Opening Quotes And Welcome

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 Queen 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. And the basic foundational episodes are episodes 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9. Yes, it is still in my memory banks. We have also created an additional resource, a collection of additional foundational episodes and other popular episodes.

Voices [1:07]

We have top men working on it right now.

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:14]

Top men. And you can find those on the episode guide page at www.riskparodyradio.com. Inconceivable! All thanks to our friend Luke, our volunteer in Quebec. Sacosh. We'd be helpless without him.

Voices [1:35]

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:41]

Because other than him, it's just me and Marion here. I'll give you the moon, Mary.

Voices [1:46]

I'll take it.

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:48]

We have no sponsors, we have no guests, and we have no expansion plans.

Voices [1:52]

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

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:55]

Over the years, our podcast has become very audienced focused, and I must say we do have the finest podcast audience available.

Voices [2:05]

Really top drawer.

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:07]

Along with a host named after a hot dog.

Voices [2:10]

Lighten up, Francis.

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:13]

But now onward, episode 494. Today on Risk Party Radio, we're just gonna do what we do best here, which is attend to your emails. So are you ready?

Voices [2:25]

Yeah, hold on. I forgot to put in the crystals.

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:31]

But before we get to that, as you all know, we are running a charitable promotion here these days, raising money for Fairfax Court Appointed Special Advocates, which is the charity that Mary is affiliated with. And she is, in fact, a Fairfax Court Appointed Special Advocate. Also known as a Casa. And so we'll begin our podcast today with a Queen Mary segment, where she gives us another little vignette of some of the work that Fairfax Casa does in the foster system here in Fairfax County. And so without further ado.

Mostly Queen Mary [3:38]

His mother struggled with untreated mental health concerns and experienced homelessness. He and his mother moved frequently between shelters due to her violent outbursts. The court ordered the removal of Carter and placed him in foster care. But Carter didn't face the journey alone. He received support from a dedicated casa along the way. Carter was placed in a foster home where he stayed for over a year. Once reunification with his mother was no longer a viable plan, the court began working toward adoption. The casa was consistent in her advocacy for Carter. Even when Carter moved out of the state to live with his maternal grandmother, the casa continued to visit him regularly. The new placement was a drastic change for Carter. However, having the support and constant presence of his casa made the transition smoother. While the plan to adopt was in motion, Carter's casa and his maternal grandmother advocated for an IEP assessment, mental health therapeutic support, and other needed therapies. The casa also helped mitigate a situation that would have resulted in Carter losing childcare. The Casa collaborated with other professionals on the team to ensure Carter's needs remained at the forefront of every decision made on his behalf. After more than two years, with the persistence of his casa and the commitment of his grandmother, Carter's story resulted in a long-awaited, joyful adoption.

Mostly Uncle Frank [5:03]

So if you'd like to give to Fairfax Casa, we'll put that link in the show notes again. All donations are greatly appreciated. And as the bonus we give here, you get to go to the front of the email line if you donate to Fairfax Casa or to my charity, the Father McKenna Center.

Voices [5:20]

Well me and the Lord, we've got an understanding. We're on a mission from God.

Mostly Uncle Frank [5:28]

So make sure if you send in an email, you tell us whether you are a donor or not, so we can move you to the front of the line.

Voices [5:35]

Always remember, if you ain't first, you're last.

Mostly Uncle Frank [5:40]

But now speaking of those emails.

Voices [5:43]

Here I go once again with the email. And first off.

Mostly Uncle Frank [5:49]

First off of an email from Nicholas. Meet Nikki.

Voices [5:56]

Hello, Frank. It's his first day in New York City. After a day like this, hey, can I ask you something?

Mostly Uncle Frank [6:08]

Most people would pack up and head home. And Nicholas Wright.

Mostly Queen Mary [6:15]

Hi Frank. I've been playing around with portfoliocharts.com and plotting the differences in withdrawal rates, drawdowns, and annual returns for various risk parity portfolios. Specifically, I looked at different portfolio combinations ranging from 5-25% gold, 5-25% long-term treasuries, 5% cash, and the remaining in equity split 50-50 between USLCB and USSCV. From my analysis, I noticed that having 20-25% gold appears to maximize withdrawal rates as opposed to 10-15%. It also appears that 20-25% gold provides similar to slightly higher returns than portfolios with 10-15%. I think you've recommended 10 to 15% gold for most risk parity portfolios as being the sweet spot. Why not 20 to 25%?

