The other day, I was catching up with an old friend and I realized we'd been friends for 27 years. I never thought I would have a friendship that long, but that's how life works. The older you get the faster time seems to fly by. And when retirement is looming, well, boy, does it start to speed up! So, if you haven't started saving for retirement, don't panic. It is possible to start saving when you're 45, 50, even 60, and still be able to retire, but you have to treat it like the house is burning down. So pay attention. I'm Britt Baker, co-founder of Dow Janes, and today I'm giving you seven steps to catch up on saving for retirement. First step is to get real about your current situation. How much have you saved for retirement so far? How much will you get from Social Security? Plug those numbers into a retirement calculator to see how much more you need to save each month to be able to retire.
The next step is to start saving dramatically. If you're 50 and you haven't saved anything for retirement, and you wanna be able to retire, you need to start saving and investing 50% of your income each month, which means that you're probably gonna either need to reduce your cost of living or increase your income. If neither of those options are possible, you need to get real about your alternative, which we'll talk about later in this video. Okay. Third step is to pay off any high-interest rate debt that you have and build an emergency fund. You wanna do these two things before you actually start saving for retirement.
The reason for this is that the high-interest rate debt is costing you more than you're gonna make by having your money invested or even sitting — definitely sitting — in a savings account, so if you try to start saving for retirement before you pay off your debt, it's a bad idea. So if you have any savings sitting around in a savings account, use it to pay off your high-interest rate debt ASAP. Then you'll wanna build up an emergency fund. But note, if you have a backup plan, this emergency fund, doesn't have to be huge. You wanna start saving for retirement as soon as possible, so don't let this step hold you back if you have family or your children who will support you in case of an emergency. Four is max out your contributions. So, at this point, saving for retirement should be your number one priority. So you wanna contribute as much as you can to your retirement accounts. If you have an employer-sponsored retirement account, like a 401(k )or a 403(b) and your company offers matching contributions, you wanna make sure that you're contributing as much as your employer will match.
This is free money, so take full advantage of it. If you don't already have an IRA, set one up and max out those contributions as well. And if you're self-employed open a solo 401(k) or SEP IRA and max out those contributions too. If you're getting the theme, the idea is maxing out your contributions. All of these ways that I'm talking about also allow you to lower your tax rate, so it's especially helpful.
The final way to do it is if you have a high-deductible health plan, you can open an HSA and max that out too. Basically, you wanna save as much money as you can in your various tax-advantaged accounts. And know that if you're 50 or over, you're allowed to contribute a bit more than the standard maximum. So look up the maximum amount and contribute that. Fifth step is to invest your savings. So, even though you're starting late, it's not too late to start investing. I hear this a lot — is it too late for me? Is it too late to start investing? But it's absolutely not. One thing that's really helpful to remember is that you don't have to take all of your retirement money out when you turn 67, if that's the age that you choose to retire. As soon as you choose to retire, you only need to take out enough to live on each year, really, even each month, so that you still can let the rest of the money stay invested in your accounts so that they will grow for as long as they can, which you know, could end up being another 30 years after retirement.
Next is to plan for your realistic retirement. So once you've done the exercises in step one to figure out the actual situation you're in, find out if you're going to have to work longer than you planned, you might need to be making income for longer than you expected and just know that. The sooner you know that, the more you can prepare for it. The next thing to consider is will you have to move somewhere with a lower cost of living? This might be why some people choose to retire in Mexico.
Cost of living is really expensive in the United States, especially in some cities. So if it's gonna make your retirement a lot easier and a lot happier, consider a change in lifestyle. Speaking of changing lifestyle, you might also have to downgrade what you are used to to be able to afford to stop working. So consider the trade-offs. Would you rather work and keep up your lifestyle or would you rather retire spend time with your grandkids and maybe not go on the lavish vacations that you're used to? Whether you wanna travel or take art classes or spend time with family, you wanna be able to enjoy your retirement without stress.
If you want some extra support on your journey towards saving money so you can actually retire, check out our free class, Think Like an Investor. I'll put the link in the description below, and remember it's never too late to start. So, even though you're getting a late start, it's okay. There's absolutely hope. You have time. Just make sure you start saving, re-watch this video, and remember the steps that you're supposed to do things in, and if you want some extra support, feel free to join our member community, The Million Dollar Year.
We support tons of women as they are just starting to save retirement in their forties and fifties, so we've got you if you want the extra help..
at some point of time you would have thought of retiring early or maybe you're thinking of it now and truth be told retirement is not about abandoning work there are very few who would say I won't work any further but what we yearn for is the freedom to operate to live life in the way we want and that brings us to the five moment now fire stands for financial Independence retirement it's a very catchy acronym and to put it in a nutshell it's a program that's designed around saving aggressively investing in high return instruments like equities and disciplined withdrawals which put together ensures you have enough money to cover your living expenses for the rest of your life and therefore retire early in this video I shall be explaining the concept in Greater details we look at the implementation steps some calculations and why fire needs to be a deliberate part of your financial life this might be a short video but it's a very powerful concept so let's begin the concept of fire was popularized in a book titled your money or your life it was built around self-sufficiency control over one's time moderate consumption and of course living life outside the nine to five for instance this guy Pete atney who is better known as Mr Money Mustache applied the fire principles which allowed him to retire from his job as a software engineer at the age of 30.
