Retirement Planning

The Core4 is our framework for integrated retirement planning and investment management. Utilizing the Core4, we can tailor the risk and reward potential of your entire portfolio to meet your comfort level, generate income, and provide opportunities for growth.

For today’s retiree, we believe it may be necessary to use more than just two primary asset classes, stocks and bonds, to have a secure retirement. Today’s retirees are living longer and potentially facing more difficult economic circumstances than prior generations. With longer life-expectancy, rapidly increasing medical costs and more difficult economic circumstances comes the need for a fresh approach to retirement planning.

By bringing additional asset classes into your portfolio, it may be possible to reduce exposure to market risk, provide more consistent income and give you a smoother ride in retirement.

We believe that one of the larger issues in retirement planning today is the proper size of a portfolio’s bond allocation. In fact, we believe that allocating too much into bonds can be a trap for some conservative investors.

During the decades-long bond bull market, simply decreasing equity exposure and increasing bond exposure was a sensible adjustment to make in retirement. However, we argue that the current market environment is different, and the coming years will be different.

Financial advisors may use illustrations based on analysis of the past to generate hypothetical expected returns and income from portfolios they recommend. In relation to bonds, these illustrations are based on time periods that may have been much different than what you are likely to experience moving forward.

The primary reason is interest rates. As interest rates rise, bond values fall.  And unlike in past decades, we expect interest rates to gradually rise over the next several years.

However, illustrations based on what happened to the bond market over prior decades may still utilize the assumption that interest rates will continue to decline. If instead, interest rates gradually rise over the next several years, those illustrations and their forecasts could turn out to be inaccurate.

An often-used phrase in the investment world is “Past performance is not indicative of future returns.” The past performance of the bond market is not likely to be indicative of the future returns in that market, given the seeming change to a rising-interest rate regime.

Oak Harvest is forward-looking. We believe protecting your retirement and planning for the upcoming challenges requires a shift in thinking.

The Core4 isn’t just an asset diversification and allocation strategy, it’s also a planning system. The Core4 is our framework for integrated retirement planning and investment management. It is the framework for your financial future.

As we hear and understand your retirement vision, our specialists design an asset allocation across each of the Core4 segments appropriate for your situation, letting you focus on enjoying a full and fulfilling retirement.