Show Notes
On Jesse's 12th "Ask Me Anything" episode, he opens the year by tackling the questions that tend to surface when calendars turn and retirement feels closer than ever. He begins with a thoughtful exploration of whether "this is the year to retire," unpacking how sequence-of-returns risk, market valuations, spending accuracy, and portfolio construction matter far more than trying to guess the next market move, and why building flexibility—not perfect timing—is the real defense against early-retirement risk. From there, Jesse shifts to a practical and surprisingly nuanced discussion on getting kids and grandkids started in investing, weighing Roth IRAs, custodial accounts, and taxable strategies while emphasizing the twin lessons of earned money and compounding—and how to balance long-term discipline with making investing engaging and educational. He then addresses how portfolios should evolve as investors age and as assets grow, explaining why the glide path toward retirement is as much about risk capacity, risk need, and behavioral fit as it is about age, and why excess capital fundamentally changes how—and why—you take risk. He closes with a comprehensive walk through the key ages and milestones that shape a financial plan, from early adulthood to Social Security, Medicare, and required minimum distributions, giving listeners a clear mental map of when critical doors open and close. Throughout, Jesse blends technical insight with behavioral clarity, helping listeners not just answer financial questions, but build a durable way of thinking about decisions that will compound for decades. Key Takeaways: • The decision to retire is less about predicting markets and more about understanding cash flow, spending flexibility, and downside protection in the early years. • Writing down the rationale behind major investment decisions helps reduce future regret and emotional reactions. • Many retirees underestimate their spending, which can create false confidence in retirement readiness. • Teaching kids about investing works best when it combines earned income, parental matching, and simple, long-term strategies. • Excess capital changes the nature of investment decisions, allowing greater freedom without jeopardizing core goals. • Knowing the key financial ages—Social Security, Medicare, Roth rules, and required minimum distributions—helps investors anticipate decisions rather than react under pressure. Links: https://bestinterest.blog/should-retirees-sell-stocks-move-to-cash/ https://bestinterest.blog/great-investors-little-secret/ https://bestinterest.blog/rmds-sequence-risk-retirement-destruction/ https://bestinterest.blog/e87/ Wade Pfau's SRR Chart: https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=461168 https://bestinterest.blog/when-not-to-rebalance/ Key Timestamps: (03:51) – Smart and Dumb Reasons to Move to Cash (16:46) – Sequence of Returns Risk (20:47) – Spending and Lifestyle in Early Retirement (23:30) – Getting Kids Involved in Investing (26:10) – Tax Implications and Control of UGMA Accounts (30:38) – Investment Strategies for Financial Independence (36:44) – Rebalancing in Retirement (43:57) – Important Ages and Events in Retirement Planning Key Topics Discussed: The Best Interest, Jesse Cramer, Wealth Management Rochester NY, Financial Planning for Families, Fiduciary Financial Advisor, Comprehensive Financial Planning, Retirement Planning Advice, Tax-Efficient Investing, Risk Management for Investors, Generational Wealth Transfer Planning, Financial Strategies for High Earners, Personal Finance for Entrepreneurs, Behavioral Finance Insights, Asset Allocation Strategies, Advanced Estate Planning Techniques More of The Best Interest: Check out the Best Interest Blog at https://bestinterest.blog/ Contact me at [email protected] Consider working with me at https://bestinterest.blog/work/ The Best Interest Podcast is a personal podcast meant for education and entertainment. It should not be tak
More from Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors
