Your Money Map Replay: Decumulation Demystified with Christine Benz and David Blanchett
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Hey everyone. Thanks so much for joining us today on Her Money. I'm Jean Chatzky and I have a question. Do worries about spending your retirement nest egg keep you up at night? Do you worry that you are going to run out of money? If so, you are far from alone. New research from the Alliance for Lifetime Income shows that 46% of American retirees say spending down their savings is taking an emotional toll. Look,

retirement is supposed to be about enjoying life. Maybe you're sitting on a beach. Maybe you're still working part-time. Maybe you're spending more time with your grandkids. The point is, it should be your choice and it should be enjoyable. So how can you move past the fear of outliving your savings to get to the retirement you want? Because

It comes down to mastering de-cumulation. In other words, coming up with a spending plan for your retirement savings. The Alliance for Lifetime Income is a nonprofit that aims to educate Americans about the importance of having protected lifetime income in retirement. Their vision is for a country where nobody has to face the prospect of running out of money during their golden years.

Her Money has partnered with the Alliance on this mission. And as part of that work, I host a show called Your Money Map, featuring some of the brightest minds who share their thoughts on retirement, money, and planning for your next chapter. On our most recent Your Money Map episode,

episode, which by the way, runs on LinkedIn and Facebook. I was joined by two people that I consider pros when it comes to decumulation. And so I want to release that episode here today.

Christine Benz, who you've all heard from a few times on this show now, is the Director of Personal Finance and Retirement Planning for Morningstar and the author of How to Retire, 20 Lessons for a Happy, Successful, and Wealthy Retirement. And David Blanchett is a research fellow with the Alliance for Lifetime Income Institute. He's also Managing Director, Portfolio Manager, and Head of Retirement Research for PGMDC Solutions.

If you are in or approaching retirement with no plan for making money last, this is a discussion that you need to hear. So keep listening. And when you're done, be sure to check out all the other amazing work being done by our friends at the Alliance for Lifetime Income at www.protectedincome.org. Here's my conversation with Christine and David. Welcome, both of you. Thank you so much for being with me.

Thanks for having me on, Jean, and it's great to see both of you. I know that you and David are old pals. You've worked together at Morningstar for a number of years, so we're glad to have you guys sharing the screen. David, let me start with you. Decumulation is not a very comfortable word as it rolls off the tongue, but what is it when we talk about decumulation?

Right. So, I mean, if you think about retirement as a series of stages, for 30 or 40 years, you're going to work and you're going to save money. Right. The reason that we save money is because at some point we want to stop working. And when we stop working, we don't have wage income. And so the idea is you're going to then take your savings and decumulate it or spend it down so that you can maintain some standard of living in retirement. So decumulation is that second stage of life where you kind of utilize your savings so that you can enjoy retirement.

As you heard me say, Christine, a lot of people are not enjoying at least the thought of this process. They're telling us that it's making them anxious, that it is taking an emotional toll. This is from the Alliance's Protected Retirement Income and Planning Study of 2024. Why do you think it's tying us up in knots?

Well, I think there are two dimensions to that, Jane. And so the first is just that it's arguably the hardest problem in all of financial planning, trying to figure out how much you can spend over an unknowable time horizon. You don't know how long you'll live.

and you're not sure how your portfolio assets will perform. So figuring out how much can I safely spend in each year is a really tricky problem. So there's that dimension. And then the other dimension that I think doesn't get talked about enough is the fact that many people have kind of honed their skills as savers, as investors. In fact, it's become kind of ingrained in their identity that I'm a saving person. I forego problems.

things, spending on myself in an effort to save. Well, at some point when, as David said, you stop earning an income, you've got to flip that switch and actually start spending from your portfolio. So there's a psychological element that I think people who have been particularly good savers

really struggle with when it comes to spending from their portfolios. And that's why you get people who want to pursue kind of odd strategies or maybe not so odd where they say, I'm just going to live on whatever income my portfolio kicks off. I'm never going to touch my principal. You get people talking about strategies like that.

It sounds like you met my mother at one point in time, Christine, because I've told this story before, but she was in retirement for a good 20 years and was so proud of the fact that her principal was even larger than it was when she started out. And it kills me to think that maybe she

there were things that she might have wanted to do that she didn't do. Maybe there were things that she might have wanted to buy or places that she might have wanted to go or adventures that she might have wanted to have. David, when Christine describes this as the most complicated puzzle in financial planning, I think she's got a point. There are all of these levers. How do you think about it?

