If you’ve listened to this podcast much, you know that I’m a big fan of fee-only financial planning. It’s the only way I know to make sure that you’re getting unbiased advice, not sales pitches for commission-based products.
For the longest time, I’ve wanted to interview my own financial planner for a story. Debbie Wise has been a leading proponent of fee-only, holistic planning for years, and we have a lot of lively, fun conversations about everything going on in the business. Debbie always has great observations and thoughts to share. So, this week she joins me on the podcast.
Debbie and I discuss:
How my wife and I decided to hire a planner, and how we found her firm
How our retirement plan changed after we hired Debbie
How Wise Planning assesses new clients' retirement plans and the biggest mistakes Debbie sees clients making when they first walk through the door
How her planning practice has evolved over time
A few areas where we don't agree
Who needs a financial planner - and who doesn't?
Hope you enjoy the podcast - to listen, click the player icon at the top of this page.
Next week: Original Medicare or Medicare Advantage?
Newsletter subscribers will receive the latest in my series of retirement guides next week - how to make the choice between Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage?
This is the most basic decision you’ll make about health insurance at the point of retirement, and it’s an important one. Advantage plans can save you money in some cases, but Original Medicare remains the gold standard from the standpoint of flexible access to providers and predictability of total costs.
Why subscribe?
“Why do you charge for your newsletter - isn’t everything on the internet free?”
I get this question often, so I thought I’d take a minute this week to answer.
You know the old saying, “there’s no free lunch.” What’s not free when it comes to free personal finance information on the internet?
Let’s start with this: no one in the retirement and personal finance marketplace creates content just for the fun of it - there always is a commercial motive. Sometimes that’s obvious - you’ll see advertising running in a newsletter or a podcast. I don’t accept advertising for a couple reasons. First, it could create a conflict of interest for me as a journalist covering this space. If I accepted direct payment, let’s say, from a mutual fund company that I cover in articles I write for news outlets like Reuters or the New York Times - that’s a conflict, or it creates the appearance of a conflict. Beyond that, I don’t want to deliver advertising to you for financial products that I don’t think are particularly good deals for my listeners. And, there are lots of them out there.
Sometimes the not-free lunch is more subtle. There are loads of radio and tv shows, podcasts and newsletter hosted by people positioning themselves as financial gurus. They don’t make money from their media products per se. The programs are sales vehicles aimed at bringing you in the door to trade stocks, buy annuities or worse. In many cases, the radio and tv shows air on blocks of time the hosts buy from the stations. Literally, they are advertisements - masquerading as programming.
So, doing a subscription newsletter makes it easy for me to cover what I think matters on retirement and aging, free of any possible conflicts, or the appearance of conflict. It’s not free to subscribe, but it’s not expensive. My aim is to deliver ideas, suggestions and concepts that will help improve your financial picture and retirement in ways that pay off far beyond paying a few dollars a month for the newsletter.
This is a listener-supported project, so please consider subscribing.
The podcast is part of the subscription RetirementRevised newsletter. Subscribers have access to all the podcasts, plus my series of retirement guides on key challenges in retirement. Each guide is paired with a podcast interview with an expert on the topic; the series already covers Social Security claiming and the transition to Medicare, and how to hire a financial planner. Next week, I’ll be publishing anew guide comparing Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage. For a sample, check out the recently-published guide to the cost of healthcare in retirement, featuring a podcast interview with retirement educator and actuary Steve Vernon.
You can subscribe by clicking the little green “subscribe now” link at the bottom of this page, or by visiting RetirementRevised.com. And if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher, I hope you’ll leave a review and comment to let me know what you think.
What does a financial journalist talk about with his own financial planner?