The One More Year Trap – Knowing When It’s Time to Retire

In this episode of the Secure Your Retirement Podcast, Radon and Murs discuss the “One More Year Trap” and why so many people struggle with knowing when it’s time to retire. For many, the decision to retire is not just about money—it’s about mindset, emotions, and confidence. They explore the common reasons people delay retirement, from financial incentives like bonuses and stock vesting schedules to the emotional ties that come from decades spent in a career. If you’ve ever wondered how to know when to retire or felt uncertain about stepping away from work, this conversation provides valuable insights and strategies to help you make an informed and confident decision.

Listen in to learn about retirement readiness, the importance of a personalized financial plan, and how to prepare both financially and emotionally for this life-changing transition. Radon and Murs break down the role of retirement strategies, retirement income planning, and the retirement mindset needed to confidently step into your next chapter. By focusing on your retirement goals and creating a clear roadmap, you can avoid the trap of delaying retirement year after year and instead secure your financial future.

In this episode, find out:

• How the “one more year trap” keeps people delaying retirement without realizing it.
• Why creating a personalized retirement plan builds retirement confidence and clarity.
• The emotional challenges of leaving a career and redefining your retirement mindset.
• How retirement income planning and Social Security strategies affect your decision.
• The value of the Peace of Mind Pathway in helping you plan for retirement and retire comfortably.

Tweetable Quotes:

“When you have a plan in place, the nervousness around retirement fades, and the one more year trap starts to disappear.” — Murs Tariq

“The trap isn’t about money; it’s about clarity. Once you see your retirement roadmap, you gain the confidence to step into the next phase of life.” — Radon Stancil

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 everyone Secure Your Retirement Podcast. We are excited to be talking to you today around the topic of Retirement. And what prompted today’s podcast is an article that we were reading on a personal finance

section on a website. And here was the context. It was

breaking free from the one more year trap, knowing when it’s time to retire.

And I just want to give a little bit of context because we see this quite often, is

that you think about it, for decades you work, and you make an income, and you save

money and you have thing in your mind that you’re thinking, I’m going to retire

next year. And it could be when I turn 60, when I turn 62, when I turn 65,

sometimes we see people pushing it and saying, I want to wait until I’m 70 or why

should I ever retire? All of these are things that we hear people talk about. Um,

but a lot of this comes down to really just kind of having in the back of your

mind, am I ready financially? Maybe am I ready emotionally?

emotionally? What’s it going to be like? What am I going to do in retirement? And

so, what we wanted to do today is kind of talk you through some of this thinking

and maybe why it is a trap. And so, Merce, if you could kind of get us started

here about this idea of it being a trap. Yeah, so the, really the trap is this

hesitation around retirement and feeling like we have to continue working for another

year. I tell you, in all these financial planning strategy meetings that we do with

our clients, some clients are retired, but a lot of clients are in that close to

retirement phase of life, which could be, you know, five years out, two years out,

one year out, and we get to that one year out sometimes, and it keeps on being,

let’s do one more year, or I’ve updated to where I’m going to work another six months,

another six months, – Well, we’ll ask the question why. And a lot of times it comes

back to, I just don’t know. I don’t know if I feel ready enough and that can come

financially, that could be emotionally, or I don’t want to miss out on something that

is coming in the future. A lot of times financially that ends up being maybe a

bonus that is coming in say the following quarter, right?

My company only pays their bonus in March or April of the following year. So, I got

to work and I can’t retire in December. Otherwise, I’ll miss out on that March or

April bonus. So, I need to work to March or April and then you get to March or

April, you get the bonus, you’re like, oh, well, what’s another year I’ll wait till

December. And then wait till December, you want that bonus again in March or April,

right? So, it becomes this, this, this trap of when do I retire? If I’m leaving

things on the table, another big common one that we see again on the financial side

is this thing called RSU’s restricted stock that employers will give you,

but it’s not yours until it fully vests for you and you have a different vesting

schedule and you may say, oh, I’m going to wait until this next chunk of stocks that

I was given from the employer vests so that I have more money available in my

retirement plan. So those are a couple of the ones that I hear quite often around

financially when it comes to the investment side, but I think there’s a big piece

around of, you know, when you work and you save you, especially if you work for a

company for a long time, you’ve got a lot of relationships there that you aren’t

potentially ready to leave. You’ve got a lot of camaraderie.

