Planning for retirement is one of the most important processes you will undertake in your life. Where are you getting advice for this critical process? Do you get caught up in the minute-to-minute headlines of what is driving the market, or how to invest in just the right stocks to get rich? Are you Googling your way to your Golden Years? Perhaps you’re turning to social media, or friends and family who may or may not have accurate information. Your retirement lifestyle can be determined by the decisions you make now. Joe Anderson, CFP®, and Alan Clopine, CPA, will help you ignore the hype and sort the facts from fiction to give you a clearer vision of planning for retirement.
Reserve your free copy of Ignore the Hype: Financial Strategies Beyond the Media-Driven Mayhem, the latest book from Brian Perry, CFP®, CFA from Pure Financial Advisors:
The downside of Google guidance:
It may:
- Encourage Market Timing
- Chase Trends
- Using Up Emergency Savings on Debt
- Lack Personalized Planning
Important Points:
0:00 – Intro
1:34 – Facts vs Fiction
2:49 – Google Guidance
3:41 – Market Timing vs Time in the Market
6:42 – Market Returns and Current Events
7:19 – Ignore the HYPE, Free Book
9:24 – Chasing Trends – Volatile Investments
11:21 – Cryptocurrency
12:35 – Ignore the HYPE, Free Book
14:06 – Solid Investment Plan
16:31 – Budget & Shortfall
18:42 – Asset Allocation
20:22 – Diversify/Rebalance
21:39 – Ask the Experts
23:14 – Pure Takeaway
23:45 – Ignore the HYPE, Free Book
Subscribe to Your Money, Your Wealth® on YouTube!
Transcript:
Joe: Your retirement planning is one of the most critical decisions in planning that you’ll probably ever do in your life. Where do you think most people are getting that advice from? You’ll be shocked!
Joe: Welcome, everyone. Show’s called “Your Money, Your Wealth®.” Joe Anderson here, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, president of Pure Financial Advisors, and of course, I’m with the big man Big Al Clopine.
Al: How you doing, Joe?
Joe: I’m doing fantastic because we’re talking about financial advice, and that’s the business that we’re in, and if you think about it, where do you go to get your financial advice from? Most people are getting it from friends and family. If I’m looking at this, 62%. So it’s like, “all right. Big Al, I’m looking at retirement.” he’s 20 years older than me. Why would I go to Big Al? Because his situation is completely different than mine. We might have different goals, different aspirations. Of course, we have different assets, so going to your friends and family might not be the best choice. Look at this. Facebook, Instagram. People are going to Facebook, Alan to get their financial advice.
Al: That’s hard to believe. By the way, I’m not 20 years older than you.
Joe: 18.
Al: 17.
Joe: 17. 17 1/2! Right? But Facebook and Instagram! What are you doing? You’re scrolling to find stocks, and then you’re gonna blow up your overall retirement. Don’t Google your retirement plan. That’s today’s financial focus. All right. Facts versus fiction. You know, when you take a look at some of these articles that are online, you Google retirement planning, you will spend your entire retirement online, right, because there’s so much information out there, and a lot of it is wrong because they’re pushing product potentially, right? They could be from distributors or insurance companies, mutual fund companies, things like that that are trying to push you in a certain direction to make decisions potentially to buy their overall product. When you Google retirement planning, it’s probably not the best choice. You want to take a step back and figure out exactly what you need to do and get the proper advice that you need and go to the appropriate sources, and who else to show us the way? It’s Big Al.
Al: So you’re going to Google for your retirement planning? I’m not saying it’s not a good idea to get educated, but just be careful, right, because if you’re going to Google or articles or other sources like that, it may encourage you to do market timing, which we’re gonna show you is not necessarily a good way to handle your investments. It may encourage you to chase trends, the hot stock. What’s the hot stock today? Should you buy it? Typically when you get the tip, it’s too late, and the third thing is it’s very likely that you will not get any sort of personalized planning. You’ll get some general planning that may or may not apply to you. It turns out everybody’s situation is completely different, so don’t go to an article or two and assume that that’s the right plan for you, and, Joe, it’s unfortunate. Google and internet is fantastic, a lot of information–
Joe: Yeah. We love Google.
