Retirement / Financial advice

[Ex-Calif]

Originally Posted by rwidman

I know some people who have gone into the home rental business and have had nothing but trouble. It's not all gravy and there are a bunch of laws to protect the renter but few to protect the owner.

It is not risk free and there are issues...

Originally Posted by Tingum

Rental property for an absentee owner can turn into a nightmare! You will need a reliable property manager who will take at least 10% of the rent. Think about repairs and evictions! Better to talk to a financial planner about where to put your money. Remember you can not access the funds tied up in a rental property if you need them in a hurry.

All the successful ones have homes in upper middle income residential neighborhoods and pay 10% to a manager, because it is worth it.

Originally Posted by TacomaSailor

The house is in a very nice Seattle suburb with great rental potential. They lease the house (two-year minimum) through a large real estate management company.

The lease income from their home provides all the money they need to cruise (they are quite frugal) and have not had to touch their IRAs which have grown significantly in the last 14 years.

The stock market declines of 2002 and 2008 had no impact on my friends cruising plans. They were in the Mediterrean at that time and their home stayed leased full time. Their IRAs did decline, but since they were not withdrawing from them, those declines had no impact on their day-to-day life.

When they return from cruising they will already own a home in their

These are the folks I am talking about. One couple I talked to had a home where the mortgage was upside down. They had solid income and did not have to sell or do a rent reduction. Their first home was paid off and continued to provide a solid revenue stream.

These guys are praying for some inflation so they can bump the rents...

[TacomaSailor]

In my prior working life I did quite a bit of financial analysis for very large and complex computer systems. Additionally, I began serious investing in 1975 and, since I owned my company, I actively managed all my retirement accounts for 17 years.

It is hard to describe how complex many of the tax issues relevant to retirement, sale of homes, reinvestment of that income, (previously owning the home for rental makes it even more complicated), early withdrawal from retirement accounts, roll-over of retirement accounts and many others.

Additionally - the assumptions you make will determine the options you will see and therefore the decisions you can make. Those assumptions are really the heart of your decision making process.

I am an EXCEL whiz and have a graduate degree in statistics and computer science. I spent thousands for hours before and after retirement trying to find the single best and easiest answer to "what to do the house, money, IRAs, pensions, lump sum distributions?"

There are NO easy answers!

I built spreadsheets (one book has 15 sheets and over 5,000 rows of calculations) that model dozens of possible scenarios to consider and many dozens more tax consequences of those scenarios. There is actually no end to the possibilities.

Following are just some of the issues to consider

- early withdrawal (prior to 59.5 years old) penalites
- substantial and equal withdrawals
- alternative investment rates
- lease management fees
- expected inflation rates
- timing of market events (gains, losses, sideways movement)
- timing of withdrawals
- investment management fees
- access to your money from abroad
- timing of social security (this is really complicated)
- IRA roll-over options
- your tax rates

There is no single best answer. My wife (whose attitude about investing is 100% opposite of mine) and I have agreed to the following parameters for our retirement money management

- lower risk
- lower return
- manage our expenses to meet our ACTUAL investment results
- minimize investment management fees
- don't invest in anything that requires our attention more than once a year
- no real estate
- no tricky tax dodges (been there - done that - lost a lot of money)
- keep it simple
- don't look at investment results more than once a quarter

Have fun sailing!

Before you visit a financial guy - you need to prioritize your life expectancies as I show above.

Our priority is
- simple life
- don't think about money
- live within our means
- ALWAYS have more money than we need so we do not have to worry
- Therefore - we must NEED less which gets us back to - simple life

[Dhillen]

Originally Posted by TacomaSailor

IF you are not relatively sophisticated in the realm of income property, investment management and tax planning then you really need to spend some time with a financial planner.

Here are two examples of how you might do things - my long time business partner and I both quit working in 1998 - 1999 and we both went cruising.

My wife and I sold our large house in 2000 and went sailing. We had to return in 2001 to deal with unpleasant consequences of the house sale that failed many months after we thought it was completed. We invested all the proceeds from the house sale in mutual funds. We also left our IRAs in the care of a financial manager who had taken care of our money since 1984.

The stock market declines of 2002 and 2008 hit us very hard and made my wife so nervous she returned to work for a few years. We put our cruising plans on hold for that period of time.

However, out financial managers have given us an annual 9.3% (net of all expenses and taxes) return for the last 14 years.

