Conventional wisdom can be a great guide for investors but general guidance doesn’t always apply to each individual. There are exceptions for every rule and that’s what we want to discuss today.
Think about the first financial lessons you learned in life. They were probably passed down to you from your parents or grandparents.
This wisdom worked for them and they want to make sure you have the same success with your money. The truth, however, is not all of these lessons and strategies work from person to person or even generation to generation. Like we always talk about in our offices, retirement planning will look different for every individual because goals and needs are unique to each person.
But we don’t want to completely dismiss the conventional wisdom that you might find useful. Instead, we want to explore the ways in which these ideas don’t always apply in every situation. That’s what we’ll do on this episode of the Money Wisdom podcast with Joel Johnson.
The first one we cover is on real estate. This is often considered a pretty strong investment, but it’s difficult to hit a home run in this category. It often takes leverage that many retirees and pre-retirees don’t want to take on.
[0:49] – Let’s start with conventional wisdom in retirement planning.
[1:06] – “You can’t go wrong with real estate. They aren’t making any more of it.”
Next we’ll tackle debt. You’ve probably heard there is good debt and bad debt, and that’s mostly true. But what is the difference between the two? And what about mortgage debt makes that good?
[2:25] – “There’s good debt and bad debt. Mortgage debt is good debt”
Of course you don’t want to carry much debt into retirement, which is the next area we cover on the show. A lot of people have the mindset that retirement is a chance to relax after an exhausting career but not everyone thrives that way. Joel talks about the clients he’s worked with that want to keep working and strive to stay active each day.
[3:40] – “Retirement is a chance to relax after an exhausting career.”
From there we turn to investing. As we’ve seen in 2020, the market isn’t always a friend to our retirement, but that doesn’t mean that you should always be changing investments. Conventional wisdom says to try something different if your current portfolio isn’t working, but let’s talk about why that’s not always the best plan.
[5:00] – “If your current investments are doing well, try something else.”
If any of these pieces of wisdom push you to explore your finances further, please reach out and let us provide you with our Money Map. We’ve seen a lot of new people over the past few months and our goal is to help you with any financial questions or concerns you have.
[6:39] – If people need guidance on what to do, how can that happen?
As we wrap up the show, we want to spend a little time on a couple other financial topics. The first is UBER as a public company and some thoughts on the rideshare platform as an investment. And second, we want to touch on why it’s so important for pre-retirees to begin shifting their mindset from accumulating assets to protecting them. It’s a challenge for many people after spending years thinking about building your portfolio, but it’s crucial for long-term success.
[10:11] – Shifting that mindset from accumulating to protecting.
Thanks for listening to this episode. We’ll be back again next week for another show.
