Weekend Reading: ‘Where Should I Live and What am I Going to Do?’ Retirement Advice We’re Not Getting from Financial Advisers

Posted: 03/25/2022

|Financial Planning |Purpose-Based Planning |"Market Watch" Articles

This article appears as part of Casey Weade's Weekend Reading for Retirees series. Every Friday, Casey highlights four hand-picked articles on trending retirement topics and delivers them straight to your email inbox. Get on the list here.

Weekend Reading

When I wrote my latest book, Job Optional, I did so with the intention of showing others just how much more depth there is to a fulfilling retirement than looking at “the numbers”.

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From ROI to ROL: I’m happy to see the non-financial aspects of retirement coming more to the forefront of planning processes in recent years, and even journalists like past podcast guest, Richard Eisenberg, author articles like this one to help you think beyond dollars and cents. However, there is still more work to be done in the realm of modernizing the financial industry’s approach to a purposeful retirement. As another past podcast guest, Mitch Anthony, says, it’s not all about ROI, but ROL (Return on Life).

Lack of life planning: Recent research gauging the guidance pre-retirees and retirees receive from their financial advisors shows there are gaps in want they want, versus what they get. These areas include insight on working in retirement, spending on housing and withdrawing money from financial accounts. Why is this lack of counsel occurring? For some advisors, their firm prohibits providing advice about mortgages, reverse mortgages, etc., and in other instances, decumulation planning becomes lower on the totem pole because the larger amount of assets the firm can keep, the more they earn.

Modernizing our retirement mindset: While there is certainly progress to be made throughout the retirement planning landscape as a whole, more retirees are leveraging resources to shape a fulfilling future, such as professional retirement coaches or non-financial planning workshops. Additionally, we now see more financial firms prioritizing the human aspect of their retirement planning process, putting 50 percent of their focus on psychology and 50 percent on financials.

You deserve more: The value proposition of a financial advisor is shifting dramatically. It’s no longer about providing simple investment advice, but instead an all-encompassing concept. You should be seeking that value for yourself.

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