Al: There’s a lot of misinformation, too.
Joe: Yeah. Unfortunately, people have, like, a Frankenstein type of retirement plan, right, because you hear this strategy. “Oh, that sounds cool.” you hear that strategy. “Oh, that sounds good,” and then you start putting this stuff together in your own situation, and it probably doesn’t make any sense for your specific situation. Let’s start with market timing. Does that make any sense at all? It could, right? So if you have that crystal ball, if you can perfectly time when to get in and then when to get out and then–guess what–when to get back in again, right, that’s a phenomenal strategy, but no one really has the crystal ball. It’s mostly cloudy. So if you want to have this perfect timing or maybe just time in the overall markets, right, if you can ride it out–this is very difficult to do. We would much rather have this. It makes us feel better because when markets go down, we still have to ride that down out? Ooh. That doesn’t feel good. It’s like, “oh, let me get out,” because it’s still gonna go down. So timing in the market versus timing the market are two totally different things.
Al: Well, they are, Joe, and, you know, when you think about it, so when you watch CNBC or whatever you’re reading or listening or googling, you tend to hear things like, “oh. Well, you know, computers, technology stocks are going well,” or they’re going poorly, or what about commodities, or what about this? What about gold? What about this? And so you have a tendency to think that you got to watch this 24/7 to figure out what the right trend is so you can make the right moves. This tends to be not a good strategy at all. You have to make a lot of right moves for this to work, and, Joe, what’s interesting is when you look at, you know, historical, even if you make perfect moves, it doesn’t really make that much difference, and hardly anyone makes perfect moves.
Joe: Right. Almost–no one. Right? Let’s be honest. You know, and then you look at other strategies is, like, buy what you know. I’ve heard that before. Peter Lynch, the great peter lynch of fidelity. You know, if you look at the pandemic, right, what did a lot of people do? They watched Netflix, or they bought a peloton, right? You would think, “wow! Those stocks are through the roof.” I mean, they’re both down at, like, all-time lows, right? I ride a peloton almost daily, and the stock is down 95%, so buying what you know or thinking what is trendy might not necessarily work because perfect timing– if you invest $2,000 annually in the S&P 500 and you timed it perfectly where that market was gonna spike, you made $151,000. If you just invested January 1, $135,000. What’s the likelihood of this? Almost zero. What’s the likelihood of this? Almost 100%. It’s easy. You just–you have to just deposit the money, right? And if you dollar cost average, you know, you kind of pump that money in monthly throughout, you know, it’s a little bit about the same. Why even go here? It doesn’t necessarily make a lot of sense, right? For the risk, the reward isn’t necessarily that great, and always, this time is different, Al.
Al: Well, it is, and when you look at this chart, it goes back all the way to, what, 1900. You can see all kinds of declines and all kinds of increases, and I think to me the most important thing here–you look at the declines like the great depression, like what happened right before World War II, right, the great recession, the dot-com bust, on and on and on, yeah, the market goes down. We know it goes down but look what happens right after. It goes up, and for people that try to market time, they may be selling as the market’s going down, but then they’re not in the market. They never know when to get back in, and they keep missing the rates of return. We know that for people that get in and out of the market historically you get about half the market return if not less.
Joe: Do we have a treat for you, right? Here’s our special offer, our special gift for all of you today. It’s Ignore the Hype, right? There’s a lot of hype out there, right? You Google things, and it’s like all these hot articles, and then you read them, and you’re like, “oh, I want to make these decisions.” We’re telling you to ignore it all. Find the right solutions, the right strategies. This book is free to you. Go to our web site yourmoneyyourwealth.com, click on that special offer. It’s by our own Brian Perry. He’s our CIO, CFA, CFP®. Pretty smart guy. Yourmoneyyourwealth.com. Click on that special offer. Book is free to you, ok? Go to the web site. Yourmoneyyourwealth.com. We got to take a break. We’ll be right back.
