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Things We Wished We Knew Before Retirement

Well it's great to be with you all again it's 
another video day for us – It is – So things that   we wish we knew before we retired almost 
sounds like a country music song there Tina   – And I guess you must be feeling lucky 
today Norm – Oh yeah got my lucky shirt   on so because we're filming been to 
Costco – Got the great deals haven't we   – We have so one of the things that we wish we knew 
before we retired was how free it is how stress   free no longer having to get up and go through the 
morning ritual of preparing yourself to go to work   and being accountable to somebody else all 
day long it's wonderful to be accountable to   your own self and your partner that's it 
you're your own person and it's such a freeing   feeling and we saw that with Tina when she gave 
up work the amount of stress we hadn't realized   until a few years after retirement just how 
different she was she'd lost all that stress of   meeting quotas and all that good stuff – And I think 
I'll just add Norm that when you're actually doing   the job you actually don't think it is stressful 
you don't think you are under all this   stress until you stop it do something else and 
you think wow this is a lot better we like this   it's great so just being accountable to ourselves 
we love it don't we – It is totally life changing   – One thing that we do think is very important 
before you retire is you do need to have a   discussion with your partner as to what it is 
that the ideas that you're both thinking you   have when you're going to retire you do need to 
have some goals about, do you want to travel do   you want to garden or do hobbies do you want 
to stay home you really do need to have that   conversation to make sure you're both on the 
same page – I think it is it is important and   we hear a lot from some comments especially 
married women who are saying that their husband   their frightened the husband will get under their feet 
because he'll be hanging around all the time in   retirement but that really isn't the case – Not 
for us is it – We've been secure as a couple for   the longest time and retirement hasn't changed 
how we feel about each other and about what   our expectations of each other is it's not as if 
we've all of a sudden being locked up together in   retirement (no) so it is important to figure out 
what you both want out of retirement and to have   that discussion a few years before you actually 
do retire (yeah) one thing to bear in mind is   the first few years of your retirement you'll 
be your most healthy so just use that health and   strength that you do have in the early years 
to achieve some of the goals that you want   – Yeah and if you want to be traveling do it while 
you've got that – Don't think about traveling if   that's on your list just do it right away – Yeah 
absolutely and that's what we've done isn't   it when we retired we just traveled everywhere 
didn't we it was great – About two years before we   retired we had an inspector come to the house 
for I don't even remember what it was but it was   some form of home inspection that we had to and 
so we got chatting with him because he was a few   years older than us but not that much and he told 
us that he had a house very similar to ours that   he had sold and now he was living an apartment 
and he went through the whole process of them   and how they moved to the apartment and how 
it was such an improvement on their life   and it was something we'd never ever considered 
– This was big news to us wasn't it we never even   thought about renting an apartment – We had been 
homeowners since we were 19 years old so to rent   we had that preconceived idea that it was throwing 
money away but the more that we looked into it so   after he left the next couple of days we spent 
many hours thinking about this we did a budget   of how much it cost to keep our mortgage free 
home – Yeah crunched all the numbers – And what the   rent would be and if we had sold the house and it 
made more and more sense to us to sell the house   to downsize into an apartment bank the money 
from the house live off that as an investment and   that's what we did – And that's what we did didn't 
we – But had that guy not come to our house we might   never have come up with that idea – No because 
originally we had thought that we would just   buy a smaller house didn't we – That's right yeah 
– So part of our decision when we had actually now   decided that we were going to rent and we realized 
that would take care of we wouldn't have all this   maintenance and stuff like that to do we decided 
after we started looking at apartments that if   we moved to a cheaper area could we benefit by 
getting the same as what we wanted in an apartment   but would it cost us less money so the more 
we looked into it we did have a family member   who lived in a cheaper place so we looked 
at the equivalent of renting an apartment   in this new place and it was so much cheaper 
wasn't it Norm – Because we initially thought   we would just sell our house and stay in 
the same area so we started shopping for   apartments to find out how much they cost and the 
availability and we were pretty surprised that   at the expense of them but we were prepared 
to pay that (yeah) and then we came to a what   you would call it a small town that's cheaper 
(yeah) we came to visit a family member here and so   we started looking around at the apartments here 
and they were substantially cheaper about $800   a month cheaper than where we were initially going 
to – Yeah and not only that Norm there was a lot of   extras with it wasn't that we got there was 
underground parking and what else a swimming pool   – And laundry facilities in the apartment – And that 
was one thing the gentleman had told us he didn't   have on-suite laundry he had it in a laundry room 
so we wanted that – But coming to the cheaper town   it wasn't just the rents that were 
cheaper everything was cheaper   the Tina's hairdresser as we've 
said in the past was cheaper it just permeated everything so our budget became 
so attainable (yeah) by moving – That gave us a lot   more money to be able to travel didn't it because 
we thought if we can save money on a daily basis   and it worked perfect didn't it – It did it was 
great, take a look at that if you do have family   that live in an area that might be cheaper or 
just consider going not knowing anybody – No it's   like a new adventure isn't it a new chapter in 
your life because we've made friends here and   they don't have any family just here but they've 
made it a new place for them haven't they – A lot   of people have moved out of the big cities to a 
small town because it's it's far more conducive to   retirement (yes) and friendlier another 
thing that you really need to consider   is where your friends are going to come from 
in retirement because once you leave work   those friendships tend to wither away because 
the only common bond you have was your job   your workplace so we've never 
really had lasting friendships from   work colleagues they've always been outside 
of there so it's it's critically important   to continue looking for friendships in retirement 
and being outgoing and prepared to speak to people   Tina when we moved to this apartment building 
they did have a social room and they did a coffee   morning and so she would go down there and we 
found out so much information about the town and   businesses to use – It was great wasn't it – It was – It 
was kind of my mission wasn't it to find out   new information and to try and make new friends 
which we did and we made some fabulous friendships   – Well in particular there was one couple that Tina 
made struck up a friendship with and they in turn   have introduced us to another couple yeah and then 
they in turn have introduced us to another couple   so that's how it goes – Yeah so now we've got 
a group of really close nice friends that we   socialize with don't we – And the thing that we have 
in common isn't an employer it's being retired   – It is isn't it – It really is so don't be afraid 
of striking out to a new city a new town   because it's relatively easy to make friendships 
– Yeah you just have to push yourself out there   a little don't you and be confident to going to 
things and it's very exciting isn't it so we hope   that everybody is staying safe – And keeping 
well – Until the next time bye bye, bye bye

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The Ultimate Retirement Plan | Wade Pfau | Ep 63

