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Shotwell Rutter Baer episodes
- How Much Money Do You Need to Retire?
Dave and Nick discuss current headlines and guidelines on how much the average American “needs” for retirement. Find out if they agree. Are the numbers accurate? How can you calculate what you actually need?
Listen to the full episode to learn the Kitchen Table Finance philosophy on retirement.
CNBC Article: Americans think you need $1.7 million to retire comfortably
About Shotwell Rutter Baer
Shotwell Rutter Baer is proud to be an independent, fee-only registered investment advisory firm. This means that we are only compensated by our clients for our knowledge and guidance — not from commissions by selling financial products. Our only motivation is to help you achieve financial freedom and peace of mind. By structuring our business this way we believe that many of the conflicts of interest that plague the financial services industry are eliminated. We work for our clients, period.
Click here to learn about the Strategic Reliable Blueprint, our financial plan process for your future.
Call us at 517-321-4832 for financial and retirement investing advice.
18 min - A Positive Way to Look at the Current Market
Join Nick and Dave as they discuss some positive things going on in the markets and what you can do with your investments to keep some peace of mind.
Things they cover in this episode include:
- Fixed income yields are the highest they have been in years
- CPI headline inflation in September (8.2%) has fallen since June highs (9.1%)
- Equity and fixed-income valuations are much more attractive than they were at the start of the year
- A 3.5% unemployment rate is not consistent with economic downturns
You can download their full commentary, outlining how these concerns may play out and how it may affect our portfolios here: Quarterly Investment Commentary Q3 2022
Their recorded quarterly call is available here: East Bay Webinar Q3 2022
About Shotwell Rutter Baer
Shotwell Rutter Baer is proud to be an independent, fee-only registered investment advisory firm. This means that we are only compensated by our clients for our knowledge and guidance — not from commissions by selling financial products. Our only motivation is to help you achieve financial freedom and peace of mind. By structuring our business this way we believe that many of the conflicts of interest that plague the financial services industry are eliminated. We work for our clients, period.
Click here to learn about the Strategic Reliable Blueprint, our financial plan process for your future.
Call us at 517-321-4832 for financial and retirement investing advice.
23 min - 5 Things You Can Do During a Down Market
Join Nick and Dave as they talk about what investors can do during a down market, like the one we are experiencing now.
The best thing to do is to do nothing, but here are a couple of things that you could consider:
- Increase savings if possible
- Swap investments to capture losses.
- Use captured losses to offset gains on investments you want to replace
- Do a Roth conversion
- Rebalance
We talked pretty extensively on our last episode about why we don’t like market timing. It might help to check that episode out before listening to this one.
And as always if you have questions feel free to shoot us an email at [email protected]. If there’s a topic you’d like us to cover or tips that you might have during a down market feel free to shoot them out to us.
About Shotwell Rutter Baer
Shotwell Rutter Baer is proud to be an independent, fee-only registered investment advisory firm. This means that we are only compensated by our clients for our knowledge and guidance — not from commissions by selling financial products. Our only motivation is to help you achieve financial freedom and peace of mind. By structuring our business this way we believe that many of the conflicts of interest that plague the financial services industry are eliminated. We work for our clients, period.
Click here to learn about the Strategic Reliable Blueprint, our financial plan process for your future.
Call us at 517-321-4832 for financial and retirement investing advice.
23 min - Marketing Timing (podcast)
What is a marketing timing strategy for investing and does it work?
Join Nick and Dave as they talk about marketing timing and their thoughts on it.
People often ask us if they should sell their stock investments and “wait until the market is better.” Market timing as a strategy does not work.
You can read more about Market Timing in our longer blog post article HERE.
About Shotwell Rutter Baer
Shotwell Rutter Baer is proud to be an independent, fee-only registered investment advisory firm. This means that we are only compensated by our clients for our knowledge and guidance — not from commissions by selling financial products. Our only motivation is to help you achieve financial freedom and peace of mind. By structuring our business this way we believe that many of the conflicts of interest that plague the financial services industry are eliminated. We work for our clients, period.
