The Retirement Answer with Dan Goldie

So, so let's, let's talk about, you know, your new book, The Retirement Answer: Uh, the Six Key Decisions Every Retiree Needs to, Needs to Make.

Before we get into some of the issues of those six decisions, why'd you write this book? Why was this important for you now?

Well, a few reasons.

One was it'd been 15 years since The Investment Answer had come out with my friend who died of brain cancer.

And so I wanted to honor his memory because he was such a, an amazing human being who was always looking to help people.

And the reason The Investment Answer actually came to be was, you know, that he felt like he was a former Wall Street person who had a long career in investment banking, and he felt really upset during the financial crisis.

This is going back to '08, '09.

He felt that Wall Street really had taken advantage of investors, and he wanted to publish some kind of simple, easy-to-read book that would, you know, teach people how to protect themselves, how to make smart financial decisions, and not get taken by salespeople from Wall Street and so forth.

I mean, this was 15 years ago when the, the market, the investment market, the investment landscape, I guess, is very, was very different.

And at this time now, my motivation was in part to continue his idea of, of helping.

And I applied it to retirement because I think that right now especially, we're just in a huge difficult time for retirees.

I mean, we've dismantled retirement.

We've, the pension, like the traditional pensions are mostly gone.

There's only, I think, 9 or 10% of companies now that still offer traditional pensions that maybe, you know, our grandfathers would have had, where you work for some place for 30 years, and then when you're retired, they'll, they, they just give you a guaranteed monthly income, a traditional pension, like an annuity.

That's all gone, and it's been replaced by the 401(k).

And the 401(k) that we're all faced with today, that all workers have to deal with is, it's something that we're not taught about in school.

We don't really know how to best handle that.

And especially, it's especially hard after the accumulation period when you're saving and working and trying to build up some money so you can retire one day.

When you do retire, now you've got to take that money, and again, no one teaches you this stuff, is how do you turn that into lifetime income that's stable- And, you know, where you can meet your expenses.

So I wanted to write something that had the same feel of The Investment Answer, something that's understandable, something that's not too long, something that, you know, has clarity.

And so that's how I ended up with these six decisions as a framework because these are the areas that all retirees need to focus on, and we need to make decisions that involve trade-offs between, between all these different areas.

And I hadn't read a book previously that involved these trade-offs.

They work together, you know, 'cause when you make a decision in one area, that affects the others.

And so-

So, so give us an example.