(audience applauding) - Welcome to our financial planning panel. I'm going to very briefly introduce our panelists because you know them all very well. They're all prolific writers and speakers. They have long ties to the Bogle heads. All are current or past Bogle Center board members. They've been frequent, much appreciated speakers at multiple Bogle heads conferences.

And you've seen them a lot over the past two days at multiple sessions, including Bogle heads university on Wednesday. So one sentence each, Christine Benz, director of personal finance and retirement planning at Morningstar. Alan Roth is founder of WealthLogic, an hourly based investment advisory and financial planning firm. I'm obviously jumping around 'cause I didn't look over before I started doing that.

Mike Piper is a CPA, financial advisor, and among his many contributions is the creator of the Open Social Security Calculator. I thought it was interesting that in the Vanguard session, the point that Joel made about a lot of what can contribute so much to outcomes for individuals is on the personal financial planning side, not the investment side.

As Mike was also saying, we talk a lot in this audience about portfolio strategies and allocations in different portfolios, but when it comes down to our individual lives, there's a lot more to that. So to start off, one of the things I wanted to ask you is, this is our first in-person annual meeting in a few years since the COVID pandemic.

It was a global phenomenon that affected all of us in ways from the tragic to the trivial, led a lot of people to make changes in their lives and how they thought about their lives, where they wanted to live, their jobs, their work-life balance. And I'm just wondering if the past few years led you to change any of your thinking about financial planning topics and how you approach questions either in your own lives or for clients.

- Sure, I can start. A couple of areas where I think the pandemic and the experience of the past few years has changed the way I think about things. One is in the realm of, I guess you could kind of call it mindful spending, which Nick Mazzulli touched on in his conversation with Jeff, this idea of being really thoughtful about how you spend your money.

And I do think that the pandemic gave us all a good chance to reflect on, especially the things that we missed in that sort of year from March, 2020 until the vaccines came online and things came back to some version of normalcy. But I know in our own household, my husband and I walked and talked a ton during that time about the things that we missed and frankly, the things that we didn't miss.

So it was just a really great opportunity to reflect on spending. I love that people like Ramit Sethi spend a lot of time talking about this mindful spending idea where you're being really thoughtful about how you're deploying your capital on an ongoing basis. And his point is like, if you're into getting the appetizer, get the appetizer every time.

It's not gonna make a difference. You just have to make some cuts elsewhere to accommodate that. So mindful spending. And then another thing that I've been talking about, thinking about, encouraged mainly by Carl Richards, I would say is time on earth allocation. That there's no more precious or finite resource in our lives.

Forget money for a second. Think about the one thing that we have that is just a non-renewable resource and it is our time on earth allocation. So how are we deploying that time? Carl has created a simple mantra. He spoke to this group via video. But his time spent with family, preferably outdoors.

That's like his focus. That's his compass. That's what he loves. And that is how he tries to figure out his life so he can do more of that. So those are just a couple of deep thoughts early in the morning. - For me, it's mostly been just a reminder that it is impossible to predict what's actually going to happen.

I mean, legislation, inflation, pandemics, no one I knew saw that coming. We were not talking about that the summer beforehand. And it changed everything. And despite changing everything, as far as personal finance and investing, all of the same principles applied. Everything is still the same, personal finance-wise, even though it upended our lives in the most serious of ways.

But the things that you go back to, okay, how do we respond? What do we do? How do we plan? It's the exact same thing it's always been. We still need the same types of insurance coverage. You need to make sure you have a level of spending that's appropriate.

Asset allocations should match your risk tolerance. Nothing changes, even though, boy, the world changed. - I'm a pessimist by nature. But the pandemic is one of the few things that I was way too optimistic. I mean, it changed our lives. It reminded me that health is far more important than wealth.

And it also, bringing it to the market, makes us humble. I mean, sure, the market is down this year. We're in a bear market. But if I had a partial crystal ball going into 2020, knew this pandemic was coming, Putin was gonna invade, complete political dysfunction, weather catastrophes, I would have thought the market would be way down.

