The Guided Retirement Show

In our previous podcast episode, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® Bud Kasper, Jason Newcomer and I discussed the differences between ETFs and mutual funds to help you truly understand which product is best for your portfolio. If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, please check out episode 12 before you listen to this one. Today, we continue our deep dive into this topic. You'll learn how to decipher t...

Many investors have had questions lately about the difference between mutual funds and ETFs: why choose one over the other? Are they the same? What differentiates these two products, why are there so many offerings that appear to be so similar, and which is the best choice for my portfolio, especially as I approach retirement? To help answer this question, I'm joined today by Bud Kasper and Jason...

There's a lot that you need to understand before you set out to build your own retirement portfolio. In the first part of my conversation with Brad Kasper (episode 10), we had a big-picture discussion of what makes a portfolio successful, the dangers of emotional investing, and why math and data will always beat attempting to time the markets. If you haven't already, go listen to that episode firs...

When it comes to retiring, nothing matters more than building a portfolio that allows you to achieve your goals, and no one knows this better than Brad Kasper. As the president of LSA Portfolio Analytics, Brad Kasper helps 440 financial advisors manage over $8.5 billion in assets by building better portfolios for his clients, working directly with them instead of tying into client assets. He belie...

In Part One of my conversation with Barber Financial Group estate planning attorneys Garrett Griffin and Jason Salinardi, we discussed the basics of wills, estate planning, and the tricky legal situations families and beneficiaries can find themselves in after you die or become incapacitated. Check out Part 1 (episode 8) if you haven't yet - I highly recommend you do before listening to Part 2. To...

One thing is certain: at some point in time, all of us won't be alive on this Earth. This means that we all need proper estate plans. Many people, however, fail to set their estate plans up correctly, keep them up to date, or even title their assets properly - and as many as 60% of Americans don't have a plan at all. That's why today, we're diving deep into the very basics of estate planning. I'm...

In our previous episode, certified Medicare specialist Tom Allen and I discussed what Medicare actually is and what it's designed to do. If you haven't listened to Part 1 (episode 6), I strongly recommend you do so now. There are so many nuances to health insurance, and it's very easy to get caught in financially devastating traps if you aren't careful. That's why today, in the second part of our...

For many retiring seniors, Medicare is super confusing. There are lots of misconceptions about how it works, how supplements work, and what you should be doing in your retirement years to ensure that you're covered. Tom Allen is a Medicare and supplemental insurance expert. Every year, he stays on top of the latest and greatest in this extraordinary complex field, and knows how to talk about it in...

You don't have to read stories about people like Alan Stanford and Bernie Madoff or The Wolf of Wall Street to learn about scams and abuses in the financial services industry. In fact, fraud and abuse often hits much closer to home, and the growing senior population all over the world gets more likely to be taken advantage of with every passing year. Over $3 billion is reported as lost to scammers...

When many people build their financial plans, they only envision an ideal retirement where nothing goes wrong. They assume they're going to live long, happy, healthy lives, that nothing's ever going to get in their way, and that the future is going to go exactly to plan. Unfortunately, this rarely proves to be the case - and retirement plans built on this fantasy often don't address countless "wha...

Why do we do what we do? What motivates us? These are big questions - and they apply just as much to financial services as they do everything else in our lives. Brie Williams, the Vice President of State Street Global Advisors , has dedicated her career to helping financial advisory firms facilitate efficiency and growth beyond asset management. She's passionate about helping people achieve better...

Last week, CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® and CPA JoAnn Huber and I kicked off the podcast with a discussion about the differences between the IRA and the Roth IRA. However, we barely scratched the surface, and if you're feeling confused after listening to Part 1 of our conversation, that's okay. This is one of the most important financial decisions you will make on the road to retirement. It's also...

For many people, the 401(k) is their largest asset. However, there are several different types of 401(k) plans, each of which follows a different series of rules and regulations. Choosing the wrong type of 401(k) can have significant consequences in retirement - and can drastically affect your quality of life for years to come. To make matters worse, when a typical financial advisor tells you abou...