If the market were to crash significantly tomorrow, some of you will be completely fine. And yet others of you, you’re gonna make decisions that you’re gonna regret for many years to come. Which group are you going to be in? Because the difference isn’t luck, it’s preparation, and the real question is how do you know before it happens?

That’s a question that we’re gonna focus on in today’s show. I’m your host, Anthony Saccaro. You’re listening to the Providence Financial Retirement Show, where it truly is all about the income. We are your retirement income source, and this is the place where retirees come for income. Really glad that you’re joining us today, and we’ve got a great show for you because we’re gonna talk a lot about what the market has recently told us and where it may go from here, along with how you can know that you’re gonna handle it properly.

Of course, as we always do, we’re gonna answer your listener questions along the way as well. Let me take you back to my opening question. You wake up tomorrow, you see that the market is down by a thousand points. Over the course of the next few days, it continues to be volatile. It goes down, it goes up, and maybe within two or three weeks, it’s down by about 10%. How are you feeling? How are you gonna respond to this situation? The answer to that question is going to give you a very big clue as to whether or not you’re invested properly for the phase of life that you’re in. But here’s the thing, you don’t really have to imagine too hard the situation that I just described. Because we just lived through it in the weeks that followed the start of the Iranian war. The market did exactly what I had explained. It became really volatile, and over a course of just a few weeks, the NASDAQ actually entered into correction territory and other indices. The broad market came really, really close to a correction, and a correction is just a 10% drop from its most recent high.

Instead of then trying to imagine how you would react in this scenario, you can actually just look back a few weeks and ask yourself, how did you react? Because that’s where the clue is going to be. Think back to those days, what were you thinking when you saw that the market was down by 1300 points one day, and then it went down the next day and then it bounced back a little bit and a lot of volatility and all the headlines about the Iranian war and bombings and people getting killed and all of the negativities that caused you to start feeling not so good like the rest of America wasn’t feeling good.

What were you thinking about your portfolio? Were you happy with how it was invested? When the market went down, were you nervous? Were you frequently checking your accounts, opening your computer, looking at the online banking, trying to figure out what your balances were? Were you wondering whether it was gonna get worse? Were you hoping that it would just bounce back quickly? What were you feeling in the moment? Because that is the biggest indicator as to whether or not you are invested properly for where you are in your stage of life. The market has since bounced back, and you can be thankful for that. But in the moment, something important happened, you got a real life test, not theory, not a simulation, not hypothesis, but an actual real life test of how you’re gonna feel when the market starts to have a lot of volatility and starts to drop like it did.

If you can look back and realize that you were calm. That you didn’t have any worry in the world. You weren’t nervous at all. You felt great about things. That tells a big piece of the story. But if you were like most people, you got nervous, you got anxious, you started looking at your account balances more often. Maybe you were crossing your fingers toes, paying attention to the news, really hoping that it would bounce back and the narrative would change. That tells you something completely different. It tells you that you might need to rethink your plan. Retirement’s not just about the numbers. Your retirement is about how you wake up every day feeling.

If the math is right and your portfolio is positioned properly, but you wake up feeling every day nervous and anxious, that’s not gonna be a great retirement. I want you to have the confidence and clarity, and more importantly, the peace of mind you deserve in retirement. That’s what retirement should be. Calm, fun, lively, not always anxious, and worry about what the market’s gonna do next. And if that’s how you felt, then maybe we need to rethink how you’re actually invested. And that’s one of the reasons why here on the Providence Financial Retirement Show, I talk so much about investing for income because it’s reliable, it’s dependable.

You can count on it year in and year out regardless of what the market does. And it’s gonna help you feel better about your portfolio as well too, because you know you’ve got income you can rely on. If you want to get more education about the idea of investing for consistent income, we’ve put together a short animated video that’s really powerful and that I want to give you for free, so you can learn how investing for income might actually help you have a calmer and more peaceful retirement.

If you want get this video, all you need to do is go to providencefinancialradio.com/video. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/video. Just leave us your information and we will email it to you shortly, but you’re gonna enjoy watching it and you’ll learn how getting income from your portfolio can actually help you have a better retirement.

