Key Habits of Affluent Retirees Video from Savant Wealth Management

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Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining us today. Today we’re going to be talking about the key habits of affluent retirees. My name is Evan Goldfuss. I’m a financial adviser and a certified financial pre professional coming to you guys live from our Atlanta office down here in Georgia. I’ve been with Savant for a little over 8 years now. I’m really excited to talk to you guys today. I think this is a great discussion and presentation. It’s really a special one because we get a glimpse into the habits and the practices of really what we’ve seen from some of the most successful retirees out there. And I don’t mean successful really in terms of dollars. I mean the real definition of success, a life well-lived, filled with purpose, meaningful relationships, continued growth, and ultimately a legacy defined on your own terms. As kids and young adults, we often you know have role models that help us guide us through our lives, but when you approach retirement and really at the pinnacle of your career, who do you look to for really guiding the next chapter? There’s a great quote from one of my favorite actors of all time, Matthew McConaughey actually, and this is a quote from his Oscar acceptance speech from when he won the Oscar for Dallas Buyers Clubs. It was at the pinnacle of his career. And when he was up there, somebody as or he was telling a story basically of one time at his point in his life, somebody asked him “Who do you look up to? Who do you chase? Who’s your hero?” and he paused and he looked out in the audience and he said “My hero has always been me in 10 years.” And you know it’s who I’m chasing. It’s who I’m planning for. It’s who helps me make all the decisions I’m making today. I’m chasing that guy that I want to be in 10 years. And I love that quote so much and I bring it up all the time with people and especially when helping to plan out for retirement and the people that are at those pinnacles you know in their career and are kind of looking forward to the next step. I like to get them thinking in terms of that mindset and saying you know who do I want to be in 10 years? That’s really where we want to start when it comes to financial planning and really building out your ideal future and your ideal retirement. You want to think who do I want to be in 10 years and what do I want to do today in order to make sure that I end up in that spot. And really that’s the core you know of what we do here at Savon. That’s really how we approach financial planning. It’s not really you know it kind of goes beyond the portfolio and it starts with where do you want to go? Who do you want to be? What are you trying to achieve? And so you know as we’re talking through these items today, I urge everybody to you know break these items down and have that question in the back of your mind. You know if you are approaching retirement or coming up or just started retirement, start thinking about who do I want to be 10 years from now, take the Matthew McConnA approach as I always say. So, let’s learn from the people that are doing it right, who are playing the long game and really thinking about where they want to be you know 10 years down the road. Few things that we’re going to talk today, talk about today. We’re going to cover a few different areas. First, we’re going to talk about creating a vision for you and your partner. Some of the key areas again that people are doing right, they’re you know on the same page with their spouse. Next, we’re going to talk about prioritizing your health, get into managing your finances, talk about giving back, adapting to change, and finding your passion. And we’ll have a little bit of time at the end of today for different questions submitted throughout the chat and we’ll get to as many as we can. So let’s jump into it from today and first talk about that you know real key area of really creating you know really step one is creating a vision for you and your partner really the first step I think when building out any single plan is getting aligned and understanding where do we want to go are we thinking about the exact you know ideal future do are we on the same page here and you know I’m not going to sit here and say hey I’m you know the expert in marital conversations. I myself actually just got married in October a couple months ago, so you know not the best one to be given marriage advice you know just yet. But I will say you know I’ll use my parents as an example because they’ve been you know absolute you know ideal you know married couple in my life obviously. You know when talking about vision and retirement, my dad worked for UPS for 37 years. Started when he was 18. He was you know out the door at 6 a.m. He didn’t come home till 7 p.m. you know that was the way of the world. My mom was taking care of the house and three kids. And my dad had the opportunity to retire at age 55 from UPS. It was you know like I said, 37 years is a big change. And the very first thing he did was well before that last retirement day you know months and months ahead. He was in logistics, so planning is his absolute thing. He wanted to be dialed in on every single decision just as he had done in his career. So before they even got to that point, my dad sat down with my mom you know cracked a bottle of wine open and said “What is your vision for this next chapter? Where do we you know want to be? What do we want to be doing? What does that timeline ultimately look like?” You take a look. We actually did a survey you know of different couples out there. You can kind of see in this chart here obviously the breakdown in responses between males and females. But take a look and see you know how misaligned despite you know the numerous conversations you can have about these topics, not explicitly addressing these and addressing timelines again is probably one of the most important things outright can kind of leave you in a weird spot of hey, maybe we weren’t really on the same page in terms of when you know I was going to stop working, when you were going to stop working. What does that mean for us? how’s that going to change you know everything. So you can see that it’s so important to get aligned and despite you know where you