Tag: how to retire at 30
10 Levels of Financial Independence And Early Retirement | How to Retire Early
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning Tips for Retiree's
Long-term financial goals can sometimes seem
so big that they feel almost unattainable especially when we’re just getting started
on our road to financial independence. I and many others like me in the financially
independent, retired early community have found it helpful to break down the goal of
becoming financially independent into smaller and more manageable levels of financial independence. Not only because it makes it easier for us
to track our progress, which in turns helps us to stay motivated throughout the process,
but also because it helps us get over that initial hurdle of starting to chip away at
this mountain of a task. In today’s video, I’m going to take you
through what I consider to be the 10 levels of financial independence as well as give
an example on how to go from the first level to the top level in your lifetime. Hey everyone Daniel here and welcome to Next
Level Life a channel where you can learn about Investing, debt, retirement, and many other
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to cover in future videos.
Now obviously these ideas of the levels of
financial independence are not solely my own nor are they very new as there are many articles
and blog posts that have covered this topic already and have done so for many years. So consider this more of a summary of many
of the ideas expressed in those articles and if you want to learn more about the topic
feel free to check out some of the articles for yourself. I’ve left some links in the description. With that out of the way, let’s get started. Okay so real quick the 10 levels of financial
Independence are Level 0 Financial dependence, level 1 Financial solvency, level 2 Financial
stability, level 3 debt Freedom, level four coasting Financial Independence (also sometimes
known as freedom from employer), level 5 Financial Security, level six Financial flexibility,
level 7 Financial independence, level eight Financial Freedom, and finally level 9 Financial
abundance. The levels are usually defined as something
like the following: Level 0 – Financial dependency is when your
debt payments and other living expenses are greater than your own income.
This means that you are in one way or another
dependent on someone or something else to help you pay for your bills or if you happen
to be a kid and don't actually have any bills you need someone else, usually your parents,
to pay to put food on the table and keep the lights on and have a roof over your head. This is the level that all of us start out
on and it is referred to as level 0 because as a financial dependent you obviously have
no Financial Independence. Level 1 – Financial solvency is when you are
current on all your debt payments and you can meet your financial commitments and your
other living expenses without any outside help. Level 2 – Financial stability is usually defined
as when you have built some sort of emergency fund in addition to being financially solvent. Level 3 – Is again debt freedom and it's defined
differently depending on who you ask. For some, it is being completely debt-free,
mortgage and everything.
For others, it's being just free of the high-interest
debts like credit cards but you still might have a mortgage or other debts like student
loans. And for some others, it is paying off all
of your debts except for the mortgage but your credit cards and student loans or car
loans all that stuff is all paid off. Level 4 – Coasting Financial Independence
also sometimes known as freedom from the employer, Barista Financial Independence, or Agency
in blogs and other mediums. I personally like the idea of it being coasting
Financial Independence so that's what I'm going to be using in this video but know that
some people refer to it by one of those other titles but the idea is the same. You have reached the level of coasting Financial
Independence when you could, if you wanted to, step down from a job that may be higher-paying
but may also be either less satisfying or more stressful or both into a new job that
is lower paying but more enjoyable or less stressful or both.
This is because in the early years of your
career or just thought most recent years you have managed to save a very decent sum of
money that would be able to provide for the later years of your retirement after it has
grown even if you don't put much more in. Therefore all you need to do is make enough
money to get you to age 60 or 65 or 70 or whatever your numbers work out to be when
that amount of money you've already invested will be able to fund your lifestyle because
it's been given enough time to grow. So in a sense, you've worked really really
hard and been very frugal in the first few years so that you can coast into your retirement. I have gone into more detail on the various
types of financial Independence in a previous video which I'll leave Linked In the description
if you're interested in learning more.
Level 5 – Financial Security is effectively
when your cash flow from wealth such as you are investments has grown to large enough
that it can provide for your annual basic survival expenses. Now I say survival expenses because I do differentiate
that from living expenses survival expenses are just the basic things you need to survive
Food, Water, Shelter, some form of transportation, clothing and probably insurance. This does not include things like Netflix
subscriptions or cable bills or things like that it is purely survival expenses. So this may not be exactly the ideal spot
to retire and I certainly wouldn't want to retire at this point but it is an important
level to keep in mind because it does give you… well security. If you were to get fired today and you were
on level 5 you would be okay you could survive until you found another job. This is essentially the first level that really
gives you I guess that piece of mind even if the lifestyle should you have chosen to
live it may not be the most lavish.
Level 6 – Financial flexibility is similar
to Financial Security just one step up. It is when you have the ability to live off
of your current cash flow from your wealth assuming that you have a flexible spending
plan that adjusts for up and downs in the market. So if the markets up 20% one year you're able
to spend a little bit more but if the market is down 20% the next year then you don't spend
quite as much. I’ve seen it defined many different ways
so it could vary depending on who you ask, but the one that I personally like the most
is that it is roughly half of your full financial independence goal, or roughly about 12.5x
your current annual expenses if you follow the 4% rule to get an idea of how much money
you need to retire like I’ve explained in previous videos.
So it isn't quite Financial Independence yet
but it's close. Level 7 – Is financial Independence and it's
usually based on the 4% rule which I have covered in a previous video. You can follow the 4% rule when you have saved
roughly 25x your annual expenses. The vast majority of the time this will be
enough money to allow you to maintain your current lifestyle in retirement and as a result,
you can be considered financially independent. And some articles end it right there but I
think there are a couple of levels that are a bit higher than that that are worth considering
even if some of us may decide to not ever try to achieve them because being at level
7 allows them to do what they wanted all along. So let's talk about those other levels. Level 8 – Is Financial Freedom which I've
often seen defined as the cash flow from your Investments is greater than financial Independence
and a few more life goals.
Life goals, of course, will differ for everybody
but this is could be something like taking a trip or two overseas or moving to a new
place you've always wanted to live but haven't had quite enough money to live there up till
now or whatever the case may be for you like I said it's different for everybody. Level 9 – Is financial abundance and this
is quite simply just that the cash flow from your Investments is more than you will ever
need.
You could spend it if you really wanted to
but it would actually take some effort. And the stuff from level 8 doesn't really
cut into it much at all. So you could up those goals even more and
still have more cash flow left over at the end of the year. This also probably has a slightly different
definition for each person depending on who you ask, but I like to think of it as roughly
3x your financial freedom number because this would allow you to experience a horrible bear
market where your investments go down by 50% and still has 1.5x the amount that you would
need to maintain the lifestyle you lead when you reach level 8.
To me, that means that it is likely more than
you will ever need, but again that one is strictly my own opinion on the matter. So those are the 10 levels of financial Independence,
now let's walk through a hypothetical example of how someone could go from Level 0 to being
financially independent in a single lifetime. John and Jane are recently married couple
each making $20 an hour at age 23 or $83,200 a year between them assuming no overtime. They manage this because they are not only
good hard-working people but got great grades in school and we're selective about the job
that they decided to pursue. Obviously just like everyone else they would
have started off as Financial dependents and as they were going through college they would
have been building up student loans that they would not have had the money to pay off (assuming
of course that they didn't earn enough money while in school to keep up with the rising
debt).
