Successful Retirement Secrets, the online course I’ve created is billed as a “new way to think about and plan for retirement”. It’s targeted at the Gen-X and millennial generations since it takes more than a few years of effort if you want to arrive at retirement and be ready for it.

First off, the idea of “retirement planning” smacks of boredom and/or a chore to be aggressively ignored. It delves into things we really don’t want to think about, much less put down on paper, and then follow a plan to make sure it works.

Unfortunately, the net effect of that turns eventually into stress, disappointment, financial pain, and who knows what else, all of it negative.

Some people realize that life on this planet can be great and to enjoy it as long as possible means taking necessary steps in life. Things like eating right, exercising, budgeting, and saving for the future.

Even so, the overwhelming pressure comes from advertising, social media, and every other messaging system. Someone is trying to sell us something, and we have no interest in being sold something. The net effect of all this overwhelming information is that it soons become noise and is ignored.

But somewhere is those messages may be something useful. How do you develop a filter that somehow allows you to better pay attention to some of it and legitimately ignore the rest.

I think I’ve developed an idea to help you do that that relies first on asking yourself some key questions, and then coming up with your unique answers to those questions. The methodology to achieve this is expressed in the online courses I referenced above.

I have no illusions that I’m the only one with a new way to plan for retirement. My inspiration for this post came from something that appeared in my inbox recently.

The old way and the new way inevitably involves money. For years I’ve used the phrase that in 21^st century America, life with more money is better than life with less money. The challenge for so many of us is how to make that happen.

What appeared in my inbox was written by a Jerry Golden, an advisor with a firm called Golden Retirement Advisors Inc. I’ve never met him, know very little about his skill sets, but appreciate the words he expressed and which I share here.

Here’s what caught my attention: “…by properly allocating the smartest sources of income, you can create more income with less market risk – for the rest of your life.”.

The language of money used by people like me, insurance agents and investment advisors, creates angst among our listeners because we use words they are not really familiar with. Try listening to an economist explain how capitalism and socialism should interact to better benefit the members of any given society. If you have no familiarity with the words used, you’ll soon give up.

The one point that Jerry Golden used resonated with me. It’s that while most of us in the financial services are honest and willing to act in a fiduciary capacity, we tend to favor what is most familiar to us. It results in us supplying limited options to our clients. We’re trying to make their money last as long as they do, and are usually convinced we’re doing the absolute best that can be done for them.

Is there a better way to set this up in the first place? Course #3 at my online school presents a couple of lesson videos that talk about specific programs that help someone come up with important metrics to use when getting ready for retirement. I think Golden Retirement Inc. has come up with a legitimate addition to that list.

It’s a free software application on the web that allows someone to focus on income allocation for your retirement savings accounts as opposed to asset allocation. This shifts the emphasis on how to best position your money across various platforms instead of various asset classes.

In this scenario, you are choosing to assign your money to sources of income such as dividends, interest, annuity payments, and withdrawals. I think it has a lot of promise. I plan to dig deeper and perhaps take advantage of it myself. I’ll let you know.

Tony Kendzior \ 08 AUG 2019