Ep. 307 – The Retirement Checklist Challenge

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In this episode of the Secure Your Retirement Podcast, Radon Stancil and Murs Tariq discuss the Retirement Checklist Challenge, a structured approach to evaluating how prepared you are for retirement. They introduce a Retirement Checklist covering Retirement Income Planning, Tax-Efficient Retirement Strategies, Medicare and Retirement, Long-Term Care Planning, Risk Management, and Estate Planning for Retirees. The goal of the challenge is to help you assess your readiness by scoring yourself on 34 key factors that contribute to a Secure Retirement Plan.

Listen in to learn about Financial Planning for Retirement, strategies for Retirement Savings, and ensuring a stress-free transition to retirement. Whether you’re already retired or preparing for the next phase, this episode will help you plan for retirement effectively, identifying potential gaps in your strategy. You’ll also learn how to access the full Retirement Checklist to take the challenge yourself!

In this episode, find out:

·      Why Retirement Income Planning is crucial to maintaining financial security.

·      How to evaluate your Social Security Strategies and income sources.

·      The importance of Tax-Efficient Retirement Strategies to minimize tax burdens.

·      How to assess your Medicare and Retirement options effectively.

·      The role of Risk Management and diversification in protecting your retirement.

Tweetable Quotes:

“A well-prepared retirement starts with understanding your income, healthcare, and tax strategies—take the Retirement Checklist Challenge to see where you stand!” – Radon Stancil

“Retirement planning isn’t just about saving money—it’s about ensuring you have the right strategy for income, taxes, healthcare, and long-term security.” – 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:

Welcome to the Secure Your Retirement podcast.

This is the place where high achieving professionals come to gain confidence on how

to successfully navigate their transition into and life during retirement. There’s no

such thing as a passive retirement plan. To have a successful financial future, your

plan must be actively managed. Each week we will bring you action plans and expert

interviews that will help you gain insights, learn fresh perspectives, and finally

experience peace of mind about your retirement. Here to help you achieve your dream

retirement and live the life you deserve are your hosts, certified financial planners,

Radon Stancil, and Murs Tariq. Welcome to Secure Your Retirement Podcast. Today is

going to be a fun one, I hope. We’re calling it the Retirement Checklist Challenge.

You know, when we’re thinking about this idea of getting ready for retirement, maybe

I just retired, maybe I’ve been retired for a little bit. There are concerns that

people have and they are common concerns across the board. When we do, um,

public speaking, one of the things that we ask our audience is we say, what’s the

number one thing that people are concerned about in retirement and everybody in the

audience says it right together, uh, running out of money. And so the question is,

have I saved enough? Um, And then maybe I’ve got enough, and I think it looks

good, but what if the stock market has a big downturn and I didn’t really have a

good risk management process in place? Does it take away a lot of my money?

What about this? And this is a big time this year is what if through the political

arena policies change it? Do I have a plan that moves with that or that I can

feel confident about those things. What if tax rates go up or what if I could have

taken advantage of different things within the tax code? Maybe that I wasn’t, um,

did I didn’t know about? Or what about healthcare? How do I deal with Medicare? How

do I deal with all these things? So, this checklist challenge is really meant that

you can go through the checklist and the goal is to see if you can get 34 of

these checklist items as a yes or positive, meaning that you’ve taken care of these

things. And it’s really the kind of design to say, how good have you prepared? And

so, if you are a client of peace of mind, wealth management, hopefully you score a

34 because we’ve helped you do a lot of these things, but maybe something did get

overlooked, maybe something that we didn’t talk about. If you’re not a client And

you can look at this and maybe if you come up and you say man, I’m doing really

well great but if maybe you’ve you’re coming here and you’re at 18 or 20 and you

go Well, maybe I need a little bit of assistance in this area, So I want you to

know that anybody who wants this checklist you’ll be able to get it all you have

to do is email us at INFO @POMwealth .net or you can

nine, seven, eight, seven, eight, eight, six, six, and say, I want the checklist

challenge. And we’ll email it over to you. It’s fillable. And you can go through

and say, how am I doing? So we’re not going to go through, by the way, all this

checklist. We’re going to tell you about the checklist, what categories are there, so

you can kind of understand the importance of it. And we’re going to talk about why we

think they’re important. So, the first category that we’re going to talk about is income.

