SC Retirees: What to Do With Your Portfolio When Markets Get Scary

With geopolitical tensions rising and markets reacting, this episode is essential listening for anyone within five years of retirement or already living off their retirement portfolio.

Stewart Smith (LUTCF®, RICP®) and Mitch Davies break down exactly how the current conflict is affecting retirement portfolios, what sectors are benefiting and which are under pressure, and the structural strategies that keep retirement income stable when headlines get scary.

As a veteran-owned business and former military, Stewart and Mitch discuss what SC retirees need to know right now.

In This Episode:

• Iran conflict impact on oil, inflation, and retirement portfolios
• Why retirees who panic in volatile markets pay the biggest price
• The self-directing mistake Stewart has seen for 25 years
• The three-bucket strategy that protects retirement income in any market
• Mitch's Market Minute: VIX, Fear and Greed Index, defense ETFs up 15% YTD
• What happens to your family's finances if the financial spouse is gone
• Power of attorney, living revocable trust, and the master financial document

Timestamps:

• 0:00 - Iran Conflict, Oil Markets & Portfolio Impact
• 5:23 - Don't Panic: What History Shows
• 7:34 - The Advisor Advantage & Fear Selling Cycle
• 15:30 - The Three-Bucket Strategy
• 28:50 - Mitch's Market Minute
• 37:15 - The Financially Uninformed Spouse
• 47:19 - Power of Attorney & Living Revocable Trust
• 59:15 - Retirement Income Roadmap

Ready to stress-test your retirement plan?

ClearPath Retirement Planning helps retirees and pre-retirees in the Upstate SC and Columbia areas create tax-efficient retirement income strategies. 

📍 300 Executive Center Drive, Suite 104 | Greenville, SC 29615
 📞 (864) 775-5033

Schedule your complimentary consultation today at www.clearpathretirement.com

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Important Disclosure:

Investment advisory services offered through Alphastar Capital Management, LLC, a SEC-registered investment adviser. SEC registration does not constitute an endorsement of the firm by the SEC nor does it indicate that the adviser has attained a particular level of skill or ability. Fixed insurance products are offered through Clearpath Retirement Planning, LLC and Alphastar Capital Management is not involved in the offer, recommendation, sale or management of commission-based fixed Insurance products. Alphastar Capital Management and Clearpath Retirement Plannin...

Transcript

# SC Retirees: What to Do With Your Portfolio When Markets Get Scary

[00:00:00] Welcome to ClearPath Retirement Radio. From retirement income and tax planning to protecting the savings you've worked a lifetime to build. This is real world financial talk designed for real people, people who want clear answers, not sales pitches, so you can make informed decisions and plan for retirement with confidence.

Now, here are your hosts, Stewart Smith and Mitch Davies.

Good morning. Welcome to Clear Path Retirement Radio. I'm your host, Stewart Smith, and I'm here as always with my sidekick Mitch Davies. Good morning everybody. Hey, good morning guys. We are here today. Talk more about retirement and today's topic's interesting. It is going to basically revolve around

the volatility that we're seeing lately in the markets, there's a ton going on. We just felt it was timely to talk about everything and talk about how that's gonna affect retirement. Yeah, I don't know if you [00:01:00] guys have been paying attention. Hopefully you have, but there is a lot going on. There is, man, crazy stuff.

So we're gonna talk about, you know, what's going on, how it might impact your retirement and your retirement portfolio specifically. And, you know, I think if you have been paying attention, you realize that the geopolitical climate is pretty volatile at the moment. And we have, we've gotten into a conflict here with Iran and it's causing a lot of like we say, a lot of volatility in the markets.

And we're gonna talk about some ways to, you know, make sure that you're protecting yourself against any of the volatility in your portfolio if you are a retired person. And, you know, things that you can be doing and thinking about as we get through this. Absolutely. And before we talk about anything, I just wanna say, of course, you know, our prayers go out to the four US soldiers that were killed in the Kuwait bombing.

And there's two others [00:02:00] confirmed as of now. So we send our thoughts and prayers, as a veteran-owned business, it's a serious stuff to us. So we just pray that continues to not get any worse for us or anybody involved. Yeah. Yeah. You know, as an ex-military myself, I, that those things hit hard.

Yeah. And they hit home for me. And, and like Mitch says, hearts go out to those guys. Yeah. And that's part of war. It's, and that's what we sign up for and we all understand that when we take that oath. And so, but yeah, definitely the, the fewer the better as we go forward here.

So. You know, one of the things that we see probably right off the bat here with this conflict is it's probably going to have the most impact on the oil markets. It is, it is. You know, roughly 20% of the global oil supply moves through the strait of form moves, which is a pretty strategic point in the world.

Right. It's huge. It's huge. There's so much oil being not only funneled through there, but it's, you know, being. Drilled [00:03:00] in that area and they funnel it out to, you know, parts of Asia, parts of Europe. And a lot of it comes actually through the US. So when, you know, we've got hundreds of tankers that are sitting there almost at a pause and that like 20% of the supply was, you know, affects the price a lot and affects, it trickles down into other aspects of the energy and.

You know, the whole energy space, so we'll, we'll talk more about that today too. Yeah. And, and oil prices has already jumped significantly. Yeah. We've seen that already. And you know, higher oil typically means higher inflation, right? It does, it does. You know, higher inflation leads to pressure on interest rates.

