Tag: investing
The $65,000 Roth IRA Mistake To Avoid
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning
– I've seen too many of
you making some mistakes when it comes to investing
in your Roth IRA. One of them could cost you
$65,000 and the other one could cost you almost $500,000. You guys are seriously going
to make my beard turn more gray than it already is if
you don't knock it off. So let me show you what to watch out for, that way, you don't lose more money than you have to and
I can save a few bucks on hair dye for a couple more years. A Roth IRA is a self-directed
retirement account where you can contribute after
tax dollars to be invested. Since the money going in is taxed, the growth of your investments are not taxed and the money withdrawal from the account are never taxed either, as long as you don't try to pull out some of the money before the age of 59.5. There is no such thing
as a joint Roth IRA. So if you and your spouse
want to contribute to one, then you'll have to do it individually, hence the name Individual
Retirement Account.
If you both have enough
earned income separately, then you can each invest up to the $6500 limit for the year. If one of you works and the other doesn't, but you file a joint tax return, then the person working can, of course, contribute to a Roth IRA and
your spouse can contribute to a Spousal Roth IRA as well. Remember, these accounts are
owned by the individual person and on paper, not co-owned by both people. I want to try to encourage you to max out your Roth IRA every single year, if possible, because if you
don't do it for that year, then in the future you
cannot go back and contribute for a previous year once that time limit has passed. A Roth IRA is one of those accounts where I would bend over backwards to make sure that I can
put in the full amount allowed every single year.
In my order of operations for
what to do with your money, I have maxing out a Roth
IRA right after investing up to your employer match and HSA. That is how important
this type of account is. The good news with this
is that you actually have a timeframe of 16
months to contribute for each calendar year. So if we are in 2023
right now, then you have from January 1st, 2023, up until
when taxes need to be filed for that year to contribute,
which in this case, would be April 15th, 2024. That's how it is every single year, so ignore the actual dates in my example and pay more attention to the timeframes since the date taxes are due
will change by a few days from year to year. Most brokerages will ask
you which year you want to contribute to. For example, I personally
invest using M1 Finance, which you can check out down
in the description below, and also get a deposit bonus as well.
If I contributed to my Roth
IRA through them right now, then they would ask if I wanted the money to go towards 2022 or 2023, since at the time of recording this, we haven't hit the date
where taxes are due. This is great because it
gives you some extra time beyond the current year to
contribute Roth IRA money for that year. Before I tell you the next mistake that I see way too many people making, please help support my dog Molly by hitting that thumbs up
button and sharing this video with anyone you think it would help. Once you deposit money into your Roth IRA, there's one more extremely important step you need to do that I see a ton of people missing, and that is
actually investing the money.
I can't tell you how
many people I've talked to over the years who just put money into the account assuming
it would automatically grow, or knowing that they
needed to invest the money, but just forgetting to do
it because life happens, and things naturally slip out of our mind, only to check their account
balance years later, realizing that it hasn't grown in value because they didn't invest the money. Stop the nonsense here and
just set up auto investing within your investment account, and if you're waiting because you think that you can time the market
to buy in at a lower price, you can't, because it's
nearly impossible to do, so just to get the money
invested right now. If you know how you want to
invest the money, then great. If you don't, then I personally
like the two fund portfolio for people who are in
the accumulation phase of investing and in the
three fund portfolio for when you're closer to
retirement or in retirement.
I'll have a link to a
playlist then I made just for you where I teach you
about both of those portfolios down in the description below
and above my head as well. When you contribute to a Roth IRA, all of your money is not
locked up until 59.5. You can withdraw the
contributions that you've made before that age without paying a penalty, but you cannot withdraw any of
the gains within the account. For example, if you've contributed $6500 and the account has grown to $10,000, then you can withdraw
the $6500 contribution, but you cannot touch the $3500 gain without paying a penalty until 59.5. I've gotta interject for a second to give my personal opinion on this.
