Welcome to how to retire on time, a show that answers your retirement questions. Say goodbye to the oversimplified advice. This show is all about the nitty gritty so you can determine what is right for you. My name is Mike Decker. I'm a financial adviser and fiduciary alongside David Fransen here, my colleague.

As always, text your questions to (913) 363-1234, and we'll feature them on the show. Just remember, this is a show, not financial advice. David, what have we got today?

Hey, Mike. I want to work another five years before I retire, but I'm concerned my position won't be around that long. How do you plan for a situation like this?

Yeah. So this is employment risk, and it's very real. I know it's not politically correct to say what I'm about to say.

Mhmm. Okay.

But I'm gonna say it anyway. Yep. You're not owns this show, so we can, I guess, see what we want as long as it's legal?

Yes. Yes.

K? Ageism is a very real thing. Whether companies will admit it or not, it is my opinion that there are many people that are being relocated or furloughed or asked to resign, what whatever you wanna call it. It's lipstick on the pig. You're being fired or let go early so they can make room for a younger person and pay them less.

That's how it works, whether people wanna admit it or not. You see that. It's a very real thing. Okay. Yeah.

So now that we've said it, hopefully, that doesn't happen to you. Hopefully, you work as long as you want, but things shift. Whole companies or sections or buildings or teams are moved overseas. These are things that happen. And so for these situations, I have found it is better to know what it looks like if you were to retire today, knowing that you don't have to retire today.

So you run the what if scenario, run the first plan, and you always put the plan together first, and then you explore the strategies, and then you explore the portfolio. Okay. So you run the plan first. If you were to retire today, what would the numbers look like? What would the income plan look like?

What does that all look like? So that's the first part. If you were to retire today, what would it look like? Then you say, if I were to retire in five years, what would it look like? Now you've got two plans.

What are the strategies that you may or may not want to implement? And why the strategies? You need to understand the liquidity needs of these strategies, including income. If you were to be furloughed or whatever next week, what would that look like? You need to understand, are you creating a tax problem by saving into the pretax account when you should be saving in the after tax account in your four zero one k or vice versa?

Are you gonna be having an issue with Medicare, with IRBA? Are you not? You start answering all these questions, and that helps guide the last five years of your retirement so you're saving the right places, you're living your best life during those years, but you at least understand where you are. I have found a lot of anxiety, financial anxiety, comes from ambiguity. They just don't really know how all the numbers are working out, and so they struggle with that.

And so what happens? They just make assumptions, they close their eyes, and just kind of keep going. Have the plan ready to go so that you know if x happens, you do this. If y happens, you do that. Yeah.

You just start there. And then you can put contingencies in there, like, are you more likely to get fired from your job or let go or whatever expression or term or phrase you wanna use when the markets are soaring and there's all time profits or when the markets crash?

You can probably guess which one you might.

Yeah. Yeah. So if the markets crash, you lost your job, and now you're kinda being forced into retirement, wouldn't it be nice to have some assets that were protected to help you get through those times so that your other assets have time to recover? Wouldn't it be nice that you knew where your income would come from just in case? Wouldn't it be nice to diversify by objectives and strategies as opposed to investment ambiguity by a little bit of all these different sectors in the market.

To me, it makes sense to be hopeful for the best, but prepared for the worst. And the way to do that is to first put together a plan, then you put together your optimization, your strategies, how to get more out of your money. That's the goal. And then you put together the portfolio that's dynamic enough that it could support both plans and the strategies that you wanna implement. It's extremely common that some people will call us, they'll and say, hey.

We wanna retire in five years, but all my assets are locked up in the four zero one k. No problem. We can still build the plan, have plan a and plan b, so markets go up or down, and then adjust the four zero one k to situate whatever the needs are of the plan.

Okay. That makes sense.

A lot of options there. We got options. Options are good. So in the end, whether you're 50 years old, 55 years old, 65, I don't really care how old you are, if you're looking to retire soon, you will have couple more years in you, the sooner you get the plan together and you understand the cash flow reality that you're working with, it really can lend a lot of peace, lot of understanding, and help you make more deliberate decisions moving forward. That's why people should have a plan, in my opinion.

And that's why it makes sense to start having these kinds of conversations instead of just saying, well, I need to have x amount of money based on the 4% rule, and I'm fine. It's more complicated than that. That's all the time we've got for the show today. If you enjoyed the show, consider subscribing to it wherever you get your podcast. Just search for how to retire on time.

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