Keen On Retirement™

How different was your life 10, 20, or 30 years ago compared to where you are now? Back then, maybe you were just graduating college, or taking the next big step in your career. You and your spouse might have been wrangling kids ranging from grade school to high school. Maybe you were thinking about buying your "forever home" while also juggling college tuition and a new minivan. And today? Look at how much has changed! The kids are grown and starting families of their own. Your forever house is paid off. You traded in that old minivan two or three cars ago. And after years of hard work, you and your spouse are finally ready to retire. But believe it or not, when you look back at the beginning of retirement in another 25 or 30 years, your life will have gone through just as many changes and surprises as you experienced in the decades leading up to retirement. And that's why your retirement plan can't just run on autopilot. In my next series of blog posts, I'm going to discuss why comprehensive financial planning doesn’t stop just because you stop working. Effective planning is always an ongoing process, even in retirement.

A comprehensive retirement plan usually includes a lot of important documents. Charts and graphs. Monte Carlo simulations. Annual rate of return projections. Lifetime tax liability. Legacy plans. But a comprehensive retirement plan isn't just documents. It's a dynamic framework for making the best possible decisions for you, your family, your money, and your life for decades to come. And as important as the numbers printed in black and white are to that framework, I believe that the true strength of a retirement plan is measured by its durability and by the confidence it gives seniors to live their best lives during their Golden Years.

As I've discussed in my recent blog posts, many of the most important retirement choices don’t happen on a spreadsheet. And, as you and your advisor navigate the complex money decisions that touch on your feelings, your relationships, and your goals, you'll probably start to see that these decisions also extend beyond the horizon of your own retirement. But rather than asking yourself what you're planning to leave behind, a successful wealth transition should answer the question “What are we preparing the next generation to handle?”

A comprehensive financial plan gives you options. Working with a fiduciary advisor gives you a trusted partner who can help you sort through those options and make informed and thoughtful decisions. But what happens if you aren't capable of making decisions for yourself? When assessing potential risk scenarios in a financial plan, cognitive decline and incapacitation are every bit as important as market volatility and liquidity. Maybe even more important. You can always earn more money. You can adjust your spending. The markets, historically, bounce back. But health is a resource that we can't always renew. That's why a secure retirement plan must include a clear, actionable process for protecting you and your assets against these cognitive risks.

You and your spouse have shared so much over the years. Professional ups and downs. Buying a home. The joys and challenges of raising kids. Taking vacations. Caring for your aging parents. Setting and reaching so many financial goals. Through it all, you've always been on the same page. So, why would retirement be any different? Because once you and your spouse stop working, your lives are going to change dramatically – much more, in fact, than many seniors are prepared for. And even if you and your spouse agree on when you're going to retire, you may not agree on what's going to come next. Here’s why retirement is different than other life transitions that you and your spouse have gone through and some important ideas you should discuss as you progress down your retirement runway.

You have the money. In fact, as you're heading into your Golden Years, you might have more money than you've ever had at any point in your life. The back-of-the-napkin math is clear: You can stop working. So why don't you? As I've discussed in my recent blog posts, the final barrier to retirement for many affluent seniors is in their decision-making process. But if you're waiting for "green lights" from the economy or the wider world, you could end up waiting for an illusion.