While withdrawing money
penalty-free is an option, I want to encourage you not to do this. To be brutally honest, I think that doing this
is one of the dumbest, most irresponsible, short-sighted
things that you can do. Withdrawing just $6500
worth of contributions would cost you $65,000 in
future investment growth. So when any money is
taken out of this account before retirement, think
about how it's actually going to cost you 7,800 Chipotle burritos, or 65 new Apple iPhones, or anything else that you would buy for that amount of money. And yes, I am fully aware
that you can do a penalty-free early withdrawal up to
$10,000 before the age of 59.5 for a first time home purchase. But this is just as stupid as withdrawing your contributions early
because that $10,000 is costing you over $100,000
in future investment growth when you pull that money out. Average annual home appreciation over the past 12 years has been 6.11%, and the US stock market
has returned 12.27%. Leave your money in the freaking Roth IRA and go earn that $10,000 that
you need to buy the home. Responsible investing takes time, like five or 10-plus years, and this money needs time to grow. The second you withdraw
any of your contributions, you are cutting down that tree before it even has a chance to grow fruit.
Once you withdraw
contributions from the past, you cannot replace that
money in the future. I get that emergencies happen in life, so that's why you need
to have money set aside in an emergency fund to
pay for those things. Do not, under 99.999% of circumstances, use your Roth IRA money for anything other than when you retire. One thing I see way too many people doing is investing in a
taxable brokerage account before they have their Roth
IRA maxed out for the year. This is a huge mistake from a tax savings
perspective for some of you because of how each account is taxed. With a Roth IRA, you invest with money
that's already been taxed, so the money can grow tax-free
and be withdrawn tax-free. With a taxable brokerage
account, you are paying taxes for the ongoing dividend
distributions every single year. Then you have to pay capital gains tax when you go to withdraw the money. Since the money within
a Roth IRA will grow and can be withdrawn tax-free, realistically, you want
this account to get as large as possible, but not at the expense of
your personal risk tolerance.
You should not take on
additional levels of risk by investing in more
risky, unprofitable stocks that random YouTubers have been pumping over the past few years or actively manage funds to
try to achieve higher returns. 99% of people, including
myself, cannot handle investing in something with a
high risk and potential, potential, high return. So don't even bother. The money in this account
is for retirement, so is it really worth it to risk that 60-year-old's financial wellbeing because you decided to gamble with their money right now? I doubt it.
Some of you might be over
the income limit to be able to contribute to a Roth IRA, or some of you will be at
that point in the future as your income grows. You can still contribute to a Roth IRA to take advantage of the tax-free growth by doing a backdoor Roth. To simply explain the process,
all you do is contribute to a traditional IRA. Do not invest the money yet. Then contact your brokerage
to have them convert the money to a Roth IRA. Now, I have done it with M1 Finance before and it was extremely easy. It only took I think two or three days for the money to get into my Roth IRA. Only do this if it makes sense based on your current tax rates
and future financial plans.
There's two things that you can do. if you are someone who thinks that you might be over the income limit, but you are not going to 100%
know until the year is over. Number one, you can
either wait until January of the following year,
like we talked about in one of the previous mistakes that
I mentioned, or number two, you can just contribute the
money to a traditional IRA, then do a backdoor Roth within
the year to get the money into the account so it can be invested. That way, if you are
over the income limit, you've already done the backdoor Roth. If you're under the income limit, no big deal 'cause you had to pay taxes on that money that was going
into the Roth IRA anyways. A question I get a lot is
whether or not you can contribute to a Roth IRA on different brokerages.
The simple answer is yes. This is how it would play out. You can contribute up to the max for one year
on, say, M1 Finance. Then you can decide to contribute up to the max on fidelity the next year. Then you can contribute up to the max on Vanguard the following year. So by the end of that third year, you would have three different Roth IRAs with three different brokerages, and there is no problem with that. You can take it one step further. If you decide, hey, out of these three, I actually like M1 finance
better than the other two, you can convert the
Roth IRAs with Fidelity and Vanguard into your
M1 Finance Roth IRA. You can also split up your contribution for the same year among
different brokerages. So if for this year you want
to say contribute $4,000 to an M1 Finance Roth IRA and the remaining $2,500
into a Fidelity Roth IRA, then you can do that without any problems.
The only thing you
cannot do is try to game the system by saying contributing $6500 into an M1 Finance Roth IRA and $6500 into a Roth IRA with another brokerage. You cannot exceed the maximum
amount allowed per year across all of your Roth IRAs on all of your brokerage accounts. Technically, you could do that since all of the brokerages aren't talking
to each other to keep track of what you are contributing, so you have to self-manage this. I would highly, highly recommend making sure
that you do not do this, whether it's on purpose or on accident. I don't know what the penalty is for this, but all I know is that you do
not want to get caught trying to defraud the government
in any way, shape, or form. Long-term investing is the name
of the game with a Roth IRA. This money is for when
you are in retirement, so make sure to take that into account when investing this money. No gambling it on stocks
that random YouTubers are promoting. I think the two or three fund portfolio is perfect for your Roth IRA, which you can learn more about
in these videos to your left.
