Jacob Duke: Hey, friends, and welcome back to another episode of Retirement Answers. My name is Jacob Duke. I'm your host as always. Hey, today on the show, I wanna ask you a question. And the reason I wanna ask you this particular question is because there are many people that I've talked to over the last few weeks and months that are holding out for something.
And they're not sure what it is, but they're still holding out. And so the question I have for you is, what are you waiting for? What are you waiting for and why haven't you retired? Now, why is that question important? Because I've talked to many people, hundreds of people in fact, over the last few months, and most of them are terrified to stop working or change their normal habits and patterns as they've kind of grown accustomed to over the last thirty years.
And what I constantly have seen happen here and where the blame gets laid is on I don't have enough money or I don't know about health insurance or I don't know about taxes and all these things, right? And those are definitely critical components to the retirement picture. Obviously, I'm a retirement planner. I get that, right? That we gotta get the money right.
But I found that many times we're blaming those things as our inability to retire or we're not ready yet. But really what it is, is you're scared for being honest. You're scared to change. You're scared of the unknown. You're scared of the void or just the space that is retirement where it's like, I've never done that before.
I know how to work, even if I don't like it, it's comfortable because I know what I'm doing, but you don't know what retirement looks like yet because you haven't done it yet. And really, you get one shot at doing it really well, hopefully. If you have to retire multiple times, maybe you didn't do something right there the first time, which is why people hire us. But what I'm getting at here is this, many people and you might fall into this category, you're terrified to change what you know to be okay, because you're scared to step into it, which is holding you back from stepping into the right next thing. The best thing for you, for your family, for your fulfillment, your purpose, all those things, right?
That are actually human to you, they're real to you. You're still working trying to build up more money and all these things and get everything dialed in perfectly, so that you're comfortable with it. And what I wanna do is backtrack just a little bit to share a personal story of mine if I can, and share how this applies to my life and I see it evident every single day to be honest. So if you go back a couple years, won't be three years now, I started doing this podcast. I think it was late in 2022, so we'll just say the start of 2023.
So over three years into me talking into a microphone about retirement planning topics and sharing things and education with you, hopefully for you to get something out of it to live a better life. And whenever I started doing that, and still today, I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing. And I feel like I am not qualified to do it. I'm not good enough to do what I do here on the podcast. And maybe that's, you know, a lie, right?
At least in part, but at the same time, I wanna point out one thing, is that even when I didn't think I knew what I was doing and probably wasn't very good at it, if you go back and listen to some of the first episodes, I probably wasn't very good at it. Right? And I don't go listen to them because it's painful for me to listen to myself. But I started. And I didn't tell anybody.
I didn't know what this would turn into. I didn't know this would be a great resource for people all around the country to learn and glean little nuggets or tidbits of information about retirement planning from just a boring person like me. But I didn't know what it would turn into in terms of what I know and the education and the learning I had to go through in order to present topics in a clear, concise way. But it also helped me get over the hump and the fear of not being good enough to start it. I had to start it in order to get good at it, right?
And so if we think about that and now I carry forward three years, I'm still doing it. I love doing it. Although it's very difficult to do for being fair, but I also often still feel very inadequate. Like I don't know enough. I'm not smart enough, I can't communicate well enough.
There's people better than me at this, right? Like there's so many of those thoughts and that's just normal for us as humans. We compare ourselves to other people or we just think we're not good enough. But I started and here we are three plus years later and it's a good thing. It's not perfect.
I'll be the first one in line to admit that. But it's a good thing in my opinion. And I think it could be approved for sure. I hope to always be doing that, but I started. Now, when I think about my life today, I've got two kiddos with another one on the way here in the fall.
And when I think about parenting, many of you are parents, some of you aren't, that's totally cool. But when you think about parenting, guess what? You're never ready for your first kid, right? You're never financially ready, you're never ready from a time standpoint, you're never emotionally ready or personally ready to raise a child, you're never ready. But you have to have a child in order to be a parent.
And guess what? I've learned in my time of being a parent for three years, I definitely don't have much figured out it feels like, but I know I've gotten better at it. I know I figured a couple things out. I've learned a lot about myself that wasn't very good. Kids teach you things, just that's the way that goes.
They teach you a lot about yourself that you'd never, you know, look at or evaluate. So the point in saying those two things about the podcast and my personal life with my kids and my family, is that neither time those two big things, they're two big milestones for me personally over the last few years. Those two things I was not ready for, yet here we are. And things are going well, There's obviously things to always improve and get better at, but things are going well, would say. But if I'd stopped and waited to be smart enough through the podcast, right?
Or, you know, been adequate enough to do it and had more certifications and training and waited for forty years to start the podcast whenever I knew everything about everything, guess what? We wouldn't be here and you would be hopefully benefiting from it. And if my wife and I waited to have kids until we were ready, financially, time, personally, emotionally, all of it, guess what? We'd never have kids because we'd never be ready. And so I know that those are two like, I don't know, weird ways of saying what I'm trying to say, but I wanted to relate it to me because I'm not in your shoes.
I'm not in that moment of like, hey, I'm turning off my income and I'm gonna start something different where I'm giving up money, cash flow in order to live off my savings that I've accumulated. It's a weird feeling, I'm sure I haven't experienced it, so I don't know. I can just tell you anecdotally what I've seen in all the conversations I've had. But the one thing that's always true is no one is ever ready, at least at the start. You get ready over time after going through it.
