As your advisor we are a walking talking insurance plan hired to protect one of the largest assets you own, your retirement nest egg. The difference being that unlike most insurance plans we protect you before a disaster strikes, not after the damage has been done.
Today I want to discuss why you should actually embrace temporary market declines rather than fear them. I said temporary because they all are temporary and always have been temporary and will always be temporary.
It seems there are many people who can't distinguish between risk and volatility. Volatility isn't risk. They aren't the same thing at all.
If you follow financial "journalism" at all you will inevitably hear how volatile the market is and how you should take action to protect yourself from the volatility. However, when we turn off the "news" and look at things rationally, we can see a completely different story. One that is actually true. It's not the market that is volatile. It's the investors that are volatile.
The picture associated with this blog shows what the average investor not working with an advisor often does.
One of the most underused, overlooked and unappreciated practices in investing is rebalancing your portfolio on a yearly basis. There's an old saying that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Disciplined rebalancing, however, is as close as you can get to a free lunch. Let's explore why.
Retirement has two doors. One leads to a chance of success. One leads to certain failure. Which door will you choose?
Yearly portfolio returns are literally meaningless in retirement and conversations about them put me into a deep REM type sleep. The only thing that matters in retirement is that you don't run out of money (also known as purchasing power). That's it! It turns out that "beating the market" or an imaginary benchmark in retirement doesn't really matter if you don't have two nickels to rub together and you're looking for a job when you could be hanging out with your grandkids.
Our strategy is long term and not affected by day-to-day fluctuations of the stock market. Our retirement plans are designed with one thing in mind and that is to keep you as worry free as possible so you can enjoy this time in your life that you have earned and deserve.
In a society that has basically turned outperformance into a religion, the average investor is not only underperforming the markets, he is consistently underperforming his own investments!
If I claim SS at 62 and decide I want to work will SS lower my monthly benefit? Will I get that money back? Am I losing that money?
If someone you love passes and leaves you as the beneficiary to an Individual Retirement Account (IRA), what should you do? Like the answer to most personal finance questions, it depends.
When reviewing the key differences between Roth accounts and Traditional accounts, it’s important to ask yourself: “When is the most advantageous time to pay tax on my income?”
If you spend ten minutes this year reading economic forecasts, you've wasted ten minutes of your time that you'll never get back. By the way, time is your most valuable asset. Invest it wisely.
You may be considering retirement from your cooperative this year. Most cooperatives that participate in the NRECA plan provide you with an annuity option, lump sum option or some variation of both options via your R&S pension plan. If you are not familiar with annuities and their payment options the choices can be a bit confusing. I'm going to list the options with plain definitions that are easy to understand in hopes that it can help you make an informed decision.
Have you ever watched an NFL football game? While watching the game did you compare either team to your favorite baseball team? Probably not because they aren’t playing the same game. As a retirement income planner, I often get questions from clients and potential clients on outperforming the market or investment performance in general. Maybe they heard on the “financial news” that the market was up X percentage that day, month or even that year and they wonder why their retirement portfolio isn't up the same percentage. Well simply stated, I am not a day trader or short-term trader. I’m a long-term, goal focused, plan-driven investor. I’m not playing the same game as the so-called “experts” on TV and radio, etc. I’m not playing a day to day game. I’m not even playing a year to year game.