In all they have credit card debt, two car
payments and the student loans which have balances of $5,000, $35,000, and $60,000 respectively,
but since they got their jobs they are no longer financially dependent and their incomes
have allowed them to become current on all their debt payments without the help of others. In addition to the regular monthly debt payments,
their annual expenses are $48,000 a year. So they are currently in level one Financial
solvency and trying to figure out a way to move to level 2 Financial stability. In order to do that they need to figure out
a way to build up an emergency fund.
Now if they're following the 10 levels system
to a T then they would look to build a 3 to 6-month emergency fund of their survival expenses. However, this is not the only way to approach
it say if you were to follow Dave Ramsey 7 baby steps you would start off with just a
$1,000 starter emergency fund and then get right onto attacking your debts. And other Financial systems and plans may
have you approached it an entirely different way.
Either way is perfectly fine because the 10
levels system is not meant to be a financial formula per say it's more there to give us
some sort of guidepost so that we can better track our progress towards achieving Financial
Independence. But for the purposes of this video, I am going
to assume that they follow the 10 levels in order so we are going to be building up a
full emergency fund. In order to find how much of an emergency
fund they will need we will need to know how much money they need to survive not necessarily
on their current level of expenses while they have jobs but purely on Survival expenses
which are basically your four walls of your financial house or in other words food shelter
including utilities Basic clothing and some form of transportation as well as the insurances
that are related to that assuming there are any.
In this case, I'm going to assume that their
survival expenses are right around $3,000 a month. Which means that in order to get a 3-month
emergency fund they would need $9,000 in order to get a six-month emergency fund they would
need to save $18,000. Both John and Jane feel that their jobs are
pretty darn secure and the market is doing fairly well so it's not likely at least in
the near-term that they would get laid off because the company has to downsize so they
decide together that they are comfortable with having just a 3-month emergency fund
of $9,000. So with $83,200 a year in income, $48,000
a year and expenses, plus minimum monthly payments of $100 on the credit card which
is 2% of the balance, $550.78 on the car loans, and $621.83 on the student loans they will
have approximately $1,660.72 a month left over to start building their emergency fund.
However, both John and Jane have been looking
into their finances and researching a lot lately and they become fired up at the possibility
of becoming financially independent while they're still young. So they want to see if there's a way that
they can speed this whole process up. And as it turns out thankfully there are many. After taking a look at the options they decide
that they're going to work as much overtime as they possibly can (for the sake of Simplicity
I'm going to assume that they manage to work on average 5 hours per week of overtime which
will increase their monthly income by about $1,300 a month, meaning that instead of $1,660
a month they will have $2,960 a month left over) and they're going to sell both of their
cars and buy some nice used cars with cash to help knock down some of that initial debt. After putting out a couple of ads online they
managed to find buyers for each of their cars that is willing to give them $15,000.
So they take that $30,000 and use $5,000 of
it to pay off the credit card balance and another $10,000 to buy a couple of used cars
from someone that they know takes good care of their Vehicles whether that be a family
friend or just a mechanic that they Trust. The remaining $15,000 is thrown at their car
loans. This means that the credit card loan is fully
paid off and therefore the hundred-dollar minimum payment is no longer needed. So John and Jane start throwing $3,060 per
month into their emergency fund and get it fully funded in 3 months with a little bit
left over at the end of the third month to throw out their car loan. Over the course of those first three months,
they managed to bring the car loans balances down to $18,423 thanks in large part to the
$15,000 that they threw at it in the first month after selling the cars and also making
the minimum payments in the first three months. Now that their emergency fund is fully funded
however they're able to throw that $3,060 a month in addition to the $550 a month minimum
payment at the car loan and get it paid off in 6 months flat.
So a mere nine months into their Journey John
and Jane not only have a fully funded emergency fund but they also have paid off both of their
car loans. Now there are just the student loans to tackle. And thanks to the fact that they've been making
minimum payments on them for 9 months and the fact that they had a little over $3,000
at the end of the ninth month after paying off their car loans their student loans now
have a balance of $53,263. John and Jane follow the same pattern that
they did with the car loans throwing the $3,600+ which is what they now have left over at the
end of every month because they no longer had a $550 car payment to make and they managed
to get their student loans paid off in full in 13 months. So John and Jane have managed to become debt
free and have a fully funded emergency fund in 22 months.
They have now reached level three and because
of that they now have over $4,200 a month left over to start investing. This brings us to level four coasting Financial
Independence. Let's assume that John and Jane want to retire
by the age of 65. That means that whatever they put in now needs
to be enough to grow to a point where it can support their lifestyle in retirement by the
time they're 65. If we assume a rate of return on an average
in the market of about 10% before inflation and an inflation rate of about 3% per year
on average then we can get a rough estimate of how much John and Jane need to put away
in order to achieve a state of coasting Financial Independence. In this case, since they're 24 about to be
25 they will have somewhere in the neighborhood of 39 or 40 years to let the money grow before
needing to take any of it out. If their expenses were $48,000 a year at age
23 then 42 years later if we assume a 3% rate of inflation they would need a tad bit over
$166,000 each year to live on.
Again assuming we follow the 4% rule to figure
out how much they need once they fully retire to be financially independent that means that
they would have to have at least $4.15 million invested in the market by the time they turn
65. In their case, they would need about $110,000
saved up give or take in order to achieve coasting Financial Independence and because
they're able to save about $4,233 a month now that they’re debt free, they’re able
to hit that goal in 2 years flat.
Meaning that in theory, they would be able
to step down from their jobs to a more rewarding less stressful but probably lower-paying job
just 3 years and 10 months into their financial Journey. That is incredible! But like I said coasting Financial Independence
wasn't their end goal. They wanted to be fully Financial Independent
so they keep working and investing for now. The next level is level 5 Financial Security
which is achieved when your cash flow from your Investments is greater than your annual
survival expenses which remember is $3,000 a month or $36,000 a year in John and James
case. Because they are debt-free, are making good
money at their jobs, and being intentional with their finances they Achieve Financial
Security in a little over 4 years with over $367,000 in their portfolio.
It is been a mere 87 months or 7 years and
3 months since they began their financial Journey. John and Jane are 30 years old and they are
able to get by on their Investments alone. In theory, they could retire now, it wouldn't
be the most glamorous retirement and it wasn't their goal but it is an option they have. They don't have to worry about losing their
jobs anymore because even if both of them lost their jobs today they would be able to
make it long enough to either find a new job or some other source of income. This is really the first level where you start
to get that piece of mind when it comes to money at least in my opinion. Next is financial flexibility which as I mentioned
earlier in the video has many definitions depending on who you ask but for the purposes
of this video, I'm assuming that it is roughly 12.5x your current annual expenses which for
John and Jane would be roughly $600,000 or about $855,000 if you account for inflation. This means that they would Achieve Financial
flexibility 9 years and 8 months into their Journey not accounting for inflation or about
11 years and 9 months if we do account for inflation.
