Tag: Financial Advisor
The Peace of Mind Retirement Planning Process
user 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning
What does it look like to build a retirement-focused financial plan? What are all the steps? What do you have to do? What information do you have to provide? In today's episode, we are going to lay it all out, super simple, for you. And our goal is, by the time you get through this particular episode, you're going to have a clear picture. You're going to understand what it takes so that you can have a secure, safe, retirement, peace of mind to and through retirement. We hope you enjoy this episode. To learn more about how to secure your retirement and all the different elements you need to know, please subscribe to our channel and hit the bell so you'll be notified when we release episodes every Monday. We have helped hundreds of our clients gain clarity and get on the path to a great retirement. Now it's your turn.
Let's dive in. Welcome, everyone, to our Secure Your Retirement podcast. Today is a very special episode. We're going to kind of take you through our financial planning process really from an A to Z. And we get the question all the time, how does this look? Does it work? To be able to really help us to do that, we have special guests with us. We have Nick, who is here in our office; and we have Taylor, who works with all of our clients as well, but she does that all the way from Salt Lake City, Utah, but she drove…
Nah, she flew here. She came on all the way for this episode and to be able to spend some time with us. So thank you, Taylor, for coming all the way out just for this special episode. Yeah, of course. But she did pick pretty good weather. She did, she did. All right. So, here's kind of the premise of this particular episode. What we get a lot of times is somebody who maybe has worked with a financial planner, financial advisor sometime in the past, maybe they never have, and they go, "What does this look like? What's that process look like?" So we have Morgan with us on this episode, and Morgan's going to really be our moderator and kind of interview us as to how this whole thing works. So that's kind of the setup for today so that you can understand from A to Z how this all works.
So, Morgan, get us started. So let's assume someone has learned about us via the website. They've seen our book. They, somehow, have learned about us and they're ready to be introduced. And how would they go about then, Taylor, getting ready to do that? How would they prepare for a personalized introduction meeting? Yeah. So first thing that we'll have someone do is fill out what we call our financial snapshot, and we send that over as a questionnaire through email. And it has a bunch of information and questions about things like if you're currently working, what your level of income is? And if you're going to take Social Security in the future, what your estimated benefit's going to be? Or if you're taking Social Security now, what your pension is all throughout your current financial situation? That will help us get to know you a little bit better and figure out where we can help you with our services.
What if somebody's not quite ready to share all of their information with us? How does that work? Yeah. So, Murs, I'll let you handle that one since you have been around for a long time. So, when it comes to someone that is… And we understand, right, it's your money that you've taken time to build up over 30-some-odd years and to go into a meeting with usually a complete stranger and be able to give them everything, we understand the apprehension around that.
But on the flip side of the coin, you got to understand that as a financial planner and the way that our firm operates, we have to know quite a bit to be able to make a decent recommendation. So we do operate… I'm a CFP, Radon's a CFP, Nick's a CFP. Taylor is one, too. And so as CFPs, we have to operate under this fiduciary standard. Fiduciary, by the way, pretty much means that we are going to put our client's interest ahead of our own. And the only way to do that, the only way to make a decent recommendation, the only way to give guidance going forward is we need all the information really that is pertinent to the conversation.
So if someone is not willing to share account values with us, or if they don't want to discuss some property that they have or something like that, well I'll tell you, it starts to raise a little bit of a red flag for us because there's a lot of things that go into all of these elements of financial planning. And it's one of those things where obviously, yeah, we need to take time to build up the trust to understand each other.
But on our side of the table, if we can't get the data, at the end of the day, the data is what is going to help us make the best recommendation possible. Then there there's holes in that data, then we start to have issues on making projections, understanding your risk levels, being able to make a proper recommendation as far as what investment strategy do we want to be utilizing. So if we don't know all the chips on the table, then it makes it very difficult. Ultimately, that ends up being a separate conversation of, "Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Client, where do we want this engagement to really go?" Yeah.
I just wanted to piggyback on a little bit about how Taylor opened it up because she talked about all these different pieces that we need. And if you think about our process, we get some basic information. Obviously, we want to know who you are, your date of birth, some just basic information. But then we get right into this idea of, well, give us an idea of where your accounts are and what type of accounts. So I just thought I'd ask Nick, if you could take us through this, because you've worked a lot with us as well around this data gathering. Could you tell us… Maybe describe what are the different types of accounts that people would be submitting and why it's important to know what those different kind of accounts are? Yeah.
So, some of the more common accounts are IRA accounts and Roth IRAs. You have 401(k)s that you might have built up for decades in the past. Those are probably the most common ones, but you can have brokerage accounts, whether that's an individual brokerage or a joint account. And then you also may have different annuity accounts. So, those can be at different insurance companies in the form of an IRA or a Roth IRA or a non-qualified account as well. So, there's a whole bunch of different accounts that you can have. Some are more common than others, but at the end of the day it's important to get the specific type of account so that we know how to build our recommendation, what to build our recommendation off of, and how to help going forward. Yeah.
And I think on top of that, it's also just a good exercise for the person that is trying to get some advice because I'll tell you, Radon and I, we've seen so many times where a person doesn't know what the balance of that one account was, where they worked for that company 10 or 15 years ago, and so an old 401(k), or they haven't really looked at how an account is allocated as far as from an investment perspective. So I think it's a good exercise not just to get all the data to us and the information to us, but also just to take a step back and look at what you have done so far to get to where you are and the different pieces of the puzzle that have come together over time. Usually, that's a pretty remarkable thing that you can look back and say, "Wow, I did all this." Yeah.
And I think, Morgan, you set this up and said, "Okay, I'm thinking about meeting with you." So, just to kind of clarify, we really work off of what we call a three-appointment process. And so, what we're describing right now is kind of getting ready for that first appointment. And so I think you asked the question, "What if I don't want to share some things" or that's not… so for the initial conversation, if we've got… I always say, "Give me the basics of your picture." Meaning I don't need to know it to the penny, but we need to have an idea of about what those accounts are or the different types of accounts Nick just talked about, and we need to know their tax classification just so we can have a basic conversation. And we're going to go through this worksheet.
Now, if you don't have this available ready when you come in, we can do this together. So don't worry about that. But now, I just wanted to set the basis in that initial conversation that we have. It's really kind of this idea of are we a good fit for each other? So, yes, this is important information. We're going to either ask you to have it for us ahead of time or we're going to do it while you're here with us. So we've kind of covered the accounts.
