It has got to be tough going solo because we are led to believe that we have things that we don’t have. We are led to believe that we have a pension plan, a 401K plan, a 403B plan, an IRA plan, a Roth IRA plan. We have a certificate of deposit plan. We have a savings plan…We don’t have any of that; those are all just accounts. It’s an account for your pension. It is a 401K account. It is an IRA account. It is a Roth account, a 403B account, a bank account.
What is an account? An account is nothing more than a place to stash cash. It’s not a plan. How is this going to be working out? It’s amazing how many people will meet with us at the very, very cusp of their retirement. They have worked 30, 35, 40 years and now they’re set to retire and they come and they ask “How do I do this?” They have all of these accounts, but all of a sudden, they come to the realization that they don’t have a plan. Those without a plan simply say, “I’ll just use the money as I need it”. Well, that’s not a plan; that is a liquidation of an account.
One of the main things, one of the main areas in which we work is Actuarial Science. There are two problems in a persons’ life. One of them is dying too soon, but that can be taken care of with life insurance. The other problem is what happens if you die too late. What does that mean? What happens if I run out of money before I run out of life? Those are very important calculations to make, and you don’t want to be wrong.
We have actually documented 234 problems that a person should be looking at in their financial life and their personal life. Make sure that the odds are in your favor that your entire life will play out correctly. Meaning, the way you would like it to be. But with that, you need a plan. You need a plan that you are the co-creator of, not a plan that somebody puts out on a table and says “Do this and you will be successful”. You should only follow a plan that you co-create, and that you are intimately involved in putting together and making sure that it plays out correctly.
Do you have accounts? Probably. Most do. Do you have a plan? Most don’t.
