Tag: how to retire

Pay This Off Before You Retire – Retirement Planning Tips
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning Tips for Retiree's
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

Can I Retire at 55? Tips for Early Retirement
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning Tips for Retiree's
If you're thinking of retiring at 55, you want to be careful about where you get your advice and guidance, and that's because most retirement advice is geared toward those who retire quite a bit later, in fact… Most people retire at 62, but things will be different for you if you're going to retire at 55. So that's what we'll talk about for the next couple of minutes here, we'll go over where you can get the money from, and how that works with taxes as well as healthcare, then we'll look at some actual numbers and what it might look like for somebody who retires at age 55.
We might also want to get philosophical just briefly and ask the question, Why age 55? Yes, it's a nice round number. And there are some interesting tax strategies that are available around that age, but let's say you could retire a little bit earlier at 54, would you want to make that happen? Or if you worked a few more years… I know you'll think this is crazy, but if you worked a couple of more years and you could not impact your finances, but still take some of those dream vacations and spend time with loved ones, would that be worth it to maybe work until 59, for example? So we want to figure out exactly why you are pursuing a particular goal and then we can improve the chances of success for you, so let's start with health coverage, this is a tricky one because you're retiring quite a bit earlier than most people who might be near that Medicare age, so you have a number of different options to continue being covered, and it is a good idea to have real health insurance coverage just in case something happens.
So a couple of your choices include, number one, you can continue your current benefits from a job if you have them for up to 18 months in most cases, and that's under COBRA or your state's continuation program, that can get quite expensive because you're going to pay the full price, if you weren't already doing that, plus perhaps a teeny little bit extra for administration, but it is a way to continue with the program that you currently have, so that can be helpful if you are mid stream in certain treatments or if it's going to be hard to get certain benefits that you currently have on a different health care program, unfortunately, that's not usually a long term solution because we need to get you until age 65, which is when most people enroll in Medicare, and you should see your costs go down quite a bit at that point, maybe depending on what happens, so another solution that a lot of people look at is buying their own coverage, and that happens typically through a healthcare marketplace or an exchange, and that's where you just by coverage through an insurance company.
So you can go directly to the insurers, but it's often a good idea to go through… Start at healthcare.gov, and then go through the marketplace or the exchange, and that way you can shop some plans and potentially, depending on your income, you can potentially get some cost reductions that make it a lot more affordable, I'll talk more about that in a second, but another option is to switch to a spouse's plan, if you happen to be married and that person has coverage that's going to continue for whatever reason, that might also be a solution for you, when you leave your job, it could be a qualifying event that allows you to get on that person's program, but let's talk more about saving money on health care expenses before age 65, most people are going to buy a policy based on the factors that are most important to them, so that could be the premium or the out of pocket maximum, the deductible, the co pays, certain areas of coverage, all that kind of thing, you can select a plan that fits your needs.
Now, you might find that those tend to be quite expensive, and so if your income is below certain levels, you might be able to get effectively a reduction in the premium, it might be in the form of a tax credit or a subsidy, so here's just a preview of how things could look for you, let's say your income is, let's say 50,000 in retirement, and you need to look at exactly what income means, but there is no coverage available from a spouse, we've got one adult, and let's say you are… As our video suggest age 55 here, so you might get a benefit of roughly 422 a month, meaning you could spend that much less each month, and that's going to make it a lot easier to pay for coverage on these plans, if we switch your income down to 25,000 per year, the help is even bigger, so as you can see by varying or controlling your income, and this is something you might have some control over if you retire at 55, you can also control your healthcare costs, we'll talk about some conflicting goals here, where you might not want to absolutely minimize your income during these years, but this is important for you to know if you're going to be paying for your own coverage, and if you're experiencing sticker shock when you see the prices…
By the way, I'm going to have a link to this and a bunch of other resources in the description below, so you can play with this same calculator yourself. Now, once you're on Medicare, the cost should drop quite a bit, this is a calculator from Fidelity where we can say, let's say you are a female, and we're going to say you're eligible for Medicare at this point, so we'll bring you up to age 65. It is going to be quite a bit higher cost, if you look at it before age 65, and that's because you are paying for those private policies from insurance companies, let's say you're going to live until age 93, and so you might expect to spend roughly 5800 6000 bucks per year, depending on your health and your location and other factors, it could be more or less, but this is an estimate of what somebody might spend, a single woman each year in retirement, of course, that number is going to increase each year with inflation and deteriorating health issues.
But this is a ballpark estimate of what you might be spending in the future, now we get to the question of, do you have the financial resources to retire at 55? And that comes down to the income and the assets that you're going to draw from to provide the resources you need to buy the things you want and need, and one way to look at this is to say We want to avoid early withdrawal penalties because again, you are retiring at an age that's earlier than the typical retiree and most retirement accounts are designed for you to take withdrawals at 59.5 or later, to avoid those penalties, fortunately, you have a couple of options, so with individual and joint accounts, just taxable brokerage accounts, you can typically withdraw from those without any penalties, but you may have capital gains taxes when you sell something, those taxes may be at a lower rate than you would pay if you take big withdrawals from retirement accounts, but you just want to double and triple check that, but that can be a liquid source of funds. You. Can also typically withdraw from Roth accounts pretty easily.
So those regular contributions come out first, in other words, you can pull out your regular contributions at any time with no taxes and no penalties, what that means is that's the annual limit contributions you might have been making her by year, so the 7000 per year, for example. That money would be easily accessible, but if you have other money types like Roth conversions, for example, you're going to be very careful and check with your CPA and find out what all of that could look like. There. Are other ways to get at funds that are inside of pre tax retirement accounts, and it might actually make sense to draw on those to some extent, we'll talk more about that in a minute, but these are some of the tricks you can use to avoid an early withdrawal penalty yet still draw on those assets before age 59.5.
The first one is the so called rule of 55, so this applies if you work at a job with, let's say a 401K, and you stop working at that employer at age 55 or later, if you meet certain criteria, then you can withdraw those funds from the 401k so they go directly from the 401k to you. They don't go over to an IRA, you could withdraw those funds without an early withdrawal penalty.
A complication here is that not every employer allows you to do that, so 401k plans can set a bunch of their own rules, and one of them might be that they don't let you just call them up and take money whenever you want, they might make you… Withdraw the entire amount, so if that's the case, this isn't going to work, so be sure to triple check with your employer and the plan vendors and find out exactly how this would work logistically or if it will even work. Next, we have SEPP that stands for substantially equal periodic payments or rule 72. This is an opportunity to draw funds from, let's say your IRA or a certain IRA that you choose, but before age 59 and a half without getting early withdrawal penalties. Now, this is not my favorite choice. I don't necessarily recommend this very often at all, and the reason is because it's easy to slip up and end up paying tax penalties. The reason for that is in part that it's really rigid, so when you establish this, You calculate an amount that you have to take out every year, and it has to be the same amount every year, and you have to make sure you do that for the longer of when you turn age 59 1/2 or for five years.
And even that sounds kind of simple, but it's still easy to trip up, and you also have to avoid making any kind of changes to your accounts, so it's just really rigid and can be difficult to stick to you, so… Not my favorite choice, but it could be an option. Those of you who work for governmental bodies, maybe a city organization or something like that, you might have a 457b plan, and those plans do not have early withdrawal penalties before 59 and a half, so you could withdraw money from that and use some income, pre pay some taxes, and have some money to spend fairly easily, this by the way, is an argument for leaving money in your employer's 457 versus rolling it over to an IRA, because once it goes over to an IRA, you are subject to those 59 1/2 rules and a potential early withdrawal penalty.
