Welcome to Bogle Heads On Investing, podcast number 24. Today our special guest is Dr. Wade Fow, a professor of retirement income at the American College of Financial Services. Dr. Fow is the author of three books and over 60 articles on how you can get the most out of your retirement savings. My name is Rick Ferry and I'm the host of Bogle Heads On Investing. This episode, as with all episodes, is brought to you by the John C. Bogle Center for Financial Literacy, a 501C3 non-profit organization and can be found at BogleCenter.net. Today our special guest is Dr. Wade Fow. Dr. Fow is the program director of the Retirement Income Certified Professional designation and a professor of retirement income at the American College of Financial Services. He holds a doctorate degree and economics from Princeton University and has published more than 60 peer-reviewed research reports. He is an expert panelist for The Wall Street Journal. He has written three books in his latest book, Safety First Retirement, an intricate approach to a worry-free retirement, is the subject of our talk today. So with no further ado, let me introduce Dr. Wade Fow. Welcome, Dr. Thanks and feel free to call me Wade and it's great to be on the podcast. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. The Bogle Heads are extremely interested in the work that you're doing and I think it's fascinating. I've read all your books and we've got a lot to talk about, a lot to get through today. But before we get there, at least start by having you tell us a little bit of something about yourself. You decided to go into this field and what was your motivation? Sure. Going back to the early days and grew up in Michigan and Iowa, went to majored in economics, went to grad school for economics and then from there just slowly started stumbling into personal financial planning. My dissertation was about the Bush commission proposal to create personal retirement accounts by carving out part of Social Security. I was just exploring how that might work out in practice and that really became the foundation for what I'm doing today in terms of simulating retirement outcomes based on different strategies. I did spend 10 years in Japan as an economics professor. That was my first job out of grad school, focusing more on the pension systems and developing and emerging market countries. But in wanting to move to the US and find something more marketable here, started looking at was studying for the CFA curriculum and so forth. And I came across this 4% rule of thumb about how much you could spend from a retirement portfolio. So from that, I had another data set that the 4% rule is just based on US historical data, but I had the global returns data for 20 developed market countries. And I was curious, did the 4% rule work with other countries data? And that really became my introduction into the world of retirement income. When you started researching safe retirement rates using basically what you call the probability base system, which is a stock and bond and cash portfolio, you discovered that there was risks to that. And basically you came up with three risks, a longevity risk, a sequence of return risk, and also spending shocks. And those three things together gave you the idea that maybe that's not the most optimal way to build a portfolio for retirement. Could you explain those risks and why it may not be the most optimal way? Right. I mean, the 4% rule of this idea that if I had a million dollars, I could take out $40,000 in the first year. And then every year just spend that same amount with inflation adjustments. That's the fundamental way the investments world thinks about retirement income. Of course, there's a lot of variations on it, but that's a fundamental idea. And the way it seeks to manage these three types of retirement risks may not be the most efficient way. With longevity risk, this is the idea that you might live longer than anticipated. The 4% rule is meant to be conservative in the sense that it plans for longer than life expectancy. In 1994, the article is written, which now is 26 years ago. The idea was a 65-year-old couple. It's pretty unlikely that either of them would live past 95. So if you build a plan that worked for 30 years, you should be in good shape. Now, there's no protection there. You might live longer than 30 years, but at least you're trying to be conservative in that regard. And then it's the same sort of story with the market risk. The 4% rule, it introduced the idea of sequence of returns risk into financial planning because it accounted for how the market volatility impacted a sustainable spending rate. And it was based on the worst case 30-year period in terms of not necessarily the average return over 30 years, but the retirement that had the most negative experience early in the 30 years. And well, in this case, it was in the mid-1960s. Markets do great after about 1982, but it was still this worst-case scenario through the sequence of returns risk. But you try to spend conservatively that your plan will work in the worst-case 30-year period from history. And so people who are comfortable with it are comfortable with that being an appropriate way to manage the market risk in the sequence of returns risk based on a worst-case historical experience. And then the spending shocks. So these are, well, I've got my baseline retirement budget. I want to spend the $40,000 a year, but I may have surprises along the way with long-term care, big health care bills, different types of events that can happen. And the 4% rule, strictly speaking, doesn't help manage spending shocks because it does anticipate just spending your budget. You're going to end up with zero after 30 years. But that's only supposed to happen in the worst-case scenario. So if you're in any other sort of scenario, you don't necessarily end up at zero. And so you would have some excess funds available to provide a source of spending for spending shocks. And that's how the 4% rule manages those types of retirement risks. Now, it's not necessarily the most efficient way to manage these risks because it really just means I'm going to be extra conservative to try to not run out of money. I may not be conservative enough. There could be a new worst-case scenario. But most of the time, I would just end up underspending and then have a bigger legacy at the end than I otherwise had anticipated. But you also wrote in your latest book, Safety First Retirement Planning, which is a whole different way of doing this that, and I'll quote, there is no such thing as a safe withdrawal rate. A safe withdrawal rate is unknown and unknowable. So your research has shown that even if you said, well, let's make it a 3% rate instead of a 4% rate, even then it might not work. Yeah, that's just kind of the academic concept behind, well, if you are trying to spend a fixed amount from a volatile investment portfolio, that there really is no such thing as a quote unquote safe withdrawal rate, that anything could fail. It's the inherent issue of volatility with fixed spending. And so if you wanted to have fixed spending, you probably shouldn't have the volatility in the portfolio. Or if you want the volatility in the portfolio, your spending should also be flexible or volatile or adjust for the portfolio performance. The 4% rule of thumb does assume you use 50 to 75% stock-straw retirement. And that inherently creates the most sequence risk because it leaves you the most exposed to being forced to sell assets at a loss in a market downturn. Right now, if I wanted the 30 years of inflation adjusted spending with where kids' yields are, at this point, we're getting close to about a 3% safe withdrawal rate. And that would ensure you run out of money at the end of 30 years because you build a ladder of Treasury inflation protected securities. And if I'm trying to spend more than that, I'm investing more aggressively. I'm hoping and anticipating that the upside from the stock market will allow for a higher spending rate. But if I get a poor sequence of market returns early on, I end up having to sell principal and digging a hole for my portfolio. And so the portfolio may not recover with the overall market. And so that's really the risk created by that sort of probability-based approach in the purest form with how the 4% rule is structured. Then your solution to this is what's called the safety-first retirement approach, which would also feed in basically annuities and life insurance and perhaps reverse mortgages and other types of assets into the portfolio to try to mitigate the longevity risk. So in a broad sense, could you talk about the safety-first retirement planning approach? So and to just be clear, I know some Bogo heads take issue with which are can be expensive assets to use annuities. We know life insurance, reverse mortgages, all can have significant costs attached to them. But what really kind of the reason I find that these things can help in retirement is because of this sequence of returns risk and how small changes to this need to take distribution from a portfolio at a loss can really disrupt the retirement plan and how just being able to cut back a little bit on that can have such a huge positive net impact on the retirement plan that that's kind of the avenue where these different types of tools can help. It goes back to just looking at what's the efficient frontier for retirement income with an article I wrote now about eight years ago and just finding that stock bond allocations are really the least efficient way to try to meet a spending goal with downside market risk while also preserving an average like the highest average legacy at the end as well that if you basically shift from bonds to income annuities so that I mean an income annuity is effectively a bond portfolio held by the insurance company. But rather than paying coupons for a fixed number of years, they pay for the lifetime. They hedge your longevity risk. If you end up living to 110, they pay you until you're 110. Now if you end up only living the 70s, they don't pay you until you're 70. But by pulling that risk, you can have your retirement outcome be more on an average experience rather than if you have this worry about outliving your money and therefore spend less to try to stretch those assets out for longer. That's where the stock income annuity mix can work better for retirement than a stock bond mix. And that's a basic idea that safety first is. It's based on more academic type models going back at least to the 1920s which is if you have a basic spending floor where you really don't want your spending to have to drop below a particular level, the most efficient approach is you lock in that level with lifetime protections through risk pooling and then you can invest the rest more aggressively and spend more aggressively at a variable rate.  That increasing spending rate as I age from an aggressive portfolio mixed with an income floor, that that's a more efficient way to build a retirement income strategy than something like using the 4% rule from a total return like 60-40 style investment portfolio. This sounds an awful lot like a replacement almost for defined benefit plans which 50 years ago a lot of workers had defined benefit plans which were this annuity based on risk pooling, correct? And so people had this money coming in for the rest of their life. Now that defined benefit plans have gone away, it sounds like what you're advocating for at basic sense is to replace that.  