Tag: how to retire
Why do People Struggle the First Year in Retirement? We were surprised!
Harvey 0 Comments Planning your Retirement Retire Wealthy & Wise Retiree Tips and Tricks
the first year of retirement isn't always the dreamy Escape many people imagine no it's not maybe one of the most significant transitions in your life it was for us and it probably is going to be for you and that's because it's filled with all the unexpected challenges roadblocks and adjustments you have to make in this new pH and I think it's really important to understand that if you fail to navigate this first year you might find yourself questioning your entire decision to retire and today we're going to give you some strategies to feel empowered to overcome any of the struggles you might find do we ever feel like we made a mistake and we should still be working I do sometimes do you I do back in your corporate life I oh my good I do I know but listen and I'm sure some people do maybe but if you're new here I'm Mark Rollins and this is my wife Jody Rollins we don't focus on the financial aspects of retirement but rather life lifestyle Health relationships and more and we're so happy you're here today and it really would be helpful to us if you could share this video with anyone else that you know or care about that's in their retirement Journey too and you know join our free Facebook community at retirement transformed we go live each week and offer guidance support strategies to make this chapter the best it can be so before we jump in I want to remind you that this first year of retirement really sets the foundation for all the future years to come so you want to be able to equip yourself with the knowledge that you need you want to stay proactive and embrace this new Journey with a lot of confidence you know we know dozens of people who are floundering in this first year of retirement and it's really not pretty to watch I was at a bridal shower this past weekend and a woman across the table from me said um you know I heard her talking to someone else and she said I'm terrified and I thought oo this will be an interesting conversation we're at a bridal shower I'm not sure what there is to be terrified about but she's a teacher and this is her last year so in June she's done done after 35 years of teaching the third grade and she said I'm I'm literally terrified I don't know where to start that is scary and it it's scary for everyone I'm not saying it's scarier for a teacher or doctor whatever but if this is all you've known and you know teachers have a special kind of thing they they work from the middle of August through the end of June and then I have the summer off right and you do that for 30 40 years right and it's a routine that you're comfortable with and you get enjoy it you get fulfillment right what do you how do you feel that so the first year is really really important to get that right my dad screwed it up big time I mean he without a doubt he's a good example of someone who made a lot of mistakes in his first year and I you know I I tell people that retirement actually killed my dad because he just didn't know how to get through this first year and set himself off in a spiral which yeah he was he was unprepared and a lot of people do enter this phase of their life maybe prepared financially but unprepared emotionally and with all of the kind of red flags that start to come their way you know your dad really just couldn't reinvent himself he lived in the used to world yeah it was it was bad but you know we do know plenty of people who think this phase is easy and for some people they actually make the transition smoothly but for others like my dad you know like I said it can actually kill you if you don't really get it right so we should cut the mystery and jump into what people really struggle with yeah and I think the first thing we see in people that we know and clients that we have and talks that we have given as well as the research that we do is this major loss of identity that hits you probably a week or two after you retire ire yeah and for a long time whether you're a teacher or a doctor or a lawyer or an insurance agent or a corporate executive we derived a lot of our selfworth from our job roles right I mean that's just the way it was and it you know when you first got out of college and started your job it was one thing but by the time you ended up you were at a much higher very senior level in your company and that was your identity and when that identity no longer exists you really find yourself in a strange danger zone right you know without an identity in retirement you can have feelings of worthlessness and and really have a hard time finding your purpose and passion so it's really a reinvention of source so in your first year this is going to happen you're going to lose your identity and you really need to start thinking about creating a new one you don't want to go too long like my dad did and spend the next 10 years holding on to or feeling sad about losing your identity you want to make a new one it's really really important now the other thing that people struggle with in the first year of retirement is financial concerns and that's normal right because you're moving from a time in your life when you have a steady paycheck or an expense account or whatever it might be health insurance all of that is just coming at you automatically yeah and then it stops it does stop and then you have your nest egg and Market volatility can add to your stress you know if you've planned properly up to that moment but then have to make different financial decisions moving forward maybe riskier or less risky Investments depending on you know how you're advised you find yourself in a little bit of a budgeting process that becomes really crucial to how you're going to live this first year well it's a good point and we spend 30 40 Years of our life accumulating assets right just adding to it adding to it adding to it 401 okay whatever it might be but then that stops and now you go into this new phase called uh decumulation where you're actually taking your savings and your assets and living on that and that is mentally is a really hard financial concern so in the first year you've really got to make sure that you figure that out and get comfortable with it and have a good plan a good financial plan or you know really nail your financials yeah really and then you know we hear a lot from people you know that they're bored they're bored in retirement you know they don't really have a routine that they can stick to and they really struggle that first year getting away from you know the the structure and accountability that they had with their work days just this morning I was down watching the sun come up and I ran into my friend who retired a year ago and he keeps himself busy but you know I was checking with him and say how's it going cuz it's it's okay it's okay how's your you know how's your new uh career that you're doing he's a he's a writer now and he's writing he said well it's interesting you know I watch you guys on YouTube and you talk a lot about um having routines and I find that it's easier not having a routine which it is but then he doesn't do what he wants to do which frankly is harder if you don't have some routines built in and some plans for your day in the first year of retirement you're going to get used to not having routines you're going to get used to not getting things done and you're not going to like it you just are not going to like it so I think that it's easier to have routines maybe harder to get moving in that direction but once you have them your life becomes so much easier I don't know how you think about no I I agree with you I do know we get a lot of push back on people who want to just abandon routine because they've lived 35 or 40 years in a strict routine and I really advise people I think it's okay to let it go for a little while but not too long so that you know as they say the proverbial horse is out of the barn and now you can't get it back you wake up every day what am I going to do today that is not a good position to be in for a whole year for sure now the other thing that you can struggle with and you might struggle with right out of the box when you leave your career is social isolation I know for me I had you know 80 people working in my company I was the CEO and I had great relationship with these people and it was kind of like Fridays were what are you going to do this weekend what's going to happen Mondays were how was your weekend what did you do how are the kids how are the grandkids all of this stops right and then it's just you and me I really I really it's important to remember that um you know those relationships that you had at work even extending out to you know I knew a lot of you know my co-worker spouses and their children and I watch them grow and go through college you know you have that longevity of your story your relationship story with these folks and some of them you will bring with you but a lot of them get kind of left behind in the situational kind of friendship bucket um so the big message here is you need to is to replace it you've got to find Community whether it's joining a health club or you know we do pickle ball we talk about that a lot going back to church or religious institution Social Clubs community centers Gym classes gym classes reaching out to your friends make a list of all your friends and start contacting them because you don't want to struggle with social isolation in your first year it's really going to bring you down you know and the fourth thing that we really wanted to talk about was your health and physical activity because I know we did this when we retired you know we were like you know we're just going to go ahead and relax and eat and drink and just sleep late and you know we got a little sluggish there for a while and it wasn't healthy for us and we did course correct and um you know not saying seven days a week you know 30 days out of the month we're always on track we do stay on the health and wellness you know Mission because as you age health challenges come your way it just happens well the other big thing that you could find yourself struggling with is when you first retire in your first year depending upon your circumstances with your partner in in this case jod and I as a married couple that relationship can struggle because we both had work we had our careers we had time at home but every all the Dynamics change when both of you now are home all day long and Frank of this business for us is really helpful because it gives us something to do together but we also do a lot of things on our own we do and and you know while the business is helpful it adds stress and boundaries become even more important I think so if you're starting a business in retirement which we should maybe do a series on that we are we definitely are because there is some Milestones that we uncovered well the other thing that people struggle with in the first year is getting used to setting goals like you said a lot of people say gosh you guys do all this planning and stuff but you need to if you don't set some goals for yourself because you were used to that during your career right you set work rated Milestones um you might find yourself without goals a little bit aimless and at least having personal goals on your physical or whatever it might be yeah I think the big difference with goals is now you have a chance to hold yourself accountable and your goals can be aimed at things that you're really interested in right and then if you're really interested in for example I've been trying to I've been practicing I don't know that I'll ever end the practice but you know different things in yoga and I set goals for for myself no one else is holding me accountable I mean you would have no idea no I but you come home and you tell me about the new stances like the the the one-legged chicken is that one of the things it is not one but we'll do a whole another yoga series I guess well I think again having goals is really important and you know just a a couple more things your emotional well-being it's easy to get in this first year and all of a sudden find yourself sad and down and cre uh you know that stuff will will creep into your life if you're not doing everything we said you know what's funny about this this emotional well-being one because I'm so sad all we actually had a little bit of a tussle this morning you think and sometimes I wonder if in retirement you have more time to think about things mhm and you know maybe you create a mountain out of a mole hill you think no no no what is this I didn't do that yes you did my finger never you're the one that built this huge mountain this morning out of a mole hill so you know I wonder if this is something to really focus on you know you know recognize emotions that you have and consider even you know seeking some counsel on it so now I need a therapist for our relationship this this whole first year of retirement can be very very difficult without a doubt definitely it's meant to be fun and exciting so we don't want to find ourselves in a rut and unsure what to do next yeah I mean trust us when it when we tell you if you get into some good rhythm in your first year the rest of your retirement can become all that you dreamed of like our retirement right that's so funny we hope you enjoyed this video and if you did this next one a happy retirement is in your control we talk about how to bring healthy habits into your life so that you can flourish in retirement so watch this one next
Don’t get bored in retirement! Steps so you don’t fall into this retirement trap.
