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Episode 1.01 Moshe Milevsky on the new retirement reality
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Moshe Milevsky is a professor of finance at York University in Canada. He’s an author and leading authority on the intersection of wealth management, financial mathematics, and insurance.
Professor Milevsky talks about the fundamental shifts in retirement planning and why it’s no longer simply a math problem to be solved, how he feels about the 4% withdrawal strategy for retirement income, and why he doesn’t like the idea of choosing a retirement date.
Go to Moshe Milevsky's website.
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The Allianz consumer study referenced in this episode is the Allianz 2023 Annual Retirement Study, an online survey conducted in February and March 2023 with a nationally representative sample of 1,000 individuals age 25+ in the contiguous U.S. with an annual household income of $50k+ (single) / $75k+ (married/partnered) OR investable assets of $150k+.
Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America (Allianz) and Allianz Life Financial Services LLC are not affiliated with our podcast guest. The guest's website is being provided as a service to you. Opinions expressed by the podcast guests are not necessarily those of Allianz or its affiliates. Please note that the information and opinions are provided by third parties and sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed. The information is not intended to be used as the sole basis for financial decisions, nor should it be construed as advice designed to meet the particular needs of an individual’s situation.
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Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America (Allianz) does not provide financial planning services.
This content is for general educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide fiduciary, tax, or legal advice and cannot be used to avoid tax penalties; nor is it intended to market, promote, or recommend any tax plan or arrangement. Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, its affiliates, and their employees and representatives do not give legal or tax advice or advice related to Social Security or Medicare. Customers are encouraged to consult with their own legal, tax, and financial professionals for specific advice or product recommendations, or the Social Security Administration (SSA) office for their particular situation.
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Transcript
Introduction to Retirement Landscape
00:00:02
Speaker
Retirements are changing. The financial industry is changing. What about you? Welcome to Rebuilding Retirement, a podcast series from Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America.
Changes and Challenges in Financial Industry
00:00:12
Speaker
For those of us in the financial industry, we're at the intersection of a number of changes, dramatic changes, related to American retirements. There are new challenges, new risk, and new technology, even new attitudes about retirement. So in this podcast, we're going to talk about ways of navigating this new reality with your clients.
Travis Walker's Financial Industry Insights
00:00:30
Speaker
Hi, my name is Travis Walker and I've worked in the financial industry for more than 15 years, starting in suitability and progressing to sales and relationship management. In my role at Allianz Life, I've met with financial professionals across the country, I've talked to you and I've heard your stories, and we've heard from clients too. Allianz has done a lot of consumer research, so we have a good idea of what you're up against.
00:00:54
Speaker
Here are just two data points. More than half of consumers are reluctant to invest in the market in the near future. And 40% say they don't have a financial plan for retirement. And we'll just figure it out when they get there. Statistics like that make it clear that financial professionals are more important now than ever before. So in this series, I'll be talking to thought leaders and innovators for a closer look at how retirements and the financial industry are evolving, and frankly, need to evolve.
00:01:21
Speaker
and today we're going to start by setting the table for all the discussions ahead. My guest is Moshe Malefsky, a professor of finance at York University in Toronto. He's published 17 books and dozens of papers on retirement and finance, so he's an experienced guide to help us explore this new retirement reality.
Rethinking Retirement: Beyond Math
00:01:40
Speaker
In our conversation, Professor Molesky talks about why he no longer views retirement as a math problem to be solved, how he feels about the 4% withdrawal strategy for retirement income, and why he doesn't like the idea of choosing a retirement date.
00:01:55
Speaker
You're going to come away from this interview with a better understanding of the issues and I hope feeling energized about the way forward. Moshe, thanks for joining us. Let's start with how you personally think about retirement. You've said that you used to view retirement as a mathematical problem to be solved, like retirement is a financial equation. How do you view retirement now and how did that change come about?
00:02:19
Speaker
Well, just in terms of background, I've been at this for at least 25 years now. I started in graduate school in the 1990s looking at this. I was studying mathematics and finance and economics. And at the time, some of my supervisors suggested to me that since you're interested in mathematics as well as finance and you're
00:02:39
Speaker
My mother's a gerontologist, so I was always sensitive to older people issues. They said, hey, why don't you try to solve retirement? Why don't you solve the retirement problem? And at the time, I thought that retirement really was about how much money do you need so that it lasts for the rest of your life? Or how much can you afford to withdraw so that it lasts forever? Or what account should you withdraw from?
