The Upside of Down

Talking Real Money - Investing Talk

Don McDonald

Education, Investing, Business, How To

4.5 • 811 Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Market drops are a gift when you’re young and a potential gut-punch when you’re retired, and this episode walks through why that’s true—and what to do about it. Don and Tom break down sequence-of-returns risk in plain English, then explore practical defenses: cash buffers, CD ladders, bucket strategies, flexible withdrawals, partial retirement, and why stocks still belong in retirement portfolios whether you like it or not. Listener questions tackle letting portfolios ride for heirs, value vs. total small-cap funds, tax consequences of rebalancing, and whether political risk should affect public fund investing. The takeaway: there’s no perfect plan, only resilient ones—and behavior matters more than spreadsheets. 0:04 Why market drops are good for young investors and scary for retirees 0:28 Holiday cheer, audience growth pleas, and the gospel of paper questions 1:40 Why young investors should root for down markets 2:41 Sequence-of-returns risk explained without the jargon 3:20 Real-world retire-at-the-wrong-time examples (2000, 2008, 2020, 2022) 4:48 Why sequence risk is such a big retirement planning problem 5:40 What to do if you fear bad markets near retirement 6:08 Cash buffers and why they actually make sense in retirement 7:06 Bucket strategies and how they’re supposed to work 7:36 CD ladders as a “get-me-through-the-bad-times” strategy 9:27 Flexible withdrawal strategies and lifestyle adjustments 10:37 Partial retirement, side hustles, and easing into retirement 11:33 Why retirees still need stock exposure 12:26 Even small equity allocations help fight inflation 13:20 There is no perfect withdrawal rate—only survivable ones 14:11 The realistic withdrawal range and why stocks are still required 15:33 Why professional fiduciary reviews actually matter 16:21 When life blows up your retirement plan anyway 18:55 Listener question: should a retiree just let stocks ride for heirs? 21:36 Washington CARES, politics, and investing public funds 23:18 Small-cap value vs. small-cap index: FSIVX vs. FSSNX 25:44 Why low-cost value tilts can still make sense 27:00 Smarter gifts: Roth IRAs, 529s, and future-you generosity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Think about cheese.
0:02.1	Make your thoughts cheesier.
0:04.2	Now add 100% chicken breast fillet,
0:06.3	Chipotle sauce and Amadea cheese melt.
0:08.3	And it's giving the new cheesy chicken stack at McDonald's.
0:12.3	Did we mention it's cheesy?
0:13.9	Cheese.
0:15.8	Availments with the 4th of Jan, 226 from 11am.
0:18.1	Price and participation may vary.
0:19.2	Subjects availability.
0:27.7	Reality radio for a really great future.
0:29.7	We're talking real money.
0:37.9	When the market goes down, that's a good thing if you're young.
0:47.3	When the market goes down and you're old, well, that can be a bad thing.
0:52.3	That's the topic of today's talking real money episode.
0:54.4	I'm Don McDonald.
0:56.2	That's Tom Cock, and you are you.
0:58.3	And we are so grateful you are you.
1:00.3	We want you to keep on being you.
1:02.2	Don't be anybody but you.
1:04.2	What?
1:05.0	More of you.
	...

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