are today, it’s always good to go back and revisit that conversation despite if you’re a year or three or five or 10 years away from retirement. Get an understanding of what your partner’s or your spouse’s vision is for that timeline and start having those conversations today. Couple of the key different things to you know highlight in those conversations ahead of you know the time and when things are going to happen is you know those different key areas where do we want to be you know when we end up. A lot of couples end up moving states. Where do we want to you know have a house? Do we want to upsize or we want to downsize with kids out of the picture? Where do we want to travel to? What does travel even look like? Do I want to go hike mountains or do I want to go travel cities? Where are our different interests there. What kind of hobbies are we going to be doing? Where’s our time going to be you know be spent if we’re not spending it at work? What kind of legacy do we want to have and what do we want to do for our kids? What’s our different health regiments? All those different things. These are kind of the key areas that I have always seen especially with the people that we work with. These are the key topics that they are honing in on and saying okay you know this is where we need to focus and really get aligned on because that’s going to be some of the most common friction points I think and ultimately at the end of the day allowing us to have these entry conversations allows us to again take that first step in the financial plan is laying out the groundwork and understanding okay these are you know where we’re aligned this is where we’re misaligned how do we get on the same page and take the best foot forward. So, it’s talking about all these different things and really getting on the same page as your partner. Absolute key advice number one. Again, kudos to my parents for get out in front of that, and I can assure you they’ve been enjoying their retirement ever since. So, kudos to them again. Second, want to talk about prioritizing your health. This is going to sound a little funny coming from your financial adviser, but again, at Savant Wealth Management, we go beyond the portfolio and we are able to recognize with all of our conversations all of the different areas of your life, health you know money, taxes, estate planning, all that stuff. It’s going to have an impact on each one of those different levers right? So health is actually a very important part, not just of your own life, but of your financial life as well. When it comes to retirees, again, some of the most important things and biggest takeaways that we’ve seen from those that are doing it right is those that come into retirement with the mentality of I’m going to make the most of this and you know I have one body and I’m going to make it work for me and I’m not going to have it work against me. You know one of the best lines I ever heard was aging is inevitable, but how we age is ultimately up to us. So you know taking that you know step back in terms of we’re at this next chapter. We have this great reset. We no longer have this time spent at work. What can we be doing to set ourselves up and our bodies up for a successful experience in retirement so that we can do all the things that we want to do? I always kind of use the analogy it’s you’re about to embark on retirement, which in some cases is up to 20, 30, 35 years for a lot of people. People are retiring earlier, living longer. You’re about to go on this giant long road trip. You got to fill the car up with gas. You got to get a fresh set of tires. You got to change the oil. It’s very similar to almost investing. You got to understand that time and discipline. They’re your greatest allies. Like I said, when it comes to investing, when it comes to planning, and when it comes to your health, the sooner you can get ahead of really getting in shape and you know getting to the physical state that you want to be in, the more choice you’re going to have and flexibility that you’ll have with what you can and want to do in retirement. And ultimately you know the hardest thing is understanding where to start. It’s daunting I think especially for those who may not have had a very large focus on their health. A lot of us were very ingrained in our careers and families and all the other you know big time sucks that happen in life. But health is such an important thing to get ahead of especially when you have this newfound time in retirement. So I always encourage people it’s not about it’s about moving the needle. I think at the end of the day when it comes to health even the little things can make a drastic difference. Better health is going to mean more choice for your family time, for your travel, for your hobbies. You know does that mean maybe in retirement it looks like I want to go to be able to hike mountains and I want to be able to take those giant walking tours through Rome or through you know all the different great cities that are out there to go explore. I want to be able to do all that and not be limited by my body or limited by what I’m capable of. So really kind of dialing back and saying where do I even start? The biggest thing you can do is start with the little changes you can do. It’s all really about discipline at the end of the day. There’s a lot of great resources you know that are available to you in terms of different people to learn from in different stages of life. Those who are you know experts and specific trainers out there that can help you set those goals. But the key thing is to start today. Time is really going to be your biggest ally when it comes to health and when it comes to being able to do the things you want to do. So where the rubber meets the road, why I want everybody to get in shape and be in a great physical state. Not only because it’s a much better way to live your life, you can do the things you want to do, but also where the rubber meets the road on the financial plan, it can be a big costsaver. Average expenses for healthcare are I think everybody can agree they’re rising, and they can be very very high depending especially depending on when you know in your life you choose to retire and step away from certain coverages and things like that. Average healthcare expenses can for those for a 65year-old couple