Voices [7:11]

Oh, Mr. Marsh, don't worry, we can just transfer money from your account into a portfolio with your study and it's gone!

Mostly Queen Mary [7:19]

Personally, I'm a little nervous holding more than 15% in gold, but can't help to reconsider given this analysis. I would love to hear your thoughts and for you to gut check me on my analysis. Thanks.

Voices [7:33]

This is gold, Mr. Bond. I think you've made your point, Goldfinger. Thank you for the demonstration. Do you expect me to talk? No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.

Mostly Uncle Frank [7:46]

Well, let's talk about gold and calculators and things. First, the 10 to 15% figure comes from a number of sources, but if you go to episodes 12 and 40, we discuss the hundred-year analysis that Big Ern Karsteneska did in Safe Withdrawal Rate Series 34 on his blog. And that was the figure that he came up with there. Now, that is taking into account prior to 1970, gold essentially functioned as cash for the most part, with one exception, and during the Great Depression, there was a devaluation of the dollar against gold. And I should say that all of that is theoretical since you were not allowed to own gold between about 1933 and the early 1970s, at least not in the United States. But that does give you a baseline. And really the importance of that is oftentimes I see or hear people say, well, put 3% gold or 5% gold in your portfolio. That's probably not going to make much of a difference, honestly. It really needs to get up to a level of about 10% to have a big difference. And that's because it is similar in character to an investment in the stock market in terms of volatility in particular. And so anything less than 10% probably isn't going to affect the portfolio very much, depending on what else is in there, of course. But that begs the next question is sort of well, what is the upper limit of good allocations to gold in a withdrawal portfolio in particular? And I have looked at the sheets you sent me, and I will link to that in the show notes. That yes, if you put in higher gold allocations, particularly in the portfolio charts calculator, you oftentimes get better performances when you raise the gold allocation to 20 or 25% in some scenarios. Interestingly, that's also kind of confirmed by Tyler's own research, not with respect to US investors, but with respect to people in other countries. They seem to benefit the most out of holding more gold in a portfolio, maybe even 25 to 30%. I did link to that study in the last episode. I'll link to it again. But here's the rub. I think you may be putting too much confidence into this one particular calculator and one particular data set. Because there are a couple of truths here. One is that if you myopically focus on trying to get, quote, the best combination, unquote, you will overfit your data. You will overfit your data. And that means that the future is unlikely to perform like your data in the past. That is why we do not have magic formulas here. A number so perfect. Perfect. You find it everywhere. Everywhere. Where it's these three funds in these three proportions, and that's the thing we should all do.

Overfitting Trap And Calculator Limits

Voices [10:38]

That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works.

Mostly Uncle Frank [10:42]

Rather, we are always looking for ranges of outcomes. And if you want a shorthand version of that in terms of what typical ranges are the best for higher safe withdrawal rates, there's a cheat sheet in episode 618 of the Afford Anything podcast that Paula Pant created based on the interview that she did of me. And you can pick that up. But basically it says that somewhere between 40% ish and 70% ish in stocks divided into growth and value, somewhere between about 10 and 25% in alternative assets, somewhere between 15 and 30% in intermediate and long-term treasury bonds, and less than 10% in cash. Those are some basic guidelines that if you create portfolios within those guidelines, you're probably going to have higher safe withdrawal rates than something that is outside those kind of guidelines. But they're just guidelines. And there is no one magic particular combination that is guaranteed to be the best one in the future.

Voices [11:42]

Forget about it.

Mostly Uncle Frank [11:44]

And the reason that's true is because the future is uncertain. This is Frank Knight in uncertainty, if you want to know what I'm talking about. This is from an economist. And it's also fractal and based on power laws, if you want to get into the math of it. But what that tells you is that you cannot calculate your way away by doing more calculations to guarantee some outcome in the future. It's not risk. Risk you can calculate away, uncertainty you can't calculate away. And the best you can do is come up with guidelines to get you in the ballpark of where you want to be. And you can't get any more precise than that. You may be more precise, but you'll probably be precisely wrong, is the answer to that.

