Thanks to Retire Rich – Invest Rs. 40 a day still selling and long past the 150,000 copies that it has sold..I am now considered an expert on retirement. These are some of the calls that I get:

• Is there a good Senior Citizens home in Navi Mumbai?
• How much does it really cost living for 20 years in a senior citizens home?
• Oh this is only a senior citizens home? it does not have geriatric care!
• Subra we went to this place you suggested..but that place is really bad…can you suggest an alternative ?

So here are some of my lessons:

• working with a person’s retirement starts well before he retires, so age 50 is not too early
• managing the portfolio is a small part of the job, there are many other issues

the challenge is that effectively managing a retirement portfolio, and the distributions that occur from it, is much more than just managing the investments portfolio. Retirement portfolios also have to face sequence of return risk – if the initial returns are so poor that the advantage of high returns can never be realized on a dwindled portfolio! Poor fund performance an also impact ongoing distributions. Some big one time expense (could not estimate) or a regular small expense both could catastrophically deplete the portfolio before the good returns show up! The best strategy for retirement income isn’t necessarily the one that produces the best return.

Getting the client to involve a spouse, progeny, or sibling is not easy, but a must. Too many people above the age of 70 REFUSE to accept that their brains are slowing down and better to ask them to write it down. You will need to push people to make wills, a living will, etc so that the next of kith and kin have some visibility about what he wanted…

will continue…