Our Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement review will tell you everything you need to know about this stock-picking service.
Motley Fool is a leading name in the research industry and is highly regarded for programs like Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers.
But how does its retirement service stack up to its headline offerings and could it help you retire sooner?
We gave it a thorough examination in our Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement review.
Keep reading to find out if this stock-picking service can help you with your retirement planning.
What Is Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement?
If you’ve spent any amount of time researching the stock market on the web in the last 20 to 25 years, you’ve likely come across the Motley Fool.
Based in Alexandria, Virginia, it’s one of the most high-profile stock picking services of the last half-century.
It offers stock picks, special reports, market data, advice, and newsletters for everyday folks.
It’s important to keep in mind that Motley Fool does not offer financial advice; instead, it offers financial research services.
Motley Fool’s most popular services are Stock Advisor and Rule Breakers.
But does Rule Your Retirement offer the same value that Fool’s followers have come to expect?
Read on to find out!
Retirement Planning with Rule Your Retirement
Rule Your Retirement is the Motley Fool’s premium offering for people nearing retirement or planning for their future.
If you’re not sure what to do with your retirement savings, the Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement service can help you figure it out.
This specialized service helps you with retirement planning through a wide array of resources on retirement, estate planning, and more.
Here are just some of the insights the service has to offer:
Personal Finance Management – Rule Your Retirement Model Portfolios, navigate major financial decisions, retirement fund, retirement income issues, saving smarter, and more.
How to Pay for College – College tuition tax breaks, college savings plans, cutting college costs, and more.
Estate Planning – Improving family finances, estate planning case studies, and more.
Health Insurance – How to pay for medicare, how to plan and financially protect yourself in the case of an unexpected emergency room visit, and more.
Social Security Benefits – Learn to get the most out of your social security benefits, including how to maximize your payout.
There’s plenty more on offer, so we recommend checking out the Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement page for more details.
Forward-Thinking Stop Picks for the Future
The full package includes access to investment ideas like stock picks, mutual funds, and exchange-traded funds that can help retirees the most.
Fool also offers model portfolios that you can use as an example for your own retirement account.
It all sounds good, but is the Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement service worth the cost of admission?
Keep reading our Rule Your Retirement review to find out if it’s the right retirement service for you.
But let’s start with a quick rundown of the Fool.
Motley Fool Review
Tom and David Gardner are brothers who co-founded the Motley Fool in their mid-twenties back in 1993.
The Motley Fool is arguably the best-known stock-picking service in North America.
The company was also one of the first financial entities to embrace the internet, partnering with AOL for their first newsletter and then the Fool.com domain in 1997.
The Fool’s flagship program, Stock Advisor, is a stock-picking service with a 30-year record of success and respect in the investment community.
Other premium Fool offerings include Rule Breakers (covering high-growth stocks), Discovery: Everlasting Stocks, Motley Fool Options, and Rule Your Retirement.
Who Is Robert Brokamp?
Certified financial planner Robert Brokamp is a senior advisor for the Motley Fool, and he runs the Rule Your Retirement service.
He has a background as a financial advisor, and he’s penned pieces for the likes of Newsweek, Better Investing, The Motley Fool, and more.
Robert also helped write Motley Fool’s Money After 40 and Personal Finance Workbook.
He’s a pragmatic investor who aims to help his readers build long-term wealth through their retirement accounts.
Now that you know more about the Fool and its certified financial planner, keep reading our Rule Your Retirement review to get the breakdown of everything the service offers.
>> Get instant access to Brokamp’s latest picks when you sign up for Rule Your Retirement <<
What’s Included in the Rule Your Retirement Package?
The Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement package offers subscribers the following:
- A 12-month subscription to the Motley Fool Rule Breakers newsletter
- Monthly stock recommendations, news, and market analysis
- Access to the Motley Fool library of trader education materials
- A 30-day guarantee review, offering subscribers a complete refund of their membership fees if not satisfied
- World-class customer service and support
Motley Fool Rule Breakers Newsletter
The Motley Fool’s Rule Breakers module is exclusively devoted to high-growth investments.
Managed by David Gardner, Rule Breakers seeks out companies that are ahead of the business curve and are leading the way in innovation.
