Folks, this is the time of the show where we visit with a local or national author, someone who s made a difference in the financial world. His name is Mr.. Chris, welcome in. Thanks for having me, Coach. It s truly an honor. I wanted to talk today about Retirement Is A Marathon, Not A Sprint. Now, you re a runner. I m a runner. So this has special meaning to you, but, I mean, do you see a lot of people out there in the retirement planning world who are treating retirement planning as a sprint and not a marathon? Can you tell us some of the characteristics they exhibit, and some of the problems they re going to run into in the future if they don t get a proper look at their portfolio? I will. Let me just back up for a minute, and give you a little background of how I came up with the title of the book in comparing it to retirement planning, comparing it to marathon training. As you said, I m a marathon runner. I ve run over 60 marathons in my life, and it takes a lot of preparation. Yep. Months and months of training. I always say that no one is going to wake up one day and decide, heck, I m going to run a marathon today. Throw on their sneakers, and go out and start the race. Now, they many start it, but odds are very high that it s not going to be a successful experience for them. The same holds true when it comes to your retirement planning. You re not going to wake up at whatever your desired retirement age is, 62, or 65, or whatever, and just say, Hey, I m retiring today, and be ready for it. If you haven t planned over the years for it, you re not going to be successful once you do retire. So just like training for a marathon or you need training to have a successful marathon, you need adequate planning to have a successful retirement plan.
Well, and let s look at this. I mean, I ve tried to run before. I ve never done a marathon, but I used to play soccer in high school. We ran all the time. Okay. Every now and then I didn t feel like running. We all wake up one day, and not feel like running. Yep. In those days, I didn t run that hard or didn t try that hard. Other times I was trying real hard, and I d get that pain in the side. You know that pain in the side? The side stitch, right. Yeah. So that was an indicator that things weren t going right, and it was time to slow down, and change course or take a break. A lot of times, there are some silent killers in the financial world. There s no side stitch, as you call it, if people are aligned wrong. So how can someone know that they re doing the wrong thing? Here s what a lot of people look at retirement. Just putting as much in their 401K as they can, maybe put a little extra in an IRA, inherit some money every now and then, and then jumble it all together, one jambalaya, and they call that a retirement plan. They start to scoop, like you get a ladle, and scoop out money each year in retirement. Sooner or later, when the scoop goes in, you hear metal on metal. There s nothing left. Yep. It s gone. Yeah. So how can someone prevent that in retirement? I know you talk about that in your book, but are there any telltale signs that people are taking too much risk, or don t have their money allocated correctly? Yeah. Let s start with what you said about people just having a 401K or an IRA, and
then just scooping the money out with a ladle out of the pot, if you will. I describe those kinds of folks as just people that have a lot of stuff. They have money here, money there, money everywhere, with the hope that that big pile of money is going to be enough to have a successful retirement plan. Right, right, sometimes it works. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn t. That s why I say, you don t want to have a maybe income plan. You want to have a guaranteed income plan no matter what happens because a solid retirement plan has to address all of the issues out there when it comes to retirement. It has to address you income. Because that s the most important thing when it comes to retirement is having sufficient income so you can maintain the lifestyle that you ve grown accustomed to. Yeah. Number two, you want to have a tax plan, right? It s not what you make. It s what you keep. So you want to have your tax situation as efficient as possible. You want to have a long-term care plan because we ve all seen people s financial situation just totally wrecked from just emergency medical expenses. That it just wipes out their portfolio. You know who suffers the most in that situation if a husband and wife are together, and the husband goes into a long-term care facility, and he spends all the money, they don t have a long-term care policy? The wife is in trouble. The wife, right. The wife can t even afford to pay for food after a while.
Correct. I mean, it happens a lot of times. Now, this isn t a gloom and doom scenario. There are ways to fix that. There are even some special hybrid life insurance policies that are out now that will give you a death benefit if you pass away, obviously, but it will enable you to dip into that life insurance value, and use for long-term care before you pass away. Correct, right. Because the biggest complaint we hear about long-term care insurance is people don t want to buy it because they re afraid that if they never use it, they re going to lose it. Well, use it or lose it. Yeah. Use it or lose it, right. I agree with that. Absolutely. Because you could pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of premium, and then if you never use it, that money is wasted. Yeah. A lot of people didn t realize that when they got in. They also didn t realize they would have rate increases. Right, the premiums go up after ten years. Yeah. That s not good. Which is a nasty surprise, right. Now, they have some of the long-term policies that are out there today. You can get a
return of premium rider on there. You pay extra, but if you don t use it, someone gets money back, but that s a cost. It s an unnecessary cost in some cases when we have some of these hybrid life insurance policies out there that never have a rate increase. You can never be kicked out. As long as you make your premium payments, you ll never be kicked out. Right, guaranteed. Once you re qualified and in, you never get kicked out again. You have a long-term care benefit built into that, makes sense. Right, it s the best of both worlds. You re protected if you need long-term care, but if you don t need long-term care, your beneficiaries get a tax-free death benefit. So it s a win-win situation for everybody. Again, the book s title is, Retirement Is A Marathon, Not A Sprint: Commonsense Financial Training Guide to Get You To The Finish Line - Without Hitting the Wall. Too many people, though, are and we see this too. When you watch some of the
athletic events, the guy is sprinting to the sidelines to catch a pass because the ball is thrown over his head. He s running real fast and he either catches it or doesn t, but he can t stop in time. He runs into people. Right, the cameraman or something gets hit. That s not the right speed for retirement, is it? Running real fast and maybe or maybe not catching the ball inbounds. Right, you want to make it a slow, steady pace, so you could have enough to finish no matter how long it takes. We ve got a couple more minutes in interview, and I want to spend these talking about your Chapter 6 in the book, Fixed Income and a Fixed Portfolio. There are, in fact, ways where people don t have to take risk, and can still get a legitimate growth each year for money they put aside for retirement, which in retirement, when they flip that income switch we call it, will give them a protected income they can never outlive. That, to me, is a peace of mind that people you can buy peace of mind these days. You used to say you couldn t buy peace of mind. You can now if you do the right thing. That you could. Now, let s talk about that. What are these fixed strategies, and how do they fit into a good portfolio? Okay. Let me just give a little background because how I came up with that chapter, Coach, was that an actual radio listener who called me a couple of years ago, and his situation was he had retired at age 54, so relatively young.