He's 48 now and he continues to live comfortably of his Investments after so many years and it's not just Pete there are writers bloggers people traveling the world software developers and even YouTubers who are using these principles to lead a more open life and have attached some articles and videos in the description to that effect some of these stories are really inspirational and it proves the fact that a little bit of planning on the financial side can have a profound impact on other aspects of one's life and in a very positive way now there are three parts one needs to address when implementing a fire strategy the first step is savings and the hardcore fire disciple is expected to save anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of one's monthly income this is of course easier said than done and probably where a lot of people make up their mind that this is not their cup of tea but from what I have read and what I've experienced the saving need not be always defined as a percentage and we can also work with absolute numbers which we'll see when I come to the calculations part now when we hear the word saving our first reaction or response is on reducing our expenses however money can also be saved by upping one's income which is what I suggest and it does make sense right I mean there is a limit to what one can save but income generation has a much longer Runway and in our case it can include taking a part-time job doing some consultancy work asking for a pay hike changing jobs for a better salary reskilling oneself or of course starting a side hustle which can be a mix of active and passive work in fact I have a friend in Bangalore who works as a data scientist from Monday to Friday and then on the weekends he takes classes on an edtech platform and also does some consultancy work to put it in numbers what was earlier a monthly saving of 50 000 Rupees is now easily over 2 lakhs a month and this guy has absolutely changed his life around by leveraging what he knows so he's on fire metaphorically speaking and the the fire strategy encourages us to find creative and better ways of increasing our savings rate the Second Step under the fire strategy is to spend wisely notice I didn't say don't spend I said spend wisely which means you need to identify what is an essential expense and what can be tagged as discretionary now people who practice Fire have a ton of helpful advice for us these include driving a good used car instead of a new one renting versus buying a house cooking at home rather than eating out track your daily expenses cancel unnecessary subscriptions Etc from what I've read these small steps can reduce your monthly expenses by up to 30 percent which if you choose to look at it differently is like getting a 30 incremented salary so you don't have to be stinky when it comes to your expenses but try to be a bit more rational about it and the third and final pillar in the fire system is the investment part now on a basic level the system requires advisors to invest as much money as you can and as early as possible so it's the principle of compounding at work here and this table here is a handy guide to how well your Corpus expands when you give it the necessary capital and a decent amount of time to grow now the fire method keeps this investing part ridiculously simple one you invest some money every month or as we call it you set up an sip a systematic investment plan and secondly this money is invested in a low cost Index Fund or ETF which in our case is either the nifty 50 or maybe a slightly broader Nifty 500 Index so essentially the focus here is to participate in the equity markets rather than actively trying to beat it which by my Reckoning should Fetchers and analyze return of 12 to 13 percent again the idea here is to maximize the returns which is why equities have been suggested but if that makes you a little uncomfortable then you can also settle for a mix of different asset classes which is something I explained in my video on asset allocation a few weeks back yet another investment you can make which is encouraged under the fire movement is on account of passive income dividends from stocks interest from your fixed deposits income from your blog your podcast YouTube channel monetization rental income are just some ways of making an Roi from physical or virtual assets now notice I have put this part under Investments and not income because passive income does require a lot of upfront work but once you do the hard work and you do it well one can expect a continuous stream of income over the next few years which will not only support your early retirement Ambitions but will also act as a safety net in fact there is something called an fi Ratio or the financial Independence ratio which largely means if your passive income is greater than your expenses then you're making some great progress on the path to financial Independence so to sum it up remember fire has three simple principles that you need to work on which is save more spend less and invest wisely if you're getting good value from this video then please do give this video a thumbs up and if you aren't a subscriber yet then do consider becoming one as I can then serve you videos as soon as they are released and also share with you some investing strategies tips and stories that are continually Post in the community section the original fire formula is based on the four percent rule which is the amount of saving you can safely withdraw every year without worrying that your money will run out for example let's say you are 29 years old and your monthly expenses are around 50 000 rupees if you want to retire at 40 then you have 11 years to accumulate a retirement fund so here's the math if household inflation is likely to grow by eight percent per annum then the 50 000 you spend now will rise to 1 lakh 16 000 rupees by the time you're 40.
So annually this comes to 14 lakh rupees and per the four percent rule it's 14 multiplied by 25 which means you need to accumulate a couples of three and a half crores to safely navigate through your retirement years or at least that's what the fire formula says now in my view there are some gaps with this four percent rule that I think we should all be aware of firstly this rule is okay for someone who has factored 25 maybe 30 years of retirement but if the retirement Horizon goes higher let's say 50 years for example then this formula starts getting a bit shaky and I've pinned a research study by Vanguard on this in the video's description secondly the four percent rule is a United States origination of the 1990s and has been tested on a historical basis when the yields on equities and Bonds were sufficiently high now we are not Americans and what works there will most likely not work for us which means there's an asset allocation and a market performance risk which needs to be accounted for and finally because each of us have our own preferences income goals saving patterns Etc I always felt it's important to have a customized fire implementation plan rather than picking something off the shelf which is why I created my own fire calculator which gives a clearer picture of how much I need to accumulate when can I idly retire how much withdrawals can I do on a monthly basis and at what point and in what circumstances my retirement money can run out so this obviously starts with the inputs and you need to type in your current age the age at which you want to retire and of course your life expectancy which I hope is strong and long then comes your current portfolio of Investments and this includes your mutual funds fds ppf EPF gold and other stuff and as a best practice kindly exclude the cost of the house where you will be staying post your retirement if you're still working then input the monthly savings and the annual increase you foresee input the expected returns from your investment the capital gain tax that can remain at 10 percent and finally have a view on how much will your expenses be in the first year of retirement and the expected household inflation rate and once we have these numbers keyed in as I have shown in this example the resulting output should clearly tell us three things one the amount of investment Corpus we need at the time of retirement which in this illustration is 2.2 crores at the age of 40.
Secondly we now have Clarity on how much can be spent on an early basis which starts from 12 lakhs so that's one lakh per month and it increases by eight percent every year and thirdly we get to know how sound or unsound this entire construct is like in this case our calculation shows that I'll run out of my money by the time I am 64 years old which is another way of saying that I need to rework my fire math which can include an increase in the monthly savings and the growth rate I can also consider extending my retirement age to a higher number let's say 45 years and finally I I can be a little careful with my expenses and instead of spending a lack of rupees maybe I can make do with 90 000. so there are many permutations and combinations you can look at but my suggestion is try to be a little conservative in your estimates especially when it comes to return on investment the inflation rate and the post retirement monthly expenses now for your benefit I have enclosed the link of this worksheet in the video's description it's a downloadable sheet all the formulas are open so feel free to change the numbers improve the formula if required add your own customization if it helps you but have a clear idea on when and where you need to be on the path to financial Independence so when I first heard and read about fire I was not a big fan of it I mean saving 50 to 7 20 percent of one salary is almost next to Impossible and I would have shut sharp had I not realized that as a method fire is quite flexible and can be used in many different ways so the calculator is one way and you can make a customized version of it but then there are more strategies there are more variants of the fire strategy and if you are interested then do read up on lean fire fat fire Coast fire and a few more of these in related articles that I've Linked In the video's description the point is and I myself realized a very late in life that many of us don't know when to retire how much is needed to retire which is why we continue working in a role or occupation that we don't enjoy much and that's where I think fire as a strategy might be the solution and it's just three things right increase your income and savings lower your expenses and get your Investments right so read up more about this concept in the Articles and websites I've added in the description and I sincerely hope you practice some sort of fire going forward if you found this video useful then do press the like button do subscribe to my channel share this video and I'll see you three days from now until then foreign
why have you advised your wife to invest in index funds after your death rather than berkshire hathaway i believe munger has cancelled his offspring to quote not be so dumb as to sell she she won't be she won't be selling any berkshire to buy the index funds all all of my berkshire every single share will go to philanthropy so that i don't even regard myself as owning berkshire you know basically it's it's committed and i've i so far about 40 percent has already been distributed so the question is somebody who is not an investment professional will be i hope reasonably elderly by the time that the uh estate gets settled and what is the best investment meaning one that there would be less worry of any kind connected with and less people coming around and saying why don't you sell this and do something else and all those things she's going to have more money than she needs and the big thing then you want is money not to be a problem and there will be no way that if she holds the s p of virtually no way absent something happened with weapons of mass destruction but virtually no way that she will shall have all the money that she possibly can use to have a little liquid money so that if stocks are down tremendously at some point they close the stock exchange for a while anything like that she'll still feel that she's got plenty of money and the object is not to maximize it doesn't make any difference whether the amount she gets doubles or triples or anything of the sort the important thing is that she never worries about money the rest of her life and i had an aunt katie here in omaha charlie knew well and worked for her husband as did i and she worked very hard all her life and had lived in a house she paid i think i don't know eight thousand dollars for 45th and hickory all her life and uh because she was in berkshire uh she ended up she lived in 97.
