You’re Asking the Wrong Longevity Planning Questions

Financial advisors can be relied on for numbers for their clients’ goals, but when it comes to accurately presenting realistic goals, advisors needs to also focus on behavior and lifestyle questions.

Retirement planning too often takes on a one-dimensional feel as it tends to focus on savings and investing needs, says Mike Lynch, vice president of strategic markets for Hartford Funds. “[L]ongevity planning needs to take into account non-financial issues.” Deeper questions need to asked to assist clients in fully realizing their goals for the future.

Using research from the Hartford Funds’ partnership with MIT AgeLab, Lynch offers three quite personal questions for retirement planning that advisors can use to help expose their clients’ feelings about crucial longevity issues:

• Who will change by light bulbs?
• How will I get an ice cream cone?
• Who will I have lunch with?

These less professional question can illuminate an often hidden future reality to clients, and make them answer the question of where they really want to be during retirement and beyond.

See Christopher Robbins, You’re Asking the Wrong Longevity Planning Questions, Financial Advisor, June 25, 2018.

Special thanks to Jim Hillhouse (Professional Legal Marketing (PLM, Inc.) for bringing this article to my attention.