You Spent Your Career Serving Others. Here's a Retirement Plan Finally Built Around You.
An overview of The CLARITY Retirement Method TM- a framework designed specifically for public servants, first responders, educators, and healthcare professionals in the Twin Cities and across Minnesota.
Here on Serving Those Who Served, I write for one specific group of people in mind - those who gave their careers to public service and are now asking what comes next. If you're a government employee, a first responder, a teacher, or a healthcare professional in the Twin Cities metro, you've likely got a pension, some retirement savings, maybe a deferred comp plan you've been contributing to for years - and a lot of unanswered questions about how it all fits together.
That's exactly where The CLARITY Retirement MethodTM comes in.
Developed at Mullins Financial as the foundation of how we serve every client, The CLARITY Retirement MethodTM is a seven-step retirement planning framework built around the financial realities public servants actually face - not the ones a generic advisor or the mainstream financial media assumes you have. From PERA pensions to 403(b) and Deferred Compensation Plans to the healthcare gap before Medicare kicks in, this process is designed to give you a clear picture of where you stand and a real plan for what comes next.
What The CLARITY Retirement MethodTM covers
Each letter in CLARITY represents a distinct piece of your retirement picture. Together, they form a complete, structured approach to planning that leaves nothing out and nothing to chance.
Why public servants in the Twin Cities need a different kind of plan
If you work for Hennepin County, teach in the Anoka-Hennepin school district, serve as a first responder in the north metro, or work in healthcare anywhere across the Twin Cities, your retirement picture looks fundamentally different from someone in the private sector. You likely have a PERA or TRA pension. You may have questions about whether to take a lump sum or a monthly benefit and with that monthly benefit choose between a single life payout or one of the varieties of the survivorship life payouts. You're probably wondering how Social Security fits in, and whether you'll have healthcare coverage in the gap years before Medicare.
Generic financial advice doesn't account for that. The CLARITY Retirement MethodTM was built around these exact realities - because that's who we work with every day at Mullins Financial.
Questions I hear most from public servants nearing retirement
When should I take my pension? The answer depends on your age, your health, your spouse's situation, your pension's benefit calculations, and your other income sources. There's no universal right answer - but there is a right answer for your specific situation.
Should I take a lump sum or monthly pension payments, what about the survivorship options? This is one of the most consequential financial decisions a public servant ever makes, and most people only get to make it once. It deserves a careful, unhurried conversation.
How do I handle healthcare before Medicare? This is one of the most under planned gaps in public servant retirement. We work through your options - including retiree group coverage, marketplace plans, and COBRA - so you're not caught off guard.
Will I actually have enough? This is usually the question underneath all the other questions. With The CLARITY Retirement Method TM, we build a plan specific enough to you to genuinely answer it.
"After a career of taking care of everyone else, you deserve a plan that takes care of you."
What working with Mullins Financial looks like
It starts with a conversation - not paperwork, not a sales pitch. We want to understand where you are, what's worrying you, and what you're hoping retirement looks like. From there, we walk through The CLARITY Retirement Method together, one step at a time, so you always know what we're doing and why.
Clients tell me the thing they value most isn't just the plan itself - it's knowing someone is watching out for them. Someone who checks in and asks those questions. Someone who catches the things they'd have missed on their own.
If that sounds like what you've been looking for, I'd be glad to be that person for you.
- Eric Mullins, Certified Financial Planner CFP®, CRPC®
Mullins Financial · Coon Rapids, MN