she ended up with you know a few hundred million and she would write me a letter every four or five months and she said dear warren you know i hate to bother you but am i going to run out of money and and i would i would write her back and i'd say dear katie it's a good question because if you live 986 years you're going to run out of money and and then about four or five months later she'd write me the same winner again and i i have seen there's no way in the world if you've got plenty of money that it should become a a minus in your life and there will be people if you've got a lot of money that come around with various suggestions for you sometimes well-meaning sometimes not so well-meaning so if you've got something that's certain to deliver you know it was all in berkshire they'd say well if warren was alive today you know he would be telling him to do this i i just don't want anybody to go through that and the s p will be a i think actually what i'm suggesting is what but a very high percentage of people should do something like that and i don't think they will have us i think there's a chance they won't have as much peace of mind if they own one stock and they've got neighbors and friends and relatives that are trying to do some like i say sometimes well-intentioned sometimes otherwise to do something else and so i think it's a policy that'll get a good result and it's likely to stick charlie well as becky said the wonders are different i i want them to hold the berkshire well i want to hold the berkshire too no i bet i mean i i i don't like them i recognize the logic of the fact that that s p algorithm is very hard to beat in a diversified portfolio of big companies it's all but impossible for most people but you know it's i'm just more comfortable with the berkshire well it's the family business yeah yeah but but it uh i've just i've seen too many people as they get older particularly being susceptible just having to listen to the arguments of people coming well if you're going to protect your heirs from the stupidity of others you may have some good system but i'm not much interested in that subject [Laughter] okay you
ANNOUNCER: The Believer's walk of faith is paid for by Bill Winston ministires, partners, and viewers. BILL: God plans that every tree in you that he didn't plant He plans to root it up. Now we're at that tree come from? It came from the life that we used to live. Came from the environment that we're in. His trees have been in us, and the only way the enemy has been getting his advantage is because of trees that should have been rooted up. The problem in trees that we've had a tree that kept us with just enough and God wants you to have more than enough.
The word is a thing for you to produce wealth in your life. When God gives you his word don't consider what anybody else said. What's the end game? Where do I want to go? I want to plant the heavens. I want to turn the West side into heaven on earth. I want to turn prisons into boarding school. I'm saying He can use you. God doesn't need but one person to believe. You ain't serving somebody down the street, you're serving almighty God. BILL: God wants to create a new you. He does it with seed. With seed and thing about a seed is a seed gotta be planted. Over in Luke chapter 17 and verse 5. And the apostle said unto the Lord increase our faith. Why? Because the Lord was telling them they've got to forgive. And they say, Hey, you're going to have to give me some more faith to do that.
I know how that is. Now remember, be fruitful and the Bible even talks in Galatians about the fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5:22 talked about the fruit of the spirit. And the first one he mentions is love. That means you going to have to love people that don't love you. And that happens to be that you've got to forgive them. No, this is not natural love, this is the God kind of love. This is Agape, this is the way God loves. And I'm saying that God is saying, I don't want you to love them with your love because your love is limited. But I'm about to take you into some places that they may call you a name, and I'm asking you to do what? To love them. And I'm here to tell you that environment can take you past what you're capable of doing.
Then you're going to find you need some supernatural love and what these are love. Put them up there again, love and joy and peace and so forth. You're going to have to have those, and we call them supernatural dispositions of God. See, he said, I am the vine, this is Jesus, you're the branch. Now, where do the fruit come on the vine or the branch? Does it come on the trunk or does it come on the branches? So the fruit come on the branches. So even though Jesus is the vine, the trunk, you are the branch and he expects the fruit to show through you. But these are supernatural disposition. These are dispositions you cannot conjure in your own human ability. Cause somebody's going to take you past your ability to love. How about some joy? You're supposed to have joy even in times of sorrow, you don't want to lose your joy. Joy keeps you young, joy keeps you strong. Sometimes just take a laughing break, just get up in the morning, look in the mirror and then take a laughing break. I'm saying that because just as quickly as this I'm teaching this it'll happen.
I just got a call and I saw who it was on the phone. I said, I'm not answering it that. Why? Because they are heard that they said some things about me that weren't too good. And I said, you know, I said to myself, I'm done speaking to that guy. That's what I said to myself and just soon as I said that, (making ringing sound) the phone rings, now what am I supposed to do? Well, I'm asking Jesus, give me some more faith for this.
I'm about to tell his brother what I think. Yeah. Watch and see your time is coming. Say, be fruitful. It's not natural fruit. So what has happened is I've got to now we got to develop a new you and a new you is not like the old you. Every now and then the old you tried to rise up and take over the new you. But when that happens sometimes you can cut you off from all the provisions, all the blessings that God has. Cause you lost your temper or not you, but somebody might lose their temper. So, the first thing I have to do is I've got to replant some seed, because everything God does he does from a seed.
It works as a seed. So I've got to get some new thinking and believing in terms of not only who God says I am, but what I can do. Cause I didn't know that before. And I thought I had to just go with the flow. You know, what's going on, I just got to roll with that. No, you don't. Be a brand new person. And so what God wants is he wants the fruit to look like the Word of God. So every seed produces what? After its kind. So I'm going to get the Word of God in here and produce some fruit. Now I believe this.
I believe that because I believe it, then I'm invested in it. See, I believe that if something going on with me that is not a part of my redemption then I've got a right to get rid of it. Good preaching here. And so what I can do to do that, to get out of this situation is I can get me some seed so that I said, the problem is trees.
Now look what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 15 and Jesus talking about getting these trees out. And we said this before we said, but he answered and said every plant, which my heavenly father's not planted shall be rooted up. Okay. Then he goes on, let them alone. They be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, everybody's going to fall into the ditch. So what he's talking about is the leaders they're blind. What are they blinded by? They're blinded by the enemy because they're seeing something or teaching something or saying something that God didn't say, and they don't want to lose their control over the people.
So they're going to try to wipe Jesus out. Cause Jesus is teaching the people who said you shall know the truth and the truth is going to make you free. So you gotta look at it and say, well, do I know the truth in this cause I'm still over my head in debt, and I'm still so far this on. I'm not coming down on anybody. I'm saying let's start with getting some new trees. That's God's job with getting new tree. You don't need money to create wealth. What made wealth? Wisdom did. Wealth comes out of wisdom. God made the earth wealthy without money. Where am I talking about living from? I'm talking about living from the inside out versus living from the outside in. See, I'm not going to let the situation and circumstances outside dictate to me who I am, what I can do, so forth and so on.
