Rethinking your retirement plan? What were your original retirement goals?

Joe Beckford, wealth advisor, and CFP®, at Goodwin Investment Advisory, acknowledges your current concerns if you are in your retirement phase of life. Retirement of course looks different for everybody. At GIA we encourage our clients to retire as soon as possible and pursue more meaningful work. Joe describes this as, “a purposeful sunset career, and what that means is we want you to do something that energizes you or something that gives you joy, or something that gives you meaning and purpose and helps you to maintain that feeling of vitality that you had in your working years. We want you to feel that you’re part of something bigger than yourself.” This is our goal for you, to help you reach your goals and feel fulfilled in your retirement years.

What do I do when the market drops?

Over the past few months, the market has been pretty volatile and 2022 has been a bit rocky, to say the least. Thank goodness the market is currently swinging the pendulum back the other way and this is good news, but no matter what is going on with the market we don’t want you to freak out. But, the truth of the matter is when the market drops as low as it did recently, it does lead people to start freaking out and asking questions like, 

“Do I need to go back to work?”

“Do I need to make any changes to my portfolio or plan?”

“Do I need to sell out of my investments and stop the bleeding?”

Joe’s response here is timeless as he states “I would just encourage you to take a big, deep breath and…..  pause…… and ask yourself to remember where you began on this journey and to look back and be proud of how far you have come.”

Take some time to feel gratitude for the journey you are on and where you have come from, and remind yourself of where you are going, keeping your sights with the end in mind. It is always good to acknowledge and celebrate your milestones along the way. Don’t let the current market environment rob your joy, change your purpose, and ultimately change your destination. 

Do I need to make adjustments to my retirement plan?

You might need to make adjustments to your investment accounts, and when the market drops it could affect your timing a little bit, but that’s gonna be dependent on what your current plan is. At GIA, we care about our clients’ individualized goals and want to make sure our clients have a plan and are continuously updating that plan with their advisor. We want you to have confidence in your plan and make adjustments along the way that help you stay aligned with your retirement goals. Are you confident in your current retirement plan? Do you need to talk to an advisor to make some adjustments to feel more secure and comfortable? The answer is, potentially. This goes back to your time horizon, goals, and the current market conditions as it is always fluctuating (hopefully in the future it’s not as volatile as it has been in 2022). We know most of our clients hire us because – really they’re hiring us to provide confidence in their financial plan and manage their investments so that they can go out and live that purposeful life that they have imagined. This is our hope for you as well!

If you do not currently have a retirement plan or just someone else to talk to about your financial goals, we would love to hear from you. Our process is a brief intro call with one of our consultants who would love to get to know your story and see how we can help guide you to reaching your financial goals. Then, after that initial call, you will sit down with one of our wealth advisors for a free 90-minute consultation where a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ will share our values, our investment philosophy, and our goodLife pyramid™ that addresses all the areas of your life and listens to your specific goals. Then, if you like what you hear and feel comfortable trusting us, next we schedule a second meeting we call the engagement meeting, where you become part of our client family and that is truly what you are — and we send you our promise letter and what we commit to you and your family.