Live Long and Live Well is the mantra at Northshore Wealth Management. I’ve built my company on the same principles and philosophy that I’ve built my life on. I seek a lifestyle that’s conducive to lasting physical and mental health, and I seek longevity in the lifespan of my financial resources so that I can live out my days as comfortably and as actively as I wish. I want to be taking a swim off the bow of a sailboat for my morning workout when I’m 75. I want to take my dog for a hike, take in a dance aerobics class, and pay my grandkids’ college tuition. I want to afford the life I want and be present to live it. To accomplish both is the real win.

I built my practice to fulfill a purpose in helping others accomplish these same goals. Because this is a wealth management firm, I primarily write about building and maintaining lasting wealth, but every now and then, I sprinkle in healthy lifestyle content as well, because what’s the point of all of this if we’re not working on sticking around long enough to enjoy what we’ve built?

I’ve known too many investment clients who built a nest egg for a long, happy, fulfilling retirement, only to have it cut short by failing health or cognitive decline. Keeping our weight down makes it easier to stay active. Staying active contributes to our mental health. Mental health keeps us in control of the life we’ve built. Whether it’s reading, writing, running, or rowing, I hope I can inspire you to take care of your health as much as your wealth. Keep moving, keep eating salads, keep studying and learning new things, and keep a good wealth manager.

Let’s all plan on living well to be 100 years old. If you retire at 60, that’s 40 more years you’ll need your money to keep growing. For most retirees, retirement is not the time to shy away from a growth objective in their investment portfolio. I’ve spent many years speaking out against investing in retirement target-date funds. It upsets many people, but none more than the mutual fund companies that want to sell them.

Consider energy bars marketed as a healthy food option. Think about who’s really supposed to benefit the most from them. Is it the consumer ingesting all the sugar it takes to make an energy bar taste good? Or is it the manufacturer who knows how to target their market? Energy bars are easy to sell; that’s why manufacturers sell them. That’s why there are 20 varieties of them at the grocery store. They weren’t created to benefit you; they were created to generate revenue. Think of target-date funds the same way. They were designed to sound like they’re as good for you as an energy bar, so they’ll be easy to sell.

Fundamentally, they make sense until you do the math and see what happens to your trajectory over the next 40 years if you start limiting your growth and investing too conservatively. It’s not like you’re going to spend your whole nest egg in the first year of retirement, so it’s not like you suddenly have a reason to move your assets out of the market. No, that next egg must keep growing to outpace inflation and the cost of living for four more decades. You can start taking income from it while what remains stays focused on working hard on a growth objective.

Now, if you don’t have a good wealth manager sorting this all out for you, then a target date fund is better than many worse ideas. But that’s the benefit of hiring a wealth manager, to help you strive for something better than just “not the worst idea”.

Live long and live well,

Alyse