[Music] welcome to the market call show where we discuss what's happening in the markets and the impact on your Investments tune in every Thursday on Apple podcast Google play Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts hi Wade how are you doing I'm doing great thanks for having me on the show you know I'm so happy to have you here if you're in the retirement income planning business or if you're a financial advisor or a money manager somehow managing money in the space for retirement income planning everybody has heard your name you've been around in this field for a long time and as I was looking through your uh resume from various sources it's like okay well what are we going to exclude you know there's because there's so many things that you have done but I thought I would just kind of just fill in for viewers that don't know you a little bit about you um you know you're an active researcher and educator about retirement income strategies you know you do a lot of speaking I know you're going to be speaking here in Denver uh pretty soon uh you are a professor are you still a professor of retirement income at the American College of financial services I am currently yes and the director of Retirement Research for McLean asset management and in-stream uh you did your PhD in economics from Princeton and you did interestingly you did a dissertation on Social Security reform which we hopefully we'll talk a little bit about later uh you're also a fellow CFA Charter holder like myself um and you've got lots of AD you know accolades and some great books in particular one that I really like that you've done is a retirement planning guidebook uh 2021 uh and then you have that safety first retirement planning how much can I spend in retirement etc etc you've done some stuff on reverse mortgages The Unwanted stepchild that actually is a useful tool for many people yet not quite known by many so uh with that said I I was just curious tell me a little bit about your background where did you grow up so uh well I was born outside of Detroit I lived there until I was 15 moved to Iowa after that my my mother is originally from Southwest Iowa so I graduated high school in Des Moines Iowa and then went to the University of Iowa after that so pretty much midwesterner lived a number of different places afterwards including New Jersey Pennsylvania Tokyo Japan for 10 years and then now I live in Texas you live in Texas now yeah actually these pictures behind me and all are all the places I've lived over the years so it's so so you so you grew up in Detroit mostly it sounds like but moved all traveled a lot um how did you go from you know studying what did you study Finance initially when you were in college in undergrad economics and finance economics okay so how did you go from economics and finance to just being so focused it seems like you're focused on retirement income planning well yeah I mean uh financial planning as an academic field is still pretty new and even I entered the PHD program uh in 1999 and actually Texas Tech University started the First Financial Planning PhD program in the year 2000 so it wasn't even an option at that time but academic economics is very mathematical and theoretical and I was always looking for ways to apply to more real world type activities and that's ultimately how I made my way into financial planning indirectly you mentioned the my dissertation on Social Security reform that was testing how in the early 2000s there was a proposal to create personal retirement accounts to carve out part of the Social Security tax and put that into like a 401k style account and I was simulating how that might perform and ultimately that's the same sort of thing I've made my career on at this point which is just writing computer programs to test how different retirement strategies perform in looking for ways to get more efficiency out of one's asset base for retirement now that was during the bush 2 Administration if I remember correctly wasn't it and so and uh what were your findings in that what was your general thesis or not thesis but your general conclusion well at the time what I determined was that it could be made to work but it wasn't obviously a better approach and now in hindsight I realize more and more that there's so little in the way of protected lifetime income that carving out more of Social Security which is that inflation-adjusted protected lifetime income and exposing that to the market as well uh probably would lead to worse outcomes for many people than we do need some risk-fooled income and so now that traditional pensions are going away Social Security is one of the last holdouts and so it probably wouldn't be the best idea to private or not privatize but uh create personal the defined contribution 401K style accounts out of those Social Security contributions very interesting and we'll we'll touch a little bit more I have a lot a few questions on Social Security uh in general um you know from a macro perspective and also a micro perspective personally for uh people so um one of the things that I really like about what you've done is that you kind of take more of a approach that I'm kind of used to like more of an asset liability management approach when you think about funding ratios rather than the traditional way that you hear financial planners talk about it I really like your overall framework and one of the things that I I think is very helpful is your retirement income style protocol your resubm Matrix can you explain a little bit uh to the viewers about your ideas there and and what how that helps an individual determine their overall approach to how they should tackle their retirement income plan yeah absolutely and that's really one of the the confusing aspects of retirement income is there are different strategies that people can use and unfortunately just there's a lot of disagreement and arguments about one strategy is better than all the others and and by what I mean by that is you have What I Call Total return which is just a you build an Investment Portfolio and you take distributions from it throughout retirement you have different bucketing or time segmentation strategies and then you also have strategies that will focus more on having protected lifetime income through annuities or other tools to cover your Basics before you start investing on top of that and they're all viable strategies at the end of the day and that's an important point that Advocates of Investments only don't appreciate how powerful the risk pooling that annuities can do to offer more income how that is competitive with anything that the stock market might do and so people really have options about what they're most comfortable with and that's what the retirement income style awareness is about developing a questionnaire to help guide people in the direction as a starting point which of these different retirement strategies resonates best with your personal Outlook and preferences you may not ultimately choose the the strategy coming out of that but at least it gives you a starting point to say okay it seems like I might look here first as a way to build my retirement strategy and ultimately if that helps me connect to a strategy that resonates and that I can stick with through thick and thin in retirement that can help give a better outcome because they're all viable strategies but where a strategy doesn't work is if you're not comfortable with it and you don't stick with it and you you bail on it during a market downturn or something like that that that's what the retirement income style awareness is really designed to do is just provide that initial talking point on which kind of approach might work best for me to to think about as a starting point yeah I like that because what it's doing is it's basically more holistically looking at how you would can solve the problem and typically you'll find advisory firms that will will overweight if you will one over the other they're like I'm a Time segment guy or I I hate annuities it's all Total return annuities are a scam or uh you know I will never buy an annuity or uh you know Etc et cetera and risk pooling is is something that's really important but it's also very complicated and I think that's why a lot of people have shunned annuities and annuities have changed a lot over the years um and you know coming from my background you know which is more of a total return approach that's great if you have a lot of money but in in other cases you know I think that you can you can you can look at the problem from a optimal way of doing it or you can look at the problem from a way that's actually going to get implemented and work and what I like about Risa is it's practical pretty much all the stuff that you're doing is practical it's not completely theoretical one problem though with that is that you can have somebody who has a safety first for example mindset but their situation is such that if they have a Safety First with 100 of their Capital that they're very unlikely to be successful can you can you expound a little bit upon how you would think about that in terms of giving advice to people in that scenario yeah so that scenario is probably more they do have a safety first mindset but they've been pigeonholed into a total return strategy but they're ultimately not comfortable with the stock market and therefore maybe most of their Holdings are in cash or in bonds which doesn't support a whole lot of spending power and that's you kind of there's three basic ways you could fund a retirement spending goal the first is just with bonds or with cash not really offering much yield on top of that and then to try to spend more than that the um the probability base perspective is invest in the stock market and the stock should outperform bonds and that should allow you to spend more throughout retirement the safety first approach is more now let's build a floor of protected lifetime income that then brings in with an annuity the the risk pooling the the support to the long-lived helps provide more spending power than bonds alone as well and people have that option and it's when the safety first person gets pushed into a total returns probability based strategy and just doesn't invest in the stock market they're ultimately left with bonds which which is the least efficient way to fund a retirement spending goal over an unknown lifetime very true and you know I guess a lot of people did take that approach probably when I first got in this business 20 over 20 years ago there was a lot of people that were doing that who were retired back where the municipal bonds were paying it was it was conducive the market was conducive for that we had high interest rates that were in the long-term secular decline so you had capital appreciation from those bonds he also had reasonably good uh tax-free interest yields that were working for people and inflation was falling um and so now we potentially could be in the opposite inflation Rising who knows how yields are going to work themselves out but um it when you're looking at this um you you bring up this concept of some of the retirement risks and and you have like these uh longevity sequence of returns spending shocks Etc of of the risks that you're seeing out there which one would you say has had the largest impact negative impact on people that they really need to solve for you know longevity sequence of returns spending shocks and surprises well longevity in a way it's the overarching risk of retirement and it's misnamed because it's a good thing it's if you live a long time it's just as an economist will point out that the longer you live the more expensive your retirement becomes just because every year you live you have to fund your expenses for that year so the cost of retirement grows with the length of retirement and then it's when you live a long time not only is there that issue that you're having to fund your budget but then there's just more time for all those other types of risks to become a problem as well with the macroeconomic environment with changing public policy with inflation even a lower inflation rate still is slowly eating away at the purchasing power of assets and then the spending shocks are things like big Health Care bills helping adult family members having to support a long-term care need to to pay for care due to declining cognitive or physical abilities and so forth and so so it's really that longevity is if you don't have longevity there's not really time for the other risk to disrupt your retirement too much and that's why longevity usually gets listed as the primary risk of retirement interesting I hadn't thought about that so a lot of the other risks are kind of correlated to the longevity element um so so really tackling that that that could be one of the biggest parts of all the surrounding risks around that you you talk a little bit in your book a retirement planning guidebook you talk about quantifying goals and assessing preparedness and I I had mentioned before that I like that you're taking your approach more like a Alm or asset liability management type of of an approach which basically that's what it is um and uh and I don't think the average person thinks about it that way they tend to think about it as like I have so much money and I'll be able to with draw so much from it sometimes there's unrealistic expectations about it but one of the common things that I've seen is that most people are not spending the time they need to do on budgeting really to actually even come up with a number or help come up with a number of what your present value of assets need to be to be prepared do you have any kind of practical tips for people and their advisors on how they can actually think about and execute a good budget not only just you know come up with one but actually implement it well now that technology can really help with that and so if people are comfortable with some of the the different websites or software that Aggregates all of your different expenses different credit cards and so forth into one Excel spreadsheet that's a very easy way to to start budgeting now for people who mostly pay in cash that can be a lot more complicated these days I don't use a lot of cash so I just simply when in the rare case that I have an ATM withdrawal I'll just kind of call that a household expense for that time period and not worry about breaking that down much more but uh when you start having those credit cards or debit card type expenses now the the software may not categorize them in the way you desire and so I usually try to not more frequently than once a month but maybe once a month once a quarter download the expenses while I can still remember well enough if I have to change some of these categories and so forth to then be able to keep track of all my expenses and know exactly then pretty much to the scent almost what I spent that year and then to start thinking about well were there any anomalies of course there's always going to be anomalies and to make sure you budget in that sort of thing but that really once you have a few years of expenses down and once you think about bigger Big Ticket items like car purchases and things that can really give you a foundation to start projecting ahead at what your expenses may be in the future as well and then then you have a way to start thinking about well how much do I need to fund those expenses and that's the whole idea of that asset liability matching do I have the resources necessary to fund your expenses are just your liabilities and do you have the resources to be able to fund that with a level of confidence that you feel comfortable with hmm interesting so I I had a meeting with a client actually who was forced into early retirement and a former engineer and keeps meticulous records has for years and uh he gave us the actual numbers for the last three years and I I figured out what the compounded rate was and it was a lot higher than the inflation rate reported by the bl by the government so um I I think there's some disconnect there between you know how we model and reality um you know uh when you look at financial planning software and you look at the assumptions that are the number of assumptions that are involved in the financial software and you know even if you're not taking Point estimates if you're doing Monte Carlo or whatever stochastic process it's very difficult to come up with a robust plan so I'd like I'd like for you to give me some and I know this is kind of a big general question do you have any general tips to people who are doing this modeling on how and for and for clients actually for for individuals and how they can make their retirement more robust to be able to deal with all the changes that can happen in the world like you said public policy changes Market changes Etc yeah you will have to revisit things over time and and as you get new information about your spending make revisions to the budgeting but uh it's still just a matter of when you're like round up your expenses or be conservative with some of your projections there's some categories that are challenging as well like healthcare and when someone switches to MediCare at age 65 that could lead to an entirely different set of health care expenses and with all your expenses on Health Care in the past you might have to completely upend that and and and do a reset there so it is challenging but if you're trying to build in conservative projections the default is usually whatever you believe your expenses will be you just adjust that for inflation every year and most people don't really do that they tend their expenses don't tend to necessarily keep up with inflation over time now that can get complicated but the way I describe it in the retirement planning guidebook is you'll have one particular budget through ajd and then you'll have another lower expense budget after ajd but also building in what if there's a long-term care event and so forth how much additional Reserve assets would I like to have set aside for out-of-pocket expenses that sort of thing and then it's not going to be perfect and it's going to need revised over time but I think you can start to get fairly confident like I've sort of done these exercises I'm still far away from the retirement date and of course I may be wrong but I I think at this point I have a sense of what my expenditures will be or what they can be at least uh over the longer term Horizon of course subject to new technologies new inventions everything else that can happen uh that would change your expenses but at least roughly speaking I think you can start to figure these things out yeah um I guess I'm coming from a practitioner who's been doing it for you know 25 years and seeing the the the conventional wisdom by the best experts at each point in time and looking at how people have actually fared without advice and what I've found consistently is that changes in in particular with government policy has led to uh sub-optimal choices for people who are trying to optimize to the typical cfp advice so and let me let me uh back that up a little bit with with uh some some examples um education planning what was optimal has changed in my career probably four or five times um let me just put it this way I I have put more emphasis in tax diversification and diversification and stuff in how you do things now because what if you if you over optimize in these scenarios it's sub-optimal does that make sense right if like if you designed everything to handle one particular public policy and then it changes on you like right now Roth IRAs or Roth accounts are incredibly attractive to have Assets in but something could change it could just be not that they might necessarily ever tax a Roth distribution but they could add a required minimum distributions or they could count it in the modified adjusted gross income measures used to calculate taxes on Social Security benefits or to calculate higher medicare premiums and so forth and so if something like that happened and you'd been doing all these Roth conversions to get everything into the Roth account yeah that would be overdoing it and subjecting you to that particular risk so I do think tax diversification is is quite important so that you still have flexibility and options because the the uncertainty is the rules will change and we see that every couple of years we just in late December 2022 secure act 2.2.0 came out and that has changed a number of different public policy matters related to retirement income it's gonna and that will continue to happen over time so so be flexible and part of that is just not overdoing things making sure you stay Diversified with with how you're approaching planning yeah in today's environment what we see a lot is is people that have taken the advice of Max 401K uh you'll get a lot of tax deferred and and what's happening is is they're coming to retirement with a large very large 401K plans and things like that and then they just get nailed in taxes and in fact I'm finding a lot of people pay more taxes when they're retired than they did in some cases than when they were not retired um and uh and and it becomes an issue it becomes a real issue then they have estate planning issues and things like that so um uh I just I'm glad that you said that about the the tax diversification I think more than ever especially given our our current you know country's economic condition there's a lot there's we're going to have lots of changes and they could be very large changes uh in particular if you considered quote unquote rich um so I'm sorry I put my little uh two cents in there but getting back to your book uh you have this concept of the retirement income optimization map um again going back to the assets and liabilities and all of that and when you're you when you're you talk about optimizing that's that's why I brought up the the concept of optimizing I I think there's optimizing within ranges one of the concepts that I've kind of looked at and you talked about you talk about different people's retirement styles um one of the issues that you can look at is like matching the duration of your expected liabilities up for a certain period of time so let's say you have a certain percentage of your portfolios in a total return portfolio and then and then another percent that you're you're cash matching or your duration matching matching for one to five years or whatever uh I think some people call that time segmentation you can call it many different things if forget about psychology and how somebody feels if you are just a rational investor a rational person what would you say the optimal length of time is on average for somebody retiring 65 say to cash match or to duration match uh you know their near-term expenses at one year is it five years is it 10 years I know that's a a loaded question but if you forget about forget about psychology and just go pure rational mm-hmm well pure rational the the total return investing approach which has less emphasis on trying to duration match uh can work and also if you then use a an income protection or wrist wrap type strategy you you have that income floor in place that is lifetime so it's already kind of duration matched to your liability so time segmentation is certainly a viable strategy in terms of my personal preferences it's my least favorite strategy so the whole behavioral point about time segmentation is if I have five years of expenses in in cash or other fixed income assets I don't have to worry about a market downturn because I feel confident that the market will recover within five years and I'll be fine and that that story that's a behavioral story and it just doesn't resonate with me personally I I can understand it resonates with others but it doesn't resonate with me personally and therefore I don't necessarily think about what sort of like front end buffer you need in place too to somehow be rational or optimal also that's where something like a reverse mortgage can fit in in a really interesting manner because if you set up the growing line of credit on a reverse mortgage that can be the the type of contingency fund that you can draw from so that you don't necessarily need to have as much cash or other assets sitting on the sidelines to fulfill that role so I would look more at some other of course you need some some cash but I tend to say less rather than more and maybe look at some other options as well about how to have that liquid contingency fund that's great so so basically the in in the guaranteed income sources plus plus reverse mortgage could uh provide a buffer provide a floor so that you could have uh less cash and and you're generally getting a higher expected rate of return on the annuity than fixed income securities and your at at least at the present time a reverse mortgage line of credit grows at a faster rate than the cash which can be used tax-free when you need the money uh so you can see that Evolution that Carol davinsky is one of the famous planners and researchers in this area and in the 1980s he talked about the five-year Mantra which was have five years of expenses in cash now cash you create drag on you're not able to get as high of potential returns with the money you have in cash so he gradually lowered that down to two years in cash and then when he came across reverse mortgages and in subsequent research and and descriptions he talked about having six months of cash alongside a reverse mortgage growing line of credit so I think that's an example of I I think something like that sounds pretty reasonable that's that's that's that's really helpful so and I want to Circle back to reverse mortgages here but before we do if you don't mind I'd like to talk a little bit more about social security uh so we're kind of getting into the realm of the the guaranteed side of things not the total return side of things um or or I more more knowable income sources um I was just looking at the kind of the statistics right now total debt in the United States is really huge um we're running very large deficits project to be like 2 trillion we have a Pago system right now in Social Security and even if we taxed it's been argued by many people even if we taxed every billionaire 100 that would barely make a dent in our current situation so we have huge unfunded liabilities off balance sheet uh type unfunded liabilities how can we really expect Social Security to keep up with inflation and will it be there for quote unquote you know what I'm saying well it will need reforms it's very unlikely to Simply disappear for my own personal planning I I assume I'll get 75 percent of my presently legislated benefits but for people who are younger as well further away from their their 60s uh the social security statement they receive assumes the zero percent average wage growth as well as zero percent inflation and the reality is there's probably going to be a positive real wage growth over time so you're presently legislative benefit could be a lot higher than what your social security statement is implying and therefore when you offset a benefit cut with the uh the wage growth that can be expected over time you may not have that much less in terms of what you're going to plug into your financial plan but yeah I certainly we don't know how the reforms will shake out but if nothing is done sometime in the 2030s Congress would have to legislate a benefit cut and to keep the system so that enough payroll contributions are coming in to cover exist current benefits that cut would have to be somewhere in the ballpark of 20 to 25 percent so I just simply assume I'll get 75 percent of my presently legislated benefit as part of my financial plan is is it fee Is it feasible feasible to actually get Social Security in a funded situation or is it gonna is it most likely going to stay Pago in your if you had a crystal ball oh it yeah it's always been pay-as-you-go and right so the buildup of the trust fund was an effort to just build up some reserves in anticipation of the changing demographics where there's more and more retirees relative to the workers paying contributions uh they try to keep Social Security funded over the 75-year time Horizon and so it's never permanently funded but yeah with a 25 20 to 25 percent benefit cut that would be sufficient to get the system to be expected funding funded fully over the subsequent 75-year time Horizon that's that's really helpful um thinking about it that way in terms of just potentially a 25 less is a reasonable way to look at it I think um the that part of it's not so hard what's harder to understand or to get a grasp on is whether or not that's going to be what that means in real terms for for a retiree um if we continue on a certain path and inflation is is in a different scenario in the future how how do you think about scenario when or inflation when you're when you would set up a plan or a retirement plan what how would you what kind of what kind of uh of Monte Carlos if you will would you put on on your inflation expectation so I do well I tend to just try to think of everything in today's dollars so that the inflation's factored out of it but I the way I think about long-term inflation is the markets tell us what they expect inflation to be if you just look at the difference between a treasury bond and then a tips treasury inflation protected security with the same maturity uh the difference between those two is what the markets expect inflation to be in if they thought it would be different they would invest in one or the other to get that aligned inflation is coming down now and even over the next five years at this point markets are only factoring in an average inflation rate of about 2.1 to 2.3 percent so it seems like markets really expect inflation to come over to come under control even over 30 years right now the markets are building in about a 2.3 percent average inflation rate which is below historical numbers and in terms of if I'm building a Monte Carlo simulation right now I'd to be a little more conservative there I'd base it around a two and a half percent inflation rate with historical volatility and inflation is around four percent so so you're basically an average of 2.4 or 2.5 and then uh standard deviation is like four basically okay so uh that that sounds reasonable um I I guess what is interesting about that is I guess if you assume that we have typical real rates of return for different asset classes that that all works itself out if you put it in present value terms um but if that's not the case and and it should stay that way ultimately it should stay that way but you could have major moves in markets in people's uh time Horizon when they retire which leads us to sequence of returns conversation uh when people retire you can have these you can have these big shifts in markets things things are rough right when somebody retires uh we uh remember I told you about that engineer we had a conversation with forced into early retirement right when the market topped uh the good news is is he had two types of annuities that worked out perfectly for him in the sequence return can you explain sequence return risk for listeners and and what it means and how to you know strategies to mitigate that a little bit more and just one quick last comment on the inflation too like if you thought when I said these low inflation numbers that that's ridiculous inflation would be much higher well then you'd benefit from investing in tips because they'll provide you a real yield plus whatever inflation ends up being and so they'll perform better if inflation is higher and they've already discounted that that was one of the best performing uh fixed income markets uh in the last couple years so but anyhow but but yeah a sequence of returns risks so that's it whenever you have cash flows going in or out of a portfolio the order of returns matters and it's when you start spending in retirement that it matters a lot more so it's like the market could do fine on average over the next 30 Years but if the market goes down at the start of my retirement I'm not having to sell more and more shares to meet my spending needs and sell a bigger percentage of what's left to meet my spending needs such that when the market subsequently recovers my portfolio doesn't get to enjoy that recovery and so it can dig a hole for the portfolio and the the average return could be pretty high but if you get a bad sequence of market returns right at the start of retirement it can really disrupt that retirement and lead to an implied much lower average rate of return than what the overall markets were doing over your retirement Horizon yeah so and in terms of actually uh let's say you're coming up on retirement so this is a common scenario you're retiring in 10 years or five years what should an investor be thinking about doing to transition from that accumulation to distribution phase to kind of mitigate that sequence of return risk so when people start thinking about retirement I think that's where the first step take that retirement income style awareness to get a sense of what sort of retirement strategy might work for you because that's where you then have um different options if you're more of a total return investor that's the whole logic of the target date fund and so forth is just start lowering your stock allocation but still investing in a diversified portfolio as part of that transition into retirement if your time segmentation the easiest way to think about the transition is instead of holding those Bond mutual funds you start exchanging those in for holding individual bonds to maturity like if I'm 10 years before retirement every year for the next 10 years I could start buying a 10-year bond and then when I get to my retirement date I have the next 10 years of expenses covered through these maturing bonds if you have more of an income protection or risk draft strategy the the options would then to be thinking about well if I have an income gap I'm trying to fill where after I account for Social Security or any pensions I'd really like to have more reliable income to meet some basic expenses well you could start looking at purchasing annuities that would turn on income around your projected retirement date as a way to have that transition into retirement and so they're all viable options and it's just a matter of taking the the route that you feel most comfortable with very good that's really really helpful um now I I guess at least is a little bit into the what I would call the traditionally unloved unwanted stepchildren annuities and reverse mortgages uh you know they've gotten a bad a bad rap for so long but they're so useful in in as tools I would say probably the reverse mortgage is the least understood and uh and and one very helpful um tool I think maybe because of just the history of them and how they used to be structured versus how they're structured now um can you give me a sense about how to think about reverse mortgages for people is it only for people who are you know can barely get their their plan together with their assets or or does this also work for people who have a cushion but they should still do a reverse mortgage more yeah I mean the conventional wisdom a lot of times is that the reverse mortgage is a last resort consideration after everything else has failed and maybe then just a way to Kick the Can down the road a little bit but ultimately that retirement wasn't necessarily sustainable since about 2012 that really the focus of the kind of research retirement planning financial planning type research was looking at how reverse mortgages can be used as part of a responsible retirement plan and so it's not that a lot of advisors may just think the reverse mortgage is only for someone who's run out of options but but that's really not the idea it's we have different assets and it's back to that real map the retirement income optimization how do we position those assets to fund our goals and the reverse mortgage provides a lot of flexibility about how to incorporate our home equity asset to help fund our retirement plan and it can lead to a lot more efficient outcomes than just simply say leaving the home sitting on the sidelines and saying well I've got the home if I have long-term care needs I'll sell my home to fund the long-term care something like that otherwise I'll just leave the home as a legacy asset for my beneficiaries there's much more efficient ways to incorporate home equity into a retirement plan and that's what the whole discussion around reverse mortgages is how can I I use a reverse mortgage to help build a more efficient retirement plan and not as a last resort but as part of a responsible well-funded retirement plan it's just another Diversified tool to a source of source of of assets that you can use that's not just sitting there I just had a conversation with a client yesterday that is about to retire in a few years and uh that is exactly what he said that other property that I have in that other State uh I'm just gonna keep that as a that'll be my I'll sell it if I need to you know there was a conversation about health care contingency and um uh long-term care and things like that and that was his rationale um and and in discussions with clients there has been a a ton of resistance you've been really good at putting out information that shows why it makes sense to have it as a potential use so can you explain a little bit about the the line of credit portion of it and how that how use how that could be advantageous yeah and it really it goes back to this idea of sequence of returns risk and if you look at a reverse mortgage in isolation it may look expensive or whatever else but it's how does it fit into the plan and by reducing pressure on the Investments it can help lay the foundation for a better outcome and the the growing line of credit is one of the most misunderstood aspects of the reverse mortgage and I think it was partly unintentional and it may sound too good to be true in a way it probably is and we saw in in October 2017 the government put some limitations on the growing line of credits so it was incredibly powerful before then it still quite powerful not as powerful as before for new uh anyone who opened a reverse mortgage before October 2017 was protected to have those Provisions in place for the entire life alone but if you wait and then after October 2017 you still have the growing line of credit it's not as powerful but but the idea is I believe the government assumed people would open reverse mortgages because they want to tap into the funds but financial planners realized with the variable rate not with a fixed rate but with a variable rate home equity conversion mortgage you do have to keep a minimal loan balance of say 50 to 100 dollars but otherwise the rest can be left as a line of credit and that line of credit grows at the same way the loan balance would grow and so you can understand why if you borrow money the what the loan balance will grow over time well it just happens to be the case that the kind of neat planning trick is if you open the reverse mortgage and 99 of it is in the line of credit the line of credit is growing over time at the same rate that the loan balance would have been growing and ultimately this improves the odds dramatically of having a lot more access to funds over time if you open it sooner and let the line of credit grow versus just waiting to open it at the time you might actually want to start spending from it yeah how has it been limited uh limited versus the way it used to be what what are the limitations well they increased the initial mortgage insurance premium which is not directly to the line of credit but then every every so often used to be more frequently we're now getting overdue at this point with it's been over five years but they revised the tables that determine the principal limit factors of what percentage of the home value can you borrow and so as part of that 2017 change they uh lowered the the borrowing percentages and also they lowered I mean this this part's a good thing but they lowered the ongoing mortgage insurance premium that would cause the loan balance to grow at a slower rate but it also in turn caused the line of credit to grow at a slower rate so it before that change I was running simulations where if you opened a reverse mortgage at age 62 there was like a 50 chance that within 20 years the line of credit could be worth more than the home and that's no longer the case it's still there's still a probability that the line of credit could grow to be worth more than the home but it's not nearly as dramatic as what I was Finding before the rule change that's very interesting because the line of credit growth rate is tied to interest rates and home prices have somewhat of an inverse relationship to interest rates to some degree but it's basically positively skewed so it's not it's hard to know but uh uh but yeah that's that is a great planning tip and it's interesting because we have had a lot of friction with this discussion with uh clients uh mentioning to them because they just have it in their head that I'm going to lose my home and I'm going to there's all these things that can go wrong and then you have to explain it's a big education process and of course they are required to do education as well no we don't sell reverse mortgages but we always you know if we if we you know we mention it to people as a source and you know having it there makes a lot of sense uh and and the same thing with the annuities um you know I have a love hate relationship with annuities but I'm becoming to love them more and let me tell you why before it was all commission driven you know and we're fiduciaries we don't do commission stuff now with the Advent of finally the insurance companies have really gotten to the point where there's at least enough of them now doing products that make sense with the guarantees I mean there was always companies out for a long time there's companies out there like Americas Etc that had just pure plain vanilla uh va's variable annuities that had just lowered your expenses and maybe eliminated a surrender or something but the guarantees is where the real there were folks too much on tax deferral and not enough on guarantees what were the guarantees is really really what we're really looking for here uh and the only way you could even get them you guarantees would be if you did a commissionable product so we'd be handing you know we would be referring people to Insurance guys who were selling commissionable products and then sometimes you don't know what's going to happen after that happens uh with that client so now thank God we have uh we're in a scenario now where the where the financial industry has finally caught up to what needed to happen with annuities yeah the only annuities yeah yeah the only annuities and there's it still has a lot more to be done it's it's you shouldn't be overlooked and I think what happens one of the reasons that I think they're so helpful uh for people is that risk tolerance is time variant people say their risk tolerance is X and then as soon as you have a market decline then their risk tolerance is all all of a sudden why which is more conservative and and uh these annuities can help people psychologically overcome that right you can always look to something that is either staying equal or growing and you can also have growing income streams during the Gap we see that a lot there's a gap between uh when they get Social Security and when they retire and it kind of fills that Gap and it's funny when I was when I was I actually had my assistant who's also a CPA excuse about my financial planning system I had to read this book first and she uh she said it sounded like like you uh were like in the room with him uh because there's so much stuff in here that you and I agree with it's amazing uh before not even knowing you so and I think it might have to do more with the approach of taking things more from uh your academic background and your CFA background it gives you a different perspective than what kind of the traditional financial planners had who had come more from a sales background and now what's happening is is we have uh the whole industry is now moving in the I think moving in the right direction and I think you've been a big uh reason why that's happening so I I really want to thank you for that all your work is really making a difference I want to talk a little bit about Medicare if we can and health insurance this is probably one of the most the hardest part is the medical the medical discussions in some ways um people don't want to think about long-term care people don't want to think about health costs I was looking at some of the statistics you know long-term care statistics is how much it costs it's a big number how would you how would you model the contingency planning you know for let's just start with long-term care how would you model that would you model it as a present value number or would you try to put it as a as something that's over time how how would you how do you approach that yeah actually so I did try to make the retirement planning guidebook as comprehensive as possible and and so I as part of that developed a long-term care calculator and the the basic logic of it is develop a scenario that you would feel comfortable that if you could fund that scenario uh you'll feel like okay things things will work out whether that's three years in a nursing home whatever the case may be but develop that scenario where you're saying okay at age 90 I will spend the next three years in a nursing home right now in the United States the average cost for a semi-private room in a nursing home is a little bit under a hundred thousand dollars I'll say in today's dollars a hundred thousand dollars a year but then I'm gonna plug in the the math gets complicated but you've got what's the inflation rate in long-term care what's the overall inflation rate and then back to this whole idea of the asset liability matching like what's the investment return discount rate you're comfortable assuming as well and also recognizing that if I do go into a nursing home I don't have to also fund my entire budget of a like if I thought I was going to spend 80 000 a year well I'm not going to be going on any sort of trips I don't have to go to restaurants or anything uh a lot of my other expenses would reduce not not 100 but they would reduce so plug it in what I think is a reasonable reduction to the rest of my budget and then you get calculated a present value of here's how much money I'd have to have set aside as a reserve asset to feel comfortable that I would be able to fund this long-term care need and and be able to have a successful retirement and for people who are worried about and who may be paying out of pocket for long-term care that could be several hundred thousand dollars to be blunted on average that's what it comes out to I actually had a coffee with a gentleman and he said uh what is it just tell me what the number is I said well it depends on your age he says no just tell me what the number I said it's roughly about 300 000 roughly on average it could be more it could be less uh you know uh okay and and there's there's there's different ways you can fund it right you can do long-term care insurance uh traditional Standalone you could do um you know life insurance policies that have embedded features you could do if you can't like qualify for um you know you know get a policy you can maybe get it embedded in an annuity of some sort you can sell fund um so it's not an easy thing that you can uh solve it with a quick answer um but but it's important to have in a plan and I and I like the fact that that uh you've emphasized that a lot in your work um it's just it's just great that that people are thinking about it from that perspective I want to switch gears a little bit um and talk a little bit about tax efficiency uh you know taxes are such a huge part of the impact of a plan and there's so many different angles to it and and the tax rules change so much um I'll tell you one of the challenges that I have asset location the concept of balancing you know where you put a certain asset according to us is tax efficiency versus keeping an asset allocation in line right up you know operationally keeping it in line with the objectives and then as money is being spent taking it from the right place it's a challenge even with excellent software and then sometimes I'm finding that it doesn't actually work out as planned so can you can you give me some practical tips on how to deal with asset location well the the basic logic of asset location but yeah I mean in practice it gets incredibly complicated as you're spending from these accounts to think about also rebalancing and making sure you're keeping the right asset allocation between stocks and bonds and the NASA location is where do you keep these things but generally just is a basic guideline your taxable brokerage accounts of course you want some cash there for your liquidity but otherwise that's your most tax efficient stock Investments so if you own stock index funds and so forth the on a relative basis they're most likely to be best off in your taxable account because a lot more of their returns will be those long-term capital gains that get the preferential tax treatment then with like your tax deferred IRAs and 401ks that's more of a place where less tax efficiency so bonds and so forth maybe lower returning type asset classes and then for your Roth accounts the Roth IRA and so forth that's where less tax efficient but higher expected return type asset classes could go the Emerging Market funds and small cap value and that sort of thing and that does also work with distribution ordering as well because the Roth will be what you tend to spend last and so also having these uh riskier asset classes that may have more growth prospects over the long term that can be a good place to set them aside since you're not likely to be spending from those accounts until later in retirement okay yeah it I think for a lot of people it's a little bit of a daunting thing and in practice it can be with contingencies and things like that can be hard to to do correctly and keep managed and I know there's good news is there's good software now that that helps with that um as far as tax efficiency the other you mentioned the order of withdrawals I mean traditionally you know you have the you know your traditional order of withdrawal that you would you would uh do in in the past a lot a lot of recommendations has been you know you want to take from your taxable accounts first right let those tax-free tax deferred accounts grow and then and then you start taking from those other sources but you make a really good point that that's not always the best thing to draw that taxable account down too fast can you expand upon that a little bit well the yeah the the basic tax efficient distribution is spent down taxable assets than tax deferred like IRAs and then tax exempt like Roth against last but you you can do better and so the the better approach is to have a blend of taxable and tax deferred until the taxable account depletes and then a blend of tax deferred and tax exempt after that and as part of that blend you can do rock conversions to in the short term pay higher taxes if that can better position you to pay less taxes over the long term and to have a higher Legacy value from assets over the long term yeah and then getting more specific than that it's there's no you really got to run the the individual numbers on a case-by-case basis but generally there's the opportunities to sustain your assets for much longer by having a more tax efficient distribution strategy that digs into that taxable plus tax deferred and then later tax deferred plus tax exempt exactly and and that's why it's important while you when you're an accumulation phase make sure you have some tax diversification if you can yeah have Assets in all those different types of accounts yeah so that you're not nailed so bad uh later on uh and then there's a lot of complexities that can happen with happen that we see quite a bit with concentrated stock positions and things like that which is probably outside the scope what we're talking about today so um and lastly here last last topic here non-financial aspects of retirement this is a huge huge huge thing uh it's funny it was the last towards the end of your book and I'm glad that you talked about it uh because uh there's I can't tell you how many times um you know you see people think that they're going to be happy sitting on the beach and then they they do that and they're miserable uh or or spouses that wind up hating each other for some reason can you tell can you give us some ideas about um like what should people be doing like say they're five years into retiring or ten years into retirement retirement What should people be thinking about doing to kind of get their their overall lifestyle satisfactory when they actually do retire yeah and and that's this is in some ways more important than any other Financial stuff because with the finances it's easier to adapt but work does so many things in a person's life it's not just that it provides a salary and you need a way to replace all the other aspects of work such as structure to the day camaraderie feeling part of a team feeling like you're creating value for a society all these different aspects that you need to be able to replace with something that gives you motivation to wake up in the morning in retirement and so to say simply it's not the best starting scenario if you retire because you hate your job you want to be able not to retire away from something but to be able to retire to something you want to have and it gives you purpose and passion and meaning to give you the motivation to wake up and and have something be active each day because in all too many cases people just they start doing passive things like watching too much television or surfing the internet too much and that can lead to a really miserable and unsatisfactory retirement wow that's huge that's interesting have something to retire to so uh and and start figuring that out sooner rather than later right not don't wait till the very end and go yeah what am I doing uh and sitting there staring at your wife or your husband yeah that's the idea that there's all these things you you want to get done but you just think well when I retire then I'll have more time to do it well if it's something you've been holding off on doing for the past 40 years it's not likely that just having more time in retirement is what you need you may just simply either not be interested if it's a hobby like oh I want to go back to playing the guitar or something if you're waiting for retirement to do that sort of thing there you go that retiring may not be enough and then people might start feeling bad that you no longer have the excuse and that's where if that sort of bad feeling compounds it can create a spiral like a downward spiral where people just become less engaged and less positive and it can even impact Health which then in turn makes it harder to be engaged and involved and and can lead to downward spirals it's really important to try to avoid that and as part of that not waiting for retirement to to consider all these other aspects of your life outside of work but making sure you're nurturing relationships and having hobbies and having things outside of work so that it will then be easier to transition into the retirement yeah that's great so is there anything as we close here is there anything that you're really excited about that you're working on right now that you want to share or is there at all right now I am just trying to get the updates done for the retirement planning guidebook and where we're doing the best we can to build out that retirement income Styles ideas uh something that people can benefit from and uh the other main research area is with the tax planning as well that I think this will be a Hot Topic and I've already done a lot of work in that area but it is such a complicated area that just trying to push forward as well about like Roth conversion strategies and and how to best Implement those in a most of the work in that area just assumes a fixed rate of return and with the reality of not fixed rates of Returns on your Investment Portfolio that also dramatically complicates some of those tax planning decisions so I'm continuing to push ahead in those areas interesting so more stochastic modeling in your future yes stochastic modeling and now you're probably going to be uh that Technology's got to be in there somewhere too any plans uh that you want to announce or share with new technology that you're going to be coming out with or software programs or anything like that or I mean I just have this Vision in my head if I were you I'd be doing something like that but I mean I'm just saying yeah don't Envision creating tax planning software but uh the retirement income style awareness that's where I'm putting on my efforts in terms of having software and that's an easier problem than the tax planning problem definitely yeah there's a lot of changes always yeah you'll be coding to your uh blue in the face all your staff would be so uh the uh it's interesting I I I'm actually going to be diving into that that profiling software that you have um I had a conversation yesterday about that so that's very good so where would people uh would you like people to send you see learn more about you um anything that you're up to oh yeah uh so my website retirementresearcher.com all one word retirement researcher and if you go there you can sign up every Saturday morning we send out an email with different articles and things and then my retirement planning guidebook is on Amazon or any other major book retailer and also I do have a podcast as well they're retire with style podcast with Alex mergia who's my a co-co-researcher and and co-founder of the retirement income style awareness excellent all right Wade thank you so much appreciate you coming on it's been a pleasure thank you the information in this podcast is informational and General in nature and does not take into consideration the listeners personal circumstances therefore it is not intended to be a substitute for specific individualized Financial legal or tax advice to determine which strategies or Investments may be suitable for you consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a final decision wealthnet Investments is a registered investment advisor advisory services are only offered to clients or prospective clients where wealthnet Investments and as representatives are properly licensed or exempt from licensure [Music] foreign

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How to Live a Big Life in Retirement with Fritz Gilbert

Casey Weade: Welcome, Facebook Live. This is your 
host, Casey Weade, of the Retire with Purpose   podcast. And today, we have a very exciting 
guest. We have Fritz Gilbert here with us today.   And if you are thinking about retirement 
at all, then you've probably met Fritz,   you've probably come across some of his articles, 
especially in our weekend reading for retirees,   that collection of four articles we send out 
every single Friday with commentary from myself.   He's got one of the best blogs on retirement, 
if not, arguably the best blog on retirement   out there in the world today.

He's won award after 
award for his work on theretirementmanifesto.com. We've got a real live retiree here with us who's 
living a big life in retirement. We're going to   talk about his RV escapades. We're going to be 
discussing marriage and what that's looked like in   retirement, contrasting that to his working life. 
We also are going to be discussing Fritz's book,   Keys to a Successful Retirement. So, 
if you are thinking about retirement,   maybe have some friends that 
are thinking about retirement,   they can benefit from this type of content, 
please share this, start a watch party,   throw their name right down in the comments 
section, so that they catch this content. And if you have any questions, this 
is a unique opportunity for you. So,   only for the people that follow our 
Facebook page, if you liked our page,   you get to come into these visits and you get 
to present your questions to our world class   experts. So, if you have any questions about 
retirement, about the experience of retirement,   maybe even just RVing or marriage and retirement, 
this is an opportunity to get those answered,   so just write your questions right in the comments 
section, I will have those questions fed to me.   And even if we don't get to your question here 
right now with Fritz, Fritz will answer those   questions on the back end and make sure you get 
what you need.

And with that, I'm going to go   ahead and count us down and we will start the 
podcast in 3, 2, 1. Fritz, welcome to the podcast. Fritz Gilbert: Casey, thanks. I'm honored 
to be on your awesome show and I really   appreciate you having me on. Thank you very much. Casey Weade: Well, I'm excited to have you here. 
I was first introduced to you separately a couple   months ago or so. And it was because of an article 
that you wrote that I just fell in love with. It   was about the retirement motto and something ended 
up in seven letters.

We actually ended up doing   a little mini podcast on that very article. I did 
a little write-up about it myself. I just really   enjoyed that whole thought. You've got a lot of 
really good philosophical content that you put out   there, not just on the blog, but in MarketWatch 
and other places. And I've enjoyed that. I think   you bring a very unbiased nature to the content 
that you put out there. And it's not very often   that we get to meet a real live retiree that's 
living it and still studying it on a daily basis. Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, I think that's what I hear 
from a lot of my readers, Casey, is there aren't   a lot of old guys like me that are bloggers. 
I mean, you got a lot of the young fire guys,   that's great, and women, I mean, there's a lot of 
fire bloggers, and that's good. But I think for   the baby boomer audience, there aren't a lot of 
bloggers. And I hear that all the time that, hey,   you're one of the few that are actually living it. 
I didn't retire at 35.

I retired at 55. I still   got a little bit early, that's great. But I've 
just always had a passion for personal finance. And I just discovered a couple years before 
I retired, I just kind of took a flyer,   started the blog, and I found out that I love 
writing. And it's really added a lot of value to   my personal retirement to enjoy the challenge of 
writing. And then, the interaction with readers,   the podcast, the interviews that we're 
doing now, these types of things,   it's created this whole element of my 
retirement that I never saw it coming   and I love all aspects of it. So, I 
appreciate your kind words about my work. Casey Weade: Yeah. So, you retired in 2018? Fritz Gilbert: I did. Casey Weade: And how long have you been 
doing the blog? How many posts you have now? Fritz Gilbert: 250-ish. I started three years 
before I retired and I've been writing every week.   So, it's been a little over five years. So, do the 
math. I'm probably closer to 280, I guess.