And again, I'm working off this first appointment because we're going to come back to those accounts for the second appointment. But for right now, we're just trying to get our baselines. So I think the next area that we start to go into is our income part of the snapshot. So, Taylor, would you mind breaking down the different types of incomes somebody might be telling us about on this? Just so we've got an idea. So if you are still working and you haven't retired yet, then we're going to want to know what your current salary is at your job.
And if you have retired and if you're taking Social Security, then we're going to ask about what your current Social Security benefits are. Or if you have not started Social Security yet, then there is a way to find out what that future benefit is going to be, so we can help you answer questions about when the optimal time to begin Social Security might be depending on your unique situation. So your current income from your salary, if you're working. Social Security, if you also have a pension, or are planning to start a pension in the future, then we'll want to find out what that amount looks like. So that that can be considered as part of your income available to you to cover your expenses in retirement. And then any other type of income that you have from maybe the sale of a business, if that's part of your plan, or from rental properties that you have.
Then we'll also consider any rental income that you have. So we know what we have saved so far and we know what we have coming in. I'm assuming there's also going to be some information about what we have going out, what we're spending, right? Yeah, exactly. We'll also want to get an idea of what your current living expenses are, if you have any debt obligations, if you're still paying a mortgage or an auto loan or things like that. If you have kids going to college or grandkids that you want to pay for their college expenses, then we want to know about those types of things. And then also we can have a conversation with you about your goals in retirement. If you want to travel or do other things with your retirement savings, donate to charity, whatever that looks like for you, or have home renovations, redo your kitchen or your bathroom, whatever. Then we also plan those so that we also get an idea of what your future expenses might be if they're not regular and consistent right now.
Yeah. And I would say that category of understanding your spending is usually one of the more difficult ones. And I'll paint you a little picture. A lot of people that come to us, they're close to retirement or maybe already retired, but a lot of times they say you're close to retirement, you're making good money, and now you're starting to say, "I need to figure out this whole retirement thing." But you're making good money, you're paying the bills, and you don't really pay all that much attention to, well, what are the dollars that are going out of the door and what categories are they? And it makes you kind of take a step back and you got to understand where you're spending because we see it all the time when someone flips from their accumulation phase of life into retirement and you don't have that employer that's paying your paycheck anymore, and it's really all about what you've done to save and build up for retirement, you start to really think about, "Well, do I need this line item in the budget or can we cut it?" Because the worry, no matter what, no matter if you've got 500,000 saved up for retirement or 10 million saved for retirement, a lot of times the worry is the same that, "Am I going to have enough? Am I going to run out of money?" So I think the earlier someone starts evaluating not just how much they have today, but also what's going to be going out the door when they do fully retire makes the plan so much more well thought out and more precise.
Yeah. So we're almost through it all, your question here, Morgan. You asked a really big question. So as we go through the snapshot, we've kind of gone now through all the financial stuff. Now, we have some other categories that we're going to want to talk through. And one of those is the estate plan. We'll ask people about how much have they done? Have they done a will? Have they done a trust? How old is it? Was it done in a different state? Do you do your own taxes? What are your goals? Do you have any specific goals? Taylor mentioned a couple about redoing a kitchen. Sometimes people say, "I've got this dream vacation we've been waiting for, and this is going to be a big expense for us, but we've been dreaming about it.
And whenever we hit that retirement, we're going to do it. And it's going to be a little bit more on the expensive side because we're going to go a lot of places and be gone for a while. So we need to build that in." So once we have all of that conversation or enough of that information to say, "Hey, here's kind of the conversation," now, we can really start to say, "All right.
What do we want to do with that and how do we want to start putting it together?" And typically, in that first visit, what we're doing is saying, "Here's how we work." And I mean very briefly, this is what we tell people, every person, is that we really kind of work in the very beginning by building a retirement-focused financial plan. That's why we need all this data. Then we're going to say, "Look, once we know that, we'll talk about investments, we'll talk about insurance, we'll talk about income planning, we'll talk about investment planning. We're going to really kind of go all the way through." So now, we got this sheet, so we've kind of got this information.
That's really kind of the first appointment. So, what's your next question? Well, so then I know that it will look like after that as far as we've done our homework, we've got our appointment set, you'll receive a call from our office to confirm for the next day, and then you'll come into the office, and then we'll have that visit, right? That's right. So once we get through with that visit though, at this point, we've got a good picture. And I think at that point is when people say, "Yeah.
You know what? I do like you guys, or I don't," but most of the time we hope you say you do. And we say, "We like you, too." And so we're kind of now moving on to the next date. And that next date is really our second visit. Okay. And what does that look like and what do I need to do to prepare between, or what would a person need to do to prepare for that? Is it- Yeah. So I'm going to say this. The person really doesn't have to do much at all at this point, but there is some key data that, in addition to what we've got already, that we're going to need next. So, we got a lot… We're going to spend with Taylor on as far as building out the plan. But Nick, I just want to have you address real quick, what is some of the information that we need to get so that Taylor is going to have everything she needs to really build out that financial plan? Because right now, we've just kind of got the snapshot, so there's some actual documents that we're going to need.
Could you walk us through what those documents would be? Yeah. Absolutely. So, what really helps us out in creating that financial plan are specific account statements. So, wherever the assets are currently held, whatever custodian that is, that could be Charles Schwab, that could be TD Ameritrade, wherever else that is, it's really helpful to get the most recent statement of the account. And then it's also helpful for us to get most recent tax return as well. So in our preparation for creating the financial plan, doing analysis on your specific tax return and tax situation, and then any other statements, 401(k) statements, that you may have that are recent are also extremely helpful for us creating that plan and beginning to formulate that recommendation throughout our meeting. So, then it gets all turned over to Taylor? Yeah. So now at this point's, whenever Taylor goes to work, in addition to what's already been done. So Taylor, could you just walk us through what you do with all that? Yeah.
And before we do that, also, let me interject and say, let me be the person that Morgan was earlier of, "Well, why do I need to give you these statements? Why do I need to give you my tax return?" That's very personal information. What are you going to get out of this that I don't already see or that is going to become relevant in our next visit together? Yeah. So this is the fun part for me because I get to go through all of the account statements, and we build out two things from those. One, we want to verify the balances of your account so we make sure that we have the right information to base off of what your assets are so that we can make appropriate recommendations to move forward. But we also will go through and look at what the holdings are in each of your account, what exactly you're invested in, what funds or if they're ETFs or mutual funds or a single company stocks.
