Retire Right With Brad White

The information buried in the fine print of the investment prospectuses, financial statements and other documents people get in the mail may be telling quite a compelling — and overlooked — story. It’s a story about the fees, commissions and costs that could be chipping away, year after year, at the money people will be relying on during retirement, potentially costing them tens of thousands, or more, over the long run. This show explains what those often-hidden factors are and how to keep them from eroding the assets people work so hard to build for retirement.

Saving for retirement is one thing. But figuring how or where to invest that money can be quite another. Do you invest for growth or for income? That is, generally speaking, do you invest in stocks or bonds? For most people, historically the answer has come down to where they are relative to retirement: If before retirement, they invest for growth in stocks. If in retirement, they invest for income in bonds. Today’s show takes people beyond that traditional — and perhaps outdated — approach, examining a more evolved strategy in which people could pursue a mix of growth and income to help their portfolio last as long as they do in retirement.

Every other day it seems like there are new ways to help us stay healthy: practicing yoga, taking fish oil or turmeric supplements, solving Sudoku puzzles, the list goes on. And as we get older - and perhaps face a couple more wrinkles or aches and pains - many of us tend to pay more attention to these tips in an effort to maintain and even strengthen our overall physical wellness. But what about our financial wellness? Have you looked at your cash flow lately? How about your assets? Are they strong enough to last as long as you do? Today on the show we’ll look into doing just that. We’ll get into some simple steps people can take to first assess the health of their finances, then to strengthen their personal finance balance sheets. This will include ways to boost savings now as well as help cover health care costs down the road. So that even when setbacks pop up in retirement years, they’ll know their financial balance sheet has their backs.

Signed into law by President Trump in late 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 ushered in what could be the most significant overhaul of American tax policy in 30 years. This show reads between the lines of the dense new law, providing listeners with a look at who the winners and losers are likely to be, and which provisions likely will have the largest impact, positive and negative, on peoples’ finances and their retirements.

Thinking about, let alone planning for the death of a loved one is something many of us choose to set aside for later — or maybe never. But what if that person is the household’s breadwinner? How would you replace that paycheck, even in the short term? How will the bills get paid? To the point, will your family be okay if something happens to their breadwinner? Today, we’ll walk our listeners through realistic steps that not only prepare the family financially for the “what if’s” of life, but build a well-rounded financial strategy for the long term, one that allows them to stay the course financially, even if the face of an unforeseen serious turn in the health of a key income source.

There are always those gnawing questions: What could I be doing to get my money to work harder for me? How to get more out of my retirement assets? As hard as people work for their money, they deserve ways to get their money to work harder for them, especially with retirement approaching or already here. This show gives them 10 different ways to get more out of the assets they have built, with actionable suggestions for what they can do now to start maximizing their money, whether it’s by managing the timing of Social Security benefits, by mining the tax code for perks, or by taking full advantage of other tools designed to grow and protect wealth.

There are some things that just go together. Like peanut butter and jelly. Cookies and milk. How about retirement savings and risk? Now that combination sounds the alarm for many people. But do you really know how much risk is in your portfolio? Do you know what would happen to your savings if interest rates spiked or international stocks dropped? What risks would your portfolio and therefore your retirement plan be exposed to by such market moves or other events outside of your control? This show walks listeners through ways to analyze your portfolio from a risk perspective. The importance of categorizing your investments so you can understand their risks given different market scenarios. And what you can do now to minimize those risks and keep your plans for retirement on track.

Most people are familiar with the concept of diversification as it applies to their assets — spreading money across stocks, bonds, cash, etc., so all your eggs aren’t in one basket. What many don’t know is that with retirement looming on the horizon, they need to consider several different levels of diversification to give their assets a better chance of providing enough income to last throughout retirement. This show walks listeners through each of the four levels of diversification — across assets classes, within asset classes, in the tax profiles of their assets, and in the income sources they’ll rely upon during retirement — providing them with steps to help ensure their assets are appropriately diversified for the next phase of life.

We’ve all heard that we need to save for retirement. But the end goal seems more elusive today than ever. Is there a way to save that will actually have a larger positive impact on the retirement bottom line? Are there certain financial building blocks that, when put in place now, will help create a retirement portfolio designed to last as long as you do? Today’s show details some of the fundamental, foundational steps people can take to put themselves on solid footing for a fulfilling retirement.

You know you need to save money for retirement. And you have been, maybe not as much as you should be, but you’ve been saving. Yet a nagging question remains: have you been saving in a way that will enable your money to last as long as you need it to? Even with market volatility, or if inflation or taxes shoot up? Even if you or your spouse gets sick? Those are hard questions to answer, but if your current portfolio could be significantly impacted by one (or more than one) of those events were to happen once you retire, wouldn’t you want to make changes now to fix those issues? Before they become a problem? And while you can’t plan for everything, there are ways Design a plan for better flexibility, resiliency, longevity. And that’s on the agenda for today: key investment strategies that designed to build flexibility and resiliency into your portfolio now so it can last as long as you do.