I don't   even keep track to be honest. But yeah, I started 
three years before I retired. And the first   year was really looking at the financials, how 
do you determine when you're ready to retire? And then, it wasn't just my journey. It 
was really, here's what I'm doing, but more   importantly, here are the things you need to think 
about as you're preparing for your retirement,   make sure you don't have any blind spots, think 
about not just the financial stuff, but also   what are you going to do in retirement, what's 
going to be your purpose, which is obviously   a hotspot for you, the lifestyle questions. I 
went through all that myself. And what's nice   about documenting it now is on my blog, I've 
got every article I've ever written and I've   timed it so that anybody that's six months away 
from retirement can go right to my timeline and   see where I was when I was six months away from 
retirement and what I was thinking about. So,   it's kind of neat that I've captured it.

And so, 
yeah, I've been writing five years every week. Casey Weade: That's so neat that someone at a 
certain period of time from retirement could go   back to maybe right where you are, right where 
you were and learn what you were going through   experiencing at that time. What would you say is 
your biggest learning moment as you've done all   this work, all this research, all this writing? 
And then, maybe it's hard to pinpoint that one big   thing, but what would be one of the big takeaways 
for you and all your writing and setting? Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, I mean, the one thing 
that popped in my mind right away and I   really do believe it's probably the most 
important thing and I write about it quite   a bit in my book as you know is… okay, let 
me start with a holistic comment and then,   I'll funnel down to what the point is.


lot of people struggle with retirement and   your chance of depression goes up by 40% 
during retirement, probably much more in   the COVID environment because people are 
locked down, mental health issues, etc. And when I was about a year or two from 
retirement, I was really intrigued, what causes   some people to struggle with retirement, whereas 
other people seem to have a great retirement?   What's the research say? And what I found 
was, they found the highest correlation   to those people that have had 
a great retirement has been   how much time have you put into preparing for 
retirement before you got there. And obviously,   I was borderline obsessive. I was writing about 
it for three years. So, I was thinking about… Casey Weade: Arguably still so.

Fritz Gilbert: What’s that? Casey Weade: Arguably still 
so. A little obsessed maybe. Fritz Gilbert: Oh, maybe a little bit, but it's a 
healthy obsession. But what I've found was those   people that spend the most amount of time thinking 
about retirement. What they want their life to be,   not just the financial stuff? What do you 
want to do with your time after you retire?   What interests you? What do you want to pursue? Those types of things and the amount of time 
that you spend thinking about them, to me, is the   biggest thing I've learned because having been 
through it myself and spending that much time,   my transition to retirement, Casey, was 
absolutely flawless, it was smooth, it was   absolutely enjoyable. And I'm two and a half 
years in now and I still absolutely love every   day of retirement. I've not gone through any 
boredom, I've not gone through any depression,   I've not gone through any loss of identity. 
A lot of those things that people hit,   I've not experienced a single one of them.

And I do attribute a lot of that, some of 
it's just probably my natural optimism,   whatever your personality, but I think 
the biggest factor that people can control   is the fact that I spent a lot of time 
thinking about it, and anybody can spend   time thinking about it. It's just, realize 
that your job is coming to an end and start   ramping down the amount of mental energy 
you put into your work, still do your job.

I was doing 110% right until the end, but when 
you're not working or when you're commuting,   instead of thinking about that conference call 
that you messed up with, with a boss or whatever,   put it out of your mind, it's going to be gone in 
a year or two years. Put that discretionary time.   Don't commit that to work anymore. Find 
a way to put more and more of that energy   into thinking about what you want your 
life to be post retirement. That's the   biggest takeaway that I would say, I've learned. Casey Weade: Well, I see that 
with the families we work with.   You've got those couples that will 
come in and say here's everything,   just tell me what to do. And then, you've got the 
others that want to sit down, they want to know,   they want to understand where they're at, 
they want to understand where they're going,   and they want to have deeper conversations. They 
don't want to just talk about the finance stuff.   They want to get into those really meaningful 
conversations about purpose and retirement.

And those people that are willing to not 
just, they come in and meet with an advisor   and in two hours, they've got a plan 
and they're on their way to retirement,   I find they're not nearly as happy, not nearly as 
satisfied as those individuals that are willing to   put in the time to be there for four or five 
meetings and really get a little bloody-eyed   honestly with us. Let's really get into this 
stuff and get educated and know what we're   doing. And then, if you put that time out on the 
front end, I find those individuals aren't coming   back and continually asking questions 
and continually bringing up concerns,   it's the ones that didn't put in that time 
to really understand that have that issue. Now, you said that you started with 
the financial stuff. In your bio,   it says one of the leading bloggers on the 
subject of retirement with a focus on both   the harder and softer issues that are critical 
to success after crossing the starting line   and say harder would be financial, softer would 
be lifestyle.

You started with the harder stuff,   but then, don't think you quickly transition 
to the softer stuff? Is there one that's more   important than the other? Should we start with 
the harder stuff or the softer stuff first? Fritz Gilbert: I think it's natural to start with 
the harder stuff. When you talk about purpose and   that kind of thing to somebody that's, let's say, 
three or maybe five years or more from retirement,   life changes. You don't necessarily know 
what you're going to be interested in.   And the only thing that really matters 
when you're thinking about retirement   and you're more than three years out, it really 
is the financials. Are you saving enough?   Are you on a path? If you run some calculators, 
if you talk to an advisor, do you kind of have an   idea of when you're thinking about retiring? And 
are you saving aggressively enough to get there? I would say the financials are necessary 
but not sufficient.

You have to have them,   but if you stop with just the numbers, you're 
missing out on making it the best possible   retirement you can make. But clearly, you've got 
to have the financial. So, if you are going to   have only one of the two, clearly, you've got to 
have the financials. I just wrote an article last   week, The 6 Most Common Mistakes that people make 
for retirement and 43% of retirees have regrets.   And the vast majority of those are around 
how much income they've got in retirement. They were overly optimistic on how much social 
security they were going to get. They were   overly optimistic on their returns, whatever. 
They didn't get the financials and they're now   having regrets in retirement. So, 
you've got to have the financials.   And for the first, up until maybe you're 
two years away from retirement, I'd say,   maybe even a year, year and a half, I 
would say make the focus the financials.   But if you're within 12 months of retirement and 
you haven't started thinking about the softer   stuff, as I call it, man, red light.

Think 
about it because it really, really matters. Casey Weade: It's a good timeline and 
I see it as, let's grab a calculator   at first. The first step is, should I even be 
thinking about retirement? Is this even worthy   of my time and effort right now to try to think 
about that purpose and meaning and vision for the   future? Let's just grab a calculator, maybe sit 
down with a financial advisor, grab a retirement   calculator, figure out if it's even possible from 
a high level. If it's possible from a high level,   now we know, yes, it could happen, should it 
happen.

That's when we are looking at those softer   things. And as we get closer, if we go, yes, 
I could retire and yes, I want to retire. Now,   we need to put together a specific plan of 
action. Now, we get into the nitty gritty details. Fritz Gilbert: Yeah. And I would argue that you 
can do high-level numbers, obviously, you can   estimate your living expenses and everybody needs 
to do that. We tracked every dime we spent. We   typically haven't been budgeters. I 
saved 20%, 25% of my earnings. Sorry,   I got a cough today. Hope, I don't have 
corona. But we saved 20%, 25% and we just   spent the rest. We knew we were saving enough. 
So, we never really tracked our spending. And we went through a full year when I was about 
two years out, we tracked every spending we spent   and we built a very grounded forecast of kind 
of, okay, this is what our current spending is,   how do we see that changing in 
retirement? And then calculating,   do we have enough to retire based on that? 
Well, obviously, you can't do that exercise   without thinking about what do you want 
to spend your money on in retirement? The RVing is an example.

We were already thinking 
about, we want to travel, we want to do RVing,   we want to do things like that, so let's factor 
that in. When we adjust our current spending   to our post work spending, let's factor 
in some spending for RV travel. So,   you kind of have to think about your 
retirement lifestyle and what that's   going to cost as you go through the financial 
exercise.

It makes it a lot more accurate. Casey Weade: It's amazing to me how many 
individuals that we'll sit down with for   the first time. They're just going to retire 
this year and they've never put together a   budget. They have no idea how much they’re 
spending. And it's just really concerning for me   if that's the case. And I wonder what that 
experience was like for you when you first   decided to start putting together that 
budget, whether tools that you use, I mean,   maybe you didn't do a budget for a decade 
or more, now you have to go back and do a   budget. Was it a spreadsheet? How did you 
track the spending? Did you have a method? Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, I basically just took 
a spreadsheet, I've kind of always been a   spreadsheet guy, I've always tracked my net 
worth and things like that on a spreadsheet.   And Casey, I mean, I would literally just stick 
receipts in my pocket or if I used a credit card   or something, I would just send myself a 
quick email or text on my phone, whatever.   And then, when I got to my computer, I'd open up 
the spreadsheet and I'd put in whatever we'd spent   money on since the last time I sat down with a 
spreadsheet.

So, a couple times a week, I'd sit   down, I'd say okay, gas, $32 or whatever. And I 
kind of broke it into major spending categories. So, transportation, housing, 
insurance obviously a big one.   And I did kind of capture it by budget. Actually, 
I have a spending spreadsheet on my websites free   to print anybody that wants to go out there. 
So, I've got the spreadsheets that I used.   And I don't think you have to overcomplicate it, 
the key is, like you said, I never tracked it,   you can't estimate how much you're spending, 
because you're going to miss some things.

And what I found interesting, as I went through 
it for the year, you don't realize how much money   you're spending on some things and it gave me an 
opportunity to challenge some of our spending,   insurance comes to the mind, I shopped our 
car insurance, I hadn't done that for years   and saved quite a bit of money. So, one of the   extra benefits of doing it is you can kind of see 
those areas that you might want to think about,   Hey, is there an opportunity to potentially 
reduce some spending in some areas as well? Casey Weade: If you can't 
accurately predict future spending,   did you build in some kind of buffer? Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, basically, like, let's talk 
about insurance, that's the big one, obviously,   for people.

I retired at 55 and my employer 
used to have retiree health insurance, they've   discontinued it. So, what do you use for health 
insurance estimate? And you can't just guess,   I mean, it's a huge unknown. So, what I would do 
in a case like that is I would do some research,   I would kind of find the typical non 
subsidized because I do have a pension,   so I wouldn't qualify for the ACA 
subsidies or anything like that. So, what is the full-burdened cost of private 
health insurance? And I found ranges, but   say 2500 is kind of on the 
high end of the range, okay,   I'm going to use the high end of the 
range, I'm going to assume 2500 a month.   And we did that for basically everything. We 
kind of estimated a little bit on the high side,   the logic being, I'd rather have surprises 
to the good than surprises to the bad. So, our entire retirement budget, now you could 
argue, well, maybe I had to work longer than I   really would have needed to. Yeah, to me, what 
would it be? A couple months, six months maybe,   I mean, even a year, I ended up working a year 
longer than the numbers that I had to and I'm very   glad I did, we could talk about that.

But I think 
having some buffer is really important because   once you get into retirement, having that peace of 
mind that you were conservative in your planning.   And now, we're not paying 2500 a month for health 
insurance, so it's like, Okay, good. We're falling   below those projections. And our withdrawal 
rate is slightly lower than we projected   and everything's good. So, there's a 
lot less stress and a lot more enjoyment   when you get into retirement if you're more 
conservative on the planning side, in our case. Casey Weade: Now, I guess, question one, 
are you continuing to track your spending?   And are you spending more today than you 
did when you retired back in June of ‘18? Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, good question.

I actually 
got a question from Facebook about the bucket   strategy. So, I think I can probably talk about 
these in the same case. Here's how I did the   spending tracking, I don't want to sit here 
and track spending in a spreadsheet, that was   insane. I did it for 11 months, I 
didn't actually make it a full-year   full disclosure. We made it 11 months, 
but I'm not going to spend my retirement   plugging every dime that I spend 
into a spreadsheet, that's crazy. So, what I did and I just kind of came up with 
this, I've got articles about it, if you search   for the bucket strategy on my blog, basically, 
I created a retirement paycheck and I move money   every month from a Capital One 360 money market 
account into our checking account.

And every   month, I've got, so I know in January, how much 
was in that money market fund, I transfer money   every month, I can track my pension coming in 
easily enough. At the end of the year, all I   have to do is look at the beginning balance minus 
the ending balance and I can see how much we spent   out of our Capital One 360, add my pension to 
it, boom, I know how much we spent in the year. Now, I can't track it down to the 
category level, but I don't need to,   as long as I know that we're within 
our safe withdrawal rate and we're   not overspending.

That's the biggest concern 
is you've got to have some kind of mechanism   to make sure you're not overspending your safe 
withdrawal rate. And if you are, you recognize   it and you make adjustments. So, I set up the 
simplest process that I could think of, that would   kind of provide those guardrails without taking 
any work. I mean, it literally takes me 30 minutes   a year to do that. It's really, really simple. And 
it works. So, that's how I track my spending now. Casey Weade: And are you spending more? When we 
make more and more money while we're working,   we have lifestyle creep, we tend to 
spend more on retirement. You find   that maybe your portfolio is doing better 
than you had projected or you have a little   bit more income than you had projected. Do 
you see some creep as well in retirement? Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, interesting question, 
Casey. I think, if you look at the research,   the vast majority of retirees understand what 
they could be spending.

And I wrote an article   called, It's Time to Live Like No One Else, 
the Dave Ramsey quote. Live like no one else,   so later you can live like no one else. Well, 
now, it's later. What does live like no one else   after retirement look like? So, 
I wrote an article about it. And basically, what I said in that article is I'm 
going to spend what we can spend. I'm not going   to underspend because so many retirees fall into 
that natural, especially if you've always been   lifelong diligent, you underspend your paycheck, 
you do a good job saving, your natural tendency   is to be a bit frugal. And when you know you can 
spend X, your natural tendency is to spend less   than X, but you don't need to. If you look at all 
these Trinity studies, etc., you can spend your X. So, what I developed was this monthly 
transfer from the Capital One which   came out of bucket one cash, I can 
spend that entire monthly transfer.   It's all calculated, I don't have to 
worry about it.

Market may go up and down,   but I've got three years of cash. I can write out 
the storm. So basically, what we're doing is we're   spending up to that amount. And we got into 
a situation, I wrote my book, obviously,   I assumed no income in retirement. Again, 
conservative assumptions across the board. And I'm making some income in retirement. I wrote 
my book, I make a little bit of money on the blog,   not a lot, but it helps. So, what we're doing 
when we found that we were underspending,   we're like, “Well, we've got a little bit here. 
What should we do?” And we're contributing,   we're very into charity, we're supporting 
our church, we're tithing, things like that.   So, we decided, “Well, you know 
what? Let's look at the numbers.”   And we decided to build what I 
call the Purposeful Workshop. I love to write. My wife is running a nonprofit. 
So, we were starting to get into a situation   where her nonprofit was growing so much, 
and she was working in a spare bedroom,   in the little corner of the bedroom with 
the bed there.

She didn't have room. So,   we're like, “Look, why don't we give you my 
office upstairs?” We had a loft in our cabin.   I'm looking out the window, people see my eyes 
going up. Our cabin is literally right there. So, we decided, well, let's give her my old 
office. It's a nice big loft. It's great.   And we'll build a new building, which is where 
I'm at now. If you look behind me, this is now   my writing studio.

And we built adjacent to it 
a woodworking shop because I've always wanted   to get into woodworking. My wife's charity, 
we build free fences for low-income families   that have dogs on chains. Well, we also 
provide dog houses and we're struggling   to keep up with dog houses. So, I'm like, “Hey, I 
like woodworking. Why don't I build a woodworking   shop? I can start making dog houses. That 
sounds fun.” I had an interest in woodworking.   And we had the financial means to do it. So, 
I would say we're not underspending, we're   not overspending, we're spending what we know we 
can spend. And we have a mechanism to control it. Casey Weade: That's great. We had a question from 
Becky on Facebook right now. And I think it's   a valid question. She asked, “How can you tell 
mid-year if you're overspending?” So, go ahead. Fritz Gilbert: Hey, Becky. I know Becky. She's got 
a great blog, actually. She just started one out.   I wish it was something about 50. Sorry, 
Becky, put your blog name out there,   we'll give you some promotion. But 
yeah, Becky's a friend of mine.   Yeah, basically, Becky, what I can do by 
that when I'm doing the automatic monthly   transfers from Capital One, if there's money 
in our checking account, we're okay.

If we get   to the end of the month and we're starting to 
scrape low, we have a minimum kind of, we leave   some money in there, obviously, but we know if we 
get below X, hey, we kind of overspent this month. So, mid-year, we kind of just do it based 
on what's in the checking account. And all   the transfers from Capital One are all automated, 
they just flow every month. Pension obviously is   automated, flows every month. So, we know that 
we can spend what's in the checking account.   And that kind of becomes our month-to-month 
budget is just spend what’s in checking. Casey Weade: So, you're really keeping an eye on 
it from a month-to-month basis, not just looking   at it at the end of the year, we're looking at it 
every single month to see if there's little excess   or maybe not enough. And then, if you're saving 
for a vacation or you're saving for a new car,   is there a portion of that that's always set 
aside into a savings for those one-off expenses? Fritz Gilbert: Great point, Casey.

I built into 
this thing and again, I get into quite a bit   more detail than we will on this. But what I do, 
every January, obviously, I refill bucket one,   I set up the Capital One to run the monthly 
paycheck. Well, what's nice about Capital One   is you can actually set up sub-accounts. So, we 
set up a sub-account under Capital One that's   not part of my monthly paycheck. And I saw an 
article, there's a really good book by the Wall   Street Journal about retirement planning and 
I'll get the name, it's over on my calendar. Basically, if you look at things, 
like you got to replace a car,   you've got to replace an air conditioner, I live 
in Georgia, it's hot, you got to replace a roof,   you got to do siding repair on your 
house, those I call unexpected but   expected, you're going to have those 
unexpected-expected costs. And so, what we do   is if you look at a car, for example, let's say 
you're going to buy a car every pick a number   three years to make the math easy, let's say it's 
going to cost $30,000.

So, that's $10,000 a year,   high level, forget that there's residual value, 
I'm just using this as a demonstration. That would   be $10,000 a year that you need to be planning on 
for your car expenses. That's what? $800 a month. So, $10,000 every year, you need to have 
for your car. Well, I'm not going to buy   that in year one. So that 10,000 is sitting 
in my subcategory over there in Capital One.   In January of the next year.

I've got a reef, 
I've got to add to that unexpected-expected   budget, that amount. And what it comes down 
to is $12,000 a year. If you look at all those   things that you need, the car, the siding, look 
at an air conditioner, how long does it last?   15 years. What's the cost? 5000. You do all that 
math and you break down those major expenses,   which is all outlined in that blog post, in our 
case, that came out to about $12,000 a year. So, every year in January, I pushed 
$12,000 into that sub-account   and if I don't spend anything, great. The next 
year, I'll put another 12,000 in. The next year,   I'll put another 12,000 in. At some point, we 
got to buy a car. Well, we'll have the money   sitting there in cash in that sub-account because 
we're basically, budgeting for it every year,   even though it's a lumpy spend.

That's 
how we manage the unexpected-expected. And then, during the course of the year, if 
anything comes up that I kind of determine falls   into that type of category, we just pull out, out 
of that account. And again, look at January versus   December, you can see how much unexpected-expected 
spending you had just by subtracting the ending   balance from the beginning balance. So, it's a 
real simple way to manage those one-off expenses. Casey Weade: I love that, unexpected-expected 
expenses. This is something that we run   into with families we work with all 
the time. They'll come into, well,   what if I need a car? What if I need new air 
conditioning unit or new roof? And will you budget   for those things? I just thought this is really, 
I mean, what you just talked about, it's Budgeting   101. And this is people ask, well, how does Dave 
Ramsey's program, Financial Peace University,   how does that fit into retirement planning, 
that's more for people in the accumulation stage? Well, a lot of it goes back to budgeting.

And 
sometimes, we need to revisit those things if   we haven't taken a good look in a while. I don't 
want to go too far down the budgeting rabbit hole   because there's some other things I want to 
make sure that we get to, but I do want to ask   about that piece in your bio that says critical 
to success after crossing the starting line.   And so, that got me thinking, what is the starting 
line? Is the starting line your retirement date?   Does the starting line happen six months 
before? What is the retirement starting line?   I also think it's becoming a little blurrier, too. Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, no doubt. You talk about, 
can you work in retirement? Well, I would argue   I'm working right now, but I love this stuff.

This 
isn't work. So, to answer your question and then,   we'll get into the philosophy of it. To me, 
the starting line is the day you retire.   And the reason I call that is so many people think 
of retirement is the end. I've been working my   whole career, I'm finally done. It's not the 
end, it's the beginning of a whole new life. Retirement is a phase in life that is unlike 
any since you were probably 4 years old.   Nobody's telling you what to do. You can entirely 
decide what you want to do with your free time.   You don't have to go to work.

Now, with that comes 
the challenge of finding what you're going to do   self-driven. That brings you 
the joy in life. But to me,   the reason it's the retirement date 
is because that's the date that you   stop working for somebody else and you start 
doing whatever it is that you choose to do. And even if you decide to do a part-time job, 
that's fine to me.

You're still retired because   your decision to do that part-time job is if 
you've done your numbers, it's no longer driven   by financial considerations, it's driven by the 
fact that you enjoy doing that and you're only   doing it because of the non-financial benefits 
that that brings to your life. Hey, the financials   might be a nice little side benefit, but I 
look at my writing, for example, in my book,   I didn't write it for the income I got from 
it, I could care less, I would have done it   for free.

The reason I wrote the book is 
because, hey, I wanted to write a book. Retirement is that time in life when you can 
do something just because you want to do it,   you don't have to consider whether you're going 
to make money or not. You can think more about   those softer elements. People think about, oh, 
when I leave work, I'm losing my paycheck. Man,   there's so much more that you lose when you 
leave the workplace that people don't think   about. You got the social interactions. You've 
got the challenges, the deliverables. You got   your objectives with your boss.

You've got 
the presentations. You've got to do whatever. Those types of things provide some meaning in your 
life, a sense of accomplishment, etc. And I think   finding those things in retirement that can 
replace those non-financial elements of work   is a real sweet spot. And if you choose to do that 
through part-time work, that's fine. That's what   you’ve chosen to do in your retirement. You're 
still retired. So, yeah, the lines have blurred   because so many people are doing part time 
work. I would argue that my writing could be   perceived as part-time work. I view it entirely 
different. I view it as totally voluntary. We're leaving next week. We're heading 
out to Seattle to help our daughter move   back to Alabama. I'm taking a month off from 
writing. I don't have a boss. Sure, my readers,   yeah, I write every week, I've been very 
consistent, but if I want to take a month off,   I can take a month off.

That's a different type 
of work than when you're before the starting   line. That's post-starting line work, it's 
totally different than pre-starting line work. Casey Weade: It's voluntary work. And I make a 
parallel here with marriage, you don't have to   continue to work on your marriage, but if you want 
it to work out, you have to continue to work on   your marriage. And you're not working for money, 
you're working for fulfillment and a bigger life,   which is much like retirement. You never stop 
working, you're just working for yourself now   and you're working on yourself and that never 
ends.

Now, you post you’re starting by line   back a little bit and the original plan 
was to retire in 2017, so why the delay? Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, the main reason on that, 
Casey, there were two main factors. One,   I had an uncle who retired probably a little bit 
before he should have. And I was at a wedding and   we were talking about, I say, I'm thinking about 
retiring maybe five years or so. It was before I   started the blog, it was quite ways out. And 
he gave me some advice that just penetrated   and it stuck with me. And he basically said, 
“Look, Fritz,” he said, “when you're at that point   and you're close to thinking about retirement,” he 
said, “just really make sure.” He said, “because   you will never replace the income that you're 
making in your peak earning years. No matter   what you do in retirement, you'll never come 
close to making that amount of money.” He said,   “so just make sure because once you walk away, 
you're walking away.” So, that stuck with me.

The second thing was I shared that advice 
with a friend of mine who was retiring   a year before me and he decided to 
wait an extra year. And then, actually,   he was going to retire two years before me. He 
waited a year and then, he retired and he told me,   “So, Fritz, that was the best advice I ever 
got.” He said, “We have more money than we   need. There's zero financial anxiety in our 
life. I'm so glad I worked that extra year.” So, hearing that from both of those 
people, our numbers said we could do it,   but I'm conservative, I cushioned everything in 
our budget and I just decided, you know what? I   don't hate my job.

