THE Retirement Equals Freedom

The SECURE Act was passed by Congress in 2019 with several benefits to retirees. However, without proactive financial planning, you may miss the boat on timing distributions and wind up paying taxes you want to avoid!

For decades, the 60/40 portfolio has provided retirees a reliable mix of 60% equities and 40% bonds to protect against market downturns. Not so much anymore. Due to shifting interest rates and other factors, that gold standard formula is no longer a given.

Learn all about bonds – Why are they important to your portfolio? How does the economy affect rates? Is it time to consider buying, selling, or looking for alternatives?

Josh and Dave (aka Vulcan Schmidt Todd Lopez) move us out of denial into a clearer understanding of what estate planning looks like and how assets are classified among partners and beneficiaries. The topic doesn’t have to be ghoulish or sad!

You are probably under dreaming when it comes to what you can afford to enjoy in your retirement. There are three tiers to Josh’s hierarchy of financial thinking: Dreams, strategies, and tools. How do each of those contribute to your retirement? Which of those should you focus on? And which should you let an advisor help with?

Is it worth it to pay fees for a financial advisor? Well, that depends on what stage of life you’re in. If you’re young and saving for retirement, just save and invest as cheaply as you can. But if you’re retired or heading into retirement, you can get tremendous value from paying retirement advisor fees.

When can I retire? It’s a question that Josh and his team get asked everyday. And like most things, there’s no one size fits all answer. You first need to know your purpose, your goals, your dreams. Because how much money you have, isn’t really all that important!

Choosing a financial advisor is serious business. Ideally you’re entering into a reciprocal relationship based on, what? Well that’s what we’re finding out on this episode of the Retirement Equals Freedom podcast. Josh and Dave talk about the top nine things to consider in forming what is arguably one of the most important relationships in your life. Because finding the right advisor will not only determine the quality of life in your retirement, but they’ll also give you the peace of mind during the good times and during the bad times.

When you imagine your Golden Pond – the retirement venue of your dreams – what does it look like? Have you really done your research and thought it through? Why leave your home state permanently? Weather is still a popular reason, but politics, cost of living, state taxes and even safety have become equally powerful influences. It’s never too soon to start exploring the many variables that make some places more attractive than others from a financial planning point of view.

This episode is devoted to the timing of moving your savings from pre-tax traditional IRAs and 401k retirement plans into a Roth IRA whose growth going forward will be tax-free. The ouch, of course, is that the nest egg on which those future free distributions rest has to be taxed in the here and now. So it can be tricky! Josh explains some of the factors that must be analyzed when developing a smart conversion strategy. And a critical word of advice: Do your due diligence because once you click “convert,” there’s no going back. It’s important to be sure you’ve got a firm grasp of your current and future earnings and tax scenarios!