Once again, if you wanna get this video about how to create income from your portfolio, go to providencefinancialradio.com/video and you’ll have it in your email inbox. Surely you’re really gonna enjoy watching it though.

I’m Anthony Saccaro. Thank you for staying with us. You’re listening to the Providence Financial Retirement Show.

We’re talking about how you react when you see the market start to get volatile. The reason this becomes so important is because how you react really is a big determiner as to whether or not you’re invested properly or whether or not you might need to make some changes. Let’s stay with that for a second because we just had a test in time when the Iranian war started. Where the market went into a lot of volatility went down almost into correction territory, and you were sitting there watching it. How did you react? What did it feel like for you? You know, a common reaction is to start getting maybe a pit in your stomach. Maybe there was a little more of a sense of urgency, and if some of you are honest with yourself, you might have even started to panic a little bit, and your brain in that scenario starts to shift.

And you might have been asking yourself, what do I do? Do I do something? You might have gone into that, do something mode, or did your brain go back to a plan that you’ve already created that has this type of scenario in mind and you realize you just need to follow your plan. I know having been a financial advisor for well over a quarter of a century, that many of you went into the do something mode, you feel like you’ve got to do something, and that moment right there, that’s the test, you don’t test your emotions when everything is hunky dory going great, and the markets are going up. Your reactions aren’t gonna get tested. When everything feels easy, the time to test your emotions and your reactions and your thought is when things start to dip and you are unsure about what to do, and yet that particular moment, it doesn’t measure how smart you are. It doesn’t measure how much money you have. What it does is it measures one thing and one thing only. That is how prepared you are.

If you’re properly prepared. Like we talk about a lot on the Providence Financial Retirement Show. That means you have a plan and your plan is not. A plan if it just always counts for the market going up. A good plan is going to account for volatility. It’s gonna account for corrections, it’s gonna account for recessions. It’s going to allow you to retire or stay retired no matter what’s going on in the market. Whether that’s a war, whether it’s inflation or anything else that’s going on in the crazy world around us.

If you have a plan, it accounts for what just happened, and a plan is a roadmap for you to follow so that you don’t have to worry. You don’t have to lose sleep. You don’t have to feel like you have to check your account balances every day, and you can keep your emotions in check because you have a plan. And if your emotions were outta check and out of balance during the last few weeks, as the market has been extremely volatile, maybe you need to do a plan or maybe you need to update your plan. And yet I know that you might not even know how to do that. You may wanna plan. You love the idea. You know that you should be in a situation to not have to react and panic when the market goes down because you know what’s gonna happen, but you might not even be sure where to start.

And if that sounds like you and you wanna get a starting point for creating a plan so you don’t have to allow your emotions to run up and down with the market every time it runs up and down, then you’re gonna want to get a copy of my book, More Life Than Money. It’s an Amazon number one bestseller, and I walk you through some of the more common mistakes I’ve seen retirees make. How to avoid them, and I also walk you through how to start developing a plan for your retirement, a plan that allows you to sleep well at night, regardless of what the market is going to do. I’ll send you a copy of More Life Than Money, absolutely free of charge. All you have to do to get it is go to providencefinancialradio.com/book.

Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/book. Leave us your information. We’ll get it right out, and you’ll have it in just a few days, but you’ll learn what you need to know to start developing a plan for your peace of mind. To get your complimentary copy of more life than money, go to providencefinancialradio.com/book and we’ll get it right out.

Thank you for staying with us. I’m your host, Anthony Saccaro. You’re listening to the Providence Financial Retirement Show. We’re spending our time together today doing a reality check. We’re really looking at the past few weeks and how volatile the market’s been. And asking you whether or not you were panicking or had any uneasy feelings or whether you felt like everything was okay and retirement moved on.

I’ve been a retirement advisor now for well over a quarter of a century, and I know from experience and from your phone calls that I’ve received that a lot of you are starting to get really worried. Some of you were even on the brink of panic. The market was getting very volatile. It went down almost into correction territory, and you were starting to wonder what to do, and as we’ve already talked about leading up to this point, that really is indicative of a bigger problem.

