We hope you are currently at your favorite beach with your favorite drink in your hand enjoying your retirement (or practicing for retirement).

We've heard a few beach stories from clients this summer and some include shark attacks, so be careful (and if you are not at the beach, below is a great viral video to see a huge Great White).

Avoid danger not only at the beach, but also with your retirement planning by knowing about insurance and protecting your portfolios. How are you protecting your portfolio? Maybe you should consider the following top five investment ideas?

Many of you will just keep swimming as usual when big waves are hitting or sharks are biting and all will be fine because you have plenty of time to recover from any bites and scrapes you take.

For the rest of you who want protection, the top idea that comes to mind is "Get Out of the Water!" also known as "move to cash!". If you have every penny you'll ever need for life saved up (and don't mind 1% guaranteed returns that will eat up your buying power over time because of inflation), this could be smart for you for some of your retirement funds. Talk to us about the cash amount that makes sense to consider because we've found that "tweaks" work better than wildly pulling out and putting into the market hoping to time things perfectly (twice).

Others of you still want to go swimming and would love to have a life preserver and lifeguard of some sort. Can this be done with your retirement funds? Yes! If the "market shark" bites, the lifeguard and preserver are there. Contact us  to find out how.

What else can you consider doing when the waves are literally crashing and the market sharks are out? My last ideas take a page out of the book of swimmers who actually enjoy big waves: Surfers! Surfers have learned to ride the waves and enjoy the ups and downs.

For those of you who are "surfer-like" with long enough time-horizons and a strong stomach, you can consider ignoring cash, throwing off the life preserver and getting on top of the waves with some retirement fund moves to the technology, energy, and high yield sectors. Sure, the waves can crash and you can lose money, but you also might have a fantastically enjoyable ride.

Call us to go over why we currently like tech, energy, and high yield and at the same time we can talk about the pros and cons of all five of these ideas! If we can help you plan your retirement goals, we can get you to the beach more often, and thank goodness most of the year isn't Shark Week!

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