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How to Make $100 Per Month in Dividends #shorts

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

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Retirement Struggles: 2 Things I Struggled With When I Retired

what's going on everyone welcome back to the show 
so as you guys can see now I'm on the road and   I am on my way to Las Vegas there's a convention 
the National Association of broadcasters   convention and so I'm gonna go to that see what's 
going on when it comes to the new technology comes   the cameras and audio equipment things like that 
but I wanted to talk a little bit about retirement   and I just want to add on to the video that 
I posted a couple of days ago and if you guys   can do me a favor like I've I've stated in 
previous videos actually I stated only in   one video the last video that I posted about 
please support the retirement content because   YouTube is not promoting this out the same 
way that it would promote some of my other   videos so like if I post a video on a social 
security update usually YouTube will promote   that but when I talk about retirement for 
whatever reason YouTube does not promote that   now you guys can do me a favor by just hitting 
the like button subscribing to the channel   hitting the little bell notification all that 
good stuff that helps with the algorithm but   by also sharing this content with your family and 
friends and that helps with the algorithm as well   so I'm almost I'm actually almost to Vegas I've 
been driving for the last two and a half hours and   I just thought about something I wanted to talk 
a little bit about when it comes to retirement   so as you guys know if you don't know 
I retired about it's been a year in   a year and six months no not 
a year a year and four months   and one thing that I did not anticipate and this 
is I talked about some of the things in a previous   video and I'll post a link to that video so you 
can check it out but one of the things that I   didn't expect and this is more of a negative when 
it comes to retiring is that a lot of the people   that you work with so your friends at work and I 
consider friends at work and your friends that you   grew up with they're kind of in different banks 
right they're not the same because your friends   you grew up with I have friends that I grew up 
with and they've been my friends for for years   and years but when you start working somewhere 
of course you're going to develop friendships   but it's kind of a situation where I don't 
want to say it's a forced relationship   but you do have to spend a lot of time with 
those people anyway and sometimes that develops   into a relationship where you might go out 
to lunch together and you might even spend   time outside of work with them and so one of 
the things that I didn't anticipate is those   people that you do have relationships with at 
work and you go to lunch and things like that   some of those people will not be around when you 
retire so they might continue working and you   retire and you don't hear from them anymore and so 
that's one of the things that I didn't anticipate   I was thinking you know what some of these friends 
we've had a friendship for years let's say five   ten years and it was okay when we were working 
together because we saw each other a lot and   we spent time and talked about different things 
and all that but when you retire it's different   now you're not a part of of the company anymore 
you're not a part of the the the the the workforce   um and so you don't see that person very often and 
you might not have even talked to them that much   on the phone or text with them that much when 
you were working because you saw them all the   time but now that you're retired it's totally 
different because now you don't text them and   you really don't hear from them so that was 
a big thing that I had to kind of adjust to   and there are some people that I still talk with 
there are some people that I work with that I   still talk to on a regular basis that I go out 
to lunch with even now that I'm retired I still   got to go out to lunch with them and spend time 
with them but some of those people I was already   doing that before I mean that it was already it 
was already established like I met them at work   but we already had a friendship outside of work 
and so that friendship was able to continue   where is there some other people that I had 
relationships with didn't really spend too   much time outside of work with them and those 
are the people that you you really don't hear   from maybe I'll hear from them once in a blue moon 
if someone got fired and they wanted to share this   information with me for whatever reason that that 
kind of stuff where something happened that was   drastic at work where they want to share that with 
you and so I think it's just something that you   should think about when you retire who's still 
going to be around as your friends and who is   not going to talk to you anymore or pretty 
much they're going about their business and   you're not a part of their life anymore and like I 
stated I've had I have friends that I grew up with   and they're still my friends today and I spend 
time with them so this is not anything for me   it's not a big deal but it's just an observation 
it's something that I didn't really anticipate I   was thinking that some of the people that I 
spent a lot of time with at work I probably   still be in touch with them after I stop working 
there but it is it it's not that's not the case   and so I just wanted to mention them now there 
are some other things when it comes to retirement   that are were Shockers to me things that aren't 
really you know positive and I wanted I talked   about in the previous video I talked about all 
the the positives of retirement and they're   the positives far outweigh the negatives when it 
comes to retiring and so I just wanted to mention   this and I'm really when it comes down to it 
if you are in a situation where you have the   opportunity to retire especially if you have 
the opportunity to retire when you're younger   and you can afford to do that I highly highly 
recommend taking taking that that uh that leap   because there are so many things that you can 
benefit from if you retire and what some people do   is they will especially if you work 
where you're receiving a pension   what a lot of people will do is they'll go ahead 
and retire and start pulling that tension in and   then go somewhere else and get another 
job in in the law enforcement community   this is very common you see this a lot because 
you're working in law enforcement you're working   for the government you're usually going to receive 
a pension and they will take that pension and then   go and they can do the same job go to another 
agency that has a different Retirement System   and then they can collect their pension 
after they've retired from the the first   uh the first law enforcement job and then go 
to another law enforcement job and double dip   and so that's very very common and not you know 
I'm not talking about just police officers and   things like that I'm talking about people 
who work for a government in general so it   doesn't even have to be just law enforcement most 
government jobs they have pension plans set up   and so they will do that exact same thing 
they'll leave they'll go somewhere else and   they'll they'll be able to collect a pension 
as well as work another job and and double dip   and so that's another option but I I highly 
recommend as soon as you can if you can retire   do it there are a lot of people out there that 
are struggling at work and they might not ever   be able to retire and that's really sad and 
there's some people that are doing fine at work   and they can retire but they don't know 
what they're going to do when they retire   and so they just continue to work and just my 
opinion that's the wrong the wrong way to do   things not everybody I mean some people they 
love their job and that's why they stay there   and they they don't know what they would do 
without their job and I completely understand   that one of the other negatives when it comes to 
retiring is now you're no longer on a schedule   whereas when I was working I had a schedule 
got up at a certain time in the morning Monday   through Friday eight at a certain time 
in the morning got to work ate lunch at   a certain time everything was was structured 
whereas when you retire that structure is gone   and that's one thing that I had to to learn really 
fast was I need to have a structure so if that   means me creating my own structure or something 
working a part-time job or doing something I need   to have that structure because if not then I end 
up not doing anything for days on end where it's   like okay I I plan to do something and then I 
just keep putting it off because I don't have   that structure and so that's something that's 
really important and something that I've learned   just in this year and a half that I've been 
been retired I've learned the importance of   I need to be on a on a schedule and I need to 
stick to that schedule so I can get things done   and so I just wanted to share that with you 
guys and those are the two main things there   when it comes to retirement that I've noticed 
just in this last a little over a year   the fact that some of your friends at work you're 
probably not going to hear from when you retire   and the schedule aspect you need to be on the 
schedule and I say that I shouldn't say you   need I need to be on a schedule in order to get 
things done when I retire because that's just the   way way I am and I've been working for the vast 
majority of my adult life on a schedule and so   it's hard to be off the schedule when you retire 
and so I just wanted to share that now I want   you guys in the comments below if you guys can do 
me a favor let me know some of the the struggles   that you found in retirement so let me know that 
in the comments below and if you like this video   please give me a thumbs up please subscribe for 
more next time you guys see me I'm going to be   in Las Vegas and I will continue to post videos 
every day so that's not going to change but I   just wanted to give you guys a quick update and 
yes I'm on my way to Vegas next time you see me   it'll probably be me shooting a video out of the 
hotel so it'll be a little different environment   and I might even show you some some stuff from 
the the actual uh the conference that I'm going to   so that's all I have like the video 
subscribe for more please share like   I said please share this video with others and 
I will talk to you guys in the next one goodbye

