Does your Retirement RV have a flat tire?
Here’s a statistic you’ve probably read – each and every day since January 1, 2011, 10,000 Baby Boomers have been turning 65 and are retiring, heading to Social Security.
And, they’re going to keep retiring, 10,000 per day every day, until the year 2030.
Let me introduce you to one such couple – Jim and Pam – they’re both 65, and they’ve just retired from their jobs. They’re in their “Retirement RV,” and they’re at their “Retirement Starting Line,” about to begin their retirement journey.
One of the things Jim and Pam checked and double-checked as they were getting ready for their “retirement journey” was making sure they had enough “fuel” in their RV’s gas tank. In other words, they were making sure they had enough money in their IRA Retirement Accounts.
Let’s face it – a Retirement RV won’t get very far without fuel, and the fuel Jim and Pam’s RV needs every day is money from their IRA accounts.
Each day during their retirement, Jim and Pam will need money for daily expenses, whether it’s for basic needs such as groceries and utilities or money for a vacation to Europe or plane tickets to see the kids and grandkids.
As they were planning and getting ready for retirement, in the back of their minds, they were thinking about the many studies confirming that the #1 fear of the Baby Boomer generation is the fear of “outliving their money,” i.e., running out of the fuel for their “Retirement RV.”
This was a major concern of theirs. Since they didn’t know how long they would live, they didn’t know how much “fuel” they would need in their Retirement RV’s fuel tank.
Jim and Pam’s “Plan A” was to be extremely frugal with their money – they planned on withdrawing no more than the 3.5-4.0% annual amount recommended by the Wall Street folks. According to what they read, sticking with this strategy would give them a 90-something percent chance of not running out of money.
That sounded pretty good until they considered the genuine possibility that a stock market correction or crash might occur during their retirement, and it could easily wipe out 20, 30 or even 40% of their nest egg’s value. If that happened, it would undoubtedly harm their retirement income and lifestyle.
Their nest eggs lost money when the stock market declined in 2000 and again in 2008, and they told each other they did not want to deal with that during retirement. After all, they’re counting on their nest eggs to provide the fuel they need in their Retirement RV until they “cross the final finish line” and pass on.
While they were contemplating all of this, Jim and Pam listened to my “Safe Money & Income” radio show and heard me talking about Fixed Index Annuities (FIAs) – a “Plan B” option that was just what they were looking.
During our appointment, they learned that moving their nest eggs out of the stock market and into FIAs would solve their two problems. Their money would no longer be at risk of loss if the stock market has a correction or crash, and their FIAs would provide Jim and Pam with guaranteed lifetime paychecks, i.e., their FIAs eliminated the risk of “running out of fuel” in their Retirement RV.
During our conversation, they also realized they had been just “putting up” with their current retirement accounts for years, even though their accounts did exactly the opposite of what they wanted. Their current IRAs did not provide a guarantee against losses in their accounts if the stock market declined or crashed, and their accounts also could not provide Jim and Pam with the guaranteed lifetime income they wanted so they would never “run out of fuel” for their “Retirement RV.”
With the “stroke of their pens” Jim and Pam solved, once and for all, their two concerns – their nest eggs are now insured and protected from any losses due to stock market volatility, and they’re also receiving guaranteed monthly “paychecks” for the rest of their lives to fund their retirement.
They’ve “taken control” of their retirement accounts and “turned the retirement accounts they had into the accounts they truly want.”
Think about this – we ensure “things of value” in our lives – our homes, our cars, our health… but until right now, reading this article, you may not have realized that you can also ensure your nest egg, your life savings. And, the cost to make this happen is a big, fat $0!
Is your nest egg insured and guaranteed? Will, your nest egg give you a guaranteed “paycheck for life?”
Both are yours for the asking.