for example here can be upwards of close to $400,000 over your lifetime in retirement. That is a lot of money. You know regardless of what your portfolio looks like that is a lot of money. I think if I asked everybody on this webinar today, what would you do with $400,000, we’d all have some different answers and not one of them would be spending it on healthcare, but that’s the kind of dollars we’re talking about. Those will impact your financial plan. And getting ahead of your health and having the foresight to know that what you can, the time you can put into yourself and into your body today can actually save you a lot of money down the road is great foresight. And again one of those great takeaways from successful retirees that we want to instill in people. So there can be a significant you know impact on these costs and that as we said before it trickles into everything else. It trickles into what your cash flow looks like and what you’ll be able to spend and how much you need to factor in in terms of future rising health care costs and things like that. So like we said, especially when you retire can have a drastic impact on what those expected costs may look at. That timeline in retirement, which looks different for everybody, can have a major impact again on what those overall expenses are going to look like. If you plan on an early retirement, you should probably plan for having higher expected health care costs in order to bridge the gap from when you separate from service in order to get to age 65 on Medicare. Then you have to think about all the things you know that come after that. Even when you get on Medicare, do I have the right income and right asset mix for funding this? After I get on Medicare, do I need to pay attention to what my taxable income looks like? You know if for those of you out there that haven’t heard of Irma costs, your taxable income can affect how much you pay in healthcare premiums. So it’s important to take a look again as you’re having those conversations with your spouse when you’re laying out all this groundwork and taking a look at your current state of health and what might be coming down the road. Take a look at that in terms of hey, when do I expect to be in retirement? Do I need to look at different solutions after potentially after I retire and separate from service? There’s different you know things that are available for different stages. For example, you can use Cobra for up to 36 months after you retire in most cases, which helps saves on a little bit of those those costs. But then once you get past that, your options are kind of limited to the private marketplace, and again as you age and get closer to 65, those costs can be pretty significant. For example, at age 60 looking at 1,200 bucks a month. Again those are pretty major costs for specific periods in your life. So you want to be able to have that foresight and then be able to link that back to the different areas of your plan and say, does you know, I’m anticipating these costs. Have I planned for that in my budget? Do I know where I’m going to be funding those from different sources of income or from my portfolio? These are all the things you need to be thinking about, right? Another key thing especially on the health care side that we want to pay attention to is understanding that life can happen and we want to be able to plan for all outcomes. One of the major things that especially in the upper age ranges is planning for incapacity. There’s a lot of different things and ways to get out ahead of this and really this should tie into your core estate planning discussions as a couple of these documents that we’re talking about today really do factor into those you know estate planning decisions. But the two to really focus on especially when we’re talking about incapacity and making sure that the decisions when you know you are unable to potentially make them for yourself that the person or party that is making those decisions is who you want them to be. And ultimately having the proper documentation in place is going to help you avoid a lot of time and hassle and not only just you but the person that’s going to help make those decisions helping to avoid a lot of hassle and time and potential you know legal back and forth in order to take care of you and make those decisions. So the two documents that we’re talking about and you’ll see up here are power of attorney for property which allows an agent to act you know on your behalf for all financial matters. To think who’s going to take over and make directions for my accounts if I need a surgery and can’t say so. Who’s going to make sure that you know that’s paid from XYZ account or anything like that. You want to make sure that you have that signed so that people can handle financial affairs for you if you’re unable to do so. And then power of attorney for health care or advanced healthcare directives as well. Those are both again for making medical decisions on your behalf and specifically the advanced healthcare directive is for how you want end of life treatment. So these are never fun conversations to have. I always have to tuck them into the healthcare conversations but the important thing is understanding that you have to be prepared for any situation out there, and you ultimately you want to have if you do run into those situations, you want to be sure that you’re being taken care of in the way you want to be taken care of, and that the right people have those authorities to do so. So if you haven’t checked out these documents, if you don’t have these in your plan, I do urge you to revisit those and make sure that you have the right people listed here and you have those checks in place. And again key quick point on this too as well, they don’t have to be the same person. There’s no mandate that says they have to be the exact same person. Oftentimes we see people set different you know people for the financial affairs and different people for the healthcare affairs. You know it’s important to take a look at your family and your close ones and see who you want in each one of those roles. So that is you know again some of the key points on health care. As we said, it’s a little funky to tie that into the rest of the you know the picture, but if we’re being honest and zooming out, it ties into the financial plan just