Retirement Fund Concerns – 4 Your Money Segment

Bill Demaree on CBS 4 Indianapolis with Debby Knox – August 25, 2015

Debby Knox: Looking at 4 Your Money tonight. The recent roller-coaster ride on Wall Street has a lot of us worried now about our retirement savings. The Dow lost another 200 points today closing at fifteen thousand six hundred sixty-six and we’re seeing flashbacks to the problems of 2008 or are we really seeing flashbacks? Joining us now is Bill Demaree, Your Retirement Guy™. Thank you for being with us, Bill. Should we be Panic? Let’s just ask the obvious question right now.

Bill Demaree: No don’t panic but pay attention.

Debby Knox: All right. So, if you’re a retiree out there with a certain amount of money you’re looking at and you’re watching all this is all these fluctuations. Why do you say that person?

Bill Demaree: Well, we should have a plan, you know for retirement and I think I mentioned this before that a lot of people spend more time planning a two-week vacation than they do planning for retirement. So planning is the key.

Debby Knox: So, if you’re not going to panic and your planning is going on, how do you get through these tough times right now? Um, a lot of people have a lot of money invested and there and they’re seeing their money go down. Is this going to be anything like 2008?

Bill Demaree: Well, it possibly could be and once we get into retirement or near retirement and when I say that it’s usually 50 and above because up until then we’ve been in what I refer to as the accumulation phase of financial planning. We’re trying to put together our nest egg, but when we get into retirement or near retirement, we should look at our savings and Investments and we should look at maybe preserving and protecting what we have spent a lifetime to accumulate rather than accumulate

Debby Knox: and that’s always usually reducing our risk. Our tolerance for risk goes down and should as we get older, but you know even those kinds of accounts are losing money as well. I mean I’m being the devil’s advocate here.

Bill Demaree: Well, we are between a rock and a hard place because I’m a retirement age as well. But we have our money in the market. We have the volatility issue. But then if we go to the bank’s they’re paying next to nothing,

Debby Knox: right

Bill Demaree: And so, what do we do and so we have to find a way where we can have growth and we can have the protection of principal at the same time

Debby Knox: Bottom line. How do you protect your money? We just have a couple of seconds left.

Bill Demaree: Well, the best way to, you know, to preserve and protect your money is to ascertain what your expenses are, and you have to have enough income to take care of those expenses; and so, it’s not so much the number of what it is five hundred thousand, seven hundred fifty thousand, or a million. It’s what you do with that income that will sustain us to supplement the Social Security that we get the pension may be that we get if we’re lucky enough to have that

Debby Knox: yea

Bill Demaree: and those are the things that we have to pay attention to

Debby Knox: paying attention now very closely Bill Demaree, Your Retirement Guy™. Thank you for being with us Tonight

Bill Demaree: Thanks for having me, Debby.