So, we’ve got a lot of different things within the checklist on income. So, Murs, So

Elsewise income important and what kind of things should be we’d be thinking about

in this arena of income Yeah, it’s good going back to what you said that what

everyone will say back the biggest fear about retirement is running out of money and

we’ll take that one step further to running out of income Is what people are really

concerned about so understanding what income is going to look like for you in

retirement is going to be the key to having a stress -free retirement and where that

money is going to come from. So, some of the checklist items here in this section

are rather important. We talk about them all the time, you know, having a budget

for how you’re planning on spending or developing that spending plan. You know,

I don’t necessarily need to be a budget in all essence, but you have to have an

idea of, you know, what are my essential income needs and what are my wants? What

about gifting and see some of these things go away when you do retire and then you

add in other items when you do retire as well, like extensive travel or hobbies or,

you know, things that you’ve been putting off that you want to start doing when you

do have the time to when you retire. So thinking through your spending plan and

what you want out of retirement is going to be key to understanding what type of

income you need to drive in Um, and so understanding income sources is going to be

another big one on this checklist, uh, for a lot of people. It’s going to be

social security plus my investments. Some of you out there may have, uh, so security

investments and maybe a pension or maybe also rental income or any other income

sources, part time work or consultant work while you are still in retirement. So

knowing what, what is going to be driving money in the door or for you is going

to be key as well. And then also what taxation looks like in retirement. Taxes, you

know, income is taxed one way. Retirement assets are going to be taxed another way,

depending on what types of accounts you have, whether it’s ordinary income taxes,

capital gains types of taxes. So understanding your income sources and you know,

how we’re going to be withdrawing and how that’s all going to be taxed at the end

of the day is going to be key, not just because you’re going to pay tax, you want

to make sure you do that properly, but there’s strategies that we would want to

implement based off what your total income is. There are things that we want to

stay away from based off of your total income, which is typically around Medicare

and Irma surcharges. Having a good inventory of your assets, right? A lot of times

we’re working and we get busy, and we don’t really think through or know where our

assets are from different accounts, so old 401ks, current 401ks, brokerage accounts

that could be spread out all over the place, money markets, credit cards, all these

different things. You want to have a good inventory of those assets as we start to

build out that plan for you. And then also liabilities.

A lot of people have a goal of retiring.

You know that we could tweak that goal to maybe just retiring with the mortgage And

you know, so understanding what our liabilities are What portion of that

is is going into our budgetary spend to cover those liabilities and Everything in

between there. So, income is a big category. I’ve mentioned a few of them but that’s

the big thing is we got to know where how the money is going to come in where

it’s coming from. How’s it going to be taxed and is it going to be enough?

Anything I miss there, Radon? No, I think we got a good understanding there.

There’s quite a few there in the income section, but that now takes us over to the

medical and health care. If you’re not 65, how much do you know about Medicare?

What are all the options? That’s a big one, a real big one, because there are so

many options and fortunately, unfortunately, however you want to call about, there

about all these options are complicated. And so making sure that you understand how

that works, what’s your exposure to expenses within the healthcare arena. I think one

that we have for 2025, we’re spending a lot of time talking to our clients about

as they come in for their financial planning strategy meetings is long -term care

planning. Now, in the old days, you just had one option and that was to get

traditional long -term care. Today, there are multiple options, but do we understand

those options? Have we gone through and identified what might be something that I

could utilize? We’ve done a couple of different podcasts on different types of long

-term care policies and planning. And if I’m not 65, by the way, and I’m retiring,

another one on here is, do I to what my health insurance needs are or how to take

care of those needs prior to turning 65, because I might lose my employer plan. So

again, I think this is just a nice way for you to kind of go through, hey, and

by the way, this is also a great checklist to say, I do want to talk to my

financial advisor or my financial planner about these topics. I hope that

you are enjoying the show. By the way, if you are in or nearing retirement, and

are someone who wants to gain clarity on what questions you should be asking, learn

what the biggest retirement myths are, and identify what you could be doing to

achieve peace of mind for your retirement, get started today by requesting your

complimentary video course, four steps to secure your retirement. To access the

course, simply visit pomwealth.net /podcast.

If you’re new here, or you haven’t done this yet, this is definitely the first step

to get started in applying these principles to your life. So head over to POMwealth.net /podcast and check us out. So, let’s go to the next one.

All right. So, the next one is advanced financial planning. So this could go in a

handful of different directions, but the checklist is really kind of walking through.

