The Biggest Retirement Planning Mistakes We See With Greenville and Upstate Retirees

How Upstate South Carolina’s Retirees Can Avoid Costly Financial Planning Missteps Before They Retire

Folks, if you’ve spent 20 or 30 years working at one of the Upstate’s great employers — BMW in Spartanburg, Michelin here in Greenville, Fluor, Lockheed Martin, GE, or Prizma — you’ve done an incredible job building a career and saving for retirement. You’ve maxed out your 401(k), picked up every dollar of company match, and watched that balance climb over the decades. That’s something to be genuinely proud of.

But here’s what we see at Common Sense Retirement Planning that keeps us up at night: having a big portfolio is not the same thing as having a great retirement plan. And the mistakes we see the most often aren’t made by people who didn’t save enough. They’re made by hardworking, disciplined savers who simply never transitioned from an accumulation mindset to a distribution mindset. In other words, they know how to build a nest egg, but nobody ever showed them how to turn it into a reliable paycheck.

We’ve had the privilege of helping thousands of retirees across Greenville, Spartanburg, Anderson, and the surrounding Upstate communities over the past 25 years. And while every situation is unique, certain patterns come up again and again — especially among manufacturing professionals preparing to leave careers at local employers. Let’s walk through the five biggest mistakes we see, and more importantly, how to avoid them.

Mistake #1: Treating Your 401(k) Like It’s a Retirement Plan

This is the big one. A 401(k) is a savings vehicle. It is not a retirement plan. There’s a world of difference between those two things, and it’s a distinction that some financial advisors may never bother to make.

Think about it this way. If you’re getting ready to drive from Travelers Rest to Charleston, you need more than just a car with gas in it. You need a map, a route, an idea of where you’ll stop, how long the trip will take, and what you’ll do if there’s construction or bad weather. Your 401(k) is the car. The Common Sense Retirement Roadmap is everything else.

We see this constantly with folks coming from BMW and Michelin and other Upstate employers. They walk in with a solid portfolio — sometimes $500,000, sometimes well over a million — and when we ask, “What’s your plan for income in retirement?” the answer is usually something like, “Well, I figured I’d just pull from my 401(k) when I need it.”

That’s not a plan. That’s a hope. And hope is not a strategy when it comes to the next 25 or 30 years of your life. A real retirement plan addresses what we call the Big Five: income planning, investment strategy, tax optimization, healthcare and asset protection, and legacy planning. If your current financial advisor hasn’t walked you through all five of those in detail, it might be time for a second opinion.

Mistake #2: Ignoring the Tax Time Bomb in Your Retirement and Financial Plan

Here’s something that catches a lot of Upstate retirees off guard. If the majority of your retirement savings is sitting in a traditional 401(k) or traditional IRA, every single dollar you pull out of those accounts is going to be taxed as ordinary income. And it gets worse — because of something called Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs), the government is eventually going to force you to take money out whether you want to or not.¹

Let’s use a hypothetical example. Say Robert and Linda from Clemson have been diligent savers for 30 years. Robert worked at a local manufacturing plant, and between their combined 401(k) balances and IRAs, they’ve accumulated about $800,000. Sounds great, right? But if they don’t have a tax strategy in place, here’s what can happen: by the time Robert hits 73, the IRS is going to require him to withdraw roughly $30,000 to $35,000 a year from those accounts, and that number only goes up. That forced income can push them into a higher tax bracket, increase their Medicare premiums through something called IRMAA surcharges², and even make more of their Social Security benefits taxable.³

That’s what we call a tax torpedo, and it’s one of the biggest retirement planning mistakes we see in the Upstate. The good news is there are strategies to address it — things like Roth conversions, strategic withdrawal sequencing, and taking advantage of the current lower tax rates while they last. These are all things we cover as part of the Common Sense Retirement Roadmap when folks come in to see us. Taxes in retirement are one of those areas where a little planning now might save you tens of thousands of dollars or more over the course of your retirement.

Mistake #3: Taking the Wrong Social Security Strategy

Social Security is one of the most valuable assets you’ll have in retirement, and yet most people spend more time planning a vacation than they do planning their Social Security claiming strategy. The decisions you make about when and how to claim can mean a difference of $100,000 or more over the course of your retirement.⁴

The following hypothetical situation illustrates this perfectly. Imagine a couple — let’s call them Frank and Deborah from Anderson. Both are 62, both are ready to retire, and they’ve done their homework online. Their plan? Both take Social Security at 62 because, as Frank put it, “I want to get my money before they run out.” Now, that’s a completely understandable concern, and we hear it all the time. But when we run couples like Frank and Deborah through our Social Security optimization software, we often find that a different claiming strategy — perhaps one spouse delaying to 67 or even 70 while the other claims earlier — can result in significantly more lifetime income. In some cases, we’ve found spousal benefits that people didn’t even know they were eligible for.