Our house, which we owned 1982 - 2001, provided us an annual 2.5% return net of all expenses (including taxes, maintenance, insurance, appreciation, selling expenses, improvements).

My business partner took the opposite tack. He and his wife kept their home which they owned outright. The house is in a very nice Seattle suburb with great rental potential. They lease the house (two-year minimum) through a large real estate management company. The house provides their entire cruising income and guarantees his wife a known entity to which they can return when they quit cruising.

That couple has sailed from Seattle to Turkey and has been in the Med for nine-years. They return to Puget Sound once a year or every 18-months and take care of house business in between leases. They have had very good renters and almost no rental problems.

The lease income from their home provides all the money they need to cruise (they are quite frugal) and have not had to touch their IRAs which have grown significantly in the last 14 years.

The stock market declines of 2002 and 2008 had no impact on my friends cruising plans. They were in the Mediterrean at that time and their home stayed leased full time. Their IRAs did decline, but since they were not withdrawing from them, those declines had no impact on their day-to-day life.

When they return from cruising they will already own a home in their favorite neighborhood.

When we quit cruising and living aboard we will have to sell our boat, take the proceeds of that sale, and purchase a home. Our problem is that we have visited so many nice places to live that we can not decide where to settle or how much to spend on a house.

My friends already know their future - at their old home and near their kids. We have no kids, no living relatives, and have no idea where we want to settle.

Either way can work.

Tacoma Sailor has an excellent story and it highlights some things we, as cruisers, have considered as well. I work in finance and am relatively sophisticated when it comes to investment (I still make stupid mistakes, however). When we first went long-term cruising from Asia to Europe we noticed an awful lot of retired cruisers (we were then in our 30s) who had sold their home and were living off the proceeds. Many/most of them found out a few years down the road while they had been out cruising the global property market had continued to rise and they now had NO WAY of ever returning.

If they had been living in a middle class house in the US, for example, their choice of a home which they could afford now would be in the ghetto. Not very palatable. Many of them continued living on their boats getting by on social security at cruiser end-of-the-road destinations, such as Malaysia, Thailand or the Philippines.

The lesson we took away from this is since no one can tell where markets will go you always need to keep a foot in the property market.

By the way, no financial planner will tell you this because they are only used to dealing with people who have "normal" steady jobs and live "normal" steady lives. You are right, in my opinion, to throw this out there to get some cruiser feedback.

Don't sell that house.

Cheers.

Dhillen

[marlinmike]

VERY interesting thread, thanks to all for your insight.

[nimblemotors]

Consider selling everything you own and buy the largest boat you can with all the money. Then to generate some income, rent this boat out to a cruiser who will sail it around the world. This way, when they get back you know the boat is good.

This is the best advice, better than buying GM at $30 or First Solar at $40 or Lithium Battery maker A123 at $12, all of which went to zero.

[dannc]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

...
Do you have to buy a residence? I think I remember you had X amount of time before you had to buy another residence or be taxed pretty severely on the proceeds?
...

I don't think you have to pay capital gains on a house sale until the net is over $500,000 for a couple or $250,000 for a single person but I am not a tax expert.

Years/Decades ago I think you had to take the proceeds and invest in a new house or you were taxed heavily. I remember back in the late 80's or early 90's where people were selling a house in CA and making huge amounts of money and having to take that money and put it in a house here in NC. They were building huge houses as a result.

Later,
Dan

[valhalla360]

The fact you own the house thru a corporation complicates things. If it was your personal house that you lived in, you could sell and take $250k profit ($500k if married) tax free.

If it's owned by a corporation, I don't know that still applies if you have been living in it. You might check if you can have the corporation sell the house and the corporation could then buy stocks/bonds (pick an investement) with the proceeds which could be liquidated over several years eliminating the one time profit (Now you would really need to talk to a tax guy). Selling the house may create a taxable event where you must pay tax on the profit before buying the new investment though.

Lots of unknowns from your description but I would generally avoid making buisness descions primarly based on tax considerations. Make descions based on what makes the most financial sense and then take advantage of the tax rules that you can.

Assuming taxes aren't huge, I would suggest parking that money somewhere with a moderate return and when the time comes, you can buy a house. No sense buying a house/condo and then 10-15yrs later deciding that's not where you want to live anyway.

