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Dear Valued Financial Partners and Friends,

Managing your retirement dollars is truly a two-stage process. During your accumulation phase—in your younger years—your saving and investing process is pretty much on automatic. You sign up for your employer’s 401(k) plan by marking a few boxes and signing a few forms. You basically set it and forget it. Right or wrong, your 401(k) is on autopilot without you making many adjustments.

The accumulation process can be dangerously deceptive. The years of automatic saving and investing could set you up mentally and emotionally for something we affectionately call the “Complacency through Success Syndrome,” exactly at the wrong time.

At retirement, complacency through your savings success may lull you to sleep. Like many people, you may suffer from financial hypothermia. At retirement you have to wake up from your successful accumulation days and become actively involved. Specifically, you have to take your retirement funds off autopilot and switch to being proactively involved in making multiple and intertwined financial decisions. For many people this is very uncomfortable and not easy. It is fraught with so many moving parts and numerous and dangerous landmines and booby-traps. And, you don’t get a do over!

For you, your retirement distribution phase doesn’t have to be ominous and painful. Because helping you succeed financially is what we do. And we’ve done this for 34 years. Believe it or not, protecting clients from themselves in making unwise and imprudent financial decisions is one of the most important things we do!

Here are some of the landmines that can blow up (or undo) your lifetime-savings nest egg: elections and timing on pensions, Social Security, Medicare, IRAs, and 401(k)s to name just a few.

Other potential problems include not dealing with a fiduciary (not all financial professionals are required to put your interests first), promises of high returns, meaningless guarantees, and so forth. Smedley Financial Services, Inc.® has been a fiduciary since our first day in business, June 4, 1982. We can help you avoid financial landmines and scams. We put your interests first and are bound by law to do so.

So don’t self-sabotage what you have worked for all of your financial life. If you think financial planning is expensive, try ignorance! None of us can afford to make financial mistakes at retirement. Your financial success is our passion!

Bullish Best Wishes,

Roger M. Smedley, CFP®
President

SFS

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