Ep. 304 – Considering Retirement Planning Goals

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In this episode of the Secure Your Retirement Podcast, Radon and Murs discuss the essential aspects of setting your retirement planning goals to ensure you’re not only prepared but also confident in your transition into retirement. Whether you are five to ten years out or already retired, having a clear retirement planning checklist is crucial to help you address areas like financial goal planning, lifestyle desires, and family considerations. They share real-life experiences of how thoughtful preparation helps people retire comfortably and why retirement planning is important for creating peace of mind.

Listen in to learn about the different categories of financial planning for retirement, from understanding retirement income sources to preparing for healthcare costs and legacy planning. Radon and Murs cover practical strategies to help you navigate questions like how to retire early, how to manage taxes, and what steps are needed to support both your family and business as you plan for retirement. Whether you’re seeking clarity on your next move or aiming to build confidence in your retirement future, this episode will guide you through the process of securing your retirement with purpose.

Listen in to learn about:

·      How to clarify retirement planning goals and gain confidence in your financial future.

·      Important considerations for retirement planning for families, like funding weddings or creating lasting memories.

·      What retirement planning for business owners looks like and how to prepare for selling a business or transitioning.

·      Why tax planning for retirement needs to happen early and strategies to reduce tax burdens.

·      How to approach estate planning for retirement, ensuring your loved ones and charitable goals are properly protected.

Tweetable Quotes:

·      “When you plan ahead, retirement becomes something you get to enjoy on your own terms, with confidence.” – Radon Stancil

·      “Understanding your retirement income sources and goals gives you the power to retire comfortably.” – 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:

Are you maybe five to 10 years out from retirement and you’re thinking, what do I

even think about? What kind of goals do I need to set in this episode? We go

through all the different things you need to think through when it comes to

retirement planning goals. We hope you’ve been enjoying all the episodes from Secure

Your Retirement. If you’d like to keep learning and receiving these episodes, hit the

subscribe button and the bell so you receive alerts when they come out. We’ve helped

thousands of listeners get on the path to securing their retirement. Now it’s your

turn. Let’s dive in.

let’s say within about 10 years of retirement or already in retirement. And as Murs

and I talk this through, what we really want to do is kind of give you different

things that we run into all the time that people are thinking about. And I think

if you are in a position that anywhere, if you’re planning for retirement or you’re

already in retirement, sometimes it’s good, especially if you’re going to sit down and

have a conversation with your or to say, hey, here’s some things I want to make

sure that we consider. And so if you’re listening to this, I want you to know

that, you know, you can make this list if you want, but we’ve also done the work

for you. So, we do have a blog written on this. We’ve got the show notes. So

you’ll have all this in writing just to go back and say, man, here’s some goals

that I want to make sure that I think through so that you’re prepared when you do

sit down for a planning meeting. And we’re going to hit quite a few different areas

and just talk through things. And this is really kind of to be that, that way to

tease your brain to go, oh man, that is a good one to think about. Now, you think

as you hear this, Merce and I’ve been doing this for a number of years of working

with financial planning retirees, pre retirees. So, this is all built off experience.

This is things we hear very commonly all the So, uh, Murs, if you don’t mind,

could you kind of start off and let’s just think about this whole idea of

retirement and, uh, some of the goals that somebody might have around that topic.

Yeah. Um, retirement, I think is a big concept and can be overwhelming. So having

goals in place, thinking through what it takes to retire properly, uh, that’s going

to be huge. So, you know, um, one that, one that comes to mind is do you need

help or have you thought through what it looks like to retire? So this is really

speaking to, do you have a plan in place as far as the plan answering the

questions of when can I retire? Is it financially possible for me to retire at this

specific age? And then everything that comes after that, which we could go for days

on all the things we need to think about, but the easy ones are social security,

Medicare, Medicare, the investment strategy, the estate plan. So are all of those

things in place as we decide when to retire? Hey, not to cut you off there and

I’ll, I’ll let you come back, but it just made me think I just had a conversation

this morning. And here’s kind of how that conversation went. Uh, he’s 59,

about to turn 60 wife, 60, and he likes his job, but he says,

I said, what’s your goal for retirement? and he said, I’m thinking about like five

years. He goes, but really if I could dream it up, he goes, I want to know that

I could retire in three years. Meaning we talked about this concept that if he knew

that he could retire in three, doesn’t mean he’s going to retire in three. But he

goes, man, that would make going to work a lot better if I just knew I could. So

he’s now thinking about it five years in advance from when he really wants to

retire, but kind of saying, what would it look like if I did it in three? And I

said, what about your wife. And he goes, she does, she wants to retire in two. So

he’s planning ahead. And I think that’s what you’re saying here, Merce, is that

we’re kind of looking at this and what’s the power of that and doing that in

advance, suddenly going to work now is fun. Cause you go, I’m going to

work because I want to go to work. Right. And it’s all possible by kind of thinking