Click here to learn about the Strategic Reliable Blueprint, our financial plan process for your future.
Call us at 517-321-4832 for financial and retirement investing advice.
30 min - Student Debt Relief Plan
Join Dave and Nick as they review the Student Debt Relief Plan and go over some options.
Here are the main points from this episode:
- $10,000 of student loan forgiveness for Federal student loan borrowers (and $20,000 for borrowers who received a Pell Grant for college) with income levels under $125,000 for single borrowers and $250,000 for married couples.
- Relevant tax years are 2020 & 2021
- Not necessary for income to be below in both years. If it was below in either 2020 or 2021 you qualify
- No federal income tax consequences for forgiveness
- States may vary
- In general, only federal loans funded by June 30, 2022 qualify (existing debt consolidated after deadline still eligible
- Federal loans for graduate school are eligible
- Parent Plus loans are also eligible
- $10,000 total not $10,000 per kid
- Current students eligible
- Some borrowers already have income information on file and will automatically receive forgiveness
- Others will have to file an application that should be out soon.
- Borrowers who want updates directly from the U.S. Department of Education can sign up to receive them by visiting https://studentaid.gov/debt-relief-announcement/.
- If you already paid off your student loan between March 13, 2020, and now you can still request a refund as a part of the cares act.
- If the balance is below the forgiveness amount you can request a refund and potentially qualify for forgiveness. Don’t have full clarity on this yet.
- Low-risk strategy as you can always put the money refunded to you back towards the loan by January and not have to pay interest on it
- Final extension on a pause of Federal student loan payments until December 31, 2022
- Changes to Public Service Loan Forgiveness eligibility
- A new income-driven repayment plan that may be significantly more generous than the others
- The newly proposed IDR plan is substantially more generous than other IDR plans, as borrowers will be required to pay only 5% of their discretionary income towards undergraduate loans, and 10% towards graduate loans. By contrast, other IDR plans require payments of 10%, 15%, or 20% of discretionary income
- Questions remain
- who will be eligible for the plan?
- What loan types are eligible?
- Will any interest accrue while borrowers are in school and not yet in repayment status?
- How will married couples with both individuals on IDR plans be handled?
- Can married couples file taxes separately so that income from only the borrowing spouse is used to calculate monthly payments?
- Action items
- Your prior strategy may have been to pay the debt down to $0. But, with the PSLF Waiver and the 34 months (i.e., from March 2020 to December 2022) of PSLF credits borrowers are potentially eligible for throughout the payment freeze, PSLF may be a far better option now.
- Conversely, some borrowers may have been on a path to PSLF but are now eligible to have either $10,000 or $20,000 of their loan balance canceled from the new Student Loan Debt Relief Plan. Depending on the new loan balance after the cancelation, their total payoff costs could be lower if they were to just pay their debt down to $0 than they are to get to their 120 required payments for PSLF.
Let us know if you have any questions regarding your Student Debt Relief Plan.
About Shotwell Rutter Baer
Shotwell Rutter Baer is proud to be an independent, fee-only registered investment advisory firm. This means that we are only compensated by our clients for our knowledge and guidance — not from commissions by selling financial products. Our only motivation is to help you achieve financial freedom and peace of mind. By structuring our business this way we believe that many of the conflicts of interest that plague the financial services industry are eliminated. We work for our clients, period.
Click here to learn about the Strategic Reliable Blueprint, our financial plan process for your future.
Call us at 517-321-4832 for financial and retirement investing advice.
24 min - Special Guest: Khadijah H. Mutakabbir, Owner of Step By Step Financial Wellness
Join Dave and Nick as they chat with Khadijah H. Mutakabbir, a Certified Financial Counselor and the owner of Step By Step Financial Wellness.
Step By Step Financial Wellness (SBS) is a financial counseling company that specializes in credit improvement, money management, & saving. They strive to help Michigan Millennials establish a solid foundation so they can achieve financial wellness & success.
