Financial Planning Controls

Hi, this is Robin Tull with Tull Financial Group coming to you with a financial tip on what we’re calling “Financial Fridays.” Each Wednesday my wife and I have a date night we go out to one of our favorite restaurants. This past Wednesday we went to an Italian restaurant where we met a new waitress and she began to share with us that she had recently been furloughed from United Airlines as a flight attendant. It was interesting because she shared that being furloughed was something that she couldn’t control, but finding a place to work waiting tables was something that she could control.

If you’ve heard me speak about retirement before, you know that I talk often about the flight path of a portfolio. That is – how the money is being managed in your portfolio over time. There’s some things that you can control and there’s some things you can’t. For example, you can’t control a pandemic. You can’t control a market crash, but there are three things that you can control and I’d like to share some of those today.

The first one is when you retire. If one delays retirement, what it allows for is a period of time where you’re not going to be drawing down as much in the portfolio and you’re going to be adding to the portfolio over a longer period of time. It also allows for the delay of filing for Social Security benefits.

The second thing that you can control is the lifestyle expenditures. Lifestyle adjustments I’ve seen include people downsizing their home for retirement, moving to a geographical area with a lower cost of living also helps. I also often see people travel less during a period like we’re having right now. These are things that you can control.

Finally, the third area would be the portfolio – how you manage the portfolio, how much you put in stocks, bonds and cash. If you did a report and you did a projection and you saw something very safe and sustainable, meaning your retirement goals, then you de-risk the portfolio with less stocks. On the other hand, if you look and you say this portfolio may not be sustainable over a period of time, you then delay retirement and adjust more in equities.

As certified financial planners our job is to help you assess your retirement strategy. We find a right balance between what you can control and what you cannot control so that you can have a successful retirement. I trust this information is helpful, and if we can assist you in improving your life through sound financial planning, please give us a call at 757-436-1122.