Joe: Hey. Welcome back to the program, folks. Show’s called “Your Money, Your Wealth®.” Joe Anderson, Big Al. We’re talking about Google and how great it is for certain things, but for your financial advice, it’s probably not the best choice. You get caught up in trends, you get caught up in market timing. There’s no real true personalized plan for you, so Ignore the Hype. That’s our free offer today. It’s a book by Brian Perry. Go to yourmoneyyourwealth.com, click on that special offer. Ignore the Hype. It’s a book. We’ll send it out to you for free. Let’s see how you did on the true-false question.
Al: True or false? I don’t know. Do you know, Joe?
Joe: I have no clue, but Mr. TV will tell us.
Al: Oh, there we go.
Joe: Oh, it’s true. All right. 10,000 or more. I don’t know. Do you have crypto?
Al: I don’t.
Joe: I do not either. I do not either. Not saying it’s a bad investment. You know, it’s funny because this is the trend, right? It could be the absolute future, right, but it’s funny how people are looking at trends and trying to figure out what is the next hot stock. Gamestop. Remember that?
Al: I do remember that, and we actually had some of our employees buy some Gamestop. Same made a bunch of money. Many lost a lot of money because they bought at the wrong time.
Joe: Right. I mean, look at this stock. From 2015, 10, and then all of a sudden, you know, all these people start blogging and reddit and then just shot up, right, and then now, but this is where most people buy, right? It’s because that’s all you heard, right? “oh, my gosh. Look at this stock. Look at the trends and look at this.” here’s another one Ali Baba.
Al: Oh, boy. I remember that one. We had a lot of people come in, probably, what, 2016, 2017, 2018, and they would tell us that’s the stock to buy, and, you know, it turned out at least for short term that’s right, but I certainly would not invest my entire retirement savings on something like this because look what happens later.
Joe: 2017–great time to buy. 2021 probably a really good time to sell, right? If we had that crystal ball, right, we would do this all day long, right? Then you’d ignore all this, or you’d miss all that, and then we get into bitcoin of course. You know, we’re not just trying to trample on bitcoin. I think, you know, it could be– the blockchain could be our future, right, but there’s a lot of trends, and it’s so volatile, and it’s so confusing, and most average investors have no idea. You know, I ran into my old college roommate, Alan.
Al: OK.
Joe: And he said he cashed out– he’s a doctor.
Al: Right.
Joe: Cashed out his retirement, bought Bitcoin, right? It was, like, he had $4 million. Talked to him today. It’s probably worth $1.2 million.
Al: Heh heh.
Joe: It’s like, “what are you”– all right? Your retirement on Bitcoin. So be careful. Is this appropriate in your overall portfolio? Absolutely it is. 100%? No. It’s probably maybe 5%. Some of you, if you’re younger, maybe a little bit more. If you’re a little bit older, if you don’t understand it, then don’t probably invest in it. This is where we get in trouble, right?
Al: Well, it is. So this is telling us that 1 in 5 of you, of all of us out there are investing in cryptocurrency, which I’m not saying good or bad. Just be careful, right? And then about 62% of you think you’re gonna be rich, you’re gonna get wealthy from bitcoin. Be very careful about that.
Joe: People are investing $10,000, and then they’re like, “I’m gonna get rich! I’m gonna strike gold!” right? Ned Clampett, here we come! Right? So 62% of you are thinking you’re gonna get rich. It’s a get-rich-quick kind of mentality. You know, investing should be boring, right? It should be watching the grass grow. That’s what investing should look like. You know, a portion of your portfolio if you want to take on a little extra risk, by all means. That’s your play money, or go to Vegas, or do whatever, right, but if your philosophy and strategy is “Hey. I’m gonna get in now, and I’m gonna get rich from this,” could that happen? Yes. The likelihood of that happening is probably very, very, very low. Ignore the Hype, folks. Here’s our gift to you this week. Go to yourmoneyyourwealth.com, click on that special offer. You got to ignore most of this stuff. Sound investment principles. True financial planning is in this book. I just sound self-serving there, but this is free! There’s no strings attached. Just go to our web site yourmoneyyourwealth.com, click on it if you want a good read. By all means, it’s our gift to you. If you don’t want to read it, then don’t click on the button. All right. We got to take another break. We’ll be back in just a second.
