097 Allan Roth: How A Second Grader Beats Wall Street

About Fun With Annuities Episode #97

What a treat to have Allan Roth on the podcast to share his insights into retirement planning. Allan’s decades-long approach can be summarized by his company’s website www.DareToBeDull.com.

To Allan, dull is good. Boring is good. Simple is good. Pragmatic is good. In other words, there’s no reason to get fancy when it comes to retirement planning. The fact that Allan has a waiting list for people to retain his services is a reflection of the success of his “dare to be dull” strategy.
During this podcast episode, we covered a lot of ground. Allan talked about the markets and how inflation should be addressed from a planning standpoint. We also discussed his planning process, which takes Allan up to 15 hours to complete an individual plan. No cookie-cutter financial planning software here! This is the real thing, old school, and how it should be done.

I encourage you to go to Allan’s site and sign up for his monthly financial planning newsletter. I’ve been receiving it for years and eagerly read it as soon as it hits my inbox. No cost for Allan’s brain on this one, so there’s no reason not to receive one of the top financial planning newsletters available today.
Between Allan’s high IQ sense of humor and my ongoing “southern take” on things, you will be laughing and learning simultaneously. What a fun way to get educated and entertained (i.e., “edu-tained”). Enjoy!

"In 8 words, investing is ‘minimizing expenses and emotions, maximizing diversification and discipline.’" —  Allan Roth

Brief Bio on Co-host: Allan Roth

Allan is the founder of Wealth Logic, LLC. He has been working in the investment world with 25 years of corporate finance. Allan has served as corporate finance officer of two multi-billion-dollar companies and consulted with many others while at McKinsey & Company.

Allan has decades of experience in portfolio construction and performance benchmarking. He has been quoted in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, Money Magazine, The New York Times, Dow Jones MarketWatch and appeared on numerous TV and radio shows.

Allan takes pride in being mocked on a semi-regular basis by some financial professionals for his hourly fee model and its obvious inability to make him rich. He is also the author of How A Second Grader Beats Wall Street (Wiley & Sons in 2009 and 2011) and writes for AARP, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Total Return, Financial Planning Magazine, and others.  Allan has taught investments and behavioral finance at the University of Denver, Colorado College, and the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Currently, he teaches continuing education classes on the subject to CPAs, attorneys, and CFP® certificate. Allan claims he can still keep investing simple despite the many credentials (CFP, CPA, MBA) he has earned. His professional goal is never to be confused with Jim Cramer.

In this episode, The Annuity Man and Allan Roth discuss:

• Minimizing expenses and emotions
• Social security is the best annuity
• Monte Carlo simulation method
• Some simple investing principles everyone should know

Key Takeaways:

• Minimize expenses and emotions to maximize results. You need discipline and emotional fortitude to stay the course and not panic.
• Social security is the single best, inflation-protected, government-backed annuity on the planet.
• Garbage in, garbage out. Similarly, if you go into something with realistic assumptions, you’ll get real answers with no-nonsense.
• The more you pay in fees, the lower your returns will be. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Know the odds of a game before you play. Don’t lend your money to someone who can’t pay you back.

Fun With Annuities Podcast® is hosted by America’s Annuity Agent®, Stan Haithcock, The Annuity Man®. Hear brutal annuity facts with no sales pitches from the top independent agent in the country, licensed in all 50 states. Author of 7 books, Stan dives deep on all annuity types and strategies. It’s fun, learning the contractual truths on how annuities actually work and if they’ll fit your personal retirement lifestyle.

Listen in on how you can be livin’ the reality, not the dream®. Listen and subscribe on Libsyn, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, and Spotify.