December 4, 2025 • 11 mins
"Hey Mike, how hard is it to learn how to manage a retirement plan on your own if you don’t have a financial background?"
Discover when it may make sense and when it probably doesn’t make sense to manage your assets in retirement.
Text your questions to 913-363-1234.
Request Your Wealth Analysis by going to www.retireontime.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mike (00:05):
Welcome to How to Retire On Time, a show that answers
your retirement questions. We'rehere to move past that
oversimplified advice thatyou've heard hundreds of times.
Instead, we're gonna get intothe nitty gritty. As always,
text your questions to (913)363-1234. And remember, this is
just a show, not investmentadvice.
Do your research. David, what dowe got today?
David (00:26):
Hey, Mike. How hard is it to learn how to manage your
retirement plan on your own ifyou don't have a financial
background?
Mike (00:34):
This is a tough one. It's a tough one because I believe
people should learn how to docertain things, but it doesn't
mean you should do them. Mhmm.Let me use an example. I know
how to repair the engine of acar.
I have taken apart thisbeautiful Chevy engine.
David (00:54):
Okay.
Mike (00:55):
I put it back together. Yeah. Right? I learned how to
take out I mean, we took outeverything, and it's
embarrassing for you to evenregurgitate this, because I
don't remember the names of allof the different components. I
just remember what they lookedlike.
David (01:08):
Uh-huh.
Mike (01:09):
Right? So I can do that. It doesn't mean I should do that
continually.
David (01:16):
Yeah. That makes sense? I was just talking to somebody
just the other day. They wereasking me if I wanted all this
oil change stuff.
Mike (01:25):
Mhmm.
David (01:26):
And I said, you know, I used to do that. I changed all
my cars all the time, but I gaveit up. It just was like, wasn't
worth the hassle anymore.
Mike (01:32):
Yeah. So here's what people typically want me to say.
Can you just give me a portfoliothat I can buy and hold and just
watch over time? Unless there'sa history of you getting up and
tracking the markets and knowingwhat to do, you already have
experience in managing aportfolio to some extent.
Whether you're an amateur, maybeyou're middle ground, or maybe
you were a professional thatjust left the industry, and
(01:54):
you're looking for a plan that'smore on the tax side of things,
that's more on the legacyplanning.
Mhmm. That probably makes moresense. Because if I'm gonna sit
here and say, yeah, just buy andhold this portfolio, and you
should be fine. Technically,that could be true. If the
portfolio is built correctly, itcould be true.
But is it in your best interest?Are you looking to try to just
(02:16):
pay less money in fees? Is thatthe goal? Because the true sense
of a fee is that you get moreout of what you paid for.
David (02:24):
Right.
Mike (02:26):
So let me just set this situation up. If you came in and
we gave you a plan, we puttogether a plan. It's beautiful.
Based on today's information,you should absolutely do this.
And maybe you implemented itmostly, but you just misaligned
a few things.
Maybe you took some creativeliberties, whatever it is, and
the markets are down now 30% or40%. And you're going, well,
(02:48):
this sucks. It does. Mhmm. And$2.50 an hour isn't able to fix
it.
There are things that whenthey're unfolding, you need to
be adjusting along the way, andwe can say it. But do you have
the emotional grit to do it whenit needs to get done? We had
someone that did a onetime planrecently, and there was one
(03:09):
stock in particular we hadrecommended. It was basically a
soft monopoly stock. Greatstock.
Has over a decade, if notmultiple decades of just
incredible performance,stability, which is nice and
easy. Right? Yeah. Well, thenthe environment changed. Stock
fell off a cliff, has neverrecovered.
Yeah. They panicked and said,yeah, I don't wanna do this
anymore. They thought they couldhandle what it takes to really
(03:33):
so you just you need tounderstand what you're signing
up for. We want to believe thatyou can just buy and hold the S
and P 500, and you're fine. It'smore risky than you may realize.
And just because the last 15have been great, doesn't mean
the next fifteen years will begreat. We wanna believe that a
sixty forty split's all youreally need. Maybe that's enough
(03:53):
to survive. Mhmm. But are youtrying to avoid fees just to
survive, or are you trying toget more out of it?
Remember, if you buy a plan,you're buying a product. There
are strategies you canimplement, but knowing how to
implement and when to implementthose strategies, that's gonna
be up to you. Are you sure youwanna take on that risk? And
this goes back to the DunningKruger effect, which is a
(04:14):
psychological phenomenon wherethose who lack experience don't
understand the right questionsto ask or what they're really
signing up for. And so I'veactually told people, no, I will
not create you a plan.