So that could end up leaving you with 72 to work with, for example, which again is not ideal. So you might be asking, well shouldn't I just minimize taxes and hold off on paying taxes for as long as possible? And the answer is not necessarily. So it could make sense to go ahead and pre pay some taxes by getting strategic, the reason for that is that you will eventually have to pay taxes on your pre tax money and it might happen in a big lump, and that can bump you up into the highest tax brackets, so it could be better to smooth out the rate at which you draw from those accounts and hopefully keep yourself in lower tax bracket, at least relatively speaking.
So when your RMDs or your required minimum distributions kick in after age 72 under current law, that could possibly bump you up into the highest tax brackets, maybe you want to smooth things out and take some income early. So let's look at the question of, Do you have enough with some specific numbers, and before we glance at those numbers, just want to mention that I am Justin Pritchard. I help people plan for retirement and invest for the future. I've got some good resources, I think, in the description below, some of the things that we've been talking about here today, as well as some general retirement planning information. So if this is on your mind, I think a lot of that is going to be really helpful for you. Please take a look at that and let me know what you think of what you find. It's also a good time for a friendly reminder, This is just a short video, I can't possibly cover everything. So please triple and quadruple check with some professionals like a CPA or a financial advisor before you make any decisions, so let's get back into these questions, Do you have enough? As we always need to mention, it depends on where you are and how much you spend and how things work for you.
Are you lucky to retire into a good market, or are you unlucky and retiring into a bad market? All of these different aspects are going to affect your success, but let's jump over to my financial planning tool and take a look at an example. This is just a hypothetical example, it's the world's most over simplified example, so please keep that in mind, with a real person, we've got a lot more going on. The world is a complicated place and things get messier, but we're keeping it very simple here, just to talk about an example of how things might look, so this person has one million in pre tax assets and 350,000 in a brokerage account, and if we just quickly glance at their dashboard here, pretty high probability of success, so let's make it a little bit more interesting and say… Maybe that IRA has, let's say, 700,000 in it. What is that going to do? And by the way, this is still a lot more than a lot of people have, but again, if you're going to be retiring at 55, you typically have quite low expenses and/or a lot of assets.
So let's keep in mind here that retirees don't necessarily spend at a flat inflation adjusted level, and I'll get into the assumptions here in a second, but let's just look at if this person spends at inflation minus 1% using the retirement spending "smile," that dramatically improves their chances, and I've got videos on why you might consider that as a potential reality, so you can look into that later at your leisure, but as far as the assumptions, we assume they spend about 50,000 a year, retire at age 55.
The returns are 5.5% per year, and inflation is 3% per year. Wouldn't that be refreshing if we got 3%… So we glance at their income here age 55, nothing, and then Social Security kicks in at 70. They're doing a Social Security bridge strategy. I've got videos on that as well, or at least one video, the full year kicks in here later, and then their Social Security adjust for inflation, looking at their taxes, we have zero taxes in these earlier years because they are just not pulling from those pre tax accounts. Maybe not getting much, if anything, in terms of capital gains, maybe their deduction is wiping that out, so we may have an opportunity here to actually do something and again, pre pay some taxes and pull some taxable income forward.
In fact, if we glance at their federal income tax bracket, you can see that it's fairly low from 55 on, maybe they want to pull some of this income forward so that later in life, they are drawing everything out of the pre tax accounts all at once. It just depends on what's important to you and what you want to try to do, and that brings us to some tips for doing calculations, whether you are doing this with somebody, a financial planner or on your own, you want to look at that gap between when you stop working and when your income benefits begin from, let's say, Social Security, there's also that gap between when you stop working and when Medicare starts, and that's another important thing to look at, but what are your strategies available there? Should you take some income, and exactly how much? That's going to be an area where you might have some control, so it's worth doing some good planning.
We also want to look closely at the inflation and investment returns, and what are the assumptions in any software that you're using, for example? These are really important inputs and they can dramatically change what happens… You saw what happened when we switched from a flat inflation adjusted increase each year to the retirement spending smile, just a subtle little adjustment has a big difference on how things unfold, and in that scenario, by the way, we would typically have healthcare increasing at a faster rate. But like I said, we use an over simplified example and didn't necessarily include that in this case, but you do want to click through or ask questions on what exactly are the assumptions and are you on board with those assumptions? You may also need to make some adjustments, and this is just the reality of retiring at an early age when you may have 30 plus years of retirement left, a lot can happen, and there really is a lot of benefit to making slight adjustments, especially during market crashes, for example, so.
If things are not necessarily going great, some little tweaks could potentially improve the chances of success substantially, that might mean something as simple as skipping an inflation adjustment for a year or two, or maybe dialing back some vacation spending. These are things you don't want to do, that's for sure, but with those little adjustments, you can potentially keep things on track, and that way you don't have to go back to work or make bigger sacrifices. And so I hope you found that helpful. If you did, please leave a quick thumbs up, thank you and take care..
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Why This Investment System Can Help Retirees Worry Less About Their Retirement Plan
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning Tips for Retiree's
I want to share an investment system for retirees to hopefully assist you as you're thinking about and planning for your retirement we're also going to look at how to prepare your retirement for the multiple potential potential economic Seasons that we may be headed into so we want to look at the multiple seasons and then the Easy System that's going to help lower taxes and then lower risk as well now if I haven't met you yet I'm Dave zoller and we help people plan for and Implement these retirement strategies really for a select number of people at streamline Financial that's our retirement planning firm but because we can't help everyone we want to share this with you as well so if you like retirement specific videos about one per week be sure to subscribe so in order to create a proper investment plan in system we want to make sure that we build out the retirement income plan first because without the income plan it's much harder to design the right investment strategy it's kind of like without the income plan it's like you're guessing at well 60 40 portfolio sounds good or you know May maybe this amount in the conservative bucket sounds reasonable you already know and and you feel that as you get close to retirement that goal of just more money isn't the the end-all goal that we should really be aiming for for retirement it's more about sustainability and certainty and then really the certainty of income and possibly less risk than before the last 30 years uh the things that you did to be successful with the financial side are going to look different than the next 20 or 30 years now if you need help defining the the income plan a little bit then look at the DIY retirement course below this video now once you do Define your goals for retirement and then the income needed to achieve those goals then creating the investment system becomes a lot easier and within the investment plan we really know that we can only control three things in all three things we actually want to minimize through this investment system the first thing we can minimize or reduce is how much tax you pay when investing we had a a client who was not a client of streamline Financial but of a tax firm coming to the the CPA firm in March to pick up his tax return and he was completely surprised that he had sixty thousand dollars of extra income on his tax return that he had to pay tax on right away before April 15th and it was due to the capital gains being recognized and other distributions within his investment account and he said but I didn't sell anything and the account didn't even go up that much last year and I got to pay tax on it but he was already in the highest tax bracket paying about close to 37 percent on short-term capital gains and dividends and interest so that was an unpleasant surprise and we see it happen more often than it should but this can really be avoided and here's two ways we can control tax so that we don't have to have that happen and really just control tax and pay less of it is the goal and I'll keep this at a high level but it'll get the the point across number one is the kinds of Investments that you own some are maybe funds or ETFs or individual uh equities or things like that the funds and ETFs they could pass on capital gains and and distributions to you each year without you even doing anything without you selling or or buying but it happens within the fund a lot of times now we would use funds and ETFs that are considered tax efficient so that our clients they can decide when to recognize gains rather than letting the fund company decide now the second way is by using a strategy that's called tlh each year there's many many fluctuations or big fluctuations that happen