Just like your first job, you don't know what you're doing in your job, right? But about a year, two years in, hey, you know what you're doing, you got some stuff figured out, you can hold your own and you know what to expect. Same thing's gonna happen with retirement. You don't know where you're gonna pull your money from, and even if you have a plan for it to be fair, like I'm a planner. Even if a plan for where you're gonna pull your money from in retirement the first year or two, that's gonna change.
Just know that it's going to change. Or hey, I think I'm gonna spend 8,000 a month in retirement. Great, that's a good projection. Let's run with that and let's use that as a baseline. But here's what I know, it's not gonna be 8,000 a month.
Every single time it increases or decreases based on different things that come up over time. So the plan is important, but you kinda have to figure things out as you go. Just like with most things like you gotta figure it out as you go, you're never gonna be ready for it. So the question for you is why are you actually waiting? Like what are you waiting for?
Are you waiting for some sign to fall out of the sky and say, now you can retire, you're finally prepared. To be honest, we're probably waiting for that because it comes down to the fact that we're scared of the unknown and we want certainty. And I've got just a little secret for you, you'll never have certainty. There's no guarantees in any of this. But what I want you to hear today is that you'll never be all the way a 100% mentally ready to retire even if you despise your job and you hate going to work and it's terrible.
When you get ready to pull the plug and say, okay, I'm doing this. I'm putting in my two weeks and I'm done. That fear, it creeps up, it's there, it's not gonna go away, I'm just telling you. You might financially be ready. I found this over and over and over again, people have way more money than they ever would need, especially when you factor in a pension or social security or perhaps rental income or other sources.
Most people have too much money that we talk to anyway. I know that might not be the aggregate across the country, but a lot of people who have too much money still worry about not having enough money. So the lie that we tell ourselves is Jacob wants to have a million dollars then I'll retire or wants to have 2,000,000, I'll retire. But the problem is once you get there, things are going well, I'm making money, you know, it's actually the job's easier now because I know what I'm doing and it's coasting a little bit. I'm maxing out my four zero one ks, all those things, so why not just work another year or two and get more, you know?
So then you go, well, you move the goalpost on yourself, say, what if I just had 1,200,000 instead of one or 1.3 instead of one or whatever it is. You're lying to yourself to think that more money will help you be more ready. And the reason I know that is because I have clients that have three, four or five million dollars and guess what? They don't feel adequate enough. They don't feel good enough about it to say I'm done.
They don't feel like they have enough. What if this, what if that? The emotional response to retirement, in my opinion, has minimal to do with money. It has way more to do with you. So don't believe the lie that you see and probably read online where you've got to have a million or 5,000,000 or, you know, a certain multiple of your, you know, last few years of income in retirement savings.
It's not true. Yes, you have to make sure the money stuff works and it the math actually works. There is definitely a mathematical component to all of it, right? We don't wanna neglect that, but I wanna I'm focusing here today on the on the you side of it, the personal, the emotional side of it, that says that you are actually the hang up, not the money. You are the thing that's holding yourself back.
And here's the cool part. Typically, in most things in life, you don't start to flourish until you get over that hard, get over the hump, Get over the thing that's holding you back that's standing in the way, right? Typically the way that you need to go is the harder path. It's just default for us humans to go the path of least resistance. I'm not gonna rock the boat, so I'm not gonna retire.
Things are going okay. Why would I mess that up? Right? That's the thought. But what if that's holding you back from stepping into what's really important to you?
Maybe that's more time with the grandkids. Maybe that's more time serving at the local church or charity. Maybe that's more time giving your actual money somewhere. Maybe it's more time with your spouse that you've been giving up for twenty years because both of your work schedules are just crazy and hectic and there's a lot of travel built into that. What is it for you that you're neglecting yourself and holding yourself out of or away from because of this thing you're scared to jump over?
So, I don't know if that is helpful at all, but that's the thought that I had today as I was on a walk around the neighborhood, just thinking about myself, but then also how that translates into what I've heard in conversations over the last couple of weeks and months. You're never gonna be ready, okay? Being ready is a lie. And that's what everything in life, not just retirement, but perhaps doing the hard thing and stepping into retirement, whatever that looks like, I don't particularly like the word to be fair. Retirement can be the next thing.
It doesn't have to be the end of anything. Whatever that looks like for you, making that decision could be the thing that helps you finally step into true joy and happiness and fulfillment and purpose compared to the average life or the average you that you're living. So thanks for listening. I know that's a different episode and maybe that's not what you wanna hear from a retirement planner. Okay, whatever, that's fine.
But I'm talking about the real stuff. This is the stuff that gets in the way of people actually retiring. It's not the money. The money stuff, we can figure that out for sure, that's our job. But if we can't connect the money back to the personal and the emotional, we're missing the mark.
Okay, so anyway, if you found this helpful, I would love to hear your comments. If you can write a comment there on Spotify, that'd be great. If you want to leave a rating or review there on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, that'd be helpful too, if you're enjoying the show, and also share it with a friend if somebody that you know might could benefit from this conversation here today. Other than that, I really appreciate you tuning in each week to the podcast. It helps me know that we're doing something right, and also always love to hear your feedback.
So shoot me an email, I'd love to have a conversation if it could benefit you. Alright, thanks so much. We'll talk to you next week.