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The 4% Rule for Retirement: What You Need to Know!

one of the most common retirement planning 
questions people have is how much money can   I pull from my portfolio every year and live on 
in retirement and that's where the four percent   rule comes in handy and it basically says that 
if you can pull four percent or less from your   Diversified portfolio invested in things like 
stocks and bonds and live off of that amount   while keeping the rest invested then there's 
a good chance that your money is going to last   20 30 years or more and as a frame of reference 
if you had a million dollars then four percent   would be forty thousand dollars if you had 
five hundred thousand dollars it would be   twenty thousand dollars per year and it's not 
set in stone it is based off a study that was   done many years ago and has held up well over 
time but there are instances where people as   they get older could pull more or if they retire 
early maybe they want to consider even doing less   than that but it's a really good way to get 
a frame of reference on looking at how much   you've saved and what that can translate 
into in retirement as far as income goes

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7 Ways One Simple Action Improves Retirement

– In this video, I'm
going to blow the lid off of the most common
mistake made in retirement and in the process bring
clarity to your next move if you carry a lot of debt. Coming up next on "Holy Schmidt." – Holy Schmidt! (object splats) – Recently, I ran into a friend of mine at a hotel lobby in Chicago. He's someone I hadn't seen in years, but someone that I had always
meant to keep in touch with, so it was great seeing him. We got on the subject
of debt and it was clear that he had read a lot of the
books out there on finance. He talked about good
debt, bad debt, no debt, an emergency fund, all of it. But the problem was, in the discussion, it was clear that he was
misapplying many of the concepts. He had read the words in the books, but he actually had not
applied them correctly. One particular point in the
conversation was very tense. He said to me he would rather have $50,000 in low-risk securities
and $30,000 in debt, even credit card debt, as
opposed to having just $20,000 invested in low-risk securities.

When I asked why he thought this, he used some strange
end-of-the-world example and said to me that, "If
we're all living in caves, and this is the end of the world, I would rather have $50,000
in cash than $20,000 in cash because the credit card companies would have a lot more to worry
about than little old me." (thunder claps) "Okay," I said, "But if you're living
life in the real world, you have real credit card companies that have debt collectors that go out, and they try to collect the debt. They actually put a judgment against you. And if you have a judgment against you, they can put a lien on your assets, particularly your checking account, at which point you won't have any cash because everything in there
will go to pay down your debt.

He looked totally confused.
So I help him translate. "If what you're saying is that you would rather pay your grocery bill than your credit card bill, I get it. That will last about a month, maybe two, before things start to go horribly wrong. But let's assume that you are
not being hunted by zombies. (zombies snarling) And you're not trying to determine what the best currency
is in the apocalypse. (knife sharpening) Debt is real, and it needs to be paid." Here's why you should have
no debt in retirement. By the way, if you have
debt, even a lot of debt, I've got you covered. There's another video
that I have, outstanding. I'll put a link in the
description below that you can use to get rid of your debt
very, very quickly. But I digress.

Let's
get back to this video. First, for those of you
who think like an investor, you'll know that the higher the return, the higher the risk, generally speaking. If for example, you invest
in US government securities, that means your investment is as safe as the US government itself, that is, if you hold your
bonds until maturity, and you don't sell them
in a choppy market. (cow bell ringing) But assuming you hold your
government investments until maturity, the five-year US government
note is currently paying (keyboard clicking) 3.39% as of five seconds
ago according to Bloomberg. On the other hand, if you invest in high-tech
Silicon Valley startups, your return could be
15, 20, 30, 50% or more, or you could lose it all. That's how high-risk investments work. But what if you could get
US government type risk and Silicon Valley type returns? (cash register rings) Well, that is the best of both worlds, and there's only one way
you can really do this, and that's to pay off your
outstanding credit card debt.

Let me explain. Imagine that you had $10,000 to invest, and you could either put it
towards a dividend paying stock that paid a 4% dividend. That would be a very good
dividend, by the way. Or you could use it to pay
down your credit card debt, and let's make the math
easy for this example. Let's assume that your credit card company only charges you 4% on your credit card, but whether you had a
4% dividend paying stock or you had a 4% credit card, your cash flow would look about the same. You would just use your dividends to pay off the interest
on your credit card. Of course, dividends are
actually paid semi-annually or annually, and credit card
payments are paid monthly.

But let's ignore that for just a moment because the point of this is not that. The point of this example is that if you had $400 of dividend income and you use that to pay off the
interest on your credit card or you didn't have $400 of
interest on your credit card, the cash flow would
look basically the same. Now, this is where people
get confused. (blows) Earning $400 of dividend
income is not better than avoiding $400 of expenses, and credit card companies don't charge 4%. In fact, they charge between
18 and 23% on average. In fact, the average according
to Wallet Hub is 19.07% as of today.
(whip whips) So your return on investment
is 19% in this example, not 4%, and it is as guaranteed as the government interest
on the government bonds, maybe even more so 'cause if you don't owe debt, you don't have to pay interest on debt. That's guaranteed. Is the dividend guaranteed? Nope. In fact, the company can
cut the dividend tomorrow, or they can go out of business, and you can lose all of your money. Now here is the sinister
part to all of this.

If you receive a $400 dividend, do you have to pay taxes on it? In most cases, unless it's in a Roth IRA, but if you avoid $400 of expenses, do you have to pay taxes on
the expenses that you avoid it? No. In almost every example,
you'll have more spendable cash if you avoid paying a dollar of expense rather than receiving a dollar of income. Now add a bunch of zeros onto that, and it becomes real money, which brings us to the next point. Even a modest improvement in cash flow improves your retirement
picture pretty dramatically.

