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In this Episode of the Secure Your Retirement Podcast, Radon and Murs discuss the foundational first step in their three-part Peace of Mind Pathway: The Peace of Mind Roadmap. This step is all about creating a personalized retirement roadmap to help you clearly define where you are, where you want to go, and what your journey through retirement will look like. Through real examples and a GPS-style analogy, they break down the importance of clarity and confidence when beginning the retirement planning process. The roadmap goes far beyond investments—it covers your retirement goals, Retirement income strategy, tax planning, estate planning, and more.

Listen in to learn about how building a retirement-focused financial plan can reduce stress, reveal opportunities, and help you retire comfortably. You’ll hear how an introductory meeting evolves into a comprehensive, personalized strategy session that gives you direction and peace of mind. With topics ranging from Roth conversions in retirement to bucket strategy retirement, this episode is perfect for anyone who’s ready to take their first step toward a secure your retirement future.

In this episode, find out:

·      Why the Peace of Mind Roadmap is critical to financial planning for retirement

·      How your personalized GPS for retirement guides your unique journey

·      The role of planning meetings and how they evolve into strategy sessions

·      How to evaluate your retirement destination and adjust along the way

·      The impact of Roth conversions, healthcare costs, and charitable giving on your plan

Tweetable Quotes:

“Your retirement plan should function like a GPS—clear, adaptable, and designed around your unique destination.” – Radon Stancil

“A well-crafted roadmap gives you more than numbers—it gives you the confidence to enjoy your retirement journey.” – 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 Secure Your Retirement podcast. We are very happy to talk with you today

and kind of go through a topic that is really, I think, very special to myself and

MERS, because it’s really helped us to clarify two individuals that are looking at

trying to figure out retirement in a nice clear, concise way. And we call it the peace of mind pathway. Now, but what we’re going to do

is over the next three episodes, this one of two more episodes, we’re going to

take you through the components of this. But I want to kind of set it up first so you

can understand what we’re trying to create from a word picture so that it comes to

you and you go, “Okay, I understand why they’re calling it this.” Because quite

honestly, I’ve been doing this for 25 years. You get into this retirement

conversation and there’s so many things that have to get looked at and it’s

overwhelming. And we really wanted to try to break things down in such a way

that people could understand it. I will tell you this just as a side note, we feel

it’s so special and in understanding this and helping people have peace of mind

because that’s the result we’ve seen that right now, Merce and I are in the final

editing phase of a book that we have written all about the pathway.

It’s explaining it from A to Z. So, we kind of wanted to do this as a precursor.

We’ve been working so hard on the book. We thought, “Hey, why not do this in the

podcast format so that you can visualize?” So, if you’re listening to this and you

are a client, don’t worry about that. Now you’re going to get a clear picture of

how we’re explaining things. And if you are not a client, then you might say,

“Well, this all makes sense.” So, let’s get the picture. a pathway. So, imagine if

you would a roadway, a pathway, might think of like one of those little curvy paths

going through the woods. And in the pathway, I have in my mind when you’re thinking

about retirement is you can look down, there’s lots of trees, you look down the

pathway and there’s a curve. And what that means is you don’t know what’s on that

part of the pathway. You can only see, but so far. And then you make the turn and

you go, oh, I see where I’m headed. And maybe you see something else along that.

And then there’s a turn another way. And you go, well, where are we headed to now?

And that is kind of how we envision this idea of getting ready for and living

through retirement is this pathway that we’re going on. But we’re hitting things,

we’re getting to a point where we go, I don’t know the answer to this, because

there are so many different things, so many different elements. I mean, it’s not just

investments. That’s what we’ve been trying to tell people now for a number of years.

Beause go back 25 years ago, I was all investments. Now, Merce and I together for

13 of those years have really worked to say it’s more than investments. And today

it’s building a retirement focused financial plan. It’s dealing with an income plan.

It’s dealing with investments. It’s dealing with taxes. It’s dealing with all the

different elements around social security and health care and estate planning.