The bigger problem might be that you don’t have a plan that is proper for your phase of life. If you’re in retirement and you’re worried and you lose sleep every time the market starts to be a little volatile, that’s not the retirement that I want you to have, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the retirement you want to have either.

Don’t you wanna be in a position to where. If we have another war or the market drops by 10%, or you see your portfolio start to fluctuate, that it’s like water off a duck’s back. It doesn’t affect you at all. Don’t you wanna be there? And if you’re not there, it’s a problem. And the problem is how you are invested.

Not only do you need to be invested so that you never have to worry about running outta money before you run out of life. But you also need to be invested so that your peace of mind stays consistent, even in volatile times. I don’t want volatility in the market to create volatility in your mindset as well. That’s not a successful retirement. And the moment when the market started to go down after the war was announced, and in the few weeks following when the market almost got into correction territory. That was the defining moment that put you through a quick test, that you could do a self-analysis to determine whether or not you’re happy.

You’re happy that you did the plan, you’re happy that you’re following plan, you’re happy with how the plan is working, or whether or not you need to revisit your plan. Or for some of you, if we’re honest, maybe you need to think about creating a plan. But then something happened. The market called Donald Trump’s bluff.

What do I mean? When Donald Trump started the war, there was a lot of bombing, a lot of taking out of the terrorists, a lot of killing of the leaders, and the market wasn’t sure how far this was going to go, and that’s when we saw a lot of that initial volatility, and it was because of the instability of that region. It also had a lot to do with energy prices. Energy prices have gone up dramatically over the last few weeks, as you’ve probably noticed at the gas pump. And whenever the markets are uncertain, people tend to sell off. They tend to go for safety, and that’s why the market sold off and very quickly almost went into a recession.

But then as Donald Trump continued making his threats, some of those threats got to a point where they really just seemed unbelievable. You remember the threat just a few weeks ago where he basically said, I’m gonna destroy all of the Iranian civilization. Well, you know what the market did when that threat came out, it actually stabilized and even went up a little bit. Why? Because the market knew that that wasn’t going to happen. Now, I also wouldn’t say that that’s outta the question still, but for that moment and that time, the market called Donald Trump’s bluff, it didn’t believe him. And of course it didn’t happen. Donald did what he usually does, and that is he backpedaled a little bit and gave them a two week extension, and we’re still in the process of seeing how this whole thing plays out.

It’s not done yet. We’re still in the middle of this time period, but for the time being, the market has now come back and almost back to the levels it was at before this war even started, because the market believes that Donald is bluffing. The markets have started to stabilize. The headlines have started to quiet a little bit and everything seems like for the time being, it’s gonna be okay and the market is not off its highs by too much at all. And you might be feeling relieved. Some of you, you might be thinking, okay, you know, I didn’t like it. Little bit of nerves in my stomach. That little hit that. Sometimes you feel when something is off. But it was okay and we got out of it and I’m glad I didn’t panic, and I know that that’s what some of you are thinking.

The market came back pretty quick and in the end it wasn’t so bad. A lot of you are thinking that very thought, but that very feeling, that feeling that it wasn’t so bad, that’s important because that feeling can lead you to a very, very dangerous conclusion. And that conclusion is, this is how it always works. The market drops and then it just comes right back. But does it always come right back? Well, the history of the stock market tells us that it does not. When you look at stock market history over the last couple hundred years, there are periods of time where the market does what it has just done, and it doesn’t come right back, and that’s what scares me is if you think that it’s gonna come right back then at that one point in time where it doesn’t come right back, that could affect the rest of your retirement. And I don’t want you to have that false sense of security that every time the market’s gonna come back, just because it did this last time.

If you wanna learn more about market history, we’ve put together a short animated video that’s fun to watch because it is animated. But it talks about the history of the stock market and what that history tells us could happen in the near future. With regards to the market, you’re really gonna enjoy watching it, and I wanna send it to you absolutely free of charge. All you need to do to get it is go to providencefinancialradio.com/video. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/video. Leave us your email address, we’ll email it to you and all you need to do is press play. You’ll be able to watch this short animated video so you can learn where the market history is telling us where the market might go from here.