I mean, I'm still only 54. 
I can work another year, sure, it feels like   a long time when you're in the middle of it, 
but once you get out of 55, if that extra year   truly does lead to less anxiety for the rest of 
my life, man, that's a pretty good trade-off. So,   I did work one more year and now, looking 
back at it, two and a half years in,   I feel the same way as my friend did. 
I'm so glad I worked the extra year. We can build the workshop that I'm 
sitting in, we can do those things.   And yeah, I gave up a year of my life, that's not   a decision to make lightly, but the benefit of 
that is every year that I'm alive after that   is more relaxing and less stressful. So, that's 
kind of the trade-off you need to think about. Casey Weade: Well, Jonah Moffitt, 
if I pronounced that correctly,   who just posted a question to our 
Facebook as we're live here said… Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, I know 
her as well.

Hey, Jonah. Casey Weade: Is there anything you would have done   differently now that you've been retired for 
two and a half years? I would add to that,   was there anything that you overlooked or 
unique issues being retired so relatively early? Fritz Gilbert: Yeah. I want to be humble, 
but I'll just be honest. I am absolutely   100% content with the way we went through this 
process and I find it almost hard to say that,   but I struggle to think of something that I would 
say, “You know what? I wish we would have done   this.

I wish we would have done that.” There's 
nothing that comes to mind and even when I'm   just lying in bed, whatever, thinking, writing, 
whatever, there's nothing that I think about that   I have regrets over the process we went through. I 
mean, it's been that good of a transition for us. Casey Weade: Were there any surprises? Fritz Gilbert: I don't know that I would say 
surprises. I have actually been documenting,   I called it the Retirement Reality series. And 
I've written like five or six posts in this   Retirement Reality series, where I talk about 
what I'm thinking as I go through the various   phases. Like I talked about earlier, if you're 
six months before retirement, you can go right   back in my timeline and see where I was. Well, 
I've done the same thing post retirement after   I've crossed the starting line and I just finished 
one about the two-year mark and I think probably   the biggest thing that I would say is, I always 
kind of knew this thinking about what you wanted   to do and finding something that gives you 
purpose.

I knew that was important, but I   don't think I really appreciated how important 
it was until I actually lived it myself. And the   fact that I've got so much contentment right now, 
I think, demonstrates, I guess, the value of that. I think the other thing I think about when I hear 
that is probably the lack of appreciation for   how big of a change it is for both people in the 
relationship. You mentioned relationships earlier.   It's really, really important to think about 
how this is going to affect both people in the   relationship. And my transition was great. 
I've been thinking about it. Obviously,   my wife and I talked about it all the time. We 
were really thinking we were ready. I made the   transition. I was great.

I was motivated. 
I was writing. I was having a great time. Well, what happened in my wife's case was she was 
a pretty much full-time caregiver for her mom,   her mom had Alzheimer's. She lived with us for 
four years. And a couple years before I retired,   she ended up having go on a nursing home, but she 
was nearby and my wife went in almost every day.   So, it really was kind of my wife's 
job, was taking care of her mom,   being there for her. And her mom died three 
months after I retired in September of ‘18.   And my wife kind of went through 
a thing because she hadn't been   thinking about that as a job and suddenly, her mom 
was gone and she hadn't really gone through that   mental exercise that I had about what do we want 
to do post retirement that brings you purpose.

Her purpose was kind of caring for others. From 
the time our daughter was born 25 years ago,   my wife had been a caregiver and suddenly, 
that job was gone. And I think, in hindsight,   it's worked out great. She started this charity, 
she's doing great, we're loving life. But there   was, I would say, a more difficult transition for 
her because we didn't recognize that caregiving   was kind of the same as a job and we hadn't fully 
anticipated the impact of losing a parent and   how that changes what you do with your day. So, 
that's probably the biggest surprise, I would say. Casey Weade: Well, I wasn't going to go 
there quite yet, but let's talk romance.   So, I came across an article you were quoted 
in MarketWatch titled, How to Make Retirement   Romantic, love the article. And I mean, the 
reality is, I mean, just look at the divorce   rate. The divorce rate of US adults aged 50 and 
older has about doubled since the 90s.

It's the   fastest growing segment of divorce today. Why do 
you think that is? There's a lot of speculation   and a lot of people want to point to this 
or that what. What is your reasoning? Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, I think what it is, Casey, 
and I'm no expert by any means, I'm just one guy   and one wife.

We've gone through retirement 
recently, but I think if you look at COVID,   as an example, how many people have struggled in 
their relationships when suddenly the spouse who's   been going to the office every day or maybe 
both spouses are going to an office every day   and suddenly they're home working from 
home, bumping into each other all day long?   How many of them have kind of had 
a tough adjustment? Probably a lot. It's no different with 
retirement. I’ll share a story,   I put this in my book. I had a buddy of mine 
who his wife had been a stay-at-home mom,   this guy retired and he was a guy who 
his job was kind of making things better,   he was a process-improvement guy. So, he’d do any 
to analyze the way they're doing things and he’d   make them better.

That was his mind, 
that's what he'd done for years. So, he's watching his wife load the dishwasher 
or something and he starts telling her how she   could do it better. I mean, it's classic 
story, but that's what happens. She's like,   “Hey, I know I load a dishwasher, I've been doing 
for 30 years.” He goes, “Yep. Sorry.” I think you   have to recognize that going from one or both 
spouses being in the workplace all day long   to suddenly both spouses being home 
all the time is a big, big change.

And I think, fortunately, one of the things we 
did and I really encourage listeners, watchers   to do this is, as you're thinking about the soft 
side in that last year or so that you're working,   kind of reach an agreement with each other. How 
much time is going to be kind of we time, stuff   that we do together? What do you want to do on 
your own? My wife really got into pottery shortly   after we retired, okay, great. You've each got to 
have those individual things that you like to do   and you have to have the freedom to 
go do those without feeling guilty,   without the other one getting mad at you.

You've got to kind of have an agreement, hey, 
okay. You don't have to structure 10 hours a week,   whatever. I love to go to the gym, I take spin 
classes, I work out every morning, that's kind   of my time. My wife, she does her charity stuff 
which takes a lot of time. She likes to paint,   she's getting into some arts and craft-type style, 
that's great. She has some time for her stuff. I   have some time for my stuff. And we do a lot of 
stuff together. But kind of talking through that   and recognizing how big a change it's going to be 
and having a little bit of understanding going in,   of how that's going to work, and talk frequently 
once you retire and you're going through those   adjustments, “Hey, don't tell me how to 
load dishes, I know how to load dishes.” Having an open relationship, where you can kind of   be honest about what's irritating you about 
the other person, man, that matters more in   retirement than any other time because 
you're always together, and it's great.   But you've got to be prepared for how big 
of a change that is to a relationship.

Casey Weade: Well, I've been setting the 15 
Commitments of Conscious Leadership for a   while now. And one of the things 
that I took away from that book   had to do with communication with your spouse. 
Many people won't have these types of discussions   of things that bother him, the things that 
irritate him, that kind of bury those things.   And then, that actually leads to 
boredom in a relationship. You're   never going to be bored if you're always 
talking about stuff that irritates you. Fritz Gilbert: That's true. And again, you 
may never be happy. If you focus always   on the stuff that irritates you, you may 
never be happy.

There's a balance there. Casey Weade: There's a delicate balance. So, I 
feel like we should stay here a little bit longer   because we had about a half-dozen questions. 
There's probably more questions that we ever had   on marriage. We have questions that come from 
Facebook, but we also have some questions that   come from our weekend readers. So, for those of 
you that subscribed to Weekend Reading, you have   an email opportunity every single time before a 
guest comes on to present us with the questions. And so, I've got a couple 
here, and it's kind of long,   but I think it's important and I think it's really 
valid and relevant here. So, Shawn Peterson says,   I am currently 52. I plan on retiring in eight 
years at 60.

As a couple, my wife and I were   happily married, recently became empty nesters, 
enjoying some more time together. When I retire,   I truly believe that we are both looking forward 
to spending even more time traveling and working   on projects together. However, while I am still 
working away from home about 45 hours a week,   my wife also enjoys a considerable 
amount of time to herself. As we are looking forward to retirement and 
obvious concern of hers, I believe is that I   will be hanging around a lot more and intruding 
on her “me time,” my questions are two. So, one,   how big of a concern is this towards 
maintaining a happy marriage? Number two,   how can I help alleviate her worries in advance 
of retirement and assure her that I will still   respect her need for personal space? Then, Mark 
Linna threw in there as well on the same lines.   He said, how do you carve out space when you 
and your spouse are now together all the time   retirement? So, you got three different 
questions but all along the same lines.

Fritz Gilbert: Yeah. And I'll add to it, 
I actually went to a retirement dinner for   somebody I used to work with and his wife 
actually came up to me and said, “Fritz,   what am I going to do when he's home all the 
time? He's going to drive me crazy.” So, I mean,   everybody has that concern. And I've always been 
interested in the retirement topic. So, years ago,   I started talking to people in the workplace when 
they were getting ready to retire and almost every   single one of them raises this question. I don't 
know how it's going to work when I'm home all the   time. Well, everybody has that concern. And 
I think I applaud the reader for saying that   his wife is concerned about his invading her “me 
time.” That's exactly what I was talking about. You have to recognize that you have 
your routine, let's just assume   the guy is working and the woman's at home 
because that's what the reader situation is.   You've got your routine as the guy, you're driving 
to the office, you do your thing at the office,   you drive home.

Well, don't fail to recognize 
your wife has her routine. She's been doing   something for years, that's kind of her routine. 
My wife kind of has a flow to her day. She does   certain things at certain times. She likes to 
read at certain times, whatever. And I think   understanding that and recognizing it and talking 
about it before you get to retirement is exactly   what I was mentioning in our last little chat, 
that you've got to realize that that's going   to change, but you can still carve out time for 
both of you to do the things that you want to do,   while also accommodating the reality that 
you're going to have a lot more time together. So, I think it's a balancing act. It's 
not kind of a one-and-done discussion.   It's an ongoing thing, but I think the first 
important thing is to recognize that the change   is going to be equally big. If 
you've got a stay-at-home spouse,   the change is just as big for the stay-at-home 
spouse as it is for the one leaving the workplace   and don't ever underestimate how big of a change 
that is.

And you just have to talk through it. Casey Weade: And with this communication, usually,   there's some negotiation or compromise in a 
marriage and especially around retirement,   were you always on the same page with Jackie? 
Or were there some areas of compromise? Fritz Gilbert: Well, I'll tell you 
something we did. Well, first of all,   I would say, we thought we were always on the 
same page and we got a great relationship. I can't   remember the last time we had a fight, we're 
very compatible, we see things very similar,   but I think when her mom passed away and I was 
invigorated, I was still in my honeymoon period   of the retirement so I was on cloud nine, and she 
kind of obviously went through a mourning process,   not only for losing her mom, but for kind of 
losing that purpose that had been driving her.   We had some pretty good discussions through 
that because she said, I'm looking at what   you're doing and you're having a great time, and 
she was, I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

So, I think having that transparency in your 
relationship where you can have those discussions.   And we talked through it, I mean, obviously, I've 
written a lot of articles. My whole focus is of   finding purpose and self-driving, self-motivating 
yourself to do those things that matter.   So, fortunately, I kind of had that knowledge 
and we talked about it. And the biggest thing   I would encourage people might be a little bit 
of a sidebar, but let me mention this first,   if something interests you a little bit,   pursue it because what you're probably going 
to find is one of you in the relationship is   going to be more engaged with something and 
you're going to love it, you're going to be   getting all that fulfillment.

And the other 
one may not have found their thing yet. That was the case with my wife and I, I’d kind 
of found my thing and she had not yet started   her nonprofit. In time, she found it, but the way 
she found it, I think is relevant. And she saw a   Facebook thing, Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs guy. He 
does a Facebook show, where he profiles different   nonprofits and he profiled a nonprofit out in 
Oregon. I think it was called Freedom for Fido   that did exactly what we now do here in Georgia, 
where they build fences for low-income dogs,   get them off the chains. And my wife 
saw that and she was, “You know what?   We could do that here. I could do 
that here.” And that was the spark. And I think the takeaway is, she saw that and 
rather than just watch it and then go on to the   next thing, she took the first step. And within 
a couple months, she had a 501(c)(3) set up,   she had a board of directors, she had banking, 
she had a post office box, she was raising money.   We were building the fence within three 
months of that first time she saw the video   and it's exploded since then.

And she is 
absolutely loving it. She's found her thing. So, if something interests you, pursue it. 
And if you see that your spouse is struggling,   you're fired up, or I think a lot of times, the 
woman that talked to me at that retirement thing   was worried because this guy was pretty much 
a workaholic and he didn't have any outside   interests and she kind of had her life. She 
was doing her thing, she was going to whatever   she was going to during the day, she 
played tennis with other ladies, whatever.   And she knew that this guy didn't kind of have 
his thing yet. So, it all leads me to that same   thought process of how do you find your purpose in 
retirement. And if one of you in the relationship   has found it and one of you hasn't, it's 
probably going to cause some conflict.

Casey Weade: Now, I just have a question. Whose 
responsibility is them? So, you found yours,   your spouse doesn't, is it your responsibility 
to help? And if it is, to what degree? Fritz Gilbert: Well, you could go deep on marriage 
counseling here, I guess. To me, I look at it   almost like an addict. You can enable somebody, 
but you can't make them stop. They've got to want   to stop. To me, it's not unlike that. You can 
encourage somebody to, “Hey, I think you should   try to find a purpose” but such a broad statement. 
What does that even mean? The only person that   can find a purpose that really works for them is 
them, I don't think it's a problem if you want to. And in my book, I do a whole 
section on resources in the back   because a lot of people do struggle with this. 
And there are people that you can reach out to   that are professionally trained to help you 
find these types of things in your life,   but ultimately, you can't make your spouse 
do that.

It's got to be something that that   individual wants to do. And if they just 
don't want to do it, I don't know what to   tell you. You can't force somebody and you're 
probably going to have some bumps in the road. Casey Weade: That's great. Yeah, one 
more question on the relationship stuff   came out of something you had brought up in 
that MarketWatch article, you said that you   and your wife created an activity jar to focus 
on making the most of the next phase of life.   Can you tell us a little bit about that? I 
thought that was an interesting exercise. Fritz Gilbert: Yeah. And again, this was 
in that pre-retirement stage where I was,   how do you find things that bring fulfillment in 
retirement? I don't know where I got the idea, but   about a year before I retired, I kind of presented 
the idea and we talked about it.

We came up with   the concept. We put a cookie jar in our bedroom 
with a little poster thing next to it and we   kind of encouraged each other, “Hey, once a 
week, come up with an activity that you'd like   to do. It can be something we've done before, but 
ideally, maybe something we haven't done before.” So, it was neat because I didn't know what she 
was putting in the jar, she didn't know what   I was putting in the jar, but each week, 
we would each put an activity in the jar,   the thinking being on the day we 
retired, if we did one activity a week,   we would have two years’ worth of activities to 
do once a week, half of which were driven by me,   half of which were driven by her. 
So, it's a neat concept for either   one in the relationship to have equal influence 
on what you're going to be doing in retirement. And I'll be honest, we've gotten so busy at our 
own retirement, we haven't gotten anywhere near   through two years’ worth of activities, I mean, 
not even close.

But I think the mental exercise   of trying to find something every week is really 
good because I was on Google looking around things   in our area and things we hadn't done before and, 
“Hey, Chattanooga is not too far.” “Well, I don’t   know Chattanooga yet.” “Okay, we're going to spend 
a weekend at Chattanooga, put that in the jar.” So, it makes both of you think about what 
do you want to do in your spare time once   you get into retirement, whether or not 
you actually do it or not, surprisingly,   probably isn't the point.

I think 
the point is that you both have equal   say and there's an equal chance that you'll 
be doing something that either party picked,   so it worked out really well for us, but we've 
come nowhere near tapping into 100 items now,   probably 125 weeks in, we're nowhere 
near tapping into the hundred items,   yet. We can't, everybody says you're too busy in 
retirement. We really have found ourselves very   busy in retirement with things that bring 
fulfillment.

And if we have an open day,   we'll grab something, we'll do it, but it's not 
driving our retirement like we thought it might. Casey Weade: I just see this 
as a wonderful exercise for   anyone really, at any stage of life. 
Even a single going into retirement,   I could see how this could help uncover certain 
passions that maybe you don’t know you had. Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, I 
agree. I think the thing is,   find a way to stimulate yourself to think about 
what do you want to do that you haven't done.   It fosters curiosity. I've got to put something in 
there every week, I'm curious, what can I find to   do around here? Anything you can do to foster 
your curiosity, make a bucket list, whatever,   anything like that that gets your mind thinking 
about that post-retirement life, this goes back   to our earlier statement. The more time you 
spend thinking about your post-retirement life,   that's what this is. It's kind of a clever way of 
doing it, but what are you doing? You're thinking   about, “Oh, what do I want to do when I retire?” 
“Well, let's go to Chattanooga for a week.”   It's a creative way to think curiously 
about things that you can do in your area.

Casey Weade: I think this is a good time to insert 
a question we had from one of our Weekend Reading   readers. John Mueller asked, “What does a 
regular week look like in retirement?” I   think more importantly, here, 
along these lines, he said,   “Are there any remaining things left to do 
on your bucket list you would like to share?” Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, I tell you what, I   did a podcast a while ago and I was like, well, 
let me just tell you what I did yesterday.

So,   let me just try that now. And honestly, this was 
not prepped, I don't… so let me just tell you what   I did yesterday, I'll see if I can remember. Okay. 
We went out in the morning, nine o'clock. Well,   first of all, I walk the dogs every morning. So, 
I took the dogs out for a walk about a mile and   a half. After that, my wife and I went and build a 
fence, Freedom for Fido fence, for a couple hours,   came back after that, and I winterized my 
RV, which took a surprising amount of time   and then, after that, I worked a little 
bit on my blog and then we had dinner   together and we relaxed last night, just 
watching TV, watching a movie on Netflix.

So, I think what's interesting is each day 
is unchoreographed, what I found is adding a   little bit of structure in the morning through 
my classes at the gym, typically, right now,   my instructor is out, but otherwise, I would have 
been at the gym instead of doing the fence build,   probably. But all that to say, a little bit 
of structure is good because you can't just   randomly wander through every day, I found that 
that to me, it works better to have a little bit   of structure because that's one of the things 
you lose when you leave work is that structure.

So, I like having a class most mornings 
at the gym, so I kind of get out,   it's a priority for me, I work on the fitness. 
But then, I have an unstructured afternoon,   it’s kind of how I normally do it. So, 
that that answers that one. What was   the other part of the question? I just 
lost my train of thought there with it. Casey Weade: Are there any remaining 
things left to do on your bucket list? Fritz Gilbert: Absolutely. Oh, 
yeah, there's tons. I mean,   by design, my bucket list is kind of things I want 
to do for the rest of my life. So, my hope is,   there's still stuff on my bucket list that I don't 
get to by the time I die. So, there's many, many   things. One, I guess, for me is, right now, we're 
in a phase where the RV travel works really well,   we have four dogs. It's easy to take the 
dogs when we do the RV, but I would like   to get to a point where maybe we do a month. 
I've always had an intrigue with New Zealand.

We've been to Europe a ton. We traveled a lot 
when I was working, I'd frequent flyer miles,   but I would like to go to like New Zealand, 
Australia, and maybe just get like an Airbnb,   stay in one place for like a month and really 
get a flavor of living in some foreign land, so   extended international travel, multiple countries, 
but New Zealand kind of comes to mind first.   It’s probably the one I would think about 
from your instinct is to go to travel first.   What I tried to do on my bucket list, 
instead of just focus on travel,   I write in my book that life is like a wheel 
and your wheel has spokes. So, you've got your   spiritual aspects to your life, your relationship 
aspects, your financial aspects, your whatever. There's multiple areas in your life and try to 
create bucket list items for each one of those.   And I would say on every one 
of those different spokes,   the goal being obviously, you develop all 
your spokes equally because a wheel rolls best   when it's round and it's only round if all your 
spokes are the same length.

So, try to come up   with bucket list items on all those different 
aspects in your life. And I would say every one   of those aspects of my life have bucket list items 
that I still have in mind that I would like to do. Casey Weade: That's great. Now, you've given 
me a little bit of homework is to go through   and I see those aspects of life being maybe 
values to like, these are the things you value,   these are your values, maybe it's spiritual, 
maybe it's personal growth, maybe it's family,   but I love the exercise of going back and building 
a bucket list out on each one of those different   items.

That's really neat. Now, Fritz, we're 
running up against our typical closeout time.   Do you have a hard stop because I'd like to 
go a little bit further if you have the time? Fritz Gilbert: I'm wide open, Casey. Casey Weade: Awesome. Fritz Gilbert: I'm retired. Casey Weade: Well, I feel like we'd be remiss if 
we didn't talk a little bit more about RV travel.   We shared an article of yours not long ago how 
to RV in retirement. So, why an RV? It seems   like there's these two camps. There's RVing is 
horrible, it's a horrible investment, don't ever   do that. And then, there's the opposite camp, this 
is a great thing, everybody should be in an RV. Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, I think RVing is like 
anything in retirement. It sounds great,   but don't go spend a boatload of money on it until 
you really know it's something you want to do. I   mean, that's, I think, where the negative comes 
in, somebody goes out and spends 100 grand, gets a   big rig, they're all set, and then they go out on 
their first trip, and they realize they hate it,   where it sits in a parking lot 51 weeks out of 
the year.

That's where the negative comes from. In our case, we've always camped. When our 
daughter was young, actually both my wife and I,   when we were kids, ironically, our families 
camped, so we've always camped. And when   our daughter was growing up, camping was very 
important to us. But guess what? You're working,   so you can only do a weekend trip here and there, 
maybe take a week off, maybe if you're really   lucky, you get two weeks off, but we knew 
in retirement, that's all going to change. So, we already knew we had 
the love of camping. So, we   built it into our budget. We talked about that 
post-retirement spending and we made sure that we   had the money set aside.

That's red light number 
one is don't think you're going to get into RVing   if you haven't built in the acquisition costs 
into your retirement plan. Don't go out on the   day you retire and spend 100 grand, getting 
a big unit and not have it factored into your   numbers because you just… big mistake. So, that's 
where it gets a lot of the negative connotations. We planned it all in and we've loved it. 
The first year because my mother-in-law   was still alive so we didn't want to 
be too far away. So, we just did quick   weekend trips within an hour to home, enjoyed 
it, got to know the camper, great. Last year,   we took a three-month trip and we drove 
out to Seattle, our daughter was out there.   So, we spent the summer in the Pacific Northwest. 
It was great, took a month getting out there.   We stayed out there a month, took a 
month coming back. Fantastic trip. This year with COVID, everything else going 
on, we took kind of an intermediate trip. We   went up around Michigan's Upper Peninsula, we 
took a month.

The joy of RVing is that it is so   flexible. You can do a three-month cross-country 
trip, you can live full time if you want to.   Or you can just do a weekend trip close to home. I 
mean, it's absolutely flexible. And just make sure   you factored it in as you're doing your retirement 
plan. And I would encourage you if you've never   done it and you think it's interesting, just go 
and rent one. There are places you can rent an RV,   go rent them for a week, make sure it's 
something you really think you're going   to enjoy before you sink the money into it, but 
it's a great aspect of our retirement, we love it. Casey Weade: You said build it into your budget, 
that's the most important aspect.

And this is   why I received so much negative press, if 
you will, is that people have lost a lot of   money doing it because they made poor decisions 
and build it into their budget appropriately.   So, how do you go about building it 
into your budget? What are some things   to look out for? What do people often overlook? Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, I guess, the way that 
we did it, you speak to a lot more people   that are planning for retirement than I do, 
but I can share how we did it. And basically,   I knew that on day one of retirement, I wanted 
to have three years’ minimum of cash. Bucket one,   we're using a bucket strategy.

So, we've 
got three years of cash at all times and   knowing what that number was going to be. And 
now, let's say I'm two years ahead of retirement,   okay, I've got to do this per year to 
get to that starting number of cash. Well, rather than stop there, we also said 
in addition to that, if we're going to buy a   truck and buy a fifth wheel, we need to make 
sure we have the cash set aside for that,   so that we're not detracting from that three 
years’ cash cushion at the beginning. So,   basically, I just did a time series. Basically, 
I saved my bonuses, we took some of our 401k   savings and redirected it into after-tax so be 
liquid, things like that. We sold the house,   we had a big house in the city, we sold that, 
took the home equity, and used some of that.   So, basically, I just did the math and said, 
“Okay, here's how much we need on day one.

Here's   the income I expect to be able to fill that bucket 
with, how much do we have leftover?” And that kind   of determined the budget for how much we could 
spend on the RV. So, that's the way we did it. Casey Weade: What about on an ongoing 
basis, I mean, maintenance fuel,   is it pretty normal? Are the 
things to look out for there? Fritz Gilbert: I mean, what I did when we did 
this 11 months of tracking our spending and then   we went to a post-retirement guest, I basically 
factored in a travel line and I said, okay,   let's say we spent 100 days a year camping, 
I had no idea what we were going to do,   but I figured it would be probably less 
than that.

