First-round Madness brings talk of retirement, sharp money and Shockers

So I get an email urging me to enter a March Madness bracket into a contest to win big.

How depressing.

It comes from my retirement planner, who is telling me this is my only chance to even think about retiring: win a contest.

Most of you have retirement in mind: yours and mine.

Sometimes I get the impression folks are looking forward to my retirement more than I am.

I checked with my Northwestern Mutual retirement planner Chad Chatham recently and he said, “You would be in great shape right now if you died.”

Or, he suggested, work another decade or so, retire and then drop dead the following day.

He said things won’t go well should I elect to retire and keep on living with the wife. The solution there seems simple, but that’s a “48 Hours” mystery for later.

I don’t know how other people do it, but my retirement planner offers to sit down with me and go over the bracket.

I recall earlier conversations, ones where he has pulled out charts and graphs while talking about the stock market. I remember him saying, “I can’t predict the future, but I explain history.”

So then he picks Harvard to beat Vanderbilt in the first round of the tournament, while telling me Harvard hasn’t played in the tournament since 1946. So why is he predicting a win when history says Harvard shouldn’t even be here?

He gets all emotional when talking about Wisconsin winning “because that’s Mother Mutual’s home base.” A minute later he’s picking Wisconsin to get beaten by Harvard because Jeremy Lin went to Harvard.

It’s not unlike how most of us pick which mutual funds to invest in.

Later he tells me he’s going with Gonzaga because his wife went to school in Oregon ... and what’s that got to do with Gonzaga, which is located in Washington?

“Sometimes I get a little confused,” he says, and this is the guy who is handling my money.

It probably goes without saying I would have more money if I didn’t go to Las Vegas every year with the daughter for the first four days of the NCAA tournament. But I remain committed to taking her anywhere there might be a lot of single guys on the prowl.

This year we’re including the Grocery Store Bagger on our annual trek to Mandalay Bay so I can spend even more money on my family. By the way, how does anyone in this country who has kids, a son-in law and grandkids ever save enough money to retire?

I got the feeling my retirement guy was also waiting for a Las Vegas invite, and we’ll see just how patient he can be.

Would you want to spend four days and bet 48 games with someone dressed in a three-piece suit who not only runs six days a week with his wife, but lets it slip she had to fill out most of his bracket because she knows more about sports than he does?

What are we going to talk about? He’s run more than 40,000 miles in his life, swam from Alcatraz to the mainland and weighs 167 pounds, the same as the day he graduated from high school?

That speaks to the kind of discipline you want in a money manager, not a degenerate to hang with in Vegas. That’s why the Bagger is joining us.

Now as for setting me up for retirement, do I go with the retirement planner who has Duke making it to the Final Four rather than Kentucky, Murray State advancing to the Elite Eight and Texas and Davidson scoring upsets in Round 1?

Or the Bagger, who says go with first-round winners in West Virginia, North Carolina State and Belmont.

I call Jay Rood, vice president of MGM Resorts supervising 12 race and sports books across Nevada, and ask him who has the best chance to be successful this weekend — the stuffed shirt or the kid who still wears his baseball cap backward?

“The kid,” Rood says. “He’s probably on the Internet all day checking things out while the other guy is working for a living.”

The Bagger, though, will be betting only parlays, putting all three of his choices together.

“Then he’s got no shot,” Rood says.

As for advice, Rood says to be careful listening to the talking heads on ESPN who suddenly start touting the same team.

“Don’t let them change your mind,” he says, noting, for example, Belmont is suddenly getting a lot of attention.

OK, so where’s the “sharp money” going so far?

“On Belmont,” he says with a laugh, and who knew the guys at ESPN were sharp?

As for first-round plays, he says, “We’re taking sharp money on New Mexico [over Long Beach State], Creighton [over Alabama] and St. Louis [over Memphis].”

As for a team that might advance further than most might think: Wichita State.

“Right now VCU is on the memory card for most people after going to the Final Four last year,” Rood says. “Wichita State will be easy to overlook. I think Wichita State can go as far as VCU did last year.”

That would mean Wichita State beating Kentucky, and Rood has Kentucky winning it all, so like any guy running a sports book, he’s figured out how to win no matter what.

We know this, Rood will retire comfortably.

t.j.simers@latimes.com