Here's why. When you're living your life, the fun discretionary stuff usually comes from the last 5, 10, maybe even 20% of your monthly income. The average retiree who carries debt spends 38% of their income
to service that debt. Now imagine what you could
do with 38% more income, particularly noting that the
last part of your cash flow is what's used to pay
for all of the fun stuff. Then, and this is big, if you
have an extra 38% in income, this is a great margin of safety cushion in case something goes wrong. This happened to many of us recently. In 2022, the average retiree
lost between 15 and 20% of their account value if they had their assets
in a target-based fund, which is over 80% of retirees, by the way. If this was that type of year,
(warning bell alarms) and you didn't have that cushion, this would mean that you'd
have to continue to sell assets at a reduced price and
crystallize the losses just to sustain your life. But if you're like my friend
Rulph from the Chicago Hotel, you're going to use that extra cash flow to build your apocalypse fund.

The rest of us call it an
emergency fund, by the way, but whatever you wanna call it, it's something that you
can designate as extra cash in case the world changes
on you all of a sudden. Importantly though,
you're using your assets to pay down your debt, so
that's taking a step back, but that will allow you to
take multiple steps forward because you're not paying
high interest on that debt, and you have extra cash flow to rebuild your emergency
fund the right way. Next is just the effect of
having debt in your life and the effect it has on
your health and wellbeing. Let me explain. I am personally in the middle of several weeks of a very
challenging point in my life.

Now these challenges are good challenges because I'm pushing ahead on
projects that are important and the end result is that they will yield some incredible outcomes for both me and for other people. But it is really stressful,
as you can imagine. And while the outcome will be great, this is a lot harder than
just doing regular work. But here's the most important thing. At the end of these projects, there will be a lot of celebration (fireworks exploding)
both for me and for others. They will have a very
positive outcome at the end, but if the stress wasn't due to something that would conclude at a point
in time and conclude well, imagine having to deal
with that level of stress every single month. This is what I'm talking about. The debt holder is worrying
about how to afford life. It's not a carrot, it's a stick, and this worry goes on at the
end of every single month.

This can very quickly affect your physical and mental health. Next, this will improve your relationship with family and friends. Imagine being able to
spend more time and money on those that you love, your spouse, your kids, your friends, being able to go out more
often, do more things. Most relationships that end
end for one of a few reasons, money being one of the big ones. So if you're taking the
money issue off the table, or at least moving it to
the side a little bit, relationships tend to get better. We talked a lot about credit card debt and personal debt in this video, but the question always comes
up when talking about debt, what about mortgage debt? Well, there are two answers here. The first is the mathematical answer, and the other is the personal side answer. Mathematically, if you have a mortgage that's 3 or 4%, and
inflation is running at 6%, well, there is an argument to be made to keep that debt outstanding
as long as possible, but imagine how you would feel
if you had all of that debt from the mortgage
redirected into your life.

That's the personal side, and that's the side that most
people actually care about. If you like this video,
check out that video. It's a video on where retirees spend 80% of their income in retirement, and it's one of my most popular. This is Geoff Schmidt.
Thanks for watching..

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Is Now A Great Time To Invest In A Gold IRA?

investing in gold is one of the wisest choices 
you can make nowadays but have you thought is   this the right time to buy or should you wait in 
today's video we will examine whether or not now   is a good time to invest in a gold Ira we have 
seen inflation overseas conflicts the pandemic   and many other events affecting the value of money 
and during these times people who have invested in   precious metals are some of the least affected and 
of those precious metals gold is the best choice   full disclosure this information may not 
all be accurate as market and policy changes   may happen from the time this video has 
been published how gold performed in 2021   as a result of more investors shifting to riskier 
Assets in response to a strengthening global   economy demand for Safe Haven assets like 
gold decreased by around 4 percent in 2021   indications that central banks May speed up 
slowing down their huge pandemic driven money   production to kick-start the economy were to 
blame for it how will gold perform in 2023   these economic uncertainties are not close to 
being solved this year especially with the war   in Ukraine as the conflict goes on there will be 
a remaining impact on the commodity market and   Russia will play some cards in dealing with these 
kinds of sanctions besides these technical factors   gold reserves may also fall as inflation can 
impact the mining Tech and exploration sectors so   it is quite possible the prices of gold will go up 
by next year is it the best time to invest in gold   the short answer is yes the ideal time to invest 
in gold is when a recession hits the market at the   time of this video being made the United States 
is in a technical recession and with inflation   being at an all-time high we're seeing volatility 
in the market which we haven't seen in a long time   the great thing is that Gold's value has 
remained relatively steadily over time even   during difficult economic conditions and that 
makes it a valuable addition to any portfolio   and investing in gold through an IRA is the best 
way to protect your Investments today if you'd   like to learn more you can get a free gold IRA 
kit by visiting the website shown in this video   or in the description this kit contains valuable 
information for starting a new account adding   assets to it and picking a custodian instructions 
on how to buy gold and other precious metals store   them and withdraw money from the account could 
also be included in the kit if you've found our   video helpful make sure to hit that like button 
and subscribe to the channel thanks for watching

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Pay This Off Before You Retire – Retirement Planning Tips

