Retirement Solution

Retirement Solution

Jim Black founded The Retirement Solution in 2003, structuring the firm around a flat-fee fiduciary model rather than the more common percentage-of-assets approach that dominates the wealth management industry. Black, a former Army interrogator, built a practice that charges households a fixed $700 per month, unaffected by portfolio valuation swings. The firm holds an SEC registration, an A+ Better Business Bureau rating, and a published 100% money-back guarantee within the first 12 months of engagement. The firm's strategy centers on retirement income distribution via a bucket-strategy framework. Advisors construct plans that divide assets into short-, medium-, and long-term pools, managing tax-efficient withdrawals layered over Social Security, Medicare, and pension decisions. Investment recommendations span liquid public markets, non-retirement brokerage accounts, and insurance-based vehicles for longevity protection. The firm provides in-person advisory through offices in Washington and Colorado, and extends virtual planning nationwide. Content on its site addresses topics ranging from the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" tax changes of 2025 to electric-vehicle tax credits, signaling active guidance on public-policy intersections with retirement income. COO Carin Sevigny oversees day-to-day operations for a team that serves several thousand retirement plans. The firm maintains five physical offices, with expansion into Colorado markets including Denver and the Tri-Cities, and publishes over 60 educational articles covering estate planning, Medicare enrollment, and Social Security claiming strategies. In July 2025, the firm published analysis of the Federal Reserve's first rate cut of the year and its effect on mortgage rates, savings account yields, and investment portfolios — integrating real-time monetary policy into client communication. The Retirement Solution's structural differentiator is a subscription-style counsel model that rejects the asset-gathering incentives embedded in traditional AUM-based advisory. Clients pay a fixed retainer for an ongoing income plan with an explicit cancellation-and-refund policy, a structure more commonly found in tax or legal practices than in wealth management. This design aligns the firm's revenue with the delivery of a retirement paycheck, not with net-new inflows, making it one of the few SEC-registered fiduciaries to price services by household rather than by wealth.