Mostly Voices [0:00]

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. A different drummer.

Mostly Mary [0:18]

And now, coming to you from dead center on your dial, welcome to Risk Parity Radio, where we explore alternatives and asset allocations for the do-it-yourself investor. Broadcasting to you now from the comfort of his easy chair, here is your host, Frank Vasquez.

Mostly Uncle Frank [0:36]

Thank you, Mary, and welcome to Risk Parity Radio. If you are new here and wonder what we are talking about, you may wish to go back and listen to some of the foundational episodes for this program. Yeah, baby, yeah! And the basic foundational episodes are episodes 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9. Some of our listeners, including Karen and Chris, have identified additional episodes that you may consider foundational. And those are episodes 12, 14, 16, 19, 21, 56, 82, and 184. And you probably should check those out too because we have the the finest podcast audience available. Top drawer, really top drawer, along with a host named after a hot dog.

Mostly Voices [1:34]

Lighten up, Francis. But now onward, episode 315.

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:41]

I'm back. Sorry for the hiatus. Mary and I were off on our 30th anniversary trip. We went to Peru for about 11 days. We had a great time. There were planes, there were trains, there were automobiles.

Mostly Voices [2:10]

You're going in the wrong direction! you're going to kill somebody!

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:14]

There was Machu Picchu.

Mostly Voices [2:24]

There was a boat. Whoa. Free boat ride for three. Now who should I take? Keeve? Yes. And T-Pain. Let's go. I'm on a boat. I'm on a boat. Everybody look at me 'cause I'm sailing on a boat. No, no, no. On Lake Titicaca? Lake Titicaca. Lake Titicaca.

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:55]

And so no, I did not do anything about this podcast or the website while I was gone. It's not that I'm lazy. It's that I just don't care.

Mostly Voices [3:03]

But these are the advantages of being retired and doing this for a

Mostly Uncle Frank [3:07]

hobby and not as a job.

Mostly Voices [3:10]

I don't think I'd like another job.

Mostly Uncle Frank [3:15]

But now that I'm back, I will update the website again. By this weekend, I suppose, since we're going to be doing monthly distributions tomorrow.

Mostly Voices [3:23]

Well, you haven't got the knack of being idly rich. You see, you should do like me, just snooze and dream, dream and snooze. The pleasures are unlimited.

Mostly Uncle Frank [3:32]

And in the meantime, let's attend to some of your emails. And so without further ado, here I go once again with the email. And... First off. First off, we have an email from Paolo. And Paolo writes, hi, Uncle Frank, appreciate your work.

Mostly Mary [3:52]

One thing I haven't heard discussed in various financial independence money podcasts I listen to is how major unexpected expenses late in life factor into safe withdrawal rates. Since a large portion of people over 70 end up with significant medical expenses not covered by insurance, for example, how would you factor that into calculations and plans? Thanks, Paolo and Tampa.

Mostly Uncle Frank [4:18]

Well, this is a very interesting question because I think it gets at a cognitive problem that people have in conceiving of what to do here and how this should play out. In particular, people are either too worried about this problem or they are not worried enough and they just completely disregard the possibility. But let's deal with first things first. You say since a large portion of people over 70 end up with significant medical expenses not covered by insurance, you should realize that statement is not true. It is not true. Most people's expenses, medical expenses, are covered by insurance when they get older. We have Medicare. We have Medicaid. There's other insurance you can buy. So the median expenses are actually quite low. The average expenses look higher, much higher than the median expenses because a whole lot of money is spent on very few people. A couple of statistics here. Something like 40% of all medical expenses are expended in the last six months of people's lives. That's an old statistic. I'm not sure it's exactly the case right now, but the fact of the matter is there is a very high proportion of medical expenses that are expended on people in the last six months of their lives, whether that's because they're in cancer treatment, some kind of long-term degenerative care or other operations or other things going on. And this gets to the cognitive bias people have with thinking about these things. and it's called the possibility effect. They look around and say, oh, it's possible that I'm going to have lots of expenses at the end of my life. And I think you're talking mostly about long-term care, although you did not say long-term care in your email. But then they translate the idea that this is possible to this is probable. And that is a cognitive error. It's a cognitive mistake. It is something that people who want to sell you insurance products take advantage of. Always be closing. To say, well, it's possible, therefore it must be probable. And let me plot some random statistics to scare you with so you can buy my crap.

