Skip to the runway James Ustby, CFP®

An instrument

Retirement is not a date. It is a length.

Retire at sixty‑two, live to ninety‑five, and a plan is carrying thirty‑three years. Scroll through all of them and watch what the income line does while the market comes apart underneath it.

IV · Thirty-three years, at the speed of your hand.

62Age
1Year of plan
62 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 The income The market · illustrative

Every mark is one year you have to fund.

The line above the baseline is the income. It does not move, because it was never built to depend on the thing underneath it.

Somewhere in here is a year you will not forget.

The plan already knew about it. That is the entire job.

Illustrative only. The market trace is a drawing, not data, not a projection, and not a representation of any actual or hypothetical investment. Ages run 62 to 95.

V

Stewardship

Money is not the point. It is the means.

I do this work because I believe what someone builds is meant to be handed on, and that handing it on well is a responsibility rather than a preference.

That belief is why the plan gets stress tested against the bad year instead of the average one, and why the conversation starts with what the money is for rather than what it returned.

There is a version of this where you guess, and it very likely works out. I would rather you never find out. Book a call and take thirty minutes with no product and no pitch, or read the letter I write most weeks and decide later.

Whoever is faithful in very little is faithful also in much.
Luke 16:10