Ep: 86: Building Your Retirement Income: The Bond Ladder Approach
THE X'S & O'S
Are you looking for a retirement plan that can provide stability and consistent income? Look no further than bond ladders!
In this gripping podcast episode, financial experts Matthew Theal, Brent Pasqua, and Joshua Winterswyk dive deep into the world of bond ladders, revealing everything you need to know to make an informed decision for your retirement plan.
In this episode:
Discover the power of bond ladders in safeguarding your finances
Gain an insider's perspective on the current state of the American economy
Learn how to incorporate bond ladders into your retirement plan for long-term success
Find out how to avoid inflation risks and protect your investments
Empower yourself with the knowledge to make informed and confident decisions for your retirement plan
Resources:
Connect With RPA Wealth Management:
Transcript
Welcome to The Retirement Plan Playbook with Brent Pasqua, Matthew Theal and Joshua Winterswyk from RPA Wealth Management. In this podcast, we cover current events, retirement planning strategies. And provide you with the tools to help you build a successful retirement playbook in any political or financial landscape.
Join Brent, Matthew and Joshua as they navigate the issues that can make the later stages of your retirement plan challenging and help you create the best Retirement Plan Playbook. Now let's get to the show.
All right. Welcome in to the Retirement Plan Playbook. We're. And I'm here with Joshua and Matthew, Certified Financial Planners. I think today's a good episode to talk about exploring strategies that come from doing a bond ladder. What do you guys think? Yeah, I've really been looking forward to this episode.
Uh, bond Ladder has been my favorite strategy to implement in the clients over the last six to nine months. Uh, you know, we've, we've briefly discussed a little bit on the podcast, a few episodes back, but now we're gonna dive deep into it today, and I'm super. I'm excited for you, Matt. Bond letters make you very excited and, uh, yeah, I'm excited for you.
Ready to, ready to dive in. I think, I think what's exciting about this though, um, is that just how it generates income and we haven't had the ability to create income like this over the last, you know, 10, 15 years, not to this level. So from a retirement planning aspect, it gives us this outstanding tool, right?
Yeah, absolutely. Uh, we're, we've approached a point where interest rates are now at a level where we could actually use bonds to plan on a person's income, and there's no better strategy to do that than using a bond ladder. Uh, perfect time for retiring and people feel safer doing that. It seems like they feel comfortable knowing, like it's that sort of fixed rate of return of, of having a steady.
Yeah, for sure. I, you know, and I think these bonds too, have the ability to maybe be the baby boomers CDs, you know, like how like our grandparents had like, CDs from the 1980s that they locked in at like 10, 12%. Right? I mean, that's, you know, could be what's going on here with these treasury bonds. And we're probably in the infancy of this.
Yeah. I, I have a question for you though, Matt. Um, you know, when we moved into this new office in Claremont, uh, , you had to pick between two offices. And I feel like part of it you thought was, you know, when we bought this, there's this space upstairs that's the attic and it was already built with permits to be built out and we were gonna potentially do a buildout up there to add more office space up there.
But once we dove into the plans, we started to see that we were gonna have to basically. Restructure this place. We're have to restabilize it. We have to put footings like we were gonna have to spend too much money than it was worth to build this attic out. So you kind of had picked that smaller office thinking maybe that you were gonna go upstairs.
Is that potentially what happened? And now we're not going upstairs? Well, yeah, so my plan was always to move my department, which is, uh, trading up to the upstairs level. Cause you know, trading should be on the top floor as always. That said, yeah, my office is a little small, but like it's cozy. Uh, I have probably the best office here.
And then what I realized is everybody's on one side of the building, you, Paulina. I'm on the complete other side, so I have my whole side of the building. So you're thinking of it like you're wing, even though you're just across the hall. Yeah, exactly. But what I'm waiting for is like, have you thought about approaching Josh and maybe, you know, like when a sports player goes to a new team and then, then they have their number, so they'll buy 'em out of their number.
