When Clients Become Planning Partners: How One Advisor Simplifies Tax and Insurance Decisions

Sal Lavely started in financial services in 1980 after a career as a Marine Corps officer. Over the next four decades he moved from producer to manager to regional director to agency owner. Today, after retiring from Prudential three separate times, he serves as the fiduciary on staff at Absolute Retirement Solutions where his work centers on tax and insurance planning for retirees. His approach comes down to one thing: giving clients a simple answer to a complicated problem, and showing them the work behind it.

His practice doesn't use titles on nameplates. It uses personal mission statements. Sal's reads: "To be a conduit in facilitating others' dreams."

Sal's goal in every case is the same. "Most clients, even the most sophisticated clients, even the real engineers, when it comes down to it, they want a simple answer. I've been able to formulate not a dumb answer, but a simplified answer to their problem, and show them it's all backed up here."

At a glance

Challenge: Finding planning software a retirement-age client can run themselves

Sal needed planning software his clients could use on their own. He had spent decades on eMoney and concluded, "While it's still a great program, it's too complex for clients' data entry."

It mattered to him that clients own their data. "One of the things I fell in love with in RightCapital is that I can have a 75-year-old go in and enter their own data. That's important to me because I knew a long time ago: if it's their data entry, it's their numbers, not the advisor's numbers. That little piece may not sound important, but it is."

Another qualification of software was ease of use for the advisor, "With eMoney, even advisors who use it regularly—if they're not in it almost every day, they wind up hiring staff to do their eMoney work."

Sal came into his current role with a specific mandate. His partner had built a large book of clients holding fixed indexed annuities and nothing else. "He said, ‘You're a planner. You taught me fee-based planning. You can handle taxation. I want you to service those clients for me.'"

For that, Sal needed software that could:

• Let clients enter their own data without hand-holding, even at 75
• Run without extra staff so there was no need for additional hires
• Model taxes, insurance, RMDs, IRMAA, and Roth conversions in ways clients can follow
• Produce visuals a client can understand in a single meeting
• Store important documents securely for an elder client base

Solution: Client-led data entry backed by tax and insurance planning tools

Sal revisited eMoney first, then saw RightCapital. "When I was introduced to RightCapital, I thought, 'Wait a minute. This is way too easy. I could have a client do it.'"

Client-led data entry and the validation call

Sal's process is built around the client doing the work first. He walks prospects through the client portal live, then assigns homework using RightCapital's Data Collection Template.

He tells clients, "Take a pencil, fill out this sheet, and then when you get into the program I just showed you, it'll take you less than 30 minutes and you're done."

The second interaction is what he calls a validation call, which is a walk-through of every data point together, usually also taking 30 minutes. Sal emphasizes, "Junk in is junk out. We've got to be right."

Because the client entered the numbers, the dynamic in the room changes, “The output isn't an objection. It’s 'This is the data. If you don't like what the data shows, we've got to make changes.'"

Snapshot™ as an opening

Sal's prospect interview starts with the RightCapital Snapshot and a sample client.

"I show them the Snapshot. 'Look, this is the probability, based on what this client put in, that they're going to hit their financial goals, and these are different timelines.'"

He then walks through the tax allocation summary widget, "That one little panel tells the story of why they want to use this."

Snapshot sets up the choice Sal gives every prospect. Option one is a project: he takes a specific pot of money and makes it tax-free, with no broader planning. Option two is working with him as a fiduciary, with a full RightCapital plan and no planning fee.

Sal says, "Do you want me to work on a project and just show you what to do with this money, or do you want to get an analysis like this? With this, you can ask me any question you want."

Almost no one takes the project option.

Tax planning: RMDs, IRMAA, and Roth conversions

Tax leverage is the center of Sal’s practice, and the tax planning modules carry it. One case began with Medicare premiums and Income Related Monthly Adjustment Amounts (IRMAA).

The client was a 75-year-old widow with a substantial IRA and no need for additional income. "She doesn't need any more money, and she's getting killed with RMDs driving her taxes up, which affects her IRMAA in future years."

Sal modeled a phased conversion, setting aside cash for both the taxes and the IRMAA increase so her income flow stayed intact, then moved the remainder into an indexed universal life insurance policy.

The change was clearest in what it meant for her daughter’s future. "Now, instead of her daughter getting a large IRA she has to spread over 10 years and ruin her taxes on her regular income, she's going to start out with a tax-free death benefit."

"Combining that with the graphics I can show them in RightCapital was what closed the case."

Insurance as the tax solution

Insurance isn't a separate conversation in Sal's practice. It's what the tax analysis often points to.

"I predominantly sell indexed universal life policies to give people some leverage on taxation—Roth conversions to IULs, as well as regular Roth conversions."

The planning work has to do more than identify the problem. It has to show the client how the solution gets funded.

"If you're a planner, an advisor, you've got to identify the problem, show the client the solutions, and in many cases show them how they're going to accomplish those solutions—which might mean a premium structure. Well, guess what? RightCapital tells me where the money's coming from, which money is the smartest to move, and why it's the smartest."

