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

Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards: Scott Ramsey

Today we continue our series, "Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards" , with a look at Jack Schwager's interview with Scott Ramsey of Denali Asset Management.  Ramsey, a futures trader and CTA who works on the island of St. Croix, spoke to Schwager about his first foray into the markets, his evolution as a trader, and the process he stands by to protect and grow his clients' money. 1) . Ramsey started trading in college. He was roped into the OTC metals market via a broker's ad in the Wall St. Journal. The broker charged customers a flat fee to buy and sell as much as they wanted in a particular market for six month. At the time, Scott was a novice and didn't know about futures, so he traded metals in this fashion through the inflationary run-up of the late 1970s. 2) . Scott had to rethink his trading strategy after he bought silver at $50 an oz., only to watch it collapse to $26 following a long string of limit-down days. He sold as soon as the market...

How to "Pull the Trigger" on Your Trading Ideas

In our last post, I quoted hedge fund manager, Jim Leitner on the importance of following up on your investment ideas.  Today I'd like to follow up and share some thoughts on how you can learn to consistently "pull the trigger" on your best trading setups and investing ideas. In order to help you do that, we'll take from the best and offer up key insights from interviews with top traders and trading psychologists like Alan Farley, Brett Steenbarger, and Doug Hirschhorn .  Now before we get to their key insights on overcoming trading anxiety and pulling the trigger on your trading ideas, let's remember what Jim Leitner said in his interview: "Learn to love to listen to people and when you hear something interesting, follow up on it. Don't just think, "Well that's an interesting idea" only to find out a year later that the company you could've bought shares in is now up 500-fold. You never want to say woulda, coulda, shoulda...

Moneyball: How the Red Sox Win Championships

Welcome, readers . T o get the first look at brand new posts (like the following piece) and to receive our exclusive email list updates, please subscribe to the Finance Trends Newsletter .   The Boston Red Sox won their fourth World Series title of t he 21st century this we ek. Having won their first Se ries in 86 years back in 200 4, the last decade-plus has marked a very strong return to form for one of baseball's oldest big league clubs. So how did they do it? Quick background: in late 2002, team own er and hedge fund manager, John W. Henry (with his partners ) bought the Boston Red Sox and its historic Fenway Park for a reported sum of $ 695 million. Henry and Co. quickly set out to find their ideal General Manager (GM) to help turn around their newly acquired, ailing ship. This brings us to one of my fav orite scenes from the 2011 film , Moneyball , in which John W. Henry (played by Ar liss Howard) attempts to woo Oakland A's GM Billy Beane (Brad Pi...