Doc Eifrig Answers Your Big Retirement Questions

Eat your vegetables... An alternative to the '60/40' portfolio... Doc Eifrig answers your big retirement questions... On stocks, inflation, reinvention, and work... Watch Doc's retirement 'wake-up call' now...

'Eat your vegetables'...

Few people like to hear this piece of advice, and even fewer successfully put it into action... But eating your veggies – or any kind of healthy food consistently – can do a lot of good for your well-being in the long run.

The same thing is true with your finances...

This isn't a popular sentiment in our industry, but it's important... Doing the right, simple things every day can really add up to a sizable nest egg over time – with much less risk than going "all in" on the next 1,000% stock tip you hear.

That's exactly the advice our colleague Dr. David "Doc" Eifrig shared last week during his retirement "wake-up call," in which he spelled out what he believes those in or close to retirement should really be doing with "90% to 95% of their money." As he said...

My colleagues made fun of me, that this is our first-ever "eat your vegetables" event, that I'm telling people things they don't want to hear right now and no one's going to listen. But I don't care... Don't forget I'm a doctor. I'm used to telling people things they don't want to hear.

We won't spoil the whole story... Be sure to join the thousands of subscribers who've already watched Doc's wake-up call for all of the details. If you ask us, it was a thought-provoking event from Doc and his right-hand man, senior analyst Matt Weinschenk.

And if you've read the Digest at all over the past few weeks, you should already know a bit of what Doc covered. In general, he and his research team say the traditional "60/40 portfolio" is not the way to go moving forward if you care about growing and protecting your retirement funds...

Doc and Matt have come up with a much better alternative to the 60/40 portfolio...

It's a portfolio-allocation model that doesn't simply rely on "what has worked in the past" and the expectation that it will continue to work in the future... Not only that, it's also an approach that beat the gold standard of income index investing last year.

Simply put, Doc and Matt looked at what kinds of stocks or other asset classes perform best in various market environments over time (like the inflationary period we're in now)...

And they pretty quickly discovered that the conventional wisdom most investors are being fed today is as unhealthy as a greasy cheeseburger compared with a healthy salad.

As Doc said last week, there's a better way to maximize your nest egg in the decade ahead... which will likely feature lower-than-expected stock market returns, next-to-nothing yields on bonds, and inflation that runs longer than the Federal Reserve might expect.

The same old approach won't work over the next 10 or 20 years. As Doc said...

I have math and history on my side, as well. I've seen this play out too many times. Been there, done that. And I feel ethically obligated to be here saying this right now... Eat your vegetables.

In short, what Doc suggests folks do with their retirement nest eggs today is not what you'll hear from the mainstream talking heads... You should watch Doc's event for more details.

In the meantime, as part of the event, Doc (and Matt) answered many of your questions...

Several weeks ago, I (Corey McLaughlin) asked you to send in your questions to Doc, who would answer as many as possible during his upcoming event. And you came through, sending in hundreds of messages that helped us guide the discussion...

The most common concern was inflation... Doc covered that topic in depth and a whole lot more during his wake-up call. And today, to close the loop on your questions, I want to share several excerpts of Doc's (and Matt's) answers from their event here in the Digest...

They covered taxes, health care costs, the future of Social Security, how long folks should expect to need to work, and even cryptocurrencies. Again, please check out the wake-up call event for the entire Q&A session. We'll only share a few of the responses here today.

For those who are worried about expensive stocks...

Larry H. asked...

My main question is what would a moderately conservative portfolio look like that can offer protection and safety with some growth? With the landscape forecast of the next 10-plus years or so to be bearish, I'm not interested in a high exposure to equities.

Doc and Matt both answered this one. Here's Matt first...

When the market is valued as highly as it is now, and everybody is just putting more money in the stock market, everything is going up together... But as we go into this period where maybe returns are flatter and drift more, the good stocks are going to do better, and the bad stocks are going to do worse. That's what we would call "dispersion."

Right now, index funds have worked for everybody, but looking forward, being able to pick the right stocks is going to be a more valuable skill to have, and it's going to provide better returns in your portfolio.

