FIN4133: Retirement Planning

Course Description

FIN4133 Retirement Planning is the course that answers, in technical detail, the question every working person eventually asks: how much is enough, where should it be held, and how should it be drawn down?

The statewide inventory records the course at four institutions, including Florida State University, the University of Central Florida, the University of South Florida and the University of West Florida.

⚠ Evidence base. Only the University of West Florida's catalog entry was retrievable; FSU's finance bulletin did not carry it and the other two publish no fetchable descriptions. The mechanics below are UWF's. ⚠ The subject itself is unusually well standardised — it is one of the named topic areas in the CFP Board's certification curriculum, which sets the content nationally — so the outcomes and topics can be stated with confidence while the prerequisites and course structure should be checked locally.

UWF places it in the College of Business, Department of Accounting and Finance at 3 semester hours, with the prerequisite FIN 3403* — financial management, and the asterisk permits it concurrently. Its description is specific:

"Provides a comprehensive overview of retirement planning from income needs analysis to retirement income and distribution strategies, as well as the related tax implications. Includes usage and rules for retirement account options, including IRAs, 401(k)s, and Roth IRAs. Covers planning for both Social Security and Medicare."

⚠ That is a course description that names the actual instruments, which is the tell that this is a professional-track course rather than a survey. The rules of these accounts are statutory, detailed and consequential — and getting one wrong costs a client real money.

The two halves of the problem.

• Accumulation — how much to save, in what vehicles, with what tax treatment, at what risk. This is the phase most people think retirement planning consists of.
• ⚠⚠ Decumulation — converting a pile of assets into an income that lasts an unknown length of time. This is genuinely harder, and it is where the profession's live arguments are. The mathematics of drawing down is not the mathematics of building up run backwards, for a reason the course makes central: sequence-of-returns risk.

⚠⚠ Sequence-of-returns risk is the single most important idea in the course, and almost nobody arrives knowing it. Two retirees can experience identical average returns over thirty years and have completely different outcomes, because one met a bad market in the first five years of withdrawals and the other met it in the last five. Selling assets to fund living expenses in a down market permanently removes shares that would have recovered. Average return is the wrong statistic once withdrawals begin — and that single insight reorganises how the whole decumulation problem is approached.

The tax layer is where the technical content lives. ⚠ The order in which accounts are drawn down changes lifetime tax substantially, and the course teaches why: traditional accounts are taxed as ordinary income on withdrawal; Roth accounts are not; taxable accounts generate capital gains and get a basis step-up at death. Layered on top: required minimum distributions, Roth conversions in low-income years, the taxation of Social Security benefits, and Medicare's income-related premium surcharges — ⚠ which behave as a cliff rather than a slope, so a dollar of additional income can cost hundreds in premiums.

Social Security is taught as a decision problem, not as a benefit. ⚠ The claiming decision — between age 62 and 70 — is one of the highest-value single choices most households make, and it is widely made badly. Delaying increases the monthly benefit substantially and permanently, and it is inflation-indexed and lasts for life, which makes it functionally the cheapest longevity insurance available. Spousal and survivor benefits complicate it in ways that matter enormously for married couples — and the higher earner's claiming age determines the survivor benefit for whichever spouse lives longer.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Conduct a retirement income needs analysis and estimate the capital required to fund it.
• Apply time value of money techniques to retirement funding problems, including inflation-adjusted calculations.
• Explain the risks a retiree faces — longevity, inflation, market, sequence-of-returns, health and long-term care, and cognitive decline.
• ⚠ Explain sequence-of-returns risk and why average return is the wrong measure once withdrawals begin.
• Distinguish defined benefit from defined contribution plans and explain who bears which risk in each.
• Explain the rules governing 401(k), 403(b) and 457 plans — contribution limits, employer contributions, vesting, loans, distributions.
• Explain traditional and Roth IRAs — eligibility, contribution limits, income phase-outs, conversion.
• Compare traditional versus Roth treatment and identify the circumstances favouring each.
• Explain required minimum distributions — timing, calculation and the penalty for failure.
• Explain early distribution penalties and the statutory exceptions.
• Explain rollovers and transfers, and the traps in indirect rollovers.
• Explain retirement plan options for the self-employed and small business — SEP, SIMPLE, solo 401(k), defined benefit plans.
• Explain Social Security — eligibility, benefit calculation, full retirement age, and the effect of claiming age.
• Analyse a Social Security claiming decision, including spousal and survivor benefits.
• Explain the taxation of Social Security benefits and the earnings test.
• Explain Medicare — Parts A, B, C and D, enrolment periods, penalties, and IRMAA surcharges.
• Explain the gap between Medicare coverage and long-term care, and the options for funding it.
• Compare distribution strategies — systematic withdrawal, bucket approaches, floor-and-upside, annuitisation — and their trade-offs.
• Evaluate withdrawal rate research and explain its assumptions and limits.
• Explain the role of annuities in retirement income, including their costs and their genuine uses.
• Determine a tax-efficient withdrawal sequence across account types.
• Explain beneficiary designations and the rules governing inherited retirement accounts.
• Prepare a written retirement plan recommendation for a case, with reasoning and assumptions stated.
• Explain the fiduciary and ethical obligations attaching to retirement advice.