Have you like off maybe thought about offering him a, an amount of money to buy him out of his office? No. Cause I really like my office. Would you take a, would you take a bio? No, no, no, no, no. Buyout. I like my office too. He chose the right office for him. It's perfect for me. It's perfect for building bond ladders.
It's, it's the trading office . But you know that wall in between your office and the office next door that that wall's not coming down? Yeah. Well, that's okay. All right. I just wanna make sure we're clear on that. All right. So, uh, in California though, we've been hit with this just abnormal winter storm.
And did you guys get snow at your house? , I didn't, um, we're, uh, I guess not a low enough elevation. Um, but I know a lot of people out here in the Rancho Claremont upland area did, uh, what about you, Josh? Yeah, I actually got snow at my house. It was a lot of fun. Our, uh, our little boy went out in the snow and really enjoyed it.
He even was mad when we brought him back. Um, so, but it, it was enough to stick to the ground, but it didn't pile up at my house, but it was really fun to watch it and my wife put on Christmas music, . We sat there in the house watching the snow come down. So yeah, we, we've only gotten snow one time over the last four years, and that was for a day or a few hours and that's how this one lasted, but mm-hmm.
you know, kids like it, so, I mean, it's pretty cool to see. Yeah, it was, we're just not used to it here. It was fun to, to. Our boy see snow kind of for the first time. Pretty cool. All right, let's get in the hot take headlines. Inflation has really continued to rise and the consumer price index has in been increasing 5.5% this year.
It's up from 5% in December. Meanwhile, personal income increased by 1.2%, the largest monthly gain since September of 2021. Like what I don't really understand is I thought the economy is supposed to be. , I thought, you know, inflation's gonna be under control. Now we're starting to get this data, what's actually happening?
That's a great question, Brent. I don't understand it either. I don't think anybody understands it. But here we are in February and everybody's been predicting the recession. Everyone's been predicting the economy's gonna, you know, implode. And we're getting numbers like that. You just said with all the inflation data for January came in hotter than.
incomes are continuing to rise. I mean, this is a really, really strong economy. There's job losses, but that's been pretty much just in the technology industry, but a lot of those jobs are being added back. Yeah, absolutely. Do they just keep raising rates? Yeah. Yeah. That's why we're doing the bond ladder show today, because like literally interest rates are gonna be at six or 7% by the end of the year with how strong this economy is.
But at what point do they re-strategize the. Or do they, I don't think they need to. I think what they're doing, I think it's slowly working. But you, you know what I was thinking is really probably the cause of this really strong economy, but I, I saw a tweet about this, but did you guys know student loan payments are still paused?
Yes. That's a lot of money, a lot of payments that aren't being made on a monthly basis. And my guess is most people are spend. . Yeah. And you're also seeing though, if you just compound that student loan payments do come back, we're seeing savings accounts in America, dwindle, credit card debt's rising. It's just not happening very quickly.
Yeah, it's, it's slower. It's much slower. Very slow. A lot slower than I think a lot of economists expected. So, yeah. Uh, economy is strong. It's, you know, I was wrong. You know, I was sitting here six months ago saying, yeah, we're going. , I don't see a recession on the horizon. So how long, like the stock market's gonna continue to be challenged with the Feds continuing to raise rates?
Maybe. I mean, the stocks were down 22% last year. Eventually. I, I kind of feel like stocks are up this year, right? Uh, you know, the markets rallied in January. It was, uh, stable in February. If SOX know rates are gonna go to 6% by the end of the year, six and a half. , they could still go up in that, that environment.
But then doesn't mainstream public start pulling a lot of money out of stocks to go into bonds? Maybe. It just depends what the public is for a retiree. Yeah, sure. But like I wouldn't switch my asset allocation. I'm not retiring for, you know, 35, 40 years. Me either. Yeah. And four contributions. Keep going in.
Yeah. Let's get into the next headline. Mortgage buy downs are really making a comeback though. Wall Street Journal recently released an. Talking about the increased popularity in mortgage buy downs in the hu US housing market. A buy down is a type of mortgage finance where borrowers pay down with an upfront lump sum cost to buy down their interest rate and lower their payment.