Looking for a financial planner? → PlanWithJesse.com Jesse tackles a collection of "billionaire problems," examining financial strategies commonly associated with the ultra-wealthy and asking whether they are real, how they work, and whether ordinary retirees should consider using them. He begins by exploring why wealthy Americans can face very different effective tax burdens than wage earners, including the distinction between how labor and capital are taxed, before breaking down infinite banking and questioning whether whole life insurance provides the benefits its advocates suggest. Jesse then explains how trusts work, including revocable and irrevocable trusts, probate avoidance, inheritance control, estate tax planning, incapacity planning, special needs planning, and blended-family situations. Finally, he revisits the buy, borrow, die strategy, showing why borrowing against appreciated assets can look attractive mathematically while introducing significant leverage, interest-rate, and margin-call risks. Throughout the episode, Jesse argues that financial strategies used by the ultra-wealthy should be evaluated on their own merits rather than copied simply because wealthy families supposedly use them. Key Takeaways: • A strategy is not automatically useful because wealthy people use it. Financial tactics should be evaluated according to your own objectives, assets, risks, and circumstances rather than copied through mimetic desire. • Ultra-wealthy households and typical workers often earn money differently. Many ordinary households primarily generate income through labor, while substantial wealth can produce income and appreciation through capital. • Revocable and irrevocable trusts serve different purposes. Revocable trusts can generally be changed, while irrevocable trusts sacrifice flexibility in exchange for potentially more substantial planning benefits. • Estate-tax planning becomes more relevant at substantial levels of wealth. More sophisticated structures such as generation-skipping trusts, SLATs, GRATs, CRATs, and CRUTs can become relevant when estate-tax exposure is significant. • Trusts can be especially valuable for blended families. They can support a surviving spouse while preserving assets intended ultimately for the deceased spouse's children. • Buy, borrow, die can work mathematically under favorable assumptions. If investment returns remain sufficiently above borrowing costs, keeping assets invested while borrowing against them can produce an advantage over selling assets and immediately realizing capital gains. Key Timestamps: (04:19) – Q1: Should the Rich Pay More in Taxes? (12:18) – Q2: Infinite Banking (18:38) – Q3: What Are Trusts Good For? (22:49) – Why Everyday People Might Create a Trust (31:21) – Q4: What Is the "Buy, Borrow, Die" Strategy? (38:09) – Conclusion Key Topics Discussed: The Best Interest, Jesse Cramer, Wealth Management Rochester NY, Financial Planning for Families, Fiduciary Financial Advisor, Comprehensive Financial Planning, Retirement Planning Advice, Tax-Efficient Investing, Risk Management for Investors, Generational Wealth Transfer Planning, Financial Strategies for High Earners, Personal Finance for Entrepreneurs, Behavioral Finance Insights, Asset Allocation Strategies, Advanced Estate Planning Techniques More of The Best Interest: Check out the Best Interest Blog at https://bestinterest.blog/ Contact me at [email protected] Need a financial planner? → PlanWithJesse.com The Best Interest Podcast is a personal podcast meant for education and entertainment. It should not be taken as financial advice, and is not prescriptive of your financial situation.
Jesse explores the three "demons of overconfidence" that can quietly undermine investing and retirement decisions: overestimating our own skill, believing we are luckier than average, and assuming we are better at predicting the future than we really are. Looking for a financial planner? → PlanWithJesse.com Drawing on ideas from psychologist Daniel Crosby and behavioural research, he explains how these biases show up in everything from stock picking and market timing to insurance decisions, retirement dates, spending plans, and expectations about our future selves. Jesse also examines concepts such as the illusion of control, the planning fallacy, focalism, immune neglect, and projection bias to show why seemingly rational financial decisions can become distorted by overconfidence. Through practical retirement examples involving concentrated stock positions, sequence risk, unexpected job loss, flexible spending, changing lifestyles, and cognitive decline, he makes the case for building financial plans that do not depend on perfect predictions, exceptional skill, or good luck. Key Takeaways: • Overconfidence is not a single behavioural problem. It can be broken into three related tendencies: overestimating our abilities, believing we are luckier than average, and overestimating our ability to predict the future. • Awareness is the