Mini-course: Avoiding Retirement Funding Mistakes

Video Transcript:

Hi folks, Dr. Jeff Camarda from Corto Wealth of course, with our mini course on retirement funding—helping folks avoid some of the mistakes that can lead to retirement disaster. We call this acid testing to avoid running out of retirement money, and you really got to look at the pieces.

A lot of planners and investors rely on the old Bengen rule of, gee, was I can take 4%, maybe more, maybe less, and be okay. But there are a lot more variables involved than just a simple percentage of the portfolio. You got to look at what your resources are: how much money you have now, if you’re going to work, how much longer you’re going to work and will that add to savings after taxes, will you have Social Security coming in (almost certainly with a tax on Social Security), will you have a pension, how long will you live? There are a lot of inputs. And then what are you going to spend the money on?

By quantitatively loading what’s really a cash flow equation, you can get a better feeling for what’s feasible and what adjustments you can make to maybe get more of what you want, or what you need to do to avoid hitting the mountain.

For instance, we like to break this down into three buckets. We call them needs, wants, and wishes. Needs are what you got to have to get by—food, electricity, transportation, that sort of thing. Wants are what you’d like to do—travel or whatever—which is reasonably feasible. And then wishes: if you can afford to, maybe you can, maybe you can’t.

To really zone in on this, we load the equation the way we do it with all these parameters—you’ve got so much money now, you work so much longer, you spend this on that, you’ve got healthcare later, whatever it is—and then run the numbers through a variety of different scenarios with different market conditions for investments to take a look at what the probability of success is. In this example, it was 87%.

Once we have the baseline and look at what you’re going to do—okay, we have Social Security, we have various buckets, and what your options are—we make some adjustments, maybe optimize it. And once we’re happy with the recommended scenario, you can then look at “what if we change some things?” You really have a slider here in the software that we give you access to as clients. Maybe we change Tyler’s retirement age—maybe he retires a little bit sooner, maybe a lot sooner. Perhaps we spend a little bit more on basic living expenses and so forth.

We call this the play zone. You can go in yourself and say, gee, what if we did this? What if we did that? What if we bought the mountain cabin? And see how it changes the projected outcome. In this case, it drops their probability of success from 87% to 79%, but still pretty darn attractive and reasonable.

And then the key to doing this successfully is you got to redo it every year or two because everything changes. The variables change, your investments change—you’ve got to keep up with it. But if you dial this in, which is far more precise and I think a lot more effective than the way most investors and advisers do it, you can really get clarity on where you’re going, be comforted by that, and if there’s trouble ahead you can see it enough in advance to make the required adjustments before you hit the mountain.

So here are some special offers if you choose to respond to this. We’ll run a number of retirement analyses for you: something called the retirement compatibility game (what do you want, what does your spouse want), a fast path to financial freedom, something called MyBlocks, we’ll take a look at developing a retirement lifestyle plan, something called a retirement Zoomer (which is kind of like a quick version of where you’re going retirement-wise), run a Social Security claiming analysis (what’s the right age, what’s the right combination, how to get the most out of the system), and a number of other reports that will help give you clarity on where you’re going—which you can use with your existing advisor, or you can consider using us, or however you want to use it.

These retirement offers will give you access to professional retirement planning software—not just “was 4% of a million dollars,” but actually drilling down and doing the calculations I describe. Looking at retirement compatibility, your fast path to financial freedom, a retirement lifestyle plan and income plan, income and wealth projections, and also Social Security planning dos and don’ts.

We’ll also throw in some bonus estate and asset protection planning to help you figure out, gee whiz, what does your estate plan look like? Do you need a trust? Should you revise your trust? Need to worry about estate taxes? Also looking at lawsuit protection and asset protection—where are you exposed and what can you do about that?

We’ll also include some free chapters from my Amazon bestseller The Financial Storm Warning for Investors, talking about the coming wealth storm, the many risks that you face. We’re a good way through the storm, but it’s not over yet, I don’t think. The paths to financial salvation, screening for a smart advisor you can trust—are they fiduciaries, have you checked that, have you seen complaints and so forth against them—and a whole lot more.

So you get free if you opt in. We’ll go ahead and spirit acid-test for you, a couple of free chapters from my latest book The Financial Storm Warning for Investors, and also bonus estate and asset protection offers.

This is Dr. Jeff Camarda.