MoneyTalksNews receives a referral fee when readers use the free SmartAsset matching service described below, at no cost to you. Our editorial recommendations are based on merit, not compensation.
I’ve spent 45 years as a CPA, a Wall Street investment advisor, and a two-time Emmy-winning financial journalist covering personal finance. In that time, I’ve watched thousands of smart, accomplished investors arrive at retirement having made one or more avoidable mistakes — each one quietly costing them six figures over the next 20 to 30 years.
If you have $250,000 or more saved and you’re within 10 years of retirement, this article is for you. Below are the five mistakes I see most often, why each one is more expensive than people realize, and how a free service called SmartAsset is designed to help you avoid all of them by matching you with up to three vetted, fiduciary financial advisors in your area.
Already know you want to talk to a fiduciary advisor near you? Take SmartAsset’s free questionnaire here →
Why I’m Comfortable Recommending SmartAsset
I get pitched a lot of financial services. Most don’t make my list. SmartAsset does, for four reasons:
It’s free to you. No cost, no obligation, no upsell. SmartAsset is paid by the advisors in its network, not by readers like you.
The advisors are fiduciaries. Every advisor in SmartAsset’s network is legally required to put your interests above their own. That’s not a marketing claim — it’s a regulatory standard. Most stockbrokers and insurance salespeople don’t meet it. The advisors SmartAsset matches you with do.
Over 2 million people have used it. SmartAsset isn’t new or untested. It’s been operating at scale for years.
The first consultation is free. Nearly every advisor SmartAsset matches you with offers a free initial appointment. You can interview them, ask questions, and walk away if they’re not the right fit — at no cost.
One thing to know up front: the matching questionnaire takes about 10 minutes. SmartAsset asks roughly 37 questions covering your age, retirement timeline, assets, income, risk tolerance, and family situation. The more it knows, the better your matches.
Near the end, you’ll be asked for a phone number — If you give it a fake number or leave it blank, your time will have been wasted. Advisors use it to schedule your free initial conversation. But don’t worry: You control whether and when you respond to anyone.
Now, the five mistakes.
Mistake #1: Treating Retirement Like a Finish Line Instead of a 30-Year Project
Most people approach retirement the way they approached their wedding: they focus everything on the date, then figure out the marriage. The date matters less than the next 30 years.
A real retirement plan answers questions like:
- How much can I spend each year without running out of money?
- What order should I draw from my accounts to minimize taxes — IRA, 401(k), Roth, taxable, Social Security?
- What happens to my plan if the market drops 30% in year two of retirement?
- What happens to my surviving spouse’s income if I die first?
Northwestern Mutual’s Planning & Progress Study has consistently found that around 71% of U.S. adults admit their financial planning needs improvement — yet only about 29% work with a financial advisor. The gap between knowing you need a plan and having one is where six-figure mistakes happen.
SmartAsset’s matching service connects you with advisors who specialize in pre-retirees and retirees in your asset range — the people for whom these questions are not theoretical.
Get matched with up to three fiduciary advisors near you →
Free service. About 10 minutes to complete. No obligation. Over 2 million people have used it.
Start the questionnaire here
Mistake #2: Waiting for “the Right Time” to Get Expert Help
Of all the retirement regrets I hear from readers, the most common is some version of: “I wish I had talked to someone 10 years earlier.”
Bankrate’s annual Financial Regrets Survey consistently finds that not saving enough for retirement is Americans’ #1 financial regret. But the deeper issue isn’t usually savings rate — it’s strategy. People with $400,000 saved at 55 often think they “don’t have enough to need an advisor.” That’s exactly backwards. The decisions you make in the five years before retirement — and the first five years after — determine whether your money lasts 20 years or 35.
Vanguard’s well-known “Advisor’s Alpha” research estimates that a good advisor adds approximately 3% per year in net returns through tax-aware investing, behavioral coaching, and disciplined withdrawal strategies. On a $500,000 portfolio over 20 years, that compounds into hundreds of thousands of dollars. There’s no guarantee — but the cost of waiting is real and quantifiable.
Get matched with a fiduciary advisor near you →
Mistake #3: Retiring at the Wrong Time — Too Early or Too Late
This is the mistake that hides in plain sight.
