Month: August 2024

Are you retired or is retirement within sight? Congratulations! Now you can do all those things you have dreamed of doing in your leisure years – travel, spend time with family, volunteer, play more golf or pickleball, or try something new.

Up to this point, you have probably focused on growing your wealth, within comfortable risk boundaries. As you look forward to retirement, have you thought about how to structure your savings and investments for the next period of your life? Instead of growth, your goal may shift to income generation, or if you have sufficient other sources of income, you may want to reposition your investment portfolio allocation to reduce volatility. There is comfort in stability.

Let’s say that you need to generate income from your portfolio. How do you accomplish regular withdrawals without decimating your portfolio’s allocation? How can you structure your portfolio for a dual purpose – keep it growing and produce income? One option is a bucket strategy.

What Is a Bucket Strategy?

The bucket strategy for retirement investment assets was introduced by financial planner Harold Evansky. Financial assets are separated into three buckets – one bucket for emergencies with the primary goal being safety, one bucket to generate income for living expenses, and one bucket for long-term growth.

The National Council on Aging slightly adjusts the basic Evansky bucket strategy and suggests the following:

• Bucket #1: Cash flow
• Bucket #2: Transfer
• Bucket #3: Longevity

The first bucket is used to fund day-to-day living expenses. The third bucket is invested for long-term growth. The middle bucket is the go-between or transfer place to refill bucket #1 as it is depleted. Let’s take a closer look at each of these three buckets.

Bucket #1 – Cash Flow

The cash flow bucket holds income-producing assets and can be a combination of savings, portfolio investments, and other sources of income. This bucket might include CDs, savings accounts, money market funds, US Treasuries, pensions, annuities and Social Security funds – things that will not decrease or are relatively stable in value and are readily accessible when needed.

If you are comfortable with some fluctuation in value, short-term bond funds or ETFs might be included. Bucket #1 should generate enough funds to cover living expenses for 1-2 years. Then you won’t have to worry if the market or the economy takes a dip.

Bucket #2 – Transfer

The National Council on Aging calls this the transfer bucket, the go-between place. I like to think of it as an intermediate step. Investments that will withstand inflation and provide a moderate return are appropriate. It is important that these funds will be available as needed to replenish Bucket #1, but they are not expected to be needed for 2 to 7 years.

Longer term CDs, and intermediate-term investment grade bond funds and ETFs – Treasury, corporate, or municipal – within this time frame are possibilities. The Council also includes senior and junior notes, preferred stock, high-grade blue-chip (dividend-paying) stocks and perhaps high-quality real estate investment trusts (REITs) in their list of appropriate investments. “These are options that generally produce income and dividends, are considered reasonably conservative, and fairly liquid/marketable.”

Bucket #3 – Longevity

The longevity bucket is comprised of investments meant to keep you from running out of money as the years pass. Assets in this bucket won’t be needed for at least 7 years or longer. Stocks, high-yield bonds, real estate and other higher return assets may be appropriate in this bucket, according to the Council. The longer-term investments can help offset purchasing power problems related to increased longevity.

You may decide that you are comfortable taking more risk with Bucket #3 because you have set aside assets to cover expenses for up to 7 years. On the other hand, you may decide to keep the same risk tolerance and portfolio allocation as your pre-retirement portfolio.

The purpose of the three buckets is to give you comfort that your retirement living expenses will be covered, not only in the immediate future, but for as long as you live. The first step is to have a clear picture of your living expenses, including any special outlays you anticipate. Only then can you allocate assets to each of the three buckets. After your initial allocation, mark your calendar to review expenses annually and reallocate between buckets as needed.

If you want help to refine this strategy for your situation, please seek the help of an investment advisor who is a fiduciary. How do you find an advisor who is a fiduciary? Look for a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) or a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professional. You can search for an advisor in your area who is a CFP® professional at the following website: www.letsmakeaplan.org.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

How do you structure your finances? Have you used the 3 Bucket strategy? If so, was it difficult to set up? How is it working for you?

Finding your way through the dating world after 50 can be a real struggle, especially when you attract narcissistic men who create additional emotional chaos for you.

One of the reasons you might fall in love with a narcissist is because he has the ability to mirror your interests.

When he does, it ends up creating a superficial bond between the two of you that unfortunately is often driven by manipulation rather than genuine connection.

His talent for masking his true self can make it challenging to spot the warning signs until you’re deeply involved.

