Retirement Archives - Cadence Wealth Management

Aug 21

Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 6 > The Investment Elephant in the Retirement Room

By Cadence WM Blog

You may have to account for at least one, but probably more of the preceding issues before and during your own retirement. However, the biggest threat that we can think of is also the one that gets almost no attention in the “biggest threats facing retirees” research we conducted, and it illustrates the need for people to work with a professional more than any of the items mentioned in the preceding paragraphs. With the U.S. stock market currently enjoying its longest and largest bull market in history, the potential for large investment losses is very high. The last two major…

Jul 24

Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 5 > How Much Home Equity Can Be Unlocked?

By Cadence WM Blog

For many years now, home-owning Americans had more equity in their homes than they did in their retirement accounts. In order to afford their retirements, they would have to find a way to unlock that equity, either by selling their homes and renting or moving in with family, or by downsizing to a cheaper home and netting the difference in the sale and purchase prices. Even for home-owning Americans with healthy retirement accounts, unlocking home equity by downsizing is a common strategy to increase retirement assets. Unfortunately, with so many baby boomers selling bigger and buying smaller at the same…

Jun 11

Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 3 > The Potential Pension Bomb

By Cadence WM Blog

Most American workers received pensions in past decades. When pensions started becoming more scarce, it forced Americans who had no real knowledge of saving and investing to manage their own money they would need to secure their retirements. By most accounts, this shift of responsibility has not worked out well for a large percentage of American workers. There are many current retirees with corporate and government pensions paying for part of their retirement, and there are also still a few companies offering future pensions along with most state and federal departments. That’s the good news. However, not all is rosy…

May 20

Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 2 > Healthcare Spending Is Increasing Faster Than the General Inflation Rate

By Cadence WM Blog

The changes to what we pay for the goods and services we buy do not increase by the same rate every year; some years they go up slowly, some years they jump up, and some years the cost of certain goods or services even goes down. However, the longer-term trend is that the cost of the goods and services we purchase to live our lives is increasing. For most items that historic increase is around 3% annually. However, healthcare costs have been rising much faster over the past 40 years, with many estimates falling in the 6% to 8%+ per…

May 06

Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 1 > Retirees’ expectations are based on a past that will probably not be the future

By Cadence WM Blog

The only certainty about the future is that it is uncertain. When it comes to retirement planning, identifying the uncertainties and their potential financial impacts are our best shots at protecting ourselves from those things that could prevent us from reaching our retirement goals. Researching the “top issues facing retirees” yields list after list of future uncertainties, everything from living too long, to the solvency of the Social Security system, to speculation around future asset prices. While we reviewed many of the issues facing retirees today, we saw some we thought important enough to highlight, but we also noticed some…

Apr 10

There Will Be A Downside To This Investment Cycle

By Cadence WM Blog

Since the US stock market bottomed after the Financial Crisis in March of 2009, large cap US stocks have returned around 15% per year. The vast majority of other investment categories have not enjoyed nearly the returns of the US stock market, however as that is the investing area that receives the most media attention, its behavior over the past ten years has shaped a lot of our expectations for what will happen going forward. Our brains have a tendency to assume the conditions to which we have grown accustomed will keep going, a tendency which has been labeled “recency…

Sep 14

Ask Cadence: If the markets and economy are likely to struggle over the next few years, will my retirement plan be ruined?

By Cadence WM Blog

Not necessarily. For those who don’t understand where we are in the economic cycle and the current valuation levels of markets, there will likely be some very unpleasant surprises down the road. This is nothing new. For investors who were too aggressively positioned in 1999 and 2007, most of the progress they had made over years of investing was wiped out within months. This time probably won’t be any different for unsuspecting investors. However, by taking a more conservative approach and focusing on principal preservation, there will most likely be opportunities down the road to invest at much more reasonable…

Aug 24

Are You Leaving Money on the 401(k) Table?

By Cadence WM Blog

Contributing to a 401(k) plan is good, right? Then contributing the maximum possible to a 401(k) is even better. However, there is one small mistake we see people making that can have a surprisingly big impact over time: hitting the maximum they can contribute before the final paycheck of the year. It may be best to illustrate the mechanics of this with an example. Consider someone making $125,000 per year, paid out as $5,208 gross twice per month. If that person decides to save 18% of his or her salary, he or she would contribute $938 every paycheck and would…

Retirement

Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 6 > The Investment Elephant in the Retirement Room

Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 5 > How Much Home Equity Can Be Unlocked?

Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 3 > The Potential Pension Bomb

Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 2 > Healthcare Spending Is Increasing Faster Than the General Inflation Rate

Retirement Uncertainties: Why Financial Planning is Necessary > Issue 1 > Retirees’ expectations are based on a past that will probably not be the future

There Will Be A Downside To This Investment Cycle

Ask Cadence: If the markets and economy are likely to struggle over the next few years, will my retirement plan be ruined?

Are You Leaving Money on the 401(k) Table?

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