Voices [12:26]

You must unlearn what you have learned.

Mostly Uncle Frank [12:30]

But this is also why the best use of calculators is not to try to hone in on which portfolio is better than another one on a safe withdrawal rate by 0.2% or something like that. It is to compare portfolios broadly, because obviously, if they're 1% difference, that is a significant difference. But you also want to use multiple calculators and hopefully get the same kinds of results in different calculators. Because what you are ultimately doing here is not trying to find a perfect portfolio. You are always comparing two imperfect portfolios. You are always comparing two imperfect portfolios. It's portfolio A versus portfolio B on this data set using this method of analysis. And to illustrate how you may get different results using different calculators, I went and did one on test folio that I'm going to link to in the show notes. And what I did was take the sample golden ratio portfolio they have there. And in one version, I took out the managed futures and just put in 26% in gold, similar to what you're talking about. And so that's one of the portfolios. It does not have any managed futures in it. In another one, I took out the managed futures and substituted commodities in it, at least back for all the data they have, which goes back to 1979 there. And that is the asset class that portfolio charts is actually using in their golden ratio analysis, since they don't have managed futures there. So this is more like the portfolio charts setup. And then I used gold prior to that, going back to 1968. And then in the third one, I basically took the sample portfolio and then say, okay, well, we don't have managed futures data back prior to 1993. So we'll use the commodities data back to 1979 and then use gold back to 1968. So we have three portfolios that are tested on this from 1968 forward. And I ran them on a 5% withdrawal rate, and you can see the results. The results are the one with the managed futures in it does the best. And the one with all the gold in it all the time does the worst. And the one that is commodities most of the time is in the middle. So why is that? Why is that result seem different than the one you get at portfolio charts? Well, there's a couple reasons. You have managed futures instead of gold or commodities, and that is a better asset class because it has a better long-term growth rate than commodities, and it is also diversified from gold, bonds, and stocks. The other reason is more subtle that the data in test folio actually goes back to 1968. And this is important in this area because that last part of the 1960s is in fact one of the worst periods to start portfolios in. So just going back to 1968 actually gets you worse results overall than using the portfolio charts data, which only goes back to 1970. Which is why when I look at the portfolio charts data, I always look at those safe withdrawal rates as a little high. They're great for comparing each other, but I would subtract like half a percent just for my own comfort, if you will. And you'll get something that looks more like that in the testfolio data. To me, all this does is correspond with a general concept I gave you, which is that your alternatives should probably be somewhere between 10 and 25% for higher safe withdrawal rates, at least if you're not using any leverage. Now, I think you're better off having more than one alternative, whether that's golden commodities, golden managed futures, or some combination thereof. And that's the real lesson you should learn out of this analysis I just gave you. And you should play around with it because you may not learn other things. You probably will learn other things. But I come back to the two main lessons here, which are don't get myopic about these percentages and always use multiple calculators when you are comparing portfolios. Because what you're hoping to see is consistency that you get the same kind of result in terms of portfolio A being better than portfolio B for some particular metric, whether you are testing it on one calculator or another calculator with a slightly different data set. You want to be using all of your tools and all of your talents.

Voices [16:51]

And we have the tools, we have the talent.

Mostly Uncle Frank [16:54]

So hopefully that was instructive. Check out the analysis I gave you, and you can compare it with the one you did. And thank you for your email.

Nathan's FIRE Plan Needs Precision

Voices [17:17]

Second off.

Mostly Uncle Frank [17:18]

Second off with an email from Nathan.

Voices [17:22]

Get your hot dogs! Hot dogs!

Mostly Uncle Frank [17:28]

And Nathan, right?

Mostly Queen Mary [17:30]

Hi, Frank. Although I'm roughly three years into my fire journey from an intentionality perspective, this is the first time I've penned a note to a financial guru I truly respect in this space. Why you and why now? And you may ask yourself, how do I work this? Well, the simple path to wealth is well simple, as are most fire fundamentals. Budgeting, the 4% rule, Roth conversions, 72T, and so on.