104 verse 24. Oh Lord, how manifold are thy works in wisdom has thou made them all the earth is full of thy riches. It's already full. I'm telling you that I came to this city with $200. That doesn't sound like wealth to me. So I'm saying in the kingdom you don't need money to create wealth you need seed. You need seed. And you can take the seed and create wealth. Here's a woman who's kids are about to be taken put in bondage because of her debt. He said, what do you have in your house? Am I right about that? Did she have any money in the house? No, she had some seed. How about Peter? Peter was here fishing caught nothing. Jesus asked to use his boat. Now I have a feeling that Peter didn't have anything, but here's Peter and he gave use of his boat, which was his seed. And what happened? He pulled in so many fish they couldn't pull them in. Am I right about that? But notice money didn't make that. See, that's what I'm telling you.
I'm telling you that the enemy tried to get you to work longer. Come on, two jobs, three jobs or come on and so forth. No, no, no, no, no, no. The reason for poverty is the absence of self production that I'm going to give you seed and the seed that I'm giving you I am Jehovah. That means self existing one, and self existing one says that, wait a minute, I can bring it to pass all by myself if you'll get my word. Luke chapter 8 verse 11 says the seed is the Word of God. That's what it says. It says in John chapter 1 verse 1, in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God, all things were made by him. Him who? God. God who? The Word. And without him was not anything made that was made.
And go to verse 14. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Marry started with what? The Word. She just started with the Word. The Word is the thing for you to produce wealth in your life. Now you get money. Sure, you can invest it and create streams of income. But the first thing this woman started with who was in debt is started with the Word. The man of God told her what to do with what she had in her house. Say amen. And God can point to something in your house and use it. He sure can. They were at a wedding and do you know they ran out of wine and know what God did? He used Jesus to tell them to take this dipper, dip it in the water and take it to the governor of the feast, the wine tester. And he tasted the wine and said, my God, this stuff is good. That you've saved the best wine until now. My point to you is, is notice he gave them so much wine, 30 gallons, I wonder how much in that did they add it up that that wine would be worth in today's market.
$215 million. Now wait a minute, here's what I want you to do. I want you to change your thinking with a seed. I want you to know that God does nothing small. And what happens is we try to take what God has spoken of whatever he said and shrink it down to fit our imagination. God doesn't want you to do that anymore. The woman who created the oil in her house, what happened to her? Well, don't try to think it out. Let God give you some new thoughts. This woman became an oil Baroness. Peter pulling in the fish. What happened to Peter pulling in those fish? No, he just didn't supply a few fish for him, his family, and so forth.
Peter changed the economy of a whole city. And I'm saying God can use one person in the sound of my voice to create something that can change the economy of a whole side of Chicago. He can bring up one business on the West side that con change the whole economy. Say, be fruitful. Now, what you gotta do first is change your thinking because God can do it all by yourself. Say amen. But he needs a vessel. He needs a branch. He needs a limb. He needs something that he can bring it through. Look what he says in Isaiah 55 in verse 11. So shall my word be that goes forth out of my mouth. What happened? It shall not return to me what? Void, but it shall what? Accomplish, but it shall what? But it shall what? But it shall what? See, whenever God gives you a seed understand that that seed is like a Palm tree seed.
A Palm tree is noted in God's Word because a Palm tree in Psalm 92, a Palm tree is a producer and it produces wealth almost with everything that it's got, whether it's a bark, whether it's a leaf, whether it's a fruit, whatever it is, it has several streams of income. And God calls you a palm tree. Why? Because when you get that seed, that seed may be small, but in that seed once you get it to produce, watch this, he's going to give you another idea. You're going to produce again.
He's going to give you another idea. You're going to produce again. I'm talking about the same seed. Bill Winston bought the shopping mall. I didn't know the Joseph business school was in this shopping mall. I didn't know- Come on now. I didn't know, but if you just get the seed, just get what he's got. Start where you are and he's going to produce, he's going to have you create something that you didn't see before. Say be fruitful. Say multiply. Say replenish the earth and subdue it. Alright. So first we want to understand that we need a change. We need a new you. We need a new you. So I'm telling you, I'm not supposed to go off on that guy. I'm supposed to call that guy and I don't know what I'm going to say to him, but I'm going to call him, and go that thing didn't sit too well with me.
All right. Well I'm, you know, I got some flesh on me too. I got to deal with that. All right. Is it the right group I'm talking to here? All right, now let's look at something else. So in this, God also does pruning in your life. Now that's the part some people don't like, and that means he's got a cutaway useless parch. He's got to do some surgery somewhere. He's got to cutaway of some of those friends that you don't like, or you like, he's got a cutaway- but God is going to prune you so that you'll bring forth more what? Fruit.
He's got to have you self contained. He got to have you like him. He's got to have you to be a producer and not just a consumer. Are you with me here? All right. So now God took these people of his or where God wants to take us is he wants to take us into a place where he can send us into an area that we can change the entire place where he sends us, because he wants the place that he sends us to look like heaven. Ooh, that's good. Amen. He wants it to look like heaven. Now, I said something to you the other day. And I said to you, I said, listen, God can make you a millionaire in how many months? In nine months. Y'all, don't say that strong. Maybe it's just weak from up here, but it, it sounds super weak. Listen, did I say that? Listen, please, the worst thing you can do is go out and mention that to your unsaved cousin, I'm telling you now, there are things that Joseph shouldn't have told.
See, it's too big for them. Say amen. It goes beyond what is reasonable. See, because they're looking at you, they're looking at you, you just finished the ninth grade. They're looking at you, come on. This may not be you, but I'm looking at you you are working on 98 years old. Come on you, they're looking at you. No, no, no, no self production. I said, self productive. See what you gotta do with anything God gives you is you got to desire it. You got to desire it. If that desire is not there, God cannot move. See, prayer is desire turned heavenward. When you really are sincere about your prayer, that the- Lord have mercy. He said, God will give you the what? Desires of your heart. And I'm telling you, I'm not saying that you are greedy. I'm saying that this is your provision. God wants you to live like him. He doesn't want you to live like the devil or like your auntie.
He wants you to live like him. God is bountifully supplied. Say amen to that. Lord Jesus, man, I'm telling you I'm trying to breakthrough. Say breakthrough. And I'm going to breakthrough too, in Jesus' name. So God wants you to live from the too, in Jesus' name. So God wants you to live from the inside out. Now, when you look at outside circumstances, those circumstances sometimes will try to pull you away from truth.
Then they'll try to make you think that this thing cannot be done. And let me tell you right now, I've got good news for you. When God puts you in this earth, he put a creator in this earth. Say amen to that. God will think it, and you can do it. I said, God will think it and you can do it. Now, what he wants you to do is have your thoughts to match his thoughts. Am I right about that? Alright, now with this, we've got to let the Word of God alone determine what we believe. We've got to let the Word of God alone determine what we believe. Fear and worry are a negative use of your imagination. Fear and worry are a negative use of your imagination. Now, what am I saying here? I'm saying that some of the greatest books that have ever been written have been written around what one man calls the law of life.
And the law of life says basically, let me read it here. Whatever you envision is what you will become. Now, the enemy is after what you envision, he is after what you can see. Now you do not see with your eyes, you see through them, you see with your brain. Y'all with me here? And what you see is where you end up. What you see is what you become. BILL: Well, I trust that you were blessed by the day's message. Now let me share with you two points that you want to remember from today's message. One is that the problem is trees. A lot of times, you know people, well, the devil made me do it.