00:03:04
Speaker
so that you're most tax efficient. To me, for many years, that was what retirement was about.
Decumulation and Broader Retirement Challenges
00:03:11
Speaker
Retirement was about solving a mathematical problem or solving a mathematical equation. It's only recently, and especially as I get older myself, that I've come to realize that what I was working on, what I was solving, wasn't retirement. I was solving something within retirement which is known as de-cumulation.
00:03:27
Speaker
How do you decumulate? How do you draw your money in a way that's efficient and tax efficient and last? And how much annuities should you have in the portfolio? Decumulation is a much smaller part of a very large problem, which is how do I manage all of the societal problems around retirement? What do I do with all that free time? How do I deal with healthcare? How do I deal with medical risks? How do I deal with family relations? How do I deal with estate planning?
00:03:54
Speaker
All of that's part of retirement and it's not necessarily mathematical. Initially, it was a very, to me, mathematical journey. With time, I've realized you need to know more about gerontology and psychology and certainly have a social work understanding. I'm not sure if I've answered your question, but that's my journey of how I came to realize it's not just mathematics. It's much more than math.
00:04:18
Speaker
I get exactly where you're coming from, so thanks for that. This series is all about helping financial professionals navigate a new reality with their clients. What about retirement is so different that it feels like the game has changed?
Complexity in Financial Solutions
00:04:33
Speaker
So you know, once again, and Travis, I think I'm going to bore you with a number of times I'm going to say during the next hour, I'm going to talk about decumulation, and I'm going to differentiate it from retirement. I think that because retirement is such a multifaceted problem,
00:04:48
Speaker
yes there's mathematics but there's also psychology and there's the social aspect and there's the family dynamics i think what is changed is that the complexity of the number of financial solutions out there and the financial strategies or products
00:05:04
Speaker
means that the advisor needs to help an individual understand what their options are, let alone what the optimal strategy is, whereas 30 or 40 years ago, there just weren't that many choices and there weren't that many decisions and maybe someone could navigate it themselves. Now, it's just become way too complicated to navigate it yourself on the de-cumulation side and I think that's one of the things that's changed too many options.
00:05:33
Speaker
for every generation, retirement is new to them. So what makes this moment in time different? I mean, I know you said, you know, so much choice is out there. Can't expand on that. Is there something else that makes it a little different for this generation? I also think that, you know, in the past, work was very unpleasant.
00:05:52
Speaker
Let's go back to the 19th century or the 18th century, the Victorian workhouses. Nobody came home after a full day of work in the factories or the workhouses. That was a lot of fun today. I was really intellectually enjoyable. I discussed with my colleagues. Obviously, the word retirement meant, when can I stop doing that horrible unpleasant stuff so that I can actually have some fun? Nowadays, there's a very large group of people that, you know what?
00:06:21
Speaker
They don't necessarily hate what they do. They've found some sort of balance, they enjoy it, and they would like to continue doing it for as long as they're mentally able to. They don't necessarily want to seize all activity and head out to the golf course. They might want to do more of that, but they don't necessarily want to seize activity. That's just one aspect in which retirement planning has changed.
Evolving Nature of Retirement Work
00:06:43
Speaker
Age 65 doesn't mean you stay home for the rest of your life anymore.
00:06:48
Speaker
Yeah, well, because the rest of your life could be 30 years at age 65 these days, whereas before, not so much. Next thing is kind of a three-parter. So if we need to come back to it to remind you where we started, please just tab me and let me know that's the case. But I want to ask one, what do you see as the main dynamics changing retirement for Americans? What do you see as unchanged? And then how do financial professionals fit into this new reality?
00:07:15
Speaker
Well, I think there are many ways in which things have changed. I think healthcare and the awareness of health heterogeneity. You can be 60 years old and in absolute perfect health with longevity, as you pointed out, of 40 years. And you can have someone who's 60 years old chronologically, and when you take a look at their health, their biological age, which is just another proxy for health, is they're 80 from a health point of view.
00:07:43
Speaker
There's 60 chronologically, but their health puts them in the 80 category. They're not looking at as much of longevity as the 30 or 40 years, and they know it now. In the past, there was this vague notion, he's in good health, she's not in good health. Now, you can get a metric for it. You can quantify. Your life expectancy is 37 years. What do you plan to do with the rest of your life?
