Kevin Gaines (00:00):

People often ask us, “Do I have enough to retire?” Or maybe they say, “When can I retire?” And the reality is it’s the same question to which we give the same answer: “I don’t know.” But then the reply is, “Well, you’re these great financial advisors, why don’t you know?”

Stephanie McCullough (00:19):

I’m not sure they say, “great” to be clear.

Kevin Gaines (00:23):

Allow my ego this opportunity, please.

Kevin Gaines (00:28):

The reason we don’t know is because the question being asked is being asked before other questions that should be answered first and that’s what we’re talking about today, those more important questions.

[Music Playing]

Stephanie McCullough (00:49):

Hey, dear listeners, we need to let you know that Kevin and Stephanie offer investment advice through Private Advisor Group, which is a federally registered investment advisor. The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations to any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you. Consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision. Now, let’s get on with the show.

Stephanie McCullough (01:24):

This is Take Back Retirement, the show that’s redefining retirement for women. Retirement is an old-fashioned cultural concept. We want to reclaim the word so you can make it your own. I’m Stephanie McCullough, financial planner and founder of Sofia Financial, where our mission is to reduce women’s money stress and empower them to make wise holistic decisions so they can get back to living their best lives.

Kevin Gaines is my longtime colleague with deep knowledge in the technical stuff: investments, taxes, retirement plan rules. He’s a little bit nerdy and quantitative, I’m a little bit touchy-feely and qualitative. Together, through conversations and interviews, we aim to give you the information and motivation you need to move forward with confidence. We’re so glad you’re here.

Stephanie McCullough (02:12):

Coming to you semi-live from the beautiful Westlakes Office Park in suburban Philadelphia this is Take Back Retirement with Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines of Sofia Financial and American Financial Management Group. Say hello, Kevin.

Kevin Gaines (02:24):

Hello, Kevin.

Stephanie McCullough (02:26):

So, yeah, people can get really frustrated with us because they kind of want a simple answer of, “Well, is this enough?” And even mathematically, you can’t answer that question first because we need to know things like, well, how much do you need to spend every year? And what do you have coming from pension or social security? But that’s all still putting the cart before the horse, right?

Kevin Gaines (02:53):

Yeah, it really is. I mean, because here it is, real simple: what are you doing in retirement? Are you going to a cabin and just going to sit on the front porch and whittle the rest of your life? Or are you going to be globetrotting doing world tours every year?

Kevin Gaines (03:12):

That’s a big difference in how you’re going to be spending your retirement money and when. So, how do we answer a generic question as, “Do I have enough to retire?” It depends on a lot of other things.

Stephanie McCullough (03:27):

And like anything with money, we would encourage you to look a little bit deeper before you get to the money part. Money’s just a tool, the key is to first understand what jobs your money has, what jobs are you giving to this money.

Stephanie McCullough (03:43):

And we believe that a simpler financial life, a less fraught financial life is one where you align your dollars with what’s most important to you, with the life you want to lead, with your values. So, when we’re talking about retirement, it’s those types of things that we’re trying to get at.

Stephanie McCullough (04:02):

So, Kevin, you recently came up with a series of five questions that you would encourage people to ask themselves, I guess, before you get to the, “Do I have enough?”

Kevin Gaines (04:14):

Yes, because these questions are going to get you closer to being able to answer, “Do I have enough?” So, the five questions we came up with are: why are you retiring? What do you want to do? Who are you retiring for? Where do you want to do this? And the scary one, how can it change?

Stephanie McCullough (04:44):

Alright. So, let’s go through them one by one: why are you retiring?

Stephanie McCullough (04:47):

So, that might seem like a stupid question, silly question, obvious question. People kind of just assume, “Well, I’m getting to 65, aren’t I supposed to retire?” Or there might be other more obvious things in your own life, but it’s worth spending a little time. Kevin, how would you approach this question?

Kevin Gaines (05:09):

Well, and I think you hit on the first part Stephanie, which is, it’s not because I’m 65 necessarily. You want to retire because you want to do something else. If there isn’t necessarily a why, the why may be, “I don’t want to retire, I want to keep working, I really like what I do.”

