Another Client Ready To Retire 

(Or "Re-wire") Ahead Of Schedule!

The excitement was palpable as we reviewed the updated Wealth Forecast and previewed the latest scenario: moving retirement up by four years. Not without one of these two folks still carrying a healthy degree of skepticism, but the new numbers we presented to them did not disappoint. It's not a full-on, we are going off golfing, feet up kind of retirement, but as these clients so appropriately suggested, it is a "re-wiring". No more commute downtown everyday, no more 5am alarm clock, no more walking back in the door at 6:30pm, but taking more control over a work-life balance at a significantly lower level of stress. Call it a graceful exit.

Client's of mine for close to 20 years (in a number of phases of my wealth management career). Two recessions (maybe another one on the horizon), never having shot the lights out (by taking too much risk, chasing out-of-reach returns), but taking the boring route of adding to savings when possible and maintaining a balanced approach to investing, while putting the focus on what they were good at: nurturing their family and pursing their own successful careers.

I love this part of my job. Bianca loves this part of her job!

More importantly, it gives me a soapbox to stand on and tell the rest of the world that our methodology works. The doubters think that they have to have stock market-like returns, year in and year out, to get to their goals. Perhaps they do because their goals are unrealistic.

However, the gamble of chasing stock markets can and may put your goals at risk. After peaking in 2001, it took the NASDAQ about 15 years to get back to that very peak. 

With current stock markets at levels that beg the fundamental question of true value:

Ask yourself, if you had to buy stocks, where do you want to be buying them? With Price to Earnings ratios at 10-15 or 20-25? Forget "multiple expansion", where is there less risk?

30 year bond yields are at record lows, we have to pay attention to what that is telling us.

I think it is clear that the Coronavirus is throwing a lot of uncertainty at us.

I think it is also clear that the current political situation in North America and around the globe is tenuous and fraught with potential twists and turns that can and may have potential destabilizing risk.

But, our clients still have to retire / rewire and if we can help them get there on or ahead of schedule, managing the risks and keeping the stewardship of their wealth on track, then our methodology, in spite of the skeptics, is working. If our aforementioned clients had stepped away from the plan we built for them or deviated significantly away from our designed strategy because of recessions or over-valued markets, wanted to chase returns and throw risk management out the window, then they might not be where they are today.