That's the idea with social security and with traditional defined benefit pensions we do get risk pooling and with a defined benefit pension the longevity risk is pooled. Some workers don't live as long as other and some live longer and also market risk is pooled because the insurer assuming they select the correct average they based outcomes on an average rate of return that some people would have been better off on their own with their own sequence of returns others would have been worse off but that market risk over time gets pooled and so a defined benefit pension it pays your pension based on an average market performance and based on it's a formula linked to your work history versus in a defined contribution pension where if you're investing that in a market portfolio you're now fully taking on the market risk of your specific sequence of returns and if you're going to do systematic distributions and not use any sort of annuity you're then also taking on that longevity risk. So indeed annuity is just provide a way to create that pension with that risk pooling that if you had a defined benefit pension you would have been getting that way before. We're not talking about everybody here. I think that the target market for what you're talking about are people who ordinarily would have had say a defined benefit plan. We're not talking about people who have 10 million dollars and only spend 150,000 dollars a year correct? Well I mean to some extent correct but at the end of the day it's still the same sort of idea that anyone now they they're not going to run out of money clearly but to the extent that you take some of your bonds or if somebody in that situation might have a big pile of cash sitting on the sidelines if you took some of that and put that into that lifetime income annuity and then you feel all the more comfortable investing what's left more aggressively you're still though you're not going to run out of money anyway you're creating a better foundation that you're at least if you live past life expectancy going to be able to leave behind a larger legacy than if you still just spent your 150,000 dollars a year from a 60-40 allocation on a 10 million dollar portfolio it's just a mathematical outcome that doesn't depend on the spending rate. Now if you are more constrained you can see a more noticeable increase in your probability of success it's not that you're going to see the success rate increase there it's if you've got 10 million dollars and you're spending 150,000 dollars a year your probability of success is probably 99% no matter what you do but still in terms of legacy it's what's the most efficient way to build the retirement strategy and in that regard using bonds to fund the retirement budget is really the least efficient way you can approach things. I did a little math to take a look at if my wife and I decided to take a million dollars and annuitize it at age 62 I am 62 and she's 60 went to the website that you recommended which is what's the website immediate annuities.com immediate annuities.com okay not a plug for immediate annuities we are non-commercial but I went there and I and I plug in some numbers and I see well what what could I get right now at 62 and my wife is 60 if we put a million dollars into this and it came out to 46,000 dollars a year I believe it was with 4.6 percent and then I said what if I never spent that money what if I just took that money and I invested in it in treasury bonds so as the money came in I invested in today's treasury bond rates you know at what point would I actually make more money than if I just took that million dollars and invested it in treasury bonds and quite frankly doing that gave me a much higher legacy rate of return as long as we one of us lived until we were I think was one of us had to live until our 80s and if one of us lived until our 80s by taking the higher return from the annuity and just taking the income from that and investing it in the same treasury bond that we would have bought we ended up having a higher legacy so the return if you live long enough the return from the annuity is higher and if you could explain why that is it's not just interest rates that drive the return on an annuity correct us the pool of investors that you're in right I mean the income annuity it's you really want to think about it as the cash flows because there is an underlying interest rate but it's not reported it's part of the payout rate that you get quoted and that's what you see it's the payout rate if I put in a million dollars how much will I get on a monthly and annual basis for the rest of my life and so naturally the longer you live the more cash flows you're getting back on your initial investment now it with a pure life only income annuity the the return is going to be negative until you get your full premium back as payments and then you'd have an internal rate of return of zero percent and then as you live beyond life expectancy your return gets higher and higher and if you live into your 90s yeah you're or even to beat bonds probably probably more like your mid to late 80s depending what the interest rate was on the bond it came out to 87 or so one of us had to live till we were 87 and then if I would have just invested 100% in a treasury bond versus investing in the annuity taking the money and put that into a treasury bond that's when I started making money in the annuity yeah and if you're both in average health at least not even bid health but just average health for the for a couple the joint longevity is going to be higher than 87 especially if you're non smokers that you're you'll have a 50% chance that at least one of you is still alive in the early 90s so the probabilities are in your favor of living long enough where you can beat out bonds with an income annuity you're right as far as a legacy asset and what I'm going to leave to my children even if I'm not going to be needing the income from an annuity it's actually a sometimes a good investment right if you're comparing just annuities versus bonds and not because then you can add in the stock market as well but with annuities versus bonds you're going to be lagging on the legacy for a while because bonds you still have the full liquidity for that but yeah once you're past life expectancy and then with the bonds eventually you're going to deplete that entirely and then you could talk about whether there's a reverse legacy like if I was just going to fund my retirement with bonds and I outlive the age that I anticipated I'll need someone to take care of me at that point but with the annuity though you may be given up legacy in the early years and we're talking about like a partial annuity strategy in reality no one's going to put all their money in the income annuity so legacies may lag for a while but if somebody ends up having a short retirement their errors are going to be getting a lot anyway it's really with the long term where you still can have a reasonable legacy with a partial annuity strategy versus with the bonds eventually they run out and you don't have any spending source at that point so it's changing the dynamics of what the legacy will be over time the annuity strategy will have a lower legacy before life expectancies but a bigger legacy after life expectancies and that's because of that risk pooling where as you live longer more and more of your spending is coming through the the subsidies of these mortality credits that investments just simply don't provide it's the premiums from the short lived helping to pay to the long lived raising that standard of living for everyone in that risk pool and that's what they call that they call mortality credits in other words I'm kind of making a bet that I'm going to live longer than you and we're all in the same pool together but I think my genes are better than your genes and my wife's genes are better than everybody else's genes in the pool too so if we get in this pool and if we actually win we only have to be on the top 50% as far as our longevity if you will we we come out ahead right and you can't think of it that way but often behaviorally it's not necessarily good to think about annuities as bets or investments because you can frame any sort of insurance that way like if I buy home road insurance I'm making a bet that my house will burn down and if it does I'll get this big payout and with the annuity it's a little bit different it's to protect a good outcome in this scenario where I live a long time and therefore my retirement becomes more expensive and I don't have the resources to fund that sort of longevity so it's insurance against outliving my assets more than it's a bet that will pay off if I beat the rest of the risk pool I mean you can think about it either way think about the insurance side as well when you're looking at your retirement plan you say there are basically four priorities and you start from the the bottom and work your way up and at the bottom is your basic needs in other words the how much you need to live on and this is where the annuities could help along with social security and then the next thing you have is called the contingency fund and a lot of people think of that as an emergency fund but you know I think the word contingency fund is actually probably a better word your house could need a new roof that's not an emergency but it is a a contingency the next level is discretionary and a legacy so I like the way that you prioritize that then you basically looked at this and said this is how you have to think about your retirement and you have to fill your basic needs bucket first with known income and then you have to have a contingency fund and then you could have your discretionary fund which might be filled more with equity and a legacy which might be filled with equity and fixed income or real estate or something am I getting that correct yeah yeah that's the idea in right the contingency fund it's really for any of these spending shots so in retirement there can be a lot more health related or long-term care and so forth so it yeah right it's more than an emergency fund but yeah that's that's the basic order of prioritizing and working your way up to your financial goals in your book and you talked about those liabilities of your basic needs and contingency and discretionary and legacy and you sort of married them up against your assets so you did liability matching these assets would be used to match up against these liabilities yeah and that's that important part of like the safety first approach it's an asset liability matching problem the liabilities are just the expenses associated with your goals which you are describing I use the term four L's as well the longevity lifestyle liquidity and legacy are your four L's the longevity about your core expenses lifestyle about discretionary liquidity for the contingencies and and then legacy for legacy of course as those are the liabilities associated with your goals and then positioning your assets to match to those goals with reliable income assets so things like social security individual bonds traditional pensions and then annuities as well potentially and the diversified portfolio and then reserve assets and so is it with this asset liability matching that's another thing where you can't double count assets so reserve assets are just what you have that's not already year mark for something else and that's important in the context of retirement income because if like if I believe in the four percent rule and I'm looking to spend $40,000 and I have a million dollars so I put it in a brokerage account and put it in like 50 50 stock bond mix do I have any liquidity uh technically the answer is yes my brokerage accounts liquid but in the meaningful sense of this retirement income problem the answer is no the entire million dollars is earmarked for that $40,000 spending goal and even though I could spend it on something else doing so directly jeopardizes that future spending goal and so the reserve assets are just what you still have available for contingencies that are not earmarked for one of your other three else your lifestyle longevity or legacy goals okay well now we're going to dig into all these different insurance products because they are they could be very simple again they can be very complicated and in your book you go through them all and some of them believe me could when I especially when I got to the variable annuity uh it got to be extremely complicated and I don't know how how anybody could keep this in their head difficult but let's go ahead and move on to the different types of annuities you talk about them all in the book and uh you know there's the basic immediate annuity deferred annuity uh getting into a whole life policy if you could go through the you know the pluses and minuses of each one of these types of annuities that would be great yeah so on the annuity side the spectrum would be the simple income annuity so single premium immediate annuity or deferred income annuity those would be uh those are fixed annuities they're on one side of the spectrum in terms of the most guaranteed income but the least or no liquidity and least or no doing no upside exposure and then as you move along the spectrum from that end towards the other end it's going to be the fixed index annuity and then the variable annuity so the fixed index annuity is in the middle where it is a fixed annuity but it's deferred you haven't locked up your money with it in the sense that you still have access