You know, well my auntie is keeping me from being successful. No, no, no. Nobody can stop you for reaching your destiny but you. Now, if you think that's the case, then you've got a tree in you that God didn't plant. That's a system of thinking. It's a belief that God didn't say. So we got to get those trees out. Praise God. Number two, in the kingdom, you don't need money to create wealth. You need seed. Ooh, that's powerful. You see, the seed is the Word of God and everywhere you see wealth in the Bible, the Word of God is the foundation. Praise God. So if I can give you enough Word, that's what happened to me. I mean, when I came into this thing, I owed everybody everything. I was so deep in debt I couldn't pay attention. But I got debt-free seed and look at me now. Owe no man nothing but to love him for years praise God. Well, I want to sow that same seed in your life if you will allow me to and watch it will produce the same harvest.
Isn't this wonderful? Get the teaching. You will not regret it. Well, this is Bill Winston saying we love you and keep walking by faith. BILL: God plans that every tree in you that he didn't plant He plans to root it up. Now we're at that tree come from? It came from the life that we used to live. Came from the environment that we're in. His trees have been in us, and the only way the enemy has been getting his advantage is because of trees that should have been rooted up. The problem in trees that we've had a tree that kept us with just enough and God wants you to have more than enough. The word is a thing for you to produce wealth in your life.
When God gives you his word don't consider what anybody else said. What's the end game? Where do I want to go? I want to plant the heavens. I want to turn the West side into heaven on earth. I want to turn prisons into boarding school. I'm saying He can use you. God doesn't need but one person to believe. You ain't serving somebody down the street, you're serving almighty God. ANNOUNCER: Today's series planting the heavens volume two is available on CD or MP3, on DVD or MP4. To order in the US contact us at 1-800-711-9327 or online at billwinston.org. In Canada, contact us at 844-298-2900 or online at billwinston.ca. Plant the seed of this life changing word within your heart to produce the fruit of the best of heaven in your life and in your community.
Order this powerful teaching, planting the heavens volume two today. ANNOUNCER: Drs. Bill and Veronica Winston are dedicated to seeing lives changed through the power of prayer. Our loving and highly trained prayer ministers are ready to pray and agree with you. We know that prayer can turn around any situation in your life. Contact us by phone at 1-877-543-9443, or submit your prayer request online at billwinston.org/prayer.
Follow us on Periscope and Facebook to join us for our regular live prayer sessions. We want to thank our partners who have made this prayer call center possible. Together, we are transforming lives throughout the world. If you are not a partner, we encourage you to pray about joining us in partnership and be a part of the wonderful work that God is doing through this ministry. We love you and look forward to praying and partnering with you..
hi there thanks for taking a moment to listen to my message I've worked very hard my whole life to save for my retirement and however with the looming economic instability and inflation consistently rising I began to worry about whether my money was safe and so I did some research and I discovered that my finances were actually better secured in gold which actually increases in value during hard times unlike paper money or stocks and real estate and when i first started looking for a company to roll over my 401k funds into gold i was overwhelmed by the amount of gold dealer websites i found so i needed help to make sure that i would choose the right company and what i mean by that is that i mean a trustworthy company that has a genuine expertise in gold ira rollovers that would store my gold securely without charging any hidden fees I was recommended to the gold rush exchange by a colleague of mine as a great resource for gold ira information and i was very happy to receive a lot of clear and very comprehensive knowledge about gold ira rollovers which was broken down well enough for even a novice like myself to understand well and best of all the site contain a lot of comparison charts the top-rated gold ira companies based on customer reviews and ratings from the Better Business Bureau the business consumer Alliance and trust link and with the gold rush exchange calm I was able to make an educated decision in choosing the right company to secure the most valuable investment of my life so for those reasons i highly recommend that you visit this website before making calls to different gold ira companies you'll find the site at the gold rush exchange calm or you can just click the link below in the description
I'm planning for retirement most people focus mostly on marshaling together enough money you know Financial Resources so that they can last the distance and then maybe at the back of their heads they have some vague plan right perhaps two or three things to fill the time with a lot of the times this is stuff like travel family well unfortunately I'm gonna say that's not quite nearly enough for Preparation we ourselves have been retired for two years and going looking back on the past two years I kind of see like six essential things that if you prep for it beforehand before your retirement starts I think this can really make such a positive difference to your retirement so that's what I wanted to bring up and discuss with you guys today number one first and foremost of course we have to talk about money most people's concern is the amount of money that they have in retirement whether it will last them till the end come comfortably and allow them to afford the Hobbies like travel good food Etc but I actually think after going through the last two years building up our financial Acumen is just as important if not more so what do I mean by Financial Acumen I mean stuff like budgeting tracking projecting investing I mean if you think about it the money in your bank account can always be squandered we all know that story I think more importantly what's going to make your retirement more fireproof is having an ability to generate more money where it came from in the first place so the second essential thing that you can prepare for so that you have a wonderful retirement it's definitely the ability to be self-directing and disciplined self-direction definitely helps so much with spending your retirement days meaningfully right after all there are no more like work schedules or like demands from colleagues or bosses to help shape your days anymore you have to be the person to take charge in retirement there's a study out there actually that shows that for happily retired folks most of them actually have about 3.6 core Pursuits that's what they say and the unheably retired folks tend to have less than 3.6 corporate suits coming in at about 1.9 call Pursuits that's what the study reflected I guess it kind of just shows in retirement you really need to fill your life to the brim and keep busy with activities you love and that is a really great formula for happiness and self-direction will help you to achieve that state as well as discipline because if you think about it like discipline directly affects the state of your finances right it affects whether you stick with your retirement planning whether you keep fit and active and you get to maintain your health in retirement even whilst you're left up to your own devices even to find your cover suits if you don't have any when you're starting or in your retirement so discipline and self-direction will be like the building blocks for enjoying your life in retirement the third essential thing you might want to work on and cultivate or happy retirement is people skills right so studies and research have reflected very consistently that the main determining factor for happiness and Longevity for most of us is actually relationships Human Relationships friendships relationship with your spouse and with your family I guess if you look at most of us you know we all have a little need of work on some social skills in some aspect I mean some of us are a bit shy paper hats or graph or maybe socially anxious working on our people skills really will help us to get along and live happily with our spouse and family members and also importantly to make new friendships at whatever age we all know that making new friends gets a lot more difficult as we get older I mean I haven't heard anyone say otherwise for me personally making new friends as I get older is the biggest challenge there's this huge feeling that nothing can replace friendships with people who have known you all your life but it is also a challenge as I have chosen to exercise through Arbitrage in our retirement and we've moved away from home so those friends aren't with us in our present I find that it takes a lot of intention I have to consciously push myself to broaden my Social Circles and make the effort to get to know people on a more intimate basis I am also very happy to be able to say that it has paid off in that for the last two years in Bali I have actually made two or three new friends that I'm happy to say are kindred spirits and not just social acquaintances so that's very nice and it's a huge Comfort to our daily life