Mostly Voices [6:43]

Because only one thing counts in this life. Get them to sign on the line which is dotted.

Mostly Uncle Frank [6:48]

Now how do you that it's going to be significant. And unfortunately, there's no one good source for this and lots of bad sources for this information. But if you ask a few chat GPs and AIs about this, what you learn is essentially that about half of the people need long-term care. A lot of people just die very quickly of heart attacks, accidents, other things.

Mostly Voices [7:35]

Here's a horoscope for everyone. Aquarius, you're gonna die. Capricorn, you're gonna die. Gemini, you're gonna die twice.

Mostly Uncle Frank [7:49]

And of the people that actually do need long-term care, the average stays are somewhere around a year or two, and much less probably for a median. You're usually looking at months, not years. So the base rate probability of you needing long-term care and it being a significant expense is probably pretty low. Now let's match that up on the other side with our basic retirement spending plans that we talk about, whether it's 4% rules or anything derivative of that. You have a portfolio and you have a withdrawal rate and you're adjusting it and doing other things. The fact of the matter is when you run Monte Carlo simulations, the chances are that you are going to end up with at least as much or more money than you started with in most of these simulations. What does that mean in this context? That means that in order for this problem to be a problem for you, two things have to happen. First of all, you have to have a very bad sequence of returns, so in fact you are getting close to running out of money in retirement. Because if you get to long-term care age and you still have as much money as you started with, you don't have a problem. Forget about it. Second, you need to be one of those people that actually needs lengthy stays in long-term care. And so as you can imagine, the probability of both these things being true is very small. We're talking, you know, single digit percentages for most people. So doing the actual math, this alleged problem is not actually a real problem for most people. Surely you can't be serious. I am serious. And don't call me Shirley. And the probabilities are low enough that to plan for it in any meaningful way other than not overspending your retirement assets and slightly underspending them, which you're probably going to do anyway as you age, is not worth a separate calculation. In a lot of circumstances, it'll be like, well, if I have to go into the home, I'm not going to need my house to live in anymore. I'll just sell the house and use that to pay for it and we'll be done with that. And if I have this problem 10 or 15 years into my retirement, then I've already got way more money than I need because I had planned to live at least 30 years or so. So speaking as a rational mathematical person with a mathematical mind, I do not see this as as big a problem as people make it out to be. And I think the people that make it out to be a big problem are usually suffering from the possibility effect.

Mostly Voices [10:38]

You are talking about the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind.

Mostly Uncle Frank [10:45]