Kevin Gaines (05:33):

And that’s a perfectly good answer, as is – and I’m picturing the answer to this question or answers to this question, being very fuzzy or touchy feely.

Stephanie McCullough (05:49):

The stuff you don’t like so much.

Kevin Gaines (05:51):

The stuff I don’t touch on so much.

Stephanie McCullough (05:52):

You want spreadsheets.

Kevin Gaines (05:53):

But it’s real. But I think it’s important.

Stephanie McCullough (05:55):

Smooshy, I say.

Kevin Gaines (05:56):

Yes. The answer could be, “I want to try new things, or I want to do the things we sacrificed as we were raising our family and saving and raising the kids,” or basically the stuff you put on hold while you were doing whatever you were doing in your 20s, 30s, 40s, so on.

Kevin Gaines (06:22):

And we recently had a conversation – talking to the client, my client, and she said, “I just want to make the world a better place than where I found it.” Okay, perfectly good. Is that somewhat of a cliche answer? Yes. Is there anything wrong with that answer? Abso-freaking-lutely not.

Stephanie McCullough (06:44):

Right. That can take many different forms.

Kevin Gaines (06:47):

Absolutely.

Stephanie McCullough (06:48):

Most of the people we work with want to still be engaged, contributing, learning, doing something fulfilling as opposed to fiddling on the porch whittling. What’s the last time you saw someone whittling? Anyway, so that’s kind of the-

Kevin Gaines (07:03):

You don’t come by my house very often.

Stephanie McCullough (07:05):

That’s often the, “What are you retiring to?” But I think it’s also okay for the driving desire to be, “What are you retiring from?” I want to put aside this 80-hour work week, I want to put aside the stress of this. I want to put aside the politics and the office.

Stephanie McCullough (07:22):

Whatever it is you want to leave from, that’s fine too. I think having an end, that starts the new beginning is also perfectly valid.

Kevin Gaines (07:34):

It also helps to have this idea, keeping it as nebulous as possible or as fuzzy as possible, because you may have concrete ideas and if they fall through, having that why is going to make it easier for you to pivot.

Kevin Gaines (07:50):

For example, same client, her actual goal was, “I want to do mission work. Now that I have all this time, I want to go on all these church trips to go to these different places and help these communities.” Well, that was 2019. Guess what she wasn’t doing in 2020?

Stephanie McCullough (08:09):

Traveling.

Kevin Gaines (08:10):

Going on mission trips, exactly. But talking through, the why was making the world a better place than how I found it. Now, it’s like, “Oh, so maybe I can pivot over to doing stuff.” Well, definitely remotely, but it kind of keeps you on that same track without the risk of spiraling, if you will.

Stephanie McCullough (08:34):

Well, it’s like having a value driving you or a desired feeling as opposed to a material object or a thing that you’re striving for. Like I want to feel connected and engaged with my community. Oh, there’s lots of different ways to do that and lots of different price points, whether you are giving up your own money or maybe you’re contributing and working and making some money, there’s lots of different ways to do that. So, I like that point.

Kevin Gaines (08:59):

So, I’ll leave with this final analogy, a reference, which will show my age a little bit. Stephanie, do you remember the sitcom, Alice from back in the 70s?

Stephanie McCullough (09:10):

Yes.

Kevin Gaines (09:11):

I wasn’t necessarily a huge fan of the show. I mean, I remember we watched it, but I couldn’t tell you much beyond “Kiss my Grits” about the show. But for whatever reason, one episode sticks in my mind. If you remember, Mel owned the diner that Alice and the other waitresses worked at.

Kevin Gaines (09:33):

Well, there’s one episode in which some big money guy comes in and buys the diner from him. And Mel’s all excited about it because now he’s going to get to do all the things he was too busy to do running the diner.

Kevin Gaines (09:48):

He was going to get to go to the horse track, he was going to get to stay up all night playing poker. And as the episode goes on-

Stephanie McCullough (09:55):

This was a 70s show, people

Kevin Gaines (09:57):

It was the ‘70s show, yeah, absolutely. So, as the show goes on, the new owner’s crap or whatever, and the waitresses want Mel to come back, but they’re worried Mel doesn’t want to sell or doesn’t want to buy the diner back, and then at the end, he does.