00:08:07
Speaker
So I think just the awareness of health and longevity heterogeneity is one of the many things that have changed. I think the greater awareness of the fact that you don't necessarily have to seize all activity and retire completely. It's not a binary zero one variable.
00:08:25
Speaker
I work, I work, I work, and then I stop and then I don't work. How much labor do you still want to do as you move into your advanced age? Companies are more flexible that way, certainly the investment environment. Those are things that have changed. They did not exist in the past. The gig economy, the working from home, you don't necessarily have to travel to do that.
00:08:46
Speaker
You can work from anywhere. You can retire and live in Baja California and do part work, even though you are redundant. Those things have changed. I think what has not changed is the fact that we are aware of the fact that as we age, we're able to do less. I don't think that that's changed. I think the concern as we get older of what we still want to do while we're around, the limited length of life and then
00:09:14
Speaker
how we fill the time in our day. I don't think that's changed very much. And the desire, the human desire to have guarantees, even though they're tough to make, the human desire that I will be taken care of for the rest of my life as long as I live. That's a human aspect that goes back hundreds, if not thousands of years. I'm getting older, can't work as much as I used to. I want to make sure that I have enough for as long as I live. That's a concern that has been with us for millennia, not just centuries.
00:09:43
Speaker
Yeah, since time immemorial. And so how do financial professionals fit into that new reality? If they know what you know, and they have to address that knowing what's changed, what hasn't changed, you know, what role do they play in that? You know, I think that there are two aspects to this, you know, on the one hand, and I'll start on a rather pessimistic note, you can't be a jack of all trades.
00:10:05
Speaker
Sure. You can't wake up as a financial advisor and say, well, I'm going to become a gerontologist overnight. And you know, while I'm at it, I'll become an expert on social work and then, you know, family dynamics will be my expertise or even something like social security. You know, it is a
00:10:21
Speaker
complex mechanism to decide when do you claim and who should claim. You can't become an expert on social security overnight, even though in some sense, it's purely decumulation. Know your limits, know your limits, and know the system limits. You may not have the software to be able to do that.
00:10:38
Speaker
On the one hand, you can't do that. On the other hand, I think that there has to be an awareness that decumulation is complex and the tools that you used in the past to help people manage their financial affairs aren't going to be sufficient. Another way that I try to explain this is there's accumulation. I'm accumulating wealth to get to retirement. I get to the top of the mountain and I have a sum of money. Then there's decumulation where I got to get down. I got to draw down.
00:11:06
Speaker
The accumulation problem is rather simple when it comes to investments. I'm accumulating wealth. What's the right asset allocation? Or I'm accumulating wealth. How should I diversify my investments? The answer isn't that complex.
00:11:23
Speaker
Make sure you're diversified broadly. Make sure you don't have too much stocks and too much bonds. I sometimes joke, you know, if I'm in an elevator and somebody says to me, you know, I'm 40 years old, what should I do with my money? What should I do with my 401k? I'm 40 years. What should I do? I just need three floors.
00:11:40
Speaker
60-40 stocks and bonds diversify. Three floors later, we're done. I mean, what more can you tell them? Diversify, low cost, balance, and get back to work. Do what you love. Somebody comes to me not at 40, somebody comes to me at 70. I'm in an elevator and at 70, they say, hey, I'm 70 years old facing RMD. What should I do with my money?
00:12:03
Speaker
I can't do it in three floors. That's a very, I mean, I got to be at the Burj al Khalifa, you know, it's 140 floors. But that is a very complicated, you know, is it an attack sheltered account? Is it not? Is it Roth? Is it IRA? Did you start social security? What's your spouse's situation? Do you have any annuities? What's your driven engra- I mean, it's just so much is going on.
00:12:23
Speaker
That's the new reality that financial advisors have to be aware of. And because there's so much going on, you've got to limit yourself to that as opposed to trying to become an expert on everything else. And it means you have to be focused more on satisfying the groups that you have. This business of, well, I want to grow my business. I want to have double the clients. I want to have triple the assets. Lovely. The assets that you have already, you better pay a lot more attention to because it's going to require more work.
