For years, I’ve worked in the Dayton community helping families retire on their own terms. As a fee-only, fiduciary financial planner, my goal is to cut through the confusion, and simplify the transition so you can confidently enjoy the next stage of life.
Maybe you want to travel more, volunteer, or enjoy concerts at the Fraze Pavilion and the Schuster Center. No matter what it looks like, the transition to retirement doesn’t need to feel scary and messy. This Dayton pre retirement checklist is designed to help you make sure you haven’t overlooked anything important.
Key Takeaways
- Define your vision and budget: Retirement readiness starts with organization, a clear vision, and a realistic retirement budget.
- Maximize your lifetime income: Coordinate your Social Security benefits, pension, and investment withdrawals to lower taxes and create the maximum lifetime retirement income possible.
- Protect your health and legacy: A complete pre retirement checklist isn’t just about your investments. It includes planning for future health care costs, insurance needs, and updating your essential estate documents.
Your Dayton Pre-Retirement Checklist: A Quick Overview
I like to think about retirement readiness in four major categories. Each area of retirement planning has different steps and objectives. Before we dive into the specifics for each step, let’s visualize the full retirement planning process.
Get Organized
- Review your balance sheet and retirement income sources
Retirement Goals and Income
- Clarify your goals and build a realistic retirement budget
- Maximize contributions to retirement accounts
- Pay down any remaining debt
- Plan your Social Security retirement benefits and investment withdrawals
Investments and Income Taxes
- Review your risk and arrange your investments
- Evaluate taxes in retirement (Ohio-specific)
Risk Management and Estate Plan
- Prepare for healthcare and Medicare coverage
- Make a plan for long-term care in retirement
- Review and update your estate plan
Dayton, OH Step-by-Step Pre-Retirement Guide
Get Organized
1. Review your balance sheet and retirement income sources
A great first step in retirement planning is to get organized by building a basic balance sheet. I do this with all of my new clients during onboarding. It doesn’t need to be fancy or complicated, just take the time to make a list of all of your assets starting with bank accounts (and equivalents like CDs, money market, etc), investment accounts, and large valuables like property and cars. Then at the bottom of your list, continue with your debts including credit cards, personal loans, car loans, mortgages, etc.
Your balance sheet will show you what accounts you have to live on in retirement but you’ll also want to gather paperwork on other income sources. First, visit ssa.gov to download your most recent Social Security statement to see where your projected benefits stand. If you work out at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, you’ll want to download your most recent FERS pension statement. If you’re a public employee in Ohio, grab your latest OPERS, STRS, SERS, or OP&F statements. And if you worked for a public company with a defined benefit pension program, be sure to gather that as well.
Retirement Goals and Income
2. Clarify your goals and build a realistic retirement budget
Before you pick a retirement date, it’s wise to get really clear about what you want retirement to look and feel like. Over the years, I’ve learned that retirement readiness is way more than just having enough money. My clients who love retirement had a strong sense of who they wanted to be when work ended and what was going to be meaningful. The clearer you get with your goals and vision, the easier it is to build a retirement plan.
As a starting point, consider asking yourself the following questions:
- What does your ideal day, week, and month look like in retirement?
- Where do you want to live? Will it be in Ohio or will you split time during the winters?
- Who will you socialize with once you stop seeing co-workers every day?
- When your job title disappears, who will you be and how do you feel about the identity change?
- What activities will feel meaningful when you have the freedom to spend your time anyway you want?
- How will you stay healthy and mentally strong?
How much will retirement cost?
Next, you’ll need to figure out what your ideal retirement is going to cost. Data from the United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics (published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) shows that the average annual spending for a retired household was $59,616 as of the end of 2024. But if you’ve saved well and plan to live an active lifestyle, you might want to spend more.
Instead of trying to build a complicated retirement budget that probably won’t be accurate, just start with your net take home income. You’re already used to living on this number. Then add on extra travel and fun spending based on your goals as well as the cost of out of pocket medical expenses. If you’ve paid off your mortgage, you’ll need to budget monthly for the annual cost of your property tax and homeowners insurance and for any other semi-annual or quarterly bills.