We want to know what you're invested in because part of what we're preparing on our end is an analysis of those holdings so that we know what your current risk exposure is like because that will be part of our recommendations moving forward, is how to make an investment that's appropriate for the amount of risk that you want to have as part of your retirement plan. So we'll do an analysis on all of the holdings within your investment accounts from the statements that you upload to us as part of our data gathering process, and then also just verify those amounts as part of your retirement-focused financial plan. And for the tax returns as well, we'll take those and do an analysis on your tax returns to look for opportunities for tax planning and observations and looking forward not just for the past years of your tax returns that have already been filed, but for different moves that we could possibly make to help you with your tax situation moving forward as part of our recommendation.
So that's what we're looking for from your account statements and also your tax return so that we can have a conversation on those topics as part of your next meeting. I can't remember if it was mentioned or not, but how do I get these documents to you? Yes. So we'll send an email out. Right now, it's been coming from me. And we have a little portal where you can securely upload all of your statements and just we will be able to access those so it is secure. All right. Nice. All right. So, just to paint a little bit of a picture here, Nick, could you kind of walk us through what's the client going to get when they come in? So now, they come in. And Taylor's been doing all this work to get everything ready and putting it into our financial planning software.
What's that going to look like to a person when they come in? How's that going to feel? What are you going to see? Yeah. So during that second appointment, we will go through your entire financial plan. So, like Radon said, once we've taken all of the data and put that into our financial planning software, we'll go and walk through each and every step of that plan with you; make any tweaks that we need to make; updates that you see, expenses, income; and make any changes that you'd like to see and even different scenarios that you'd like to see. So we'll walk you through each step of that process in the meeting. And then at the end of the meeting, whatever you'd like to take home, you're free to take home.
So whether that's different scenarios, whether that's a printout of the entire financial plan, we can print it out or we can send it straight to you securely. And so we do that a lot of the time. So it's really walking through each and every step of the financial plan, making any adjustments that you'd like to see, and then giving that to you so we can progress and move forward as well. Yeah. And I think I want to add a little bit more power to what that experience is because I mean, you just picture it, right? You've never sat down with a financial planner before, you've never worked with an advisor, and all the questions in your head of "Can I retire at 67?" Or whatever that age you have in your mind, "Do I have enough money? What if there is a long-term care scenario? Are we able to afford it? Do we need to look at insurance?" All of those questions that you've been worried about and really didn't have all the answers to, they start to get answered in that visit. And we're walking you through it.
"Hey, here's the dollars coming in, here's the dollars going out, here's what we've built up to work with." And then we take it to this final spreadsheet that ultimately we start to see a huge sigh of relief from a lot of people that we work with. And it brings it all in on one nice, little sheet that says, "Here's where we are today. Here's the assets that we have, and here's how we progress down in our years." And we like to take it out to age 90, 95, 100, whatever you want to look at. And by the end of that, I would say, part one of the second appointment, you've already got someone who feels that there's been a lot of value that's been delivered because now I've got some answers to the questions that I've had for a long time of, "Hey, can I retire? What's Social Security going to look like for me? How much are we going to be able to spend in retirement?" Things like that.
So it's pretty cool feeling being… as an advisor on the other side of the table, being able to deliver that. And we're not even working with the person yet. So it sounds like a lot of information you're taking in from that appointment. How do you move forward from that? Do I need to make a decision at that point? Or what do I need to do after that appointment? So that I go back to, I say, that's part one of the visit. And we spent about 20 to 30 minutes on part one of the visit. Part two now goes into what Taylor was talking about that we have put together as far as a risk analysis. And I'll let Taylor chime in on this, but basically, she's done some work as far as understanding what is in those statements, what investments are we in, and then we also have a risk conversation that says, "Well, forget about how we're invested today. What does our gut tell us about how we feel about risk?" And, Taylor, if you want to talk to the differences that we see sometimes on how someone's invested versus how they feel like they should be invested.
Yeah. So part of what we'll do when we're meeting with you and talking about your current risk exposure and the difference between what you're currently invested in and what maybe you would like to be invested in is we'll go through a questionnaire with you to get an idea of how much risk you want to tolerate in retirement, and then we can kind of compare what you want to where you are currently invested to give us an idea of some of the changes that we might need to make for you as part of your retirement financial plan so that we can better align where you currently are with where you want to be as far as your risk exposure in your investment accounts.
Yeah. I think what we do here that's a little bit different is I always tell people, "If you've ever done this before, a lot of times there's a questionnaire you get" and it's kind of like, "Do you go to Vegas on the weekends and bet everything on one type of gamble that you would take over the weekend?" It's obscure. What we do is actually look at the numbers. So we say, "Hey, if you got $1 million and it were down 10%," somebody might immediately say, "It's not that bad" until we show them it's down $100,000.
And then they go, "Whoa, I don't want to be down $100,000." "Oh, if you're down 20%, that's $200,000." Definitely can't handle that. So we basically walk them through those real numbers. And then somebody comes up with their number and they go, "Look at this point, whatever that might be," so let's say it was 10%, "At 10%, yeah, I'm starting to get nervous, so I don't want to lose more than 10%." Well, then we take them and we show them what their real risk is on their current investments and they go, "Oh, my goodness, I didn't realize I was that risky in my investments." And then we talk about how did it go last year? I mean, "That's an easy one this year because last year the markets were down 20%." So people go, "Yeah, I was down 20%, too.
And I just didn't think about it from the dollar's perspective." And so that is eye opening to a lot of folks when we get to that point. So now, what we've done is we've kind of worked all the way through this information. And at this point is where we say, "All right. We're going to send you the financial plan. We're going to send you the data of what we've put together thus far." And now what we're doing is, is we say, "Look, we want you to take a break at this point, go home, look at what we've going to send you. And then we come back together for a strategy meeting." And the strategy meeting is saying, "How do we start to look at this? How do we that?" And I'm just going to say that we do it in a couple of different ways. One of the things that we do as a bucket sheet. And in that bucket sheet is breaks this into three buckets.
So Nick, could you kind of take us through what that bucket sheet looks like as a part of the strategy? Yeah. So, to start with the bucket sheet, we start with basically three different buckets. And usually we're typically drawing this on the board, so that whoever we're meeting with can see it in person. And visually, it's a lot easier to see. So you start with either a cash…. you start with a cash bucket, a safety bucket and then a growth bucket. And to kind of break those down step by step, the cash bucket is really anything that you feel… or the amount of cash that you feel comfortable holding.