John and Jane continue investing through all
the highs and lows of the markets until they reach Financial Independence exactly 14 years
into their financial Journey assuming we don't account for inflation or 18 years and 3 months
if we do. So you might be wondering why did I split
up the accounting for inflation time frames and the not accounting for inflation time
frames should we always be accounting for inflation? Well technically yes but the reason I split
them up is because in my experience taking this journey myself as well as seeing others
take it, this journey changes how you view a lot of things and more often than not those
changes lead to you valuing things such as freedom of mobility and location and freedom
of time to be able to spend with the people you love more and valuing more material things
that cost possibly a lot of money less and less. That's not to say that everybody becomes minimalist
going through this journey, I'm not saying that at all but I have seen a lot of people
who have gone through this journey become closer to minimalist than they were when they
started the journey as they find out more and more things that they used to buy just
don’t provide enough value or happiness for them to be worth the purchase.
They find better uses for their money and
time and as a result, they generally tend to spend less. Which means that even though inflation is
technically increasing your expenses by making every dollar less and less valuable over time,
if you're also decreasing your expenses because what you value is changing it may even out
or in some cases, you may even see your regular expenses going down year-over-year as you
continue through this journey. So that's why I split them up. And, before I go, I do want to mention that
based on what I've seen on various articles and forums some people really like to have
even more goals to chase as they go through this journey than what I've laid out today
in this video so if that's something that would help you feel free to break down these
levels even further then I have today this is obviously just the list that I used and
what worked for me, but you could take it even further.
For example, Debt Freedom could be broken
down into three separate stages: One where you are free from all high-interest debt,
a second where you are free from all debts except for the house (if you have one), and
a third where you are totally debt-free. You could tackle the coasting Financial Independence
level in a similar way breaking it down into two stages: One where are you have invested
enough to survive in retirement and a second where you have invested enough in order to
maintain your current lifestyle, adjusting for inflation of course, in retirement.
And the financial independence level could
also be broken down into three stages: Stage one would be where you are at a survivable
level of financial Independence, stage 2 would be where you have achieved leanfire status,
and stage 3 would be where you have achieved full Financial Independence on your current
lifestyle assuming that it is above the leanfire level. So what do you guys think of this 10 levels
system of tracking our progress to financial Independence? Do any of you use a similar system to track
your progress? If so, what is it and what level, step, or
stage are you guys currently on? Let me know in the comments section below. But that'll do it for me today once again
if you enjoyed this video be sure to subscribe and hit that Bell next to my name so that
you'll be notified of all my future uploads.
I generally upload every single Monday, and
if you have a friend that would be interested in this kind of content be sure to share it
with them and let's really get this information out there and start our own Financial revolution..
How To Retire At 30 Living Off Investments
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning
in order to live off of
your investments completely. And I know that the title of this video may sound crazy about retiring by 30, and there are a lot of people
out there selling a pipe dream of you can retire by 30
as long as you invest in this course, or go buy real estate and while that may work for some people I'm not here to sell you guys a course or to pitch you on any
kind of product like that. What we're going to
simply talk about here is how much money you need to have invested in order to live off of your investments and essentially not have
to work to earn your money. And believe it or not, there's
actually countless people out there who have in fact
retired as early as 30 years old, by following this exact strategy
that I'm going to outline. So if this idea of retiring early and not having to work for your money is something that interests you. What I want to ask you
guys to do is go ahead and drop a like on this
video just show your support.
I really do appreciate
that as it helps out with the algorithm and allows this video to get shared with more people. But what we're going to look
at in particular in this video is something called the 4% rule, and that essentially
shows you just how much money you need to have set aside, in order to live
off of your investments. Now you can in fact live off of different types of investments like real estate or the stock market for
example or a business that's providing income for you. But what we're going to use in this video as an example is a passive
stock market investment, and we'll show you exactly
how much money you need to have invested in order
to live off of that income. So the goal here with this
strategy is to simply invest your money and have a large
amount of money invested and then you would
essentially be living off of the interest income or
the growth of that money without touching the principle.
And as I'm sure you guys can imagine if you're not touching the principle or your initial investment, then your money could
foreseeably last forever. Now, the sooner you're able to retire is all based on how much
money you're able to save up and how little money you are
spending each and every month, and there's actually a
whole movement of people that are following this
exact strategy, and it's something out there called FIRE, and FIRE stands for financial
independence retire early. And there's a lot of
people who are doing blogs and videos and all kinds of
stuff about this concept, and there are countless
examples out there, of people who have retired
as early as 30 or even less. By following these strategies. Alright guys so there's
basically three steps you have to follow in order to do this, and as I'm sure you can imagine, step number one is to be frugal or to spend as little money as possible, because ultimately what
you're looking to do is save and invest enough
money that the interest or the dividends, or
whatever the growth is pays for your monthly living expenses.
And as I'm sure you guys can guess if your monthly expenses
are $6,000 versus $3,000, you're going to need a
lot more money invested to cover those expenses. So being frugal and saving
as much money as possible is actually going to serve
two different purposes here. Well, number one, the
less that you're living on the more of your paycheck
you're able to save up, and the more of your paycheck
you're able to save up, the more you're able to
contribute to that freedom fund, which will eventually be paying for all of your living expenses. And then second of all by spending as little money as possible
every single month, you actually don't need
to save up as much money to potentially live off of the interest or the growth of your money.
And we're going to go over
those exact numbers right now. Alright guys so step number two
that you have to follow here is going to be a tough one, but that is going to be saving 50 to 70% of your take home income and again, if you're looking to
retire by 30 years old, let's say you want to work from 20 to 30, and then not work for
the rest of your life, you're going to have to take
some drastic actions here.
And that is why you need to live off of a microscopic amount of money. And that's why step number
one is so important, by cutting down as much as possible on those monthly expenses. So people who are trying to do this, you're not going to see
them driving brand new cars, you're not going to see
them going on vacations, they're probably going to be,
you know, eating canned beans and doing campfires in the
backyard as summer entertainment. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but they are literally spending
as little money as possible, because they're focusing
on the long term picture of what they are trying to do. So people who are following
this FIRE movement are often aiming to save 30
times their annual expenses, and that will allow them to
withdraw about 4% per year without basically touching that principle and that is where that
4% rule comes into play.
And that is basically where you're able to draw from an account about 4% per year, and over a long period of
time based on the growth of that account and those investments, it shouldn't be chipping
away at the principle which should in theory
give you unlimited money. So what you're aiming
to do here is to lower your monthly expenses as much as possible.
Figure out what it costs
you to live per year, multiply that by 30, and then
save up that amount of money by saving 50 to 70% of your
paycheck every single week or month, or however often
you are getting paid. Alright so now the question
you guys have been waiting for, just how much money do
you need to have saved up and invested to live off of that money following the 4% rule. Well if your annual expenses
are $20,000 per year, they would recommend having 30 times that amount of money saved and
invested, so $600,000. If your annual expenses were $35,000, that number becomes 1.05 million. If you're somebody
spending $50,000 per year on your living expenses
you would need to have $1.5 million saved and invested,
and for the final figure here, if you spent $100,000 per
year on cars and housing and food and all of that,
you would need to have about $3 million to successfully
follow this strategy.
