Retiring From SCPMG: 7 Decisions That Can Change What Your Portfolio Needs to Do -- A guide for SCPMG physicians 55+ who are thinking about retiring or going part-time in the next 5 years
You've probably spent a good part of your career accumulating wealth. You've earned a physician's income. You've contributed to your retirement accounts. You've built equity in your home. You've accumulated years of service with SCPMG. And you've probably spent more than a little time thinking about the Common Plan, Social Security and what retirement might eventually look like.
Then, somewhere in your 50s, the question changes.
It isn't:
"Am I saving enough?"
It becomes:
"What happens when I stop working?"
And that's a very different financial problem.
Maybe you're thinking about retiring at 60.
Maybe 62.
Maybe 65.
Maybe you don't actually want to retire yet—you just want to stop working at the pace you've maintained for the last 20 years.
Perhaps you've started wondering whether 0.8 FTE or 0.6 FTE could give you some of your life back.
And then the questions begin.
"I'm close to 10 years. Should I really leave now?"
"Is 20 years a major breakpoint?"
"What is my pension actually worth?"
"What happens if I go part-time?"
"Can I afford to retire before 65?"
"What happens to our healthcare if we move out of California?"
"How much of my retirement is actually dependent on Kaiser?"
And underneath all of those questions is another one:
"What should I be doing with the money I've spent my career building?"
That's the question I want to focus on.
I'm Daniel Harris, founder of D.R. Harris & Co. I work with physicians and other professionals who have accumulated meaningful assets and are within 5 years of retirement or pre-retirement at which point where those assets need to start performing a different role.
Retirement changes the job of your portfolio.
During your career, your paycheck do all the heavy lifting.
In retirement, your portfolio needs to provide stable income, preserve purchasing power, manage taxes and support decades of spending—all while you no longer have your clinical income to fall back on. SCPMG is great because of the common plan pension so that means SCPMG physicians do not need to be as financially sophisticated about retirement as other physicians but given SCPMG's physicians dependence on Kaiser for their financial security not just in their working years but in retirement - it can be wise to approach retirement in a financially sophisticated manner.
At SCPMG, your pension, Common Plan, healthcare benefits, Social Security and other retirement resources are all part of the picture.
The better you understand those pieces, the better you can understand what your investment portfolio actually needs to do.
Here are seven decisions I'd want every SCPMG physician approaching retirement to think through.
1. Should I Stay—or Is It Time to Go?
This is often the first question and SCPMG physician who is considering doing different things with their days are thinking.
Maybe you're approaching 10 years at SCPMG (the most common tenure we see for Kaiser physicians).
Maybe you're approaching 20 or even 30 years at SCPMG.
Maybe you've already reached a milestone and you're wondering whether another year of full-time practice is really worth it.
You might be asking:
"I'm close to 10 years. Does it really make sense to walk away now?"
Or:
"Is staying one more year actually worth it?"
Or:
"If I get to 20 years, is there much financial reason to keep working full-time?"
These aren't questions I'd answer with a generic rule of thumb.
I'd want to see the numbers not just of your retirement benefits but also your goals, dreams and lifestyle costs.
SCPMG's published benefits materials distinguish between Qualifying Service and Credited Service, and the Common Plan benefit calculation takes service into account.
The materials also indicate that part-time service can be treated differently for eligibility and benefit calculations.
That makes it important to understand what a particular retirement date actually means for you.
But there's another piece that often gets overlooked.
Your retirement date also changes the job your investment portfolio needs to do.
Suppose you retire at 58 instead of 62.
That's four additional years your portfolio may need to help fund your lifestyle.
Retire at 65, and the picture may be completely different.
So when I think about a retirement date, I don't just ask:
"What will your pension be?"
I also ask:
"What will your portfolio need to accomplish because you chose that retirement date?"
That's the beginning of good investment management which is designed to use the tools available to work to help you achieve the lifetstyle you'd like to have. In today's environment investments are often treated as an after thought - and attention to them is sort of subsumed to things like taxes and estate planning, which are important but have more marginal benefits. Investments actually remain the core of how people achieve their goals and investments are never really "solved" or anything like that. Investing is a competitive field, just like buying real estate, or getting deals on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. There will also be intense competition for good investments and in today's environment there is a large amount of complacency regarding investments and so while other things matter too, investments probably matter the most in helping you achieve your goals in our view.
Just as you cannot make a really delicious meal with rotten vegetables and rancid meat and good restaurants take sourcing good ingredients seriously. And this doesn't just mean high end restaurants - but it is a commitment to quality at all price points and that is an important thing to do. I say this because I believe quality is not necessarily super expensive or unaffordable but it does I suppose involve a mindset.
Two ways to conceptualize this is Processed Cheese vs In and Out Burger. Here are two videos on the topic that you might enjoy and tap into the feeling that we hope you get when invest one way versus the other.
