Guardian Investment Advisors

The 4% rule was created in 1994. A lot has changed since then.
Inflation, healthcare costs, interest rates, market conditions—and the way people prepare for retirement—look very different today.
As Garry puts it: “Do you want to retire on a floppy disk or a hard drive?” 💾
The point isn’t that one rule works or doesn’t work for everyone. It’s that your retirement income strategy should be built around your lifestyle, your needs, and the risks you may face throughout retirement.

Sometimes estate planning is about more than who gets the money.Bobby shares a story from his time working as a professional executor and trustee about a woman who kept decades of records organized in filing cabinets built into her garage. While going through everything, they found pieces of her life her family may never have known were there—including original playbills from her time as an opera singer in New York in the 1930s and ’40s.The takeaway is simple: keep the important things, but make sure what you leave behind is organized, accessible, and usable for the people who will eventually have to sort through it.Sometimes your legacy is worth a lot more than a number on a statement.

ABOUT GUARDIAN INVESTMENT ADVISORS

Guardian Investment Advisors serves individuals and families preparing for and living in retirement. Our team takes a comprehensive approach to retirement planning with the goal of helping clients understand their options and build a strategy around what matters most to them.

Plan Today. Own Tomorrow.

🔗 CONNECT WITH GUARDIAN

🌐 Guardian Investment Advisors:
giaplantoday.com⁠

🎙️ Plan Today, Own Tomorrow Podcast:
Listen to the podcast⁠

📺 Plan Today, Own Tomorrow TV:
Watch the show⁠

📱 Facebook • Instagram • YouTube • LinkedIn • Spotify • Apple Podcasts:
All Guardian links⁠

📍 Chattanooga: 423-710-9199
📍 Knoxville: 865-951-7526

Have a retirement question? Drop it in the comments while we’re LIVE.

What’s more dangerous in retirement: being too aggressive or being too conservative?
Most people assume playing it safe is always the safer choice. But being too conservative can come with risks of its own, especially when inflation and the rising cost of living are part of the equation.
On the other hand, taking on more market risk than your retirement plan can handle can create an entirely different problem.
So, how much risk are you actually taking with your retirement?
Take our GIA Risk Quiz today to discover your Retirement Risk Score and get a better understanding of your current approach to investment risk.
👉 Take the quiz at GIARiskQuiz.com

One of the biggest lessons in business often comes from the mistakes you make along the way.
In this clip, Garry shares what he considers one of the biggest mistakes he made as a business owner and what that experience taught him as he continued building Guardian.
Success isn’t always about getting everything right from the beginning. Sometimes it’s about recognizing what isn’t working, learning from it, and being willing to make a change.
For anyone building a business, leading a team, or chasing a bigger goal, this is a lesson worth hearing.

We’re in one of the lowest federal income tax environments in U.S. history—but that doesn’t mean taxes will stay this low forever.
For younger investors, that’s one reason a Roth IRA is worth understanding.
A Roth IRA is funded with after-tax dollars, and qualified withdrawals in retirement can generally be tax-free.
If you’re in your 20s or 30s, you potentially have decades for that money to grow. And no one knows what tax rates will look like 20, 30, or 40 years from now.
The question isn’t just “How much am I saving?”
It’s also “How will that money be taxed when I eventually need it?”