I think about it every day and I'm still confused by it. So I think that if you think anyone that suggests this is an easy problem to solve has a lot about retirement. And I think that what's really important is why it's so complicated is because we have a lot of systematic and industrial credit risks that you just don't know how to plan for.

And this is getting worse. If all we had were defined benefit plans or pension plans, it'd be pretty easy. You would retire, you would get sent a check every month, and that would be it. Increasingly, we've got to figure out how we're going to draw down our savings. How are we going to figure out how much we can afford to spend given all these unknowns? I think that's the problem, is that we're moving towards

a system of defined contribution plans. I really like 401ks. Problems is that people, we're not well suited to figure out all these complex things. So as we kind of move more and more towards personal responsibility around savings and 401k plans, for example, I think this is just going to keep increasing this anxiety around retirement. It's going to get worse, not better, because there's no easy button when it comes to retirement income when you're pulling money from a 401k first.

No, no. And we've got additional research to show that out of the alliance. Fewer than a third of people said that they have a specific income plan in place for their retirement. 41% said they don't know how to stage withdrawals from their account yet.

Fewer than half said they even know how to handle required minimum distributions or minimize taxes. I think everybody can definitely be forgiven for the latter because they keep moving the goal line. But these are hard concepts to sort of parse. So as we think about moving from this life where we have received a paycheck,

for years and years and years and years and taken some of that money and funneled it away for ourselves. What's the best way or what are some good ways to think about creating a stream of income that is lasting as we head into retirement? Christy, let me start there with you and we can bat it around. Well, I think one terrific starting point is getting some help.

And it doesn't have to be that you're turning over your portfolio to someone to manage in perpetuity, although that may be what you want to do. But getting just a second set of eyes on your plan. This is not DIY back of the envelope time. There's too much going on. There's too much, as David said, that's idiosyncratic. That's very individual specific about everything.

what sorts of assets you'll be bringing into retirement, what you expect your tax trajectory to be like over your retirement time horizon. These are not simple things to get your arms around. So even though you might be comfortable doing one aspect of your financial plan, like overseeing your portfolio, you might not be as comfortable in all of the different dimensions. So I feel like hiring on with a certified financial planner or

to get a second set of eyes on the plan is a really terrific first step.

I think it's a really terrific first step, even for people who know what they're doing, right? I think about doctors who have to see doctors, right? I ostensibly know how to do this, but I've got help on my team in the form of a financial advisor to go through the numbers, to poke holes in my theses, to let me know what I'm not thinking about so that I can, as I head into my 60s, really better plan for this next stage of life.

I think in part, and your work, David, points to this, taking some money and using it to buy yourself some income, to essentially produce out of your savings a paycheck of sorts that can last you for the rest of your life, is one of the considerations that we're hearing more and more about these days. Can you talk about why?

Yes. I mean, almost every American already receives some form of lifetime income benefit, whether it's social security, a public pension plan. So we all have this kind of base of lifetime income. I think the question is, how do you take what you have left to most effectively deploy, given your goals, your preferences, everything? I think that preferences are really important, right? I think that a lot of people approach retirement as a product, but it takes a plan.

And if you look at how people utilize their wealth to fund retirement. So this is some new research with Michael Finca at the American College. And we actually have two papers on this. The first one came out a few years ago. We've got a new one. The new one we really want to look at, how do households deploy all of their wealth? So you can break income into wage income, lifetime income, and capital income. You can also look at qualified and non-qualified accounts.

And you can look at there's like 7,500 observations, this massive data set and say, how well do households use these assets to fund their retirement? OK, and most of these households are going to have advisors. We focus on only in households that have over $100,000 in savings. And like the short answer is just not very well, except.

for the income that is protected or guaranteed for life. Now, again, for most households, that's social security. It might be an annuity. But to me, what the research suggests is that people just don't enjoy, appreciate. There's lots of words you can use, spending down their portfolios.

And so I think that to me, what this requires is an honest conversation about what will it take for you to enjoy your retirement? Gene talking about your mother. I mean, I think some people really enjoy this idea of growing a nest egg. But the thing is, is that when you save for retirement, that's not usually your goal. Usually your goal is to enjoy retirement. And so kind of what am I in like more foundational beliefs now is that like every American should have the amount of income that they deem essential covered with lifetime income.