as much as taxes do. We want to be sure that we’re covering as much as we can when it comes to healthcare and prepping for all outcomes. So again do what you can today. You know start asking those questions, start checking for your blind spots, and understand that that’s going to have a factor or an impact on all the other areas of your financial plan as well. So let’s jump into the key notes from managing your finances, right? For successful retirees, what are they really doing and what are the questions they’re asking when it comes to actually managing the finances? You know you’ve got your mind and body set, right? And you have your mindset, you have your healthcare taken care of. So let’s move into you know really talking about how do we take those first steps in the plan? what questions should we be asking? We want to get an understanding of really you know what you plan to spend and where you plan to spend it from. So a couple of the key biggest worries right that come out of surveys of retirees is you know do we have enough money saved for retirement? How are we going to pay for healthare and retirement? Do we have enough saved and forecasted for that knowing that you know those inflation rates are quite high? And then finally are we making enough to live the life that we’ve dreamed of? Right? Again key key word there is dreamed of and that’s why we talk so much about zooming out and talking about your ideal future because it’s not just about can I meet all my expenses. It’s can I do the things that I really want to do. So it’s important to have you know ask these kind of key questions ahead of the game and understand that it’s important to be able to back into those to have those conversations and say “Okay, you know, I’ve worked my whole life. I’ve built up and saved this nest egg. How do I go about thinking through the challenge and the puzzle pieces of using this nest egg and using my different income sources, whether that be pensions or social securities or you know rental income, whatever it may be, how do I factor in and kind of back into how it’s going to meet all the different goals and spending needs that I’ve outlined?” So that’s why we talk about taking a holistic approach to this. Like we’ve kind of talked about the theme today, every single aspect of your financial life is going to have a tug and pull on you know the next aspect as we saw with healthcare and you know as we’ll talk about sooner. The first step in getting to a holistic view right in mapping out that roadmap and you know getting pen to paper on that 10-year goal is understanding you know one that there is no one-sizefits-all answer to any financial plan out there. Every piece of your financial life like we said is going to impact another. How you invest is going to impact your taxes. Your taxes are going to impact your health care costs. Your healthare costs are going to impact your cash flow and your liquidity. Cash flow and liquidity is going to impact your investment strategy. It’s all going to tie in. You know we like to say there’s 10 key areas out there you know that we want to pay attention to when it comes to building out financial plans. And as we said the biggest thing you can do one is gathering your team of trusted professionals. And really what that looks like is potentially working with financial adviserss, CPAs you know attorneys. You want your team to be out there. And most importantly you want your team to be coordinated, right? If you’re on the football field and your financial adviser is at the quarterback, you probably want him to know the names and the numbers of who the receivers are on the CPA side and on the estate planning attorney side. If you’re out if you’re the coach on the sidelines, you want those guys to be talking and well coordinated, right? If they’re not, then you know they’re not aligned on one, what’s the ultimate plan and what is the strategy and there’s a lot of missing pieces that can happen when those people aren’t having those conversations. Finally you want to you know review your long-term plan projections. If you haven’t sat down and said “Okay, I have an understanding of what I’m going to be spending. How do I back into really that gap and what I need to fill for my portfolio?” You want to get an idea of kind of what your future cash flows are going to look like and where those sources of income are going to come from because that’s also going to impact that second or third bullet point is how should I be invested for today? I you know I have a portfolio as it exists today. I’ve spent my entire life you know more or less in growth mode. How do I go about really either changing or optimizing that portfolio not only for meeting the spending needs that and goals that I want to have but how do I do it in a tax efficient way that’s going to pay attention to all those different levers that are going to you know impact my life. So start asking those questions today. That’s the very you know beginning step one of laying out the plan is getting out in front you know of the different changes to your finances. You’re going to have you know you’re going to have to deal with changing market returns. You’re going to have to deal with changing tax brackets. So it’s getting the foresight and the plan in place to be able to deal with whatever is going to come down the pipeline. You know we know life is going to come at us. It’s going to change. You know we never know what headlines or news events are going to happen next, but we need to have a plan in place that is going to be able to weather any storm and react and be flexible in the way that we need it to so that we never have to change what our ideal you know future in retirement looks like. So one of the other big items that is a major conversation of successful retirees and something that’s really changed you know I believe in the last decade or two decades and that’s giving back. And not necessarily giving back and giving to charity, but giving you know to your family, to the people you care about in your life. I think historically you know giving has was more so at the end of the plan says “Okay, I’m going to do whatever I want. I’m going to spend whatever I want. Whatever’s left over, we’ll figure that out later.” You know that’s for the estate plan to deal with. The mentality I think has really changed