00:12:50
Speaker
In talking about the financial tools and accumulation, you did mention a couple things and that leads perfectly into the next question here. How do long-standing rules of thumb for retirement fit into this new retirement reality? Like comprising a retirement portfolio of 60% stocks and 40% bonds or what about the 4% withdrawal strategy for retirement income? How do things like that, those long-standing rules fit into the retirement
00:13:22
Speaker
It's interesting on a brief historical note. As I said, I was a graduate student in the 1990s and I had already been writing articles on decumulation in the early 1990s. That was when the famous 4% article came out, this idea that we should spend 4% I think was published in 1992. I had written something about decumulation and I looked at that and I said, yeah, that's not going to last. That 4%, that's not going to, come on.
00:13:46
Speaker
That's too simplistic. Here we are 40 years later or 30 years later and it's taken over. I think 60-40 has legitimacy. 60-40, you have a balance. You don't have fully stocks. You don't have fully bonds. You never really know. For most of the time, they're counter cyclical. I think that has legs. It has scientific basis
00:14:11
Speaker
It will still be used for very long periods of time even in decumulation. I think the idea of a balanced portfolio. I think the 4% rule is problematic as a normative tool to say, you should withdraw 4%. First of all, the world has changed dramatically in the last 30, 35 years since that rule came into effect.
00:14:32
Speaker
I think it completely ignores longevity risk. There is absolutely no awareness that you can be in very good health or you can be in poor health and that's gonna affect longevity. And unfortunately, and to me, this is the biggest concern, the 4% rule leaves no room for annuities. There's no way to see how an annuity improves your outcome in retirement if you're using a 4% rule. It's like a thermometer that's not capturing the wind that's blowing.
00:15:01
Speaker
You know, it's giving you a great temperature read, but, you know, lovely balmy 72 degrees, but there is so much wind that I'm just going to be knocked right into the ocean, but it's 72 degrees. And I think that's the sort of, you know, 4% rule. Yeah. It sounds like it's, you know, seems reasonable. And I think that there are certain things that lose out from that. And I think that it overemphasizes asset allocation and, you know, it was a spend down rates. So the way I like to say this, and, you know,
00:15:31
Speaker
It's a great conversation starter. It's like sitting down with someone at dinner and starting the conversation with, wow, those Raiders. Did you see them over the weekend? Finally. That's a conversation starter. You can't spend the entire dinner talking about Green Bay versus the Raiders. I think it's the same idea. The 4% rule, great start to a conversation about retirement, but at some point, it's got to get serious and 4% isn't going to be.
00:15:59
Speaker
For a long time, and you alluded to this earlier, you know, retirement men leaving the workforce and drawing down on your saved assets. And those two don't necessarily happen at the same time. And I know that you look beyond the number, you look beyond, you know, decumulation, and again, the kind of quality of life and everything else that goes into retirement. But in looking at that, now when you're talking about retirement, you know,
00:16:25
Speaker
what does that mean to you when thinking about leaving the workforce and drawing down things like that? Yeah. So, you know, with the understanding that we want to differentiate, we want to break apart the link between decumulation or retirement, we want to recognize that those are two very different
Decumulation vs Full Retirement
00:16:41
Speaker
things. I would say that for me personally, I have no intention of retiring 100% from the labor force.
00:16:50
Speaker
I will continue teaching and lecturing in a reduced scale for as long as I possibly can, until they just drag me out. And they say, look, he's completely lost his mind. He has nothing to say. Get him out of the classroom. Decumulation, though, drawing down of assets, I plan to start in my mid-60s because I am tax aware. Gotcha.
00:17:10
Speaker
And I want to start withdrawing. I want to decumulate. So I will begin decumulating much, much earlier than I begin retiring. I will retire later than I decumulate. And I think it's important for people to understand that for many of those out there that say, I'm never going to retire. I love, I have no idea. Yeah, but you're going to have to accumulate.
00:17:30
Speaker
You're going to have to accumulate. So have a conversation with a financial advisor. Even if you have no intention of retiring, you do need to accumulate because at some point you do turn on social security. At some point you do have pension and annuity income. You're going to need some guidance on how to do that. Even though we respect the fact you want to go into the office until you're 90.
00:17:50
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. No, so in answering that, you kind of answer the other question of how that change would affect financial professionals and how they would work with clients because they do need to be aware of that of a person, like you said, not necessarily taking their foot off the gas and just walking off into the sunset retired.
Unplanned Retirement Factors
00:18:07
Speaker
I know that you don't like the idea of picking a retirement date. And I think you've explained that, but I'll ask directly, why is that exactly?
