Wealth Wednesday

One of the most important elements of planning for retirement is understanding how much you will spend when you get there. Creating a budget is not a task most people enjoy. The tedious process of going through bank and credit card statements creates an obstacle to the planning process. If only there were an "easy button" to help you figure things out. As luck would have it, there is a useful guideline. Fidelity created some general guidelines to help people begin thinking about their retirement plans. Today we look at one of them: Using the 70% Rule to easily determine your retirement spending.

Today we look at one of Fidelity’s Four Rules for Retirement Savings. This one is called the 45% rule. For a general rule of thumb, this one may actually be pretty good.

During the last weekend of October, Michael Seese, Todd Kimpel, Daniel Spurgeon, Shanell Jeffrey, Nikki Lude, Ciara Smith and Neal Watson attended Charles Schwab's annual conference. In addition to educational sessions designed to deepen their knowledge, they also heard from Charles Schwab's executive leadership and investment experts. There were also networking opportunities and motivational messages from some big names. Today we share our experience.

Our world has become dominated by technology. It is hard to imagine doing much of anything without a computer, tablet or smartphone. By and large, it has made things easier for all of us, but it has also created some additional risks. October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and we have a special guest today to talk about how you can protect yourself.

Join us for a live stream. We will review the investment markets for the first three quarters of the year. We will talk about some big changes in our model portfolios and what concerns us for the remainder of this year and into next.

Investing is a key component of your financial plan. To be successful, one of the most important traits you need is intestinal fortitude. Reaching for return introduces some emotional stress, and sometimes that stress can be Intense. Big decreases in value cause many people to sell investments – and most do it when they shouldn’t. Today, we talk about the difference between investment return and investor return.

Planning for the future is something we firmly believe. It not only applies to our clients but also to our firm. Today, there are eight financial advisors at Commonwealth. The experience on our team ranges from 10 months to over 40 years. It is also critical for us to also plan for the future, and that means finding bright young minds. In the last few months, we added two financial planning residents. Today we introduce you to Madison Gontarek and Khoury Kloss.

We spend our working years saving for retirement. There comes a point where we will need to turn those savings into an income stream. How much can you take from your savings and not run out of money? Is the 4% rule still valid? Is there a “magic number” we can all use to figure out if we have saved enough?

You can look at retirement in three phases: the go-go years, the slow-go years, and the no-go years. Nobody knows exactly how long each of those will last, but when we start to think in those terms, it can change how you approach planning for that next chapter of your life.