Higher rates leads to pressure on stocks and bonds. And you know, when energy prices. Spike like they have, it flows through the entire economy, gas prices, transportation, food, corporate cost. All of these things go up and, and you know, so there's definitely some things that you can be doing to kind of, alleviate and offset some of [00:04:00] this stuff.

And let's talk about that, Mitch. So, you know, sectors that benefit while others struggle during geopolitical. Cl climates like we're in now. You know, potential beneficiaries of these things are, are like energy companies. Yep. Defense contractors. Yeah. Commodities like oil and gold. And, you know, often the, the industries that get pressured in these type of environments are things like airlines and travel global industrial industries, emerging markets and high value growth stocks.

Right. Right. So that's, you know, the first thing you can do, first thing we would challenge you to do is take a look at your portfolio, right? And if you've just been invested in an overall, you know, S&P, ETF, it could be time to, especially in retirement, I mean, if you've got a long time horizon, you know these, these industries will recover, right?

It'll all balance out. But if you're in retirement and you've just been heavily invested in a big tech or big S&P, ETF, maybe it's time to. [00:05:00] Take some off the table, start shifting again some of this into these more concentrated sectors or even just reducing some risk overall. So when we see this heightened volatility like we're seeing right now, you know, any of these conflicts always create volatility.

They always create these big red days and huge news headline days. So could be time to, you know, what we're always trying to do for clients is set up ahead of time to. Where when these things happen, it's not as scary. Absolutely. And I mean, if you've been listening to the show for the past three or four weeks, we've been talking about this constantly.

Yep. Every week, and giving you really good advice on some steps that you could have been taking and should be taking to kind of again, be. Put yourself in a more defensive position here. Right. And I think that makes a whole lot of sense. You know, but I will say this, you know, in times like these people do panic.

They do. And what we've seen is if, if history has shown us anything, it's shown us that these markets, you know, often recover quickly. They do during these type of [00:06:00] geopolitical environments. And so, you know, I would, I would caution everybody out there that, you know, if you are panicking, if you feel like this is just a lot and you, and you're, you know, it's, it's really got you stressed and worried.

Just take a deep breath. Right. A lot of times these things pass pretty quickly. Markets recover pretty quickly, and you know, these things in, in six months, they seem like a, a blip in on the radar screen, right? They do. They do. That's just, some good advice for you there.

You know, these geopolitical headlines feel scary, but markets have proven historically resilient. They do. And the biggest, you know, what happens is these funds, these big banks, big investment firms, they'll push these narratives of, oh, you know, we're all this fear. They push this fear. And then, you know, the retail investors, the everyday people are the one who are selling outta these things, right?

And then we see that hedge fund buying. Steps in, in a big way when these dips happen. So [00:07:00] it's, you know, there, there's a lot of general fear going around the mainstream media, but then we see these big funds come in and buy up a lot of these dips. So, you know, like Stewart mentioned, these dips are often very, feel very dramatic and are very heavy on the days that we are going down.

But it's a. Usually a very quick V-shape recovery like we saw in COVID, like we saw in last year when we had the Iranian dispute, you know, in mid, early 2025. We've seen a lot of these types of events and it's often a quick recovery. So just to back up Stewart's point, don't panic if you're in that position.

You know, and that's why it's important to have a team of people that can walk you through this process. Because if you are in the later stages of retirement and you see, you know, we have. People call, Hey, I, you know, I see thousands of dollars. Losing it can feel scary. Yeah. So it's important to have a team that can walk you through this and hold your hand here.

Yeah, I, I think it's times like these that we shine as advisors. Yeah. And we really prove our value and our worth. You know, it is times like these, if you're self-directing and you're, [00:08:00] you're managing your own investments. I mean, you can make some pretty serious mistakes here if you're panicking and, and making bad moves.

And I think a lot of times. Just having an advisor who is, you know, hyper-focused on investing retirement funds and has you allocated correctly on the front end, and also someone who can be the voice of reason for you when you call into the office. And I can kind of. Talk you off the ledge, so to speak.

Yep. I think that is where having a real experienced retirement planning advisor that has been through these type of markets, has seen the ups and downs for two and a half decades now, can really, really prove extremely valuable to you and what you're trying to do in your entire retirement plan.

Because we are people that are gonna keep our minds focused on the big picture and not get caught up in these little [00:09:00] blips that that happen and they're going to happen. Right? And they always happen. And Stewart, you can attest to this. You've been doing this for 25 years. Whenever we talk to, you know, someone who's coming into the firm for the first time and they say, Hey, I've been self-directing.

The mistake I've made is it always has something to do with selling out during a time where they were scared. It's never that they came in and they say, Hey, I held through the market too long. You know, it's always a, it's the exact same conversation. Hey, there was this happening in the world and I got scared and sold out of a bunch way too early and then had to buy back.

It's always that sort of conversation. Yeah. So that's like Stewart said, you know, anybody can. Do well in the good times, but it's having people to, that are experts in this stuff to help you through the bad times. And that's where we see the difference in, you know, working with a firm versus self-directed trading.

The biggest mistakes we see are people who trade out of fear and emotion. Absolutely. And it's an endless cycle. You buy in kind of at. At, at a high because you, you heard about, [00:10:00] you know, this new stock or you heard about this new investment opportunity and by the time it got to you, it was, you know, already at a high and you bought in there.

