I’m 75 and afraid to let my retirement fund dip below $1 million. Am I being too conservative?
It’s a big achievement to amass $1 million for retirement — which is why it can be hard to let it go once you start spending. – Getty Images (please put “Fix My Portfolio” in the subject line). Dear Fix My Portfolio, I always saved and invested for the “long term,” but now I am…
It’s a big achievement to amass $1 million for retirement — which is why it can be hard to let it go once you start spending. – Getty Images
(please put “Fix My Portfolio” in the subject line).
Dear Fix My Portfolio,
I always saved and invested for the “long term,” but now I am 75 and my long term is not so long anymore. I sold a lot of my mostly stock portfolio and invested in CDs and some bond funds, as well as cash and long-term-care insurance for myself and my husband, who is 83. We have no debt and try to live off our Social Security, pension and annuities, only withdrawing from our Roth or IRAs for major expenses like a roof or vacations. Our expenses run $100,000 a year.
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My assets of $1.2 million are now divided half in stocks (much in the “Magnificent Seven” and other tech) and half in fixed-income CDs and cash. I have current and future annuities that now pay $40,000 a year, but will eventually pay another $12,000 in five years and another $12,000 in 10 years. My Security Security is $50,000 a year. I took it at 68½; I had wanted to delay as much as possible, but I didn’t want to spend my savings where I would get below $1 million. That is just a number I want to stay above for my own security and comfort.
My husband’s income ($24,000 a year) and savings ($200,000) are not included in my numbers (We have separate Fidelity and bank accounts.)
My question is: Am I being too aggressive or not aggressive enough with my investments, and if so, how should I revise my portfolio?
Wanting it Both Ways
Dear Ways,
First of all, thank you for filling out our new MarketWatch Retirement Questionnaire as a way to reach us. You gave just the right amount of information to be able to address your concerns, and also to help other people who might be in a similar situation. There are so many out there who hit retirement after saving for their whole lives, and then don’t know how to proceed.
I want to laser-focus on one part of your question, because I think this holds the key to everything for you: “I didn’t want to spend my savings where I would get below $1 million. That is just a number I want to stay above for my own security and comfort.”
This is your risk tolerance, and figuring that out is usually how financial advisers start the planning process in earnest, after getting down all your demographic information and calculating your current balance sheet.
These days, $1 million is an arbitrary number, like getting 10,000 steps or reaching your first $100,000 in savings. Some studies show the magic number for retirement is $1.46 million. It’s not the figure that matters — it’s the feeling it gives you.
In that vein, the standard way to figure out your risk tolerance is to take a quiz of some sort. With an adviser, these are psychological-style assessments where you give your gut responses to certain scenarios. You’re doing your own planning, but you can approximate the process.
The first question on Merrill Lynch’s online risk-tolerance quiz is: “You want to keep at least $100,000 in a certain investment account. A market dip drops the value to $95,000. What’s your reaction?”
Do you buy, sell or do nothing? In your case, all you have to do is multiply that number by 10 to get to your security-blanket number — and then you magically have your answer to your question of whether you are being too aggressive or too conservative.
Adjust your investments
The way you have your investments structured right now is called the “barbell” investment strategy — which MarketWatch called “the new normal” back in 2010 — and it’s a little bit like trying to have it both ways at once. You are heavy on risk on one side (tech stocks) and you’re trying to counterbalance that with really safe picks on the other side (CDs and cash).
What would a middle-of-the-road approach look like? An index fund, most likely, or a series of them — running from tech-heavy funds through various sectors, down to Treasury bond funds or CDs on the safe side. Instead of two heavy ends, you’d try to pull a quarter of the money from each of those extremes and ease it toward the middle.
That’s not to say that your approach is bad. You’re 75 and still have $1.2 million, after all.
But maybe you could be spending a little more if you understood where your need to keep $1 million on hand comes from and how you can get past it as you age. You say your “long term is not so long anymore,” but your lifespan could be 20 to 25 more years, and once you reach the end of that, you can’t take anything with you. You’re well prepared with annuities, Social Security and long-term-care insurance. So what’s on your wish list?
You didn’t mention any children in your questionnaire, so that’s one thing left unknown to us. You could leave your funds to your family and feel pretty good about that — but that should bring you happiness, not anxiety. If they get $950,000, they are not going to be disappointed.
Or you could spend more now. If you’re not a luxury person, then maybe it’s time to give money away. A qualified charitable distribution from your pretax accounts might be the most effective way to maximize your funds; you save on taxes, reduce your future required minimum distributions and you can get pleasure from spending money on a good cause.
Always remember that the money itself is not the goal, so your security doesn’t come from some minimum bank balance. You are the security, and the money is your tool for doing good for yourself and the world. Use it.
You can also join the Retirement conversation in our .
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