Just go to providencefinancialradio.com/video and leave us your information. You’ll have it in your inbox shortly. I’m Anthony Saccaro. Thank you for joining us today for the Providence Financial Retirement Show. We’re talking about the fact that the market just almost went into correction territory as a result of the war, and we’re doing an analysis through this entire show asking you how you felt. Because how you felt during all those times of volatility is really a big indicator as to whether or not you’re invested properly and your plan is working, or whether you might need to shore up your plan. We’ve also just talked about the fact that this recent volatility and the fact that the market has really bounced back, has led some of you to a false sense of security, a belief that this is the way the market always works.

It always goes down and it’s always going to come back, and that may not necessarily be true. As a matter of fact, stock market history tells us that it is not true, and we can learn from history that there may be an extended period of time in the future where the market doesn’t come back at all, and it may stay down, or it may stay flat for a long period of time.

You may very well have walked away from our most recent correction and recovery thinking that. This recent drop was just temporary. And you might be among the masses that think that the market’s always going to recover. And if that’s the case, you’re certainly not alone. Most people think that, but it’s that exact belief that can get you into trouble because when you zoom out, when you start to look at market history from a much longer perspective, instead of year by year, even looking at it from decade by decade. And when you start to look at market history, not just the last few years, you start to see a different picture. The market’s been around for a long, long time, and over that time there’s been all different kinds of cycles. There’s been booms, there’s been corrections, there’s crashes, there’s short recoveries, there’s long recoveries, and the list goes on.

Yet. Sometimes the market does drop and sometimes it comes right back, but other times it doesn’t. When you study market history like we have here at Providence Financial, you’ll quickly realize that there are multiple time periods that last over 20 years where the market has had multiple crashes and multiple recoveries, but no growth.

And if I asked you before I just told you the answer, whether or not there’s ever been a time period in history, 20 years or longer where the market has just had no growth, what would you have said? Well, I know what you would’ve said because I’ve asked this question hundreds or thousands of times to different people I talked to, and almost no one knows that there’s ever been a time period in history where the market’s been flat for 20 years. Why? Because that’s not what we’re told. We’re told that the market always goes up and we don’t tend to believe what’s true. We tend to believe what gets repeated, and it’s often repeated that the market always goes up, but history tells us a different story. That’s not always true, and there are multiple time periods where the market has been flat for 20 years or longer, but this is probably the first time that many of you are hearing that.

A lot of times those long flat periods come right after long good periods, and for the last 12 or 13 years now, the market has gone straight up and history tells us that that’s probably not gonna continue. We’re probably gonna have a period of time where the market becomes flat again for a long, long period of time.

And if you are retired and you’re invested wrong in that period of time, it can be very, very dangerous to your retirement. And that’s what I’m just trying to help you see so that you can at least be aware of it and make decisions now that you will wish you would’ve made later down the road if we start to have another time period like this.

If you’re curious about this market history though, and you want to dive a little deeper and maybe learn a little more about history, just so you can kind of read it for yourself, I want to give you a brand new copy of More Life Than Money, absolutely free of charge. I’ll mail it to you. No cost, no obligation. I just want you to get the information you need so you can be prepared the next time we have a longer market crash, not one that just bounces and comes back very quickly. And if you’ll go to our website and give us your information, you’ll have it within just a couple of days.

To claim your free copy of more Life than Money, just go to providencefinancialradio.com/book. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/book. Leave us your information. We will get it right out. You’ll have it in a few days, but you’re really gonna enjoy reading it. To claim your free copy of more life than Money, go to providencefinancialradio.com/book and we will get it right out. You’ll have it shortly, I promise.

Thank you for staying with us. You are listening to the Providence Financial Retirement Show. My name is Anthony Saccaro. Thank you for taking time out of your day to join us wherever you might be.

We’re talking about this most recent market volatility and the fact that the stock market almost went into correction territory. The NASDAQ actually did go into correction territory, and the other big indexes almost did, but not quite. And how did that make you feel? Did you panic? Were you worried? Were you looking at your accounts every minute of every day hoping that the market would come back? Or did you have the confidence and clarity and peace of mind that you should have even though the market was going down?

