Ep. 182 – 3 Questions to Ask Yourself About Retirement

What questions should you be asking yourself when planning and thinking about retirement?

When it comes to planning for your retirement, your major concerns should be around your goals, your need for professional help, and the actual retirement plan. To build a retirement-focused financial plan, you must have goals or at least have an idea of what you want your retirement to look like.

In this episode of the Secure Your Retirement podcast, we talk about the three major questions to ask yourself when thinking about retirement over a glass of Erath Pinot Gris wine. Listen in to learn how to align yourself with someone that’s specialized in retirement planning and not just the investment side of things as you transition into retirement.

In this episode, find out:

●     Think about when you want to retire and figure out if that’s possible for you.

●     Think about what you’re going to do in your retirement to live a fulfilling life.

●     Think of the type of retirement you want for yourself before you start planning for it.

●     How we help relieve you of the worry of taking care of your retirement planning.

●     Take time before engaging an advisor to fully understand how their practice works.

●     Align yourself with a specialized retirement advisor as you transition into retirement.

●     How to build a retirement-focused financial plan based on your idea of retirement.

Tweetable Quotes:

●     “You want to take the time before you enter into an engagement with an advisor to really understand a lot of things as to how their practice works.”– Murs Tariq

●     “If you’re going to work with a professional, try to align yourself with someone that is specialized in the area of retirement planning and not just in the investment side of things.”– Murs Tariq

Resources:

If you are in or nearing retirement and you want to gain clarity on what questions you should be asking, learn what the biggest retirement myths are, and identify what you can do to achieve peace of mind for your retirement, get started today by requesting our complimentary video course, Four Steps to Secure Your Retirement!

To access the course, simply visit POMWealth.net/podcast.

Here’s the full transcript:

