How to Increase Your Retirement Spending by 45% (The BlackRock Strategy)

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It is January 6th, and it— this is the One of a Kind Financial Show Daily with your host, Mike Milligan. This past weekend on the One of a Kind Financial Radio Show, Gary and I dissected a big study, a white paper that was done by BlackRock and the Bipartisan Policy Center. And that white paper outlined key strategies to enhance retirement security for Americans that focuses on expanding access to retirement plans, promotes emergency savings, and optimizes income during retirement. If you're listening to this right now, it's because somebody believes you need to hear this message. And the person who gave this to you is in my network. Guys, 2026 is the year to execute. It's the year to build one-of-a-kind financial plans for your one-of-a-kind life. And it starts with understanding where you are. Listen to this segment next and how Gary and I break down this BlackRock study that was— that came out in 2025.

In March of last year, 2025 sounds weird. In March of last year, BlackRock and the Bipartisan Policy Center hosted the Retirement Summit in Washington, D.C. Now, it brought together policymakers, corporate lenders, and other stakeholders to discuss collaborative approaches to strengthen retirement security in the United States. Now, the resulting white paper was called Building a Secure Retirement, presents a comprehensive framework addressing the challenges and opportunities in the current retirement landscape. So here's the first one we're going to talk about: expanding access to retirement plans, Mike.

So this white paper, which was well-written, well-drafted, that, uh, has been not as broadly distributed to the pre-retired and retiring community. This white paper highlights that many Americans lack access to employer-sponsored retirement plans, which is a significant barrier to retirement savings. So there has been many policy reforms that have come out in the most recent years, most recently with SECURE Act that came out in 2020 and SECURE Act 2.0 that came out in 2022. Legislatively, they are trying to fix this, but I will tell you, this all starts at the small business level, in the solopreneur level, in the 1099 level, people that are out there hustling in our communities every day. You need to create retirement income plans for yourself and for those who trust you enough to come to work every day.

Talk about some— there's a couple of different strategies here, Mike. Talk about the strategies that they could use or talked about.

Okay.

So if you, if you were already retired, or you're really approaching retirement, one of the strategies that they talked about was incorporating guaranteed lifetime income products like annuities. Gary, I feel very confident because I hear what's going on in Washington. I hear what's going on in the marketplace. that annuities, that bad word that many people feel, right?

I know.

That's out there. They are going to become an investment option in people's 401s. Matter of fact, in the VRS system, when Mission Square— VRS is the Virginia Retirement System— when Mission Square was operating your 457 plans and 403 plans, they had an annuity disguised in there as a fixed-rate option. These are coming more and more, but I'm telling you, the BlackRock study showed that people with guaranteed incomes, they boosted their annual retirement spending. They could boost their retirement spending by 29% and reduce downside risk. That's also called market risk by 33% compared to a traditional one-size-fits-all 60/40 portfolio. The second strategy that the study highlighted was that if you delayed retirement and Social Security claims by 2 years, from age 65 to 67, in addition to doing strategy 1, you further increased annual spending by 16% and you reduced downside risk by additional 15%. So these 2 strategies, when combined, it gave you 45% plus more of spending ability in retirement. And it reduced risk by almost 48%.

Wow, that's impressive. Corporate coverage standard. What do we mean by that?

Well, and this is where, when I was talking earlier about expanding access to retirement plans, this is where employers are pivotal, pivotal in promoting retirement security. This white paper discussed the best practices in retirement plan design. such as automatic enrollment and re-enrollment. I took this to heart, by the way, Gary. So for years at Ideas by Mike and now One Oak Financial, we've had something called a SEP IRA. Yeah, I've heard about them. SEP IRAs, it's a great tool because it allows me as the employer for our 20-plus employees to put some of our profit, 4%, 5%, 6% of our profit into an account, a retirement account, for our employees. But the one thing that we lacked is the ability for our employees to save for themselves. So they had to use traditional IRAs. As of January 2026, we now have a One Oak Financial 401 plan.

Nice.

That is not only employees contributing to it, but it also allows for a larger potential profit sharing from the company to the employees. And so I've taken personal responsibility As a, as the leader of our corporation, to be able to provide for our employees. Now the employees have to do their part. They have to budget enough to be able to put some money aside and save it.

Absolutely. Sounds like a great plan. The show is the One of a Kind Financial Show with Mike Milligan. I want you to get that one of a kind financial plan. It starts by picking up the phone and dialing this number. The folks at One Oak Financial are standing by this weekend. First weekend of the new year, 800-748-1838, 800-748-1838, or text the word IDEAS to 600-700. Emergency savings and early wealth building, Mike.

So, access to emergency savings is crucial in preventing early withdrawals from retirement accounts. Guys, I mean, let's be for real. People, I mean, I have taken in tough times, taken money from a retirement account, and I've had to pay a 10% penalty.

True.

Plus pay tax on that money.

A lot of people have to do that. Sure.

Yeah. Those things happen in life, right? But we want to do things to prevent those when we know times are good. And so building an emergency fund that is 3 to 6 months is an important wealth-building opportunity because it allows your money to stay invested when those emergencies come. And it's good for long-term financial wellbeing. There's some things that are important about emergency funds is they establish savings that prevent these early withdrawals, and they serve as that financial buffer, reducing the need to tap into that purposed account, retirement savings, just for things that come up in everyday life.

Yeah, sounds like it was well planned and well thought out, Mike. All right, we're up against the clock. Tell us about the one-of-a-kind financial plan.

Guys, I I believe, again, 2026 is going to be all about honesty. We're going to— we're— this is going to be the no BS zone. We're going to talk to you directly about what's needed. And if you're listening right now, um, your risk capacity has changed, right? From 2025 to 2026, the markets are at an all-time high. Nobody in this market does tax planning. You're getting ready to do a lot of tax preparation with your CPA right now in the coming months. But nobody does planning like we do. And then finally, the people we talk to on this, nobody has an income plan. That's what the one-of-a-kind financial plan will do for you. It'll solve the risk problem, the tax planning problem, and the income plan problem that you have. I want you to call us because we are here to solve problems for you. And if you, and if, uh, as opposed to letting problems continue to get bigger and bigger over time, Let's solve them now. Because Gary, you know what happens when you allow problems to get bigger?

They get bigger and bigger and bigger. Exactly. They don't go away, Mike. Absolutely. It's the One of a Kind Financial Plan. Get on the calendar. 800-748-1838. 800-748-1838. Or text the word ideas to 600-700.

This has been the One of a Kind Financial Show Daily with your host, Mike Milligan. Again, Gary gave you ways to connect with us. On the phone number or our text line. But I want to remind you that I am— that's Mike Milligan— is an investment advisory rep with Advisory Alpha LLC. Ideas by Mike, doing business as One Oak Financial, is an unaffiliated entity of Advisory Alpha LLC. All opinions expressed by me and Gary Nolan from the One of a Kind Financial Show are strictly our opinions. This is done for education purposes only. Please consult with a tax advisor, a qualified financial professional, or various resources that are out there offered by investor.gov, socialsecurity.gov, or, um, or other reliable sources. Until next time, this has been Mike Milligan.

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