So for everyone, that may be different. Some people like to hold a lot in cash just for emergencies. Some people are typically holding smaller amounts. So that's person to person. That's a completely personal choice. And as long as that doesn't really negatively affect the plan in any way, typically, it won't. And that's just a number that we have as part of the bucket sheet overall. That second bucket is the safety or income bucket, and that's set basically for safety or income in the future. And that's basically a few different products that we recommend as part of the strategy meeting to hold in that bucket and provide safe and reliable income throughout your retirement. And then the third bucket is the growth bucket. And that's really set to grow throughout your retirement.
The goal there is basically to have that money so that you don't have to… you can, but you don't need to tap into it throughout your retirement. And typically, that will be liquid if you need it. But really, the goal of that growth bucket is to grow throughout the 20-some-odd years. And then, your safety bucket will take care of your income during retirement. So those are the three different buckets. And we kind of basically form our recommendation around those three. Yeah. Over the years, I've been doing this for 22 years. Murs has been with me now for 11 or 12 years.
How long was it? How many? 11 years. 11 years. So we started using this bucket strategy just to make things simple. So I just want to ask you, Murs, what are you seeing from folks as we started using this as to how they get it and how valuable it is to them? Yeah, I think in one word, it's clarity. Clarity on how things are positioned, and confidence, as well as how this plan can actually function. A lot of times, again, doesn't matter how much money you got, it's one of those things where until you see it on a screen, until you see it mapped out for you, it's hard to imagine that whatever money you've built up is going to last as long as you need it to. So once we show this cash bucket, this safety and income bucket, and then this growth bucket, and help someone understand, again, personalized to them, you may have someone that…
And we see all types of situations. You may have someone that's got all the income that they need, discretionary income that they need is covered through their Social Security or their pension. So they've got a really good situation. So their bucket sheet is going to look a little bit different than someone else who has no pension and just has to rely on Social Security. They're going to need to draw on their assets a little bit more. And so being able to kind of put those three categories together and being able to show someone in a very simplistic manner, this is not… we don't want this to be complicated. Yeah, the investing side of things can be complicated. The income side of things can be complicated. But if the strategy and if the client can understand the why, why do we put money in this bucket versus this bucket, and they can talk about it in conversation to their friends and family, all of a sudden it sits very well. And I think there's a lot of power to that, right? There's some that would use a 20, 30, 40, 50-page financial plan.
And we all know what happens with that plan. You looked at it once or it's presented to you once, and then you never looked at it again because it was just too overwhelming. This bucket sheet that we end up using as a recommendation, and then as a final deliverable, it's a one-page snapshot of what your life is going to look like. And we're updating that year after year after year because in our opinion, at the end of the day, a financial plan, it's moving.
It is not set in stone. It is flexible because we know life happens, we know situations happen. And so we need something that can be nimble with that as well. All right, Morgan, we gave you a lot. Any other questions? Yeah. Well, I feel like these tools, this visualization and all these conversations are going to help you come to a pretty good decision. What do you do after you've taken all this information in? Yeah. We try to keep these episodes at around the 30-minute mark just because we don't want it to be overwhelming, but here's where we are. I mean, at this point, a person has a pretty good idea of how things are, at least, going to get started, but it is just the beginning. It is just the start of where we are in this journey to and through retirement. And so what we're going to do, we're going to come back together because I've got more questions.
I think Morgan's got more questions for all of us around this idea, "Okay, well, I'm here. You've given me all this. So now, what do I do next? And where do I go? And if I become a client, what does it look like then? And how do I take all of this hard work that's been put into building out this plan and building out this whole process? How do I implement it? And what does the implementation look like and how long does it take to implement? And how long am I going to be having this thing monitored? And what does that look like?" So we're going to walk you through that in our next episode when we all get together. Just so you know, if you're looking for that, it'll be the end of the next month, so in a few episodes.
But we're going to walk you back through all of those different aspects. So I just want to say thank you very much, Nick and Taylor, for coming on, the special guests, with us here on this episode. And your insight has been very helpful on making sure we clearly understand what it means to build a financial plan. So, thank you. Thank you, too, Murs, and Morgan, for all the great questions. All right, everybody, have a great week. We will talk to you again next Monday. We hope this video has given you some confidence and clarity as you plan for a worry-free life and retirement. But what else do you need? We have created a complementary video course called Three Keys to Secure Your Retirement. This video walks you through step by step what you need to do to get ready for retirement.
You can also check out our podcast called Secure Your Retirement. You can subscribe below. For more retirement tips, check out these videos. Also, if you find them valuable, please subscribe to our YouTube channel and give us a Like.
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How Do You Create a Simple Retirement Income Plan?
user 0 Comments Retirement Planning
A retirement income plan is needed because life changes in retirement. Your retirement plan should account for every year in retirement, even past your life expectancy. For each year, make a list for you and your spouse that include social security income, pensions and annuity income. Also list earnings from investments and working part-time. List any other fixed and regular income sources. For each year, list your desired gross retirement income need.
Be sure to include taxes, the effects of inflation and potential medical expenses. Then for each year, determine the gap or surplus by subtracting expenses from income. If you see that you have gaps in your retirement plan, give us a call today. We can make sure you have a strategy to help you reach your retirement goals. .