And then it starts to, you know, we have an incident like this and it starts to lose a little bit of money, and you start panicking and then you sell. You know, at a much lower and instead of just staying the course. Right. And, and that's, that's a cycle of fear selling and, and losses that, that we've seen over and over again with people so much who are self-directing.

So, you know, if you need a voice of reason, you want that trusted advisor. You want someone who really understands the, the long-term effects and, and short-term effects of these type of geopolitical markets, and you just feel like that having that guidance would help you to make better choices, better decisions, you know, go to ClearPathretirement.com right now

click on the Get Started Today button. You know, [00:11:00] let us know you want to, you wanna sit down, let our team sit down with you, and let's just have a conversation. Let's just have a conversation about, you know, how we might, can bring value to your plan. How we might, can, can be that voice of reason for you and, and times where things are extremely volatile.

And I think in the long run, you know, it will serve you tremendously well. So. Give us a call, 8 6 4 7 7 5 5 0 3 3 or go to clearpathretirement.com and click that Get started today. Button. Hey, are you approaching the distribution phase of life where it's time to turn the assets? You've worked so hard to accumulate into a reliable retirement income, and are you unsure how to do that in the most tax efficient way possible?

At ClearPath Retirement Planning, we help. Retirees and pre-retirees design income strategies that aim to reduce taxes, manage risk, and create confidence in retirement. Visit [00:12:00] ClearPath retirement.com to schedule a complimentary consultation. Thanks for tuning in to ClearPath Retirement Radio with Stewart Smith and Mitch Davies.

Let's get back to the show. Hey, welcome back to ClearPath Retirement Radio. I'm Stewart Smith here with Mitch Davies, and today we are talking about, you know, how historically geopolitical shocks cause short-term drops, but rarely long-term market damage unless they trigger a recession. So, you know, this is a.

A very timely discussion we've got going on here, Mitch. And you know, one of the things that I want to go through here is let's just kind of talk through some of these ways that people can be protecting themselves in times like these. And I wanna start with, you know. One. The first thing I would say is, you know, maintain diversification here.

Yeah, right. Don't be overly concentrated in [00:13:00] one asset class, sector or country and make sure that you are very well diversified in your investment portfolio. So it's a simple one, Stewart, but a lot of times, you know, how many times have we seen people come in and they, they feel like they're diversified, but you know, it's really among five or six stocks or they have a lot of different.

You know, a lot of people mistake diversification, right? They've got eight different accounts that are all kind of doing the same thing, and they feel diversified. You know, they feel physically diversified because they're logging into multiple different accounts, but they're essentially invested in the same thing.

So, like Stewart mentioned, it's very important in these times. Every year or two, we're gonna see a new sector do well, and every, you know, with, with times like this, we see a short term window where certain sectors are gonna do really well, and others are gonna do really poorly. So don't mistake diversification for.

Lots of different accounts. You know, make sure you understand exactly what you're holding, exactly what sectors you're extremely exposed to, and exactly what kind of downside you have. Yeah. One of the analysis that we do for clients [00:14:00] is we run a report called the Stock Intersection Report, and what that report does is it shows us.

How many of the client's, different funds that they're invested in, have owned the same stocks inside of them. Right. And I think a lot of times when people see those resort results, they're just shocked. Yeah. They don't, they think that, you know, because you own all these different index funds and because you, you know, you have a fund of funds so to speak, that you are well diversified.

And what they come to find out is really, they own a lot of the same. Stocks inside of these funds. And it's a shocker to them. It is. And so, you know, don't just think by owning all these different funds that you're well diversified. 'cause chances are, I mean, you might be, yeah. But chances are you're, you're not as well diversified as you think you are.

So come in and let us run that report for you. Let us show you how that works and, and, and open your eyes to, you know, whether you really are diversified or, or not. So the other thing [00:15:00] that we do at the firm, and we've talked about this in other shows, and I think it's just critical to investing well in retirement because investing in retirement is a whole different ball game than when you're in those growth accumulation years, just trying to hit those double digit returns and really not worried about any of these other moving parts.

But when you get to retirement, there's. All kinds of other things to think about. So, you know, we use Time Horizon investing in the firm. Yep. And what that means is if you come to us and most people come to us and they've had one portfolio, basically their entire accumulation life where they've been just.

Accumulating assets and have done a good job with it. But what we'll do is when you get to to retirement, we're gonna invest a, a lot differently than what they've been used to investing. Yep. And what that typically means is we're going to, we're gonna break that, that portfolio up into three different [00:16:00] distinct portfolios with, you know, the first one being ultra conservative.

You know, maybe it's, it's treasuries, it's a bond type portfolio. But one that is going to be the money that that client needs for the first five years of retirement, right? And that, that is gonna be a super, like we say, conservative, stable not gonna be impacted by geopolitical climates like we're in right now, very much at all.

And is going to, you know, be a mixture of, of maybe even cash equivalents, just depending on what's going on. Like money market funds and so on and so forth. But. You know that bucket is gonna be that stable income providing bucket for the first five years. And what that's gonna do is, you know, put them in a relaxed position where they know the income they're gonna need for the first five years is in good shape.

It's still earning money, it's still earning a return, but if we have major [00:17:00] market corrections that it's going to be okay and their income is not gonna be impacted pretty much at all. Then the next. Portion of that, those funds we're gonna allocate into a more moderate bucket, and that's gonna be money that is gonna be utilized to provide income in years five through 10 of their retirement.