Harvey 0 Comments Planning your Retirement Retire Wealthy & Wise Retiree Tips and Tricks
because there are many people who leave retirement with a huge sense of relief and excitement you have your life back maybe they were shocked when a month or six months or a year or even longer went by and they finally hit a wall for some it creeps up sooner and others it hits later and harder and that you get that feeling of okay so so now what or the feeling like everything feels a little out of control although I'm bored which is kind of a strange juxtaposition today we want to focus on how to prevent boredom in this phase of life boredom is the silent killer that can end your retirement way too soon if you begin to let the days unfold with Lila or no planning you're going to find yourself with idle time and that can lead down a path of self-destruction or at a minimum feel lost and a little scared about what the next 30 years of your life will more and there is boredom leads to loneliness which leads to a list of chronic illnesses such as heart disease anxiety depression and more today we're going to give you some easy Surefire steps to make sure this doesn't happen to you and you're going to finish this video knowing that what you can expect and make a plan to avoid this largest retirement Challenge and stay to the end where we're going to give you three easy steps to bounce back if you feel bored but before we go any further we want to introduce ourselves my name is Mark Rollins and I'm Jody Rollins and we started retirement transformed not only for us but also for you and the 10 000 people turning 65 every day now we don't focus on the financial aspects of retirement but rather lifestyle Health relationships and more if you're new here please hit the Subscribe button and also the notification button so you'll get notified when our videos come out all right let's get into it during your career or if you are a stay-at-home uh mom or dad you were busy right 40 to 60 hours a week and you had a built-in schedule you did if you had children then that was your schedule running them from place to place organizing being involved and you had routines and you had routines that were commonplace maybe you got up at six there was coffee you checked emails maybe had breakfast you did a little exercise that was what our morning was like but it was just automatic we didn't even think about it we had to do that right and then at night at night we would uh come home uh open a bottle of wine cook some dinner and put another bottle have another bottle of wine watch some TV and almost busy Beyond busy in fact we made busy a thing in our house yeah during the week it was it was sort of Controlled Chaos yeah so sometimes it was just chaos weekends for us was rest catching up doing chores doing laundry going dry cleaners having fun with friends but then and they landed that's right you land in retirement and there's this huge relief that now you're free to commit and do whatever you want to do without a schedule and you're free from your from you're free from being Tethered to your career with all of those responsibilities and time commitments that's right and it opens up I remember our first Monday after retirement we retired at the end of 2018 on a Friday at three in the afternoon we walked out of the office with our boxes with our boxes and I remember that Monday the weekend was kind of cool but I remember Monday we still got up at six because our bodies were used to it we still had the coffee we still watched the news but then we had more coffee more news and we said hey we've never really been able to watch the morning shows let's do that all of a sudden it was 10 30 and we're looking at each other like now what do we do well and then if you think about it on that Monday where the blues were just starting to sink in we decided to shower and go out for lunch right and what we didn't really click into was most restaurants were closed on Mondays that we would go to so we came home when we made a list of chores we needed to do around the house well wait a second what we were going to do you made a list of chores I needed to do around the house which wasn't really fair but that's not true you wanted to keep me busy well and then Mark will say things like let's go to Home Depot and before I know it we're at like nine other stops and we finally get to Home Depot well we also decided let's start a Netflix series which we had never really gotten into no so all of a sudden it's six o'clock in the afternoon and we hadn't done anything other than made a list went to Home Depot watched three hours of TV and now it's time to cook dinner and then before we knew it Tuesday looked like that Wednesday looked like that Thursday looked like that and Bam there we are with a board retirement and that was embarrassing to say boredom had set in and we we didn't even want to say to each other but there it was right it was there so we got to work we did we dug ourselves out of that feeling and invested some real time in figuring out how would we fill our days you know maybe you had a different experience because there are many people who leave retirement with a huge sense of relief and excitement you have your life back maybe they were shocked when a month or six months or a year or even longer went by and they finally hit a wall for some it creeps up sooner and others it hits later and harder and that you get that feeling of okay so so now what or the feeling like everything feels a little out of control although I'm bored which is kind of a strange juxtaposition today we want to focus on how to prevent boredom in this phase of life so the first thing you need to do is you need to do some planning now I know I know what you're thinking and you've heard us say this before you've heard us say this before but there's no way you went through a 30 or 40 year career without planning so you need to plan in retirement too because you want to plan on how to fill this new found 40 plus hours of free time that come your way and it's going to guarantee you have at least one activity each day to look forward to you know it's also going to open up you know opportunity for you to make some commitments yes you know we had a client Deb who ended up making a commitment to her College roommates after she retired that she was going to do 52 new things a year that was one new thing every week for a year sometimes alone sometimes with her friends but that's the other thing about this phase book sometime with your friends go to a gym play golf with a friend just go have a cup of coffee or carve out time for your partner Jody and I carve out a lot of time during the week for each other and I would say also especially as a prior recovering working executive mom workaholic maybe you know carve some time out for just yourself what is it that you want to do but again by planning you're going to open up your calendar and you're going to be able to make these commitments so morning time yeah our coffee we sit and chat no TV we just it's funny because we watch we did the whole thing in the beginning with the Netflix series and binging we've really stepped away from TV we don't do it that much if it's a rainy day and we get the urge maybe but our coffee time is pretty sacred I think that's important it is and you know we don't even really turn on the news anymore because there's so many ways that we get news right so news comes at us through our phones and our laptops and you know YouTube and all these other people besides the planning that we do when we're having coffee we just have nice conversations we chat about the kids and things we're going to do or dinner plans or opportunities each of us may have been given for the week and we also talk about what we're grateful for yeah now a lot of people say okay we heard you say that but what do you fill your days with well we obviously have this business but you also need to find something for for ourselves a hobby exercise reading research go to the library when was the last time you were in the library and got lost in some research on a hobby or a or anything that you wanted to learn something about or spend time with a friend you know having a community in retirement is really critical I also think this is a great time you know I know for me weekends were filled with chores when I was working because that was the only time I had a chance to do them but they were always the emergency chores well there are also chores that like kind of overwhelmed me because I had to get it all done now you know I can space out you know I can clean a closet I can clean a drawer I can organize part of the basement I can take a load of stuff to a charity you know so you know adding a chore or something like that to do each day actually makes it a little more fun and a lot less pressure you know the other thing that we've found is that we retired with closets filled with work clothes that we haven't worn in years we've already purged twice right really give serious thought to getting rid of your work clothes so that someone else can wear them you know I think that's really really important you know I think it's important to remember that building each day with a plan begin with your plan it'll do wonders for your boredom it almost negates the opportunity for boredom to get in plus I think it's okay at the end of the day when we're having dinner whatever to check in and see how did we do today right what was it what was the best thing that we did today and what are we looking forward to tomorrow right you know if you stick to this schedule with the morning planning making commitments and activities and filling your days putting in some down time too you'll feel less bored and more excited about what tomorrow brings so the last thing we want to share with you to make sure boredom does not creep into your retirement is to protect your weekends we did talk about that a little bit how weekends were so important to us during our career but they're really important now too we really like our weekends we do and you know we we fight that urge and we fight that wave and we actually fight some clients on the fact that they say shouldn't every day be a Saturday now that I'm retired but our weekends we still do fun weekends right and our response is no you know protect your weekend Savor your weekend still make Saturday Saturday plus you do want to plan some things we did another video on this we want you want to plant some things so you know what day of the week it is right you don't want to just feel like every day is a Saturday but we do certain things on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays and all of that but the other thing about weekends is a lot of our friends are younger and they still work right so we plan things to do on the weekend with them because they're more available yeah I mean even if it's dinner out or a farmer's market or breakfast or you know a day trip to a to a village nearby we plan that on the weekends really savoring that weekend time you know what you don't want to do is be a weekend homebody because because there are crowds you know it's okay these days to get out you know bring your own crowd into the weekend bring your own energy into the weekend so we're big fan of weekends so make your weekends fun all right we're at the end and we wanted to give you three steps to get unstuck if you feel like you're bored first thing is as soon as you feel bored do something fun for yourself do not sit there in your sadness work on the hobby read for an hour call a bunch of friends just pick up your phone and call your friends don't just sit there and lament that you're bored you know something easy you can do is to just turn on some music loud music dance sing I like loud music Mark doesn't so much but I turn on music when I feel that boredom creeping in the second thing is spend some time planning a vacation Dream a Little Google some fun places pick some great hotels or Resorts make it a project that when you have time you feel that you can work on it get a folder include kids don't include kids include another couple talk to your spouse where do you want to go and how can you dream there's actually science around the fact that you get happier oh yeah when you're planning a vacation as opposed to even just going on the vacation so yeah if you get happier planning your day if you just sit there and plan your day even if you don't do everything it gets exciting right all right right you're feeling bored here's the third thing you can do get out of the house and take a walk fresh air if it's raining if it's snowy it doesn't matter dress for the weather go to a beach and walk along the beach or walk in the in the woods on a trail the Japanese call that Forest bathing if you're bored get out and move you know feeling bored is not a good feeling and it's not an option for you in retirement if it continues for a long period of time it can be debilitating when it kicks in adjust and do something to get you out of this funk now if you want to learn more ideas on having fun in retirement check out this video right here we just posted a while ago and it gives you a lot of great ideas and if you enjoyed this please share with your friends and also please subscribe by clicking the Subscribe button below and finally join our free Facebook Community the link is also in the notes below thanks for being with us today and we'll be back again soon
Top Tips to Declutter Your Home for Retirement
Harvey 0 Comments Planning your Retirement Retire Wealthy & Wise Retiree Tips and Tricks
living in a cluttered home filled with too many possessions that don't mean anything to you can create stress anxiety and depression and you have to know that this clutter is actually stealing from you whether you know it or not it's stealing your energy it's certainly stealing your space it's stealing your money and it's definitely stealing your happiness you know it's been proven that people are less productive in a cluttered environment now look this idea of decluttering is so hard for some people and maybe you have a little bit of a hoarder mentality I think we all do we don't like to throw certain things away or maybe you always disagree with your partner on what gets thrown away yeah exactly like that stupid frying pan from college that you had there had Teflon peeling off and was killing us one egg at a time you know clutter breeds more clutter Mark's mom loved pigs pigs everywhere not live pigs but she did like live pigs pigs in every way shape or form if they were printed on plates painted on cups she had knickknacks years of pigs every gift she was given I swear had a pig on it yeah and because over the years I was buying my mom so many Pig things Jody started buying meat Pig things and I said no no I'm not the pig person no only after so this is well it's an example of someone who has a I don't know roosters or pigs or pillows would do tchotchke names on it oh that's nice but then people start giving you all this stuff and in the end your house is filled with it I mean think about it how do we get clutter in the first place and if and if you go back to what we just said you do have objects that remind you of important things or objects that have sentimental value those are hard ones we're going to talk about that at the end actually how to declutter those but then there's the expensive yeah oh really like the snowshoes that you purchased top of the line snowshoes that we have those are going to my niece who lives in Vermont they've been going to Lucy for years okay so this is what this is how this is going to go today but so to your point an expensive purchase sometimes we're afraid to let go right right we also take a lot of comfort in our possessions sure you know they make us feel comfortable you know people give us gifts and maybe you don't really want them but you hate to just get rid of them because sometimes they look for them when they come into your house well we're talking about that at the end too because that's not fair that we don't get rid of it just because they gave it to us right so appliances from your kids wait we use the air fryer twice let's jump into decline we need better air frying stuff come on recipes yes all right so if you have a good air frying recipe stick it below yeah let's talk about our process right now this might seem mundane and very granular but this is what you need to do to start and you want to start small so you have some easy wins just try it try taking your kitchen utensil drawer and take that apart first start with the area above it can't have all sorts of stuff clean that out but then take your drawer open it up and everything comes out as you're taking it out if you know something's definitely going to go in the garbage put in the garbage but get everything out clean the drawer and then if you need any kind of new separators or organizational stuff you know you want to get that ahead of time well and I'd be careful I mean you know maybe you have two of something so it doesn't go in the garbage but it goes into a bit where you're going to well I know I'm just saying I mean I'm just garbage things well if there's something in there that's garbage I'm saying put it in the garbage don't put it on the counter right but if there's