Decker Retirement Planning Articles

The two biggest questions on the minds of people that are over 50 years old are; can we retire?…and if we can retire, how much money can we draw from our accounts so that we don’t run out of money before we die?

Many advisors still rely on the outmoded 4% Rule to help people plan for retirement income. In our opinion, the 4% Rule is responsible for destroying more people's retirement than any other piece of financial advice.

When interest rates go up, bond funds lose money. This is called interest rate risk.

After you have accumulated assets for your entire life, it is now time to make sure those assets are protected. Do you have car insurance and insurance on your home? Of course you do, since it is required. But how about life insurance? Do you have it? Do you need it? Remember, we are fiduciaries and we put your best interest in front of our company’s best interest. Most of the time we recommend an option that pays our company nothing, but it is in your best interest.

Bankers and brokers usually have all of your assets at risk in their asset allocation pie chart. We don’t.  That makes no sense to us since you are exposed to both stock market risk (the risk of losing money in the stock market) and interest rate risk (the risk of losing money on your bond funds as interest rates go up).

We define liquidity as money that can be in your savings or checking account next day, no penalty.  If all of your money were liquid, then it’s not working for you.  If all of your money is locked up, that is equally silly. We try to have about 40% of your invested funds next day liquid so that when life happens you are able to deal with it and have liquidity without destroying your plan. The reason liquidity is a big deal is because many financial planners will lock up your funds and we want to warn you about that.

A fiduciary is required by law to put the client’s best interests before his or her own or their company's best interest. It's a higher ethical and moral standard in the finance industry.

The salespeople (not fiduciaries) at the bank or brokerage firm can hurt you in many ways.  I will just focus on 6 ways they can hurt you.

1) Work With A Fiduciary