through it way ahead of time and having that plan in place that lets you play

with, well, is it one or two years from now? Is it five years from now, which

leads into the next one is, do we have goals of retiring early? And if we do

have, we thought that through because it’s not just, do I have enough money to

retire early at, you know, we’re seeing people retire at 60 and 62 quite often,

but understanding that, well, social security doesn’t turn on till 62. Um, so how

are we going to bridge that income gap? We don’t qualify for Medicare till 65. So

health insurance, quite honestly, health insurance is a big reason why people don’t

retire early is because they don’t want to deal with that added cost of getting

private health insurance. So, a lot of things that think through there when it comes

to retiring early and all comes back to having a good plan in place. Another one

is maybe some people don’t want to fully retire and they like their job or they

have passion projects and they say hey what if at 60 I retire from my career,

but then from 60 to 65, I work part time or I’ve got really good relationships and

I want to consult just to bring in some additional cash flow before I start tapping

into my own assets, you know, that’s a big one, that’s a big goal of a lot of

people is to steadily start slowing down so it’s not just a straight stop from

working.

And then, you know, from a goal’s perspective, how confident do you feel about the

retirement plan or do you even have a plan in place and how confident do you feel

in it when it comes to that? And then the next one would be understanding your

retirement income sources. I think when you understand your retirement income and the

assets that are going to drive that income, that’s going to start building the confidence.

So do we have the right pieces of the puzzle in place when it comes to the

investment accounts when it comes to understanding your social security and your

pension and your income sources and what’s going to generate that for you is all

going to build that confidence to help make that decision to retire. And then

another big one, which is common, you know, some people say, “Hey, I’ve lived up

north all my life and I want to retire in Florida.” Well, have you thought through

what a change of residency would look like and is that truly a goal of yours or

is it kind of a pipe dream that just sounds nice and you would never actually pull

the trigger on? So, getting serious about some of these things that we have

mentioned is all going to kind of lead towards what retirement is going to look

like for you and then also build that confidence in it. Very good. Well, let’s move

on to family goals. There’s only a couple here that I just wanted to point out

that we’ve run into. One of those is, do you have something coming up that’s one

of those big events in life that you go, “I really want to make sure we’re covered

on this. We’ve had a client here recently who, they have twins and a son.

So, they got twin girls and a son and the son is getting married and then the

twins, one of them is seriously dating. So they’re like, we’ve got three weddings

that in the next five to 10 years that we need to kind of think through. And so

we were kind of like really laying things out well in advance of that. And I know

now that the real life of that, my son is at the point where he’s kind of

contemplating this idea of getting married. And all of a sudden now you’re kind of

going, okay, how are we going to lay this out? What’s it going to look like? What

do I want to do? And that takes a thought process based on maybe your belief

system, but also the amount of money. And then one here, I think is,

is kind of an interesting one. And I think we’re going to talk about this one one

more time, but within family goals, we had a client had this big bucket list thing

that they wanted to take all the family. And this included, I believe they have

three children. So, three children and their spouses and probably around eight or so

grandchildren, and they all wanted to go on a cruise together. And the grandparents,

our clients wanted to pay for the whole thing. So, they said, look, this is just

something we want to do. We want to build this memory together. And so big event.

And they talked to us probably a year and a half or so in advance saying, this is

what we want. And we talked about where do we want to pull the money from? The

other one that could come up that we need to think about in advance is do I have

a parent that is aging or do I am myself in the situation, but in particularly,

do I have a parent that maybe I might need to be a part of their care? And how

do I want to be a part of their care? I know for me, my mom is in an assisted

living and our plan for how we deal with that my two siblings and I, you

know, it’s a lot of thought process. And I know our clients, when they enter that

scenario too, it’s, we got to think through what are we, what are we going to do?

What’s going to be needed from us? And that could just be time away from work.

that could be time away from other goals, just thinking that through. So, Merce, you

want to talk a little bit about maybe the professional self -development goals or if

you got anything else on those? – Yeah, so in the self -development and professional

goals category, not a ton here, but there’s one here that talks about financial

independence and financial health. I would restructure that goal to kind of saying,

hey, as we approach retirement, I think it is important to get more financially

involved in your situations.

What is that amount to? What types of buckets of money do we have from a tax

classification? How does this financial plan that the advisor has made for us? How

is this actually operating to where the advisor can say, “Hey, you’re going to have

a successful retirement?” I think understanding all of that and taking the time to

kind of learn and educate ourselves on what the plan is just, I think, puts a

little bit more power back in your pocket and kind of builds that confidence as we

approach retirement. So, I think that would be a goal of some is, you know, for a

long time you were the expert in your own career, whatever that career was, but now

we’re transitioning into retirement. And I think having people do a lot of it for

you is a good thing, but also kind of understanding what all of it truly means to

you at the end of the day is going to be powerful.