Listen as they discuss how to build credit as a young person, what to look for when you get your first credit card, and pitfalls that young people often encounter when learning how to manage money.
Connect with Khadijah on Facebook and Instagram
About Shotwell Rutter Baer
Shotwell Rutter Baer is proud to be an independent, fee-only registered investment advisory firm. This means that we are only compensated by our clients for our knowledge and guidance — not from commissions by selling financial products. Our only motivation is to help you achieve financial freedom and peace of mind. By structuring our business this way we believe that many of the conflicts of interest that plague the financial services industry are eliminated. We work for our clients, period.
Click here to learn about the Strategic Reliable Blueprint, our financial plan process for your future.
Call us at 517-321-4832 for financial and retirement investing advice.
32 min - The Power of Investing During Down Markets (podcast)
It’s an often–repeated cliché about the markets: Stocks are the only thing Americans do not like to buy on sale. When the markets fall, people cut back on contributions to retirement accounts and repeatedly miss out on a golden opportunity to buy shares at low prices.
The concept is simple: If you are buying a fixed dollar amount of an investment every month, purchasing on down months means buying more shares, which in turn means a better return when the market rebounds. The problem is that doing so requires faith that the markets will rebound, and the best opportunities to buy come exactly when doing so feels the worst.
To illustrate this idea, we ran an experiment: We built a spreadsheet showing what would happen if someone purchased $1,000 of the Vanguard Total Market Fund (a broad-based stock portfolio covering the entire domestic market) every month from the beginning of 2007 through the end of April 2022.
We chose the timeframe to capture the market before and during the financial crisis, along with the recovery, so we could compare individual $1,000 deposits and their return over time.
The experiment quite clearly illustrates the power of investing in down markets and continuing to invest despite the doom and gloom we were all feeling at the time.
Here are a few of our observations:
• Looking at the annualized return of each $1,000 deposit, the contribution with the highest return were those made at the bottom of the market in February and March of 2009. The Cumulative Contribution Vs Cumulative Value Contributions Portfolio Value $1,000 contributions would have grown to $6,666.48 by April 2022, for an average annualized return of 15.01%, while the average return of the entire fund was only 10.93%. The best-annualized return was for the shares purchased at the market’s bottom.• The worst of the financial crisis, from the fall of 2007 through the spring of 2009, would have been quite discouraging: By March 2009, you would have spent $27,000, but your portfolio value would have only been $17,979.99, a loss of 33.41% over that period. However, the
number of shares was rising by a higher number as every monthly $1,000 investment was able to purchase more shares at lower prices. By March 2009, the share total was 304.23 shares. For comparison’s sake, if the market had stayed flat through this period, you would only have265.07 shares. While that might have FELT better than seeing negative returns, by consistently buying more shares as the market dropped, your portfolio was well–positioned to outpace the market during the rebound.• The market turned around abruptly in March of 2009, and the Vanguard Total Market Fund we used in this project started to rise with it. It took the fund until February of 2012 to get back to its pre-crash level. While the fund only broke even over that time, if you had continued to invest as the market fell your portfolio would have grown by $15,180 over that time frame, for a cumulative return of 24.48%
To really drive home the value of investing during a falling market, let’s say you wanted to stop contributing when the market is falling, and you were able to time it perfectly, pausing your contributions in November of 2007 and not resuming them until the market had bottomed out in March of 2009. While you may have felt that you were protecting yourself, that pause would have cost you immensely. Sitting out the crash would have meant $18,000 less in contributions, but the difference in portfolio value by 2022 would have been $90,625! You would have missed out on $72,625 in compounded growth on that $18,000. And that is only if you timed the market perfectly.
Investing always feels better when the market is posting positive returns and prospects look good, but as this real example from the Financial Crisis illustrates, sticking with a consistent plan, particularly when the market feels horrible, can lead to a very powerful outcome. The shares you buy with your contributions in down markets become the most valuable shares you own for funding your long-term goals.