first defence against behavioural biases. Investors cannot eliminate the way their brains are wired, but they can build systems designed to reduce the damage those biases cause. • Overestimation causes people to believe their skill, performance, control, or probability of success is greater than it actually is. • A useful question for an overconfident investor is why they believe they understand something that the rest of the market has failed to recognise. • Over-prescience describes excessive confidence in our ability to predict future events, including how our own future selves will think and behave. • Market conditions can influence risk tolerance in similar ways. An asset allocation that feels comfortable during a long bull market may feel completely different during a severe downturn. Key Timestamps: (01:11) – Introduction (04:16) – Demon 1: Overestimation (09:18) – Demon 2: Luckier Than Average (15:45) – Demon 3: Over-Prescience (23:15) – How the Demons Affect You Key Topics Discussed: The Best Interest, Jesse Cramer, Wealth Management Rochester NY, Financial Planning for Families, Fiduciary Financial Advisor, Comprehensive Financial Planning, Retirement Planning Advice, Tax-Efficient Investing, Risk Management for Investors, Generational Wealth Transfer Planning, Financial Strategies for High Earners, Personal Finance for Entrepreneurs, Behavioral Finance Insights, Asset Allocation Strategies, Advanced Estate Planning Techniques Mentions: https://orion.com/thought-leader/daniel-crosby https://www.standarddeviationspod.com/bio https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00O72MW1W?ccs_id=5202b60c-f45f-428a-b75f-79a9579e6283 More of The Best Interest: Check out the Best Interest Blog at https://bestinterest.blog/ Contact me at [email protected] Need a financial planner? → PlanWithJesse.com The Best Interest Podcast is a personal podcast meant for education and entertainment. It should not be taken as financial advice, and is not prescriptive of your financial situation.
Looking for a financial planner? → PlanWithJesse.com Jesse answers a new round of early-retirement questions, beginning with how investors can build a portfolio designed to last through a potentially long retirement. He explains why focusing narrowly on dividends, interest, or other forms of "income generation" can lead retirees toward mathematically suboptimal decisions, and why total return, risk, and diversification provide a better framework for evaluating a retirement portfolio. He then addresses the challenge of retiring before Social Security, when portfolio withdrawal rates may temporarily reach 5% or 6% before falling substantially later, explaining why static rules like the 4% rule cannot capture the lumpy reality of retirement spending and why detailed cash-flow projections, Monte Carlo modeling, and sensitivity analysis can provide a clearer picture. The episode also explores how much cash an early retiree should hold, the trade-off between protecting against sequence-of-returns risk and sacrificing long-term returns, and how a retiree might gradually spend down an oversized cash position rather than trying to time the market. Finally, Jesse provides an early-retirement checklist covering ways to access money before traditional retirement age, including taxable accounts, Roth IRA contributions, Roth conversion ladders, Rule 72(t), the Rule of 55, 457 plans, HSA reimbursements, deferred compensation, lines of credit, and even family financing or early inheritances. Key Takeaways: • Total return matters more than income alone. Interest, dividends, and capital appreciation are different forms of return, and retirees should evaluate investments based on their total return and associated risk rather than fixating on income generation. • The preference for retirement "income" is partly psychological. Paycheck replacement, mental accounting, loss aversion, and a desire for control can all make dividends and interest feel safer than selling investments. • An all-time market high isn't automatically a reason to sell stocks. Markets have repeatedly continued rising after reaching new highs, making "the market is high" an unreliable market-timing signal. • Retirees may rationally prioritise avoiding ruin over maximising wealth. Once someone has accumulated enough for retirement, sacrificing some expected return to protect the plan can be entirely reasonable. • An oversized cash position doesn't necessarily need to be invested all at once. Jesse suggests that a retiree could