to the funds and they're generally based on some sort of like a financial derivative strategy that's where you can read about how people can create their own fixed index annuity return structures they can't create the mortality credits if you have a guaranteed living withdrawal benefit but it's generally you have principal protection because the insurance company buys enough bonds to protect your principal and then with what's left over they buy some call options to give you some exposure to the upside it's like the very basic level of how they work so downside protection with some upside exposure and with a guaranteed living withdrawal benefit can provide that lifetime income and especially with the tax deferral they their returns could be competitive with the bond portfolio after taxes and then you've got moving along the the variable annuity at the other end which would generally then have the least downside protection that you can have the guaranteed lifetime income but it would generally be lower than what an income annuity or a fixed index annuity would provide but the most upside potential with the ability to invest in an underlying asset allocation and sub accounts that are not the same as mutual funds but they're the annuity equivalent of mutual funds and then also the liquidity as well were you because it's a deferred annuity you still can tap into and get access to those funds if you wanted to get them back and take them out of the annuity so that's the spectrum income annuity fixed index annuity variable annuity and where you end up on that spectrum really just depends on that tradeoff between the most the most income in the worst case scenario versus maybe less income in the worst case scenario but the most potential for a higher income if markets end up doing well you recommend that if people are going to buy a an immediate annuity that they should first not take social security delay social security oh yeah yeah that's an important point because step one of thinking about annuities is delay social security because delaying especially for the high earner in the couple the spouse might start sooner delaying social security age 70 that the delay credits that you get from doing that were based on the situation in 1983 when people were not living as long when the assumed real interest rate was 2.9 percent instead of the negative territory that it is now and so the implied benefit of delaying social security if you think of if I delay social security the benefits I give up become a premium for at least the difference in benefits the premium the benefit increase I get at 70 that's a really high assumed payout rate much higher than any commercial annuity could provide and so it'd be really inefficient to start social security at age 62 and then also buy an annuity first delay social security to 70 then figure out what's going to be your income gap at that point and then think about the annuity from there I kind of think of it in many ways as if you're going to go buy an immediate annuity that you are trying to beat the pool you know you're trying to be in the 50% that outlives the rest of the pool that you have other people in the pool who are thinking the same thing they're healthy and you know they think that longevity is going to beat the pool so everybody who's in that pool is you know I think probably more healthier than say the average person out there but that's not the case with social security I mean everybody's in the pool so if you're healthier delaying seems to me to be the best option oh yeah yeah absolutely right that with annuity is there's adverse selection that those who have a feeling they're more likely to live longer are more likely to buy the annuity but but right social security is based on the aggregate us population and so to the extent there's all these factors that are correlated with longevity some people because they have more of a long term focus and this is going to be a lot of bogelheads they just higher education higher income levels saving and accumulating more wealth that ultimately they're going to have a longer average lifetime than the average American so that's even speaking stronger to the idea of delaying social security because your likelihood of living beyond the break even ages is all the more greater than the average person and generally it's once you get past age 80 you benefit from delaying social security and 80 is well below life expectancies for well almost anyone who's going to be listening to a podcast about retirement income but I mean there's going to be accidents or illnesses that happen randomly on occasion but the average person listening to this type of podcast will live dramatically longer than the average American and that's even a stronger case for delaying social security and for annuities you also talk about another type of insurance which is called whole life normally you know out there in the world to stay away from whole life and but what you're saying and you're making the argument that this could actually be a good option for people yeah that that's what I found in doing my simulations and just to be clear so I'm still a little bit young to be buying the annuities I anticipate doing that but still in my early 40s but after doing this work on whole life insurance and I am at the right age so I found it so compelling I did get myself a big whole life policy I know Bola hedge generally don't like it but it's not about whole life versus the stock market this is about as a replacement for bonds the if you just think about the cash value as an alternative for taxable bond investments it can be competitive in that regard that the simulations I do they start at somebody who's still you know 35 or 40 years old and they decide they need life insurance pre-retirement then they think about do they buy term and invest the difference or do they buy whole life insurance which is going to have a much higher premium and it's going to reduce the amount they have in their investment accounts but then lays the foundation for then having different strategies for retirement income and comparing well what what sort of approach where I'm going to have a limited amount of savings each year and I can allocate that between investments term insurance and whole life insurance what can lay me the best foundation to get the most spending and legacy in retirement and finding there were a number of different ways that whole life insurance can fit into that puzzle to support more income and or more legacy in retirement and I found it compelling enough to actually kind of begin implementing this for myself it's we just had the discussion about the annuity that the simple income annuity often has the most downside income and that's true like a single life only single premium immediate annuity would have the highest payout rate and then if you have two spouses with annuities the way you protect the spouse would be you get a joint life or you get a cash refund or you keep the the liquidity for the underlying contract value and so forth and then that's your life insurance in that case you get a lower guaranteed payout rate because you're building in more protection through the annuity and I compare that to well what if I just have the death benefit to back up the annuity premium so in retirement you could get a single life life only income annuity backed by the life insurance and I found that that sort of approach could work much better than bi-term and invested difference and then doing systematic distributions or even bi-term and invested difference and then by a joint life income annuity at retirement and then the other approach it's really about the sequence of returns risk and it's this buffer asset which I first really learned about on the reverse mortgage side but cash value life insurance is the other major example of a buffer asset it's this idea you have something outside your investment portfolio that's not correlated with the portfolio that can be a temporary spending resource to help avoid having to sell assets when they're at a loss or in trouble or the rule that I found work best is whenever your remaining investment assets are less than the amount they were at the start of retirement in nominal terms draw from the buffer asset if you have it and that can really help manage sequence of returns risk and help to preserve the portfolio in a way that the gains in the portfolio can more than offset the fees associated with the buffer asset whether that's the expensive reverse mortgage or whether that's the life insurance that has of course the insurance fees but you're getting the death benefit for that but also just anything else related to the complexity of the contract and how that can lead to commissions or fees that are otherwise hard to tease out what exactly they are but looking at real policies finding that you can support more spending and or more legacy at the end of retirement as well with these more integrated strategies but it's the same idea again it's it's not that you're selling stocks to buy the insurance it's you're selling bonds to buy the insurance try to keep the same amount of stocks but you just position bonds so that they're not all held in bond bonds they're also held in income annuities or in in whole life insurance and I just found the results to be really compelling and tested many different variations on it I agree it's counterintuitive and surprising because I do come from the investments only world but I found it compelling enough to actually implement for myself so just a couple of clarifications when you're talking about your buffer assets you're talking about if you have a downturn in the market and you don't want to have to sell stock in order to take the money to live on that you go to one of these buffer assets like the cash value in a whole life policy or like a reverse mortgage and that's where you get the money from in the year or two in which the markets are down and then when the markets come back up then you can go back to selling stock then and this is the the concept of a buffer asset yeah yeah that's the idea and that because sequence of returns risk works in such odd ways the synergies of being able to avoid having to sell at a downturn or at a loss are really compelling and really then lead to a much better outcome for the portfolio in both cases with the reverse mortgage or the cash value you're treating it as a loan the reverse mortgage you're borrowing from the home equity and the cash value you structure it as a loan from the policy so there's going to be a loan balance that grows with interest but the the benefits to protecting the portfolio can more than offset the the costs of the growing loan balance associated with the buffer asset so yeah that's the idea we're going to talk about reverse mortgages but I think that before we do that we need to kind of clear up a couple of things and that is I live in a retirement community and an over 55 community and I get these invitations to go to dinners where they're put on by retirement specialists talking about giving me guaranteed retirement income for life so I went to one of these free chicken dinners you know I'll tell you it was the biggest farce I've ever been to in my life the guy used all kinds of emotional things to try to get particularly targeted the woman the woman in the audience to to say you're never going to see your grandchildren again if your husband dies unless you come and see me and I'm going to make sure you get the income that you get I mean like it was a real sleaze there's a sort of the impression that people get about you know insurance and insurance sales people so all of this stuff gets lumped under don't do it don't go there it's just high commission garbage yeah and I mean as a starting point default assumption that's probably a good rule to live by because as annuities get more complicated that they're not transparent so the that can allow costs to be internalized in ways that are not at all obvious I mean so the starting point is the simple income annuity and just the reason all these more complicated annuities developed was because the simple income annuity is you pay the premium and then that asset disappears from your balance sheet but you now have this protected monthly paycheck for the rest of your lifetime people were not comfortable giving up liquidity and then also they were not comfortable with giving up upside for that asset once you have the income annuity you can't strike it big in the stock market