This is money that isn't gonna be, need to be accessed for five years, and that gives us a little longer time horizon, which allows us to take a little more risk. Because historically speaking and statistically speaking, if you have a longer time horizon then and you take a little more risk, that's paid off significantly in, in, you know, historically.

So it just makes sense. And so we're gonna be a little bit more moderate on that bucket and you know. Then the, the third bucket that we're gonna have, the, the last portion of your, your original portfolio is [00:18:00] gonna be allocated and it's gonna be money. You're not gonna need to touch for 10 years. That bucket is going to typically be a more moderately aggressive bucket and maybe even aggressive, just depending on the person's risk tolerance.

But the thought process there is, if we are not gonna need this money for 10 years, then you know, we've got that longer time horizon. And again, historically speaking, the more risk you take and, and the longer time horizon you have. The better off you've been as far as returns go over that 10 year period and we've been able to, you know, by deploying this strategy with our clients, we've been able to easily hit the assumed rate of return that they need to provide the income over 30, you know.

Plus year retirement and you know, that just has helped tremendously, even mentally and emotionally understanding that they don't, when the market is [00:19:00] extremely volatile, which it is right now, that they don't have to have that fear and make really poor decisions on selling stuff out of fear. They can just stay the course and know that they've got, you know, five years to get through this and.

And the, you know, more than likely those moderate and moderately aggressive or aggressive buckets are gonna recover dramatically in that timeframe and they're gonna be just fine. Right. And Stewart, and that's exactly right. And there's a couple key things that that's accomplishing that isn't accomplished with just traditional, you know.

50% stocks, 50% bonds portfolio. You know, the first thing going on there is what we're doing is splitting up the same money with three completely different time horizons and assignments. So what happens is, you know, the traditional mistake we see is people will have, people will be like, yeah, you know, I've got some in bonds, I've got, you know, 50 50 portfolio, right?

I've got half it in stocks, half in bonds, and they're pulling income off that account to live in retirement, which is. Which is great, but what they're [00:20:00] doing is they're selling out of it proportionally. You know, you don't go in and sell if you just sell outta that account. You're not going in and selling the stocks per portion of it.

In particular. You're just selling outta the portfolio, so you're equally pulling out of it. Whereas what we're doing is we're not touching the five to 10 year money or the 10 plus. And the other reason this is so important is because, you know, if you look at just the last. Seven or eight years we've had the magnificent seven.

This is seven companies that have substantially outperformed everything else. And if you don't have exposure to the very high risk portions of the s and p or the NASDAQ or whatever it is, if you missed out on the Nvidia, if you missed out on the Tesla, the Google, if you missed out on these big companies in the last seven years and you just had.

Everything kind of safe. You know, we see that a lot. People are like, well, I don't wanna be too risky. I don't wanna be too safe. I'm just gonna have everything kind of in the middle. I've got some bonds, some super safe companies, so they're not fully protected with any of the money. So they're taking downside and they're not really aggressive with any of the money, so they're missing the.

Big gains because [00:21:00] so much of the s and p's gains, if you look at just those seven companies versus the s and p, you know, we call it the Mag seven versus the s and p 4 93. If you compare the s and p 4 93, without those seven companies, it's. Done not very well at all in the last seven, eight years. So without exposure to the highly aggressive stuff, which is what we do with the 10 plus year, you're missing those big years, but you don't have anything super protected either.

So it's extremely important to structure, you know, this is our foundation of retirement income planning. It's extremely important to structure it, to have these three different assignments. Yeah, I mean, if you don't have exposure in that, that. 10 plus year portfolio to these higher risk investments, like you say, the Mag seven in this case then, which is you can get exposure to in that, in that longer term portfolio, then you're not really, you're, it's much less likely you're gonna be able to hedge off inflation the way you need to in retirement.

And inflation is, will, is, is a [00:22:00] killer in retirement. And so, you know, those, having that exposure is. Critical, even if it's only on that third bucket, that that more, you know, aggressive bucket that you have. Because you know, in the long run what it's gonna do, when you average the return out from bucket one, two, and three, when you average those returns, it's, you know, you're going to have a much more statistic.

Statistically proven opportunity to hit that overall return that you're looking to hit, and that is just critical as you go through retirement. Yeah. The, the next thing you know might make a lot of sense here is. You know, again, and we typically do this in that five year, first five year bucket, is to keep that cash buffer going, right?

People like to have that cash buffer and it does provide peace of mind. And let me tell you there is value just in [00:23:00] comfort and peace of mind in retirement. Absolutely. So, that cash buffer, if that's something that just makes you sleep better at night, understanding that like, Hey, look, I've got $20,000 of cash right there in the bank account if I need it.

And if the worst case, you know, scenario does happen that I'm, I'm gonna have the, the peace of mind of knowing I can get to that very quickly. There is true value in that. And I would not you know, scoff at that at all. I wouldn't feel bad about having that cash buffer. I think, again, there is a lot of value in having peace of mind, but if the rest of your money is allocated correctly, then having that little bit of cash buffer isn't going to be a big problem for you.

Alright, so we're wrapping up segment two. We'll be right back to continue this discussion here in just a minute. Retirement planning isn't just about growing money, it's about [00:24:00] using it wisely. Generating income, managing taxes, planning for healthcare costs, protecting your legacy. At ClearPath Retirement Planning, we specialize in helping retirees and pre-retirees transition from accumulation to distribution with confidence and clarity.

