Keen On Retirement

As much as we caution investors against making knee-jerk reactions to the news, your investments and your long-term planning don’t exist in a vacuum either. That’s why when I attend conferences like the Barron’s Top Independent Advisors Summit or the Schwab Impact Conference, I like to come back with a report that I think will be beneficial to my clients and listeners. It’s just another way that we at Keen Wealth try to give the folks we work with a comprehensive financial-planning experience.

Most of the clients that we work with at Keen Wealth are prudent, reasonable and disciplined with respect to their retirement resources. Every so often we will come across a soon-to-be retiree who thinks that when they gain access to their retirement nest egg, they can just stop working and crack open their accounts like they’ve just won the lottery. This occurs more often with folks who haven’t had to commit to a lifetime of saving, investing, and planning, but instead may have earned a lump sum on their pension, earned corporate profit sharing, or came into an inheritance. In s

The number one question we get from clients and friends at Keen Wealth is, “How much money do I need to retire?” But that’s not the question we help our clients answer when we’re working on their financial plans. Contrary to all the late-night TV and internet ads, there’s not some magic number to hit, no secret formula for combined savings, assets and investments that’s going to guarantee a secure retirement.

But once I’m confident my plane is airworthy, I give myself a final once-over as well. Like many pilots I know, I take a moment to myself and check to make sure I’M SAFE. And I think this personal preflight checklist might give retirees a few things to think about too as they prepare to journey into an exciting new phase of their lives.

In order to avoid this downside of retirement, my Keen Wealth team works to determine not only our clients’ financial needs, but we also work to understand their psychological and emotional needs. We like to really get to know our clients so that we can plan together for a meaningful retirement in which financial security and an active, engaged, fulfilling lifestyle go hand-in-hand.

When people ask, “How’s the market doing?” the response is typically based on how the Dow Jones Industrial Average is doing (Dow for short). The Dow has been around since the late 1800s, so it has a long history of measuring how the US stock market has performed.