Could You Outlive Your Money?

For Mark Roberts’ Use: Rather than deciding upon how much money you need during retirement, one of the key aspects to financial planning revolves around deciding how long you will need it. This can be problematic for some people, because it requires a bit of guesswork. In other words, it’s difficult to put a price tag on your retirement when you don’t know how many years you will actually live beyond your retirement age.

The past century has brought about incredible changes in the human life expectancy. In 1900, the average life expectancy was only around 45 to 50 years old. Between better healthcare, access to proper nutrition, and advancing medical technologies, we are expected to live far beyond those ages. Today, if you are 65 years old, you will probably live another 20 years or so.

While that is great news for our quality of life, it certainly does change the way we think about retirement planning. In the old days many people worked until the day they passed away; now we can look forward to retirement years that include travel, hobbies, and time with friends and family. But without proper retirement planning, many of us may find ourselves sorely disappointed with our retirement lifestyles. In the worst case scenarios, some of us may even outlive our retirement savings.

In addition to a longer lifespan, we now tend to retire earlier than in past years. In 1950, the average retirement age was 68. Today, that statistic has dropped to age 62. We may conceivably spend a quarter of our lives in retirement, so retirement planning is not something to be taken lightly.

In order to be sure you won’t outlive your money, seek advice from a professional financial advisor. Remember that rather than aiming for a specific amount of money in savings, you should be thinking about the amount of money you need each year of your retirement. Your financial advisor can help you put together a solid plan that will provide the income you need for as long as you need it.

Sources:

McKinsey Global Institute. 2008.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2001/10/art2full.pdf

By Mark Roberts|2013-12-09T08:00:50-06:00December 9th, 2013|Retirement|0 Comments

About the Author: Mark Roberts

In addition to managing clients’ money and giving investment and diversification advice, Mark offers something that “the other guys” don’t - a unique approach to Retirement Tax Strategies and distribution. Time and time again, Mark meets with new clients who tell him they have a great relationship with their financial advisor but have never been offered information on this kind of approach to securing their financial futures. Mark has taken this feedback to heart and works tirelessly to ensure that his strategies focus on taxes and distribution. Mark started selling insurance for a major insurance company right out of high school to help put himself through college. After graduating with a degree in finance, he dove into estate planning on the financial side to set himself apart from other financial advisors. However, as changes were made to estate tax laws over time, Mark shifted his focus to income tax strategies. Mark’s philosophy is “the blue prints are more important than the wall paper or carpet.” The wall paper and carpet represent products like investments and insurance policies, whereas the blue prints represent the strategies. Once strategies that truly fit the client’s needs are put in place, our focus can shift to providing you with the right products. According to Mark, “It doesn’t matter what carpet we use if the walls are not in the right place.” Our approach to money management is designed to generate the largest alpha (quality) with the lowest standard deviation and beta (risk). By doing this, we help provide clients with the highest return on the lowest risk. Generating income for our retirees is also very important. Because withdrawing money from your portfolio hurts the account rather than helping it, our goal is to design income strategies to harm the portfolio the least making the money last longer.

Could You Outlive Your Money?

Could You Outlive Your Money?

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About the Author: Mark Roberts