A Better Way Financial
Empower Your Retirement
By Frankie Guida, CFP®
Most people don’t grow up thinking they’ll become a retirement financial planner. I did — but not for the reason you might think. It wasn’t the numbers that drew me in. It wasn’t the markets, or the tax code, or the mechanics of a portfolio. It was a moment I witnessed in my father’s conference room when I was 16 years old. A moment I still think about today.
Let me tell you what happened.
Growing up, my dad Frank had already been in the financial services industry for decades. It was always part of our household — the conversations at dinner, the clients he’d talk about, the sense that what he did genuinely mattered to people. But as a teenager, I wasn’t really thinking about any of that. I just wanted a job.
One summer between football practices, I asked my mom to help me put together a resume so I could start applying. She looked at me and said, ‘What do you need a resume for? Your dad has work for you at the office.’
So I showed up. I fetched coffee. I filed papers. I learned QuickBooks. I did everything an intern does — none of it remotely glamorous, but I was there.
What I started to notice was that people came into the office one way, and they left a different way. People who walked in looking tense, worried, even a little defeated — they’d come out the other side looking lighter. More settled. Like something that had been weighing on them had been lifted, even just a little. And I couldn’t figure out what was happening in that conference room that was causing it.
So I asked my dad if I could sit in on a client meeting. And he said yes.
The first meeting I sat in on, I was just a fly on the wall. At the table was my father and a woman who had come in on her own. She was a widow. Her husband had passed away, and he had always been the one who managed the finances. Now she was carrying all of it by herself, and she was scared.
At some point in the conversation, she said it plainly: she was worried she was going to run out of money.
When I heard that, my heart sank. I had no idea what her financial situation looked like. I didn’t know if the numbers were good or bad. I just knew this woman was genuinely frightened about whether she was going to be okay for the rest of her life.
I looked over at my dad to see how he would respond. He was calm. Completely steady. He said her name, looked her in the eye, and told her: not only are you going to be able to live on the income you have now, but you are going to be able to live on $20,000 more per year for the rest of your life.
She started to cry.
My dad asked her what that meant to her. She said it meant she didn’t have to watch every single thing anymore. If she wanted to take a weekend trip with her friends, she could. If she wanted to go out to dinner, she could. She didn’t have to stress about whether she was going to make it.
I was 16 years old, and I knew in that moment that this was what I wanted to do. Not because financial planning sounded impressive, but because of what being a retirement financial planner could do for someone in their most vulnerable moment.
That story from my dad’s conference room is not unusual. It is, in many ways, the story we see play out over and over again with the people who come through our doors at A Better Way Financial.
People arrive uncertain. They have worked hard for 30 or 40 years. They have saved. They have done their best. But nobody ever taught them how to turn those savings into a retirement — how to build a reliable income plan, how to manage risk in a portfolio when you’re actually drawing from it, or how to structure decades of withdrawals so you don’t end up paying far more in taxes than you have to.
That gap — between what people have saved and what they actually know about using it — is where we live. It is what we solve for every single day.
No course in school teaches you how to be your own retirement financial planner. No employer hands you a guide when you hit 60. Most people arrive at retirement’s doorstep having done the hard part — the saving — and then realize they have no roadmap for what comes next.
That is exactly what we provide.
When people hear the word fiduciary, their eyes sometimes glaze over. So let me make it simple: a fiduciary is legally required to act in your best interest. Not in the interest of a product company, not to hit a sales quota, not to recommend what pays the highest commission. That distinction matters more than most people realize.
At A Better Way Financial, we are independent fiduciary retirement financial planners. That means when we build your retirement plan, we are looking at your entire picture — your income needs, your risk tolerance, your tax situation, your estate goals, your timeline — and designing a strategy that serves you specifically. Not a template pulled off a shelf.
Here is what that looks like in practice: last year, for the clients who came in and completed a full retirement analysis with us, we identified an average of over $600,000 in potential tax savings per couple over the course of their retirement years. When that tax savings translated into additional annual income, it averaged around $16,000 more per year that clients could actually spend — money they already had, just structured inefficiently*.
That is not magic. It is planning. It is the kind of planning that most people simply don’t have access to without working with a retirement financial planner.
Here is the mindset shift that I try to bring to every client conversation: you have already done the hard part. You spent your twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties building this. You showed up every day. You contributed to the 401(k) when it was easy and when it was hard. You made sacrifices.
Now the question is not ‘can I retire?’ The question is ‘how do I get the most out of what I have built?’
That means maximizing income. That means reducing unnecessary taxes. That means making sure the money you eventually pass on to your family transitions efficiently. And it means doing all of this in a way that lets you actually enjoy your retirement — not just survive it.
Our job is to make sure you are not leaving money on the table. Not one unnecessary dollar to taxes. Not one income stream left unoptimized. Not one risk you are carrying that you don’t need to carry.
In your sixties, seventies, and eighties, you should be enjoying the fruit of your labor — not worrying about whether you made the right decisions decades ago.
A few years ago, I noticed something: there was no real starter guide for retirement financial planning. Plenty of technical books for people deep in the weeds, but nothing accessible for the person who just wants to understand what they’re dealing with and what questions they should be asking.
So I wrote one. A Better Way to Retire: How a Fiduciary Retirement Planner Can Be the Key to Financial Success is available on Amazon, and you can also get a complimentary copy through our website. It covers the foundational questions around retirement income, investment risk, tax strategy, and what to look for when choosing the right retirement financial planner for your situation.
It is not meant to replace a conversation with a professional. It is meant to make that conversation far more productive — and to help you walk in knowing what to ask.
*In 2025, A Better Way Financial advisors conducted retirement income analyses for clients and identified potential tax planning opportunities, including strategies such as Roth conversions and other tax-efficiency approaches. In certain applicable cases, these hypothetical projections illustrated potential lifetime tax savings that varied significantly based on each client’s individual circumstances.
All tax savings figures referenced in our materials represent hypothetical projections based on current federal and state tax law, individual client data, and planning assumptions at the time of analysis. They are not guarantees of future results. Actual outcomes will vary based on factors including, but not limited to, changes in tax legislation, income levels, investment performance, life expectancy, inflation, and personal financial decisions. No representation is made that any client will achieve similar results.
These projections are illustrative in nature and do not constitute tax advice. A Better Way Financial, LLC is not a tax advisor or CPA firm. Clients should consult with a qualified tax professional regarding their individual tax situation.
Past planning outcomes are not indicative of future results. All investment advisory services are provided by A Better Way Financial, LLC, a registered investment adviser.
*Your privacy matters. All information is kept secure and confidential.
"*" indicates required fields