This week, I’m talking about the What To Do Before You Retire In 2021. 

Today’s must-do checklist item you’ll need to tick off before retirement is setting your retirement spending budget. 

Many people I work with - even people who are good savers and make smart decisions with their money - don’t have a clue where their money goes every month. 

If you can’t tell me how much you spend on groceries, eating out, travel, and for all of the various subscriptions you have - then you’re playing with fire when it comes to your retirement. 

For most of you, your income will be less in retirement, so it’s critical that you understand your spending and where you’ll likely cut back, and where your spending might increase. 

The purpose here is to establish a realistic budget and understand how much you spend on a monthly and annual basis and how much you will need to support and maintain the lifestyle you desire in retirement. 

Too many people don’t do this, and the result is either spending down of your assets because your assets can’t sustain your income needs - this will potentially leave you penniless sooner than you realize. Or, you get to retirement and you realize that you can’t afford to do any of the things that you envisioned.

So setting your retirement spending budget comes first. And should be done well in advance of your retirement - ideally 1-2 years out. If you are starting from scratch here, start by tracking your spending over a 3-6 month time frame. Then you’ll want to determine which spending categories will shift in retirement (maybe you’ll spend more on healthcare and travel and less on gas and clothes). Once you know your numbers, you can use these numbers as a baseline for answering one very important question: 

How much will you spend in year 1 of retirement?

Don’t worry yet about how you’re going to cover your spending - we’ll talk about that tomorrow. 

Thanks for listening. My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, finances, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, money tips, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, financial podcast, retirement podcast, financial independence podcast

Welcome to a new week and a new theme here on the One Minute Retirement Tip! 

This week’s theme is What To Do Before You Retire In 2021. 

When you’re contemplating retirement, especially in the next year or two, there are a few must-do checklist items you need to tick off before you collect your gold watch and pack up your office space. Nobody gets a gold watch anymore, right? These days I think it’s just some cake and an Amazon gift card and a don’t let the door hit ya on the way out after 20 years of faithful service.

If you’re planning to retire in 2021, it would be foolish to not do a few key things before you retire - some examples include beefing up your emergency savings, estimating health care costs, calculating your spending, deciding if you’ll work part time, updating your will, and eliminating debt - these are just a few important things you’ll want to do before retirement. 

But if you are already feeling overwhelmed by all the things you should do, take heart because this week, I’m going to focus on just a handful of items that I consider must-dos. These are the things that if done right will set you up for success in retirement, and if done wrong could costs you hundreds of thousands of dollars or worse, lead to you running out of money in retirement.  

So this week, I’ll cover 5 must-do items to help prepare you for a smooth transition into retirement, helping to ensure that your money lasts in retirement and you spend your retirement years in comfort, and not broke. 

That’s it for today, but before you go...If you haven’t already left a review for the One Minute Retirement Tip, please consider leaving an honest review in Amazon or Apple Podcasts. I read them all, so feel free to leave any feedback or topic suggestions there too. 

Thanks for listening. My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip. 

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, finances, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, money tips, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, financial podcast, retirement podcast, financial independence podcast

It’s Sunday, which means...It’s recap time! This week’s theme was the 2021 stock market & economy outlook.

Here’s what we covered in each episode this week:

• Economic growth predictions as measured by GDP here 
• Stock Market Outlook for 2021
• Winners for 2021
• Losers for 2021
• Housing and Real Estate Market Outlook

While nothing you heard this week was likely earth-shattering news, considering I still have my crystal ball in storage, my hope is that you come away from this week with a better sense of the opportunities that exist today - namely dividend paying stocks and other potential winners for 2021 - as well as some areas to be cautious about - namely that S&P 500 index fund you might own and going all in on commercial real estate in the former republic of CHAZ in Seattle.

Tomorrow, we are starting a brand new theme: What To Do Before You Retire In 2021. If you’re planning to retire in 2021, what are the must-do checklist items to tick off before you make the leap into retirement. Next week, I’ll cover 5 must-do items to help prepare you for a smooth transition into retirement. 

