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What is the RISA® and how can it help my Retirement?

The Retirement Income Style Awareness® (or RISA®) framework is a psychology-backed, research-driven income personality assessment transforming retirement income planning.
The RISA is a questionnaire that takes about 15 - 30 minutes to complete. It is designed to help you uncover your preferences for retirement income. Your answers to the research-backed questions produce a RISA® report that helps you understand how you’ll be most comfortable funding your retirement. You and your financial advisor will be able to identify which “style” matches best to your preferences and how that can translate into a personalized retirement income strategy. 

The RISA framework identifies a collection of retirement income preferences that translate into retirement styles. A retirement style addresses how one seeks to source their spending in retirement. This framework provides a first step in the transition from saving for retirement to spending in retirement.
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How does it work?
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When you sign up, you’ll be sent a special link where you can sign up and begin immediately taking the questionnaire. As you answer the questions, remember that there are no “right” answers. This questionnaire is meant to gauge of your preferences among different viable options, so you can take your time and respond honestly. Besides answering some simple demographic questions, the majority of the questions are asked on a scale, where you identify how strong you feel about the contrasting statements listed on the left and right.

How does it work?

There are competing viable approaches for retirement income. Retirement income strategies can be separated into four general styles. No one approach or retirement income product works best for everyone. With the RISA results, you will have a better sense about which approach is best for you. It is a vital first step in building a retirement income plan. 

The four retirement styles

The Total Return Style

The Total Return style identifies with sourcing income from a diversified investment portfolio. Investors rely on portfolio growth to sustainably support their spending and wish to preserve maximum flexibility for their assets.

The Protected Income Style

The Protected Income style uses contractually protected lifetime income to cover essential retirement expenses, along with a more diversified portfolio for discretionary expenses. These individuals are generally more willing to accept a role for insurance with lifetime income protections to help manage various retirement risks.

The Risk Wrap Style

The Risk Wrap style maintains comfort with focusing on market growth through investments, while also displaying a desire to commit to a solution and to build guardrails around the market risks to provide a more structured income stream. The Time Segmentation styles appeals to those seeking a mixture of contractual protections alongside flexibility. A time segmentation or bucketing strategy usually sources short-term retirement income needs with bonds or other fixed income assets to help weather market volatility, with a more growth-oriented investment portfolio earmarked to cover longer-term expenses.

The Time Segmentation Style

The Time Segmentation styles appeals to those seeking a mixture of contractual protections alongside flexibility. A time segmentation or bucketing strategy usually sources short-term retirement income needs with bonds or other fixed income assets to help weather market volatility, with a more growth-oriented investment portfolio earmarked to cover longer-term expenses.

  •  It is a financial planning program that helps the client and financial planner set a course toward the direction which is most comfortable to the client. ~ Dean G.

  • A psychological evaluation of your thoughts and concerns about the financial aspects of retirement. A completely different approach to personal finance than anything I have seen before. ~Randy T.

  • A psychological evaluation of your thoughts and concerns about the financial aspects of retirement. A completely different approach to personal finance than anything I have seen before. ~Randy T.

  • A very intelligent framework to think through one’s retirement issues. ~Peter T.

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About the RISA® Founders

Wade Pfau, Ph.D., CFA, RICP®

Wade is a one-man think tank. Wade’s retirement income framework was the base that helped me build out the RISA®. He is the Professor of Retirement Income at The American College of Financial Services, a higher education institution for financial planners. He leads the curriculum for their Retirement Income Certified Professional designation (RICP®). He is also a partner with me at McLean Asset Management and Retirement Researcher.

He earned a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University in 2003 and became a CFA charter holder in 2011.

Wade regularly publishes his research on retirement income topics in leading peer-reviewed practitioner-based financial planning research journals.

Alex Murguia, Ph.D.

Alex graduated from George Washington University with a doctorate in Clinical Psychology. During this time, he focused his research efforts on psychometrics and was a research fellow for the National Institutes of Health. He created a questionnaire to assess how your health beliefs affect how you utilize medical services. It was well-received and set him up for an academic career.

Upon graduating, his research interests evolved to investments, and he sought a formal career in the financial industry. Staying true to his scientist-practitioner mindset, he joined McLean Asset Management and was able to publish a number of articles. Alex also founded a financial planning software company to better serve the industry and their underlying clients. Alex took Dr. Wade Pfau's  framework for Retirement Income Planning and sought to quantify his concepts into a workable retirement income model. 

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