Ready To Retire, Part 2

With a few hundred thousand in various forms of savings and a $400,000 home we worked together to build a plan and went about forming a strategy to get reasonable growth, but within a prudent and well diversified framework.

That framework proved important through the 2008/2009 time frame, because not only did it limit the downside of the value of the portfolio and allow us to keep our wits about us through a fairly scary period (and stick to the plan), but it also allowed for a very quick return to growth in the portfolio. Portfolios that carried more risk through that period took a lot longer to recover.

That period in and of itself, taught me a great deal, not only about about balance and diversification, but about the perils of human emotion that might cause one to abandon a good plan. The following years of growth were less about finding the right growth assets, but more about the balancing and re-balancing of the portfolio to keep the asset allocation consistent and properly diversified and the regular updating of the wealth forecast (the key to defining and re-defining portfolio startegy).

This style of balanced investing certainly caught on and with some pretty solid marketing from my (then) partner, the practise grew, significantly. Probably too much, because it spread me way too thin (another story for another time).

But that certainly did not stop me from making sure that my client couple, now beginning to see the time in the future where their dreams would be realized, were being well taken care of.

When I moved on to High Rock to build an even better home for client care, they were naturally anxious to stay the course. I was happy to have fewer clients so that they could all receive the attention that they deserved. Specifically to provide them with a Certified Financial Planning professional to improve upon their "wealth forecast" for their retirement and some crucial portfolio model tactical expertise from my new partner. The discretionary management platform that we work from now, is so much more efficient (and we even further reduced their costs).

We are very much ready for them to retire and spend the next 30 plus years with us to manage their financial life through their retirement!

From a few hundred thousand in savings and a house to this:

in 15 years!

And now a retirement that looks like this:

Congratulations to these folks for making a plan and patiently sticking to it and coming out the other side with  great success!

On another note: It is webinar Tuesday at High Rock, where we will recap the latest week of the important happenings in the global economy, financial markets and the world of wealth management for our High rock clients. We will post the recorded version at http://highrockcapital.ca/current-edition-of-the-weekly-webinar.html at approx. 5pm EDT. So feel free to click on the link to tune in.