in this video we'll look at what expenses you should think about getting rid of before retiring and a few mistakes that retirees make when it comes to expenses in retirement there's a few things that you may want to say goodbye to before you say goodbye to that wage or that work income we're going to cover this in three parts it's going to look like this first we'll go over needs and wants and then what i'd call highway robbery and then also what to ear mark in retirement we've seen that the retirees that can get rid of these expenses before retiring have a little bit more breathing room and they feel better about their retirement plan because when you're planning for retirement we usually think about really two types of expenses it's the needs which are the essentials the absolute must-haves to just live you know as you think about my maslow's hierarchy of needs those things at the base layer and then there's the wants which are the the nice to have things but then there are other types of expenses that really don't fit into that category of needs or wants those are the things that we need to be done with before retirement and by the way i'm dave zoller and me and my team we run streamline financial it's a wealth management firm focused on retirement planning and we've been helping people personally for 13 years and streamlines been around for 22 years and we created this channel to share what's working with our clients so that you can benefit too so if you're close to retirement be sure to subscribe because i share one new video each week to make your retirement a little bit better i also put some free resources in the description below like my favorite diy retirement planner if you're more of a do-it-yourselfer so let's get into the list and then as you're watching if i leave something out please share it in the comments below i'd love to hear from you and then also i'll try to reply back to depending on how many comments i get so the first two you will probably agree with but you might not be thinking about the other ones and i want to show you ways to prepare and just make sure that your retirement is a little bit smoother by using our retirement planning software the first one which you already know is to pay off high interest debt which i sometimes think of as highway robbery it's when those interest rates are just so high and they're charging people it just seems unfair right that high interest debt i'm referring to is usually credit card debt and sometimes it's student loan debt and you'd be surprised at the number of people who in their first year of retirement they still have a large monthly payment towards credit card payments or student loan debt and this should be the number one thing that we should focus on to really reduce before we say goodbye to that job income or that wage because if you retire with credit card debt and then you get serious about paying it off in retirement then that means you've got this bigger amount that you got to take from investments which could alter your retirement plans i helped a woman recently who's not a client but she was looking at her plan and she wanted some help and she had about 20k of credit card debt she also had over a million dollars and her regular expenses adding on this 20k of a lump sum expense to her plan it really made quite an impact and once we looked at that together it gave her the motivation to work a little bit extra and extra hard to get this debt payment down to zero or get the credit card debt down to zero before retiring because she'd have a greater peace of mind and it would just increase her confidence as she was going into retirement that peace of mind it's key right i'm sure you're feeling the same way i actually want to share a little bit more about how to achieve this before you retire and during retirement and i share that at the end of this video so stay tuned the next ones are expenses that you can either pay early or at least you want to earmark these in your retirement plan and i'll show you what i mean when i say earmark that just means setting aside funds for specific purposes and either not including those funds in your retirement plan or including them but at least showing the specifics within the plan and i'll show you some images coming up of a retirement plan and how to do this number one thing to earmark is any big travel expenses that you're looking forward to that first year of retirement or really the first few years of retirement a lot of people kick off retirement and they'll really have a big special trip that they've always wanted to take or a place that they've always wanted to go to and lots of times that vacation it's going to cost more than the typical vacation that you might take on a regular year it's really that cap to uh ending work and then really doing a bigger than normal trip some clients choose to take one of those european uh river cruises that are pretty popular and they can cost 10 to 20k or more and knowing that this is a bigger than normal expense or a lump sum expense coming soon into retirement you can either pay that ahead of time like actually many of the cruise places make you do or you can at least earmark it in the plan and make sure that it all works with everything and i'll throw it in there as an example coming up soon here's an example of a retirement plan that's based on annual expenses going up each year three percent regular inflation rate and then over on the left side we can add some expenses that are bigger and irregular you know not the regular every year expenses but things we can earmark so that we can see the impact of on the plan before actually spending the money and doing it this way we can add some peace of mind to your retirement plan and your confidence as you're spending money and so you can just feel that it's a good decision and feel good about that vacation or whatever it might be a few other bigger than normal one-time expenses we've seen are related to your adult kids if you have them whether it's final college expenses or maybe a wedding that you want to help out with or future gifts maybe towards a home purchase or something like that for those you're not really able to pay those before you retire because we don't know when they're going to happen so earmarking them is the next best step and setting funds aside to make sure that these potential expenses that you might have in the future are ready and available ready to deploy when needed one mistake that we've seen some retirees make getting close to retirement is not factoring in these one-time expenses and then getting caught a little off guard when it's time to pay for them especially if we're in a market like we are now now you might be thinking one big expense that i did not mention and before i share that one if you enjoyed watching this video so far and you found it helpful please click the like button so this can hopefully spread to other people who are like you and might find it helpful as well so that one big expense that you might be thinking of that i didn't mention yet is paying off your whole mortgage before you retire and this is a big one for many people as you've heard before behind every financial decision there's also an emotional one as well and many people they feel very strongly or maybe adamant on on being debt-free in retirement and that's a really good feeling for for many people for others depending on their financial decision it actually a mortgage could actually make sense in retirement some people see it as a fixed expense which doesn't go up with inflation it actually gets cheaper as everything else increases with inflation and as one dollar can buy less and less over time which is basically what what inflation is it may be at really attractive interest rates as well and some people want to have a little bit more flexibility in their retirement accounts by keeping some funds available in their non-retirement accounts versus using that money to pay off the mortgage the more important thing to to think about when deciding whether this makes sense whether to pay it off or not is try to measure first just the emotional feeling or comfort with debt you know yourself and then also your spouse if you're married and then step two is map out both scenarios what does it look like that plan that we're just looking at over here what does it look like if you pay off debt early or don't pay off the mortgage at all look at the difference see which one's okay lots of times it comes down to the strength of the emotional feeling around debt for one person in the relationship or if it's just you then it's just whatever you prefer when we're thinking about paying off expenses or earmarking things in retirement get help from a financial professional a cfp could be a great place to start but i'd like to hear from you what did i not mention as we're thinking about these different expenses in retirement i'd love to hear your thoughts about these expenses and especially the thoughts on mortgage having a mortgage in retirement and i want to share another video about how increasing peace of mind and making sure that you get both parts needed for a successful retirement the sad thing is that in this industry the financial industry most of the time they focus on one thing but here's a video to watch that'll help you think about and prepare for both sides of retirement so hopefully i'll see you there and if you haven't already subscribe and then i'll see you in future videos take care you

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Retirement: I’m 60 Years Old with $900K in Savings. Can I Retire Now? What is My Risk Capacity?

so you're 60 years old with nine hundred thousand dollars saved and the question is can you retire in today's video we're going to look at a few different decisions that could be made the impact those decisions have on the plan with the overall goal of not running out of money hi I'm Troy sharp CEO of Oak Harvest Financial Group a certified financial planner professional host of the retirement income show and a certified tax specialist in today's case study we're going to look at a situation that's not too dissimilar from what we normally encounter in our day-to-day operations here at Oak Harvest Financial Group so we have James who's 60 years old he comes in and he says Troy I want to spend about seventy thousand dollars and I'm just tired of working I want to to this year to be my last year so I want to spend seventy thousand dollars I think I'm going to live to about 90 years old pretty good health and I want this fifty thousand dollars to increase with inflation over the course of my retirement but for the first 10 years and what I hear you talk about in this go go spending phase I want to spend an additional 20 000 per year bringing that first 10 years of spending up to 70 000 per year then that go go spending goes away and then we have the inflation adjusted 50 000 to plan for from age 70 to age 90.