You know, I, I don't remember this strategy really being used all that much over the last, I don't know, five, 10 years, but seems like where, where rates are, it's probably pretty critical to at least considered. Yeah, you have to do your calculation because interest rates. So much higher than they were before.
Like you just talked about. A lot of people weren't using this strategy of taking capital and actually purchasing the rate to be bought down. Um, and what this essentially does is it locks you into a lower rate for that 30 year period and you have to now analyze, does that cost of capital you putting down more to buy down that rate, offset the interest enough to.
Value for you to do that? I mean, there's a lot of variables to this strategy. Do you even have the capital to buy down the rate Where I see it a lot though. Um, and just the data too is it's a negotiation tactic. Sometimes the buyer will say, instead of decreasing the price of the home, well the seller buy down my rate.
Cuz rates are so much higher. Where it's also being utilized a lot too, is new builders are buying down the rates. Clients. Um, let me give you an example of like Lena Homes, right? They have a new community. They have some inventory piling up because interest rates are higher. They're actually buying down the rate for the actual purchaser, which is a lot better than, you know, you buying a home from someone else and financing it through a mortgage company.
You could finance it through them, and they're gonna buy down that rate for you. That's becoming very, very popular, and that's helping new home sales as well. If you, if you're buying down your rate though, aren't you probably considering keeping that loan for a long period of time? You'd have to, yeah.
You'd have to, to offset, um, you know, like just the cost of capital. A lot of times this is used too, if you couldn't afford it now, because interest rates are higher, you couldn't afford the payment, you weren't approved for the mortgage. You're being forced to buy down. Uh, but yes, you'd have to stay in that home to offset that interest cuz you know, there is a break even.
So there's definitely, you know, reach out to your advisor here if you're thinking about buying down the rate and using some capital to do so because there is, um, you know, a calculation that has to be made to see if you are gonna save interest over time. That's what I was just gonna say. It sounds like what I'm hearing from you is buying a home was a lot more difficult than it was two years ago when rates are at three to 4%.
And if you are looking to purchase a home, you probably. need to meet with a couple lending experts on, on the mortgage side, but then also have a good realtor and then have a good financial advisor to help you actually run the numbers they're spitting back at you. Yeah, cuz it also could provide a tax benefit too.
So, I mean, you know, grouping your whole team together for this decision. This isn't an easy one. Um, and like you said, yeah, it is a little bit different of a period. It's making it a little bit more difficult of a decision. Um, so be careful with buying down rates, making sure that you run the numbers even though this is becoming more.
Yeah. And it would seem like if rates have pretty much at least doubled, possibly tripled now, right? Mm-hmm. and housing prices haven't gone down all that much. The percentage of which housing prices have gone down is very minimal. True. A house now is so much more expensive even than it was a year and a half ago.
Yeah. We've been talking about this on the, um, podcast a few times as this increase has happened, so eventually, potentially. , you know, housing prices do come down, but if they don't, you're gonna see more of this buy down strategy to make it more affordable. I, I don't see how, I don't see how housing prices are gonna drop, you know, unless millions and millions of baby boomers just die off for some reason.
Like, sorry, I don't see it. We're not building enough. Yeah, we're not. All right. Well, let's get into the retirement planning corner. Now that we've covered some of the latest headlines in the financial world, it's probably time to shift over our focus to a segment to discuss these also well known bond ladders that Matthew, you wanted to talk about.
And let's get into sort of the structure, how it actually works, how you get income, like how things actually function in a bond ladder. But obviously the, the basic question to start is what is a bond? Yeah, I'll start here. Um, I'm gonna let Matt dive into the bond ladder strategy. Um, but we're, when we're talking about a bond, what is a bond is just a, it's a debt security and they're issued to raise capital.
