BYU Education Week

Recognizing Retirement Risks and Investment Fallacies so You Can Focus on What “Really Matters” During Retirement

Today’s retirees face challenges previous generations didn’t: longer lifespans, decades of inflation eating at purchasing power, and — with pensions largely gone — full responsibility for managing their own retirement money. In this class, Scott M. Peterson takes on three widespread investment fallacies that trip retirees up: that stocks are too risky to own in retirement, that investors can consistently beat the market, and that past performance predicts future results. Drawing on academic research and long-term market data, he explains the difference between volatility and risk, examines popular alternatives like gold and index annuities, and makes the case that behavior — not intelligence or stock picking — is what most often separates good investment outcomes from bad ones.

Common Sense Investing: What Actually Determines Investment Performance

Most investors focus on picking the right stock or fund. In this class, Scott M. Peterson argues that performance is driven by four far less glamorous factors: your time horizon, asset allocation and diversification, the fees you pay, and — most powerfully — your own behavior as an investor. He walks through how long-term market history rewards patience, the difference between real diversification and simply duplicating the same holdings across accounts, how widely fees vary between funds tracking the very same index, and how fear, greed, and headlines lead investors to buy high and sell low. Underlying it all is a case for financial stewardship and the value of investing according to a plan rather than a prediction.

The Retirement Income Plan: Creating a Perpetual Stream of Investment Income to Last Through Retirement

Turning a career’s worth of savings into income that lasts thirty years takes a different skill set than accumulating it did. In this class, Scott M. Peterson lays out what a retirement income plan must actually do: be specific to your goals, provide a framework for both investing and distributing your money, keep pace with inflation, and coordinate your income sources to reduce taxes.

He walks through the time-segmentation approach behind the Perennial Income Model — dividing your portfolio into five-year segments so near-term income sits in stable investments while later segments stay invested for growth — and explains how regular harvesting adds discipline to the process. He also covers how the model protects against a bad sequence of returns, what happens when a spouse passes away or an aging investor can no longer manage money, and the tax landmines and planning opportunities retirees should watch for, from RMDs to Roth conversions and Qualified Charitable Distributions.

Scott lays out the time-segmentation approach behind the Perennial Income Model, in his book Plan on Living, a step-by-step method for turning a career’s worth of savings into a predictable stream of monthly income that isn’t at the mercy of market swings. If you’d like a copy, we’ll send you one free. Just request yours at the link below.

Class Resources

Perennial Income Model™ 

Get your free copy of Plan on Living

Maximizing Social Security Benefits and Taxes During Retirement

Social Security is one of the few sources of retirement income you can’t outlive, adjusts for inflation, and continues for a surviving spouse — which makes when and how you claim it one of the most consequential decisions retirees make. In this class, Scott M. Peterson covers how benefits are calculated, what happens when you claim early versus delay, and the rules behind spousal, divorced-spouse, and survivor benefits. He then turns to taxes, explaining how Social Security is taxed based on your other income and how to reduce that burden by coordinating Social Security with pensions and IRAs, considering Roth conversions, and using Qualified Charitable Distributions.

Class Resources

Social Security Planning

Qualified Charitable Distributions

Five Important Decisions You Will Make in Retirement

Retirement rarely turns on one dramatic choice — it’s shaped by small decisions that compound over three decades. In this class, Alex Call covers the five that matter most: where you get your financial advice, whether you build a real income plan, when you choose to retire, whether you have a tax strategy, and recognizing that retirement isn’t only about the money. He closes with the emotional stages of retirement and the question that matters most — not what you’re retiring from, but what you’re retiring to.

Financial Foundations for Your Senior Mission

Many couples say they’d love to serve a senior mission but don’t think they can afford it. In this class, Alek Johnson makes the case that a mission is often more affordable than people assume — sometimes less expensive than staying home. He breaks down what a mission actually costs, how health insurance works depending on your age and where you serve, and how to handle obligations back home. He also covers managing your investments while you’re away, whether to claim Social Security before or after your mission, and the estate planning documents and practical steps to have in place before you go.

Class Resources

Mission-Ready: The Complete Financial Guide to Serving Your Senior Mission with Confidence

Carson Johnson, CFP® and Senior Advisor at Peterson Wealth, is working on a new book designed to help couples prepare financially and practically for serving a senior mission.

The book will cover many of the decisions we discuss in this class, including retirement income, housing, healthcare, budgeting, taxes, and other financial considerations that can come with missionary service.

The book is not yet published, but you can join the email list below to be notified when it becomes available.

Minimizing Taxes in Retirement: Tax Strategies Every Retiree Should Know

Taxes are one of the largest expenses retirees face, and one of the most manageable. In this class, Alek Johnson covers how retirement income is actually taxed, then walks through four strategies retirees can use to keep more of what they’ve saved: bunching deductions with a donor-advised fund, donating appreciated assets instead of cash, using qualified charitable distributions from an IRA, and evaluating whether a Roth conversion makes sense. He also shares tax tips specific to senior missionaries — including which mission expenses may be deductible — and recent tax law changes retirees should know about.

Psychology of Investing for the Latter-day Saint Retiree

How you do with money has less to do with how smart you are than with how you handle your emotions. In this class, Alex Call looks at the cognitive biases that quietly shape retirees’ financial decisions — loss aversion, which keeps retirees sitting in cash; optimism bias, which fuels unrealistic assumptions about returns and spending; and recency bias, which tempts investors to react to headlines. He offers practical ways to counter each, then closes with a simple framework for any bias: A.S.K. — Awareness, Seek Advice, Know Your Goals.