Kevin Gaines (10:12):

But his reasoning was because, “When I was working, going to the track, playing poker was an escape from the diner, I don’t want to do that full-time all day, every day.” So, I think, Mel didn’t have a why, and that led him to having at least a rough start to his first attempt at retirement.

Stephanie McCullough (10:38):

Well, and that leads us to your second question, which is: what do you want to do? How do you want to spend your time? For most of us work takes up a lot of time. And even if you are not going, having a cliff retirement, meaning you’re going from full-time to nothing, maybe you’re going to seasonal, maybe you’re going to part-time – there’s still some time freed up. So, what do you want to do with that time?

Stephanie McCullough (11:01):

I’m telling you, I just had this conversation with a couple last week, and the husband was like, “I have no problem. I’ve got a list, I have no problem thinking about what I’m going to do.” And the wife was like, “Huh, I don’t know how I would fill basically 60 hours a week of time.”

Kevin Gaines (11:19):

It’s not easy. It’s actually a little intimidating when you really start thinking about it. It’s easier to think about, say in your 40s when you can’t do anything about it. It’s like, “Oh yeah, there’s this, there’s that.” But as you’re entering that period, it’s like, “I got to fill all these hours, what am I going to do?”

Kevin Gaines (11:41):

I mean, and the what you want to do could be a Hollywood movie. Think Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in The Bucket List. Now, that was a little darker because they had terminal cancer diagnosis, so they’re trying to do all these things before they die.

Kevin Gaines (11:59):

But our retirement is pretty much the same thing because we’re talking about maybe the stuff you didn’t get to do before that you want to do now.

Stephanie McCullough (12:11):

But also, to the point about the movie, and they didn’t have a lot of time – we don’t know how much time we’re going to have, of course. But also, it’s probably a safer bet that we’ll be healthier in our 60s than we will in our 80s, hopefully 70s are still super healthy.

Stephanie McCullough (12:32):

So, there’s this concept of time bucketing. So, not just bucket list, but like a time bucket. So, if you want to do some big hike, or you want to do the Camino in Spain, or you want to climb a mountain, maybe that’s closer to mid-60s than late 80s.

Stephanie McCullough (12:50):

So, you can start to put kind of timeframes around these things. And maybe having a relaxing vacation by the seaside and taking up watercolor, that can be done over a longer range of time. So, not just the what do you want to do, but when might make the most sense to do it.

Stephanie McCullough (13:09):

If it’s something with family, thinking about family ages and when it’s going to work for them, or while somebody’s still in college and has the summer off, as opposed to when they get a full-time job and only have two weeks’ vacation. Thinking about those things, it’s worthwhile.

Stephanie McCullough (13:22):

Of course, as Kevin and I always say, we’re making guesses. We’re guessing, we don’t know exactly how everything’s going to pan out. You don’t want to come up with an itinerary, like a tour group for every single day of your retirement. That’s not what we’re talking about. But starting to put some thoughts and some guesses down is worthwhile.

Kevin Gaines (13:44):

Now the third question, who are you doing this for? And I know you like this question, Stephanie. But when we were first discussing this, to me, this sounds, it’s like you’re doing it for yourself, of course. But then we started thinking about it and this can be a very interesting question.

Kevin Gaines (14:10):

Because real simple, think about it; I’m retiring because I want to spend time with my grandkids. Well, if they live nearby and they’re four or five-years-old, okay, fine. But what are you going to do when they’re in middle school or high school?

Kevin Gaines (14:29):

They’re going to be hanging out with their friends and everything. Your who may even change. So, where does that leave you in your retirement dreams?

Kevin Gaines (14:40):

And even more interesting, I have another client, he’s 59 and he retired. He’s single, no kids. So, the who, you would assume, is going to be, he just wants to go out and party. And he does, don’t get me wrong, but the true who in this situation was his parents, they’re getting older.