There's a bunch of free stocks and resources down in
the description below to help with all of your personal finance and investing needs. I'll see you in the next one, friends, go..
Why Retirement Income is so Important
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning Tips for Retiree's
Canada is getting older in 1980 less than 2 A5
million Canadians were over the age of 65 around 9% of the Canadian population recently that
number was over 7.3 million almost 19% of the population in 1980 the average 65-year-old could
expect to reach 81 now the average 65-year-old can expect to reach 86 and there are almost 50% more
Canadians aged 100 or older than there was two decades ago basically more Canadians are getting
older and living longer which poses a significant challenge for retirement funding traditional
retirement savings have relied on withdrawing from a fixed amount of capital with some cash
flow from CPP OAS and fixed income Investments like bonds and gic's however as Canadians live
longer they may expect significant costs down the road such as long-term care at the same
time most of these fixed income Investments are paying at rates below current inflation
levels and what about running out of capital some Canadians are faced with the difficult
and complex choice of delaying retirement or going back to work compromising the retirement
lifestyle dreams or passing on the cost of care to the Next Generation attractive and steady
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retirement Harvest income happens [Music] here
Warren Buffett: How To Turn $10,000 Into Millions (Simple Investment Strategy)
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning
you can't really fail at it unless you buy the wrong stock or just get excited at the wrong time and i would like to just spend just a couple of minutes uh giving you a little perspective uh on how you might think about about uh investments as opposed to the uh tendency to focus on what's happening today or even this minute as you go through and to help me in doing that i'd like to go back through a little personal history and uh and we will start i have here up here in new york times of march 12 1942 and i'm a little behind on my reading and if you go back to that time it it was about what just about three months um since we got involved in a war which uh we were losing at that point uh the newspaper headlines were filled with bad news from the pacific and i've taken just a couple of the headlines from the days preceding march 11th which i'll explain it's kind of a momentous day for me and so you can see these headlines we've got slide 2 up there i believe and uh we were in trouble big trouble in the pacific uh it was only going to be a couple months later that the philippines fell but here we were getting bad news we might go to slide three for march 9th uh uh i hope you can read the headlines anyway the price of the paper is three cents incidentally um the uh and uh uh let's see we've got march 10th up there a slide i'm i want to get to where there's advanced technology of slides i want to make sure i'm showing you the same thing that i'm seeing in front of me so anyway on march 10th uh when again the news was bad full clearing path to australia and it was like it the stock market had been reflecting this and i'd been watching a stock called city service preferred stock which had sold at 84 dollars the previous year it had sold at 55 the year before early in the in january two months earlier and now it was down to forty dollars on march 10th so that night despite these headlines i said to my dad i said i think i'd like to pull the trigger and i'd like you to uh buy me three three shares of city certified the next day and that was all i had i mean that was my capital accumulated uh uh over the previous five years or thereabouts and so my dad the next morning um bought three shares well let's take a look at what happened the next day let's go to the next slide please and it was not a good day the stock market the dow jones industrials broke 100 on the downside now they were down 2.28 as you see but that was the equivalent of about a 500 point drop now so i'm in school wondering what is going on of course uh incidentally you'll see on the left side of the chart the new york times put the dow jones industrial average below all the averages they calculated they had their own averages which have since disappeared but the dow jones has continued so the next day uh we can go to the next slide and you will see what happened the stock that was in 39 my dad bought my stock right away in the morning because i'd asked him to my three shares and uh so i paid the high for the day that 38 and a quarter uh was my tick which is the high for day and by the end of the day it was down to 37 uh which was really kind of characteristic of my timing in stocks that was going to appear in future years uh um but uh uh it was on the what was then called the new york curb exchange then became the american stock exchange but things even though the war until the battle of midway looked very bad and if you'll turn to the next slide please you'll see that the stock did rather well you can see where i bought at 38 and a quarter and then the stock went on actually to eventually be called by the city service company for over 200 dollars a share but this is not a happy story because if you go to the next page you will see that i well as they always say it seemed like a good idea at the time you know uh so i sold those i made five dollars on it it was it was again typical of behavior but when you watch you go down to 27 uh you know it looked pretty good to get that profit well what's the point of all this well we can leave behind the city service story and i would like you to again imagine yourself back on march 11th of 1942 and as i say things were looking bad in the european theater as well as what was going on in in the pacific but everybody in this country knew uh america was going to win the war i mean it it was you know we'd gotten blindsided but but we were we were going to win the war and and we knew that the american system had been working well since 1776.