Joe: Hey. Welcome back, folks. Show’s called “Your Money, Your Wealth®.” Joe Anderson, Big Al. We’re talking about financial planning and where to find the advice, and Google’s probably not the best choice for that, especially when you’re market timing, finding those hot trends, trying to get rich quick. We’re talking about boring stuff, doing the solid principles of your overall financial plan, and let’s kind of dive right in, Big Al.
Al: Yeah. So starting with what you should do. So we’ve just been telling you what you shouldn’t do, so the first thing is to set a goal. What’s your goal, and so what does that mean? It means, ok, I want to retire in 5 years, and I want to live on 80,000 a year, whatever the number is. It doesn’t matter. So that’s your goal, and how did you get 80,000? “Well, you know, I want to travel more. I’m spending 60,000 or 70,000 now. I want to spend a little bit more for travel,” or maybe I want to buy a vacation home, so I need to have a little bit of extra income for that or whatever. Whatever your goal is. Maybe it’s 40,000 a year. Maybe it’s 400,000. I don’t care what the number is, but set your goal, figure out your timeframe, and then take a look at does it make sense, the time horizon. Are you gonna make it, right? If your goal is to spend 400,000 a year and you only have 400,000 and you’re retiring next year, it’s not gonna work, Joe, because you got one year.
Joe: Yeah. Ha! Good point. Good math.
Al: Ha ha ha!
Joe: So–but that’s key. I think take this a step further when you’re setting a goal is write it down, ok? I think, you know, hey, I want to retire in 5 years. Well, then write it down. Hey. We’re spending $100,000 this year. Do you want to maintain that lifestyle? If it is, write it down. More people are more apt to accomplish their goals if they just simply write it down instead of just thinking about it. So setting those goals, talking to your loved ones. Make sure that you’re on the same page. You know, here’s another one. With husband and wife, one of the highest divorce rates right now are people–are couples in their 60s, and why do you think that is? It’s because they’re spending so much time together, right, and they’re not necessarily communicating. There was a survey ran, and they talked to the spouses, and they asked them the same question– what is your number one thing that you want to do once you retire? They asked the wife, ok? Then they asked the husband. The husband’s number one answer–the male–was, like, “I want to spend more time with my spouse,” right? Then they asked the wife. Do you think “I want to spend more time with my spouse” was the number one answer? No. Didn’t even make the top 50, ok? So you have to communicate, set these goals. Looking at your time horizon, is it 5 years, 10 years, 15 years? Is it tomorrow, right? Are you financially independent today where you can just walk off the set and retire, right? That’s what Big Al’s gonna do.
Al: Ha ha ha!
Joe: Then you look at your risk. There’s an expected rate of return that you need to generate but then also a gut check. Can you handle that risk, right? “hey. I don’t like the volatility.” well, then maybe you got to tone the risk down, and are you ok with that in regards to your overall goal and your time horizon? And then diversify and then rebalance.
Al: Yeah. Well, no question. I mean, it’s as simple as that, right, and when you’re setting the goals, here’s a quick kind of rule of thumb to think about, and that is whatever your assets are–your liquid assets, what your investments in your retirement accounts, outside your retirement accounts– multiply the balance times 4%, and that’s roughly what you can spend. Is that gospel? No. It’s not at all, but at least it gives you an idea. If you want to spend $40,000 a year and you got $100,000, well, that’s not 4%. That’s 40%. It’s not gonna work, so it just gives you kind of a guideline of what you need.