00:18:15
Speaker
Well, I think that many people leave the workforce, not by choice. I don't have the specific number in my head. But if you take a look at people that you and I would agree are retired, very rarely was it something a date that was picked in advance that they got closer to and they realized, you know, there's a pandemic
00:18:36
Speaker
and they were forced to do something that eventually led to their retirement. They had a health shock, a layoff, a merger, an acquisition. If I can use a fancy term here, retirement is less deterministic and more stochastic than you think, which is a fancy way of saying,
00:18:55
Speaker
Many, many people move into the less work phase, not by choice, but because something forced it upon them. So this notion that you pick a date and that is the date, let alone 65, which is a relic of 130 years ago. Bismarck in Germany sets up a pension system. You need to pick a date. What is the age? Is it 70? Is it 60?
00:19:15
Speaker
Why are we even using that number? That number is meaningless when longevity is in the 90s. What does that number mean? I'm against picking a date and saying, that's when everything's going to happen, given all the uncertainty that takes place in the world. Decumulation, though. When do you start to plan to decumulate?
00:19:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's easier because there are tax rules that force us to do certain things at certain ages. And if you wait to 70, you'll get more Social Security. You take it at 60, you get less. So they're age gearing and fixing ages for your financial plan. That makes sense. And once again, I would encourage advisors, stop talking to people about retirement. There's a lot of stuff going on. Focus more on your expertise, decumulation.
00:19:56
Speaker
How has that role changed for financial professionals? If they're going to consider some of the things you're talking about, I think it's in some ways kind of even easier just to think about the numbers and accumulation and that's just fine, kind of set it, forget it. But what you're talking about goes far beyond that. How does that change for a financial professional going forward?
00:20:17
Speaker
I think financial professionals need to have a broader rolodex of contacts than they did in the past. I think once they recognize that they will never become experts in Alzheimer's and dementia, and you will need that as you get to the end of the life cycle. If you're fortunate enough to get to your 90s, if you get lucky, you get into the tail to the distribution, you're going to have to deal with cognitive decline.
00:20:41
Speaker
You will. And if you are an advisor to someone who is in their 80s and 90s, your client will have to deal. But you're not gonna become an expert in Alzheimer's and dementia and cognitive decline. Make sure you know people who are so that you can put your clients quickly into contact with someone who is. You have to start thinking of yourself as a concierge at a top-end hotel. You may not know where to get the best dinner, but you better know somebody who does.
00:21:11
Speaker
You may not know what to get. You got to be one step removed. I think that that's part of the value out of the advisors. Hey, we have someone here. As soon as the advisor thinks that they can start to become an expert in cognitive decline, it's like, no. Hey, you were a stockbroker 15 years ago. Now you're suddenly a biogerontologist. Come on. It's going to be surface deep knowledge.
00:21:37
Speaker
But get a network of people and know who to put them in contact with and I think that's where your value add is. Know the people to put your client in contact with. Thinking about adjusting the financial strategy and kind of the number of financial decisions and how to make them as you age. I go to a lot of conferences and meetings and for the first time ever this year, someone actually did do a presentation that I've seen about
00:22:04
Speaker
cognitive decline and all that entails and the decisions that will have to be made and scrambling about where you're going to get your money from and who's got power returning, all the sort of things that go into that with cognitive decline as people are living early. I think you may be out front on something that a lot of people aren't giving a ton of consideration to.
00:22:24
Speaker
When we think about what risk to retirement of a financial professional should be paying attention to right now when creating retirement plans for clients, I'm assuming that fits into it. What other things are you thinking about that they should look at in terms of risk when creating this plan?
00:22:43
Speaker
We've certainly talked about health risk and the multi-dimensional aspects of health risk, so I won't overemphasize that. I think the other risks that you certainly want to have conversations around are about the economic environment and the geopolitical environment and how that is going to affect your financial plan.
00:23:04
Speaker
I think that software today and specifically financial planning software that a lot of advisors rely on, a lot of the broker dealers and RIAs rely on, create this false sense of determinism for the future that you have to build resilience towards being wrong. Let me be specific about it. You have software that's projecting out for the next 30 years what your tax rate is going to be.
00:23:35
Speaker
Look at that, Mrs. Smith. In 1997, you'll have $1.3 million. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm 60. You're telling me in 37 years, how do you know who's going to win in college? How do you know what the tax code's going to be? Oh, we assume everything's going to stay the same.