So I'm sure this goes without saying guys, the best way to follow the strategy and to reach that retirement as quickly as possible is going to be
to keep your monthly expenses as low as possible. And just to put it in
perspective for you guys, every additional $100
that you spend per month, if you follow this is
an additional $36,000 you need to have set
aside in that freedom fund to support that $100 of monthly spending. So if you're serious
about this and you want to retire at 30, or even younger, you are spending literally as little money as humanly possible. Alright so the final step
to following this strategy is going to be passively
investing in the stock market. So most people following this strategy are actually following
the Warren Buffett style of passively investing in index funds. And if you're not familiar,
index funds are basically a way for you to have diversified
exposure to the stock market. Where you're not essentially
picking what stocks are going to outperform,
you're just passively owning the entire market.
So people following this strategy are not out there trying
to beat the market, they are not stock
traders or stock pickers they simply passively invest
in these low fee index funds, one of the most popular ones being VOO or the vanguard 500 fund. And essentially what you are doing, is buying a small piece of the 500 largest publicly traded companies out there, and all the different
dividends those companies pay are all collectively put together, and then you earn a quarterly
dividend from that ETF.
And over the last hundred
years or so the stock market, on average, has returned
about eight to 10% per year. So if you were only drawing
4% from that account, based on historical data, you should never be
touching that principle over a long period of time. And that is how you would
be able to live off of 30 times your annual income, if you save that money and invest it. Now that being said that
is the perfect segue into the sponsor for this
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willing to give you up to two completely free stocks just for opening up an account with them. Number one, if you open the account, you're going to get a free
stock worth up to $250, and then when you fund the account, you'll get an additional
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So if you do the math there, that is two completely free stocks worth up to $1,250. Now I am affiliated with Webull, so I do earn a commission in the process if you use my link, but
if you guys are interested in grabbing two completely free stocks that is going to be down
in the description below. So finally, the last
thing I want to do here is to put all of this together, and go through a real
example of how you could in fact follow this strategy and even retire by 30.
Now again, this is going to
require some very drastic saving because essentially you're trying to work for about 10 years of your life and then not have to work
for the rest of your life. So most people will never
be able to accomplish this, because of the amount of
sacrifice that is required, with that being said, let's go ahead and run
through the numbers now. So let's say you're earning
a salary of $75,000 per year from your job, and ideally,
you don't have any, you know school loans,
student loans, medical bills, or anything like that. So you haven't gotten
sucked into the consumerism and you don't have like a brand new car so your expenses are as low as possible.
And I know this sounds like
you know theoretical situation, but this was actually
about the same situation I was in, when I graduated
college I was 20 years old, now I was making about $68,000, so a little bit less, but I had no debts, I had no car payment,
and so I was somebody who could have potentially
followed this strategy. So after you pay your
taxes, your take home pay is going to be around $56,250. Now we know already in
order to pull this off, you need to save 50 to
70% of that take home pay in order to actually build up enough money to live off of that income. So we're going to assume
you are saving 70% of that take home pay. So you would need to live off of 30% of that post tax income, which
amounts to just over $16,000, or around $1400 per month.
Now, is that possible? It absolutely is. Is it easy? Absolutely not, you're certainly not going to be going out to the
bar and buying beers or going out to dinner,
you're probably going to be living in a tiny apartment driving an old car and eating at home for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But if that type of
sacrifice is worth it to you for the long term picture, it is something you may
be willing to do yourself. So each year you would
be saving and investing a staggering amount of money, which is 70% of your take home pay
or just over a $39,000. And that is how you would
be able to pull this off, and assuming you kept that
cost of living the same at around $16,000, just over 16,000. your freedom number, or 30
times your annual expenses, would be just over $506,000. So, how long would it take
you to save up that money? Let's go ahead and answer that now.
Well if you took that
$39,375 per year of money that you are saving and
invested in the stock market, earning 8% return, and
as we said, historically, it's an eight to 10% so we're going to go on the conservative side, well in 10 years at 8%
return career you would have $570,408.40, meaning you could then, if you kept those living
expenses the same, following that 4% rule, not have to work for your
money past that point.
And just to circle back
guys what this really comes down to is the level
of sacrifice involved. Are you really willing to live
off of about $1400 per month, or do you want to have vacations and going out to get dinner
and things like that? So it's not people who are doing this that are out there traveling and dining it's people that are living
as frugal as possible and finding enjoyment
in other areas of life other than just, you know,
spending money on dining and things like that. Now, is this a strategy I
would personally follow? Probably not because I
am one of those people that enjoys traveling, I enjoy dining, and I do spend a little bit
more than the average person, so my freedom number would be
multiple millions of dollars, but instead I follow the
strategy of earning as much as possible and saving a
lot of that earned money, and then eventually allowing
that to supplement my income by having that interest
or the growth of my money paying for a lot of
those things that I want.
And believe it or not,
guys, there are honestly countless people out
there that have followed this exact strategy and
retired at 30 or less. One of the most well known people being Mr. Money Mustache, he has a whole blog where he documented this whole journey of becoming financially
independent and retiring early with both him and his wife. So I'm going to link up his blog down in the description below
as well as a couple of other stories about
people who have followed this exact strategy and
retired at 30 or less. So that's going to wrap
up this video guys, thanks so much for watching. If you're new to this channel, make sure you subscribe and
hit that bell for notifications so you don't miss future videos, and I hope to see you in the next one..
Retire Rich: 2023 Ultimate Planning Guide (Step-by-Step)
Jason 0 Comments Career after Retirement Retire Wealthy
– What's going on you guys. Welcome back to the channel. So in this video today, we're gonna be going over a ultimate guide to retirement planning in 2021. You already know I got my seltzer here. I gonna go ahead and
crack this bad boy open. And we're gonna get this
video started shortly. So at the end of the day, most
people do not want to spend the rest of their life working. And since your expenses don't
just magically disappear, when you turn 60 or 65 or
whatever that retirement age is you have to do things in order
to plan for your retirement. And so in this video, I'm
gonna go through exactly what you need to know to
start off this process of planning for retirement. This is going to include a
number of different topics. We're gonna talk about, how to tell when you can retire based on your level of income. We're gonna cover three primary ways that people derive
income during retirement, when to start saving for retirement, which is as soon as possible obviously, where to save for retirement? And we're also going to cover, how to make your retirement money last? Now real quick here, guys I just want to say thank
you to today's video sponsor which is T-Mobile.
We're gonna talk about
that more later on guys but I just wanna mention
here that T-Mobile offers their Essentials Unlimited 55 and up plan which is going to be
offering unlimited talk, text and data on two lines
at just $27.50 per line. It is a great option for people who are approaching retirement
age, who are looking to minimize those monthly recurring expenses. Compared to Verizon and AT&T
you can often save around 50% with T-Mobile. Not to mention guys, T-Mobile is the only wireless
company that offers a discount on the 55 and up plans regardless of what state you live in. Other companies like Verizon and AT&T only offer those discounted
plans in Florida. So you may wanna check that out. In addition, if you're thinking
about upgrading your phone and getting the latest 5G technology, 5G is included at no
extra cost with this plan. But more on that later. Now I'm definitely not looking
to waste your time here with this video guys. So I wanna go ahead and
identify who this video is for.