a lot and it’s kind of changed to a what can I be doing in my lifetime? We use the term giving with a warm hand which is not my favorite term but giving with a warm hand so that you can actually see and feel ultimately the benefits of the giving and the work and the charity that you are doing today. And we talk about this you know this big change and that shift because one I think people you know I like to think people are getting better and more benevolent, but two there’s a lot more opportunities and more ways to do it than ever before. People are learning that there’s ways to incorporate giving and giving you charity into a plan and make it work and still be able to do all the things you want to do, but also be able to do the things that are going to impact your legacy and impact what you’re doing for others. So you know talking about giving during your lifetime, you know there’s different things you can look at with doing you know annual exclusion gifts to friends and family you know which is a great tax-free way to get you know money out of your estate potentially if you don’t need it. There’s different tax advantages of giving certain areas of your portfolio, right? So that’s a certain you know more complex planning topic is to take a look at your portfolio and say “Hey, what makes the most sense for me to give away?” And then finally you know when we’re talking about the estate plan and what is left over, there’s ideal assets to pass on to your family and to other people you know from a tax perspective there are good and not saying that there’s any such thing as bad inheritance but there is better you know inheritance vehicles out there than just not taking a look and paying attention to your plan. Sometimes there’s unintended tax consequences for your beneficiaries. So all these things you know that we’re talking about there’s just a lot more options and a lot more knowledge and resources than ever before to help you guys accomplish giving back and accomplishing like we said what you want to do with your money, what you want to do to really impact your legacy and what’s left over. Different options out there. One of my favorites is the donor adise fund. You may have seen the acronym DAFF out there, donor adise fund. That’s a great tool that is very commonplace offered on most custodial platforms. It’s a charitable investment, but what it allows you to do is you can donate appreciated stock to that donor adise fund. You can take the tax advantage and the tax benefit of donating those appreciated securities in the year that you need it. You get that tax benefit you know at that time, but it can stay in the donor adise fund and then you can give it out. One you can keep it invested and two you can give it out to various charities at whatever time you want. Sometimes it makes sense for to explore private family foundation gives you a little more control and a little more specific causes, and then there’s different things out there like charitable giving annuities and charitable remainder trusts that can be extremely beneficial and lucrative and in you know planning for your estate and managing that future potential estate tax. So there’s a lot of different ways and functions out there, but like I said, the biggest takeaway and I think the biggest thing that successful retirees are doing is taking a look at where their buckets are today, what their asset mixes look like, and saying “Okay, if I know I want to meet these charitable goals, here’s where I want to look from first. Here’s the most optimal thing to give. Here is the most optimal thing to keep and use for you know my upcoming expenses.” So taking a look at all those different resources and using them to your advantage to again instill the legacy and you know really feel the benefit of giving back and making use of you know that amazing you know wealth that you’ve built up you know and earned your entire life. Now you can give back and pay it forward if you want to. So next a little more you know on the emotional side you know my personal favorite is adapting to change. This is a huge one. You know this is really where in the financial advisory world, we say this is a little more on the therapy side where the numbers are kind of removed and we’re talking a little more about emotions and mentality. So being adaptive to change personally is one of the most important things you can do because this is going to be a major as I’m sure you know if you’re coming up on retirement, if you just maybe you’re in that first year, this is a major change. This is an absolute light switch flip for a lot of people. Like I said for my dad, he was 37 years with UPS and all of a sudden you know tomorrow he or you know on the day he retired, the next day he didn’t have to wake up at 6:00 a.m. Actually he did. Really funny story. He woke up at 6:00 a.m. because it happened to be my first day of work, so I met him downstairs. He’s in his pajamas. I’m in my suit and he goes looks at me and he says “Oh, the tables have turned. Baton’s yours now.” And you know that was the start of my career. The end of his great great memory for me. But no, I think it’s about being able to adapt to change and be positive about it. You know there’s some different exercises out there that I saw. So for example, take just a brief second. Let’s dial this back. So think back as we were talking about where do you want to be in 10 years? Just take a quick second. If you woke up 10 years from now, say you were unhappy, you didn’t feel good, kind of didn’t know what your purpose was, what you were doing, didn’t have a lot of structure. If you woke up 10 years from now and say that’s the picture you have. You’re unhappy. Maybe you don’t feel great. You’re not really sure what you’re going to do with the rest of the day. If you had the opportunity, if that person had the opportunity to look back and talk to yourself sitting right here today, what would you tell yourself to do? Right? That’s the position you’re in is thinking about where you’re sitting today. Not as you know a challenge, but really as an opportunity, like we said, to chase and be that man. Going back to McConnA, be that man you want to be and become your hero in 10 years. And that really all starts with mentality. It’s not it doesn’t start with planning. It starts with you know what’s going on between