I lost the business because whatthey were asking for did not
support their expectations, andtheir alleged experience was not
(04:40):
congruent with what they saidthey would be willing to do in
the future. Retirement is notthe time that you learn how to
manage money in the market. It'sthe time you learn how to manage
money with a professionalguiding you along the way.
David (04:52):
Because the stakes are kinda high. Right?
Mike (04:54):
Yeah. If you mess this up, you're done. So I believe in
self reliance. The church that Iattend has a whole program about
self reliance. Yeah.
But you need to differentiateignorance versus self reliance.
So let me just dive into thatreal quick.
David (05:10):
Okay.
Mike (05:11):
It is good to become self reliant in understanding how to
manage your personal finances,how to manage your cash flow,
how investments work. It isignorant to think that your half
an hour a week or maybe yourhour every morning a week is
going to compete better than anentire team with over a decade
(05:31):
of experience that understandshow to do this. Yeah. There is
something about time in thesaddle that's going to benefit
than those who happen. Nownotice the difference here.
If you're just starting it, youneed to work with someone who's
going to teach you how to fish.That doesn't mean that
eventually you go out and fish.It means that you know how to
(05:53):
fish so that you can have anintelligent conversation with
the person that's managing yourmoney Yeah. To be with them as a
team member.
David (06:01):
Okay.
Mike (06:02):
You don't wanna operate off of blind trust. Okay? In my
opinion, I've never had asurgery, but if I were about to
have a procedure or surgery, youbetter believe I'm gonna be very
informed and ask the doctor alot of questions. Not stupid
questions like, well, chat GPTtold me this. Uh-huh.
I'm gonna say, help meunderstand the risks. Yeah. Help
me understand. Okay. If thiswere to happen, what should I
(06:24):
expect?
If that were to happen, thismedication is great. Is there
another medication we should beconsidering? And if the doctor's
frustrated with you asking thosequestions, get a new doctor. I'm
willing to believe that a doctorwould prefer to have a more
informed patient, because ifthey're a more informed patient
and they consent, they're lesslikely to get sued.
David (06:45):
Oh, yeah.
Mike (06:46):
I don't know. That sounds like a good deal to me if I were
a doctor. Yeah. But they fullyunderstood, okay, so these are
the risks. Here here's somethinghappened recently.
My daughter, she's young, lessthan a year old, got an ear
infection. We took oneantibiotic. She almost got
better, but didn't quite getthere. So then the doctor said,
well, you know, here's the nextantibiotic you should give her.
That was the conversation.
(07:07):
There was nothing else. And wejust thought, well, it's
antibiotic. They're all kind ofthe same. Right? I've now
learned, no.
This secondary antibiotic,though it's kind of the textbook
way to do it, has a high risk ofthrowing up. Oh. So when our
daughter started throwing up allthe time, couldn't hold food
down, we thought, oh, she'sgetting worse. No one told us
about that risk, And the doctornever said, well, they're close
(07:28):
enough to healing. You couldjust keep her well fed, help her
take her naps, make sure you donot miss nap.
She will probably heal in thenext two weeks. If you wanna
speed it up, we could use thisantibiotic. There's a high
chance that she'll throw up. Youdon't need to do one or the
other, but here are youroptions. Yeah.
I would have much appreciatedthat conversation, and then we
would have done the naturalpath. Look, I love Western
(07:49):
medicine. Mhmm. But she wasn'tthat bad. We just noticed she
was scratching her ear.
I would have much rather said,yeah. We can probably, as long
as it doesn't get worse, chosenthis other path. Yeah. Self
reliance has been an informedbuyer. It is not prudent for you
to do everything yourself.
I mean, are you gonna go out andfarm for yourself and avoid the
(08:09):
grocery store? Are you gonna goout to the lake and fish for
yourself instead of buy fishfrom the store? Are you gonna
change your oil for the sake ofsaving some no. That's not what
self reliance really means.
David (08:20):
Mhmm.
Mike (08:20):
It's being an informed buyer. But do you see my point?
Sure. If your money serves you,then you hire professionals to
get you a better result than youwould on your own, but you're
still incredibly involved everystep of the way. Yeah.
You should be learning. Youshould be learning about taxes.
You should be learning aboutinvestments. You should be
understanding why. I get thequestion all the time when we do
a portfolio rebalance.
(08:42):
Why'd you buy that stock? That'snot annoying. That's not a
criticism. That's a wonderfulconversation.