and so forth and so that's where these other types of annuities developed and these are deferred variable annuities or fixed index annuities and I think a lot of those chicken dinner type events are going to be for the fixed index annuities where they might even portray them as get the returns of the stock market without the risk and that to be clear is also not how they work but it's easy to get misled about that but at a basic level and so the idea is there can be good competitively priced versions of those that's not necessarily what you're getting at one of the chicken dinner events but it's a way to still have the liquidity you don't have to annuitize the contract so you can still get your money back now there could be surrender charges and things but you still have access to the funds and then you still have some degree of upside exposure and the variable annuity usually would provide more upside exposure than a fixed index annuity but you have the underlying contract value you have the upside exposure and then you have this optional rider that really was developed just in the 1990s initially this guaranteed living withdrawal benefit that will provide you that guaranteed lifetime income and you're spending your own money as long as there's money left in the contract but the idea is if the contract depletes that's when the rider kicks in and you'll continue to receive that guaranteed income for the rest of your life so it works as a source of guaranteed lifetime income but the companies have just made these things so complex and every company uses different terminology and then especially with the variable annuities they have the guaranteed roll-up rates that people misconfute misunderstand to mean a guaranteed rate of return and so the point of those two chapters in the safety first book was to just try to step back and describe how the annuities work so that if somebody's thinking about them they at least know the basic underlying structure and know what questions to ask and know what they need to understand to determine if that's the right type of product for their situation but yeah I mean otherwise the default is you do want to be quite cautious you know to me the transparency of say an index mutual fund here's the fee here's what you get here's the performance of the index here's the performance of the fund it's very clear even if you're doing you know treasury bond here's the interest this is what you're going to get you know here's the bond if you go to a bank and you buy a cd this is the annual percentage rate that you're going to get this is for how long if you turn it in early there's a penalty and it's all very simple and very clear and a lot of people can figure it out and on their own and they'll end up buying index funds and cds and you know keeping it simple but when it comes to insurance why things can get really messy I mean how do you know you're working with an agent who actually cares about you well but that's a good question and since I'm not actually involved in selling insurance these kinds of more practical issues it's a good question that I don't necessarily have a good answer for because you can't just go by on who has the nicest personality or who's a member of your church and so forth because those a lot of people can use these types of civic organizations to gain trust in inappropriate ways um so yeah I mean I don't have a good answer but I think you probably want to just do more especially like bogelheads who are more involved in this process do the research about the actual annuity products themselves figure out what annuity is right for you and then just as necessary use an agent to get what you want rather than having to rely on that agent to give you the proposals about what they want to sell you I guess would be the real starting point with that but do you see why there's a kind of an inversion to doing the whole concept of the safety first not that it wouldn't work it all sounds good and I'm sure that there are good companies out there to do it it's a question of how does a individual actually go out and decipher which are the good people to work with and whoever's out there selling chicken dinners trying to capture a 10 commission and on to the next person it makes it very difficult to say adopt your strategy which probably should be adopted by more people so the question is the process of how you actually ferret out all this stuff out there and actually come up with what is the way in which you do this yeah I'm probably like staying away from those chicken dinners is a another sound bit of advice but increasingly the annuities are now being offered on a like a fee only basis where they they don't pay commissions and so the traditional financial advisors who don't accept commissions and who just charge a fee from their clients to provide the advice are able to offer annuities to their clients as well and with the the fee only version since it doesn't bake in a commission it can have lower fees and and also even perhaps not have surrender charges or at least have dramatically lowered surrender charges as well but yeah your point's valid that it's hard to know who you can trust in the world of annuity purchasing let's talk about another buffer asset that you mentioned a few times now called the reverse mortgage which you wrote a book about in fact it was your first book you wrote it in 2016 some of the rules and regulations have changed since the book has come out so could you go over reverse mortgages and how reverse mortgages could work into this whole retirement plan right so it's it's another tool that you can have as part of the toolkit and indeed as people are starting to really figure out the value of reverse mortgages and it was possible to set one up for 125 dollars in some circumstances in august 2017 there was a rule change introduced that got implemented october 1st 2017 that effectively by increasing the initial mortgage insurance premiums raised the initial cost of setting up a reverse mortgage quite dramatically i wasn't planning to do it but i had to like write a second edition of my book to redo all the analysis under the new rules found the new rules did weaken the case for reverse mortgage but didn't completely overturn it so the the second edition of my book accounts for today's rules and it's the same idea if you can be strategic and you open the reverse mortgage and then use it strategically alongside the investment portfolio in any number of ways it can help lay a foundation for a better retirement outcome in terms of either supporting more spending and or the same spending but having more legacy at the end of retirement as well where legacy in that case would be what's left in your investments plus the value of your home minus the loan balance due on the reverse mortgage where it's the buffer asset same as we were just talking about with life insurance that you have the reverse mortgage line of credit and it's growing over time and it's it can't be canceled or frozen and then rather than having to sell from your portfolio at a loss in a troubling time you could tap into the reverse mortgage as a source of funds again it's proceeds from a loan so it's not taxable income doesn't show up as part of your adjusted gross income and it can provide that bridge for spending you could also just set it up as a contingency fund as a way to have liquid contingency assets for any sort of spending shock so there's a lot of ways reverse mortgages can be used wait a lot of these ideas seem to make sense what stops people from doing it in terms of annuities there's this whole academic literature about the annuity puzzle of just trying to explain why people are not comfortable with annuities and that we've talked already about the lack of liquidity and upside potential in a traditional income annuities another thing is just people they view it as the gamble like we discussed that if if I buy the annuity and then I die early the insurance company wins at my expense and people aren't always comfortable with that that's not strictly how the annuity works it's it's a long lived in the risk pool that that win at your expense rather than the insurance company but that that can certainly be an impediment and so there are things as well like charitable gift annuities where you can usually the payout rate would be less with a charitable gift annuity because it's trying to build in something for the charity but in that case you can frame it more as well the charity would win at my expense rather than the insurance company so that that can be a potential solution to that annuity puzzle could you explain what a charitable gift annuity is it's a way for charities to receive charitable contributions from individuals but to link that as well to a lifetime income now charities have different approaches the safest approach for the charity is they take your gift and they purchase from a commercial insurer an annuity for you to pay you but because they're offering a lower payout rate than a commercial annuity they're able to then keep part of that as a gift the riskier way for a charity to manage that would be to actually become an insurer themselves so to speak and to pay out the annuities through the the collections that they receive but either way is the idea is they're paying below market rates as annuities and therefore on average are able to receive a charitable contribution so that people can make that gift sooner but still receive a lifetime income connected to it so that they can also be thinking of it as it's like a way to mix their retirement spending and their charitable giving together into one overall strategy rather than keeping them separate how do the taxes work on that in other words do you give a gift to charity and they buy you an annuity I mean how much of a deduction do you get on the gift and how much of do you have to pay in taxes on the income that you get from the annuity well you're not going to necessarily get the full tax deduction right away you probably do want to indeed talk to a CPA to make sure that you're getting all those specifics right because indeed part of a charitable gift annuity payment can be taxable income and as we talk as well about this annuity puzzle and kind of why don't people seem to like annuities another idea that's been offered is it's been called the Scrooge McDuck effect yeah from the the old cartoons he loved to jump into his money bin and swim through his money and it was like people want to see their money they they may not have a money bin like Scrooge McDuck but when they look at their portfolio statement if they see a lot of funds they feel wealthier and if you purchase an income annuity you can lose that phenomenon the annuity has a present value of its lifetime future payments and that can be substantial but that's not usually reported anywhere and so people may feel poorer after purchasing an income annuity because instead of having this pot of assets to look at they do have a valuable asset if they just don't get to see it and they they don't appreciate it as much for that reason let's jump into one topic that you talk about a lot that is not insurance related and that is using tips in a portfolio well so interest rates are very low now but that's true across the board if you're going to hold individual or if you're going to hold bonds in retirement I think yeah the case for tips would be much stronger than for traditional treasuries but at the end of the day I don't just simply know how many different types of bond holdings a retiring needs it would lean more towards using that income annuity approach instead but yeah I mean it's if you want inflation protection tips and I bonds are the bonds that can provide that to you let's end with what you call the retirement research manifesto where you have eight points you put this in the beginning of all your books and I just want to go through them with you and comment quickly on each one the first one is play the long game uh-huh you occasionally hear somebody say oh I don't need a retirement plan I'm going to be dead by 70 and that's not really the way to think about retirement planning you've got to assume you're going to live a long time that the foundation of how we mostly think about retirement but it's just important to have that reminder on number two don't leave money on the table the idea there is to just be efficient with your planning and there's so many parts of retirement income where a small short-term expense can lead to a big long-term