But the market is up since the pandemic. So think three years is short term. But certainly this year is incredibly short term. So think long term and yeah, be humble. - Thank you all. So this is an audience of people who care a lot about investing and personal finance, who think about those topics a lot, who are largely committed to Boglehead principles of diversification, simplification, low cost investing.

So what might be some blind spots for this group of people, things that we could be doing better or in a smarter way? Oh, nothing. - That's why I was asking Nick earlier. Yeah, that's a trick question. - Well, Mike, you were just talking about some things that we don't talk about enough.

- Okay, thank you for the prompt. Yeah, so we spend all of our time. Well, not all of our time, but a lot of time on the forum talking about small cap value tilting and exactly what's the right percent in international stocks and international bonds and should you own tips and all of these things that are not even in the top 100 most important financial decisions you need to make.

And that's because a lot of the most important financial decisions you need to make are kind of terrible topics to talk about. You know, it's you dying, you're becoming disabled, your spouse dying, your kids dying, all like horrible things, right? 'Cause you were talking about insurance coverage, we're talking about estate planning and they're not happy topics, but they're so important to make sure you have those boxes checked off.

And the other reason we don't talk about them very often is because there's not a whole lot to say. Like if someone came up and asked, I'm 36, I'm working, do I need disability insurance? Yes, I mean, that's the end of the discussion. And so there's just, whereas we can talk forever about whether you could, should small cap value tilt because it's not a clear answer.

That's the reason we talk about it because there's really strong arguments on each side and it's not obvious at all. And that's why we can go around in circles for 15 years, whereas we don't do that about disability insurance. But disability insurance is more important. - I'll just hop in really quick if we're talking about hard things, the topic of hard things.

One thing that came up at a Bogleheads conference probably three or four years ago was the topic of elder care, caring for older adults in your lives, parents thinking about your own self as an older adult and the various issues that might accompany that. So I would say that that's sort of the softer dimension of long-term care and elder care planning is probably something that we don't discuss enough as a community.

And I think we need to discuss all of those dimensions. And I would give my family's experience as kind of a, I think a good reminder of why it's not just financial. So I think of my parents as in a lot of ways came into their later senior years, very well equipped financially.

They could handle long-term care expenses out of their own coffers and were able to die with funds left besides those which they wanted. And they had adult children living close by to help ensure that the long-term care delivery happened as they had envisioned. So we had caregivers in the house.

So a lot of that was pretty perfect. I lived about two and a half minutes away. And so what I would say is if that's your plan and if you're well-situated with long-term care, just think through sort of the side aspects of that long-term care. Don't just dwell on the financial.

Think about the actual delivery of the long-term care. Because I would say from my own family situation, even though it all lined up on paper, it was awful. Those were the worst years of my life. And my parents went into it thinking that they had everything all lined up, but still super hard on the family.

So whatever you can do to kind of think through all of the possible contingencies on that front I think will go a long way. And one resource I would throw out on this front is Carolyn McClanahan, who is an MD and also a financial planner. She talks about all of this stuff in her work, the things that you might never think of.

So if the plan is for the children to be involved in managing the house that the parents wanna stay in, well, they need to sign a contract to ensure that they're actually committed, that the parents aren't just thinking they're committed. So all that stuff I would say is a blind spot for a lot of us, even if we feel like we have everything all lined up on paper.

- I just wanna echo the same thing. The investing part is incredibly simple. The only complication, admittedly, it's a big complication, are taxes. Boy, do you make it simple. I don't like talking about estate planning, that's death. It's not fun, but it's incredibly important. Long-term care, very, very difficult.

And the information out there, whenever I write about it, I get a lot of hate mail 'cause the data's all over the map on your probability of needing long-term care. And by the way, it's usually lopsided. Don't forget, if one spouse becomes the caregiver, the other spouse eventually needs long-term care, they no longer need a house.

