There is a saying in professional golf that, “You can’t win a tournament on Thursday, but you sure can lose it.” For the golf uninitiated, every professional golf tournament starts on Thursday and concludes on Sunday. So, a good round on Thursday can put you in position to win with three rounds to go, but a terrible round on Thursday is likely to result in missing the cut and any chance at a paycheck. Retirement planning follows a very similar…
I read articles regularly that discuss optimal portfolio withdrawal strategies. I think these articles are great but are probably best kept in the academic world. In other words, they should not be given to clients. I have a friend that was forwarded one of these articles by an advisor as the basis for their retirement planning decisions and asked for my thoughts. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that this advisor is staying up to date on the latest research, but…
The post this week is not a typical one. I hope it is obvious based on my website name plus the content that I write that I am passionate about the subject of retirement planning. I am also passionate about #RetirementLiteracy and improving the lives of retirees everywhere. There are many issues that I believe retirees should be educated about prior to turning in their retirement papers but often are not. This is true regardless of net worth and regardless of…
Back in March, the CFP Board voted to require every CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNERTM professional that provides financial planning to be held to the duty of care of a fiduciary starting October 1, 2019. I greatly applaud this move! For folks not in our industry, if an advisor is a fiduciary, then that advisor is legally and ethically required to put your best interest before their own. Up to this point, the CFP Board separated the level of care required between planning…
When I speak to folks that are in their final stretch leading up to retirement, one topic that often comes up is how much they should be saving. While the simplest answer is “as much as possible”, I wanted to provide some additional perspective on why saving as much as possible in the homestretch to retirement is so important. It’s not the reason you think. Let’s say that you just turned 60 and you are thinking that you could squeeze…
Last week, I had a conversation with a recently retired reader that I thought might be applicable to what many retirees are likely to experience at some point in retirement and wanted to share some insights with regard to how you might approach the issue. Important points from the conversation: Earlier this year during the market pullback, the investor sold his entire equity position and invested the proceeds into bonds which he acknowledged was a “knee-jerk reaction” to the market volatility….
There have been studies that show that when people pay more for something, they believe the product is better. For example, people rate wines better if they are told it is expensive. Based on this study, the wine doesn’t actually have to be better, people just have to believe it’s better and their mind takes over from there. In the wine example, when the isolated variable is price, people were forced to assume that the higher the price, the higher the…
Last week I wrote a post titled “Switching Advisors at Retirement – Things to Consider“. It didn’t occur to me until after re-reading it that I realized I omitted one of the most important (and overlooked) things you should be looking for in your search. And that is, “Who is going to help your spouse if something happens to you?” When considering switching advisors, the final decision regarding who to hire often resides with the person that handles the day-to-day…
As investors close in on retirement, it’s relatively common to consider changing advisors. I often inquire when meeting a prospective client for the first time as to why they are considering making a change, and the answer usually falls within one of two categories: (1) They question whether or not their advisor has the expertise necessary to get them through their retirement or (2) Their advisor is roughly their age and likely considering retirement as well, so they understandably feel…
According to the Investment Company Institute as of March 31, 2018, there were approximately $9.2 trillion in IRA assets. Given the sheer volume of Americans that own an IRA combined with the complicated IRS tax code that accompanies them, there are plenty of ways to trip yourself up when it comes to IRA planning throughout your life. Though not surprisingly, the focus of this article will be the IRA mistakes I see most from folks that are at or nearing retirement…