Coasting in Retirement is dedicated to the financial planning and investment management needs of pre-retirees and retirees living an active lifestyle along our part of the Gulf Coast. Host Josh Null and co-host Michelle Melton dive into relevant financial topics, plus have a little fun with the "Michelle with the News of the Week" and "Josh's Crystal Ball & Big Mouth" segments. Josh's practice Gulf Coast Financial Advisors serves clients in the Panhandle of Florida, Lower Alabama, and the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Louisiana. You can hear the original broadcast of Coasting in Retirement every Sunday from Noon to 1 PM CT on 106.5 FM in Mobile, Alabama.
So why do we call this a needle vs haystack discussion? This stems from a famous quote from the father of index funds, Jack Bogle, who famously said that instead of trying to find the perfect handful of stocks, or needles if you will, it’s much easier for investors to just buy the entire haystack.
Sequence of returns risk is a real, relevant threat to the longevity of your portfolio. A 4% withdrawal has been mathematically proven to survive the worst stock markets, but that doesn’t mean you just set it and forget it.
So that leads us to our topic of the day, a milestone that many strive for and more people reach than the news would have you to believe – accumulating a million dollars – but is that enough to retire on? We’re even going to discuss strategies for those of you fortunate enough to have a million dollars of investments and looking at potentially retiring early, which I can tell you from experience, is one of the most enjoyable and fun financial planning experiences we have with our clients at Gulf Coast Financial Advisors.
What should you do with your 401k from a previous employer? Should you leave it where it’s at? Should you roll it into an IRA? If so, what type of IRA? What’s the upside of doing a rollover? What’s the downside? What if you have several 401k accounts?
We discuss what we learned about money and investing in 2023, we make some predictions about 2024, and most importantly, we discuss why these things matter to those of you in or near retirement.
Since we last spoke with you listeners, the Fed gave indication it was going to hold its Fed Fund Rates steady for December, and as a result, the market celebrated with a run up that has left some indexes nearing their all-time highs, last seen in January 2022.