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Welcome to How to Retire on Time, a show that answers your questions about all things retirement, including income, taxes, Social Security, healthcare, and more. This show is an extension of the book How to Retire on Time, which you can grab today on Amazon or by going to www.howtoretireontime.com.
This show is intended for those within 10 years of their target retirement date or for those are are currently retired and are concerned about their ability to stay retired.
Hello, and welcome to How to Retire on Time, a show that answers your questions about all things retirement, including income, taxes, Social Security, health care, and more. The show is an extension of the book, How to Retire on Time, which you can grab today on Amazon, or you can go to www.how to retire on time.com to get the book and some bonuses as well. My name is Mike Decker. I'm the author of the book, How to Retire on Time, but I'm also a licensed financial adviser, an insurance agent, and a tax professional, which means when it comes to financial topics, we can pretty much discuss it all. Now that said, please remember this is just a show.
Mike:Everything you hear should be considered informational, as in not financial advice. If you want personal financial advice, at least if you want it from my team, you can request your wealth analysis at no cost by going to www.yourwealthanalysis.com. With me in the studio today is my esteemed colleague, mister David Fransen. David, thank you for being here.
David:Yes. Thank you. Good to be here.
Mike:David's job, you got an important role, is to read your questions, and I'm gonna do my best to answer them. You can send your questions in now or later, but just save this number, 913-363-1234. That's 913-363-1234.
Mike:You know what's fun is you can submit those questions anytime in the week. We collect them all, and then we address them on the show. So you can send them in 913-363-1234 or email them to hey mike at how to retire on time.com. Let's begin.
David:Hey, Mike. How much do you need to comfortably retire?
Mike:Oh, okay. I don't know. Yeah. It's okay to not know.
Mike:It's gonna be different for everybody, isn't it? Yeah. So let me give you the questions to ask and then bring context in your specific situation. And the reason is I've seen people that I thought could retire. We ran the numbers, and they couldn't.
Mike:I've seen people that did not think it was possible to ever retire, and they were retiring next year Mhmm. And everything in between. So, really, the conversation goes down to how much do you have? Where do you have those assets? Are they in real estate assets?
Mike:Are they in qualified accounts? Are they in nonqualified accounts? What types of investments or products do you have? Are you all in CDs, and do you plan to stay all in CDs? Are you all in bonds or bond funds?
Mike:Are you all in annuities, and are there liquidity issues? Are you in the market? Are you just riding the NVIDIA tech sector roller coaster or whatever? So where are you? How old are you?
Mike:What's the longevity look like in in your family? And then just general averages, are you healthy? What does that look like? What income streams do you have to work with? Do you have rental income?
Mike:Do you qualify for social security? Are you married? Can we do Social Security spousal optimization? Do you have royalties? Is there a buyout plan with a business?
Mike:I mean, what are you working with from those income stream standpoints, assets in some sense, and then how much do you want? If you wanna live an expensive lifestyle, you just have to have more money. If you live a pretty modest lifestyle and you qualify for Social Security, you might not need as much as you believe. There's there's a lot of advertisements out there that say, you gotta have a $1,000,000 to retire. Yeah.
Mike:That's just not true. The complexities of plans create so much variation in this question that I think people have been bullied into defaulting to saving for a $1,000,000 and calling it good. The reality is I've met many people that could not retire off of a $1,000,000. I've met many people that could comfortably retire with less than a $1,000,000. It just depends.
Mike:And then I think one of the most important parts of this analysis is looking at your tax efficiencies, especially if you have less money, so less than $1,000,000. Typically, you're within the ballpark of being able to do a more aggressive tax minimization that opens up more efficiencies, like in your Social Security, to then get more of your hard earned money. So the answer is, I haven't a clue. It just depends on you. It depends on what you want.
Mike:But people are typically pleasantly surprised at how close they are to retire. Sometimes they've come to the realization that they could already retire, that they already qualify Yeah. In that sense. Now it's just a question of do you wanna keep working, or are you good? That must be nice to sort of have that gift dropped on you.
Mike:Yeah. It really is a gift, but you also need to be, considered of inflation risk. You don't want to squeeze yourself too tight Yeah. Beginning of retirement and hope it works out. If your married spousal risk could be a concern as well.
Mike:If you have 2 Social Securities, one goes away, how does that affect you? You don't want to assume that things are just gonna work out for you. You plan for the good, the bad, and the ugly. One big mistake people make is they just they opt into the simplest retirement plan itself, which is buy an annuity, turn on the flat income stream, and kind of ignore that flat income, especially from an annuity, has inflation risk and tax risk, especially if you fund an annuity with pretax money. So you got to be cautious about moving into a position of simplicity because you may be exposing yourself to additional blind spots, additional risks that you may not even know exist.
Mike:Yeah. This is called the Dunning Kruger effect in the world of psychology. It's how people who don't have sufficient experience don't know the right questions to ask, and they overestimate their abilities. Doesn't mean you can't afford to retire. It means that you may be employing the wrong strategies for your retirement, which is why we stress so much to to make sure that you're working with a comprehensive, multi licensed financial professional that operates off of systems and not sentiment.
Mike:If you wanna see what that looks like, just go to www.yourwealthanalysis.com and request your no cost analysis from me and my team to where you can really explore your lifestyle and legacy potential. Again, that's www.yourwealthanalysis.com or text keyword analysis to 913-363-1234. 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.
Mike:Discover if your portfolio is built to weather flat market cycles or if you're missing tax minimization opportunities that you may not even know exist. Explore strategies that may be able to help you lower your overall risk while potentially increasing your overall growth and lifestyle flexibility. This is not your ordinary financial analysis. Learn more about Your Wealth Analysis and what it could do for you regardless of your age, asset, or target retirement date. Go to www.yourwealthanalysis.com today to learn more and get started.