Well, mainly this video is geared towards people who are
approaching retirement age. You're probably not ready to retire but it's something that's on the horizon in the next 5 to 10 years. And you're wondering what things should you be aware of right now, and how can you get your ducks in a row for when you do approach
that retirement age. This video is also helpful
for those who are just looking to prepare for
retirement early on.
Even if you're in your
20s like me or your 30s, there's things you can start doing today that are gonna be relatively painless. And trust me, you're gonna
thank yourself later, when you have a lot of money set aside for your golden years. Now, many hours of research
did go into this video. So I just have three small
favors to ask you here, guys. First of all, if you are sitting there and watching this on your computer, go ahead and put your phone on silence and put it away for a little bit, because you wanna focus
all of your attention on this video, and not be distracted with all those social media apps, you can go back to those shortly. Also guys, make sure you pause the video and grab a pen and paper.
And if you need one, go ahead
and grab a beverage as well. We are gonna be here for a little bit but I promise to you that I'm gonna answer probably
every question you have about retirement planning in this video. So you're not gonna have to jump to like 10 different videos to get all
of your questions answered. Lastly guys, if you enjoy this video just go ahead and drop a like, it shows me that this
information was helpful and I'm not asking you
to like the video now but at some point, if you're
watching it and you say, "Hey, this was pretty helpful." That little thumbs up button
certainly does help out. Lastly, a few quick disclaimers
I have to make here.
I am not a financial advisor. This is not financial advice. You need to do your own research before investing in anything out there. Don't do what some guy on the
internet just tells you to do. I'm not here to sell you any products. I'm not selling any courses
or anything like that. And lastly, I have been
getting a lot of scam comments down below where people
are impersonating me. They're trying to get
people to send money. That is not me. I wanna put up two comments
on the screen here. This is a comment that's from me. And you can see the check mark and the different way that it looks versus this scam comment that
doesn't have those things. So if you're communicating with
someone down in the comments and it's me, make sure I
have that check mark in place otherwise you better
bet that is a scammer, and they're trying to take your money.
Hopefully YouTube does a
better job at policing this but for the time being, it
is utterly out of control. And I don't really know what else to do other than make this disclaimer
in every single video. That being said, guys,
let's get right into it and start off with when can you retire? And to be honest with you guys,
it's a pretty simple answer but the way of figuring this out is a little bit more complicated and we're going to cover that later.
But the truth is when
you're able to retire is when you no longer need
to rely on active income to pay for your expenses. So most people out there have a mortgage, they have car payments, they have different monthly expenses. And so in order to retire, you have to make sure that all
of those expenses added up, and even those unforeseen
expenses that you can plan for. Well, your level of income derived from your different investments needs to be enough to
cover those expenses. Otherwise you may have to go out there and get a different job to supplement your retirement income. And so for most people that may not be the ideal retirement scenario. So short answer here, guys, you can retire when your passive investment
income exceeds your expenses, but the longer answer is there's a calculation we're
gonna use to figure this out, that we'll discuss later in the video.
So next up, what are your different
options for retirement income? Well, this pretty much comes down to anything out there that
can make you money, but there's pretty much three main areas where people derive retirement income. The first one is your personal savings and your personal investments. So maybe you're somebody
who's worked a job for your entire life and you've been slowly
contributing to that 401(k). And then maybe you also
have some IRA accounts. Maybe you have a Roth
IRA or a traditional IRA.
And then beyond that, you might have a nest
egg with your savings. Maybe you have the taxable
brokerage account as well. And the goal is for
eventually all these things to be able to provide income for you to not have to work in
order to pay for your bills. Now, the second area
where people derive income for retirement is social security. However, we've certainly
heard a lot about this in recent years, and I don't
think it's such a safe thing especially for young people
to be reliant on that in the future because
social security is kind of in shambles right now
where we don't know how long it's going to last. However, if you are
approaching retirement age, that may be something you can count on for the time being is deriving income from social security. However, social security
alone, 90% of the time is not going to be enough
money to pay for your expenses unless you're living in like the smallest apartment in your entire city and you pinch every penny. And at least for me that's not my idea of a good retirement.
And just a couple of statistics I wanna share with you guys
here about social security, 40% of those who are 60
and above are 100% reliant on social security as a means of income. And so, like we said, here,
there's three different ways people typically derive income, but most people are just fully
reliant on social security which is something to be worried about. And if you're a younger
person watching this video, you don't want to put
yourself in that situation. Another surprising statistic here is that the social security trust fund based on the current rates is likely going to run out around 2035.
Now, are they gonna let
it run out entirely? Probably not. What they're gonna do is probably decrease payouts over time, which means that those who are reliant on that as income are gonna start making less and less money if they have to decrease those payouts. So that is why you really
don't wanna be in the situation where your reliant on this
social security income as a means to sustain yourself. And then lastly, the third source of retirement income for most people that's becoming less and less common is something called a pension.
Now pensions vary from company to company. In the past, it was
typically a percentage of your highest earning year
basically paid to you in perpetuity until you are passed away. But what they found is that these things are not very
profitable for companies. And it's very rare to
find any companies today that still offer this pension. But if you're an older
person watching this nearing retirement age, you may still have a pension plan to derive income during retirement.
So your best case scenario
here for retirement is that you're deriving income from these three different sources. Number one, personal savings
and personal investments. Number two, social security,
number three, your pension. That's like the perfect
scenario for retirement. However, unfortunately
only about 6.8% of people over age 60 are deriving retirement income from all three of those sources. So the vast majority of people
probably don't have pensions and some unfortunately don't
have any personal savings or personal investments. So that's the big picture right now. And that's why it's very
important to have your ducks in a row and start thinking
about this early on and planning that way. You can try to have a a
three-legged stool here where you're able to derive
income from multiple sources.
You don't want to be fully reliant on social security or fully
reliant on pension income or personal investments, personal savings. You wanna have different
things that are able to generate income for you
that way you're diversified. Because basically people
who are deriving income from one source are balancing
on a one-legged stool. It's not very stable. You wanna have multiple legs
to that stool, ideally three. And of course in that personal investments and personal savings
category, there's a lot of different things that
fit under this category. For most people, it's stocks and bonds but a lot of people also invest in things like real
estate or precious metals. And there's a lot of people who literally will
just put all their money in real estate, build up, you know a portfolio of 30 or 40 units. And then they live off of
that rental income cashflow. So there's many different
ways to skin a cat here, guys but just understand that
your goal here should be to derive money from
multiple different sources and have three legs to that stool. So next up here, guys, let's
answer the question of, when should you start
saving for retirement? Well, short answer as
soon as humanly possible.
Now, what I mean by this is when you're younger and
your expenses are lower. Let's say you're in
your 20s and early 30s. Maybe you don't have kids yet. Maybe you're still
living with your parents. This is your prime opportunity
to put as much money as you can into your 401(k), maxing out Roth IRA contributions, and basically holding onto
as much money as you can and putting it in
something that grows value. Because the main factor in how much money you have in retirement isn't based on how much
money that you invest.