It’s so many different moving parts there that we really wanted to say, how do we

get down that pathway? And it is not a come in and 15 minutes later, we’ve got

this figured out. So, we’re going to take you through basically building a roadmap,

getting a guide, if you would, to say, how do I get down the pathway and then how

do I implement that? And then how do I nurture it? So, we can’t do all this in

one podcast. All right. So, hope, I hope you understand the picture and you,

you understand why we’ve called it the peace of mind pathway. And then we’re going

to now break down some of those different elements. So, the first thing is we got

to get some guidance how to get down the pathway. Maybe there’s multiple, I don’t

know that you that you come down and there’s a why in the pathway and I could go

this way or I could go this way. How do I know which way to go? How do I make

a decision? So, Merce, if you kind of want to now take a setup and let’s just

deal with this first part of it, how do I get a guide? What do we call it? What

does it look like so that we can start trying to get down this pathway? Yeah, so

the pathway itself has three major components that Raiden kind of started to allude

1. And what we’re talking about today in today’s episode is we’re focusing on

component number one part number one, which is the peace of mind roadmap component

number two and three are going to come in a in following episodes number two is

implementation we’re going to go deep dive on that and then the third is peace of

mind nurture all three of these together combined create this pathway that we’re

talking about as far as how we make this successful, this idea of retirement. So

today’s focus, again, we’re building that roadmap. And what does that really look

like? Well, the roadmap starts from really just getting to know who you are and

what you’re looking for and what your goals are. And so, a lot of times we have,

you know, on this podcast, we’ll have people that are interested and have been

listening to us for years at this point. The podcast started back in 2020. It’s

hard to even believe that as we sit here in 2025 and you know people have been

listening to us for a while. Eventually they get comfortable enough with us. They

feel like they know us, and they will set an appointment, or they watch us on

YouTube or they come to one of our educational events or some of their friends or

clients and they get referred over to us. So, there’s a handful of avenues as to

where someone comes into our fold, but once they come into our fold and become

wanting to understand who we are, how we take care of our clients and what is it

we actually do here, it all starts with that roadmap. So, it starts with this idea

of an introduction type of meeting, very, I would say laid back, but serious at the

same time, you’re here for a reason and we do a very specific job, which is help

you try to figure out what retirement is going to look like for you. So, in that

introductory meeting, we’re trying to get to know you. In most cases, we’ve asked

you to fill out a document that helps us understand some of your financials,

understand some of your goals, understand what you’ve done thus far to prepare for

retirement. We call that our confidential financial snapshot. And there’s a bunch of

yes and no questions on there. There’s a bunch of open-ended questions on there.

It’s really, when I say a bunch, it’s a two page, uh, two-page document. So still

we keep it simple and high level, but that gives us a nice basis of conversation

to understand every little thing, we can about you. And that 30 to 45 minutes

meeting, we’re asking questions to get clarification. You’re asking questions to

understand us more and more as far as our general philosophy, how do we operate?

Where do we hold money at when it comes to the investing side? What does a

financial plan look like? And so, in that meeting, there’s clarity that’s immediately

starting to happen. There’s clarity around what a relationship with us looks like.

What is it we actually do here from the aspect of building out a

what is that? And, you know, at the end of this visit, again,

it’s 30 to 45 minutes, on both sides of the table, we have to make a decision of,

“Hey, we’ve spent some time together. We kind of know each other to a good degree

at this point.” And we both have to ask each other, “Do we think that we are on

path to being a good fit for each other?” Not making a decision on becoming a

client yet, but do we think we’re on the right path to being a good fit for each

other? So, on our side, as the advisor, we’re saying, hey, do we think we can truly

add value to what this person in front of me is looking for? On your side, you

kind of have to say, hey, do I like who I’m talking to, right? Uh, our personal

personality is very important, and comfort is very important in these scenarios and

also trust. So am I getting that feeling, that good feeling of, “This is

pretty cool. Do I like the strategies? Do I like the philosophy?” If so, we both

agree there. Then we go on to a following visit, which is way more focused,

really specialized, really personalized. To you, we call that our personalized planning

meeting. So, I just took you through on a high level, the personalized introduction

meeting, which is really step one in that roadmap building process. And then there’s

some things that happen in between, and then we go to this follow -up visit, which

we call the personalized planning meeting. So, Radon, you want to kind of walk

through that? Well, before I do, I kind of want to use another illustration that we

like to talk about. And I think this kind of helps you visualize what we’re trying

to do. And so, this roadmap, I mean, everybody, you know, today, I mean, if you

probably remember actually having a map. But today, very few of us actually have a

physical map. A lot of times we use a GPS.