benefit and that's what I mean about not leaving money on the table in that regard use reasonable expectations for portfolio returns I think that one's really important a lot of financial planning software just plugging in historical averages for everything assuming bonds are going to average five or six percent returns when we see interest rates in the neighborhood of one percent you've got to be realistic and especially with sequence risk which leads into number four be careful about plans that only work with high market returns so much of the simple stuff you'll see online is assume an eight percent rate of return and this or that happens and sure it's easy to fund retirement with eight percent returns but the probability of getting those is not necessarily all that high you've got to make sure you have a plan that can work even if you don't get eight percent returns and that leads us to what we talked about today number five build an integrated strategy to manage various retirement risks bonds are a starting point and the way to try to spend more than just a simple bond portfolio you have the diversified stock portfolio aggressive portfolio and get risk premium from the stock market or you use an insurance approach and get risk pooling and either way you have the potential to spend more and they can manage these different risks the longevity the market risk and the spending shocks in different ways so integrating tools together is important and number six is the reason I want to do on the call today because of what's going on in the financial markets with very low historic low interest rates negative interest rates all over the world approach retirement income tools with an agnostic view yeah that's the important one because if you come from a particular area you think that's a solution for everything whether it's investments whether it's insurance even people who think that reverse mortgages are the solution for everything and and at the end of the day just keep an open mind about any sort of tool think about how it can contribute to your plan and and think about things that way don't just exclude things without a deeper investigation number seven start by assessing all retirement assets and liabilities the retirement balance sheet it's about asset liability matching and so you figure out your goals they lead to your liabilities or expenses and then you map your assets to those goals and you try to match up the risk characteristics so you don't want a lot of stock market investments for your basic expenses that sort of thing but you need to think about the whole picture about matching assets to liabilities and finally distinguish between technical liquidity and true liquidity an investment portfolio can be technically liquid but with asset liability matching if i believe in the four percent rule and i have a million dollars and i want to fund forty thousand dollars that money though technically liquid is not true liquidity it's earmarked to meet my future spending true liquidity is when you have assets that are not earmarked for something else and then they became the source of reserves that can fund your contingencies in retirement wait thank you so much for being on bogelheads on investing you gave us a lot to think about and i very much appreciate you being on the show today well thanks it's been a pleasure this concludes bogelheads on investing podcast number 24 i'm your host rig ferry join us each month to hear a new special guest in the meantime visit bogelheads.org and the bogelheads wiki participate in the forum and help others find the forum thanks for listening


Let's talk about some of the palm positions in the last section in the first four So we have a several palms in the last section. We have the diagonal palm. We have the center horizontal palm and we have the upside down palm, the pole down. So the first diagonal one is called 探测 in Chinese. So like I said before you want to press this way. So this is actually sinking down, your wrist is sinking down while your elbow is pushing out.  See this action? So that's what's happening.  Like that. Notice that my fingers will be pointing up. We start here and our fingers point up diagonally at the end. So that's the 探测. You can practice by doing this. Now that the horizontal palm is similar We're not going to be hitting with the heel. A lot of people try to do this. Actually it You don't have as much power as if you do it with the bottom part. So this actually fits right here beneath the ribs and once I actually did it to a guy and broke his ribs and I didn't even need a lot of power. I just went like this and he had fracture ribs. So that's what you do. You use the bottom part, bottom edge of your palm. Same action. Your shoulder drops.  You can see. Rotates backwards and it becomes a horizontal palm. All right. In Chinese it's called 阴肘, which means stamp. So imagine you have a stamp. When you stamp something, you kind of start on the edge and you roll it and you take the stamp off. Okay, so you're going to press on it and then press on the rest of the hand. So you can put on the edge and then press the rest of the hand into the target area. Now the last one, the po zhang, is upside down palm. So we're going to do the same thing. But then our hands just upside down. So you want to drop your shoulders. Elbow is pushing forward and then your wrist is pushing forward. In this case, we're using the the base of your palm here. The other two we're using this part. This case we're using this part. So we're going to go this way. Some people would take it like this, but actually there's very little power if you go this way. Okay, I don't know anybody that can get a lot of power from here to here. Okay, so what you need to do is use your elbow power, shoulder power, and this power to go this way. Shoot it out like this. So you see my fingers go back and the base of my palm goes that way. So if I'm exaggerating, that's what's happening. Okay, so once again, you don't get power by going like this. You get power by shooting it out like this. All right, so that's the po zhang and the other two palm attacks and I hope that helps.


As we design our research, we must consider the choice of visual media and their implications for our participants and for us. The subject we are researching, the culture of our participants, their comfort and our skills will determine our choice and preference for a particular visual media. Using visual media such as photography or video or even drawing can make us more visible in the context. All the more so when we are new entrants and still in the process of immersing ourselves. Depending on how our tools or equipment are viewed in our participants' culture, this visibility may make it easier or more difficult for us to gain access. Using drawing for example is likely to draw curiosity and attention to us. A researcher working with children living in the streets in Vijaywada used drawing as a way to access and learn about her participants in the early part of her fieldwork. Her participants were children and young women who worked at the scrap dealers unit. She would visit the scrap yard every day, not wanting to distract the children from their work and antagonize their employer, the owner of the scrap yard. She would sit in a corner of the yard and sketch images of the children as they worked while making her observations about their activities. For several days this continued without any verbal exchange between the participants and the researcher. One day, as she was walking through a street close by, she was approached by one of the young women who worked at the scrap yard. The woman asked the researcher to make a portrait of her when she came to the scrap yard the next day. Drawing images of the participant had thus made her a benign and even welcome presence in the context. In fact, many researchers and visual artists find that drawing enables them to engage with participants as they observe and record. One such work is that of artist Prashant Miranda. Prashant is a visual artist who uses sketches to document his travels and observations. Here we want to share with you one of his sketchbooks where he recorded his time spent with the Gond and Baigar communities in Madhya Pradesh. In these sketches we see the everyday life of his participants, the imponderablya. His sketches carefully record objects and visuals that exist in the context, the patterns of tattoos, the structure of the mahua drinking cup, the traditional costumes and dances. You might have noticed one drawing that explains two different processes of preparing the mahua drink. This sketch is made by one of his participants, Lakhanlal Bharbhi. This kind of shared record making makes the process a collaborative one. Let us hear from Prashant on how he uses drawing as a medium for engagement and learning. Hello, I'm Prashant Miranda and I'm in beautiful Kathet, which in the local Aayi Jutam language of the indigenous people here were the Klaaman people. This space and the word Kathet means working together. I was lucky enough in 2012 to spend some time with the Gond and Baigar tribes in Madhya Pradesh, which was just the most beautiful time. They were so welcoming and generous of me being there. But one of the things that struck me very deeply while being there was the visual medium with which they interacted amongst themselves, and I would say with the rest of the world, of the universe. When I was in Bhimbetka, there were these rock shelters and cave paintings from more than 20,000 years. Neopaleolithic drawings on the walls and then in the Mesolithic period horses were introduced to India. So then you see horses being drawn on these rocks and then people on horseback after that. And the way of life of dancing, of riding horses, of hunting, which for me was a way of documentation, a way of recording their lives, which I have been doing for close to 30 years in my sketchbooks. So the medium of drawing is such that we can participate and observe details and nuances of things going on in the environment, which sometimes cannot be communicated through words. While doing it, of course, I get to pay attention to a little bit more of the details going around. So whether it is me drawing a tree or a person's face or a building or a structure, it forces me to spend that much more time observing. And I find that to be an amazing tool because it's not as fleeting as a snapshot of a photograph, whereas that is so immediate it's like getting a little glimpse and you move on. Whereas drawing for me as a tool helps me engage a little bit more deeper with my subject and participate in a way that I feel a bit more of a dialogue that is happening. So it helps me look at intricacies of details that I would normally not have paid attention to if I was just taking a little snapshot on my camera. Noticing that they fold their leaves into cups to drink mahua out of or, you know, these little observations and while drawing it, you realize, okay, this is a particular kind of leaf. And even if I don't have the capacity at that time to find out what the name of that leaf is or from what tree it comes, it's a great reference for me to go back to at a later date and do some research on what these things could be. Whether the bamboo they're using as a still or a pipe and the earthenware pot in which they boil these flowers and how it is distilled. Just by the fact that I'm spending that more time in observing the details helps me then question a lot more and in the process helps me engage with whether it is my subject or my audience or communicate in a different way. I've realized that one of the things about drawing kind of very simply breaks down barriers. So when I draw in front of people or while I'm interacting with people it feels like it's a less intrusive medium for me because it doesn't feel like I have a camera in my face or putting a camera in someone else's face that automatically makes me a bit more conscious or the other person a bit more conscious. Whereas drawing is a little less intrusive and a gentler way to participate in an event or in your surroundings. It's a different language altogether and you do not need words when you're using drawing as a tool and likewise while being with some villages of the Begat tribe I couldn't speak or communicate in a way but there are other ways while drawing or asking how Mahua is being made. While engaging with these people also helps me to interact and say can you draw and show me how this is made because I