So that could be social security. You should always look first to delay claiming social security to get more lifetime income beyond the May by annuity. But I really do believe that once you know for certain

that no matter how long you live, you have your essential expenses covered. It might make you more comfortable, more willing to access what you have left. Now, some folks might want to annuitize all their wealth. Some might not want to do any. I think I want to kind of bring this behavioral lens into what are you going to do with your savings? And I just worry that Americans haven't saved enough for the most part, but they're terrible at spending their savings. And so we're kind of reaching this point where we need to help people figure out what to do because they're not

effectively doing it well with what they've saved. Can I come back to that word essential for a second? I mean, when you're talking about covering essential expenses with protected income, I don't know that people actually know what they are. I mean, Christine, you did, your book is a really interesting read in part because it's not all numbers. It's not all

tactics and dollars and cents. It's a lot of information about what's going to make people happy in retirement. And you and David had a whole conversation about how do you spend in order to maximize your happiness? Can you give us a little bit of a peek inside there?

Well, I think it starts with a vision, having a vision for retirement. I think that one unfortunate effect of the way we work in the U S is that people show up in retirement quite burned out and

And so their only vision for their retirement is, oh, it's all going to be golf and watching Netflix. And they don't really think about the things that they will do to confer purpose and identity and relationships. Some of the things that we get from work, they're sort of like, I want nothing to do with any of this work stuff, but they forget that there are some valuable things that we get from work. So ideally you would think about

What are you doing for relaxation and fun? And that might be leisure. It might be travel, whatever. But you're also thinking about what am I doing to confer a sense of purpose and identity? And that might be continuing to work in some fashion. It might be pursuing volunteer work.

efforts. It's very individual specific, but ideally you would look at both sides of the ledger purpose as well as what am I doing for fun? And then you would think about the financial ramifications of those activities. Some of them may take money out of your coffers. Some of them, if you continue to work part-time might bring something in. But I do think that sometimes people focus disproportionately on

just the financials and do not have that holistic vision of what am I going to do with my days throughout retirement.

As you think about essential, David, how do you take what Christine is saying and use it to help us figure out how big a number we should be putting in that pile of things that we really do want to do? And how do we give ourselves permission to make things like time to pursue a new hobby a

essential when for most of our working life, they've been relegated to, well, if I have some spare time on the weekend? Well, I mean, I think it starts with the question we're asking. I think that the word retirement is a loaded term that we really shouldn't use anymore. I really like the word financially independent. I think you shouldn't ask someone, what do you want to do when you retire? It's what do you want to do when you're financially independent?

Right. Because retire has like, like Christine, like negative connotations. Like you're going to just, you're going to become a sloth and just lay around and watch TV. And that's not what we want to do. Right. I think that what they want to do is enjoy the fact they would have worked for 30 or 40 years and now they have time. Right.

So your question is, well, how do you create that sense of this isn't retirement, this is your chance to really decide what you want to do with this last part of your life? And I think that if you talk to retirees, a lot of them, they get it wrong. They think they want to do one thing and three months they figure out they're doing something else. But back to your question about essential expenses, well, these are going to vary over time. And I'm not overly concerned with the exact number. I love doing these surveys. And for some people like

like going golfing is like more important than healthcare. So like, you can't just use like traditional definitions, healthcare and food and all that. I think to me, the key is like, at what level are you going to feel comfortable to actually enjoy what you say? Because I think that too often we don't have a sense of security.

with what we get from our social security. And it creates this desire not to enjoy what we've seen. And there's a really colorful example about like ants and grasshoppers. Those that have the most money are like really good ants, right? You know, and it's really, really hard

to make an ant become a grasshopper. And I think that advisors can help with that. But I kind of believe for better or for worse, the only way to really do that effectively is to make someone, is to almost force them to convert that savings into something that says, hey, here's your paycheck, beat the insurance company. The longer you live, the more you get out of this. And so just go out and enjoy this money. I think it just changes the way that we view income or retirement. So again, love the 401k system, but I'm just not convinced that

like it's all creating these massive balances, it's going to lead to the best retirement for Americans. I want to dig into that, but I want to take a very quick break first. Her Money is proudly sponsored by Edelman Financial Engines.