So if you'll turn to the next slide i'd like you to imagine that at that time uh you had invested ten thousand dollars and you put that money in an index fund we didn't have index funds then but but you in effect bought the s p 500 now i would like you to think a while and don't do not change the slide here for a minute i'd like you to think about how much that 10 000 would now be worth if you just had one basic premise just like in buying a farm you buy it to hold throughout your lifetime an independent and you look to the output of the farm to determine whether you made a wise investment you look to the output of the apartment house to decide whether you made a wise investment if you buy an apartment small apartment house to hold for your life and let's say instead you decided to put the ten thousand dollars in and hold a piece of american business uh and never look at another stock quote never listen to another person give you advice or anything of the sort i want you to think how much money you might have now and now that you've got a number in your head let's go to the next slide and we'll get the answer you'd have 51 million dollars and you wouldn't have had to do anything you wouldn't have to understand accounting you wouldn't have to look at your quotations every day like i did that first day i'd already lost 3.75 by the time i came home from school uh all you had to do was figure that america was going to do well over time that we would overcome the current difficulties and that if america did well american business would do well you didn't have to pick out winning stocks you didn't have to pick out a winning time or anything of the sort you basically just had to make one investment decision in your life and that wasn't the only time to do it i mean i could go back and pick other times that uh would work out even greater gains but as you listen to the questions and answers we give today just remember that the over the overriding question is how is american business going to do over your investing lifetime uh i would like to make one other comment because it's it's a little bit interesting let's let's say you're taking that ten thousand dollars and you listen to the profits of doom and gloom around you and and you'll get that constantly throughout your life and instead you use the ten thousand dollars to buy gold now for your ten thousand dollars you would have been able to buy about 300 ounces of gold and while the businesses were reinvesting uh in more plants and new inventions came along you would go down every year into your look in your safe deposit box and you'd have your three ounce 100 ounces of gold and you could look at it and you could fondle it and you could i mean whatever you wanted to do with it but it didn't produce anything it was never going to produce anything and what would you have today you would have 300 ounces of gold just like you had in march of 1942 and it would be worth approximately four hundred thousand dollars so if you decided to go with a non-productive asset goal instead of a productive asset which actually was earning more money and reinvesting and paying dividends and maybe purchasing stock whatever it might be you would now have over 100 times uh the value of what you would have had with a non-productive asset in other words for every dollar you have made in american business you'd have less than a penny by of gain by buying in the store value which people tell you to run to every time you get scared by the headlines or something disorder it's it's just remarkable uh to me that we have operated in this country with the greatest tailwind at our back that you can imagine it's an investor's i mean you can't really fail at it unless you buy the wrong stock or just get excited at the wrong time but if you if you owned a cross-section of america and you put your money in consistently over the years there's just there's no comparison against owning something that's going to produce nothing and there frankly there's no comparison with trying to jump in and out of stocks and and pay investment advisors if you'd followed my advice incidentally or this retrospective advice which is always so easy to give uh if you'd follow that of course you're there's one problem buddy your your friendly stock broker would have starved to death i mean you know and you could have gone to the funeral to atone for their fate but the truth is you would have been better off doing this than than a very very very high percentage of investment professionals have done or people have done that are active that it's it's very hard to move around successfully and beat really what can be done uh with a very relaxed philosophy and you do not have to be you do not have to be you do not have to know as much about accounting or stock market terminology or whatever else it may be or what the fed is going to do next time and whether it's going to raise rates three times or four times or two times none of that counts at all really in a lifetime of investing what what counts is is having a a philosophy that you've that you stick with that you understand why you're in it and then you forget about doing things that you don't know how to do
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10 Levels of Financial Independence And Early Retirement | How to Retire Early
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning Tips for Retiree's
Long-term financial goals can sometimes seem
so big that they feel almost unattainable especially when we’re just getting started
on our road to financial independence. I and many others like me in the financially
independent, retired early community have found it helpful to break down the goal of
becoming financially independent into smaller and more manageable levels of financial independence. Not only because it makes it easier for us
to track our progress, which in turns helps us to stay motivated throughout the process,
but also because it helps us get over that initial hurdle of starting to chip away at
this mountain of a task. In today’s video, I’m going to take you
through what I consider to be the 10 levels of financial independence as well as give
an example on how to go from the first level to the top level in your lifetime. Hey everyone Daniel here and welcome to Next
Level Life a channel where you can learn about Investing, debt, retirement, and many other
general financial education videos because the school's aren't going to do it for us.