something that you can donate so here's the things you can do you take it out and you want to sort it some it's either going to go in the garbage you're going to donate it it's going to go back in the drawer or saved items might go in a different drawer so you might reorganize a little bit so you can actually start a new junk drawer no and we're not in a junk drawer we're in a utensil door you're right but it might belong somewhere else this is what I do you don't do this I know you mess up I clean them I love this stuff very true but you want to keep going until the counter is clean and the drawer is full and maybe you need to make a list of new things you need like the rusty can opener doesn't work anymore but do one drawer get it done and look at it and you'll feel great and then keep going if you have the energy but do not start a new drawer never mark never start a new drawer unless you have the commitment to finish it correct right don't look at me I'm like the king of this oh my goodness so just take pictures and leave them below there's nothing worse than having a drawer half empty on the counter in there and then you won't touch it for days yep but there's also some Rules of Engagement if you're married or in a relationship or you live with someone if you have a roommate right yeah you can't you can't create this d-cut cluttering plan and have it lead to fighting you know you got to make it fun you got to make it purposeful and you could even turn it into a game you know you can agree on some items and maybe you choose not to agree on other items and I know we have a few of those well the other thing to do is if I'm going to clean a drawer I make sure Jody is gone for the day and I do it and then she doesn't even notice it but it feels so much cleaner I feel great huh what do you mean is that when that happens that's when it happens you think a little munchkin comes in the middle of night and does it no so you're going through this process start small start small start with a drawer make sure you can finish it and make sure you stay till the end we're going to give you some tips on decluttering the sentimental items that's where we really get stuck yeah we'll all do all right so let's tackle the bathroom okay now we've done the kitchen kitchen drawer not the whole kitchen which is testing we're getting warmed up all right now we're in the bathroom okay another easy one under the sink in the drawers medicine cabinet get some divisors for down below but most of the crap down there you could throw out you just don't need it you know what's funny is there are dates and expiration dates on a lot of things you know and I know there's debate whether they're true expiration dates or not but I know when we did this recently and we went through like half of our sunscreens had expired well yeah they moved all over the place and so you know you got to look at the dates look at things that are half empty things that you can combine things you don't use anymore and pay particular attention to medicines right and you can't flush everything down like you have to figure that out but the same rules apply when you're taking everything out it's either garbage donate goes back or go somewhere else and you need to be rigid with yourself you can't mess around with this you got to make sure you do it right all right so now you've had some good and easy wins and everybody feels like I should start a new business how to how to declutter people's houses I would love to do like Maria Conde or whatever yeah we should switch shift from retirement transform to clean your house I should just go out more in the house would maybe be cleaner because apparently you do it well all right so we've had some easy wins everyone's feeling great now you got to figure out how to do the rest of the house so you want to set a time frame to finish it let's say six months well you can do six months I I would say do this you know count your rooms before you set your time frame so if you have three bedrooms a living room dining room and kitchen you know that's six so then the six month time frame give yourself a month in each room I was going to say a week oh I would do a week in each of those rooms and I would say the attic the garage and the basement for Less you are definitely the expert oh yeah because they're complicated they're loaded with things that always kind of move around the house and that's where they end up well they're also loaded with things that aren't necessarily yours what do you mean so our basement attic garage is loaded with things that are the kids well that too yeah yeah but the bedrooms that's another process and I think it's it's individual but you have to take your dresser take everything out touch every piece of stuff that goes in there and put it on your bed you do my dresser when I'm gone no I never touch your dresser but it's either going to go back in the dresser it's going to donate or it's going to go and that's where donating really feels good if you have you know things that you're not wearing or things that you're not using that you know other people can use and you get them together and you put them in the car and you donate them that really does feel good bedrooms are tough because you tend some people tend to have piles of things boxes and all of that so you just have to start somewhere and keep working your way around and that's why maybe six months is a good time but I do the stuff in my hanging my hanging clothes you know if I look at a piece and I haven't worn it in a year it gets donated and what's funny is when I go through that process every year sometimes I always find a few pieces that I haven't worn in three years right but now that you have some Rhythm let's in and then move on to the dining room if you have one you know you might have a dining room cabinet that's full of glasses and platters and you know just make sure you're using them all or donate them or hand them down to their kids if they're family heirlooms living which by the way the kids don't love like China my kids don't anymore China Crystal they kind of look at it and go like no what am I going to do with that living rooms you're going to run into problems because you're going to probably have a lot of sentimental things in there like we said we're going to cover that at the end so keep listening but it's the same process yeah and and I can tell you firsthand so while you're cleaning drawers and potentially under the sink I got stuck cleaning the attic before we moved out of New York so the attic can definitely be a multi-day project and here is really the time to be really clear with yourself that you're gonna get rid of junk I mean just yeah I need a dumpster that's where junk ends up and believe me I learned that firsthand attic basement garage yeah they're tough multi-day projects might want to do it on a weekend and then clean the areas up you might benefit from putting some shelving in there or some racks we like to use those racks that have wheels on them so you can move them around the garage and clean it when you need to but right it's really um it's for me it's a fun process it's painful sometimes but in the end gosh you just feel so much better well listen thanks for staying to the end but now let's talk about what to do with the sentimental things you know first thing you can do is see if your kids or any other family members want it and believe me we tried that we got a few things from our parents we didn't know what to do with them and I remember our kids looking at us with a few Furniture pieces and said no we don't want your brown furniture so um we had a hard time we actually had to donate it donated a lot all right so with sentimental things you need to be intentional is it something that we actually use or is it just feeding memories if it's that I don't know that spoon in the kitchen you never use it because it's all crappy and old and Rusty get rid of it if you're not using it are you talking about my grapefruit spoon with the serrated edges no that's that's up on a mount on the wall with a plaque my grandmother game but don't keep these things in your life just if it's for the memory if it's feeding memories maybe limit the number like one photo one spoon for grapefruit one serving dish one tool from your dad one beloved heirloom just keep one but not all of them it's just it's just too much gosh that's a hard one what you just went through I know I guess the other thing you could do and this is a big project but turn your photos into a digital format you know get the digital picture frame what is the name of our picture frame it's called Remember uh Adventure we'll find out what it is put a link below it's amazing it just flips through pictures all day long well you can upload them from anywhere that you have Wi-Fi and you can also Grant access to other people to upload so if one of the kids takes a great picture when they're here and they have access they can upload that so instead of having hundreds of photos just send baskets do that and it's hard to have hundreds of photos if then something happens to you like your mom we have 12 moving boxes of photos that your mom had now you also can make a scrapbook which is kind of fun and if you're not really good at this you can hire someone to do it but take some photos some letters some cards and notes and put them in a scrapbook put some handwritten notes in the column one why that item is important to you and maybe it's something you could pass on to your kids and this and this fifth one is hard for me be a burden you know if someone gives you a gift and you know you're gracious and you accept it and but it's not something you want to keep forever you can't keep it forever because that's really how clutter starts all over again look this is a hard process but in the end you lighten the load you make space in your home and you make space in your mind and you're gonna feel happier really having more empty space in your home will make you feel a difference in so many areas of your life now if you like this video you're really going to like this next one do this instead of downsizing now not everyone wants to downsize so it's not going to work for everyone but in this video we walk you through ways you can make your current home feel fresh and new and we give you 10 easy low-cost tips to upgrade your house so watch this next
Singapore: Your Ideal Retirement Haven Unveiled! Here’s Why
Harvey 0 Comments Planning your Retirement Retire Wealthy & Wise Retiree Tips and Tricks
Why is Singapore one of the top choices for
retirement? Huh? Really? Isn't Singapore one of the most expensive cities in the world? Hello!
Sky high property prices and ridiculous car prices with COE shooting through the roof! So
why would Singapore be considered one of the top choices for retirement? As we Singaporeans
always say Sure boh? Well before I set some context to today's video, a short introduction.
I'm John,
one half of the Corporate Breakout Couple. In 2020, my wife Fran and I retired young in Singapore and
we love making retirement videos. Okay, let me set some context. First, I'm addressing Singaporeans and
Permanent Residents and because this group of people will have no issues staying in Singapore
for the long term. For foreigners without PR, I'd like to share with you some reasons in today's
videos why you want to make Singapore your Top Choice as a retirement destination.
And that
means of course getting a leg into Singapore first working here, getting your employment pass
and then getting your PR and then eventually getting your Singapore citizenship. Allow
me to share with you the beauties about my beloved Singapore. For one, we have world-class
infrastructures and amenities. For example the transport system. The public transport system is
amazing from the buses to the MRTs, they're so well connected and very nicely air conditioned and very
clean as well. Number two: Safety and Security. That is something that we should never ever take for
granted, even though Singapore has a low crime rate. Remember low crime doesn't mean no crime.
Number three: Singapore is a cosmopolitan city and diverse in culture. As a foreigner, you will
feel right at home here. Number four: Singapore is a clean and green city, one of the cleanest in
the world. Look what's going on behind me. People are cleaning up the beach voluntarily. Number
five: Racial harmony.
Singapore has many races and multiple religions and Singapore has
done a great job to keep everyone living harmoniously. I would like to talk about the cost
of living in Singapore. In today's times, the perception of Singapore Incorporated, that's how
we call it, is that it's a very expensive city to live in. That may be true from outside looking
in but for Singaporean and PR who's working and living here, it's important to have context with
respect to your earning capacity, your salary, with respect to your quality of life which is your
basic needs and your wants, and importantly with respect to your purchasing power in Sing dollars.
If you actually dive in into the numbers, you'll find that there's certain cost categories that's
pretty affordable such as your public transport and your Hawker food. If you are Singaporean or PR
earning $5,000 SGD every month and the cost of a unlimited bus and MRT ride card cost $128 SGD,
that's only 2.5% of your total salary. What about Hawker food? You can find meals going
for three to four SGD and that's a very small percentage of the salary.
What about cooking
at home? Cooking at home can be really economical as well and you can find everything in Fair
price and Cold Storage, whatever you need. As much as Singaporeans don't want to admit it, the cost of
basic needs is actually not as high, with respect to the average household income. So is it really
as expensive as what we are complaining about? Let me tell you something. What I really believe
is it's the lifestyle inflation that's causing all this talk and I'm talking about hipster cafes..
can you live without traveling every quarter, half yearly or every yearly? Can you live without your
restaurants, your Japanese, your Italian food? That is the lifestyle inflation that's causing all
this talk.
What about housing? It's true housing can be pretty expensive in Singapore, even
for public housing like HDBs. HDB prices are no longer starting at $100,000 to $200,000 SGD
but going for $400,000/ $500,000 SGD. However as a Singaporean, I know that much of your property
loan can be serviced by CPF, which you cannot take out anyway and the government gives a lot of
subsidies for first timers and not forgetting, most importantly the prices of property in
Singapore generally goes up so you're holding an item of value.
Therefore, your top three expenses
your transport your groceries and food and your housing which is mostly serviced by your CPF, they
are actually pretty low percentage of your total income. In today's video, I actually like to cover
some technical aspects about Singapore, namely the financial stability and strength and the
geographical location and I'm doing comparisons because I've been traveling around together with
my wife, going around the different places and looking at different retirement destinations
and I will still name Singapore as one of the top choices.
Singapore is a Global Financial Hub,
growing from strength to strength. Our pro business environment, our regulatory system which is very
effective, our infrastructure that supports all that and attraction of top talents substantiates
that. For that reason, we have attracted lots of high net worth individuals into Singapore.
For example Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, one of the largest hedge funds and
we have Google co-founder Sergey Brin, they set up Family Offices here during and after
the pandemic. And we also have high net worth individuals who have converted to Singaporeans
like Eduardo from Facebook, you have Li Xiting, you have Forrest Li, who are from China.
We have lots and lots more bringing more money into Singapore. It's no wonder when the Singapore
Government released their Securities and Bonds, the demand is so strong from your MAS bills, your T
Bills, your Singapore Savings Bond and lots more. And they are all solid AAA ratings. All that is
pointing to Singapore being a safe haven for your money. One of the important aspects of this video
that I would like to cover is the Sing dollar currency strength and the purchasing power.
This is
one of the important things for you to recognize as a retiree in Singapore, holding Sing dollars. You
know that your dollar will work really hard for you because of the strength of purchasing power
that you can buy whether it's for imported goods or traveling around, so this really supports your
retirement lifestyle and your means. I'd like to share with you some charts on the foreign exchange
between Sing dollars and other currencies like your US dollar, Japanese Yen, Aussie Dollars, your
Pounds and how it has performed, to share with you why our Sing dollars has increased in purchasing power
over the years. Let's look at Sing dollars versus Malaysian Ringgit which I'm pretty sure Singaporeans
and Malaysians are familiar with. This is the last 20 years chart starting from 2003 which the number
the Sing Dollars to Ringgit, it was at 2.20.