If you're approaching retirement and want to plan. Not just opinions. Discover the clear path difference. Visit clear Path retirement.com today. Welcome to Clear Path Retirement Radio. From retirement income and tax planning to protecting the savings you've worked a lifetime to build. This is real world financial talk designed for real people, people who want clear answers, not sales pitches, so you can make informed decisions and plan for retirement with confidence.

Now, here are your hosts, Stewart Smith and Mitch Davies.

Hey, welcome back to ClearPath Retirement Radio. I am your host Stewart Smith, and I am here with Mitch Davies. And here it is [00:25:00] time for my favorite part of the whole show. That is a segment we do every week called Mitch's Market Minute, and he is here to get it started. Let's go, Mitch. Thank you, Stewart. I'm I'm excited as Alwayss, you know, this is the market minute where we're going to stick to the same structure we've had where we talk about first, you know, what's going on overall in the market, you know, where we're at with the major indices, what we're seeing today, right?

And then we're gonna talk about where we've, what's been going on for the year, and then what we're focused on, right? We're always trying to pick one thing, whether it's a new teaching point or whether it's, you know, current event. And, you know, this week we've got an interesting one, but to start off, you know, we've had.

A rough week with the, again, we, we've been talking about this segment. We've been talking about, you know, the Middle East and what, what's going on over there with Iran and Israel and all this stuff. So, Monday opened up. You know, not great. Tuesday, not great. We, we've had a tough week, but the s and p still sits around 6,800.

The Dows right at about 48,000, and [00:26:00] the NASDAQ's a little over 22,000. So nothing there, nothing major there. You know, we're still kind of trading in what we'd call a range from where we've opened up the year. Nothing significant. The. The volatility index, the vix, we introduced this last week and this is what we use in the market to determine overall volatility.

In a healthy market. We'd like to see this index Trading at anywhere from 12 to 14 is pretty standard in a bull market. You know, the lower the better. The lower this number is the less volatility. We saw it shoot up yesterday to 25, 26. It came down today where it's at 21, so it's starting to trend down, but we're still seeing it above 20, so we've still got some overall volatility.

Another, you know, metric I want to introduce and we'll use this as a good, it's a general gauge that people understand is the Fear and greed index. You, you might have heard this, Warren Buffet's notable for using it. It's trading around 37 today and I, I found it interesting one year ago today. Was when we had a, around the, the same sort of thing [00:27:00] and it, the fear in green index was at 11, so extremely low, zero being the most fear you could possibly have.

A hundred being the best bull market ever. We're trading around 37 in this index. What that means is people are still generally scared and you know, last year, this time when it was at 11, the s and p was at 5,800, and then about a week or two after that, it went on to run up another 15%. So. Historically times under, you know, 30 or so on this index have proved to be great buying opportunities.

So, wanted to introduce that. You know, the Volatility Index and the Fear and Greed index are two we're gonna continue to watch, but what again everyone's been talking about is this war in Iran. Essentially, you know, the US is joined up with Israel to strike Iran, take out leadership there. There's a lot going on.

You guys have heard about it, but I wanna talk about how that's affecting the markets and if you've been listening to the show. Pretty much every week we've been talking about the constraint on the energy sector, whether it's oil, whether it's these rare earth minerals, whether it's [00:28:00] any of these things.

There's a huge rush. We've seen commodities like gold and silver do really well. We've seen the energy sector and these consumer staple companies outperforming the market this year. And this is because of these rare earth minerals and these commodities that are being used to power. All this ai, all this stuff that we're doing is extremely scarce right now.

And when we have an event like we're having right now, so the US oil supply, the global oil supply, rather, is extremely concentrated. In the Middle East, you know, we have a large basin here in the southeast of the us but the biggest basin is in, you know, the UAE area over in the Middle East, and there's a strait that runs through under Iran, in between Iran and Qatar.

Essentially it's called the Strait of M, and this is where 20% of the global oil ships through O over 20 million barrels a day move through this. This is extremely dense region and it's only 20 miles long, which is really interesting. So what Iran did last year, what they've done this year [00:29:00] is when there's.

Geopolitical tension, they shut it down. They technically have jurisdiction over that area, and what they'll say is, Hey, no more ships can pass. And they'll threaten to use, since it's only 20 miles long. They have the ability to use underwater mines and all these types of, you know, war tactics to scare ships from going in because these aren't battleships, right?

These are oil tankers. They're not, you know, there to fight. They're there to just transport oil and they have shut this down and are threatening, you know. Action against any ships that go through there. So when we see that we saw, you know, oil shoot up to 80, $80 a barrel, it's down to 74. You guys have, may have seen this when you went to fill your tanks, but this happened last year and it only lasted a couple weeks.

And I don't expect it to last long. There's just too much, you know, global pressure. But what this tells us, and you know, what we've been trying to do with people is focus on these energy companies. We've been broadly. Ex getting exposure to these energy ETFs and these, there's a lot of ways you can get exposure to all of these companies.

[00:30:00] Companies that are producing oil mining, oil mining, these minerals. And another sector that does really well in these times is the defense sector. You know, we talked about that earlier. There's a, the defense ETF, one of the main ones that we use is up almost 15% year to date. So a another sector that does extremely well in these times, and this is something that we've been talking to clients about and something that we've been urging.