Um, companies, corporations, and they're essentially, you know, when you're buying a bond, you're essentially lending your money to a corporation or a government, and you're receiving an interest rate in return or a coupon payment. And then at the end of that term that you've agreed upon for your money being lent out, you'll get that return of capital.
So this is a debt instrument to raise capital. Um, and that's essentially what a bond is when you're purchasing. , can you explain to us a little bit about how a bond ladder works? Yeah, so a bond ladder is an investment strategy where you purchase a series of bonds and you stagger the maturity date. So what does that mean?
That means, you know, you buy a one year, a two year, three year, four year, five year, just like that. And what an investor does is they put an equal amount of money into those different maturities. and then as the bonds come due, so let's say you buy a five year bond ladder using, you know, maturity's, five years out in one year from now, your one year bond will come due.
And let's say you put a hundred grand in and you're gonna get that a hundred grand back, just like Josh said. And you'll take that a hundred thousand dollars and you're gonna move it to the back of the. and purchase a five year bond. And why would you do that? Because it's one year down the road and your two year bond is not one year bond.
Your three year bond is now a two year bond and so on. So it's a very simple strategy. And while this is happening, let's say if rates are averaging 5% like they are right now, and they might get to 6% like we're projecting, you're collecting that income. So say you did off a million dollars, that's 50, $60,000 a year in income, you're generating off the strategy.
Then every time you're just reinvesting your principle right back into the ladder. . So do you have to go that long of a duration to use this type of strategy? No, not at all. You could pick any time horizon you want. You could do a short term ladder. That's the one we've been doing with most of our clients where we're sticking under a year.
I mean, you could do a long term ladder, you know, one to, or a medium term ladder, one to five years. You could do a longer term ladder if you really want to, and go out 10. You know, it's just really up to the client and what's best for them. And right now we're using a lot of short terms, right? Yeah, yeah.
Short term, under a year. Um, I could actually see us maybe move into like a three year, pretty soon. I mean, these rates are just so attractive. I wouldn't wanna pass these up. Now, why don't you consider doing a three year. Six months ago, uh, the rates just weren't there yet, but now approaching 5% across most of the yield curve, I five percent's a pretty good rate of return guaranteed.
How long has it been since we've been at this type of rate? Uh, we haven't had rates like this since the late nineties, early two thousands. And I think for listeners to kind of compare this to something else, the bank also does this with cd. So I think a lot of people are familiar with a cd. It's essentially the same thing as a bond ladder just with a different instrument.
So the concept is the same, and that can give people a little bit of a comparison. What are the benefits of using a bond ladder for retirement income compared to. Other strategies like just a normal portfolio using stock dividends or um, using a cd? Like what, how does a bond ladder sort of separate itself in that its own strategy?
Sure. Yeah. That bond ladder strategy is gonna give you that predictable income stream. Because you're fixing the rate of income that you're going to receive from the bond that you're purchasing. So it's really gonna be easy to calculate what monthly or however you got want to set that up, but what income it's gonna create for you.
So there's a lot of predictability. It's gonna be that sturdiness to the, you know, your portfolio boat. Also, just really you're going to create flexibility within your plan. This is another key point to the benefit of building a bond ladder. And also you're gonna, Interest rate risk. As interest rates change, I mean that's what makes bonds essentially risky is when the interest rates change.
So by staggering these bond investments and building a ladder, you're essentially going to lower that long-term interest rate risk. Matt, you wanna touch on anything else? Yeah, absolutely. And so when we look back on, you know, what made investors the most money at the 1970s, 1980s, when the, when inflation was out of control and interest rates were.
It was ladder strategies, just like we're talking about today. And the reason is, is because as rates rise, you reinvest your principle in those higher yields. And by doing that, you're guaranteeing, you're gaining the new best interest rate every time your bond comes due. And then when you look at this, compared to other strategies, right?
Like, you know, there's a lot of guys out there, Brent, I know you love this. pushing those annuities, right? They're pushing, you know, 10% bonus, lock your money up for 10 years, beat the market without the market, draw down whatever they, whatever those guys say. Yep. And these are just so much cheaper than annuities.
