Retirement allocations

I am 77 , my wife is 73 our total portfolio is 250,000 I need about 15,000.00 a year in addition to our ss , we are both very healthy and active.. My financial adviser charges 1 percent and I am now drawing 12,000.00 per year and the 1percent is eating into my total investment… Am I doing ok or should I make changes..

Terry Says:  The answer to this question takes more than guesswork or simple math.  That’s why you have a financial advisor.  I don’t think that one percent is too much to pay in fees — IF you are getting good advice on both investing and withdrawing.  Ask your financial planner if he/she is using some kind of “monte carlo” modeling program.  That’s designed to view the range of probabilities and possibilities of investment returns over your projected life expectancy, and calculate an appropriate withdrawal rate — AND invest appropriately to have some exposure to stock market gains, but also have enough cash so you are not forced to sell stocks to withdraw when markets are down.  That’s why it takes a sophisticated computer program to do the calculations; it is multi-dimensional.  And if you want a “checkup” or second opinion, I recommend T. Rowe Price’s Retirement Monte Carlo analysis — not something you do on their website, but after talking with their individual financial planners.  That might give you more peace of mind than just a blind assurance from me — which, because I don’t know the details, I certainly can’t give you!