Velvetta Cheese and how it is made according to a cheese expert: https://youtu.be/6d6eUT6YNBk?si=9nzVc7KdXEofmrSH
Anthony Bourdain discussing what makes in and out Burger the best fast food in LA: https://youtu.be/R4J1seTHAMU?si=ddbf4SdmmfF0aShP
The point is just how food is not just food - there are differences between providers and what their goals are - investments in our view are not just investments. They are not actually fungible in our view and this matters more in retirement than ever, in our opinion, this is the first time that you are truly living off your investments.
2. What If I Don't Want to Retire Completely?
Retirement doesn't have to be a light switch.
For many physicians, the real decision isn't:
Full-time or retired.
It's: Full-time, 0.8, 0.6—or something in between?
You might be asking:
"What happens if I go down to 0.8?"
"What if I work 0.6 for a few years?"
"Can I coast part-time and still qualify for the retirement benefits I'm counting on?"
Those questions matter because reducing your schedule can change both your income and the way retirement benefits accumulate.
But there's another way to look at it.
Going part-time may also change how much your investment portfolio needs to do.
If you're earning 60% or 80% of your previous income, perhaps your portfolio doesn't need to generate as much income yet.
That could give you more time to allow your investments to compound.
Or perhaps you want to use those years to build more liquidity before you fully retire.
The point is that your employment decision and investment decision should be connected.
You shouldn't necessarily manage your portfolio as if you're retiring tomorrow if you actually plan to work another five years.
Likewise, if you're seriously considering stepping away, your investment strategy may need to start reflecting that reality.
3. Can I Really Retire at 58, 60 or 62?
This is where retirement planning becomes very personal.
Sometimes a physician isn't asking:
"Can I afford to retire?"
They're asking:
"How much am I willing to pay for three more years of my career?"
If you want to retire before 65, your portfolio may need to bridge the years between your last paycheck and the point when Medicare and other retirement income sources become available.
I call this your retirement bridge.
The bridge might include:
Taxable investments
Retirement accounts
Cash reserves
Pension income
Social Security later
ESP, if applicable
Other sources of income
The important question isn't simply how much you have.
It's when you can access it and what role each pool of money needs to play.
The portfolio problem
Imagine you're retiring at 60.
You don't necessarily want every dollar invested the same way.
Some of your assets may need to be available to fund the first several years of retirement.
Other assets may need to support you 15, 20 or 30 years into the future.
That means your portfolio has different jobs.
And that's where asset management becomes particularly important.
The goal isn't to eliminate investment risk.
It's to understand which risks you actually need to take and which risks you don't.
4. How Much of Your Retirement Depends on Kaiser?
This is one of the questions I think more SCPMG physicians should ask.
Consider your retirement balance sheet:
Your career income came from Kaiser.
Your retirement benefits are connected to Kaiser.
Your healthcare may be connected to Kaiser.
Your Common Plan is part of the retirement picture.
And potentially ESP is part of the equation as well.
None of that is inherently a problem.
But it does raise an interesting investment question:
What does your portfolio need to do given everything else you already have?
I sometimes think of this as Kaiser concentration.
Not investment concentration in the traditional sense.
Rather, how much of your future financial security is tied to the same institution or system?
If you have a meaningful source of retirement income that isn't directly tied to the stock market, that matters when thinking about how aggressively your investment portfolio needs to be positioned.
Likewise, if a large portion of your retirement spending will need to come from your investment portfolio, that matters too.
This is why I don't believe your investment portfolio should be designed in isolation.
Your pension is part of the picture.
Your Social Security is part of the picture.
Your retirement spending is part of the picture.
Your portfolio is the part we can advise on.
5. What Happens to Your Healthcare When You Retire?
Healthcare is one of those retirement questions that can look simple from a distance and become much more complicated once you start looking at the details.
You may be asking:
"How much will healthcare cost if I retire before 65?"
"What happens when I reach Medicare?"
"Does Kaiser reimburse Part B for me and my spouse?"
"What happens if we move away?"
SCPMG's current retiree Medicare materials contain specific eligibility and enrollment requirements for Senior Advantage and Medicare Part B reimbursement. They also address what happens when retirees move outside the relevant service area.
Those details matter.
But from an investment perspective, there's another question:
How much of your portfolio needs to be available for healthcare and other retirement expenses?
If you retire at 58, your portfolio may need to fund healthcare for several years before Medicare.
If you retire at 65, the picture changes.
If you move, it may change again.
This is another reason I like to think about retirement as a series of decisions rather than one giant financial plan.
You don't need to predict every expense perfectly.
You need a portfolio that is designed with reasonable assumptions, adequate liquidity and enough flexibility to adapt when those assumptions change.
6. What Will Your Retirement Actually Look Like After Taxes?
A retirement portfolio isn't really about how much money you have.
It's about how much money you can use.
That means taxes matter.
An SCPMG physician may have several different sources of retirement income:
Pension benefits
Common Plan benefits
401(k)
Keogh
Roth accounts
Taxable investments
Social Security
Those sources can have very different tax characteristics.