There's no fees on bonds, there's no expense ratio. All it is, is you, you know, trade it through a company like Charles Schwab, fidelity, um, or whoever your broker dealer. and there's a little spread on on the trade and that's it. It's over. Now are you pulling people out of a, let's say, retirement portfolio of a 60 40 stock to bond portfolio to go into a bond ladder, or where are you fitting this in Right now?
I see it being used as really an income strategy as a separate sleeve of a 60 40 portfolio. That's how it is. I don't, I don't think this is, you know, a great wealth building strategy for someone who's just looking to build wealth. Um, it's purely an income strategy right now. It's a great cash management strategy.
You know, you have cash sitting on the sidelines or it was at the bank or you know, you sold a home. Any sort of new funds strategy for cash management, this is great for, and also man, I think like just your point on annuities, you know, buyer beware again with annuities, but also rates are going up with annuities cuz interest rates are up.
So guess what? The annuity salesman are back offering higher rates too, and I think that's just really important because this strategy can provide just such a great yield for clients without all of those complexities and fees. And we should mention too, even if you're in a five year bond ladder or a 10 year bond ladder, whatever it is you choose, it's best for your circumstances.
The treasury bonds bills, they're marketable, which means we could sell them right away. As long as the bond market's open, you could sell it and get your money. . I feel like the Annuity Vultures are probably just coming out right now because rates were so bad in annuities for the last like 10 years now with these rates.
They're just gonna be trying to switch people out of these old annuities and put lock 'em up for another 10 years. Yeah, I, you know what I heard, it's like I heard it's kind of like the opposite of refinancing a house. You know, you gotta refinance, answer your new, you get the better rate. , that's pretty good.
White goes up, can't come down, right. All right, so I guess then, you know, the next big question that I have when I'm thinking about a bond ladder is really trying to determine the length and the composition of the bound ladder. Like how long do you go for, like how do you determine your time horizon?
Like what, how do you build it around that? Yeah, so this is really, we're probably working with a financial planner comes in, but we're gonna want to look at your time horizon. There's multiple ways to do this, but if you're fully trying to replace the 40 in a 60 40 portfolio, you're probably gonna have a longer duration bond ladder, meaning it's gonna stretch out longer than someone who's just using it for short term income needs, like Josh was saying.
And then we'll look at your income needs. How much income do you need? Is it, you know, 40,000, 50,000? How much of your capital is it gonna take to get you $40,000 a year? that'll help us structure the ladder as well. And then, you know, what's your risk tolerance? So what does that mean? There are risks when we do bonds, right?
So the longer your maturity in bonds, the longer out your bond ladder is, is a five years. At a 10 year, the more risk you're gonna be taking, the shorter term, the less risk. So there are risk to bonds. And then we'll look at your diversification. What kind of industries are, are you in? What kind of issues were, we use government bonds, but you could also do this with municipalities.
You could do this with corporate bonds. There's a range of different strategies you could run with inside of a bond ladder. Yeah, and I think that overall, just looking at. Market conditions. There's just so many variables and I think you make a lot of good points, Matt, but so many variables to consider when you're coming up with this.
So definitely doing your research and, and reaching out to, you know, your advisor to setting this up because although it is a pretty simple strategy, I think there is a lot of variables to be mindful of. and I feel like there's so many different types of bonds out there. Like what? How do you determine what types of bonds to use when putting together a bond ladder?
I think simple. I, I mean high quality. Let's stay high quality. Matt already mentioned a few of these, but what is high quality? High quality means that bonds are actually credit rated. So they are a security that's credit rated based off of the quality of the bond that's being issued. Meaning there's the government, the US government has a credit rating for the bonds that they're being issued, so it's the likelihood that they're gonna pay you back or get your money.
And then also corporations also have ratings. So, you know, what we look at when we say quality is actually a highly rated bond. Purchase them for clients. And Matt said, you know, municipalities, government bonds. We can also use tips and short-term bonds within the portfolio. These are all different types of bonds that can be placed, um, in a portfolio for clients.