The newsletter summarizes the Rule Breakers portfolio.
Rule Breakers is geared toward aggressive investments, rather than the more passive, risk-averse type that’s seeking slow, steady returns.
Why Rule Breakers for Retirement Planning?
While there’s nothing wrong with consistent gains, a more aggressive style of investment is good for retirement planning in your early years, as younger people often have more room for risk.
Many of the stocks Rule Breakers picks are technology companies that are disrupting the market with groundbreaking products and services.
A Rule Breakers pick tends to be a burgeoning, small- to mid-cap company in an emerging industry.
Fool.com says that, as of August 2019, the Rule Breakers portfolio is returning 157% on initial investments, outpacing the S&P 500 index by a substantial margin.
While you should certainly diversify your investment portfolio, these explosive stocks can be a great addition to your retirement planning.
>> Tap into the Fool’s market-beating research now <<
Rule Your Retirement Stock Picks and Analysis
Robert Brokamp’s Rule Your Retirement service also offers a series of stock picks, sample portfolios, and analysis of retirement investment issues.
The Fool.com offer page notes that Rule Your Retirement subscribers get access to three sets of model portfolios, each one tailored to different investment strategies for retirement.
There’s a special focus on mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which are essentially stock portfolios in themselves.
Rule Your Retirement subscribers also get advice and tips on “maximizing your benefits” from Social Security, as well as occasional articles on retirement planning topics like estate planning and insurance.
Educational Library Access
The Motley Fool website features exhaustive materials to educate anyone from beginners to experts.
The website’s 1,000+ articles include how-to guides, stock market concepts, strategies, news, and advice.
They can help you build a general investment strategy or build upon an already sturdy foundation of knowledge.
Titles that cater to the Rule Your Retirement subscriber base include “7 Ways to Make the Most of Your 401(k),” “5 Long-Term Care Stats That Will Blow You Away,” and many more.
The range of topics Fool.com’s educational library covers is astonishing — it’s as complete a guide to retirement living as one’s likely to find from a stock-picking website.
30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Most of Fool.com’s premium services come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, including the Rule Your Retirement service.
Within the first 30 days, if you’re unsatisfied with the product for any reason, you can request a full refund.
World-Class Service and Support
Motley Fool subscribers can get answers to questions with an online contact form, or on a toll-free number during regular East Coast business hours.
Also, there are a generous number of message boards for the Fool.com community to help each other out or discuss pertinent investing topics.
Retirement planning can be exceptionally complicated, so it’s great to have a solid support team and an engaging online community at your back.
Rule Your Retirement’s Trading Track Record
The Motley Fool has tremendous credibility among the online investment community for a few reasons.
Nonetheless, they’re world-class investors who don’t take themselves too seriously.
The Fool team tailors their stock pick offerings for a wide range of investing styles and approaches, including active, passive, and balance investing.
Most importantly, their track record of stock picks is as solid as they come.
The Gardner Brothers each offer their lineup of stock picks.
Tom Gardner provides deep analysis for every company, and he looks at everything — including culture, valuation, and more.
Conversely, David focuses on emerging industries and the tech sector; as of 2021, David’s picks returned about 670% on average.
On the other hand, his brother, Tom, netted gains of nearly 202%.
>> Sign up now for more Motley Fool stock picks now <<
Motley Fool’s Rule Your Retirement Pros and Cons
The pros and cons of Rule Your Retirement essentially echo those of all the other premium services the Motley Fool offers.
Still, they are worth pointing out for anyone new to the service.
Here’s what we found in our Rule Your Retirement Review.
Pros
Let’s start with the many pros of the service.
Approachability of Rule Your Retirement
The Motley Fool has, over 30 years, demystified a lot about the stock market for everyday people.
The team’s insights and recommendations are geared for multiple strategies.
They make it basic enough for anyone to understand while still being authoritative enough to appeal to experts.
You could learn all you need to know about stocks from a subscription to one or two of the Motley Fool’s premium services, including Rule Your Retirement.
Rule Your Retirement Accuracy
Every stock pick carries a risk, and no stock-picking service ever gets it right 100% of the time.
That being said, Motley Fool’s record of stock selection is impressive.