[barnakiel]

IF you need additional income (other than your retirement pension) to cover your cruising needs, put required amount of your investments into assets that generate fixed positive cash flows. These cash flows (say coupons, interest, etc.) will be your extra cruising fund. Prioritize regular and fixed income over low risk.

The reminder (I assume this with be the major part of your invest'able funds) allocate into less liquid investments that have highest chance of keeping their value (e.g. quality property). Prioritize low risk over liquidity and immediate pay back.

Pick up a portfolio that will fit your control freak curve. If you want to cruise far from home, prioritize assets that require minimum supervision/management.

Remember it takes time to build a sensible portfolio of retirement assets especially if you prefer property over securities. I think starting building yours now makes plenty of sense if you want to have worry free cruising in 5 years.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
b.

[onestepcsy37]

Originally Posted by TacomaSailor

It is hard to describe how complex many of the tax issues relevant to retirement, sale of homes, reinvestment of that income, (previously owning the home for rental There is no single best answer. My wife (whose attitude about investing is 100% opposite of mine) and I have agreed to the following parameters for our retirement money management

- lower risk
- lower return
- manage our expenses to meet our ACTUAL investment results
- minimize investment management fees
- don't invest in anything that requires our attention more than once a year
- no real estate
- no tricky tax dodges (been there - done that - lost a lot of money)
- keep it simple
- don't look at investment results more than once a quarter

Have fun sailing!

Before you visit a financial guy - you need to prioritize your life expectancies as I show above.

Our priority is
- simple life
- don't think about money
- live within our means
- ALWAYS have more money than we need so we do not have to worry
- Therefore - we must NEED less which gets us back to - simple life

Best advice yet, IMHO. I've practiced this most of my adult life and have no regrets - well, just one; wish I had bought 30 year treasury bonds back in the late seventies!

Stocks and bonds. You can go away for a year and not think about them. If you want to think about them you can follow them on the internet from anywhere on the planet. And if you want to sell, or buy, you can do that online too, within minutes. Try doing any of those things with real estate. JMHO.

I listen to all investment advice, then make my own decisions. We are now at the point where we live comfortably on just social security and interest and dividend income.

[socaldmax]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

A couple of things
First I want to thank you for taking the time to answer

I will go to a financial adviser, but I want to go there with some ideas of my own.
I want to bounce ideas against one, no go in dumb, has to be other cruisers that have faced this same dilemma, can't be unusual, would be pretty common I would think.

This house I'm talking about selling was essentially destroyed by a renter when I was stationed in Germany, the first two renters were excellent, the third destroyed it, I've been down that road, I understand the risks.

I've talked to my Accountant about liquidating the Corp and apparently if I do, I have to report those assets as income for that year and pay taxes on them as income, I don't want to do that, that is simply not viable.

Not all CFPs are the same.

In 2000, I lost $80k of my $120K I had invested in Fidelity Magellan. At the same time, my wife invested $90K with her friend at Metlife and lost only $1K of it, Warren Buffet didn't lose money, he just made less than usual. Why?

As he explained it, he invested her money with his "whale" investors like Warren Buffet, who rarely, if ever lose money. Every firm has financial analysts, and for the most part they make the same decisions based on futures reports, earnings reports, movement in the bond market, etc. Yes there is some insider trading (think Congressmen and Martha Stewart) but for the most part, the herd on Wall St. moves en masse. First ones to move make the most money, last ones to move lose the most money. But who buys the stocks that all of the whales are dumping? That would be the "guppies" like I was, in the 401k funds.

Find a CFP honest enough to admit that there are whales, large fish, small fish and guppies in the market, just like the ocean. If you can get him/her to invest your money with the whales, you'll make the most/lose the least on every trade. Give it to a mutual fund run by a faceless monkey in a suit, and run the risk of losing most, if not all of it.

Unfortunately for me, he retired early after making several $M/yr on his own investments, right next to his whales.

[TacomaSailor]

“Find a CFP honest enough to admit that there are whales, large fish, small fish and guppies in the market, just like the ocean. If you can get him/her to invest your money with the whales, you'll make the most/lose the least on every trade. Give it to a mutual fund run by a faceless monkey in a suit, and run the risk of losing most, if not all of it.”

I just cannot agree with that description of mutual funds or advice about those funds. That is just repeating a conspiracy theory that investors tell themselves to explain poor investment decisions.

My wife has been 100% invested in mutual funds for over 30 years. The ANNUAL compounded return, net of all expenses, since 1984 has been over 10%. My wife can afford to be quite aggressive because we have no need to use any of her investments until at least 2020.