can't visualize it but you know it helps to form a kind of a communication which otherwise would not have been possible for me just purely through words. Sketching for me is really important to notice and to observe and to pay a little more attention to the details in these everyday life events. We see from these examples that people often enjoy being sketched. They consider it a kind of compliment and a harmless less intrusive form of documentation. The use of still or video photography may bring a more diverse range of reactions. On the one hand if photography or videos are already common in the context making images can be a good way for us to be a part of the context. It can make us accessible and useful to our participants. You might recall the visual ethnographer Sarah Pink whose work we discussed in the last section. She began her research on bullfighting culture in Spain by attending the many public events organized to felicitate bullfighters. Photography is common at such events and they're often professionals as well as amateur photographers present. Pink too would carry her camera along and make photographs as she observed the events. This made her feel comfortable in the environment since she had something to do there taking on the role of an amateur photographer. And soon enough people started asking her to make pictures of them. This enabled her to establish her role as a researcher photographer in the local bullfighting culture. Through this kind of engagement she also got to meet others who were interested in bullfighting culture or amateur photography or both. Many of these people eventually became her friends and participants and the images she was asked to make became valuable research records. Later in her research she would discuss these images and the moments they represented with the participants who had asked her to make them. Through such discussions she gained insights into what her participants saw as a valuable moment and why. For example, some of her participants wanted to be photographed with a particular bullfighter or with some other important person. This gave Pink a sense of the value that her participants associated with various personalities in the social world of bullfighting. However, if the camera is uncommon in the context or makes participants uncomfortable it can create additional challenges in our attempts to gain access. This is something that anthropologist Kirsten Hastrup discovered during her fieldwork in Iceland. Hastrup was studying a particular event, an Icelandic sheep market which is usually attended only by men. Uncertain about her own presence and the presence of a camera in a gathering from which women were otherwise excluded the pictures she made failed to convey the essence and meanings of the phenomena. Instead they showed completely uninteresting backs of men and rams. The presence of Hastrup, a woman from another culture with a camera were both transgressions against the cultural norms of the gathering. Thinking back, Hastrup interpreted the poor quality of the images as a reflection of the inhibitions that she felt in going against these established norms. The tools, methods and devices that we use often come to be associated with us and define how our participants see us. The relationship that we build on field are defined as much by our behavior as by the techniques and methods we use. Imagine being approached by someone who is holding a sketchbook or a small camcorder and now imagine being approached by a crew of people with a big camera, a sound recorder, some lighting equipment. A heavy-duty setup is quite likely to intimidate even those who are not uncomfortable with photography in general. It is possible that the discomfort and curiosity that participants feel with being visually recorded through photography or sketching changes with time. As the device and the ethnographer are seen more and more, they both become a ubiquitous presence. Even if we expect the discomfort to reduce in time, we cannot take it for granted that it will. If while recording the participants seem uncomfortable, it is a good idea for us to pause and speak to them and make them feel comfortable. And if they feel better with the camera turned off, then we can continue with audio recording and written notes. From our discussion so far, we have come to see that making visual records is a lot more than documenting. In making visuals during fieldwork, we are simultaneously doing several things. We are engaging with our participants, learning from them, recording our observations and interpreting them. Often visual ethnographers use the recorded material to represent the outcome of their research. We shall discuss representation in our next section.


Family Theatre presents Joan Leslie and Wendell Corrie. In cooperation with Family Theatre Incorporated, presents Wendell Corrie and Guy de Maupassant's Mademoiselle Fifi with Edgar Berrier, Hans Conreed, and Parle Verre to introduce the drama, Your Hostess, Joan Leslie. Thank you, Jean. The permanent place in literature of Guy de Maupassant was earned by a wide variety of tales and a shrewd understanding of all kinds of people. Many of his most penetrating character studies have become classics because his dissection of human emotions is as real and revealing today as it was in the times in which he lived. One such tale is Mademoiselle Fifi. Perhaps you will find a strong parallel in a much more recent conflict and occupation. The tale takes place in a small town in northern France when Bismarck's armies were overrunning the French Empire. But let our narrator, Wendell Corrie, tell it. Here in this French village, I am called Pierre Boucher. But that was not always my name. It was only a few years ago that I was known as Peter Borgon, Sergeant Peter Borgon of the Prussian Army. Here, where I now live in peace and contentment, I once came armed with gun and bayonet to occupy and destroy. If that puzzles you, allow me please to explain. I was a very young man in the year that Bismarck ordered the Prussian armies into France. I lived on the borderline between the two countries. My family spoke both French and German. Some members even lived in France. But I made a different choice. I thought to fight for Bismarck, to fight in a victorious army. No life could be more glorious, more courageous. When I was, I said, a very young man. Then my regiment was assigned to occupy this French village. It was here that I encountered a new kind of courage. A courage very different from that of a soldier charging with a fixed bayonet. It was an encounter that changed my whole life. But let me tell it all, as it happened. We marched into town with Major von Faultsberg and his aide, Lieutenant von Eirek, at our head. Quarters were commandeered for the men and the handsome rich chateau in the village for the Major and his staff of officers. The Major wanted me near him, so I too was given a room in the chateau, much to the annoyance of Lieutenant von Eirek. An odd one he was, very handsome. A trifle too handsome, perhaps. Yet so short that he stuffed his boots with paper to make him appear an inch taller. And a bad temper he had too.  But that is impossible, Major. He cannot be allowed to stay here at the chateau. Why not, von Eirek? He's a common soldier from the ranks. He cannot live with officers. You have no contagious diseases, have you, sergeant? No, sir. You see, Lieutenant, there's no danger of your becoming infected. In any case, von Eirek, I believe I am command here and it suits my convenience to have Sergeant Borgen close at hand. I do not wish any further discussion on the matter. Is that clear? Yes, sir. Good. Now have the curfew notice and regulations printed. And Sergeant Borgen can see to their posting. So this seems to be a quiet little town. We should not have much trouble here. In a way, the Major was right. It was a quiet little town. And the people went about their business as usual. At least so it seemed on the surface, except for one thing, the church bells. As in most of these French towns, these bells had been its heart, bringing every day to announce a wedding, to mark some solemn memorial, or to call the villagers to a meeting. But after we moved in, the bells were silent. Father Chantevoir and the local priest refused to ring them. It was such a small thing, such an unimportant case of resistance that Major von Faulisburg chose to ignore it, but not Lieutenant von Eirek. To him, this refusal to ring the bells was insufferable disobedience. And when Major von Faulisburg had made his journey to headquarters one day, and Lieutenant was left in command, he decided to act. I was ordered to bring in Father Chantevoir. But is it you want to see the father about? I do not want to see him. It is Lieutenant. Oh, that one. Mademoiselle Fiefi. What is that? Mademoiselle Fiefi, we all call him that. It's the way he stumps his foot every time he loses his temper, like a spoiled infant when someone takes away his toy. Mademoiselle Fiefi, eh? Better not let the Lieutenant here any of you call him that. I do not think he'd be amused. I am sure not.  One of the soldiers to see you, Father. Yes. May I help you, Sergeant? Lieutenant von Erich would like to see you at the Chateau Father. Very well, Sergeant. Watch out for yourself, Father. That Lieutenant has the face of an angel and the soul of a devil. Why, then, I should certainly be able to handle him. Angels and devils are my line of work. Come along, Sergeant. When I showed Father Chantevoir into the Chateau, Lieutenant von Erich was busy at his favorite pastime, cleaning and polishing his pistol. He did not even look up at us. So you know why I sent for you, Father? Well, I am not certain, Lieutenant. Confession, perhaps? I mean no mood for your wit, priest. Come here, over to the window. Those bells, priest. The bells in your church tower. Yes. It was your custom here to ring them every day, was it not? That was some time ago, Lieutenant. They had a nice tone, those bells. Good. We would like to hear them. You have to start ringing them again. That will not be possible. Today? I'm sorry, Lieutenant, but the bells are broken. Have them repaired. Yes, of course. We are working on them. But the men left in the village, like myself, they are old. It will take some time. I will help you out with some of my men, Father, young men. If I may suggest something, Lieutenant, they are a very personal thing with our village, those bells. It would be better if you would let us work on them ourselves. My men will be there this afternoon. Show them what is wrong, and they will repair it. That is all. No, Lieutenant, that is not all. You see, I'm afraid the bells will only break again. What?  It does not seem to penetrate. We are the conquerors here.  Look around the room, Father. That statue of Joan of Arc is only a coat rack for German tunics now. Those paintings are only targets when we feel bored and desire to amuse ourselves with our pistols. And that bust of your Napoleon Bonaparte. Watch, Father. You see? Now it has no more head to think with. And now no mouth to talk back. All Bonaparte has left our ears, Father, ears to listen and to take orders. Whose orders, Lieutenant? Major von Falspiel. It is, Lieutenant. Good afternoon, Father Schöntervern. Something I can do for you? No, Major. I was just leaving. Oh, thank you, Lieutenant. Your demonstration of marksmanship was most interesting. I had no intention, sir, of exceeding my authority. I am sure of that, Lieutenant. It is only that I was trying to correct the situation of the barrels. No need to go on about it. I understand. But there is something else, sir.  You give me too much credit, von Erich. What is that, sir? If you looked ridiculous, you accomplished the feat entirely by yourself. Sir, there. Oh, come, come, von Erich. Don't stand there like a statue. I have work to do. Well, you'll be kind enough to pass on my papers for transfer to another unit, Major. Preferably front line.   Sir, I am making a formal request. And the sooner I am. I know, I know. And I am asking you to forget it. You are needed here. Yes, sir, as you wish, Major. A moment, von Erich. You believe I am too easy with the French, do you not? Well, sir, it's quite all right, Lieutenant. I know you do. But actually, our views are not as far apart as you think. If you will permit me, Major. No, wait. I feel the same way you do about these people. But I believe I understand them better. This matter of the bells, for instance. Now, we've had no trouble around here. But I tell you, on the issue of those bells, that priest and this whole village would resist to their death. I have no compunctions about shooting the lot of them. But only if it will accomplish something.  