Saturday, January 21, 2006

A New Blog From Random Roger

My name is Roger Nusbaum. Chances are that if you found this page you know a little bit about me and what I do. My primary work is as a portfolio manager for Your Source Financial in Phoenix, AZ, you can find all the necessary disclaimers in the side bar of this page.

In addition to managing separate accounts for clients I also write a lot about the stock market and other topics related to navigating the capital markets on my blog, Random Roger's Big Picture. I also am a contributing writer to TheStreet.com and RealMoney.com.

Random Roger's Retirement Planning will be much different from my Big Picture blog. I doubt I will be posting several times a day here, more likely a couple of times a week. The focus of this page will be my thoughts on all aspects of retirement planning; saving for it, creating a paycheck during it and some other random thoughts that I think are relevant.

This site will not be about financial planning. That is an entirely different vocation. You may or may not need financial planning help from a professional but you do need a financial plan. My focus here is the retirement part of your plan.

There are a couple of catalysts moving me to start this page. One is that I have very specific ideas about how to reach retirement goals. Modesty aside, I am well on the way to where I want to be financially and even if you find my thoughts to be completely upside down, it will still be useful to see planning and discipline playing out.

Another motivation for me is my steadfast belief that successful retirement will look very different in the coming years than it looks today. Success will require thinking outside the lines in many different ways about every aspect of retirement. I don't think this gets enough attention in the main stream media.

I hope this will be useful and entertaining and I hope I can reach a lot of people. More to come.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi - I think you're hitting the proverbial nail on the head. As a recent retiree, I can already see the differences from what "the experts" previously advised. The classical advise used to be that you should keep increasing the percentage of your portfolio in fixed assets because you had a short planning horizon and should concentrate on income. Well, surprise, surprise!! A person retiring at age 65 today could likely live to 90+. In my book, that's a planning horizon of 25 years. If you don't have an increasing asset base, inflation will destroy you. How do you beat inflation with fixed assets?
Having said all that, I believe that retirement is wonderful and provides many opportunities that I had not realized. However, without proper planning (do you know the engineers dictum - P to the 7th power?), it will be a disaster. That planning has to start early and has to include living well and happy. But also learning that true happiness does not equate to spending money.

I look forward to your columns.

Al

Anonymous said...

Good luck with this, Roger. Great idea, and you're perfectly situated for it.

Roger Nusbaum said...

Managing parents is very diffcult. My inlaws have a tough time talking about all of this stuff and so they have no will.

I don't care about "getting" their money but they would make things much easier for their children if they made a plan, even if the plan is to give it all to a charity.

Anonymous said...

Roger,
I like your new Blog! I "retired" at age 52 and moved to Prescott 6 years ago from back East. For me it was a "quality of life" choice. I downsized my lifestyle and have never looked back.
Keep up the good work.
Mark

Anonymous said...

Right on, Roger! Very happy to see your new blog.

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