Hey just a brief Interruption here to ask you to subscribe to the channel now what that does for you is that puts us Oak Harvest Financial Group and all the content we produce in your little TV Guide so you have a much easier way to come back and find it later share this video with a friend or family member and also comment down below I love to respond to the comments now if you have any questions about your particular situation or you'd like to consider becoming a client of Oak Harvest feel free to reach out to us there's a link in the description below but you can always reach out to us and give us a call and have a conversation to see if we might be a good fit for each other James tells us that since he wants to retire as soon as possible he he thinks it makes sense to take Social Security the first time available so claiming at 62 a little more than two thousand dollars a month at twenty five thousand dollars per year he also has that nine hundred thousand dollars broken out to four 401K money of 700 Grand then 200 000 in a taxable account or what we call non-qualified outside of the retirement account very important to point out here that the tax characteristic of these two accounts and the Investments inside them and the interest and dividends and the withdrawals from them are taxed differently so that's part of an overall tax plan now James also has a home that's completely paid for and worth six hundred thousand dollars but he's told me that I don't want to use this to fund any of my retirement goals I've lived in this home for a long time I want to stay in the home but we know from a planning perspective that we do have that in our back pocket if it's needed down the road so James's total net worth here is about 1.5 million looking at the paid off home of six hundred thousand the 700 Grand inside the 401K and the 200 000 of non-qualified or taxable account assets now as part of the process to understand where someone is and where they're trying to get to we have to understand how is the portfolio currently allocated so James tells us that Troy I know I've wanted to retire so I've been investing aggressively and trying to get ahead of the game but here we are in 2022 and the markets have pulled back some so that double-edged sword is starting to kind of rear its rear its head but we see James's 93 stock so one of the questions that we have from an internal planning perspective is if we keep this same level of risk while we retire and start taking income out of the portfolio what does that do for what we call the risk capacity or the portfolio's ability to take on risk while Distributing income in the retirement phase so we have to look at the guard rails and guard rails are essentially a statistical calculation of probabilities of the portfolio returning this much on the high side and a good year and this much on the downside in a bad year if these guard rails are too far apart and we're taking in income out if we run into a bad couple of years that bump up against that bottom guardrail but we significantly increase the risk of running out of money so part of the analysis of the planning is is this an appropriate guard rail for this type of portfolio given the desired income level so with everything we've looked at so far the question is if James continues doing what he's currently doing and retires with the desired spending level the assets that he's accumulated living until age 90 what is the probability that he has success well it comes in at about 61 so that's probably not a good retirement number it's something we want to see if we can work to improve so I'm going to pull up the what if analysis here and start to look at some of these different decisions that we could make and see if we can get this probability to increase okay so now we have the what if analysis where we have two different columns up here on the board right now they're identical we're going to keep this one the same as the base case everything that we just went through but now we're going to start to change some of these variables to see what the impact those decisions have on the overall retirement plan and this is much more of an art at this stage than it is a science because we want to start to explore different scenarios and then see what is most comfortable for you once you understand the impact of these different decisions you can take some time to kind of way think about them weigh the the pros and cons and now we're starting to work together to craft you a retirement plan that gives us increased probabilities of success but also something that you feel very very comfortable with so the first couple of options we have which are the most simple and usually have the biggest impact on the plan is that we can either work longer or spend less so James says no I don't want to spend less I have a specific plan I want to get my RV I want to travel the country I want to play some golf I've done my budget I need to spend that 70 000 for the first 10 years so the first thing we'll look at is the impact of working another couple of years so I've changed the age here to 63 as far as Retirement the only variable we're going to change at this time I don't want to change too many variables at once I want to see the impact of different decisions how they impact the overall plan okay so that gives us a bit of an increase but the next thing I want to look at here is social security so Social Security is a very valuable source of guaranteed lifetime income first it's an increasing stream of income it increases with inflation but two no matter what happens with the stock market that income is always going to be coming in so instead of taking the 62 and having a significant reduction in the lifetime income that we receive because I don't want to change spending we still have the 50 and 20 in here I want to change the Social Security from taking it a 62 to taking it at full retirement age okay so changing the Social Security election day gets us up to 76 we're definitely moving in the right direction here after a conversation with James and he realizing that you know what I do feel really secure with that increased social security income because if the market doesn't cooperate I know I'm still going to have that much higher income later in life so that would lead us down the road to say okay let's look at adding more guaranteed lifetime income if we can get your Baseline income to cover a majority of your spending needs then we don't need the market to perform necessarily as well later in life so now we want to look at the impact of adding more guaranteed income to the plan which has the effect of providing more security later in life because if the markets don't cooperate we know we have a certain level of income being deposited every single month no matter how long we live so if you go to our website here it's Oak harvestfinancialgroup.com com we have up top an income writer quote where this is constantly searching for the highest amounts of guaranteed lifetime income that are available in the marketplace simply input the variables here so in Texas age 60 Ira money income starts we're going to start looking at seven years here and I know the dollar amount I would want to put in 300 000.

The good news here is you can input any of these different variables we don't ask for your information so it's a calculator tool that you can play with on your own Single Life payout and we get quote okay so here's the output screen we have all of these different companies over here when you see the same company twice it's because that company offers multiple different products with the same income Rider so an income writer is just an addendum or an attachment to a contract that guarantees no matter what the stock market does a certain amount of Lifetime income based on the specifications you input so about thirty three thousand dollars here so that's about 11 percent of the initial deposit with that income starting in year seven this is why we call it a deferred income annuity because it gets a guaranteed growth to calculate a guaranteed lifetime income that you then would incorporate into your plan so in this what-if analysis we come down here we I've already inputted so three hundred thousand dollars and then we just calculate these scenarios okay now we're up to 87 percent here so now things are starting to look a little bit better let's make a couple of different adjustments here because remember when I talked about the guard rails that's too aggressive of a portfolio given the income need especially in the beginning years but now that we've added some deferred income into the plan the portfolio's capacity for risk increases later in life and all that means is because there's so much income coming in the portfolio can withstand a bit more volatility later once Social Security and the Deferred income annuity kick on because you're needing to take less from the portfolio so let's make a couple more adjustments here so after retirement we don't want to keep the the current investment strategy let's get a little bit more conservative here go from an aggressive plan to something a little bit more conservative and then you know what let's also say now that we're starting to move in the right direction instead of retiring at 63 what happens if we retire at 62.

Get your retired one year earlier than some of these other numbers okay now we're at 83 percent retiring at 62. I want to look at one more variable here because you may want to get a part-time job James may want to be a starter at a golf course maybe he wants to work in the church and he can get ten thousand or fifteen thousand dollars a year maybe just wants to work two three months out of the year so the next thing I want to look at is if we've done all this now what happens if during this first 10 years of retirement he decides he wants to work three months out of the year or maybe just a part-time job and work one or two days a week so instead of needing twenty thousand dollars per year we just need another ten thousand let's say from the portfolio so really that's only earning ten thousand dollars extra in retirement income you could do that driving Uber many different choices there you know what I'm just going to decrease this no I'll leave it there now with James deciding to maybe work part-time here to reduce that spending need in the first 10 years let's see if we can also get them retired at 61.