Today, it has hit a high of 3.50, one of the highest. So you
can imagine the appreciation that that Sing Dollars have strengthened against Ringgit just by 20
years. For those of you who are old enough, you'll know that Sing to Ringgit was actually at par which
is one to one in 1980. Here's the Sing Dollars against Aussie dollars, one of the major currencies
for the last 20 years. The earlier 10 years from 2003 to 2013, you can see that for Aussie Dollars
it's stronger than Sing Dollars around 0.8 on average with the exception of Lehman Brothers, the
Great Financial crisis period in 2008/ 2009 after which you can see that from 2013 onwards, there is
a steady increase. Steady increase of Sing Dollars appreciation against Aussie Dollars to around 1.1, almost 1.15 today. How about the performance of Sing Dollars against the other major currencies?
So for the last 20 years, this is the chart for Singapore Dollars against British Pounds.
In 2004/
2003, it was around 0.31, 0.32 and has gone up to over 0.6 today, almost double. And what about Sing
Dollars to Euros? That was around in 2005, around 0.5 now it's around 0.7 against Euros. What about
another major currency Yen. In Japanese Yen, in 2003 was around $1 SGD to 62 Yen. Now is around $1 SGD to 108 Yen, 109 Yen. So the appreciation for the last 20 years has been very drastic and major for the strengthening of
Sing Dollars. What about Sing Dollars against the Greenback, which is the US Dollars? So in 2003/2004,
it was around 0.6 and hitting a high of 0.8, 0.82 around 2011, and then normalizing to around 0.7
to hovering around the range of 0.73, 0.75 for now. So why has Sing Dollars not appreciated against
the Greenback as much? Well that's because USD is currently still the world's Reserve Currency.
Based on data from IMF as of Q2 2023, they are at 58.88% market share and what that means is
countries of the world are holding their foreign exchange reserves in USD. That's why the US Dollar
continues to be the dominant currency with Euros at a distance second at almost 20% and China RMB
is 2.45%, still miles away from USD.
And what that means is when the US Federal Reserve prints money,
the rest of the world follows along because USD sets the precedence. How does the dynamics of all
this currency impact you as an individual, in terms of inflation and the eroding of your currency?
Now let's look at this chart. This is the Federal Reserve debt from the Central Bank of USA and how
much debt they're holding till date. Starting from 1971 when the gold standard was taken off when
President Nixon decided that, you know, US Dollars are going to be backed by the Government, that's
when fiat currency was born and you can see debt has started to increase steadily, linear actually,
until around 2007/2008 and what happened was the Global Financial crisis, the housing crisis where
Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman decided to go heavy into quantitative easing, printing of
money heavily, you can see from a debt of around 9, 10 trillion, this is trillion not millions, trillion
all the way for the last 10-15 years till around 32 trillion as of today. And what that means is
inflation has severely increased because of the debt incurred and that eroded your purchasing
power all around the world.
You know, Fran and I talk a lot about inflation and quantitative easing,
about money printing and all the different money dynamics in the world because we feel there's a
need to raise awareness in this world, in terms of financial literacy and that's one of the key
reasons why we started our Breakout Academy. Talking about finances, talking about breaking free,
breaking out the rat race and talking about early retirement because we really like to help people
to find their feet in this world so that they can then make powerful choices for themselves. Do
check out our Breakout Academy. I will advise you to not look at Singapore as a single retirement
destination. The world is our oyster. Traveling is the way how we can gain experience and really open
up our eyes.
What am I talking about? For example Singapore is an international hub, a regional hub
for businesses. For example your Finance industry. Do the same for your retirement as well. Use
Singapore as your hub so that you can go around the region especially Southeast Asia like Malaysia,
Indonesia, Thailand where you can stay for 6 months, one year, I mean depending on the visa requirements,
but use Singapore as a hub so that you can really explore all the different destinations in your
retirement life.
That brings me to my next point: Diversification. When you travel frequently and
you're exposed to different countries, different cultures and let's say their stock exchanges, their
housing market and all that, you will feel more inclined to want to invest in the different places.
Why? Because when you diverse across countries, you diverse across currencies and different assets
that actually hedges your risk and reduce your Risk of Ruin. So Singapore is actually in a perfect
sweet spot position to dance with the rest of the International Community and the Government
has done a fantastic job to do that, so that we stay very up to date, very up to tuned and our Sing
Dollars holds its currency strength and continue to strengthen actually, for us to improve and
increase our purchasing power to stay strong and relevant.
And as a retire in Singapore, your savings
and Investments are protected here in Singapore and you really get to stretch your dollars and
as the Singapore government is doing a great job to grow Singapore economically, strength to strength,
you will continue to enjoy a stronger purchasing power. Many people feel very stressed living in
Singapore because of the fast-paced environment. However, you think about it, that is true for
any metropolitan city that's very competitive. However if you are retiree or early retirees like
Fran and I who have Time Freedom, you have plenty of opportunities to explore different aspects of
Singapore in a very slow pace, comfortable, taking public transport everywhere with no rush
and there's no crowd like East Coast Park today, at the beach, there's hardly anybody and we
get to really go to different shopping malls, enjoy our time to explore Singapore.
What
about cost? Actually in Singapore, you have lots of choices. For example coffee. It can be as
cheap as $1+ Dollar in a local kopitiam or Hawker Center or you can go to Yakun and Toast
Box with slightly more expensive about $2 Sing Dollar or if you really want to splurge for
specialty coffee, it can go as high as SGD6-7, it's really your choice.
The point I'm driving at is, don't limit yourself. Create your llfe by your own design. Think out of the box. Singapore can be your home base for retirement but you also can have multiple regional bases for you to enjoy other countries as well. And perhaps for those of you with kids, you can retire early as
well. Think about this.
When you're in your 50s, your kids would have grown up. You can also enjoy
your life to the fullest and think out the box and you don't have to restrict yourself to only
one locality. Given a choice, would you consider Singapore as your top retirement destination?
I'll like to hear from you below in the comments section. Do comment the reasons why you would or
would not! We hope you have enjoyed a different point of view about Singapore today. Do hit
the Like button and Subscribe to our YouTube channel to join our YouTube family. See you in
the next video. If you interested in breaking out of the corporate 9-5 rat
race or embark on your early retirement journey, do check out our Breakout Academy,
where we'll support you further on your goals.
One’s Retired. One’s Not. How to Survive the Retirement Transition.
Harvey 0 Comments Planning your Retirement Retire Wealthy & Wise Retiree Tips and Tricks
Rhythm plays a big part in successful marriages when both Partners work or even when one works they have lives outside of their relationship together and these Separate Lives become part of their identity even if one of the spouses is a stay-at-home partner they usually by now have had routines that work really well both in the home and outside of the home and when One retires the Rhythm is a bit disrupted to say to the least it could be a tornado the peaceful Harmony is gone and replaced by some chaos and stress you know it's funny we just started watching a new show on TV called shrinking husband and wife are in the kitchen life's been a stay-at-home she's got a routine she she does rocks what does she do polishes she's all this stuff the husbands I don't know I forget what he is a lawyer or something like that but he's just about to retire and he's in the kitchen and the wife looks at him and says hey look it or more like this hey look it Derek Derek before you retire you need to find something to keep you out of the house each day I've been running this house for 30 years and I don't want my life disrupted and it's funny because his response was no I've been out of the house for 30 years and now I think you need to find something outside the house it's my time to be home that was actually pretty fun it was pretty funny but you can see without some tools this could be a rocky start to the retirement phase right so there's a way to smooth this transition and let's get into some ways that people can do this so that you don't find yourself really in a tough spot and the first way without a doubt is like those two just did communicate expectations well I don't think they did that very well well they started a conversation they started a conversation there's got to be verbal conversation about this you can't hope things are going to work out you've got to say what your expectations are because there's going to be a lot of difference of opinion on what they want to do yeah a lot of change is coming right and you know 50 percent of couples differ on what they want to do in retirement and that can impact them in a lot of ways and even financially so way before you retire five years before you need to start talking about this as a couple right right and even even ask yourself ask your partner as ask yourself first maybe and ask your partner some questions you know what do you dream about in retirement you know where do you want to live yeah how about downsizing do we want to downsize which is a big one yep and if you have kids where do they fit in right and grandkids these are all important issues that you need to talk about as a couple really in the initial phase or pre-retirement would be a great time to talk about it right and I know during our career we had a tough time fitting in date night with the responsibility of the kids and all of that I think date night and retirement's almost just as important if not more important to have a little bit of time to check in well because a lot of people feel you're spending 24 hours a day seven days a week together now there's no real reason to create that special time to check in but we're saying there is and what's our special time we have coffee every morning markets up super early I do not I get up at six and we have about 30 or 45 minutes every morning before we start well you've already started your routine but before I really started every morning we do that and we talk about you know how are we feeling we check in with each other what are our dreams for today this week this month we plan our day it's just it really gives us a chance to always check in which is really helpful for us and maybe that's something you want to try so communicate and communicate often and stay in touch is one big piece another big piece is finances you know finances are an area of disruption in marriages and certainly an area of disruption in retirement who is going to deal with the money matters who's going to pay the bills and do you agree on Money Matters yeah well it's true there was a study we found by Fidelity Investments from 2021 that said 25 percent are couples 25 percent of couples are irritated by their spouse's pen spending habits and relationship with money and that's before retirement right so that irritation enhances even more once you retire because many of you are retiring and you've already built your nest egg and many of you are working with a financial planner which is great so you have knowledge of your finances but when you retire it takes getting used to not having that steady paycheck right and when it stops there are some areas you need to focus on and adjust yeah I mean there's things like taxes your monthly expenses you know do you still need you know all the fancy cable travel plans do we really want to do that big trip or not but you need to save for it right you know downsizing dreaming of a second home you know one of the big ones that our financial planner has really pushed on us is this idea of withdraw stress strategies right making sure that you know before you could just hit the ATM and you know you had income coming in you could withdraw whenever you wanted now it's a little different well also the 401K right Social Security optimizing that when's the right time to do that and having a rainy day fund for unexpected medical expenses right right so okay so the third broad category is establishing boundaries right so this is again this is your bread and butter no it isn't this is again under the big topic of topic of keeping Harmony As you move into retirement right you have to find a way to ex to respect each other's time especially if one's still working and the other isn't you know your space you know one house with two separate schedules potentially if you're retiring at different times you know how you're going to spend your down time you know your TV time your reading time your cooking time yeah because even your cleaning time if one of you is working and you're working from home and one of you is like bound and determined to vacuum the whole house every morning at nine it's just not gonna work you know so you have to adopt each other's schedule you know for me it's important to find a place and a time for a long time time for separate friends outside of the house and all of these need boundaries and agreement so you don't find yourself banging up against each other doing each other's activities it creates stress and you don't need that you know we have friends who are actually clients of ours and she was a teacher and he's run his business a sports marketing firm out of their home for years she was a teacher so she was gone from seven to five every day let's say and now she's home and she's doing everything she's she loves to do she's hosting Mahjong and swim parties and lunch with friends she's taken a cooking class well all of that is happening in their house which is giving her really good fulfillment because she's amazing amazing he's like what's going on but he's trying to run a business in the same space so that's an example of where boundaries and communication really needs to come in you really want to respect each other's activities and priorities and space so you don't again step on each other's toes yeah so that the fourth big category of advice that we have in this in this in this arena is what what is your division of labor now that one of you is retired how do you split the chores who's going to cook who's going to shop who's going to pay the bills this is a whole new conversation I think at this point you can't make Grand assumptions that now that you're retired you're going to do all of that yeah and that's true and the other and I think what you want to make sure you do is do what you pick the things that you're good at and you like to do I love to cook I don't really like to shop well hangout I'm good at shopping I don't love it no but but I'm good at it yeah I'm good at cooking and you love it I do love it you don't love shopping who loves grocery shopping I'll take the shopping over too oh cooking and shopping cooking and shopping wow that's a win for me today here's the other thing and I don't I don't know what it's like in your house but I'm the I'm the guy that fixes stuff yeah so what I don't want to get from Jody every morning is a list of things that have to get fixed home repairs house maintenance car repairs you know there there are things that have to get done your car needs to go in and that's my responsibility I need I need to do it but I don't want a list right to put under my nose every day but this idea of talking about who's going to do what and it's not just about chores and cooking and bills but even who's responsible for scheduling activities who's a social butterfly that's right or me right so I end up doing you know golf dates pickleball dates dinner arrangements travel arrangements and that's fine I do actually like doing those things so that helps us stay in our Rhythm you know in the beginning we talked about how couples find a natural Rhythm that will take them through many years of their marriage and maybe the one that you had worked and worked well but the newly retired person shouldn't get a free ride on being engaged in the Rhythm yeah you know we've we have clients that get in trouble with this because you've got that example on the TV show shrinking uh where you've got someone who's in charge of the house and has her routine and everything's going really well and then the retired spouse comes in and says all right so what are we going to do all day right and they're like well no you do your thing I'll do my thing I'll meet you later for dinner so you have to be really careful you do but the other big thing is this whole idea of one person retiring before the other it's going to create a lot of change in your life and you need to understand that the change is going to come it's going to create friction and stress so if that's happening the right thing is happening you just need to walk your way through it and talk about it the person who's retiring you know the person who retired earlier stayed home has interest hobbies and groups and friends the new person retiring needs to create new interests new hobbies new groups and new friends we think so right because that's the way you build community and you stay active what you want to make sure that you're doing is if one is working and one is retired and the retiring spouse is crushing it in all those areas you want to make sure you're looping in the working spouse so people you know don't feel left out you all of a sudden have new friends and new interests and new hobbies which is awesome but remember to Loop in the working spouse too and I think the other thing is you've got to keep your relationship alive and healthy it's really important when one of these changes takes place that you're dedicating enough time to each other to show you care about them you're concerned about them and you love them back to your point on date night don't I do that well you do you always feel loved I do oh good good so look retirement is something we all look forward to and we deserve to find ways to make it the best years of our life and we really want to be able to live in harmony with our partner and if you've just retired or it's coming up soon make sure to follow some of our advice here and importantly make sure you're starting to talk about this phase of life with your partner or spouse to share your dreams and aspirations now if you enjoyed this video check out this next one the truth about early retirement what they don't tell you this is a great video we talk about the endless opportunities that exist and you aren't getting any younger now might be the right time to retire so check out this video next
The Top 5 Things Retirees Should NEVER Buy!