Kevin Gaines (15:10):

And he said, “Listen, I have the money saved, we’ve done a great job of planning for all of this. I want to take advantage of being able to do this stuff with my parents while they still can. Yes, I’m going to be retired so I can help them with the doctor’s appointments and be there to help them around the house, but I also want to be able to take trips to go see their siblings or I think they had four or five states left that they had never visited.” They wanted to do the 50, they wanted to see all the 50 states.

Kevin Gaines (15:49):

So, two weeks after he retires, that’s what they did. So, the who, knowing that it’s not going to be his entire retirement, but that who was very important. So, that generated the idea of not just what I’m going to do in my retirement, but when I’m going to retire.

Stephanie McCullough (16:08):

And let’s think about it this way too, I mean, I think for a lot of people, the hesitation on retiring is the financial one. Especially maybe, at least, we’re socialized to believe that that’s the man’s role, to be the breadwinner, to bring home the dollars, and that’s the big contribution to the household.

Stephanie McCullough (16:28):

But maybe your family would like to see more of you, and spend more time with you as opposed to just seeing the dollars. So, it’s an interesting thing to think about the who and the time together can make things perhaps a little bit more clear for you. And it’s also perfectly fine if the who is yourself.

Kevin Gaines (16:57):

Absolutely, absolutely. There’s nothing wrong with that. But that’s going to help you understand that the who can change whether because people, like we were referencing earlier, the grandkids get older.

Stephanie McCullough (17:13):

Well, and we’ve been so far this episode painting a rosy picture about retirement being by choice. Retirement, as we know, is not always by choice. Whether the company decides to part ways with you or there’s just other demands.

Stephanie McCullough (17:29):

We know people who have had to step back from their main careers to step into a caregiving role for parents, for family members, for kids – doesn’t matter, it could be anyone. So, the who might be maybe not exactly the timing and way of your choice.

Stephanie McCullough (17:51):

And it’s still, I think, a valuable thing to think about, focus on. Think about that relationship, thinking about what you’re trying to … who you want to be, how you want to show up in that situation.

Kevin Gaines (18:04):

I mean, another client, him and his wife moved down to the Jersey Shore, he retired, and their retirement was going to be just quietly living on the shore. They have each other, they were going to do whatever they’re going to do.

Kevin Gaines (18:19):

Unfortunately, she dies during COVID. So, now, his who has changed. It’s not “us,” it’s now me. And that led to changes such as living on the Jersey Shore in the wintertime, not a really fun place.

Stephanie McCullough (18:35):

Isolating.

Kevin Gaines (18:37):

It really is. There’s there much going on. Jersey gets cold in the wintertime. Sorry, it does. So, all of a sudden, now, he’s changed his plans. He moves closer to Philly and happy ending is he moves into a 55 plus community and he’s having the time of his life, but the who changed. So, all of these other things changed. Nothing we’re talking about is written in stone here.

Stephanie McCullough (19:05):

Yeah, exactly. And that brings us to question four because it ties into that most recent story you just said, the where – where do you want to do this? And you know, of course all of these things are intertwined, but where not only in terms of geography, but where in terms of the living situation, right, Kevin?

Kevin Gaines (19:27):

Yeah. Again, just go back to the last story. All of a sudden, living in just random shore house, now you’re in a 55 plus community, two hours to the west. We had an earlier podcast in which we had real retirement story.

Kevin Gaines (19:44):

And she’s talking about how they got inspired by their daughter because she took a gap year to go explore things. They say, “Hey, we don’t know where necessarily where we want to live. Let’s treat it like a series of gap years and just go to random places across the country, see what we like. Maybe we want to keep moving, maybe we fall in love with something.”

Stephanie McCullough (20:08):

Right. They were experimenting with their where.

Kevin Gaines (20:11):

That’s fantastic.

Stephanie McCullough (20:12):

You don’t have to have decisive answers on these things. Like experimentation, this is the time that you can do it.

Kevin Gaines (20:21):

I mean, my parents are a great example of this as well. And as much as they knew when they retired, they wanted to move back to Cincinnati, where both of them were from originally and extended family.