Retire too early, and a 30-year retirement may strain a portfolio built for 20. The Employee Benefit Research Institute’s Retirement Confidence Survey has consistently found that nearly half of retirees end up retiring earlier than they planned — often because of a health event or a layoff, not by choice. If you haven’t stress-tested your plan for an early-retirement scenario, you may be one event away from a forced decision.
Retire too late, and you trade irreplaceable years of healthy retirement for marginal additional savings that don’t materially change your outcome. Many of the readers I hear from kept working “just to be safe” — and later realized they could have stopped two or three years earlier with no real financial impact.
The right retirement date isn’t a guess. It’s the output of a model: your expenses, your income sources, your tax picture, your Social Security claiming strategy, and your portfolio’s projected longevity under different market scenarios. That’s what a good advisor builds for you.
SmartAsset will match you with advisors who specialize in retirement timing →
Mistake #4: Hiring the Wrong Advisor — Or Trusting Someone Who Isn’t Actually Working for You
This is the mistake that costs the most, and it’s the reason I specifically recommend SmartAsset rather than telling readers to “find a financial advisor.”
The financial services industry is full of people who use the title “advisor.” Most of them are not legally required to act in your best interest. Some are commission-based salespeople paid to sell you specific products. Some are licensed only to sell insurance. Some are dually-registered and can switch between giving “advice” and making a “sale” mid-conversation.
A fiduciary is legally bound to put your interests first. That single distinction can be worth tens of thousands of dollars over a typical retirement — and it’s almost invisible from the outside. Two advisors can have identical offices, identical websites, and identical-sounding pitches. One owes you a fiduciary duty. The other does not.
Every advisor in SmartAsset’s network is a fiduciary. That’s the screen. SmartAsset has done the vetting most readers never get to: credentials, regulatory history, and disciplinary records. You don’t have to.
Get matched with up to three vetted, fiduciary advisors in your area →
Free service. About 10 minutes. No obligation. Over 2 million people matched.
Take the questionnaire now
Mistake #5: Mismanaging Risk — Taking Too Much, or Not Enough
The standard advice — “get more conservative as you age” — is half right and quietly dangerous.
Yes, a 65-year-old shouldn’t carry the same equity exposure as a 35-year-old. But a 65-year-old who is too conservative faces a different risk: inflation. At 3% annual inflation, $500,000 buys roughly $276,000 worth of goods in 20 years. A retiree who shifts entirely into bonds and CDs hasn’t eliminated risk — they’ve traded market risk for purchasing-power risk, and the second one is harder to recover from.
The right portfolio for someone within 10 years of retirement balances three things: protection against sequence-of-returns risk (a bad market in the first five years of retirement), enough growth to keep up with inflation over 30 years, and a withdrawal strategy that doesn’t force you to sell at the wrong time.
This is exactly the kind of analysis a fiduciary advisor builds for clients in your asset range. It’s also the kind of analysis you cannot reliably get from a do-it-yourself spreadsheet or a brokerage’s generic risk-tolerance quiz.
The Bottom Line
The five mistakes above have one thing in common: each one is relatively easy to avoid with the right help, and expensive to fix once it’s been made. A retiree who claims Social Security at the wrong age, draws from accounts in the wrong order, or holds the wrong asset mix in their first decade of retirement can lock in losses of $150,000 or more — and never know it happened.
The investors I’ve watched navigate retirement most successfully have one thing in common: they didn’t try to do it alone. They built a working relationship with a fiduciary advisor who knew their full picture and was legally bound to act in their interest.
If you have $250,000 or more saved, that level of help is available to you at no cost. SmartAsset’s free matching service will connect you with up to three vetted, fiduciary financial advisors in your area in about 10 minutes. Over 2 million people have used it. There’s no obligation, and nearly every advisor offers a free first consultation.
Get matched with up to three fiduciary advisors near you →
Free | About 10 minutes | No obligation | Fiduciary advisors only | Over 2 million people matched
ADVERTISEMENT. MoneyTalksNews is an independent personal finance publisher. We receive a referral fee when readers use the SmartAsset matching service described above, at no cost to you. Our editorial recommendations are based on merit, not compensation.
Read the full article here