Radon Stancil:	Welcome everyone to our Secure Your Retirement podcast. This is our last episode for the month of October, 2022, which is amazing how this year is just flying. But as you know, the last Monday of the month is our wine down. We’ve changed these up a little bit in a sense that we really try to bring to you great value, but we still do it with a bottle of wine. So Morgan, what is our wine for this month? You
Morgan Dunn:	Well, you see, the perk of picking out the wine is you get to pick out whatever you want. And I was a little lazy, so I just went to my favorite here, the Erath Pinot Gris from Oregon from the Willamette Valley, and I really like it. And so, we’re just drinking it again.
Radon Stancil:	I think it’s good. I like it.
Morgan Dunn:	It’s very good.
Murs Tariq:	Yeah, I think it’s nice and crisp.
Morgan Dunn:	Super drinkable.
Murs Tariq:	Makes for an effective episode. So Morgan, I think we’ve got a really good episode today on our wine down. And can you just give everyone a quick overview as to what we are going to be talking about, and then we’ll dive right in.
Morgan Dunn:	Yep. Today, we’re going to talk about the three questions to ask yourself when planning or thinking about retirement. And just to outline what those questions are, first, what are my goals? What do I want to do in retirement? Two, do I need professional help with that? And three, how do I plan for retirement? How do I go about doing that? So Murs, I’m going to ask you. Number one, what are my goals? How do we figure that out?
Murs Tariq:	Yeah, I think that’s a question that you should always be asking yourself. A lot of times we’re thinking about retirement as a point to get to, and we get so focused on reaching that point that we don’t really think through what do we want to get out of retirement. And that’s where goals come into play. So yeah, obviously number one is think about when do I want to retire? What age specifically do I want to retire? And then, we will help you think through is that possible or not? Once you have the one figured out, then you get to start thinking about all the fun things that retirement is going to be for you. So, we don’t need to get bogged down too much in the details just yet as far as all the numbers of everything and how it’s all going to work out and the dollars in and the dollars out.
	It’s really, let’s think theoretically about this thing that we’ve been working so hard to get to for 20, 30, 40 years and saving and saving and saving. And now, what are we going to do to really enjoy it? So for some, the what could be, “Well, I want to travel. I’ve worked a lot, and I never got to travel. I never got to take my family anywhere because I was so tied to a desk that I never got to travel. So, I want to travel.” And also get specific about where is it? What places do you want to see so you can start planning that out and looking forward to that. For others, it may not be travel because work made them travel so much. So it could be, “I just want to hang out with family. I want to spend time with the kids and the grandkids. And maybe pick up a hobby or whatever that could be.”
	So, I encourage you to start thinking about what is going to be in that next step of your life going to be fulfilling to you. And that can go all over the place. And so, thinking about that earlier is going to be very helpful when we get into the actual planning process of retirement. And then, another one I think is really important is how are we going to retire? So, some people are quite fine and happy to jump into full retirement. That means they raise their hand, and at age 65 they’re going to retire and they never work another hour again for a company. Some people aren’t really wired that way, though. And we do see it all the time with clients that they retire, but they want to stay busy. They want to stay active. And whether that could be volunteer work or it could be a part-time job for something that their career was one thing, but they have this passion for something else. And maybe they pick up a part-time job just to give them something to stay busy and keep their brain working and staying active.
	And a lot of times what we see is that a person could have an opportunity to consult after retirement. So, they fully retire for their company, and then they have such a well network that is built up that they can easily start to consult. The beauty of that one is you get to work for yourself and you get to set your hours, you get to set how many clients you’re going to take on, and it changes the game from working for a person to working for yourself. So, some really powerful tools that can come into place when we know what type of retirement do we want to have. Is it full retirement? Is it semi-retired? Is it consulting? And that’s another big thing that we talk about when we go into building out this retirement plan. So, all that to say we want to think through what do I want retirement to look like for me and my family? Once you start answering those questions in a theoretical way, then we can really start doing some planning.
Radon Stancil:	Yeah. As I was listening to you talk about those different goals, Murs, it made me start thinking about some of our clients. One of the clients I know, they were just talking with us and they live here now. But their goal is to move to California to be with their children because that’s where the grandchildren are. We don’t have that one quite as much. We normally have people that are moving here from California or up north because North Carolina is a nice environment temperature wise and other things, as well. But we can have all kinds of things. I know I didn’t even ask you to do this, but you want to talk about the one client we had who moved to Washington just to be able to-
Morgan Dunn:	Yeah. She wanted to spend more time with her niece and her niece’s children. And so, she went the consulting route and is consulting from there and spends a lot of time with her niece and their children. And she’s very happy there. But we get to stay in contact with her, too.
Radon Stancil:	Yeah, and Murs actually always talks about a story about a client who their goal was to buy an RV and travel the US. But we have other clients who say, “You know what? I want to learn something new. I want to learn a new whatever, hobby, or a new skill, or a new language or whatever it might be, or how to be a better gardener or whatever that might be.” But I think just thinking that through and writing it down, that’s so key to do that in that goal time.
Morgan Dunn:	So, then after you’ve established those goals, how do you figure out whether or not you need help with them? Do you seek professional help?
Radon Stancil:	Yeah. So, a lot of folks that come to us, they have worked at a company, and they have put money very nicely into a 401k. And that’s just what they’ve done. They’ve been a really good saver and especially in putting money in their 401k. So, they didn’t really have financial advisor. They just pump money into it. And now here they sit and some of them have very sizable savings that they’ve put in their 401k or their Roth IRA or in their brokerage account. And they say, “You know what? The saving part was easy in their mind. I just had to put the money in and now instead of just being a saver, I’ve got to now take all this money that it took me decades to save and I got to make it last my lifetime.” And that’s where the stress changes. Now, we do have people that come in to see us that just say, “Hey look, I need a second opinion.”
	“I am all set. I understand investing. I understand how to handle everything. I just want a second set of eyes to be able to look at things.” I will tell you that, for us, that is rare. That is not a very high percentage of people who say, “You know what? I just want to take care of it myself.” Even the folks that have been taking care of it for themselves for 20 and 30 years say, “You know what? Now I just want to relax. And so, I don’t want to keep up with all this.” Because it was kind of like this 10, 15, 20 hour per week hobby that they had. And they go, “I don’t want that anymore.” So, you may not need it if you just really love doing everything around this, and you just love doing research, and you really love wanting to spend hours and hours and hours a month being able to do it.