David (08:48):
Yeah. Like, I just wanna understand why, and then I'm on
this journey with you instead ofjust being a, I guess, a passive
just.
Mike (08:54):
Blind trust is a great way to get abused. Yeah. So when
someone has history of managingtheir money, they have their
system of how they manage theirmoney in the market. And I say,
what would you do if this wouldhappen or that would happen? And
they have an answer.
I love building those people onetime plans. Love it. Because I'm
just bridging the gap of theirtax planning, lining up their
(09:16):
social security optimization,and so on, and they're good to
go. Our one time plans werereally intended for those
people. They were not intendedfor, I don't know, four to six
visits, and now you're somefinancial expert.
That is an inappropriateexpectation, and I would rather
lose the business than tell youwhat you wanna hear and say,
yeah. Just just do this, andyou're you're good.
David (09:37):
Yeah. Maybe their motivation was just, I'm gonna
save a few bucks, give me my onetime plan because I don't wanna
pay the fees.
Mike (09:42):
Yeah. If you've got a million dollar portfolio and you
made a 2% error, it's a $20,000error. Yeah. To what? Save $250?
David (09:50):
Right.
Mike (09:51):
Or maybe $5,000 for a year? And then think about the
tax planning. So the activeavoidance of fees is well
intended. Heck, I wrote thearticle that said how a
comprehensive plan could replaceyour adviser and save you money
and fees. I love thatconversation, but I don't want
(10:13):
anyone to ever have theimpression that after a couple
of visits that you'reemotionally and intellectually
equipped for what could happenin the next couple of years.
Just understand the difference.If you have a background, you've
been doing it yourself, great.Maybe that's suitable for you.
But once you retire, now is notthe time to inherit all of that
risk. It's just not appropriate.
(10:35):
That's all the time we've gotfor the show today. If you
enjoyed the show, considersubscribing to it wherever you
get your podcast. Just searchfor how to retire on time.
Discover if your portfolio isbuilt to weather flat market
cycles or if you're missing taxminimization opportunities that
you may not even know exist.Explore strategies that may be
able to help you lower youroverall risk while potentially
(10:56):
increasing your overall growthand lifestyle flexibility.
Is not your ordinary financialanalysis. Learn more about Your
Wealth Analysis and what itcould do for you regardless of
your age, asset, or targetretirement date, go to
www.yourwealthanalysis.com todayto learn more and get started.
Welcome to How to Retire On Time, a show that answers
your retirement questions. We'rehere to move past that
oversimplified advice thatyou've heard hundreds of times.
Instead, we're gonna get intothe nitty gritty. As always,
text your questions to (913)363-1234. And remember, this is
just a show, not investmentadvice.
Do your research. David, what dowe got today?
David (00:26):
Hey, Mike. How hard is it to learn how to manage your
retirement plan on your own ifyou don't have a financial
background?
Mike (00:34):
This is a tough one. It's a tough one because I believe
people should learn how to docertain things, but it doesn't
mean you should do them. Mhmm.Let me use an example. I know
how to repair the engine of acar.
I have taken apart thisbeautiful Chevy engine.
David (00:54):
Okay.
Mike (00:55):
I put it back together. Yeah. Right? I learned how to
take out I mean, we took outeverything, and it's
embarrassing for you to evenregurgitate this, because I
don't remember the names of allof the different components. I
just remember what they lookedlike.
David (01:08):
Uh-huh.
Mike (01:09):
Right? So I can do that. It doesn't mean I should do that
continually.
David (01:16):
Yeah. That makes sense? I was just talking to somebody
just the other day. They wereasking me if I wanted all this
oil change stuff.
Mike (01:25):
Mhmm.
David (01:26):
And I said, you know, I used to do that. I changed all
my cars all the time, but I gaveit up. It just was like, wasn't
worth the hassle anymore.
Mike (01:32):
Yeah. So here's what people typically want me to say.
Can you just give me a portfoliothat I can buy and hold and just
watch over time? Unless there'sa history of you getting up and
tracking the markets and knowingwhat to do, you already have
experience in managing aportfolio to some extent.
Whether you're an amateur, maybeyou're middle ground, or maybe
you were a professional thatjust left the industry, and
(01:54):
you're looking for a plan that'smore on the tax side of things,
that's more on the legacyplanning.
Mhmm. That probably makes moresense. Because if I'm gonna sit
here and say, yeah, just buy andhold this portfolio, and you
should be fine. Technically,that could be true. If the
portfolio is built correctly, itcould be true.
