This eBook is all about how your Nest Egg can be taken from you in retirement unless you learn how to take control and protect it. Fees from Financial Planners can seriously reduce your Nest Egg in the long term. There are many other things too which are explained in this eBook that will help you take control of your Nest Egg.

At less than $US10 you will be better informed than most financial planners about how to manage your Nest Egg in Retirement. It is an easy read and gives plenty of information for you to use and many places to go on the Internet to get more “no-hype” information on what you can do.

John P. Greaney of The Retire Early Home Page website has just reviewed my ebook today 22nd April 2008.

You can read it at Retire Early Book Review.

Technorati Tags: Baby Boomers,Protect Your Nest Egg,Retirement Income,Pension,Financial Planners

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Thanks for dropping by and taking a look at my blog. As the title suggests it will be all about how to protect your nest egg in retirement.

I’m not talking about all the financial wizardry spoken of by the Wealth Management industry. I’m talking about how your nest egg can disappear over time through things that have nothing to do with the Stock Market. It is my own experience that has motivated me to create this blog and to write an eBook based on my research.

Why should you listen to me? That’s a good question and I hope I can answer it for you on this Blog over time and with my eBook.

First I am in semi-retirement and so my income has been reduced considerably. I do have enough of a nest egg for a reasonably comfortable retirement. At least that is what I thought. I have done my own investing for the last 25 years until last year when I decided to hand it all over to a financial planner via a WRAP account and Mutual Funds. Whilst I was nervous I liked my financial planner and trusted him so in November 2007 I handed over my nest egg to my chosen wealth management team.

I wasn’t looking to make a “killing” I told my planner. I was happy to protect my capital and make 8-10% if I could. This was very conservative I was told. It was strange at first but I wanted to spend my time doing other things. Read the rest of this entry »

Hi Baby Boomers,

Let me introduce myself ….

I will be turning 60 this year and I am semi-retired. So I qualify as a Baby Boomer and am writing this blog for Baby Boomers.

Until recently I managed my own Superannuation Fund. Whilst I was doing okay, it was taking a lot of my time. So in November 2007 I decided to hand over my Nest Egg to a Wealth Manager. My super funds were then installed in a WRAP Account with a large Fund Manager and the money invested in several Mutual Funds.

After June 2007 I realized the returns were far worse than the returns I was getting managing it myself. I queried the poor performance and was told I should wait 5-7 years before deciding whether my investments were successful or not.

I pointed out that since I had retired and was now drawing a pension from my super fund, I could not wait 5-7 years to find out the investment returns were not there. I said with virtually no income from other sources, I have no way to replenish any losses required to maintain the capital, so that in good years it will give me a good return.

No matter what I said or did I could not convince my chosen wealth managers that there was a problem.

Whilst trying to convince them there was a problem, I accumulated a large amount of information about what can seriously erode my nest egg and that has nothing to do with the Stock Market, Inflation or Taxes. What is more important these things eat away at the nest egg regardless of the Stock Market, Inflation or Taxes.

It was then I realized too, just how much it was costing me in Fees having them manage my Superannuation Fund.

I have detailed my trading and investing experience below if you want to read more about me. The main thing I discovered from trading and investing since 1995 was the importance of money management. Protecting your capital and minimizing losses is paramount to your long term survival when trading. It is no different when managing a Nest Egg in retirement. I am well qualified to talk about protecting capital and minimizing losses because I have been doing it for over 10 years.

This Blog is dedicated to putting all this information in one place for easy retrieval and understanding. It is my hope that other Baby Boomers will also realize the dangers to their nest egg and take appropriate action to protect it.

Please Note: I am NOT a financial adviser and do not offer any financial advice. I only provide information which you need to discuss with your trusted financial advisers before acting on it. I may tell you what I am doing with my investments, or what I might be doing, but you need to make your own decisions in concert with your trusted financial adviser.

If you wish to contact me please use the form on the Contact Me page.

Thank you

David J. Bates

More in Brief …. Covering my Futures, Stocks and CFD Trading and Investing

The Futures Market taught me very quickly about good Money Management

In 1995 I traded the Futures Markets. I lasted about 12 months and traded every day. Much of the trading was blind. By this I mean I had to get my trades to the broker several hours before trading began because they would forward them to their US brokers for execution. Whilst I did not come out ahead I did learn a lot about money management, stop losses and sticking to my trading plan.

I built my own Trading and Investing Systems

Also in 1995 I began developing my own trading systems using Metastock. I was quite successful at stock trading and actually made money. I was out of the market most of 2000-2002 and only re-entered in March 2003 when I believed the trend was up once again. I exited the markets in December 2004 because too many of my stop losses were triggered and I thought I should sit on the side lines for a while. I managed a 34% annual return from March 2003 to December 2005. But I could not get back in using my tight stop losses and get a profit buffer before a retracement in the market occurred. So I sat on the side lines with most of my nest egg until I stupidly gave it to a WRAP/Mutual Fund Manager to manager for me just as I went into semi-retirement.

I made a mistake handing all my Nest Egg over to Wealth Managers

Luckily I made the decision to redeem my nest egg in total from the WRAP account in November 2007 and have it sitting in cash. In Australia I can get a return of about 7.5% in a cash account or 8.3% on term deposit. I have chosen to split my nest egg across several banks just in case there are sub-prime problems lurking in the Aussie Banks they have not admitted to yet. We should know soon ;0)

Excellent Money Management Skills kept me Safe whilst doing highly leveraged trading

I have also traded CFDs with CMC for about 18 months. At times I was leveraged up to $300,000.00 with 1-3% margin. Ouch!. I was actually making good profits initially, but could not keep it. This is normal when trying to learn this type of trading. My money management skills helped me minimize my losses but they slowly mounted up and I decided whilst I was good at developing and following a system, I just did not have that extra skill to become successful. I was also slowing down in my “real job” and as my income reduced from it I stopped CFD trading.

My experience trading made me realize my Wealth Mangers will not protect my Nest Egg

I’ve included this information here so you may know I have some experience trading and investing on my own behalf and have enough experience to know when I am being fed a line by the WRAP/Mutual Fund Managers. This blog is aimed at helping other baby bloomers get control of their nest eggs. There will be a financial feeding frenzy if Baby Boomers don’t take control of their nest eggs.

I am putting in place a low maintenance Nest Egg Investment Strategy which I will write about on this Blog

I have a plan to put some of my nest egg in the market once the volatility settles down. I will be using stop losses though and not hope. Daily moves of 3% in the stock market may mean I will be in cash for a little longer. In retirement being overly cautious in these markets is common sense. I will be setting up my Greg Heiple’s Teeter Totter and using Jim Otar’s retirement calculator software.

If you have any questions about my blog, the posts or my About page please contact me using my contact page form.