Okay so now James has decided that working part-time and hey we're talking 10 grand here so this isn't a lot of money now I want to see what happens if we go back to the original goal that James had of retiring as soon as possible at age 61. so we're going to change this back to his original goal 61 calculate all scenarios and now this gets us up to 94 so we started at 61 if where James was originally at whenever he came in if he kept doing whatever he was already doing we got him up to 94 percent here okay I want to take a minute before we finish the final Concept in this video to discuss some of the adjustments we've made so far to get James from 61 to 94 so first and foremost we adjusted the Social Security election strategy secondly we added that deferred income annuity thirdly James has decided to work part-time to generate ten thousand dollars per year in those beginning years to help reduce the burden of taking out an additional twenty thousand dollars of retirement income and then finally we've brought the guardrails in on the Investment Portfolio which helps to eliminate very bad outcomes that could happen with his original 93 allocation to stocks we haven't totally went to bonds or cash we've just brought those guard rails in by reducing our Equity exposure in the beginning years of retirement we can always adjust that later now last thing I want to do is look at what we call the combined details all of these things together in a spreadsheet just so we can see how these different pieces are working together and then look at what we call different Monte Carlo analyzes so now I want to share with you some of the individual trial analysis that we run just like we would for a normal client to help identify not only where the weak spots are in the portfolio but how these different decisions that we're making impact the overall client balance and it's not just looking at what we call an average rate of return it's looking at a thousand different simulations we're going to look at a couple here and the Order of the return so check out the video if you want to understand more about this concept you can click the link up above and the title of the video is how eleven percent average returns could destroy your retirement and that'll really get home that concept of it's not about what you average but it's about the order in which you realize returns over the course of your retirement during the day distribution phase so here we have this individual trial and we're gonna it's the median scenario out of a thousand different scenarios so I just want to go through this fairly quickly with you and based on some of the adjustments to the portfolio we see the investment return column here so all of this I think averaged out to I think it was about four and a half percent gross returns I can go back and double check that in a second but you see it's it's never four four four four four four four four or six six six six this is what it looks like in the real world so James retires essentially the beginning of 2023 we have the Deferred income annuity clicking on here we've changed Social Security to click on here so if we add these two together come heck or high water there will be minimally 74 000 almost 75 000 deposited into his bank account every single year now if we look at the retirement need it's about sixty one thousand dollars plus the discretionary Go-Go spending is about twelve thousand two ninety nine so about seventy three thousand dollars but what this does is because we're getting so much from these two sources it really reduces the need for the portfolio to perform and if we kind of go out go on out through retirement you see Social Security isn't increasing income so later in life now we're up to about 89 almost 90 000 of income and our ninety thousand dollars inflation adjusted retirement income need is covered by the amount of guaranteed lifetime income that we have in the portfolio which then allows our portfolio balances to stabilize because we're not needing it to support our lifestyle later in life so this is just one example here but we see the ending portfolio value even though it spends down a little bit in the beginning years okay it starts to stabilize because the income provided from the decisions that we've made put us in a situation where we don't have to withdraw so much from the portfolio Okay so now I want to look at a different trial and just to confirm here the 500th scenario was an average of 4.6 but you saw the different order of those returns and how we actually got to 4.6 okay so if we slide this up here let's assume it's a pretty bad scenario this is going to let me change it here find a worse return okay so this brings the average down to 3.05 and we still see in bar graph form here that the portfolio value still is stabilized and it's primarily because that change in the Social Security decision and adding the Deferred income annuity it still puts us into that position to where if the market doesn't perform we have enough income from guaranteed sources that we're not dependent on the stock market to provide us income in retirement especially later in life when we typically are more conservative and most people that I've worked with don't have the same stomach at 80 or 82 to stay invested in Big Market pullbacks as they did when they were 52 or 62.

Now what I want to show you is the comparison to what we just looked at in the individual trial analysis to the original plan that came in at 61 percent with all the original inputs so if James just wanted to retire not go see anyone make any adjustments I want to show you what that looks like on the individual trial analysis so remember in this scenario we kept Social Security at 62 no job so the spending stayed at seventy thousand twenty thousand was that go go spending no change to the portfolio so we still have the aggressive portfolio which brings in the possibility of some pretty bad outcomes and no deferred income annuity here to help stabilize the income generation later in life as well as the volatility impact on the portfolio so when we when we look at this so here we go um had James has a 900 000.

You see we have none of the annuity income here Social Security starts out at about 26 000 for him a little more than two thousand a month now look at the investment returns here because it's a more aggressive portfolio the range the guard rails are increased here and then finally the spending we have the fifty thousand plus twenty thousand increasing for inflation with the Go-Go lasting 10 years so in the first 10 years of retirement we see things are going pretty well even at this spending level because we have some pretty good returns in here even though we have a couple bad years but what happens is the income because of inflation the income need increases later in life and we see it really just takes a couple of bad years here minus 21 minus 12 we go from a million to 755 and then it's pretty much all downhill from there in this particular scenario running out of income except for Social Security which is now only up to about forty four thousand dollars per year compared to the other plan with the Deferred Social Security so full retirement age and the Deferred income annuity we were at I wanted to say it was around 85 88 000 um of income not dependent on the stock market here we're only at 45 in the mid 80s so that means we have to take more out of the portfolio so it's more susceptible to bad returns later in retirement now the big takeaway here is this is what a good retirement planner does it's not necessarily about the investment returns it's about determining how much money you should have in the market when you should take Social Security we didn't even get into taxes here additional benefits could be provided through tax planning but what you should do with taxes and identifying those spending goals and those needs in order to get you retired and stay retired and then staying connected to this plan over time that's what a good retirement advisor does it's not about outperforming the market it's about finding a plan that gets you and keeps you retired just a brief reminder here to subscribe to the channel now what that does is that puts us in your TV Guide here on YouTube so it doesn't cost anything but if you subscribe to the channel you can come back to us much more easily down the road make sure to comment down below and also share this video with a friend or family member that you think could benefit from what we're talking about today [Music] foreign

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Retirement Part 1: Why have a retirement plan?