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Read MoreHow to Rock Your Retirement with Roger Whitney
user 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning
the first step is have a client dream expansively of what could they do if they had it all you know would they you know if they could have everything if they could retire tomorrow or go part-time and they could have their needs their wants and their wishes what would you want if you literally couldn't fail at it this is the door roller money podcast i'm your host rob berger in today's show we're talking with roger whitney he is the retirement man literally his blog and podcast of the same name or legendary and his mission is to help people shift what they think is possible in retirement by changing how they live work and celebrate what's possible in the present boy do i need that roger is a three-time plutus award winner and author of rock retirement a simple guide to help you take control and be more optimistic about the future he's been ranked by investopedia as one of the most influential financial advisors for over five years and he created the rock retirement club which is an online community which provides tools for others to build an amazing retirement roger welcome to the show wow i always sound impressive on paper and then i open my mouth well listen we can just stop here it was great having you on the show have a good day i'm done no it's great to be here it's great to be here so i want to dive right in i got a ton of obviously retirement questions to ask you uh and i'm you know i have very much self-interest in this interview i don't care about the listeners it's all about me today always um yeah but i want to start actually with your firm agile retirement management which as i understand is you know a financial planning firm you'll correct me if i'm wrong focused on retirement i'd kind of like to know like what do you do for people and how much does it cost can we kind of start there and then i'm gonna dive into a bunch of retirement questions ah sure um so agile retirement management is our firm uh we act as project managers in someone's journey towards retirement so we take a very much a project management approach to a financial planning process hence we've borrowed a lot from the agile methodology which is how software is developed right that's why your phones have to update software all the time is because they're constantly iterating and so in the firm we act as project manager and implement agile retirement management and we can talk about what exactly that is uh we aren't accepting new clients so we're i'm sorry you are or not or not oh uh okay i can talk about that we walk life with about 80 families and not really trying to grow that beyond what it is and we charge as a traditional financial advisor so our fees range anywhere from ten to twenty thousand dollars a year and uh so let's yeah let's talk about the no new clients why will that change in the future and why did you stop at 80 well so i i've been on the street so i've been a practicing financial advisor for over 25 years and you say that when it's over 25 years so you don't have to say exactly how many years ago and i've done a lot of things for over 25 years and i went the journey so my journey professionally professionally is i worked at a major firm uh as a traditional financial advisor early in my life and then in just after 2000 transitioned to establishing an independent firm and i had two business partners and we grew that to a firm of about 15 or 16 people and just over the last four or five years i've extracted myself from what i've created in order to right size my practice so i didn't have to do all the things that you have to do when you run a big firm you know the the compliance the education the coaching the all the management responsibilities and so i right sized my practice to fit what i want for my stage of life which is i want to walk life more closely with individuals i want to have a profitable practice i want to have a location independent practice i want to have time freedom personally and so i created a firm where i can have all of those things and still actually practice my craft and so when i extracted myself from the firm we're building this firm to serve the people we work with but not just simply to scale which is generally what plan business is about always scaling and getting bigger i'm not i'm trying not to do that so do you foresee taking on new clients anytime in the foreseeable future or not can you imagine periodically yes yeah i can imagine periodically yes so then what we need to know is how folks can um perhaps approach retirement the way your firm does without obviously hiring you and you mentioned you know you see your role as a project manager which uh i like that idea although i've never really heard of it applied in the financial planning perspective so how does that work so i i call myself a classically trained financial planner so i was trained in the cfp curriculum and i taught the cfp curriculum to cfp candidates for a number of years and i equate that to how we used to develop software it was this huge bloated process where we tried to solve for everything at once to create this thing which is called a financial plan or a retirement plan and that is generally how financial planning has been done and it's all had as the hub investment management yeah that's where the money is well for a lot of reasons it's come it would you know the financial planning process was developed by financial advisors and insurance people so the natural hub is what their center of the universe is which are those products right that's not necessarily good or bad it's just how things develop and in reality with a modern retiree say you someone who's going to retire the dynamic is different than any generation in history because one you're going to live longer than any generation before you two you're going to be healthier and more active than any generation before you in the later part of life three you're likely not going to have a pension and be more responsible for your own retirement all of these things collide where the traditional financial planning approach approach generally gives you a lot of bad options right if you go through a traditional retirement planning process it does it you know it actually does net present value how much you need on the day you retire and because of the dynamics you're going to spend more you're going to live longer et cetera essentially the math doesn't add up near as often as it used to for people that had pensions and that didn't live long or active lives and so the the solutions that generally advisors offer clients are one hey you know what these numbers you're probably going to have to work longer than you think right maybe we should have you work longer to make this math work or two we need to probably inves you know take on more investment risk to try to get returns to catch up three i mean you probably should start saving more um so we can build up a bigger nest egg for when you retire or four maybe we settle for less of what you can spend during retirement so we make sure you don't run out of money so those are the four general recommendations that you get from the financial advice system or some combination of those four right you know maybe we work and to be blunt all of those choices suck right because they sacrifice your life if you work longer well that's more of your life that you don't have time freedom if you save more money there's a financial there's actually human cost to that right you means you can't take that extra vacation maybe you have to work more hours maybe you do without certain things and all of those are reasonable recommendations but there's a lot more than just simply the math when it comes to creating a retirement plan right um there's a lot of dials that people can move if you get out of the mindset of financial products and portfolios which is generally the hub and i can we can talk about a lot of examples so what we do with clients is an agile process that is based off of the you know agile methodology but there's three major pillars to a retirement plan process the first step is have a client dream expansively of what could they do if they had it all you know would they you know if they could have everything if they could retire tomorrow or go part-time and they could have their needs their wants and their wishes what would you want if you literally couldn't fail at it we try to help people think in those terms rather than sacrifice their life before they understand what's possible and then we organize our financial resources because you're gonna pay for your life from three sources of capital uh human capital which is your ability to earn income we think of that as a job but there's lots of different ways to earn money that's not full-time um what does it covered by your income can be covered by what we call social capital which is like pensions and social security and then lastly whatever isn't covered by those two has to come from your financial capital and so the the first pillar is dream expansively look at the resources you have and see if it's feasible and so my goal in a agile process is i want the first iteration to fail miserably i want their dreams to be so big of what they would what they would want if they could that they really don't have the resources and that seems counterintuitive but the reason i like to do that is because now you have all the things on the table and then you end up negotiating with yourself we all know we can't have it all but we should define what it all is so we can flush it out so there isn't something that was unsaid by say your spouse or your partner or your that was unsaid to yourself and then you end up negotiating with yourself to get to a feasible plan something that is focused on the things that you truly care about most and that you know from a long-term planning perspective is feasible as a road map and what will happen is and i've had many instances where people on paper almost are identical but one you know person a or couple a says their deal killer is i have to get out of this job that's killing me as soon as possible and so we negotiated understanding that that was what they really needed to solve for and they were willing to give up their sacrifices elsewhere i wonder if you've had clients where you go through this process they say okay we need we need to get your wants and your wishes and we might fail in the first iteration as you just said and they have trouble coming up with them oh yeah yeah they're definitely because i think that's probably again not that this interview is about me that's probably the bucket i would fall into so what do you how do you get people you know how do you break the dam so to speak and get people to figure out what in the world they want to do with their life and you're right that is a problem for some right it's and it well let's not call it a problem right and let's take you rob let's lay down you have a lay on the couch let's have a chat um it's a journey right because a lot of us are especially the people that have the most options in retirement generally are great accumulators they're used to self-sacrifice and delayed gratification every everything else and we're going to do a series on our show next year called overcoming frugality i was going to ask you about that because i listened to your show i know you're going to do it and it's a great topic so how does some someone what's it mean to overcome frugality and how does someone actually do it well what it means to overcome frugality is to realize that you can't take it with you and start to and the way you overcome it is a journey right so a good place to start is the thing you know to decrease the friction in your spend money to decrease the friction in your life right the classic example that's a great one would be mowing the lawn right when i gave up mowing the lawn it was a big deal it's like the money i could afford but it was annoying it was enough money and i sort of enjoyed it but that decreased the friction um yeah flying first class if you can another good one that seems silly when you look at the number but if it decreases the friction and enhances your life and allows you to be more well rested when you're there etc so that's a great place to start so i think really rob it's a journey and a lot of times why we don't make that journey is we don't have a framework to know whether it's really being flitted away if i fly first class just as an example that's a lot of money and if i do that consistently that could really you know without a context we think that could hurt us i can't afford to spend this money because i might need it when i'm 90.
