “Which risks does your household actually face, and which tool is built for each one?”
Market-based investing
The growth engine. P.L.A.N. participates in public markets and adapts exposure as trend, momentum, volatility, and credit conditions change.
Market-hedged strategies
The timing buffer. Contractual floors, buffers, and income features can reduce dependence on selling growth assets during a market decline.
Alternatives
The different-return-source lever. It seeks results driven by something other than the same public stock and bond markets.
Risk transfer
The household-risk lever. Insurance contracts can shift longevity, extended-care, and survivor-income risks to an insurer’s balance sheet.
Different risks need different answers.
A market decline early in retirement, a long life, several years of care, the death of a spouse, and a decade of weak returns can all pressure the same plan. They do not respond to the same investment adjustment.
A plan is more than its allocation.
Tax and account constraints are considered during design. Once the mix is set, WG Plan maps each strategy to an appropriate account. Tax treatment, liquidity, eligibility, time horizon, and life events all affect where a lever belongs and when it should change.
- Income needs are measured—not guessed.
- Tradeoffs are shown in plain language.
- Risks you choose to retain are documented.
- Drift and life changes trigger a fresh review.
Your mix begins with measurable conditions.
Risk tolerance matters, but it is not the whole diagnosis. These are some of the conditions that can move a lever up, down, or out of the plan entirely.
How much spending is covered by income that does not depend on markets?
How many years must the portfolio support—and how much time is available for recovery?
What income or benefit would disappear at the death of a spouse?
How much must remain available without surrender periods or multi-year lockups?
Which strategies are legally available, suitable, and medically attainable?
Is the price of protecting or transferring a specific risk worth paying?
The framework inside the plan
The mix is diagnosed.
The decision is yours.
Income gaps can point toward risk transfer. Near-term spending can limit illiquid strategies. Eligibility can rule a strategy out entirely. Those findings frame a conversation; they do not force a purchase.
See the diagnosis, decisions, and review process ↗P.L.A.N. has a specific role.
P.L.A.N. is the systematic investment engine inside Market Based. It is not another name for the four-lever framework. The other three levers perform different jobs alongside it.
Explore the investment engine ↗See the risks before choosing the tools.
Begin with a complimentary diagnostic of the income, tax, market, and life risks already inside your plan.
Schedule COMPASS Vision™