But is it in your best interest?Are you looking to try to just
(02:16):
pay less money in fees? Is thatthe goal? Because the true sense
of a fee is that you get moreout of what you paid for.
David (02:24):
Right.
Mike (02:26):
So let me just set this situation up. If you came in and
we gave you a plan, we puttogether a plan. It's beautiful.
Based on today's information,you should absolutely do this.
And maybe you implemented itmostly, but you just misaligned
a few things.
Maybe you took some creativeliberties, whatever it is, and
the markets are down now 30% or40%. And you're going, well,
(02:48):
this sucks. It does. Mhmm. And$2.50 an hour isn't able to fix
it.
There are things that whenthey're unfolding, you need to
be adjusting along the way, andwe can say it. But do you have
the emotional grit to do it whenit needs to get done? We had
someone that did a onetime planrecently, and there was one
(03:09):
stock in particular we hadrecommended. It was basically a
soft monopoly stock. Greatstock.
Has over a decade, if notmultiple decades of just
incredible performance,stability, which is nice and
easy. Right? Yeah. Well, thenthe environment changed. Stock
fell off a cliff, has neverrecovered.
Yeah. They panicked and said,yeah, I don't wanna do this
anymore. They thought they couldhandle what it takes to really
(03:33):
so you just you need tounderstand what you're signing
up for. We want to believe thatyou can just buy and hold the S
and P 500, and you're fine. It'smore risky than you may realize.
And just because the last 15have been great, doesn't mean
the next fifteen years will begreat. We wanna believe that a
sixty forty split's all youreally need. Maybe that's enough
(03:53):
to survive. Mhmm. But are youtrying to avoid fees just to
survive, or are you trying toget more out of it?
Remember, if you buy a plan,you're buying a product. There
are strategies you canimplement, but knowing how to
implement and when to implementthose strategies, that's gonna
be up to you. Are you sure youwanna take on that risk? And
this goes back to the DunningKruger effect, which is a
(04:14):
psychological phenomenon wherethose who lack experience don't
understand the right questionsto ask or what they're really
signing up for. And so I'veactually told people, no, I will
not create you a plan.
I lost the business because whatthey were asking for did not
support their expectations, andtheir alleged experience was not
(04:40):
congruent with what they saidthey would be willing to do in
the future. Retirement is notthe time that you learn how to
manage money in the market. It'sthe time you learn how to manage
money with a professionalguiding you along the way.
David (04:52):
Because the stakes are kinda high. Right?
Mike (04:54):
Yeah. If you mess this up, you're done. So I believe in
self reliance. The church that Iattend has a whole program about
self reliance. Yeah.
But you need to differentiateignorance versus self reliance.
So let me just dive into thatreal quick.
David (05:10):
Okay.
Mike (05:11):
It is good to become self reliant in understanding how to
manage your personal finances,how to manage your cash flow,
how investments work. It isignorant to think that your half
an hour a week or maybe yourhour every morning a week is
going to compete better than anentire team with over a decade
(05:31):
of experience that understandshow to do this. Yeah. There is
something about time in thesaddle that's going to benefit
than those who happen. Nownotice the difference here.
If you're just starting it, youneed to work with someone who's
going to teach you how to fish.That doesn't mean that
eventually you go out and fish.It means that you know how to
(05:53):
fish so that you can have anintelligent conversation with
the person that's managing yourmoney Yeah. To be with them as a
team member.
David (06:01):
Okay.
Mike (06:02):
You don't wanna operate off of blind trust. Okay? In my
opinion, I've never had asurgery, but if I were about to
have a procedure or surgery, youbetter believe I'm gonna be very
informed and ask the doctor alot of questions. Not stupid
questions like, well, chat GPTtold me this. Uh-huh.
I'm gonna say, help meunderstand the risks. Yeah. Help
me understand. Okay. If thiswere to happen, what should I
(06:24):
expect?
If that were to happen, thismedication is great. Is there
another medication we should beconsidering? And if the doctor's
frustrated with you asking thosequestions, get a new doctor. I'm
willing to believe that a doctorwould prefer to have a more
informed patient, because ifthey're a more informed patient
and they consent, they're lesslikely to get sued.
David (06:45):
Oh, yeah.
Mike (06:46):
I don't know. That sounds like a good deal to me if I were
a doctor. Yeah. But they fullyunderstood, okay, so these are
the risks. Here here's somethinghappened recently.