I have been fully invested in mutual funds since 2004. My funds have provided an ANNUAL compounded, net of expenses, return of 6% during that time. We use my funds as an income source to supplement pensions and social security. Therefore, the funds are much more conservatively invested.


We know, based on 40 years of careful analysis of our income and expenses, that if my funds can make 3% over the rate of inflation (last year inflation was less than 1%) we will be fat, dumb, and happy.

Our investment management firm allows us to purchase as many funds as we wish from a list of about 50 funds. They provide very detailed statistics and analysis of fund performance and expenses. We also use Morningstar to validate the data we get from our management firm.


Every six to 18 months, depending on how the market and economy is changing and how our life is progressing we draw up a new set of priorities for each of our investments.

We then re-evaluate all 50 or-so funds, several new ones are added each year and several are dropped from the available list, and select the four to six funds that meet each of our objectives. Our investment managers allow us to move our money amongst the funds at no cost as long as we meet the individual fund requirements. Additionally, all the money we have in these funds is pre-tax and we pay no tax on inter-fund movements as long as we do not take constructive procession.

We do our homework and pick funds that meet our objectives. I have developed several complex spreadsheets to compare the various funds and to rank them based on our objectives. We spend about 20 hours over a week or so on the new fund selections.

My very conservative bonds and low-risk equities lost about 10% in value during the 2009-2009 recession. As that happened – I did a little short term work to offset the losses and we reduced our expenses. We managed our expenses so that we need not need to make any withdrawals from my diminished mutual funds.

During the same recession; my wife’s more aggressive investments lost about 30% of their value, which was difficult to accept but not too big a concern because we had another decade to recover those losses. As the economy began to recover – we switched her funds to even more aggressive mutual funds and quickly recovered the losses. Her funds have returned more than an 12% during the last two years.

In our SPECIFIC, but not unique, situation: 30+ years of investing in mutual funds have made us a great deal of money.

[hpeer]

Yeah, bought First Solar too, but higher than you!

We are working with our advisor on our retirement strategy, just started to work through his questionnaire. Also I've played with the Firecalc tool a bit. That has been helpful.

I'm book marking this thread to use in prepping for the meeting with the advisor.

On rental properties, we've owned a few. The one we have now is a four unit town home in a upper class section of center city. It's been a great investment and has had the least hassle with tenants. Location, location, location.

[Prairie Chicken]

Here are a few random thoughts.

Financial advisors are a good thing if you are not investment savvy. Still, they are expensive so if you can self-invest that is a better way to go. We've done both & are way ahead now that we are self investing. We were fortunate that we found a 'coach' who was able to help us get started.

Financial advisors typically charge a small percentage of the capital you invest with them. For example, if you have $100,000, they may charge 1.5% or $1,500 per year. It doesn't sound like much, does it? Especially if they invest well & you make a good profit. If your $100K earns 5% in a year, or $5000, you are paying the advisor 30% of your earnings! And if they lose money for you, you still pay them that $1,500.

You might want to consider an advisor during the transition period from working to retired. They do have computer models & questionnairs which will help with some decision making. Once fully invested and with a comprehension of how things were set up, you could dispense with their expenses & go it on your own.

In 2008 we were only about 40% invested in the market. Our holdings dropped 30%. A year later we were back where we were pre-crisis. Look to the market if your investing horizon is >5 years. Look at the market historically--it has always gone up when you consider the long term.

Research 'passive investing' and consider ETFs (exchange traded funds). Establish a discount brokerage account.

Investing is fun--once you get the hang of it, and it doesn't have to take a lot of time to do so.

[Ex-Calif]

So I will dive in and counterpoint on financial advisor, brokers, whatever...

They put their pants on one leg at a time just like we do. The ones that average Joes like me have access to didn't go to magical schools...

I had a Merrill Lynch guy, I set my account up to automatically buy mutual funds each month and once a year I would rebalance.

He was constantly calling with stock tips. One day he was all excited talking about the deal of the century and I had to get in...

I immediately fired up the internet and the buzz was everywhere. I turned on the tv and that crazy Eddie guy was touting this stock.

I called my guy back and told him I didn't pay him to tell me what everyone in the world knows. I then called his boss and fired him.

Investing is like diet - It's what you mom said. Eat a balanced diet and don't eat too much.

