I write about retirement planning, Social Security, and the financial decisions that don’t get straight answers anywhere else.
I’m Thomas Clark. I’ve spent the last 18+ years working with pre-retirees and retirees on the kinds of decisions that don’t have do-overs — when to claim Social Security, how to build an income floor that actually holds, what to do with a 401(k) when you stop working, how to think about taxes once your paycheck stops.
This site is where I write about that work in plain language. Articles, free guides, printable resources, and — starting this year — books and a paid community.
How this site works
ThomasClarkAdvisor.com is published by Confluence Media Group LLC, an independent publisher I founded to do this work as its own thing. The blog is free. The Just in Case Binder and other printable resources are sold direct. The newsletter is free and weekly. The community is paid and small by design.
Everything on this site is educational — it’s not personalized advice and it’s not a sales funnel for anything else.
I’m also a Series 65 Investment Advisor Representative and I operate Confluence Capital Management, my own investment advisory practice. That’s separate from the publishing side. Investment advisory services are offered through Altitude Capital Management, LLC, an SEC-registered investment advisor. If you want to talk about working together on advisory services specifically, that’s its own page.
My background
I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. I now live in Charlotte, North Carolina with my wife and our six kids.
I came to financial planning the long way. Years of trading my own accounts, learning markets the hard way, working with families through every kind of retirement transition you can imagine — including the ones nobody plans for. The pattern that kept showing up: people don’t need more information. They need the right framework, applied to their actual situation, by someone who’s seen it play out a few hundred times.
That’s what I try to do here in writing, and that’s what I do for the families I work with directly.
What I believe about retirement planning
A few positions I hold pretty firmly:
- Bucket planning works. Now, Soon, and Later. Money you need this year is different from money you need in five years, which is different from money you need in twenty.
- A guaranteed income floor matters more than people think. Social Security, pensions, and income-focused Fixed Index Annuities. Cover your essentials with sources that don’t depend on what the market did this morning.
- Variable Annuities are counterproductive for retirement income. Market risk plus high fees defeats the entire purpose of guaranteed income security.
- Most people don’t have a Social Security claiming strategy. They have a Social Security claiming guess. Those are different.
- Sequence-of-returns risk is real. The first five years of retirement carry disproportionate weight. Plan for it.
You’ll see all of this show up across the writing on this site.
Beyond finance
I’m a husband and a father of six. I lift weights. I love basketball. I read more business books than is probably reasonable. Most of what I write here ties back to one idea: financial decisions are about freedom and choices, not about hitting a number.
Thanks for being here.
— Thomas
Email: hello@thomasclarkadvisor.com
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