Voices [18:02]

Dogs and cats living together, massisterium.

Mostly Queen Mary [18:06]

But what feels far less simple, and occasionally like voodoo, is figuring out how to maximize and preserve wealth over 40 plus years while minimizing sequence of returns risk. The kind that has people running back to their corporate desks. You can't handle the dogs and cats living together. That's why I'm reaching out. Your focus on risk parity and evidence-based diversification is both intriguing and intimidating, but also incredibly relevant for someone at my stage. A bit about me. I'm 45, married, and have two teenagers. We just went on our first college visit last weekend.

Voices [18:48]

Who dumped a whole truckload of fizzies into the swim meet? Who delivered the medical school cadavers to the alumni dinner? Every Halloween, the trees are filled with underwear. Every spring, the toilets explode.

Mostly Queen Mary [19:06]

About 20 years ago, I started my career as a manufacturing engineer at a mid-sized aerospace company. It's an entirely different kind of flying, altogether.

Voices [19:18]

It's an entirely different kind of flying.

Mostly Queen Mary [19:21]

Over the next 15 years, I worked my way up the corporate ladder, contributing 5 to 10% of my salary to my 401k. Back then, I didn't know about fire or much about investing. And it's gone. Poof. Just that mutual funds, mostly large and mid-cap, were the right place for retirement savings.

Voices [19:45]

We can put that check in a money market mutual fund, then we'll reinvest the earnings into foreign currency accounts with compounding interest and it's gone.

Mostly Queen Mary [19:54]

Just before COVID, my company consolidated divisions and centralized decision making out of state. Over the next few years, work became a soul-sucking routine. We lost strategic autonomy and were micromanaged to death. Current snapshot, age 45, net worth 1.77 million. Target retirement, approximately 5 years. Estimated retirement spending, approximately $100,000 per year. My wife runs a small fitness business slash charity and may or may not retire with me. Annual contributions through retirement $401K $32,000, including MACH, HSA $8,000, Wife's IRA $7,000, brokerage $10,000, Money Market $10,000 to $15,000. Current allocations, traditional IRA rollover, VTSAX $660,000, VBTLX $230,000, Roth IRA rollover, VTSAX $230,000, 401K SVSPX $20,000, MWTIX $16,000, limited index options, HSA SVSPX $24,000. Brokerage FXAIX $59,000, FSKAX $29,000. Home equity is $470,000, remaining $280,000 on a 15 year mortgage at 2.875%. We plan to downsize post retirement to free up. Approximately $200,000. Money market $19,000. And checking $10,000. After listening to several of your episodes, I've realized that VBTLX may not provide meaningful diversification against stock volatility. I'm considering moving to something like BLV for duration diversification and possibly adding approximately 5% gold to further smooth volatility. My thought is to make most of these changes within my traditional IRA given the tech sheltered environment. I'd really appreciate your thoughts on this approach, especially how you'd think about risk parity allocation and inflation protection for somebody about five years out from fire. Thanks for all you do on Risk Parity Radio. Your clarity and realism help bridge the gap between theory and practice for a lot of us. Nathan from Minneapolis.

Voices [23:00]

No more flying solo. You need somebody watching your back at all times.

Mostly Uncle Frank [23:06]