gradually spend cash while simultaneously taking smaller withdrawals from the investment portfolio. • Early-retirement funding is a toolkit, not a single withdrawal strategy. Taxable investments, Roth assets, 72(t), employer plans, HSAs, deferred compensation, credit facilities, part-time income, rental income, and potentially family financing can all form pieces of an individualised bridge to traditional retirement age. Key Timestamps: (01:16) – Q1: Income Generation from a Sustainable Portfolio (14:21) – Q2: Monte Carlo and Modeling Your Own Lumpy Cash Flow (49:11) – Q3: Should I Use Cash or Sell My Stocks? (30:36) – Q4: Early Asset Access Checklist Key Topics Discussed: The Best Interest, Jesse Cramer, Wealth Management Rochester NY, Financial Planning for Families, Fiduciary Financial Advisor, Comprehensive Financial Planning, Retirement Planning Advice, Tax-Efficient Investing, Risk Management for Investors, Generational Wealth Transfer Planning, Financial Strategies for High Earners, Personal Finance for Entrepreneurs, Behavioral Finance Insights, Asset Allocation Strategies, Advanced Estate Planning Techniques Mentions: https://bestinterest.blog/e134/ https://bestinterest.blog/e145/ https://investor.vanguard.com/investor-resources-education/education/model-portfolio-allocation https://bestinterest.blog/roth-conversion-checklist/ https://choosefi.com/listen Die With Zero: Getting All You Can From Your Money And Your Life by Bill
Sure, you own index funds. But 99% of portfolios have a "shade of gray" that's more active than we realize. This episode dives into the "shades of gray" in passive investing and how they affect our portfolios and benchmarks. Looking for a financial planner? → PlanWithJesse.com Jesse explores an important distinction that many investors overlook: owning passive funds does not necessarily mean you have a passive portfolio. He explains why passive investing remains a strong strategy, using research on the small number of stocks responsible for most market returns, the drag created by active-management fees, and the difficulty of separating investment skill from luck. From there, Jesse examines how allocation choices—such as favoring U.S. stocks, concentrating in technology, or tilting toward small-cap and value stocks—represent active decisions even when implemented entirely with index or rules-based funds. He then connects those decisions to benchmarking, explaining why investors need relevant benchmarks that reflect their portfolio's asset classes, geography, risk, and intended strategy. Ultimately, Jesse argues that investors should understand where their portfolios deviate from the broader market and use thoughtful benchmarks to determine whether those choices are delivering the results and risks they intended. Key Takeaways: • Beating the market is possible, but the odds are not 50/50. Stock returns are highly skewed, with a relatively small percentage of companies responsible for much of the market's long-term performance. • Diversification increases the odds of owning the market's relatively few major winners. Trying to identify those winners beforehand creates a difficult stock-picking problem. • Investment success can be difficult to distinguish from luck. Even when someone beats the market, determining whether that performance resulted from repeatable skill is challenging. • Nearly every investor has some degree of active allocation. A theoretically pure passive portfolio would hold the global investable universe according to its market weights, something that is difficult to replicate completely. • Deviating from global market weights is not inherently wrong. The important issue is understanding where and why your portfolio deviates rather than making those bets unknowingly. • The right benchmark should resemble the investment being evaluated. Asset class, geography, risk level, and the investment's intended purpose all matter when selecting a benchmark. Key Timestamps: (2:22) – You Can Beat the Market, But... (5:12) – Stock Performance Is Skewed (7:44) – Fees Make Beating the Market Harder (9:00) – Luck or Skill? (Usually Luck) (11:43) – Not All Funds Are Created Equal (14:23) – Consider the Allocation (19:48) – Are You a True Passive Investor? (22:55) – Risk Is Fungible (23:39) – You Probably Have Active Allocation (25:15) – What Is Investment Benchmarking? (29:30) – Absolute Investing Benchmarks (35:20) – The Benchmark You Should Use (38:40) – Conclusion Key Topics Discussed: The Best Interest, Jesse Cramer, Wealth