But let's plan for, again,   conservative budgeting. So, we did 100 nights 
a year at like $35 a night and we said, okay,   how many miles do we think we’ll drive? 
Let's say 10,000 miles. Okay, 10,000 miles,   let's say 10 miles a gallon because you're 
pulling a big camper. So how much fuel is that? So, I literally went through that level of 
detail in my thinking when we went from our   existing spending to our projected spending 
and whatever that calculation came out to be,   we threw that in there and when we were trying 
to determine, do we have enough money to retire   that spending, not only to include the $2500 
a month to health insurance we talked about,   but it included whatever that calculation was 
for RV travel.

So, yeah, we did factor it in.   And it's in that number that we set up through 
these monthly transfers into our checking account. Casey Weade: And you're able to do a lot of 
these things, I think, because you relocated and   correct me if I'm wrong, you mentioned this term 
geoarbitrage and I'd like you to share with us   just what it was like in a downsizing, why 
you chose Georgia and what's geoarbitrage? Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, basically, in summary, 
geoarbitrage is moving from a higher cost   location to a lower cost location, which allows 
you to spend less money and still enjoy life.   And what we found, Casey, we had a big house, 
suburbs of Atlanta.

Yeah, it’s fine, we're raising   our daughter, we had my mother-in-law living with 
us. It was nice to have the space but by the time   you're empty nesters, you got half your house 
sitting empty. I mean, it's got furniture in it,   but when's the last time you went into your formal 
sitting room or whatever people have these days?   You probably, if you have a big house, you have a 
lot of rooms that you don't use, but you're paying   for them, you got to heat them, you got to cool 
them, you got to pay taxes on the square footage. What we found by moving, we had a weekend 
cabin up in the mountains that we rented   for maybe seven or eight years before I retired 
and we came up here on weekends, we enjoyed it,   we just fell in love with the area. But what we 
found now, we probably have 2000 square feet,   it's perfect, it's comfortable.

We got a little 
bit tight on the office space so we added this   thing out here. So, I'd have my office writing 
studio. But what we found is every square inch   of our house is being utilized. We don't 
feel crowded, but we don't feel like we're   wasting a bunch of space. We have exactly 
the right footprint for what we need. So, what does that allowed us to do? It's allowed 
us to reduce our property taxes. We moved out of   a more expensive area. It lowers utility 
bills. The knock-on effects of downsizing,   it's significant. The property 
tax alone is a big issue.   Why Georgia? Main reason we chose Georgia is 
we already lived in Georgia. Georgia recently   recognized the importance of getting the 
tax structure right to attract retirees. So, they're not rated if you look at a 
lot of the Kiplinger's or whoever does the   state's attractiveness for retirees. 
Georgia typically rates pretty highly   in terms of what income they tax and 
don't tax retirees. So, their tax,   I'd say, maybe not the best, but they're 
pretty good.

So, it's a tax favorable location.   And we just like it. We're in the mountains. We 
got trout fishing out the back of our property.   We got a beautiful lake a mile away. We got 
hiking trails everywhere. I think the most   important thing is it just fit our lifestyle 
and what we wanted to do in retirement. Casey Weade: Well, you're definitely 
living that seven-letter motto in to life. Fritz Gilbert: That’s it. Casey Weade: I know you enjoy that. And I hope 
if you didn't catch that podcast, where we dove   into that article, please go back and listen 
to that, I think you'll really benefit from it.   I'm hoping that I get to have the 
opportunity to have you on again,   Fritz, and talk about ants versus grasshoppers.

Fritz Gilbert: That was a good one. Yeah. Casey Weade: Grasshoppers have to do with 
retirement. We'll just tease that one. And maybe,   we'll come back on for a short episode around ants 
and grasshoppers, it has to do with boundaries.   I'll leave that hint out there for you. As we 
come to a close here, I want to talk about your   book a little bit.

We have picked up a whole box 
of your book, if you could hold it up for us. Fritz Gilbert: Sure. Casey Weade: We've got a whole box of Keys to a 
Successful Retirement, a summary of the 24 keys   that Fritz's identified and experienced in his 
own successful transition into retirement. It is   a must read for anyone within five years. Every 
time we've got a whole box of these things here,   we're going to give them away until they're 
all gone. If you want to claim your copy,   all you have to do is leave an honest 
review for the podcast over on iTunes. You can go to retirewithpurpose.com, click on the 
podcast tab, it says leave a review right there   at the top of the page.

Or you can just scroll 
to the bottom of your podcast app and leave a   review there. That's how we get discovered. And 
that's also how you get a complimentary copy   of Fritz's book, Keys to a Successful Retirement. 
Fritz, thank you so much for joining us here and   again, I hope we get to come back and talk 
about ants and grasshoppers in the future. Fritz Gilbert: Oh, Casey, thank you very much. I 
really appreciate being on your show and I'm sure   you’re an ant just like I am and 
we'll have to talk about it. And   I would love to come back on it. I really enjoyed 
talking with you and I think we could talk for   hours.

Obviously, we see things very similar 
and I'd love to come back on your show anytime. Casey Weade: Awesome. Thanks, 
Fritz, until next time. Fritz Gilbert: Okay, thank you, Casey..

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The Top 10 Best Places To Retire in the World ⛱

You've done it. You've worked hard all your life, you've put in your time, and now it is finally time to reap the rewards. You are retiring. Congratulations. The only question now is what do you do with all of your new found free time? How do you spend it? Where do you spend it? And with so many amazing places to visit or live in the world, how do you narrow them all down to just one? Well, you could spend the next 40 years Googling it or you can just watch this video settle in my friend, because we are about to go on a journey of the best places to retire in the world. But this is not your ordinary top 10 list. Oh no. I have scoured the internet for the best of the best of the best. The number one places to retire on all of the top lists. We've got the best place for quality of life, the best place for cost of living, for zero taxes, and the best place to retire from the retirement gurus themselves, international living.

My role here is to be your guide. I'm going to take you through each place, give you my reaction and opinion to each one and let you know the pros and cons and if I agree with their number one choices. And at the end of the video, we're gonna save the best for last of course. And I'm going to tell you my recommendation for where he should retire. But first, what makes a place a good place to retire? Well, I went over to ask the 5,000 people in my Facebook group what they thought, and they overwhelmingly told me that a high quality of life with a low cost of living are the two main things that they're looking for. So that's what we're gonna look for on this list. Let's get started. Kicking things off in 10th place.

We have the best place to retire early and cheap. This is a top 15 list by a gentleman named Vagabond Awake. You may have seen some of his videos before on YouTube. Let's see what he has to say. Okay, so he's going with Bali. That is a pretty interesting choice out of everywhere in the world, but I like it. I don't hate it. Bali is a great place to live. It's a very tropical and beautiful, it's very affordable, and there are a lot of foreigners living there for that reason. In fact, Indonesia made it on my top 10 list of places to live in the world. But when it comes to retiring, there's a couple issues with Bali. I mean, the big thing is that it's just very far away. It's an island in an island chain. So if you are coming from North America or Europe and you're going to be retiring to Bali, it's just really far away like going to the Philippines.

So if you really want to settle on that side of the world, I think it's great. Of course, right now it is a difficult time as we're filming this during the pandemic, but there are a lot of plans for Bali to reopen their borders for travel and tourism. And also they're developing some new remote work in digital nomad visas. So if you have a retirement income that can make it really affordable for you to live in Bali for up to five years if their visa goes through without having to apply for any sort of permanent residency status. So that could be a good option for you. Next up, we have the best places to retire under $1,500 per month according to another fellow YouTuber.

Harry, scary. So Harry chose Tulum, Mexico as his number one spot, which surprises me to see on a list of the best places under $1,500 per month because Tulum is actually the most expensive town in that region in the Maya Riviera of Mexico. So if you're considering that area for your retirement, then you're gonna wanna look at places like Ply Del Carmen just to the North, or even Puerto Aventuras, which is between Tulum and Ply del Carmen. You'll get a lower cost of living in a lot fewer digital nomads dancing around on your beach.

Another place to look at this area is actually between Cancun and Ply Del Carmen. There are a lot of golf course communities. There's a lot of really nice neighborhoods that are kind of out of the downtown core of p Playa Central, and you can get more affordable housing there and still have the same access to amenities, the same great climate, and the same nice quality of life. So I do like the Yucatan area of Mexico as a retirement destination. I'm just not sure I would choose Tulum. But what if you're from the US and you don't wanna head south of the border? What is the best US city for you to retire to while US News and World Report does an annual report on this? And so let's see who won in 2021? Sarasota, Florida, number one, best place to retire with a score of 7.6 out of 10. And it looks like they chose Sarasota because of the art scene and also the beautiful beaches and the foodie culture. I really like Sarasota as a US retirement destination. I actually used to live around that area on the Gulf Coast over in St.

Pete, Florida. And my sister used to always joke with me whenever we were FaceTiming and she would ask like, oh, how are you enjoying your retirement? Because in the screen she could just see all of the beaches and the palm trees and everything around me. And she just said, it always looked like I was retired. And you know, maybe I was living my digital nomad retirement life.

If you're looking for a beach town in the United States, then it's really hard to beat Sarasota because it has that beautiful water, the sailing, the boating, a really nice arts and cultural scene, lots of live music, you've got lots of breweries over there, and it's just a nice place to enjoy a nice beverage at sunset. There are also no state taxes in Florida, and the cost of living is pretty moderate as well.

So good choice. Now let's see what another one of my favorite YouTubers Briggs has to say about that, because I know he does a lot of top 10 lists. Mesquite, Nevada did not see that coming. <laugh>, what the heck? I need more information. Okay, so he says that he chose this place because you can get your real estate under 150,000, but there are a ton of places around the world where you can get a condo for less than 150 grand. And according to my Facebook poll, the cost of real estate was at the bottom of people's priorities when it comes to where they wanna retire abroad. So I think out of all of the places in the world, like sorry, Briggs, but I'm probably not going to pick a desert. There are probably a lot of similar places in Nevada with a similar cost of living. So for me, that doesn't necessarily stand out as one of the best places in the US to retire, but it could be for you to each their own.

I've never heard of it personally, but if you've ever been to Mesquite, Nevada, let us know in the comments what we're missing now in sixth place. What about the best tax-free destination to live? Well, to answer that question, we're gonna have to go over to none other than our friend, the Nomad capitalist. Let's see what he has to say. So Andrew's recommending the United Arab Emirates, which is really interesting choice, but I can definitely see why I just did a lot of research on Dubai specifically for their new remote work visa. And so I was reading about all of the reasons that foreigners go to live there, but I'm not sure that I would recommend it as a retirement destination specifically.

And I don't think that's what Andrew's doing here. I think he's just saying the best tax free country, but for retirement, I mean, first of all, it's really hot, so it's not a place that you would wanna live year round. And it is pretty far removed from Europe and from North and South America, from Southeast Asia and Australia. It's kind of isolated.

It's a different time zone, it's a different culture. You might be far away from your friends and family from home, and so it has quite a few pros and cons. But if you're looking for a tax-free destination with a high quality of life, English speaking population, very modern, lots of amenities, u a e could be the place. And wherever you decide to live your best retirement life, you might wanna consider learning a new skill on Skillshare, the sponsor of this video. Skillshare offers thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people on topics like illustration, design, photography, video, freelancing, and more. It's a place where you can explore new skills, deepen an existing passion, or just get lost in your creativity. I really like this class by Jessica on portrait photography, especially if you're going to be traveling or living abroad and you want to document your experience.

In fact, I used Skillshare in 2017 to learn how to use my new camera equipment and to start this YouTube channel. It's never too late to start learning something new. The first 1000 of my subscribers to click on the link in the description will get a one month free trial of Skillshare. Thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this video. And now let's continue with destination number five on our list. In fifth place. Let's see what else Andrew has for us because he has a bazillion videos on his channel. I really like the title of this one, where To Retire With a Million Dollars and Live Like a King. Sounds good. Let's see. Now I know that Southeast Asia might be the first assumption when you think of the best places to live with a low cost of living.

But as Andrew mentions, Eastern Europe is a great place for that. You can definitely live there for a thousand or $2,000 per month really well, and the real estate is also very affordable there. So Serbia, Albania, Bulgaria, I have a lot of videos, especially about Serbia and Bulgaria on my channel because they do offer so much They're modern countries with good infrastructure and amenities, really good food. You've got the four seasons, you can go skiing in the winter. You've got hiking in the summer, you have city life, you have the beaches. There's a lot of variety in Eastern Europe, and it's a really underrated region. I even have a video on the most underrated places to live in Eastern Europe. I think he's including Georgia in this list as well. Okay, we are getting into the end of the list with some heavy hitters now. And in fourth place we have the Intonations Expat Insider Survey from 2020. So these are ranking the best cities and countries for expats to live in in the world. Valencia, Spain, first out of 66 countries on healthcare and climate.

And another city in Spain. Alacante came in second. So we've got two their top two best cities in the world for expats, both in Spain with Lisbon, Portugal coming in in third. I really like Spain as a retirement destination in general, regardless of which city you choose. I actually have a video on the cost of living in Spain where we go through Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Sevida. So check that video out too. But Spain is great. You've got a really low cost of living, a really great climate that's very mild year round.

Amazing food of course, and a really high quality of life overall. It's a really friendly place and you can get by without speaking Spanish, although it's best to learn the local language. But there's a lot to explore in Spain. And then of course, you're just right over the border from Portugal, France, and close to other countries if you wanna travel throughout Europe. So in third place, let's see what Intonations chose for their number one destination for expats in 2021, Taiwan followed closely behind by Mexico and Costa Rica to extremely popular retirement destinations. So it says here that Taiwan ranked first out of 59 destinations for the third year in a row in their survey. And it also came in first in quality of life. And 96% of foreigners living there rated their healthcare system highly, and they chose Taiwan because not a single expat feels personally unsafe. That's very promising. And although I haven't been to Taiwan yet, I did interview an expat family that was living there. Then you can listen to their story in my podcast. In second place, we have international living's, number one choice for the best place to retire in the world in 2021.

Let's see what they say. Costa Rica couldn't have a best places to retire list without Costa Rica. Am I right? And it seems that the universe does have a sense of humor because if you know me, it's quite possible that you found my channel through a little video called Why Expats Leave Costa Rica. So I'll let you watch that video to balance out this opinion with, uh, International Living, ranking it as the number one destination in the world so that you can get both sides of the story.

But it is true that Costa Rica has a lot to offer for retirees. I mean, the weather is good. There are some areas like Atenas, but a lot of places in the Central Valley that have some of the best climates in the world, you've got the beaches, the fresh food, lots of organic markets, the slow pace of life. And it's a beautiful place. I mean, I lived in Costa Rica for eight years. If you've never been there, it can be a great place to live for a while.

They've got this new Costa Rica digital nomad visa coming out that perhaps retirees can qualify for with your social security or retirement income. And then you can stay in Costa Rica for up to one or two years with just a passport without applying for permanent residency there. And so it says here, you can live in Costa Rica on $2,000 a month. That would be tight, but there's certainly rental properties that go for $2,000 a month. So locals can live in Costa Rica for 2000 a month. But for retirees, um, you're gonna have to live a pretty modest lifestyle to make it there.

Costa Rica is one of the more expensive countries in Latin America. So if you're looking to save money then Mexico is much cheaper. Panama is a good alternative as well. So in 2020, they chose Portugal, which to be honest should also be on any best places in the world to retire list because Portugal is one of those places that just checks all the boxes. You've got the sunny climate, you've got a moderate cost of living. Uh, you're right next door to Spain. You've got amazing food you can choose from the cities or the beaches. There's a lot of different places to live, there's a lot of variety, and it's also really safe. Congratulations, you've made it to the end of our journey. And the number one place that I recommend for you to retire in the world is drum roll, please, wherever the heck you want. That's right. If you have worked your entire life to enjoy retirement, you should be able to live wherever is the best place for you. Yes, of course you should do your research.

Of course you should look at the data, look at the cost of living in all these different places. But at the end of the day, even if there's a place that looks perfect on paper, once you get there, if you don't feel comfortable, if you don't feel at home there, and if you don't love it, then you shouldn't have to stay. Choosing a place to retire is really similar to choosing a life partner. Sometimes it doesn't make sense to anyone else except you. You should go to the place that appeals to you the most, that fits your budget and that you're going to enjoy, and that's going to be different for every one of you. But where do you dream of retiring? Let us know your thoughts and the comments below. Remember to vote in our retirement poll and give this video a thumbs up either way. And if you are planning on moving to a foreign country in the next couple years and you'd like some guidance and support, then feel free to reach out at orbisrelocation.com.

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How To Calculate WHEN You Can Retire

I challenge many of us face is we don't know how much money we need to retire and when we can reasonably expect to get there I've been a fee only financial advisor for over 20 years and in today's video I'm going to walk you through that process step by step and towards the end I'm going to share with you some key risk that you need to be aware of and at the very end of the video I'm going to share with you a free online calculator that makes the whole process a lot easier okay let's jump in let's go for a walk and talk about this you know the goal is to create a nest egg where you can live off of the money that it generates and have the nest egg be invested in a way that's comfortable and consistent with who you are and overall where the income it generates is something that gives you a lifestyle that that's comfortable for you that you're looking forward to okay so how do we actually do this and what we do is we start at the end and then work our way up right so I just mentioned three items so let's start with the third one a lifestyle that's comfortable and you're excited about right so the money from your portfolio is going to be designed to generate that income so so how do you do that well first we need to know what that lifestyle is right I mean I think all of us you know hey a million dollars a year would be nice but very few of us are in a situation where we can do that so how do you determine how much money is reasonable uh and will give you the lifestyle so let's start with the lifestyle question how do you determine um how much money that you need to maintain your lifestyle there's really two approaches one is to go from the bottom up and kind of list all the things that that you need and the first what you need and then you know higher priority wants and then some aspirational ones and really put them into those three categories so in the need category is going to be lodging and food and if you're below 65 if you're not Medicare eligible is going to be health care right how are we going to pay for that so list out your wants I'm sorry your needs and then list out your wants and add that up and then you know what are some of the aspirational wants you know uh traveling around the world and you know what is that cost and you know there's we're adaptable we're human so you know our budget may not allow us to to travel around the world every year or even every three years but you know what we can still have a really fun retirement so the first thing is figure out what the cash flows are so figure out what that's going to be now the next question this is really really important this is step two remember we're kind of going backwards through that list that I I shared at the beginning of the video the second one that I said was it's invested in a way that's comfortable for you and consistent with who you are and that's really important because you don't want a portfolio that's going to be too scary for you because if you have a portfolio that's going to be scary for you and you know what I mean by that is you know if you have a 100 stock portfolio for most people I'm not saying for everybody but for most of us that volatility is going to cause us to lose sleep at night I mean if you look at 2008 2009 you know could a correction like that happen again where the market was down over 50 percent 5-0 you know if you have a hundred percent of your retirement in a portfolio like that it's going to be hard to stay the course so usually people as as we get older you know we won't have a hundred percent stocks probably doesn't make sense for you to have a hundred percent bonds you know and and bonds can be stable or they can be fairly risky when I talk about Bonds in in my videos I mean stable bonds that that pay a reasonable rate uh high quality Bond short duration so what is the right mix of that to buffer out the volatility so if the Market's down 50 60 percent hopefully your bonds are you know they might be down a little bit for a short period of time but if you get bonds that are three years in duration two years in duration one year in duration and they're they're from very solid companies that have great credit scores those should be fairly stable now there's no guarantees in life and nothing I'm sharing with you here is financial advice for you I recommend that you work with a fee only financial advisor yourself or hire an accountant to help you go through this but high level generalities you want an Investment Portfolio that's consistent with who you are now at the end of the video I'm going to share a free online calculator and you can see how your asset allocation really has a huge impact on what kind of lifestyle that that you can maintain in retirement so you do want to be thoughtful about it um you don't want to have quote you know no risk in your portfolio you know having it in in CDs at the bank because it's likely not going to beat inflation and you want it you want your Investment Portfolio to at least keep up with inflation and hopefully beat inflation so you can have compounding uh working in your favor okay so that's that's the second point and then the first point that I I talked about is being able to live off of the income that it generates right and so think of think of your Investments as as uh the goose uh and Dave Ramsey uses this analogy I think it's pretty good you know your Investment Portfolio is the goose and then you're living off the golden eggs that it hatches so the more risk in your portfolio the more stock uh exposure likely there's no guarantees but likely uh those golden eggs are going to be a little bit bigger or use another analogy you're going gonna get more of those eggs but if it's too risky you know you might end up killing the goose and and you don't want to do that okay so that's that's how we look at the portfolio and and let me give you an example let's say that uh you want to live off of a hundred thousand dollars a year and let's say between your other sources of income you're you're let's say you have a rental property or Social Security whatever it is you've got half of that hundred thousand a year coming in from those sources so to use our analogy the Golden Goose only needs to provide fifty thousand dollars a year uh for your retirement now um fifty thousand dollars a year you know if you have five hundred thousand dollars saved up or that's what you're going to end up with before you retire you know fifty thousand a year it's probably not realistic you're probably gonna run out of money uh before you run out of life and and none of us want that so um at a million dollars uh can you afford to take fifty thousand dollars a year out maybe you're getting closer right you you there's the rule of four percent uh William bangans uh ruled a four percent that says you know you can take out four percent a year um and and have a high likelihood of not running out of money so that would be forty thousand so you're close you know could you pull out fifty thousand a year maybe I don't know it depends on what the returns are and it particularly depends on what the returns are in the early years but let's say you have 1.5 million dollars you know now you're solidly in the range that you you likely can and pull out fifty thousand dollars a year and not run out of money right so you have bangin's four percent rule the inverse of four percent is twenty five one divided by twenty five is that four percent so the easy math on this is you want fifty thousand dollars a year from your portfolio you multiply that by twenty five you get one point two five million and that gets you in the ballpark having a buffer is probably a good thing so you know 1.5 million I don't know your situation but you're in the ballpark it's it's reasonable okay um but what are the risks um that that you need to be aware of and I mentioned one of them earlier it's called sequence of return risk and it's the risk of you know what are your returns uh in the first couple years of retirement because that's when your balance is likely going to be the highest so you know looking at your sequence of return risk none of us have a crystal ball none of us know let's say I retire this year you know I don't know what my returns are going to be this year the next year the following year and and those are really important returns for me so you have to be adaptable you have to be able to to change as as Life Changes right so there and there's different techniques and you know I want to get back to that asset allocation and the fact that you have to be flexible I think this is one of the big reasons people should consider working with a fee only financial advisor is the asset allocation is going to have a big big impact on what kind of money that you can spend in retirement and I think you want to have a river guide right we all have our own lives that we live and I mentioned I've been a fee only financial advisor for over 20 years I have helped a lot of clients through this discussion and I've had the benefit of of seeing how things play out and you know over time not only do you have the knowledge but you have the wisdom that comes from working with many many families and and I I think most people would benefit from working with somebody that has that wisdom think of it as a river guy you know somebody to go through the Journey with you somebody that caution you for instance one of the questions I often give people is your views on risk are going to change as you retire you know if you're making good money now um and you've saved up a nest egg and the market goes up and down and you haven't reacted first off good for you for for for not blowing out of the market during scary times and in your lifetime in your investing career there's been some scary periods so if you've always stayed the course good for you that's hard to do um but risk is going to feel different for you when you feel retired and that's the kind of thing that somebody that's been through some Market cycles that has helped lots and lots of other people through this discussion and through this journey those are the types of things that uh the only financial advisors can help you with now all of these calculations you know I've gone through really high level but there are some great um online free online calculators to help you with this I I did a survey in my con Community polls asking people which custodian they use it was Fidelity Schwab Vanguard or other by far the the most common Odeon is Vanguard so in all three of the custodians are going to have free online calculators and you know vanguards is is is really really good and it's very approachable for for everybody so if you just do a quick internet search on Vanguard retirement calculator it'll walk you through the key um things that you need to think about and we'll give you an idea of how much that you're going to need in retirement and it also has a place for other sources of income which I like and then another question and this is where you can really see the impact of asset allocation if you Google Vanguard Nest Egg it will bring up a calculator that it has to help you think through how long your money will last based on how much you're spending your asset allocation and how much your beginning balance is I hope you found this video helpful if you did you're going to enjoy this video up here that talks about average income for retirees in America in this video down here that talks about five reasons to retire as soon as you can thanks for watching bye bye

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How We Retired Early and Quit Our 9-5 Jobs: Money-Saving Secrets Revealed!

People are always asking us how did we retire early and quit our 9-5 jobs. But before we get into that today, I'm Sarah. I'm Olivier and our channel is called "Enjoy Retirement Life". So one of the first things we did was to have a look at our debt and to see if we could reduce it in any way. And the other thing was to look at our weekly spending and to see if we could trim that back.