in an investment account and the strategy that we call tlh that allows our clients that's tax loss harvesting it allows them to sell an investment that may be down for part of the year and then move it into a very similar investment right away so that the investment strategy stays the same and they can actually take a write-off on that loss on their taxes that year now there's some rules around this again we're going high level but it offsets uh you know for that one client who are not a client but who had the big sixty thousand dollars of income he could have been offsetting those capital gains by doing tlh or tax loss harvesting that strategy has really saved hundreds and thousands of of dollars for clients over a period of years so on to the next thing that we can control in our investment plan and that's cost this one's easier but many advisors they don't do it because it ends up paying them less now since we're certified financial planner professionals we do follow the fiduciary standard and we're obligated to do what's best for our clients so tell me this if you had two Investments and they had the exact same strategy the same Returns the same risk and the same tax efficiency would you rather want the one that costs 0.05 percent per year or the one that costs 12 times more at point six percent well I know that answer is obvious and we'd go with a lower cost funds if it was all the same low-cost funds and ETFs that's how we can really help reduce the cost or that's how you can help reduce the cost in your investment plan because every basis point or part of a percentage that's saved in cost it's added to your return each year and this adds up to a lot over time now the last thing that we want to minimize and control is risk and we already talked about the flaws of investing solely based on on risk tolerance and when it comes to risk a lot of people think that term risk tolerance you know how much risk can we on a scale of one to ten where are we on the the risk factor but there's another way to look at risk in your investment strategy and like King Solomon we believe that there's a season for everything or like the if it was the bird song There's a season for everything and we also believe that there's four different seasons in investing and depending on what season we're in some Investments perform better than others and the Four Seasons are pull it up right now it's higher than expected inflation which we might be feeling but there's also a season that can be lower than expected or deflation and then there's higher than expected economic growth or lower than expected economic growth and the goal is reduce the risk in investing by making sure that we're prepared for each and every one of those potential Seasons because there are individual asset classes that tend to do well during each one of those seasons and we don't know nobody knows what's really going to happen you know people would would speculate and say oh it's going to be this or this or whatever might happen but we don't know for sure that's why we want to make sure we just have the asset classes in the right spots so that the income plan doesn't get impacted so the investment system combined with the income system clients don't have to worry about the movements in the market because they know they've got enough to weather any potential season I hope this has been helpful for you so far as you're thinking about your retirement if it was please subscribe or like this video so that hopefully other people can be helped as well and then I'll see you in the next one take care thank you

Can I Retire at 55? Tips for Early Retirement
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning Tips for Retiree's
If you're thinking of retiring at 55, you want to be careful about where you get your advice and guidance, and that's because most retirement advice is geared toward those who retire quite a bit later, in fact… Most people retire at 62, but things will be different for you if you're going to retire at 55. So that's what we'll talk about for the next couple of minutes here, we'll go over where you can get the money from, and how that works with taxes as well as healthcare, then we'll look at some actual numbers and what it might look like for somebody who retires at age 55.
We might also want to get philosophical just briefly and ask the question, Why age 55? Yes, it's a nice round number. And there are some interesting tax strategies that are available around that age, but let's say you could retire a little bit earlier at 54, would you want to make that happen? Or if you worked a few more years… I know you'll think this is crazy, but if you worked a couple of more years and you could not impact your finances, but still take some of those dream vacations and spend time with loved ones, would that be worth it to maybe work until 59, for example? So we want to figure out exactly why you are pursuing a particular goal and then we can improve the chances of success for you, so let's start with health coverage, this is a tricky one because you're retiring quite a bit earlier than most people who might be near that Medicare age, so you have a number of different options to continue being covered, and it is a good idea to have real health insurance coverage just in case something happens.
So a couple of your choices include, number one, you can continue your current benefits from a job if you have them for up to 18 months in most cases, and that's under COBRA or your state's continuation program, that can get quite expensive because you're going to pay the full price, if you weren't already doing that, plus perhaps a teeny little bit extra for administration, but it is a way to continue with the program that you currently have, so that can be helpful if you are mid stream in certain treatments or if it's going to be hard to get certain benefits that you currently have on a different health care program, unfortunately, that's not usually a long term solution because we need to get you until age 65, which is when most people enroll in Medicare, and you should see your costs go down quite a bit at that point, maybe depending on what happens, so another solution that a lot of people look at is buying their own coverage, and that happens typically through a healthcare marketplace or an exchange, and that's where you just by coverage through an insurance company.
So you can go directly to the insurers, but it's often a good idea to go through… Start at healthcare.gov, and then go through the marketplace or the exchange, and that way you can shop some plans and potentially, depending on your income, you can potentially get some cost reductions that make it a lot more affordable, I'll talk more about that in a second, but another option is to switch to a spouse's plan, if you happen to be married and that person has coverage that's going to continue for whatever reason, that might also be a solution for you, when you leave your job, it could be a qualifying event that allows you to get on that person's program, but let's talk more about saving money on health care expenses before age 65, most people are going to buy a policy based on the factors that are most important to them, so that could be the premium or the out of pocket maximum, the deductible, the co pays, certain areas of coverage, all that kind of thing, you can select a plan that fits your needs.
Now, you might find that those tend to be quite expensive, and so if your income is below certain levels, you might be able to get effectively a reduction in the premium, it might be in the form of a tax credit or a subsidy, so here's just a preview of how things could look for you, let's say your income is, let's say 50,000 in retirement, and you need to look at exactly what income means, but there is no coverage available from a spouse, we've got one adult, and let's say you are… As our video suggest age 55 here, so you might get a benefit of roughly 422 a month, meaning you could spend that much less each month, and that's going to make it a lot easier to pay for coverage on these plans, if we switch your income down to 25,000 per year, the help is even bigger, so as you can see by varying or controlling your income, and this is something you might have some control over if you retire at 55, you can also control your healthcare costs, we'll talk about some conflicting goals here, where you might not want to absolutely minimize your income during these years, but this is important for you to know if you're going to be paying for your own coverage, and if you're experiencing sticker shock when you see the prices…
By the way, I'm going to have a link to this and a bunch of other resources in the description below, so you can play with this same calculator yourself. Now, once you're on Medicare, the cost should drop quite a bit, this is a calculator from Fidelity where we can say, let's say you are a female, and we're going to say you're eligible for Medicare at this point, so we'll bring you up to age 65.
It is going to be quite a bit higher cost, if you look at it before age 65, and that's because you are paying for those private policies from insurance companies, let's say you're going to live until age 93, and so you might expect to spend roughly 5800 6000 bucks per year, depending on your health and your location and other factors, it could be more or less, but this is an estimate of what somebody might spend, a single woman each year in retirement, of course, that number is going to increase each year with inflation and deteriorating health issues.
But this is a ballpark estimate of what you might be spending in the future, now we get to the question of, do you have the financial resources to retire at 55? And that comes down to the income and the assets that you're going to draw from to provide the resources you need to buy the things you want and need, and one way to look at this is to say We want to avoid early withdrawal penalties because again, you are retiring at an age that's earlier than the typical retiree and most retirement accounts are designed for you to take withdrawals at 59.5 or later, to avoid those penalties, fortunately, you have a couple of options, so with individual and joint accounts, just taxable brokerage accounts, you can typically withdraw from those without any penalties, but you may have capital gains taxes when you sell something, those taxes may be at a lower rate than you would pay if you take big withdrawals from retirement accounts, but you just want to double and triple check that, but that can be a liquid source of funds.