They're not traveling, they're not eating out. They're saving a lot of money elsewhere. So yes, financial planning is less about investments and more about planning for our lives. We will get older, we will die. Did I say I'm a pessimist by nature? (audience laughing) - Okay, so now that we've stepped into some of those really painful topics, let's take a step back into some of our safe space, talk about investing.

At our investing panel yesterday, one of the topics that came up was ESG funds, which elicited some very strong, consistently negative reactions. So just a very quick question to the panel here. Anyone own ESG funds or wanna make a case for why that's something that people should consider? (audience laughing) - I do not own ESG investments.

I will say Morningstar has made a huge investment in the ESG space. We acquired a company called Sustainalytics that does a lot of research in ESG matters and have some of our team focused on ESG matters. I do not own ESG. It's not that I don't think that there are valid ways to ESG, but I think that there might be better uses of my principles or better ways to deploy my principles.

In terms of the landscape, I do find it terribly confusing. In fact, I was attempting to help do these portfolio makeovers every year, and I was attempting to help a woman who did want to have an ESG portfolio sort out her tangle of funds that she had assembled, and she had about 25 different holdings with a portfolio of about $100,000.

So a terribly complicated portfolio. And I found it really difficult to sort among the various ESG options. I think that there's a need for transparency to help people ESG if they want to. The one thing that tantalizes me in the ESG space is behavioral. I have a feeling that if people have a portfolio that is aligned with their values, that potentially they might be more likely to stick with that plan, and that's not nothing.

The idea that someone, we have seen all this data about dollar-weighted returns. We know that people, a lot of times, don't stick around when they buy something. So that's the one thing. I'll be intrigued to see how the data unfold on that front, because that's the one thing that really compels me in the ESG space.

If someone has that alignment, are they more likely to stick with the program? I think that that's worth watching. I own a business. Alan owns a business. I have control over that business because I own it. Alan has control over his business because he owns it. To me, it has always seemed just on-its-face bananas that the way you could best influence a company is to choose to not be a shareholder.

It's backwards. That's what it's always seemed to me. You're doing exactly the opposite of what you want to be doing. You're giving up a major potential source of influence over this company by excluding it from your portfolio. So it's always seemed not just unhelpful, but detrimental. What I do feel differently about is, and so I asked this yesterday to Ben from Morningstar, is engine number one or other similar companies that have a different approach to ESG.

They say, "We're gonna own everything. "It's a low-cost indexed portfolio." So they're gonna get similar investment returns to what you would get. And they vote the shares in a particular way. And maybe that way is in keeping with your values, maybe it's not, but I like the idea of having options.

This fund company is gonna vote their shares this way. That fund company is gonna vote their shares that way. And they're still boring, simple index portfolios, but they're actually exercising the source of control and influence that we have. And to me, I'm much more optimistic about that version of ESG.

Whether it's gonna be super impactful, I don't know. Do I still think, just like Jim said yesterday, there are better and more impactful ways to change the world, yes. But I'm more optimistic about that than the traditional version of ESG by a huge margin. - Okay. Christine, when you were saying about the makeovers and someone who has 25 funds, and I will admit to there have been periods in my life when I have had more than 20 funds for no justifiable reason.

So I wanted to ask you about simplicity, radical simplicity and complexity in portfolios. We had a question from the audience about a couple who had opted for a very simple approach with a three fund portfolio. And then more recently had augmented that with I-bonds and laddered CDs and tips.

And so the question was, so we are drifting from what was once a simple and easy to manage portfolio into something that might be safer, but more complex. Is it a mistake to abandon our commitment to simplicity in this manner? And I just wonder just how much of a, how far do you feel people should go in simplicity?

- Right, it's a great question. And I often evangelize about the value of simplicity, but I do think specifically what this couple has done makes a lot of sense to me. So in retirement, as you kind of think about a retirement portfolio, I just like the idea of stair-stepping it by risk level.