Well, Nathan, interesting situation. But if you are planning on retiring in five years or so, you've got some work to do here. You really need to tighten things up because you're not there in terms of being able to do a proper analysis of your situation right now. So, first and foremost, you gave your estimated retirement spending as $100,000 a year in five years. That is not good enough for planning purposes if you're going into retirement. You can get away with that all the time you're accumulating because you can essentially just save, invest first, spend the rest, and not worry about what the exact numbers are. Once you start getting close to your retirement, you need to stop estimating, first of all. The first thing you need to do is sit down and actually go through your own records and figure out what are your expenses right now for at least the past year, hopefully two or three. Because all of your planning comes out of that. And if you don't do it, you can't really plan. This is the place where calculating more and getting more data is the right thing to do. Because your expenses are controllable by you, or largely controllable by you. So there's a risk factor there. And risk you can calculate away. So what you want to know out of that is not only how much you're spending total, but then what are the categories that they're in, and in particular, what are your mandatories and what are your discretionaries? That's the most important thing to suss out after you get the total. Then you need to sit down and figure out what part of that is going to change over the next few years. For most people, the truth of it is not that much is going to change. If you're not moving, if you're not getting a divorce, if you're not adopting some new lifestyle or taking on new expenses, most of your expenses are going to be pretty consistent, other than some inflation, and it may be pretty minor inflation if it's like your house since the mortgage is fixed, and your cars if you're not replacing them. Usually it's children who are the wild card here for most people in their middle age. So after you do that exercise, then you can get a correct estimate of what you think your actual expenses are going to be five years from now. And it won't be that hard, but it's grunt work. I can't tell you how many people try to avoid actually doing the grunt work here. And instead they think they can come up with magic formulas of investments to make so that they don't have to think about how much they're actually spending. But if you go to a financial advisor, any decent financial advisor, the first thing they're gonna do is sit down with you and go over your expenses. Because that is, in fact, the value that financial advisors really have as planners and forcing people to actually look at what they're spending and figure things out from there. So you need to figure that out. And then you need to use the correct figures for determining how much you need. Because right now you've got your net worth at 1.77 million, and it's written up as if that is all available to spend, and it's not all available to spend because a lot of it's in your house. What is important here is what is the difference or the comparison between your expenses and your liquid assets, your investments and things. That's the number you need to focus on for the purpose of knowing how much you need because you can't eat shingles. So your $1.77 million number is irrelevant for this purpose. I went through your numbers there, and what I determined was that you actually have about $1.3 million in liquid investments that would be available to support your lifestyle. $1,297,000 was the number I got. So just looking at the rough calculations, which you should always do, let's assume that $100,000 is the correct number that you'll be spending $100,000 in five years. At a 4% withdrawal rate, you would need $2.5 million in liquid assets and investments, which is about twice as much as you have right now. And so that would be using kind of a basic off-the-shelf two or three fund portfolio, the kind that Bill Bangin determined has about a 4% withdrawal rate back in the 1990s. Now, if you're targeting a 5% withdrawal rate, which Bill Bangin now recommends, and I think is imminently doable if you're willing to modify your portfolio appropriately and have some variability in your expenses, which you would know about after doing that exercise, figuring out what your mandatory and discretionary expenses are. If that's the case, then you only need like two million. Now, you probably will get to around two million in the next five years if markets are average. It's possible you won't, though. It's a lot less likely you'd get to 2.5 million in five years, unless you're contributing a whole lot. And what I get from that is I don't think you should make five years as a hard retirement date, particularly with the kind of aggressive portfolio you're holding right now, because you may not have any growth at all in five years. If we have a market crash or something. To me, saying five years from now would be like an earliest retirement date. I think you're probably going to be safe if it's between five and ten years. But we won't know until we get there. Okay, now looking at this portfolio, you've got it is essentially an 80-20 portfolio with 80% in VTSAX or similar funds. And all of your stocks are in similar funds. They're all SP 500 or some kind of total market fund. So you can consider them as all one kind of fund. They're not diversified from each other. And all of your bonds seem to be in like total bond fund kind of funds, which are a mix of treasuries and corporates from short, medium to long. So when you break this down, what you basically have is a simple two-fund 80-20 portfolio. That kind of portfolio works fine in accumulation. It could be more aggressive, but it doesn't have to be. But it's a mediocre decumulation portfolio. It does not have a particularly high safe withdrawal rate. In fact, it's got too much in stocks in it, according to Begin's original research. But even if you reduce the amount of stocks in it, you're still talking about that simple portfolio that has a 4% safe withdrawal rate at bottom. And so generally when people hold that kind of portfolio, they really adopt a strategy where they're just not spending much money. Because you have other options here. I mean, you could work until you're in the sh in your 60s and then plan to spend like 3% or less, then you can hold this portfolio or any portfolio you want. It just depends on how long you want to work. And that would also be a good strategy if you want to accumulate the most money at death.