your ears. You know choose to be optimistic. It feels better from the Daly Lama. You know the biggest thing is the biggest thing to take away is retirement is a great opportunity. It’s a very big challenge, not only from a financial aspect, but also from a mental and emotional standpoint. Highly optimistic people are, as we said, everything ties in and everything has an effect on a different area of the plan. Highly optimistic people tend to fare a lot better. They end up saving a lot more money and just have an overall better experience in retirement, often have a lot better health. You know we all know that that mentality and emotions tied directly into your health. So it’s important to take a second and understand you know this is a big change. How do I want to approach it? How do I want to approach this and get on the same page again with my spouse or with my partner? Where do I want to start? How do we how do I even start to think about you know being optimistic and more or less starting over on a new chapter? You know we always talk about some great little tidbits. Try journaling you know try having those conversations with yourself, I think, is a better way to put that, to get an idea of really what you want to start looking at and start to achieve, because ultimately at the end of the day, it it’s going to flow into everything else. It’s going to flow into better health for you. You’re going to end up saving more money, you’re going to have a better overall experience. And it all starts with again your first decision and choice for what you want to be doing in retirement. And that ties into finding your passion, right? This is kind of the last thing that we’ll touch on. Finding your passion in retirement. As we said there’s a huge light switch that goes off. You spend your entire time working. You’re maybe at the pinnacle of your career, pinnacle of your importance. And all of a sudden, and you know again I don’t mean that, but in terms of importance, but all of a sudden you have this career change and you’re standing there and saying “Well, where’s my purpose now? What am I going to apply myself to and work on today? How do I fulfill myself as I felt you know fulfilled in the office and in my career?” So again kind of using my dad as the example here. This is a major part of the conversation is what does that timeline look like? Is it going to be a clean cut? Am I emotionally ready for that? That’s one of the things we talk about as advisers all the time. It’s not necessarily just being financially prepared for retirement. You have to be emotionally and mentally ready for it as well. So having those conversations, getting out in front of that, it’s important to do and it’s important to recognize that it is not going to be a clean transition in most cases. There are absolutely some people out there that are like, I’ve been waiting for this day my entire life. Let’s go pay to work. On to the next thing. Let’s go play golf every single day. But for I think for most people, there is a transition period. And that’s exactly what my dad found was there is an absolute transition period. There is such a thing as too much golf. It’s not uncommon for retirees to feel lost and unsure of what to do in those first few years, but the really successful ones, the ones that really take advantage of it and get out in front of it is understanding you know they tell themselves that there is no guidebook and figuring out is okay. In fact, in a lot of cases, we’ve seen a good amount of people end up going back to work in some capacity, not necessarily back to the same career, but maybe doing you know consulting or doing some other you know options or working with old friends, things like that. Oftent times there’s this weird transition period where you try something new, you try to figure out you know how much of an impact that has on the rest of your life, and ultimately you know trying to balance that is this the kind of work life balance I wanted and what I expected in retirement. So figuring out is okay and I think it’s important to ask those questions. What does your ideal day look like? What do you want to spend your time doing? How much time do you want to spend how much time you want to spend with your immediate family? I bring this one up as a joke because we had a colleague one time had a great story that they were talking to a fresh retiree. He was about 6 months in. And he was talking to the couple and same same instance the husband had been out of the you know working in the office every single day in the last 30 years and the wife says you know I married him for better or for worse but I don’t know if I married him for lunch every single day so you know had a good laugh about that but it begs the important question of what do we want to spend our time doing are we aligned on where we’re going to spend our time and who we’re going to be spending it with. So asking those questions, what other hobbies do we want to incorporate? And how does this all fit into my current financial plan and where I’m trying to go? You know these are the important things to start off with. So finding a sense I’m going to say refinding a sense of purpose, not finding a sense of purpose, refinding a sense of purpose. You know in those different areas, like we said, after work, you can experience more or less a loss of identity. You have you spent your entire career building up and hitting those high achievements and you’ve done so well to get to the point of retirement and then all of a sudden you have to almost rework everything. So some of the different ways to refine that sense of purpose are to one you can go out and explore either if you were interested in doing a different career taking the opportunity and say hey you’re going to go do what you want not because you have to do it because you want to do it. Give back, share your wisdom. A lot of retirees end up doing some sort of teaching or volunteering, giving back and helping that next generation. You know maybe you’re, as we said before, maybe you’re not necessarily charitably inclined, but you can give it through time. I think that’s a phenomenal extra way to look at it. Advancing in new hobbies, bringing in and having those conversations on what is what does ideal travel and extracurriculars look like in retirement. You know you can get