You’ve got your expertise, right? People know you as whatever you are in that role,

your career. And you could be the go-to person. You like that feeling of being the

go to person in your career. And so, a lot of things end up being tied to your

career. And I think, you know, at some point, you have to decide, does it make

sense or not to just be working because of this or should I think about what my

life is going to be like after my career. And which leads to another big reason,

which is people don’t know what they want to do when they retire. I think a big

part of financial planning that we try to talk about prior to retirement is really

thinking through what you want your retirement life to look like post-retirement. So

think about your goals, your hobbies, the goals and the hobbies and the travel and

the dreams that you’ve really put off because of work, and you need to be thinking

about those so that as soon as you do retire, you’ve got things to jump right into

and tackle because you weren’t able to do them while you were working.

And I, you know, bottom line, the bigger one is going to be all around finances.

And do I have, do I feel comfortable with what I’ve done to prepare for retirement?

When I say that, do I have a financial plan in place? Do I have investments that

are going to support that financial plan and support the way that I want to spend

in retirement? So do I feel comfortable with all those things lining up, the

decisions around social security, healthcare, how’s that going to work, all those

things, are they lining up to make me feel really, really good going into

retirement, which stems back into what we call the retirement focus financial plan.

So, the one more year trap, it is a trap. And the whole goal is let’s not make it

feel like a trap. Let’s just make it feel like, hey, I’m ready to retire. And I

think that’s a big distinction. So yeah, you know, Radon, why I guess from your

experience, I know I kind of listed off a bunch here, but anything to add as far

as why is it so hard for people to step away from work? Yeah, I think I mentioned

it earlier. I think the emotional side of things is difficult. It’s emotional to

think about this idea of starting to pull money out of accounts. And quite honestly,

it doesn’t matter whether I’ve got a little bit of money, or I’ve done a really

good job of saving money over a long period of time. I think that the reality is

it’s still emotional and we’ve got to deal with that. And I think quickly, I think

that just takes us into what is it that we can do to get us comfortable?

And you mentioned it, and I think that the real thing is, is I need to see a

plan. I need to see something that can help me be able to visualize that I’m going to

be okay. And we talk about it all the time. We have developed what we call the

peace of mind pathway. And the Peace of Mind Pathway™ is really made up of three

categories. And the category, the first one is what we talk about,

which is our Peace of Mind Roadmap. And I think what I like about this idea of a

roadmap and why we developed it this way is that it gives somebody an ability to

see the path and to know that they can make it down. We liken it to a GPS. A

GPS helps somebody know how to go somewhere and it gives you confidence. I could

say I’m headed to a place I’ve never been to before in my life and I remember

back when you actually had a paper map and you had to figure it out and then you

had a navigator and the other side of the car and if you were by yourself, I mean,

and it was dark. I mean, or you had a trip in an area where it was more rural.

I mean, that was difficult. Today, we jump in our cars, and we don’t think about it

whatsoever. We just type an address in, and we just go with our GPS. So that’s what

we’ve done for our clients is we say, let’s build out a roadmap. Let’s build out a

GPS as it is saying, hey, I’m going to get in my retirement vehicle and I’m going to

head toward retirement. Is it possible? And I think that’s what we find is when we

have that meeting and we show somebody their personalized retirement focused financial

plan, I’m going to say the stress goes away nine times out of 10 because people go,

wow. And then I’ll have people, they’ll say to me, and you probably hear it too,

Murs, is this real? I can’t believe this, it doesn’t, I knew I worked hard, I

knew I saved money, but was it real for me to be able to accomplish this? And I

think that that’s what it does. So, if you want to go into that a little bit more,

as far as that idea of what we’re looking at, what kind of things go into that

focus? – Yeah, so when we’re looking at and building out a retirement -focused

financial plan for families, we’re looking at, hey, what are your goals for

retirement? So where are you at in the stage of planning for it? Do you have a

plan yet, doesn’t need adjustments? And a lot of times we are starting from scratch

and saying, here’s where you are, so your age, right? What’s my desired goal for my

retirement? And that could also be an age, but also what type of retirement are you

looking for, you know, and do I want to consult after retirement? Do I want to pick up

a part -time job to stay busy after retirement? So, what is that looking like for

you and as far as I transitioned into retirement, as far as timing and age and

what are you going to do? And then we look at all the things or the knobs that

would have to be turned in a well -thought -out financial plan around, well, if I’m

going to retire at age X, how does Social Security fit into my plan? Am I taking

it early? Am I taking it at full retirement age? Does it benefit me to wait till

age 70, which is the latest you can take it?

How does that fit into my plan and then making sure that we’ve accounted for

potentially the spousal side of Social Security as well and making sure those

complement each other very well.

How are we going to spend in retirement? That’s a big conversation. We work and we

kind of pay the bills without realizing oftentimes how much we truly are spending.