So you've got your liquid reserves that you're drawing upon on an ongoing basis. You've got some short-term bonds, which you can't ask total bond market just to give you your short-term bond piece. If you need to take some money out of your in-retirement portfolio, I think it's wise to have some short-term bonds as kind of next line reserves in case the cash is depleted in a year like 2022, for example, and you still need additional funds.

And then maybe moving into intermediate term bonds, and you'd also want to have I-bonds in that portion of the portfolio. The other thing I would say is to me, it's fine for accumulators to manage their portfolios as kind of a unified whole. So as long as if someone has the really great low-cost index fund in their 401k, they can put all their funds there, but in other parts of the portfolio, they may want to hold fixed income where perhaps they can obtain more favorable pricing.

So I think it's fine to sort of use that unified portfolio model in the accumulation years. In the decumulation years, Mike showed the value of being a little bit flexible about where you're pulling your assets from on a year-to-year basis. And at that point, as you move into retirement, I think it makes sense to internally diversify each of those silos across asset classes.

You might use different asset allocations within them, but there may be years, for example, where it is a slam dunk to pull all of your allocation from your traditional tax-deferred IRA, and you'd want to make sure that that withdrawal comes from whatever is the right part of the portfolio for picking.

So I do think that you can oversimplify in draw-down mode. And so I think, to me, the sound of the changes, the couple made, it seems like they're exactly on the right track. - Investing is simple, but taxes aren't, although I know somebody that makes it as simple as possible.

So when I started investing, there was no Vanguard Total Stock Index Fund, Total International. And I have unrealized capital gains, and that creates some complexities. A really simple plan, by the way, is when somebody comes to me, they've just sold their business for $100 million. There's no tax implications.

So generally speaking, I believe in simplicity, and I'm gonna sneak one other thing in on the ESG. I own a Chevy Volt, getting over 10 years old, getting over 250 miles per gallon. I believe in being socially responsible, but buy VTI and take the savings and donate it to whatever cause you believe in.

- Okay, talking about the investment environment, a number of speakers, starting with Bill Bernstein, said this is a great market for accumulators to be buying, but it's a really tough market for people who are approaching or just in retirement, who are hit by those losses early on. So what are some strategies or approaches that people should think about to limit the pain of these losses as they go into the drawdown period?

You wanna give that to Alan? - Well, I don't know how to limit the pain. I don't even know how not to look at the market 10 times a day. But in terms of, there's a lot of strategies like buy an income ladder, buy a SPIA. You know, cash right now is-- - Immediate annuity just to get that-- - Yeah, yeah, let's get the annuity out there.

And by the way, there's a great annuity out there, and that is delaying social security. That's one annuity I very much believe in. As somebody who failed retirement, I believe in retiring slowly. Maybe that person with the high stress job that Joel pointed out, you know, hated his boss, but maybe he could do something that's more fun that, you know, brings healthcare insurance.

And, you know, there are things like that. You know, the cash now might be the exception, might feel as good as eating that steak I ate a couple of nights ago, but in the long run, that cash is a drag. And, you know, we can't count on two or three years worth of cash getting us through the market turnaround.

We've had teddy bears so far this year. I think that was Jason's term. And, you know, I was in Japan in 1989. The market today is still below that. Yes, I'm a pessimist. (audience laughing) - Sure, I would echo Alan's point about the series of incremental steps versus like one giant sort of leap to help make a save if a portfolio is looking shaky in the years leading up to retirement to explore multiple levers.

Maybe that's working a year or two longer. Maybe that's having a part-time job. Maybe it's delaying social security. I think all of the levers can work together, that it's not one big asset allocation change, for example. One thing I would say is I don't think there's any shame in de-risking a portfolio that's overly risky, that's overly stacked towards stocks.

Ideally, you would have done that in 2020 or 2021 rather than doing it in this market. But I think we all have to remember, if you look at the 10-year return on stocks, still really strong. I think still double-digit 10-year annualized return. So if you've been along for that ride, you've had a good experience in equities, you didn't catch the absolute top, but there's no shame in de-risking a portfolio appropriately given your proximity to retirement.

