Active Wealth Management for Retirees and Pre-Retirees in Central Florida
We're a wealth management firm in Winter Haven, FL building actively managed portfolios for retirees and pre-retirees across Central Florida, adjusting allocations based on economic fundamentals rather than locking your savings into the static buy-and-hold approach that left so many investors exposed in 2008, 2020, and 2022.
Reviewed by Allen Thomas, independent financial advisor practicing since 1991, author of Wealth Beyond Work.
Client assets held at
Charles Schwab as an independent custodian
Transparent AUM-based advisory fees
Active portfolio management based on economic fundamentals
Plain-language portfolio updates on a regular cadence
Retirement investing is different.
A Different Approach for Retirement-Stage Portfolios
The wealth management approach that worked for your savings years isn't the approach your retirement years actually need. During accumulation, a static buy-and-hold portfolio could ride out downturns because you had time on your side, you weren't yet drawing income, and a bear market simply meant you were buying more shares on sale. None of those conditions hold once you're retired.
Once you start drawing income, sequence-of-returns risk becomes the single biggest threat to a 30-year retirement. A 30% market drop in your first five retirement years doesn't average out the way the same drop would have at age 45. You're already pulling money out of a smaller pool, locking in losses, and giving the portfolio less to work with on the recovery. The investors who got hurt most in 2008 weren't the ones still saving. They were the ones who had just retired.
That's why wealth management for retirees is a different discipline than wealth management for accumulators, and why every client portfolio at Thomas Advisory Services is held at Charles Schwab and managed with the retirement timeline in mind from day one.
What "Active Management" Actually Means in Practice
Active management is one of the most overused phrases in financial services, so let's be specific about what we mean by it and what we don't.
We don't mean day-trading, market-timing on headlines, or chasing whichever sector is having a good quarter. Those approaches reliably underperform their own benchmarks and increase the tax drag on a portfolio that already has a job to do.
What we do mean is this: we adjust portfolio positioning based on what's actually happening in the broader economy. Monetary policy shifts. Interest rate environments. Fiscal actions. Geopolitical events that meaningfully change the risk picture for an asset class or sector. When the underlying economic conditions change, the portfolio's positioning should reflect that, not sit on autopilot waiting for the next quarterly review.
Active management doesn't mean we promise to beat the market. It means we don't let a portfolio drift through a changing environment without adjustment. The retirees we serve through our investment management work in Polk County tell us this is the single biggest difference between working with us and working with a captive advisor whose firm-mandated model can't be touched between annual reviews.
Your assets held securely at Charles Schwab.
Where Your Money Actually Lives: Charles Schwab as Your Independent Custodian
When you become a client, the assets we manage for you are held in your name at
Charles Schwab. We act as the advisor on the account. Schwab acts as the custodian, the firm that actually holds the assets, processes the trades, and produces the statements you receive directly.
This separation matters for three reasons:
- We never take possession of your money.
Your funds move into accounts in your name at Schwab, and they never sit in a Thomas Advisory Services account at any point. The Madoff-era scandals that wiped out so many retirement portfolios involved advisors who served as both advisor and custodian. The structure we use makes that scenario architecturally impossible.
- You can verify everything independently.
You log into Schwab directly. You see every position, every trade, every fee. Your monthly statements come from Schwab, not from us. Anything we tell you about your portfolio is verifiable against the source-of-truth records Schwab maintains.
- You can fire us without moving accounts. If you ever decide to end the relationship, you don't have to move your money. You revoke our advisory authority, and the accounts stay where they are. That portability is built into the structure.
Schwab's role as custodian is one of the clearer trust signals available in the wealth management industry, and we made the deliberate choice to use them rather than a captive in-house custodian.
Personalized Portfolios Built Around Your Risk Profile
Portfolios Built Around Your Risk Tolerance, Not a Model Number
Most large-firm wealth management runs on a small number of model portfolios. A new client takes a brief risk questionnaire, gets sorted into Conservative / Moderate / Aggressive Model 3, and receives the same allocation as several thousand other clients in the same bucket. The model is then rebalanced quarterly without much regard for the individual situations of the people invested in it.
We build portfolios around the actual person sitting across from us, and the risk-tolerance conversation we have in the first working session goes deeper than a five-question quiz.
- Your tolerance for volatility. How you actually feel during a 20% drawdown matters more than how you say you'd feel on a questionnaire. We dig into your real history with past downturns and what you did or wanted to do during them.
- Your income needs.
A retiree drawing 5% from the portfolio with no other income has a fundamentally different risk profile than a retiree drawing 2% with a pension and Social Security covering most of their needs.
- Your time horizon by money bucket.
The money you'll spend in the next two years has a different risk profile than the money you'll spend in year fifteen. We allocate accordingly rather than treating the whole portfolio as if it had one horizon.
- Your other assets and income floors. If part of your retirement income comes from a fixed index annuity with a lifetime income rider, the managed portfolio can take more growth-oriented risk than it could if it were carrying the entire income load on its own.
The output is a portfolio designed for you specifically, not a model number you got sorted into.
How Wealth Management Fits With the Rest of Your Retirement Plan
Asset management for retirees in Florida works best when it's part of a coordinated retirement income plan, not a standalone investment account that exists in isolation from the rest of your financial life. We design wealth management to complement the other pieces of the plan.
The managed portfolio at Schwab carries the growth and flexibility of the plan. It's the part that has to keep pace with inflation over 25 or 30 years, that funds discretionary spending and travel and the unexpected line items, and that gets adjusted as conditions and your life change.