And if you haven’t already, be sure to check out my YouTube channel - True North Retirement, where I cover a wide variety of retirement planning topics - with a new livestream on Mondays at 9am Pacific,  where I go in depth on the topic for the week. 

That’s it for this week! Thanks for listening and I hope you have a blessed Sunday! 

My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the “One Minute Retirement Tip”.

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----------

Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, finances, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, money tips, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, financial podcast, retirement podcast, financial independence podcast

This week, I’m talking about the 2021 Stock Market & Economy Outlook.

Were you as surprised by the housing market in 2020 as I was? You wouldn’t guess that in the middle of a deep recession with double digit employment, that the housing market would be on fire this year...but that was certainly the case. 

Demand was strong despite uncertainties and record low mortgage rates helped grease the wheels for a 

Today, I’m talking about the housing and real estate market outlook for 2021. Danielle Hale, realtor.com chief economist says: “We expect sales to grow 7 percent and prices to rise another 5.7 percent on top of 2020’s already high levels. While we expect mortgage rates to tick up gradually, sales and price growth will be propelled by still strong demand, a recovering economy, and still low mortgage rates. High buyer demand and still-lagging supply will keep prices growing, but at a slower pace than 2020 as buyers contend with mortgage rate and price increases that create affordability challenges.”

So that’s good news if you’re looking to sell a home in 2021. But what about all this we keep hearing about people leaving the cities and certain regions of the country? What about all those companies with remote workers or brick and mortar retail companies who have failed in the pandemic - all of whom will not be renewing their leases. 

What’s going to happen in commercial real estate and in certain parts of the country? Already, about 10% of commercial loans are in trouble and the real fallout hasn't even arrived yet, since stimulus and PPP loans helped many renters stay afloat. 

Property prices appear to be collapsing in NYC. The work-from-home and less business travel trends don’t look good for office space and hotels respectively. Higher density in cities and the fallout from civil unrest in certain cities without the protections for property owners could depress commercial real estate in 2021 and beyond. 

For me, the general stance with real estate in 2021 is to be cautious. With so much upheaval, there will no doubt be opportunities, but I would be cautious about buying any type of real estate - especially with home prices continuing to new heights this year. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening. My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, finances, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, money tips, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, financial podcast, retirement podcast, financial independence podcast

This week, I’m talking about the 2021 Stock Market & Economy Outlook.

Today, I’m talking about some likely losers in 2021. At the end of February 2020, the stock price for Zoom was just over $100/share. If you had a crystal ball and could see into the future and see all of us on our Zoom calls, you would have made serious gains in the stock this year as it jumped from it’s pre-pandemic $100/share to nearly $600/share in the fall. But the stock has since dropped back down to $350/share as of this recording. 

The stock appears to be overvalued with a lot of investors driving up the stock price by piling in to the stock this year. But with a price to earnings ratio and other valuation metrics skyrocketing, the current price doesn’t seem justified. 

So I think in 2021, there will be some investments out there like Zoom, or DoorDash or any other covid darling that benefited from the obvious Covid trends, but whose valuations got so stretched that the stock price wasn’t justified and may drop significantly once the economy begins to return to normal. 

So I call these covid-bandwagon stocks and I would tread lightly here and make sure if you own stocks that benefited greatly from Covid and the lockdowns that the stock’s value has not lost touch with reality. 

I’m also not a big fan of the big tech stocks. The likes of Google, Facebook, Apple & Microsoft have experienced years of outperformance, and as I mentioned earlier this week, the music has to stop at some point. 2021 could be the year that tech stocks finally slowdown - after a big run up in 2021, investors could take profits, and there is a greater potential for antitrust litigation for these tech giants that could hamper profits and destroy confidence in these bubble-like stocks. 

The biggest problem with Big tech stocks is that it’s likely that your S&P 500 index fund or your target date mutual fund you own in your 401k is loaded up with these stocks - as the FAANG stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netfilx and Google) now make up more than 15% of the S&P 500 index. 