The point is, Social Security is complicated. There are over 500 potential claiming strategies for married couples.⁵ Getting it right matters, and it’s a core part of what we do for our clients at Common Sense Retirement Planning. If you haven’t had someone run your numbers through professional-grade software, you could be leaving serious money on the table.

Mistake #4: Keeping Too Much Market Risk Too Close to Retirement

This one hits close to home because we’ve seen it play out in real time. When the markets were flying high after the 2024 election, a lot of people close to retirement were feeling great about their account balances. But when tariff-related volatility hit in early 2025 and markets dropped sharply, some of those same people started wondering whether they could still retire on time.

That’s exactly the kind of scenario you want to avoid. If you’re within five years of retirement — or already in retirement — and your portfolio is still allocated like you’re in your 40s, you’re taking on more risk than you probably realize. We call it sequence of returns risk, and it’s the idea that a major market decline early in your retirement can permanently damage your ability to sustain income over a 25- or 30-year retirement.⁶

At Common Sense Retirement Planning, we believe in what we call the five-year income bucket. The idea is simple: you want at least five years of your essential living expenses in stable, low-volatility positions so that if the stock market has a bad year — or a bad couple of years — you’re not forced to sell investments at a loss just to pay your bills. That’s one of the worst things a retiree can be: a forced seller in a down market. The five-year bucket gives you breathing room and lets you ride out market storms without losing sleep.

Mistake #5: Having No Plan for Healthcare or Long-Term Care Costs in Retirement

Folks, this is the one that can truly wreck a retirement if it catches you off guard. According to recent estimates, the average 65-year-old couple will need roughly $315,000 in after-tax savings just to cover healthcare costs throughout retirement — and that doesn’t even include long-term care.⁷ Meanwhile, about 70% of people turning 65 today will need some form of long-term care in their remaining years.⁸

We’ve seen families across the Greenville, Spartanburg, and Anderson areas who did everything else right — saved well, invested wisely, had a decent income plan — but a long-term care event came along and changed everything. Nursing home costs in South Carolina can run anywhere from $6,000 to $10,000 a month or more, and Medicare covers very little of it. Without a plan, families are sometimes forced to sell homes, liquidate investments at the worst possible time, or watch decades of savings evaporate in just a few years.

The good news is there are newer strategies for addressing long-term care that are much better than the old “use it or lose it” policies. This is something we cover as part of the healthcare and asset protection pillar of the Common Sense Retirement Roadmap, and it’s one of the most important conversations we have with clients.

The Common Thread: A Portfolio Is Not a Financial Plan

Every one of these mistakes has the same root cause. People have done a wonderful job saving money throughout their careers. They have a portfolio. What they don’t have is a comprehensive plan that addresses all five pillars of a great retirement: income, investments, taxes, healthcare, and legacy.

And here’s the thing — it’s not their fault. The financial services industry has spent decades telling people to save, save, save and focus on accumulation. But very few advisors focus on what happens next: the distribution phase, where you actually have to turn those savings into income that lasts the rest of your life. That’s exactly what we do every day at Common Sense Retirement Planning.

We have offices in Greenville, Spartanburg, and Anderson, so we’re never far from where you are in the Upstate. If anything in this article resonated with you — whether it’s the tax time bomb, Social Security strategy, market risk, healthcare costs, or just the feeling that you have a portfolio but not a plan — we’d love to sit down with you for a complimentary consultation. There’s no obligation, no pressure, just an honest conversation about where you are and where you want to be.

References

1. Internal Revenue Service. “Retirement Topics — Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs).” IRS.gov, 2025.

2. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. “Medicare Part B Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amounts.” CMS.gov, 2025.

3. Social Security Administration. “Income Taxes and Your Social Security Benefit.” SSA.gov, 2025.

4. Shoven, John B., and Slavov, Sita N. “Does It Pay to Delay Social Security?” Journal of Pension Economics & Finance, 2014.

5. Sass, Steven A., et al. “Social Security Claiming Decision.” Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, 2013.

6. Pfau, Wade D. “Sequence of Returns Risk.” Retirement Researcher, 2023.

7. Fidelity Investments. “How to Plan for Rising Health Care Costs.” Fidelity.com, 2024.

8. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “Long-Term Care Information.” LongTermCare.acl.gov, 2024.

Securities and advisory services offered only by duly registered individuals through Madison Avenue Securities LLC, member FINRA/SIPC and a Registered Investment Advisor. MAS and Phillip Allen Inc. or Common Sense Retirement Planning are not affiliated entities. Artificial Intelligence was used to create this content. The information and opinions contained herein provided by third parties have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed by Common Sense Retirement Planning.

A Roth IRA conversion is a taxable event. Our Firm does not offer legal or tax advice. Consult with your legal or tax advisor regarding your situation.

Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of principal. Any references to protection, safety or lifetime income, generally refer to fixed insurance products, never securities or investments.

The examples above are hypothetical in nature and intended for illustrative purposes only. Your results will vary. Past performance does not ensure future performance or results.