Example: Tim and Sara are a married couple in Centerville, Ohio. Their net employment take home income is around $8,000/month. Their mortgage is paid off, and they want to travel early in retirement. To build a realistic budget, we started with that $8,000/mo baseline and made some strategic adjustments:
| Budget Adjustment | Monthly Impact | Why |
| Current net take home | $8,000 | Initial baseline for spending |
| Subtract old mortgage | – $1,500 | House is paid off |
| Pre-65 health care costs | + $1,200 | Health care before Medicare |
| Extra travel | + $1,000 | Funding travel goals |
| Lump expenses | + $700 | Semi annual property taxes |
| Target retirement budget | $9,400 | Total estimated need |
3. Maximize contributions to retirement accounts
The IRS lets you make annual catch-up contributions to your workplace retirement accounts once you turn 50. For 2026, the standard 401(k), 403(b), or Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) contribution limit is $24,500, and the standard age 50+ catch-up limit is an extra $8,000. Thanks to the SECURE 2.0 Act, if you’re between 60 and 63, you qualify for the new super catch-up contribution limit of $11,250 instead of $8,000.
Maxing out pre-tax accounts right up to your final day on the job gives your retirement savings a boost right before you need to draw income. Even better, it can improve your Medicare coverage costs by lowering your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI). That said, if your prior-year wages were higher than $150,000, the IRS now requires your catch-up contributions to be made on a Roth or after-tax basis.
4. Pay down any remaining debt
Many of the prospective clients that I talk to tell me they want to hire an advisor to help them maximize their retirement income. In their minds, they’re usually thinking about picking the right investments or finding tax savings. Both of these are important, but I’ve found that one of the easiest ways to maximize your retirement income is to pay off your debt.
If you have a mortgage or a car loan in retirement, you’ll have to pull significantly more monthly cash flow from your investments to cover your bills. And it turns out that lenders don’t let you skip payments when the stock market drops and your portfolio is feeling stressed.
As you run through your pre-retirement checklist, here are a few debt ideas to explore:
Re-direct savings
If you’ve been aggressively maxing out your retirement accounts, you could adjust your future contributions down to the company match. Then channel that newly freed-up income to pay down your debts faster.
Debt snowball method
List your debts from the smallest balance to the largest. Throw all your extra cash at your smallest loan first to score quick psychological wins, then roll that momentum into the next loan, and so on.
Debt avalanche method
List your debts by their interest rates, from highest to lowest. Attack the highest-interest debt first to save the most money mathematically over time.
Example: Let’s say you need $8,000 a month to live comfortably in retirement at age 61, but $2,000 of that goes toward your mortgage and a car loan. If you pay off those loans before your official retirement date, your monthly cash flow need instantly drops to $6,000. By eliminating debt, you just found $2,000 a month in your budget without having to take on any new stock market risk.
For more information on retiring debt-free, check out my article: How (and why) to retire debt-free.
5. Plan your Social Security retirement benefits and investment withdrawals
When it comes to Social Security, pensions, and investment withdrawals, I’m a big believer in maximizing your total lifetime income, not just your monthly check. This means getting the most out of your government benefits and investments by planning ahead and being tax-efficient.
You’ll hear people argue that the best way to maximize Social Security is to delay until age 70. But a smart retirement strategy focuses on getting the most out of your benefits over the course of your entire life. If you delay Social Security beyond your full retirement age, you might lean too heavily on your portfolio in the meantime. This could cause irreversible damage to your accounts especially if the market drops shortly after you retire. Not to mention, maximizing your Social Security benefits also has a lot to do with your life expectancy. Depending on your health, delaying benefits until 70 might not get you the most money overall.
With your investments, you’ll need to determine a sustainable withdrawal rate and be mindful of tax issues by carefully sequencing where your income comes from each year. Instead of just pulling randomly from your accounts, you’ll want to explore concepts like pulling pre-tax dollars up to the top of your current marginal tax bracket, blending in tax-free Roth distributions to cover unexpected large expenses, and managing capital gains in your taxable brokerage accounts.
The government recently passed the Social Security Fairness Act, which eliminated the old Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO). If you qualify for an Ohio pension like OPERS or STRS, you don’t have to worry anymore about the government penalizing your benefits. This makes the timing of when you start your pension, Social Security, and portfolio withdrawals even more important. To maximize your lifetime income, you’ll need to plan the best strategy for each of these sources individually and in combination with each other, avoiding unnecessary tax spikes or Medicare premium surcharges.
A note about income timing
If you have a pension through OPERS or STRS (or even if you have a federal or private pension), keep in mind that your first payment can take 1-2 months to arrive after your official retirement date. So it’s really important to have a dedicated cash buffer ready so you’re not pinched if there’s a delay in income when you retire.
