Where you are now
Your working life, your timeline and what you want retirement to look after. This is most of a first conversation, and it is the part that cannot be skipped.
Retirement planning with perspective
Make the years ahead feel considered.
A first conversation is about understanding where you are now, which decisions are actually in front of you, and what is worth thinking about before any of them are made.
The Ascendra approach
Start with the outcome.
Retirement decisions tend to get made one at a time, in the order they arrive, without anyone standing back to look at how they fit together. A first conversation does the standing back: what you want retirement to look after, what is already in place, and which decisions are actually in front of you. Nothing is recommended before your situation is understood.
Most people arrive with some version of these three
What a first conversation covers.
What is already in place
Your pension, your workplace plan, your savings and how the pieces relate to each other — including the parts that have never been explained to you properly.
What is coming, and when
The decisions that arrive with a retirement date: elections, timing, and which of them are permanent once made. Knowing which are in front of you is usually more useful than an answer to any one of them.
The conversation follows you.
Not a script.
Before any decisions
How a first conversation works.
The conversation follows your situation rather than a script. Most people arrive with questions about how their pension, savings and retirement timing fit together, what their choices are when they do retire, and what is worth thinking about between now and then.
Jayson explains how things work in plain language, and which questions are worth asking before any decision is made. Nothing is recommended before your situation is understood, and you will not be asked for health, banking or payment details.
Explore the learning center ↓Who you would be speaking to
About Jayson Crawford.
Most of the people I sit down with have worked hard for a long time, and have never had anyone explain in order what actually happens next. They have a pension statement nobody has read to them properly, a retirement date that is closer than it used to be, and a set of decisions arriving without much warning.
What I want for them is straightforward. That they reach retirement genuinely on the right track, rather than hoping they are. And that the people who depend on them have been thought about deliberately, rather than assumed. A plan should account for a whole household, not only the person who earned the pension.
I believe everyone should be able to live the life they actually want in the years they have worked for. Getting there is rarely about one clever decision. It is about understanding what you already have, knowing which choices are permanent, and taking them in the right order with enough time to think properly.
That is the work, and all of it. Nothing is recommended before I understand your situation, and there is no jargon where plain language will do.
Jayson Crawford
Retirement Specialist
Atlanta, Georgia
Retirement learning center
Useful starting points.
Plain-language explanations of how the common retirement plan types actually work.
A first conversation
Start with the questions that are already on your mind.
We can begin with where you are, what you want retirement to make possible and the parts of the plan that need more clarity.
Conversations are available with residents of Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, Michigan and Texas.
Request a planning conversation ↗Conversations are 30 minutes, Monday to Thursday 9am to 8pm and Friday 9am to 5pm, Eastern Time.