It's how much time you
allow that money to grow. So even if you're in your
20s or 30s watching this, and you're thinking, "I don't really have a ton that I could set aside right now." It doesn't matter how much you put aside, the main factor is the amount of time that you allow that money to grow. So just for an example here, guys if you're looking to have $1
million in your retirement let's say your 401(k) for example you could invest just $300 per
month, over a 40 year period earning the average return
from the stock market. Or if you wanted to do it in 20 years, you would have to invest $1,750 per month. That's almost six times
more money to get you to the same result. So you can either invest
a smaller amount of money for a much longer time or you're going to have
to invest a lot of money for a shorter window of time. So the sooner you start,
the better off you are. And I highly encourage you to check out a compound interest calculator and play around with some of those numbers if you are a young person
watching this video.
If you're already close to retirement age and you didn't do these
things, don't worry. I still have more options for you that we're going
to discuss in a little bit. And again, it's important
to understand that truly it's never too late to start saving and investing for retirement. So even if you are in your
50 and you have no assets, you should still do something. You know, doing something is
better than doing nothing. It's gonna be a lot harder because you don't have that much
time to let your money grow, but it's never too late.
It's just important to
understand the sooner you start the better off you are. So now, let's talk about where you should be saving
money for retirement. And there's a pretty simple
process to follow here that most financial experts agree on and I'm going to teach
it to you right now. So the very first thing you should do before investing your
money in the stock market and opening up different
investment accounts is to set up an emergency fund. And this is just simply a liquid account. It sits there in a online savings account or a savings account at your bank or maybe a certificate of deposit. And so what you want
here is a rainy day fund. So what most experts
recommend is setting aside three to six months of
all of your expenses. So what you wanna do is sit
down on a piece of paper write down every one of your expenses, your car payment, your mortgage,
groceries, utility bills and come up with that figure. Let's say for most people maybe it's $3,000 per month
is their monthly expenses.
Well, I would encourage you to save up six times that expense
in a liquid emergency fund. So your very first step is to have let's say anywhere from
10,000 to $20,000 parked in a savings account
where it just sits there in case of emergency. And then you're not going
to invest that money. You just leave it sitting there. And if you end up taking
money out for an emergency like a car repair or a medical expense, you replenish that fund and
you keep that amount there. And of course, if your monthly expenses
are going up over time, you're going to want to
adjust your emergency fund accordingly to make sure you
keep enough money in there. So that's your very first
step is, begin saving up money for an emergency fund and
aim have three to six months of expenses sitting in a liquid account. The very next thing you should do after you have your emergency fund in place is to take advantage of any employer match with the 401(k).
So if you're not familiar, the 401(k) is an employer
sponsored retirement plan which allows you to take money pre-tax and put it away for retirement. And it also gives you
a pretty nice write-off on your tax return, which is
something else to consider. Now, I don't recommend
putting all of your money into the 401(k) because
it's hard to access it and you'd have to pay taxes and penalties to get that money out. However, if your employer
is offering a company match, you should maximize whatever
they're offering you because that's literally free money. So back before I was a
full-time YouTuber guys, I used to work for a utility company and they didn't have a
pension or anything like that, but they did have a employer match. So every dollar I would put in, they would match me with an
additional 50 cents up to 6%. So what I would do is I put 6% of my paycheck into my 401(k)
and then they matched me 50%. So I got another 3% for free. So, effectively 9% of my total pay was going into my 401(k) every
single week automatically.
So after you have your
emergency fund established, or at least started. You don't have to have
all that money there before you move to step two. You just want to kind of start that and begin putting a little bit over there every single week to build up that fund. The next thing is to take advantage of those employer 401(k) matches. After that, if you have any
high-interest debt, you know like personal loans, credit
card debt, things like that. You wanna pay that debt off next, because the average
return you're gonna see from the stock market is somewhere
around 8 to 10% per year. And so if you have high-interest debt, like let's say you have a
credit card with 25% interest, the most wise move you can
make financially is to pay off that debt because you're
paying way more in interest than you're gonna earn as a return. If you had $1000 invested and you're gonna make 10% in one year, you're going to make $100.
If you have a $1000 on a credit card at 25% interest over
the course of one year you'd pay like 250 in interest. So even though you could invest
that $1,000 and make $100 you're still paying 250 in interest. So overall it's a net loss. So if you have high-interest debt, you got to get that paid down first before you begin investing in other stuff, just because that's your
wisest move financially. So after you have your
emergency fund in place and after you maximize your employer match and then you pay off your
high-interest debt, if applicable the next thing to consider is an IRA.
And in particular, I like the Roth IRA. Assuming you're able to contribute to this based on your level of income. Now I'm not gonna get into
a whole thing here guys on Roth IRA versus traditional IRA. I could probably spend 30 minutes on an entire video talking about that. So for now, we're just gonna
cover some very basic stuff about the Roth IRA. With your 401(k) as mentioned, you're contributing pre-tax income and you get the write-off. However, down the line when
you draw out of that account that is when you pay taxes. With the Roth IRA, you're actually contributing
post tax income. So you've already paid taxes on it, meaning you don't get any write-off. However, if you follow
the rules and you know you start drawing from
that by a certain age you don't actually have to pay taxes on the growth of your money.
So it's a very powerful account and it allows you to grow
your wealth tax free. The other advantage of the Roth IRA is you can pull out your
contributions at any time. So if you were putting a $2,000
per year of contributions into that Roth IRA, every single year, you can pull out those
contributions at any time, tax free, penalty free. You just can't touch the earnings or the growth of your money. So let's say you're putting
money into a Roth IRA. And then 10 years later, you decide that you want to invest in a
business or something. You can pull that money out
and pull your contributions out and not have to worry
about penalties and taxes.
So I liked the Roth because it's flexible, you can choose where you put that money. You can put it in stocks,
bonds, precious metals there's all kinds of different Roth IRAs. And you have access to that money where you can take out your contributions, if you do need to access it. So now assuming that you have
the emergency fund in place, you're maxing out your 401(k), you've paid off high-interest debt, you've maxed out Roth IRA
contributions for the year. After that, that's when
I would put that money into a taxable brokerage account where you're able to invest that money, you're able to touch it
you're able to access it.
The only thing is you pay
taxes on your dividends and taxes on those capital gains. But for the most part, that is the generally agreed upon plan for where you should save
money for retirement, is in these different things
that you have control of. And this is all within that category of your personal savings
and personal investments. As far as your pension goes that's all based on your employer, most of them are not
offering any pensions today. However, if they offer it and it's something you
have to contribute towards, if you expect to stay with
that employer for a long time and make a career out of it,
that is definitely a wise move.
And then you automatically pay into social security if
you are a W2 employee. So that's not really something
you have any choice over. So now let's go ahead
and cover how much money that you're going to
need in order to retire. Well, it's kind of a moving target and it's going to change
based on your lifestyle. I mean, are you looking to live in a one bedroom apartment and
drive a ten-year-old vehicle and you know, eat canned
beans for a living? Or do you want to retire
on a beach in Miami? So it all depends based on your lifestyle.