That reaction is very, very important because if you’re panicking, you probably don’t have a plan, or at least your plan doesn’t have a panic clause in it. There should be a panic clause. Something in your plan should keep you from panicking no matter what happens, and if your plan doesn’t account for a simple 10% correction, which not only just recently happened, but is going to happen many times again in the future. And if your plan doesn’t allow you to have the peace of mind that you deserve, even in spite of all the volatility, I’m gonna make a bold statement. Your plan is wrong. Your plan needs to allow you to have peace of mind in retirement, regardless of what’s going on. We know that there’s gonna be future recessions. We know that there’s gonna be future corrections. Your plan needs to account for them, and just because the market is volatile doesn’t mean that your mentality has to be volatile. If your plan is not giving you the peace of mind you deserve, it’s time to revisit the plan.

We have a question that came in from David that is along the lines of what we’ve been talking about today. David is from Irvine and he wrote in this. I’ve been watching the market pretty closely lately, especially with the recent drops, and honestly, it’s made me a little nervous at first, but then it seemed to recover pretty quickly and that made me feel better. I’m in my early sixties planning to retire in the next few years, and most of my money is in the market right now. So my question is this. If the market has always come back over time, should I really be worried about these kinds of drops or is this just something I need to ride out?

And David, a lot of our listeners are wondering the same thing. That’s why I’m taking time to answer your question. So thank you for writing it in because I know it takes time outta your day to write in a question for the show. It’s probably a good time to remind the rest of you that if you have a question for the show, very easy to ask. All you have to do is go to providencefinancialradio.com and you can ask a question there, and maybe we’ll get a chance to answer it in a future episode. And while you’re at that website, Providence Financial Radio dot. There’s hundreds of episodes that you can listen to that are all designed to give you the confidence and clarity and the peace of mind you deserve in retirement. I know you’re gonna find something of interest to you while you’re there, so just go to providencefinancialradio.com, listen to any one of the episodes you want, or ask us a question that way.

But David’s question is, in short, should I just ride out the market? Should I stay vested even though I’m a few years away from retirement? David’s question is definitely the right question, and you’re right, David, to be thinking about this now because yes, the market has historically come back over time, but that’s only a small part of the story. What matters for you now that you’re just within a few years of retirement is how long does it take to come back and what happens while you’re waiting. In your situation, being close to retirement, you don’t have the luxury of time as you did maybe 20 or 30 years ago. If the market drops and it stays down now for a few years and you wanna retire, you might not actually be able to retire. You might actually change your mind about whether or not you can retire because your portfolio right as you wanna retire might be down by 10 or 20 or 30 or 40% or more. And let me ask you, David. If the market dropped and your portfolio in the next few years was down by 30 or 40%, as has happened many times in the past, would that affect your ability to retire? Would you decide that, okay, this was part of my plan, I’m still gonna retire on schedule because I’ve accounted for that? Or would it cause you to rethink retirement and maybe you wouldn’t wanna retire at all, maybe you decide to work a few more years? The answer to that question is going to be the determining factor as to whether you should make any changes.

If the market goes down significantly from here right before you retire and you could still retire and it wouldn’t affect your peace of mind, fine. You probably don’t need to change a thing. But if you’re in a situation where the market drops, would cause you to have to work a few more years and to rethink your retirement. Yeah, I think you do need to make some changes because I don’t want your retirement to depend on what the stock market does and I’m pretty sure that you don’t want that either.

Thank you David, again, for taking the time to write in that question, and I certainly hope I’ve given you something to think about if your, and the same situation as David or a similar situation where you wanna retire in the next few years and you’re wondering whether or not you should make changes now or whether you should just wait.