So when we started to analyse our debt, we figured out that there were two cars. Why do we need two cars? I don't know, because where was your car all week? On the drive. Because where did you work? I was commuting to London. I used a train. The train is very expensive as well. So we decided we didn't need two cars. I actually had a car loan on mine. So we decided to sell mine, clear the loan. And basically I ended up with a bit of an upgrade because he had a much nicer car than me. So we just had one car, no mortgage, nothing. Win-win, because I had a decent car and we were paying less each month. So we noticed as well the number two in our spending was the TV subscriptions. We have, how many do we have? We have ***, we have ***** Video, we have ******* and even ****** Channel for our children. A lot.

That is too much because we don't have time to watch all these channels at the same time. So we had to make some decisions about which ones we were going to keep and which ones we were going to give up. And actually that was quite a nice saving, wasn't it? Every month. Very nice saving. So we kept just one, the one we watched the most and all the others, we cancelled. And we haven't really missed them, have we? Not at all.

To be honest. So one of the other things we noticed was how much money we were spending on restaurants each month. So we love going to restaurants, whether it's on our own or with friends, but we decided as we wanted to quit our jobs and retire early, perhaps we should save money by switching to takeaways. So that worked for a while. Until our kids ordered a pizza from our favourite place and I almost had a heart attack when I saw the bill. They ordered four pizzas and some nibbles and the bill was 60 quid. Don't forget pizza is flour, salt, water and baking powder. It's true. A little bit of toppings, that's it. 60 quid. So from then on our kitchen at home became a pizza kitchen and we did it ourselves and we saved even more money. So that was another win. A win, win. Again. Another point where we noticed we spend a lot of money is on food and we spend a lot of money on supermarkets.

It's not what we were buying, it's where we were buying. So we made a switch. We went for a lower cost supermarket and we were quite surprised because the prices were good and the food was very similar quality. For example, if you buy pasta in one supermarket, and pasta to the other supermarket, the only difference is the label because it's still flour and water inside. And some eggs. Yeah. So another plus was that there was a better selection of wine and actually that was less expensive too. So it was another win. A win for us because we love wine. So another way that we started to save money was also to think about leftovers and how much we had left in the fridge and what was going to waste each week. I don't like to waste food. No, he really doesn't like to waste food. Even if I need to eat the same thing for one week, I'm going to do it.

So we started to make shopping lists, really plan the meals for the week and then make sure that we were cooking enough so we could eat the same thing. Maybe not the next day. So I introduced to your family, the leftovers. We need to eat the leftovers. Yeah, the problem was before that we didn't have any leftovers. Yes, they ate everything. Anyway, we cooked a bit more. And of course, there's economy of scale and it means that you've got some for maybe a couple of days' time. Because the benefits to cooking more, you use the same gas, you use the same electricity, you just buy a little bit more food and you can switch that for this day and to another day.

And actually for us, when it was a night where we didn't have to cook, it was brilliant. We could just put our feet up after a day at work and enjoy the fact that the food was already in the fridge and we just had to heat it up. So not only did we save money, it was very convenient too. Yeah. As you notice, it was very easy to save money each month and that was part of educating our brain to our new retirement journey. Because we knew that in the end when we retired early, we had a five-year plan, that we wouldn't have a monthly pay check anymore. We would be too early for a pension and probably not able to get any support from the government. So we knew that we had to adjust to having less money. So not only did we save money, we also re-educated ourselves about how to live, what was important. With less things because we don't need all these things. So that was one part of our journey to quit the 9-5. It's kind of an essential part that we needed to go through.

Yeah. So don't forget to subscribe and to click on the thumbs up. That is helping us and helping our channel. Don't worry, it's free for you. And we've got plenty more videos to come about our retirement journey to France. So hopefully you'll watch us again soon..

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Our Day In Retirement / A Day In The Life

well team i got a favorite beatles song from way back when can you tell what the title is i was gonna say is it a hard day's night norm well that might describe a marriage but uh hey yay no i was thinking about day in the life oh that's that's a great topic for a video team it is but before we get to that we are tina and norm and we talk all things retirement lifestyle and travel when we can travel and if you're new to the channel um thank you for joining us and please consider subscribing it really does help our channel grow soden a day in the life and the reason we're doing this is because we've had quite a lot of viewers actually say to us what do we do in a day so we thought we would talk you through it so it's quite simple team i get up i sit in my chair and that's it i don't do anything no that's not true is that the end of the video in actual fact norm is the early riser he gets uh at around 5 30ish in the morning and he will creep away and go into the office and he will do video editing or photos or pictures whatever is needed um for youtube or for stock that's right tina's a hard task master she boots me out of bed so i enjoy that because it's quiet i get a lot of work done i'm able to concentrate on video editing and photo editing and i i quite enjoy that so then around uh well i can hear i know when it's 6 30 because i start to smell coffee wafting through from the kitchen oh yeah that's a good sort of mini alarm clock isn't it i don't even have to look at my watching actually no you can hear it gurgling in the distance so coffee goes off on the coffee maker at 6 30.

So my job at quarter to seven seven o'clock is to get her highness here or a cup of tea in bed what the perfect way to start the day i love to do it and so we uh i wake her up with the team bed and i don't throw it at him no we put a light on and uh and then we start having our first discussion of the day yeah we um at that point we do look at our youtube channel we do just to make sure there's no naughty comments on there that need deleting we always like to see like if where the subscriber numbers are how many views we've had on the videos we've put up we just generally just have a quick chat about it don't we we do and after we've done that we will then move through into the kitchen where we will have breakfast between around 7 30 to 8.

Yeah and then normally that's uh we we tend to like eggs and um as as we've told you in a in a video it seems a long long time ago we go to an egg farm that's uh that's just in the countryside not too far from here and we get fresh eggs from the farmer and um they're absolutely fantastic so we will have eggs for breakfast of some description and um and once again we will listen to the news um on our amazon device yeah we can't say a name because you'll start talking now we've really enjoyed listening or putting that on and just talking about the news that's going on and current affairs keep up the date so that we mentally caught it it catches us and keeps us um stimulated and aware of what's going on doesn't it that's kind of nice to do that and then after breakfast i will um sit in a nice comfortable chair and i like to do some of these brain games sort of either word puzzles or suduko um yeah you like those don't you i just feel as though your brain needs to be kept active and exercised as as much as your muscles do and um so i do that every day and then um yeah generally while you're doing that i'll do like comments and that on the youtube channel won't i tina's the chief commentator replier on our youtube channel i help her out with comments but tina does an awful lot of the comments so you know who to blame if you don't like the comment and then we might have maybe maybe a mid-morning coffee or after that we'll rotina's favorite is either a hot cross bun or a currant bun from our baker friend out in the countryside with coffee so she would have that every day at 10 30 toasted with butter yeah but we have tried to cut that down a bit looking sort of weight and things haven't we yeah the injuries are starting to pack on and then we will try to go for a walk um if we can we'll go for about an hour or so it has been really cold lately so when we have to adapt to the weather and if it's really really cold we'll sometimes just walk up and down the floors and go up and down the stairs in the apartment building and it's a great way of exercising um sometimes i will go swimming but the pool's being closed hopefully it's going to be opening soon so then i might go swimming too it's had a leak which has defied uh fixing for a long time so it looks like it might be coming back online um tina would swim every day um so and then with the markets being open i like i have a watch list uh that i have put together i have two actually i have uh the global mail newspaper has a watch list that you're able to set up and also yahoo finance does and i've just switched to the yahoo finance one because it it allows you to input your stocks into there as a portfolio and it shows the running amount by the second as the market is trading it's very addictive to sit there and it's actually very interesting isn't it because as we're buying new stocks and you're putting them on there then you can instantly hopefully that we're making money as opposed to losing it but you see the graph go up and it is quite exciting isn't it but we don't we think it's important to be aware if you if you are invested directly in the stock market um because the one thing that we have done is to is to leave a fair amount of cash in uh high interest bank accounts and if we see a pullback then we will invest if it's the type of stock that we are interested we just recently did that with the bank of nova scotia and the cibc bank and bought them at a at a nice discount they they dropped in a day um and uh they've gone back up yeah it's great we're doing really well on those aren't we so we spend quite a bit of time or you spend a lot more time than i do on that but we do that and then normally tina there's that magic hour of the day comes around oh that one hey you've missed lunchtime norm oh i'm on a diet so generally we will then have lunch and then we might do lots of different things in the afternoon we might go grocery shopping yeah um we might just go for a run out just for the hell of it to get out the apartment because as you realize this day is generally different because we're at home with the pandemic isn't it but this at this time of year as we're making this video we would normally be uh somewhere sunny uh either portugal or the us all destinations yet to be explored but we can't do that at the moment so we're adapting to around here on we are we're adapting to having a boring day actually and sometimes normal say in the morning this is just like groundhog day because he feels it's the same day in day out and it kind of is isn't it but it'll get better and that takes us to that well-earned great time of the day which happens at four o'clock doesn't it norm yep happy hour yay so we have been doing um virtual happy hours with friends yeah and i must admit this it's been working really well hasn't it so we use facetime but but just to to save all our own modesties we we just do it as audio um message uh facetime so our friends can be in their pajamas if they want to be and we normally chat for an hour and a half to two hours easily don't we we'll have a beverage or two and uh chat about news what's going on about mutual friends yeah and but the beauty is that then you can actually start to prepare your meal your dinner as well while you're chatting and having your happy hour so you know we might be chatting for an hour and a half and then in the last half hour we'll start to prepare dinner which is great isn't it and there are two ways that we eat dinner we'll either sit at our table and once again continue chatting we we have a lot to talk about with our youtube channel no shortage is this our stock photography business and with with places that we've identified we'd like to travel yeah so we will chat about that well the other way is we just stick the good old tele on and we sit on the couch with our dinner and watch a movie or a show and we've been finding some really good shows on our new tv with some great movies so that's been working really well it's been very enjoyable and that's kind of what we do in the evening now we will also check then our youtube channel before we go to bed see what's happening there um get updated with comments and things and normally we're we're in bed by 10 o'clock yeah and have a really sound sleep and then it's groundhog day again and then home gets up at 5 30 in the morning now we are hoping this will change slightly as we progress to being able to go to the trailer in may we do we're looking forward to yeah which will be great but basically that's kind of what we do we're just ordinary people day in the life of isn't it and what you find in retirement is you you wonder how you're going to spend the days but those minutes just find a way of filling up on all on their own and you'll be swept along with it yeah so that's our day in the life and thanks for watching and we hope that everybody is staying safe and keeping well till the next time bye bye bye

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Our Day In Retirement / A Day In The Life

well team i got a favorite beatles song from way back when can you tell what the title is i was gonna say is it a hard day's night norm well that might describe a marriage but uh hey yay no i was thinking about day in the life oh that's that's a great topic for a video team it is but before we get to that we are tina and norm and we talk all things retirement lifestyle and travel when we can travel and if you're new to the channel um thank you for joining us and please consider subscribing it really does help our channel grow soden a day in the life and the reason we're doing this is because we've had quite a lot of viewers actually say to us what do we do in a day so we thought we would talk you through it so it's quite simple team i get up i sit in my chair and that's it i don't do anything no that's not true is that the end of the video in actual fact norm is the early riser he gets uh at around 5 30ish in the morning and he will creep away and go into the office and he will do video editing or photos or pictures whatever is needed um for youtube or for stock that's right tina's a hard task master she boots me out of bed so i enjoy that because it's quiet i get a lot of work done i'm able to concentrate on video editing and photo editing and i i quite enjoy that so then around uh well i can hear i know when it's 6 30 because i start to smell coffee wafting through from the kitchen oh yeah that's a good sort of mini alarm clock isn't it i don't even have to look at my watching actually no you can hear it gurgling in the distance so coffee goes off on the coffee maker at 6 30.

So my job at quarter to seven seven o'clock is to get her highness here or a cup of tea in bed what the perfect way to start the day i love to do it and so we uh i wake her up with the team bed and i don't throw it at him no we put a light on and uh and then we start having our first discussion of the day yeah we um at that point we do look at our youtube channel we do just to make sure there's no naughty comments on there that need deleting we always like to see like if where the subscriber numbers are how many views we've had on the videos we've put up we just generally just have a quick chat about it don't we we do and after we've done that we will then move through into the kitchen where we will have breakfast between around 7 30 to 8.

Yeah and then normally that's uh we we tend to like eggs and um as as we've told you in a in a video it seems a long long time ago we go to an egg farm that's uh that's just in the countryside not too far from here and we get fresh eggs from the farmer and um they're absolutely fantastic so we will have eggs for breakfast of some description and um and once again we will listen to the news um on our amazon device yeah we can't say a name because you'll start talking now we've really enjoyed listening or putting that on and just talking about the news that's going on and current affairs keep up the date so that we mentally caught it it catches us and keeps us um stimulated and aware of what's going on doesn't it that's kind of nice to do that and then after breakfast i will um sit in a nice comfortable chair and i like to do some of these brain games sort of either word puzzles or suduko um yeah you like those don't you i just feel as though your brain needs to be kept active and exercised as as much as your muscles do and um so i do that every day and then um yeah generally while you're doing that i'll do like comments and that on the youtube channel won't i tina's the chief commentator replier on our youtube channel i help her out with comments but tina does an awful lot of the comments so you know who to blame if you don't like the comment and then we might have maybe maybe a mid-morning coffee or after that we'll rotina's favorite is either a hot cross bun or a currant bun from our baker friend out in the countryside with coffee so she would have that every day at 10 30 toasted with butter yeah but we have tried to cut that down a bit looking sort of weight and things haven't we yeah the injuries are starting to pack on and then we will try to go for a walk um if we can we'll go for about an hour or so it has been really cold lately so when we have to adapt to the weather and if it's really really cold we'll sometimes just walk up and down the floors and go up and down the stairs in the apartment building and it's a great way of exercising um sometimes i will go swimming but the pool's being closed hopefully it's going to be opening soon so then i might go swimming too it's had a leak which has defied uh fixing for a long time so it looks like it might be coming back online um tina would swim every day um so and then with the markets being open i like i have a watch list uh that i have put together i have two actually i have uh the global mail newspaper has a watch list that you're able to set up and also yahoo finance does and i've just switched to the yahoo finance one because it it allows you to input your stocks into there as a portfolio and it shows the running amount by the second as the market is trading it's very addictive to sit there and it's actually very interesting isn't it because as we're buying new stocks and you're putting them on there then you can instantly hopefully that we're making money as opposed to losing it but you see the graph go up and it is quite exciting isn't it but we don't we think it's important to be aware if you if you are invested directly in the stock market um because the one thing that we have done is to is to leave a fair amount of cash in uh high interest bank accounts and if we see a pullback then we will invest if it's the type of stock that we are interested we just recently did that with the bank of nova scotia and the cibc bank and bought them at a at a nice discount they they dropped in a day um and uh they've gone back up yeah it's great we're doing really well on those aren't we so we spend quite a bit of time or you spend a lot more time than i do on that but we do that and then normally tina there's that magic hour of the day comes around oh that one hey you've missed lunchtime norm oh i'm on a diet so generally we will then have lunch and then we might do lots of different things in the afternoon we might go grocery shopping yeah um we might just go for a run out just for the hell of it to get out the apartment because as you realize this day is generally different because we're at home with the pandemic isn't it but this at this time of year as we're making this video we would normally be uh somewhere sunny uh either portugal or the us all destinations yet to be explored but we can't do that at the moment so we're adapting to around here on we are we're adapting to having a boring day actually and sometimes normal say in the morning this is just like groundhog day because he feels it's the same day in day out and it kind of is isn't it but it'll get better and that takes us to that well-earned great time of the day which happens at four o'clock doesn't it norm yep happy hour yay so we have been doing um virtual happy hours with friends yeah and i must admit this it's been working really well hasn't it so we use facetime but but just to to save all our own modesties we we just do it as audio um message uh facetime so our friends can be in their pajamas if they want to be and we normally chat for an hour and a half to two hours easily don't we we'll have a beverage or two and uh chat about news what's going on about mutual friends yeah and but the beauty is that then you can actually start to prepare your meal your dinner as well while you're chatting and having your happy hour so you know we might be chatting for an hour and a half and then in the last half hour we'll start to prepare dinner which is great isn't it and there are two ways that we eat dinner we'll either sit at our table and once again continue chatting we we have a lot to talk about with our youtube channel no shortage is this our stock photography business and with with places that we've identified we'd like to travel yeah so we will chat about that well the other way is we just stick the good old tele on and we sit on the couch with our dinner and watch a movie or a show and we've been finding some really good shows on our new tv with some great movies so that's been working really well it's been very enjoyable and that's kind of what we do in the evening now we will also check then our youtube channel before we go to bed see what's happening there um get updated with comments and things and normally we're we're in bed by 10 o'clock yeah and have a really sound sleep and then it's groundhog day again and then home gets up at 5 30 in the morning now we are hoping this will change slightly as we progress to being able to go to the trailer in may we do we're looking forward to yeah which will be great but basically that's kind of what we do we're just ordinary people day in the life of isn't it and what you find in retirement is you you wonder how you're going to spend the days but those minutes just find a way of filling up on all on their own and you'll be swept along with it yeah so that's our day in the life and thanks for watching and we hope that everybody is staying safe and keeping well till the next time bye bye bye

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Extreme Frugal Minimalists Plan to Retire by Age 35!

>>> > MAT: Hey every person in this video, we'' re conference a pair from Vancouver BC who are intending to retire by age 35. They'' ve adopted an incredibly prudent minimal way of life and for the previous 7 years, they'' ve been able to save over 65%of their yearly earnings.'They ' ve been carefully spending their financial savings and they intend to live off the passion when they do retire. Although very early retirement isn'' t obtainable to everybody, we do believe that what Stephanie and Celestian are doing is actually intriguing because economical way of life options might aid make some financial goals like getting out of debt, as an example, much easier to achieve. We'' re truly excited to share their tale. Let'' s go fulfill up with them. >> > > STEPHANIE: So basically concerning seven and half years ago, we chose to go after very early retirement. We identified a system including lowering our expenditures a lot, so we can obtain our cost savings rate truly high approximately around 60, 65% and just investing that and afterwards just gradually the cash simply kind of collects and currently at this factor we'' re possibly concerning 2-3 years away from having simply sufficient in investments that we wear'' t requirement to function anymore.So at this moment, we'' re nearing completion of the trip we started. [Music Playing]>> > CELESTIAN: What early retired life suggests to us, is being able to retire at a fairly very early age but still have adequate cash to be able to sustain ourselves via our financial investment income without needing to work. We may function if we desire however we wouldn'' t be compelled to function in order to spend for our costs and such. [Songs Playing]>> > STEPHANIE: The biggest things we do is make our huge expenditures rather a little bit lower. We lease a very inexpensive apartment or condo. We wear'' t have a cars and truck. I do all our food preparation from scratch. I do bulk meal prep. Typically, you recognize, we'' re extremely minimalist. We put on'' t really buy points. There are all these groups for a lot of people that simply don'' t exist for us. I suggest, we don'' t have a restaurant spending plan'; we put on ' t have an alcohol budget plan; we put on ' t have an auto budget. Most of those categories are$0

invested in those categories.So, it simply indicates our price of living is extremely, extremely low which allows us to … you understand although we don'' t make that much cash, we are still able to conserve regularly 65%, 70% of our earnings annually, in spite of making just extremely ordinary earnings for our city. [Music Playing] I'' m an assistant at an accounting firm and Cel is a freelance editor. >> > > CELESTIAN: So I primarily do novels, like people self-publish books on the Amazon Kindle Shop and similar markets. Those are the major people that I work with. >> > > STEPHANIE: Typically, our mixed revenue is around $80k/year. We spend regarding $9,500 on traveling, about $9,500 on housing, and regarding $2,500-$3,000 on food annually for both of us. To maintain our costs down for grocery stores, it'' s actually just an issue of food preparation everything from the ground up and not acquiring icy dishes or points like that, yet simply really cooking and baking every little thing from square one. It drives the expense way down. We invest much less than $300 a month on food for both of us, and that'' s no difficulty because we shop at the kind of areas that are very cheap.We buy a huge sack of flour on a monthly basis. That ' s at Costco, a$'6 sack of flour. That ' s all our bread, pizza dough, cooking, you know, muffins … I buy huge sacks of rice. >>> > CELESTIAN: We purchase like cases of soy milk from Costco which'' s a bit less costly too. So there are some points that we purchase wholesale that are less expensive and afterwards we likewise go to a neighborhood market and acquire

quite cheap vegetables.It ' s called Sunrise Market. That'' s component of it. And we try to obtain produce that'' s pretty economical and in season. We take 2 big worldwide holidays a year, usually one in the summer and one in the winter season and after that we do a couple of little journeys to neighborhood areas occasionally. It'' s something that we truly appreciate just going to new countries, new cultures trying brand-new experiences, trying brand-new food. >>> > STEPHANIE: I think every journey we do is actually just inspiration towards layoff because it'' s like a taste of it! We invest near to $10,000 a year on travel. So it'' s not like we do a traveling budget plan. A great deal of it is just we do the very same kind of things when we take a trip that we do in the house. We have a tendency to head to the food store, obtain active ingredients and cook. When we travel, we tend to go to perhaps a local market or the outdoor markets or something obtain ingredients, bring them back and cook or in your home we put on'' t use an automobile, we walk areas and bike places.When we travel, we do the exact same. We take public transportation or bike or we walk locations. I assume there'' s simply a great deal of it is just living the same way of living that we live at home, certainly reduces into the cost of taking a trip a bit. So our transport costs usually would be about $40 a month that would be with recompense, however it can frequently be much less than that, particularly throughout the summertime, where we would certainly just walk and bike a lot more. We really obtained major concerning it, once we understood layoff was even an opportunity which had to do with 7 years ago. So we'' ve been type of taking it a lot more seriously and servicing it and really concentrating on spending a whole lot and obtaining our high savings price and making development simply for around 7 and a half years now. When we initially started, Cel had a little web well worth. He was simply completing up institution. I had concerning seven thousand bucks of debt.I did one year of post-secondary before deciding I didn'' t intend to do anymore of that, however that was gone truly swiftly. We purchase index funds. We simply have extremely simple portfolios through a robo-advisor. When we make money, we transfer money, it'' s handled, and we wear'' t consider it and it just sort of grows behind-the-scenes. Annually, we obtain our tax slips and file our tax obligations. That'' s the level of what we pertain to our investments, however we don'' t truly do any kind of kind methods or psychological stuff to spend less. We just really check out our costs all at once and kind of determine exactly how we feel about that and we'' re either pleased with this amount or we'' re not and if'we ' re not, we would certainly simply >>spend much less. > > CELESTIAN: We attempt to set it up such that saving is much easier than not. Due to the fact that individuals just have so much psychological power therefore much technique they desire to make use of daily, right? One example is that we do bulk meal prep on the weekend breaks and afterwards we just put all of our food in the refrigerator therefore then after work with the week days, instead of eating in restaurants and mosting likely to the dining establishment or obtaining takeout, we can most likely to the fridge and put something right into the microwave.Not only is it the even more inexpensive alternative however it ' s the easiest choice. > > STEPHANIE: I would certainly claim in regards >>to that I assume an additional among things people face occasionally is they make this plan and they say day-to-day i ' m gon na go home from job and I ' m gon na cook a healthy and balanced supper. I suggest maybe for some people that works. For me, it doesn ' t. For me, when I obtain'home from job I ' m kind of weary.'I intend to just consume something. You understand, I don ' t desire to cook a meal. I might be able to maintain a system like that possibly I can manage it for a week, possibly 2 weeks, but after that, I wear'' t assume I might do it every day. So I intend around that to make sure that I have food prepared to go, prepared to simply essentially reheat during the week which makes a big difference. >> > > CELESTIAN: There are drawbacks, but it depends on … they are sort of subjective downsides.It depends on your values or your preferences like your individual preferences. A lot of people would certainly see not consuming alcohol as a significant downside. For us, it'' s not because just we wear'' t wish to drink it. Some people would see that not having a vehicle and not having the flexibility to drive, any place they desire as a big drawback. For us not having a vehicle and not driving, are not drawbacks, that'' s simply how it is. > > STEPHANIE: We have a blog. We'' re not incredibly energetic, however we have a great deal of details on there. It'' s called Incoming Properties. It ' s pretty very easy to discover. We have kind of updates in our lives, areas we travel, type of just how our total assets is going, and after that a little bit concerning spending and self-employment and penny-wise living as a whole, type of several of the important things we do.We want to do things like possibly longer-term traveling. We'' ve spoke about possibly relocating to an island, constructing a cabin and type of doing a bit of a homestead point. There are great deals of various things we'' d like to do or simply having the versatility simply to to relocate to various areas and not have to think “” Well, what about getting a job there or whatnot?”” Simply have the ability to kind of have that freedom to do type of some unconventional way of living options. I think that'' s among the real allures of early retired life is to have that flexibility to primarily live your life the means you desire.