Matt, what is a tip? A tip is a treasury and inflation protected security. and think of this like a bond that is designed to hedge out inflation and the principle payment is gonna adjust for inflation, so it's gonna adjust with the cpi and it's a really cool strategy. They can be a little bit more risky though than just a straightforward bond because they have that inflation component.
So what could actually end up happening is your principle goal could decrease if inflation's decreasing. But outside of that, I think it's a good way. Uh, add this to a portfolio if someone's really concerned about inflation, but for the most part, just sticking with standard, boring, old vanilla government bonds is gonna make you a great bond ladder.
I think you explained it well when you're talking about how you can fit this bond ladder into a, a natural portfolio. But where does the bond ladder actually fit into the retirement plan? Like how do you strategically build it into the. That's a, that's a really good question. Number one, I would say, well, let's look at how much of that money we have to put in the bond liner to get you your income, right?
And then after that, we could invest in stocks or maybe we could pick some bond mutual funds. And then, as you know, financial planners, we're gonna want to see what, you know, what's coming in with social security. So how much are you getting three, 4,000 from social? Are you gonna get, you know, a couple thousand from your bond ladder, okay.
Or up to 6,000. Is that enough for you to live comfort? . Those are probably the two best ways to do it though. Josh, do you have any other ones? Yeah, I think it, in summary, it's understanding your cash flow projection, right? What's coming in, what's coming out, how much you're going to need and when you're gonna need it.
So determining the time horizon and that income need will kind of frame this strategy within your financial plan. What are some of the mistakes that people make when they're setting up a bond letter? Number one is just not really considering inflation, right? Inflation can eat away a bond ladder. If you're in a short term bond ladder, that doesn't matter.
But if you're in a longer term ladder and you stretch it out longer, and inflation's really, really bad, , then that could eat away at the interest you're getting. You can also just not be mindful or ignore that there is interest rates to bo uh, interest rate risk when it comes to investing in bonds. You know, right now we're in an environment where interest rates have continued.
To increase, but that's not gonna always be the case. So interest rates coming down or going higher than we even expected can provide some volatility to these bond position in the portfolio. Yeah. Like to give an example of how that would really work for the listeners. Let's say for some reason you picked a longer term bond strategy with your financial planner and you did a 10 year bond ladder and say when you locked it in, the rate on the 10 year was five.
and then two years later the rate's at 7% on that 10 year bond. Well, you still got eight years to go. You're gonna be underwater on your principal investment on that bond. So what can you do? You know, there's really not much you can do. You could trade, try and trade in and outta that bond, but that's kind of pointless cuz we're setting this up for an income strategy.
It, it's why I say it's really just for clients who really want that guaranteed stable income in retirement. I know what you can do, build a bond. Avoid that risk by just, I guess, laddering them, right? Yep. I mean, that's essentially what you're doing is you're, you know, lowering the risk profile of the bonds by staggering these maturity dates.
I think one of the big questions that a lot of people probably have though too, and at least from my perspective I would have, is how does taxation impact your net return? How does it affect your. It's a good question. So if you're doing this inside of an ira, which is where most financial planners would recommend you put in a bond letter and use, it would be with government bonds inside of an ira.
Then taxation doesn't matter. Because you're only gonna get taxed at ordinary income when you pull money out. So all of your interest is gonna be tax free. If you were doing this inside of a brokerage account, you could take, you know, you could still run this strategy, uh, you're gonna be taxed on your interest for clients in higher income brackets.
We could look at doing, you know, municipal bonds where in that case we would, you know, avoid some of the, the potential taxe. And for a lot of people, you know, like this money and this capital, if it is, let's say in a, in a money market at the bank or you're buying a cd, that interest is being taxed as well.
So this isn't necessarily new for those type of investors where it is in an after tax account, yes, we want to be mindful of the increase. Maybe, you know, the interest is providing you for income, but it's not necessarily, you know, new for everybody that this money is being taxed for the earnings that you're making.
