Cut Expenses, Retire Sooner

Posted On May 31, 2019 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Retirement Planning /  

While we use robust retirement planning software to carefully consider retirement readiness, many of these scenarios end up strikingly close to the familiar “four percent rule”. The four percent rule suggests that you can start with 4% withdrawals from a diversified portfolio, increase your spending to keep up with inflation, and you are highly likely to have your money last for a full retirement of 30 years or more. (Bengen, 1994, Journal of Financial Planning)

Under the four percent rule, If you have one million dollars, you can retire and withdraw $40,000 a year in the first year. If you need $5,000 a month ($60,000 a year), you would want a nest egg of at least $1.5 million. If your goal is $8,000 a month, you need to start with $2.4 million. 

We spend a lot of time calculating your finish line and trying to figure out how we will get there. Once we have that target dollar amount for your portfolio, then we can work backwards and figure how much you need to save each month, what rate of return you would need, and how long it would take. Is your investment portfolio likely to produce the return you require? If not, should we change your allocation?

What we should be talking about more is How can you move up your finish line? When you reduce your monthly expenses, you can have a smaller nest egg to retire and could consider retiring sooner. In fact, under the four percent rule, for every $1,000 a month you can reduce your needs, we can lower your finish line by $300,000. Think about that! For every $1,000 a month in spending, you need $300,000 in assets! 

If you can trim your monthly budget from $5,000 to $4,000, you’ve just reduced your finish line from $1.5 million to $1.2 million. It’s not my place to tell people to cut their “lifestyle”, but if you come to the conclusion that it is in your best interest to reduce your monthly needs, then we can recalculate your retirement goals and maybe get you started years earlier. 
Cutting your expenses is easier said than done, but let’s start with five key considerations.

1. Determine your fixed expenses and variable expenses. Start with your fixed expenses – those you pay every month. Housing, car payments, insurance, and memberships are key areas to look for savings. Personally, I like to see people enter retirement having paid off their mortgage and being debt free. In many cases, it may be helpful to downsize as well, which can reduce your monthly costs or free up equity to add to your portfolio. Downsizing or relocating often also lowers your taxes, insurance, utilities, and maintenance costs. 

Your house is a liability. It is an ongoing expense. Often, it is your largest expense and therefore the biggest demand on your retirement income needs. (And now 90% of taxpayers don’t itemize and don’t get a tax break for their mortgage interest or property taxes.)

2. Insurance costs are surprisingly different from one company to another. Unfortunately, it does not pay to be loyal to one company. If you’ve had the same home and auto policy for more than five years, you may be able to reduce that cost significantly. If you’d like a referral to an independent agent who can compare top companies for you and make sure you have the right coverage, please send me a reply and I’d be happy to make an introduction.

3. When creating your retirement budget, make sure to include emergencies and set aside cash for maintenance and upkeep of your home and vehicles. Just because you didn’t have any unplanned expenses in the past 12 months doesn’t mean that you can project that budget into the future.

You will need to replace your cars and should plan for this as an ongoing expense. If you can go from being a two or three car family to a one car family in retirement, that could also be a significant saving. If you only need a second car a few days a month, it may make sense to ditch the car and just use Uber when you need it.

Read more: Rethink Your Car Expenses

4. Healthcare is one of the biggest costs in retirement and has been growing at a faster rate than general measures of inflation such as CPI. This can be very tricky for people who want to retire before age 65. If you don’t have a handle on your insurance premiums, typical costs, and potential maximum out-of-pocket expenses, you don’t have an accurate retirement budget.

5. People retire early usually start Social Security as soon as they become eligible, which for most people is age 62. This is not necessarily a good idea to start at the earliest possible date, because if you delay your benefits, they increase by as much as 8% a year. If you have family history and personal health where it’s possible you could live into your 80’s or 90’s, it may be better to wait on Social Security so you can lock in a bigger payment.

Read more: Social Security: It Pays to Wait

Reducing your monthly expenses can significantly shrink the size of the nest egg needed to cover your needs. We will calculate your retirement plan based on your current spending, but I would not suggest basing your finish line on a hypothetical budget. Start making those changes today to make sure that they are really going to work and then we can readjust your plan. 