Now let's talk about the practical what you can do and what you need to think about in your particular situation. Because I was just talking about base rates if we look at the entire population. Now obviously the base rate for needing this kind of care is going to be not the right rate for any particular person or very few particular persons because it's a median rate or an average rate at best. But what this means is it's really not a financial issue so much as it is a lifestyle and health issue. And that's how you should address this issue, not trying to use your finances to solve this problem, but solve it with other means? And what are those means? Well, first you need to educate yourself because you know what your personal family histories are, whether there is a chance that you would suffer from Alzheimer's or one of those cognitive degenerate kind of diseases. You can get DNA testing now to check for probabilities of that in addition to talking to your doctor about your family histories of those sorts of things. And you may have other family or genetic issues that you need to deal with. But go get your DNA tested. That's how you find these things out. Go talk to, if you haven't and you don't know, talk to your relatives, your parents, about the family histories of these sorts of things. Okay, so that's the knowledge part. Go get some knowledge. What about the practical applications? What can we do to make sure our rate of or possibility of needing this is lower than the base rate. Fortunately, there's a lot of good information about this, in particular, if you follow a person named Dr. Peter Attia, who recently wrote a book called Outlive and has a podcast. This is all he talks about, is improving your health span so you age well. And once you get to your 90s, if you can make it there in a healthy state, the chances are if you're going to die, you're going to die really fast. You're not going to linger on. The main problem people have is if they have degenerative problems when they're in their 70s or early 80s, those are the kinds of people that tend to linger on for quite a while because they can be physically healthy but have other degenerative problems. Now, I'm not going to turn this into the Peter Attia show because I'm going to say things wrong. But basically what he talks about is let's deal with the things that lead to chronic degeneration. And those things are things you already know about. They're high blood pressure, they're high cholesterol or bad cholesterol, they are metabolic syndrome, the whole spectrum of moving towards diabetes. And then there are the cognitive decline issues involving Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and those sorts of things that involve the brain. And what he says is, if you can stay on top of those, chances are you are going to have a very long health span and be a healthy person long into your elderhood and then die relatively quickly. But what that means is you need to go get your checkups, your battery of tests, all those sorts of things. And then after that, if you need medications to control those things, you should get on those medications, do those things while you're in your 50s. Go get those colonoscopies. They're not fun, but they do a good job in taking care of that problem. And then the rest of it is choice of lifestyle. And a lot of it has to do with just not sitting around, going out and walking around or doing something that keeps you active, and being able to do things like squat down on the floor and get up again without too much trouble. Very simple things like that are instead of getting your entertainment from television, get it from podcasts and go out for a walk. Most of these things do not require lots of workouts, trainers, things like that. Now, if you want to get more advanced and give yourself some better possibilities than that, yes, Weight training is very helpful. Go get a book called the Happy Body by Jersey Gregorak. That outlines a daily workout that will keep you in very good shape because it involves lots of getting up and down, squatting and those sorts of things. And you can do it yourself with some dumbbells. Or get a trainer or a nutritionist. That's what your money is for. Spend it on your health. I can tell you money spent on that is going to be much more effective than money spent on some kind of long-term care insurance. Start with the low-hanging fruit. This is the low-hanging fruit. Fix your lifestyle and then the possibility of you having these long-term degenerative problems is going to go down and may disappear entirely. And then clean up your consumption habits. Don't smoke.

Mostly Voices [15:50]

It's like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking.

Mostly Uncle Frank [15:54]

Don't abuse substances. It's like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines. Don't eat too much sugar or processed foods. I mean, I'm not here to tell you how to do this or other people that know much more about this. You could start with Peter Attia and Jersey Grogan. That'll give you 80 to 90% of what you need to know. But you can also go around and look at healthy older people. How do they live? What do they do? What has kept them going? I'm very fortunate in our family, both my parents and my in-laws are healthy, active older people. My father will turn 95 next month. My mother turned 90 in November. They both live together in a house, a normal house, with my disabled sister. They still drive to the store. They drive to their medical appointments. My father still works in the yard. Now what did he do before that? Well, he was still going out fishing and backpacking well into his 80s. He was not sitting around watching TV.

Mostly Voices [16:56]

Forget about it.

Mostly Uncle Frank [17:00]

Now my in-laws are in their 80s. They're still riding bicycles. They're still running around. They're still swimming, exercising, doing all those things that you would want to be doing if you're going to have a healthy health span. And those are the people you want to be emulating. Not the people that can tell you what they saw on the news that day. Not the people that only go on cruises and never walk anywhere. Because fundamentally, this is not really a financial problem you're talking about. It's a health and lifestyle problem and you should approach it that way. Now, one of the things Mary and I got to do when we were Down in Peru is go to see Machu Picchu.

Mostly Voices [17:39]

Senor Beavis, don't start to hull pass. Are you threatening me? The famous Incan ruins.

Mostly Uncle Frank [17:49]

And one of the things you can do is do a hike up the mountain behind it and look down on it from there.

Mostly Voices [17:53]

I am the great cornholio. Now it's not a very long hike. It's only about 1.

Mostly Uncle Frank [17:57]

3 miles, but it is very steep and goes up 2,000 feet. Now at our age, I can tell you that We only saw like two people older than us doing this hike. Most of the people were much younger. The reason it's difficult in particular is because of the altitude. You're up at about 10,000 feet there. Now, Mary's in great shape because she takes care of herself and goes to the gym very often. I'm in okay shape because I at least walk around and get some exercise. But neither of us are super people doing super things. We are just making an average effort in this. And the problem is most people, particularly most Americans, do not even do the bare minimum in terms of health and lifestyle.

Mostly Voices [18:45]

Let me ask you a question, Joanna.