and without a framework to understand that the decision you make today that you'll still be okay later on absent that framework you're likely going to sacrifice because you want to make sure you're okay tomorrow so let's talk about the framework what does that look like and how can someone how can someone build the framework that you envision on their own well that's you know do they read your book what resources would they use so what's the framework look like because because ultimately that is the question right how much money can i spend today how much money can i spend this year without worrying about when i turn 90.
so what's that framework look like for you and how can someone whether it's books obviously listen to your podcast but what resources are available to folks so that they could take your vision of the framework and implement it well i think the podcast is where we that's my laboratory for talking about it and talking through the different elements um the rock retirement club is meant to teach people we have a master class that walks you in an agile way through building what we call your plan of record right so okay peer one is knowing that your roadmap is feasible right and but having a feasible plan isn't enough right because it's feasible for me to swim across you know a two and a half mile lake but what happens if a storm comes in or what happens if the current shift then the second period you have to make it resilient if i'm going to embark on this journey i have to put some guard rails in place so i don't get thrown off course or swamped with the storm whether it's a life event or the markets or inflation and then you get to optimization which is all the bling of financial planning right all the stuff that people talk about most so those are the three pillars and so if you get a feasible plan and then you make it resilient we call that a plan of record which is our working project model this is the project that we're on and that's going to include you know and that's what we teach in the class when we talk about on the show the feasible part of it is mainly financial planning software like in the club we have club members get new retirement plus calculator which is one of the best public-facing calculators so you get the software approach and then when you make it resilient you have to you have to actually go to spreadsheets you have to create your roadmap of how i'm going to pay for life early in retirement so what we do you know a good feasible plan that is resilient is once you know the model say you're fine long term we we recommend or suggest that people retire having the first five years of old life pre-funded so they know exactly just a savings account somewhere a cash account um yeah you can get you know that's the optimization stage how do you eke out yield but the key is you want to have that money set aside to essentially be your payroll account to create your paycheck for yourself when you're not working and that we have spreadsheet templates that we have there and what's interesting about this rob to me is and this is why we think it's a project not a plan is you're always iterating because when rob has his plan of record and he starts iterating on that the problem is his plan is going to change a million times because rob and his wife or partner i don't know if you have a wife a partner they're going to change their mind and you're going to pivot she does occasionally from time to time she's actually in the other room so i should probably keep my voice down and and so using a project man once you have this plan of record that's really setting up the project then then the key there rob is what i call creating the wham really what people need is the wham and that's what we try to deliver in an agile way and that is basically every time you're reviewing your plan of record that you know is feasible and resilient you're always asking yourself whether it's verbally not well what do i do next or you know what should i focus on what do i do next to improve the plan because of an opportunity or shore up the plan by addressing a risk so people want to know the what and then they want to okay once you identify the what and one thing about that is it's very you know if you think of levers that you can pull in your life it's in because everybody thinks so tactical we can focus a lot of our energy on things that have very little impact in our life right and in planning that's generally where most people stay because they read an article about roth conversions or about you know irma with medicare and they spend all this time thinking about it when they could have a very easy task over here that could have a huge impact on their life that they just totally ignore because it's not very sexy so we want to know what do we focus on and that's what we help people figure out and then how do i do it you know the actual how and then some assistance and accountability to actually get that little step done which creates momentum because you've completed it which leads you back to what do i do next so an agile approach to planning never ends because it's always now what do i do and it's all these little decisions to try to improve the plan and i think that's where you need to live and this is all in the rock retirement uh club course that folks can take this is what we teach them yeah but i mean that your your firm doesn't take new clients but but folks can sign up for the class you're describing is that right yeah so the the club is structured around gives you the education of how to put this in place and then it gives you tools to actually do those things and then it gives you the community of people that are all doing them together okay um and what you said one of the tools is new retirement right that's one that you like which i've used for a long time i know steve steven the founder very well yeah he's a good guy um yeah uh and uh okay so that's good you mentioned and i and i plan to ask you about this in terms of prioritization because you know when you're planning for retirement in retirement there's a thousand little things you could be thinking about but as you pointed out you really at least should start with the low-hanging fruit so to speak right um the things that are going to make a big difference that you know might be easy to implement uh my question for you then is what are some of those things what are some of those those priorities that you see folks sort of ignoring that they probably should focus on first it's a good it's a good question and i'm going to start by saying a lot of this process is you want to think strategy tactics not tactic strategy right you want to think from a strategic level and let that dictate the strategy the tactical execution of things and most people approach it an incorrect way um probably one of the biggest things if you're within five years of retirement is starting to address boundaries around work you know bound you know because what happens as you get closer to retirement is you're used to being on a career track and pleasing your boss and the superiors in the company and working for whether it's the recognition or the promotion or the raise or whatever else that's a cycle a lot of us have been on for decades and we can easily sacrifice our life to it because we care so deeply about our teams and what we're doing right when you're close to retirement one thing a lot of people i don't have time i don't have time to think about what i want afterwards i'm too busy i'm traveling whatever else is to start realizing hey you're not on this career advancement treadmill anymore and just you know so i think one low-hanging fruit is start to create some boundaries so you can capture some time to start thinking about the transition that you're getting ready to go to right so i think that's a big thing to work on i think another one is especially with if you're within five years of retiring have you ever been to the gym and have seen like those dudes that all they do is upper body they're just huge walking around i mean they're really developed you know from the waist up that is how a lot of us are when we're close to retirement because we're so good at accumulating you know the game has been work your butt off save reinvest every dollar embrace investment risk and we've done that for decades to prepare for retirement and then we've had the joy of especially our generation the joy of updating our net worth statement seeing those balances go up saying this is how much i saved this year all that affirmation cycle that comes from all that saving so we're like really strong accumulators well when you get close to retirement that changes you're decumulating you're you're switching from