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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
Where You Hold Investments Changes What You Keep (Asset Location)
Your investment allocation might be fine, but your account structure could be quietly shaving thousands off your retirement over time. I’m talking about the gap between what your portfolio earns and what you actually keep after taxes, and the s...
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Why Two Identical Portfolios End in Completely Different Retirements
Two women retire at 62. Same $2 million, same index funds, same 7% average return, same $80,000 a year. One dies at 92 with more than she started with. The other runs out at 82.The only difference? The year they retired. That's sequence-...
When to Claim Social Security: Why the Math Is Different for Women
Every Social Security break-even calculator is giving you the wrong answer — because the life expectancy table it's using isn't yours. In this episode, Hazel walks through why the Social Security claiming math is structurally different for wome...
The Roth Conversion Window: Why Your 50s Are the Most Important Tax Decade of Your Life
If you're a woman in your 40s or 50s with $1.5M or more in pre-tax retirement accounts, the Roth conversion window is the single highest-leverage tax decision you will make. It opens when you stop working and closes the year you turn 73 — and w...
When Should You Hire a Financial Advisor? The 3-Pillar Framework
When Should You Hire a Financial Advisor? The 3-Pillar FrameworkIf you've been asking yourself "Is it finally time to hire a financial advisor?" — this episode is your answer.Hazel Secco, CFP® and CDFA®, founder of...