On the bells, yes. Refusing to ring them, Lieutenant, enables them to keep their pride and obey on everything else. It saves a great deal of trouble, and it costs us absolutely nothing.  I think so, sir. But it is still my belief that these people must be made to know who is master here. You and I know, von Erich. That is all that really matters. MUSIC But with the Lieutenant, that was not all that mattered. Although the occasion did not arise wherein Lieutenant von Erich could force Father Chantavan to ring the village bells, the priest knew as well as I that he was in danger, that the Lieutenant was only waiting an opportune moment to act. But he remained calm and polite and always gentle. It was a strange kind of courage, a different kind of courage, and it gave me something to think about. Then, suddenly, things began to move too quickly to allow much time for thinking. It started with the officers boredom up at the chateau. The usual boredom of occupation duty. The major and von Erich were in the drawing room, and I was polishing their boots. Why do we not enliven things with some feminine company at dinner table, Major? We could send the sergeant to bring a couple of dancers from the butterfly café. The butterfly is off limits, von Erich. Oh, yes, sir. But the chateau is, no? It is not likely any of these French girls would come up here willingly. I'm afraid it would only make trouble. I promise a full meal will bring them running. Possibly. No, you overestimate these people, Major. I will show you their patriotism cannot ignore the promise of a good meal. Well, besides, the sergeant will give them my word, the word of a Prussian officer. That's that they will not be molested. Well, how about it, sir? Come, I'm sure you would appreciate some ladies around the table as much as I. Very well, Lieutenant. I will not spoil your fun. Thank you, sir. You heard the major sergeant. Stop fiddling with those boots. Be on your way. I expect you back here in time for dinner with the two best-looking dancers at the café butterfly. Good evening, Major. Just finishing up the preparations for dinner. Wine and candlelight. Not bad, eh? You've done things up handsomely, von Erich. Including yourself, I notice. Decoration, sword, and all. I'm glad you approve, sir.  Yes, I confess now. I think you had a good idea, if the sergeant is successful. I will risk a month's pay, Major, that they would not dare refuse for fear of our displeasure. No, wait. That must be the sergeant now. It is, sir, with two ladies. Now, remember, von Erich, I want no trouble tonight. The sergeant gave the word of a Prussian officer. A Prussian officer, sir, is bound only by his word to another Prussian officer. Come in. Major von Falksberg, may I present Madame Iselle Blondina de Sal, and Mrs. Madame Iselle Rachel Meyer. Good evening, ladies. I'm very delighted you could come. May I present my aide, Lieutenant von Erich. Ladies. How do you do? How do you do? Take their coat, sergeant. We will dine in a few minutes. Yes, sir. And now, my dear Blondina and, uh, and... Rachel Meyer. And Rachel, shall we begin with a little champagne? Champagne? Oh, yes. Rachel and I have not had any champagne since the war started. It has been difficult to get lately for the French. Well, there's no shortage tonight. Ah, there we are. Gatharan, ladies.  The first court of champagne emptied quickly, and I served a second. And by the time dinner was over, a third. Not that the two dancers were drinking, the blonde one had a glass, but the dark one, Rachel, did not drink at all. She just quietly and hungrily ate her dinner and watched Lieutenant von Erich. Lieutenant ate almost nothing, only kept drinking. Yeah, sergeant, fill my glass. Fill hers, too. I believe he does not wish any more, Lieutenant. Fill it, I said. This town breeds them stubborn here, Rachel. It's hard to get you to drink, as it is to get your priest to ring the bells. But both shall be done. Yeah, let me help you quench your thirst. Stop it. I do not want it. My apologies, mademoiselle, for spilling the wine over your dress. Fill her glass again, sergeant. Yes, yes, fill her glass, sergeant. I'm sure she will drink with us. This time, for I have a toast to propose. Ladies, to our victories over parts. I would like to propose another toast, if I may. To our victories over France. How brave you are, Lieutenant, when you sit well guarded in the chateau. And your countrymen, my dear, I cannot remember their faces. It seems I saw only their backs when they ran from the battlefield. All right, Spongebob, that's quite enough. No, Major. Not quite enough. First, I have a toast to propose, too. You see, Lieutenant, you get your way. I shall have a glass of wine, after all. A glass to a free France. You hear that, Major? Every little French girl thinks she's Joan of Arc. Well, I drink to oppression, France. For that's the way it is, my Rachel. France now belongs to us. France, and every man in it. Yes, and every woman, too. Let go of me, let me go. So champagne into my face, will you? I'll teach you a lesson, you little. What are you doing? Let's look out the door. OK. Ah! Frozen for a moment, like people in a bad painting.  Then suddenly, she dropped the knife and ran to the open window. She was out into the courtyard before any of us had recovered. Sergeant, after her! Oneirik. Oneirik. Is he? Is he? Yes. Yes, he is dead. No, no! No, you cannot go, mademoiselle. You must remain here until the sergeant returns with Rachel Meyer. Things helped Rachel Meyer to escape that night. One was the darkness of the courtyard. The other, my own confused feelings. During the course of that evening's dinner party, I'd come finally and completely to revile Von Erich and all the prussian nonsense he stood for. Somehow it caused me to delay for a moment and shouting for the guard. And the momentary delay enabled Rachel to get away. An instant later, I'd shaken off my confusion. I called out two squads of men and began a careful search of the town. It was morning by the time I returned to the chateau. The blonde girl was still there. The major was pacing up and down. He turned hopeful to me when I entered. Well, Sergeant? Not yet, sir. We'll have her very soon. Too bad about Lieutenant Von Erich, sir. Von Erich, a fool only got what he asked for. Sergeant, an idea has occurred to me. I want you to arrest the mayor and two councilmen. Any two. I leave it to your judgment. You want them brought here? Yes. And turn out a firing squad. Perhaps if I show headquarters, I took quick action. No, major. You cannot shoot them. Right away, Sergeant. Wait. Everyone will know what went on here last night. Who was to blame? And suppose I have you shot too. You will learn it anyway. Rachel is still free. They will learn that a french girl had to kill for the honor of her country. And they will know that you had innocent citizens shot to protect your own skin. You have not had much trouble in this village so far. But if you do this thing, you will never walk down one of our streets safely again. You will have to double your troops, triple them, and still there will be unrest. Still, you will not be safe. All right. You can go, mademoiselle. And never mind the mayor, Sergeant. Just bring me Father Shantavwan. In observance of Lieutenant Von Erich's death father, I am ordering you to ring the church bells. Have I made myself clear? You speak very distinctly, Major. And you will obey? I will give your wishes. My order? My sincerest consideration. Be careful, priest. I have been very lenient with you up till now. I am warning you. If the bells are not rung immediately, I will send my own men to ring them, and I shall consider the whole town to be an open rebellion. You yourself then, Father, will be responsible for any action I may be forced to take. You may go. Good day, Major. Stubborn fellow, that priest. Well, Sergeant, now we can straighten this town out very quickly, and what is more, the records will show it all to be quite legal. I don't understand, Major. But here, let me read this order to you. Notice to all townspeople, your refusal to ring the village bells in honor of a Prussian officer's death is considered an insult to the entire Prussian army. As a direct result, we are forced to execute four of your leading officials.  Interesting strategy, isn't it, Sergeant? When Father Shantavon fails to ring the bells, arrest him and the mayor and the councilman. Are you not overlooking something, Major? Suppose Father Shantavon should ring the bells. That is the beauty of it, Sergeant. He will not. He cannot. If you had studied his type, as I have, you would know that he would go to his death before. Sergeant, is that? Yes, Major. It's the church bells on all. It was not until much later after the war was over, in fact, and I had returned to the village to live as one of the French. It was not until then that I learned why Father Shantavon yielded that night and rang the bells. But the reason was simple, though Major von Falsberg could never have foreseen it. Father Shantavon had to keep our men from coming up to the belfry. He had someone hidden up there, someone who had fought to defend the honor of France. Father. Yes, Rachel? If the Prussians should find out it is you who have hidden me, given me shelter. But it is not I, Rachel. God has sheltered you. No, Father. What will happen to me? You will be all right. As soon as the search quiets down, we will smuggle you out of town. No, Father.  Father, I did not mean to. I know. Believe me, I know, Rachel. But there is also something more in your defense, Rachel. Something these Prussians must someday learn. All that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Ironically enough, in the end, Lieutenant Von Erich had his most fervent desire. Father Shantavon rang the bells. And in a way, it was the lieutenant who forced him to do it. We of the family theater have enjoyed bringing you Guy de Maupersant's story of Mademoiselle Fifi. It's the kind of story everyone likes to hear again and again, for it gives us reassurances, all of us, that the power of the sword can never crush the power of the spirit. The times we live in have been called overmaterialistic, meaning, I suppose, that we place too much long range value on the things of this world, spend too much time in pursuit of things that will perish. Well, perhaps we have become nearsighted in the matter of our own souls, our own destiny. But it's a thought that should lead us to sober reflection, even some realistic soul searching and some praying. Prayer has been the support of all people who have had to resist the forces of injustice. Prayer is the rock on which the sword of might can be shattered. Prayer now, for us and for our families, can avert the day when our land and our homes may no oppression. By prayer, we can come into actual contact with God and gain unbelievable poise from realizing the presence of His power. That is why we remind you now, as we do each week, that the family that prays together stays together. More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams on. From Hollywood Family Theater, as brought to Wendell Corey as Sergeant Borgen in Mademoiselle Fee Fee, with Joan Leslie as your hostess. Hans Conreed was heard as Lieutenant von Eirich, Edgar Berrier as Major von Falsberg, and Polly Bear as Father Schantt-of-One. Others in our cast were Mary Ship and Virginia Gray. This adaptation of Guy de Mopassant's classic was written by Andrew Michaels, with music composed and conducted by Harry Zimmerman, was directed for family theater by Jaime Del Valle. This series of broadcasts is made possible by the thousands of you who have felt the need for this type of program. By the mutual network which has responded to this need, and by the hundreds of stars of stage, screen, and radio who have so unselfishly given of their time and talent to appear on our family theater stage. This is Gene Baker inviting you to join us next week when we bring you a stalling of the old and new in California with Leo Carrillo and Sheriff Eugene Viscolleau. Join us, won't you? To the facilities of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and his broadcast to our troops overseas by the Armed Forces Radio Service. This is the world's largest network, the Mutual Broadcasting System.