I'm a big believer, and I know Alan and I differ on this, but I'm a big believer in the bucket approach to retirement portfolio planning, mainly because I see and I hear from people that it really works behaviorally, that it keeps them on board with the long-term assets in their plan.

And that's really the point is, yes, you want to grow and maximize the portfolio, but peace of mind is really important. So I like that idea of structuring the portfolio by sort of using your portfolio spending as kind of the yardstick to determine how much to drop into each of the buckets.

And we can talk about that, or I talk a lot about it in my work on Morningstar.com. -Christine was talking about de-risking, making your portfolio slightly less risky. In my opinion, the very best post ever on the forum is by the anonymous Nissy Prius, and it is "Evaluate Your Jitters." Look it up if you haven't read it.

And the principle is basically, so any time that the market has gone down significantly, take note of how you're feeling. And if you are really not feeling well about it, then it can make sense to scale back that stock allocation. Would it have been better to do that before the market went down?

Yes, obviously, duh. But it still might be better than never doing it. But the key point, the really, really key point, is that if you do that now, you scale back that stock allocation, write it down, write down how you're feeling, write down that you made this decision. Because two years from now, when the market's doing great, and you're tempted to go back to a higher stock allocation, you don't wanna be bitten again.

Make this mistake once, okay, fine, but don't make it twice. - So let me ask a question for all of you, I guess. If you were talking to someone, a neighbor, a young relative, someone who wants to start investing along with Boglehead's philosophy, would you suggest that person open account at Vanguard, or would you suggest they invest at a different platform, potentially using Vanguard products, or other products?

- Yeah, I'm surprised Joel didn't mention our conversation last night. I think I gave him an earful, and by the way, I still have a flagship advisor who can't overcome some of the customer service issues at Vanguard. You know, on one hand, for somebody starting saving, by the way, I probably would recommend Vanguard, 'cause automating it is really important, and one can automate mutual funds.

And I still believe that the Vanguard funds are better than Fidelity, or the Fidelity Zero, or other low-cost. I trust Vanguard more. So, you know, it's a tough call. And Schwab, by the way, I argue, is no longer in the investment advisory business. They make about 120% of their profit from paying people virtually nothing on cash, and reinvesting that cash in short-term T-bills.

So I trust Vanguard more. I probably would recommend Vanguard still, but I am more than a little bit concerned that some of the philosophies of Jack Bogle are not as prominent as they used to be. - I would certainly recommend Vanguard to young people in my life. I have had a good experience with the firm.

I also have a Schwab account. And I would say, from a technology standpoint, I don't see a big difference. On the other hand, I'm not a big user of either website. I spend as little time as possible interacting with my financial matters. I see it as one of my luxury goods, that I feel like things are on track, and I just don't have time, and I don't spend much time at all.

And I would also say, from the standpoint of young people, generally speaking, they'll do anything to avoid getting on the phone with someone. So that is not, right? (audience laughing) And I'm one of those people. In fact, and I'm not young, but my husband, I'll call him, and he'll pick up his phone, and he'll be like, "What's wrong?

"Why are you calling me?" So anyway, I don't see the customer service, the phone customer service, as being a big impediment for young folks, but certainly have been observing, there's a level of dissatisfaction, and that's not nothing, but it wouldn't deter me from recommending the firm. - I had this conversation recently with a neighbor and a good friend, and in both cases, I did recommend Vanguard.

Targeted fund, it's so straightforward, it's so easy. Are there all of these concerns? Yes, absolutely. Is Schwab a totally fine place, or E-Trade, or Fidelity, or any place where you could build a simple three-fund ETF portfolio? Sure, go for it. But I still trust Vanguard more than I trust any other company.

- Thank you, I know that's a difficult question, and I think you've all given really interesting and nuanced answers to a question I think a lot of people have struggled with. So Mike, while you're there holding the mic, let's talk a bit about favorite tax strategies or opportunities that you wanna flag for people.