00:23:50
Speaker
wait a minute you're assuming everything stays the same if there's one thing i've learned in the last three years is nothing stays the same so i think that resilience to changes in basic fundamental factors is something that an advisor has to prepare clients for you know that we can call that risk management or we can call it prepare for the unexpected
00:24:09
Speaker
We can call it, make sure that no matter what happens, you're okay, not just the trajectory we're expecting.
Preparing for Financial Uncertainty
00:24:16
Speaker
I think that that's going to be very important in the environment where we don't even understand what currency is going to look like in 20 years. You're telling me, I'm okay for the rest of my life, but I don't know what currency will look like in 15, 20 years from now.
00:24:30
Speaker
Yeah. Modesty. Modesty. And the clients will appreciate the fact that, you know, you're being a little bit more realistic. Like, you know, we really don't know. Given what we know now, we think you'll be okay. Come back in six months. Let's take a look at again. So that being the case, what are some strategies that can help clients mitigate those risks? And then how do we decide about what we budget for and what we ensure? Yeah.
00:24:55
Speaker
So I think the first thing is a scenario analysis instead of a probability analysis. Stop telling people that you'll be OK 97% of the time. Or yeah, we just ran the numbers. You're 99% OK. I think it's the wrong. I mean, this is the analogy I like to explain. Can you imagine you get on a flight, you get on a plane, and you're in New York, you're flying to LA, and the pilot says, look, we believe here at American Airlines in democracy, we want to give our flyers a chance to decide the flight path.
00:25:25
Speaker
We're going to let you decide the flight. Imagine that. The pilot says, we have two flight paths here from New York. We can go south. In this flight path, there is a 99% chance that we will arrive within the hour. There's a 1% chance that we'll arrive 15 minutes late of when we had determined.
00:25:48
Speaker
99 to one. 99 to one. And you listen to, okay, what's the other alternative? And they say, well, we can fly north. And that one, there's a 99.9% chance we'll arrive on time. Ooh, that's good. 99.9. But there's a 0.01% chance we'll never arrive. But 99.99 sounds really, really good. I like 99.99. Yeah, but the alternative is not acceptable. It's not acceptable. So you know what? Let's go south. Let's do the 99. I'll take the 1% delay.
00:26:17
Speaker
But 99.99 sounds good. And I think that a lot of financial planning has gone into that, let's get that number as high as possible. Oh, we allocate this way, we'll get you a couple more percentage points. No, no, no, no, no. It's not about probably, it's about scenarios. If we have an administration that heavily tax your IRA, or if you haven't, that changes tax rates, and now federally you got to pay 50%, will you be okay?
00:26:43
Speaker
No, we won't. So what are we going to do around that instead of giving probabilities that in many cases are hard to really justify. And I don't think that's the way people should make decisions. So I will answer your question with the following Twitter summary scenario analysis is how you prepare for risk management.
Generational Perspectives on Retirement
00:27:00
Speaker
No, I like that. I love your philosophy on this and how you're looking at it a lot more broadly than just accumulating assets here. Right now, retirement planning is focused on boomers. How do you envision retirement strategies varying for Gen Xers, Millennials, and even Gen Z?
00:27:20
Speaker
So you know that is something that I face a lot because my students tend to be more you know the Gen Z Gen X depending on the millennials obviously depending on whether it's MBA or undergraduate students. I think that for many of them the word retirement is a joke.
00:27:40
Speaker
Anybody, if you're 22 years old and you get asked what's your retirement strategy and you still don't know what to study, where are you gonna work, where to live, do you want a family, do you want kids, like retirement, that's like asking, it's seriously like asking someone, so if you're given a thought to your burial plot, cremation or burial, what have you decided? I'm 22, like it's just way too early, like this idea of retirement, come on, this is not the wrong,
00:28:09
Speaker
Have you thought about your future? Are you provisioning for the uncertain future? Are you setting yourself up for stability in your financial plan? Yeah, that kind of resonates with someone in that age group. But the word retirement, it becomes a joke and we have to understand that we hear the word differently depending on the age group that we're in. For many people at that age group, they do not have a defined benefit pension.
00:28:34
Speaker
No company is offering 25-year-olds, unless you work for government. I wouldn't consider that a company. You're on your own. Provisioning for advanced age, provisioning for a day when you might not be able to work, provisioning
00:28:51
Speaker
I think that's the way to approach it. Creating stability in their spending is the way to do it as opposed to focus on retirement planning. If you're a baby boomer, the word retirement means something to you and you want to use it in conversation. If I'm talking to financial advisors, don't sprinkle the word retirement too much when you're discussing this with a 30-year-old. It's ridiculous. 70-year-old. Yes, absolutely.
