What We Do
A Clear Framework That Guides Every Decision We Make
Our Tools
A Complete Set of Strategies for a Secure Future
Every part of our planning—retirement strategy, investment management, tax coordination, Social Security decisions—starts with a single foundation: Modern Retirement Theory, created by our founder, Jason Branning. MRT gives us a clear structure to understand what you will actually need in retirement and a practical framework to help you retire with clarity and confidence.
Modern Retirement Theory recognizes that retirement is an absolute goal. You want to retire and stay retired. That means your plan has to be grounded in real numbers, real spending needs, and real risks—not generic rules of thumb.
Understanding What You’ll Actually Need in Retirement
MRT begins with organizing your financial life into the Core 4 Funds: Base, Contingency, Discretionary, and Legacy. This structure gives purpose to your planning and helps us match the right strategies and investment tools to each part of your retirement life.
Your Base Fund
The Foundation of Everyday Life
Your Base Fund covers the essentials—housing, groceries, utilities, healthcare premiums, insurance, transportation, and the other non-negotiable expenses you depend on. Our goal is to match these Base Expenses with secure Base Income that remains stable throughout retirement. This is where the Safety-First approach comes in. We dedicate fixed income securities to deliver predictable cash flow so that your core needs are met regardless of market conditions.
Your Contingency Fund
Planning for Life’s Unknowns
A strong retirement plan has to prepare for events you can’t fully predict—long-term care needs, early-retirement market volatility, inflation surprises, changing tax laws, home repairs, or shifting family needs. The Contingency Fund builds resilience into your plan. It keeps you from having to sell growth assets at the wrong time or compromise the Base Fund that protects your lifestyle.
Your Discretionary Fund
Enjoying the Freedom Retirement Brings
Travel, hobbies, home upgrades, helping grandchildren, and other lifestyle goals fall under your Discretionary Fund. These goals are important, but they carry built-in flexibility. When markets move through a downturn, these expenses can be adjusted so your long-term strategy stays intact. That flexibility is what allows your growth portfolio to remain invested and compounding.
Your Legacy Fund
The Impact You Want to Leave
Your Legacy Fund reflects the people, causes, and values you want to support—during your lifetime and at death. It guides decisions around gifting, charitable giving, estate planning, and family support. MRT helps you approach these decisions intentionally so your legacy is aligned with your values and structured with tax efficiency in mind.
Our Planning Process
Build the Plan
We start by gathering your income sources, expenses, assets, and goals and mapping them into the Core 4 Funds using our planning software.
Test Multiple Scenarios
We run stress tests, analyze timing strategies, and generate your Critical Path to measure how stable your plan is under different conditions.
Create Your Safety-First Foundation
We build a bond ladder or fixed-income structure designed to fund your Base Expenses in the early years of retirement.
Invest for Long-Term Growth
The remaining assets are invested according to your time horizon using Time-Targeted Growth portfolios that align with your long-term retirement goals.
Retirement Planning Built on Security and Confidence
Our two-part structure—Safety-First income plus Time-Targeted Growth—creates a plan that feels stable even during market volatility. You’re never forced to sell growth assets at the wrong time, and you always know how your plan is progressing. Our Critical Path monitoring system keeps everything on track and shows how adjustments may affect your long-term outlook.
This is retirement planning with clarity, purpose, and confidence.
How the Core 4 Shapes Everything We Do
Once we establish your Core 4 Funds, we draw on the full Branning Wealth toolbox to build the right strategy for each part of your retirement. MRT gives us the framework. Our tools help us execute the plan:
- Safety-First income planning
- Time-Targeted Growth portfolios
- Tax-efficient withdrawal strategies
- Social Security optimization
- Insurance analysis and long-term care planning
- Estate and legacy coordination
- Ongoing monitoring through Critical Path analysis
Every decision you make in retirement—whether routine or unexpected—is evaluated through this structure. If a new expense or opportunity comes up, we ask:
- Which fund does this affect?
- How does it impact long-term stability?
- Which tool is best suited to address it?
This turns a complex retirement into a clear, manageable strategy.