in today's presentation retirement part one why have a retirement plan we will discuss the benefits of offering a retirement plan for your child care business the information contained here has been prepared by civitas strategies and is not intended to constitute legal tax or financial advice the civitas strategies team has used reasonable efforts in collecting preparing and providing this information but does not guarantee its accuracy completeness adequacy or currency the publication and distribution of this information is not intended to create and receipt does not constitute an attorney client or any other advisory relationship reproduction of this information is expressly prohibited whether it is just for you as the sole owner or for a large center with many employees retirement is an increasingly critical benefit for child care businesses there are three key reasons to start your retirement plan having enough money to retire retaining your employees including yourself and keeping your hard-earned money having enough money to retire takes a great deal of saving Financial experts estimate that most individuals will need up to 80 percent of their pre-retirement income to maintain their standard of living once they stop working that means if you are making thirty five thousand dollars today you will need to have twenty eight thousand dollars a year every year from when you retire onward however the average benefit paid by the Social Security Administration is only fourteen thousand four hundred dollars a year leaving a large gap for many people to retire comfortably fastest way to get the savings you will need relies on compound interest where the money you make on your savings is reinvested here's how compound interest works let's say you decided to have one less Mill out a month and you put that fifty dollars into your retirement savings instead let's also assume you have six and a half percent interest rate which is the average for 2022 for retirement accounts in the first year you will have saved six hundred dollars and made 18.20 in interest now in the next year you have 618 dollars and 20 cents in savings your original six hundred dollars plus the interest of 18.20 and with interest and the monthly contributions you'll end the year with 1277.81 cents as this continues over 30 years you will have saved eighteen thousand dollars and accumulated thirty seven thousand three hundred eight dollars and ninety cents in interest for a total of fifty five thousand three hundred eight dollars and ninety cents because retirement savings is critical and can add up over time it can be a great tool for retaining your staff in a Morgan Stanley 2022 survey ninety three percent of employees consider retirement programs a draw as they decide where to work having a retirement Savings Program can help you keep the employees you have and attract new ones in this competitive labor market remember this also includes yourself if you are the sole owner and employee you need a retirement plan too and many child care providers have been tempted to leave the profession for other jobs with retirement benefits by providing yourself with the benefits you need you can stay in child care and prepare for your future a key benefit of business retirement accounts is the opportunity for business contributions or matches where the child care business makes additional retirement contributions or matches employee contributions to the employee's retirement as we will discuss further in the next section most plans allow or even require companies to provide some contribution to the employee's retirement these contributions can be a set amount a percentage of the employees compensation or a match which means that the employer will contribute the same amount that the employee contributes often up to a certain percentage for example an employer may offer to match the money contributed to a retirement account up to three percent of the employees salary this could mean that for a person earning thirty thousand dollars a year and contributing nine hundred dollars annually which would be three percent their employer would also contribute or match the nine hundred dollars increasing the total contribution to eighteen hundred dollars this match is essentially free money for the employee and is an incentive for employee retention since they are getting additional funds beyond their regular compensation however the money is oftentimes not available until the employee is vested vesting is the time it takes for the business portion of the retirement account to be fully owned by the employee and can vary from business to business es can choose for employees to become vested upon hire or require that they are employed for a certain amount of time up to six years to become vested for example let's say you make a six hundred dollar contribution in 2022 and you have a three-year vesting schedule typically that would mean if the employee left your business at the end of 2023 they would only have one-third or two hundred dollars the rest would return to the business because in this case they would be considered partially listed if they left at the end of 2024 still only partially vested two-thirds or four hundred dollars would follow them it wouldn't be until the end of 2025 that they would have the full six hundred dollars if they changed jobs as at that point they would be fully vested implementing a vesting period can also encourage employees to remain employed at your child care business so that they are able to access a hundred percent of the employer contributions to their retirement most business contributions are on average 4.3 percent of the employee's annual salary however there are a few additional considerations first you should check what other child care providers are offering in the area a retirement contribution is like any other form of employee compensation you want to keep up with or even surpass the other businesses in the area so employees don't leave turnover can be costly an estimated 1.5 to 2 times an employee's salary according to LinkedIn when you factor in the time needed to recruit and hire for the open position overtime hours needed from other employees to feel the Lost capacity and the time and cost of onboarding regularly checking on the retirement Plans offered by other area providers can help you keep your staff and reduce the cost of turnover second the majority of employers in the U.S if their retirement plan allows it opt to require matching and vesting a match means that an employer will contribute only if the employee makes one as well typically matches are 50 percent of the employee's contribution to a certain level for example let's assume an employer has a 50 percent match for up to three percent of the total salary if an employee makes thirty five thousand dollars and contributes three percent of their salary for retirement that is one thousand fifty dollars the employer will only contribute 525 dollars further employer contributions are often vested where possible vesting is the amount of time it takes for an employee to entirely own an employer match or contribution to their retirement usually this is based on how long they continue to work for the business as an incentive to stay in our example above if the employee had to wait three years to be vested and left after two years they may just get a portion of the employer contribution so maybe 75 percent of the 525 dollars through regular contributions and compound interest this becomes a great incentive for employees to stay with your business finally you can keep more of your profit through retirement savings between the tax benefits and potential credits from the federal government there are savings for employers and employees There's an opportunity to save in three ways contributions your business makes to the plan and the cost of maintaining it are deductible even if it is just for yourself retirement plans are tax favored and retirement contributions can get you tax credits contributions your business makes to the plan and the cost of maintaining it even if it is just for yourself or deductible this will cut the amount of Revenue taxed by your business which also lands on the personal income tax return retirement plans are taxed favored that means that the government gives you tax benefits to encourage you to save some retirement uses pre-tax money this means that the money you put in now is taken out of your income so it isn't taxed today however whatever money you make in the account over the increased value of the investment will be taxed so for example the five thousand dollars you invest in a SEP IRA today won't be taxed but the additional fourteen thousand three hundred and fifty dollars you may gain over the next 20 years in investments will be when you retire retirement contributions can get you tax credits specifically the Savers credit and the retirement plan startup costs tax credit the Savers credit is a non-refundable credit available to adults over the age of 18 who are not dependents of someone else or students the program will give you a credit worth up to fifty percent of your contributions to your retirement up to one thousand dollars in credits if you are married and have an adjusted gross income less than seventy three thousand dollars you are a head of household making less than fifty four thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars or single and making less than thirty six thousand five hundred dollars remember your adjusted gross income is typically less than your total income so even if your salary is higher than the limit you may still qualify the retirement plan startup cost tax credit is open to employers who have retirement plans that include W-2 employees who are not owners the credit was just updated in December of 2022.

