In this episode Jason talks about the pros and cons of strategic and tactical investment management in retirement. Below are links to the articles and resources discussed.

https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/plan-participant-employee/rollovers-of-retirement-plan-and-ira-distributions

https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc413

https://www.barrons.com/articles/william-sharpe-how-to-secure-lasting-retirement-income-51573837934

https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadepfau/2020/02/24/modern-portfolio-theory-part-two/#52c252d1483f

Transcript:

Welcome back America to Sound Retirement Radio, where we bring you concepts, ideas, and strategies designed to help you achieve clarity, confidence, and freedom as you prepare for and transition through retirement. And now here is your host, Jason Parker.

America, welcome back to another round of Sound Retirement Radio. So glad to be joining you this morning and I’m actually back in the office. We are back in the office, say goodbye to Coronavirus. Life is moving forward here and it’s getting better all the time. The title of this show is number 315, it’s Investing In Retirement. This is going to be a great podcast. I’ve got some really good information I’m excited to share with you. And then I have a couple of questions that have come in that I want to answer. So this is just going to be a lot of fun. Buckle up baby, here we go. Okay. As you know, I like to get the morning started right two ways with first one with a verse to renew our mind. And this comes to us from Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future”.

How do you know carrots are good for your eyes? Because you never see a rabbit wearing glasses. I just want to let you know, I am officially the owner of some bad dad joke socks. So yes, it’s true. My kids bought me some camouflage socks that say, “Ain’t no bad joke like a dad joke”. All right. So the title of the show, 315 Investing In Retirement, we have to talk about this. I want to set the stage by looking at a couple of pages from my book, Sound Retirement Planning. And then I just want to have a discussion around some of the questions that people have as we talk about this idea. So just a couple of pages here, and then we’ll get into more of a free flow conversation.

I subscribed to two different philosophies that can be combined for how you can invest your money in the stock market, tactical investment management, which I call the art of investing. And strategic asset allocation, which I call the science of investing. We’ll take a look at each of these below. I recognize that some people will believe strongly about one or the other investment style. So much so that there’ll be unwilling to bend or see investing from any other perspective. For some, it’s all or nothing. But I believe both of these styles are justifiable for different reasons. I tell our clients both are good investment styles, and depending on market conditions, different strategies may perform better than others. When it comes to clients retirement savings and retirement plans, I’d rather be right 50% of the time than wrong 100% of the time. With the current extreme volatility we’re seeing in the market, I’m recommending that our clients consider using both strategic and tactical investments as appropriate.

In tactical investment money management, the managers are seeking opportunities and looking to avoid risk by actively trading and managing a portfolio, which means they will at times move your investments out of the stock market and into cash. This style of management, the art side of investing, they can’t be academically or scientifically proven, but some managers have had very impressive results over a long period of time. Even though no guarantees exists that these results will continue into the future, you would be hard pressed to discount what some of the tactical money managers have achieved.

Strategic asset allocation. Strategic asset allocation was born through modern portfolio theory. Harry Markowitz and William Sharpe won the Nobel Prize in 1990 for developing this theory. William Sharpe contributed to the Capital Asset Pricing Model. And we’ll talk more about that in just a minute. In October 2013, Eugene Fama won the Nobel prize for efficient market hypothesis, which is often associated with modern portfolio in the sense that efficient-market hypothesis asserts how that financial markets are informationally efficient, and one cannot consistently predict returns in excess of average market returns.

Modern portfolio theory proposes how rational investors… Key word there. Rational investors will use diversification to optimize their portfolios and how a risk asset should be priced. Modern portfolio theory assumes that investors are risk averse, meaning that given two assets that offer the same expected return investors will prefer the less risky one. Thus, an investor will take on increased risk only if compensated by higher expected returns. Conversely, an investor who wants higher returns must accept more risk. The exact trade-off will differ by investor based upon individual risk aversion characteristics. The implication is that irrational investor will not invest in a portfolio if a second portfolio exists with a more favorable risk return profile. If for that level of risk an alternative portfolio exists, which has a better expected returns, the rational investor will choose it.