00:29:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense. And we always say, oh, it's not a one size fits all. Well, that's, I think the clearest example of not being one size fits all, uh, simply even coming down to a word. And at that point you're correct. Retirement does sound a bit like a joke. All right. So for
00:29:30
Speaker
From a financial professional perspective, Moshe, cutting through the clutter for their client, what are a few things they can do? Just because there's just a laundry list of things out there that are being thrown at them for suggestions. But to get through all that, what are some important things you think financial professionals can do to get down to brass stacks for their clients?
00:29:55
Speaker
Well, I think, you know, if I was giving career advice or if I was coaching a fin pro on what they should be doing, number one is never rest on your laurels. I mean, you cannot simply look back and say, you know, I have been successful and now I can coast in today's environment. It's just like a good athlete continues to train even if they're at the top of their game. I think that financial professionals have to understand that it is very, very dangerous.
00:30:22
Speaker
in this environment to simply sit back and coast and say, well, you know, the next 10 years of my career are smooth sailing because I've made it. I've built it. So simply continuing to be engaged and not to simply say that I've achieved a certain level of success and not now that'll stay there. That's number one. You know, continue continuing education. People view it as a drag and they view it as a requirement. Ah, darn CE credits. I got it. No, it is a very good idea.
00:30:52
Speaker
to continue your education. It's not just to keep FINRA and the SEC or the insurance regulators happy. You want to make sure you're keeping up to date on what's happening out there. I think that's important. I think another aspect that I would emphasize for financial professionals is that get to know your client's human capital. What exactly do they do for a living? It's not just an entry in a spreadsheet.
00:31:16
Speaker
Well, my client makes $172,000 a year and this is what their portfolio looks like. Look beyond the sales and the spreadsheet. What do they exactly do? Do they like what they do? Do they want to stop what they're doing? Sometimes the metrics on the dashboards don't tell us that. Is this someone that would love to work forever but won't be able to because of job impediments? Or is this someone that really wants to stop?
00:31:39
Speaker
Get behind the numbers is what I would strongly urge as part of my learning that it's more than just a mathematical or equation part. I also think that one of the things advisors have to understand is that the tools and the strategies and the products that they learned to help people in accumulation may not be enough in decumulation. Learn about newer products and strategies that are coming out that in the past you might have dismissed because they weren't suitable and appropriate for your clients in that phase of life, your clients are
00:32:09
Speaker
aging, they're moving into decumulation, those things you might want to pay more attention to now, even though in the past you dismissed them. And perhaps rightly so. Now it's time to go back and learn more
Continuous Learning for Financial Professionals
00:32:20
Speaker
about it. So those would be some of the recommendations. Continuing awareness, budget more time in your day to learn. How many hours a day are budgeted to learning new things? I don't even have a budget for that, they'll say. Well, put it in your budget. Learning new things.
00:32:37
Speaker
So, in reducing the number of decisions, right, when you're thinking about retirement and speaking of people getting a little bit older, you know, you're thinking about those strategies. What can financial professionals do to kind of reduce the number of some of the decisions? Because there's going to be a ton of them out there, you know, like you said, the accumulation chief among them, what can they do to kind of narrow that list?
00:32:59
Speaker
Yeah. And Travis, just to emphasize the importance of your question, it is so critical to minimize and reduce those decisions with time. I mean, I'm in my 50s, all of it. I enjoy financial decisions at this stage because I teach it and I enjoy it. I fire up my spreadsheet once a month and I look at my asset allocation and I look at the allocation to European stocks versus Asian stocks. And I'm wondering, hey, the dividend yields are looking nice on the European side. Let's up it. I'm engaged.
00:33:28
Speaker
with financial decisions. I like to think about whether it's better to pay down debt or to take on more. I enjoy making financial decisions at the age of 50. When I hit my 60s, will I continue to enjoy and be able to do that? I think so. I hope so. 75. Now, I'm 20 years from now. 75.
00:33:49
Speaker
Do I really want to fire up that spreadsheet every month and figure out whether the dividend yield on Europe is better than that? I don't know. It's 75. How 85 if I get to 85? Do I want to make that decision? Now let's be honest. Let's imagine I get longevity. I get lucky I'm 95. I'm 95.
