About this episode

Paul Merriman discusses retirement planning strategies with Morningstar's Christine Benz, focusing on making retirement portfolios last.

This special two-part session opens with Paul Merriman solo — paying tribute to Tim Ranzetta of Next Generation Personal Finance, sharing the latest numbers on state-mandated financial literacy, and walking through Daryl Bahls' quilt charts to show annual earnings invested in the S&P 500, large-cap value, small-cap blend, and small-cap value since 1928.Then Paul sits down with Christine Benz — Morningstar's Director of Personal Finance and Retirement Planning, and author of How to Retire: 20 Lessons for a Happy, Successful, and Wealthy Retirement — for a wide-ranging conversation on how to actually make a retirement portfolio last.Christine lays out her five-step plan for anyone retiring in 2030 or 2035: turbocharge savings, rethink household spending, build seven to ten years of "safer assets" for portfolio withdrawals, diversify globally, and use TIPS to protect purchasing power. She and Paul dig into how to structure fixed income (short, intermediate, TIPS), why she's cooler on REITs than she used to be, when a simple income annuity makes sense, and why alternatives rarely earn their keep.They also cover performance-chasing the S&P 500, balanced funds vs…

People in this episode

Hosts: Paul Merriman, Paul

Guest: Christine Benz

Topics covered

• retirement planning
• financial literacy
• portfolio management
• savings strategies
• investment diversification

Keywords

• financial advice
• TIPS
• REITs
• S&P 500
• income annuity

Mentioned in this episode

Products: S&P 500, TIPS, Wellesley/Wellington

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