Kevin Gaines (20:32):

Well, Cincinnati sits on the corner of three states. They could have moved to Ohio, Indiana, or Kentucky and still be in the Cincinnati area. What was interesting is they chose Kentucky because dad has a federal pension. He retired from the government, and Kentucky does not tax federal pensions.

Kevin Gaines (20:57):

So, all of a sudden, their where got more specific because of other factors that you don’t necessarily think of when you say, “Hey, I want to go live here or live in this type of structure.”

Stephanie McCullough (21:12):

Right, right. So, that does bring another financial aspect back in.

Kevin Gaines (21:16):

I mean, and this gets to something that you touched on earlier, Stephanie, which is these five questions are not a linear process. You don’t answer one, then the next, then the next, the next. This is, you’re going to be jumping all around as you’re thinking through these things.

Stephanie McCullough (21:32):

They’re all intertwined.

Kevin Gaines (21:34):

Yeah, use the analogy of looking at a statue. If you go to a museum and you know, “Hey, here’s this great sculpture.” Well, you don’t look at it from just one angle and normally, you don’t walk around it just once.

Kevin Gaines (21:49):

As you’re walking around, you may notice something, so you take a couple steps back to catch a different angle. And you’re looking at it from all these different perspectives in different orders, trying to appreciate the whole thing. I think that’s a pretty good analogy to describe what this process is.

Stephanie McCullough (22:07):

Yeah. Well, and then another factor in the where, could be, remember our friend down in North Carolina that you visited not too long ago. They’re rethinking their where? Can you explain that? Because that’s a big issue as we get older.

Kevin Gaines (22:23):

So, they moved to the outer banks, they spent every vacation, they looked further west in North Carolina. So, they always went to the outer banks to go to the shore and that’s where they spent their family vacations, and they really liked the place.

Stephanie McCullough (22:39):

Down there, it’s called the beach, up here it’s called the shore.

Kevin Gaines (22:42):

Yeah. And where they settled and where they always had vacation was Ocracoke Island, which is on the southern end of the outer banks. Very nice island. I love going to visit them because it’s a really nice place.

Kevin Gaines (22:58):

It’s also a very quiet and versed and less touristy, shall we say, in the rest of the outer banks. But that also means there’s less things on this island.

Stephanie McCullough (23:12):

Less infrastructure.

Kevin Gaines (23:14):

Less infrastructure, specifically, medical care. On the island, they have an EMT, that’s the full-time medical facility there or resident there. I mean, they don’t necessarily have a facility. If you had an emergency, you have to get airlifted. You have to get on a helicopter and that’s still almost an hour trip.

Stephanie McCullough (23:39):

Ouch. In a helicopter, which ain’t cheap.

Kevin Gaines (23:43):

Assuming you don’t have horrible weather, which the outer banks is known for some violent storms at times, shall we say. So, now, they’re aware of this and they’re saying, “Yeah, we probably still have a good 10 years here, but at some point, we’re going to have to move back to the mainland.” You know, it is what it is.

Stephanie McCullough (24:09):

And I think in each of these five, we’ve highlighted how things can change. And that’s important to keep in mind; our flexibility, our kind of mindset of being open to things adjusting.

Stephanie McCullough (24:24):

I have a client who lived in a beautiful large home in the suburbs, and she downsized to a smaller home, not too far away, still close to her friends and community and networks and medical providers, all of that.

Stephanie McCullough (24:42):

And then she wasn’t there too terribly long when she visited a few friends who lived in a continuing care retirement community that was super vibrant and active. And she was thinking, she’s widowed, so she’s on her own, no adult, children live far away across the country.

Stephanie McCullough (24:59):

She thought, “Oh gosh, this place is lovely, and there’s a lot of fun things going on. And perhaps, as I continue to age as we all do, there is no choice in the matter.” Well, as we say, it’s better than the alternative. You know, maybe being there for the social as much as the increased support that she may need in the future.

