Retirement strategy for the people who keep the lights on.
A fee-only fiduciary practice in Watkinsville, Georgia, focused on the three risks that quietly determine whether a utility career becomes a retirement — or a regret.
What we actually do here.
Most retirement advice is generic. Utility employees face a specific combination of risks that generic advice misses entirely.
Concentration Risk
Three decades of ESPP shares, 401(k) match in company stock, and dividend reinvestment can quietly become 40%, 60%, even 80% of a retiree's net worth in a single ticker. This is the single largest unaddressed risk for utility retirees.
Sequence Risk
A bear market in your first five years of retirement does permanent damage that a bear market in year twenty does not. The order of returns matters more than the average. Most plans ignore this.
Suitability Risk
The "advisor" near the plant entrance may be a broker held to a lower legal standard. Knowing the difference between a fiduciary and a salesperson is itself a retirement decision.
If you've spent a career at a utility, this practice was built for you.
I work primarily with employees and retirees of Southern Company, Georgia Power, Alabama Power, Mississippi Power, and other regulated utilities — people who built careers around reliability and now face decisions that will shape the next thirty years.
Most of my clients come to me with the same combination: meaningful company stock, a pension decision in front of them, and a sense that the generic retirement advice on the internet doesn't quite fit their situation. It doesn't. That's the work.
- Currently employed at Southern Company or a subsidiary
- Within 5–10 years of retirement
- Recently retired and re-evaluating strategy
- Holding 25%+ of net worth in company stock
- Facing a pension election decision (annuity options, survivor benefits, period certain)
- Considering a rollover or account transfer
- Looking for a fiduciary, not a salesperson
The Utility Employee's Retirement Checklist
A field guide to the decisions, deadlines, and traps facing Southern Company and Georgia Power employees in the years before retirement.
The Utility Employee's Retirement Checklist
A 12-page guide written for the specific situation of a Southern Company or Georgia Power employee approaching retirement. No fluff, no generic advice — just the questions you should be asking and the decisions you can't undo.
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Thirty years working alongside the people who built the grid.
I'm Wilder Bailey, founder of Bailey Financial Services — a fee-only fiduciary registered investment advisor based in Watkinsville, Georgia. For more than three decades I've worked with utility industry employees and retirees on the questions that actually matter: how much company stock is too much, which pension election fits a particular family, how to build retirement income that survives a bad first decade.
I'm also the author of three books on retirement strategy and financial markets: Think Like a Survivor, Invest Like a Strategist; The Creature That Ate America: The Federal Reserve and the Slow Ruin of the American Economy; and The Psychology of Staying Invested at the Wrong Time. The work — both the writing and the practice — is built on a single idea: that most financial damage is done quietly, and that the retiree who reads carefully is rarely the retiree who is harmed.
Two doors. One word makes the difference.
Fee-Only Fiduciary RIA
- Legal StandardFiduciary 100% of the time, by law
- CompensationDirect fees from clients only — no commissions
- Product SalesNone. No insurance, no proprietary funds
- ConflictsDisclosed in writing on Form ADV
- RegulatorState securities regulator, Investment Advisers Act framework
Broker / Dual-Registered
- Legal StandardReg BI when selling — a lower bar than fiduciary
- CompensationOften commissions on products sold
- Product SalesAnnuities, mutual funds, insurance, structured notes
- ConflictsDisclosed, but often buried in fine print
- RegulatorFINRA, suitability framework
The Utility of Retirement
A weekly conversation about the financial decisions that matter most — before, and after, the last shift.
How to Choose a Fiduciary Advisor
The two legal standards, three questions to ask, and why the difference is the most important financial decision a retiree makes.
How Much Southern Company Stock Is Too Much?
The math, the psychology, and the strategy for unwinding a position you've spent a career building.
Your Pension Election: More Options Than You Think
Single life, joint and survivor, period certain, level income — a framework for choosing among the elections that will shape the next thirty years.
The next thirty years deserve a strategy.
If you're a Southern Company or Georgia Power employee within a few years of retirement — or already there — a conversation costs nothing and may save a great deal.