Mostly Uncle Frank [18:53]

What do you think of a person who only does the bare minimum? And so my best advice here is To spend your money and time on working on this from a health and lifestyle perspective, and do not try to solve this possibility problem you've identified of needing longer term care later in life as a purely financial problem, because that's just not the right tool for the job.

Mostly Voices [19:14]

Looks like a tricky job, Bob. Not when you have a good team, Mr. Bentley. Okay, team, let's get to work. Can we fix it? Yes, we can!

Mostly Uncle Frank [19:25]

And chances are you will have the resources to cover that, whatever you need or you won't need it at all. Just do not confuse possibilities with probabilities, because that is where people get hung up here. They're sitting out there waiting to give you their money or you're gonna take it. You cannot prepare for all of the possibilities of bad things that might happen to you 20 or 30 years on. You just can't. Forget about it. That is life. Accept it. But chances are very small that you are going to both have a financial problem and a health problem at the same time. If you have adequately saved and are adequately managing your finances in the first place and you're doing something to keep yourself healthy.

Mostly Voices [20:30]

If you want me to wear 37 pieces of flair like you're a pretty boy over there, Brian, why don't you just make the minimum 37 pieces of flair? Well, I thought I remembered you saying that you wanted to express yourself.

Mostly Uncle Frank [20:34]

So our approach is to focus on our health and lifestyle first with respect to this issue.

Mostly Voices [20:42]

Do you think anybody wants a roundhouse kick to the face while I'm wearing these bad boys?

Mostly Uncle Frank [20:46]

and to be prepared to sell the house, disgorge all of the assets that are locked up right now if that becomes necessary at the end of life. Neither one of us has any desire to leave some kind of legacy to our kids because we're going to give the money to them early on, and we're giving it to them now to fund their IRAs and things. We will Also take Social Security as late as possible, at least I will, because that will give us some longevity insurance. We'll also look into things like QLACs when we get to our 70s to have something that pays out when we're in our 80s, which would also be something that could ameliorate this kind of expense. But I do not foresee this as being a problem for us or for anyone who takes care of their health and is approaching the management of their finances in a reasonable way and has accumulated a reasonable amount of money. It will be a big problem for people who have not done either of those things. That is the straight stuff, O Funk Master. Or I should say it may be a big problem because there's a good chance that a lot of those people are just going to die of a heart attack very quickly or some other Instant death or sudden death kind of event.

Mostly Voices [22:06]

Haha, you fool! you! fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia.

Mostly Uncle Frank [22:22]

But only slightly less well known is this：Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! But I've probably gone on about this far too long. I would go look at those resources. Jersey Gregorich's Happy Body, Peter Attia's Outlive, and those sorts of things because that is where the real answers to this problem are. They are not going to be found in the financial realm.

Mostly Voices [22:40]

Dead is dead. But look at what has been done with hearts and kidneys. Hearts and kidneys are Tinker Toys. I'm talking about the central nervous system. But sir, I am a scientist, not a philosopher. You have more chance of reanimating this scalpel Then you have amending a broken nervous system. Hopefully that helps, and thank you for your email.

Mostly Uncle Frank [23:05]

Never thought I'd be on the phone. It's a big blue watery road. Yeah, I'm starting and look at me. Second off. Second off, we have an email from Phil.

Mostly Voices [23:24]

Phil? Hey, Phil? Phil? Phil Connors? Phil Connors, I thought that was you.

Mostly Mary [23:36]

And Phil writes, Just listened to the podcast Money for the Rest of Us, which I think you pointed me to. Did you use his system in early days? He referred to a paper by, I think, the same folks that Rational Reminder talked about challenging the 4% rule per international bonds. In any case, I was interested in the 50/50 US international portfolio performing better than lifestyle 60/40 and 100% US stock. Dropped it into the early retirement now sheet with impressive results. Thinking about 25% US large cap growth, 25% US small cap value, 25% international large cap growth, growth and 25% international small cap value. I guess I am missing the Ulcer Index from portfolio charts. Thoughts? My current portfolio is 30% US large cap growth, 30% is small cap value, 20% TLT, 10% GLDM, 5% DBMF, and 5% cash, retired at 58, and using early retirement now sheet for the withdrawal percentage. My rebalance policy is 10% threshold. Love the show and the approach you take to sharing information and how you have built a community for what you are interested and passionate about. Bing! Happy New Year and best wishes for 2024 and beyond. Cheers, Phil. Bing again!