a decumulation or from a from a sewing to a reaping standpoint and so that's like all your legs now you're so big up here and you're supposed to run a marathon and you've never developed those muscles because so think of what happens and so that transition from accumulation mindset to decumulation mindset and what that actually means is so i think low-hanging fruit that if you understand that it makes everything else a lot easier yeah that was the biggest shock to me i i retired about four years ago now i ended up going back and doing more work and i have a side business so you know i'm not really spending my nest egg right now but when i sold part of my business i thought okay that's it i'm gonna be spending my nest egg and psychologically it's a it's a very very difficult thing to do uh for me just like you've described and at one point it was because you know the fear of running out of money but after a while you kind of get used to that at least i have and that's not really the fear anymore uh although it helps when the market's doing well so yeah you know if the market crashes maybe that fear will come back but it was also kind of like you described i just like doing barbell curls i like accumulating money i don't really do that many barbell curls but you know you like accumulating money it's fun to invest it the thought of watching your balance go down who likes that so how do you overcome that well that's why it has to be a process and not a plan yeah so i have a question for you um when you left work did you know you're going to be doing part-time work or building a business no uh i mean i thought that i might some point down the road um i had a non-compete so i couldn't really do much for two years in terms of my own business i ended up doing some work though it fell into my lap you know how this happens like three weeks after i sell my business i get a call from forbes and they they want me to do some things for them and i was allowed to do that and that was enough to sustain us financially but it was totally unexpected and then and then eventually i started my websites back up and i'm doing this podcast right you know and uh a few other i got a youtube channel and so we live off of that income now and so i've kind of i've sort of accidentally unretired but i'm guessing you probably have more control of your time and time freedom yeah i mean and i wouldn't do it otherwise if i had to go to an office eight hours a day i wouldn't be doing this and in surveying our audience over the years probably one of the biggest insights i i've had is asking them what retirement actually means because i use the word just simply because that's the word that's used yeah but my understanding is most people don't want to not do anything yeah they just want to slow down and have some control of their time yeah right absolutely absolutely and i think you know low-hanging fruit from uh if you understand this it changes it makes it much more multi-dimensional than the classical way is retirement is framed in planning as a light switch you're working you're not most people don't want that so if you can think more multi-dimensionally and think of it like a dimmer switch where you can get out of the rat race take a breath most people and this is true in my private practice as well are doing something because they enjoy it and they're earning some money from it and it's the pace of life that's really the difference not not working yeah absolutely absolutely well let me let me drop down to some tactics i guess this would qualify as tactics uh at some point you can do all the planning to talk about all sort of the psychological issues uh but at some point you know a retiree needs to know okay how much can i spend in the first year of retirement what's the number and it may be a range i suppose but i don't know but how do you think through that question and and how do you you know how do you advise folks uh in trying to answer that and this is where i think planning even even a professional planner you get beyond the charts and the graphs to the okay exactly how does this work and what do i do it starts to get a lot lower resolution um and and so the way that i'll just tell you how we do it this is what the course digits do is once we know it's feasible we're making it resilient we want someone to go into retirement with a contingency fund and then an income floor which will be anywhere from pa pre-paying for life two to five years out and then so if you have a million dollars let's say you're gonna have your normal contingency emergency fund and let's say after part-time work in in pension or social security you need a hundred thousand dollars from your portfolio these numbers aren't going to work right but you get the point well then that means if you need a hundred thousand dollars a year for the next five years you need a half million dollars is basically pre-paying your consumption so that million dollars half of that is going to go to consuming and then you have a half million dollars left and that goes to upside portfolio and so i call it a pie cake first lay we have multiple asset allocations we have contingency we have the income floor which pays for your life early and then we have the upside portfolio that will help pay for future life because you have too big risk when you're allocating assets in retirement from a financial standpoint you have near term you have sequence of return markets just being bad right up front and long term you have inflation so those are the two things and we're on a teeter-totter trying to balance those two so to your question when once we identify how much they need in years one through four or five say we identify then we identify what accounts are we going to get that money from yeah and there's some tax planning in there and then now that we know the accounts that we're going to get the money from we set ups we sequester or segregate that money and we call that a payroll reserve to pay for what years one through five so psychologically it's like a bucket system so if someone said to you okay that sounds good i'm gonna take my five years of of income need whatever that number is and i'm going to invest it in say i don't know 50 index funds stock index funds and 50 bond index funds would you say no no no slow down it's got to be an all in cash uh how would you think through investing that five year i'll call it a bucket it almost to me sounds like the bucket strategy but slice and pie or that whatever you want to call it how would you invest that five years and so so to answer what is that money for that money you know when you and this is a basically a pension management way of doing things an asset liability matching so if rob needs a hundred thousand dollars in three years that's really a liability on your balance sheet you owe a hundred thousand dollars in three years and so we're matching your assets to that liability your spending is a liability so but to answer your question cash you know in ideal world you would buy a inflation-adjusted security that matured right before you needed the money right so you neutralize inflation if you need a hundred thousand three years from now you take a hundred thousand dollars you buy a inflation-adjusted security that matures right before you need it now you've pre-paid it in reality we use high-yield money markets we use cds we'll look at three three year fixed annuities you can look at tips you can look at individual bonds that mature on a certain date it's really not the environment for that but we've had periods of time where we'll actually buy bonds that mature right before they need the money so how how would you respond to someone who said that that's that's gonna end up creating a portfolio that's got too much in short-term you know fixed income and that it's going to really hurt you you don't take too much risk but maybe the argument that that's too conservative how would you respond to that too much relative to what right well relative to a portfolio that and i think in terms of percentages when i do asset allocation i don't think in terms of years of expenses um that you'd be better off coming up with an asset allocation based on percentages 60 40 70 30 whatever and only taking out and from that in terms of cash what you need say in a given year uh so you're still going to have probably years two through five and maybe even longer depending on how much money you have in some form of fixed income right uh but it's going to be allocated based on percentages uh rather than pulling out from the allocation five years of expenses i i think and you're going to have ups and downs if the stock market crashes though that's okay because you'll sell fixed income to buy