My daughter, she's young, lessthan a year old, got an ear
infection. We took oneantibiotic. She almost got
better, but didn't quite getthere. So then the doctor said,
well, you know, here's the nextantibiotic you should give her.
That was the conversation.
(07:07):
There was nothing else. And wejust thought, well, it's
antibiotic. They're all kind ofthe same. Right? I've now
learned, no.
This secondary antibiotic,though it's kind of the textbook
way to do it, has a high risk ofthrowing up. Oh. So when our
daughter started throwing up allthe time, couldn't hold food
down, we thought, oh, she'sgetting worse. No one told us
about that risk, And the doctornever said, well, they're close
(07:28):
enough to healing. You couldjust keep her well fed, help her
take her naps, make sure you donot miss nap.
She will probably heal in thenext two weeks. If you wanna
speed it up, we could use thisantibiotic. There's a high
chance that she'll throw up. Youdon't need to do one or the
other, but here are youroptions. Yeah.
I would have much appreciatedthat conversation, and then we
would have done the naturalpath. Look, I love Western
(07:49):
medicine. Mhmm. But she wasn'tthat bad. We just noticed she
was scratching her ear.
I would have much rather said,yeah. We can probably, as long
as it doesn't get worse, chosenthis other path. Yeah. Self
reliance has been an informedbuyer. It is not prudent for you
to do everything yourself.
I mean, are you gonna go out andfarm for yourself and avoid the
(08:09):
grocery store? Are you gonna goout to the lake and fish for
yourself instead of buy fishfrom the store? Are you gonna
change your oil for the sake ofsaving some no. That's not what
self reliance really means.
David (08:20):
Mhmm.
Mike (08:20):
It's being an informed buyer. But do you see my point?
Sure. If your money serves you,then you hire professionals to
get you a better result than youwould on your own, but you're
still incredibly involved everystep of the way. Yeah.
You should be learning. Youshould be learning about taxes.
You should be learning aboutinvestments. You should be
understanding why. I get thequestion all the time when we do
a portfolio rebalance.
(08:42):
Why'd you buy that stock? That'snot annoying. That's not a
criticism. That's a wonderfulconversation.
David (08:48):
Yeah. Like, I just wanna understand why, and then I'm on
this journey with you instead ofjust being a, I guess, a passive
just.
Mike (08:54):
Blind trust is a great way to get abused. Yeah. So when
someone has history of managingtheir money, they have their
system of how they manage theirmoney in the market. And I say,
what would you do if this wouldhappen or that would happen? And
they have an answer.
I love building those people onetime plans. Love it. Because I'm
just bridging the gap of theirtax planning, lining up their
(09:16):
social security optimization,and so on, and they're good to
go. Our one time plans werereally intended for those
people. They were not intendedfor, I don't know, four to six
visits, and now you're somefinancial expert.
That is an inappropriateexpectation, and I would rather
lose the business than tell youwhat you wanna hear and say,
yeah. Just just do this, andyou're you're good.
David (09:37):
Yeah. Maybe their motivation was just, I'm gonna
save a few bucks, give me my onetime plan because I don't wanna
pay the fees.
Mike (09:42):
Yeah. If you've got a million dollar portfolio and you
made a 2% error, it's a $20,000error. Yeah. To what? Save $250?
David (09:50):
Right.
Mike (09:51):
Or maybe $5,000 for a year? And then think about the
tax planning. So the activeavoidance of fees is well
intended. Heck, I wrote thearticle that said how a
comprehensive plan could replaceyour adviser and save you money
and fees. I love thatconversation, but I don't want
(10:13):
anyone to ever have theimpression that after a couple
of visits that you'reemotionally and intellectually
equipped for what could happenin the next couple of years.
Just understand the difference.If you have a background, you've
been doing it yourself, great.Maybe that's suitable for you.
But once you retire, now is notthe time to inherit all of that
risk. It's just not appropriate.
(10:35):
That's all the time we've gotfor the show today. If you
enjoyed the show, considersubscribing to it wherever you
get your podcast. Just searchfor how to retire on time.
Discover if your portfolio isbuilt to weather flat market
cycles or if you're missing taxminimization opportunities that
you may not even know exist.Explore strategies that may be
able to help you lower youroverall risk while potentially
(10:56):
increasing your overall growthand lifestyle flexibility.
Is not your ordinary financialanalysis. Learn more about Your
Wealth Analysis and what itcould do for you regardless of
your age, asset, or targetretirement date, go to
www.yourwealthanalysis.com todayto learn more and get started.
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