Optional Outcomes

• Explain ERISA and plan qualification rules in detail.
• Explain nonqualified deferred compensation and executive benefits.
• Explain employee stock options and ESOPs.
• Explain health savings accounts as a retirement vehicle.
• Model retirement outcomes using Monte Carlo simulation.
• Explain behavioural finance as it affects retirement saving and spending.
• Explain estate planning interactions with retirement assets.
• Explain public sector and Florida Retirement System options.
• Use professional planning software.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• The retirement planning process and needs analysis.
• Retirement risks, including sequence-of-returns.
• Defined benefit and defined contribution plans.
• Employer-sponsored plans — 401(k), 403(b), 457.
• IRAs, traditional and Roth.
• Plans for the self-employed and small business.
• Contribution, distribution and rollover rules.
• Required minimum distributions.
• Social Security and the claiming decision.
• Medicare and health cost planning.
• Long-term care risk and funding.
• Distribution and withdrawal strategies.
• Tax-efficient withdrawal sequencing.
• Annuities and guaranteed income.
• Beneficiary designations and inherited accounts.
• Ethics and fiduciary duty.
• Case analysis and plan preparation.

Optional Topics

• ERISA and plan qualification.
• Nonqualified deferred compensation.
• Stock compensation and ESOPs.
• Health savings accounts.
• Monte Carlo modelling.
• Behavioural finance in retirement.
• Estate planning interactions.
• Florida Retirement System and public sector plans.
• Planning software.

Resources & Tools

• Textbooks: Dalton, Dalton, Cangelosi and Guttery, Retirement Planning and Employee Benefits — ⚠ the standard text on CFP-registered programmes; Leimberg, The Tools and Techniques of Retirement Income Planning; Kaplan and other CFP review providers publish course-aligned material.
• ⚠⚠ The primary sources are free, authoritative and change every year — and using them is part of the professional skill. IRS Publication 590-A and 590-B (IRA contributions and distributions), Publication 575 (pension and annuity income), Publication 560 (small business plans), and the IRS's annual cost-of-living adjustment notice for contribution limits. The Social Security Administration's site, its Retirement Estimator and its publications on spousal and survivor benefits. medicare.gov and the annual Medicare & You handbook.
• ⚠⚠ Every dollar figure in this subject is indexed and changes annually. Contribution limits, income phase-outs, the Social Security wage base, IRMAA brackets and RMD tables are all moving numbers — the textbook is out of date the year it prints. Learn the RULE and look up the NUMBER. This is the single most important working habit the course teaches.
• Research and practitioner literature: the Journal of Financial Planning; Wade Pfau's work on retirement income and safe withdrawal rates; the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College — ⚠ free, rigorous, and the best source of retirement research written for non-specialists; the Employee Benefit Research Institute; and Michael Kitces's Nerd's Eye View, which is free and is where practitioners actually read about rule changes.
• Tools: financial calculators (HP 12C or TI BA II Plus — ⚠ required for the CFP examination, so learn one now); Excel for cash flow and Monte Carlo modelling; professional software such as eMoney, MoneyGuidePro, RightCapital and Holistiplan, which some programmes provide; and free calculators from the SSA and from Open Social Security for claiming analysis.
• ⚠ Florida-specific: the Florida Retirement System — ⚠ its Pension Plan versus Investment Plan election is a real, irreversible decision faced by every Florida public employee, including teachers, and it is a superb case study; Florida's lack of a state income tax, which changes the arithmetic of Roth conversions and of retiring here; and Florida's homestead protection and the exemption of retirement accounts from creditors under Florida Statutes. ⚠ Florida has the largest retiree population in the country, and this is a course about the state's own demographics.