You. Can also typically withdraw from Roth accounts pretty easily. So those regular contributions come out first, in other words, you can pull out your regular contributions at any time with no taxes and no penalties, what that means is that's the annual limit contributions you might have been making her by year, so the 7000 per year, for example. That money would be easily accessible, but if you have other money types like Roth conversions, for example, you're going to be very careful and check with your CPA and find out what all of that could look like. There. Are other ways to get at funds that are inside of pre tax retirement accounts, and it might actually make sense to draw on those to some extent, we'll talk more about that in a minute, but these are some of the tricks you can use to avoid an early withdrawal penalty yet still draw on those assets before age 59.5.
The first one is the so called rule of 55, so this applies if you work at a job with, let's say a 401K, and you stop working at that employer at age 55 or later, if you meet certain criteria, then you can withdraw those funds from the 401k so they go directly from the 401k to you. They don't go over to an IRA, you could withdraw those funds without an early withdrawal penalty. A complication here is that not every employer allows you to do that, so 401k plans can set a bunch of their own rules, and one of them might be that they don't let you just call them up and take money whenever you want, they might make you…
Withdraw the entire amount, so if that's the case, this isn't going to work, so be sure to triple check with your employer and the plan vendors and find out exactly how this would work logistically or if it will even work. Next, we have SEPP that stands for substantially equal periodic payments or rule 72. This is an opportunity to draw funds from, let's say your IRA or a certain IRA that you choose, but before age 59 and a half without getting early withdrawal penalties. Now, this is not my favorite choice. I don't necessarily recommend this very often at all, and the reason is because it's easy to slip up and end up paying tax penalties. The reason for that is in part that it's really rigid, so when you establish this, You calculate an amount that you have to take out every year, and it has to be the same amount every year, and you have to make sure you do that for the longer of when you turn age 59 1/2 or for five years.
And even that sounds kind of simple, but it's still easy to trip up, and you also have to avoid making any kind of changes to your accounts, so it's just really rigid and can be difficult to stick to you, so… Not my favorite choice, but it could be an option. Those of you who work for governmental bodies, maybe a city organization or something like that, you might have a 457b plan, and those plans do not have early withdrawal penalties before 59 and a half, so you could withdraw money from that and use some income, pre pay some taxes, and have some money to spend fairly easily, this by the way, is an argument for leaving money in your employer's 457 versus rolling it over to an IRA, because once it goes over to an IRA, you are subject to those 59 1/2 rules and a potential early withdrawal penalty.
So that could end up leaving you with 72 to work with, for example, which again is not ideal. So you might be asking, well shouldn't I just minimize taxes and hold off on paying taxes for as long as possible? And the answer is not necessarily. So it could make sense to go ahead and pre pay some taxes by getting strategic, the reason for that is that you will eventually have to pay taxes on your pre tax money and it might happen in a big lump, and that can bump you up into the highest tax brackets, so it could be better to smooth out the rate at which you draw from those accounts and hopefully keep yourself in lower tax bracket, at least relatively speaking.
So when your RMDs or your required minimum distributions kick in after age 72 under current law, that could possibly bump you up into the highest tax brackets, maybe you want to smooth things out and take some income early. So let's look at the question of, Do you have enough with some specific numbers, and before we glance at those numbers, just want to mention that I am Justin Pritchard. I help people plan for retirement and invest for the future. I've got some good resources, I think, in the description below, some of the things that we've been talking about here today, as well as some general retirement planning information. So if this is on your mind, I think a lot of that is going to be really helpful for you. Please take a look at that and let me know what you think of what you find. It's also a good time for a friendly reminder, This is just a short video, I can't possibly cover everything.
So please triple and quadruple check with some professionals like a CPA or a financial advisor before you make any decisions, so let's get back into these questions, Do you have enough? As we always need to mention, it depends on where you are and how much you spend and how things work for you. Are you lucky to retire into a good market, or are you unlucky and retiring into a bad market? All of these different aspects are going to affect your success, but let's jump over to my financial planning tool and take a look at an example. This is just a hypothetical example, it's the world's most over simplified example, so please keep that in mind, with a real person, we've got a lot more going on. The world is a complicated place and things get messier, but we're keeping it very simple here, just to talk about an example of how things might look, so this person has one million in pre tax assets and 350,000 in a brokerage account, and if we just quickly glance at their dashboard here, pretty high probability of success, so let's make it a little bit more interesting and say…
Maybe that IRA has, let's say, 700,000 in it. What is that going to do? And by the way, this is still a lot more than a lot of people have, but again, if you're going to be retiring at 55, you typically have quite low expenses and/or a lot of assets. So let's keep in mind here that retirees don't necessarily spend at a flat inflation adjusted level, and I'll get into the assumptions here in a second, but let's just look at if this person spends at inflation minus 1% using the retirement spending "smile," that dramatically improves their chances, and I've got videos on why you might consider that as a potential reality, so you can look into that later at your leisure, but as far as the assumptions, we assume they spend about 50,000 a year, retire at age 55.
The returns are 5.5% per year, and inflation is 3% per year. Wouldn't that be refreshing if we got 3%… So we glance at their income here age 55, nothing, and then Social Security kicks in at 70. They're doing a Social Security bridge strategy. I've got videos on that as well, or at least one video, the full year kicks in here later, and then their Social Security adjust for inflation, looking at their taxes, we have zero taxes in these earlier years because they are just not pulling from those pre tax accounts. Maybe not getting much, if anything, in terms of capital gains, maybe their deduction is wiping that out, so we may have an opportunity here to actually do something and again, pre pay some taxes and pull some taxable income forward.
In fact, if we glance at their federal income tax bracket, you can see that it's fairly low from 55 on, maybe they want to pull some of this income forward so that later in life, they are drawing everything out of the pre tax accounts all at once. It just depends on what's important to you and what you want to try to do, and that brings us to some tips for doing calculations, whether you are doing this with somebody, a financial planner or on your own, you want to look at that gap between when you stop working and when your income benefits begin from, let's say, Social Security, there's also that gap between when you stop working and when Medicare starts, and that's another important thing to look at, but what are your strategies available there? Should you take some income, and exactly how much? That's going to be an area where you might have some control, so it's worth doing some good planning.
We also want to look closely at the inflation and investment returns, and what are the assumptions in any software that you're using, for example? These are really important inputs and they can dramatically change what happens… You saw what happened when we switched from a flat inflation adjusted increase each year to the retirement spending smile, just a subtle little adjustment has a big difference on how things unfold, and in that scenario, by the way, we would typically have healthcare increasing at a faster rate. But like I said, we use an over simplified example and didn't necessarily include that in this case, but you do want to click through or ask questions on what exactly are the assumptions and are you on board with those assumptions? You may also need to make some adjustments, and this is just the reality of retiring at an early age when you may have 30 plus years of retirement left, a lot can happen, and there really is a lot of benefit to making slight adjustments, especially during market crashes, for example, so. If things are not necessarily going great, some little tweaks could potentially improve the chances of success substantially, that might mean something as simple as skipping an inflation adjustment for a year or two, or maybe dialing back some vacation spending.
These are things you don't want to do, that's for sure, but with those little adjustments, you can potentially keep things on track, and that way you don't have to go back to work or make bigger sacrifices. And so I hope you found that helpful. If you did, please leave a quick thumbs up, thank you and take care..