Joe: Yeah. This at least gets you kind of a–in the timeframe of saying, “all right. Am I close?” right? Because if I look at it like this, first thing set the goal, ok? Well, what’s the goal, right? Well, I don’t know. I want to spent “x” amount of dollars. I want to spend $100,000 a year. Well, can I do it? Well, first thing that you look at your social security benefits. What do you think you’ll receive there? Ok. Write it down. If you have a pension or if you have real estate income or if you have part-time work or if you have whatever other type of fixed income source coming in, write it down. Ok? So your fixed income is key. That is, like, let’s say, your “guaranteed income source.” then you look at your liquid savings. In this example, 700,000 this couple had. All right. Well, great. They got $32,000 of combined social security, some pensions, $700,000. You take 4% of the $700,000. That’s $28,000. You add them all up. That’s 80 grand. Well, my goal was $100,000, but here, this is telling me I can only spend $80,000. Of course, I can spend $100,000, but the likelihood of me running out of money is a lot higher, so we want to stay in that 4% or lower, ok? And it’s not gospel like al said. This is just a good, high-level, 30,000-feet view of someone’s overall retirement.
Al: Yeah, and I think the closer you are to retirement, the more accurate this becomes, but it’s something you ought to be looking at all the way through. Now another thought here is if you went through this example, you want to retire in a couple years, and you wanted to spend 100,000 but you can only spend 80,000, ok, well, you need to make some changes, right? What are the changes? Well, you could work a little bit longer. You could work part-time in retirement. You could spend a little bit less. You could sell your home, downsize. There’s all kinds of things you can do. You don’t have to stay in that job forever, right, but you may have to make some changes. Another way to think about this is if I want to spend 100,000 and I currently can spend 80,000 and I have $700,000 to do it plus the other income, then what do I need, and in this example, you need $1.2 million times 4% to get to that $100,000. So just do a little bit of math to get yourself to where you need to be.
Joe: Then you have to look at your investments, ok? So this is another guide, if you will. Like, if I’m in my 20s or 30s, you probably want to have more stocks. So the green in this are stocks, the yellow is fixed income–cash, cds, bonds, things like that. So if I’m a little bit younger, I can–right–and of course, this is for my retirement, so I have a lot longer timeframe, and as I get closer to my retirement, right, then that’s when you want to turn on a little bit more bonds, right? This fixed income is gonna be your safety valve, right, so when markets go down, you have a place to continue to grab from that you’re not selling stocks when they’re low. Sometimes, we see people in their 60s and 70s that are looking to retire next year, and they have a portfolio like this. We get a ton of calls, e-mails from all of you saying, “hey. Should I postpone my retirement? I was looking at retirement this year. The market’s down 20%. I think I need to postpone it.” why did they have to postpone it, or why are they asking us? Because they probably have the wrong portfolio.
Al: Yeah. I think that’s right, and of course, as you said, Joe, this is just a guideline, right? The concept is you can be more aggressive when you’re younger because you have more time, less aggressive when you’re older because you need to withdraw those funds, but this is certainly not true for everybody. Sometimes, people are in their 70s and 80s, and they have 100% stocks. Why? Because it’s for their grandkids, so the time horizon is a lot longer, so every situation’s a little bit different.
Joe: You know, then you look at all of these different weird names–small-cap, mid-cap, large-cap, right, growth, value. What does all of this stuff mean? So this is risk and return, all right? If I’m looking at here the higher the return, the more risk I have to take. So small-cap. What’s small-cap. Those are smaller companies, and it’s intuitive, right, because if I’m a small company, I’m a startup or something like that, right, if I make it big, I’m gonna have a pretty good return, but the likelihood of small companies making it big is pretty low, so that’s why there’s that much more risk. A lot of small companies fail. Only a few succeed, so that’s why you’re rewarded for the risks that you take, so then you have to look, right, now a little bit more micro. This was macro. Then you get into micro–mid-cap, large-cap, and so on. So make sure that you understand exactly what you’re getting into, as well, and then that’s gonna determine the overall volatility, and then finally, making sure that you’re controlling the risk long term, right? As markets go up, those stocks will continue to rise, ok? Well, then your bonds or your safe money is gonna be less. You want to make sure that you continue to rebalance, all right, or vice-versa, right? If this is kind of where we’re at now, well, I probably want to buy more stocks today while they’re down 10%, 15%, 20%. So making sure that you’re controlling your risk. All right. Let’s switch gears real quick. Let’s go to ask the experts.