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So a couple of things. I think I'm an aunt, not a grasshopper. I also think, no, I think my mother was an aunt, right? And when my husband first met me, he said, I have to meet your mother because I have to see what you're going to become. And I've become my mother. It's going to be, I know, very, very difficult for me to spend down the money that I've saved for retirement. But when you think about how we actually got people to save for retirement, it's

It wasn't easy. There was a lot of behavioral finance that went into the equation. We had to make changes to the system where we enabled people to

opt out of automatically putting money into 401ks rather than opt in and where we defaulted them into plans that automatically enrolled them and automatically escalated their contributions and threw them into target date funds so that they didn't have to worry about rebalancing. What you're sort of suggesting, David, is the flip side of that, that maybe we need a dose of

I mean, it's not really big brother because we do have to make the decision to do it ourselves, but that this one and done decision could be really helpful there. Does that, Christine, you're nodding, does that resonate?

Well, it absolutely does. You know, there's so much that's suboptimal about the way that we do retirement decumulation today, where people save throughout their careers in the confines of these plans, where there are a lot of guardrails in place, where, you know, if they do nothing, they're automated in and you just outline some of the features that are in place in modern 401k plans today.

Now, when someone turns 65 or whenever they retire, we hand them this pot of money and basically say, go figure it out. And so ideally, there would be sort of guardrail set up if someone wants to stay inside the plan and have some sort of safe withdrawal dribbled out to them. It

there need to be more structures for people to do retirement decumulation, especially given what we know about cognitive decline. And that's

that's one really attractive benefit of guaranteed income is just it's going to keep on coming regardless of what goes on with your mental faculties. It won't require you to have to make some of the decisions that go on if you continue to manage your retirement portfolio later in life. So that's a beautiful feature of turning on some form of guaranteed income. It's one of the things that makes Social Security so very attractive.

Yeah, absolutely. So, David, how would you suggest we do it? I mean, I think many people probably know that a lot of the 401k plan providers are working on in-plan solutions. They're not really here yet, which means that for those of us who are heading into that peak 65 zone or already are in that peak 65 zone, they have to

do it themselves with or without the help of a financial advisor. What sort of solutions, and we're talking about annuities, would you point them to? It's a confusing landscape. They're products that are often misunderstood. How would you suggest people think about them?

So I have one like high level controversial idea. I think that I'd love it if we got to a place where all employer contributions had to be annuitized. I think that it'd be very difficult to force people to save their elective deferrals to make them annuitize them. But I think I really like the idea, like the employer monies are like locked away. And then when you retire, that creates a stream of income. And then it's up to you to figure out with your saving what you're going to do with it. But I mean, I think that it just starts with things.

like education around delay claim and social security, right? I mean, I know that I work for an insurance company if you kind of roll up high enough. And I think annuities are great. I think that they can be great. But I think that like only about 20% of plans today offer tools to help their participants optimize claim and social security. Let's start there.

right? Let's create explicit sleeves in target date funds called like the lifetime income portfolio. It could just be stable value, but I want to message to someone, we're going to use this money when you retire to probably bridge delay claim and social security, maybe buy an annuity, but just so it's less of a surprise. So I think that doing some kind of preconditioning to folks ahead of retirement and messaging-

that this is so important can help. But it needs to be a decision. I think that everyone is different. We've got different preferences, different goals. To your point, annuities can be very confusing. There's lots of different products out there. That being said, I really do like the products that we see inside of defined contribution plans. The retail space is kind of the Wild West. There's really great products and lots of really bad products out there.

If you look at what you're seeing in the defined contract, these are usually the absolute best of what you could possibly buy out there. So I have a lot less concerns about folks allocating to these products. But again, let's start with talking about the role of guaranteed income, the benefits of delay claiming social security, making 401ks more retirement friendly. And then we can get to annuities, but there's kind of other places we could potentially start in the interim.

And just to put a finger on the benefit of guaranteed income, I mean, we didn't really cite the statistic that came out of that research that you did. But what you found was that people felt that they were able to or were actually spending twice as much. I mean, twice. That's mind boggling.

Well, I mean, so we did, so we did all these regressions, it's like fancy math stuff, whatever. And what we found is that, so we could, a 65 year old married couple, we talk about the 4% rule, right? The average retiree who was 65 and married was taking out 2% or less from their portfolio to fund consumption.

