Join David McKnight and I to discuss his book "The Guru Gap"!

[LostDollar]

The more well-known books are those by Tom Hegna for retirement planning:

Paychecks and Playchecks: Retirement Solutions for Life
[EXTERNAL LINK] - Amazon.com

This book has 315 ratings on Amazon.

Don't Worry, Retire Happy: Seven Steps to Retirement Security
[EXTERNAL LINK] - Amazon.com

This book has 129 ratings on Amazon.

David McKnight's The Power of Zero: How to get to the 0% tax bracket and Transform Your Retirement
[EXTERNAL LINK] - Amazon.com

McKnight's book has nearly 2,600 ratings on Amazon.

I don't know who Terry Savage is.

Laurence Kotlikoff would add to these areas. Here you go:

Amazon.com

Thank you for taking the time to post the comments and the links.

I can't get to zero. I will see what McKnight says in his new book about Gurus and those 18 retirement risks you talked about.

I think Hegna's book, Don't Worry, Retire Happy is what I will start with out of the additional things you suggested.

Last year I was trying to decide about making a recommendation to take Social Security early when the payments would be offset by earnings.

I ran onto reports by Kotlikoff and Savage about ruthless clawbacks of old SS "overpayments". I decided taking the early SS when it was going to be accompanied by job earnings offsets was not worth the risk of future challenges by SS for incorrect computations.

Anyway, that's where her name came up for me.

Based on some other comments I saw made by Kotlikoff, I had considered attempting, back then, to ask you about Financial financial planning vs Economist financial planning, but decided I did not have the reading speed, reading comprehension, and level of critical thinking that would have been necessary for me to uphold my end of the conversation.

 

[DHK]

those 18 retirement risks you talked about.

This link has a white paper from The American College on those 18 retirement risks. (I would've posted it directly, but the 3.2mb file is "too big" for the forum to attach it as a file.)

https://www.safemoneyhouston.com/uploads/7/8/5/6/78562736/retirement_risk_solutions.pdf

Based on some other comments I saw made by Kotlikoff, I had considered attempting, back then, to ask you about Financial financial planning vs Economist financial planning, but decided I did not have the reading speed, reading comprehension, and level of critical thinking that would have been necessary for me to uphold my end of the conversation.

I have a general rule for retirement planning combined with tax planning: If you have less than $500,000 of retirement assets, you don't need tax-focused planning. The math just won't make sense and the tax code really won't hurt you.

For potential clients in that economic level, those will primarily be product sales, such as annuities with lifetime income benefit riders or other provisions. It won't be a max-funded non-mec cash value life insurance policy. It just doesn't make sense to me.

There is a term that I made up that doesn't really exist: Generally Accepted Financial Planning Principles (GAFPP). The problem with it, is that there aren't hard and fast rules like there is in accounting with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).

That being said, Financial financial planning is more of the "time-tested" or rather "traditional" planning while Economist planning is looking at the dynamics of the world and insulating ourselves from them and/or taking advantage of them.

Sometimes there's room for both in a product strategy. It just "depends."

 

[LostDollar]

I have a general rule for retirement planning combined with tax planning: If you have less than $500,000 of retirement assets, you don't need tax-focused planning. The math just won't make sense and the tax code really won't hurt you.

I fit that categorization.

In terms of absolute dollars, for you guys dealing with hundreds of people with millions in retirement assets, my situation is like an Oreo cookie for an afternoon snack. But since it is my situation, it is a big deal to me.

(following comment based on current tax tables)

(And in case you can't tell, I like the concept of GAFPP. Ray has the secret book of example retirement case plans he matches prospects to. Locked in a safe where only he can see it. GAFPP sounds like something an anonymous member of the ignorant and unwashed masses might be able to find and use (or mis-use as the case may be). )

I don't know for sure what logic would say about my needs for tax planning. What I can tell you is my feelings say it is necessary -- to the extent I can find GAFPP concepts that can be adjusted to fit my situation.

For 3 years that was increasing my qualified funds tax snowball by making before tax contributions in order to maximize an ACA health plan premium refund. (And that also left me arguing with Allen about the wisdom of deferring RMD's on a post 2019 inherited IRA.) The need for ACA coverage has gone, so now I am in a phase of attempting to reduce the size of the snowball by Roth Conversions.

In 5 years, my household's marginal tax rate will jump 1 bracket. My death and the resulting widow tax rate "adjustment" might jump it another bracket, leaving my wife as a single taxpayer with a marginal rate two brackets higher than our current joint marginal rate.

Hence my concern to see there is not some easy "you should be doing this" tax thing in addition to Roth Conversions that I should be doing now. I think your and Allen's comments have told me there isn't.

 

[LostDollar]

This link has a white paper from The American College on those 18 retirement risks. (I would've posted it directly, but the 3.2mb file is "too big" for the forum to attach it as a file.)

https://www.safemoneyhouston.com/uploads/7/8/5/6/78562736/retirement_risk_solutions.pdf

There are a number of those things that are applicable to me.

However, at this particular instant in time, I would say I am attempting to use:

Public Policy Bonus
and
Sequence of Returns Bonus

to address

Longevity Risk
Frailty Risk
and
Loss of Spouse Risk