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Why Some Retirees Succeed and Others Live in Worry – 5 Retirement Truths
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning Tips for Retiree's
I want to share one of the most valuable pieces of retirement advice that I've ever heard if you're thinking about your retirement and you're wondering if you're doing the right thing or think that you should be doing something different or if you're just worried about all the things going on right now whether it's the economy or the markets or the value of your accounts be sure to watch this video because I'm going to share the retirement truths that every retiree goes through and it's these things right here we're going to cover today and every retiree goes through it and it they experience this in retirement so it's going to go over this and then also what to expect in retirement and then how to give yourself the best chances of maintaining your lifestyle in retirement as well now the negative of these retirement truths that we're going to look at is that many of them lead to increased uncertainty or worry about your retirement one of our goals though as we're thinking about it is really the opposite of uncertainty or worry in retirement it really should be more about confidence right the next years really all the way up until you pass away wait these are the the magic ears these could be the best years of your life and I know that because there's an actual study a research study uh proving this so let me pull that up really quick and show you the results and I'll link to it below people were asked to score their life satisfaction from zero to ten where 10 is the best possible life and then zero is the worst possible life and this is really just the average score by age and I thought it was encouraging to see that life satisfaction tends to increase as you can see as we get older and then it tends to Trail off as we get older but really the area the the period of time we want to focus on is that this is the magic time and we know this to be true as well because we've helped hundreds of pre-retirees move into retirement with confidence and excitement and these were the people who were coming to us that were feeling somewhat unsure or not 100 confident with their money plan and our firm streamline Financial has been around for 24 years and we've made it through quite a few bad Market periods with our clients and by the way if I haven't met you yet I'm Dave zoller and I own streamline Financial with Tim and Luke and Sean and if you're working with an advisor now that's mainly focused on investments and investment planning but doesn't talk about these key retirement strategies like the tax efficient withdrawal planning and income planning or just tax reduction overall feel free to reach out to us through the website now we don't always have time but I'll get back to you either way so let's get into this first truth in retirement it will be common to have that thought of maybe I should be be making a change or should I be doing something different it'll be normal to feel this way in retirement especially when you see the news or you're listening to friends talk about their finances there's this feeling or this thought of really making us doubt our current plan which causes some people to make more emotional decisions instead of making smart financial decisions and a good way to avoid this is really to avoid this feeling is by having an understanding of your plan which really leads to more confidence with what you're doing and having a plan for both the good times and also the bad Mark of times so that you know that you're prepared for either one of those and I'll give you some ways to achieve this coming up in this video now on to the second thing that comes up in retirement that we just have to be prepared for is we need to expect bear markets right you've most likely lived through a lot of them already and really in retirement though they feel a little bit different usually worse but because of the frequency creating a plan with bear markets in mind and really big Corrections built into the plan is a smart thing to do that way you don't have to worry when they eventually come now if you're not sure how to model out these various what-if scenarios or bad Market scenarios for your plan then you may want to talk to a cfp or check out my favorite retirement income planner below this video you should see a link to it it's one of the best consumer facing planners that I've seen and it doesn't cost thousands of dollars like the ones that we use for our clients the next thing to bring up is for pre-retirees who are close to stopping their wage especially if that's during bad markets they may think should I work a little bit longer maybe just one more year to kind of make it through this this difficult period we actually had a client call us up about five months ago and uh no she was five months into retirement and she said something like it seems like so much bad news is out there and what's going on with the markets I'm wondering if I it would have been better if I should have just kept working so we reviewed her plan and because we built in to her plan this expectation of bad markets everything looked great and and really the only reason to keep working would be if she really enjoyed this sort of work that she was doing and it brought her some some purpose but she didn't so it was great it was great confirmation that she was still on the right track so if this sounds like you take a look at another video I recorded I'm gonna either link on this screen or it'll be below and it gives a few real examples of what working an extra year might look like in a financial plan the next thing to know is that no one really knows what's going to happen next it seems like everybody has a prediction on TV or YouTube or at the dinner table with family or with friends and no one really knows what is definitely going to happen we know this uh in a logical way because you know there's that saying if you put 10 economists in the room together and they come up they need to come up with a conclusion they'll come up with 12 of different answers when they walk out knowing that it's important to prepare your investment plan for that four economic Seasons that we may go through in the future since we don't know which one we're going to go through next so just as as an example you've seen it before the four economic seasons are higher than expected economic growth or lower than expected economic growth and then higher than expected inflation or lower than expected inflation and there's asset classes that can do well in each one of those now again we don't know which way we're headed but having asset classes and each one of those potential Seasons that could be beneficial now that's just my opinion and really it's for all of this talk to your own Financial professionals before doing anything like this now on to the next one which really has more to do with human psychology than investment strategy and then after that I'll share the the really the most helpful piece of advice that I've heard related to retirement planning but if you'd like this so far please click on the the like button and and maybe this video can help somebody else going through the same things that that you're looking forward to so the next truth is in retirement we may have a tendency to compare ourselves to others the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence really throughout life that's we've got that tendency to compare it to others but it can harm us in retirement too if we do a video on this channel that mentions a dollar amount as an example we don't want that to really make you feel better or feel worse about your current situation because you know we help high net worth families at streamline Financial we sometimes mention big numbers but we don't want it to be about the numbers we really want to communicate just the principles and the strategies that can can really be applied to to anybody's finances and there's always going to be people with more than us and then there's always going to be people with less than us and the one who wins is the one who's content and at peace most at peace with their current situation you know that saying if I want to be able to practice being content with a little and I want to be able to practice being content with a lot and and you know healthy competition that's okay but comparing ourselves to someone else because uh you know if it causes us a feel of lack or less than that can hurt our retirement plans because that leads really back to that first point that we talked about in uh in this list of feeling like we should be doing something different for example if we see a guy on the internet and he's investing a certain way or he's deciding he's changing up his entire strategy um because of what's happening with the economy then that may cause us to feel like we should be doing something different and then start to increase the emotional level of uh of our decision making instead of staying to strictly logical or financial levels but again it's a normal feeling to feel that worry or fear or anxiety um with what's happening during during current periods but one of the most helpful pieces of advice that I've heard that we can apply to retirement planning is really the difference between those two words fear and anxiety knowing the difference between those two is actually very very helpful as we're planning retirement and talking about money that is if we want to feel better about what we're doing right now when we think about fear and anxiety we might think of them as being the same thing but actually they're completely different things and let me just pull up these two definitions if I can really quickly fear is a caution over a real and present danger and then anxiety is a worry over an imagined future danger now fear if we've got something right in front of us then it's obviously a very helpful tool for us as humans anxiety though is not always a helpful tool as as we're trying to process things partly because these anxieties there's nothing we can do to control or influence them you may have seen this drawing from Carl Richards before about things that matter and then things I can control here's a place to focus and then another way to look at it is we actually sent this to clients not too long ago on a video of what you can't control and what you can control so we can't control the markets and inflation and