You know, we urged last week or every week on here to take a look at your portfolio and if you're just invested in the big tech, the big s and p companies, you know, it could be a great time to shift some into these things because this war, quote unquote, could go on for a few weeks, could go on for a couple months.

We don't know. Hopefully it ends sooner rather than later. But you know, we gotta look at how this affects retirees money. So what I challenge is take a look at your allocations. Again, if you're overly exposed to one sector, just tech, look at diversifying into some of these energy plays in particular because this whole industry has a lot of tension and a lot of room to grow.

Yeah. [00:31:00] Awesome. Okay. Thanks for that information, Mitch. That was good stuff. Good, good content there. And hope everybody takes something away from that. I tell you, I just, it made me flashback to my days of being on the, the Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier floating through the the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal and, and all of that fun stuff and how how interesting all that was and to be in those places like Bahrain and, and United Air Remembrance, and some very interesting places over there.

So, brought back memories, but okay, well we're gonna shift gears now. We're gonna. Dramatically shift gears here for the rest of this show. And what I want to talk about guys, is a problem that we're seeing more and more with folks and when it comes to retirement planning, and that is, you know, what we see time and time again is that typically we have one [00:32:00] person in a, couple that, that we work with, that is one spouse or the other who is basically fully in charge of handling the finances for that couple. And you know, one of the major fears that they've shared with us is that, you know. They are very, very concerned because they are concerned if something happened to them that their spouse who doesn't really know what's going on with the finances, doesn't really care to know what's going on with the finances.

Is going to be in a really bad place and not, you know, not understand, you know, what they need to do and, and how to pick up all the pieces and move forward financially. And so, you know, we had a, a, a. A client in her office the other day, and she was literally you know, in tears talking about how, you know, her husband [00:33:00] just didn't, didn't understand this stuff, didn't know this stuff, and that she had been handling it for them for years.

And she even mentioned that she just didn't even know if he even knew what bank. Which they used and, and where the money was and you know, who's gonna pay the bills and, and all of that. So, you know, we're gonna walk through some, some ways to kind of alleviate that situation here. And I think this is, this is important for people who are in this situation to understand that, you know, we've helped a lot of people through these types of situations as as their retirement planner.

And the first thing that I would say, and the biggest thing I've seen to be extremely helpful for them is, you know, develop a single reference document that lifts lists all the key financial investments. Or key financial information period. Really? Yeah. So to include bank accounts and account numbers, investment in retirement accounts, [00:34:00] insurance policies including life health, long-term care pension and social security information, mortgage and other debts, credit cards.

Contact information for advisors. We get this a lot. Yeah. You know, Hey, I want to, you know, can I share this with family members? Can I share your card? Of course you can. And then what you really wanna do is make sure that you, you revisit this thing at least once a year and keep this document up to date.

And then store a copy in a secure location and tell that spouse where it is. This is so important, you know, the. Most important thing. What you wanna do to provide that peace of mind is you want your spouse to know, say that they're not involved in this stuff. You want them to know, if I were gone today, they'd have that place to go for everything.

Because that's the scariest thing for the spouse in that position. Once they're, you know, once they're through the morning and the smoke clears and they're like, all right, like, I need to get on my feet and keep things moving. It. What do I do? Who do [00:35:00] I call? Where, where is money? Where, who's, am I gonna be expecting insurance checks?

Am I gonna be expecting bills? What am I expecting? You know, you need to have a clear place. And we've got a ton of, you know, really helpful ways that we actually, you know, securely do that. We'll, we'll talk about that in a bit, but it, it's so important to have this master document, essentially. It is, and, and I tell you, I mean, that spouse is already going to be suffering emotionally.

V you know, intense emotional stress. Yeah. You don't want the additional stress on them of this financial stuff, because I can tell you that's, that's the kind of stuff that breaks people. It's, it's, and we have seen, you know, people, you know, really in their darkest moments in these type of, of environments where they've just lost a loved one.

They're going through the emotional stress of that. And then on top of that, they're trying to figure out, you know, how do I keep paying the bills? Where's the money at? You know, what did, did we [00:36:00] have insurance? Did you know all of these things? And that can all be alleviated with good planning, right? And that's what we help people with.

I tell you, one of the biggest things that we provide our clients with, and that has been an extreme hit with them, is we actually provide all of our clients with a. Online Digital storage vault that is military grade encryption on it. And is SOC two compliant? HIPAA compliant? Everything you need, and it is a wonderful place to store all of your important documents, all your bank statements, you know, you can go through and, and.

Type in, you know, your own information, you can, it's really intuitive, so it'll actually ask you questions and walk you through actually uploading these documents. And it's been incredible for our clients because once they've been able to, to get all of this stuff on there and we will actually go in and update all [00:37:00] the financial stuff for 'em here.

The stuff that they have with us on a regular basis. And once they've been able to do that, they're just, it alleviates. All the stress of knowing that all that spouse needs is the username and password to get into that one digital storage vault. And they have the keys to the kingdom there. And so it's been a wonderful experience for them and we just highly recommend that you have some sort of situation like this.

Even if it's the old school, you know, write it down on, on, on paper and put it into a, a safety deposit box at the bank. Whatever you need to do. And, and I tell you this is a, a big deal when it comes to more like end of life planning and, and helping to make sure that your spouse is in good shape. Guys, we're gonna continue this discussion.