Voices [29:40]

Death stocks you at every turn. Grandpa? Well, it does. There it is!

Build Real Diversification For Retirement

Mostly Uncle Frank [29:48]

But if you want to retire earlier and be able to spend more money, then you need to make changes to this portfolio. And you need to move towards what I described earlier in terms of those four guidelines. So you want your stock percentage to be somewhere between 40 something percent and 70 something percent. You want it divided into growth and value. Right now it's 100% growth and large cap. So that needs to change if you want a higher safe withdrawal rate. Your bonds should be somewhere between 15 and 30% in intermediate and long-term treasury bonds. Right now you have a mix of things. Some are short-term, some are corporate. Those are not well diversified from your stocks. The reason you hold treasury bonds and not corporate bonds is because they are the most diversified from stocks. And if you're using bonds as a diversifier as their primary purpose in a portfolio, they should be treasury bonds, not corporate bonds, not some mixed bond fund, not some mega bond portfolio that some advisor charges you an arm and a leg to construct and doesn't do anything.

Voices [30:54]

Forget about it.

Mostly Uncle Frank [30:57]

So moving to something like BLV from VBTLX isn't going to do anything for you. BLV has a bunch of corporate bonds in it. It's not that much different from BBTLX, other than not having the short-term bonds in it. And if you want to see which kind of bond funds are most diversified from stocks, the easiest way to do that is to go put the ticker symbols into someplace like test folio and then go over to the correlation matrix and it'll show you which ones have the lower correlations and which ones have the higher correlations. And you'll find that anything with corporate bonds in it is going to have a higher correlation to stocks. And if we have a 2008 scenario, those things are going to go into the tank with the stocks. And so will tips. So that's not a solution either. So instead of BLV'd pick something like VGLT, which is Vanguard's long-term treasury bond fund, or VGIT, which is Vanguard's intermediate treasury bond fund. And there are a lot of similar choices that you can make these days, but just stay away from corporate bonds. Now adding 5% in gold will help you a little bit, but it's probably not enough to make a big difference if you really want to get it up to 10%. If you really want to make a difference here in terms of a higher safe withdrawal rate. So I would be looking at making those kind of changes to this portfolio. I agree you should make most of them within IRAs because you should treat this all as one big portfolio and put all of your ordinary income payers in the traditional retirement accounts, and that's where you can make a lot of transactions without any tax consequences. Now, since most of your assets are in fact in retirement accounts, your situation's going to be really easy there to make all kinds of changes. You can, for example, change out of your VTSAX and your Roth and change that to some value tilted funds, a small cap value or some other kind of value-tilted funds. That part of what you're doing is going to be pretty easy. You may also be asking in your mind when should you start doing this? I'm not sure you really need to start doing it now. I would say when you get closer to 80% of your FI number in your liquid invested accounts, that would be a good time to be making some of these changes. Alright, then you also asked about inflation protection. And the things that work the best for inflation protection are alternatives like managed futures. That is by far the best one. Something like that went up 20 or 30% in a scenario like 2022. The other thing you want to hold in inflationary scenarios is value-tilted stocks, particularly those that are involved in commodities or property and casualty insurance, things like that. Things that will not help you at all in an inflationary scenario. No bonds. I don't care what you call them. I don't care if they have inflation in their name. They're not going to help you because they're bonds. That's not what they do. That's why tips went down 15, 20, 25% in 2022. Don't make that mistake.

Voices [33:54]

Not gonna do it. Wouldn't be prudent at this juncture.

Mostly Uncle Frank [33:58]

And something like gold does not react automatically to inflation. So in a year like 2022, I think gold was down four percent. It does over long periods of time keep up with inflation. But it's not an immediate reactive. So those are my thoughts. I guess there are a lot of thoughts there.

Voices [34:20]

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

Mostly Uncle Frank [34:26]

Fortunately, you have plenty of time to plan here, but I would sit down and get granular on those expenses as your first project. So hopefully that helps. And thank you for your email.

Voices [34:57]

Last off.

Mostly Uncle Frank [34:59]

Last off of an email from Lisa.