Mostly Uncle Frank [25:13]

All right, a few things here. First, I think you are referring to this Scott Cederberg paper discussed in the Rational Reminder podcast, and David Stein of Money for the Rest of Us has also discussed it. We most recently discussed this in episodes 306 and 307 of this podcast, and I don't want to repeat all of that information. But it's sufficient to say that I do not believe that the portfolios that they have constructed using that database are realistic or things you would want to hold because they effectively have a large proportion of foreign bonds in countries with unstable or non-reserve currencies. Basically, that's the baseline portfolios they are analyzing. look through the data and how they're using it. So I think those papers are only of academic interest. I do agree with the conclusions of that recent paper that these lifestyle or target date funds are something that you should not be using because they are not well designed and they do not perform as well in an accumulation mode in particular than something that's like 100% stocks or something close to it. I would not use a 100% stock portfolio in retirement and do not believe that the research from that paper actually supports that when you look at the kinds of bonds they are actually holding in those portfolios. It would be the equivalent of an American holding things like Turkish bonds. And really the proper use of bonds in portfolios for decumulation is as a good diversifier from the stocks in the portfolio. Therefore, what you really want to have is the most stable bonds and the most stable currencies. So you would not be holding the kinds of bonds that they say you would be holding in that study. Those are not good diversifiers. You can see that easily if you look at the correlation between international bonds versus treasuries against the US stock market. You will find that international bonds are more highly correlated with US stocks than US Treasuries are. And the reason for that is because of the speculation on the dollar. When the dollar is weak, that's generally good for the stock market. When the dollar is weak, that's generally good for international bonds. When the dollar is strong, though, that could also be good for US Treasuries in many circumstances, particularly in recessions. So the devil there is in the details of these bond choices. The portfolio that you are describing that you're currently in 30% Large cap growth, 30% small cap value, 20% long-term treasuries, 10% gold, 5% managed futures, and 5% cash. Does look like a nicely diversified portfolio to me. That should easily support a 5% safe withdrawal rate. And I would not change anything based on that Cedarberg paper or any research that's similar to that. Okay, your other question was, did I ever use David Stein's system for asset allocations. And the answer to that is no. First of all, I arrived at the things that I like to do before I read his book or was exposed to any of his materials. But if you read his book, you'll see that one of the options, good options he describes is the risk parity style portfolio, which is the option that I took. What he calls his approach is a garden approach, and he invests in a lot of more complicated kinds of investments, including closed-end funds, various kinds of public and private debt instruments, and other things. So his portfolio is extremely well diversified, but kind of strange and difficult to analyze because it's only got, I think, less than 20% in stocks. stocks. I think his approach requires too much knowledge, too much research and too much effort, honestly. Because in order to use his approach, you have to be able to independently analyze all of these esoteric investments that he employs. Now he conveniently provides a service for you to get that kind of information. Yet I realize that's the kind of lifestyle business he wanted to engage in. But I think you're probably going to be just as good or better off after the fees and complications in using what we call a more naively diversified or constructed portfolio where you take a few asset classes that are diversified, come up with allocations to them, and then rebalance into those allocations. Because what he is doing is a dynamic thing where you are changing the allocations of various assets pulling them in and out, it is a form of market timing. That's at baseline. What he is doing is market timing with a whole bunch of different asset classes. Now he's a former institutional advisor investor, so he's probably capable of doing that. I am not capable of doing that. Man's got to know his limitations. And I don't think most people are capable of doing that. You could ask yourself questions. So it's probably not a good approach for most people.

Mostly Voices [30:39]

Do I feel lucky? Do I feel lucky? Well, do you punk?

Mostly Uncle Frank [30:48]

I'm glad you like the show and are willing to put up with my antics.

Mostly Voices [30:53]

Real wrath of God type stuff. And thank you for your email. I'm on a boat. I'm on a boat. Everybody look at me, 'cause I'm sailing on a boat. Last off.

Mostly Uncle Frank [31:10]

Last off, we have an email from visitor 5858 from Reading, Pennsylvania. And visitor 5858 writes, Question regarding the golden portfolios.