Many of David Gardner’s Rule Breakers picks see returns very quickly.
Their common-sense approach to research and market fundamentals reinforces their method.
It also helps to have a certified financial planner in the mix.
Rule Your Retirement Opt-Ins and Alerts
The Motley Fool makes a lot of announcements: news bulletins, special reports, buy-and-sell alerts, and more.
With the Rule Your Retirement service, you can choose to be alerted by text message or email so you can make moves quickly.
Rule Your Retirement Affordability
The Motley Fool remains one of the better bargains in the increasingly crowded stock-pick industry.
Rule Your Retirement’s $99 annual fee ($149 for two years) can, in theory, pay for itself within a month or so if subscribers can capitalize on its investment ideas.
Focus of Rule Your Retirement
The Rule Your Retirement service is nuanced to address the most pertinent issues of post-retirement financing, planning, real estate, and even lifestyle.
It makes sense for the service to be so focused, as you have a certified financial planner plotting the course.
The Fool is diligent and concerned about their subscribers’ financial stability, and that focus especially shows in their well-crafted retirement planning silo.
>> Get instant access to these benefits now with Rule Your Retirement <<
Cons
There are only a few cons to this service.
Upselling with Rule Your Retirement
The Motley Fool is notorious for upselling their premium services — a lot.
Rule Your Retirement is a separate service from Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers, and all their other offerings.
If you subscribe to one service, Motley Fool will likely send emails asking you to sign up for all the other services they provide.
No Guarantee of Success with Rule Your Retirement
Not every single recommendation the Motley Fool makes pans out — once in a while, they’ll hit upon a clunker stock — and Rule Your Retirement is no exception.
However, this is the case with literally every stock-picking service in existence.
By the time you sign up with any of them, including the Rule Your Retirement service, you should know the inherent risk of every stock investment.
What Does Rule Your Retirement Cost?
An annual Rule Your Retirement subscription costs $99.
That’s about $8.30 a month — not too shabby when you consider that Motley Fool has services priced over $1,000.
Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement Discount
Two-year subscription plans are available at $149, a 25% discount off the full two-year price.
At that rate, the subscription could pay for itself in just a few weeks.
Is Rule Your Retirement Right for Me?
We found a lot to love in our Rule Your Retirement review — though it’s not surprising given that we’re talking about the Fool.
You’re never too young to start planning for retirement.
It’s not a topic most in their 20s like to think about.
However, the sooner you get familiar with the investments available to you, the more prepared you’ll be for the future.
Even small movements can have a huge effect down the road.
If you’re still in your 20s, 30s, or 40s, Rule Your Retirement has a lot to offer.
Retirement Planning Made Easy
Although it’s tailored for retirement investment, it contains more than enough general info about the stock market and ETFs that could pay off for young subscribers decades before they retire, too.
Even just a one-year membership may be worth it, as it can provide a solid base for ongoing investment decisions after it expires.
In particular, those who are already retired, or getting close to it, definitely stand to gain from Rule Your Retirement’s approach.
It answers virtually every question about personal finance that a retiree is bound to have, and not just about stocks and investments, either.
Especially if you’re a retiree that plans to remain active in trading, a multi-year subscription to the Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement service may be of great help.
Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement Review: Final Thoughts
It’s hard to overstate the Motley Fool’s influence on the stock-picking industry (and the stock market in general).
They’ve maintained a persistent presence on the financial radar for almost three decades.
As a result, they have become the unofficial standard for up-and-coming stock-picking services.
With Rule Your Retirement, the Motley Fool and Robert Brokamp offer common-sense advice for a myriad of issues involving retirement finances.
The Right Tools to Build a Retirement Plan
In conclusion, we found in our Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement review that the service lives up to the Fool name.
And at just $99, It’s easily worth its price and more.
Plus, it has a money-back guarantee, so there’s no reason NOT to take it for a test spin.
So if you need help planning for retirement, Motley Fool Rule Your Retirement should be on your radar.
John Parker
John Parker is a finance writer and journalist based in the Outer Banks, NC. He worked in finance for several years before branching out into his writing career. He is The Stock Dork's chief review writer and works with several other online publications.