Voices [35:02]

Now, who's up for a trip to the library tomorrow? Notice I no longer say library or tomori. I'd love to go to the library with you. It's a date.

Mostly Uncle Frank [35:14]

And Lisa writes.

Mostly Queen Mary [35:16]

I've been listening to your program and studying the Risk Parity portfolios. I am not confident to move forward without some guidance. How can I find a fee-based advisor that is familiar with risk parity? Dad, did you read all these books today?

Voices [35:32]

Everything from hop on pop to death be not proud. It's so tragic the way they hopped on pop.

Mostly Uncle Frank [35:39]

Well, Lisa, this podcast is primarily directed at do-it-yourself investors.

Voices [35:45]

Abby someone. Abby who? Abby normal. Abby normal.

Mostly Uncle Frank [35:56]

So we don't spend too much time talking about particular financial advisors.

Voices [36:01]

You know, whenever I see an opportunity now, I charge it like a bull. Ned the bull, that's me now.

Mostly Uncle Frank [36:06]

Other than as our favorite whipping boys and girls.

Voices [36:10]

Ned Ryerson got the shingles, real bad senior year, almost didn't graduate. Bing! Med Ryerson, I dated your sister Mary Penn a couple times till you told me not to anymore.

Mostly Uncle Frank [36:21]

For entertainment purposes only.

Voices [36:32]

Takamata, do not ask him for mercy.

Mostly Uncle Frank [36:36]

So I will not be compiling lists of approved advisors or anything like that for this program.

Voices [36:44]

Do you think anybody wants a roundhouse kicked to the face while I'm wearing these bad boys? Forget about it.

Mostly Uncle Frank [36:51]

The good news is our friend Bill Yout of Catching Up to Fi has done some of this kind of work and has come up with a good process for doing this kind of work, involving a lot of consultations with alternative intelligences about what he was really looking for. I am optimist. So we talked about his process in episode 481, and it's in the email he sent us. And there are also two other podcasts you should listen to where he is the guest. One is a recent catching up to Fi podcast. I'm forgetting the number, but I'll link to her in the show notes. And then there was a Bigger Pockets Money podcast where he was also interviewed about his process in selecting a financial advisor who does risk parity style investing. And I thought he had a very good process, so I would recommend that you check that out and follow it.

Voices [37:48]

You feeling lucky, punk? Easy, iron eyed. Just kidding. I just wanted to show him my cannons. You're a legend in your own mind.

Mostly Uncle Frank [37:59]

And yes, he'll get to hear about the person he chose. We've talked about on this podcast in the past. So you'll have to excuse my laziness in this area.

Voices [38:09]

It's not that I'm lazy. It's that I just don't care.

Mostly Uncle Frank [38:14]

But it is what it is.

Voices [38:16]

I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working.

Mostly Uncle Frank [38:20]

Hopefully, those links will help you, and thank you for your email.

Voices [38:26]

Watch out for that first step. It's in juicy.

Mostly Uncle Frank [38:30]

But now I see her signal is beginning to fade. There won't be a podcast this weekend because Mary and I will be off at the Economy Conference.

Voices [38:48]

I'm living on the air in Cincinnati. Cincinnati WKRP.

Mostly Uncle Frank [38:57]

We will be having our little Risk Parity Radio meetup in the Soler Hotel, playing a little trivia game and handing out some door prizes. Lucky. Hope to see some of you there for that. That's on Friday at three o'clock in the afternoon. And then I'll actually be doing my presentation on Saturday and Sunday.

Voices [39:17]

Gosh.

Mostly Uncle Frank [39:19]

Which is about financial forecasting.

Voices [39:22]

I am a scientist, not a philosopher.

Mostly Uncle Frank [39:25]

And I'll probably link to that in the show notes next week so other people can check it out. So, in the meantime, if you have comments or questions for me, please send them to Frank at RiskPardiRear.com. Then email us Frank at RiskPardyRear.com. Or you can go to the website www.riskperdirear.com. 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, a follow, a review. That would be great. Okay. Thank you once again for tuning in. This is Frank Vasquez with Risk Party Radio. Signing off.