	And that might just be a fulfillment for you. The other two, though, categories are where a person says, “Look, I’m okay with the investment side, but I really need help with the plan. I need somebody to help me plan things out, lay it all out, come up with a plan and I’ll implement the whole thing.” I will tell you that, for Murs and I, that’s a rarity, as well. That’s not really our common. Our most common, though, is a person who says this, “Look, I’ve had a CPA doing my taxes. I’ve been looking for an estate planning attorney to help me with my estate plan. Or I had one that was 5, 10, 15 years ago, but I need another one. I don’t really understand Social Security as to when to take it. I don’t know if I should take it at 62, full retirement age, or 70.”
	“And this whole idea around Medicare and which one of the Medicare plans I should take, I really don’t get that either. Oh yeah, and do I need long term care? Or when should I start thinking about downsizing my home? Or how should I pay off my mortgage or keep it? How much money should I have in cash?” I mean all those questions, those are very typical questions for us. This person is really who we work with the most. And this person says this, “I want a plan. I want to turn it over to somebody else. I would like to be the CEO of my life, but I really want a chief financial officer, a CFO, to help me make sure I’m managing everything correctly, and then quarterback all the different aspects of retirement.” And so, that’s really what we do is we say, “Look, if you want that and you want to be able to have everything taken care of, your taxes, your estate plan, your Medicare, your Social Security, your long term care, all of those things, and you just don’t want to have to worry about it.”
	We got some folks that have been on vacations and been gone for a month or two months into a place where they just were disconnected. And so, they were like, “How could I go on that vacation and do that without worrying if I didn’t have a team in place?” Now I’ll tell you this, Murs and I can’t do it. We do this full time, and there’s no way we could manage all those aspects by ourself. We have our own team. And then we have CPAs, we have estate planning attorneys, we have Medicare specialists, we have long-term care specialists, we have all of these people to help us. There’s no way that one of us, even both of us, could take care of all those things. So, when you look at that to say, “Do I need professional help?” If that sounds attractive to you, and you go, “Man, if I could just have that put in place and I don’t have to worry about it,” a hundred percent, you need help. And most people want help. Anything on that Murs?
Murs Tariq:	Yeah. I would just add to that if you say, “Yes, I think I need at least a second set of eyes, or I like this idea of what Radon just talked about,” take the time to sit down and interview multiple advisors. We talk about that all the time. It really comes down to is the advisor going to serve what you’re looking for? And also, comfort is a big part of working with someone. So, building that trusting relationship. Because a lot of times, I mean what we expect is that we’re going to be working with our clients for decades and through getting them all the way through their life and that you’re building up a certain amount of trust there and respect for each other. And so, you want to take the time before you actually enter into an engagement with an advisor to really understand a lot of things as to how their practice works, what are their specialties, what are they going to offer you. Also understand the fees that are going to be charged.
	And then, realize also that at the beginning of your career and your saving life, that’s one, one part of your life. But as you transition into retirement, it’s completely different. The questions change. All the things that you need to think about change. And so, I would say if you’re going to work with a professional, try to align yourself with someone that is specialized in that area of retirement planning and not just the investment side of things, because there’s a lot of things Radon listed them off really quickly. When do I take social security? How can I retire? When can I retire? Taxes, Medicare, all these things that start to snowball and create anxiety if we don’t have the right team working with us.
Morgan Dunn:	So, we’ve figured out what our goals are. We’ve determined that. We’ve also determined whether or not we need the professional help to do so. How is it that we go about building out a plan for retirement?
Murs Tariq:	So, I think the first one is from the last question, decide whether or not you need to work with an advisor. If you don’t, then great. You’re going to do it yourself, and that’s completely fine. If you end up working with an advisor, then the first thing you really want to do is start building out this idea of a retirement plan. We talk about it as a retirement focused financial plan. And the basics of it is you got to understand really the ins and outs of what retirement’s going to look like for you. So, that starts with when do I want to retire? Obviously, if you’re five to 10 years out, you don’t really know when that exact date is, but you’ve got a general idea. “Hey, I like what I do, but I don’t really see myself doing this past age of 65, 62, 67, whatever it is.” You have to pick a starting point.
	And then, “What am I doing now to get me to retirement? So, am I saving enough and what buckets of money am I saving into? Is it all going into the 401k? Should I reevaluate how I am saving? And so, how am I building up assets and what assets do I have currently? And then, where am I going to get income from when the time comes?” So, everyone’s going to have Social Security. A few of you are going to have pensions. And so, those are fixed income that we can rely upon. Is there rental income? We need to think through all these different knobs that will be turned on as we approach retirement. And then, also a huge factor when we’re doing retirement planning is how much are we going to spend in retirement? So, saving is huge, right? We’re never going to downplay saving. Do as good of a job as you can to build up these assets because you’re going to rely on them for the rest of your life.
	But understanding what your spending plan is going to be in retirement is very, very important. And that goes back to understanding number one. “What are my goals? How do I want to live? What type of travel do I want to do?” We want to understand that so we can somewhat hypothesize as to what it’s going to be going forward and building a plan around that. So then that way, in a simple way of describing it, we know the money that’s coming in, we know the money that’s going out, and then we answer the question, “Is it going to last based off of the age that I want to retire?”
	And then, we run all kinds of what ifs off of that. What about long term care? What about downsizing a house? What about this thing called a CCRC, a continuous care retirement community? All these are very important and valid topics. But the beginning is let’s get a baseline measurement of what retirement’s going to look like so that we can do a lot of what ifs off of that and really optimize it for your goals and what you want to do and maybe what you want to leave behind and see if that’s even possible.
Radon Stancil:	Yeah. I’m sitting here listening to our discussion, and we called this, Three Questions to Ask Yourself When Planning for Retirement. And I think we threw in there about 50 other questions on top of that. So, these were just three major questions, and I hope that out of this, if you are listening to it and you’re saying to yourself, “Oh my goodness, this sounds like a lot,” and you’d like to be able to get that second opinion, you’d like to be able to have a second set of eyes, or you maybe know somebody who might need a second set of eyes or somebody who might need a little bit of guidance, then hop on our website pomwealth.net. Go to the top right hand corner. You’ll see a little button there that says Schedule a Call. Our calendar will come up. You can schedule a 15 minute call.
	It’s no obligation. It’s simply for us to chat. And if you say, “Hey, you know what, I’d like to be able to have this discussion with you guys,” it is super simple. You basically are going to have a meeting with us in the office or on Zoom, and we’re going to walk you through a conversation that says, “What are my goals? When do I want to retire? How do I want to retire?” Once we have all that data, then we’re going to walk you through exactly what that looks like, and we’re going to present all that to you. We give all that to you.
	And we do this at no obligation and no cost. We only get paid if you become a client. So, if you’d like to do that, feel free to hop on and schedule that. But that’s all we’ve got for you today. We hope you enjoyed it. We’ll talk to you again next Monday. Thank you very much, Morgan, for being with us for our wine down, you always bring us great wine. We appreciate it.