When the income picture benefits from it, we layer a guaranteed lifetime income strategy alongside the managed portfolio, typically through a fixed index annuity with a lifetime income rider. The annuity provides a contractual income floor, structured to continue paying for life even if the underlying account value drops to zero, which removes a portion of the overall plan from market risk entirely. The portfolio handles growth. The annuity handles the floor. Most retirement plans benefit from both, in the right proportions.
Simple, transparent AUM-based fees
A Fee Structure You Can Read on One Page
Our wealth management fees are AUM-based, meaning they're calculated as a percentage of the assets we manage for you. The fee is deducted monthly from your Schwab account, shown on your statement, and aligned with the size and performance of the portfolio. As the portfolio grows, our compensation grows. When the portfolio is down, ours is too.
We walk through the exact fee schedule in your first working session, in writing, before you decide to work with us. There are no separate planning fees layered on top, no commission incentives on the managed account side, and no surprise costs that show up later.
You'll Always Know What Changed, and Why
A common complaint we hear from prospective clients is that their previous advisor went quiet between annual reviews and that they could never tell what the portfolio was actually doing without logging in and trying to interpret it themselves.
We run the practice the opposite way. Clients receive plain-language updates on a regular cadence covering what changed in the portfolio, what economic condition prompted the change, and what we're watching for next. The updates aren't quarterly jargon-fests written by a compliance department. They're written by Allen, in the same language he'd use across the conference table.
For senior clients with urgent questions outside of scheduled reviews, Allen is reachable directly. Most months, no major adjustments are needed and the update is brief. When the environment shifts meaningfully, the update reflects that. Either way, you're never wondering what's happening with your money.
Who We Serve Across Central Florida
We work with retirees and pre-retirees across Polk County and the surrounding Central Florida region. Most of our wealth management clients are within ten years of retirement on either side, and most fall into one of a few profiles:
- Recent retirees who built their savings at a captive firm and want a different approach now that they're drawing income from those savings rather than adding to them.
- Pre-retirees in their late 50s and early 60s who want their portfolio repositioned for the retirement transition before, not after, they stop working.
- Surviving spouses who inherited investment accounts they didn't manage personally and need an advisor who'll explain the portfolio in plain language without being condescending.
- Florida transplants who relocated for tax reasons and need a Florida-based wealth manager familiar with the state-specific planning considerations.
We meet in person at our Winter Haven office and travel to clients in Lakeland, Orlando, Tampa, and Davenport as part of our regular review cadence. For clients elsewhere in Florida, we work by phone and secure video.
Clear answers to common wealth management questions
Common Wealth Management Questions
How does wealth management work for seniors and retirees in Florida?
Wealth management for retirees in Florida differs from accumulation-stage management in three main ways: portfolios are built around income reliability and sequence-of-returns risk rather than long-horizon growth alone, allocations are adjusted actively as economic conditions change rather than locked into static models, and the managed portfolio is coordinated with other pieces of the retirement plan (Social Security timing, withdrawal sequencing, and any guaranteed income strategies) rather than treated as a standalone account. In Florida specifically, the absence of state income tax changes the math on withdrawal sequencing and Roth conversion decisions.
Who is a good wealth manager in Central Florida for retirees?
The right wealth manager for a retiree has three traits worth checking: they specialize in retirement-stage households rather than treating you the same as a 35-year-old accumulator, they hold your assets at an independent custodian like Charles Schwab rather than taking custody themselves, and their fee structure is transparent and aligned with portfolio performance. Thomas Advisory Services is built around exactly that profile from our Winter Haven office.
Why is it important that my advisor uses an independent custodian?
An independent custodian, like Charles Schwab in our case, holds your assets in accounts under your name rather than in accounts the advisor controls. This separation means the advisor never has possession of your money, you can verify every transaction independently against statements that come directly from the custodian, and you can revoke advisory authority and change advisors without having to move accounts. The structure makes certain categories of fraud architecturally impossible.
What is the difference between active management and buy-and-hold investing?
Buy-and-hold investing involves setting an allocation and largely leaving it in place through changing market and economic conditions, rebalancing occasionally to maintain the original mix. Active management adjusts positioning in response to economic fundamentals, monetary policy shifts, interest rate environments, and global events. Neither approach is inherently better in every situation, but for retirement-stage portfolios drawing income, we believe active management is better suited to today's market environment than the static models that worked in calmer decades.
How are your wealth management fees structured?
We charge AUM-based advisory fees, meaning the fee is calculated as a percentage of the assets we manage for you. It's deducted monthly from your Charles Schwab account and shown on your statement. There are no separate planning fees on top, no commissions on the managed account side, and the full fee schedule is walked through in writing before you decide to become a client.
Expert Guidance for Creating Wills in North Carolina
Who's Behind Thomas Advisory Services
Thomas Advisory Services is led by Allen Thomas, an independent financial advisor based in Winter Haven, Florida who has practiced in financial services since 1991 and is the author of Wealth Beyond Work. Allen holds the FINRA Series 66 registration along with Florida Life, Health, Variable Annuities, and Property and Casualty licenses, and has held FINRA Series 6, 7, 24, 79, and 99 over the course of his career. The practice is independent and fee-based, with client assets held at Charles Schwab as an independent custodian.
Let's Talk About How Your Portfolio Is Positioned
If you've been wondering whether your current portfolio is positioned for the retirement you're walking into, the next step is a free first conversation. We'll look at how it's allocated today, what conditions it's exposed to, and what we'd do differently.