A landmark study conducted in 1991 and expanded in 1993, suggests that portfolio asset allocation is the most important long-term determinant of investment results. Strategic asset allocation also suggests that no one can accurately and consistently predict when shifts in market leadership will occur or how long they will last. The market leaders of one year, often the laggards of the next. Strategic asset allocation therefore suggests that it’s important to spread your assets across multiple investment asset classes and sectors so you can potentially benefit from an upswing in any one asset class. It also suggests that the stock market is efficient and that all asset classes do not move in tandem. So the hope is that when one asset class zigs the other zags because we are looking for balance between these asset classes.

In 2008, when the market went haywire, this type of strategy didn’t work very well. The only negatively correlated asset class were treasuries. Typically, when stocks drop bonds increase, but because of the fear in 2008, even some high quality bond mutual funds lost money in the short term. Many of those bond funds made a strong recovery once people got their senses back and the fear resided.

The secret to buying low and selling high. Have you ever heard that the secret to success in the stock market is to buy low and sell high?Unfortunately, many studies point out that individual investors are fairly bad at timing the stock market. These studies suggest that most people tend to invest after a long and sustained bull market and then they sell after the market has crashed. Essentially they’re buying high and selling low. What if a way existed to strategically buy low and sell high? Would you want to know about it? And when would you plan to implement it? One of the ways I believe you can intelligently invest in the stock market is to create a broadly diversified portfolio across asset classes and sectors diversified across the entire globe. This method of diversification is what I call strategic asset allocation and is built by using low cost index mutual funds or exchange traded funds, ETFs.

The powerful ingredient that really makes strategic asset allocation work is rebalancing the portfolio. Rebalancing is counterintuitive because it forces you to sell some of your winners and buy more of your losers. But if you believe that the market’s efficient, then you believe that no one asset class or sector will ever dominate from year to year and that eventually a regression to the mean will happen. So while large cap growth may be the best asset class this year, perhaps small cap value will be the best next year and treasury inflation protected securities the next. We don’t know. Rebalancing is an intelligent way to buy low and sell high. How often should you rebalance your portfolio can and should be debated, especially depending on what stage of life you’re in.

If you’re in accumulation mode versus distribution mode, but some people will rebalance a portfolio based on a calendar year of historical data. An old saying goes, “Sell in May and go away”. But instead of selling, some will use this historical data to rebalance their portfolio in May instead. Depending on whether you have your money invested in a qualified or non-qualified account may impact how often you want to rebalance your portfolio from a tax planning standpoint. We set drift parameters for our strategic portfolios at anywhere from 2% to 3%. So any time one asset class has drifted out of alignment by more than 2% or 3%, that’s an indicator for us to rebalance a portfolio.

In summary, one way to make money in the stock market is to buy low and sell high. Rebalancing a portfolio that is broadly diversified across asset classes and sectors across the entire globe is a strategic non-emotional way of helping you do just that. Many academic articles have been written on modern portfolio theory, efficient-market hypothesis, and the benefits of strategic asset allocation. Many of the greatest minds in finance recognize these theories and many would argue that they are the only way to invest your money. They have a proven track record and are used by many large institutions for managing billions of dollars.

Both strategic and tactical investment styles offer advantages and disadvantages. Market conditions will determine which one of these styles will perform the best. In an upward trending market like we had from the early 1980s through 1999, strategic asset allocation will probably have performed best and in a very volatile market like we had in 2008, tactical asset allocation may have performed better. They’re both good. And as we said, I’d rather be right 50% of the time than wrong 100% of the time. Okay. So let’s use that as a foundation now for having a discussion about tactical and strategic.