To learn more about how to maximize your resources, check out my recent article: 10 Helpful Retirement Withdrawal Strategies to Stretch Your Income.
Investments and Income Taxes
6. Review your risk and arrange your investments
When it comes to arranging your investments for retirement, my approach is largely driven time horizon. During your working years, you probably had one target allocation for your 401k. But in retirement, not every account or tax type needs to have the same allocation. For example, if you want to draw your early retirement income from pre-tax IRAs, those accounts will need a dedicated bond and cash buffer so you don’t have to sell stocks at a loss during a down market. On the other hand, if your tax-free Roth accounts won’t be touched for another 15 years, they have a longer time horizon. This means you might be able to keep them in a more growth-oriented allocation.
Unlike when you were working, in retirement you’ll need your investments to keep growing for inflation while making a plan to handle down markets. One way to plan your retirement asset allocation is to figure out how many years of income you’d feel comfortable holding in cash and bonds, and then work backwards. Historical market data tracked by Charles Schwab shows that the average length of a bear market (down market of 20% or more) is about 14 months. Because it takes time for the market to bottom out and recover, you’ll need some way to keep your income going without damaging your portfolio.
Example: Let’s say you have $1 million in your 401(k) and you plan to draw $47,000 per year to supplement your Social Security. If you decide you’d feel secure having 5 years of your income parked in conservative assets to weather a market crash, we would allocate around $250,000 in cash and short-term bonds. Working backwards then, we arrive at an asset allocation of roughly 75% stocks and 25% bonds. You’ve tailored your investment risk to your income needs and risk comfort.
7. Evaluate taxes in retirement (Ohio specific)
For years, you’ve been enjoying a tax break for putting money into your 401(k). But in retirement, you have to finally pay those taxes. And even if you’re in a lower bracket, IRS bills just seem to feel more painful when you’re spending your savings.
I’ve noticed this usually hits people the first time when they need a lump sum. You ask your financial advisor to pull $15,000 from your IRA for a home project, and you realize you actually need to withdraw around $19,000 just to pay uncle sam. Or you find out you have to pay two to three times as much for Medicare Part B and Part D thanks to IRMAA surcharges because your tax return has been high thanks to required minimum distributions.
So you’ll need a proactive plan for how to navigate retirement taxes so you can enjoy more of your money. If you plan to stay in Ohio, our local rules provide some relief. First, Ohio doesn’t tax your Social Security benefits. Second, the state recently passed major tax reform. Beginning in 2026, Ohio is moving to a flat 2.75% state income tax for non-business income over $26,050. Also, there are a number of retirement tax credits you might qualify for depending on your household income and source.
For a deeper dive on planning a tax-efficient retirement in Ohio, check out these recent articles: 10 Retirement Tax Strategies Every Retiree Should Know About and Ohio Retirement Tax Strategies to Optimize Your Budget.
Risk Management and Estate Plan
8. Prepare for healthcare and Medicare coverage
Retirement health insurance coverage is usually one of the biggest question marks for my clients. I’ve found that a good starting point is to figure out if you’ll be retiring before or after you turn 65.
If your retirement age is below 65, you’ll need to find and pay for your own health insurance until Medicare kicks in. For example, if you retire at 62, you’ll have to find coverage for three years. You could use COBRA to bridge a shorter gap, shop on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace, or hop on your spouse’s policy if they’re still working.
If you’re retiring at or after 65, thankfully you’ll have access to Medicare, but planning coverage involves a lot more than just comparing premiums. You’ll have to choose between Traditional Medicare potentially paired with a Medigap supplement, or a Medicare Advantage plan. The right choice will depend on your favorite doctors, hospitals, whether you’ll be traveling a lot, and the specific prescriptions you take.
Because the rules change every year, I recommend working with a health insurance specialist. I love connecting my Dayton clients with the team at RetireMed. They’re an awesome local resource that can help you navigate the Medicare maze and find the exact right fit for your situation.
For more on how to build your coverage timeline, check out my guide on How to Plan for Health Insurance in Retirement: Coverage Options Explained.
9. Make a plan for long-term care in retirement
Long-term care is one of the toughest things to talk about because no one wants to imagine losing their independence and it’s so hard to predict. But ignoring it when you plan retirement can leave you and your family in a bind. According to CareScout, a private room in an Ohio nursing home averages around $125,000/yr, and in-home care runs just over $77,000/yr.
