Season One: The Peak Financial Freedom Show

Join Jim Files and Dan Ahmad as they provide valuable information about risk level in your portfolio as you age. Mathematically, there’s a high probability that you will experience many peaks and valleys of the stock market. That’s why as you age, your risk of running out of money in retirement goes up.

Join Jim Files and Dan Ahmad as they answer listener questions touching on topics that range from pension management to retirement planning to why it’s so important to have a written plan for your personal wealth management goals. Having a comprehensive financial plan for your future is critical to staying on top of your finances and setting you and your family up for the retirement you deserve.

You spend your entire life working hard, saving up, investing your money, and dreaming of the day when you can finally retire and enjoy the fruits of your labor. However, one can never expect stability in the stock markets, and that’s why it’s so important to have a portfolio that is uniquely built to protect you from any fluctuations the markets may face – no matter how drastic.

Portfolio stress tests! Consolidating assets! Analyzing risk! Shifting money to bonds! In this episode of Peak Financial Freedom Show, Dan and Jim discuss different ways that you can bring planning into your portfolio to minimize risk, especially when you’re in retirement. To do so, they look back at all of the bear markets that have happened since 1929 – how often they’ve happened, how big the losses were, the best ways one could have protected themselves from the market drop, and how another bear market may affect your portfolio.

In this latest episode of The Peak Financial Freedom Show, Jim and Dan look into a case study of a widowed woman on the precipice of retirement and discuss the unique challenges that come with entering retirement single. Among those challenges, they explain why investing in stocks is actually much safer than investing in bonds. In order to reduce the amount of risk in your portfolio, you want to be sure that more of your money is in assets and stocks than it is in bonds. Another way to minimize your risk, is to be sure that you have a well-thought-out plan which details the ways in which you will make and manage your income once in retirement.

There is a strong correlation between the risk in your portfolio and achieving financial freedom; the less risk you have, the more freedom you gain. In this episode of The Peak Financial Freedom Show, Jim and Dan discuss the difference between having a portfolio that looks pretty on paper and having one that is actually working for you, it all comes down to the amount of risk that you’re taking on and how much income flow you have. By taking the time to sit down with an advisor to write out your assets, your income revenues, and your investments in a simple format, you’ll be able to see and better understand exactly what your money is going to do for you for the rest of your life.

In this latest episode of The Peak Financial Freedom Show, Jim and Dan use a hypothetical client to showcase the benefits of sitting down with an advisor to minimize the risk in your portfolio and create a financial plan that works for your unique needs. Specifically, they touch on how one might go about organizing their assets and savings in order to use their assets as income during retirement so that they are able to both live the life they desire and deserve in retirement and leave an inheritance to their children or grandchildren.

If you’ve been following the show, then you’ve often heard about how important a comprehensive written retirement income plan is, but what is it exactly? In this episode of The Peak Financial Freedom Show, Dan and Jim discuss the details of what makes a comprehensive written retirement income plan, why it’s so important, and how it will help give you the retirement that you deserve.

It’s completely understandable to worry about the state of your finances, especially as you get closer and closer to retirement. In this episode’s Case Study, Dan and Jim discuss the best financial plan for chronic worrier, Gary. For them, the best way to combat financial stress and fears is to minimize the risk in your portfolio and then create a lifetime income projection so that you know exactly what to expect for your financial future. This works by simplifying your financial life into one page so that you can see exactly where your income sources will come from for the duration of your retirement; whether from savings, your assets, revenue, the government, or your investments.

When it comes to planning for retirement, there’s a lot of information and options available to you that it may get a little overwhelming. However, for a successful retirement, it’s important that you’re in front of, and in control of, your retirement rather than the other way around. For example, did you know that you can move your 401K funds into an IRA, tax-free if you’re 59.5 years old or over? Not many people do.

When it comes to retirement funds, the greatest worry is whether or not you’ll outlive your savings. Too often, people spend their whole lives working and saving for retirement, only to reach retirement and end up spending none of their money out of fear of running out. However, retirement should be about relaxing and enjoying life, not about stressing and fear.

When it comes to building a portfolio and a retirement plan that works best for you, it’s crucial to have an advisor who is both professional and competent. While it’s important to have a good relationship with your advisor, there’s a distinct difference that Jim and Dan highlight in this episode, you want your advisor to be friendly, but you don’t want them to be your friend. Your money is yours, and you want to manage it in a way that makes it work for you and for your family, not in a way that works for your advisor.

In this episode of The Peak Financial Freedom Show, Jim and Dan take time to focus on the nuances of investing in the stock market. They discuss topics like how much of your money should be invested in the stock markets, how you can better control your investments in the markets, and why they would never tell their clients to “ride out the stock market.” They also explain the processes that they put in place to mitigate the risk in your portfolio so that you never have to feel unsafe financially as you save and invest for your future.