Keen On Retirement

Whether you’re 30 or 60 years old, involving a financial advisor in your retirement planning is a smart move. But not all financial advisors are created equal. Some advisors are more interested in making money or meeting employer metrics. It’s important you know how to steer clear of these folks and find an advisor who truly has your best interests in mind.

When you’re working full time and raising kids, it’s hard not to get caught up in the minutiae that dominates your daily life. Just getting from Monday to Friday can feel like one frantic slog through whatever’s next on the agenda: getting the kids to school, getting yourself to work, meetings, project deadlines, picking the kids up, soccer practice, dance rehearsal, homework, and a few meals squeezed in wherever they fit.

There’s more to crafting a sensible estate plan than just deciding what assets you want to leave to your loved ones. That’s a big part of the process, of course. But your estate plan might also include establishing a trust that safeguards your assets for beneficiaries. You might set up a charitable fund that benefits a favorite cause. You’ll need to file all your important documents in one easy-to-find spot. You’ll need to make decisions about how you want to be cared for at the end of your life. And you’ll need to coordinate with attorneys and tax experts.

Here’s a fun fact you may have seen as we celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing: An iPhone has approximately 100,000 times the processing power of the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC). It also has around 7 MILLION times more memory! Heck, even the first graphing calculators your kids used in the late 1990s were more powerful than the AGC!

This is one of my favorite questions to ask clients and guests at the many seminars we host throughout the year. And because we’re privileged to work with such outstanding folks at Keen Wealth, I get a lot of very smart answers, such as: “59 ½, because I won’t be penalized for making withdrawals from my retirement accounts.” That’s true.

For most folks, July 4th is the official kickoff party for Summer. But I think it’s important to take a moment between bites of barbeque, parade floats, and fireworks to remember what we’re really celebrating. I’m not just talking about the anniversary of the Continental Congress signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776. I’m thinking more about how our forefathers, working in times that were every bit as challenging and polarized as our own, managed to create something extraordinary: the freest, strongest, most innovative, and most prosperous nation in history.