Living With Debt In Retirement

Written by Richard Rosso, CFP, CIMA

At the end of the financial crisis, my perspective on financial planning and investment strategies were deeply impacted.

It wasn’t by choice.

I was jolted by the realization that things had changed; a deep crack now existed in household financial foundations. I was shocked by how fragile our financial system really was.

My former employer didn’t share my concern; a dearth of guidance and direction were provided. And there I was on the front lines with clients seeking answers and assurance. They were scared and it was warranted.

Behind The Red Door

I hit the history books and financial journals from the 1920’s & 30’s. I parsed research on the Great Depression from Ben Bernanke. I studied the writings by Nomura Research Institute’s Chief Economist Richard Koo who understood deflation (which I believed was coming). I spent late caffeine-driven hours studying, highlighting and taking notes from my original copies of “The Magazine Of Wall Street;” I own a voluminous collection from the Great Depression years. I focused on the words of writers who lived through a challenging time for the country.

I was hungry for feedback about the state of retirement from almost everybody I encountered. I was steadfast in my approach in finding people who did not agree with my thoughts about numerous financial topics and long-held philosophies and dogmas.

The majority agreed that the impact of the Great Recession would be postponement (in some cases indefinitely), of retirement plans. During those dark days, the conversations about retirement felt trivial, silly, and awkward.

After all, lives were altered. Several couples I counseled saw their marriages implode as their businesses did.

Main Street is still working through the aftermath of the crisis, seven years later. Long before Wall Street or financial planning academia could admit the Great Recession was a structural hit to household balance sheets, the majority of Americans knew early on it would be a challenging, long-term road back to fiscal prosperity.