here in a foreign land away from home now before we move on a big thank you to Mumu Singapore for sponsoring this video Singapore is an online trading platform for stocks ETFs and options I've been using the MooMoo mobile trading app myself for almost a year now and I think it's awesome it's fast intuitive trading US Stocks is commission free plus they give free level to data and many more 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you can definitely work on and that will benefit your retirement tremendously it's actually courage you're definitely gonna need lots of courage in retirement and I guess this isn't a skill exactly it's kind of more of a quality but in retirement you need a lot of courage to even plunge into retirement you need the courage to you know take that leap of faith to stop putting it off due to fear of the unknown feel or financial insecurities so then it's all about courage at that stage not let fear and insecurity rule your life and your decisions it is also the courage to recognize that in life at the start at the end in the middle the Domino's you need are never all nicely lined up you know at some point you just got to jump into it and then learn to cross the obstacles as they come so for retirement long term I guess the biggest issue most commonly is always money but my perspective on this is that hey budgets can always be reduced money can always be earned or recouped or whatever happens so I still think that you know it is actually beneficial to Advocate an approach whereby you get to a point where you feel that you have most of your Ducks lined up you've planned well you've prepped for it grab hold of your courage with both hands and then take the plunge people tend to think of retirement as the end but it's not it's the start of a new phase where you should be trying so many new things new Pursuits new ways to live and for each of these new adventures you're gonna need courage to take action and once you have taken the plunge you'll find the next fifth thing very very useful and that would be a mentality of resilience especially in early retirement there are a lot more decades ahead of you you know and therefore a lot more chances that they things can go wrong whether it be down to bad financial planning or perhaps an unexpected Health catastrophe or even sometimes natural disasters whatever comes I guess you will always need that strength of Will and the resilience so that you can roll with the punches and then get back up you want to know that you have the mental strength that even if things go pear-shaped you won't just give up and lose hope and certain Corner you've got to Marshall what you've got inside you go out there find Solutions perhaps if necessary you've got to go back to work but know that later on you can return to retirement and try again so the sex essential thing that I believe will benefit everyone in retirement is to cultivate an attitude of gratitude we all know life is a very long journey hopefully at least and so much of what we Chase using most of our years actually doesn't really matter in the big picture once you have taken a step back and then at that point is when you start realizing the earlier you cultivate and attitude of gratitude and that appreciation for the simple little things that are probably around you everywhere every day the happier you probably will be and it sounds silly but it's not really automatic I mean we all live and grow up and work and go to school in a society that kind of innovates us with messages that we need to reach for more have more ambition gives us you know that High definitions of success in life that we have to try to jump to reach and nobody sings the Praises of the pleasures of a simple cup of tea you know the importance of family time with your loved ones or or just the pleasure of being able to take an evening walk on the beach with your dog so I think that it's very important that somebody reminds you that you know you can not overload what you already have what you're already surrounded by growing that muscle of appreciation so that in each and every moment you are present in your own life you see all the little Joys that you're surrounded with every day and if you live life like that I think that will help you achieve contentment with just the small stuff around you and that's what majority of your life in retirement may be about is just a small stuff every day but in my own retirement here in Bali it is what makes me so grateful and so happy every day that I am surrounded by my loving husband and very interesting and independent little dog that's very very cute you know that we have very comfortable a bit simple house we have the ability to enjoy good food even if it's simple stuff from the war rooms locally we have a garden and beautiful things are growing around us every day the weather is great you know stuff is good yeah I think this is one of the most essential simple things that's often overlooked simply because it's a matter of mentality but I believe this essential quality or characteristic could make all the difference for you so these are the six essential things that I believe are very very important for you to cultivate and prepare for in the leader to actually taking the plunge into a return then I think that if you have these six strong skills and qualities going for you you will be in a position much more well placed to make the best out of your retirement however long that period may be let me know what you think of my suggestions whether you agree or if you think they suck let me know why but in any event I really appreciate you tuning in and sharing my thoughts for this week and wherever you are in the world I'm wishing you a happy Saturday evening and let's speak again next week till then you take care and bye for now
Transcriber: Zsófia Herczeg Reviewer: Peter Van de Ven Everyone says you have to get ready to retire financially. And of course you do. But what they don’t tell you is that you also have to get ready psychologically. Who knew? But it’s important for a couple of reasons. First, 10,000 North Americans will retire today and every day for the next 10 to 15 years. This is a retirement tsunami. And when these folks come crashing onto the beach, a lot of them are going to feel like fish out of water without a clue as to what to expect.
Secondly, it’s important because there is a very good chance that you will live one third of your life in retirement. So it’s important that you have a heads up to the fact that there will be significant psychological changes and challenges that come with it. I belong to a walking group that meets early three mornings a week. Our primary goal is to put 10,000 steps on our Fitbits, and then we go for coffee and cinnamon buns – (Laughter) more important. (Laughter) (Applause) So as we walk, we’ve gotten into the habit of choosing a topic for discussion.
And one day, the topic was, “How do you squeeze all that juice out of retirement?” How's that for 7:00 in the morning? So we walk and we talk, and the next day, we go on to the next topic. But the question stayed with me because I was really having some challenges with retirement. I was busy enough, but I really didn’t feel that I was doing very much that was significant or important. I was really struggling. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what success looked like in a working career, but when it came to retirement, it was fuzzier for me. So I decided to dig deeper. And what I discovered was that much of the material on retirement focuses on the financial and/or the estate side of things. And of course, they’re both important but just not what I was looking for. So I interviewed dozens and dozens of retirees, and I asked them the question, “How do you squeeze all the juice out of retirement?” What I discovered was that there is a framework that can help make sense of it all.
And that’s what I want to share with you today. You see, there are four distinct phases that most of us move through in retirement. And as you’ll see, it’s not always a smooth ride. In the next few minutes, you’ll recognize which phase you’re in if you’re retired, and if you’re not, you’ll have a better idea of what to expect when that time comes. And best of all, you’ll know that there is a phase four – the most gratifying, satisfying of the four phases – and that’s where you can squeeze all the juice out of retirement. Phase one is the vacation phase, and that’s just what it’s like. You wake up when you want, you do what you want all day. And the best part is that there is no set routine. For most people, phase one represents their view of an ideal retirement. Relaxing, fun in the sun – freedom, baby. (Laughter) And for most folks, phase one lasts for about a year or so, and then, strangely, it begins to lose its luster.
We begin to feel a bit bored. We actually miss our routine. Something in us seems to need one. And we ask ourselves, “Is that all there is to retirement?” Now when these thoughts and feelings start to bubble up, you have already moved into phase two. Phase two is when we feel loss, and we feel lost. Phase two is when we lose the big five – significant losses all associated with retirement. We lose that routine. We lose a sense of identity. We lose many of the relationships that we had established at work. We lose a sense of purpose. And for some people, there is a loss of power. Now, we don’t see these things coming. We didn't see these losses coming in because they happened all at once.