The biggest thing I share with my clients is that everyone needs a long-term care plan, but not everyone needs long-term care insurance. And I define a long-term care plan as having a documented answer to these questions:
- Where do you want to be cared for? If you eventually need help with activities of daily living, would you prefer to stay in your own home, move into a continuous care retirement community, go into assisted living, or live with a family member?
- Who do you want to provide that care? Do you expect your spouse or your kids to care for you, or would you prefer it to be handled entirely by a professional?
- How are you going to pay for it? If the need arises, will you self-fund using a portion of your investments, spend down your HSA, look into long-term care insurance coverage, or explore modern hybrid policies that pull from a life insurance benefit if you need it?
For more info on local care costs and how to build your strategy, check out my article: How to Plan for Long-Term Care in Dayton, Ohio: A Helpful, In-Depth Guide.
10. Review and update your estate plan
This isn’t the most fun part of planning retirement, but it’s just as important. Estate planning sounds fancy but it isn’t just for the ultra-wealthy. In fact, a huge part of your estate plan is designed to protect you while you’re still alive.
Many people assume that having a will is enough. But you’ll also need a Durable Power of Attorney and a Healthcare Power of Attorney so someone you trust can manage your finances and make medical decisions if you’re ever unable to. You’ll need a Living Will to outline your wishes for life-sustaining care, and a HIPAA authorization so your family can actually talk to your doctors.
And you’ll want to understand how your assets will eventually transition to your loved ones. A will is basically just a letter to the probate judge. It requires your family to go through a public and time-consuming court process. This is why some people opt for a revocable living trust, or utilize beneficiary designations (including TODs on property) to bypass probate entirely.
Finally, don’t forget your online accounts. A modern estate plan should probably include instructions for your digital assets like your social media profiles so your online life doesn’t become a tangled mess.
Example: Let’s say you own a home in Centerville, Ohio and have a healthy investment portfolio. If you rely solely on a will, your adult children might have to wait six to nine months and spend thousands of dollars working with an attorney in Ohio probate court before they can finally sell your house. But if you placed that home in a living trust and added beneficiary designations to your bank accounts and IRAs, your kids could step in the very next day, pay your final bills, and distribute most of your inheritance.
Common Pre-Retirement Mistakes to Avoid
Having helped Dayton families navigate this transition for years, I’ve noticed some common issues that can derail an otherwise great retirement:
- Leaping before figuring out what makes life meaningful: Retirement readiness is about a lot more than just your investments. Quitting your job without a clear vision of how you’ll spend your time, stay active, and replace your work identity can easily lead to boredom and depression.
- Treating financial decisions like isolated events: Taking large IRA withdrawals without checking your tax bracket, or picking a Medicare plan without verifying your doctors and prescriptions could throw your entire plan out of sync. Every part of your plan needs to work in sync.
- Underestimating inflation and irregular costs: Don’t assume your spending will just drop by 20% when you stop working. You’ll have 40 extra hours a week to travel, play golf, and eat out, all while healthcare and everyday expenses tend to go up.
- Ignoring sequence-of-returns risk: Selling stocks during a market downturn right after you retire locks in those losses. Without a dedicated cash or bond buffer to protect your income, a bad market can cause permanent damage to your portfolio.
Looking For Pre-Retirement Guidance? Let Stage Ready Financial Planning Help you
You’ve worked incredibly hard to save and you only get to retire once. If you’ve accumulated between $750,000 and $1,000,000 or more and want an expert set of eyes to review your situation, you don’t have to figure it out alone.
At Stage Ready Financial Planning, my goal isn’t to sell you products. It’s to help you synchronize your investments, minimize your Ohio tax burden, and build a reliable, lifetime income strategy so you can step away from work with confidence.
Schedule your no-pressure intro call today to see if we’re a good fit, and let’s get your retirement plan stage ready.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How much do I need to retire comfortably in Dayton, Ohio?
Because the cost of living in Ohio is lower than the national average, you don’t necessarily need the same savings as someone retiring in New York. Many couples in the Dayton area find they can retire comfortably with investments between $750,000 and $1,500,000 and sometimes even less. Your specific target will depend on how much you spend, your health and longevity, whether your debt is paid off, and if you have access to pension like OPERS, STRS, or FERS.
