Welcome back to Part Four of our “Back to Basics” series .. we hope you’ve enjoyed the First Three which started with all about “The Emergency Fund” in Part 1 … with Part 2 being “Protection Planning” and Part 3 discussing All about Debt Planning or “The Good the Bad and the Ugly of Debt” and now we happily bring you Part 4 Retirement Planning!
As a reminder this is a high level Financial Planning Education like overview starting with the basics of and we will continue into advanced topics in order of Planning Importance.
Retirement Planning
The most important parts of retirement planning are very easy and as follows:
- Start Early
- Save as much as you can especially when you are young as compounding is your friend, do not worry about the amount, just save!
- Don’t overthink your investment options, just allocate as available and save save save…
Starting out with a healthy savings percentage of our earnings at an early age will lead to eventual maxing out of your retirement plans, forcing you happily into other savings vehicles thereby balancing your eventual portfolio with pre-tax retirement savings and after tax buckets of investments.
Continued high percentage earnings savings will also ultimately create the habits of not living on all that you are earning. This is especially important as we get closer to retirement and create just darn good habits.
There will likely be times in our lives when we may not be able to save as much on a percentage of our earnings as we would like, but constant top of mind savings habits will garner success in the long term, don’t let life’s curve balls distract your long term savings effort, you can do it!
Early savings should be very aggressive as the corpus of your savings are the actual savings component. All equity type of investments especially during the first 5-10 years are not out of the realm of possibilities, again your continued contributions dominate the investment during these early stages. As your retirement savings and for that matter other investments grow in size adjustments are necessary especially as we near retirement.
While there are talks of optimal retirement allocations, it’s not unusual to find inferior investment options in retirement accounts. Not to worry, don’t throw your employer or your plan under the bus … the most important item in your retirement savings program is the actual deferral of your hard earned work and the broad allocation! Be aggressive in the beginning and slowing down the allocation as it matures in size and our chapter nears retirement.
Weather 401, IRA, Sep- (Simplified Employee Pension), Roth.403b. 401A or any other retirement vehicle, the vehicle is not as important as participation!.
We will help you optimize from a tax standpoint which vehicle is best. and of course with the allocations as well!
Have a Great “Retirement Planning” Day!
John A. Kvale CFA, CFP
Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.
A Dallas Texas based fee only
Financial Planning Total Wealth
Management firm.
April 2022 Financial Planning and Capital Market Review – By John Kvale CFA, CFP
Hello and Welcome to our April 2022 … Financial Planning and Capital Market Update!
If you are too busy to read, feel free to listen as we describe our post and thoughts in friendly podcast audio format as well as Video!
Newbies –
We like to articulate our thoughts and review on a Monthly basis our Financial Planning Tips, Capital Markets thoughts and current events!
Hope you enjoy!
April 2022 Video
YouTube
Financial Planning Tip(s)
Back to Basics Series – Educational Funding
In our continued fun “Back To Basics” Series here we discuss Educational Funding…
Here is one very important item to remember from the post:
Did you notice we put Retirement Planning BEFORE Education planning? Do you recall in Part 3 in Debt Planning we said one of the few good debts are educational related debts ….We of course are not advocating Student debt/loans… but they are available in abundance and again not a bad debt. There are not retirement planning loans…. just saying!
Proxy Vote Reminder
In this post we remind you to please reach out if you have fallen off the list for us to proxy vote for you!
If you are getting those pesky Proxy Notices (some can be small books- oh the trees that are destroyed- digressing) reach out to us, we not only vote the Proxies for you, but we get one single notice for everyone, and Jen has done an excellent job in getting a great deal of those electronically…. Did we say how Green this is?
Capital Market Comments
The Slowdown is Here
We first started speaking of the slowdown in our Q 1 2022 Newsletter here in our “Anatomy of a Slowdown” main aricle actually released in December of 2021….
And then again, here in our Q 2 2022 Newsletter ….
Then again here, here, here, here, and again here.… among a few other times…
Last week the BEA “Officially Released” a negative GDP print as noted here in our post and in this chart….
Never get the timing exactly, but we are not surprised and have been waiving the flag here in our talks and are prepared!
Have a Great Day, Talk to You at the End of May!
John A. Kvale CFA, CFP
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Posted in Audio, Clients/Clients Only, Economy, General Financial Planning, Investing/Financial Planning, Market Comments, Monthly Review, Podcast, Reminder, Video
Tagged 529, Anatomy of a Slowdown, Back to Basics, College Funding, CPI, Proxy Vote, Slowdown