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I’ve spent 45 years as a CPA, Wall Street investment advisor and two-time Emmy-winning financial journalist covering personal finance. In that time, I’ve seen thousands of smart, adept investors reach retirement making one or more avoidable mistakes—each quietly costing them six figures over the next 20 to 30 years.
If you’ve saved $250,000 or more and are within 10 years of your retirement, this article is for you. Below are the five mistakes I see most often, why each one of them is more expensive than people realize, and how a free service called SmartAsset Designed to help you avoid all of this by matching you with three verified, trusted financial advisors in your area.
Do you already know that you want to speak to a fiduciary advisor near you? Take SmartAsset’s free questionnaire here →
Why am I comfortable recommending SmartAsset?
I get a lot of financial services. Most don’t make my list. SmartAsset does this for four reasons:
It’s free for you. No cost, no obligation, no upsell. SmartAsset is paid by the advisors in its network, not by readers like you.
Advisors are fiduciaries. Every advisor in the SmartAsset network is legally required to put your interests above their own. This is not a marketing claim – it is a regulatory standard. Most stockbrokers and insurance salespeople do not accomplish this. Advisor SmartAsset matches you.
More than 2 million people have used it. SmartAsset is not new or unused. It has been working extensively for years.
The first consultation is free. Almost every advisor at SmartAsset matches you with you and offers a free initial appointment. You can interview them, ask questions and walk away if they’re not a good fit – at no cost to you.
One thing to know first: The matching questionnaire takes about 10 minutes. SmartAsset asks about 37 questions covering your age, retirement timeline, assets, income, risk tolerance and family situation. The more it knows, the better your mails will be.
Finally, you will be asked for a phone number – if you give it a fake number or leave it blank, you will have wasted your time. Consultants use this to schedule your free initial conversation. But don’t worry: You control whether you reply to someone or not.
Now, five mistakes.
Mistake #1: Treating retirement as a finish line rather than a 30-year project
Most people think about retirement the same way they think about their marriage: They focus all their attention on the date, then deciding on the wedding. This date matters less than the next 30 years.
A realistic retirement plan answers the following questions:
- How much can I spend each year without running out of money?
- What order should I withdraw from my accounts to minimize taxes – IRA, 401(k), Roth, taxable, Social Security?
- What happens to my plan if the market drops 30% in the second year of retirement?
- What happens to my surviving spouse’s income if I die first?
Northwestern Mutual’s Planning and Progress Study consistently finds that approximately 71% of American adults admit their financial planning needs improvement – yet only 29% work with a financial advisor. The difference between knowing you need a plan and having a plan is where six-figure mistakes happen.
SmartAsset’s matching service connects you with advisors who specialize in pre-retirees and retirees in your asset range – people for whom these questions aren’t theoretical.
Meet up to three fiduciary advisors near you →
free service. Approximately 10 minutes to complete. No obligation. More than 2 million people have used it.
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Mistake #2: Waiting for the “right time” to get expert help
Of all the regrets I hear from readers about retirement, the most common is some version of this: “I wish I had talked to someone 10 years ago.”
Bankrate’s annual Financial Regret Survey consistently finds that not saving enough for retirement is Americans’ No. 1 financial regret. But the deeper issue usually isn’t the savings rate – it’s the strategy. People who have $400,000 saved by age 55 often think they “don’t have enough money to need an advisor.” This is completely backwards. The decisions you make in the five years before retirement and the first five years thereafter determine whether your money will last 20 years or 35 years.
Vanguard’s famous “Advisor Alpha” research estimates that a good advisor adds about 3% per year to net returns through tax-conscious investing, behavioral coaching, and disciplined withdrawal strategies. On a $500,000 portfolio over 20 years, this adds up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are no guarantees – but the cost of waiting is real and quantifiable.
Contact a trusted advisor near you →
Mistake #3: Retiring at the wrong time – too early or too late
This is a mistake that hides in plain sight.