And most of us understand the concept of a GPS. I put in where I want to go,

and I know where I’m at today. So, I have my starting point, I know where I’m at

today, and I got my ending point of where I’m trying to get to. But within that

GPS, I’m able to make some decisions because I’m in control of where and how I’m

going to go down this journey that I’m headed on. I can say things like avoid

highways. I could tell it to only go on the back roads. I could tell it that I

want to make a stop or two on the way. So, I could put that into the system. The

nice thing about a GPS system is if I do put in my destination and I start on my

journey, the cool part about the GPS is that it will actually reroute me if there’s

something along the way that it sees, it’s going to bring that up. And it’s going

to tell me, Hey, there’s a problem there. So, the way we, the way we feel about it

is, is that we’re kind of like the retirement pathway, if you want to call it, GPS

got our team. We are the GPS, right? So, you tell us,

that’s that meeting that, uh, Merce, which is talking about, we’re getting a very,

very clear picture as to where you’re at right now. We also want to know where you

want to go. And those are different things. Somebody might say, look, I have

traveled vastly in my work years. I don’t want to travel anywhere anymore.

Here’s what I want to do. I want another home. I’d like that to be at the beach.

I want it to be at the mountains, whatever that might be. And here’s where I want

to live out. That’s a whole different destination than somebody who comes up and

says, I was so busy working. Um, I never got to go anywhere. And so, we have a,

we have some significant, um, vacations that we want to do. We want to explore.

That’s a whole different path. Uh, we’ve had folks that have come in and we think

about this all the time where they come in and they said, I just want to, I want

to travel on an RV whole different path than the others. So, we are the GPS.

We’re the team that says, okay, we are here. You want to get here. How do we get

there? And what stops do you want along the way? We also as a team have the

mechanisms in place that if we see things, we bring it to your attention and we do

reroute. So, I wanted you to get that picture, right? So, so meeting number one is

clearly understanding exactly where you are right now and where you’d like to go.

And that’s a, you might change your mind, by the way, where you want to go. So

now we know that the team goes to work, and they start building the routing,

the routing. They start looking and saying, hey, we want, here’s where we want to

1. How do we, are we going to be able to get there? I guess that’s firstly the

really big question is, how do I know that I can actually get there? So, when you

come back in on the second visit, you’re going to sit down with at least two

certified financial planners and they’re going to walk you through and say, we have

done a very detailed analysis of what you’ve told us, and you can or cannot reach

your destination based on all the parameters that you gave us. And so, if it is a

can, well, then it’s easy and we just kind of, you get the confidence to know when

you can make it. And then inevitably in that meeting, a lot of times people go,

“Well, hey, what if I take another path?” Right? So, we might go through that and

they go, “Wow, I’m going to make it to the end of retirement and have tons of

money left over. What if I travel a little bit more? What if I did go ahead and

do that second home?” So, we adjust right on the fly. We can actually adjust now

because we have all the parameters in. We can adjust and say, wait a minute,

absolutely you can do that. What if the person though comes in and based on all

the things they told us, when we look at it, we say, you can get to the end, but

it’s a little tight. So, then what we can say is, what are some adjustments that we

can do? And maybe that adjustment is, you work two more years. Maybe that adjustment

is, you spend a little bit less. Maybe that adjustment is, you go ahead and retire

from the stressful job that you’re in right now and you do some part -time

consulting that all of those is you’re watching your GPS your retirement piece

of mind retirement team working that GPS making sure that it’s aligned and now this

is what I love out of this particular visit it is the time where people have the

most piece of mind because they get to see it and they go wow I actually have a

plan. I actually have direction. I can see the path. I know I now can make it or

I know what I need to do to make it. And that is just one of my favorite

appointments that when we get together and they see how this is all come together,