It’s like, poof, gone. It’s traumatic. Phase two is also when we come face to face with the three Ds: divorce, depression and decline – both physical and mental. The result of all of this is that we can feel like we’ve been hit by a bus. You see, before we can appreciate and enjoy some of the positive aspects associated with phase three and four, you are going to, in phase two, feel fear, anxiety and quite even depression. That’s just the way it is. So buckle up and get ready. Fortunately, at some point, most of us say to ourselves, “Hey, I can’t go on like this. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life, perhaps 30 years, feeling like this.” And when we do, we’ve turned the corner to phase three.
Phase three is a time of trial and error. In phase three, we ask ourselves, “How can I make my life meaningful again? How can I contribute?” The answer often is to do things that you love to do and do really well. But phase three can also deliver some disappointment and failure. For example, I spent a couple of years serving on a condo board until I finally got tired of being yelled at. (Laughter) You see, one year the board decided that we were going to plant daffodils rather than the traditional daisies. (Laughter) And we got yelled at. Go figure. I thought about law school, thinking perhaps of becoming a paralegal. And then I completed a program on dispute resolution. It all went nowhere. I love to write. So I created a program called “Getting started on your memoirs.” That program has met with “limited success.” (Laughter) It’s been a rocky road for me too, and I told you to buckle up. Now, I know all this can sound bad. But it’s really important to keep trying and experimenting with different activities that’ll make you want to get up in the morning again because if you don’t, there’s a real good chance of slipping back into phase two, feeling like you’ve been hit by a bus.
And that is not a happy prospect. Not everyone breaks through to phase four, but those who do are some of the happiest people I have ever met. Phase four is a time to reinvent and rewire. But phase four involves answering some tough questions too, like, “What’s the purpose here? What’s my mission? How can I squeeze all the juice out of retirement?” You see, it’s important that we find activities that are meaningful to us and that give us a sense of accomplishment. And my experience is that it almost always involves service to others.
Maybe it’s helping a charity that you care about. Maybe you’ll be like the old coots. (Laughter) (Applause) Yeah. These folks took a booth in the local farmers market and were prepared to give their advice based on their vast years of experience to anyone who came by. So one of their first visitors was a kid who wanted help with his math homework (Laughter) on his tablet. (Laughter) They did the best they could. Or maybe you’ll be like my friend Bill. I met Bill a few years ago in a 55 plus activity group. In the summer, we golf together and walk together and bicycle together.
And in the winter, we curl. But Bill had this idea that we should exercise our brains as well. He believed that there was a tremendous pool of expertise and experience in our group, and so he approached a number of folks and asked if they would volunteer to teach some of the things that they love to do to others. And almost invariably, they agreed. Bill himself taught two sessions, one on iPads and one on iPhones, because we were smart enough to know that a number of our members had been given these things as gifts at Christmas (Laughter) by their children, and that they barely knew how to turn them on. The first year, we offered nine programs, and there were 200 folks signed up. The next year, that number expanded to 45 programs with over 700 folks participating. And the following year, we offered over 90 programs and had 2100 registrations. Amazing. (Applause) That was Bill. Our members taught us to play bridge and mahjong.
They taught us to paint. They taught us to repair our bicycles. We tutored and mentored local school kids. We set up English-as-a-second-language programs for newcomers. We had book clubs. We had film clubs. We even had a few golf clubs. Exhausting but exhilarating. That’s what’s possible in phase four. And do you remember the five losses that we talked about in phase two? The loss of our routine and identity and relationships and purpose and power? In phase four, these are all recovered. It is magic to see, magic. So, I urge you to enjoy your vacation in phase one.
(Laughter) Be prepared for the losses in phase two. Experiment and try as many different things as you can in phase three, and squeeze all the juice out of retirement in phase four. (Applause).
Making your money last in retirement can be tricky, so it's worth asking if a bucketing strategy might help you address some of the biggest challenges you face. So in particular, we're talking about number one having the confidence to stop working and start spending. That can be terrifying even for those of you who are well prepared. You might have assets and a healthy income from social security and pensions, but still it's kind of terrifying to walk away from a job with a steady income and some nice health care.
You might also need to invest at least some portion of your assets for long term growth, and that's because we all face the risk of inflation or rising prices over time. So if your assets aren't growing then you may lose purchasing power over decades in retirement, and that can be a problem. Then a third issue is of course that sequence of returns risk, and this is when you are selling assets especially at the beginning of your retirement when markets are down, if there happens to be a crash at the beginning of your retirement years, if you're selling assets during that event it can really take a bigger bite out of your portfolio and increase the risk of you running out of money later in life, and we don't want that. So let's spend the next couple of minutes talking about retirement bucket strategies.
We'll go over some examples, maybe look at how to start it and manage it over time, and then discuss if it's the right move for you. I will mention that I don't see a lot of clients using this beyond a two bucket approach, but it's still nice to know these concepts so that you can either rule it out if you're not going to use it or get some good ideas. Bucketing is also known as time segmentation. In other words, you have different buckets of assets that you can pull from over different time frames, and the promise of this is that hopefully you would be able to avoid selling assets when they're down and you can be confident that you have the funds you need for your withdrawals and your spending.
So you always have a cash bucket and this involves money that you might be spending next week or next month. This is relatively safe money, and then beyond that you might have one or more additional buckets that are invested a bit differently, and we'll talk about that in just a minute. It's important for you to know that you can customize this in any way you want. We're just going to go over some examples that are concepts, but whether you use two buckets or three buckets or make the time frames different, maybe you want four years worth of cash for example, these are all things that you can customize to suit your preferences. One of the simplest approaches is a two bucket strategy.
So you've got just that one bucket for several years worth of spending. You might set aside enough cash to satisfy let's say one to three years worth of withdrawals if you needed to take money out of investments and you didn't want to sell investments because they're down perhaps. The second bucket is maybe a total return portfolio. It might be invested according to whatever is right for your risk preferences, your needs, and your tolerance, and you would know that given that you have some cash set aside you don't need to dip into that bucket for at least four years or so. Now keep in mind that this isn't rigid so you don't need to necessarily start by spending from your cash bucket. If the markets are doing well and your investments are gaining value it might make sense just to spend from those investments and leave that cash bucket as is and it's there for if you ever need it. So if there is ever a market crash it is already loaded with cash that you can draw on and you can worry a lot less about what the markets are doing.
So you can see some of the investments in bucket number one. These are cash equivalents basically it might even be in a savings account or CDs. You could look at T bills if you wanted and other types of things. Again this is up to you but the point is you might feel really confident if you have this money set aside. And by the way it's probably a good idea to start building up this cash bucket a few years before retirement so that once you reach day one of retirement you have this money set aside already.
In the second bucket of course you have a diversified portfolio so that might be mutual funds and ETFs, maybe some individual stocks and bonds, whatever it is that you invest in according to whatever is appropriate for you as an investor. So if that's a 60 40 for example you do that maybe you have more risk or less risk or alternatives or something else. We'll look at some deeper examples next but first I want to mention I'm Justin Pritchard and I help people plan for retirement and invest for the future, and in the description below you're going to find more information on bucketing, some resources from Christine Benz, as well as just some general retirement planning resources and information.