If you’re still working and maybe there’s certifications or education that you’ve been

looking towards to kind of put that icing on the cake for your career. Those are

things that could be worth exploring as well as we are on the back end of our

career. If you considered starting a business as your second career or your way to

transition into retirement, be very careful about that, starting a business is not

easy and it’s not always fruitful. So, you really want to think that one through and

do some proper business planning on that. But that’s really all I’ve got for self

-development and professional types of goals. – All right, let’s talk a little bit

about asset and debt goals. And I think the first thing that I want to talk about

here is something that we’ve been dealing with a lot this year. And that is, do I

want to reduce my risk of market volatility in our investments? And the reason why

that’s been such a big topic is we’ve had a couple good years where the things

have grown. And so, if you said originally, let’s say your overall allocation was, I

don’t want to have more than, let’s just say 60 % of my money exposed to market risk.

Well, right now, if you’ve done the math, you might have 70%, even 75 % exposed

because that market did so good. And so should I rebalance? And that’s been a big

topic that we’re talking about this year is to bring ourselves back into balance.

So, if you want to do that, say, “Hey, what’s that conversation look like?” I need

to talk to my advisor about how that would look. The other might be is that I

want to increase my returns. So, you might have kind of gotten it easy here for a

little bit and you went, “Man, I got my CD that’s paying 5 % “or I got my bank

that’s paying five.” And now all of a sudden rates have come down and you’re like,

“Hey, I got a lot of cash in the bank. “Do I Do I really want to see what else

could I do to get a little bit better rate of return? And then the other part of

this could be, you know, and this would go either way. You know what? I’ve got

more money coming in the door than what I really need, and that’s why my bank

account is building up. So, I might want to make an adjustment that way and maybe

reduce what I’ve got coming in the door and let it stay more in savings. And then

the other scenario that that is you know what? I’ve got some other goals I

want to do this year. I need to, I want a little bit more income this year. Either

one of those is okay. It just needs to be well thought out and planned when it

comes to this aspect of things. – Okay, moving on to lifestyle goals,

which I think is a big thing way too often in retirement planning types of meetings

with clients or people that are interested in our services. When we When we talk

about what do you want when it comes to what do you want to get out of

retirement? A lot of people don’t have a good answer for that in the terms of what

am I going to do to keep me busy? What’s going to continue to give me purpose? My

career gave me purpose and now I’m going to transition out of my career. So what’s

the next big thing that I’m going to tackle as I enter into this retirement phase?

So, lifestyle goals are going to be very important. Some of ones are going to be,

you know, are you planning to move? So are you going to move to get closer to the

kids and grandkids or are you trying to move to that retiree type of destination?

And what’s that going to look like for you, which could involve selling a house or

selling a second home? And the implications of that from a tax perspective also from

what are you going to buy if you do sell? And, you know, is it going to make

financial sense to do that? And then lifestyle sometimes people say hey, I never

drove nice cars. I want to get a nice car when I retire So what does that look

like? How does it fit into the plan and the bigger one? I think is vacations and

hobbies, right? We have we sacrifice in our careers to Save and then also take care

of the family and maybe we’ve got some bucket list vacations that we want to Tackle

especially on the younger side of our retirement years in the first five to 10

years of retirement. And then also the hobbies that we’ve been putting off. We have

plenty of clients that have taken up woodworking or taken up golf or now pickleball

is a huge thing in our area. So, what are some of those hobbies that we want to take

up now that we’ll have a little more time on our hands. – All right, let’s move on

to the thing that everybody loves to talk about and that’s taxes. So, what’s some

tax planning goals? This is a great thing to think about, by the way, at the

beginning of the year, because there’s things I could start doing now that could

really be impactful to my next year. There’s not much I can do about 2024 at this

point, if I’m listening to this episode here. So, whenever you’re listening to this,

if I’m in the beginning of the year, I can’t do much about last year, but I can

do something about this year. So, what are some things that I could do? I mean,

do I want to think about being charitable inclined? Is that something I should look

at? We tell people all the time, even if you’re not charitable inclined, I think we

can convince you that you might want to be a little charitable inclined because

there are benefits to being charitable inclined when it comes to taxes if I do it

right. The other thing to really think about ahead of time is if I have a business

that I’m going to sell, or I have real estate a sale before I get a contract.

