Sell all your stocks at retirement

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]So, Fred Vettese says, "Sell all your stocks at retirement." Does it even make sense?

[00:00:07]Disclaimer, the following is for education and general information only, not investment, legal, or tax advice, and not a recommendation to buy or sell anything. Investing involves risk, dividends are not guaranteed, and past performance does not predict the future.

[00:00:22]I may hold position in securities discussed and may trade at any time.

[00:00:27]Hey, what's up Market Moose? Mike from The Moose on the Loose. Happy Thursday.

[00:00:31]So, today I'm going to take um I don't know. I'm going to have an interesting discussion about something that Fred Vettese, a OG um that actually wrote a book and and bear with me a second.

[00:00:51]There you go. Uh the book is Retirement Income for Life, very interesting book.

[00:00:56]Uh if you're about to retire, you want to read that, especially if you're Canadian. If you're not, well, then it's not going to be much of a a use, but um this guy knows a lot of things. And he was on a podcast with another OG um The Wealthy Barber. I mean, like seriously, when those two guys are talking together on a podcast, uh it's it's it's kind of like the the ultimate personal finance console in Canada, right? So, so everybody will listen and everybody will like ponder off about what they are saying.

[00:01:28]And and there's something that caught my attention, and it was Fred Vettese says like "You should probably sell all your stocks at retirement if you don't need more returns." So, it obviously it it touched me because uh I always keep saying stay invested, right? And I have the intention to stay 100% equity for the rest of my life. So, I I really care. This is how I started um 23 years ago and this is how I will continue moving forward. So, I think though that there's some context to be put on both statements, right? So, sell your stocks at retirement if you don't need more returns or stay 100% invested as I do. So, there's some merit and there's like some thoroughly like wrong thing about that and this is what I want to touch today to add that context cuz unfortunately, if you just take that part of the interview and then you you just apply it to your financial plan, it may or may not make sense at all actually.

[00:02:36]So, let's start with the merit. Why should we go all in in bonds and GICs and like no equity at retirement assuming that you have enough money. So, that is really assuming that you would be able to live with just breaking breaking even with inflation. So, you don't need returns, you have plenty of money or you don't spend that much or a balance between both. So, it's really in a case where your financial plan would run on a 3% return with a 3% inflation after well, 3% return after tax or whatever, but you get the idea. You just break even with inflation, you maintain your buying power and then you're done. You don't need additional returns, so you sell all your stocks. So, it could make sense if you cannot sleep well at night. I mean, and I remember I told that to one of my client when I was a financial planner. The guy was like worth above $10 million.

[00:03:33]He was still working because he loved his job. He was like 73 and every time his portfolio was down like 3-4% he was freaking out. So, I told him one point, you know what?

[00:03:42]You probably don't need this. Why don't you just like build a GIC ladder and call it a day so you don't have to worry about anything. So, if you really stressed and you cannot sleep at night when you have your portfolio and you can afford to get rid of that stress. I mean, life is too short to be bugged by stuff that stresses you, right? So, you should get rid of this. So, I I get that. I mean, some people would say, "Well, why would you want to go for more? Is it for greed? That doesn't make any sense." So, I'm like, "Yeah, kind of make sense." And on top of that, if you add like another layer, well, we could say we are roughly at an all-time high right now. So, if you're selling all your stocks, you're selling it at a pretty good timing when you look at the stock price graph, right? So, you may be thinking, "Well, that kind of makes sense.

[00:04:28]Uh I'm going to get rid of my stress. I made my money with the stock market anyway, and right now could not be the better moment to sell." And then, I would already add like one curveball is like, "Yeah, you could have told you you get I've told yourself that last year, 2 years ago, 3 years ago. You could have told you that in 2017 actually, when I um actually retired from my corporate job and decided to um continue my journey into entrepreneurship. The market was an all-time high in 2017, and it was at the end of a great bull run technically. So, imagine if you have if I would have like put my money into a GIC back then, that would have like be very bad investment take, right? Um So, if you're stressed, if you don't need money, if you want to cash in at all-time high, and if you want to keep it simple, cuz I mean, there's nothing more simple than having like a GIC for 1 year, GIC for 2 years, GIC for 3, 4, and 5 years, and then you just roll those.

[00:05:30]Cannot be more simple to manage. So, those are the merit.

[00:05:36]Now, let explain my side, my point of view, cuz it's it's all about angles, right?