Well, I’ve put together an animated video that you are gonna wanna watch that talks about investing for income and the reason that investing for income becomes so important prior to retirement. It’s because you put yourself in a situation to be able to retire on your schedule, not on the stock market schedule. And that’s what you’re gonna learn when you watch this short animated video about investing for income. I’ll send it to you absolutely free of charge. You just have to let me know you want it, and you can do that by going to providencefinancialradio.com/video. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/video. Leave us your information and you’ll have this video show up in your inbox really, really shortly. Go to providencefinancialradio.com/video and you’ll be able to watch this video about how you can get income from your portfolio that you can count on no matter what’s going on in the world around you.

providencefinancialradio.com/video. I’m Anthony Saccaro. If you just hopped on, you’re listening to the Providence Financial Retirement Show. Welcome to the show. We’re talking about a couple different things having to do with all our recent stock market volatility. When President Trump declared the war on Iran, the market got really volatile and it went down almost in the correction territory, and then it bounced back.

And we’ve already discussed the fact that if you were feeling really nervous during that period of volatility, you might not be invested properly and yet the markets bounce back. And that may have a lot of you having this false sense of security that the market always bounces back. And so you just kind of ride it out. Whether or not that’s true depends on your situation. If you’re in your twenties or thirties or forties, I agree with that. I think you should just write it out that volatility doesn’t hurt you. It actually helps you because when the market crashes or goes down, you get to buy more shares when you’re putting money in the market.

But if you are a year or two, or maybe four or five years away from retirement, you need to be a little more cautious and a little more worried. What would happen to your retirement plans if the market crashed right before you decided to retire? Would it affect your plans like we just talked about with David’s question? Or would you be able to retire on schedule? What if you’ve already retired? Maybe you retiring this year and within a year or two after you retire, the market crashes and your portfolio crashes with it. How would that affect your retirement? These are questions that many of you need to be asking, but I know from experience just haven’t really thought about, and many of you might have that false sense of security that if the market crashes, it will always come back.

And while that’s true, if you are taking money out of the stock market at the same time it’s crashing, there’s a double drain on your portfolio that could cause you to have to worry about running outta money before you run out of life. The first of that double drain is the fact that the market is going down. That’s drain number one. The second of that double drain is the fact that you’re having to sell principle. You’re having to cannibalize your shares in order to get your income. Drain number one is the market’s going down and drain. Number two, you’re selling principle to get your income. That’s that classic double drain.

And if you stay in this double drain scenario for some years while the market is bouncing around trying to figure itself out, you could very well be putting yourself in a position to have to worry about running outta money 10 or 20 or more years from now. And that’s not a scenario that I want you to be in. And I know that that’s not a scenario that you wanna be in. But that’s a possible scenario, and if that is a possible scenario in your situation, I’m gonna suggest strongly that you need to revisit your plan. Or for some of you, if we’re honest, you need to do a plan. But at Providence Financial, when we put together a plan for our client, it includes income that you know that you can count on irrespective of the value of your portfolio. Irrespective of what the stock market does, irrespective of what wars or other geopolitical concerns are going on. If you are truly invested for income like we teach here on the Providence Financial Retirement Show. You are gonna be able to count on your income week in and week out, month in and month out, year in and year out, and decade in and decade out, no matter what’s going on in the world around you because you’re not relying on selling principle to get your income, your focus on interest and dividends, and you can count on your interest and dividends.

You cannot count on growth, and if you’re having to cannibalize your portfolio to get the income. You’re putting yourself in a position to potentially have to worry about running outta money before you run out of life, and that’s why I focus so much here on the show on interest and dividends income. You can count on if you wanna learn more about getting income from your portfolio that you can count on year in and year out, regardless of what’s going on. You’ve gotta read more Life than Money. Chapter five. I talked just about that. I’ll send you a copy, absolutely free of charge. You just have to go to our website to request it. Our website is providencefinancialradio.com/book. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/book. Leave us your information, and in just a couple of days, a FedEx truck will pull up to your house with a brand new copy of more Life than Money. And once you read chapter five, you’ll learn what you need to know to be able to get income from your portfolio that you can count on no matter what.

To get your free copy of morelife than Money, go to providencefinancialradio.com/book and we will get it right out.

Thank you for continuing to stay with us where you are listening to the Providence Financial Retirement Show. I’m your host, Anthony Saccaro. We are your retirement income source and this is the place where retirees come for income. We’re in the middle of a great show because we’re talking about all the recent volatility that has occurred because of the war in Iran, and particularly how you have responded to it.

