Did you ever wonder how big wave surfers or magicians or prostitutes or soldiers manage risk in their

lives? Yeah, me either. But luckily, economist and author Dr. Allison Schrager did, and she wrote a book

about it called An Economist Walks Into a Brothel and Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk.

She joins us on Your Money, Your W your wealth today to explain how the risk management

techniques of these very risky professionals might relate to our own investing and retirement

planning. Plus, does it matter which assets you withdraw first from your retirement portfolio?

Stick around to find out why it's less about stocks versus bonds and more about your tax bracket,

your asset allocation, and your asset

location. And just how much can you convert to a Roth IRA without incurring the 3.8%

Medicare surcharge? The fellows will talk that one out too. I'm producer Andy Last, and here

with our guest, Dr. Allison Schreger, are the hosts of YMIW, Joe Anderson Y. Anderson, CFP, and Big Al Clopine CPA.

Allison, thanks so much for joining us and welcome to the program.

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

Hey, let's start here.

Why did you write the book, and how did you come up with the title?

Well, for a book about, it's not all about brothels, but for a book that opens in a brothel,

you'd probably be surprised. It was actually largely inspired by my work with financial planners.

And I found that, you know, financial planners, you work in risk, you manage risk. My background

as an economist is studying retirement to finance is it's like this very, like the life cycle

problem, like moving money throughout your lifetime and managing money over it's like this very, like the life cycle problem, like moving

money throughout your lifetime and managing money over your lifetime is this very sort of classic

basic risk problem. And a very difficult one. I think personal finance sort of gets a bad

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