into pickle ball. We already mentioned golf, although I will say be careful with the pickle ball. I’ve heard it has spiked health care costs because people are getting a lot of injuries and overestimating themselves which again going back to those healthcare conversations guys. But you know it’s all about exploring things and I think it’s about having an open mind. I had a friend tell me the other day as as you know we’re getting older and a lot of us are starting to explore new things and trying out new hobbies. You know it’s not necessarily the old sports we used to play in high school or college. Why is it so hard to try new things? And I think ultimately it’s because people have a pretty big fear of failure. Once you get good at something, once you have that, you know great career and you’re top dog and you’re doing everything right, it’s difficult to turn the page and say “I’m a little nervous about trying something new. I’m nervous about failing.” Again that goes back to mentality. You have to be okay with failing. You have to be okay with working through it and figuring it out. So it’s important to have that right you know I think outlook, having the right conversations going into it, and really finding that sense you know again refinding that sense of purpose and becoming the person you want to be. So those are all you know really the key things, guys. The big takeaway here you know if you don’t take away anything else from today, I urge you to explore or you know one I urge you to go listen to Matthew McConna’s acceptance speech. I think it’s phenomenal, but the biggest thing is start having those conversations today. The biggest thing you know I always talk about is getting out in front. The more you can plan ahead and get out in front of these conversations in front of these decisions the more flexibility you are going to have and more flexibility is the ultimate thing you can have in retirement. You want to have you know the choice to be able to do what you want to do when you want to do it and not have to worry about the broader plan you know behind the scenes or worry about the changing you know market returns that we’re going to experience every single year. You want to have those the core tenants in place so you can focus on what you want to focus on you know with your time. So those are the key things, guys. You know I hope you hope you found everything interesting. We’re going to take this time and do a few questions from the audience today as you guys have put them into this chat, so we’re going to take a look at a few questions. We’ll answer as many as we can. If we don’t have you know time for everything you will also have the option to put some specific questions into the chat that you’re going to see pop up you know in the chat in the webinar, and if anything’s not answered, we’re going to have some time after for scheduling a complimentary 15-minute call if you want to have a more in-depth conversation and explore some of these topics a little more with an adviser here at Savant. So couple questions. Let’s start off with guys. I’m going to take a look. So question one, how do I know if I have enough saved for retirement? So we did touch on this a little bit, but I think this is a great opportunity to outline what where we start when it comes to the financial piece of all of this to outline I think the key equation. The biggest thing is understanding what are your needs and what are your goals going to be in retirement. What is retirement spending look like for you? Is it drastically different than what you were spending you know when you were working? What are those different big lofty goals and kind of where do you anticipate that ultimate expense looking like for understanding where if you don’t know what you’re currently spending and kind of what you might want to be spending a really easy exercise actually is to take a look how much you made last year if you’re still working that is. Take a look at what you made last year back out you know what was taken out for taxes back out what you added to savings or for portfolio IO you know to your portfolio or to your bank accounts, back those out. And if it didn’t go to any one of those, chances are you probably spend it. So you know that gives you a decent idea back the napkin math here you know in terms of what you can you know spend from your portfolio. And then on top of that you know once you have that spending outlined, you can say “Okay, I know what I want to be spending or I know what I think I want to be spending and I know what income sources I have. I know that I’m going to have x amount coming in from a pension. I know I’m going to have x amount coming in from social security. So I’m going to back those off of what I’m spending. The remainder of that is going to be the gap. And that gap needs to be filled from your portfolio, from your liquid assets or investments.” And so kind of backing into that equation and saying “Do I have enough say for retirement?” It’s understanding where that gap is, what that amount looks like, and then saying “Okay, well, I want to be able to sustainably fill that gap.” You know if I’m in retirement and want to be retired for 20, 30 years, do I have enough to sustainably spend from that portfolio to fill that spending gap for the next 20 years? How do I need to look at my portfolio in order to invest and achieve a certain rate of return to best fill that gap knowing that I’m going to be spending from it along the way. So I think that’s a great place to start. You know there’s a lot of other things that are involved I think in that question. Have I saved enough for retirement? But that’s a great starting place and a good you know great conversation piece to kick off the rest and let it envelop. So that was a good one. Question two, should your gifting and charitable strategy change as you get older? This is a great question and absolutely is the key takeaway. We didn’t get to dive into this too much in the charitable gifting slide, so I appreciate somebody asking this. It absolutely does. We touched on this a little bit knowing that different areas of our portfolio are more optimal for giving and that does depend on what point you know you’re at in your life. I’m going to give you a quick example you know just to dive into this a little bit but for example charitable