Hall of Fame Jockey Mike Smith Earns 2nd Kentucky Derby Win

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — Mike Smith showed how he got his nickname.

“Big Money Mike” came up with another impressive victory, this time aboard Justify in the Kentucky Derby. He has won in many ways, but Saturday all it took was a big move at the start that gave the horse all the room it needed on a sloppy track to remain unbeaten.

Smith guided Justify to a 2½-length victory over Good Magic in the 144th Run for the Roses at Churchill Downs and earned his second Derby victory. It was his first Derby win since 2005 with 50-1 longshot Giacomo. The 52-year-old Smith is the second-oldest Derby winner behind Bill Shoemaker, who rode Ferdinand to victory in 1986 at age 54.

Smith has achieved so much on the big stage, but he doesn’t take anything for granted at his age. Especially a chance to ride a top-flight horse like Justify.

“Just keeping riding horses like this and that’ll keep you around a long time,” Smith said. “You don’t have to work a whole lot; they do all the work for you.”

Smith helped Justify improve to 4-0 and become the first horse since Apollo in 1882 to win without racing as a 2-year-old.

And the jockey made it look almost easy racing in pelting rain and on a muddy, crowded track. Smith got Justify near the lead at the start and left the other horses to deal with the muck.

Smith who has 5,456 career wins, was none the worse for wear afterward with nearly spotless green-and-white silks. He is one of the sport’s best-conditioned riders and a keen tactician, a couple of the reasons why trainer Bob Baffert chose Smith to ride Justify after breaking his maiden beneath Drayden Van Dyke. It also is one reason Baffert appeared so calm all week.

The rain and track made Baffert nervous, albeit only briefly, as Justify and Smith ran another impressive race.

“He was just ... he’s all Hall of Fame,” Baffert said. “He came through. That’s a lot of pressure.”

Justify came into the Derby off a three-length win in the Santa Anita Derby and even had a March win in the mud at the California track. Despite concerns about the so-called Apollo Curse continuing, he went off as the 5-2 favorite from the No. 7 post at Churchill Downs.

Smith made sure the horse quickly delivered on the expectations.

He found a hole right away for Justify out of the gate and kept the horse to the outside alongside Promises Fulfilled through the backstretch. He made his move in the far turn and steadily pulled away for his most significant win.

“What happened today is what I have been daydreaming about all afternoon,” Smith said. “I just knew he was capable of this. My job was just to get him out of there. I did that, and the rest is up to him.”

Thirteen years after his previous Derby win, Smith is grateful Saturday with his second.

“I have been blessed to be in this race so many times,” he added. “I’m more relieved right now than anything. I think later on I’ll start getting excited as the days go on.”

How To Manage Cash Flow In Retirement

Strategies for managing cash flow

• Set up direct or remote deposit.
• Bucket cash for different needs.
• Consolidate with one provider.

Whatever the size of your nest egg, retirement will likely mean big changes in your financial life. Sources of income can shift, as can expenses. And financial priorities often change as you move from saving for retirement to generating income from your hard-earned retirement savings.

"Retirement is a milestone and a good opportunity to start fresh," says Ralph Poirier, vice president of cash management at Fidelity Investments. The clean-slate approach, he says, has the potential to make dealing with finances easier, more efficient, and cheaper if you can consolidate accounts and mitigate fees.

Managing your retirement income

To start, consider the ways that retirement can change cash flow. Your weekly or biweekly paycheck may be replaced by income from a variety of sources, including Social Security benefits, pension distributions, and annuity payments. If you are age 70½ or older, you will be required to take minimum distributions from your retirement plans [401(k), 403(b), IRAs, etc.]. Some retirees may even generate income from part-time employment or sales of assets.

All of this means that money is arriving in varying amounts on very different schedules—most likely in the form of a check. To manage these income sources efficiently, you can set up direct deposit services, or use a financial institution that offers remote deposit—meaning you can log on to your computer and scan or snap a photo of a check with a smartphone.

Spending patterns will also likely change, reflecting both your new lifestyle and shifting financial responsibilities. When you retire, often nothing is being withheld for state and federal income taxes, so you may be responsible for any quarterly estimated taxes. Likewise, most retirees generally have to pay health care and other insurance premiums directly to the insurance carrier(s). Some retirees may also find they are traveling more or living in dual residences. All these situations can make monthly bill paying even more complicated.

"It makes sense to simplify and consider new options, given your change in lifestyle," notes Poirier. This may include taking advantage of everyday financial management tools over the phone, on the Web, or via a mobile device. These days, technology makes it easy for people to effectively manage their regular financial transactions from anywhere. Doing so can eliminate worries about paying the mortgage bill, no matter where you happen to be.

Consider a bucket approach

At any point in your retirement, your income streams may be producing more cash than you are spending. If so, you’ll want to think about how to continue to invest that excess cash flow to help meet both your near-term liquidity needs and longer-term needs for both income and growth. When investing, be sure to make liquidity—how quickly you need access to your cash—a central consideration. In general, the more comfortable you are with risk (for reasons of investment horizon and risk tolerance) the greater the level of risk—and potential return—you can afford to pursue.

One approach to consider is to bucket cash for different short- and longer-term needs, such as living expenses, short-term goals, and emergencies. Here are some ways to implement each:

Living expenses: You’ll want to have a portion of your savings easily accessible and liquid for paying everyday living expenses such as groceries, utility bills, and insurance premiums. For these needs, you may want to consider keeping cash or cash equivalents invested in lower-risk, highly liquid investments such as money market funds* or short-term Treasury bills.