Retire too early, and a 30-year retirement can put a strain on a portfolio built for the 20s. The Employee Benefit Research Institute’s Retirement Confidence Surveys consistently find that nearly half of retirees retire earlier than they planned – often because of a health event or layoff, not by choice. If you haven’t stress-tested your plan for an early-retirement scenario, you could be one event away from a forced decision.
Retire too late, and you trade irreplaceable years of healthy retirement for marginal additional savings that don’t significantly change your outcome. Many of the readers I’ve heard from kept working “just to be safe” — and later realized they could have stopped working two or three years earlier without any real financial impact.
The exact date of retirement is not a guess. It is the output of a model: your expenses, your income sources, your tax picture, your Social Security claims strategy, and the estimated longevity of your portfolio under various market scenarios. This is what a good advisor does for you.
SmartAsset will match you with advisors who specialize in retirement planning →
Mistake #4: Hiring the wrong advisor – or trusting one who isn’t actually working for you
This is the mistake that costs the most, and that’s why I specifically recommend SmartAsset rather than telling readers to “find a financial advisor.”
The financial services industry is full of people who use the title “adviser.” Most of them are not legally required to act in your best interests. There are some commission-based sellers who are paid to sell you specific products. Some are licensed to sell insurance only. Some are dually registered and may switch between “advising” and “selling” mid-conversation.
A responsible person Legally obliged to put your interests first. That single difference could be thousands of dollars compared to a typical retirement — and it’s almost invisible from the outside. Two consultants may have similar offices, similar websites, and similar-sounding pitches. Someone owes you a fiduciary duty. The other does not.
Every advisor in the SmartAsset network is a fiduciary. That’s the screen. SmartAsset has done the checks that most readers never get: credentials, regulatory history and disciplinary records. you do not have to do that.
Connect with up to three verified, fiduciary advisors in your area →
free service. About 10 minutes. No obligation. More than 2 million people match.
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Mistake #5: Mismanagement of Risk – Taking Too Much, or Not Enough
The standard advice – “Become more conservative as you age” – is half right and quietly dangerous.
Yes, a 65 year old should not have the same equity exposure as a 35 year old. But a 65 year old man who is Very Conservatives face a different risk: inflation. At 3% annual inflation, $500,000 buys about $276,000 worth of goods over 20 years. A retiree who shifts entirely to bonds and CDs hasn’t eliminated risk—he or she has traded market risk for purchasing-power risk, and the second risk is harder to recover from.
The right portfolio for someone within 10 years of retirement balances three things: protection against sequential-return risk (a bad market in the first five years of retirement), enough growth to keep up with inflation over 30 years, and an exit strategy that doesn’t force you to sell at the wrong time.
This is exactly the type of analysis a fiduciary advisor makes for clients across your asset range. It’s also the kind of analysis you can’t reliably get from a do-it-yourself spreadsheet or a brokerage’s typical risk-tolerance quiz.
bottom line
The five mistakes above have one thing in common: Each mistake is relatively easy to avoid with the right help, and expensive to fix once it’s made. A retiree who claims Social Security at the wrong age, withdraws money from accounts in the wrong order, or has the wrong asset mix in the first decade of retirement could lose $150,000 or more — and never know it happened.
The investors I’ve seen most successfully navigate retirement have one thing in common: They didn’t try to go it alone. They built a working relationship with a trusted advisor who knew their whole picture and was legally bound to act in their best interests.
If you’ve saved $250,000 or more, that level of help is available to you at no cost. SmartAsset’s free matching service Will connect you with three verified, trusted financial advisors in your area in about 10 minutes. More than 2 million people have used it. There are no obligations, and almost every consultant offers the first consultation free of charge.
Meet up to three fiduciary advisors near you →
free | About 10 minutes No obligation Fiduciary Advisor only. More than 2 million people match
Advertisement. MoneyTalksNews is an independent personal finance publisher. We receive a referral fee when readers use the SmartAsset matching service described above, at no extra cost to you. Our editorial recommendations are based on merit, not compensation.