Career Pathways

• Personal financial advisors (SOC 13-2052) — ⚠ the direct destination, and Florida has exceptional demand for it.
• Financial analysts (SOC 13-2051).
• Retirement plan consultants and third-party administrators (SOC 13-2052, 13-1141).
• Employee benefits specialists and managers (SOC 13-1141, 11-3111).
• Insurance sales agents (SOC 41-3021) — annuities and long-term care; ⚠ requires Florida licensure through the Department of Financial Services.
• Trust officers and private banking (SOC 13-2052, 11-3031).
• Actuaries (SOC 15-2011) — a different technical route, via the SOA examinations.
• Accountants specialising in retirement and tax (SOC 13-2011) — ⚠ CPA licensure has its own requirements.
• Compliance officers (SOC 13-1041) — ⚠ a growing function given fiduciary regulation.
• Financial counsellors and educators (SOC 13-2052, 21-1099) — nonprofit and workplace programmes.

⚠⚠ The credential that matters here is CFP. Certified Financial Planner certification requires completing CFP Board-registered coursework, a bachelor's degree, passing the CFP examination, and qualifying experience — and retirement planning is one of the Board's named topic areas, which is why this course exists in this form.

⚠⚠ The point students most need to hear: a CFP Board-REGISTERED programme is what satisfies the education requirement — not an accumulation of finance courses that happen to cover the same topics. Confirm whether your institution's programme is registered before assuming this course counts toward it. This is the same structural rule the repository documents in nursing, medical laboratory science, social work and teacher preparation: programmatic recognition outranks course credit.

Other relevant credentials: Series 7 and 66 (securities, via FINRA and a sponsoring firm), the Florida life and health insurance licence, and CRPC or RICP as retirement-specific designations. Florida employers include Raymond James (St. Petersburg), Fidelity (Jacksonville), Charles Schwab, Northwestern Mutual, Edward Jones, the large banks' wealth divisions, and a very large independent RIA sector across the state.

Special Information

⚠ Single-source guide — what to verify locally

Four institutions carry the number; one catalog answered.

• The subject content is safe — the CFP Board's topic list standardises it nationally, and the outcomes above reflect that.
• ⚠ The mechanics are UWF's: the prerequisite, the concurrency allowance, and whether the course sits inside a CFP-registered track. All three vary and all three matter.
• ⚠⚠ Check whether your institution's financial planning programme is CFP Board-registered, and whether this specific course is part of it. That single question determines whether the course is a step toward a credential or a general elective.

Prerequisites — and a concurrency worth thinking about

UWF requires FIN 3403* (financial management), with the asterisk permitting it in the same term.

• ⚠ Here the concurrency is workable but not ideal. This course uses time value of money constantly — present value, future value, annuities, inflation adjustment — and that material comes early in FIN 3403. Taking them together works if you are comfortable with the calculator; taking this course with no finance background does not.
• Unlisted but genuinely useful: an income tax course. ⚠ A large share of this course is applied tax — marginal rates, ordinary income versus capital gains, phase-outs, the taxation of benefits. Students who have taken individual taxation find the second half substantially easier.
• Also helpful: investments, for the portfolio and withdrawal-strategy material.
• ⚠ The unlisted skill that separates students is calculator fluency. Learn the HP 12C or TI BA II Plus properly in week one — the exams are time-pressured, and it is the same instrument the CFP examination requires.

Course format and workload

3 credits, 45 contact hours — lecture, three hours per week. UWF notes it may not be repeated for credit.

Expect 6–9 hours per week outside class. ⚠ The workload is characteristically detail retention plus calculation: the rules are numerous, specific and interlocking, and the exams test whether you know which rule applies as much as whether you can compute. Assessment normally includes examinations, problem sets, and a comprehensive case study producing a written plan — which is the assignment most like professional work and the one worth keeping.

⚠⚠ The rules change — and that is a professional condition, not a course inconvenience

Retirement law changes frequently. ⚠ The SECURE Act (2019) and SECURE 2.0 (2022) altered required minimum distribution ages, the treatment of inherited IRAs, catch-up contributions and several plan rules, and further changes are routine. Contribution limits and income thresholds are indexed annually.

• ⚠⚠ Learn the structure and look up the number. A student who memorises this year's IRA limit has learned something that expires; a student who understands why a phase-out exists and where to find the current one has learned the job.
• Practitioners follow rule changes continuously, which is why the practitioner press listed above exists. Continuing education is a licensure requirement in this field, not a suggestion.
• ⚠ A textbook more than a year or two old will contain wrong numbers and may contain wrong rules. Check IRS publications for anything you intend to rely on.

⚠ Ethics, and why this course carries more of it than most

Retirement advice is given to people who cannot easily recover from bad advice. A thirty-year-old with a poor portfolio has time; a seventy-year-old who has annuitised badly or run out of money does not.