That’s why today we are going to uncover 3 Warning Signs that can help you recognize if you’re dating a narcissist.

Warning Sign # 1: He’s Extremely Self-Centered

A big sign you might be dating a narcissist is when he constantly focuses on himself.

The thing about narcissists is they often display an inflated sense of self-importance, and they do this by exaggerating their abilities or accomplishments.

Or he might talk endlessly about his career, his social status, or his personal life while barely acknowledging your stories or interests.

This kind of self-centered behavior makes you feel like you and your experiences aren’t important, and this should raise a red flag for you.

Let me give you an example of this using a favorite phrase Sophia uses in the TV show The Golden Girls.

Picture This:

You’ve had the best day, and you’re excited to share your experience with a man you’ve been dating. You begin to share your story, and he interrupts you steering the conversation back to his own day and his accomplishments.

He barely acknowledges your story, leaving you with a sense of dismissal and insignificance.

Warning Sign #2: He Lacks Empathy

Empathy is the glue that holds a healthy relationship together. Sadly, narcissists often lack this trait. They find it challenging to grasp or connect with your feelings, offering you very little emotional support or validation.

If the person you’re dating brushes off your emotions, belittles your worries, or appears unconcerned about your well-being, these behaviors might be signs of his narcissistic tendencies.

Keep a watchful eye on how a man responds to your emotional needs or how he treats others in vulnerable situations.

A continual absence of empathy should set off warning bells in your mind.

Picture This:

You’re at dinner with a man you’ve been dating, and you’re feeling down because you recently lost a pet dog. You share some of your sadness by telling a story about the two of you hoping for some comfort and support.

Instead of offering a hug or a few kind words about your loss, he quickly brushes off your sadness, telling you to “get over it because it’s only a dog.”

Or he totally ignores your feelings and shifts the dialogue to a minor inconvenience he’d had during the day, making your genuine emotional pain seem trivial.

When his lack of empathy leaves you feeling so alone during a difficult time – it’s a BIG RED FLAG.

Warning Sign # 3: He Is Manipulative

A narcissist uses manipulation to maintain control so that his needs – not yours – are met. He might use strategies like guilt-tripping, gaslighting, or playing the victim. These tactics can make you start doubting your thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

Gaslighting, for example, can lead you to question your sanity and beliefs, making it challenging to trust your own judgment.

If you notice that the person you’re dating frequently distorts reality, blames you for things you haven’t done, or twists situations to make you doubt your perceptions, you want to take these signs seriously.

Their manipulative behavior can erode your confidence and make you feel trapped in a future relationship.

Picture This:

Imagine you and the man you’re dating have planned a quiet evening together, but at the last minute, he decides to go out with his friends instead.

When you express disappointment, he turns the situation around, accusing you of being controlling and selfish for not wanting him to have fun.

Over time, these manipulative tactics make you question your own feelings and judgments.

You start doubting whether your needs are reasonable, slowly losing your sense of self-worth and independence.

Keep Watch for These Signs

Recognizing the signs of a narcissistic partner is vital for you avoiding this type of toxic relationship.

Watch for extreme self-centeredness, lack of empathy, and manipulative behavior. Trust your instincts and prioritize your happiness. If you feel undervalued, reassess whether he is relationship worthy.

Healthy relationships thrive on respect, empathy, and equality. Your well-being matters, and you deserve a relationship that nurtures your happiness and peace.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What narcissistic behaviors have you noticed in someone you dated? Did you see those as red signs? Have you run away from a man who proved to be a narcissist? Have you seen relationships where the woman was the narcissist?

Yes! We create our own anxiety. It’s true! Maybe you think it’s the situation. Maybe you think it’s about your health, money or relationships.

You’re thinking… “If the situation just got better, everything would be okay.” But the truth is that while you are going through a stressful situation, the thing that is causing your anxiety is what you are thinking.

It’s your own thoughts.

One thought leads to another, which leads to another, and the result is anxiety.

Now you’re feeling…

• Overwhelmed
• Scared
• Nervous
• Distracted

It’s Not Me, and I Can’t Control It!

A few years ago, I would have blamed my anxiety on the unsettling situation I was experiencing. I thought anxiety just happened; it seemed so. I thought I couldn’t control it! My mind kept repeating the same scary, negative thoughts. I was miserable and exhausted! All I wanted was to stop the threatening voices in my head, relax and find peace.