Stephanie McCullough (25:22):

So, she’s now gotten herself on the waiting list and she’s accepted that she might move out of this lovely home that she had redone. And it’s beautiful now, but she might not be there too long because these things do have a waiting list and kind of she wanted to put her name in in case … if you don’t sign up until you’re 80, it may be too late. So, yeah, things can change.

Kevin Gaines (25:45):

It’s not even necessarily things that change negatively to you, it could just be things change. This is going to sound weird, so there’s the disclaimer. In a really twisted way a lot of us are lucky that we got to experience the COVID pandemic and lockdown.

Kevin Gaines (26:03):

I’m not saying we got lucky to get COVID or anything like that, but what it did was serve as a real-life example for us to appreciate, “Hey, you know, things can change that aren’t impacting me, but it’s still going to directly impacting me, but it’s still going to screw with all of my plans, what I want to do.” I mean, think about it.

Stephanie McCullough (26:28):

What’s possible in the outer world.

Kevin Gaines (26:31):

Yeah. I mean, definitely 2020, very few of us got to do a lot of stuff and many of us were hesitant to do stuff even in ’21 or ’22. So, now all of a sudden, there’s a, call it a two-year window in which all of your — if you’re planning on going into retirement, if you started your retirement at the beginning of 2020, all of a sudden, everything got put on hold for two years.

Kevin Gaines (27:00):

Well, think about it; how are you going to adjust or how are you going to adjust your plans? And what plans can you adjust if the rest of the world is changing on you?

Stephanie McCullough (27:14):

And let’s not imagine that all changes might be negative either. There could be positive change, there could be maybe new little, tiny family members that you want to spend time with. Or maybe your best friend decides she wants to go on a knitting tour of Scotland, and you hadn’t even imagined it, but it sounds amazing, and you want to be able to have the flexibility to go along with that.

Stephanie McCullough (27:40):

Take new opportunities, hopefully putting yourself in a situation to go back to our episode with Carol Merrick, and we’ll link to it in the show notes. She found herself as a single adult after the death of her parents, and she was primary caregiver.

Stephanie McCullough (27:56):

And she thought, “Oh gosh, who’s going to kind of take care of me?” And she changed her whole living situation to be somewhere where there was more community, where there were people of different generations, there was more activity, and she’s loving life, but she did it very intentionally.

Stephanie McCullough (28:11):

So, perhaps, thinking about how you can put yourself somewhere where you’re not isolated, where you are exposed to opportunities for connections and for activities, that could be really enriching.

Kevin Gaines (28:26):

I mean, and even if it is a bad thing that creates this part of the question, you still may have plenty of time to do things. So, my dad, couple years after he retired, wasn’t feeling good, went to the doctor, and he got the long face, carcinoid cancer, both lobes of his liver.

Kevin Gaines (28:48):

So, it’s not like they can go in and cut off one of the lobes, the infected lobe and you’re fine, no, it’s incurable. There is no cure for carcinoid cancer. Good news is, it’s a very slow growing cancer and life expectancy is like 8 to 10 years.

Kevin Gaines (29:06):

In my dad’s case, he almost went 15 before it finally took him. So, my parents had to pivot, something changed. So, all these things they were thinking of doing over the next 20, 25 years, they were saying, “Oh, we got to do it in the next 5 to 10 years.” Now, 5 to 10 years is still a half decent window.

Stephanie McCullough (29:27):

Sure, but it’s still condensed.

Kevin Gaines (29:30):

It’s still condensed. But they had time to think. And then other opportunities again, as weird as this may sound appeared. So, mom really got into this, she was looking at the different experimental treatments and the clinical trials they were doing, and there was a procedure they were testing over in Switzerland.

Kevin Gaines (29:50):

All of a sudden, they decide to take a two-and-a-half-week trip to Switzerland. First half of the trip, they’re touring around, bebopping around Switzerland, checking out the sites. The next week, he’s going through the treatment and everything.

Kevin Gaines (30:07):

And fortunately, it didn’t render him extremely sick or anything. So, they were still even able to in the evenings after the treatments, they were able to some degree, go out and enjoy the town. Quite frankly, I don’t think my parents would’ve gone to Switzerland had dad not gotten sick.