I don't know if the, I think that's close to like 5% or whatever, but it's not 2%. I think that like across the board, all of the withdrawal rates from, you know, every age in the analysis were well below what anyone would suggest is optimal. But, you know, from like a pure economics, the issue is all this uncertainty. Like people

People don't want to be broke when they're 95 years old. That is a rational response to this uncertainty. So I think the issue is when you kind of mitigate that and you allow someone to say, hey, you've got this income for life, it changes their comfort around how they spend. So I think the hard part here is getting people to make that choice to kind of convert their savings into lifetime income. But the evidence is pretty overwhelming. When they do that or if they do that, they're going to enjoy retirement more from a pure spending perspective.

Christine, in the other experts that you spoke with for your book, what else did you hear about happiness in retirement and specifically happiness as it was associated with spending or the flip side of it, this anxiety around spending?

One insight came from John Guyton, who's a financial planner and works with clients directly on their spending. And so I wanted to get his perspective because he really has that real world experience and

And I think a level of control over spending is actually attractive. So one thing he talked about that I've had several people repeat back to me who have read the book, so I think it resonates with others as well. He talks about how there are categories of spending. Travel is the example he uses where you don't.

want to have a fixed amount that you're taking per year and assuming you're going to spend that same amount per year throughout retirement. You want kind of a travel pot is the way he put it. So he said for his clients, it's much more freeing to give them a pot of money and say, hey, do with this what you want. It might be that you take the whole extended family on a big cruise and you blow it all in one year or you take

trips closer to home and you stretch it out. But I think having that control over spending, giving yourself kind of a discretionary pool is a way to think about handling some of the more sort of lifestyle goals that you might wish to pursue in retirement. And then another thing that we discussed in the book was the idea of lifetime giving. I

I believe I covered it with Mike Piper, who's written a terrific book on this topic. But I think sometimes spending is unfortunately associated with like profligacy that we're telling you to go out to dinner every night or buy a new car every year or do sort of silly frivolous things.

when in fact lifetime spending in retirement can encompass giving during your lifetime. That when you look at the data, when people inherit money from their parents, they're often in their mid-50s, early 60s, their financial fortunes are usually pretty well set. By that time, that inheritance doesn't make a big difference to them and the life that they have.

But earlier gifts, when your kids are in their 20s, 30s, getting launched, thinking about buying first homes or going to graduate school or whatever it might be, those even smaller gifts can be more impactful. And people derive a lot of satisfaction from giving those gifts and seeing their funds in action. So those are a couple of takeaways on the spending front from the book.

The book is doing, as I said earlier, incredibly well. Congratulations on that, by the way. But what do you think it is? I mean, there's no shortage of retirement books on the landscape. Well, you're both in it. So that is. It's not that. David and I agreed before we got on that it's not us.

Well, it's you two and a phenomenal roster of people. I love that the book covers the waterfront. So it doesn't just consider the financials. It doesn't just consider your visioning for your retirement, the sort of fluffy aspect of retirement. It really brings them together.

And so I think that has resonated with people, that the financial people can get what they're interested in and the non-financial people can feel like it speaks to them as well. So I've been very gratified with how well it's done, but I would not underrate the experts who have contributed to it. I think that's its secret sauce. In the book, one of the things that you write is that retirement is really less than 50% about retirement.

David, as you think about it from where you sit, what's the makeup in terms of money, emotion, other things? Yeah, I mean, I guess I used to be an advisor. We go way back and I get all these like random emails and have these random conversations. And I think that everyone's just so different, right? I think for some people, it's all about money.

Other folks, not about money at all. But, you know, when you read these stories, there's one today in the Wall Street Journal talking about how people make do with different levels of wealth. And so I think we can all make it work. People find ways to make it work. And to me, the numbers are important. I mean, I'm a numbers guy. I can't not like the numbers. But I think that it is a very behavioral thing. We're humans.

I mean, we have lots of different goals and preferences and things we want to do. And retirement is just so uncertain. So I think that the best plans have to account for all these things. And that's why there isn't one optimal strategy for everyone. There just can't be. There's a lot of bad ideas and a few okay ones. But I think that this is where, to Christine's point, having someone that you can talk to and walk you through the options is really important. I get so tired of talking to friends or family when they meet with someone and they just sold a product.

They're not like, they don't get asked, what do you want to accomplish? It's a really complicated thing, requires an in-depth conversation. So for those of you that are listening and your advisor doesn't walk you through all of this, that isn't probably what you need in terms of an advisor to help you figure out retirement.

