Let's talk about the S&P 500 index, what it is and why it is not the appropriate benchmark for your portfolio.

And this is the 89th 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.

Well, hello, everybody.

Today we have a fun one, a little different.

It's not going to be about the technical taxi financial planning distributiony sort of stuff we normally talk about, but I think many of you

will find this one interesting. Today I'm going to talk about the SMP 500 index, which you've

all probably heard of. Many of you know what it is. Many of you may not, but again, I've heard of it. So I'm going to break down what it is,

why it's important, what to do with the information. And secondly, I will explain why it is not

the appropriate benchmark for you and your portfolio in almost all cases. There could be

somewhere it is, but for the vast majority of you listening,

knowing the returns of the S&P 500 could be interesting,

and it is a good bit of info to be aware of,

but it is not the returns against which you should benchmark

your portfolio and how they're performing,

and I will explain why.

But before I do that, I have a question for you.

What is it called when you kill chickpeas? Hummus-eyed. Oh, what? So I don't have my little

sound machine here with the laugh track and stuff because I'm recording this from my, for my home,

as opposed to my work office where I have my fancy little mixing board because it is currently a

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