I get excited about that one because I know that one’s going to be such an eye

-opener. I’ve done so many of them for the last 20 years that I just have seen at

every time the stress goes down, the peace of mind comes into play. So now we’ve

got this

thing built, right? And we kind of got it, but we’ve got one more step that we

want to do still in this roadmap area. And that’s really when we come back for a

third visit. And at this point, we’re really kind of starting to talk a little bit

about some of the strategies that we would need in order to do it. So, if you want

to walk through kind of how that looks, because this is this is the one step prior

to the next one, which is our implementation. Yeah, so we’ve got, we’ve had our

introduction meeting at this point. Raiden just walked you through a bit of that

planning meeting, kind of getting, putting it on on screen, understanding, here’s

where we are, here’s where we’re going, does it work out? Do we need to make

adjustments? And when we’re all on board with that, then we talk, well, how do we

actually, have strategy around this to make this plan work. It’s kind of like, if we

don’t know where we’re going to go, so say you’re getting in the car, you’re packing

for a trip, but you haven’t decided where you’re going yet, how do you pack? You

put a little bit of everything in the car and it may or may not make sense, but

you got a bunch of stuff, right? If we know where we’re going, then we can pack

accordingly, for it. That’s really what strategy ends up being is if we know where

we’re going, we know where what our goals are, we know when we want to retire, we

know it’s possible. Now we can build a thorough strategy around it. And the strategy

is all involved in a handful of elements around your investment strategy.

That is a big piece of it, but it’s not the only piece of it. So, on the

investment strategy, if you’ve been listening to us, we talk heavily about this

concept of It’s, we’re not going to go into it today, but it’s really having a

balance of growth assets and safe assets and putting those two together. It controls

risk. It also, it also controls our ability as far as our withdrawal strategies,

which is the next piece that comes together is, hey, we’re going to need to start

pulling this money. At some point when we do retire, where are we going to pull it

from? Uh, and so that the withdrawal strategy goes hand in hand with our investment

strategy, which then you build up all these different types of assets, right? All

these different things that we’re packing in the car are all going to have different

taxation. So, we start to think through your tax strategy for what the year is going

to look like when it’s taxation, but also long -term tax strategy as far as what

are our goals for taxation? Do we want to do Roth conversions? Do we want to leave

a tax -free legacy behind and having those deeper conversations. We also want to make

sure, where we’re at from a healthcare perspective. When we start having those

conversations around if we’re retiring early, let’s make sure we think through the

pros and cons of that when it comes to healthcare, because you don’t qualify for

Medicare until 65. When you do hit 65, you have to know exactly what we’re doing with

Medicare. On that point, by the way, we have a specialist in office that those are

the only conversations he’s having is all around medical, pre -Medicare and post

-Medicare to kind of narrow all that down for our clients. And then giving

strategies, when it comes to charitable giving and how we want to do that to take

advantage of tax law, definitely, if you’re in the mindset of giving, give,

but let’s do it in the right way so that everyone benefits from it. So that’s just

a handful of things that happen in that strategy meeting. We start talking about

that. And so by the end of this process here of designing this roadmap, we’ve got

a really good concept. And hopefully we’ve got a really good direction as far as

can I do what I have been saving forever to do, which is enjoy this element of a

comfortable, exciting, fun retirement and whatever that means to you. All right.

Well, we hope this has at least given you this idea as you can conceptually see

what it kind of looks like to go down this idea of being confident while you plan

for and live in retirement. We always are open if you want to ever have a

conversation with us. It’s very easy to do so. You can go to our website, which is

Pomwealth.net, and you’re able to

schedule a phone call with us. We’ll answer any questions that you might have and

walk you through this process more personalized for you. As we said in the outset,

in our next episode, we’re going to talk about now, how do we implement? So, we built

this whole thing out. We have a whole roadmap right now. We’ve looked at it from

the goals. We’ve looked at it from the, does it work? We’ve now looked at some

strategies around how to make it all work. And so now it kind of comes down to,

well then, if I want to implement, what does that look like? So, in the next

episode, we’re going to go all through implementation.