In general, I feel like people worry way too much about taxe. , like, you know, if I could come up with a strategy that's gonna generate me an extra 50 to a hundred K in income a year. Yeah, man, I'm, I'm gonna take that. I'll, I'll let my accountant figure out how much I owe in taxes. Yeah. I'll deal with the taxes.
I'd rather have more money and deal with the taxes than not. Yeah. I've never gone to my work and said, Hey, don't gimme a raise cause I don't wanna pay more in taxes. Yeah. And I, I feel like that's sometimes where backwards thinking comes into play and, I feel like that question comes up a lot more than it probably should, so often.
So often. Are there any situations where a bond ladder ladder wouldn't be suitable or you wouldn't want to use it? . Yeah, you need higher expected returns. You know, we're talking about locking in an interest rate between, you know, right now let's just call it four or 5%. But if we're trying to really build wealth, you know, with a specific goal, if it's just retirement and you're young, five or 6% isn't as attractive as equities long term or stocks long term.
This can definitely take away some of that premium, um, if you do decide to go with this more conservative strategy. So if you need higher expected returns, it might not be. and you know, if you're in your mid sixties, seventies, you're still kind of working. You got a bunch of money saved in your retirement, you're not working the financial.
like this strategy is literally for you. This is what's gonna get you retired. Like, I'm literally shocked our phone's not ringing off the hook with these bond ladders because I, I think it's so great and like literally it wasn't possible for 23 years. Yeah, and I think where it also fits in is if you have money that's short duration, it's earmarked for something else for in the year, 2, 3, 4, 5 years, or you don't know how long until you need this big lump sum of.
this is a very good strategy to get an earning interest right now where you could stagger liquidity, get a higher output of. This fits a lot of situations. It's one of the best strategies tomorrow. I'm gonna go stand out front outside of Chase and Josh is gonna stand outside a Bank of America and we're gonna hold 5% guaranteed signs.
Yeah. Uh, to everybody who walks in the bank. Anyone make signs for us? You know what? We should have like a little ladder, like we get. Hold a little ladder on there. I'd pay money to see you guys out there. . We'll have bond with the greater sign than CDs . One of you could be bond. The other one could be latter
There we go. There we go. Now we got the, that's working. Let's get into RPA recommends. Matthew, what do you have for. All right. So it's been a while since we've done our recommends. I'm looking forward to this segment, uh, cuz we had Caitlin and Amber on the last two shows. But um, I'm gonna go with an HBO O show, I think.
Are they still called hbo? I'm so confused with these streaming services, is it H Show Max? It's HBO Max, yeah, is the app, but they're still HBO o So this is a really good show. It's called the Last of. I guess it was a video game, uh, but the production quality on this show is incredible. It reminds me of like a Game of Throne style show.
I'm not like a Dungeons and Dragons person, so I, no offense to those people out there, but I still like, like Game of Thrones, like I thought that was really good. And the last of us is a kind of like zombie apocalypse type show, but I'm also not into zombie apo apocalypse stuff. I'm just into high quality shows.
And this is a high quality show. Every episode is like a movie. It's really good. I heard it's really good. And it's based off of video game, right? Yeah, it's based off of a PlayStation game, which is kind of cool. Did you, uh, play the video game? I did not play the video game. That actor that's in there, is it Pedro?
Pedro Pasco. He's the best. Yeah. He's in so many good shows. I mean, Mandalorian, Narcos, Narcos. Oh yeah, he's good. Yeah, he's good. I have to watch it. I haven't, I haven't watched that yet. Well, we, what we're watching right now, um, my wife and I is full swing on Netflix, the golf documentary. Oh, that's, , uh, we are loving it.
I mean, I, yes, over the last couple years I've really gotten into. Um, but just the show, they follow a few different golfers on the PGA tour and it comes at like the perfect time cuz there's a lot of drama cuz there's players living to a different tour that's being, um, started. Uh, so it's just been great.