Do you feel the same way? Do you want to…

• Calm down and relax.
• Get a good night’s sleep.
• Turn off the noise in your head.

What You Can Do About Your Thoughts

I discovered that while the situation I was experiencing was challenging, it was my negative thoughts that were causing my anxiety and upset. Xanax was a temporary fix. Changing my thinking patterns was the solution.

If you want to calm down and relax, follow these steps.

Pay Attention to Your Thoughts

This means becoming aware or conscious of what you are thinking. Our minds generate thoughts automatically based on a lifetime of experiences. Be intentional. Pause and ask, “What am I thinking about right now? What’s going on in my head?” Experiment with this several times a day. Make it a habit.

Evaluate Your Thoughts

Get clear about the kinds of thoughts running through your mind. Ask: How are these thoughts helping me or troubling me? What feelings are these thoughts producing? How do these feelings prompt me to act?

Asking the question, “How real or true is this really?” helps bring objectivity and clarity to what’s actually happening. Getting a clear perspective based on reality brings relief and calms you down.

Change or Reframe Your Thoughts

Pinpoint negative and unhelpful thoughts. Change these thoughts into positive and helpful thoughts. Be intentional and deliberate. Repeat the new thoughts and phrases over and over in your mind. Say them out loud.

Notice What Happens

With practice, identifying and changing negative thoughts to positive thoughts makes a difference. Observe how your feelings change and you start to feel calm, less worried and more at peace with your situation. It will affect your behavior, too. A positive, clear mind makes better decisions. It makes it so you can handle those stressful situations.

I recently worked with a client who contacted me about the anxiety she experienced when she left her house. Anxious thoughts kept her from meeting friends and going places. After noticing her negative thought patterns and reframing them to positive ones, she started to calm down and became more at ease with leaving her home.

You, too, can calm down by changing negative thoughts to positive ones!

You can stop creating your own anxiety! I hope you follow these steps to become aware of your negative thoughts and reframe them into positive thoughts to stop creating anxiety.

But if you are truly struggling with anxious thinking that’s keeping you overwhelmed and distracted, watch my FREE 10-minute video on How to Stop Anxiety to learn the exact 3 steps you can take to Become Anxiety Free.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Who do you blame for your anxiety? Do you blame others or the situation you find yourself in? Have you considered that your own thoughts might be causing you to feel anxious?

By the time we have reached our 60s, all of us have had a share of fails and successes; hopefully, far more of the latter. It is the very nature of living that life is full of ups and downs. As we each write our own unique life story, it is these that help us grow, learn from our mistakes, celebrate our wins, and turn us in to the person we are today.

Looking at the many chapters of our life, we can see how we evolved from a dewy-eyed baby, through to childhood, teenage and eventually to adulthood. We have probably all made mistakes now and again, and maybe even had a few regrets, but I hope this doesn’t deter us from making our final chapters into interesting and wonderful reading. Take a risk. This is our legacy, our own unique story. 

Opportunities

There are still so many opportunities out there, just waiting for us to grab hold of and make our own. Perhaps starting a micro business, volunteering, travelling the world (or our own back door!), learning new things, exploring all that this beautiful world has to offer. Imagine yourself on a boat going down the Nile, starting a business, writing your first novel, or becoming a much needed volunteer at your local hospice. All of them are life enhancing and let the world know that you are still living your best life.

‘I can’t’, you say. There are things that need to be done, or money that needs to be spent somewhere else; perhaps you fear failure or have a hundred other reasons not to do something. 

But let me ask you this. If in 10, 20, 30 years you are no longer here, wouldn’t you want to have at least tried to do something special, something you are proud of. Something that sets you apart from others. What’s the worst that can happen?

Just for You

You have already done so much for so many, how about doing something just for you? Something that makes your heart sing and, maybe, skip a little faster. Something you are truly passionate about. Perhaps it will take some courage, but you owe it to yourself to be living the life you want. No more excuses, no more reasons not to; just make a plan and see what happens.

Whatever your situation, there will be something right for you. Perhaps you can’t just hop off somewhere, but there are still a hundred things for you to do… Get involved in local affairs/events, read at a local school, join a local organisation, raise money for local causes, walk the dogs in the dog rehoming centre. Anything you truly care about.