And Doc followed up...

For example, you want to pick and find a stock that has pricing power, so if inflation does happen, they can also raise their prices. Those are the kind of investments that we're looking at and focusing on and thinking about so that even if you are in equities, although this person doesn't want to be, we would say find those stocks that do have that pricing power in inflation environment. That's what we do.

This next question gets to the heart of the wake-up call...

Rob B. asked...

The typical financial advice I get from the managers of these accounts is the same old "stay the course," "keep adding," brain-dead analysis or lack thereof. Is there a good resource somewhere that will help me figure out a path, other than keep doing what I'm doing and pray?

I don't see a lot of creative thinking or analysis when it comes to these kinds of retirement vehicles, and certainly not the level of analysis that you guys put into your portfolios.

I sense that something awful this way comes, but I'm trying to not only hold down my 40-hour job, so, trying to perform due diligence in this area is really starting to cause stress.

To which Doc said...

Well, we'd like to imagine that we can help this person. We think stress is an interesting thing, we've talked about it in Retirement Millionaire... There's good stress, there's bad stress, so-called "eustress" and "distress."

You can meditate, if you're getting really stressed, but I think reading our letters, reading our stuff, your analytics, this new model, this is the time and place to kind of let us help you help yourself, so that you're feeling less stressed.

Matt concurred...

[People like Rob B. are] exactly who we're trying to talk to... People feel like they have to do more, but then you're told, "Don't overtrade, or trade too much," and you have to find this balancing act.

It's not easy to find the answer that you need to hear to get you to make the right decision. So, we understand that... That's exactly who we're trying to speak to.

Next up, a question about 'reinventing yourself,' which Doc knows something about...

Thomas O. said...

I believe that a huge problem with retirement is that it basically requires a person, male or female, to reinvent themselves. That is an enormous challenge for anyone, but especially for those of us who've worked our whole lives.

Thoughts? Suggestions? A bit of wisdom on this matter would be appreciated.

Doc – who longtime readers know has one of the more eclectic backgrounds you'll ever find (Wall Street veteran, medical school graduate, winemaker, and more) – gave his take...

In finance, there's a rule that applies here... Once you've sunk your cost into something, it really doesn't matter what you've spent through today... It's what you want to do the next moment or the next decade.

For myself, all of my life, I don't want to say I got bored easily, but I always was looking at what I was doing, and it didn't matter what I had done. So people asked me why in the world would I leave Goldman to go to a different firm, and I was like, "Well, because how often do you get a chance to work for the Goldman Sachs of Japan?"

The next question was, "Why would you ever go to medical school?"

"Well, how often do you get to work for Wall Street, go to Columbia, then go to medical school?" And so, it doesn't matter what you've done... what's important is what you do in the next moment and the next chance in time. So for someone who has been an operator of a crane for the gas company for 70 years, he could do whatever he wants to tomorrow... you just got to start doing it.

I've got friends, they have parents who are 78 years old, the mom every morning gets up and listens to vocabulary words in Chinese and Italian, and she already is fluent in French, Spanish, somewhat fluent in Italian – she's learning Chinese and Italian at breakfast every morning, and walks five miles every day.

You can do anything you want to do.

Here's another related question about longevity in the workforce...

Jim D. asked...

Have you met anyone who might be planning or maintaining a well-paid job until near 70 years old? I'm wondering if this might become more common [for] people... With healthy people living longer, would your advice change?

Matt replied...

Everybody is in a different scenario... And we've been judging financial markets for a long time, but we've also been communicating with people on how to understand it themselves.

We have a very simple set of instructions for what we want people to do, but we do help them learn how to apply it to themselves and see what scenarios might be different for them. Because, really, no two scenarios are the same, and we say it's not personalized advice because everybody's personal situation can be very different.

We help people walk through that, and understand why they're doing what they're doing, so that they know if it works for them.

You won't find much better advice than that.

One more – and this is a common one...

Sofrito V. wondered...

I'm just a little confused over information Stansberry sends from different sources and different stock market analysts. Some say a "Melt Up" is coming soon, some say a crash is coming. So, what is it?