I've really enjoyed it. Um, makes me want to golf even more. The second episode where they're all at with the Waste Management tournament is just, that's incredible that, that just seems like such a cool event to go to. Yeah, that's the one that Super Bowl weekend, um, in Phoenix and they have like the stadium that's built around like, I think it's, you know, whole 16 and it's like a big party and they drinking and throwing beers on the chorus and everything else.
That looks like a lot of fun. Which is funny cuz they kind of combine the episode with the masters. As one of it. And then the way Smash, it's like the exact office is like Party, the Masters. You can't breathe. . Yeah, . The show's great. I recommend, you know, I, there's not a lot of shows I gravitate towards.
I've really enjoyed watching this so far. Outstanding. I'd recommend it highly. What about you, Brent? Uh, I have a recommend, um, that might not pertain to a lot of people, but I think it's helpful just in general. Um, I'm coaching my son's little league team and have been for several years. One of the things I was on the hunt for when I started was just getting good content to teach kids and to be able to be prepared for practices and games.
And I found a site called Dominate the Diamond, which is really just really good content to teach the kid prop kids proper fundamentals and mechanics. And the reason why I bring this up is cuz I think it's really helpful in general when, anytime. You know, we're doing something with our youth that we may not know a lot about or we're learning about.
For example, if you have grandkids or if I'm doing something new with my kids, there's so much content now, whether it's on YouTube or online, that you can either subscribe to, that you can purchase that can just gravitate sort of that relationship closer together, that when you're doing those things, like you're actually prepared and you're actually giving them good advice.
Cuz the things that I was. aren't now the way that people are being taught. The fundamentals are different, the mechanics are different. There's a lot more research about it, and instead of giving them like the old school training, which isn't pertaining anymore, , you can be a lot more prepared in giving people training that way.
You mean the coach yelling, keep your eye on the ball, son. Isn't the best training strategy. You gotta still keep your eye on the ball, right? Well, yeah, you do. But I feel like that was like the extent of little league coaching in the nineties. All right, now son, keep your eye on that ball. , I think you, you just make a really good point.
There's so many good resources. It's cool to see you, Brent. You, you know, you come in here excited about like even sharing with us that you found like this site and the instructional videos. Cuz even like what we do with investing in financial planners, we're always looking for better ways, right? And like you're sharing another like better way out there.
And I think it's really cool to watch you coach your son and then also implement these new strategies that we can even relate to as we, you know, raise our kids. And you guys use this for golf too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Internet's great for golf, YouTube videos and, and everything else too. So this is definitely, I cosign the instructional videos online, recommends Rick, Rick Shields the best YouTube golf.
Yeah. And there's been a lot of things that I haven't known how to fix cuz I can't fix anything. But like you load up a good YouTube video and you can sometimes figure something out. Oh yeah, no, definitely. Even when you're building like. Like a kid's toy or something. There's some other dad that videoed him doing it or putting it together.
It could be very helpful for sure. And texts like that. Mm-hmm. , you know, it just as another example. Yep. Absolutely. All right, so that's a wrap on today's episode, Retirement Plan Playbook. Matthew, I know you were super excited about discussing bond letters, so I hope that gave you your little fix. You know, I loved it, and please call me.
I wanna talk bond ladders like this is finally exciting. We haven't had this 23 years. , add it to your portfolio. If you're interested in learning more, be sure to check out the article on our website that dives more deeper into the topic. We can also additionally help you calculate, you know, a fixed rate of return and what the interest would be on a bond if you're looking into it.
We're excited to share that. We've written a comprehensive book on retirement planning, which really covers everything from creating retirement planning income. Managing your investments and also just really trying to minimize your taxes. The book is available for download on an@retirementplanplaybook.com, and we encourage you to check it out.
And as always, thank you for listening in and uh, we'll, we'll have a great podcast next time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Retirement Plan Playbook. Click the following button to be notified when new episodes become available. To get in touch with our team, call us at (909) 296-7977 or visit our website@www.rpawealth.com to schedule a complimentary consultation.
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