I'm an investor nearing retirement. How should I be thinking right now?
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April is the cruelest month, wrote T.S. Eliot, almost like he owned the Dow or the Nasdaq.

I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. Welcome to May. And here's the math. The S&P 500 stock index, with all its highs and lows and the tariffs on, tariffs off April, ended down just seven-tenths of a percent for the month. The Nasdaq was down eight-tenths of a percent in April. The Dow fell 3.1 percent, but that represents some recovery from a headline about a week ago suggesting maybe the worst April for the Dow since the Great Depression. That was not to be.

But just because a roller coaster comes to rest where it started doesn't mean it wasn't a wild ride. The real-time index of stock market volatility, the VIX, some call it the fear index, started the month at a lowish 21, hit a crazy 52 ahead of President Trump's tariff turn, and is now back down.

For stock investors who don't need their money for a while, perhaps no big deal. But if you're doing the required sign up for Medicare because you're turning 65, it is seatbelt time. Let's consult Pam Kruger, a registered investment advisor and founder of WealthRamp, which helps people connect with vetted financial advisors. Welcome. Thank you. Great to be here. I know if you have a long time horizon, you can blow off all this market technology.

Right.

Right now, that is the number one question. How, given the current volatility, am I going to make sure that I am never going to run out of money in retirement? And I am hearing from people every single day who are thinking that they're going to retire, they want to retire in the next maybe five years, two years, one year. They were planning on retiring in September and now they're saying, oh,

you know, can I really still do this? And what can you possibly tell them? You should have saved 20 years ago. I mean, that's not a good answer. You know, when you're thinking about nine months ago, how things were quiet, the market was making new highs and you literally were just like, you know, asleep at the switch a little bit. And now all of a sudden it's like, oh my gosh, I have to be

both proactive and defensive at the same time. So what does that look like? This is the time to really look with fresh eyes and say, do I really have a resilient plan? Not for accumulating, like you said, but now you have to have a plan. And this is where real retirement planning actually starts.

to take the money out without running out of money during your lifetime. I mean, you could put it all in money market cash. That is safer, but it's not going to keep going up. And I'm sure that anyone who's done any financial planning knows you're counting on some of it continuing to go up. Right. And it's never a question of, oh, should I be in the market or should I be out of the market? It's a question of

How do I stay invested? And then you want to be really honest with yourself and say, do I have a real strategy that feels like it's going to be resilient, that's been stress tested for down markets? And either you feel like you can do that yourself

or this is when a lot of people turn to advisors, to find advisors who can help them. But this is where my best advice here is if you do decide to turn to a financial advisor, at this point, especially in your lifetime, when you're not accumulating, you're looking at actually using the money you've saved

It's vitally important to take your time and learn how advisors really operate, how they're compensated. There's just way too much at stake. Pam Kruger is a registered investment advisor and founder of WealthRamp, which helps connect people with vetted financial advisors. You also may know her work hosting a weekly personal finance show on PBS called Money Track. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, David. This has been a pleasure.

Starbucks has been thinking about flow control, not the coffee coming out of the brew head, but the flow of who gets what when. It's to address the heartbreak of having to wait if you just want a simple Pike Place black, but the dude ahead of you orders a double shot ice mocha latte with whipped cream sprinkles and a pickle. Daniel Ackerman now on Starbucks sequencing.

Robert Byrne loves coffee shops, and he wants to see them succeed. It's personal for me. I met my wife when she was working at a coffee shop, so we're like a coffee shop family. Byrne also directs consumer research at the restaurant consultancy Technomic, and he says what's bad for a coffee shop is too many uncaffeinated customers waiting for their morning fix.

It's a bit of a boxing match that can take place, right? You know, a lot of elbows out and things like that and confusion. And that's never a good thing. In a survey of Starbucks patrons, Byrne found that speed of service was the key to creating loyal customers. If you got your order less than five minutes, you're 50% more likely to give them that highest rating for intent to return, that highest rating for intent to recommend. I'm going to become a promoter. That's significant.

To cut down wait times, Starbucks has slashed the number of menu options. And it's cracking down on bespoke orders for foams and creams and flavor shots, says Miguel Gomez, a professor of food marketing at Cornell. They are reducing the amount of customization because it takes too much time.

Gomez says faster service can also improve employee satisfaction. When you have long waiting times, usually customers are grumpier and then that increases the pressure on the baristas.

Slimmer menus and algorithmic order sequencing are all part of the coffee chain's plan to turn around slumping sales, says Steven Zagor, a restaurant consultant and professor at Columbia Business School. Good coffee served fast.

But Zagor says there's a risk of getting customers in and out of the store too quickly. You don't want it to look like a loss of wait time is a loss of popularity. Zagor says a bit of a wait can signify the product is in demand and exciting, insofar as anything can be exciting before morning coffee. I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace. And in Los Angeles, I'm David Brancaccio to the Marketplace Morning Report from APM American Public Media.

Hannah Sanborn was a single mom with newborn twins struggling to find affordable childcare. Her best friend Briar Rossi was burned out at work and looking for a way out.

So they came up with a plan. I was like, look, your leave's coming up like two weeks. Like, I'll put in my two weeks. Wow. And like, we'll just start it. We'll just do it. I was just like, let's do it. We're getting you out of this situation. We're getting me out of this situation. You tell me how much your rate is and I will pay it every week.

I'm Rima Grace, and this week on This Is Uncomfortable, how Hannah and Briar went from colleagues to best friends to lifelines. Listen to This Is Uncomfortable wherever you get your podcasts.