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Align Your Retirement
Align Your Retirement is the retirement podcast for women in their 40s and 50s who've done a lot right with their money — and know retirement is too important to wing.
If you're the CFO of your household — whether you're married, single, divorced, or widowed — you already know the voices:
"I'll run the real numbers after Q4."
"My 401(k) is fine — I check it."
"I'll handle Social Security timing when I'm closer."
"The inherited IRA can sit in cash until I figure out the 10-year rule."
Every one of those voices is quietly moving your retirement date. Each episode is a direct, specific conversation about one retirement decision that costs more than it needs to when you carry it alone — Social Security timing, Roth conversion windows, sequence-of-returns risk, tax-efficient drawdowns, pension elections, asset location, the inherited IRA, healthcare before Medicare.
The decisions. The tradeoffs. The numbers. From a fiduciary who runs these with clients every week.
Hosted by Hazel Secco, CFP®, CDFA®, founder of Align Financial Solutions — a fee-only, fiduciary firm built for women in their 40s and 50s. Serving clients virtually across the U.S. from Hoboken, NJ — the mile-square city just across the Hudson from NYC.
Two ways to go deeper:
📋 Retirement Readiness Assessment — free, self-paced, 5 minutes. Link in every show note.
📞 Align Call — 15 minutes with Hazel. One conversation. No pitch. You'll leave knowing where you stand.
Align Your Retirement
Latest Episodes
I Tested 4 Roth Conversion Strategies on a $2M IRA for a Single Woman
Much of the Roth conversion guidance out there is built on married couple numbers. If you're single, or expect to be, those numbers can be off by about half.In this episode, I model four Roth conversion strategies on a $2 million IRA for...
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$2 Million vs. $5 Million: Why 2.5x the Savings Buys Only 1.7x the Income
Two couples, identical in every way except one detail: Paul and Linda have $2 million saved, and Richard and Susan have $5 million. In this episode I run both through the same retirement to show what actually lands in the bank each month after ...
Why a $3M Nest Egg Can Mean Higher Taxes in Retirement
Margaret saved $3 million, and every dollar sits in a 401(k) and a rollover IRA. It's enough money. The problem: at 75, she'll pay about $16,400 more in federal tax than she did in her final working year, with no salary at all. And by then, she...
Early Retirement Health Insurance: The MAGI Dial Wealthy Women Don't Know They Have
The thing that stops more women from retiring early isn't the market. It's health insurance before Medicare. For a woman who wants to leave at 58 or 60, that's a five to seven year gap where she buys her own coverage, and family plans can run w...
The Medicare Surcharge That Ambushes You Two Years Late (IRMAA, Explained)
Episode DescriptionYou did everything right. You saved aggressively, earned well, maybe converted to Roth or sold a property. Then two years into retirement, a letter arrives from Social Security: your Medicare premiums are going ...
