I wrote this article because the “Earl password cartoon” and article actually identified the real challenge at the heart of this whole exercise: the more complete and useful your information/instruction letter is, the more dangerous it becomes if it falls into the wrong hands. A document good enough to hand your whole financial life to … Read more
Earl has a plan (he always does), and he mostly works them through to some stage of completion. He’s reallocated his retirement portfolio, run his Monte Carlo simulations (about 20 times and counting), updated his beneficiary designations, and recently had his and Dot’s wills and other documents reviewed by a professional who charged by the … Read more
Pastor Dave has been Earl and Dot’s pastor for eleven years. During that time, he’s preached through most books of the Bible, married their kids and some of their friends’ kids, and answered Earl’s questions—and follow-up questions—on all kinds of topics, especially stewardship and retirement. He’s not exactly a financial whiz, though. He’s got an … Read more
This article is part of the Biblically-Informed Framework for Retirement Stewardship (BIFRS) series. In the previous series of articles, we explored the Self-Sustaining Principle, which is the biblical call to plan wisely so we don’t become an unnecessary burden on others. We discussed saving adequately, generating sustainable retirement income, managing expenses, and building wealth responsibly. … Read more
Some retirees don’t love being asked how they’re spending their time. They were accountable for their time while working, so having to “give an account” in retirement feels a little uncomfortable, even in informal conversation. Still, people are curious. Or they’re just making polite retirement chit-chat because they have absolutely nothing else to talk about. … Read more
Ask a roomful of retirees what keeps them up at night, and you’ll hear the same answer from many of them: running out of money. Not death, not illness, not nothing to keep them busy—money. The technical term for this is “longevity risk,” but a less technical, more common term for some is FORO—”fear of … Read more
This article is part of the Biblically-Informed Framework for Retirement Stewardship (BIFRS) series. In this article, we’ll explore Tier 3 income. This variable, self- or advisor-managed layer sits atop your guaranteed income (Tier 1: Social Security, pensions, annuities) and semi-stable income (Tier 2: bonds, dividends, TIPS). It’s the most flexible part of your retirement income, … Read more
If you’ve spent any time around Christians who take money seriously — especially pastors, teachers, deacons, and writers like me — you’ve noticed something: we really love the word stewardship. We put it on book titles and seminar banners. We name giving campaigns after it. We work it into sermons, small-group discussions, and financial-planning conversations. … Read more
I’ll admit that retirement planning is serious business. Scripture, faith, wisdom, stewardship; plus sequence of returns, required minimum distributions, Social Security optimization strategies—there’s no shortage of weighty topics to wrestle with, and we wrestle with them regularly around here. I’m still working on the “Biblically-Informed Framework for Retirement Stewardship” (BIFRS) series, which will probably take … Read more