- Gosh. - Or not. - That's a challenging one, 'cause it varies so much depending on what stage of life you're in. - I have a specific question for you. Go for it. So we've heard a little bit about direct indexing during this conference, and Ben Johnson was talking about the tax benefits, but I'd like to hear Mike's thoughts on tax loss harvesting.

We've been hearing a lot about that in this market. And so one of the criticisms of really aggressive tax loss harvesting from Michael Kitsis and his team is that it has the potential to lower your cost basis. So the benefits are not as great as are being touted from these direct indexing platforms.

So I'd love to hear you talk about that. - Tax loss harvesting is when you sell something. So it's currently worth less than what you paid for it. It's in a taxable account, not an IRA or a 401k. And the idea is you sell it right now. So you have a capital loss, which is gonna save you some money on your taxes.

And at the same time, you buy something that's not exactly the same thing, but it's gonna fill a similar role in your asset allocation. And so you haven't had to mess up your portfolio, but now you have some tax savings. That's the idea. And the tax savings, it comes from a few things.

Number one is, well, so just like Christine said and other people have pointed out, when you do this, the downside is that this replacement investment that you purchased has a lower cost basis. So when you sell that replacement investment, the gain is now going to be larger. So someone was asking me yesterday, well, what's the point?

There's three points. Point number one is that you can use up to $3,000 of net capital losses every year to offset ordinary income. And ordinary income is taxed at a higher tax rate than capital gains. So if you create later capital gain income, but you're offsetting ordinary income right now, that's advantageous 'cause you're offsetting higher tax rate income and creating lower tax rate income.

So that's thing number one. Thing number two, and this is not, this is the least important one, is that there's simply some tax deferral, right? Even if you have to pay tax on a gain later, well, it's gonna be later. And so that extra money that you have right now from that tax savings, you can invest it and get some earnings.

That's the least important piece. The third piece is that maybe this new thing that you bought, maybe you never sell it. Maybe you donate it to charity. Maybe you leave it to your kids. And so that lower cost basis that results in a higher capital gain, you're never paying tax on that higher capital gain anyway.

Because if you donate it to charity, you get a deduction for the current market value and you don't have to pay tax on the gain. If you leave it to somebody, they get a step up in cost basis and they don't have to pay tax on the gain. So there's three things that the tax savings comes from.

And there's some studies that are ambitious with what they estimate as the value of that tax deferral piece. Most of it, in my opinion, comes from that $3,000 deduction against ordinary income and the fact that maybe you never have to pay tax on this gain. - You get the quick tax savings, but then assuming the market goes up in the long run, you get less and less of the harvesting and the fees and complexities stay.

With that said, 40 bips is not outrageous. And you stole my point, darn it. If you're gonna, in a few years, give it to a donor advised fund, that's wonderful. If you're 98 years old and you're not gonna be paying those fees for 40 years, that could work as well.

Or if you're in a really high tax bracket this year in a high tax state and you're gonna retire a year or two later, then you could be in a much lower bracket. So there are some small cases where direct indexing can work. - Thank you. I think while we still have a few minutes left, let's give you out there a chance to ask some questions.

So Lady Geek, would you put this or somebody else? Just share one mic. Oh, wow, responsibility. Very quick. Okay, first thing on tax loss, Bogleheads Wiki, tax loss harvesting. And again, taxes are complicated. If you're not sure what Mike and Christine are talking about, please stop and ask. 'Cause if you buy, if you sell something in your taxable account and you take a loss, you can buy something.

If you're not sure what that's for, please stop. And it's better to do nothing than the wrong thing. That's my perennial thing. Okay, next, let me back up a bit about buying confidence in Vanguard. I've posted in the, well, let me just say that don't confuse owning the Vanguard fund with your trading platform.

I own Vanguard funds at Fidelity. I've moved my mother's accounts to Fidelity because of, well, so as I say, you can own Vanguard. Vanguard funds are fantastic. But I am doing that from Fidelity right now. The reasons are that website errors, customer, lack of customer service. And the main thing that drove me to move my mom's account under POA was because of their transfer to the brokerage platform.