Harvey 0 Comments Planning your Retirement Retire Wealthy & Wise Retiree Tips and Tricks
we spent a good portion of Our Lives savings for retirement so we don't want to squander it away on useless items or pick up poor spending habits you know we're you get to this point you're on a fixed income you want to be careful so not every tempting purchase is going to bring value to your retirement actually many purchases can lead to unforeseen burdens which has happened to us it definitely has happened to us the last thing we all need is to find ourselves strapped financially and sitting on stuff and things that create more work than they do experience and they also have tremendous expense yeah they might bring a little bit of Joy but not enough to justify it right today we're going to dive in and unveil for you five purchases that might seem appealing at first but have hidden pitfalls in retirement and if you guys are new here thanks for joining us I'm Mark and this is my wife Jody we don't focus on the financial aspects of retirement but rather lifestyle Health relationships and much more to do us a favor hit the Subscribe button the notification button and if you could share this video or others would with some of your friends that'd be awesome we're really trying to grow this Channel and get more people to watch our stuff and have a good retirement all right so let's jump in here we go retirees often believe they're making wise purchases and wise purchasing choices to to enjoy their golden years but many of them end up with regrettable financial dreams so first category is luxury items without a good purpose let's face it we've worked hard our entire lives up till now and if there's a little bit of extra money laying around it's a good time to splurge right it is I'm trying to think like what do we mean by luxury items well I think if you think about it is that something that might cause twice as much as the basic version or three times or four times yeah but doesn't bring as much value yeah so exotic sports car okay or even a brand new fancy car or my hankering that's hanging out there an antique pickup truck a 1957 Ford or Chevy pickup the year I was born so I could bang around town in that that's not a smart thing that's why I haven't bought it yet right so so exotic sports cars okay so they serve a purpose but do you really need the latest and greatest you don't yeah and what are you going to do about maintenance and cost That's my kind of pushback on this truck what truck the truck you want I is one it's not gonna happen it's just a little thing I have out there don't worry about it you're not getting the truck I promise not I promise we're not going to get a truck so anyway Exotics you're retired you need your car is up uh you had a company car do you buy it do you lease it is it new or used you kind of remember depreciation what kind of options do you need do you really need do you really need the latest and greatest uh Lexus GS 250 or I don't know but you need a car right you need to get around so I think it's important to really challenge yourself when you're thinking of getting a car or a fancy car does it really make sense and the other so I'm good on that one because I'm not really a fancy car person all right how about the latest computers phones gadgets I mean I love gadgets so far these two are speaking to you okay so all right let's jump into something different okay how about high-priced designer clothing I mean this outfit costs one I'm not really a high price designer clothing kind of guy wow I kind of wish I was but I do believe and I do have friends that have you look nice by the way I like it thank you I have one friend that has seven pairs of those Golden Goose sneakers and they're like 750 a pair I don't have any of that stuff but you know we have flyers I wish they'd come back you don't remember PF Flyers no back to luxury items right so for all luxury items I think it's important to think about resale maintenance and costs longevity of use and is it practical right so that's maybe the best way to define for you individually what is a luxury item and we're over with jewelry it's out no no more fancy jewelry right what you have is fine yeah you're good yeah actually pretty happy if you want we're gonna start selling something all right so timeshare what about that the second item would be a time share which is appealing to a lot of people we know people that have time shares and they've had them for decades that's great yeah but if you're a retirement now you say thinking about a time share you really want to challenge yourself on that there's hidden costs monthly maintenance Insurance property taxes there's risks um gosh Geographic risks political risk you know where you buy a time share right the resale value is a little sketchy on some of that thing and the other thing is flexibility of dates right because we we travel we we do Airbnb or VRBO right which is a really good option I think well it is most of the time if you do the research ahead of time I don't know a lot about time shares but I do know we do have friends that utilize them a lot well they go the same two weeks right every year to the same place now the good thing is they've been doing that for a long time they know the staff right they know the other people that go at the same time but if it's new to you really what we're saying is give that a lot of thought you're 60 65 years old how much longer are you going to go to this location do you want to be tied to one local do you still like doing the same things the same activities I mean vacation and retirement is important but and travel is right and just make sure that you vet everything that is included well the third thing that you really should never buy and when we say you never should buy we don't really mean never well but it's individual large and expensive boats or hobby equipment so we what's so funny we've been boating for a very long time and during our career we carved out weekends and we went boating and it was really important to us and then we got a little bit of a bigger boat so we could go further afar but then we retired and said okay this is great we have all this free time let's get even a bigger boat so we can go away for longer periods of time so we did that and we sold it a year later the thing is I think it's really important to figure out if you're going to get a boat does it really fit into your lifestyle we thought it would we did but we now with all our free time travel to go see the kids we have them come to our house we hang out they don't want to go on the boat with us so I think that that's something you know talk about depreciation you buy a new boat there's this saying that uh a boat is a hole in the water into which you pour money now there's some acronym oh the uh the best day and uh the best day to buy the best day of boating is the day you sell it or something like that yeah yeah anyway well I think the thing about an investment like a boat is it has to be part of your retirement vision and in that retirement Vision you have to have explained to all of your community right your children your partner your spouse your it has to be part of what you do otherwise it is a huge floating expense well we yeah and and we started entertaining more at the house and visiting the kids and then when you're not on the boat I have a real problem with a luxury becoming an obligation right and our boat really became an obligation to us and we really got angry with ourselves and each other because we weren't spending enough time on it I think it got more angry at me than I did it myself really yeah anyway uh we have friends that have large boats right in Florida but that's their winter home so if that's what works it works anyway expensive hobby equipment you know we're going on a safari next year can't wait for that and we're like we should get a camera with a long lens take pictures of all the animals not we're bringing our our iPhones and then we're gonna maybe maybe borrow a camera from a friend don't need the highest end camera for a two-week Safari right buying high-end drones uh expensive gym equipment you know I work out with freeletics app doing body weight you go to yoga we don't we don't you don't need to buy all that stuff yeah well and and if you do and it's part of your vision and it's part of your financial plan and you've budgeted for it then great but really the message in this is just be careful be careful not to jump into certain things the other thing that a lot of people face when they retire is their home does it make sense to buy a much larger home we have six children all over the place and in order for us to have a home large enough for them to come visit we need a seven bedroom house oh gosh not with the grandkids it needs to be eight or nine okay we'll get a nine bedroom house then it's just it's just so it's not we're actually downsizing we're buying smaller houses we we are at this phase where maybe and hopefully we start to spend more time at our kids houses for holidays and things like that and the other thing that we do is uh when we have kids come in town is no room we do Airbnb they are VRBO or somehow figure out how long are they coming where are they staying are they bringing pets like what do we need to do I think when you're looking at upsizing you know when you retire because maybe you have a nice pension you have a wind full of money you have stock you need to cash out whatever it is you've got to think of things more than just the cost of this new grand home right the ongoing cost you have to think of insurance and taxes and heating and air conditioning and Landscaping and maintenance all of that has to go into your decision-making process otherwise you may find yourself behind the eight ball a little bit so that's you know you really need to give that consideration we don't say it's wrong to do but right if it works for you that's great there's nothing like having all of the kids all the friends and family around for holidays and things like that absolutely another thing not to buy is these new Financial products that are unvetted and Mark and I have a lot of Congress conversations about this because we have friends that are into some um wildly High returned short-lived unvetted Financial I don't even know what they're called Bitcoin and nfts yeah that I don't know if that's but if you're if you've got money to invest it's really not smart to say have a friend say I got this thing it's a 20 return you should give me 100 Grand or 50 Grand or 10 000 or 5 000.
It could be gone in a minute it could evaporate so you want to get good advice from a financial planner before you invest in anything that looks and sounds a little bit like is that really possible Right is it is it the right thing for me to do with my money now right and we're a big Advocates of and we are not financial planners but finding yourself a financial planner and getting your Baseline really understanding your spending and your withdrawal strategies and really trying to figure out where you can go moving forward you know we have this um arrangement with new retirement and the link is below for their dashboard that you can get that ties together all your financial information to show you on one screen how much money you have and then you can run all sorts of different scenarios it's a really cool tool if you don't have it you should take a look at it but you know we're talking about your nest egg right right what are you going to do with it you want to protect it and make smart decisions and really there is no get rich scheme no in retirement we've all worked hard to get here and hopefully we have enough money to last and live a comfortable lifestyle that's been the goal right probably the best advice we can give is to live within your means make smart purchases and make good financial decisions with solid advice yeah we only get to retire once so we shouldn't blow it by making rash and short-sighted purchases we hope you enjoyed this and if you did this next video Don't retire without this financial advice even though we're not financial advisors there's some great information in here we touch on emergency funds living within your means you just mentioned that and some tips on social security so watch this next
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Why Downsizing in Retirement may NOT be the right thing to do!