[00:05:41]And there's no right or wrong here.

[00:05:42]There's just like different angles, which is always fascinating and interesting about personal finance.

[00:05:48]Um On one side, I don't see that risk. Like being invested in the stock market, in my mind, in my perception, it's actually the safest thing that I could do. Because if I go for GICs, I'm almost certain that inflation is going to eat up my money.

[00:06:07]I don't want that. I want my money to be better than inflation. And when I consider taxes and everything, probably that the rate that the bank is giving me, or I will have to to to spend my life chasing about promotions and yield all the time. Um that is something maybe you you like doing. I don't. But if not, I'm going to kind of like guarantee that my money today, I will not ever be richer than this, and probably will be kind of like poor. The other angle, and and if you read the book, and this is one place that I really disagree with Frank Vatice, Fred Vatice, is it's is expected returns. He's like pushing down the return so low. We're talking about like 5% minus fees, minus inflation. I mean, at this point, you might as well just sell lemonade at the mall, right?

[00:06:59]And you're going to make more money than if you invest your money in the stock market, which is not exactly what I went through. I I went through like 23 years, yes, of volatility and ups and downs, but I made a ton more than 5% returns, minus fees, minus inflation. It's actually a lot more than that, right?

[00:07:17]So, technically, if you're invested in stocks, financial planning perspective, you should be using 6.5, maximum 7%, but even 7% is kind of like generous uh for the long run for your equities.

[00:07:32]Uh but in reality, what you're going to So, that is to be very conservative, cuz in reality, if you look at charts for like 30, 40, 50 years, and this is the moment that you're going to live uh into your retirement. Even if you retire today at 65, chances are you're going to live 20 to 25 years, right? So, don't look at like 10 years period. Look at 20 plus years period. And the average will be like eight, nine, sometimes 10%. So, even if if you plan at like 6.57 and you generate like eight, nine, 10% and then you deduct inflation, you're going to make a lot more than 5% minus fees minus inflation. And therefore, it makes a lot more sense. In my mind, I invest for the next generation. I don't think I'll I wanted to die with zero, but I don't think I'll be able to do that. But I'm going to spend as much money as possible to enjoy life as well. And the better returns I get, the more money I can spend with my loved ones and I can support my children and I can donate to charity. If I just play it safe at the age of 65 and then I I have to run a tight budget because I'm on GICs for the next 20 years, this is not exactly the retirement I envision. So, again, different angles, different perspective.

[00:08:43]I wanted to show both of them. But from a place of like if you hate fluctuation to the point that you're not able to eat, to sleep, and you're crying under your table your your your your dinner table every night, well, then yeah, it makes sense to sell your stocks. But if you're if you're able to go through that, I mean, I think it's a good way to do it. Um I want to invite you I'm going to end the podcast. Uh I want to invite you to uh my next webinar on retirement planning. It's going to focus on five retirement plan vulnerabilities.

[00:09:17]So, if you're thinking about retirement or if you recently retired and you have your plan, you probably have blind spots. We're going to talk about expected return, sequence of returns and in terms of like regarding your investment. We're going to also talk about inflation. What What does it mean and how to factor that into your plan?

[00:09:35]We're going to talk about tax optimization versus tax obsession cuz sometimes you want to save so much that you end up losing. And this is what we're going to talk about in this webinar. We're going to talk about the risk of health care and longevity, but on both ways, what if you live for a very long while, but what if your spouse pass away unfortunately way too soon?

[00:09:57]How do you manage that in your retirement plan? And finally, we're going to end up by the most important risk in my mind, the most important vulnerability of your plan is that you're probably not spending enough.

[00:10:09]Um and this one's going to surprise you for sure. So, you can register to this free webinar. It's going to happen on May 21st at retirementloop.ca/webinar.

[00:10:20]So, it's retirementloop l o o p.ca/webinar.

[00:10:25]Uh it's 100% free. You're going to get all the like the the handouts and everything. There will be a replay if you cannot attend the live, so don't worry about the date and the time. Um and yeah, last time that we did a webinar about retirement planning, we had over 2,000 people that registered.

[00:10:39]That was kind of crazy. So, I hope to see you there. And tomorrow, we are going to take a look at a another ETF for retirement. ZLB low volatility. Is it worth it at retirement? Let's take a look at it and talk about it tomorrow.

[00:10:54]All right? Until then, don't forget to stay invested.