Okay

... to be so ultra-conservative.

And I'm like, "Look, I feel you, okay? The- your worry," I said, "but you're in a position where you do need to be, you know, obtaining, you know, higher growth, quite a bit more than what you'd like to for the next five years if you want to try and meet that timeline." And I said, "Look, there's things that we can do to minimize downside," I said, "but ultimately, f- with the returns that you probably expect, given what's happened over the last 10 years, and what you do need, y- you know, you don't need those kind of returns, but 3 to 4% just isn't gonna make it."

Right.

You know, 'cause ultimately something like treasuries, although it's a little bit higher now, you know, tough to imagine it staying this way for the next 25 years.

So you gotta, you know, plan to stress test, y- y- you know, the portfolio and make sure you have a high probability of meeting the growth plans that you need and also, you know, achieving the income you need.

Like, you know, we said earlier, it's potentially going to get more challenging if the cut that the government is saying they're gonna make in Social Security, you know, unless the laws change on how they fund it, they will have no choice, and it's only five years away.

So to me, it's, it's around the corner, and maybe they can do something to fix it in a few short years.

[clears throat]

But when it comes to your health, and with, you know, specifically here talking about the Medicare drug plan, the Part D, right, that everyone has to have, otherwise you face that penalty if you don't enroll.

So, you know, there's a process for that, and the plans do change.

The, the good thing, it's the one part of Medicare that you can change every year if it suits you.

You know, if your situation changes where, hey, something's happened, now instead of out-of-pocket 50 bucks a month, I'm out of pocket 1,500 'cause of these new drugs that I need, you know, for my health, you can review that and change it, and it's worth reviewing.

You know, I'm gonna give you a live example here of, uh, something that happened.

This one was, uh, I, I'm gonna say two years ago.

Guys, could focusing only on the monthly premium sometimes be misleading for folks? Are there situations where paying a slightly higher premium could actually save somebody money over the course of the year?

You could get 18% opening up a money market account.

But I do believe we are all feeling this at this point.

You know, you go out to dinner, you see how much more it costs.

You go to the grocery store and you see how much more it costs.

And of course, at the pump, right? So it's been going on a while.

We're all feeling it.

And it's just kind of like this cumulative effect on us, I think.

Right, Dan?

What do we need to be on the lookout for, boys?

So one that you see happen sometimes, either knowingly or unknowingly, someone will take a big withdrawal from their 401k, pay a penalty if they're younger than 59 1⁄2, and they may or may not have known about it, and they say to themselves, well, yeah, okay, I'm taking $30,000, big deal.

well what i would say is well let's say that 30 000 you were going to have invested for another 15 years before you actually retired okay and let's say you made seven percent you know the thirty thousand dollar decision was really more of like an eighty three thousand dollar decision because that's what it would have grown to if you had left it alone So even if after five years you go to put it back in, it's just not the same, right? Because it doesn't have that time that's been in the market.

And over the last 10 years, I was using 7%.

Over the last 10 years, we've averaged more like 15% in the market, right? So think about that for a minute.

Okay, so if you do that, well, now that's a quarter million dollars.

If you had left it alone, it made 15% over the next 15

And it can get really, really terrible and even more traumatic.

Yeah,

they do.

Right? To guide them through these times when things are a little uncertain, right? You could say right now people are probably feeling that way.

Inflation is more than we would all like.

There's a lot going on in the world that makes markets very volatile, right? You know, on the other hand, our economy continues to do well overall.

Certain sectors are changing, though.

So that requires attention.

Right, Dan? Absolutely.