On this episode of The Retirement Huddle podcast, Mark Howard looks at issues faced by people in other professions outside of the financial world and sees what kind of retirement planning lessons we can learn from these other professions.
Today, we’re seeing what we can learn from teachers and the issues they face.
Everybody hates homework.
Some teachers might enjoy giving homework assignments, but most of them just see it as a necessary evil. And you won’t find a student anywhere that enjoys having to do homework.
But the reality is that there just isn’t enough time in the day to cover everything that needs to be covered during school hours.
In retirement planning, nobody likes homework either. A few people really enjoy getting into the nitty-gritty with their investments, but most people want the process to be really painless and simple.
A good advisor can take a lot of that pain and annoyance out of the process for you, but the truth is that you still need to be involved. In addition to gathering up statements and making sure you know what you have, you also need to think about your goals, dreams, and desired lifestyle and be able to articulate those to an advisor so that your plan can truly be customized to you.
Standardized testing isn’t ideal.
Most teachers hate standardized testing and the feeling that they have to teach to the test. Different students learn in different ways and some are good test takers and some are not. So standardized tests that have been forced down everyone’s throat aren’t usually the best indication of how well students are learning.
The standardized test of the financial world is the cookie-cutter, boilerplate financial plans that get doled out by big brokerage firms. They try to shoe-horn everybody into a certain template without adequately taking into account your goals, feelings about risk, or any true analysis of what your spending needs will really look like in retirement.
Standardized testing gets pushed in schools because it works for administrators and legislators, not because it’s great for students. And cookie-cutter financial plans get pushed because they work for big companies, not because they’re great for clients.
Listen to the full episode or use the timestamps to jump to a specific section. Thanks for listening! We’ll be back for another show every other Thursday.
Today’s Rundown:
[2:02] – Everybody hates homework
[4:54] – Standardized testing isn’t ideal
[8:43] – Pros and cons