I'm Kenan Robinson. I'm the director of sports medicine and science for USA swimming and obviously our partnership is a national governing body USA swimming with the USOC. We work very very closely with USOC sports medicine staff and when Dr. Moreau had passed along the information that this clinic was going to be going on it was it was a slam dunk when I looked at the speaker list and the depth and breadth of topics being covered here it's it's it was a no-brainer to come just come up the hill for this and when you think of the presenters Dr. Moreau and Dr. Philippon just to hear those two speak on things that they're experts in the field and it's just you can't put a price on that and then you look at you know the fact that Dr. Chad Prusmak was going to be talking about the neurological aspect and the neurological rehabilitation aspect of concussions and to me in a sport like swimming you don't think that that concussions occur but they do in fact do they do occur and I think one of the things that we take away is that it's no longer an injury that we just sit in and let it heal we actually can rehabilitate and I think to be able to get some that information out is going to be very very beneficial to our practitioners and most importantly our athletes and our coaches I think I think the big things are when we talked about we'll kind of talk about the sections yesterday when we talk about the concussion I think it's like I mentioned the the importance that we have to do a better job of identifying what is our baseline neurocognitive status of our of our swimmers and the message I want to get out to primarily to our universities or secondary schools would be great but to our university start start with the low hanging fruit first is be conscientious and aware of doing great baseline testing because you don't know when that injury is going to occur and we don't want to get into a situation we have what the NHL has gone through or the NFL has gone through we have an epidemic of former athletes coming back and saying you guys did nothing for us and so number one identifying with a with our neurocognitive baseline statuses of swimmers and for swimmers in particular I think that was coming becoming very very prominent and more and more the speakers that went through the concussion section is that there's differences between men and women there's differences between high school athletes collegiate athletes and professional athletes there's difference between contact combat athletes and and non-contact combat athletes and so I would I was quickly doing a PubMed search and there's nothing on the aquatic athlete and so I think number one let's let's let's start that so we so we have the the benefit of it and when you think of again then when you think of the hips it's it's let's let's think about the ability to identify them at a younger age you know looked at like with many of the football or soccer I guess as we call in this country in the in the Pee Wee hockey identifying them at an earlier age will help identify those risk factors and then potentially we can we can make an impact with them and I think the last presenter was great wasn't it common sense medicine how many of these things could have been prevented with just a Band-Aid and some Neosporin and and obviously sports analytics and medical informatics all these things are great and important and they need to be done but let's not lose like let's not lose sight of what's what's important and it's common sense and things that are easily preventable now it's it's funny go to any any swim meet that involves more than two teams and you'll see why there's probably 30 swimmers to a lane swimming up and down if you go international it's just like driving they don't circle swim the way we do in the United States so you have the swimmers from the Asian countries pushing off into the Americans and the Europeans in the same lane and so that's usually when it happens or kids just not paying attention when they're doing the backstroke and counting their strokes from the flags into the wall and colliding or in the butterfly stroke because there's too many the lanes are too narrow and that one swimming butterfly so they come across and it's that hand-to-head combat so on one end we have an orthopedic fifth fracture we have to replace and the other one we have a neurocognitive issue we have to treat yeah and that was that was probably one of the the the great things is when they asked me to present on on hips because since September we've seen four hip issues and some of our top swimmers and so to be able to come up here and present in front of Dr. Philippon and all of his colleagues it was more for me to say this is what we're dealing with what are some ideas you guys think what are we missing and so when you look at the the clinical exam it replicates what the frog kick is but none of the swimmers we've seen have been breaststrokers or IMRs which involves the breaststroke so I think what we're seeing is like you can't replace how God made you or all or whoever you believe in right like so if they if they have these deformities or these abnormal hips then then no matter what you do they just won't be able to get into that position you're just putting them at a risk and to get hurt and then when you look at the presentation of how some of these younger hockey coaches are trying to still do the quick speed and I think that's some of the things that we're doing in the sports swimming too is we just pushing the envelope too quickly it's these kids age without any sort of adaptation or tissue healing so those two ones right and they're funny so we have a pretty large concussion task force now we started about two years ago and we're thankful that one of our former sports medicine chair was Scott rodeo the team physician for the New York Giants and so he had gone through all he'd sat in so many court and he said it's great that you guys are starting this initiative and when we started to look into just report of occurrence and insurance claims they were happy more frequently than we than we thought and then we we had to start survey first and so we we surveyed coaches all 18,000 registered club coaches it's just like what is their knowledge base to it and we found out that they don't they're still calling it a bell rung and they're still just saying well I mean we had more responses that that well because we're not a contact I understand they hit their head on the wall and they were having some dizziness but we felt like it wasn't going to happen again so the second impact because that's what they hear on ESPN or the news and so they're putting them back in so we've done a really good job of creating a coach education curriculum and then we surveyed all NC2A swimming institutions if they do they have a do they have a concussion protocol and do they have a return to swim concussion protocol and so it's really helped us map out a kind of a program for that


Let's sing a song, you don't hear every day, it's your old friend calling again. Hello, sweetheart, is smiling Ed Mcconnelly, old Aladdin lamp man again. Have you heard this one lately? If we can't be the same old sweethearts, then we'll just be the same old friends.  My happiness on you, it all depends. For I've known you too long to forget you, and my old dream of love never ends. Though I know you can't be mine, we will meet from time to time, and we'll just be the same old friends. I don't know about Ed, huh? Oh, play it sweet now, think it over here. To forget you, my old dream of love never ends. Though I know you can't be mine, we will meet from time to time, and we'll just be the same old friends. I don't know about that, but I do know good Aladdin light in the right places in your house can make the difference between groping in a dimly lighted corner of a room and being able to see well everywhere in the house. You know there's a type and style Aladdin lamp that fits in every room in your house. Why not stop in our store and see these smart looking Aladdin table lamps and floor lamps with those wonderful whipple light shades to match. These are the famous greaseless and oilish shades that were originated by Aladdin in order to give you a prettier shade that is easier to keep clean and new looking. See you at our store soon, I hope, won't I? And now for our hymn. There'll be light in the sky from the palace on high when I come to the end of the road. This sweet relief from all care will be waiting in me there when I come to the end of the road. When the long day is ended, the journey is o'er. I shall enter that blessed abode for the Savior I love will be waiting for me when I come to the end of. That's the end of our visit for today. This is Smiling Ed McConnell, the Aladdin lamp man saying bushels of love and thanks for listening. We'll be looking for you again next time when we come back to sing a song. You don't hear every day when we all come calling again.