Hans Goldstein
Founder, RLF
Who I am
I'm a licensed insurance agent based in Huntington Beach, California. I sell annuities, life insurance, and long-term care planning when they're the right fit — and I refuse to sell them when they aren't. The Retirement Literacy Foundation is a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit I founded in 2024 to teach the math behind the decisions, free of any sales obligation.
Most retirees I meet don't need more products. They need someone to slow down and explain the math behind their Social Security claiming decision, their Roth conversion options, and their Medicare bracket exposure. Nobody had explained the IRMAA two-year lookback to them. Nobody had walked them through what the SECURE Act collapse of the stretch IRA means for their kids. Nobody had shown them that filing single after a spouse passes can jump their tax bracket by 10 points overnight.
The foundation runs free workshops at libraries across Pasadena, Orange County, and Los Angeles. No products. No pitch. Just the math.
Credentials & licenses
National Producer Number
NPN 20602398
Mutual of Omaha · MutOmaha Writing # 1080586 · Transamerica Producer # MLSR122174
State License
CA License Pending
Multi-state through Family First Life appointment
E&O Insurance
$1M / $3M
SuranceBay/CalSurance, Policy MKLM7PLCA00124
Nonprofit Status
501(c)(3) Approved
EIN 41-5062266 · IRS determination 04/02/2026 · effective 03/18/2026
My approach
Most financial advice is delivered in the framing of "here's what you should buy." That framing fails retirees because the most important retirement decisions aren't purchases — they're sequencing decisions. When you claim Social Security. How much you convert to Roth and when. What order you withdraw from across accounts. How you fill your income floor with guaranteed sources.
Get the sequencing right and product selection becomes obvious. Get it wrong and no product compensates for the lost compounding.
That's why RLF leads with calculators, articles, and workshops — the math, in plain English, before any product conversation. When a product is right, I have access to top-rated carriers and competitive rates. When it isn't, I'll tell you that too.
What I specialize in
These are the areas where most retirees discover blind spots — and where most advisors either don't have time to go deep or have an incentive not to.
- Roth conversion strategy — multi-year bracket-filling, IRMAA-aware sizing, withdrawal-order coordination, the full pre-RMD optimization window
- Social Security claiming optimization — when to file, spousal coordination, survivor planning, earnings-test management, the math that most people get wrong by 5–7 years
- IRMAA Medicare planning — the 2-year lookback, the cliff brackets, how Roth conversions and capital gains can spike Medicare premiums out of nowhere
- Income floor planning — figuring out the gap between essentials and guaranteed income, then filling it with the right blend of SPIA, MYGA, and ladder structures
- Widow's penalty — the year-of-death filing decision, the bracket jump in year 2, the IRMAA impact, the survivor-benefit decision tree
- Inherited IRA + SECURE Act — the 10-year drain rule, beneficiary tax planning, multi-year withdrawal optimization
- Annuity selection — when SPIA vs MYGA vs Fixed Indexed Annuity makes sense (and when none of them do), independent rate comparison across A-rated carriers
Why this work matters to me
I came into financial services from a software-engineering background. The first time I saw the actual math behind a poorly-timed Social Security claim — six figures of lifetime income gone, irreversibly — I realized that the gap between optimal and average retirement decision-making isn't a margin. It's a chasm.
I'd watched my parents and their generation navigate retirement with whatever pamphlets the SSA office handed them and whatever their advisor felt like covering in a 30-minute meeting. The decisions they made affected their grocery budgets twenty years later. Many of those decisions could have been better with a calculator and a conversation.
RLF exists to make sure the next generation of retirees has the calculator and the conversation. The workshops, the articles, the free calculators on this site — all of it is free, all of it is non-pitching, all of it is funded by the small percentage of attendees who eventually want my help on the product side.
About the Retirement Literacy Foundation
The Retirement Literacy Foundation is a 501(c)(3) educational nonprofit founded in 2024 and IRS-approved in 2026. Our mission is to give retirees and pre-retirees the math, the framework, and the language they need to make confident retirement decisions — without being sold to.
We deliver this through three channels:
Free workshops — in-person at libraries across Pasadena, Orange County, and Los Angeles. 90 minutes. No products. No pitch. Just the math.
Free online tools — 22+ calculators covering Roth conversions, IRMAA brackets, Required Minimum Distributions, Widow's Penalty, Sequence of Returns risk, MYGA-vs-CD comparisons, and more.
Free articles + guides — long-form education on the topics most retirees never get explained in a meaningful way.
EIN: 41-5062266 · Nonprofit status: 501(c)(3) · Approved by IRS April 2026, effective March 2026 · Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. Mailing address: 9401 Darrow Drive, Huntington Beach, CA 92646
Want to talk?
Free 20-minute walkthroughs by phone or Zoom. No charge, no products being sold, no pressure. Just the math on your specific situation.
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