stocks which is exactly what we want to do anyway that would be sort of the alternative in my mind and that and that that approach is essentially taking asset allocation and investment management uh from an accumulation mindset and trying to fit in the decumulation model which is where we come up with four percent rule and things like that now you can accomplish it that way right um i think a lot of this is accounting because one is what are we trying to solve for we have to understand that and in retirement unlike accumulation we're not trying to solve for optimization of returns relative to risk that we're taking which is what efficient market theory says right or modern portfolio we're trying to minimize risk for a given level potential return and in modern portfolio theory inflows was never part of never in the universe of that model that was about accumulating assets in retirement what we're trying to solve for is life outcomes right so i'm not against a systematic withdrawal model in the way you speak but first you have to know feasible because in when you create a feasible plan we put people into three buckets they're either underfunded for the spending they want they're constrained or they're over funded and it's important to understand that because if you're over funded meaning you have much more in assets than you have in spending liabilities you can do a systematic withdrawal because you have so much excess you can absorb a period of time when stocks and bonds go down because you have so much excess it's okay to do a systematic but the more you get into the constrained category which is where most people are the more you better secure the outcomes and what ends up happening rob when you go through this exercise actually when you have contingency floor upside you end up getting to a fairly balanced model because the upside can have more equities because essentially it's a time horizon structure you know you wouldn't put money into something for four if you needed the money in four years you're probably not going to put 60 of it in stocks yeah so if some so folks listening and they're thinking well am i underfunded or over funded or constrained i mean do you see the four percent rule as at least a rough starting place to think about that issue or how do you how do you help clients determine whether they're underfunded you know or over funded you build a household balance sheet and understand the liabilities that you have from a spending standpoint um that's what we that's what the class does you get to a that's how you determine your feasibility is through building your household balance sheet to see how overfunded or underfunded you are and once you know that that will help to determine the toolbox for how you make it resilient so as an example if somebody is highly constrained the knee jerk would be well i need to take more investment risk to get less constrained right yeah that's actually the last thing you want to do because you can't afford the risk of taking more investment risk it will just exacerbate an already tight situation so somebody that's highly constrained is going to have a more safety first approach which wade fowls talks about because there's this there's this dial from safety first on one extreme to systematic withdrawal on the other extreme where you are at between those two extremes is going to be dependent one on your personality profile which people are just now developing things to solve for and it's also going to be determined by how funded you how you know how funded you are yeah but i mean doesn't it at the end of the day it still comes down to numbers right so like i'm guessing if someone said i got a million bucks i'm going to spend 100 000 the first year and that's going to be my income floor i'm going to guess what i don't care what tools you're probably not funded they're probably underfunded right if they say i want to take 40 grand out or maybe even 50 grand well okay it's probably roughly in the ballpark i suppose um for your course i know you mentioned new retirement so new retirement comes up with numbers uh but in order to come up with those numbers the user of the tool right has to make an assumption about the returns and and future inflation so i know i'm getting into the weeds and we don't have to go down too far into the down the rabbit hole i suppose but those two things are a big concern for people the returns are a concern because uh stocks at all-time highs more or less and bonds are at all-time highs meaning the yields are low uh although the 10-year has been rising today who knows um and people are scared of inflation so how do you i mean again folks can take your class obviously to get into the nitty-gritty but just how do you do you think we're in sort of the chinese curse may you live in interesting times are we living in interesting times right now we always are that's sort of the the crux of that that saying right um that's a lot rob so first off i think the one reason that's why an agile approach is more important than ever yeah so one story i tell people is that hey and i'm gonna use a you know i'm gonna say trailer and that's not a bad thing but most people don't live in a trailer i tell people and very wealthy people like look we can do everything right and you may still have to live in a trailer it is and it's the truth because we the the hard part with this type of planning is you cannot figure it out it is unknowable it's unknowable inflation's going to be it's unknowable what returns are going to be it's unknowable what your life is going to be that's just as fluid as all these other things we're talking about life events happening and so forth and given that you better have a very well thought out process to make lots of little conversations so you can identify risks and opportunities early enough to take little actions rather than big actions that is the best we have that's one reason why we've adopted an agile methodology so to answer your question on inflation and returns in the class we have new retirement calculator which is more of a traditional forward-looking calculator which has return assumptions in the class when we build a household balance sheet we have no return assumptions we we actually bring back to net present value everything today so if we're talking about spending what rob and his wife are going to spend when they're 85 and let's call it 180 000 inflation adjusted we discount that back to make it a present value as of today so we can look at your we know what your assets are right we know what your assets are you bring back present value all the cash flows for social security and pension and we do the same thing for the spending so we can compare them more apples to apples um that is much more conservative and what ends up happening than traditional software because what ends up happening if you forecast forward which is the traditional sense and i do that with monte carlo scenarios and etc what ends up happening is especially with monte carlo the scenarios though the time frame is so long the possible outcomes just spread yeah they're crazy yeah so now when you bring everything back down you make you make zero prediction on investment returns and you're dealing essentially with your inflation assumption and your discount rate okay right which are still focused i want to find your class they go to rockretirementclub.com rockretimer.comclub.com is where the course and the community all of that is talked about okay and how long does the course like if someone wants to go through the course how long does it take or how long does it last yeah it's right it's nine modules and it's structured as an agile project so it's little baby steps starting from the first remember the yellow brick road when you start on the first step you have to go back you start and you iterate people do it at their own pace okay that's terrific i'm gonna check it out myself uh because it may be uh perfect for me um so folks that want to follow you follow your work your writing where should they where should they go best place to find me is in podcasts on the retirement answer man show that's where we do everything okay i've been listening to that i'm it's funny i'm not a big podcast person uh but i started listening to your show and enjoy it immensely uh you're doing a great job it's it's uh it's really helping a lot of people thank you uh it's my lab i don't have any uh illusions that i haven't figured out i'm trying to be a very organized thinker about things yeah absolutely well roger thanks for tolerating my my persistent tactical questions thank you for coming on the show you bet buddy have a great holiday you
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