Monte Carlo. It's not just a gambling town in the French Riviera. It's actually a quite

powerful retirement planning tool, and I'm about to explain what it is on this, the 18th episode

of the Retirement Planning Education Podcast. Welcome to the Retirement Planning Education Podcast,

where you can learn all about IRAs and Roth IRAs, employer retirement plans, taxes, Social Security, Medicare, portfolio withdrawal strategies, annuities, estate planning, and much more.

And now here's your host, Andy Panko.

All righty, welcome back, everybody. Who wants to learn about Monte Carlo? I know I do. So as I said in the teaser, Monti Carlo is a retirement planning tool, not just retirement planning, but sort of an investment planning tool named after the gambling town of Monte Carlo in the little sovereign city, state of Monaco on the French Riviera. Before I get into it, though, I want to

mention, I forgot to add something in last week's podcast. Last week was episode 16 where I talked

about, I'm sorry, episode 17 was last week where I talked about alternative to bonds and bond funds.

And I did not mention something called a stable value fund. I actually thought about it

and decided to leave it out because it's not available to all people. It's only available to those

in institutional investment plans like 401Ks, you know, employer plans. But after I thought about it,

I realized, yeah, it probably should be in there because more people than I think might have access to it. So briefly, a stable value fund is sort of like a money

market account or a bank account is a better way to think about it. There's really no risk of principal

loss. You put money in. You can take it out typically whenever. Some plans may allow you or may

require you to keep it in for a quarter or something, you know, 90 days.

But the upside is there's higher than bank level interest.

Depending on your employer's plan, stable value funds are currently paying somewhere between one and a half to maybe 2% interest.

Now, that can change every month, every quarter,

every whatever, based on your plan's documentation and rules. But it's a good, you know,

guaranteed interest, no downside risk alternative. Again, only available to those in institutional

plans like 401Ks.

There is no stable value fund on the outside world, at least nothing that allows you to put

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