Do I fully understand the fees that I’m paying to work with the advisor that

I’m working with. So, management fees, commissions, understanding, at the end of the

day, what are you paying for and what are you getting for it? I think there’s

always a good evaluation to be doing. Also, within your portfolio there’s going to be

fees in there as well depending on the different investments that you have,

mutual funds, ETFs. So, you want to have a good understanding of what the fees are

within the portfolio. And then, you know, how much interaction are you getting with

the advisor? Is there a plan in place for, as you approach retirement, you know,

to monitor that plan to help you think through the strategies on withdrawals, social

security timing, Medicare, long -term care, all those different pieces, puzzle pieces

that put together a well thought out plan. And typically, as we see someone

getting close to retirement, we’re meeting with them a little bit extra in that year

because there’s a lot of moving parts that we want to think through, right? Salary

is going to turn off and then income has to start pretty much immediately when that

salary turns off. So, we’ve got to be well prepared for that. Another big one is

your estate plan, making sure that’s all-in place. That’s your, you know, wills,

power, attorneys, hip authorizations. And then for some of you, a trust may be of

good use. Making sure that’s up to date or that you have one in place is always

going to be key to having a stress -free type of retirement. But those are the big

ones when it comes to the advanced financial planning checklist. All right, a big

one now, risk management. And if you’re listening to this podcast here in the first

part of 2025, you know that there has been some volatility in the market.

And if you’re listening to it later, and there’s no volatility right now,

well, volatility is going to come back. It’s just the way the markets work. So the

question is, do I have an investment strategy that matches my viewpoint of risk?

Not only does it match my viewpoint of risk today, but as I advance that’s in age

or getting closer retirement, am I keeping that up? One of the things that we do

in our financial planning strategy meetings that we’re doing right now is we

reassess, we talk about risk exposure. And what we find is, is sometimes the

clients, they’ve changed, they, for whatever reason, maybe what’s going on in the

world says, you know what, I don’t really like feel that good right now, or what’s

going on in the world makes me feel extremely confident. Either one is okay, But am

I adjusting that risk as I move and go through out and get ready for retirement?

We talked to a client here recently and they still have a few years of work.

They’re making good income. They said, right now we’re comfortable being exposed to

volatility tomorrow. We don’t, because we know long term if we stay in, we’ll do

fine. The problem is if I’m in retirement or I’m closer to retirement, I don’t want

to live through all those valleys because I need access to my money. I want it to

last my lifetime. So, I want to dial that back. If I’m still working and making

good income and I hit a valley, I can live through the valley and that would be

okay. Many folks that are retiring today said in 2008, when the market dropped

drastically, they were working. And they said, I really just kind of kept working

and kept feeding it and everything turned out okay. And that is most of the time

reality, but, but we want to make sure we understand this whole category. All right.

Last one, taxes. Last one. It’s a big one. Tax efficient strategies. You know,

I think it comes down to the difference between tax filing and tax strategy. One is

the act of just getting your tax return done, doing the paperwork, paying if you

pay, oh, getting the refund if you are do a refund, but you know a lot of tax

strategy in our opinion should be done well before the end of the calendar year and

there’s not much you can do come April 15th of the tax year. So the tax

strategies that we’re talking with clients about one is just understanding your tax

return and what that you know what are the elements that are creating your taxable

situation. And so, understanding that, once we understand that, then we can manipulate

it through software and help us make projections for how 2025 is projecting out to

be and which then opens up the door to, well, what strategies can we utilize this

year? Maybe we’re retiring halfway through the year and we’re going to have a drop

in income. Maybe that opens the door for these things called Roth conversions. Or

maybe where in a tough spot and we need to reduce our taxable income, maybe we

decide to increase our contributions to a 401 (k) or to an IRA to reduce our

income, or maybe we do some charitable giving to help out with that scenario. So

those are all tax strategies. And the thing about tax strategies, they got to be

done in most cases before the calendar year ends. So having a proactive tax plan,

especially as we start to walk into this brand-new arena for someone transitioning

from work world to retirement world where you take withdrawals, and it generates tax

and we got to do withholdings or maybe set up quarterly payments. It’s a different

world and we want to do it right so that again we can be comfortable. So, having a

tax strategy or a tax plan in place that is revisited annually is going to be key.

So, there’s a check list items there to help you think it through. But that’s our

checklist there. – All right, just remember, if you would like to get this checklist

to see how good you are, set up the day, send an email to info @pomwealth .net.

And just say you want the retirement checklist, the challenge, and we’ll send it

over to you. Call the office, 919 -787 -8866. We hope that this kind of helps you

think things through. Maybe you might play this game with a family member or

somebody, a neighbor, and see how you score comparative to others. But it’ll help

you just make sure you’ve, you’re either going to walk away from the checklist

feeling really, really good or going, hey, I might have a couple of things I need

to work on. Thank you very much. We’ll talk to you again next Monday.