John, so good to see you. We start with a really important question: Are you taking on too much risk? We have four signs that you might be. Risk isn't just about numbers, of course; it's about how you feel when market conditions change. So let's talk through those four signs that you may be taking on more risk than you should.

First, you check your accounts constantly—but how often is too often? Daily, or especially hourly. Listen, folks, unless you're a day trader, checking your accounts daily is just going to add to the stress. Especially now, we're recording this in January 2026, and we're in a very similar position to where we were in January 2025, where for the last couple of months, the market's been sideways. That means the market goes up one or two days or a week, and then it goes down a couple of days or a week. It's just this ever flow of going up and down, up and down. It's really frustrating for a lot of investors. If you're checking that daily, you're going through a myriad of emotions—one day you're happy, one day you're not. So I would tell you, at the max, check once a week. I think for a lot of people, especially if you have an advisor, every other week to once a month is fine. Little moves in the market aren't going to have profound effects, or they shouldn't have profound effects, on your retirement life. The only other time I'd really tell you that it'd be good to check it within that time period is if a major market news cycle happens. For example, coming into this New Year's, we had the Maduro arrest with Venezuela. In 2025, we had the implementation of tariffs. Now we're looking at whether these tariffs are going to be legal. Those types of major news events might spike a market reaction, and that's another time you can check the markets. But daily? Folks, enjoy retirement. If you're a do-it-yourselfer and you're day trading, then you have to do it. But if you are, especially with an advisor, understand the markets are going to go up and down. That's how the markets work. Don't stress yourself out. Enjoy life.

 Yeah, easier said than done, of course. It helps when we have that plan. So the next sign: ask yourself, are you losing sleep when the market drops? Because as you're mentioning, John, sometimes it is really hard to tune out those headlines. And this goes back to: do you have a plan? In that plan, you have to ask yourself, how much are you willing to lose? For a vast majority of my career, and along with the vast majority of advisors, you're on a buy-and-hold type of investment strategy, so you should be well diversified. Within that strategy, we would always tell our clients: before planning for growth, you need to have a plan for how much you're willing to lose, because there will be a time where you will lose money. And that's when the majority of mistakes happen. So if you're a conservative person, you need to be in conservative allocations now.

 Late last year, we made a big transformation in our investment process with our investment mastermind group, and we are more tactical and will make moves. For example, I'm showing a chart here of a stock that we purchased. This is a very highly rated stock—a strong buy in a fundamental sense, with growth, valuations, all the great things you want to hear about a business. We bought right here in that green zone, rode it up, and then we started to see some weakness in the technical data, so we lowered our position. Then you see that first candlestick dropped as a three percent drop in that day. Our signal said to sell the position based on data, not emotion. We sold the position. While this is still a highly rated stock, over the course of the next month, that stock dropped another thirty-two plus percent. So our clients had the peace of mind that when our data says to sell, we're going to sell. And they understand that we're not going to buy in until the data says to buy. So in both those instances, our clients—and you—should have an understanding of what the plan is in a bullish or a bearish market.

You bring up so many good points, John, but chief among them, what I'm hearing you say over and over again is making decisions based on the data as opposed to making panic-driven decisions, right? Or something that we've talked about many, many times, which is the investing cycle of your emotions and how we as humans with our feelings tend to make the exact wrong choice when it comes to our money. Yes, and this is the first module of my retirement management advisory accreditation: behavioral finance. This plays a huge part in the game in any financial aspect, but especially investments. Dalbar at MIT has done over three decades of research showing that people buy and sell at the wrong time. Listen, Grandpa Buffett says buy low, sell high. But we do the exact opposite because our emotions are taking control over the data. So when we hear market highs on the TV, you have to look at it—that's almost a little bit of Wall Street marketing, right? When you hear the market's up at all-time highs, you get FOMO, you get excited, you want to buy in. But you have to understand that when you're at market highs, you're almost to the peak of that mountain, and that's a point of maximum financial risk.

 Then, when you have a major market correction—a drop of twenty, thirty-plus percent—it gets real for a lot of people, especially retirees, because there's no more putting money into your 401k and lessening that blow. This is money you depend on. Then you have panic, fear, anxiety, desperation, and you get to that point where you're just like, "I can't lose anymore," and you sell out at the bottom. This is psychologically proven: you've been beat up so much that you just don't trust the market when it's going back up. You're just waiting for it to whipsaw back down on you, especially because in most downturns, you have what's called bear market traps, where the market drops and then it bounces back up and people go, "Okay, it's over." Then they get back in and then they get whipsawed down for the big drop. So people just sit out until when? Until there's several waves into the market growth and back almost all the way up the mountain again, and they're buying in. So they're buying high and selling low.