I think you will find all of that really helpful so please check that out. And by the way it's just a friendly reminder that this is just a short video it can't possibly cover everything. You can still run out of money even if you use a bucketing strategy so triple check all of this with some professionals and be aware that there is always some risk and uncertainty in the retirement planning world. Now moving on to a three bucket example we have those same two buckets as before but we've added an income bucket so this is in between the cash withdrawal bucket and the longer term growth bucket. You might prefer to set aside an extra bucket. I'm not sure that you necessarily need this bucket but you could include things that kick off higher levels of income perhaps longer term bonds and CDs maybe some dividend stocks if you have the appetite for that kind of risk and anything else that comes to mind that might help create some income that can go into bucket number one.
If we look at this three bucket example depending on how you set it up you might have roughly or almost 10 years worth of withdrawals in relatively safe assets. You've got a couple of years in cash so that's going to be really safe and then the income is a little bit more risk but not quite everything in the stock market like your growth bucket you could potentially pull from those assets for up to 10 years before you need to go and sell from your growth bucket and of course the past doesn't necessarily repeat, there are no guarantees but if we look historically there's a decent chance that you wouldn't be selling at least at steep losses and you might not be selling at any losses if you have a diversified portfolio over a rolling 10 year period, again can't predict the future, then if you really wanted to you could add more buckets but that really gets complicated, and speaking of complicated, let's get into bucket maintenance or bucket management.
This is really where you start to see some cracks in getting too complicated with this strategy or using too many buckets it's easy enough to design a bucket strategy in theory so you can set up the amounts you want and figure out how many years they should last and on your retirement date and in the early months you will have a lovely set of buckets, you've got the exact amount in each one and the investment mix in each one is exactly what you want, but at some point, life might happen, if you get into an extended downturn or even a flat market or if you have huge expenses that you didn't expect at some point we need to figure out how exactly you're going to be moving assets from one bucket to the next again when things are going well you're typically going to maybe just sell from those investment assets and not even use bucket number one the safe money you might just take profits off the top of whatever your growth investments are doing during the good times and meanwhile you might be sending income let's say dividends or capital gains payments over from the income and growth buckets into bucket number one and that can help to build that up or replenish it from any withdrawals that you might have taken but if you really start drawing from bucket one that safe bucket how exactly do we decide when and how to put money back in well one way is to use a systematic approach and that might be one example is going to be just every time period whether it's every six months every year you take some money out of the subsequent buckets and pull it forward into your cash bucket that can kind of defeat the purpose of bucketing because the idea is that you don't want to do things systematically you want to be more opportunistic and not just sell every six months but you want to avoid selling when investments are down to make a slight improvement on that you could look at a rebalancing strategy so you just take profits off the top of whatever did well and sell those assets and put the proceeds into bucket number one so if stocks did really well you're taking money out of stocks putting it into cash if bonds did really well and stocks suffered you would sell some bonds to get back into balance and then move that money over into the cash bucket you could also look at more opportunistic approaches and these border on market timing but you might say that maybe you have some rules you could say if something rises by more than five percent during a quarter or during a month for example you're going to sell some of that get it back down to a smaller proportion and take the sales proceeds put that into cash your bucket maintenance gets really complicated at some point especially if the markets don't behave so I would say you want to do a lot more thinking ahead and a lot more research if this is something you're considering look at some of the discussions with Christine Benz from Morningstar there are a number of those here on YouTube and she talks about that in more detail and proposes maybe some simplified ways of going about this which might take us right back to the two bucket approach really quickly how do you set this up in the first place well one way to do it is to use different accounts so your cash bucket is in cash and that might be in savings accounts CDs banks credit unions or even a conservative brokerage account then you might have your other buckets in different accounts and that way you can keep a balance of whatever the assets are in that account you can rebalance that account and the cash bucket is unaffected so it might make sense to do that but if you prefer you could do all of this in one account so for example you could have a couple of years worth of withdrawals sitting in cash or in a money market fund in a brokerage account then the subsequent money or the rest of the buckets would be in other investments inside of that same account ultimately this comes down to your preferences and what's going to be easiest for you to keep track of because that's really important you have to manage this over time it isn't just setting it up once and then letting it run you really do need to keep paying attention to it so I've hinted at some of the potential challenges here and I'm going to propose what I think is a simpler way of doing that and explain exactly why I think that but again it can be hard to manage this over time you don't always know what the next step is and so you might be kind of figuring things out and winging it as you go and that kind of defeats the purpose of setting up a structured process at the beginning if you aren't really sure what you're going to do with it as the years pass this can also be a cash heavy approach so you might have several years worth of withdrawals sitting in cash and that's not necessarily a bad idea but for some people given how everything is set up that can potentially mean that they don't have much that is invested for longer term growth so you want to think about that as you explore all of this and of course there are no guarantees so there could be extended draw downs that cause you to wipe out one bucket then the next and then get right into those growth assets selling exactly when you don't want to sell you can still have problems with this approach so what are some decent alternatives to bucketing you're obviously looking for a solution that can provide some peace of mind and give you a reasonable path forward as you figure out how to spend down the assets that you have one solution might be total return investing and that's where you just have a diversified portfolio that is tailored to your needs it has the right risk level and then a cash reserve so basically we're just talking about two buckets here if you want to look at it that way you've got a couple of years let's say worth of money in cash that can satisfy withdrawals during market downturns and the rest of it is invested I think you'll find that this functions similarly to what everybody thinks about as a bucket strategy so what you're doing with that approach is you want to keep the portfolio in balance so a couple of options number one is you can just sell what's been doing well and generate cash that's kind of like what we were talking about with bucketing or you might keep the portfolio in balance every six months for example or when it gets out of different tolerance ranges you might get it back into balance but effectively you're still selling your winners there and then putting it into the portfolio balance and then whenever you want to add cash you would just sell everything proportionally but you have been previously selling your winners to keep the portfolio in balance it's not exactly the same as a three bucket strategy for example but it can function somewhat similarly and another approach is to look at guardrails this is different than bucketing and looking at what to sell and when but it might be a different way to figure out exactly how much you can spend and avoid running out of money during retirement that's a topic for another video but it's something to look into if you're exploring these ideas so I hope you found this helpful if you did please leave a quick thumbs up thank you and take care.
if you want to make a hundred bucks a month in dividends it is going to take quite the investment to get to that point but if you want to know how much you need invested i'm going to show you how to do the math because it is fairly straightforward the first thing you need to do in your calculator is turn the monthly amount into a yearly amount so if you want to make a hundred bucks a month just take a hundred and multiply that by 12 meaning 12 months in a year and you're going to get 1200 bucks which is the annual amount that you want to be making in dividends now just look up any stock that pays out a dividend and find their dividend yield so in this case coca-cola is paying out a current dividend yield of 2.59 now just go back into your calculator and take your yearly amount which was 1200 and divide that by .0259 in the calculator and that is going to give you 46 332 bucks that you need to invest today in order to make 100 bucks a month in dividends through coca-cola