I need to make sure that I’m talking to a tax specialist. And one of the things

that we do, if a person’s got significant gain on a piece of property, significant

gain in a business, we have a tax specialist that we work along with and we bring

it to our clients to say, before you get, this is very important, before I get a

sales contract, before I get that deal done, I need to do some things because we

can significantly change the impact that you would have on a sell like that of a

major asset. So if you think that’s coming up, you don’t want to get that and go,

“Hey, I just got a contract. And by the way, I got an extra, you know, a few

hundred thousand dollars coming in. What do I do now?” Well, there’s things we could

do, but we could be so much more impactful if we did it prior to the contract.

Okay. So, another favorite of people outside of tax planning is healthcare planning,

and what does that look like as we approach retirement? A lot of us are on

employer -sponsored type healthcare right now, and so you don’t really think about it,

you just come out of your paycheck, and all of a sudden you have health insurance

for you and the family. That changes when you approach retirement. And so the

questions you got to start asking yourself are, do I have any benefits that carry on

with employer? Or am I going to have to go find insurance if I retire early?

And then at 65,

how does Medicare work? Have I talked to a consultant? In our office, we have Sean

who is very, very knowledgeable around Medicare and he helps people make those

decisions because it’s ever changing and it’s quite a bit to take in. The other big

aspect of retirement is then long -term care. So today in our financial planning

strategy meetings, we’re having those long -term care conversations. And honestly, the

long -term care space today, when it comes to insurance and different products that

have become way more attractive and simpler and easier to understand compared to say

10 years ago, I think long -term care today is way, insurance is way more attainable

than it ever has been before. And so, there’s some pretty unique things that are

happening in that space. So, I think that conversation is always worth having with

your advisor of, hey, do I need healthcare or long -term care insurance? How can I

afford it? Can I afford it at all? Can we afford to self -insure? Those are things

that you should be walking through with your advisor before retirement. And then

anything around potential

around do we want to age in place or are we good with the nursing home

transitioning into a continuous care retirement community? Things like that I think

are always good to be thinking about having top of mind as we do approach this

concept of retirement and aging down the road with medical types of issues. All

right our last topic here is estate planning. I think that this is something that

we like to review this regularly. I think every year we’re at least going to go

through beneficiaries with our clients just to make sure everything there is exactly

the way they want. So, there are things that you might think about though. Some of

our clients like to give gifts to their to their children and grandchildren now.

They say instead of just leaving it to them and us not be able to see them enjoy

it, we kind of want to give them some of it now and they have different goals in

that aspect and they say we want to give them a little bit extra. Well, what do

you want to give them? What’s the best way to give them money? How is the best

way to structure that. Those are great questions to have when you’re talking with

your advisor. Another one is to review; do you have the right people in place still

that are going to be the fiduciaries if you were to pass away to handle your

estate? So, you might have named somebody a number of years ago, forgot about who

you named, and maybe that person now is not doing well health wise. And you think,

well, that’s not really the right person. And so, I might need to tweak that. That

is a very tweakable thing. We help our clients all the time. We have a resource to

help them rewrite that document. And we are able to do that for our clients. It’s

built into our system. And so they don’t have to worry about any extra costs to do

that. So make sure you got that in mind. And then have I made sure that I’ve

looked at everything the way I need to when it comes to my family? Do I have new

grandchildren? Do I have somebody who now maybe needs a little bit more assistance

than they did before. How do I think about that? We’ve got some clients that go,

“Look, I’ve got a son that him and his wife “are just off the charts financially.

“I got another child who is struggling. “Can we think through how we might be able

to structure this “to help the one that’s struggling a little bit in that way?” So

just things to think I’m not trying to tell you how to do them, just trying to

tell you things that we run into. And then finally, which we’ve hit on this a

little bit is charitable organizations. There are different vehicles that we talk to

different ways to do things. In particularly, if you’re over 70 and a half, you

really want to think about what’s called a qualified charitable distribution or a

QCD. And then there is another one that’s really advantageous if I’m trying to get

itemization on things and I regularly give to an organization is to set up a donor

advice fund. I’m not going to go into any details on those. I’m throwing those

terms out there so that if you’re having a conversation, you go, tell me about this

QCD thing or tell me about this donor advice thing. Cause I don’t have to be 70

and a half for the donor advice. I do have to be 70 and a half for the QCD. So

this is a kind of like a lot of goals, a lot of things we talk through the day.

We do have a checklist. If you would like to get it, all you have to do is send

an email over to us or contact our office. You can find all that information on

the website, which is POMwealth.net. We are more than happy to send this out to you,

just so you got it to think through as you’re planning throughout the year. But we

hope this has been helpful. We’ll talk to you again next week. We hope you have

enjoyed this episode of Secure Your Retirement. If you would like to learn more, we

have created an online course called Three Keys to Secure Your Retirement.

This video course helps you to think through all the different steps as you get

ready to plan for and live throughout retirement. You can access this by going to

our website, POMwealth.net. In addition, you can also subscribe below to our

podcast called Secure Your Retirement.