Al: This is from Rob. Rob, great question. We get this all the time particularly from people that life in, like, California or high-cost states because properties are so expensive and they don’t tend to cashflow. You can make money, and a lot of people do, but you have to be more careful, right, because there are downturns. In fact, right now as we film this show, prices are dropping a little bit in California, so just be aware of that. You may not get the appreciation that you’re thinking. A much better approach is to have a property that does cashflow. You can ride out markets good and bad. It’s not that you can’t make money on this kind of investment, but it’s just a lot more risky.
Joe: Yeah, and you don’t want to necessarily buy an investment for, like, a tax break, right? There’s a lot of really bad investments that could give you a tax credit, you know, and that may or may not make sense, as well, so if you are cashflow negative, then you’re betting on appreciation, and if the market dips, oops. Let’s go to the next one.
Al: Number two. Seth. Certainly, but you have to sell that cryptocurrency, which you may or may not want to. Maybe you can buy another cryptocurrency, just stay in that kind of market, and then you can use those losses against any other capital gains that you have.
Joe: So what did we learn today? Well, first of all, it’s tough to time the market. Probably don’t even try. When you are following trends, right, you could get lucky, but again, most of us will probably miss the boat there. You know, base your portfolio based on your goals, your risk tolerance, taxes, and everything else, and make sure that you create that customized plan. If you want help with that, here’s a free book for you. It’s called Ignore the Hype by Brian Perry. He’s a CFA, CFP®. He’s our CIO here at Pure Financial Advisors. Ignore the Hype. Go to yourmoneyyourwealth.com, click on that special offer. We got a limited offer here, so we’re only gonna give these to the first people that click, so get on your computer, folks. Yourmoneyyourwealth.com, click on that special offer. That’s our gift to you. We’ll mail it out to you. All right. That’s it for us. For Big Al Clopine, I’m Joe Anderson. We will see you next time.
IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES:
• Investment Advisory and Financial Planning Services are offered through Pure Financial Advisors, LLC. A Registered Investment Advisor.
• Pure Financial Advisors, LLC. does not offer tax or legal advice. Consult with a tax advisor or attorney regarding specific situations.
• Opinions expressed are subject to change without notice and are not intended as investment advice or to predict future performance.
• Investing involves risk including the potential loss of principal. No investment strategy can guarantee a profit or protect against loss in periods of declining values.
• All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however, we make no representation as to its completeness or accuracy.
• Intended for educational purposes only and are not intended as individualized advice or a guarantee that you will achieve a desired result. Before implementing any strategies discussed you should consult your tax and financial advisors.
CFP® – The CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ certification is by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. To attain the right to use the CFP® designation, an individual must satisfactorily fulfill education, experience, and ethics requirements as well as pass a comprehensive exam. Thirty hours of continuing education is required every two years to maintain the designation.
AIF® – Accredited Investment Fiduciary designation is administered by the Center for Fiduciary Studies fi360. To receive the AIF Designation, an individual must meet prerequisite criteria, complete a training program, and pass a comprehensive examination. Six hours of continuing education is required annually to maintain the designation.
CPA – Certified Public Accountant is a license set by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and administered by the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy. Eligibility to sit for the Uniform CPA Exam is determined by individual State Boards of Accountancy. Typically, the requirement is a U.S. bachelor’s degree which includes a minimum number of qualifying credit hours in accounting and business administration with an additional one-year study. All CPA candidates must pass the Uniform CPA Examination to qualify for a CPA certificate and license (i.e., permit to practice) to practice public accounting. CPAs are required to take continuing education courses to renew their license, and most states require CPAs to complete an ethics course during every renewal period.
CFA® charter – Chartered Financial Analyst® designation contains three levels of curriculum which includes analysis using investment tools, valuation of assets, and synthesizing the concepts and analytical methods in a variety of applications for effective portfolio management and wealth planning. Candidates must meet enrollment requirements, self-attest to professional conduct, complete the approx. 900 hours of self-study, and successfully pass each level’s 6-hour exam to use the designation. CFA Institute does not endorse, promote, or warrant the accuracy or quality of Pure Financial Advisors. CFA® and Chartered Financial Analyst® are registered trademarks owned by CFA Institute.