what they're doing with interest rates or what's happening in the news or the world or tax laws or the elections but a lot of these things actually do relate to things that we can control for instance you know markets are inflation or interest rates your portfolio allocation you can control that you can control when to pay taxes when it's related to in investing you know as we're talking about Roth conversions or the the costs the tax cost tax drag on some of the portfolio and not to get too nerdy about these things but two of the biggest things that we've seen is this idea of not controlling the news but what we can control is news consumption we've seen a big shift with uh some people who instead of someone who wants to consume the news they switch from TV news to reading news where you have a little bit more control of what's coming at you versus TV is just the next thing is coming at you if you know what I mean I don't know if that's if I if I'm explaining that the right way but back to the this video all the things that we mentioned before earlier here um a lot of these can be anxiety-inducing things as well right the severity of a bear Market or not being able to predict what's going to happen next in the world or comparing ourselves and doubting our plan or thinking that we don't have as much as as we wish we had when it comes to to money or the you know what if this happens and what if this happens how is that going to impact my plan and that can lead that sort of thinking can lead to paralysis and really no action being taken but what if you had a plan that was built in to show those different what-if scenarios so instead of the unknown future danger you're able to get more concrete scenarios in the plan as a result that's what I would recommend once you get get it out in the open then it becomes a lot less scary we both know that so either find a great certified financial planner who can show you that and show you the what-if scenarios or check out the the DIY planner or a different planner that helps you put in those what-if scenarios as well so it becomes less scary so don't forget anxiety is it can be the thief of Dreams it takes you away from enjoying the the present moment and it stops you from even taking the right action to make things better in the future because it really just makes you only focused on on the negative as you're you're moving through life that video that I mentioned earlier is called why delaying retirement might not be a good idea if you're pre-retirement and you're thinking you want to work a little bit longer because of what's going on take a look at that one coming up next or below and then I'll see you in the next video take care foreign [Music]

Why This Investment System Can Help Retirees Worry Less About Their Retirement Plan
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning Tips for Retiree's
I want to share an investment system for retirees to hopefully assist you as you're thinking about and planning for your retirement we're also going to look at how to prepare your retirement for the multiple potential potential economic Seasons that we may be headed into so we want to look at the multiple seasons and then the Easy System that's going to help lower taxes and then lower risk as well now if I haven't met you yet I'm Dave zoller and we help people plan for and Implement these retirement strategies really for a select number of people at streamline Financial that's our retirement planning firm but because we can't help everyone we want to share this with you as well so if you like retirement specific videos about one per week be sure to subscribe so in order to create a proper investment plan in system we want to make sure that we build out the retirement income plan first because without the income plan it's much harder to design the right investment strategy it's kind of like without the income plan it's like you're guessing at well 60 40 portfolio sounds good or you know May maybe this amount in the conservative bucket sounds reasonable you already know and and you feel that as you get close to retirement that goal of just more money isn't the the end-all goal that we should really be aiming for for retirement it's more about sustainability and certainty and then really the certainty of income and possibly less risk than before the last 30 years uh the things that you did to be successful with the financial side are going to look different than the next 20 or 30 years now if you need help defining the the income plan a little bit then look at the DIY retirement course below this video now once you do Define your goals for retirement and then the income needed to achieve those goals then creating the investment system becomes a lot easier and within the investment plan we really know that we can only control three things in all three things we actually want to minimize through this investment system the first thing we can minimize or reduce is how much tax you pay when investing we had a a client who was not a client of streamline Financial but of a tax firm coming to the the CPA firm in March to pick up his tax return and he was completely surprised that he had sixty thousand dollars of extra income on his tax return that he had to pay tax on right away before April 15th and it was due to the capital gains being recognized and other distributions within his investment account and he said but I didn't sell anything and the account didn't even go up that much last year and I got to pay tax on it but he was already in the highest tax bracket paying about close to 37 percent on short-term capital gains and dividends and interest so that was an unpleasant surprise and we see it happen more often than it should but this can really be avoided and here's two ways we can control tax so that we don't have to have that happen and really just control tax and pay less of it is the goal and I'll keep this at a high level but it'll get the the point across number one is the kinds of Investments that you own some are maybe funds or ETFs or individual uh equities or things like that the funds and ETFs they could pass on capital gains and and distributions to you each year without you even doing anything without you selling or or buying but it happens within the fund a lot of times now we would use funds and ETFs that are considered tax efficient so that our clients they can decide when to recognize gains rather than letting the fund company decide now the second way is by using a strategy that's called tlh each year there's many many fluctuations or big fluctuations that happen in an investment account and the strategy that we call tlh that allows our clients that's tax loss harvesting it allows them to sell an investment that may be down for part of the year and then move it into a very similar investment right away so that the investment strategy stays the same and they can actually take a write-off on that loss on their taxes that year now there's some rules around this again we're going high level but it offsets uh you know for that one client who are not a client but who had the big sixty thousand dollars of income he could have been offsetting those capital gains by doing tlh or tax loss harvesting that strategy has really saved hundreds and thousands of of dollars for clients over a period of years so on to the next thing that we can control in our investment plan and that's cost this one's easier but many advisors they don't do it because it ends up paying them less now since we're certified financial planner professionals we do follow the fiduciary standard and we're obligated to do what's best for our clients so tell me this if you had two Investments and they had the exact same strategy the same Returns the same risk and the same tax efficiency would you rather want the one that costs 0.05 percent per year or the one that costs 12 times more at point six percent well I know that answer is obvious and we'd go with a lower cost funds if it was all the same low-cost funds and ETFs that's how we can really help reduce the cost or that's how you can help reduce the cost in your investment plan because every basis point or part of a percentage that's saved in cost it's added to your return each year and this adds up to a lot over time now the last thing that we want to minimize and control is risk and we already talked about the flaws of investing solely based on on risk tolerance and when it comes to risk a lot of people think that term risk tolerance you know how much risk can we on a scale of one to ten where are we on the the risk factor but there's another way to look at risk in your investment strategy and like King Solomon we believe that there's a season for everything or like the if it was the bird song There's a season for everything and we also believe that there's four different seasons in investing and depending on what season we're in some Investments perform better than others and the Four Seasons are pull it up right now it's higher than expected inflation which we might be feeling but there's also a season that can be lower than expected or deflation and then there's higher than expected economic growth or lower than expected economic growth and the goal is reduce the risk in investing by making sure that we're prepared for each and every one of those potential Seasons because there are individual asset classes that tend to do well during each one of those seasons and we don't know nobody knows what's really going to happen you know people would would speculate and say oh it's going to be this or this or whatever might happen but we don't know for sure that's why we want to make sure we just have the asset classes in the right spots so that the income plan doesn't get impacted so the investment system combined with the income system clients don't have to worry about the movements in the market because they know they've got enough to weather any potential season I hope this has been helpful for you so far as you're thinking about your retirement if it was please subscribe or like this video so that hopefully other people can be helped as well and then I'll see you in the next one take care thank you

Pay This Off Before You Retire – Retirement Planning Tips
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning Tips for Retiree's
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
Can I Retire at 55? Tips for Early Retirement
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning Tips for Retiree's