Read More

Extend Your Car Warranty for Free

Posted On January 3, 2019 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Financial Planning /  

When it comes to saving money, there are two expenses which will make or break your budget: your home and your cars. If you keep those expenses below your means, you will have a surplus to save and invest. That’s how you generate wealth. 

Unexpected car repairs are the worst. You can spend thousands and it feels like you are just flushing your money away. That’s why we love car warranties: they help extinguish our fear of repair bills. For a lot of people, when their car warranty runs out, they want to get a new car because they can’t stand the thought of a catastrophic repair bill. 

But buying a new car every three or four years exposes you to the steepest part of the depreciation curve. Most cars will lose 50 to 60 percent of their value within five years. Owning new cars is trading the mere possibility of car repair bills, which might not happen, for the certainty of significant depreciation, which is inevitable.

Of course, car dealers would love to sell you an extended warranty. It’s one of their most profitable areas. That alone makes me think they are not worth it. You are spending $2,000 to buy a $1,000 warranty. And the insurer probably only pays out 50 to 80 cents in claims for every dollar in premiums it receives. It seems like you would be betting against yourself. 

I don’t usually endorse products or services here in my newsletter, but I came across a benefit which I think many of my readers might enjoy. It’s a way to provide protection against unexpected car repairs. This might allow you to keep your vehicles for longer and then direct more savings into your investment portfolios. (Selfishly, I will make more if my clients have larger investment portfolios, but hopefully that’s a goal we can both agree on!)

There is a company called BG Products which makes fluids for cars and trucks. They make motor oil (including synthetic), transmission fluid, brake fluid, anti-freeze/coolant, steering fluid, etc. BG offers a Lifetime Protection Plan that when you use their product regularly, if that component breaks down, they will reimburse you for the cost of the repair, up to a specific limit.

Best of all, they will cover your car, even if you don’t start using their fluids until 50,000 or 100,000 miles. That means that if you have a car with 80,000 miles, past the manufacturer’s warranty, you can actually add protection to your vehicle today. They offer double the protection if you start before 50,000 miles, so you might want to start sooner if you can. 

There is no limit on miles. As long as you continue to change the fluids within the specified number of miles, your car will be covered. You could keep your car for 300,000 miles and it would still be protected.

Here are the service intervals required for the Lifetime Protection Plan. If your manufacturer suggests more frequent changes, I would follow those instructions. To stay under this protection plan, you need to replace fluids before reaching these limits.

Engine Oil: 10,000 miles

Coolant: 30,000 miles

Transmission Fluid: 30,000 miles

Power Steering: 30,000 miles

Brake Fluid: 30,000 miles

The BG plan will reimburse repairs if these components break, but not for normal wear and tear. You would have to get the repairs done and then submit your receipts for reimbursement, which are subject to the following limits:

Plan 1, started before 50,000 miles: $4,000 coverage

Plan 2: started between 50,001 and 100,000 miles: $2,000 coverage

Full details of covered components HERE.

BG Products are not available in stores, you have to find a shop which uses them. Here in Dallas, I have used M2 Auto Repair, near Love Field. I’ve had a great experience there and can recommend them. If you talk to Eddie, the owner, please tell him I sent you.

If you’re not in the Dallas area, you can find a BG Dealer here. I have not filed a claim with BG, so I cannot vouch for that process, but obviously it is going to be very important to be able to document that you did have the services performed within the mileage limits and that the repairs required were on the specific parts covered by the protection plan. 

It doesn’t cover electronics, which is an increasingly large component in modern cars, but can give you some peace of mind over mechanical failures. If you’ve used BG and had a claim, please send me an email and tell me about your experience. 

I am aware that other fluid makers offer warranties, including Mobil 1, Castrol, and Valvoline. In reviewing their warranty pages, they may offer similar benefits, but I think it may be more difficult to document proof of eligibility, and they don’t cover all of the systems that BG Products covers.