But when you get to where you’re drawing money out of the accounts that you’ve

built up, you look at spending a different way. And so, we want to understand what

that spending is going to look like, not just the basics and keeping the lights on,

but also, the fun stuff that you’re going to pick up in retirement that you may not

have today, like desires to pick up a membership, a golf membership, or maybe a gym

membership that you didn’t have time for, or travel. That’s a big one for our

clients. So, what’s that added expense going to look like for you? Um, and then

that flows into conversations around Medicare, when’s Medicare going to kick in? Am I

retiring before that? Do I need to think about private insurance prior to Medicare,

long -term care, life insurance needs? It just continues to go on and on. With this

main goal of here’s where I am today. Here’s what I’ve done to prepare for

retirement. Here’s when I want to retire. Does this all play out? Does it look it’s

going to be successful to where I’m age 90 and things have played out perfectly for

me or very nicely for me from a cash flow perspective. I think once you answer,

like you said, right, once we answer that financial question, that big question of

can I retire when I want to retire, the stress does start to melt away. And that

opens the door for you to start thinking about other things that you may want to

think through in retirement that’s kind of going to get you there. Things like, you

know, you’ve got a lot of social connections in work, right? Maybe some of your

best friends you’ve worked with for years and years, but that may transition a

little bit away to, you know, you want to think about your social connections

outside of work and strengthening those a little bit. New routines, right? You’ve

gotten up, you’ve gone to work, or you logged into your computer, and you did that

for years and years and years. What’s your new routine going to be when you do Um,

some are going to do a phase retirement. So maybe cut back on time or like I

said, part -time or consulting. And I think, you know, reassessing your goals as you

enter into retirement is going to be a big piece to help you, uh, feel comfortable

with that. Again, that emotional aspect. So, there’s a financial aspect, build the

plan, make sure the plan works, and then monitor the plan. That’s what the pathway

is. Uh, but then also the emotional aspect of you got to think about what you want

your retirement to look like outside of finances so that you can make it more fun

for you as you transition into the stage. So, but I think, Radon, there’s a big

mindset shift that does happen for people that are working, earning and saving to

then having to now spend all that money. Let’s talk a little bit about that mind

shift, mind shift that does happen. Yeah, I think though, quite honestly, that it

happens naturally. As somebody goes this as they start thinking about it. I’m, you

know, very few people come up and wake up one day and decided to retire tomorrow

unless you got laid off. But this idea of retirement takes some time.

So, what we recommend, I mean, ideally is for you to start thinking about retirement,

probably in that area of 10 years prior, and then get it really serious five years

prior. And that’s going to allow you to have time to start thinking it through. So,

and the thing is, by the way, that can change. So many of our clients that are

coming to us that are working with us today, let’s say they’re working with us in

their 58 or their 60, and they’ve got five years and that’s their goal. It’s okay

to get down to that next age and go, “I decided I’m going to work another year too.”

It’s okay to do that but allow yourself to have the time you need.

And then the other thing is something in the middle, many of our clients say, “I’m

going to leave this job that I’ve been out for 25 or 30 years,” or the type of

work I’ve been doing for 25 or 30 years. And I’m going to consult or I’m going to

work part -time just so that I’ve got something to do to keep me busy. And I think

that’s a big-time concern as well. So, I think just giving yourself time,

going ahead and building out your plan, and I’ll just kind of walk you through what

that looks like to get yourself started. So, if you were going to work with someone

like us, I’ll just tell you, our process. The first thing that we’re going to do is

we’re going to send you over a discovery profile. We call it the piece of my

discovery profile. And that’s really going to let you write out your goals, where

you are right now. We then take all that data, and we put it over into our roadmap

or your personalized retirement -focused financial plan and that allows you to get

that started. And we give it to you in a way that you’re able to play with it,

meaning you’re able to say, “What if I do wait another year? What if I go ahead

and retire early?” A lot of it, by the way, when you go through this process, I

find a lot of people just knowing that they can retire makes work more pleasurable

because now they go, “I am going to work for one reason because I want to go to

work I am not going to work because I have to go to work and that changes the

focus that changes the mentality Massively when it comes to doing this so I would

say if we were going to sum this episode up It can feel like a trap, but that trap

is usually because of lack of planning or a lack of clarity So if you feel like

you’re trapped you feel like you don’t know what to do next Get a plan get a

focus get it understood so that you can now not feel trapped Even if you decide to

continue to work and if you’d ever like to have a conversation with us about that

feel free to reach out to us You can go to our website, which is p p o m wealth

net. You can go to the contact us page Fill that out. We’d be glad to hop on a

The phone or a zoom or whatever in the office and have a conversation with you so

that you can have that plan right in front of you. But I think that’s all we got

on this. We appreciate very much you listening. We hope you have a great week. We will talk to you again next Monday.