We will be right back here in a minute. Are you a business owner with an email list you are not sure is actually growing your business? Most business owners are just [00:38:00] guessing, sending emails, hoping for a click. At Kathy Fair Consulting, we take guesswork out of your email marketing. We help you identify what's working and fix what's broken.

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Let's get back to the show. Welcome back in to Clear Path Retirement Radio. I am Stewart Smith and I'm here with Mitch Davies. And this has been an interesting discussion in that, you know, we see this situation time and time again where you have a couple and one of the spouses in that couple is responsible for.

You know, maintaining the finances. And the other one is really, you know, is focused on their [00:39:00] job and what they do and making money or whatever that is, but they're just not involved in the financial process. And, you know, paying the bills and balancing the, the bank accounts and. You know, getting, you know, ha understanding what the investments are and, and all of those things.

And it's a real point of concern for that spouse that does handle the financial matters. And just stressing over, you know, what happens if something happens to me? Is my spouse going to be okay? You know, are they going to understand what we're doing here financially? How to just pay the bills? Where the money is, what kind of income sources we have, what our expenses are, how to, you know, keep that financial home afloat.

And, you know, we, we talked about having that, that major document where you're gonna track all that information and something that you can either share digitally or physically with that spouse. If, God [00:40:00] forbid, something does happen to you, and just alleviating that stress so that they have all the information at their fingertips.

But the next thing that we see is, you know how critical, and I mean critical it is to ensure that you have the. Proper legal documents in place. And by that I mean things like healthcare and financial power of attorney. Right. You know, having a revocable living trust, if that's, you know, if you want to avoid probate and if not, then at least having a, a goodwill updated will that, that has all of your current information in it.

And is, disseminating your assets in the way that you would like for that to happen. So, you know, I'm gonna share a personal story here. I had my father look at me at 70 years old and he looked me in the eye and said, son. I was getting a little concerned about, he had memory issues and [00:41:00] he said I said, I think we need to go ahead and do power of attorney and you know, have this in place.

Just God forbid anything happens to you, dad. And he said, we're never gonna need this. He was adamant that it, we weren't gonna need it, but I pushed and pushed and, and eventually he did agree to do power of attorney. And I will tell you that he spent a few years later, he, he started a six years stint in a memory care unit prior to his passing and which he had no idea where he was at or what was going on around him.

And I can tell you that that is a heart. Breaking process to go through, but I can only imagine how much worse it would've been had I not had the power of attorney over him, where I was able to do things like sell his home and his assets to make sure that there were funds available to continue his care [00:42:00] when that time came and that I was able to make.

Decisions about his healthcare and everything that needed to happen. If I would not have had that document in place prior to actually needing it, then I just, it would've been a world of hurt for me. Absolutely Stewart. And you know, these are the kind of conversations we have all the time, and I think this is the biggest thing that sets us apart from a lot of other firms out there.

You know, most, a lot of financial advisors want to just invest money and hey, call you and say, Hey, we're up 20% this year. All right? Talk in a year. You know, a lot of these just. Investment conversations. We do that, you know, we manage investments, we manage a ton of assets for clients. But the most important thing, and you know, the most impactful work that we do is this estate planning.

You know, we're leading these conversations. They're not fun conversations. They're not, but we are bringing, every time we meet with, you know, a, a client, we're bringing these types of things. Hey, what are we gonna do about the grandkids? You know, we've got. Six grandkids now and anywhere from age two to 10, and you [00:43:00] know, do we wanna have money set aside just for them for college?

You know, we're talking through these things at multiple generations of a level where this is the most important work that we're able to do. Every time we have these meetings, clients are thinking about, I was never thinking about this and I didn't think about, oh, well what if my, what if I predeceased my spec?

You know, all these types of estate planning and legal planning and issues are where we spend the majority of our time because this is the stuff that really moves the needle. Anybody can invest money, but what really sets us apart is our ability to take the taxes into account, take the estate planning into account, take, you know, multiple generations of planning into account and really provide value in ways that investment accounts can't.

Absolutely. And I'll tell you, you know, the, the. The arrangement that we found a few years ago where we used to refer clients out to, you know, a local attorney to get that trust or will executed. And then, you know, what we found is the client just, you know, we would give them the [00:44:00] referral and for whatever reason that would just not happen.

And you know, what we decided was when we found this arrangement that we currently have where we actually paid a fee to become. Part of a network of local attorneys in South and North Carolina where we have the ability to go ahead and actually execute a living revocable trust or a will in our office with the client.

And then, you know, build that out, get the language correct, get it all done, and get it sent over virtually to a an attorney that is going to double check everything, make sure all it's all in order, and then sign off on it and, and send it back in a beautiful, you know, leather binder all tabbed out.

And then send us a digital copy as well. We're able to go ahead and. Do all the signature pages in our office with the client. The client never has to go to the attorney and we're able, because of [00:45:00] our arrangement, we're able to do that at an extremely low cost for the client. These things aren't just talked about at Clear Path retirement planning.

They actually happen. They get done, and that is one thing that I'm extremely proud of, of how we run our firm is because this is not. Theoretical stuff, guys, this is stuff that happens. We do this every single day at the firm, and I can tell you that, you know, for the, the reasonable cost that we do a living revocable trust, I can't understand why anybody wouldn't have one at in 2026 because you know, everyone doesn't want their loved ones to have to go through the probate process.

