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A financial roadmap for retirement: Behind the Business with Retirement Freedom Team in Rumford, RI
Robin Hofheinz founded Retirement Freedom Team in Rumford, RI, and serves as its president. “My business focuses on wealth and retirement planning, specifically tax efficiency or tax minimization and retirement planning and income planning,” said Hofheinz. In a nutshell, Retirement Freedom Team provides fiduciary-based financial and retirement solutions, including managed money, fixed index annuities, fixed annuities, and life insurance.
Hofheinz is no stranger to personal tragedy, and the business owner credits those experiences for shaping her career path. Hofheinz lost her parents by age 13 and lived in California in 2002 when she became a widow at 38. After her spouse died, Hofheinz moved to New England “and spent some time with family and then went back into the financial field in insurance and securities,” she said.
The entrepreneur’s life experiences inspired her to start a business. “After a whole lot of difficulty in my life, I asked myself, ‘all the things in the world that had happened to me—what had it prepared me for? What did it best enable me to do?’ And I realized that it was just leading me to retirement planning because I'd been extremely fortunate. I had not had to think much about the future. Everything was pretty glowing and perfect, and we hadn't really prepared for the future. We had a life insurance policy, which helped with the mortgage. But we were still young, and we were still believing that everything was great,” she said of her spouse's untimely passing.
Hofheinz continued and shared how she found her niche in retirement planning. “I had been drawn through the insurance field, but I found my niche in the planning field because I was able to solve puzzles. People would come to me, and they'd have different money; they'd have different needs; they'd have different expectations, experiences and abilities. And a lot of times, they were just one or two thoughts away from having a complete plan. They needed somebody to see it from a higher view and work it out, sort of like a puzzle, and resolve it. Essentially, over the years, I became more of an expert on income planning for retirement to allow people to keep more of the money that they made. There are ways of planning to minimize taxation. And I think it's kind of important to be able to maximize how much money people have to do the things they want to do in retirement—when they've worked so hard for it,” said Hofheinz about her planning philosophy.
Hofheinz discussed that prospective clients usually meet with her or her staff in their 50s when retirement is on the horizon and elaborated on that thought. “I become the bridge between your accountant and your financial advisor or planner with wealth-building strategies and tactics focused on reducing, eliminating, and recapturing the maximum amount of your tax liability for creating untaxable wealth. Being able to minimize taxation is a huge part of what we do. We help our clients plan for income in retirement and how it translates into a successful life for them or later on.”
Three employees work with Hofheinz in her Rumford office, but she has national support staff. “I try to keep it tight and more niche, comfortable for people. I don't like the whole people coming into offices and just seeing a whole bunch of cubicles and everything being very clinical and just the kind of environment that makes people just sort of acquiesce and do what they're told. It goes against the grain for me. It goes against the grain for my staff. So, I've worked pretty hard to make sure that we maintain the warmth of a small office but the capacity of a national office. I have closer to 30 or 40 support staff as we go into the national level and the national support level because we work with a number of other companies and individuals, and so our support structure is much larger,” explained Hofheinz.
Hofheinz and her team enjoy what they do. “I absolutely love it. My staff absolutely loves it. We love being able to take people from the point of maybe frustration or anxiety to the point of relief and being able to see how it's going to all work out. It's extremely gratifying. And it's funny because people are like, ‘oh, so you're a broker?’ Well, yes, I manage money when they think of you in the financial world—yes, I do manage money. ‘So you're a financial advisor?’ Well, yes, I do planning. And then they're like, ‘okay, so you help coordinate strategies on taxes?’ Yes, that's it. I do that too. But what I primarily do is focus on how to get somebody from the point in their life where they have been working and saving to knowing how to create for the future and put it into a roadmap or a blueprint, so to speak, that they can follow and that will get them where they want to go. My staff and I absolutely love being able to help people when they come in,” Hofheinz shared.
For more information about Retirement Freedom Team, check out their BBB Business Profile. To learn more about BBB and read more stories like this, visit Behind the Business Stories. from BBB of Eastern MA, ME, RI & VT.
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