And Matt had a great answer...

It's important that we let all our analysts and editors have their own voice and their own view. I think if you try to get everybody together to agree on a consensus view, what you end up with is vanilla – like what a bank puts out that says the market's going to [return] 6% a year, and we've seen that those [predictions] are always wrong.

In fact, Doc said this is exactly the type of groupthink that leads to conventional wisdom like the 60/40 portfolio-allocation recommendation that he sees as such a threat to the wealth of many folks today.

In the end, Doc's wake-up call was a bit more than an "eat your vegetables" event. It was well worth the time and addressed a lot of the issues that we know many of our Digest readers are concerned about today.

Doc explained all of the details you'll need for retirement, including how the model he has come up with could've turned a $100,000 investment into an $18 million retirement nest egg in part by protecting your portfolio from some of the worst drawdowns in history.

Over 50 years of back-testing, Doc's model never saw a drop bigger than 12%, even during times when the broader market crashed 50%. This level of protection will be absolutely critical during the volatile times ahead.

So again, we urge you to listen to Doc's wake-up call if you haven't already.

(And Stansberry Alliance members or existing Income Intelligence subscribers, be sure to give Doc's latest research a look today... He has created several new special reports, including an Inflation Survival Guide and an entire report on what Doc and his team learned over a month in the "Wild West" of generating income from cryptocurrencies.)

New 52-week highs (as of 6/25/21): American Homes 4 Rent (AMH), Asana (ASAN), American Express (AXP), CBOE Global Markets (CBOE), Costco Wholesale (COST), Cintas (CTAS), Commvault Systems (CVLT), Dropbox (DBX), DocuSign (DOCU), Expeditors International of Washington (EXPD), Formula One Group (FWONA), Alphabet (GOOGL), Hershey (HSY), Intuit (INTU), Liberty SiriusXM Group (LSXMA), Motorola Solutions (MSI), Cloudflare (NET), Intellia Therapeutics (NTLA), OptimizeRx (OPRX), S&P Global (SPGI), ProShares Ultra S&P 500 Fund (SSO), Smith & Wesson Brands (SWBI), Visa (V), and Vanguard S&P 500 Fund (VOO).

Today's mailbag is full of responses to our colleague Dan Ferris' most recent Friday Digest, which included "a little something extra – totally free of charge, too." As always, we welcome your thoughts, comments, and observations on the markets at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.

"Dan, I enjoyed your essay Friday, particularly the free ( ) at the bottom. There is one more item you could have included under 'people paying for worthless stuff' – Ripped Jeans. You observe a lady who obviously cares about her appearance, hair, makeup. And she is wearing these discreditable ripped jeans. It's been a trend for years now. Every one's doing it. Who knows why they caught on." – Paid-up subscriber Tom C.

"I'm an Alliance member that was brought into Stansberry through Extreme Value. Dan, I've been following your work for years and enjoy listening to you on the Stansberry podcast (I never thought somebody could top Porter, but you did).

"Also loved your 'free' advice in last Friday's Digest, you nailed it as usual. We are in Bizarro World and most sane people feel like outliers. Prepare for stormy weather ahead at some point and it's going to be a doozy when it does arrive." – Stansberry Alliance member Andy S.

"Lately I've been sending in misanthropic negative feedback on various Stansberry articles, so I thought it only fair to remit something positive. I've been waiting and reading, and this is it: The Dan Ferris [Digest] of June 25th. Read it, dear friends, chuckle a bit, then print it and hang it up next to your computer, or wherever you do your 'investing'... Read it again before each trade. Thank you Dan; good job." – Paid-up subscriber Jerry F.

"Best Digest content for a long, long time!!" – Paid-up subscriber Phil B.

"'As you can see, it's more 'air and spirit' than actual advice. But I'm told that it comes with a potential value of $18,000. That might be the highest-returning advice you get all year.'

"I don't know about $18,000, but you gave me the best deep belly laugh I've had in ages, for which I thank you so much!" – Stansberry Alliance member John W.

All the best,

Corey McLaughlin
Baltimore, Maryland
June 28, 2021