That s real young. Yeah. Right, with a million dollar stock portfolio. Nice. So he told his advisor, he said, I m retired now. I need $45,000.00 a year to live on. Okay. His advisor said, Hey, that s easy. That s 4½ %. You re going to be set for the rest of your life. The old 4% rule or 5% rule back in the day. Right, right, so this was 2004 and we know what s happened since 2004. Choppy. The market s been up. It s been down. It s been up. It s been down. So he s been taking out his $45,000.00 a year, and in the meantime, his value went from $1 million to $500,000.00. Yeah. So now he s worried a little bit because he s how old is he now? He s only 62.
Yeah. A lot of people aren t even retired yet. Now he s at half his portfolio, and he s looking at longevity risk we call it, 20, 30, 40 years of unemployment. More unemployment we call retirement. Called retirement. Yeah. So what is he going to do? Well, thankfully, the market has come back so we re able to now use these vehicles where you could get a guaranteed amount of retirement no matter what. Now he has he actually has $50,000.00 a year coming in because the market has come back. So he s going to have $50,000.00 a year guaranteed no matter how long he lives, and also, it s going to be guaranteed no matter how long his wife lives as well. So in a sense, he s built a joint lifetime pension for himself that has taken the worry out of retirement. Yeah. Because he had the excess withdrawal risk there when he was taking money out, and then factor it also into market risk and all that when he s based on the market. Now you ve been able to get him into a plan where he doesn t care about what happens in the market anymore because he s got an income plan in place where he has a lifetime of protected income. Correct. You don t need all your money to do this. A lot of people think it s an all or nothing kind of thing. It s just looking into the future, getting that crystal ball out, figuring out how much money you want in the future, how much money you re going to need and want, two different things too by the way.
Absolutely. You need more than you think a lot of times, and you want a lot more than you anticipate. So there are ways, though, you can peel off some money from the risk market, and put into an account that will grow by, I don t know, 4, 5, 6, 7%, for a lifetime income, and then give you that lifetime income for the rest of your life. It makes a lot of sense. Right, it s a beautiful thing. Folks, if you want more information about what Chris has been talking about today as well as getting informed and getting that real plan in place, go to financialsafari.com.
Preparing for retirement is one of the most difficult and confusing challenges that a person faces during their lifetime. And these days, there isn t a shortage of resources available that someone can turn to. Between the internet, cable television, and countless financial magazines, it seems like there is information overload. With so many choices, and with so many different opinions available, what is a person to do? In this book, brings what he has learned from over 20 years of helping individuals prepare for a comfortable retirement. He ll break down the fundamentals of retirement planning into clear, easy to follow language and show you that it doesn t have to be near as difficult as a lot of experts would like you to believe. Use the principals that Chris talks about in this financial training guide, and you ll be sure to reach the finish line of retirement without worrying about hitting the wall.
Peter J. D Arruda Peter J. D'Arruda is President of the IARFC (International Association of Registered Financial Consultants), an Investment Advisor, and has been in the financial arena for nearly 25 years. He is the founder at a financial firm designed to help his clients "Cross the street of life." At Capital Financial Advisory Group, LLC he and his team strive to help their clients take the worry out of living in retirement. Known as "COACH PETE" to most of his clients, Pete has made it his lifetime goal to assist his clients in achieving the levels of success they desire. He has authored 6 books and co-authored 2. Two of his books have reached the bestsellers list on Amazon. The most noteworthy book, Successonomics, is one that Coach Pete co-authored with Steve Forbes. But, by far, his favorite book just happens to be his most recent, "7 Baby Steps to a ridiculously Reliable Retirement Income" Each week he hosts the wildly popular, nationally syndicated, Financial Safari radio show, heard by millions each year. You can listen to past shows on itunes and by visiting FinancialSafari.com He has just been named to the prestigious Forbes Leadership Council and will be submitting at least 6 articles a year to Forbes for their readers' print and web enjoyment. He graduated from The University of North Carolina in 1988. is WINNER OF: 2 EMMYS 2 Quillys (best-selling author award) 3 EXPYS He is a proud father of daughter, Caroline, age 11 with his wife, Kim.