They required a new power of attorney. My mom can't sign that. That's why I have a POA. So I just basically had an off and left. That's my situation. But the confidence in Vanguard personal advisor service is different. So if people have confidence in the people who are offering the service, that's fine.

I just wanna make sure there's a differentiation between the website issues. I say you can find Vanguard. So it comes to the Fisher Price UI design. That's our long running thread on their website. And I express my opinion in there. But I say, please don't confuse their service with the website and their phone support.

So, okay. - Excellent point. - Wanna get some of your thoughts on longevity. Financial planners and demographers are telling young folks like me, anticipate still being alive when you're close to 100, 95, 100. And even others are saying, there may be advances in nutrition, in endocrinology and medicine that may have us living even longer as we advance in the coming decades with technology.

So any thoughts on how that might affect asset allocation or in the case of target date funds, setting your target date, any other implications? - Well, I suppose if you are forecasting a very long life, you'd want to have more in growth assets. On the other hand, bonds are finally looking like a halfway compelling thing.

One broader point I would make is just how I think the traditional concept of retirement in our mid 60s is pretty flawed from a lot of standpoints financially, there's that dimension for sure. But also, it's like how much more data do we need to see to show that engagement with others, physical activity, all of those things confer wellness and happiness later in life.

And how do many of us get those things? We get them through working. So I wish, especially younger people would be less kind of one dimensional about retirement, that they'd be thinking about, well, maybe I transfer to something that's less remunerative, but more rewarding later in life, just to keep active.

And there's also a financial side benefit of that as well. So that's the main way I'd like to see people address concerns about longevity. But I would also say one thing I think a lot about is how health and longevity are not at all equally distributed in our society, it very much aligns with wealth, unfortunately, in my opinion.

And so I always exhort wealthy or certainly people with investment assets to push toward the further end when they're thinking about longevity, because you see the data and there's a very clear correlation. If you have assets, you're probably going to be more toward the longer lived side of the actuarial tables.

- We talk about safe spin rates. I guess one of the good things about the pandemic is life expectancy is shortened. But we talk about a 90% safe spin rate, and especially for younger people. If you look at the history of governments, Bill Bernstein educated me on this, I'm not 90% sure the US government's going to survive that long.

Mike, your chart on social security with that two by two grid, the biggest predictor of life expectancy is wealth, especially for men, by the way, because wealthy people are better educated, take better care of themselves, et cetera. So I would plan on a very long life if you can stay aggressively invested.

And the last piece I wrote for Money Magazine was the 2009 financial crisis, write down how you feel now and pull it out the next time stocks recover and you suddenly feel brave. So stick to an asset allocation, go for the long run, try to do what I can't do, ignore what the market's doing every day or every 10 minutes.

- I don't think I have anything to add particularly. Sorry. - Thank you. - My question is, obviously there's the difficult things to talk about with estate planning and some of those topics are just not really a topic of conversation amongst families. For those families that have businesses that need to be passed down to their children or whatnot, what are your guys' strategies in speaking about these things as I'm sure the ones that are owning that business or owning their portfolio, they don't think that time is there for them to do those things.

So what are your guys' strategies to account and handle those conversations? - Okay, so we're talking strategies for the conversations, the interpersonal strategies rather than-- - Right. - Okay. - Right. - Christine. - Sorry. (audience laughing) Yeah, no. - It's not a fun thing to do, but we just started and not as early as I should have sharing our financials with our son.

We only have one son so that he understands. If he had any inclination in taking over my business, we would work on that, but my exit strategy is to eventually shut it down. I think there's some difficult conversations. We haven't had this yet, but if I start having cognitive impairment, when does he need to start taking things over?

And will I resist it? Those are very difficult conversations to have. - I would also throw out one resource in the realm of thinking about your finances as you age. Cameron Holston wrote a really great book. I think it's called "Mom and Dad, "We Need to Talk About Your Money" or something like that.