And if you've ever been through probate or you ever know someone who's ever been through probate, it is not fun. It is not a great process. There's a lot of paperwork involved. There's a lot of waiting involved. And you know, God [00:46:00] forbid someone steps forward and, and claims to be, you know, that, that the, there's debt owed to them and then you have to deal with that.

And all of those things just can be easily avoided by having the proper, you know. Living revocable trust in place and it's such an easy, you know, process to get that done. And then to simply just retitle the assets that you want inside that trust, in the trust name, and then you don't ever have to worry about that again.

That stuff is gonna pass, you know, outside of probate is gonna be a private matter. It's a private living revocable trust. And, you know, it is, is just an. Easy process and, and you know, your, your beneficiaries will thank you time and time again for it because you have helped them tremendously to avoid a lot of hassle in, in that whole process.

Right. Right. So the other thing I would say is, again, having [00:47:00] that healthcare power of attorney and revocable, I'm sorry, and financial power of attorney, those two documents are very critical. Should you become incapacitated for some reason. And I tell you, everybody has that mindset of it won't happen to me, it happens.

My dad. Never thought he would get to a point where he couldn't make good sound judgements and decisions, and it happened, and he wasn't able to do that for the last six plus years of his life. And so don't think to yourself, that will never happen to me. And I can tell you, you'd much rather determine who's gonna make those decisions, those critical, critical decisions.

Ahead of time. Then just let the state figure out who's gonna make those decisions after the fact. Right. And that is a literally a 20 minute process to get those two things executed it. As long as you know [00:48:00] who you want to be making those decisions, we can knock that out in 15, 20 minutes and that can be done and off your plate.

So if that's something you feel like you need, just give us a call. 8 6 4 7 7 5 5 0 3 3. Clear path Retirement planning. Let's just set up a time to sit down, have a chat, a conversation. Let us talk you, you know, to you about the process and how it would work. But let's get it done. Let's don't put that on our to-do list.

Let's get that actually done. Let's get it done, Stewart. And that's, that's. The most important thing you know we can do is actually implement these things. We're scheduling the meetings, we're sending, Hey, here's what you guys need to have in two weeks. We're gonna meet, we're gonna sit down and we're gonna talk about this stuff.

You know, the last thing Stewart, I wanted to talk about is another thing we're able to do for, you know, getting back to this, when we have one spouse that you know is less knowledgeable in the financial world and one that's more, you know, we always say, you know, there's one spouse that wants to get super deep into the intel, and then [00:49:00] there's one that's like, Hey, I just wanna like understand.

Where everything is and like what year things are gonna happen. What we're able to do is the thing, another thing I'm really proud of is we're able to build out really good visuals. You know, we've had, you know, prospects come in from different, they've met with multiple advisors and they sit with us and go through our planning process and they see that we're able to.

Visualize things in such a clear way that shows what's gonna happen every year. What's gonna happen from what account? Where is the money coming from? That's the biggest question we get is I, I know how much money we have total, but where does it all come from? In which year? What about when we have to start taking this pre-tax money, paying taxes on it?

What about. You know, the raw, all these things are like, where does this all come from? So we're able to visualize it in a way that super financially savvy people can understand and get in the weeds with. And also someone who knows nothing can just say, okay, I see in 2027 we're gonna take 50,000 out from this account and pay this great.

You know, and we're really able to visualize it. So if that's something you've never had a true, you know, retirement income roadmap, say, [00:50:00] give us a call and we'd be happy to walk you through that and set up these visuals. Really starts to make sense. I love it because we can, you know, we can do that for the, the one that just kinda wants to understand the big picture.

Yep. And then if the other spouse wants to take a deep dive and, and we'll go as deep as you want to go. That's why engineers love us. But we really, we can, we can, you know, kind of cater to both of those styles and make sure that both of them have exactly what they need and, and give them that peace of mind.

If you think this process makes sense for you, you know, give us a call, 8 6 4 7 7 5 5 0 3 3 or visit our website. Clear Path retirement.com today. Hit that get started button and let's sit down and talk and let's get you started towards financial freedom in retirement. Are you anxious to see what retirement might look like for you?

Do you feel like you have the pieces of the puzzle but you're not sure how they fit together or where to start? At [00:51:00] ClearPath Retirement, we help you bring clarity to retirement by organizing your income taxes, healthcare decisions, and legacy planning into one cohesive plan. Retirement doesn't have to feel uncertain, it just needs a clear path.

Schedule your complimentary consultation@clearpathretirement.com. You've been listening to ClearPath Retirement Radio with Stewart Smith and Mitch Davies helping you make informed decisions so you can plan for retirement with confidence. To learn more, visit ClearPath retirement.com. That's Clear Path retirement.com.

Investment advisory services offered through Alpha Star Capital Management LC at SEC Registered Investment Advisor. SEC registration does not constitute an endorsement of the firm by the SEC, nor does it indicate that the advisor has attained a particular level of skill or ability. Fixed insurance products are offered through ClearPath Retirement Planning.

LLC and Alpha Star Capital Management is not involved in the offer, recommendation, sale, or management of commission-based fixed insurance products. Alpha Star Capital Management and ClearPath Retirement Planning LLC are separate and independent [00:52:00] entities. This is for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal, tax or investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security investment product or investment strategy.