Good morning, Retirement Starts Today Community! Welcome to Every Day is Saturday, the newsletter reminding us that in retirement, every day is Saturday (including Thursday mornings).

New Tool: The Retirement Runway & Rebalancing Sheet Ever wondered what your 60/40 portfolio really means for your retirement income?

I built a simple Excel tool that helps you visualize exactly that. This spreadsheet does two things:

1. Visualizes your “retirement runway.” It translates your bond and cash holdings into months or years of income, so you can see how much “runway” you have before needing to sell stocks.

2. Simplifies portfolio rebalancing. Twice a year, you can plug in your current allocations, and the tool will show what to buy or sell to get back to target. It’s designed to help you see your portfolio not as percentages on a page, but as real-world income security — and make more confident rebalancing decisions.

Retirement Runway_Rebalance Tool.xlsx

Click here to watch my recent YouTube video about Why $1.2M Is Enough To Retire IF You Spend Like This where I discuss this new tool.

​Click here to work with us!

Episode Breakdown:

00:00 – Welcome and Introduction
​01:20 – Retirement Headline: “It’s So Simple—Fees Predict Performance” by Jeffrey Ptak
​05:40 – Listener Question: Comparing 5-year vs. lifetime SPIAs (single premium immediate annuities)

​Listen on Spotify | Listen on Apple​

Retirement Headline

This week’s headline comes from Jeffrey Ptak (longtime Morningstar analyst, writing now on his Substack) with a piece titled:
“It’s So Simple: Fees Predict Performance.”

Jeff analyzed 15 years of mutual fund and ETF data (2010–2025)—and the results are as refreshingly simple as the title suggests:

He divided nearly every U.S. mutual fund and ETF into five “cost buckets,” from the cheapest 10% to the most expensive 10%. The outcome was like a perfect staircase—each lower-cost group outperformed the pricier one above it, and that performance gap widened the longer you held the investment.

For retirees, this reinforces a timeless truth:
Every dollar you don’t pay in fees compounds in your favor.
Shaving even 0.5% off your portfolio’s internal expenses can mean thousands—if not tens of thousands—of extra dollars available for spending, travel, or charitable giving over a 20–30 year retirement.

While none of this is “new,” it’s a powerful reminder of what we can control:

• You can’t control markets or inflation.
• You can control what you pay in fees.

So whether you’re investing in mutual funds, ETFs, or working with an advisor, make sure every dollar you spend on financial services buys you something truly valuable—like peace of mind, tax planning, or a well-structured spending plan.

Sometimes the best investing advice really is the simplest.
As Jeffrey puts it: “It’s so simple.” And in investing, simple often wins.

Listener Question

Our listener Ray wrote in with a thoughtful follow-up question about single premium immediate annuities (SPIAs)—specifically comparing a 5-year term SPIA to a lifetime SPIA with a 10-year certain period.

Ray shared that his lifetime SPIA guarantees income for life but also continues payments to beneficiaries if he passes within the first 10 years. That led us to unpack a few key differences between the two types:

1. Rate of Return vs. Lifetime Income

A 5-year SPIA is best viewed as a fixed-term investment, where rate of return matters. A lifetime SPIA, however, isn’t about return—it’s about insurance against longevity risk.

2. Payout Rate vs. Investment Return

That “7.3% payout rate” in the illustration? It’s not a rate of return.
It’s simply the annual income divided by the initial premium—an important distinction many retirees miss.

3. Opportunity Cost

If you invested $100,000 in a lifetime SPIA paying $7,320 per year, you’d essentially be drawing down your own principal until about age 73. After that, if you live into your 80s or 90s, the annuity wins because of risk pooling—your payments continue even after your original investment would’ve been depleted.

4. What Are You Solving For?

If your goal is return, look to fixed-term options like CDs or short-term annuities.
If your goal is longevity protection, a lifetime annuity might be a good fit.

I put together a simple spreadsheet comparing these outcomes. If you’d like to see the numbers, reply to this newsletter and I will send it to you.

Resources

• Respond to this email if you would like a copy of the SPIA illustration
• ​Click here to view my YouTube channel, Even Better Retirement
• ​Click here to order my book, Retirement Starts Today: Your non-financial guide to an even better retirement
• Click here to read, It's So Simple by Jeffrey Ptak

I need your help...

I will be starting a new segment on my podcast: Retire TO something, not FROM something.

The segment will be brief at the end of the show and will share a fun retirement idea, along with links to learn more. Volunteer work and part-time “fun” jobs will be a common theme.

​Click here to share your ideas!

That's it for our four hundred and second installment of "Every Day is Saturday." As always, I read (and usually reply to) every listener email. Got a question? Hit reply—you just might hear your name on the show.

Enjoy your “Saturday,”
​Benjamin Brandt

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