Jacob: Hey, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Retirement Answers. My name is Jacob Duke. I'm a certified financial planner, and I help people just like you retire on a daily basis. If you've been following along for a while, I appreciate that so much.
I hope this has been super valuable for you and you found different ways to learn more about retirement, but also help you make better decisions around the things that you've got to decide. If you have found it helpful, I would appreciate it a ton. If you are on Apple Podcasts, please do give it a five star review, And, feel free to write a written review as well if other people might find it helpful too. So, today, I wanted to talk about an idea that a lot of people I find get stuck on whenever they get to retirement age or they're thinking about, hey, when can I retire? Or they're like, hey, I'm gonna retire next year, but I'm just not ready mentally.
And it's this idea of what if my retirement plan is wrong. Well, I'm here to tell you that your retirement plan is going to be wrong. Now, that might scare you at first, but please do hear me out. What I what I mean by that is that it will be wrong in terms of the specificities. Like, you cannot predict exactly what's gonna happen throughout the rest of your life, especially financially, right now, today, for the next twenty, thirty, perhaps forty years.
Like, it's just not possible. If you look back over your entire life so far, your life has not gone the way you thought it would or even the way that you hoped that it would. Like, things just never work out exactly how we imagine them in our minds or even the way that we plan for. So the number one thing I want you to take from today's episode is just encouragement that your retirement plan is gonna be wrong and that is okay. Like, it doesn't have to be exactly perfect because I find that most people hesitate to jump into retirement or hesitate to leave their their job that they don't enjoy because they're scared of the what ifs or the uncertainties that lie ahead.
And the reality is is there are always gonna be uncertainties, especially through this game called life. There will always be things out there that cause us to question whether or not we're on the right track or if we're heading in the right direction. But I just kinda wanted to talk through how a lot of times we just get retirement planning wrong. Like, we place a stake in the ground today, like, we are, and then we put a stake in the ground where we wanna be in the future or what the end of our life looks like. And then we draw a straight line between where we are today and then where we are gonna be in the future, or whenever we pass away one day.
What that straight line is is that's just talking about your retirement. That's what's gonna happen between now and then. And the problem is we draw that straight line, and we try to make it as precise and as accurate as possible. And we think that if we just have a good enough calculator or if we run enough Monte Carlo simulations or if we get our expenses exactly tuned in or dialed in or we know exactly how much income we need to pull from our retirement accounts or maybe we delay our Social Security that extra three months because of this reason or that reason. Just know that all of that is important.
Yes. But don't get fixated on how precise or how accurate those numbers are because they will not work out the way that you thought that they would. Those different projections or simulations, they're designed to give you a probability. They're not designed to say this is exactly what's gonna happen, when it's gonna happen, and how it's gonna happen because we can't know the future. There's just no way of doing it.
So whenever we draw that straight line from this point right now to some point in the future, just know that the only thing that we know about that line for a 100% certainty is that that line is wrong. Okay? That line is wrong, and that's the only thing that we know 100% to be correct about that line is that it will be wrong. We just don't know why it's gonna be wrong yet because your life will look different in 10 or perhaps five years or tomorrow. Things are gonna change.
You're gonna spend money on things that you otherwise had no idea you were gonna spend money on. You're not gonna spend money on the things that you wanted to spend money on or that you thought you would be spending money on. But whenever we go through this thing called retirement, we're gonna be wrong again and again and again. So, whenever we create a plan for retirement, I'm gonna talk more about this in a second, but whenever we create a plan for retirement, that is very important. But perhaps, maybe what's even more important is the ongoing planning or the ongoing decisions that have to be made as we adjust that plan throughout the rest of your life.
So just know that there is good news that, yes, you need to create a plan, but just know that that plan is wrong. It's almost like a pilot. You know, whenever a pilot is gonna fly passengers across the country, they have to submit a flight plan. And if you ask any pilot whenever they do this, they pretty much know 100% certainty that they will not fly exactly on the direct flight plan that they turned in already. They know that they will have to make adjustments in terms of direction or coordinates or heading along the way.
They know that they're gonna have to make adjustments in terms of what altitude they're flying at. They're gonna have to go around storms. They're gonna have to listen to their, flight controllers and say, hey, you know, go this way so that you don't run into this plane or this other aircraft. There will be adjustments and tweaks that have to be made in the air, in the middle of the flight, while they're going, but they can always go back to their flight plan and know what direction they should be heading, why they're heading that direction, and where they're ultimately trying to get. So the plan is important, but they also have to be flexible and understand that the plan is not ultimate.
So the plan is important, but it's not ultimate. We have to continue to make adjustments and tweaks along the way, and the same thing applies to your retirement. Yes. We need a plan. It's very important to have a plan as you enter these crucial years of your life so that you can ultimately enjoy them to the fullest extent, and you can use your money the way that is most fulfilling to you.
But I would encourage you not to be so fixated on how exact or how accurate or precise everything is with your plan, because the reality is we're gonna have to make adjustments along the way, which is that's why it's important to have a really good planner in your corner, an adviser. That way, can ask questions, make adjustments, and really have someone speak into your situation that says, hey, I think that we should, you know, make this small change because of x, y, and z reason. So, with that being said, I just wanted to encourage you today, just know that your plan does not have to be 100 foolproof, fail proof before you enter retirement. It's almost like this dance. We're going back and forth, and we're trying to figure out, hey, what do we do today?
And the ultimate goal with having a plan in general is not to be perfect today, it's just to be less wrong tomorrow. So, every day we wake up, we have decisions to make, we have things to do, every month, every year. When it comes to retirement, we just wanna be a little bit less wrong tomorrow as we gain more information and can make better decisions. So, straight line planning is about being precise and correct today, but just know that that is not reality. We will have to make adjustments.
We'll have to make small tweaks. We'll have to change course a little bit here and there because of different reasons or life changes or health or, all these different decisions that we've gotta make through our retirement. So instead of trying to carve the perfect retirement plan in stone and just mount it on the wall as it's like, this is the thing we have to go by, let's write our plans in pencil and just stay focused on the process of being a little bit less wrong tomorrow. So thank you so much for tuning in to this week's episode of Retirement Answers. My name is Jacob Duke, and we will see you next week.