Retirement planning takes patience, diligence, and guidance, but it’s easy to be lured into chasing bigger returns or running away from investments in times of trouble. Staying the course laid out by you or your advisor might feel challenging at times, and that’s okay as long as you stick with it.

To help you keep you on track, we’ve put together a list of financial commandments for you to follow. These will allow you to decide between right and wrong when a major financial decision is looming. With the help of Joel Johnson, this episode of Money Wisdom will list each of them out and explain why they will help improve your retirement planning.

The four commandments are as followed:

• Thou shalt not compare your investments to the stock market without the proper context.
• Thou shalt not give up before giving your strategy time to play out.
• Thou shalt not chase big returns too late in life.
• Thou shalt not ignore costs and fees.

Learn about each on the podcast and you can use the timestamps below to skip around.

This episode will also take three listener questions to begin the show. Each of them provide some great information on using Roth IRA withdrawals to pay for college, life insurance in retirement, and how to work with your spouse on planning.

So let’s get started! Here’s the list of main topics you’ll hear on this episode of the Money Wisdom podcast:

[0:21] – What’s coming up on the show.

[1:19] – Listener question: Since I can take money out of my Roth IRA without paying taxes on it, I’m thinking about doing that to pay for my child’s college. Is that a good idea?  

[3:26] – Listener question: My life insurance is about to retire but I assume that’s okay because I’m about to retire. Is that right?

[4:48] – Listener question: It’s time for us to do some planning but my husband just wants to keep doing the same things we’ve always done. What can I tell him to get him moving and make some financial decisions?

[6:03] – Question from Kim: I pay an annual fee to my financial advisor but we never communicate. I assume he’s paying attention to my accounts but how do I know?

[8:37] – Financial commandment 1 – Thou shalt not compare your investments to the stock market without the proper context.

[11:32] – Financial commandment 2 – Thou shalt not give up before giving your strategy time to play out.

[14:19] – Financial commandment 3 – Thou shalt not chase big returns too late in life.

[15:48] – Financial commandment 4 – Thou shalt not ignore costs and fees.