About Shotwell Rutter Baer
Shotwell Rutter Baer is proud to be an independent, fee-only registered investment advisory firm. This means that we are only compensated by our clients for our knowledge and guidance — not from commissions by selling financial products. Our only motivation is to help you achieve financial freedom and peace of mind. By structuring our business this way we believe that many of the conflicts of interest that plague the financial services industry are eliminated. We work for our clients, period.
Click here to learn about the Strategic Reliable Blueprint, our financial plan process for your future.
Call us at 517-321-4832 for financial and retirement investing advice.
29 min - Ask A Financial Advisor Anything – Part 4
The guys are back! Get ready for Part 4 of Ask Ask A Financial Advisor Anything – Part 4a Financial Advisor Anything! Check out our listener questions below and listen to the episode to hear the answers.
Got a question? Send it to [email protected] and they will get back to you and possibly feature your question in a future episode.
Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram for videos and clips of our podcasts.
Financial Questions Answered in this EpisodeShould I pull money out of my retirement account for my child’s college?
IRA or 401k? The guys answer this open-ended question in a variety of ways including, “What if I had a 401K but no longer work there?” and “What if I am a business owner, do I contribute to a 401K or do I start an IRA?”
Check out Part One, Part Two, and Part Three of Ask a Financial Advisor Anything.
About Shotwell Rutter BaerShotwell Rutter Baer is proud to be an independent, fee-only registered investment advisory firm. This means that we are only compensated by our clients for our knowledge and guidance — not from commissions by selling financial products. Our only motivation is to help you achieve financial freedom and peace of mind. By structuring our business this way we believe that many of the conflicts of interest that plague the financial services industry are eliminated. We work for our clients, period.
Click here to learn about the Strategic Reliable Blueprint, our financial plan process for your future.
Call us at 517-321-4832 for financial and retirement investing advice.
25 min - Ask A Financial Advisor Anything – Part 3
Join Nick and Dave for another round of listener questions. Our listeners have submitted some very compelling questions that are probably things you are also wondering about. Check it out!
Here are the questions:
#1. I lost almost half of my retirement in the stock market and I have stopped making buys. Is that the wrong strategy?
#2. How do I get good health insurance if I don’t work somewhere that provides it?
#3. What are some safe retirement investment options for someone who does not want to lose their principal?
Check out Part One and Part Two of Ask a Financial Advisor Anything.
About Shotwell Rutter BaerShotwell Rutter Baer is proud to be an independent, fee-only registered investment advisory firm. This means that we are only compensated by our clients for our knowledge and guidance — not from commissions by selling financial products. Our only motivation is to help you achieve financial freedom and peace of mind. By structuring our business this way we believe that many of the conflicts of interest that plague the financial services industry are eliminated. We work for our clients, period.
Click here to learn about the Strategic Reliable Blueprint, our financial plan process for your future.
Call us at 517-321-4832 for financial and retirement investing advice.
28 min - Second Quarter 2022 Market Review and Economic Outlook
We’re halfway through the year and inflation and interest rates continue to drive the markets and the headlines. Our friends at East Bay Investment Solutions recently published their Quarterly Investment Commentary for the second quarter of 2022 outlining where we are now and where markets may be headed.
East Bay likes to summarize the economic outlook in terms of both the bad and the good:
You can read their full report here follow the link below for their recorded webinar.
https://youtu.be/mjD5f2qGlRo
About Shotwell Rutter BaerShotwell Rutter Baer is proud to be an independent, fee-only registered investment advisory firm. This means that we are only compensated by our clients for our knowledge and guidance — not from commissions by selling financial products. Our only motivation is to help you achieve financial freedom and peace of mind. By structuring our business this way we believe that many of the conflicts of interest that plague the financial services industry are eliminated. We work for our clients, period.
Click here to learn about the Strategic Reliable Blueprint, our financial plan process for your future.
Call us at 517-321-4832 for financial and retirement investing advice.
20 min