Harvey 0 Comments Planning your Retirement Retire Wealthy & Wise Retiree Tips and Tricks
the thought of downsizing makes sense to many people and for those people there are great benefits but it's not for everyone so many people have left comments on our Channel about the fact that they don't want to downsize so we decided to do a little research on that and put together why it might not work for you so you can actually feel good about that decision and give it a a different look instead of thinking you have to do it maybe you don't have to do it I mean staying put in your current home may be the smartest thing you ever did all right so you've got this couple that we know really well they're our age their second generation owners of a home her dad who just passed away lived with them until he died at the age of 93 right yeah yeah and while at times that was difficult having him in there it really was a good end of life situation for him and they enjoyed their last time oh absolutely and now it's two of them you know all three of their kids have moved out and they actually have a second apartment second income apartment yeah which is literally a separate entrance you know and that pays a lot of the house costs I think it pays all the house costs because their mortgage is so low now because they've been they've been there for so long right and they have this younger couple now that checks in on them right so and there's still plenty of room for the kids to visit and they host events so it really made sense for them not even to think about the idea of downsizing right yeah and you know you and I talked a little bit about it you know the sign of the times is that you know a lot of our kids aren't even buying homes they're not so when they when they want to come back somewhere for a holiday it's our home so let's talk a little bit about some real concrete reasons why downsizing may not make sense right the first is financial reasons maybe the numbers just don't make sense and this is what we get a lot on our on our comments right is it they it they can't afford to move out into something even smaller right because they have they have no mortgage right and or you can just afford to stay put yeah like it's just like a no-brainer you know in a lot of instances the real estate market dictates whether or not you can afford to sell your house at a high but then where do you go well the thing is the real estate market right now in 2023 it's hot I mean everything is up so if you can sell your house at the highest it's ever been when you go to buy something it's at the highest it's ever been so it really it doesn't really matter so that's one of the aspects of financial the other aspects of the financial is maybe the monthly cost for your current home works for you yeah I know that works for like my pop right for example we wanted him to move after my mom passed away because he's in a big town he has a three-bedroom townhouse for one person he has a three bedroom three-story townhouse with a full finished basement but there's nowhere he can go two-bedroom townhouse is more money and and the monthly costs yeah you know and all of that so monthly cost is really a good thing to kind of plug in the other the other uh financial piece is a mortgage if you've paid off your mortgage you just have a little bit left why would you want to take on some debt so these are all good reasons not to want to sell your house and move and you should always check with a financial planner or a banker right just to get a little more clarity on the finance piece of downsizing or not so so the first reason you may not want to downsize is financially might not make sense that'll sum that up secondly you know you may just live in a community where you have family nearby that are going to visit yeah and a lot of people have that their kids are there their grandkids are there this is not us our kids live in six different states all over the U.S right but for people that have the children who have grown up they have jobs and they live in the same town they're having their own families and they want to come to Grandma and Grandpa's house for uh Thanksgiving or whatever the holiday might be or birthdays or sleepovers right then you know it's hard to get up and leave from that yeah and that's if the kids are there you know we're still in a generation where maybe our elderly parents still live nearby either at their home or in a facility you know of some kind so you know we are that generation that you know is still kind of figuring out what to do with our kids and grandkids and then still maybe have elderly parents so you know it's not the case for us because our kids do live all over the U.S in in six different states right and our grandkids live all the way in California although that idea of living in the same town with everybody that would be awesome I mean if that's really sweet if that was the case I think we would rethink where we live right now yeah so we're we're I'm not fortunate that they don't live near us but it's not a reason for us to stay in the same town we grew up in you know interestingly enough I found an article in AARP that did a survey and three quarters of the people over 50 wanted to stay in their house as long as possible that's a that that's a big chunk of people it was a big chunk of their survey my parents stayed your your mom stayed in in their house she did my parents never left and the survey went on to say 69 of the people said they have a relative living within close proximity to their home which helped make their decision right so you know there are reasons with family and proximity that may make sense not to downsize and move right so we talked about financial reasons not to downsize we talked about um having the family or kids live nearby or sisters or brothers whoever it might be the other thing is where you live right now might be the greatest Community ever and the lifestyle is great for you so why get up and and leave it doesn't make any sense that's right you know you might have the best if you if you have neighbors who were still there and they've been there for 30 or 40 years these are really good friends and it's critical to have these kind of people in your life yeah you can't underestimate the value of the friends that may live nearby or you may be able to walk to town and love your village and your shopkeepers and your restaurants and your local markets you know some sometimes your community provides you an opportunity to be an active volunteer yeah the other thing is as you retire you find new things in in your community that you can do right you didn't do before because now you have this 40 plus hours of free time that came your way you could volunteer right you could join a gym maybe your town has bicycle pass and you want to take up walking or cycling and just live healthier so you get to investigate what your community has and maybe you didn't know before right we joined a YMCA down here I've never belonged to a YMCA before ever in my life and I'm like why didn't I I know because they're everywhere but it really has become a good Social Hub for us and also a lifestyle yeah and a lot of studies show that towns that have a ym or YWCA really promote community and we did find that and if you live in a home or a condo or whatever it is and you can walk to Town versus drive that is a huge plus yeah because once you leave that and move out you know where you have to get in the car to go somewhere you're going to find you walk less I grew up my hometown I grew up in a college town in a big college town and there was something about that as my parents aged that kept them alive and with a buzz and you know living in that college town feel with all of those kids and all of those restaurants and all that comes with it I think if you're in a college town that might actually be a reason not to doubt I I agree because there's just an energy about it that's really really important yeah now another reason why you might not want to downsize or move is because you want to age in place and that's listen if that's what you want to do then you should try to figure out a way to do it right yeah I mean it's a big decision it's a big decision a family decision a financial decision it's whether or not you have the room to age appropriately in your house you know I know our house in Connecticut it is a vertical house four stories it would not be a great place to age you know no because it's an old house the stairs are really steep they're right they're steep narrow yeah not real deep stuff but if you can age in place in your home because that's a new thing and there's a lot of research we should actually do a video on that no Aging in place because there's a lot of new resources available there is but the other thing the other reason not to downsides is maybe there just aren't any good choices where you live yeah you can't actually go smaller your current or your current home is the perfect size yeah sometimes it's harder to live with one less bedroom than it is just to have one extra bedroom right so you know sometimes if you own a home and you want to go into an apartment apartment living just isn't for everybody no no you know and so maybe your current home has a small yard and you can still garden and you still get some energy out of that so that's another reason I think the sixth reason is really important and that's just maybe you're just not emotionally ready you know you're not ready to downsize and that's a very personal decision it is and it's if you have a partner you have to figure this out together you know again there's other videos we have on our Channel about downsizing and the Dilemma and how to work it out but maybe you know just take a pause say you know what we're not going to downsize we're going to stay here maybe we'll right size well you were ready to downsize way before I was ready to downsize and it caused friction for I would say a couple of years yeah every time you brought it up I wasn't interested and it took some time so if you're not ready that's okay right there's there's a long life ahead of you you know we we talk a lot about um because we think we're in a good spot right now but what is 10 years from now look like where will we live our kids are all somewhere else we would like to live at least near one set of kids that might help take care of us I don't know but maybe not hard because how do you choose one set of kids to go live near yeah I mean I don't know how you do that so but anyway if you don't feel the need to downsize that should be okay have comfort in that decision and you can always do it at a later date and lamenting over it time and time again it's going to wear you out and you're going to wear out your partner and your kids so if you can't decide right now just be okay or do what we did just agree to talk about it annually you know be curious about your future don't have a closed mindset as to where you think you need to be but be clear where you stand right now and if you like this and you're dedicated to staying where you are right now watch this next video because it's called instead of downsizing try this just putting in some basic upgrades into your home decorating ideas to stay put and just spruce up your home and we give you 10 inexpensive changes you can make to your home so watch this next
Can I Retire at 55? Tips for Early Retirement
Harvey 0 Comments Planning your Retirement Retire Wealthy & Wise Retiree Tips and Tricks
If you're thinking of retiring at 55, you want to be careful about where you get your advice and guidance, and that's because most retirement advice is geared toward those who retire quite a bit later, in fact… Most people retire at 62, but things will be different for you if you're going to retire at 55. So that's what we'll talk about for the next couple of minutes here, we'll go over where you can get the money from, and how that works with taxes as well as healthcare, then we'll look at some actual numbers and what it might look like for somebody who retires at age 55.
We might also want to get philosophical just briefly and ask the question, Why age 55? Yes, it's a nice round number. And there are some interesting tax strategies that are available around that age, but let's say you could retire a little bit earlier at 54, would you want to make that happen? Or if you worked a few more years… I know you'll think this is crazy, but if you worked a couple of more years and you could not impact your finances, but still take some of those dream vacations and spend time with loved ones, would that be worth it to maybe work until 59, for example? So we want to figure out exactly why you are pursuing a particular goal and then we can improve the chances of success for you, so let's start with health coverage, this is a tricky one because you're retiring quite a bit earlier than most people who might be near that Medicare age, so you have a number of different options to continue being covered, and it is a good idea to have real health insurance coverage just in case something happens.
So a couple of your choices include, number one, you can continue your current benefits from a job if you have them for up to 18 months in most cases, and that's under COBRA or your state's continuation program, that can get quite expensive because you're going to pay the full price, if you weren't already doing that, plus perhaps a teeny little bit extra for administration, but it is a way to continue with the program that you currently have, so that can be helpful if you are mid stream in certain treatments or if it's going to be hard to get certain benefits that you currently have on a different health care program, unfortunately, that's not usually a long term solution because we need to get you until age 65, which is when most people enroll in Medicare, and you should see your costs go down quite a bit at that point, maybe depending on what happens, so another solution that a lot of people look at is buying their own coverage, and that happens typically through a healthcare marketplace or an exchange, and that's where you just by coverage through an insurance company.
So you can go directly to the insurers, but it's often a good idea to go through… Start at healthcare.gov, and then go through the marketplace or the exchange, and that way you can shop some plans and potentially, depending on your income, you can potentially get some cost reductions that make it a lot more affordable, I'll talk more about that in a second, but another option is to switch to a spouse's plan, if you happen to be married and that person has coverage that's going to continue for whatever reason, that might also be a solution for you, when you leave your job, it could be a qualifying event that allows you to get on that person's program, but let's talk more about saving money on health care expenses before age 65, most people are going to buy a policy based on the factors that are most important to them, so that could be the premium or the out of pocket maximum, the deductible, the co pays, certain areas of coverage, all that kind of thing, you can select a plan that fits your needs.
Now, you might find that those tend to be quite expensive, and so if your income is below certain levels, you might be able to get effectively a reduction in the premium, it might be in the form of a tax credit or a subsidy, so here's just a preview of how things could look for you, let's say your income is, let's say 50,000 in retirement, and you need to look at exactly what income means, but there is no coverage available from a spouse, we've got one adult, and let's say you are… As our video suggest age 55 here, so you might get a benefit of roughly 422 a month, meaning you could spend that much less each month, and that's going to make it a lot easier to pay for coverage on these plans, if we switch your income down to 25,000 per year, the help is even bigger, so as you can see by varying or controlling your income, and this is something you might have some control over if you retire at 55, you can also control your healthcare costs, we'll talk about some conflicting goals here, where you might not want to absolutely minimize your income during these years, but this is important for you to know if you're going to be paying for your own coverage, and if you're experiencing sticker shock when you see the prices…
By the way, I'm going to have a link to this and a bunch of other resources in the description below, so you can play with this same calculator yourself. Now, once you're on Medicare, the cost should drop quite a bit, this is a calculator from Fidelity where we can say, let's say you are a female, and we're going to say you're eligible for Medicare at this point, so we'll bring you up to age 65.