So I want to start out addressing questions that so many people have right up front about active money management or tactical money management. Why would we want to include the tactical position and include what I call the art of investing? You’re going to pay more money in fees and expect a lower return. But if you think about it, when you allocate money to bonds, aren’t you also expecting a lower return? The bottom line is that investing in retirement is different than your accumulation years. When you’re accumulating wealth, volatility is just noise. Let me say that again. When you’re accumulating wealth, volatility is just noise. If anything, the volatility helps you. Hopefully you’re making regular contributions to your retirement accounts and your dollar cost averaging. You’re buying more shares at lower prices. And so volatility helps you accumulate wealth, but the exact opposite happens in the distribution phase.

If you’re selling shares to generate income, and at the same time the market’s falling in value, you are reverse dollar cost averaging. So then why might you want to include a tactical position? The reason you would include a tactical or active money management, the art of investing, is to help reduce volatility in the portfolio. You would not do it for lower fees, nor would you do it for higher expected returns. You would include tactical money management to help reduce volatility at a time where volatility is no longer noise, but real risk that could impact you very negatively as you draw money out of your investments. Now adding active money management or tactical is no guarantee that you will reduce volatility. You would want to review the long-term track record of any tactical managers before investing and make sure that you’re willing to pay the higher fees and accept the fact that there’s probably going to be lower performance for the expectation that there would be reduced volatility.

Now, if you have more than five years before retirement, you don’t need to worry about adding tactical or active money management, unless you tend to be more conservative. In fact, if you are in your twenties, thirties, and forties, I would recommend that you just invest in strategic asset allocation. The reality is I’ve never had someone walk into my office and when I ask them what the purpose of their money is, they say to me, “Jason, the purpose of my money is to beat the market or beat an index”. They’ve never even said the purpose of my money is to track an index. Most of the time, what they say is they just want their money to earn a fair rate of return, maybe a few points above inflation, and they don’t want to worry about running out of money in retirement. And when things go really bad, they don’t want to get wiped out in retirement.

I just was reading an article the other day about people that were investing in leveraged funds. And literally in a matter of weeks saw most of their wealth wiped out because they’re playing a high risk game and that that is not the game you want to be playing as you start to transition into retirement.

So let’s talk about some of the negatives associated with strategic asset allocation. Harry Markowitz, again, modern portfolio theory. He said simply stated, “We’re trying to minimize risk for given return”. And he says the answer to do that is to diversify. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. William Sharpe, who also won the Nobel Prize that year for the Capital Asset Pricing Model. He explains CAPM, is how it’s commonly referred Capital Asset Pricing Model, is that it has to do with the price of a security, its risks and its expected return. And he says there are two key takeaways from CAPM.

Number one, the most efficient strategy is to be broadly diversified… And everybody sounds like a broken record here. And then he says there will be a reward in higher expected returns for bearing risks of doing badly in bad times. Doing badly in bad times, there’s a higher expected return for bearing the risk of doing badly in bad times. I think it’s really important to understand that life is risky. Life is so risky, I can prove it to you right now. It’s so risky that none of us are getting out of here alive. That’s how risky it is.

If you think that you can create a strategy and not accept any risk, then you’re going to have to accept that there’s not going to be hardly any return. There’s a trade-off. And accepting that life is risky is just understanding that that’s the world we live in. And that’s a good thing. We get compensated for the risk we take. So what most people have come to learn from all of this academic research is use index funds for broad diversification, keep your fees low and a long-term strategy for accumulating wealth is to follow something like modern portfolio theory. But what about the next phase as you transition out of wealth accumulation and into the distribution phase of investing?

Well, let’s revisit what these two guys told us that won the Nobel Prize in Economics. We’ll start with Harry Markowitz. We have all of this academic theory around portfolio construction, but it was all based on the accumulation of assets. After Harry Markowitz won the Nobel Prize in Economics, he was asked to contribute an article about the implications of modern portfolio theory for the individual investor to a magazine called the Financial Services Review back in 1991, which was one year after he had won the Nobel Prize for modern portfolio theory. He was thinking about the application of modern portfolio theory in the context of the individual investor. And in this article he writes, and this is a quote he says, “But an evening of reflection convinced me that there were clear differences in the central features of investments for institutions and investments for individuals”.