[Songs Playing] As for how our way of life will look when we retire contrasted to exactly how it is now. It really depends. I mean if we make a decision to remain in a city, it would certainly be similar. If we do make a decision to relocate to an island and construct a cabin, there would most likely be some relatively significant distinctions. I think at the core a lot would remain the same. >> > > CELESTIAN: Without a doubt we have no intents after retirement instantly spending a great deal of money on dining establishments, acquiring lots of things on Amazon. It'' s certainly still going to be a prudent way of life blog post retired life. [Music Playing]>> > MAT: If you wish to adhere to Stephanie and Celestian'' s trip in the direction of layoff, you can have a look at their blog which is called Incoming Assets where they share all sort of information concerning their economical lifestyle and traveling adventures.Please share this video clip if you liked it and thanks for seeing.

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How to Live a Big Life in Retirement with Fritz Gilbert

Casey Weade: Invite, Facebook Live. This is your.
host, Casey Weade, of the Retire with Objective podcast. And also today, we have an extremely exciting.
visitor. We have Fritz Gilbert here with us today. And also if you are thinking about retired life.
in any way, after that you'' ve most likely satisfied Fritz, you ' ve most likely found some of his articles,.
especially in our weekend reading for senior citizens, that collection of 4 short articles we send out.
each and every single Friday with commentary from myself. He'' s obtained among the ideal blogs on retirement,. if not, probably the most effective blog on retirement around in the world today. He'' s won honor after. award for his service theretirementmanifesto.com. We ' ve got an actual live senior citizen below with us that ' s. living a huge life in retired life.
We ' re going to chat regarding his RV escapades.We ' re mosting likely to be. talking about marital relationship and also

what that ' s appeared like in retirement, contrasting that to his working life. We additionally are mosting likely to be going over Fritz ' s book, Keys to a Successful Retired life. So,. if you are thinking of retirement, perhaps have some good friends that. are thinking of retired life, they can benefit from this sort of content,. please share this, start a watch party, throw their name right down in the comments. section, so that they capture this content. And also if you have any type of inquiries, this. is a distinct possibility for you.
Only for the people that follow our. Facebook web page, if you suched as
our page, you get to enter these check outs and also you get. to present your concerns to our world class professionals. If you have any concerns concerning. retirement, regarding the experience of retired life, perhaps even simply RVing or marriage and retired life,. this is a possibility to get those responded to, so simply create your questions right in the comments. section, I will certainly have those questions fed to me.
Now with Fritz', Fritz will certainly respond to those inquiries on the back end as well as make sure you obtain. Fritz, welcome to the podcast. Fritz Gilbert: Casey, many thanks.
I ' m honored. to be on your incredible show as well as I truly value you having me on.
Casey Weade: Well, I ' m delighted to have you below. I was first introduced to you independently a couple months ago or so.
It was about the retired life slogan as well as something finished. We in fact ended up doing a little small podcast on that very post. I just actually delighted in that whole thought.
You ' ve got a whole lot of. truly good thoughtful web content that you'place out there, not just on the blog, but in MarketWatch. as well as other places.And I ' ve taken pleasure in that. I think you bring an extremely impartial nature to the web content.

that you place out there. And it ' s seldom that we obtain to satisfy a real live retired person that ' s. living it and also still studying it every day. Fritz Gilbert: Yeah,
I assume that ' s what I listen to. from a great deal of my readers, Casey, exists aren ' t a great deal of old men like me that are blog owners. I indicate, you obtained a lot of the young fire
men, that ' s wonderful, and women, I mean, there ' s a lot of. fire bloggers, which
' s good.But I believe for'the child

boomer target market, there aren ' t a great deal of.

blog owners. And also I listen to that regularly that, hi there, you'' re among the couple of that are in fact living it..
I didn'' t retire at 35. I still got a little bit'early, that ' s wonderful. I ' ve.
I retired, I simply type of took a flyer, started the blog, and I figured out that I love.
writing. And also it'' s really added a great deal of value to my individual retirement to enjoy the difficulty of.
composing. As well as after that, the communication with readers, the podcast, the interviews that we''
re. doing currently, these types of points, it'' s produced this entire element of my.
retired life that I never ever saw it coming as well as I like all aspects of it. So, I.
appreciate your kind words regarding my work. Casey Weade: Yeah. So, you retired in 2018? Fritz Gilbert: I did. Casey Weade: And how much time have you been.
doing the blog? The amount of posts you have currently? Fritz Gilbert: 250-ish.

I started 3 years.
It ' s been a little over five years. I ' m most likely closer to 280, I guess. And what'' s nice concerning recording it now is on my blog, I''
ve.
retired life and also what I was thinking of. it'' s kind of cool that'I ' ve recorded it. And also so,.
yeah, I'' ve been creating 5 years each week. Casey Weade: That ' s so neat that somebody at a.
specific amount of time from retirement can go back to possibly right where you are, right where.
you were and learn what you were undergoing experiencing at that time.What would certainly

you state is.
your biggest learning moment as you'' ve done all this job, all this study, all this writing?. And also then, perhaps it ' s tough to identify that a person big thing, yet what would be among the large takeaways.
for you and also all your writing and also setup? Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, I mean, the one point.
that appeared my mind right now and I really do believe it'' s possibly one of the most. vital thing and I blog about it rather a little bit in my publication as you know is … okay, allow.
me start with a holistic comment and afterwards, I'' ll funnel down to what the point is.A.

lot of individuals have problem with retired life and also your possibility of depression increases by 40%.
during retired life, probably a lot extra in the COVID environment because people are.
secured down, mental wellness problems, etc. As well as when I was regarding a year or more from.
retirement, I was actually intrigued, what triggers some people to deal with retired life, whereas.
other individuals appear to have a great retirement? What'' s the research say? And what I located
. was, they located the highest possible correlation to those individuals that have had.
a fantastic retirement has been just how much time have you place right into planning for.
retirement before you got there.And clearly,

I was borderline compulsive. I was blogging about. it for three years. I was assuming regarding … Casey Weade: Arguably still so. Fritz Gilbert: What's that? Casey Weade: Perhaps still.
so. A little obsessed maybe. Fritz Gilbert: Oh, perhaps a little bit, however it'' s a. healthy fixation.'What I ' ve discovered was those people that invest the most amount of time thinking.
concerning retirement. What they desire their life to be, not just the economic things? What do you.
What passions you? What do you desire to seek?
that you invest assuming regarding them, to me, is the most significant point I'' ve found out since having been.
via it myself and spending that much time, my transition to retired life, Casey, was.
definitely remarkable, it was smooth, it was definitely enjoyable.And I ' m 2

as well as a half.
years in currently as well as I still absolutely love every day of retired life. I'' ve not gone through any.
monotony, I'' ve not gone via any anxiety, I'' ve not gone through any kind of loss of identification..
A great deal of those points that individuals struck, I'' ve not experienced a single among them. And I do attribute a great deal of that, a few of.
it'' s simply probably my natural positive outlook, whatever your individuality, however I believe.
the most significant aspect that people can control is the reality that I spent a lot of time.
believing about it, and any person can invest time considering it.It ' s simply, recognize.
that your work is coming to an end and begin ramping down the amount of mental power.
you put right into your job, still do your task. I was doing 110% right until completion, however when.
you'' re not functioning or when you ' re commuting, rather than considering that teleconference.
that you screwed up with, with a boss or whatever, placed it out of your mind, it'' s going to be gone in.
Don'' t devote that to work anymore.
a means to place increasingly more of that power right into considering what you desire your.
life to be post retirement. That'' s the greatest takeaway that I would claim, I'' ve learned. Casey Weade: Well, I see that.
with the households we function with. You'' ve got those couples that will certainly.
been available in as well as state right here'' s whatever, just tell me what to do. As well as then,'you ' ve obtained the. others that intend to rest down, they need to know, they intend to understand where they'' re at,. they want to recognize where they'' re going, and they intend to have deeper conversations.They.

wear'' t intend to simply chat regarding the money stuff. They intend to get involved in those truly significant.
conversations about purpose as well as retirement. And those people that are ready to not.
just, they can be found in and fulfill with an advisor and also in two hrs, they'' ve got a plan
. as well as they'' re on their means to retired life, I find they ' re not nearly as happy,
not almost as. pleased as those people that want to place in the moment to be there for four or five.
conferences as well as really get a little bloody-eyed honestly with us.Let ' s actually get into this.
stuff and also get enlightened as well as know what we'' re doing. And afterwards, if you place that time out on the.
front end, I discover those individuals aren'' t returning and also continually asking concerns.
and continuously bringing up worries, it'' s the ones that didn ' t put in that time.
to truly comprehend that have that issue. Now, you said that you began with.
the monetary stuff.In your biography, it

says one of the leading bloggers on the. topic of retirement with a focus on both the harder and also softer problems that are critical. to success after going across the starting line and state harder would be economic, softer would. be way of living. You started with the more challenging things, but after that, wear ' t assume you rapidly change. to the softer'things? Is there one that ' s more essential than the various other? Must we begin with. the more challenging stuff or the softer things initially? Fritz Gilbert: I believe it ' s natural to start with. the harder things. When you discuss purpose
which kind of thing to somebody that ' s, allow ' s say,. 3 or possibly five years or even more from retirement,
life modifications. You wear ' t necessarily recognize. what you ' re going to be interested'in. As well as the only thing that truly'matters. when you ' re believing concerning retirement and you ' re even more than 3 years out', it actually. is the financials.Are you conserving sufficient ? Are you'on a path? If you run some calculators,
. if you chat to a consultant

, do you type of have a concept of when you ' re considering retiring? And also.
are you conserving strongly sufficient to get there? I would state the financials'are essential. but not adequate.
You need to have them, however if you quit with just the numbers, you ' re.
Plainly, you ' ve got. if you are going to have just one of the two, plainly,
you ' ve got to.
They were overly confident on exactly how much social. As well as for the first, up until maybe you'' re.
If you ' re within 12 months of retired life and. you'sanctuary ' t started thinking of the softer stuff, as I call it, male, red light. Think. concerning it due to the fact that it actually, actually matters.
Casey Weade: It ' s an excellent timeline and. Is this even worthy of my time and also initiative right currently to try to assume. Let ' s simply order a calculator, maybe rest.
That'' s when we are looking at those softer points. And also as we obtain closer, if we go, yes,.
I might retire as well as indeed, I intend to retire. Now, we need to create a particular plan of.
Currently, we get into the nitty abrasive details. Fritz Gilbert: Yeah.
can do top-level numbers, certainly, you can approximate your living expenditures as well as everybody requires.
Sorry, I got a coughing today. Hope, I wear'' t have. We saved 20 %, 25 % and also we just invested the rest.
So, we never ever truly tracked our costs. As well as we experienced a complete year when I was around.
2 years out, we tracked every spending we spent as well as we built a very based projection of kind.
of, fine, this is what our current investing is, exactly how do we see that altering in.
retirement? And after that calculating, do we have enough to retire based on that?.
Well, clearly, you can'' t do that exercise without thinking about what do you want.
to spend your cash on in retirement? The RVing is an example. We were already assuming.
around, we intend to take a trip, we want to do RVing, we want to do points like that, so allow'' s element.

that in.When we adjust our current costs to our post job investing, allow'' s aspect. in some spending for motor home traveling. So, you sort of have to consider your. retired life way of life and also what that'' s going to set you back as you undergo the monetary.
exercise. It makes it a whole lot more precise. Casey Weade: It'' s fantastic to me exactly how several.
individuals that we'' ll take a seat with for the initial time. They'' re just mosting likely to retire. this year and they ' ve never assembled a budget plan. They have no concept just how much they're.
investing. As well as it'' s simply really worrying for me if that'' s the instance. As well as I question what that.
experience resembled for you when you initially made a decision to start putting together that.
budget, whether devices that you utilize, I mean, possibly you didn'' t do a budget for a decade. or much more, now you need to go back as well as do a budget.Was it a spreadsheet? Exactly how did you.
track the investing? Did you have an approach? Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, I basically simply took.
a spreadsheet, I'' ve sort of always been a spreadsheet individual, I'' ve always tracked my net.
worth and points like that on a spread sheet. And also Casey, I mean, I would literally just stick.
receipts in my pocket or if I made use of a credit rating card or something, I would simply send myself a.
fast e-mail or message on my phone, whatever. And afterwards, when I reached my computer, I'' d open.
the spread sheet and I'' d placed in whatever we'' d invested money on because the last time I took a seat with a.
spreadsheet.So, a couple times

a week, I'' d rest down, I ' d state all right, gas, $ 32 or whatever. As well as I.
sort of damaged it into significant costs classifications. Transport, housing,.
insurance policy clearly a big one. And also I did kind of capture it by spending plan. Actually,.
I have a spending spreadsheet on my internet sites cost-free to publish anyone that wishes to go out there..
So, I'' ve obtained the spreadsheets that I made use of. And also I put on'' t assume you need to overcomplicate it,.
the secret is, like you stated, I never ever tracked it, you can'' t quote just how much you ' re spending,
. due to the fact that you'' re going to miss out on some points. And also what I found interesting, as I experienced.
it for the year, you put on'' t understand just how much cash you'' re costs on some things as well as it offered me an.
opportunity to test several of our costs, insurance concerns the mind, I shopped our.
car insurance, I hadn'' t done that for many years and also conserved a fair bit of money.So, among

the additional benefits of doing it is you can kind of see.
those locations that you might intend to think about, Hey, exists an opportunity to possibly.
Reduce some investing in some locations? Casey Weade: If you can'' t. Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, primarily, like, allow'' s talk.
made use of to have retired person wellness insurance, they'' ve discontinued it. What do you use for health.
insurance policy estimate? As well as you can'' t just presume, I suggest, it ' s a huge unknown.
What I would do. in a situation like that is I would do some research study, I would sort of locate the regular non. subsidized since I do have a pension, so I wouldn'' t get approved for the ACA.
subsidies or anything like that.So, what is the full-burdened expense of private.
medical insurance? And I discovered arrays, however claim 2500 is type of on the.
As well as we did that for generally whatever.
type of approximated a little on the high side, the logic being, I'' d rather have shocks.
to the excellent than surprises to the poor. Our entire retired life budget, currently you could.
suggest, well, maybe I had to function longer than I truly would require to. Yeah, to me, what.
would certainly it be? A couple months, six months maybe, I suggest, also a year, I finished up working a year.
We ' re falling below those forecasts. And also our withdrawal. rate is slightly lower than we predicted and also whatever ' s good. So, there ' s a. lot much less tension and a
great deal extra enjoyment when you get right into retired life if you ' re much more. conservative on the planning side, in our case.Casey Weade

: Currently, I presume, examine one,.
are you continuing to track your investing? And also are you investing even more today than you.
did when you retired back in June of '18? Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, excellent concern. I actually.
got an inquiry from Facebook regarding the bucket approach. So, I believe I can most likely discuss.
Below'' s just how I did'the costs monitoring, I put on ' t desire to sit below.
this, I'' ve got write-ups concerning it, if you look for the bucket approach on my blog site, primarily,.
I created a retirement paycheck and also I relocate cash each month from a Resources One 360 money market.
account into our checking account. As well as every month, I'' ve got, so I know in January, just how much.
was in that money market fund, I transfer money on a monthly basis, I can track my pension can be found in.
conveniently enough.At completion of the year, all I need to do is look at the start balance minus.
the ending balance and I can see just how much we spent out of our Funding One 360, add my pension plan to.
it, boom, I recognize how much we invested in the year. Now, I can'' t track it down to the.
group degree, yet I wear'' t need to, as long as I recognize that we'' re within.
I imply, it literally
takes me 30 minutes a year to do that. that ' s how I track my investing currently. Casey Weade: As well as are you spending much more?When we.
make increasingly more money while we'' re working, we have way of living creep, we often tend to.
spend much more on retirement.You locate that maybe your portfolio is doing better. than you had projected or you have a little extra revenue than you had projected. Do. you see some creep as well in retired life? Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, interesting inquiry,. Casey. I believe, if you take a look at the research study, the substantial majority of senior citizens comprehend what. they can be investing. And I created a short article called, It ' s Time to Live Like Nobody Else,. the Dave Ramsey quote. Live like no person else, so later on you can live like no one else. Well,. now, it ' s later on. What does
live like no one else after retired life look like? So,. I wrote an article concerning it. As well as primarily,
what I stated in that post is I ' m. going to spend what we can invest. I'' m not going to underspend since numerous retirees come under. that all-natural, specifically if you ' ve always been lifelong persistent, you'underspend your income,. you do an excellent work conserving, your natural propensity is to be a little bit frugal.And when you know you can.

spend X, your natural propensity is to spend much less than X, however you don ' t demand to. If you look at all. these Trinity research studies, etc, you can spend your X. So, what I established was this regular monthly. transfer from the Funding One which came out of pail one cash, I can.
invest that entire monthly transfer. It ' s all determined, I don ' t need to. bother with it. Market may fluctuate, but I ' ve got three years of money. I can compose out. the storm. Basically,'what we ' re doing is we ' re investing up to that amount. And we'got into. a circumstance, I composed my publication, undoubtedly, I assumed no revenue in retirement. Once again,. conventional assumptions across the board. And I '
m making some revenue in retirement. I'created. my publication, I make a little of money on the blog, not a lot, however it assists. what we ' re doing. when we'found that we were underspending, we'' re like, “Well, we ' ve obtained a bit here
. What should we do?” As well as we'' re adding, we'' re extremely right into charity', we ' re supporting.
our church, we'' re tithing, points like that. So, we determined, “Well, you know.
As well as we made a decision to develop what I. My wife is running a nonprofit.
She didn'' t have area. we'' re like, “Look, why don ' t we offer you my.
workplace upstairs?” We had a loft in our cabin. I'' m watching out the home window, people see my eyes.
increasing. Our cabin is literally right there. So, we determined, well, allow'' s give her my old.
workplace. It'' s a good large loft space. It'' s fantastic. And also we'' ll build a brand-new building, which is where.
I'' m at now. If you look behind me, this is now my creating workshop. As well as we constructed nearby to it.
a woodworking shop since I'' ve constantly desired to enter into woodworking. My better half'' s charity
,. we build totally free fencings for low-income family members that have pets on chains. Well, we also.
supply pet houses and we'' re battling to keep up with pet homes. I'' m like,” Hey, I.

like woodworking.Why wear'' t I build a woodworking shop? I can start making pet houses. That.
noises fun.” I had a passion in woodworking. And also we had the financial means to do it. .
I would say we'' re not underspending, we'' re not overspending, we ' re investing what we know we.
And also we have a system to regulate it. Casey Weade: That'' s excellent.
Becky on Facebook right currently. And also I assume it'' s a legitimate concern. She asked,” Just how can you tell. mid-year if you ' re overspending?” So, go ahead. Fritz Gilbert: Hey, Becky. I recognize Becky. She'' s
got. an excellent blog site, in fact. She just started one out. I wish it was something regarding 50.

Sorry,.
Becky, put your blog site name out there, we'' ll offer you some promotion. But.
yeah, Becky'' s a friend of mine. Yeah, primarily, Becky, what I can do by. that when I'' m doing the automated month-to-month transfers from Funding One, if there'' s cash. in our inspecting account, we ' re alright. If we obtain to the end of the month as well as we ' re beginning to. scrape low, we have a minimal kind of, we leave some cash therein, clearly, but we know if we.
get listed below X, hello, we sort of overspent this month. Mid-year, we kind of simply do it based.
on what'' s in the checking account. And all the transfers from Funding One are all automated,.
they simply move every month. Pension plan clearly is automated, streams each month. We understand that.
we can invest what'' s in the monitoring account. And also that type of becomes our month-to-month.
budget plan is just invest what's in checking. Casey Weade: So, you'' re actually watching on.
it from a month-to-month basis, not simply looking at it at the end of the year, we'' re taking a look at it. each and every single month to see if there'' s little excess or possibly not enough.And then, if

you'' re conserving. for a getaway or you'' re saving for a brand-new vehicle, exists a section of that'that ' s always establish. apart right into a cost savings for those one-off expenditures? Fritz Gilbert: Great factor, Casey. I built right into.
this thing and once again, I enter quite a bit a lot more detail than we will on this. What I do,.
every January, clearly, I fill up bucket one, I established the Resources One to run the monthly.
income. Well, what'' s great concerning Capital One is you can really establish up sub-accounts. So, we.
established up a sub-account under Resources One that'' s not component of my monthly income. As well as I saw an.
post, there'' s an actually excellent publication by the Wall surface Street Journal regarding retirement planning and also.
I'' ll get the name, it'' s over on my calendar. Basically, if you take a look at points,.
like you got to change a vehicle, you'' ve reached change an a/c, I live.
in Georgia, it'' s hot, you reached change a roof covering, you reached do home siding fixing on your.
home, those I call unforeseen yet anticipated, you'' re going to have those.
unexpected-expected costs.And so, what we do is if you consider an automobile, for example, let'' s claim. you ' re going to buy a car every pick a number 3 years to make the mathematics easy, allow ' s say it ' s. mosting likely to cost $30,000. that ' s $10,000 a year, high level, fail to remember that there ' s recurring worth,. I'' m simply utilizing this as a demo. That would certainly be $10,000 a year that you require to be intending on.
That'' s what? $800 a month. In January of the following year.
I'' ve got to include in that unexpected-expected budget, that amount. And also what it comes down.
to is $12,000 a year. If you look at all those points that you need, the car, the siding, look.
at an a/c, the length of time does it last? 15 years.What ' s

the cost? 5000. You do all that.
math and you damage down those major costs, which is all outlined because article, in our.
case, that came out to regarding $12,000 a year. So, every year in January, I pushed.
$ 12,000 into that sub-account and if I put on'' t spend anything, wonderful. The following. year, I ' ll placed an additional 12,000 in. The following year, I ' ll placed another 12,000 in.
At some factor, we'. reached acquire an automobile. Well, we ' ll have the cash sitting there in cash in that sub-account because.
we'' re essentially, budgeting for it annually, although it'' s a bumpy invest.
That ' s. exactly how we handle the unexpected-expected. And after that, during the training course of the year, if.
anything shows up that I type of figured out falls right into that type of classification, we just take out, out.
of that account.And once more, look at

January versus December, you can see exactly how much unexpected-expected. spending you had simply by deducting the finishing balance from the beginning equilibrium. It ' s a. actual easy means to take care of those one-off expenditures. Casey Weade: I like that, unexpected-expected. costs. This is something that we encounter with families we work with all. the time.
They'' ll come right into, well, suppose I need an automobile ?
What happens if I need brand-new air. conditioning device or brand-new roof? As well as will you spending plan for those things? I simply thought this is really,.
I indicate, what you simply spoke about, it'' s Budgeting 101. And this is people ask, well, exactly how does Dave.
Ramsey'' s program, Financial Tranquility University, just how does that suit retired life planning,.
that'' s more for individuals in the build-up phase? Well, a whole lot of it returns to budgeting. And.
often, we need to revisit those things if we sanctuary'' t taken an excellent search in a while. I put on'' t. intend to go also much down the budgeting bunny opening because there'' s a few other things I want to. make certain that we get to, yet I do intend to inquire about that item in your biography that states crucial.
to success after crossing the beginning line. Therefore, that obtained me thinking, what is the beginning.
line? Is the beginning line your retired life day? Does the beginning line occur six months.
can you operate in retired life? Well, I would certainly argue I'' m working now, but I love this stuff. This.
isn'' t job. To answer your question and also then, we'' ll get right into the ideology of it. To me,.
the beginning line is the day you retire. And the reason I call that is so lots of individuals believe.
of retired life is the end. I'' ve been working my entire occupation, I'' m ultimately done. It'' s not the. end, it ' s the beginning of a whole brand-new life. Retired life is a phase in life that differs from.
any since you were most likely 4 years old. No one'' s informing you what to do. You can entirely.
decide what you intend to make with your free time. You wear'' t need to go to function. Currently, with that said comes.
the challenge of locating what you'' re mosting likely to do self-driven. That brings you.
the joy in life. To me, the reason it'' s the retirement day
. is since that'' s the date that you quit working for someone else and also you begin.
doing whatever it is that you choose to do.And even if you choose to do a part-time work,.
Hey, the financials may be a good little side benefit, yet I.
because, hey, I desired to create a publication. Retirement is that time in life when you can.
when I leave job, I'' m losing my paycheck. Male, there'' s so much a lot more that you lose when you.
leave the workplace that people put on'' t believe regarding. You obtained the social interactions.You ' ve.