What should I do 5 years before retiring?
The five-year mark is when your planning needs to shift into high gear. This is a great time to maximize your catch-up contributions, stress-test your ideal retirement budget, and start adjusting your investment portfolio’s risk level. It’s also a good time to aggressively pay down your mortgage or car loans so you can enter retirement debt-free.
What should I do 1 year before retiring?
Your final year before retirement will involve a lot of logistics. You’ll need to solidify your official retirement date, choose your healthcare and Medicare coverage options (I highly recommend using a local specialist like RetireMed), and confirm your income plan. And if you haven’t already done so, you’ll want to establish a cash and short-term bond buffer so your first few years of income are protected from stock market drops.
Should I work with a financial advisor in Dayton before retiring?
I think an objective set of eyes is always helpful but It really depends on what you’re looking for. If you enjoy tracking tax brackets, researching changing estate laws, and rebalancing investment portfolios, you can absolutely manage your own retirement transition.
But for most of the families I’ve helped over the years, reaching the finish line means they want to step away from the numbers. These households usually want an expert plan, but they also want to outsource investment management to a professional. They’ve spent decades working hard to build their savings, and they want to spend their time traveling, golfing, or enjoying life with family instead of managing spreadsheets and stressing over market volatility. If you want someone to help you spot hidden tax issues, coordinate your income timeline, and give you the freedom to just go enjoy retirement, collaborating with a specialist makes a lot of sense.
About Joseph Eck, CFP®
Joseph A. Eck, CFP®, is the owner and lead financial advisor at Stage Ready Financial Planning. He dedicates his practice to helping retirement savers navigate the important window before retirement and beyond. Utilizing his background in education and with over a decade as a financial planner, Joe acts like a conductor for your finances. He strives to help you tune out market noise, structure dependable retirement income, and pay less in taxes. A proud member of the Dayton, Ohio community, Joe provides down-to-earth, fiduciary guidance to ensure your retirement transition is seamless.
About Stage Ready Financial Planning
Fiduciary Financial Advisor Serving Dayton, Ohio. Retirement Planning that stays in sync with your life. Providing fee-only wealth management, designed to handle the math so you can enjoy the music.
Stage Ready Financial Planning helps retirees and savers over 50 throughout Dayton, Ohio and surrounding communities stay in sync with their goals through fee-only and fiduciary wealth management. Designed for households with $750,000+ invested for retirement, Joseph Eck, CFP® helps clients coordinate and implement retirement income, investments, taxes, and more into one cohesive strategy.
From orchestrating predictable retirement income to reducing unnecessary taxes and market noise, Stage Ready Financial Planning was built to help clients enjoy retirement with clarity, confidence, and financial harmony.
Article References
- Social Security Administration. “My Social Security Account” Accessed June 29, 2026. https://www.ssa.gov
- FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “Expenditures: Total Average Annual Expenditures by Occupation: Retired.” Accessed June 29, 2026. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CXUTOTALEXPLB1209M
- Internal Revenue Service. “Retirement Topics – Catch-up Contributions.” Accessed June 29, 2026. https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/plan-participant-employee/retirement-topics-catch-up-contributions
- Social Security Administration. “Social Security Fairness Act: Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO) Update.” Accessed July 13, 2026. https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/social-security-fairness-act.html
- Charles Schwab. “How to Invest During a Bear Market.” Accessed July 13, 2026. https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/how-to-invest-bear-market
- Senator Stephen A. Huffman. “Senate Approves Final Budget Reducing Tax Burden By $1 Billion with Flat Tax and Substantial Property Tax Relief.” Ohio Senate. Accessed July 13, 2026. https://ohiosenate.gov/members/stephen-a-huffman/news/senate-approves-final-budget-reducing-tax-burden-by-1-billion-with-flat-tax-and-substantial-property-tax-relief
- RetireMed. “Your Health Insurance Expert and Advocate for Life.” Accessed July 13, 2026. https://www.retiremed.com/
- CareScout. “2025/2026 Cost of Care Survey: Ohio State Data.” Accessed July 13, 2026. https://www.carescout.com/cost-of-care
This communication is for informational purposes only and is not intended as investment, tax, accounting, or legal advice, as an offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or as an endorsement of any company, security, fund, or other securities or non-securities offering. This communication should not be relied upon as the sole factor in an investment making decision. Past performance is no indication of future results.