He goes on to say, “As I thought about the subject further on subsequent days, I found myself of two minds”. He says that when he wrote the dissertation that ultimately won him the Nobel Prize, “The investing institution, which I had most in my mind when developing portfolio theory for my dissertation was the open end investment company or mutual fund”. In Wade Pfau’s book, Safety-First Retirement Planning, he explains it this way. Namely… And this is really the key for understanding how the retirement income problem differs from the modern portfolio theory approach. Households must meet spending goals over an unknown length of time in retirement. Modern portfolio theory just seeks to grow wealth over a single time period, such as a year when there is no need to take distributions from the portfolio. It’s an assets only model.

In a model where distributions in time are not important, modern portfolio theory is a winning strategy. This is why it works so well for people who are in the accumulation years. And I like how Harry Markowitz thinks about financial planning. In this paper that he wrote back in 1991, he used the term “The Game of Life model”, where he says, “Time and uncertainty are the heart of the problem”. Time and uncertainty are the heart of the problem. If you think about it, the Game of Life model that he talks about creating is a computer program that would allow you to test your hypothesis. And that’s what we built in the retirement budget calculator. If you think you can retire, why not test your own Game of Life model and see if it’s going to work.

Modern portfolio theory, Capital Asset Pricing Model are all geared towards accumulating wealth. Oftentimes I meet with people who have been using these strategies during the accumulation phase of life, and they’ve been very pleased, but the game changes in retirement. Now time and distributions are factors that need to be considered. Managing volatility, standard deviation, sequence of returns, cashflow from investments become the new goal. You’re no longer in wealth accumulation phase of life. When you retire, you want your money to continue to work, but it needs to work different. We know that the future is unknown and unknowable. The longer I work in the investment field, the more humility becomes an important virtue. Making decisions based on past performance is like driving your car and only looking in the rear view mirror. You might get where you’re going, but I wouldn’t want to be the passenger in the car.

Okay. So now I want to talk about William Sharpe. He also won the Nobel Prize back in 1990 for this CAPM, Capital Asset Pricing Model. And in 2019, he was 85 years old and he was interviewed by Barron’s. And the article is titled, How To Secure Lasting Retirement Income. Let me share with you a few quotes from this article. Now, remember William Sharpe is Nobel Prize winning economist, professor of finance emeritus for Stanford University graduate school of business. And here’s what he says about this. This is a quote from him, “The most difficult problem in finance” says Sharpe “is knowing how to strike a balance between having enough income to meet your current needs and having enough to get you through your lifetime”. The most difficult problem in finance, from the guy that won the Nobel Prize in Economics.

He goes on to say, “Over the course of my career”, and this is really key for you accumulators that are trying to make the switch. He says, “Over the course of my career, I have always been interested in individual investors. My earlier work focused on helping people accumulate money”. Again, modern portfolio theory, efficient-market hypothesis, Capital Asset Pricing Model. This idea of broad diversification works really well in a strategy where time and distributions aren’t important. Here’s another quote he says, “If you invest your money in almost anything, except in an annuity with a cost of living adjustments, you’re going to be subject to two kinds of uncertainty. Investment uncertainty and mortality uncertainty”. And by the way, I’ll include a link to this article in the show notes. In fact, all of these resources that I’m sharing with you I’ll include in the show notes if you want to go back and review it.

I like this. He says, “When you retire and make your initial decision on buying annuities, investing and adopting some sort of spending plan, I would think it would make sense to sit down at least once at the outset with a financial advisor”. Now, remember he’s a fan. One of the things that he knows is that if you keep your fees low, you’re going to do better. And he says, he’s not. He says, “I don’t necessarily advocate paying 1% of your assets to an advisor indefinitely”. We’ll talk about that.