It is going to be quite a bit higher cost, if you look at it before age 65, and that's because you are paying for those private policies from insurance companies, let's say you're going to live until age 93, and so you might expect to spend roughly 5800 6000 bucks per year, depending on your health and your location and other factors, it could be more or less, but this is an estimate of what somebody might spend, a single woman each year in retirement, of course, that number is going to increase each year with inflation and deteriorating health issues. But this is a ballpark estimate of what you might be spending in the future, now we get to the question of, do you have the financial resources to retire at 55? And that comes down to the income and the assets that you're going to draw from to provide the resources you need to buy the things you want and need, and one way to look at this is to say We want to avoid early withdrawal penalties because again, you are retiring at an age that's earlier than the typical retiree and most retirement accounts are designed for you to take withdrawals at 59.5 or later, to avoid those penalties, fortunately, you have a couple of options, so with individual and joint accounts, just taxable brokerage accounts, you can typically withdraw from those without any penalties, but you may have capital gains taxes when you sell something, those taxes may be at a lower rate than you would pay if you take big withdrawals from retirement accounts, but you just want to double and triple check that, but that can be a liquid source of funds.
You. Can also typically withdraw from Roth accounts pretty easily. So those regular contributions come out first, in other words, you can pull out your regular contributions at any time with no taxes and no penalties, what that means is that's the annual limit contributions you might have been making her by year, so the 7000 per year, for example. That money would be easily accessible, but if you have other money types like Roth conversions, for example, you're going to be very careful and check with your CPA and find out what all of that could look like.
There. Are other ways to get at funds that are inside of pre tax retirement accounts, and it might actually make sense to draw on those to some extent, we'll talk more about that in a minute, but these are some of the tricks you can use to avoid an early withdrawal penalty yet still draw on those assets before age 59.5. The first one is the so called rule of 55, so this applies if you work at a job with, let's say a 401K, and you stop working at that employer at age 55 or later, if you meet certain criteria, then you can withdraw those funds from the 401k so they go directly from the 401k to you. They don't go over to an IRA, you could withdraw those funds without an early withdrawal penalty. A complication here is that not every employer allows you to do that, so 401k plans can set a bunch of their own rules, and one of them might be that they don't let you just call them up and take money whenever you want, they might make you…
Withdraw the entire amount, so if that's the case, this isn't going to work, so be sure to triple check with your employer and the plan vendors and find out exactly how this would work logistically or if it will even work. Next, we have SEPP that stands for substantially equal periodic payments or rule 72. This is an opportunity to draw funds from, let's say your IRA or a certain IRA that you choose, but before age 59 and a half without getting early withdrawal penalties. Now, this is not my favorite choice. I don't necessarily recommend this very often at all, and the reason is because it's easy to slip up and end up paying tax penalties. The reason for that is in part that it's really rigid, so when you establish this, You calculate an amount that you have to take out every year, and it has to be the same amount every year, and you have to make sure you do that for the longer of when you turn age 59 1/2 or for five years.
And even that sounds kind of simple, but it's still easy to trip up, and you also have to avoid making any kind of changes to your accounts, so it's just really rigid and can be difficult to stick to you, so… Not my favorite choice, but it could be an option. Those of you who work for governmental bodies, maybe a city organization or something like that, you might have a 457b plan, and those plans do not have early withdrawal penalties before 59 and a half, so you could withdraw money from that and use some income, pre pay some taxes, and have some money to spend fairly easily, this by the way, is an argument for leaving money in your employer's 457 versus rolling it over to an IRA, because once it goes over to an IRA, you are subject to those 59 1/2 rules and a potential early withdrawal penalty. So that could end up leaving you with 72 to work with, for example, which again is not ideal.
So you might be asking, well shouldn't I just minimize taxes and hold off on paying taxes for as long as possible? And the answer is not necessarily. So it could make sense to go ahead and pre pay some taxes by getting strategic, the reason for that is that you will eventually have to pay taxes on your pre tax money and it might happen in a big lump, and that can bump you up into the highest tax brackets, so it could be better to smooth out the rate at which you draw from those accounts and hopefully keep yourself in lower tax bracket, at least relatively speaking. So when your RMDs or your required minimum distributions kick in after age 72 under current law, that could possibly bump you up into the highest tax brackets, maybe you want to smooth things out and take some income early. So let's look at the question of, Do you have enough with some specific numbers, and before we glance at those numbers, just want to mention that I am Justin Pritchard.
I help people plan for retirement and invest for the future. I've got some good resources, I think, in the description below, some of the things that we've been talking about here today, as well as some general retirement planning information. So if this is on your mind, I think a lot of that is going to be really helpful for you. Please take a look at that and let me know what you think of what you find.
It's also a good time for a friendly reminder, This is just a short video, I can't possibly cover everything. So please triple and quadruple check with some professionals like a CPA or a financial advisor before you make any decisions, so let's get back into these questions, Do you have enough? As we always need to mention, it depends on where you are and how much you spend and how things work for you. Are you lucky to retire into a good market, or are you unlucky and retiring into a bad market? All of these different aspects are going to affect your success, but let's jump over to my financial planning tool and take a look at an example. This is just a hypothetical example, it's the world's most over simplified example, so please keep that in mind, with a real person, we've got a lot more going on.
The world is a complicated place and things get messier, but we're keeping it very simple here, just to talk about an example of how things might look, so this person has one million in pre tax assets and 350,000 in a brokerage account, and if we just quickly glance at their dashboard here, pretty high probability of success, so let's make it a little bit more interesting and say… Maybe that IRA has, let's say, 700,000 in it. What is that going to do? And by the way, this is still a lot more than a lot of people have, but again, if you're going to be retiring at 55, you typically have quite low expenses and/or a lot of assets.
So let's keep in mind here that retirees don't necessarily spend at a flat inflation adjusted level, and I'll get into the assumptions here in a second, but let's just look at if this person spends at inflation minus 1% using the retirement spending "smile," that dramatically improves their chances, and I've got videos on why you might consider that as a potential reality, so you can look into that later at your leisure, but as far as the assumptions, we assume they spend about 50,000 a year, retire at age 55. The returns are 5.5% per year, and inflation is 3% per year.
Wouldn't that be refreshing if we got 3%… So we glance at their income here age 55, nothing, and then Social Security kicks in at 70. They're doing a Social Security bridge strategy. I've got videos on that as well, or at least one video, the full year kicks in here later, and then their Social Security adjust for inflation, looking at their taxes, we have zero taxes in these earlier years because they are just not pulling from those pre tax accounts. Maybe not getting much, if anything, in terms of capital gains, maybe their deduction is wiping that out, so we may have an opportunity here to actually do something and again, pre pay some taxes and pull some taxable income forward.
In fact, if we glance at their federal income tax bracket, you can see that it's fairly low from 55 on, maybe they want to pull some of this income forward so that later in life, they are drawing everything out of the pre tax accounts all at once. It just depends on what's important to you and what you want to try to do, and that brings us to some tips for doing calculations, whether you are doing this with somebody, a financial planner or on your own, you want to look at that gap between when you stop working and when your income benefits begin from, let's say, Social Security, there's also that gap between when you stop working and when Medicare starts, and that's another important thing to look at, but what are your strategies available there? Should you take some income, and exactly how much? That's going to be an area where you might have some control, so it's worth doing some good planning.
We also want to look closely at the inflation and investment returns, and what are the assumptions in any software that you're using, for example? These are really important inputs and they can dramatically change what happens… You saw what happened when we switched from a flat inflation adjusted increase each year to the retirement spending smile, just a subtle little adjustment has a big difference on how things unfold, and in that scenario, by the way, we would typically have healthcare increasing at a faster rate. But like I said, we use an over simplified example and didn't necessarily include that in this case, but you do want to click through or ask questions on what exactly are the assumptions and are you on board with those assumptions? You may also need to make some adjustments, and this is just the reality of retiring at an early age when you may have 30 plus years of retirement left, a lot can happen, and there really is a lot of benefit to making slight adjustments, especially during market crashes, for example, so.
If things are not necessarily going great, some little tweaks could potentially improve the chances of success substantially, that might mean something as simple as skipping an inflation adjustment for a year or two, or maybe dialing back some vacation spending. These are things you don't want to do, that's for sure, but with those little adjustments, you can potentially keep things on track, and that way you don't have to go back to work or make bigger sacrifices. And so I hope you found that helpful. If you did, please leave a quick thumbs up, thank you and take care..
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Preparing Emotionally for Retirement…Don’t let it take you by surprise!
Harvey 0 Comments Planning your Retirement Retire Wealthy & Wise Retiree Tips and Tricks
preparing for retirement is a major life transition and tackling the emotional side of this can trigger a wide range of feelings from excitement and anticipation to anxiety and uncertainty and these wide ranges of emotions are impacted by how retirement lands with you for example was it your idea to retire or were you forced out are you retiring early or later in life is your spouse or partner retired already or still at home and you're entering their domain all of these issues really impact how you show up in retirement but really regardless of how you got here you're here and the question is are you emotionally prepared for this transition so as Jody said it's a major life transition this whole idea of retirement and it Alters your sense of self it Alters your purpose and it really changes your daily activities you were used to going to work every day and now things are different so why are so many people entering this phase of Life emotionally unprepared because well we're going to show you what you need to do to get prepared but we have a client um let's call him Billy Billy's a good name right a good alias he was an entrepreneur for 25 years during high school he went to work for a restaurant and after about five or seven years he bought it from the owner and he ran that thing for a very long time and he had a great identity and a great business but about 20 years ago he sold it right and then he and what was interesting is he sold it about 20 years ago so maybe sold it at around 50.
