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Blended Families in Retirement

By Josh Manifold | Principal | Advisor

Retirement planning, in and of itself, is a balancing act in a marriage–lifestyle, personalities, adult children, and so on. This balancing act requires even more intentionality when we add the layer of a blended family. If you are entering or already in a blended family, here are a few of the questions you should make space to discuss with your spouse.

Assets, Debts, and Rules

  • Out of the gate, what level of transparency are we comfortable embracing around finances?
  • For day-to-day decisions, are we combining finances or preserving more autonomy?
  • For our long-term planning, are we creating a unified financial plan? Or managing retirement finances separately?
  • If it is the latter, have we created a single balance sheet that shows us our complete financial picture with assets and liabilities?
  • How will we fund larger expenses, from trips to long-term care?

Priorities & Planning

  • What do we picture a fulfilling retirement looking like? (lifestyle, geography, relationships, etc.)
  • What financial support do we want to provide our adult children and/or grandchildren?
  • How can we help establish safe boundaries to navigate disagreements when they come up?
  • What does an ideal estate plan look like to each of us? How do we want to communicate our decisions?

Blended or not, these questions require tact and grace for every family. In blended families, you may feel there’s a lower comfort level approaching these conversations, but they are definitely worth having.

Post-Election Markets: While the inauguration was just last week, the election was last year and that has our attention because post-election markets have historically been kind of average. The chart below shows how, since 1950, most of the big gains took place in pre-election years, while midterm years could be trouble. Election and post-election years tended to be more average.

In more recent years, post-election years have been very strong. Going back 40 years (to 1985) post-election years have gained more than 18% on average and have been higher nine out of 10 times.

While stocks fell in December and during the historically Santa Claus rally period (we talked about that here), the S&P 500 made another new all-time high and is up nearly 4% in January already.

 

 

 

 

 

*The views expressed represent the opinions of Compass Ion Advisors, LLC, as of the date noted and are subject to change. These views are not intended as a forecast, a guarantee of future results, investment recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any securities. The information provided is of a general nature and should not be construed as investment advice or to provide any investment, tax, financial, or legal advice or service to any person. The information contained has been compiled from sources deemed reliable, yet accuracy is not guaranteed.

Additional information, including management fees and expenses, is provided on our Form ADV Part 2 available upon request or at the SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure website at www.adviserinfo.sec.govPast performance is not a guarantee of future results.