For some of you, it’s a really good plan. Some of you are well-equipped. This is an area you spend a lot of time and paying the 1% fee may not make sense. And for somebody like William Sharpe, who spent his whole life in this, it may not make sense. But the one point I would argue there is that many of you, this is not how you spend all of your time. And you’ve done a really good job in terms of accumulating money, because you’ve been a good saver. You’ve kept your spending low. But I would argue that a lot of people really should pay a fee to get the advice because this isn’t where they spend all of their time and this isn’t where they want to spend all their time. And so if that’s the case, there’s some things that are worth outsourcing.

Okay. Here’s another quote from this article in Barron’s. He says, “We who have been on the investment side, have been babbling about pooling investment risk all our lives. Diversify, diversify, diversify. And yet when we retire, longevity risk is at least as big a risk as investment risk. And you really should consider pooling some of that particularly as you get into the later stages of retirement”. When he’s talking about pooling longevity risk, mortality risk, what he’s talking about is considering buying an annuity to create a floor for some basic level of spending.

Now this next one you guys are going to love. I love it when the academic community just validates everything I’ve been teaching you on this show for the past 10 years. But remember this article is 2019. The guy doing the interview says, “Your e-book outlines a strategy that you call a lockbox. Can you take us through it?” And William Sharpe says, “The idea is that you segment your money. It’s similar to using buckets, but with a time component.” One of the things that I’ve been preaching for years now is that time is secure to the volatility of the stock market. The more time you have the more risk you can afford to take. But what I love about William Sharpe’s work when it comes to time segmentation, bucketing, laddering your money over time and retirement is listen to what he says next. He says, “The bottom line is that bucketing your assets in annual increments with different initial asset mixes in these lock boxes can provide a more efficient production of retirement income over time”.

So we’ve had people on the show in the past that say, “Well, it reduces your overall return by having different buckets”. But the Nobel Prize winning economist, William Sharpe says it can provide a more efficient production of retirement income over time. Remember, you have to ask yourself as you’re making this transition into retirement, what’s the purpose of the money? Are you still in accumulation phase of life or have you made the transition into the distribution phase? You’ve got to think different about your money as you transition into retirement.

So where does this leave us? Should you consider a tactical investment strategy as part of your plan to help reduce standard deviation or volatility? Yeah, because sequence of returns is real. Now it doesn’t mean everybody’s going to want to pay the higher fee and that’s okay. But should you consider it? Well, I think so. Should you consider purchasing an annuity with some of your retirement funds to provide a guaranteed income at a point in the future, and as a way to de-risk as you head into retirement? Should you create a floor? Do you need one? Well, I don’t know because I don’t know your situation. Some of you already have a good floor. Sometimes the floor that social security builds for you is enough. But for some of you, you really should have an additional annuity income. Some of you have a pension, which is an annuity, and that creates the floor that you need.

Some of you don’t have those things. And so you need to be thinking about taking some of your retirement assets and saying, how much do I need to annuitize to guarantee? And an annuity is the only financial tool you can use the word guarantee with. And of course the guarantees are based on the financial strength of the company, but to guarantee at least a basic standard of living. So I heard somebody once say, he calls it his beer and pizza money. He says he doesn’t want to gamble his beer and pizza money. I think maybe beer and pizza would fall under more discretionary in my book, but you want to be able to keep the lights on. You want to be able to pay the mortgage if you have one. You want to be able to buy food and groceries.

Should you include strategic asset allocation as part of your overall investment strategy? When you have enough time on your side, I would say so. Remember, modern portfolio theory, efficient-market hypothesis, Capital Asset Pricing Models works great in an asset only strategy, but now we’re not talking about asset only. We’re not talking about accumulation. We’re talking about distribution. We’re talking about a time when time matters. Should you use buckets or as William Sharpe calls them lockboxes to diversify your money across time as you head into retirement? Well, I think so. That’s what we’ve been talking about for the last couple of years. I would argue yes. And it’s not just because I walk life with real people that have been on this journey, but because this is what the academic community also recommends as a way of dealing with as William Sharpe says, “The most difficult problem in finance”.