I’d also love to hear from you if you have ever filed a claim with another oil company and what result you received.  Regular maintenance is an important part of keeping your car healthy, and it’s great to see a company stand behind its products. I’m no expert on cars, but I have spent a lot of time looking at spending behavior. Any techniques which can help us spend less over the life of our vehicles will help you achieve your other financial goals. So, even if you don’t end up using the Lifetime Protection Plan, just knowing you were covered may provide you with the extra confidence to keep you car for 150,000 or 200,000 miles.

Read More

How Much Income Do You Need In Retirement?

Posted On January 13, 2018 By Scott Stratton, CFP(R), CFA In Financial Planning /  

Many people significantly underestimate how much income they will need to maintain their lifestyle in retirement. We’re going to point out how people underestimate their needs, explain why a common “rule of thumb” is a poor substitute, and then share our preferred process.

If we begin with the wrong budget, then our withdrawal rates, target nest egg, and portfolio sustainability are all going to be inaccurate, which is very difficult to correct after you’ve retired.

In general, when I ask someone to estimate their monthly financial needs, they use a process of addition. They think of their housing expenses, utilities, taxes, food costs, etc., and try to add those up. Unfortunately, the number many arrive at can be significantly too low, and here’s how I know.

They tell me that they spent $5,000 a month, or $60,000 last year. But I ask how much they made and they tell me $150,000. How much did they save last year? $30,000. To me, that suggests they spent $120,000, not $60,000. If they only spent $60,000, they would have saved more than $30,000. You either spend or save money; if it wasn’t saved it was spent, even if that spending wasn’t discretionary.

Here’s why most people fail with the “addition method” of trying to create a retirement income budget:

  • They don’t include taxes. Taxes don’t go away in retirement; pensions, Social Security (up to 85%), and IRA withdrawals are all taxable as ordinary income.
  • Unplanned expenses such as home repairs, emergencies, or car maintenance can be substantial and fairly regular, if not consistent or predictable.
  • Your health care costs may be much higher in retirement than you anticipate, especially in the later years of retirement.
  • You may finally have time to pursue activities which you did not have time for while working, such as travel, golf, or spoiling your grandchildren. With an additional 40 hours a week available, you will likely be spending money in new ways.

Some financial calculators use a rule of thumb that most retirees will need 75% (or 70-80 percent) of their pre-retirement income. This is called the “replacement rate”. And while there have been a number studies that confirm this 75% estimate as an average, its applicability on an individual basis is poor.

We know for example, that lower income people will need a higher replacement rate than higher income people. That’s because the lower income levels may have had a lower savings rate, a smaller proportion of discretionary spending, and little tax savings in retirement. Higher income workers may have been saving more and find significant tax savings in retirement, and therefore have a lower replacement rate.

Instead of trying to use an addition method or a one-size-fits-all rule of thumb, I’d suggest using subtraction:

  1. Begin with your current income.
  2. Subtract any immediate savings you will experience in retirement, including: the amount you were actually saving and investing each year, payroll taxes (7.65% if a W-2 employee), and work expenses, if significant.
  3. Examine your sources of retirement income and if you calculate any income tax reduction, subtract those savings.
  4. Consider any increases in retirement spending, starting with health care costs and discretionary spending (travel, hobbies, etc.). Add these back to your spending needs.

Unless you are planning to have paid off your mortgage, substantially downsize your house, get rid of a car, or stop eating out, I think most people will initially continue their spending habits in retirement very much the same as they did while they were working. Like everyone else, retirees spend a significant portion of their income on things which they did not want (property tax, income tax, insurance) and on things which were not planned (replacing a roof, medical expenses, etc.).

Underestimating your retirement income needs could lead to some very painful outcomes, such as depleting your nest egg, being forced to downsize, or impoverishing your spouse after you pass away. You have to still plan for occasional expenses, such as replacing a car, home repairs, and emergencies, in a retirement budget.

If you’ve calculated your retirement income needs and your planned budget is significantly less than your pre-retirement income, please be careful. When the number you reached through addition isn’t the same number I reach through subtraction, it’s possible you are not budgeting for some costs which you currently have and are likely to still have in retirement.

Read More