20 Lessons for a Successful Retirement: Christine Benz

Well, I wanted this to be a book that would stick around for a while and be helpful to people for at least a few years. So, I didn’t want this to be a book where we were totally focused on, like, the tiny minutiae of what the tax code says today and exactly what the specific rules for retirement distributions are at this moment.

These things change pretty quickly over time, and they don’t necessarily speak to the bigger picture of what it takes to achieve a successful retirement. Instead, we are focused on the bigger topics and some more evergreen considerations about retirement planning.

I’d also say that we strove to identify topics that would be useful to both advisors and their clients. I like to imagine the clients learning new things as they read and the advisor nodding right along in agreement.

I see that the foreword was written by Jonathan Clements. Did you know him before writing he book?

I’m glad you asked that, because I have been hugely influenced by Jonathan’s work in terms of my own career. As I told him recently, when I started at Morningstar, it was as a fund analyst, where I was doing research on individual funds and more granular stuff.

At that time, I had a Wall Street Journal subscription, and I had the conviction that I should read The Wall Street Journal every day from cover to cover. In hindsight, that sounds a little ridiculous, but the result was that I pretty quickly realized how great Jonathan’s work was. This was a guy who was telling people what they really wanted to know about their finances.

He had the vision about the importance of indexing, for example, which at the time was not as widely accepted as it is today. He inspired me to focus more on matters of financial planning and to get out of the weeds with purely investment matters.

Regarding our relationship, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to get to know him through our mutual involvement with the Bogleheads group. Jonathan has been a great ally to the group and has spoken at many of our conferences and events, so we’ve had the chance to get to know each other well.

I was just so thrilled when he agreed to write a foreword for the book, also because he’s such a beautiful writer.

You’ve said there are some points of disagreement in the book among the experts. What are some of these?

That’s right, and I think it reflects the fact that no one has all of the answers about how to retire well. There isn’t just one single way to look at everything, and the book reflects that.

For example, one area where there are differences of opinion among the experts is in terms of portfolio construction matters for retirees. Some argue that the best approach is to build the portfolio with a baseline ladder of Treasury inflation-protected securities, while others see a more fundamental role of equities as a primary component of retirees’ portfolios.

There’s actually a chapter where my colleague Susan Dziubinski interviews me about the bucket approach to portfolio construction — and my bucket approach is not necessarily just a TIPS ladder-based portfolio. I prefer holding a diversified stock and bond portfolio with an element of TIPS as a ballast.

The book also features a discussion with Wade Pfau about his Retirement Income Style Awareness framework, which helps us to see the various different approaches people may resonate with when it comes to managing their wealth and income in retirement. Again, there’s not just one single way to navigate retirement. It’s personal for everyone.

Pictured: Christine Benz