But there is again, another
generally accepted calculation that financial experts use, to calculate necessary retirement income. And it's something called the 4% rule that I'm gonna teach you right now. Also guys, just a quick reminder, I know I mentioned this earlier, but if you have found any
value in this video so far, a like would certainly be appreciated. It helps this video to be
shared with more people. And if you have any thoughts or questions leave me a comment down below. But anyways let's talk
about this 4% rule now.
Now, as far as the math behind this goes, I'm not going to get into it. If you wanna watch,
there's plenty of videos about the 4% rule that we'll
go into a lot more detail but essentially it's a
very simple calculation. What you're going to do,
is you're going to multiply your desired retirement income by 25. So let's say for example you wanna have $40,000 per
year of income in retirement. If that's how much money you want, you want to multiply that by 25. And that will tell you a rough idea of how much money you should have in your savings and your investments in your personal investment
and savings accounts. So for example, if you
wanted $40,000 per year, you would multiply that by 25 and you would come to the conclusion that you're going to want
to have $1 million saved and invested in these different accounts in order to sustainably derive $40,000 per year from that account
without running out of money.
Now, if you wanna be a
little bit more conservative, there is the 3% rule which
is going to be a multiple of around 33, but anywhere
between 25 to 33 times, your desired annual retirement income is how much money you
should have set aside saved and invested for retirement. So obviously guys, the main thing here is the
less money that you need per month based on your lifestyle, the less money you need saved and invested and the sooner you can retire. That's where that whole
FIRE movement comes from or Financially Independent Retire Early, that's people who live off of
as little money as possible. They save as much as possible and they aim to be retired in their 30s. And they're able to accomplish that by living off of as
little money as possible. I did a whole video on this
called how to retire by 30. If you guys wanna check it out at the end I will include a link down below. So now what I want to
cover here is what to do, if you're somebody who
doesn't have 25 to 33 times their desired annual income in a savings or retirement account.
Maybe you're already in
your 50s or early 60s. And you're saying, "What am I gonna do? I don't have money that's just going to fall out of thin air to put in this account,
what options do I have?" Well, let's cover those right now. The main things that you can do are surrounded by things
that you can control. And the main thing you can
control is how much money you're actually spending
during your retirement. So essentially you have two options.
You can try to make more money or you can try to spend less money. Now I'm more of a fan of
the offensive approach here which is figuring out
how to make more money. And so let's talk about that now. The first thing you could
do is figure out some kind of side hustle that you wanna
start maybe in retirement or maybe you wanna do this
before retirement and save up extra money and take all
that money and invest it. I've done a lot of videos
about side hustles. We're not going to get into them here but just understand that
this right here, this laptop this provides a lot of
opportunities to make money.
And it's certainly not rocket science, and I know a lot of people who in their later years have started
YouTube channels and blogs and these different things that allow them to make extra money on the side. So the first thing you wanna consider is, "Hey, let me look into
starting a side hustle." Second of all, pretty simple, spend less money now, pre-retirement. That way you can save
more money to invest. So if you're in your 40s
or 50s, and let's say for example, you're driving
a brand new luxury car and you're watching this
video and you're realizing, "Oh crap, I'm not
preparing for retirement." Maybe you make some
small sacrifices today, that allow you to save
and invest more money. So maybe you trade that car in and you get an economy vehicle and you take that difference
in your monthly payment, and you put that into your
Roth or your 401(k) instead. Another option, pretty simple, spend less money in retirement. We're gonna cover that
more in a little bit. I'm gonna give you guys some
tips on how you can do that.
And then lastly, option number four not the best one, which
is delaying retirement. Maybe you wanna push it
until age 70, age 75, which will allow you
to stay working longer. It will allow you to contribute money towards retirement accounts
and investment accounts longer and allow that money to
have more time to grow before you have to start drawing. So now what I wanna cover
here is a rough idea of how long your retirement
money is going to last. And I don't wanna sound morbid here guys but the truth is, you want
your retirement money to last until you pass away. And then you also wanna make
sure you have enough money sitting there to cover medical bills, funeral costs, and things like that because most people just
don't wanna be a burden on their family when they pass away.
Where they're out of
assets, they're in debt and then their family
has to scrape together 10 or 20 grand for a funeral. So it's not something that
we like to think about or really talk about but it is something that's important to prepare for. And so your goal here should
be to have enough money that you can have your money outlive you and cover some of those costs and maybe have a little
bit of money to pass on to your family as well,
maybe towards, you know college expenses or things like that. But anyway, let me give you
a couple of pointers here on, how long that money will last in a couple of different
factors to consider. Well, first of all how
long your money will last is going to largely depend
on your investments. Some of them are lower risk and some of them are higher risk. And so if you're investing
in higher risk assets, they may be more volatile but you may also see greater returns. On the other hand, if
you're super conservative and let's say you only put your money in fixed income assets, you may find that you're not taking on enough
risk, and you could find that your money doesn't last
as long as you need it to.
So, one of the main things
you have to understand with retirement is that asset mix. And for most people, it's a
split between stocks and bonds. And so that's the main
thing you wanna focus on is that allocation. If you'll have too much money in stocks and not enough in bonds, you might be taking on too much risk and your portfolio could be very volatile, going up and down in value all
the time, stressing you out. If you're too low-risk you might not be growing
your money fast enough and it might run out too soon. So figuring out that asset
mix is very important. Now as far as that number goes, there's a couple of different
rules of thumb out there, but one that most people agree upon is the 110 or the 120 rule. And it's based on your life expectancy. So, I actually am a fan of the 120 rule, which basically means
you take your current age and subtract it from 120. And that tells you how
much money you should have in stocks and the rest should be in bonds.
So for example, I am 25 years old, I would take 120 minus 25,
and that leaves me with 95. That tells me that 95% of my money should be in stocks and
only 5% should be in bonds. Whereas if we take a 70
year old, for example we would take 120 minus 70,
and that leaves us with 50. And that tells us that
50% should be in stocks, 50% should be in bonds. Now, of course, guys that
is a very basic example and it doesn't take into account your unique personal situation. So for exact numbers I
would actually recommend speaking with a financial
advisor and you don't necessarily have to have them manage your money, you can pay them for a
one-time consultation where you're basically saying,
"Hey I want you to tell me what my allocation should be, and help me understand how
that changes over time." But by far that's one of
the most important factors to consider is your asset
mix or asset allocation? Now in general guys, that 4%
rule that we discussed earlier has been pretty successful,
and most people have found that it lasts them around 30 years, which is a pretty long retirement.
That's about how long most
people expect to be around once they retire. However, the success of that
4% rule is largely dependent on that asset allocation we discussed. Because if you're not
taking on enough risk, and you're only earning
a very small return, you're going to dwindle
that money a lot sooner. Another important factor
to consider is taxation. And this varies based on the types of accounts that you have. As mentioned earlier, the Roth IRA is an account
where you put your money in and you pay taxes on the way in. But when you draw from that account you don't pay any taxes. Whereas with the 401(k)
it's tax-free going in but when you come out, you're
actually going to pay taxes.