Okay. So now I want to take a minute and just thank you guys. We have, as you probably know, you can send us an email if you have a question at soundretirementplanning@gmail.com. Or if you go to Sound Retirement Planning, we’ve got a little button it’s powered through technology called SpeakPipe and you can actually leave us a voicemail. So I want to take a minute and answer some of your questions. Now, this first question is really basic, but I love that it came through SpeakPipe. This is the first time we’ve got an actual voice question. So let me share it with you.

Hello. Can you tell me if CSRS information is covered in Dan Jamison’s FERS Retirement Guide, as it relates to non law enforcement personnel?

I love that we have the ability to answer your questions through something like that. Not exactly the type of question I was expecting to get, but Dan Jamison is a friend of mine. So for our friends out there that are federal employees, the Federal Employees Retirement System. Dan Jamison is retired from, I believe the FBI, he’s a CPA. And he writes the FERS Guide, F-E-R-S Guide. And it’s a great resource. It’s something that you have to pay for. But Dan, because he’s a friend, he gives me a complimentary copy. And so I just sent him an email and asked him about this question. So let me share with you what he says. Dan says, “Jason, great to hear from you. Unfortunately, I do not cover CSRS in my book, but if they are a website subscriber, I can answer any CSRS questions. I know the plan well, just don’t cover it in the book. Hope this finds you safe and well, Dan”. There’s your first Q&A.

Now I’ve got another one here for you. This next question was emailed to us at soundretirementplanning@gmail.com. And it was emailed to us after I did the post about the backdoor Roth. So this gets a little bit technical, but we’ll try to answer it. Now as a quick disclosure, of course, I don’t know this person’s entire financial situation. I really can’t give them advice for their specific situation because we operate as a fiduciary and fiduciary says we have a legal obligation to act in your best interest. And in order to do that, we really need to know your full situation, but we’ll touch on this at a high level, at least.

So here’s the question, “Hey Jason, thank you for your financial service. I’m a long time listener. I have a couple of questions about Roth contributions and rollovers. My AGI for tax year 2019 was too high to qualify for Roth contribution. So instead I did a backdoor Roth contributed in 2020. Looking ahead for tax year 2020, my AGI might be too high again to qualify for Roth contribution. So instead of waiting until the end of the year to see if I qualify or not, can I just go ahead and do another backdoor Roth? This way, at least I can get my 2020 contributions in the market now. Also, I’m self-employed and have a solo 401k. I’d like to do a partial Roth conversion for tax year 2020 from my solo 401k. When I do this, I’m told that the funds first need to go into my traditional IRA account then into my Roth IRA account. So my question is, does this create any problems having multiple funds pass through my traditional IRA multiple times in calendar year 2020, does this create any problems?”

And then he or she summarizes and says, “219 backdoor Roth funded in 2020 is completed. 2020 backdoor Roth funded in 2020, not completed. 2020 Roth rollover funded in 2020, not completed. FYI I only have one traditional IRA account and it’s always at zero balance. I use it as a pass through account”. Okay. So let’s try to simplify and talk about this as simply as possible.

So the first thing I want you to understand is what they said there. They did a contribution for 2019, but they funded it in 2020. Remember that you can make contributions in most years up until April 15th of the following year to a traditional IRA. So they did this post tax contribution to their traditional IRA in the year 2020, but it was for the tax year 2019. And then there’s two different components to this. Remember what they were doing was the backdoor Roth. So they were wanting to get money into the Roth account. Remember that you can do the contribution and this year you have until July 15th because of the whole COVID Coronavirus thing. But in most years, it’s April 15th to do those contributions. But remember, Roth conversions have to be done by December 31st of the calendar year. So even though they did the contribution for 2019, when they convert the money from the traditional IRA to the Roth, it’s going to count as a conversion for the tax year 2020.