If you'' re thinking about retiring at 55, you intend to beware concerning where you obtain your advice and support, which'' s since a lot of retirement guidance is geared toward those who retire quite a bit later, as a matter of fact … Most individuals retire at 62, yet things will be various for you if you'' re going to retire at'55. That'' s what we ' ll talk concerning for the following pair of minutes right here, we'' ll go over where you can get the cash from, and just how that functions with tax obligations as well as health care, then we'' ll appearance at some real numbers and also what it might look like for someone who retires at age 55. We might likewise intend to obtain philosophical simply quickly and ask the question, Why age 55? Yes, it'' s a good round number.And there are some fascinating tax methods that are readily available around that age, however allow ' s state you could retire a little earlier at 54, would certainly you wish to make that take place? Or if you worked a couple of more years … I recognize you ' ll believe this is insane, yet if you'functioned a number of even more years and also you could not influence your finances, but still take a few of those dream holidays as well as hang around with loved ones, would certainly that be worth it to maybe function until 59, for instance? So we want to figure out specifically why you are pursuing a specific goal and after that we can boost the opportunities of success for you, so let ' s begin with wellness insurance coverage, this is a challenging one because you'' re retiring a fair bit earlier than lots of people that could be near that Medicare age, so you have a variety of different options to continue being covered, and also it is an excellent concept to have actual medical insurance coverage simply in case something happens.So a couple of your options include, top, you can continue your present advantages from a job if you have them for as much as 18 months in many instances, and that ' s under COBRA or your state ' s continuation program, that can get quite pricey due to the fact that you ' re mosting likely to pay the full price', if you weren ' t currently doing that, plus possibly a teensy little bit additional for administration, but it is a way to proceed with the program that you currently have, to ensure that can be handy if you are mid stream in certain treatments or if it ' s mosting likely to be hard to get certain benefits that you currently have on a different health and wellness care program, however, that ' s not normally a long-term service due to the fact that we need to obtain you till age 65, which is when the majority of people enroll in Medicare, as well as you must see your prices drop a fair bit at that factor, perhaps depending on what occurs, so one more solution that a great deal of people check out is getting their own insurance coverage, which happens generally via a medical care industry or an exchange, and also that ' s where you just by coverage with an insurance policy company.So you can go straight to the insurance providers, yet it ' s typically a great suggestion to undergo … Begin at healthcare.gov,
and also after that experience the industry or the exchange, which means you can go shopping some strategies as well as potentially, depending upon your revenue, you can possibly obtain some cost decreases that make it a great deal extra inexpensive, I ' ll talk much more regarding that in a second, yet an additional choice is to switch over to a spouse ' s plan, if you occur to be wed which individual has coverage that ' s going to proceed'for whatever reason, that may additionally be a solution for you, when you leave your'job, maybe a certifying occasion that allows you to get on that person ' s program, however allow ' s chat even more concerning conserving cash on healthcare expenditures before age'65, the majority of individuals are going to get a policy based on the aspects that are most vital to them, to make sure that could be the costs or the out of pocket optimum, the deductible, the co pays, specific locations of protection, all that kind of point, you can pick a plan that fits your needs.Now, you could locate that those often tend to be fairly costly, as well as so if your revenue is listed below particular degrees, you may be able to get successfully a reduction in the costs, it may be in the form of a tax obligation debt or an aid, so right here ' s just a preview of just how things can seek you, let ' s claim your income is, allow ' s say 50,000 in retired life, and'you need to look at specifically what income means, yet there is no insurance coverage readily available from a spouse, we ' ve obtained one adult, and also let ' s claim you are … As our video recommend age 55 below, so you may obtain an advantage of roughly 422 a month, suggesting you might invest that much less every month, which ' s mosting likely to make it a great deal easier to pay for'insurance coverage on these plans, if we switch your income down to 25,000 per year, the assistance is also bigger, so as you can see by varying or regulating your revenue, as well as this is something you might have some control over if you retire at 55, you can additionally control your healthcare expenses, we ' ll talk about some conflicting goals here, where you may not wish to definitely lessen your income throughout these years, however this is essential for you to understand if you ' re mosting likely to be paying for your own insurance coverage, as well as if you'' re experiencing sticker label shock when you see the prices …'By the means, I ' m going to have a web link to this and also a bunch of various other sources in the summary listed below, so you can have fun with this same calculator yourself.Now, once you ' re on Medicare, the expense must go down a fair bit, this is a calculator from Integrity where we can'say, let ' s state you are a woman, and we ' re going to claim you ' re eligible for Medicare at this point, so we'' ll bring you'approximately age 65. It is mosting likely to be quite a little bit greater expense,'if you look at it prior to age 65, which ' s due to the fact that you are paying for those personal policies from insurer, allow ' s claim you ' re mosting likely to live until age 93, therefore you may expect to invest approximately 5800 6000 dollars per'year, depending on your wellness as well as your area and also various other aspects, it might be essentially, but this is a price quote of what someone may invest, a solitary female each year in retired life, naturally, that number is going to boost annually with rising cost of living and also deteriorating wellness issues. This is a ball park estimate of what you might be investing in the future, now we get to the inquiry of, do you have the economic resources to retire at 55? Which comes down to the earnings and also the possessions that you ' re mosting likely to draw from to offer the resources you require to buy the important things you'want as well as require, and also one method to look at this is to claim We intend to avoid early withdrawal fines due to the fact that once more, you are retiring at an age that ' s earlier than the regular senior citizen and also a lot of retirement accounts are made for you to take withdrawals at 59.5 or later on, to stay clear of those fines, the good news is, you have a number of options, so with private and joint accounts, simply taxed brokerage firm accounts, you can normally withdraw from those with no charges, however you might have funding gains taxes when you sell something, those taxes might go to a lower price than you would certainly pay if you take big withdrawals from pension, yet you just wish to double and also three-way check that, yet that can be a fluid resource of funds.You. Can also generally take out from Roth accounts pretty conveniently. So those routine payments come out initially, simply put, you can draw out your normal payments at any type of time without taxes as well as no penalties, what that indicates is that ' s the yearly restriction payments you may have been making her by year, so the 7000 per year, as an example. That cash would be easily obtainable, but if you have various other money types like Roth conversions, for example, you ' re going to be really careful and get in touch with your certified public accountant and also discover out what every one of that could look like. There. Are various other methods to access funds that are within pre tax retired life accounts, as well as it might actually make good sense to draw on those somewhat, we ' ll talk a lot more regarding that in a minute, yet these are a few of the tricks you can make use of to stay clear of an early withdrawal charge yet still attract on those assets prior to age 59.5. The very first one is the so called guideline of 55, so this uses if'you work at a work with, allow ' s state a 401K, as well as you quit working at that company at age 55 or later, if you fulfill particular requirements, after that you can withdraw those funds from the 401k so they go straight from the 401k to you.They wear ' t go over to an individual retirement account, you could withdraw those funds without a very early withdrawal fine. A difficulty below is that not every employer allows you to do that, so 401k strategies can establish a lot of their own guidelines, as well as among them could be that they wear
