We don’t have the most exciting or positive topic today. We’ve been talking about the doom and gloom of an impending recession. If you’re out there planning for retirement or thinking about retirement, we’ve been talking about things you can do to protect yourself.
I tend to be an optimistic person. I don’t enjoy talking about the storm clouds, but it’s so in our faces right now I must talk about it. It’s the elephant in the room. In case you missed it earlier, we went over some headlines recently and the inflation report came out. We were expecting inflation to level off or drop. Nope, inflation is still going up. It has not leveled off, which means the Fed is probably going to keep raising interest rates. That brings us to this next headline: mortgage rates top 6% for the first time since 2008.
That same day, another headline says mortgage demand has plummeted around 29% as interest rates go up. Inflation is going up, the Fed is pushing interest rates up, mortgage rates are going up, and the housing market is collapsing. These things are happening in front of our very eyes, even in Austin, Texas, which is a hotbed of housing. It’s not like it was a year ago when you could put your house on the market on a Saturday morning, and by later that afternoon you had 35 buyers competing for it. You could be offered $100,000 more than what you asked for. That is gone. We have new housing developments, and the builders are reporting that people aren’t looking at the houses in the new housing developments because they can’t afford them now that interest rates have shot up.
How’s this all going to affect the economy? We already know it’s bad. On top of all these other factors, we’re now sitting on something called an inverted yield curve. That means that short-term interest rates are higher than long-term interest rates, which is the exact opposite of what logic tells us we should expect. It’s a screaming red flag that a recession is coming up in the not-too-distant future. We’re already in a recession, technically. The current state of interest rates, mortgage rates, and the housing market are all precursors to a bad economy. When the economy goes south so will the stock market and your retirement savings. If you’re retired now or hoping to retire soon, you can’t sit on your hands and hope it’s all going to magically work out. You need a plan and strategies that will protect you no matter what the markets do.
Here’s the first question that comes to my mind that I would ask you; if you’re already retired, and you’re taking money from your portfolio, how are you protecting that income? How are you ensuring that your income will come to you no matter what the stock market does? What strategies have you put in place to make sure that when you retire your paycheck will then continue from your portfolio instead of your employer? Are you strategically structuring your money to replace your paycheck after you retire no matter what the stock market does?
If your answer is that your financial advisor has you in a diversified portfolio, that doesn’t cut it. That means that you are probably invested in the same way I had my parents invested 23 years ago when they retired. That did not work out for them when the markets didn’t cooperate, and it probably won’t work for you either. It’s even worse if you don’t have an advisor at all and almost all your money is in your 401K or if you’re using a target date fund. When the market doesn’t cooperate, neither of these are great places to be.
If you’re recently retired, or you’re coming up on retirement, you absolutely cannot mess up your financial strategies. You need to ensure your money lasts as long as you do and that you can maintain your lifestyle. That all revolves around the strategies you put in place right now, especially when we have all these screaming red flags that are telling us that things are going to get worse before they get better.
From 2002-2009, we had 10 rough years with the markets. What if that were to happen again? Warren Buffett’s favorite indicator says that we’re already in the beginning stages. If your portfolio earns nothing for the next 10 years, are you going to be okay? The odds are you’re not, but if you have the right strategies in place, you’ll be okay. If you set up your strategies the right way, and markets do well, you win. If the markets go south for the winter, you still win.
If you’re investing but you’re not planning, what you’re doing is hoping. You don’t have the time to hope anymore. Now is the time to plan. That’s why it’s so important that you call us right now to get a personalized Retire Right Report. That report gives you a baseline. It lays out what you’re doing well and where you need to plan more. It gives you some ideas of what you can do. It’s free and there are no obligations. It is a ridiculously easy way to make sure that you’re in great shape when it comes to your planning.
I can’t emphasize how easy we make it. We don’t want this to be hard for you. I want you to call us, get this report in your hands, and be able to kick back and feel relief that you did it.
Why do we do it? For every 10 families we do this for, roughly three of them might choose to work with us.. I want you to pick up the phone now. Don’t put this off.
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