So just be mindful of that and consider rebalancing if you own a tech heavy portfolio. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening. My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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----------

Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, finances, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, money tips, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, financial podcast, retirement podcast, financial independence podcast

This week, I’m talking about the 2021 Stock Market & Economy Outlook.

Today, I’m talking about some likely winners in 2021. I touched on this briefly yesterday when I talked about the stock market outlook for 2021. So today, I’m going to talk more about why I think monies will flow into high quality dividend paying companies, as well as neglected areas such as cyclicals, financials, and small cap growth companies. 

Let’s start with high quality dividend paying stocks. I was surprised that dividend paying companies didn’t perform better in 2020 as the flight to quality during difficult stock markets and economic downturns typically props these types of companies up. In 2021, I think it’s reasonable to forecast that dividend paying companies will benefit as we begin to emerge from the pandemic recession. Dividend paying stocks tend to be profitable, cash cow businesses, with dominating positions in their market. Most dividend paying companies aren’t big tech or consumer discretionary companies, so they largely got left behind last year.

I think returns in 2021 won’t be so lopsided - in 2020, unless you invested in big tech or consumer discretionary companies, your portfolio likely underperformed the stock market in 2020. I think returns will likely be normalized in 2021 as the economy begins to return to normal. 

Small cap companies were also largely ignored last year, as well as cyclical companies. However, both of these groups tend to do very well coming out of a recession, so I would expect the same in 2021. 

Lastly, financials were hit hard in 2020 and it was one of the worst sectors to be invested in last year. Low interest rates and business shutdowns hurt financials a lot, but as we emerge from the recession, financial and bank stocks seem poised for a strong recovery in 2021 especially as credit conditions improve. 

The key across all of these potential opportunities though is quality. There will still be plenty of losers, even in areas of opportunity, so choose your investments prudently in 2021. 

That’s it for today, but before you go, I have a special free offer just for you - my loyal listeners - the Retirement Success Forecaster. Using data from a simple questionnaire, I’ll be able to tell you if you’re on track for retirement, and if you’re not where you need to be at this stage in the game, what adjustments you can make today to live the retirement you envision.  

Getting a customized retirement forecast is easy. Just go to www.truenorthra.com/retirementsuccess/ to download your forecaster questionnaire. Fill it out, send it back to me using the instructions in the forecaster, and I’ll send your personalized results for free - no strings attached. 

Thanks for listening. My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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----------

Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, finances, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, money tips, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, financial podcast, retirement podcast, financial independence podcast

This week, I’m talking about the 2021 Stock Market & Economy Outlook.

Today, I’m talking about the 2021 stock market outlook. If I told you in late March when the economy shut down and the stock market drop had it’s swiftest and sharpest decline ever, that the stock market would reach all time highs just 6 months later, most of you would have laughed, some of you would have argued with me, and nobody would have agreed with me.

Yet, the stock market recovered from the shortest bear market on record to rally to new all-time highs by late September. In fact, as of this recording  the tech-heavy NASDAQ finished up +42.7% for 2020, the S&P 500 Index is up +14.6%, and the industrial heavy Dow Jones is up +5.8%. What made this all possible was the stimulus that went to consumers and the PPP loans that kept businesses afloat during the shutdown. 

The recession and the stock market drop would have no doubt been much deeper without government intervention. But what about looking ahead to 2021? Will that trend continue? Will the stock market continue to touch new highs this year? 

In our 2020 year-end commentary to clients, we at True North believe 2021 will look much different than 2020. The darlings of this year (mostly tech stocks) and many other untested companies have skyrocketed to astronomical heights. At some point the music will stop and someone will be left without a chair. 

We think monies will flow into high quality dividend payers as well as neglected areas such as cyclicals, financials, and small cap growth companies in 2021. I’ll talk more about that tomorrow when I cover the outlook for the likely winners in 2021, but for now, it seems likely that 2021 will be a good year for stocks - perhaps with high single digit ir double digit returns for the S&P 500, on the heels of an economy that will likely continue it’s recovery. 