So if any of those topics sound interesting
to you or if you want to learn how to better handle your money and have more financial
freedom be sure to hit that subscribe button and the bell next to my name to be notified
every time I upload a video. And if you want to further support the growth
of this channel you can check out some of the links I’ve left down in the description
below which includes a 30-day free trial of Audible and 2 free audiobooks of your choice
as well as a list of some books on money I’d recommend checking out, or you can share this
video with a friend, and leave a comment below letting me know what topics you’d like me
to cover in future videos.
Now obviously these ideas of the levels of
financial independence are not solely my own nor are they very new as there are many articles
and blog posts that have covered this topic already and have done so for many years. So consider this more of a summary of many
of the ideas expressed in those articles and if you want to learn more about the topic
feel free to check out some of the articles for yourself. I’ve left some links in the description. With that out of the way, let’s get started. Okay so real quick the 10 levels of financial
Independence are Level 0 Financial dependence, level 1 Financial solvency, level 2 Financial
stability, level 3 debt Freedom, level four coasting Financial Independence (also sometimes
known as freedom from employer), level 5 Financial Security, level six Financial flexibility,
level 7 Financial independence, level eight Financial Freedom, and finally level 9 Financial
abundance. The levels are usually defined as something
like the following: Level 0 – Financial dependency is when your
debt payments and other living expenses are greater than your own income.
This means that you are in one way or another
dependent on someone or something else to help you pay for your bills or if you happen
to be a kid and don't actually have any bills you need someone else, usually your parents,
to pay to put food on the table and keep the lights on and have a roof over your head. This is the level that all of us start out
on and it is referred to as level 0 because as a financial dependent you obviously have
no Financial Independence. Level 1 – Financial solvency is when you are
current on all your debt payments and you can meet your financial commitments and your
other living expenses without any outside help. Level 2 – Financial stability is usually defined
as when you have built some sort of emergency fund in addition to being financially solvent. Level 3 – Is again debt freedom and it's defined
differently depending on who you ask. For some, it is being completely debt-free,
mortgage and everything.
For others, it's being just free of the high-interest
debts like credit cards but you still might have a mortgage or other debts like student
loans. And for some others, it is paying off all
of your debts except for the mortgage but your credit cards and student loans or car
loans all that stuff is all paid off. Level 4 – Coasting Financial Independence
also sometimes known as freedom from the employer, Barista Financial Independence, or Agency
in blogs and other mediums. I personally like the idea of it being coasting
Financial Independence so that's what I'm going to be using in this video but know that
some people refer to it by one of those other titles but the idea is the same. You have reached the level of coasting Financial
Independence when you could, if you wanted to, step down from a job that may be higher-paying
but may also be either less satisfying or more stressful or both into a new job that
is lower paying but more enjoyable or less stressful or both.
This is because in the early years of your
career or just thought most recent years you have managed to save a very decent sum of
money that would be able to provide for the later years of your retirement after it has
grown even if you don't put much more in. Therefore all you need to do is make enough
money to get you to age 60 or 65 or 70 or whatever your numbers work out to be when
that amount of money you've already invested will be able to fund your lifestyle because
it's been given enough time to grow. So in a sense, you've worked really really
hard and been very frugal in the first few years so that you can coast into your retirement. I have gone into more detail on the various
types of financial Independence in a previous video which I'll leave Linked In the description
if you're interested in learning more.
Level 5 – Financial Security is effectively
when your cash flow from wealth such as you are investments has grown to large enough
that it can provide for your annual basic survival expenses. Now I say survival expenses because I do differentiate
that from living expenses survival expenses are just the basic things you need to survive
Food, Water, Shelter, some form of transportation, clothing and probably insurance. This does not include things like Netflix
subscriptions or cable bills or things like that it is purely survival expenses. So this may not be exactly the ideal spot
to retire and I certainly wouldn't want to retire at this point but it is an important
level to keep in mind because it does give you… well security. If you were to get fired today and you were
on level 5 you would be okay you could survive until you found another job. This is essentially the first level that really
gives you I guess that piece of mind even if the lifestyle should you have chosen to
live it may not be the most lavish.
