Of all the articles I have read, not one of them was written from a client’s perspective. After all, every truthful adviser will agree that it is times like these where financial advisers should be adding the most value to their clients—wouldn’t be useful to try and capture the client’s perspective in this? So, here is a list of ways your financial adviser should be earning their keep—written from what I believe to be the client’s perspective.

Over the past month, a significant number of clients have actually asked to put estate planning on the agenda to discuss. Many of these are from clients who want to make sure everything is up to date. However, a surprising number is from clients who felt that estate planning wasn’t the most important topic at the time we brought it up. Now it is.

If you’re currently on Medicare, and paying IRMAA surcharges, you might be wondering what impact the recently passed Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act might have on your IRMAA surcharges. The short answer is that there does not appear to be anything in the Act that directly impacts your IRMAA for 2020. The longer answer, however, is that there still might be something you can do to lower or eliminate your IRMAA for 2020 or in the future.

At the time of this writing, we’re talking about the stock market decline due to the coronavirus pandemic. But truthfully, this approach worked for many portfolios during the Great Recession of 2008-2009, the ‘lost decade’ of the early 2000s, and countless other periods when stocks didn’t perform as well as investors would have liked.

One of the most common services that we perform for our clients is Roth conversions, particularly for our recently retired clients. If you don’t mind how much you pay in income tax, it can be quite simple to do Roth conversions. However, if you’ve accumulated significant wealth in your retirement accounts, you might have a hefty tax bill if you decide to do this all in one year. If you want to keep your overall lifetime tax liability as low as possible, you’ll probably want to do your Roth conversions over time, and make annual adjustments depending on significant tax events that occur each year. In other words, you probably need to establish a Roth conversion plan.

One of the most common things that our recently retired clients ask us to do is to help them convert as much of their traditional IRAs into Roth IRAs as quickly as possible. Our job is to help them build a strategy that allows them to pay as little in taxes over the course of their lifetime. Each year, as part of our tax planning appointment, we review that year’s tax projection to make sure that our Roth conversion amount is in line with expectations.