• ⚠⚠ Fiduciary duty versus suitability is the central distinction, and it is not academic. A fiduciary must act in the client's best interest; a suitability standard requires only that a recommendation be appropriate. The two can produce different recommendations for the same client, and which standard applies depends on how the advisor is regulated and how they are paid. Know which one applies to you.
• Compensation structure shapes advice. ⚠ Commission, fee-only and fee-based are different arrangements with different conflicts, and the course should be explicit that some retirement products carry high commissions and surrender charges that are appropriate for some clients and are also, not coincidentally, the most profitable to sell.
• ⚠⚠ Elder financial exploitation is a specific and serious risk in this field, and Florida — with the country's largest retiree population — has a correspondingly large problem. Florida law provides for reporting suspected exploitation of a vulnerable adult; the Florida Abuse Hotline is 1-800-96-ABUSE (1-800-962-2873), and it covers vulnerable adults as well as children. FINRA rules also permit firms to place temporary holds on disbursements where exploitation is suspected. Knowing this is professional competence.
• Cognitive decline in clients is a planning variable the course should treat seriously — including having designated trusted contacts and simplifying arrangements while a client can still direct them.

Articulation and transfer

The number FIN4133 is used at the institutions carrying it, so articulation is clean where the receiving institution offers it.

⚠⚠ The real transfer question is CFP registration, not credit. A CFP Board-registered programme is registered as a programme, and a transferred course may or may not be accepted into it. Ask the receiving institution's financial planning programme director directly, and keep the syllabus.

This is a 4000-level upper-division course; Florida College System institutions do not offer it. FIN2100 personal finance is the lower-division relative, ⚠ and it is not a substitute — it is a general-education personal finance course, not a professional planning course.

Prefix note. FIN is finance; RMI risk management and insurance; ACG and TAX accounting and taxation; REE real estate; ECO economics. ⚠ Retirement planning content also appears under RMI at institutions that house financial planning in a risk management department — search by subject rather than prefix.

AI Integration

⚠ Financial planning is being changed by automation in a specific and well-documented way, and this course should be clear about where the line falls.

What is genuinely in use:

• Planning and projection software — Monte Carlo simulation, tax-aware withdrawal sequencing and Roth conversion optimisation are computational problems that software does far better than a human.
• Robo-advisors — automated portfolio construction and rebalancing at low cost. ⚠ These have genuinely compressed fees for straightforward accumulation-phase investing, and that is a real change.
• Tax document extraction and analysis, meeting note-taking, and client communication drafting.
• Compliance surveillance across communications.

⚠⚠ Where AI assistance fails in this subject, and the failures are expensive:

• ⚠⚠ Outdated rules stated confidently. This is the worst failure mode in this course, because the rules genuinely changed recently. Models reproduce pre-SECURE-Act inherited IRA rules, superseded RMD ages and old contribution limits with complete fluency. ⚠ A wrong RMD age is a 25% excise tax; a wrong inherited-IRA rule can cost a beneficiary a large fraction of the account. The IRS publication is free and is the only correct source.
• Fabricated citations to tax code sections and rulings. Invented section numbers and misstated contents. Verify every citation.
• State-specific error. ⚠ Florida has no state income tax and unusual creditor protections; model output averages across states and will get both wrong.
• Arithmetic in multi-year projections. Plausible and unverifiable without checking. Build it in Excel.

⚠⚠ The professional line, stated plainly. Computation is not advice. A model can compute an optimal withdrawal sequence given assumptions; it cannot elicit what a client actually wants, notice that they are anxious about a decision, recognise early cognitive decline, or take responsibility for a recommendation. ⚠ Retirement planning is regulated advice given to a specific person, and liability attaches to the advisor. "The software said so" is not a defence in a FINRA arbitration, before the SEC, or to a CFP Board disciplinary panel.

⚠ The honest professional read on automation. Automation is compressing the commodity end of this business — portfolio construction and rebalancing for straightforward accumulation-phase clients. What it has not touched is the part this course teaches: complex decumulation, tax-sensitive sequencing across account types, irreversible one-time decisions like Social Security claiming and pension elections, and the behavioural work of getting a real household to follow a plan when markets fall. Those are judgement problems attached to a person's whole circumstances. A planner whose value was picking funds is exposed; a planner who can do the above is more valuable, not less.

Academic integrity. Follow the course policy. Submitting generated work as your own violates every Florida institution's policy — ⚠ and in a field where CFP Board certification and securities licensing both involve character and fitness review, an academic dishonesty finding is a professional problem as well as an academic one.