Some of you have been very emotional. Some of you have been on the brink of panic, and you’re wondering if you should make any changes, and just your reaction to what’s going on in the war tells you a lot. It tells you about whether the plan you have in place is satisfactory, whether it accounts for these type of volatile situations, and it tells you whether or not you need to adjust your plan.

We’re at the point though where I want to answer another listener question that’s in line with what we’ve been talking about, and this question comes from Brian in Newport Beach and Brian says this. After seeing what just happened with the market, I realized I don’t really have a clear plan for what I would do if the market keeps going down. I did not make any big moves, but I was definitely watching it closely and kind of hoping it would turn around. It’s been a reality check. I’m 62 years old, planning to retire soon, and most of my money is still invested. What should I actually be doing right now to prepare for the next time this happens?

And Brian, that’s a phenomenal question. I think that’s the right question. I think you hit the nail on the head for the way a lot of people are thinking. And yet my fear is that a lot of people think that, okay, the market comes back, this is what’s always gonna happen, and they leave it there. You are taking it a step further. You’re saying, look, this is a reality check. I realize that maybe I do need to make some changes. I just don’t know what to change. So let me ask a question to Anthony, and I think that’s very smart. So thank you for taking the time to do that.

If we take your scenario and boil it down to a very simple question that we can talk about. The question is this. What should I actually be doing right now to prepare for the next time this happens? There are four things that I think, Brian, you need to consider at this point. The first thing you need to do is you need to know where you currently stand. You need clarity on your current situation. How much risk are you actually taking? How much of your portfolio is exposed to market swings? And your situation, how would it be affected if the market has another major crash? Just kind of like we’ve talked about in the last couple of segments. That’s number one. You need to know where you currently stand.

Number two is you need to know what your income strategy is. When you retire, where’s your income going to come from? Are you just planning on pulling it from your investments? Or are you gonna position yourself to where you can get income from your portfolio without cannibalizing your principle?

Step number three is that you wanna make any adjustments before the next drop. You don’t want to try to fix this in the middle of a downturn. You wanna fix it now while things are still smooth, while the situation is still relatively stable. And this might mean reducing risk, repositioning some of your assets, creating more stability, and focusing more on income producing investments.

Step number one then is you have to know where you stand. Step number two is understanding or creating an income strategy. Step number three is making adjustments before it’s too late before the next drop and the final step. Step number four, this is where you want to stress test your plan. If you’re like a lot of our listeners, you’ve probably never stress tested your portfolio.

And if you haven’t done that, then you don’t know what’s gonna happen the next time the market has a major crash. And I can tell you that one of the first things we do for individuals that we communicate with is we run a stress test on their portfolio. Because if you don’t know how much risk you’re taking, then how do you know whether or not your investment is in line with your stage of life? Well, you can’t. You have to stress test your portfolio, and that’s what I’m going to recommend that you do stress test your portfolio. That would be step number four. So Brian, I certainly hope that gives you something to think about, and if you answer those four questions, then I think the answer will be clear to you as to what your next move is.

Now, I know that a lot of you are wondering the same thing. Should I make any moves now? What should I do? And in your situation, because you’ve never had a stress test on your portfolio, I’m gonna offer you something that I’ve offered very few times on this show because it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of effort on our part, and you have to be qualified for what I’m gonna give you right now, which means that you really have to have more than $500,000 of assets just because it is gonna take us a lot of time. And if you have less than $500,000 of assets, it just may not make sense for either of us. But if you have more than $500,000 of assets, I’m gonna offer you a complimentary stress test of your portfolio. We have the software here at Providence Financial that allows us to take your specific investments, your holdings, whether they’re stock or mutual funds or bonds, or whatever they are. Put ’em into our software and pretend like we have another financial crisis. And if that happens, how would your portfolio hold up? I know with no doubt that many of you are taking a lot more risk and your portfolio would not hold up nearly as well as you might think it would. Because you are a listener of the Providence Financial Retirement Show.

