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Roll it on.
No brakes. No reverse.
Make the high-speed turnoff.

Smooth, precise, no drama. You flew that way for thirty years.
Bring that same discipline to your retirement income plan. This is too important to wing it.

I'm Ready

What We Do
More Than a Portfolio

The large "cookie-cutter" firms have a standard answer for nearly every client: a diversified portfolio, a management fee, and an assistant who returns your calls when he gets around to it. What gets left out is everything that makes retirement actually work — how your income gets taxed, how you draw down savings without running dry, and what happens to your plan if the market drops in your first year out of the cockpit.

As a fiduciary CFP® with over two decades in financial services, Ed works with pilots and other pre-retirees on the stuff that actually keeps people up at night — not just what you own, but when you spend it, how it gets taxed, and what happens to the plan if the market drops the month after you retire. The bucket strategy. The Roth conversion window. The sequence-of-returns problem nobody warned you about. That's the work.

Who We Are
Our Background

Freedom Capital Management was founded by Edward Schweitzer, CFP®, a former airline pilot who spent over a decade at one of the country's top independent investment advisory firms before building a practice around the clients and challenges he understood best. The full story is on the About page, and it's worth reading.

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I understood (Hughen)...and hoped that he would spend some time in an armchair drinking beer.

— Ernest K. Gann, "Fate is the Hunter"

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

— Leonardo DaVinci

People's gut-level emotional wants are always and everywhere the mortal enemy of return.

— Nick Murray

Worrying is like paying a debt you don't owe. 

— Mark Twain

The sole function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. 

— Thomas Sowell

How we help
A Full Picture,
Not a Partial Plan

Getting retirement right means accounting for more than just your investment balance. The services below cover the areas where the financial decisions made in the years before and after retirement tend to have the biggest long-term impact, and where coordination between those decisions does the most work.

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Our History

  • The closer you are to retirement, the more your portfolio's structure shapes what's possible. We build and manage it around your plan and timeline.

  • Turning decades of savings into income you can live on requires a distribution strategy, not just an account balance. We build one around your specific sources, spending needs, and timeline.

  • Your accounts, assets, and policy benefits all need a clear path for how they pass, to whom, and when. We work with the legal and financial resources needed to build that plan. We are not estate attorneys, but we have the connections to make sure you get to the right ones.

  • Employer coverage ends at retirement. Medicare comes with enrollment windows and plan decisions that carry long-term financial consequences, and we walk through those options with you. We don't sell insurance products, so the guidance here is just guidance.

  • The financial decisions you make now can create tax consequences you won't see for years. We coordinate planning around the full picture, working alongside your tax professional to make sure nothing gets missed.

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Who we help
For People Who Would Rather Find the Problem Before it Finds Them

What do you notice about this photo?

Most people see the Red Sox hat. This photo was taken in October, 1999. The Red Sox were in the playoffs.

A pilot sees something else.

There’s an orange INOP sticker on one of the fuel gauges.

It’s not unusual for an airplane to be flying with inoperative equipment until it reaches a maintenance base. But pilots especially hate busted fuel gauges — they sit in the corner like a rattlesnake.

You don’t really know how much fuel the plane landed with, so ground crew has to physically stick the tanks to verify the fuel load. And here’s the part that surprises people: the flight management computer won’t calculate properly without a functioning fuel gauge feeding it accurate data. The workaround for a “simple” broken gauge turns out to have a long tail.

Retirement has its own broken fuel gauges.

Most pilots heading into retirement have at least one — and don’t know it.

Required Minimum Distributions are a good example. At age 73, the IRS requires you to start pulling money out of your tax-deferred accounts whether you need it or not. If you haven’t planned for it, you may end up in the wrong tax bracket or paying Medicare IRMAA penalties.

Or the surviving spouse trap. When one spouse dies, the survivor files as single — and single filers pay more taxes on the same income. The pension or PBGC election made at retirement, and when to claim Social Security, are decisions that can’t be revisited. They need to be optimized before anyone signs anything.

These aren’t obscure edge cases. They’re standard equipment on most pilots’ retirement balance sheets. You need to see them while you still have options.

Retiring Airline Pilots

At 65, the FAA shows you the door. No negotiating, no extensions. The question is how to structure everything: distributions from the 401k, taxes, Social Security timing, and whatever the PBGC is actually going to send you.

Working Professionals and Their Families

The broken gauges are the same. The uniform is different. If your financial picture has gotten complicated — and at this point it probably has — we should talk.

How This Works
Plain English, No Pressure

It starts with a real conversation about where you stand, what's coming, and what's worrying you. You won't fill out an intake form, sit through a canned presentation, or take home a binder you'll never open again. From there, most of the work concentrates in two places.

Taxes

By the time you retire, the bulk of your savings is likely sitting in a 401(k) the IRS has never taxed. The years before mandatory withdrawals begin at 73 are the best window you'll have to get ahead of that.

Inflation

A plan that works when you're 65 still has to work when you're 85, which means accounting for the rising cost of living across a retirement that could span decades.

Frequently Asked Questions

Pilots face a financial picture that most advisors aren't built to read. Here are some of the questions we hear from clients who've figured that out.

1.

You specialize in airline pilots. Do you work with anyone else?

Yes. The planning problems pilots face — a hard retirement date, a 401(k) full of pre-tax money, an income gap to bridge before Social Security — show up in plenty of other careers too. If that description fits your situation, we should talk.

2.

What makes this different from what a typical investment advisor does?

Growing your portfolio matters — we do that too. But at 65, you've got a second problem that most advisors aren't set up to solve: how to actually spend what you've built without running out, paying more tax than you have to, or getting derailed by a bad market in year one. That's where most plans fall short. That's where this one starts.

3.

How do you handle taxes in retirement?

For most clients, taxes are the largest controllable expense in retirement — and the window to do something about it is shorter than most people realize. The years between retirement and 73, when the IRS starts requiring withdrawals from your 401(k), are the best opportunity you'll have to get ahead of it. That means Roth conversions, managing Medicare premium surcharges, and planning for what happens to a surviving spouse's tax situation. The goal isn't just a lower tax bill this year. It's a smarter strategy across the whole run.

4.

You're a one-man shop. How do I know my money is safe?

Fair question, and you should ask it. Your assets are held at Charles Schwab — not with me. You get independent statements directly from Schwab. Your money is never commingled with my business. Behind the scenes, I work with GeoWealth for institutional back-office and investment management support. The advice is personal. The custody and infrastructure are institutional. That's by design.

Discover how we can help.

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Resources

What Rate Would I Need to Earn on My Savings?

What Rate Would I Need to Earn on My Savings?

Work backwards from your savings goal to find the rate of return you'd need to get there.
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The Power of 401k Catch-Ups

The Power of 401k Catch-Ups

See how catch-up contributions after age 50 could significantly boost your retirement balance.
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Retirement Strategy After a Job Loss

Retirement Strategy After a Job Loss

Job loss can shake both finances and confidence, reassessing your retirement strategy is key to moving forward with clarity.
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Managing Money as a Couple

Managing Money as a Couple

Keys to preparing to grow wealthy together.
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Let's Talk About Your Plan

If something on this page sounded like your situation, the next step is a straightforward conversation about where you stand and what you're working toward. Reach out to schedule a meeting, and we'll take it from there.

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