Jerry Golden on Retirement

Choose the right advisor for the center of your retirement plan

May 9, 2018 By Jerry Golden in Two-stage retirement Tags: Annuities, Estate planning, Guaranteed Income, retirement advisors, Social Security

Who is at the center of your retirement income plan? Do you decide randomly how to build your retirement, or do you choose the best options after careful thought and research?

Most people would say they are thoughtful and decisive, but the facts often prove otherwise.

In reality, among the several advisors we need — for money management, tax, insurance, real estate and more — the one we are most friendly with rightly or wrongly influences our decision-making.

There are plenty of reasons to choose one advisor over the others. One may simply strike you as more experienced. Or perhaps your kids attend the same school. Maybe you just click better with them.

It’s good to have friends, but that’s not the best way to plan for the rest of your life.

A multi-faceted team for retirement income

To create a retirement income plan you might need an investment advisor, an insurance agent, a mortgage broker, and even a career counselor. Each brings a different and valuable perspective to your retirement. But which expert will you rely on most?

I would say, “None of them.”

In my opinion, your most important goal should be to create lifelong income that you can count on. That goal requires a long-term view. Everyone else in that group may be thinking short-term.

This may be a difficult idea to embrace because retirees too often focus on short-term results as well. Your accountant isn’t thinking past tax day. Your money manager will tell you the current market is volatile. The insurance agent is looking at current risks like death and disability.

An advisor specializing in retirement income planning, however, will advise you on the two stages of retirement. In the first stage, you’re active, traveling and hopefully in good health. In the second stage, you should be enjoying yourself, but also considering how to handle unreimbursed medical costs and ensuring peace of mind with income that won’t stop.

Ideally, you make informed financial decisions that you understand today and will be happy about in the future.

A retirement income planner is looking decades down the line on your behalf. This planner should be able to bring together information about insurance, taxes, and the rest to create a plan that will provide income as long as you live.

Eek! The future!

The issue is real – and difficult to address – because we tend to over-value the present over the future. It’s not easy to let go of something guaranteed today to get a bigger reward tomorrow – especially when we’re not sure how many tomorrows we may have.

We can make plans, but we can’t predict the future with certainty. Sometimes we are reluctant to think about what the next 10 or 20 years might bring.

Perhaps you are someone who says today that if you’re around when your 95, you’ll deal with it then. But that’s too late, and we all know it.

The only expert you can rely on to help you plan for the future is a retirement advisor who creates a plan for income that will last the rest of your life. With the correct advice, you may not be able to predict the future, but you can prepare for it.

Go2Income offers two no-obligation tools to get a better picture of your financial future. Income Power will tell you how much guaranteed income your retirement savings can buy today. Customize Your Income Annuity will suggest the best income annuities to consider as part of your plan.

Too many financial advisors ask the wrong question

April 24, 2018 By Jerry Golden in Income Power Tags: Annuities, Baby Boomers, Income power, retirement income

Baby Boomers are the 401(k) generation.

When Boomers started working, nearly every major company offered some form of pension providing lifetime income. Now, as members of this cohort are retiring in large numbers, pensions are nearly extinct outside of government employers.

The 401(k) was invented 40 years ago and now shares the retirement landscape with Social Security. Many Boomers have a good amount of money in their 401(k) accounts, but that doesn’t mean they can stop planning. In fact, this is when critical retirement planning begins.

Can you answer the question?

Annuities: The “bad,” the “good” and the “misunderstood”

March 26, 2018 By Jerry Golden in Annuity Tags: Annuities, Baby Boomers, Go2Income, QLAC, retirement income

For some investors, annuities have an image problem. Read the headlines on the advertisements from a few marketing-focused financial advisors to understand why. They often include words like scary, avoid, and often just plain “bad.”

The problem with this characterization is the total failure to distinguish between the broad categories of annuities and to analyze the features of each. As I said in a recent seminar, you don’t drop your life insurance because you are unhappy with the claim adjuster on your automobile insurance.

Do you have enough income to retire?

March 13, 2018 By Jerry Golden in Annuity Tags: Annuities, Dependable spendable income, Guaranteed Income, Income allocation, retirement income

Part III – Study confirms more income with less volatility

In Parts I and II in this series, I suggested that you could receive more retirement income with less volatility if you and your advisor moved from asset allocation to income allocation. It’s one thing to suggest and another thing to prove. So we conducted a study and will publish the full results and the underlying methodology in the next few weeks. As you will see, there are dramatic advantages to focusing on income allocation.

For this article we selected one of the case studies (a male 70, who has $1 million in retirement savings, 50% in a rollover IRA) with a current asset allocation of 30% to equities based on the “100 minus age” rule of thumb, and 70% to bonds and CDs. We compared that case to an income allocation strategy. You will see the results throughout this article, including a table of detailed results at the end of this article. Here are some highlights for this case:

Pre-tax income is increased by 32% over the investor’s lifetime.
Income volatility is reduced from 72% to 29%.

Do you have enough income to retire?

February 28, 2018 By Jerry Golden in Annuity 1 Comment Tags: Income allocation, Income annuities, Income power, retirement income

Part II: Income planning starts with income allocation

As a famous TV sports reporter would say, “Let’s go to the videotape!” When the talking is done, it’s always good to look again at the results to find out who won the race and why they won.

Unfortunately, most “experts” often view the wrong race. In the case of your retirement, many advisors will tell you that in this race against time you win when you hit a magic savings number. When we go to the videotape (or in our case an Excel spreadsheet), we realize that isn’t the correct focus. Instead, we should be asking, “Do I have enough income to retire?”