Skip to main content

Planning for Retirement (Part 2)

In Part 1 of our "Planning for Retirement" post series, we started with a brief overview of the Baby Boomber retirement schedule and the problems and changes that could arise out of this huge demographic shift.

We also looked to the retirement wisdom imparted by investment manager and Financial Sense Newshour host Jim Puplava, and his co-host John Loeffler, in their recent FSN radio broadcast, "Planning for Retirement - Part 1".

Today we'll continue with part two of the FSN radio broadcasts.

In this segment, Jim and John continue their discussion of mass Boomer retirement, while emphasizing the need for sound budgeting and planning. An important part of retirement planning would come under the heading of "expectations management."

According to Puplava, many retirees are already starting to see some shocks from the falling values of their homes and investment portfolios. As a result of this, some current and future retirees may feel the urge to take on greater speculative risk in their savings and investments.

Program transcript excerpt:

"And last week, we talked about the budget. We talked about breaking the budget between fixed and variable expenses. And then we talked about expenses subject to inflation, expenses that weren’t subject to inflation and a lot of people are looking at changing their retirement dates.

In fact, it was amazing, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal this week, and it was on the front page and it said, “Americans are delaying retirement as housing and stocks swoon.” And they give the example, of about four or five couples, one guy was an executive for IBM and he was looking at his 401(k) program and also looking at selling his house, downsizing his house, taking the proceeds, getting a cheaper home to live in, taking some of the excess paying his house and then also where his retirement plan.

Well, guess what? At the end of the year it was a bad year for him last year, this year he was down 20% on his portfolio; the proceeds from the house – they had to drop the value of their house a lot more than they were anticipating. So you’ve got millions of retirement age Americans who are stung by this recent economic pall who are suddenly having to reassess their plans with many forced to quickly change course."

As you can see from Jim's example above, one of the main issues facing retirees will be a need for reappraisal of retirement expectations, in terms of both lifestyle and monetary comfort.

With sound planning, you may be able to secure a very enjoyable and fulfilling retirement, but it might not conform to the image of so many personal finance and lifestyle magazine covers.

For more on managing retirement expectations, and planning wisely in your investments and retirement expenses, see the Financial Sense Newshour's program, "Planning for Retirement - Part 2".

Be sure to catch part three of our retirement post series, when we'll look ahead to the concluding segments in the FSN "Planning for Retirement" programs.

We'll also outline some of the main points discussed in the program series, and top it off with a little bit of enlightened thinking on the issue of retirement. Hope to see you then!

Popular posts from this blog

Seth Klarman: Margin of Safety (pdf)

Welcome, readers! Signup for free email updates at the Finance Trends Newsletter . Update: PDF links removed due to DMCA notice. Please see our extensive Klarman book notes below. New visitors, please check the Finance Trends home page for all new posts. Here's something for anyone who has been trying to get a look at Seth Klarman's now famous, and out of print, 1991 investment book, Margin of Safety .  My knowledge of value investing is pretty much limited to what I've read in Ben Graham's The Intelligent Investor (the book which originally popularized the investment concept of a "Margin of Safety"), so check out the wisdom from Seth Klarman and other investing greats in our related posts below. You can also go straight to Ronald Redfield's Margin of Safety book notes .    Related posts: 1. Seth Klarman interviews and Margin of Safety notes     2. Seth Klarman: Lessons from 2008 3. Investing Lessons from Sir John Templeton 4.

Slate profiles Victor Niederhoffer

Slate's recent profile of writer/speculator, Vic Niederhoffer has been getting some attention from traders and finance types in recent days. I thought we'd take a look at it here too, to offer up some possible educational value from Vic's experiences with trading and loss. Here's an excerpt from Slate's profile of Victor Niederhoffer : " I've enjoyed getting your e-mails. It sounds like you've thought a lot about being wrong. Well, the reason you contacted me, to call a spade a spade, is that I'm sort of infamous for having made a big, notorious, terrible error not once but twice in my market career. Let's talk about those errors. The first was your investment in the Thai baht, which pretty much wiped you out when the Thai stock market crashed in 1997. I made so many errors there it's pathetic. I made one of my favorite errors: "The mouse with one hole is quickly cornered." That is key. There are certain decisions you make in li

William O'Neil Interview: How to Buy Winning Stocks

Investor's B usiness Daily founder and veteran stock trader, William O'Neil share d his trading methods and insights on buying winning stocks in an in-depth IBD radio interview. Here are some highlights from William O'Neil's interview with IBD: William O'Neil's interest in the stock market began when he started working as a young adult.  "I say many times that I didn't get that much out of college. I didn't have much interest in the stock market until I graduated from college. When I got married, I had to look out into the future and get more serious. The investment world had some appeal and that's when I started studying it. I became a stock broker after I got out of the Air Force."    He moved to Los Angeles and started work in a stock broker's office with twenty other guys. When their phone leads from ads didn't pan out, O'Neil would take the leads and drive down to visit the prospective customers in person.