Transcript:

The retirement red zone is a period of time for any pre-retiree that is five
years or less away from full retirement. Now, compare that to football. We love football. I love the Washington Redskins and if they are five yards or less away from scoring the last thing you want the team to do is throw an interception or fumble the ball right when they’re about to score. Compare that to your retirement. You’re about to score. You’re about to cross the finish line into retirement and the last thing you want to have happen is a major loss or a major market downturn that’s going to affect your retirement.

This five-year period of time called the retirement red zone is so crucial to get really thorough comprehensive income planning done and these decisions made. So, we highly encourage meeting with a financial professional that can help you sort through all these decisions. Something that I talk to people on the phone a lot about is the fact that the stock market has been doing really well. Things have been going really well and even when people are getting towards that red zone or in that red zone they want to hold on to their stocks and they want to just keep taking that risk because everything’s been so great. However, that’s that period of time where if something happens, and it’s very likely to, you can’t predict it and you can’t see it coming.

Generally, it can be a huge, huge mistake and something that you really regret. So even though things are going really well, if you fall into this retirement red zone five years away from retirement or you know closer, then we just really encourage you to get some safer strategies in place.