00:34:07
Speaker
Do i really want to figure out how much to withdraw this month for my portfolio i'm gonna have other things to do with ninety i want to minimize those financial decisions what i don't think i trust myself let alone that i'm gonna enjoy it then i want it and here's the key word on autopilot.
00:34:24
Speaker
Okay. I want to put my financial affairs on autopilot. I want AI to land that Boeing 747 because the pilot is now 97 years old and I'm not sure I trust their intuition to land that plane. It's a scary runway. So I want it on autopilot, highly reliable autopilot.
00:34:43
Speaker
I want to minimize financial decisions by putting it on autopilot and having products and strategies that by construction are autopilot. You don't have to make any decisions. Every month, there's a check that comes into your account and it's going to last for as long as you live. That's an example of autopilot.
00:35:00
Speaker
Okay, so as we wrap up, just a few final questions for you. What does your ideal day look like in retirement? Right, so I think Travis by now you'll know that to me there is no binary a day in retirement. There is a day in 90% retirement and there's a day in 70% retirement and there's a day in 60% retirement.
00:35:22
Speaker
I'll tell you that the day in 50% retirement is the day where I can spend more time reading, which I obviously enjoy, writing a little bit more, spending more time with family. That would be a day in 50% retirement, a day in 90% retirement, maybe more time on the beach, more time traveling, more time enjoying things that life has to give. Certainly, I envision a day in retirement is spending a lot of time in doctor's offices.
00:35:52
Speaker
It's not ideal, but I have no choice. I'm going to have to do it. But with the recognition that as this stage evolves, there are going to be things I have no choice about. I would say doing more of the things I've always enjoyed doing, but things that I haven't had the time to. But I don't envision any day in my life that will be 100% retirement. I have no doubt that there will never be a point in his life or my life where you point to me and say, he is 100% retired.
00:36:20
Speaker
Not happening. Gotcha. So what's the best thing you've done or are doing to make sure you can achieve that vision for your retirement? And I'm putting retirement in air quotes. Yeah.
00:36:32
Speaker
I think that one of the things for me has been a challenge is to develop interests and hobbies that go beyond work. I'm not proud of this. I consider myself a workaholic and to develop things that I enjoy doing that will last for a period where I'm not 100% engaged with work. Hobbies, interests, things that I enjoy doing with my wife,
00:37:00
Speaker
that maybe in the past i would have done because i didn't see the point in doing it i'm trying to prepare for it the famous roman author sis row i wrote a book on old age very very famous jurists from two thousand years ago he was lamenting that he was getting older and he makes a very interesting point that retirement requires preparation not just for financial reasons
00:37:24
Speaker
but because of what are you going to do? You got to plant that garden years and years before so that you can enjoy the fruits of that garden. He said that the old age, he didn't use the word retirement, he said old age is similar. You got to prepare things that you're going to do in old age. You can't just get to it and say, now what do I do? I think preparing for it is something that is important in terms of activities. What do you plan to do? Yeah, sure.
00:37:49
Speaker
Well, this has been a wonderful conversation. I thank you for your time and it truly has been great for listeners who have enjoyed today's conversation.
00:37:59
Speaker
Where can they find you online? Well, I don't live online, but I have a website, BoschMolevski.com. They can Google it, where a lot of the research and articles and books that I've discussed and written are available. So I would start there for people that want to read more or perhaps hear a little bit more of their snippets of videos there. Yeah. Well, I would encourage them to do it because this has been great for me. Really, a different perspective on how to look at retirement and
00:38:29
Speaker
Honestly, one of the best I've heard. So thank you, Professor Moshe Molesky, so much for your time. Yeah, my pleasure. No question, Professor Molesky gave us a lot to think about in terms of the shifting dynamics of retirement and how the financial industry needs to respond. But one of the biggest takeaways is that now more than ever, Americans could benefit from retirement strategies that can serve more than just finances.
00:38:54
Speaker
As we heard, it's no longer just a math equation to be solved. It's so much more. But we aren't through yet. We've got more episodes to come exploring different aspects of our new retirement reality. We'll get into the role of technology, managing new risks to retirement income, and where the next generation of clients is coming from.
00:39:12
Speaker
and you'll hear from guests like Sally Krawcheck, Joel Bruckenstein, and Suzanne Syracuse. And if you don't know those names, you should, and you will, when you come back for future episodes of Rebuilding Retirement. I'm Travis Walker. Thanks for listening.