Mostly Mary [31:23]

Can another asset class be switched out in place of gold? or is that needed due to correlation?

Mostly Uncle Frank [31:30]

Well, this is an interesting question because it gets at what the purpose of gold is in a portfolio to begin with. The reason gold is helpful in a stock bond portfolio is not because it has some magical properties, but simply because it has essentially a zero correlation over time to both stocks and bonds. So is therefore diversified from both of those things. If you go back to episode 40, we discussed this in more detail about how a small allocation to gold in an otherwise stock bond portfolio will increase the safe withdrawal rate and the optimal amount seems to be somewhere between 10 and 15% depending on what else you're holding. So this leads to the answer to your question, can another asset class be switched out in place of gold? And the answer is, well, if you can find another asset class that has the same kind of properties, which are to have a positive expectation over time, gold does increase in value over time due to the long-term effects of inflation and other factors, and is not correlated with either stocks and bonds. There aren't a whole lot of assets that match those two Managed futures is probably one of them. Unfortunately, we do not have as much data on managed futures as we do on something like gold. Now, people have experimented and tried other things, such as commodities generally, which don't work as well because their expected returns are lower and their volatility is higher, and they are often positively correlated with stocks. Silver has that problem because it behaves more like a commodity. Some people are hoping that cryptocurrencies can fulfill that role. Right now they have not proven to fulfill that role because they seem to be positively correlated with speculative tech stocks. That could change in the future because the asset class is young, if you will. But this is also why things like investing in Volatility futures and things like that probably isn't going to work simply because those things have a negative expectation as opposed to a positive expectation in terms of returns over time. All this tells you is that gold happens to be the simplest solution to this problem of finding a asset class that is uncorrelated with stocks and bonds and has a positive expectation and is also something that is liquid and can be rebalanced with those other assets. I should have mentioned that too. That would be the problem with holding something like raw land, because you can't exactly rebalance in and out of pieces of raw land like you can with gold ETFs. Any kind of collectible would also have that same problem. Those are not liquid assets. That's also why you don't want to hold your gold in the form of jewelry or even really the form of physical gold, because it's not very liquid that way. And that's why ETFs are so valuable and why we are in a kind of golden era of investing because we have ETFs that cover just about any asset class that you would want to invest in, including now cryptocurrencies, at least Bitcoin. And that makes it much more easy and viable to use all of these different assets in a portfolio that can be managed, rebalanced, and that you can take withdrawals out of easily without having to go through any machinations or complicated transactions and incur a bunch of transaction costs. One of the questions I have in my mind is whether managed futures will in fact be a better holding to hold than gold in a portfolio like this. And I don't know the answer to that. My guess is that it's better to hold both of them because you get Some additional diversification that way. A managed futures fund may in fact hold some gold in it when gold is trending, but that's not going to be the main or major component of a fund like that. Anyway, now I'm rambling again.

Mostly Voices [35:40]

I love gold! Hopefully that helps, and thank you for your email.

Mostly Uncle Frank [35:49]

But now I see our signal is beginning to fade. As I mentioned before, I will be trying to catch up here and clean up the website, update things on the portfolios page so we have that all done up for at least the month of January. I may forego weekly returns this week simply because I'm too lazy to calculate them when I hadn't calculated them in a couple of weeks.

Mostly Voices [36:14]

Looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately. I wouldn't say I've been missing it, Bob.

Mostly Uncle Frank [36:21]

And I will make an effort now to get caught up on some of these emails. So if you have comments or questions for me, please send them to frank@riskparityradio.com that email is frank@riskparityradio.com or you can go to the website www.riskparityradio.com and put your message into the contact form and I'll get it that way. If you haven't had a chance to do it, please go to your favorite podcast provider and like, subscribe, give me some stars of review. That would be great. M'kay? Thank you once again for tuning in.

Mostly Voices [36:57]

This is Frank Vasquez with Risk Parity Radio signing off.

Mostly Mary [37:10]

The Risk Parity Radio Show is hosted by Frank Vasquez. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Please consult with your own advisors before taking any actions based on any information you have heard here, making sure to take into account your own personal circumstances.