So you might reasonably ask:
"Should I just max the 401(k) after my Keogh contributions?"
Or:
"Should I be putting more into Roth?"
Or:
"Am I going to end up in a higher tax bracket in retirement?"
These aren't just tax-planning questions.
They're investment-management questions, too.
Where an investment sits can matter almost as much as what the investment is.
A physician with substantial traditional retirement assets, Roth assets and a taxable portfolio has different choices available than someone whose retirement savings are concentrated almost entirely in tax-deferred accounts.
That flexibility can be valuable.
At D.R. Harris & Co., we think about tax-aware investing as part of advising on the portfolio—not as something completely separate from investment management.
The objective isn't to predict your tax bill twenty years from now.
It's to build a portfolio that gives you reasonable flexibility as yourcircumstances change.
7. What Does Your Portfolio Need to Do Once the Paycheck Stops?
This is ultimately the question behind all the others.
During your career, your portfolio is mostly an accumulation vehicle.
You contribute.
You invest.
You let time work.
Retirement changes the assignment.
Now the portfolio needs to help support your lifestyle.
That creates a different set of questions:
How much should I have in stocks?
How much should be in bonds or cash?
How much should I be withdrawing?
How much liquidity do I need?
How much risk can I afford to take?
What happens if the market drops shortly after I retire?
How much growth do I still need if retirement could last 30 years?
These questions don't have universal answers.
Because your portfolio shouldn't be built around a generic retirement formula.
It should be built around your retirement income sources, your spending needs, your time horizon and your tolerance for risk.
The physician with a substantial pension may have a very different portfolio problem from the physician who needs their investments to provide nearly all of their retirement income.
That's why we start with:
"What does your money need to do?"
Then we build from there.
The Point Isn't to Predict Your Retirement
I've noticed something when talking with physicians about retirement.
The more information they receive, the more complicated retirement can sometimes feel.
Another pension estimate.
Another Medicare document.
Another article about taxes.
Another projection.
Another opinion from a colleague.
Eventually, you're left with a stack of information and the same basic question:
"So...am I okay?"
I don't think the answer is more information.
I think the answer is better organization of the information you already have.
Your SCPMG benefits tell us something.
Your investment portfolio tells us something.
Your spending tells us something.
Your retirement date tells us something.
Your tax situation tells us something.
Our job is to put those pieces together well enough to answer a simpler question:
"What does my portfolio need to do from here?"
That is a question I find much more useful.
Your SCPMG Benefits Are Part of the Picture. Your Portfolio Is What We Advise on.
At D.R. Harris & Co., I don't believe you need another financial project to manage.
You've spent your career managing enough complexity already.
What I want to help you do is understand the role your retirement benefits play in your overall financial picture—and then manage the assets we oversee accordingly.
That might mean helping you think through whether you can retire at 60.
It might mean looking at what happens if you go to 0.8 FTE.
It might mean deciding how much liquidity you need before retirement.
It might mean changing your portfolio as you move from accumulation toretirement income.
It might mean making your investments more tax-aware.
Or it might simply mean taking a portfolio you've accumulated over 20 or 30 years and asking:
"Is this still the right way for this money to be invested now?"
That's the conversation I want to have.
If what you really need is someone who understands your situation and can help manage the money you've spent your career building, that's a conversation I'm happy to have.
You've Done the Hard Part. Now Let's Think About What Your Money Needs to Do.
If you're an SCPMG physician age 55 or older and you're considering retiring or going part-time within the next 5 years, you don't need to have every answer figured out.
You may simply be at the point where you're starting to ask better questions.
Should I stay another year?
Should I go part-time?
Can I retire at 60?
How much of my retirement depends on Kaiser?
What should my portfolio look like when the paycheck stops?
Those are questions worth talking through.
At D.R. Harris & Co., we work with physicians who have spent years accumulating wealth and now want to make sure their investments are positioned thoughtfully for the next stage.
We bring a fiduciary perspective, an emphasis on tax-aware investing and a focuson helping clients understand what their money is actually being asked toaccomplish.
And the first conversation doesn't need to be complicated.
It can simply be an opportunity for us to get to know each other, hear what you're thinking about and see whether the way we work is a good fit for what you need.
You may already be ready to retire.
You may need another few years.
You may decide that part-time is the right answer.
You may simply need to make some changes to the way your portfolio is positioned.
You don't have to know which one it is before you call.
That's part of the conversation.
Request an Introductory Pre-retirement phone Call
If you'd like to talk through what you're considering, request a 10-minute introductory call with D.R. Harris & Co.
Disclaimer: This article is for educational and entertainment purposes only. You are not a client of D.R. Harris & Co. nor Daniel Harris unless you have a signed written advisory agreement with us. We believe the information in this article is accurate as of the time it was written on 9/18/26 but we make no warranties about its accuracy. You should do all your own research, discuss issues with benefits people at SCPMG or speak with your own professional advisors before acting on any information you read about in this article. This article likely will not be update after 9/18/26, so it may become less accurate over time.