So this tax situation
is largely dependent on your own investment accounts. Maybe one person has all
of their money in a Roth and somebody else has all
of their money in a 401(k). Those are vastly different tax situations. And this is a scenario again
where a financial advisor can look at this for you, and help you with some tax planning. And you can understand what
are the tax implications associated with your
different investments. So now that you have a
general idea of the factors that will tell you how
long your money will last, let's talk about some different ways to make your retirement money last longer. So the first thing you can do to make your money last longer, which is getting more and more popular is something called downsizing. So most people end up having a home where they raise their kids. And let's say that you're still
together with your spouse. You may now be in this situation where you have this three or four bedroom house, you're paying to heat all those bedrooms.
And you're maintaining this big house, when you're only utilizing
like 25% of that space. Even if your mortgage is paid off, you're still paying for
utilities and landscaping and things that on a much
larger property than you need. So you could downsize into an apartment or downsize into a smaller house. That's becoming more and more popular with the goal of reducing
your fixed monthly expenses. Another option, going back
to the side hustle idea, maybe you Airbnb, a part of your home or you do one of your bedrooms
or something like that, to figure out how to generate
income from that unused space.
But downsizing is a very popular option. Another one is reducing
your fixed expenses like your car payment, as
well as things like your utility payment and things
like your phone bill. So this is where I wanna
talk more about our sponsor for today's video, which is T-Mobile, because they have specific wireless plans designed for people in
retirement to save you money on those fixed monthly costs. So, 55 and up customers who live anywhere in the United States, not just Florida are able to get two lines
of unlimited talk, text and data on T-Mobile's network,
starting at under $30 each.
Which if you have an existing phone plan you have a general idea
of what you're paying, and I can tell you guys right now I'm paying a heck of a lot
more than $30 per line. Now you might be wondering if you're getting some really
cheap plan in the process and the answer is no. In fact, it comes with a lot
of different bells and whistles and extra perks. For example, it comes with the industry's best scam protection, unlimited
3G mobile hotspot data, international texting, no
annual service contracts, your very own dedicated
customer service team, as well as additional
free items here and there and discounts every single
week through T-Mobile Tuesdays. So oftentimes if you
switch from a carrier like, AT&T or Verizon, over to
T-Mobile with this plan, you could save upwards of
50% every single month. And while it may not sound
like a lot of money upfront when you factor in that cost
over the next 20 or 30 years, these little things you
can do to save money on those monthly expenses
really are going to add up. So if you are interested
in those 55 plus plans through T-Mobile, switching
carriers is very easy.
If you're ready to make the switch, you just have to stop
into a T-Mobile store, or you can call 1800 T-Mobile or visit T-mobile.com/55, and I'll go ahead and
include links to all of that as well as the phone number down below, if you guys wanna go
ahead and take advantage of those discounted plans. Now another thing you can do
to make your retirement money last longer is falling
into that category of delaying your retirement. You can also delay taking social security, and this can lead to you having
a larger monthly benefit. So for every year that you wait, you're going to get an
additional 8% in social security, every single month. And if you wait until age 70
to start taking social security you can get up to 24%
more every single month. So if you can delay retirement, and delay taking your
social security benefit, that can result in
additional monthly income. Another great strategy is exactly what we're talking about here, which is having a retirement spending plan before you stop working.
So you do things in advance
to get your ducks in a row. You cut down on recurring monthly expenses like your phone bill,
maybe you take advantage of something like
T-Mobile's 55 and up plans. Maybe you downsize, or you
decide to Airbnb a spare room as us as a side hustle. You just start planning early on before you hit retirement
age, and then you think, "Okay, I haven't planned for this at all. Let's get something going." You're better off to plan in the beginning and get your ducks in the row early. Another suggestion that I have is utilizing credit card reward
points, because a lot of people in their later years want
to travel during retirement. We're in a unique situation right now with the global pandemic,
but once it's safe to travel, that's a popular thing
in your retirement age is seeing the world.
Well, if you're able to
effectively use credit cards and get free points for
travel or free miles, that's another way to get
more bang for your buck. And as long as you're not paying interest on those credit cards and you're paying them
off every single month, I would highly recommend utilizing
credit card reward points and bonuses for travel. Lastly, one of the
things that you can do is make investments in your health to make sure that you're
not having a lot of medical stuff coming up in retirement.
Hopefully you have some
plan for health insurance. So let's say now that worst case scenario, you're somebody who is
in retirement right now and you're slowly realizing that you're going to run out of money. You don't have enough for that 4% rule and maybe you only have
one leg to your stool, which is social security. What options do you have available to you, if you know, you're going to fall short? First of all, as covered
earlier, you can reduce expenses or pick up a part-time job or side hustle.
A lot of people in
retirement end up working 10 or 15 hours per week on the side. Number one for something to do, and number two, just to
have extra spending money. Another option is to tap
into the value of your home with a home equity line of
credit or a reverse mortgage. That's pretty complicated, not gonna get into that
too much in this video, but if you want to hear more about that leave me a comment down below, and maybe I'll do a whole video talking about the reverse mortgage. Another option that you may explore is, if you have a life insurance policy, you may be able to tap into the value of your life insurance policy and get something called the cash value, if you draw on that early. Again, complicated subject
maybe a topic for another video but if you have a life insurance policy, you should sit down
with a financial planner or financial advisor and ask
them about those options.
And one thing I want to mention here is, if you're somebody who's in retirement and you know that your
money supplies dwindling, don't ignore this problem. There are things that you can do. The longer you wait the
worst it's going to be. So I would start addressing
these issues now. So just to wrap up here guys, one of the main things
that I want to recommend as a call to action is it
may be worthwhile to sit down with a fee only certified
financial planner.
It's gonna cost you a couple
of $100 out of pocket, but they're going to be
able to help you answer a lot of questions you may have, such as asset mix, asset allocation. There'll be able to look at your different retirement accounts
and help you understand the tax implications,
because on the surface retirement planning is pretty simple. It comes down to your
expenses, your income, your lifestyle needs, and basically what you're looking to get
out of your retirement. But when you look into
the individual details that each person has with
their different accounts, that's where it becomes more personalized and more complicated. So I think you're going
to get a lot of value out of a fee only
certified financial planner that you pay an hourly rate to, that way you can get unique information about your personal financial situation. At the end of the day here guys, if you fail to plan, you're
essentially planning to fail.
And I want to discourage
you from doing that. This isn't the most exciting topic and it's certainly not on
the top of my to-do list but retirement planning is very important. So I encourage you to take
action on this advice today. I thank you so much for
watching this video. I hope you've got a
lot of value out of it.
Let me know down in the
comment section below what your thoughts are on this. And if you made it to the
very end, let me know too because I'm always curious
how many people stick around for full videos. Lastly, one last, thank
you here to T-Mobile for sponsoring this video. I have a link down below, if you wanna check out
T-Mobile's essentials, 55 and up plan, which is a great option to minimize your monthly recurring
expenses in retirement, to make sure that money lasts longer. If this is your first time
seeing me make sure you subscribe and hit that bell for
future notifications, and on that I hope to see
you in the next video.
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