If you are able to travel, perhaps you can volunteer overseas. Join WOOFA (live and work on organic farms around the world), teach English abroad, work on a cruise ship (yes, they do employ older people). Or you could take the Golden Triangle Tour of India, visiting Delhi, Jaipur and Agra, or perhaps a cruise up the river Amazon. There is so much to see and do, so make the latest chapters of your book amazing!

One Day I Will…

What inspired or motivated you when you were younger? Those wonderful dreams that made you think, ‘one day I will…’. Well, now is that ‘one day’. The day you decide to make your dreams come true. So, whether you want to rescue orphan elephants, swim with turtles, sing, become a film/tv extra, start up a community business or even do a parachute jump, make today ‘Your Day’.

Whatever you decide to do, it will be an experience, and even if it doesn’t all go according to plan, you tried. You will make new friends, gain new skills, solve many problems, and learn a great deal about yourself too. I think that is not a bad return, especially because, you are likely to succeed. Just think about all the incredible things that could bring…

What if I fall, I hear you ask. Oh, but what if you fly?

Let’s Start a Conversation:

What would you love to do? What is holding you back? What would you like to write in your chapters?

Over the weekend, I was riding my bike to one of my favorite coffee shops, which is only about 10 miles away, so it’s usually an easy ride.

But on this day, the wind was blowing “like spit,” as my grandmother used to say. (Do you ever think about things people said as you were growing up that you never thought much about, and then at some point, you begin to wonder “what on earth did that mean?”)

Because of the wind, the ride was a real struggle, and I was very relieved to finally get to the coffee shop. On my way back, I looked down at my little computer and saw I was effortlessly going 19 mph. Now, I am a fairly slow rider, so this is very atypical unless I’m going down a pretty good hill.

What Direction Is the Wind Blowing?

I understood that having changed my direction, the wind now was coming from behind me. Thank you, wind!

What, you might ask, does this have to do with downsizing my home? Well, what I realized was that how I feel about something often depends on what direction I’m facing.

As I think of downsizing my home, do I think about how hard it’s going to be, how long it’s going to take, the pain of letting go of countless numbers of things that have been really important over the years?

Or do I think about how wonderful it will be to get rid of all the stuff that’s crammed into drawers, closets, bookcases, the garage, the basement – or wherever in my home I stash stuff? How about the exhilaration of looking at open spaces on the bookshelves, the tabletops, the kitchen counter?

My Downsizing Journey

My downsizing journey started when I was faced with moving from my 2000-square-foot home with a big two-car garage and a very large yard to an 800-square-foot apartment with a 46’x46” cage in the basement for storage.

Yikes! Among other things, this meant getting rid of about 80-90% of what I owned. Is this a possibility in your future? If so, you’re not alone in feeling the fears and overwhelm such a prospect can bring. You can read all about my journey in my book.

Changing Direction

What I’m inviting you to do as you begin to contemplate a major downsizing of your home, is to think about getting to enough. Getting to just enough to feel happy, satisfied, sufficient. Getting to that place of feeling internal peace and external spaciousness. That sense of “I have just enough.”

Does it feel like too much of a stretch to change your direction completely from fear, overwhelm and sadness to exhilaration, joy and freedom? That’s totally understandable, so let’s take it in small steps.

Identify one area, room or closet that you think may be one of the easiest places to begin downsizing. For me, it was the kitchen.

I’m not a cook, so I don’t have any attachment to specific pots or pans or cooking utensils. It was fairly easy for me to look at something and realize I hadn’t used it for a long time and put it in the “donate” pile.

What would have been hard for me was to start with the bookcases because my books are very important to me.

So, start with something that will be fairly easy. If possible, take everything out of that area, and then only put back what you use very regularly or is precious in some way, or simply brings you great joy. Don’t put back things that you might be able to use ‘sometime.’

Next Steps for Downsizing Your Home

This changing of direction is often not easy. If you find that to be the case for you, I suggest you get some help. This may be a very good, non-judgmental friend who can be with you for support and suggestions. My good friend Lynn helped me when I began to downsize my kitchen.

Another option is to hire a coach for a couple of months to help you get through some of the most difficult moments, at least at the beginning of your downsizing process.

The most important thing is to get started. And before you begin, just notice what direction you’re facing because it will make a very big difference in how you feel throughout the entire process of downsizing your home to enough.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What direction are you facing right now as you think about the possibility of downsizing your home? What are two things, even very small steps, you might do immediately to get started? Please feel comfortable to share your thoughts and observations below.