I've never seen an internet post since 1990 where the poster wasn't some financial genius out performing Warren Buffet and no one on the internet has ever lost money.

My advice is simple - Dow, Asia and when the economy is down by a Small cap fund.

Now, retirement tax planner? Good idea... The time to make money is when you are working. After working you preserve your money...

[socaldmax]

Originally Posted by TacomaSailor

“Find a CFP honest enough to admit that there are whales, large fish, small fish and guppies in the market, just like the ocean. If you can get him/her to invest your money with the whales, you'll make the most/lose the least on every trade. Give it to a mutual fund run by a faceless monkey in a suit, and run the risk of losing most, if not all of it.”

I just cannot agree with that description of mutual funds or advice about those funds. That is just repeating a conspiracy theory that investors tell themselves to explain poor investment decisions.

My wife has been 100% invested in mutual funds for over 30 years. The ANNUAL compounded return, net of all expenses, since 1984 has been over 10%. My wife can afford to be quite aggressive because we have no need to use any of her investments until at least 2020.

I have been fully invested in mutual funds since 2004. My funds have provided an ANNUAL compounded, net of expenses, return of 6% during that time. We use my funds as an income source to supplement pensions and social security. Therefore, the funds are much more conservatively invested.


We know, based on 40 years of careful analysis of our income and expenses, that if my funds can make 3% over the rate of inflation (last year inflation was less than 1%) we will be fat, dumb, and happy.

Our investment management firm allows us to purchase as many funds as we wish from a list of about 50 funds. They provide very detailed statistics and analysis of fund performance and expenses. We also use Morningstar to validate the data we get from our management firm.


Every six to 18 months, depending on how the market and economy is changing and how our life is progressing we draw up a new set of priorities for each of our investments.

We then re-evaluate all 50 or-so funds, several new ones are added each year and several are dropped from the available list, and select the four to six funds that meet each of our objectives. Our investment managers allow us to move our money amongst the funds at no cost as long as we meet the individual fund requirements. Additionally, all the money we have in these funds is pre-tax and we pay no tax on inter-fund movements as long as we do not take constructive procession.

We do our homework and pick funds that meet our objectives. I have developed several complex spreadsheets to compare the various funds and to rank them based on our objectives. We spend about 20 hours over a week or so on the new fund selections.

My very conservative bonds and low-risk equities lost about 10% in value during the 2009-2009 recession. As that happened – I did a little short term work to offset the losses and we reduced our expenses. We managed our expenses so that we need not need to make any withdrawals from my diminished mutual funds.

During the same recession; my wife’s more aggressive investments lost about 30% of their value, which was difficult to accept but not too big a concern because we had another decade to recover those losses. As the economy began to recover – we switched her funds to even more aggressive mutual funds and quickly recovered the losses. Her funds have returned more than an 12% during the last two years.

In our SPECIFIC, but not unique, situation: 30+ years of investing in mutual funds have made us a great deal of money.

First off, what you're describing is how you are basically trading your own funds. You're not doing what I did. I invested in a mutual fund (Magellan was the highest rated at the time) and concentrated on my work, and let them invest my money. They lost 66% of it in 2000, and when I cashed the rest of it out in 2012, it was still sitting at exactly $40K, no net gain since 2000. That was my experience, you can believe it or not.

Secondly, in your previous post you did admit that the stock market crashes of 2000 and 2008 hit you very hard, so hard that your wife went back to work. I'm sure you spent a great deal of time managing your funds after each of those crashes to recoup your losses. In essence, you were investing your own stocks, by selecting different funds. That's contrary to what most people do with mutual funds. People just dump their money in and let the fund manager handle the trades.

Meanwhile, my wife's $90K lost only $1,000 in 2000. I merely repeated to you exactly what our CFP told us, explaining how Fidelity Magellan lost $80K out of $120K, while he lost only $1K. If you like, I can get you his phone number, and he can explain it exactly the way he explained it to me. He's retired, but still in SD.



I have another story for you about how the stock market is rigged. There is a conglomerate of companies who spent billions building a fiber optic link between the traders on Wall St. and the other exchanges in order to intercept stock trades, place their own trades for those stocks within milliseconds and then resell those stocks at a small profit to the brokers who placed the trades before they knew what happened. They were skimming off of every stock trade, making hundreds of billions per year and it wasn't illegal, but it did steal those hundreds of billions from investors.

Just another conspiracy theory?