Short-term savings goals: If you have short-term savings goals, such as a car purchase or a dream vacation, you may want to consider investing in low-risk vehicles such as Treasury bonds and FDIC-insured CDs with maturities that correspond to the date you need the money.

Emergencies: You should review the adequacy of your emergency fund, or set one up if you have not already done so, keeping as much as six months of expenses for unexpected events, like a roof that needs to be replaced or another hefty bill you did not anticipate. However, one size does not fit all. You will need to take into account your expenses, liabilities, and other individual circumstances in order to determine a dollar figure that suits your needs. Consider investing this money in a mix of highly liquid accounts such as money market funds, and less liquid options such as CDs or conservative bond funds.

How to tie it all together

The key is to make sure your money can be easily accessed, moved, and invested according to your needs, and, ideally, to do so in a way that mitigates overall fees. Some people opt to consolidate by putting all their funds into a group of accounts with a single provider so that money can move easily from one account to another. For example, you might have a basic checking or brokerage account for paying the bills with a variety of electronic options, including mobile or Web payments, electronic funds transfer, mobile check deposit, or similar services.

Look for a provider that offers options to easily transfer money from your retirement accounts, such as IRAs, into your cash account. Some firms will offer periodic withdrawal methods so you can harvest retirement assets or earnings on a schedule that fits your needs. Periodic withdrawals help you create a "just-in-time" income stream and allow remaining assets to produce potential earnings until you need more cash. If you are spending less than you expected, consider setting up access to a sweep system that automatically reinvests excess cash.

Look to mitigate fees and increase efficiency

Retirees can create a similar kind of financial network by linking accounts across different banks and brokerage firms. This may require a little more effort and there could be some additional fees involved. Whatever approach you take, it’s important to choose reliable financial institutions that provide the features you need to make your retirement finances easy to manage, affordable, and flexible.

Consider an account that offers:

• Free direct deposit
• Mobile deposit
• Online access
• Free checks
• An ATM or "no-fee" debit card
• Free transfer services
• The ability to speak with a representative by phone or in person

If FDIC coverage is important to you, make sure that your cash accounts don't exceed the maximum covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures individual bank accounts for up to $250,000 per institution.

Make sure you have a clear picture of your finances

Finally, the retirement cash management system you create with your providers should offer a comprehensive view of your finances. Being able to access concise, up-to-date reports on your cash balances, transactions, and assets is a basic requirement and can help prevent unpleasant cash flow surprises.

Putting a good cash management system in place now can pay off in the future, Poirier says. For example, it can make it easier for you to handle your finances as you grow older. Make sure you record the specifics, such as direct deposits and automatic transfer schedules, so if you are unable to access your account(s), a properly authorized spouse or third party can make changes as necessary.

Taking the time to think through the "what ifs" of future cash management also means that you get to make the decisions about how you'll be using your financial resources during a retirement that may stretch 30 years or more.

Source: FidelityVoice via Forbes

Retirement planning trend: Women now spend fewer years in marriage

Studies that have examined women’s finances have looked at households rather than individual women, since traditionally women spent most of their lives married and thus traditionally made financial decisions jointly with a spouse.

But that’s no longer the case, according to a brief from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, which finds that as time has passed, women spend less of their lives married—and that changes the dynamic.

It also changes—drastically—the way women need to plan and save for retirement, since the financial needs of a woman alone are substantially greater—and different—than the needs of a woman who is part of a couple.

Researchers sought to determine whether women are still spending most of their lives married, and to that end they studied four cohorts of women, calculating the percentage of years that they are married based on data in the Health and Retirement Study, which has interviewed people over age 50 every two years since 1992, asking detailed questions about both current and past marital status.

The analysis focuses on the change in marriage patterns over four birth cohorts: the original HRS cohort (born 1931–1941); the War Babies (1942–1947); the Early Boomers (1948–1953); and the Mid Boomers (1954–1959).

It sought to discover what percentage of women’s adult years—ages 20 and older—is spent as part of a married couple.

Allowing for the fact that the youngest group in the study has not lived as long, and thus has not amassed as many married (or single) years as the oldest, researchers calculated the number of years (“total woman years”) for the women in each group and arrived at the percentage of years each group was married.

For the earliest cohort, those born in 1931–1941,” the brief says, “72 percent of women’s years between age 20 and the last interview were spent married. By the Mid Boomer cohort, those born in 1954–1959, the share had dropped to 54 percent. According to this measure, women have gone from spending most of their lives as part of a married couple to spending just 54 percent of their lives married.”

One final calculation, to account for the younger cohorts who have not yet reached the age of the women in the older cohorts, “show that if the Mid Boomers were interviewed at ages 73–83, then women in this cohort would have spent just about half of their life as part of a couple. It may well be that, once the whole lifespan of Mid Boomers has elapsed, women in that cohort will have spent less than half their adult years married.”

Why the drastic change?

The study finds three reasons: an increase in the age of first marriage; a drop in the percentage of women who marry; and, for those who do marry, an increase in divorce.

But the trend is not equal across all demographics.

The report finds that while women in the aggregate are spending less and less time in marriage, “black women have always spent a smaller percentage of years married than white women … [and] the decline in the percentage of years married is greater for black women than white women.”

But while there was substantial variation by race, the same wasn’t true by education.

The report says that regardless of whether women had some college or just a high school degree or less, “the percentage of years spent married declined from about 70 percent to about 50 percent between the HRS and Mid Boomer cohorts. The increase in the percentage of years not married or divorced was consistent across educational group.”

The report concludes that since “women as a group are going to spend less than half of their adult years as part of a couple,” the change “has significant implications for financial planning.”