Yeah, totally agree with that. I get very annoyed when I hear about advisors who just talk and advisors who don't ask any questions about what you want, especially in that first conversation. You should be doing 90% of the talking. And if you're not doing 90%, it's a real problem. I have two final questions I want to ask them of both of you.

How has the work that you've done changed the way that you think about your own retirement or in your case, David, financial independence? Christine, you first.

Sure. So two things. One is that I've come to be a great believer in phasing into retirement, that if you have aspects of your work that you enjoy, that give you that sense of purpose and identity, see if you can't carry them forward and do them longer.

I've been enthusing about kind of a Sunday night calendar test where you look at your calendar for the week ahead and you invariably have things on it where you're like, oh, okay, not going to be the best day on my calendar. And then other things where you're really excited.

So use that to kind of influence how you're positioning your work. And this is kind of a luxury good. You need to be in good standing with your employer. But I believe in that phased retirement that we see that people who are able to continue working longer are often happier. And it doesn't mean full time. It might mean 10 hours a week or something, just doing parts of a job that you enjoy. And then the other thing, and this is

really syncs up with the venue here, but I have come to appreciate the value of guaranteed income, social security claiming strategies, certainly as David pointed out, but also perhaps additional sources of guaranteed income through some sort of an annuity product. When I think about my husband and my retirements, I think I want our

our fixed expenses, our fixed outlays to line up with those guaranteed income sources. And that'll just give me peace of mind to have a pretty aggressively positioned investment portfolio that's going to fluctuate. And it will give me more flexibility with my withdrawals so that if the market's down, I won't have to take much out of that portfolio because I know that our income needs are coming from elsewhere.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to do exactly the same thing. And David, from you? Yeah, I mean, I've got a bit of ways until I retire. But I don't view it as retirement. I think to me, it's financial independence. I really enjoy working. But I think to me, I save early and I save often. But I just want to have the opportunity to kind of do whatever I want at some point in the future. So I do believe I'm going to have a significant allocation to annuities when I retire because I don't have to worry about it. You could say, well, David, you're an expert. Well, like,

you know, like things happen, things change. Like I want an easy button for myself. And so right now I'm more focused on the accumulation side of things. But, you know, I think that when I do get to retirement, I just understand I'm not a very good spender and I want to enjoy retirement. And so I think that the behavioral stuff will be important for me when I get there eventually. Last question. And this is one we like to ask everybody on this show. If you're going to leave the people who are watching with a tip or two, something that they can walk out of here and do, what would it be?

what would it be? David, take that first. We've touched on it a few times, but I've done a lot of research over the last decade plus on the value of advice and personal financial planning. And when you're getting close to retirement, if you don't have an advisor, you need one. If you have one, get a second opinion.

I think that you're going to make a lot of decisions that are somewhat irrevocable. And just having a solid foundation from a qualified advisor that can give you holistic advice, that is absolutely invaluable. So I think that to me, getting help, you can do a pretty good job on your own and accumulation. But I just think that there's this really important need for having someone that you can talk to, at least to get a gut check before you retire. So to me, it's just getting help

but to figure things out when you're approaching retirement to make sure that you're making the right decisions. And Christine? The elephant in the room in retirement planning is long-term care costs. One thing we haven't talked about is how

People are so anxious about spending. I think part of it is that they are worried about having this balloon payment at the end of their lives where they have these catastrophic long-term care expenses. It's really difficult to triangulate whether you will have long-term care expenses or not, but at a minimum, get kind of a plan.

So figure out, will you be self-funding long-term care if that should arise? And if so, figure out roughly how much that might cost and then segregate it from your spendable assets. If you're a person who has a lot of assets, you probably want to go that route. And then if you don't have a lot of assets, you're probably going to be covered by government provided care if you should need it. And that

is sort of another thing to think about. And then if you're in between, then maybe you're a good candidate for some type of insurance product. But figuring out a plan, I think, is a good way to alleviate some of that anxiety. It all goes back to that notion of control. David Blanchett, Christine Benz, thank you so much for being here today. For anybody watching, if you're looking for more information on topics like these, please go to protectedincome.org.

slash subscribe and sign up for our newsletter comes out every other week. It's free and it's got lots of information on retirement and other topics like these. Thanks again, everybody. And we'll see you next time. Thank you. Thanks.

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