The balance sheet and retirement cash flow views show the client which assets are working against them, what moving those dollars does to their tax picture, and what the funded policy leaves behind. The client entered the data themselves, so they can trace the funding in their own numbers. The recommendation arrives as a conclusion, not a proposal.

Sal has been doing this side of the work since the beginning of his career.

"Understanding the valuation of how life insurance fits into an overall plan—whether you're using it for tax leverage, death benefit, or the critical care rider—that was never a problem. I've been specializing in that for 47 years."

The financial plan also surfaces gaps outside his own product set such as disability coverage, underinsured property and casualty, which he refers out as a fiduciary. "By extension, the data gathering allows me to help clients in other areas, even where I'm not the expert."

Retirement cash flow and the budget worksheet

Sal pairs a printed budget worksheet with retirement cash flow on screen, marking every taxable item.

"Look, you've got the cash flow, but see what's happening to your taxes? See what's happening to your RMDs? That's what you're trying to avoid. When clients see the RMDs going up and up and up, that hits them."

From there he can pivot to net worth and account-level balances, "Those little things really show there's substance behind all these numbers."

He tailors depth to the client. Engineers get the full tour, sometimes a printed 65-page plan summary. Others don't. "If they're the type who says, 'Look, I understand what you're doing, Sal. What's next?' Well, 'what's next' means stop talking, Sal. Do an application." He also notes, “If I do the budget analysis and the retirement cash flow, that answers things for most clients. The visuals are easy for clients to use.”

Asset allocation and managed money

Account aggregation allows Sal to show the effect of a portfolio change in real time. He used it the night before this discussion with a prospect who had linked all of their accounts.

He told the prospect, "Do you realize that since you linked up all your accounts, I've got every asset allocation class you have and all your investments? It's all in there. This is your current model, and this is where it's going. If I can increase the rate of return by 2%, it's going to have a quantum effect on your retirement."

The speed matters as much as the substance. Sal’s able to say, "See how quickly it did that? Look what happened to your results. Instantaneously."

The Vault as a legacy tool

Sal pushes the secure electronic Vault hard, and it’s not just so clients’ important documents are within reach. He personally keeps messages for each of his grandchildren there, so they can be easily found.

"Who thinks of going onto your computer after you pass away? But if it's in RightCapital, it'll be there."

RightCapital’s AI tool, Iris™

Sal started using RightCapital's AI tool, Iris, the day it launched, as a check on his own analysis.

"I started challenging it. Here's what I looked at, these are the things I'm seeing; then I click the AI tool and see how many times it matches up with me. And what I love is when it gets me and it finds two more things that I’d missed."

Iris is RightCapital's planning-focused AI agent, built to interpret client data inside the advisor's workflow—catching profile gaps, surfacing planning concerns and opportunities, building strategies toward a probability-of-success goal, and answering plan-specific questions on demand. Every answer comes from RightCapital's own calculation engine in a closed system that never uses client data for training, and it's included with Premium and Platinum subscriptions at no additional cost.

Support that teaches

I just think your support line is probably the best support line I've ever worked with in 46, 47 years.

Sal noted the differences between the RightCapital Support Team and others he’s dealt with. "They do a really good job of listening before they start showing you what they know, which other firms don't. When you call some of these other providers, it's like, wait a minute, you didn't even hear my question and you're already telling me what you think my answer is.”

As a former educator, he also appreciates the teaching approach of the Support Team. “They do a good job of guiding me to the answer and then letting me actually touch the case. They'll hang with me as long as it takes to make sure I'm really getting it." That means he understands the fix and isn’t asking the same question again later.

"In two years, I don't think I've had more than one occasion where someone said, 'I don't know the answer, but I'll get back to you.' One time in two years."

Results

RightCapital is now the front door to nearly every case Sal works on and the pattern shows up in how his clients engage with it.

The most telling number is the project count. Given the choice between a narrow, one-pot engagement and a full fiduciary plan, almost every client picks the plan.

Everybody is going to RightCapital.

The firm’s pace has followed. Sal’s most recent six months have been busier than his entire preceding year—not because he’s prospecting harder, but because a plan a client built themselves tends to lead somewhere.

The deeper change is in how well he can diagnose a situation before recommending anything.

"I can see it in the balance sheet. I can see it in the cash flow. So it gives me the who, the what, the where, the how, and the why. And I can do it in a very simplified fashion."

Sal’s advice to fellow advisors

For advisors comparing planning software, Sal comes back to one question, "If the client can do the data entry without causing you to have to do everything, why not? If you don't see the value of them putting in their numbers and it meaning something to them, I think you're missing the game from the beginning."

On the learning curve of RightCapital, Sal notes, "Most other software takes a lot of training for someone to get it right."

Above all, he frames the work as service, not sales—being a conduit in facilitating others' dreams.

Are you ready to let your clients own their numbers? Schedule a RightCapital demo and explore the features Sal uses every day.

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