If you’re like many Atlanta entrepreneurs, you take on multiple roles both in your business and at home. But juggling the needs of your company and your family can put planning for your own future on the back burner.
At SignatureFD, we understand this challenge and have guided numerous Atlanta business owners through the complexities of retirement planning while maintaining work-life balance, helping them understand how to take advantage of local incentives, walking through potential tax implications, navigating succession planning, and more.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the strategies we recommend and implement for our business owner clients.
Thinking Outside the SEP IRA: The Power of Cash Balance Plans
While SEP IRAs and Solo 401(k)s are familiar to most business owners, Cash Balance Plans are worth considering.
Unlike traditional defined contribution plans with annual limits around $69,000 (2024 figures), Cash Balance Plans can allow business owners to contribute substantially more—often $200,000 to $300,000 annually in tax-deferred savings, depending on age and compensation.
For high-earning business owners in their peak earning years, this accelerated retirement saving strategy can:
- Dramatically reduce current taxable income
- Create a significant retirement nest egg in a compressed timeframe
- Provide predictable retirement benefits with less market risk than defined contribution plans
This powerful option is frequently overlooked but can be transformative for Atlanta business owners looking to catch up on retirement savings while their businesses are thriving.
Strategic Tax Planning: Beyond Business Write-offs
Many business owners we work with focus exclusively on business deductions while missing personal tax-planning opportunities. But beyond standard business write-offs, we also recommend looking into these strategies:
- Optimizing your business entity structure for both current tax benefits and eventual business transition or sale.
- Evaluating your compensation strategy carefully. Many business owners either take too little salary (limiting retirement plan contributions) or too much (creating unnecessary tax burdens).
- Implementing expense segregation between truly business expenses and lifestyle costs that should be covered from personal funds—ensuring your retirement planning is based on a financial picture that’s as accurate as possible.
- Considering charitable giving strategies that can offset high-income years while supporting Atlanta’s vibrant nonprofit community.
Tax-Loss Harvesting: A Strategic Advantage for Business Sale Transitions
For business owners facing a significant liquidity event such as selling their company, tax-loss harvesting through direct indexing can provide substantial tax advantages. This strategy systematically identifies underperforming stocks in your investment portfolio and strategically sells them to generate realized losses that can offset capital gains.
At SignatureFD, we use Aperio to help business owners offset capital gains from a sale:
- The strategic realization of investment losses can be used to offset the often substantial gains from selling a business, potentially reducing your taxable income significantly.
- Since business sales typically result in large one-time capital gains, the ability to counter these with harvested losses can lead to meaningful tax savings.
- After selling loss-generating positions, portfolios can be rebalanced to maintain desired market exposure while maximizing tax efficiency.
- Beyond the business sale, ongoing tax-loss harvesting can continue improving after-tax returns by offsetting future capital gains from investments.
For high-net-worth individuals experiencing liquidity events, this sophisticated approach to tax management can preserve more wealth for retirement.
Succession Planning: Your Business as a Retirement Asset
For many Atlanta entrepreneurs, their business represents their largest single asset –but surprisingly few have a clear exit strategy that aligns with their retirement goals.
A question we often help clients answer: How much cash should you keep in the company versus paying yourself? The answer impacts both business valuation and retirement readiness.
Many business owners fixate on reaching “their number”—a specific business valuation or retirement portfolio size. However, this approach can be misleading. Through Monte Carlo analysis, we often find these targets are either unnecessarily high (delaying retirement) or dangerously low (risking future security).
We believe your succession plan should account for:
- Business valuation trends specific to your industry and the Atlanta market
- Transition timing that aligns with both business cycles and family needs
- Post-sale income strategies that provide tax efficiency and lifestyle sustainability
A properly structured exit can multiply the value of your business as a retirement asset.
Reclaiming Your Time: The Work-Life Balance Equation
We find the most overlooked aspect of retirement planning for business owners isn’t financial—it’s psychological. Many entrepreneurs struggle to separate themselves from their businesses, creating both family strain and retirement planning challenges.
One practical strategy we recommend to our clients: Invest in quality support staff, particularly executive assistants. The rise of virtual assistant services has made this accessible even for smaller businesses. A skilled assistant can:
- Free up 10-15 hours of your week for higher-value activities
- Improve business operations through better organization
- Create space for both family time and retirement planning
The return on investment from quality support staff frequently exceeds traditional business investments, particularly when measured in terms of work-life balance and long-term planning capacity.
Exploring the Family CFO Approach
While many financial firms focus exclusively on investment management, at SignatureFD, we take a “Family CFO” approach that integrates business considerations with personal financial planning.
This means:
- Coordinating business decisions with personal financial goals
- Managing the transition from business owner to retiree
- Supporting family dynamics around wealth and business succession
- Creating space for you to enjoy the wealth you’ve created
Ultimately, we believe you want your business to serve your family priorities rather than competing with them.
Securing the Future You’ve Worked For
As a small business owner, you’ve built something valuable through vision, persistence, and hard work. Applying those same qualities to your retirement planning can help ensure that both your business legacy and family future are secure.
We invite you to schedule a conversation with our team at SignatureFD to explore how our Family CFO approach can help you balance business demands with family priorities while creating a retirement plan tailored to your unique circumstances as an Atlanta entrepreneur.
Your business supports your family today. The right retirement plan help ensure it continues to do so tomorrow.