It's written from the standpoint of someone who is in her 30s or 40s and was thrust into the role of kind of the main decision maker for her mother. But it's very well done and includes a lot of concrete ideas for managing these issues. And Jeff and I had a great conversation with Cameron.

So I would recommend that book. And I think she's also got a website. Sorry, that's exactly what I was thinking of when I handed it to you. Sorry about that. Yes, it's an excellent long view episode. It's recent within the last few weeks. Yeah, it's super good. - Great, thanks as always for sharing.

So I'm one of the organizers for the New York City Bogleheads chapter as well as one of the Life Stage chapters. In speaking with folks here, we thought a good future meeting topic would be couples and personal finance. Are there any top tips you have for couples and any specific authors you like on the topic?

- As far as my spouse and I, we've been pretty lucky. We've been mostly on the same page. It's not the case where either one of us is the big spender and the other one isn't and there's been any conflict. I think one thing that is something that I don't necessarily wanna say that we struggle with it, but clearly of the two of us, you might guess who is more involved in the finances.

But we do, every month, sit down, got a spreadsheet, obviously, and it shows us. (audience laughing) And we go over it. And it's not the portfolio stuff 'cause that doesn't need to be looked at every month, but okay, let's talk about spending. Let's talk about just where we are and whether anything needs to be adjusted.

So trying to get the other person involved and making it as easy for them as possible, I think is helpful. So that they don't have to do any of the analysis. You're just showing them, okay, here's where we are. - I have a thought on that, too. One thought is, and I think this is the case with a lot of couples, one spouse is simply not into it, will never be into it.

So I would say, do not spend a lot of time trying to get them engaged with books. And I love that there are couples who are here because the other spouse is not that into it, and that's great. But in some cases, I mean, you've got a spouse who is truly not into it.

The best thing you can do in that case is pre-identify an appropriate financial advisor, make sure that that person knows the person. Rick Ferry once made the great comment that he had had so many guys come up to him and say, "I told my spouse that if ever something happens with me, "to check in with you." And Rick said, because they hadn't made the introduction to Rick, he hadn't heard from these people.

So go through that step of introducing your spouse once you've found someone who ticks the right boxes for you, get that introduction in place. You may have to pay for a meeting, you may not, but identify the right type of person. And then if your spouse isn't comfortable on sort of an emotional interpersonal level, that's great feedback, move on to the next person.

So I guess my bias would be if someone's just not into it, yes, leave the good details, leave what they need to hand it off to someone else, but don't overdo the education if it's just gonna waste everyone's time. - I won't even take on a client if they're married and the spouse isn't going to participate 'cause it's important that both be involved, understand the game plan.

And my strategy when I kick the bucket, my wife Patty knows to call Mike Piper. (audience laughing) - I was gonna say the other advantage of making that connection with an advisor, could be a Vanguard type service, it could be a local individual, is if you put it on your calendar, okay, we're gonna have this conversation next Thursday at 11 with this advisor and I will show you some spreadsheets in advance so you know the things I'm talking, I'm looking at, but let's have a conversation in advance about what are some of the important questions that we wanna take up with this person.

And it's actually very liberating because then you're not the expert, quasi expert in this conversation with your spouse, you're bringing in somebody else as a neutral party and you are also laying the groundwork for if you're not around your spouse that has somebody already that they have a connection to that they can take things up with.

- Hello, my question is regarding tax loss harvesting strategy. I have a simple three-fold portfolio across the board, retirement, HSA and my brokerage account. I was thinking to apply the strategy in my brokerage account, will it trigger a wash rule if I have the same funds in retirement or HSA?

- It can, if you buy them in those accounts during the wash sale period, so 30 days in either direction, yes is the answer. Similarly, if your spouse does for what it's worth. - And if I already have them 30 days prior for years, will it still-- - Just owning it, not a problem, it's only if purchase transactions happen during those windows.

- Thank you. - Thank you all for the excellent questions. We're gonna wrap it up now. Thank you so much, Christine, Mike and Alan. (audience applauding)