It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to achieve; people tend to talk in terms of metrics and averages: the average time it takes to run a mile, the average serving of potato chips. It’s all about fitting to a certain standard. This holds true for retirement planning and investing as well.
While “beating the market” generally refers to the S&P 500, retirement planners often focus a particular set of criteria on crafting an action plan to gauge retirement success. The problem is that when it comes to retirement, no one is average.
There are a lot of moving pieces in the retirement puzzle – from the number of years spent in retirement to healthcare costs – that can change the success and failure of a plan. So, it is important to understand that for investors and their financial planners, there truly is no one-size-fits-all product.
