MONEY MAKEOVER
Couple partway to their financial future
December 3, 2006
Thirty-six-year-old Shawn DeWitt is busy making plans for his family's future.
He has his mind set on trading in his two-bedroom condo for a larger home, a backyard and plenty of space where his children can play. At the same time, he wants to continue saving up enough money to pay for at least half of each child's college tuition, as well as for a comfortable retirement.
 EARNIE GRAFTON / Union-Tribune Members of the DeWitt family of Lemon Grove are (from left) Jeanette, 5-month-old Jonas, Shawn and Jessica, 3. |
DeWitt is a local brewer and business investor of the Coronado Brewing Co., while his wife, Jeanette, stays at home to care for their 3-year-old daughter, Jessica, and 5-month-old son, Jonas.
Although the privately owned brewing company doesn't yet offer employees 401(k) benefits, DeWitt has regularly contributed to his Roth IRA and has made miscellaneous investments in mutual funds, business ventures and real estate over the years.
Despite the $64,000 he's already put away, the birth of his second child has made DeWitt a little more concerned that the savings and investment decisions he's made to this point may not be enough to help achieve the family's long-term financial goals.
He wanted to establish a more precise plan and felt he needed to somehow beef up his savings to buy the larger house, pay for his children's college education and secure his retirement.
“I've been investing for 10 years now, but I've always made my decisions based on advice from family members,” DeWitt said. “As we've started to accumulate more, it's become more of a complex and time-consuming job to manage my money. At this point, I think it's time I know for sure if I'm on the right track.”
So DeWitt volunteered for a San Diego Union-Tribune Money Makeover, sponsored by the newspaper and the San Diego chapter of the Financial Planning Association.
The association chose Gregory Richardson, a certified financial planner with Cullington Hill Advisors in San Diego (Elisabeth Cullington, CFP, CDFA shown to the left), to work with him and make recommendations. In exchange for sharing his story in the newspaper, DeWitt received a comprehensive plan at no charge.
Richardson agreed that the DeWitts could be a little further along with their savings, but assured them they've still got a lot of positives working in their favor: They live within their means, they have no consumer debt and they have four months of expenses set aside in an emergency fund.
If the DeWitts were to buy a house now, however, the costs involved could considerably weaken their financial foothold. So Richardson encouraged them to hold off until 2009.
“If they were to sell now and use the proceeds to buy a new home, they'd still have to pull from their emergency fund and take out additional loans,” Richardson said. “This would cause them to operate from a cash-flow shortage every month. I would prefer that they wait and get a loan that they can afford to pay down.”
DeWitt agrees that waiting until 2009 would help their financial situation, but maintains that if the right opportunity were to come up to sell/buy now, they would likely take it. The condo is currently on the market.
“We're not in the situation where we have to sell, because it's a two-bedroom condo and the little one isn't moving around yet anyway,” he said. “I'm not in any hurry, but if it were to sell now, we would definitely look into buying our house.”
The DeWitts and Richardson agree that a second income would put them on a faster financial track.
“If we were to focus on how to achieve their main goals to buy a house, save for college and save for retirement, it's not realistic to achieve all of this along a decent timeline with just one income,” Richardson said. “I suggested that it might be a good idea for Jeanette to begin working in three years when their children are older. “
Jeanette, who is a nurse practitioner, is planning on going back to school to become certified as a radiology/ultrasound technologist. After some research, Richardson found that the average annual salary for this profession is $40,000 to $60,000, an amount that would almost double the family income.
Although DeWitt says he and his wife agree that Jeanette going back to work would be a good idea, there are still some key considerations to be made.
“If we have to put the kids in day care, the cost of that compared to what she'd be making might not be worth it,” he said. “If we're going to break even on all of that, why not just raise our own kids? It's something we're still looking into.”
In the meantime, the DeWitts should use the positive cash flow they typically have left over after paying their monthly bills to increase contributions toward retirement.
Richardson recommended that DeWitt continue saving the maximum amount ($4,000 for 2006) toward his Roth IRA and that he also open a spousal IRA for Jeanette. Doing so would allow the DeWitts to save double what they've done so far, putting away at least $8,000 annually.
The couple could also be saving more toward their children's education funds.
The DeWitts already have about $4,300 put away in a 529 savings plan for their daughter's college education. Richardson told them that to achieve their goal to pay for half of each child's tuition, they would need to increase contributions from $100 to $327 per month.
“They're already ahead of the game on this, but there's a little more that they could be doing,” Richardson said. “Assuming the cost to be about $15,000 a year in tuition for each child, I suggested that they put away an extra $227 a month on top of what they're already putting away. This way they'll have about $7,500 available for each child per school year when the time comes.”
Even though the DeWitts have some room in their budget to begin making these extra contributions, Richardson did have a few suggestions to help them tighten their expenses and provide them a little extra financial security down the road.
Richardson determined that the DeWitt portfolio, which totals around $44,000 of investable assets, is overweighted in mid-and large-cap stocks and diversified in about nine different holdings. Just three of these are held in mutual funds.
To help increase returns and reduce the risk, he advised that the couple reallocate their investments through no-load, no transaction-fee mutual funds to reflect 80 percent in equities and 20 percent in bonds. DeWitt should also sell off his individual stocks.
“I don't recommend the use of individual stocks for the size of their portfolio,” Richardson said. “You need about 20 stocks to diversify as a general rule. They should really have an investment allocation that is strictly mutual funds.”
The DeWitts could save some money by replacing their universal life insurance policy with a less-costly 30-year term policy. Not only would the switch reduce monthly premiums by almost two-thirds – which would mean about $2,000 extra in cash flow a year – but it would also increase coverage from $525,000 to $1,100,000.
The extra cash should go toward the purchase of disability insurance for DeWitt.
“One of the biggest problem areas that I see is that they don't have disability coverage,” Richardson said. “Shawn is the only one working, so if something were to happen to him right now, a loss of his income would destroy their financial picture. It would be devastating.”
Richardson urged DeWitt to obtain long-term disability coverage at a maximum amount that would financially protect Jeanette and their two children.
“I hadn't really ever thought about disability insurance until now,” DeWitt said. “We've spent all this time acquiring assets, and if something were to happen to me, my wife's finances would be depleted almost immediately. It isn't something I like to even think about.”
The DeWitts will also need to get their estate planning documents in order, including simple wills with established guardianship of their children, as well as durable powers of attorney for financial matters and health care directives.
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