I am going to offer you this stress test absolutely free of charge, but again, you have to have more than $500,000 because it probably wouldn’t help you much if you’re not in that scenario. If you want this stress test. All you need to do is go to providencefinancialradio.com/report. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/report. Leave us your information and one of our representatives will be in touch with you to let you know what do we need to do in order to run this stress test for you Absolutely free. Complimentary. You don’t wanna miss this, just go to providencefinancialradio.com/report. Give us your information. Someone will be in touch with you soon about scheduling a time to do your stress test, but if you’re like most, you’re probably gonna be surprised as the result, and I’m more than happy to do it for you.

I’m Anthony Saccaro. Thank you for continuing to join us here for the Providence Financial Retirement Show. We are your retirement income source and this is the place where retirees come for income because my definition of a successful retirement is as much income as you need until the day you die. We’ve spent our entire show talking about the volatility that has gone on as of recent, particularly ever since the war in Iran started.

And it’s a great opportunity to use that volatility to determine whether or not you have a plan that is sufficient for your situation or whether or not you need to update your plan. And as I talked about a little earlier, a plan that might work on paper mathematically and numerically. It’s not a good plan if you still can’t sleep at night because of the volatility you see in your portfolio.

A good retirement plan is going to allow you to have confidence and clarity and peace of mind and be able to sleep at night no matter what’s going on. And if your plan is the best plan in the world, but you’re losing sleep, then it’s not a good plan at all. And this recent volatility has been a really good wake up call for some of you to realize that maybe you need to revisit things.

Fortunately, the markets bounce back, so it’s a great time to revisit next time, though it might not bounce back as quickly. Imagine that you know the market goes down 10% like it did just recently, and you’re wondering what to do. You’re starting to worry a little bit and before you even answer that question, it goes down another 10%. Now you’re down 20% and while you’re still starting to think and you’re kind of vacillating and you’re wondering, should I sell, should I not? Then the next thing you know, it’s down another 10% and now you’re down 30%. That scenario has happened many times in the past. I’ve been a retirement advisor for well over quarter century. I’ve seen that scenario play out, and I’ve seen it affect retirement plans. I’ve seen people that were planning on retiring that couldn’t retire. Maybe had to work another two or three or four years just because they were in a situation to where the scenario dictated whether or not they could retire. They didn’t have a plan that allowed them to retire on schedule. And I know from experience that most of you, your plan is contingent on what the stock market and the economy does. Your plan is probably not set up to withstand a 20 or 30% market correction, and if that sounds like you, you probably need to revisit and change your plan the next time the market has a correction.

It may not bounce right back like it did this last time. If that sounds reasonable, and you realize that you’ve just gone through a little miniature stress test of your own because of the market volatility and you want to put a plan in place, but maybe you’re not sure how well, that’s a part of the reason why I wrote my book, More Life Than Money. It’s an Amazon number one bestseller and. It talks about the most common mistakes I’ve seen retirees make in retirement and how to avoid them, and you’ll also learn how to develop a plan to make sure that you can retire on your schedule and not have to worry about whether or not you can retire. I’ll send you more life than money, absolutely free of charge. You just have to ask for it. You can do that by going to providencefinancialradio.com/book. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/book. Leave us your information and a FedEx truck. I’ll pull up in front of your house in just a few days and hand deliver you a brand new copy of More Life Than Money.

But I know you’re gonna enjoy reading it once again. To get your free copy of more Life than Money, go to providencefinancialradio.com/book and you will have it shortly. I’m Anthony Saccaro. You’ve been listening to the Providence Financial Retirement Show. We’ve been talking about all of the volatility in the market, and particularly how has it made you feel because that is a warning signal as to whether you’re invested properly now or whether you should make some changes.

I certainly hope you’ve learned something that you didn’t know before, something that’s gonna help you have the confidence and clarity and peace of mind that you deserve in retirement. Thank you for joining us for today’s Providence Financial Retirement Show. My name is Anthony Saccaro. Have a great week everyone. God bless.

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for educational and informational purposes only and reflects a general discussion from a live radio broadcast. It is not intended as personalized financial, tax, or legal advice. Individual circumstances vary, and listeners should consult a qualified professional before making decisions.