obtained the challenges, the deliverables. You got your purposes with your manager. You'' ve got. the presentations. You'' ve reached do whatever. Those sorts of things provide some meaning in your.
life, a feeling of success, etc. As well as I believe finding those points in retirement that can.
replace those non-financial components of work is a genuine sweet place. And also if you choose to do that.
through part-time work, that'' s fine. That ' s what you have actually picked to do in your retirement.
You ' re. still retired. So, yeah, the lines have blurred because a lot of individuals are doing part-time.
work. I would certainly say that my writing can be perceived as part-time job. I watch it totally.
various. I view it as absolutely volunteer. We'' re leaving following week.We ' re heading.
out to Seattle to assist our child relocate back to Alabama. I'' m taking a month off from. writing. I wear ' t have a boss. Sure, my visitors, yeah, I'create weekly, I ' ve been extremely. constant, however if I intend to take a month off, I can take a month off. That'' s a different type.
That'' s post-starting line job, it'' s. Casey Weade: It'' s voluntary job.
parallel below with marriage, you put on'' t have to continue to service your marital relationship, yet if you want. it to work out, you need to remain to deal with your marriage. And also you'' re not working for money,
. you ' re helping satisfaction and also a bigger life, which is a lot like retired life. You never ever quit. functioning, you'' re simply functioning for on your own now as well as you'' re working on yourself which never ever.
ends.Now, you publish you're beginning by line back a little bit as well as the original strategy.
was to retire in 2017, so why the delay? Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, the major factor on that,.
Casey, there were two primary factors. One, I had an uncle who retired most likely a little bit.
before he should have. And I went to a wedding as well as we were speaking around, I say, I'' m considering
. retiring possibly 5 years approximately. It was before I began the blog, it was rather escapes. As well as.
he gave me some suggestions that just permeated as well as it stuck with me. And also he primarily stated,.
” Look, Fritz,” he said, “when you'' re at that factor and you'' re near thinking about retirement,” he.
claimed, “simply actually see to it.” He said, “since you will certainly never ever change the revenue that you''
re. making in your top gaining years.No matter what you perform in retired life, you'' ll never come.
near to making that quantity of cash.” He stated, “so simply make certain since as soon as you walk away,.
you'' re leaving.” So, that stuck to me. The 2nd thing was I shared that advice.
with a pal of mine that was retiring a year before me and also he decided to.
wait an added year. And after that, in fact, he was going to retire 2 years prior to me. He.
waited a year and after that, he retired and also he told me, “So, Fritz, that was the finest guidance I ever before.
obtained.” He stated, “We have even more money than we need.There '

s zero financial anxiety in our.
life. I'' m so delighted I functioned that added year.” Hearing that from both of those.
individuals, our numbers stated we might do it, however I'' m traditional, I supported everything in.
I wear'' t hate my job. I'indicate, I ' m still only 54.
but when you obtain out of 55, if that added year absolutely does bring about much less anxiousness for the rest of.
my life, guy, that'' s a rather great compromise. So, I did work another year and now, looking.
back at it, 2 and a half years in, I feel the same method as my buddy did..
I'' m so thankful I functioned the additional year.We can build the workshop that I ' m. that ' s. I ' ll just be straightforward.
I wish we would have done that.” There ' s. absolutely nothing that enters your mind and also even when I ' m simply existing'in bed, whatever, thinking, composing,. whatever, there ' s absolutely nothing that I assume about that I have remorses over the procedure we went through.I. suggest, it ' s been that good of a change for us. Casey Weade: Were there any kind of

shocks? Fritz Gilbert: I put on ' t know that I would state. surprises. I have in fact been documenting, I called it the Retired life Truth series. And. I ' ve written like five or six blog posts in this Retired life Truth series, where I'discuss. what I ' m reasoning as I go via the different stages. Like I talked around previously,'if you ' re. 6 months prior to retired life, you can go right back in my timeline and also see where'I was.Well,.
I ' ve done the very same point blog post retirement after I ' ve went across the starting line and I simply

finished
.'one concerning the two-year mark as well as I believe most likely the greatest thing that I would claim is, I constantly.
kind of understood this thinking of what you intended to do and also discovering something that offers you. function.
I recognized that was crucial, however I wear ' t believe I actually valued just how important.
it was up until I really lived it myself. And also the truth that I ' ve got a lot satisfaction right currently,. I assume, demonstrates, I think, the worth of that.I assume the other point I consider when I hear.
that is possibly the absence of appreciation for exactly how large of a modification

it is for both individuals in the. relationship.
It ' s really, actually crucial to think around. I ' ve been assuming concerning
it. I made the shift.
I was writing. Well, what took place in my other half ' s situation was she was.
She lived with us for. It truly was kind of my spouse ' s.
She started this charity,. she ' s doing great, we ' re caring life.
There was, I would certainly claim, an extra challenging transition for. her due to the fact that we didn ' t recognize that caregiving was kind of the like a work and also we hadn ' t fully.
Casey Weade: Well, I wasn ' t going to go.
Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, I think what it is, Casey,.
both partners are mosting likely to an office everyday and instantly they ' re home working from. home, running into each other all day? Exactly how numerous of them have type of had. a difficult adjustment? Most likely a lot.It ' s no various with. retired life. I'll share a story, I put this in my book. I had a friend of mine.
who his spouse had actually been a stay-at-home mom, this'individual retired and also he was a guy who. his task was type of making points much better, he was a process-improvement person. He ‘d do any kind of. to analyze the method they ' re doing things and he would certainly make them
better. That was his mind,. that ' s what he ' d done for years.He'' s seeing his other half load the dishwashing machine. or something and he begins informing her exactly how she could do it better.I mean, it

' s classic.
tale, yet that'' s what occurs.'She ' s like, “Hey, I recognize I'fill a dishwashing machine, I ' ve been doing. for three decades.” He goes, “Yep. Sorry. “I assume you need to identify that going from one or both. spouses being in the office all day to all of a sudden both spouses being house.
constantly is a big, big change. As well as I believe, fortunately, among the important things we.
did as well as I really urge audiences, spectators to do this is, as you'' re thinking of the soft.
side because in 2015 or two that you'' re working, sort of reach an agreement with each other. Exactly how.
much time is going to be kind of we time, things that we do together? What do you want to do on.
your own? My partner delved pottery soon after we retired, all right, great.You ' ve each reached.'have those private points that you like to do and also you need to have the freedom to.
go do those without sensation guilty, without the other one getting mad at you. You'' ve got to type of have an arrangement, hi there,. alright. You put on'' t have to framework 10 hours a week, whatever. I like to head to the fitness center, I take spin.
courses, I function out every morning, that'' s kind of my time. My partner, she does her charity things.
which takes a whole lot of time. She suches as to paint, she'' s getting involved in some arts and also craft-type style,.
I have some time for my things.
things with each other. But type of chatting via that and acknowledging how huge an adjustment it'' s mosting likely to be. and also having a bit of recognizing going in, of how that'' s mosting likely to function, and also talk regularly.
when you retire and also you'' re going through those modifications, “Hey, don'' t inform
me exactly how to. lots recipes, I recognize just how to pack meals.” Having an open relationship, where you can type of be sincere concerning what'' s annoying you around.
the various other individual, guy, that matters much more in retirement than any type of other time since.
you'' re always together, as well as it ' s wonderful. Yet you'' ve reached be planned for exactly how large.
of an adjustment that is to a relationship.Casey Weade: Well, I '

ve been setting the 15.'Commitments of Conscious Management for some time now. And also one of things. that I took away from that book related to interaction with your spouse. Many individuals won ' t have these sorts of conversations of points that trouble him, the important things that.
aggravate him, that sort of hide those things. And after that, that in fact leads to.
Fritz Gilbert: That ' s real.
There ' s a balance there. Casey'Weade: There ' s a delicate balance.
There'' s possibly a lot more questions that we ever before had on marital relationship. We have inquiries that come from. Facebook, but we also have some inquiries that come from our weekend break visitors. So, for those of. you that subscribed to Weekend break Reading, you have an e-mail chance each and every single time prior to a.
And so, I'' ve got a couple. Shawn Peterson claims, I am currently 52.
years at 60. As a pair, my wife and also I were happily wed, recently ended up being empty nesters,.
appreciating some more time with each other. When I retire, I truly believe that we are both looking ahead.
to spending a lot more time taking a trip and also functioning on tasks together. Nevertheless, while I am still.
working away from house about 45 hrs a week, my other half also appreciates a substantial.
amount of time to herself. As we are anticipating retired life as well as.
evident issue of hers, I think is that I will certainly be hanging around a lot even more as well as intruding.
on her “me time,” my concerns are 2. So, one, exactly how big of an issue is this in the direction of.
keeping a delighted marital relationship? Phone number two, just how can I help alleviate her worries beforehand.
of retired life and also guarantee her that I will still appreciate her demand for personal room? Mark.
Linna tossed in there also on the exact same lines. He stated, exactly how do you take area when you.
and also your partner are currently with each other all the time retired life? So, you obtained 3 various.
And I ' ll add to it,. As well as I ' ve constantly been. I wear ' t.
since that ' s what the reader scenario is. You ' ve obtained your regimen as the individual, you ' re driving. to the office, you do your thing at the office, you drive residence.
Well, don ' t fall short to acknowledge. your better half has her regimen. She ' s been doing something for years, that ' s sort of her routine. My wife kind of has a flow to her day. She does certain things at certain times. She suches as to. read at specific times, whatever. And I think recognizing that and also recognizing it as well as talking. about it prior to you reach retirement is specifically what I was mentioning in our last little conversation,. that you ' ve obtained to realize that that ' s mosting likely to alter, but you can still carve out time for. both of you to do the important things that you wish to do, while likewise accommodating the fact that.
you ' re going to have a great deal even more time together.So, I assume it ' s a harmonizing act.
It ' s. not sort of a one-and-done discussion.

It ' s a continuous thing', yet I assume the. essential thing is to recognize that the modification is going to be just as huge. If.
you ' ve obtained a stay-at-home partner, the change is simply as huge for the stay-at-home. spouse as it is for the one leaving the work environment and put on ' t ever ignore how big of a change. that is. And also you just need to chat via it. Casey Weade: And also with this communication, normally, there ' s some negotiation or compromise in a. marital relationship and specifically around retired life, were you always on the very same web page with Jackie
?. Or were there some locations of concession? Fritz Gilbert: Well, I ' ll tell you. something we did.Well, first off, I would say, we believed we were constantly on the.
I can ' t remember the last time we had a battle, we ' re.
We had some rather great conversations via. that due to the fact that she said, I ' m checking out what you ' re doing and also you'' re having a blast, and also.
she was, I put on'' t recognize what I ' m intended to do. So, I believe having that openness in your.
As well as we spoke with it, I suggest, clearly, I''
ve.
you ' re mosting likely to enjoy it, you ' re going to be getting all that gratification.
As well as'the other. one may not have actually located their point yet. That held true with my better half and also I, I ‘d kind.
And also she saw a Facebook point, Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs guy. Oregon.
As well as my other half. saw that as well as she was, “You know what? We can do that right here.
I can do. that here. “Which was the spark. And also I believe the takeaway is, she saw that and. instead of simply view it and afterwards take place to the next point,
she took the initial step. And within. a couple months, she had a 501( c) (3) establish, she had a board of directors, she had financial,. she had an article workplace box, she was elevating money. We were building the fencing within 3. months of that very first time she saw the video clip and also it ' s blew up given that then.
As well as she is. absolutely loving it. She ' s discovered her thing.So, if something interests you, pursue it
. And if you see that your partner is struggling, you ' re discharged up, or I believe a whole lot of times, the. lady that talked with me at that retired life thing was worried since this individual was practically. a workaholic and he didn ' t have any outside rate of interests and she type of had her life. She. was doing her thing,
she was mosting likely to whatever she'was going to during the day, she. played tennis with other ladies, whatever. As well as she knew that this individual didn ' t type of have.
his thing yet. So, it all leads me to that exact same idea process of just how do you discover your purpose in.
retired life. And also if among you in the connection has found it as well as among you hasn ' t, it ' s.
possibly mosting likely to trigger some conflict.Casey Weade: Currently, I just have a concern. Whose. duty'is them? you located your own, your partner doesn ' t,

is it your responsibility. to assist? And if it is, to what degree? Fritz Gilbert: Well, you can go deep on marital relationship. counseling below, I think. To me, I look at it nearly like an addict. You can allow somebody,. You can ' t make them stop.
They ' ve obtained to desire to stop. To me, it ' s not unlike that. The only individual that
can find a purpose objective really works for them is.
As well as if they simply. don ' t want to do it, I put on ' t know what to inform you.
You can ' t pressure someone as well as you ' re. Casey Weade: That ' s great. Can you inform us a little bit regarding that?
We created the principle. We placed a cookie jar in our room. with a little poster thing alongside it as well as we kind of urged each other,” Hey, as soon as a. Week, come up with an activity that you ' d like to do.It can be something we ' ve done previously. preferably, possibly something we place ' t done before.
” It was neat due to the fact that I didn ' t understand what she. was placing in the jar, she didn ' t understand what I was placing in the container, but'each week,. we would each put a task in the container, the thinking being on the day we. retired', if we did one task a week, we would certainly have two years' well worth of tasks to. do once a week, half of which were driven by me, half of which were driven by her. , it ' s a cool idea for either one in the relationship to have equivalent influence. on what you ' re mosting likely to be doing in retirement.And I ' ll be straightforward, we ' ve gotten so busy at our. own retirement, we sanctuary ' t gotten anywhere near with two years' well worth of activities, I'mean,. not also close. I think the mental exercise of attempting to discover something every week is actually. excellent since I got on Google taking a look around things in our location and also things we hadn ' t done prior to and,.” Hey, Chattanooga is not too much.”” Well, I don't recognize Chattanooga yet.
“” Okay, we ' re going to invest. a weekend break at Chattanooga, put that in the container.” ', it makes both of you think concerning what. do you wish to perform in your extra time once you enter into retired life, whether or not.
you really do it or otherwise, surprisingly, probably isn ' t the factor.
I assume. the point is that you both have equal say as well as there ' s an equivalent chance that you ' ll. be doing something that either party selected,'so it exercised truly well
for us, but we ' ve. come nowhere near taking advantage of 100 products currently, probably 125 weeks in, we ' re no place. near tapping right into the hundred items, yet.We can ' t, everybody says you ' re as well busy in. retired life. We truly have actually found ourselves very hectic in retired life with
things that bring. satisfaction. And also if we have an open day, we ' ll grab something, we ' ll do it, but it ' s not. driving our retirement like we thought it might. Casey Weade: I just
see this. as a fantastic workout for any individual actually, at'any type of phase of life
. Also a single going right into retired life, I could see how this can assist uncover particular.
I believe the thing is, find a way to boost on your own to believe about.
what do you desire to do that you place ' t done.
It promotes curiosity. I ' ve got to place something in.
there each week, I ' m curious, what'can I locate to do around here? Anything you can do to cultivate.
your curiosity, make a bucket listing, whatever, anything like that that gets your mind reasoning.
about that post-retirement life, this goes back to our earlier statement.The more time you. spend believing about your post-retirement life, that ' s what this is. It ' s kind of a clever

means of.
doing it, yet what are you doing? You ' re assuming around,” Oh, what do I wish to do when I retire?”.
” Well, allow ' s go to Chattanooga for a week.” It ' s a creative way to believe curiously.
regarding things that you can do in your location. Casey Weade: I believe this is an excellent time to put.
a concern we had from one of our Weekend break Reading visitors. John Mueller asked, “What does a. regular week resemble in retired life?” I assume a lot more significantly, right here,. along these lines, he said,” Exist any continuing to be things left to do. on your bucket list you wish to share?” Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, I inform you what, I did a podcast a while ago as well as I resembled, well,. let me just tell you what I did yesterday.So, allow me simply attempt that currently. And also honestly, this was. not prepped, I don ' t
. so let me just inform you what I did the other day, I ' ll see if I can keep in mind. Okay. We headed out in the morning, nine o ' clock. Well, initially of all, I'stroll the dogs every early morning. . I
took the pet dogs out for a stroll'regarding a mile and a fifty percent. After that, my spouse and also I went as well as build a
. fencing, Liberty for Dog fence, for a pair hrs, came back after that, as well as I winterized my.
MOTOR HOME, which took a surprising amount of time and afterwards, afterwards, I worked a little.
little bit on my blog site and after that we had dinner together and we kicked back last evening, simply.
viewing TV, viewing a movie on Netflix.So, I assume what ' s fascinating is each day. is unchoreographed, what I discovered is adding a

bit of framework in the morning via.
All that to state, a little bit.
that to me, it functions far better to have a little of structure since that ' s one of things.
Fritz Gilbert: Definitely.
my hope is, there ' s still things on my pail list that I wear ' t. There ' s numerous, several points.
One, I think, for me'is, right now, we ' re. I ' ve always had an intrigue with New Zealand.We ' ve been to Europe a heap. Australia, as well as perhaps simply obtain like an Airbnb, stay in one area for like a month as well as actually.
It's possibly the one I would think around. From your reaction is to go to take a trip.
There ' s numerous locations in your life and also attempt to.
Attempt to come up with bucket checklist things on all those various. facets in your life.And I would state every one of those
facets of my life have container listing products. that I still have in mind that I would such as to do. Casey Weade: That ' s fantastic. Currently, you ' ve given. me a bit of research is to experience as well as I'see those elements of life being maybe.
values to like, these are the points you value, these are your worths, possibly it ' s spiritual,.
maybe it ' s individual growth, possibly it ' s household, but I enjoy the workout of returning as well as structure. a bucket'list out on every one of those various things. That ' s actually cool.
Currently, Fritz, we ' re. Do you have a hard quit because I ' d like
to.
Casey Weade: Awesome. Fritz Gilbert: I ' m retired. Casey Weade': Well, I seem like we ' d be remiss if. we didn ' t talk a little much more'regarding motor home travel.
It appears like there ' s these 2 camps. And also then, there ' s the contrary camp, this. It seems excellent, yet put on ' t go spend a boatload of money on it till.I imply, that'' s, I believe, where the negative comes. in, somebody heads out as well as invests 100 grand, gets a eighteen-wheeler, they'' re prepared, and afterwards they head out on.
their first trip, and they realize they despise it, where it beings in a car park whole lot 51 weeks out of.
the year.That '

s where the unfavorable originates from. In our case, we'' ve always camped.
When our. daughter was young, in fact both my better half as well as I, when we were youngsters, paradoxically, our households.
camped, so we'' ve always camped. And when our daughter was maturing, outdoor camping was really.
crucial to us. Presume what? You'' re working, so you can only do a weekend trip below as well as there,.
maybe take a week off, perhaps if you'' re actually lucky, you get 2 weeks off, however we knew.
in retired life, that'' s all mosting likely to transform. So, we already recognized we had.
the love of outdoor camping. So, we constructed it into our budget plan. We spoke concerning that.
post-retirement costs as well as we made sure that we had the money established aside.That ' s

red light number.
one is don'' t think you ' re going to obtain into RVing if you sanctuary ' t built in the procurement costs. into your retirement strategy. Don ' t go out on the day you retire as well as spend 100 grand, obtaining.
That'' s.
The very first year due to the fact that my mother-in-law was still to life so we didn'' t wish to. be as well away. So, we simply did quick weekend break trips within an hour to house, appreciated.
it, was familiar with the camper, great.Last year, we took a three-month trip and we drove. out to Seattle, our child
was out there. So, we invested the summer season in the Pacific Northwest..
It was terrific, took a month going out there. We stayed out there a month, took a.
month returning. Fantastic trip. This year with COVID, every little thing else going.
on, we took sort of an intermediate trip. We increased around Michigan'' s Upper Peninsula, we.
took a month.The delight of RVing

is that it is so versatile. You can do a three-month cross-country.
journey, you can live full-time if you desire to. Or you can simply do a weekend break trip close to residence. I.
and rent out one. There are locations you can rent out a recreational vehicle, go lease them for a week, make certain it'' s. something you really think you'' re mosting likely to enjoy before you sink the cash right into it, however.
it'' s a terrific aspect of our retirement, we enjoy it. Casey Weade: You stated construct it into your budget plan,.
that'' s one of the most essential aspect.And this is why I received a lot unfavorable press, if.
you will, is that people have lost a great deal of cash doing it since they made inadequate decisions.
as well as develop it into their spending plan suitably. Exactly how do you go about constructing it.
right into your budget? What are some points to watch out for? What do individuals typically forget? Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, I presume, the way that.
we did it, you speak with a great deal more individuals that are preparing for retirement than I do,.
however I can share how we did it. And also primarily, I knew that on day one of retired life, I desired.
We ' ve.
If we'' re going to purchase a truck as well as purchase a 5th wheel, we need to make.
sure we have the cash money allot for that, to ensure that we'' re not interfering with that three.
years' cash money cushion at the start. So, essentially, I just did a time series. Generally,.
I conserved my bonus offers, we took some of our 401k cost savings and redirected it into after-tax so be.
liquid, points like that. We offered your house, we had a large residence in the city, we sold that,.
took the house equity, and utilized several of that. Primarily, I just did the mathematics and claimed,.
” Okay, below'' s just how much we need on day one.Here ' s the revenue I expect to be able to load that bucket.
with, just how much do we have leftover?” And also that kind of identified the allocate just how much we can.
invest in the recreational vehicle. That'' s the way we did it. Casey Weade: What about on a recurring.
basis, I mean, maintenance gas, is it rather typical? Are the.
points to look out for there? Fritz Gilbert: I imply, what I did when we did.
this 11 months of tracking our spending and afterwards we mosted likely to a post-retirement visitor, I basically.
factored in a travel line as well as I stated, fine, allow'' s say we spent 100 days a year camping,.
I had no idea what we were mosting likely to do, however I figured it would certainly be probably less.
than that.But allow ' s

prepare for, once more, traditional budgeting. We did 100 nights.
a year at like $35 a night and also we claimed, alright, just how many miles do we assume we'll drive?.
Okay, 10,000 miles, allow ' s claim 10 miles a gallon because you ' re. How much fuel is that?
detail in my thinking when we went from our existing costs to our projected spending.
as well as whatever that estimation appeared to be, we threw that in there and when we were attempting.
to establish, do we have enough money to retire that spending, not only to consist of the $2500.
a month to medical insurance we discussed, but it included whatever that computation was.
for motor home travel.So, yeah, we did aspect it in. And also it'' s in that number that we set up with.
these regular monthly transfers right into our examining account. Casey Weade: As Well As you'' re able to do a great deal of.
these points, I think, since you moved and also fix me if I'' m incorrect, you discussed this term.
geoarbitrage and I'' d like you to show to us just what it resembled in a downsizing, why.
you selected Georgia as well as what'' s geoarbitrage? Fritz Gilbert: Yeah, essentially, in summary,. geoarbitrage is moving from a greater cost place to a lower price place, which permits.
you to invest less money and also still appreciate life. And also what we found, Casey, we had a big house,.
suburbs of Atlanta. Yeah, it's fine, we'' re elevating our child, we had my mother-in-law coping with.
us. It was nice to have the space yet by the time you'' re empty nesters, you obtained half your home.
resting empty.I mean, it ' s got furniture in it, however when'' s the last time you went right into your formal.
resting space or whatever individuals have these days? You probably, if you have a huge residence, you have a.
great deal of rooms that you wear'' t use, however you ' re paying for them, you obtained to heat them, you obtained to cool.
them, you got to pay tax obligations on the square video footage. What we discovered by relocating, we had a weekend break.
cabin up in the hills that we leased for perhaps 7 or eight years before I retired.
as well as we turned up below on weekends, we appreciated it, we just loved the area. However what we.
located now, we possibly have 2000 square feet, it'' s ideal, it ' s comfy. We got a little.
bit tight on the workplace room so we included this thing out here. So, I'' d have my workplace creating.
We wear ' t.
the appropriate impact of what we require. So, what does that enabled us to do? It'' s allowed. us to minimize our home tax obligations. We moved out of a more expensive location. It reduces energy.
expenses. The knock-on results of downsizing, it'' s significant.The home

.
tax obligation alone is a large problem. Why Georgia? Key reason we picked Georgia is.
we already lived in Georgia. Georgia recently recognized the significance of obtaining the.
tax structure right to bring in retired people. They'' re not ranked if you look at a.
lot of the Kiplinger'' s or whoever does the state'' s attractiveness for retirees..
Georgia generally prices quite very in terms of what earnings they tax and.
don'' t tax senior citizens. So, their tax, I'' d claim, maybe not the'finest, however they
' re. respectable. So,'it ' s a tax obligation favorable area. And we much like it. We'' re in the mountains.
We got an attractive lake a mile away.
treking trails everywhere. I think the most vital point is it just fit our lifestyle.
and what we wished to perform in retirement. Casey Weade: Well, you'' re definitely.
Fritz Gilbert: That's it. Casey Weade: I know you delight in that.
if you didn'' t catch that podcast, where we dove into that article, please return as well as pay attention.
to that, I think you'' ll actually take advantage of it. I'' m wishing that I reach have the.
Casey Weade: Insects have to do with. We ' ll just tease that one.
Casey Weade: We ' ve got an entire box of Keys to a. Effective Retired life, a recap of the 24 secrets that Fritz ' s identified as well as experienced in his. You can go to retirewithpurpose.com, click on the.
That ' s exactly how we get discovered. And also. that ' s additionally how you obtain a complimentary copy of Fritz ' s publication,
Keys'to a Successful Retirement. Fritz, thanks a lot for joining us here as well as once more, I hope we reach return as well as talk. concerning ants and also grasshoppers in the future. Fritz Gilbert: Oh, Casey, thank you quite.
Certainly, we see things really similar. Casey Weade: Awesome. Fritz, up until next time.
Fritz'Gilbert: Okay, thank you, Casey.

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