Wealth planning for
Deerfield families.

Yes. Deerfield is one of roughly thirty Lake County and Lake County communities we serve from its Evanston office at 909 Davis Street. The firm has been planning retirements for Lake County families since 1977, and meets Deerfield clients in the Evanston office, at their home, or by video call.

Deerfield's position along the I-94 corporate corridor, home to Walgreens Boots Alliance, Baxter International, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, and Catamaran, means we regularly work with executives and long-tenured employees retiring with complex corporate benefit packages. The specific decisions these employers present, lump sum versus annuity pension elections, net unrealized appreciation on company stock, deferred compensation payouts, and supplemental executive retirement plans, require specialized planning that generic retirement advice doesn't address. we coordinate Social Security claiming, retirement account withdrawals, annuity and life insurance placements, long-term care funding, and estate decisions into one written plan tailored to the Deerfield cost of living.

Many Deerfield residents are retiring from corporate careers with complex benefits packages, stock options, deferred compensation, pension buyouts, and executive retirement plans. We specialize in unwinding these benefits into a cohesive retirement income strategy. Deerfield's median home value of $520,000 and median household income of $140,000 mean planning here's shaped by local cost-of-living realities, not a national average. Roughly 31% of Deerfield residents are over 55, and many have spent decades building equity that now needs to be coordinated with retirement income, healthcare, and estate decisions.

Lake County's retirement landscape is shaped by its dual identity as home to some of Illinois's wealthiest communities and a concentration of major corporate employers. AbbVie, Baxter International, Walgreens Boots Alliance, and Abbott Laboratories are all headquartered or substantially based here. Executives and professionals retiring from these firms often hold pensions, deferred compensation, and equity awards that require specialized coordination alongside Social Security and personal savings. Lake County property tax rates, while generally lower than Cook County for comparable properties, still represent a significant fixed cost, and Illinois's full exemption of retirement income means the property tax, not the income tax, is the primary budget variable to plan around. For Deerfield retirees specifically, this means treating property taxes as a non-negotiable fixed expense and building a guaranteed income floor, typically from Social Security and, where appropriate, an annuity, that covers them regardless of market conditions.

The tax complexity of retiring from a major Deerfield-area employer, with deferred compensation payouts, company stock in a 401(k), pension income, and Social Security all arriving on different schedules, makes multi-year tax planning essential. We model the optimal sequencing of income sources across the first 10-15 years of a Deerfield retirement, identifying the windows where Roth conversions are most valuable and where deferred compensation payouts interact with the broader tax picture.