About RetirementFAQs

Why would a fee-only advisor give away 300 retirement answers for free? Because the hard part of retirement was never finding the information. It's knowing which decision actually moves the needle, and which one quietly costs you for the next twenty years.

I'm Gabriel Kaplan. I'm a CFP® and a CPA, and I run Wealth Habits, a deliberately small, fee-only advisory firm. Born in Sweden, raised in Uruguay, trained as an engineer, and I started my career at the worst possible time to learn the lesson that shaped everything since: I walked into finance during the 2008 crash and watched illiquid assets nearly take a family apart. I don't forget that. It's why I don't put clients into things they can't get out of when they need the money most.

How I think about money

Money is a tool to buy time, and time is the one thing you can't compound back. So the work isn't chasing the hottest return. It's avoiding the unforced errors: the tax bill you could see coming a decade out, the lock-up that traps you in a downturn, the Social Security claim that quietly shrinks your spouse's income for life. Most of retirement planning is second- and third-order thinking, and most people stop at the first order.

Who this is for

RetirementFAQs is written for people with real wealth to protect, usually within a decade of retiring on either side. The answers lean toward the questions that get complicated once there's a meaningful portfolio in play: Roth conversions, RMDs, IRMAA, estate decisions, where to live. No jargon walls, no sales pitch, no fear hooks.

The honest part

Everything here is educational. Reading it doesn't make me your advisor, and none of it is personalized advice. If you want that, it starts with a conversation, and you can check the fit in about two minutes on the talk to an advisor page. If a one-on-one relationship isn't right for you, the community usually is.

Either way, read freely. The whole point is to walk into your decisions already knowing the right questions to ask.