Ask the Retirement Expert About Safe Spending and Income Portfolios: Christine Benz

Retirees commonly experience both increases and decreases in spending during their retirement years, and their spending across different categories also varies significantly over time — as do portfolio returns and inflation conditions. Despite this complex reality, some financial planners continue to favor static spending strategies that may not adequately address their clients’ evolving needs.

In this fourth episode of Ask the Retirement Expert, ThinkAdvisor senior reporter John Manganaro speaks with Christine Benz — director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morningstar — about the difficulty of the retirement income planning process.

As Benz notes, fluctuations in spending have significant implications for potential retirement income solutions — particularly in determining factors such as the optimal liquidity and accessibility characteristics and the level of equity exposure. Changing market conditions also play a big role, as do choices about annuities.

In this podcast, Benz and Manganaro discuss several tricky retirement-planning topics and the steps advisors can take to address them. The main themes include:

• The top portfolio management issues that advisors and their retirement-focused clients should be talking about and acting on in late 2023 and early 2024.
• How the advisor industry is doing when it comes to addressing the analytical and behavioral challenges involved with retirement income planning.
• What advisors should make of the latest research about the pros and cons of fixed versus flexible spending approaches, especially the concept of “income guardrails.”
• The risks of over- and under-spending in retirement.
• What advisors and retirees should be thinking about when it comes to required minimum distributions in the final months of 2023 and also in 2024/?

To listen to the first episode in this series, click here.