gifting almost is never advantageous to do purely from cash when it makes sense to do so. If you have appreciated securities where say you have a very high unrealized gain that you might potentially pay taxes on should you want to you know sell that position and then give those cash proceeds to charity. In a lot of cases you can give that appreciated stock directly. And the cool thing about that is that the charity, not only are you removing that gain from your portfolio and your potential tax bill, the charity doesn’t pay any taxes on that gain at all. They receive everything taxfree. So it’s a win-win situation, but you know as I’m saying, this depends on your timeline. Maybe that doesn’t necessarily make sense to do so because maybe you’re in your later 70s and you have required minimum distributions from your IRA account. In your IRA required minimum distributions that happen right now at 73 and it’s you know it gets pushed back to 75 and 2033 I believe those RMDs are taxable income that is forced out of that IRA account or 401k account you know interchangeable there. Those are taxable income that is forced to come out if you’re charitably inclined and you’re looking for the best sources to give from your portfolio you can also take advantage of actually at age 70 and a half doesn’t even have to wait until 73 but you can take advantage to what’s called qualified charitable distributions from your IRA. So you can do direct you know charity will receive a check right from your your IRA balance essentially and you’re removing that from a potential ordinary income tax burden on you down the road if you don’t need that money. So just a quick example of the comparison of where you can save taxes and where it might make sense to save even a little bit more you know in taxes depending on where you’re giving it from. So that was a great question, and again I think it’s important to understand your timeline. How much can you give away? You know is another great conversation to have in terms of your broader planning and where does it make sense to give from all the things you really need to be looking at, and much better to get ahead of those. Finally good question here. When is the right time to start working with an adviser? Love this question and you know if you haven’t taken a look at the theme of today I think the theme is time is the greatest asset we have. So really quick answer to that question is that there is no right or wrong time to start working with an adviser. I think working with an adviser and laying out your plan the sooner you can do it the better because the more planning you can get ahead of like we said the more flexibility and more choice you’re going to have down the road. So you know when is the right time working the more time you can give yourself the more choices and the better foresight you can have the better off your long-term plan is going to be. One of the key examples I always use with this and why I’m such a big you know proponent or fan I guess of taking advantage of time I always use the 1 in60 rule as an example of every time I talk about you know as we talked about with healthcare and investing the little changes that we can make. I use the 160 rule as an example of why time is so important and why the little changes that we can make today are so key and pivotal. So the one and 60 rule for anybody that hasn’t heard of it is what it means and I was taught this you know my granddad had had some you know ties in the aviation industry and so he taught me this rule when I was real young but what it means is that one in 60 for every one degree off a plane’s initial heading is for every 60 mi traveled you’re going to end up one mile away from your intended destination. So not a big deal over 60 mi. I mean 1 mi away is a pretty long time, but just think about that in terms of everything else. Little decisions, even one degree off. Extrapolate that over a long period of time, you can end up in a drastically different you know area whether for better or for worse. So when talking about you know taking the time to work with an adviser or taking the time to lay these plans out ahead of time, you know even the little things you can do, you know little things, little decisions, little changes you can make with your portfolio, your spending, your saving, all those things, time, value, money, compounding you know year after year, it’s all going to add up. And so I always encourage people to take a look. Time is going to be your greatest ally. There’s never you know too soon to start working and start laying it out. So those are some great questions, guys. I know we’re running a little bit tight on time, so I’m going to pause right there, and you know I’m going to pause right there. If we didn’t get to your question, I know there are some availability in the chat, if you want to have your question or if your question wasn’t answered and you want to have a further discussion, please reach out. Use the link that’s in the chat and you can schedule a complimentary 15-minute call with somebody on our team. And we’d love to discuss those questions, you know oneonone, dive deeper into it and address your individual needs, so yeah, just follow the link that’s in the chat and you can you know go ahead and schedule now. And you know finally, I just want to thank everybody, you know for being here today, you know I know we talked a lot about some highle stuff, some interesting stuff and key takeaway key takeaways from successful retirees, but like we said in the beginning, the biggest thing to take away is start having those conversations today and remember that you know that one key takeaway from Matthew McConnA, hey, who do you want to be in 10 years? Even who do you want to be next year, 5 years, 10 years, it doesn’t necessarily have to be 10 years. Create your own timeline, but understand the person you want to be, the life that you want to have, and understand that you have to start making those decisions, start making those plans today if you want to meet that goal and become your hero. So thanks for everybody, you know for being here today, you know hope you hope you guys have a great rest of the day. Hope you guys if you enjoyed this webinar, visit savantwealth.com/guides and download our complimentary guide books, checklists, and other useful financial resources.