 And then number four, because these are all interrelated, you feel pressure to chase returns. You said this a second ago, John. It is known as FOMO. Yes, and again, that goes back into behavioral finance. Everybody wants to have the best returns. Everybody wants to keep up with the S&P 500, the Dow Jones. Even I would love that for my clients. However, it goes back to having that plan and having that conversation with yourself, or in my case, having that advisor-client conversation, saying, "Listen, you don't need to keep up with the S&P 500, because if you're in a buy and hold and you're keeping up with the S&P 500, you're also going to keep up with it when it drops." So don't have that keeping up with the Joneses mentality. It's easier to say than to do, right? But if you're having those conversations and you have the software and the illustration to say, "Listen, if we just achieve six or seven percent, you're going to have plenty of money to live the life you want," and again, it goes back to having a plan for both bear and bull markets and how that plan fits into your income stream and also your values. For a lot of people that are taking distributions based on the market, folks, you have to find a better way.

 We develop income streams that, when market volatility hits, our clients are still getting a predictable and sustainable income stream. That's how they pay their bills. That takes a lot of the stress off. And then the investments—we say, "Listen, these are the goals and this is what you should expect in the bull and bear market." Again, it's knowing what to expect and planning within your own values.

 Now, I'm glad that we've laid this all out. And again, logically, I feel like we all kind of understand this. But John, how can working with a financial advisor help us stay in line with our risk tolerance? Yeah, so generally speaking, the advisor has the expertise to develop a plan that's going to be within your risk tolerance, especially in the buy and hold world, which is the most common type of investing. The other thing they're going to do is they should be there to communicate with you for both good and bad. I've had clients that were like, "Man, if we were just a little bit more aggressive..." They were really happy with their returns, double-digit returns, but they're like, "Gosh, if we just went a little bit more aggressive, maybe we should get more aggressive." And that's when the advisor says, "Listen, we're way ahead of the game. You're going to live a great life. You can actually take out more money." So we're kind of bringing down that euphoria a little bit.

 On the flip side, and the more important side—because the big mistakes happen in down markets when the market is correcting—your advisor is being proactive, saying, "This is what we're seeing in the market. We expect a big drop. We have planned for this when we were developing your portfolios. So this is your expected, not guaranteed, but expected area of the amount of money you're going to lose." Our clients, they know this is when, as we showed earlier in that chart, when our technical data says to sell, we are going to sell, we are going to move you to positions of safer investments, less volatile investments, and just that open communication and being there for your clients as a mental Sherpa, so to speak. For a lot of people, you haven't experienced market volatility in retirement or in a situation where you didn't depend on this money because you had a salary and you were just putting into your 401k. In retirement, these big market corrections really become a physically or mentally draining type of issue.

 For clients to have somebody that has the expertise in managing it, it really helps them have that peace of mind. And again, folks, in retirement, it's just about living the life you want. You work so hard. Have the peace of mind. Enjoy life. And, you know, when you have those questions, reach out to your advisor. Don't let it sit there and just build up inside you. That's stress. Be proactive yourself. Hopefully your advisor is being proactive and they're helping you communicate and navigate both bull and bear markets.

 Yes, you're allowed to feel your feelings, as we tell our kids, but being able to talk to an advisor who can then say, "The reason that we are doing this is because of data," can just help you again stick to the plan, which is what it all comes down to. So John, if somebody would like to sit down with you and create that financial plan that is based on their own unique risk tolerance, which is different from everybody else's, what's the best way to reach you? Yeah, so visit our website, www.gosecurus.com. While you're on the website, we've got plenty of podcasts and videos that talk about behavioral finance and investing. We just had one of my investment mentors, Joe Casey, on our last podcast talking about the markets. And while you're on the website, you can visit the Contact Us tab, where you can schedule a twenty-minute phone call where we can answer any general questions. Or if you're interested in our services, you can go ahead and schedule a one-hour complimentary vision and clarity consultation. Great, John, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you, Erin!