How to Retire Happy: Joe & Al Discuss AARP's 6 Questions

Joe and Al discuss a recent AARP article about how to retire happy which includes six questions to ask yourself. These include questions like: What will I do when I retire? What role will my children play in my retirement? Also covered on today’s podcast: risk vs. reward, how to find financial independence and what to look at if you want to go on a long-term vacation.

1:03 “Sometimes individuals will look at past performances of several different mutual funds”

2:06 “Right now there’s quite a bit of recency bias when it comes to the overall markets because the large companies have done quite well since 2009”

3:35 “We had the lost decade; people already forgot about that. The S&P500 was negative for ten years, from the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2009; for a ten-year period it was down nine-percent”

4:48 “Your asset allocation is one of the most critical pillars in retirement planning, yet no two allocations look alike”

7:00 “You have to be extremely careful when it comes to markets, whether it’s bull or bear, and don’t get too greedy or too fearful”

7:54 “Different asset classes have different characteristics, like small companies and value companies tend to earn more than regular stocks over the long-term, but they’re more volatile”

12:54 “You want financial independence? Number one: you’ve got to avoid consumer debt”

16:00 “Pay yourself first. This is key; a lot of times people don’t necessarily do that”

16:41 “Once you start saving, you have to invest the money in assets that will generate income and appreciate, so that could be stocks, real estate, all sorts of things”

17:30 “Be flexible and adjust your spending accordingly. Some years are bound to be more financially difficult than others, and you need to be able to deal with that”

21:50 “Here’s the first question you’ve got to ask yourself in terms of how to retire happy: are you ready to retire?”

25:53 “This is where we see big problems, because all of sudden your reason for getting up is not there anymore”

28:40 “Most of you want to protect your money; you want to mitigate your risk, and everyone should have a rock-solid game plan to transform the savings that you’ve built over your lifetime into income”

31:45 “Some people want to stay on vacation forever, but they’ve got to do some planning ahead of time”

36:52 “Social Security benefits—if you retire overseas, you can still collect any Social Security benefits you’ve earned while working in the U.S. as long as you paid in for the minimum forty quarters”

38:08 “A lot of people think that if they move to another country they don’t have to pay U.S. taxes anymore, and that’s false”