if a business has 100 or fewer employees this credit covers up to five thousand dollars in administrative costs for the first three years of a new 401K 403 b profit sharing SEP IRA or simple IRA plan additionally businesses was with less than 50 employees can get a credit of up to one thousand dollars per employee in the first year of the plan for contributions they make for employees who earn less than one hundred thousand dollars this credit continues for three more years with the credit decreasing by 25 percent in each subsequent year so if you had an employee making thirty two thousand dollars a year and you contributed one thousand dollars a year to their retirement over five years you would get a total credit of two thousand and five hundred dollars let's look at two examples of how these savings can benefit you kashana is a family care business owner and sole proprietor who made thirty eight thousand dollars over the course of the year she put two thousand dollars into a simple retirement account we will cover the types of plans later in part two of this guide the two thousand dollars will save her three times over first she will save 15.3 percent in self-employment tax and 12 percent in income tax for a total of five hundred forty six dollars second she qualifies for the Savers credit so she gets a tax credit for 50 percent of the contribution in this case kashana has two thousand dollars for her retirement and after the money saved and the credits the cost to her was only 454 dollars Estelle has a center with 15 employees and she decided to use some of her stimulus money to start a 401k her business is an LLC that declared to be treated as an S corporation so the profit goes on to her personal tax return which is taxed in the 22 percent bracket still contributes at five percent of the salary of each employee one thousand five hundred sixty dollars per employee for a total of twenty three thousand four hundred dollars between the fees and the cost of her time to set up and have her bookkeeper help her with the 401K she paid 2 550 dollars between her contribution to the retirement and the administrative cause Estelle paid a total of twenty five thousand nine hundred fifty dollars however Estelle was able to save money in three ways first since the 401K is new she gets 100 percent of her administrative costs back that's two thousand five hundred fifty dollars second since our employees make less than one hundred thousand dollars she can get up to a thousand dollars for her contributions per employee for a total of fifteen thousand dollars this is a total of seventeen thousand five hundred fifty dollars in tax credits third she gets the deduction for the contributions and administrative costs which saves her another five thousand seven hundred nine dollars all in all Estelle's benefit cost her twenty five thousand nine hundred fifty dollars but she saved or received credits for a total of twenty three thousand two hundred fifty nine so she really only spent two thousand six hundred and ninety one dollars plus a stale can share information on the Savers credit for her employees so they will receive their tax credit and greater benefit setting up a retirement plan through your business will help you and your employees prepare for a successful retirement provide additional retention incentives and help you save money in the long run to learn more about selecting a retirement plan see retirement part two how do I choose the right retirement plan thank you for joining me as I mentioned stay tuned for part two of this guide and if in the meantime you are interested and other helpful resources information or guides visit childcare.texas.gov to find these on various topics in both English and Spanish there you can also sign up and register for free one-on-one business coaching

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I Turned This Cash-Only Savings Hack Into An $850K Business

I just remember, like,
wondering how I was going to make it through the
next month. Like had a degree, no
job, student loan debt hanging over my head,
credit card debt hanging over my head. And
January 1st came and I was like, I will never
be in this position again. And that's when I
started researching ways to budget and I found
cash budgeting. I started budgeting at
the beginning of the year and started throwing it
on social media to keep myself accountable. I started the business
after my tiktoks went viral. I was like, okay,
well, people are actually interested in this
because finances come off really boring to me and
for some reason people were engaging.

Our
internet will be receiving $20. My name is Jasmine
Taylor. I'm 31 from Amarillo, Texas, and my
business brought in over $800,000 last year. You implement cash
stuffing with it by budgeting the money
literally and physically with the cash. So that
means you start to budget with whatever your
paycheck number is and you give every dollar a
place down to zero. The first product we
sold was just a simple budget binder so you
could buy a binder, pick your cover, add your
name, and then choose six categories. And then we
moved on to adding in different savings
challenges. This one's pretty cute with the
piggies and the wallets, and I also like fries
before guys, we are out of stock a lot and out
of stock on our website doesn't mean that we're
out of stock in our warehouse. We stock enough items
that we can pack and ship out that same week. People are literally
waiting on the site at midnight on Saturday
night like waiting for the restock. Last week,
our $1,500 savings challenge sold out in
like six minutes.

I honestly didn't have
any expectations. I just went into it
hoping that I would make my money back. But I had
no idea. Even to this day,
sometimes I wake up and I'm like, What is
happening? I believe that my mindset changed in
December of 2020. I had just got through
Christmas and my sister died probably four years
previous, so I've been full time taking care of
my niece that works with me now. I was working at
the freestanding emergency room and then
I lost that job actually over the holidays. When you finally get
access to money, at least in my circumstance,
everything I wanted, I wanted to buy it. I have
bipolar disorder. So at the beginning of
my journey, I understood that a lot of my impulse
spending was tied to that.

I started tracking my
expenses and being really diligent about budgeting
and cash stuffing. I was not only able to
change my finances, but I was able to change my
mindset and my relationship with money. I have a bill checking
account. Right? So in that
checking account, there's already next month's
bills. So when you see me cash
stuffing on camera, that's for the next
month. So the first day of the
month, I go and deposit everything I've cashed
up into the bill account. And as the month goes
on, everything is direct deposited. The first
time I had been able to save $1,000, like I'd
never been able to hold on to $1,000. It really empowered me
more than anything else was. Okay, well, you did
that. What else can we do? It went crazy viral. And I was like, well,
I'll be back tomorrow with another one. I knew the stimulus
check was coming and I literally just went for
it. And so I went and bought
me a cricut and I bought the supplies for the
cricut, the mats and stuff like that.

And I
put the rest into inventory, into
purchasing my Shopify plan for the next couple
of months, some shipping supplies and that's it. It was pretty much gone. So in February of 2022,
I realized we needed help. We were working
like 18, 19 hour days trying to get custom
orders out, and we were burnt out. And it got to
the point where I couldn't hardly restock
the site because we couldn't keep up with
the orders. Right now I have three
contracted employees and they do crafting, so
they help me make envelopes. They help
make savings challenges as well as one of the
ladies comes here and she helps me pack orders
because we're now packing 700 – 800 orders a week
and it is pretty tedious. For example, our
customers can pick the cover that they want and
then they customize the envelopes inside to fit
their needs. So different people
choose different titles. You can pick the color,
the font on the envelopes. Monday
through Friday I pretty much come in admin,
catch up on anything that's happening that's
crazy that I need to fix.

We go to the back pack
orders, unbox inventory and we do that until 8
or 9 and then I come up here and if I'm going to
do lives or whatever, I do those if I need to
film YouTube content, I'll do that. Saturdays
and Sundays we all come in and we heavily pack
orders. A lot of the income that
I was making. I was very diligent
about throwing it towards debt. I invest some in
my future and the form of a 401K, pay my bills
with it, give myself spending money and put
some towards savings challenges.

So the same
stuff that I teach my audience I still use in
my daily life. We don't have an issue
bringing in customers. Our issue is honestly
that we can't fulfill more orders. We are shooting for $1
million at the end of 2023 and we are going to
get it. I'm believing that we're
going to get there. I've never had a problem
betting on myself.

You've got to be willing
to bet on yourself. If you don't how can you
expect anybody else to?.

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401K to Gold IRA Rollover

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45+ and Have NOTHING Saved for Retirement?

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..

As found on YouTube

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