What Could Go Wrong?

You can be confident when you’ve carefully considered what could go wrong and are prepared for it. To give you confidence, a financial plan needs to be tested against all kinds of adverse scenarios.

Thinking about what could go wrong, you should ask yourselves what would happen if:

You Are Unsure What You Can Safely Spend

During your working life, saving money offers tangible proof that you’re spending less than you make. However, in retirement, possibly for the first time, you will spend money and you won’t be earning any. While you will have Social Security and may have a pension plan or benefit plan through work, you will have entered a new chapter, one where you will need to have a very good sense of the consequences of your spending. You should know what you can safely spend regardless of how long you live.

Your Health Fails You

One clients frequently say that they don’t want to be a burden to their children and that they want to remain independent as long as they can. More and more this discussion has come to include the subject of health care costs during retirement and, particularly, the cost of entering a care facility full time. It is important to have a strategy in place that prevents this from being financially catastrophic to you or your children

Bear Market at Retirement

As many people have recently learned, it’s very scary to retire and then see asset values drop precipitously. You should know how you would adjust to a bear market in retirement. Moreover, before you retire, you should have a strong sense of how working an extra year or years or, conversely, retiring early would affect you in this ‘bear market at retirement’ scenario.

You Live Longer Than Expected—The Mixed Blessing

It is a blessing to live a long rich life. However, clients frequently tell us they don’t want to live beyond good health. This is particularly true of clients who are taking care of elderly parents. You should have the documents in place to empower those who love you to act on your wishes.

Give us a call and see if Goostree Financial Group is a “fit.”