Kevin Gaines (30:24):

There were other things they would’ve done. I’m not going to say they would’ve stayed at home. But yeah, I mean, it’s one of those weird things that you never know where the inspiration or the opportunities are going to come from, good or bad.

Stephanie McCullough (30:38):

And then we did want to highlight one challenge that we see, and I have to say, I would not have expected when I first started this career in financial planning that this would be a challenge. And you might know who you are, as we say this – we see people who are really reluctant to spend their money.

Stephanie McCullough (31:03):

So, they spend their whole career saving for retirement, save for retirement. They put money aside, they invest wisely. They put it in their retirement plan, they have accounts here and there. They’re building up assets, they’re building up their wealth.

Stephanie McCullough (31:13):

And then they get to the point of life that this money is for, and they can’t bring themselves to actually spend it. Maybe they’ll take the income, the earnings from it, the dividends, something like that. But they really don’t want to touch the principle.

Stephanie McCullough (31:33):

What? That’s appalling. Like yeah, but the future you’ve been working so hard for, it’s here, it’s now, but I get it. It’s hard to mentally pivot.

Kevin Gaines (31:44):

It is. I mean, because we’ve spent, what, call it 30, 40, even longer years following one set of behavior which is spend some money, but we got to save, we got to save. So, that’s a hard habit to break.

Kevin Gaines (32:02):

And then there’s always the fear of, “Oh my gosh, what if something really evil happens, and I need this money?” It’s a legitimate fear, we’re not dismissing that at all.

Kevin Gaines (32:16):

But also, keep in mind, what if you just live a regular life, 20 years of retirement, and you do nothing because you’re scared you might need the money, and you don’t enjoy these years that you’ve been saving and sacrificing for. I mean, it’s not go out and blow it all in the first six months. No, we’re not saying that.

Stephanie McCullough (32:49):

No. And we have clients who are more the … we’re having to talk down their spending. But I’d say more, we have more clients when they get to retirement who we’re trying to convince them that they can spend more, that they are not going to run out of money.

Stephanie McCullough (33:06):

Their money is still building up even when they’re retired, like, “Wait, wait, this is what the money is for.” Maybe we’ll have to do a whole another episode on that, because there’s a lot to dig into.

Kevin Gaines (33:20):

Yeah. You’re right Stephanie, I think it’s something that we do need to talk through more, help exploring the idea of striking that happy medium of enjoying the retirement while making sure you don’t get caught short.

Stephanie McCullough (33:37):

Yep. There’s definitely things we can do. But back to this episode, so next time you go to a financial professional and ask, “Am I on track for retirement? Do I have enough to retire? When can I retire?” Do not be surprised if they say, “Well, it depends.”

Stephanie McCullough (33:57):

And then ask you these questions or even better, start to ask yourself these questions today. Even if you’re in your mid-40s, think about these questions because while people say, “I’ll never be able to afford to retire,” okay, that’s fine.

Stephanie McCullough (34:16):

But as we say, the whole reason we named the show Take Back Retirement is we want to redefine it, repurpose the word to be more relevant to today. So, do some of this work. Do it with your life partner if you have one, do it with a trusted friend. Sit down and think through some of these things together.

Kevin Gaines (34:37):

I think Stephanie, that is a great way to end the episode. I think you said it all right there.

Stephanie McCullough (34:41):

Thanks so much for being with us. We’ll talk to you next time. It’s goodbye from me.

Kevin Gaines (34:45):

And it’s goodbye from her.

[Music Playing]

Stephanie McCullough (34:49):

Be sure to subscribe to the show and please share it with your friends, show notes and more information available at takebackretirement.com. Huge thanks for the original music by the one and only Raymond Loewy through New Math in New York. See you next time.

Voiceover (35:03):

Investment advice offered through Private Advisor Group, LLC, a registered Investment Advisor. Private Advisor Group, American Financial Management Group, and Sofia Financial are separate entities. The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual security. To determine which investments may be appropriate for you, consult your financial advisor prior to investing. This information is not intended to be substitute for individualized tax advice. Please consult your tax advisor regarding your specific situation.