As the vaccine gets injected into us Americans and as life hopefully begins returning to normal by mid-year, I would expect to see strong earnings, capital spending, buybacks, and higher dividends - all of which spells good news for the stock market. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening. My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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----------

Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, finances, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, money tips, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, financial podcast, retirement podcast, financial independence podcast

This week, I’m talking about the 2021 Stock Market and economy Outlook.

Today, I’m covering the economic outlook for 2021. 

On a recent work trip to Boise. My 1 hour flight home from Boise to Portland had 16 people on a Monday evening flight. 16 people! 

Then when I arrived at pdx, I saw a sight I had never seen before. One lane open at the security checkpoint and NO ONE going through the line. PDX is a bustling airport that is busy all the time, especially during the holiday season. Now here I was, less than 2 weeks before Christmas, the airport was a ghost town. It was stunning. 

It’s a clear sign of the pandemic, and also a sign of some lingering and perhaps permanent changes to the economy. Reduced air travel - particularly for business travelers, who have found other creative ways of seeing clients and conducting business virtually. 

History often behaves in this way - like a big bang effect - where a sudden and unexpected event permanently changes an entire industry, an entire economy, and the entire world. And so the airline business may forever be altered.

In other industries too, there will be some dark clouds lingering and some permanent changes. Hotels and restaurants and small retail shops will likely struggle for years - many will have permanently closed. Many job losses experienced in the pandemic are permanent. 

But there are reasons to expect that the overall economy will thrive in 2021. 

After President Trump signed the $900 billion stimulus bill at the end of December, Goldman Sachs forecasts 2021 GDP growth at 5% in the first 3 months of 2021. The economy will likely jump in the first 3 months of the year as stimulus checks arrive and consumers and businesses start spending the funds. 

As vaccinations roll out in 2021 and things begin to return to normal - people begin to travel again, eat out more at restaurants and go back to work, the economic growth is likely to continue. 

And all of this makes sense...the economy was doing well at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, so once the main cause for the sharp recession has passed, then it seems likely that growth will continue.

Thanks for listening. My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

----------

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----------

Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, finances, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, money tips, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, financial podcast, retirement podcast, financial independence podcast

Welcome to a new week and a new theme here on the One Minute Retirement Tip! 

This week’s theme is th 2021 Stock Market and Economy Outlook. 

I don’t have the ability to predict the future, but I think it’s a worthwhile exercise to look at the current trends happening in the stock market and the economy that will likely continue into 2021. And then use those trends and the probability of those trends continuing to hopefully make smarter decisions with your money. 

So in my outlook this week, I’ll cover 5 key areas and themes that you should pay attention to as we embark on a new year: 

1. Economic growth predictions as measured by GDP
2. Stock Market Outlook for 2021
3. Winners for 2021
4. Losers for 2021
5. Housing and Real Estate Market Outlook

That’s it for today, but before you go...If you haven’t already left a review for the One Minute Retirement Tip, please consider leaving an honest review in Amazon or Apple Podcasts. I read them all, so feel free to leave any feedback or topic suggestions there too. 

Thanks for listening. My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip. 

----------

>>> Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2DI2LSP

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>>> Check out our blog: https://truenorthretirementadvisors.com/blog/

----------

Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, finances, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, money tips, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, financial podcast, retirement podcast, financial independence podcast

Welcome to a new week and a new theme here on the One Minute Retirement Tip! 

I’m closing out the year with a sprinkling of several different topics from the most downloaded episodes of 2020.

I’ll be back with new episodes on January 4th, and in the meantime I have a new resource for you that's jam--packed with value - the retirement success forecaster. 

Go to https://truenorthretirementadvisors.com/retirementsuccess/ - there you’ll be able to download the free retirement success forecaster to gauge your retirement readiness. Once you answer a few questions you’ll receive your free personalized results. 

To get your free retirement success forecaster go to: truenorthra.com/retirementsuccess. 

And now here is today’s best of 2020 episode...

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, finances, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, money tips, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, financial podcast, retirement podcast, financial independence podcast