Management Rochester NY, Financial Planning for Families, Fiduciary Financial Advisor, Comprehensive Financial Planning, Retirement Planning Advice, Tax-Efficient Investing, Risk Management for Investors, Generational Wealth Transfer Planning, Financial Strategies for High Earners, Personal Finance for Entrepreneurs, Behavioral Finance Insights, Asset Allocation Strategies, Advanced Estate Planning Techniques Mentions: https://bestinterest.blog/fewer-needles-bigger-haystack/ https://bestinterest.blog/the-needle-in-the-haystack/ More of The Best Interest: Check out the Best Interest Blog at https://bestinterest.blog/ Contact me at [email protected] Need a financial planner? → PlanWithJesse.com The Best Interest Podcast is a personal podcast meant for education and entertainment. It should not be taken as financial advice, and is not prescriptive of your financial s
Jesse shares an exciting new career update. And to celebrate 150 episodes, we're doing a unique AMA episode. Looking for a financial planner? → PlanWithJesse.com First, Jesse shares an exciting new career update. He has joined a new financial planning firm - as an advisor and an owner. The new firm, Rialto, is focused on serving people JUST like those who read *The Best Interest* and listen to Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors. Justin Peters takes the microphone around and asks Jesse the questions listeners have been sending in for months—the ones that don't quite fit into a traditional personal finance show. From career changes and family life to engineering, hiking, favorite books, pizza toppings, and what's next for the podcast, you'll get to know the person behind Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors. Along the way, Jesse also shares lessons from leaving aerospace engineering to become a financial planner, why he chose advising over becoming a full-time content creator, how he thinks about risk in his own life, and why long-term thinking extends far beyond investing. Key Takeaways: • The biggest piece of financial advice he would give differently today. • Growing up in rural New York and why Rochester still feels like home. • How the University of Rochester shaped Jesse's confidence and career. • Why Jesse chose financial planning over becoming a full-time content creator. • Favorite travel destinations, books, movies, and hiking adventures. • A preview of a potential new podcast format featuring real listener financial case studies. Key Timestamps: (01:34) – Jesse's New Chapter (04:43) – Leading with Financial Planning (07:58) – Who Are Jesse's Ideal Clients? (10:29) – Celebrating 150 Episodes (12:23) – Who's on Your Team? (13:50) – What Are Jesse's Frivolous Purchases? (15:06) – When Will Jesse Be Financially Independent? (18:06) – What's the Worst Financial Advice Jesse's Given? (20:29) – Would Jesse Ever Leave Rochester? (22:35) – What's Jesse's Family Situation? (27:24) – University, Squash, and Effort (32:32) – Space Telescopes, Engineering, and Results (37:28) – Starting The Best Interest Blog and Becoming a Financial Planner (43:03) – Why Not Just Be a Content Creator? (45:33) – Making a Career Change (50:43) – Travel (53:14) – Books and Movies (56:55) – 46 Peaks (59:00) – Jesse's Pizza Philosophy (01:00:36) – What's Next for the Podcast? Key Topics Discussed: The Best Interest, Jesse Cramer, Wealth Management Rochester NY, Financial Planning for Families, Fiduciary Financial Advisor, Comprehensive Financial Planning, Retirement Planning Advice, Tax-Efficient Investing, Risk Management for Investors, Generational Wealth Transfer Planning, Financial Strategies for High Earners, Personal Finance for Entrepreneurs, Behavioral Finance Insights, Asset Allocation Strategies, Advanced Estate Planning Techniques Mentions: Website: https://rialtowealth.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesse-cramer-11b58155/ Mentions: Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Best Investment Guide That Money Can Buy by Burton G. Malkiel https://libbyapp.com/ https://www.harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/chris-crutcher https://bestinterest.blog/e123/ https://finconexpo.com/ More of The Best Interest: Check out the Best Interest Blog at https://bestinterest.blog/ Contact me at [email protected] Need a financial planner? → PlanWithJesse.com The Best Interest Podcast is a personal podcast meant for education and entertainment. It should not be taken as financial advice, and is not prescriptive of your financial situation.