So again, conversions have to be done by December 31st. You don’t get to benefit from the April 15th or in this case, July 15th deadline. The first thing that I wanted to clarify. Now, the next part of this question, as they say for 2020, they’re not quite sure what their income is going to be. Obviously they’re in a position where their income fluctuates from year to year, but they want to do this backdoor Roth again. And so why not just contribute to the traditional IRA, do the conversion, get the money into the Roth. And yes, of course you can do the contribution to the traditional IRA. Remember if you haven’t listened to the episode on the backdoor Roth, go back and listen to that if all of this seems confusing to you. I’m trying to answer a question for somebody that’s already in the midst of doing these types of things.

The thing you need to remember is that if your income is too high to get a tax deduction for the IRA, then it’s all going to be considered post-tax contributions. And you just do the conversion like you did in previous years. However, if your income is lower than expected, then a portion of the contribution that you make to the traditional IRA may be tax deferred. In which case, when you do the Roth conversion, a portion of the conversion may be taxable to you. So I don’t see any issue with going ahead and doing the contribution and the conversion. We just don’t know what the tax implications are until the new year and that I don’t see that as being an issue. Now, the next part of this question is, “I have a solo 401k, and I’m interested in doing a conversion from a solo 401k, a traditional solo 401k into a Roth”.

Now the key here is that this is going to depend on the 401k plan documents. Many, not all, but many 401k plans do not allow for in-service distributions, unless there’s a qualifying event, which oftentimes means you have to be at least age 59 and a half or have something else happen. So the first thing you need to do there is to determine whether or not you can actually do this based on the plan documents. The 401k plan may not allow you to do an in-service distribution to do the conversion or the rollover into a traditional IRA and then convert to a Roth. So the plan documents are going to make that decision for you.

Now as I think about the question here, what I see and what I hear you saying is you’re trying to get as much money into the Roth as possible. So one of the things I would ask you to consider, it sounds like you have a traditional solo 401k, have you considered setting up a solo Roth 401k? So that you can just make greater contributions to the Roth in the first place and that way you don’t have to worry about doing the conversions. So there’s a lot of moving parts in that question. I don’t know if I answered all of it. I hope I got most of it. I’ll include some links to some IRS articles that may be helpful in the show notes for this show.

To finish up this week, I wanted to share with you two quotes that really captured my imagination and my thoughts. This first one is from George Patton. He says, “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week”. The reason that this one jumped out at me is because it’s one thing to have a plan, it’s another thing to make sure that that plan is being executed, it’s being optimized and it’s being adjusted over time. So we’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of planning people. It’s great to have the plan that gives you a sense of confidence as you start to make this transition. But I would just encourage you, make sure that you don’t just have the plan, but the plan is being executed and followed. Otherwise, what good is having a plan?

The second quote, and I think this one really speaks to the time that we’re living in right now today, it’s from James Allen. And it says, “Circumstances do not make the man, it reveals him to himself”. Circumstances do not make the man, it reveals him to himself. My friend, Steve used to sometimes… Well, sometimes even now he’ll say to me, “Jason, anybody can be good in the good times, but how does somebody respond to the bad times? That’s the true measure of a man”.

Anyways, I hope you found our time together helpful. I hope that you have a great investment strategy as you prepare to transition into retirement. I hope you have a really good plan. I hope you’re researching and studying. And I wanted to let you know, we’re building community around the retirement budget calculator. If you have not yet become part of the RBC Nerds private Facebook group, just really smart people coming together to help one another. And it’s really been fun to see that community growing. So encourage you to join us there. Until next week, this is Jason Parker signing out.

Information and opinions expressed here are believed to be accurate and complete for general information only and should not be construed as specific tax, legal or financial advice for any individual and does not constitute a solicitation for any securities or insurance products. Please consult with your financial professional before taking action on anything discussed in this program. Parker Financial, its representatives, or its affiliates have no liability for investment decisions or other actions taken or made by you based on the information provided in this program. All insurance related discussions are subject to the claims paying ability of the company. Investing involves risk. Jason Parker is the president of Parker Financial, an independent fee-based wealth management firm located at 9057 Washington Avenue NW, Silverdale, Washington. For additional information, call 1-800-514-5046, or visit us online at soundretirementplanning.com.