' t allow you just call them up and take cash whenever you desire, they may make you … Withdraw the whole amount, so if that ' s the situation, this isn ' t going to work, so make sure to triple contact your employer and also the plan vendors as well as figure out exactly just how this would certainly function logistically or if it will also function. Next, we have SEPP that stands for significantly equivalent periodic repayments or rule 72. This is a chance to attract funds from, let ' s say your IRA or a certain IRA that you choose, but prior to age 59 and also a half without getting early withdrawal penalties.Now, this is not my preferred selection. I don ' t always suggest this extremely typically in all, as well as the reason is because it ' s simple to slide up and also end up paying tax obligation charges. The factor for that remains in part that it ' s truly rigid, so when you establish this, You compute a quantity that you have to take out yearly, and also it has to be the'very same quantity every year, as well as you have to make certain you do that for the longer of when you turn age 59 1/2 or for five years. And also also that seems type of simple, yet it ' s still simple to trip'up, and you likewise have to stay clear of making any type of modifications to your accounts, so it ' s simply truly rigid as well as can be hard to stay with you, so … Not my favorite option, but maybe a choice. Those of you who work for governmental bodies, maybe a city company or something like that, you could have a 457b strategy, as well as those strategies do not have early withdrawal penalties prior to 59 as well as a half, so you can withdraw cash from that as well as utilize some income, pre pay some taxes, and also have some money to spend relatively conveniently, this incidentally, is an argument for leaving cash in your employer ' s 457 versus rolling it over to an IRA, because once it visits an IRA, you undergo those 59 1/2 policies and a possible early withdrawal penalty.So that could end up leaving you with 72 to deal with, as an example, which once more is not optimal. You might be asking, well shouldn ' t I just reduce'tax obligations and also hold off on paying taxes for as long as possible? As well as the response is not necessarily. It can make sense to go ahead and also pre pay some taxes by obtaining calculated, the reason for that is that you will at some point have to pay tax obligations on your pre tax cash as well as it could occur in a huge lump, as well as that can bump you up right into the highest tax obligation brackets, so it can be far better to smooth out the price at which you attract from those accounts as well as with any luck keep yourself in reduced tax obligation brace, at least reasonably speaking.So when your RMDs or your required minimum distributions kick in after age 72 under present regulation, that could potentially bump you up into the highest tax obligation brackets, possibly you want to smooth points out as well as take some income early. So let ' s take a look at the inquiry of, Do you have enough with some specific numbers, and prior to we eye those numbers, just wish to mention that I am Justin Pritchard. I help individuals prepare for retirement and also spend for the future. I ' ve got some great resources, I think, in the description below, several of the important things that we ' ve been chatting regarding right here today, as well as some general retired life intending information. If this is on your mind, I believe a great deal of that is going to be really useful for you. Please have a look at that and also allow me recognize what you assume of what you discover. It ' s also a great time for a pleasant pointer, This is simply a brief video clip, I can ' t possibly cover whatever. Please three-way and quadruple check'with some experts like a Certified public accountant or a financial consultant before you make any type of decisions, so allow ' s get back right into these questions, Do you have enough? As we constantly need to discuss, it depends upon where you are as well as exactly how much you invest as well as how things benefit you.Are you fortunate to retire into a good market, or are you unfortunate and also retiring into a negative market? All of these different facets are mosting likely to affect your success, but allow ' s jump over to my monetary preparation tool and also take a look at an instance. This is just a theoretical example, it ' s the world ' s most over streamlined example, so please keep that in mind, with a genuine individual, we ' ve got a lot much more taking place. The world is a complex place and
points get messier, however we ' re keeping it very easy below, just to chat about an instance of how things might look, so he or she has one million in pre tax possessions as well as 350,000 in a brokerage firm account, as well as if we just swiftly look at their dashboard right here, quite high likelihood of success, so allow ' s make it'a little bit'extra interesting and state … Maybe that individual retirement account has, let ' s state, 700,000 in it. What is that going to do? As well as incidentally, this is still a great deal greater than a great deal of individuals have, but once more, if you ' re going to be retiring at 55, you usually have rather low expenses and/or a great deal of assets.So let ' s remember here that retirees wear ' t always invest at a flat inflation changed level, and I ' ll get right into the assumptions below in a second, yet let ' s just take a look at if this individual spends at rising cost of living minus 1 %using the retired life costs “smile,” that significantly improves their opportunities, and I ' ve obtained video clips on why you may consider that as a potential reality, so you'can check into that later on at your leisure, yet as for the presumptions, we presume they spend about 50,000 a year, retire'at age 55. The returns are 5.5 %per year, and also inflation is 3%per year. Wouldn ' t that be freshening if we got 3%… So we eye their earnings below age 55, absolutely nothing', and afterwards Social Safety and security starts at 70. They ' re doing a Social Safety and security bridge method. I ' ve got video clips on that particular as well, or at the very least one video, the complete year starts here later, and also after that their Social Protection change for rising cost of living, considering their taxes, we have absolutely no taxes in these earlier years since they are just not pulling from those pre tax obligation accounts. Maybe not getting much, if anything, in regards to capital gains,'perhaps their reduction is wiping that out, so we might have a possibility right here to in fact do something and also once again, pre pay some tax obligations and pull some taxed revenue'forward.In reality, if we eye their federal income tax bracket, you can see that it ' s fairly reduced from 55 on, possibly they desire to draw some of this earnings ahead to ensure that later on in life, they are drawing whatever out of the pre tax obligation accounts simultaneously. It just depends on what ' s essential to you and what you intend to attempt to do, and that brings us to some tips for doing calculations, whether you are doing this with somebody, an economic coordinator or on your own, you intend to consider that space in between when you quit working as well as when your earnings advantages start from, allow ' s say, Social Protection, there ' s also that space between when you stop functioning and also when Medicare starts, and also that ' s an additional essential thing to check out, yet what are your approaches available there? Should you take some income, and precisely how much? That ' s going to be a location where you might have some control, so it ' s worth doing some excellent planning.We also desire to look very closely at the inflation and also investment returns, and also what are the assumptions in any kind of software application that you ' re making use of? These are truly important inputs and also they can considerably transform what takes place …'You saw what happened when we switched over from a level rising cost of living modified boost annually to the retirement costs smile, simply a refined little adjustment has a big distinction on how points unfold, as well as in that circumstance, by the means, we would normally have healthcare boosting at'a much faster rate.But like I said, we use an over streamlined example and didn ' t necessarily consist of that in
this case, yet you do intend to click via or ask concerns on what exactly are the presumptions and also are you on board with those assumptions?'You might additionally need to make some changes, and also this is just the fact of retiring at an early age when you may have 30 plus years of retired life left, a lot can happen, and there really is a whole lot of benefit to making small changes, particularly during market collisions, for example, so. If things are not necessarily going terrific, some little tweaks might possibly enhance the possibilities of success considerably, that might imply something as easy as avoiding a rising cost of living modification for a year or 2, or maybe dialing back some holiday spending.These are things you put on ' t intend to do, that ' s for certain, however with those little changes, you can potentially keep things on the right track, and that method you put on ' t need to go back to function or make bigger sacrifices. And also so I wish you located that valuable. If you did, please leave a fast thumbs up, thanks as well as take treatment.
Yes, it'' s a great round number.And there are some intriguing tax obligation approaches that are available around that age, however allow ' s state you could retire a little bit previously at 54, would certainly you want to make that occur? A problem below is that not every company allows you to do that, so 401k strategies can set a lot of their own policies, and one of them might be that they wear
' t allow you just call them up and take cash whenever you want, they could make you … Withdraw the whole quantity, so if that ' s the case, this isn ' t going to function, so be sure to three-way check with your employer and the plan suppliers and locate out precisely just how this would certainly work logistically or if it will certainly also function. It simply depends on what ' s important to you and also what you desire to attempt to do, as well as that brings us to some ideas for doing estimations, whether you are doing this with somebody, an economic planner or on your own, you want to look at that space between when you stop working as well as when your revenue benefits start from, let ' s claim, Social Protection, there ' s also that void between when you quit functioning as well as when Medicare starts, and that ' s one more essential point to look at, but what are your techniques readily available there? That ' s going to be an area where you might have some control, so it ' s worth doing some excellent planning.We additionally desire to look very closely at the inflation and also financial investment returns, and what are the assumptions in any software that you ' re using? If points are not necessarily going great, some little tweaks might potentially enhance the opportunities of success significantly, that might mean something as straightforward as skipping an inflation adjustment for a year or two, or possibly calling back some trip spending.These are points you wear ' t want to do, that ' s for certain, yet with those little changes, you can potentially keep points on track, as well as that way you put on ' t have to go back to work or make larger sacrifices.
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