Yeah and entered politics and worked in the state legislator created a whole new identity for himself a whole new community a whole new set of Knowledge and Skills that really propelled him for another 20 years yeah it was great but then he retired three years ago he has his full pension he's financially secure but he got he started to get in a little bit of trouble first of all his only hobby was golf and he lives in the Northeast where golf is not 12 months a year maybe but then he lost his wife which was really sad and all of a sudden now all of his dreams of retirement have changed so he's a solo retiree and he's not really taken the best care of himself physically and he's really having a tough time building new community outside of his golf right and that's when he came to us and we found a real pivotable turning point for him where he could go through some great self-discovery and transition yet again in his life and he went through our seven day challenge I think we'll put the link below so that you can have that and if you haven't taken the seven day retirement challenge even if you're 30 years old you should take it because there's really good stuff in there it's easy and it's free so we got him to go through the seven day challenge and start talking to us about it then he took our full your retirement game plan course and he started getting his life back on track which was really encouraging and there was some work on his part to do it but now he has a whole new outlook on his health both his physical and mental he's building tremendous great new quality communities of people and he's actually volunteering for several organizations that gives him a lot of fulfillment community and and more but he was totally unprepared for this change and maybe you are too so let's get in how to better prepare men before we do anything let's just address money because it's always the first thing on everyone's mind we don't do anything with money but I know it can't spend it you spend it my day too much sometimes I know it can create unwanted Stress and Anxiety and you know the fact is that many people underestimate their expenses and the stress that money has on their emotions as they're entering retirement yeah and the other thing that people might do and you really can't tell because the stock market is just crazy but some people or many people overestimate their investment income returns so that can put you in some emotional state too so really being better prepared financially is critical and that's not what we do here but but check that box you know so that you can live this phase with a little less stress work with your accountant or your financial planner to get a budget in place and you also you want to be able to work with them so that you can make some smart financial decisions like a good withdrawal strategy integrating with Social Security 401K maybe downsizing is something you should consider doing maybe you need to do it to cut your costs a little bit that's another whole level of stress and there's we have um search our YouTube channel for downsizing it's actually our most popular video if you're thinking about it but this is going to give you a clear Financial picture and this is so critical to a successful retirement like Jody said that just take away a lot of the stress so check the box on your financial picture and move that aside right so let's talk about some other big impact to your emotional preparedness in retirement the number one thing that we come up with the number one thing that we research the number one thing that our clients talk to us about is this idea of loss of identity and people really struggle with this you know coupled with the loss of purpose this is a big impact on your emotional preparedness well it is if your identity has always been tied into your title which a lot of people do in their office and your expense account your status in the community your status in the company if you were the CEO or if you're a doctor or a fireman or a lawyer or an accountant that's your identity and when you step away from your job that goes away and you know this happened to us and more than likely it will happen to you too it leads down a long journey of rediscovery in retirement and we'll leave a link below for the video on this topic which I think it would be really helpful now money and lost identity can have major impacts on you emotionally as you enter retirement but you also need to think about losing your community and ending up feeling socially isolated social isolation leaves many people unprepared for retirement and it's a huge health risk that again if you search our YouTube channel for social isolation and there's some great videos we put together on that you know when you walk away from your career there's a good chance that many of your key relationships won't follow you you know there are younger people they're still working they're still engaged they still have the purpose and the identity and you know they may have been situational relationships based on your employee employment you know they were your work family maybe not necessarily your close personal friends however you may bring some along with you you may you may but this loss of community catches so many people unprepared and surprised and you're gonna need to put real effort into creating a new community it does not happen on its own so let's share some tips on how to be better prepared emotionally as you transition into retirement and if you're in retirement a year two or three or five these things are going to work for you as well so the first thing you want to do is visualize your retirement and when we say that you know what does it look like what does it feel like what is your um what else what is your daily daily routine you know what habits or activities do you want to do do you want to put in your schedule and you know the big question is who is in your life yeah and who's important and positive in your life how about this where are you going to live right you know what are your dreams for what we call the five pillars of retirement what are your dreams for your physical wellness your mental Wellness your relationships your spouse partner relationship is ours good today so far so good so good and then wisdom sharing that the thing is dream a little bit and have a vision for this so that you can put some activities in place to get you to that vision and really getting to this vision is just yourself those basic questions that we just went through the next thing you'll want to do is to make a plan you know keep it simple at first include your financial goals and your lifestyle goals and definitely your health and wellness goals yeah the Five Pillars the vision the idea is to get to the vision you want to put a plan in place so that you get some things done and your plan is not one and done think about it retirement can last 30 years or more you don't spend 10 minutes putting a plan together right for a 30-year time in your life don't skip this part or you really could find yourself wandering a bit like a ruddlest ship lost at sea how's that that was very interesting yeah ship lost at sea you don't want to be that so after you visualize and make a plan it's critically important to stay connected right stay connected to your your family to your friends and to those past work colleagues that will come with you you know um we talked about the colleagues that stay behind and lose interest in your relationship it's really behooven upon us to go back to those work friends and reconnect and we've done that and also we've put effort into finding new friends and new relationships you need to dedicate time to this you do and you have to be intentional about it you know I just saw a really interesting quote a couple weeks ago in the paper by Jane Fonda about being intentional about your friendships it was very interesting you know being emotionally prepared for retirement includes this big one as well you have to address your fears what fears are you having and how are you going to tackle them one at a time head on you might even want to talk to a therapist you know and you also need a good we talk about this all the time because we don't do financial planning you need a good financial planner or wealth manager and you want to develop clear strategies to address all of these fears the big the first thing is to figure out what the fears are and then deal with them one at a time right and the final thing you can do is to practice self-care taking good care of your physical and emotional health exercising regularly eating healthy finding stress reducing activities to take care of you is important to be emotionally prepared you know we all spend a good portion of Our Lives thinking about retirement probably from when we leave college or high school and enter our career all we do is we save money we yearn for the freedom we get excited about what could be in store for us but many people don't prepare as much as they should for this transition to make it smooth fun exciting and fulfilling spend the time getting yourself prepared now if you like this video and we hope that you did this next one what's your identity once you retire we're going to walk you through the three phases of identity when you retire letting go of the old identity the neutral zone and finally putting some effort into discovering what your new identity is going to be and then we're going to give you three steps you can Implement right away so watch this next video
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The Truth About Early Retirement: What they don’t tell you!
Harvey 0 Comments Planning your Retirement Retire Wealthy & Wise Retiree Tips and Tricks
at our ages when we retired and even now we have energy we got a really good Baseline on our health and wellness so you kind of know where you are and what you need to do you have more time to do what you want to do versus waiting another five or ten years I mean I yeah it's true but you know I will tell you it's not all roses and butterflies right when we retired our health Baseline I'll say for both of us was pretty low and frankly I'm glad we learned that because we weren't paying attention to we weren't paying attention and had we continued working and living at the pace and eating and drinking The Way We Were through business and extracurricular activities you know we would have gotten a lot worse so we've used the past four years to work hard on that aspect of our life and I think we are feeling younger than we did four years ago when we did I definitely feel younger absolutely we know so many people who put off retiring for fear of what they'll do after and that's a true feeling so we get it you know the fear of what will I do is a real one that many of you experience but by putting off retirement you might be cheating yourself and maybe others who want to spend more time with you if you can afford to retire and it's your dream to have to leave your job then do it today we're going to take away some of that fear and leave you feeling inspired to take the leap and enter into this incredible phase of life but before we go further we want to introduce ourselves my name is Mark Rollins and I'm Jody Rollins and we started retirement transformed not only for us but for all of you and the 10 000 people turning 65 every day now we don't focus on the financial aspects of retirement but rather we pay attention and focus on lifestyle Health relationships and more if you're new here please hit the Subscribe button and also the notification button so you'll get notified when our videos come out I recently got into cycling and the first thing I did was to get to know local bike shop the first thing you did was spend an hour on Google that's true okay but the first thing that the results said was get to know someone in your bike shop so he went to the local bike shop and we met this great guy Greg who had a stellar career in Insurance just like you and I his finances were in order he got a package at 60 and he retired but he retired into something he was an avid cyclist and instead of just retiring he spoke to the owner of the bike shop and said hey I'm going to retire soon can I come work for 20 hours a week and he got a job and he loves it because it lined up with his passion right it gave him instant community in the shop and the people he was serving I I think he only did it for 20 hours 20 hours a week oh yeah he got paid he did but he loved more yeah the discounts on the equipment and clothing yeah which is a great way to think about retiring into something thinking about your passions and then what are some benefits but here's the big thing he was 60 and when we were chatting about this he really was deciding whether or not to work another five or ten years or retire and it's because he retired into something that he did it but he's been retired now for I think seven years and he loves his life it's great he works part-time his wife cycle so they have that in common well she Cycles as well but she's also retired and they do have that in common and you know she had her thing that she was doing for about 20 hours a week and then they do some things together including cycling even cycling as a vacation which is kind of cool they do we should do that sometimes we should where Europe sure come on well with some deep refreshing and planning retiring early has tremendous appeal and it can enhance your life in so many ways retired at 50 53 my new retired at 61.
2 61. oh 61. well I thought it would be 65 or 70. yeah and in the past four years we've made tremendous strides in our life you know our relationship because we're spending more time together and more quality time as well as quantity is better and I think our physical health is even better than you think it's absolutely better I feel younger and better than I ever have in my life because we've worked on it right well with all the new habits and routines that we have in place our mental Wellness is improving every day I mean it really is isn't it and the community that we're building in retirement is growing just like Greg in a bicycle shop you know um he's now got a whole new community that he's built post career and we have done the same thing so here's really want to get to today here's the truth about retiring early number one truth is you do have Newfound time and let's be honest work was hard and stressful and it was hard to find any time to do anything for yourself and when you get to walk away you find 40 or more hours a week to do with what you want to do and if you're someone who really loves their job and we hear this all the time I don't really want to leave because I love it I'm getting so much satisfaction but you could retire then here's the thing go to your employer and say you know what I want to stay but I want to work part-time I want to work 20 hours a week and that's okay or even 10 hours a week yeah I mean strike a deal and go part-time you know find that hour balance that works for you but just remember this your newfound time opens up major opportunities for you so let's go to another truth you know opportunities are truly endless you know start with your dream job that aligns with your passion kind of like Greg did at the cycle shop or maybe it's a non-profit for you that you really want to sink your heart and soul into you may want to coach somebody younger or somebody up and coming in your old company or if you're like Mark and I maybe you want to write a book and find a way to pour your stories into the book to help others well you could also travel a lot of people travel there's a lot of people that travel for a year we are traveling but not I mean taking a year I don't think we could do that no but you could start a hobby you know I started cycling we started playing golf again this winter in Florida we're going to take up pickleball we're committed we're committed but you also can spend time just re-engaging with old friends or or repairing some broken relationships with all this free time there's a lot that you can do but we don't want you to let the fear of not having a plan hold you back watch some of our other episodes on planning for a full and active retirement all the links for the shows that that align with what we're talking about today are below so okay so now you have some whether it's 40 Newfound hours or 20 or 10.
So let's go to another truth you can do this now because you are as young today as you're ever going to be in time yeah I think that's important I think it's important too because we we looked at it that way a little bit too at our ages when we retired and even now we have energy we got a really good Baseline on our health and wellness so you kind of know where you are and what you need to do you have more time to do what you want to do versus waiting another five or ten years I mean I yeah it's true but you know I will tell you it's not all roses and butterflies right when we retired our health Baseline I'll say for both of us was pretty low and frankly I'm glad we learned that because we weren't paying attention to we weren't paying attention and had we continued working and living at the pace and eating and drinking The Way We Were through business and extracurricular activities you know we would have gotten a lot worse so we've used the past four years to work hard on that aspect of our life and I think we are feeling younger than we did four years ago when we did I definitely feel younger absolutely I'm more fit um I have more energy you know and sometimes we find ourselves in retirement that we're working harder than we thought we would in retirement but the thing is this I don't know what we would be doing to fill our free time with if we hadn't started retirement transformed I think both of us with our energy would have started something in this case it was this but we balanced it out you know I think that's the important part it has to be a balance I mean I'll be honest there are weeks where I feel like this is all we do is retirement transformed and then there are weeks when the kids are around or we have friends in town when I feel like we don't do any of this so again it's a balance over time right so let's go to another truth if you keep working you're never going to get those years or that time back I know it's true and you never hear anyone on their deathbed say I wish I had worked longer people don't say that now there are cases where working till your death is what you're called to do I mean we recently Lost Queen Elizabeth II and now her son King Charles they have devoted themselves to lifelong service and that's that's what they do we don't to do that I don't know how long we'll do this but right now I love it I'm 65 and I could see doing it 10 or 15 years well I think what you have to remember part of the reason we work is to build the nest nest egg right the whole financial aspect so we can live this phase of our life a little untethered from routines and schedules but the reality is routines and schedules are what's going to continue to enhance this phase of so those are those are the truths about retiring early and I think it's important if you're thinking about it you know embrace your age do not think you're too young to retire Jody was 55.
I was 53 53. he keeps saying 55 and adding years no bueno you will and I was 61. I thought I'd worked till 65 or 70 but believe that there's something out there for you to do take the time to plan and build this phase I think it's important to embrace the free time that you have find opportunities that exist or that you can dig up and don't squander it live fully and listen if you enjoyed this please share with your friends and also please subscribe by clicking the Subscribe button below and finally don't forget to join our free Facebook Community it's growing every single day the link is in the notes below thank you for listening and we look forward to being with you again.
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