Level 6 – Financial flexibility is similar
to Financial Security just one step up. It is when you have the ability to live off
of your current cash flow from your wealth assuming that you have a flexible spending
plan that adjusts for up and downs in the market. So if the markets up 20% one year you're able
to spend a little bit more but if the market is down 20% the next year then you don't spend
quite as much. I’ve seen it defined many different ways
so it could vary depending on who you ask, but the one that I personally like the most
is that it is roughly half of your full financial independence goal, or roughly about 12.5x
your current annual expenses if you follow the 4% rule to get an idea of how much money
you need to retire like I’ve explained in previous videos.
So it isn't quite Financial Independence yet
but it's close. Level 7 – Is financial Independence and it's
usually based on the 4% rule which I have covered in a previous video. You can follow the 4% rule when you have saved
roughly 25x your annual expenses. The vast majority of the time this will be
enough money to allow you to maintain your current lifestyle in retirement and as a result,
you can be considered financially independent. And some articles end it right there but I
think there are a couple of levels that are a bit higher than that that are worth considering
even if some of us may decide to not ever try to achieve them because being at level
7 allows them to do what they wanted all along. So let's talk about those other levels. Level 8 – Is Financial Freedom which I've
often seen defined as the cash flow from your Investments is greater than financial Independence
and a few more life goals.
Life goals, of course, will differ for everybody
but this is could be something like taking a trip or two overseas or moving to a new
place you've always wanted to live but haven't had quite enough money to live there up till
now or whatever the case may be for you like I said it's different for everybody. Level 9 – Is financial abundance and this
is quite simply just that the cash flow from your Investments is more than you will ever
need.
You could spend it if you really wanted to
but it would actually take some effort. And the stuff from level 8 doesn't really
cut into it much at all. So you could up those goals even more and
still have more cash flow left over at the end of the year. This also probably has a slightly different
definition for each person depending on who you ask, but I like to think of it as roughly
3x your financial freedom number because this would allow you to experience a horrible bear
market where your investments go down by 50% and still has 1.5x the amount that you would
need to maintain the lifestyle you lead when you reach level 8.
To me, that means that it is likely more than
you will ever need, but again that one is strictly my own opinion on the matter. So those are the 10 levels of financial Independence,
now let's walk through a hypothetical example of how someone could go from Level 0 to being
financially independent in a single lifetime. John and Jane are recently married couple
each making $20 an hour at age 23 or $83,200 a year between them assuming no overtime. They manage this because they are not only
good hard-working people but got great grades in school and we're selective about the job
that they decided to pursue. Obviously just like everyone else they would
have started off as Financial dependents and as they were going through college they would
have been building up student loans that they would not have had the money to pay off (assuming
of course that they didn't earn enough money while in school to keep up with the rising
debt).
In all they have credit card debt, two car
payments and the student loans which have balances of $5,000, $35,000, and $60,000 respectively,
but since they got their jobs they are no longer financially dependent and their incomes
have allowed them to become current on all their debt payments without the help of others. In addition to the regular monthly debt payments,
their annual expenses are $48,000 a year. So they are currently in level one Financial
solvency and trying to figure out a way to move to level 2 Financial stability. In order to do that they need to figure out
a way to build up an emergency fund.
Now if they're following the 10 levels system
to a T then they would look to build a 3 to 6-month emergency fund of their survival expenses. However, this is not the only way to approach
it say if you were to follow Dave Ramsey 7 baby steps you would start off with just a
$1,000 starter emergency fund and then get right onto attacking your debts. And other Financial systems and plans may
have you approached it an entirely different way.
Either way is perfectly fine because the 10
levels system is not meant to be a financial formula per say it's more there to give us
some sort of guidepost so that we can better track our progress towards achieving Financial
Independence. But for the purposes of this video, I am going
to assume that they follow the 10 levels in order so we are going to be building up a
full emergency fund. In order to find how much of an emergency
fund they will need we will need to know how much money they need to survive not necessarily
on their current level of expenses while they have jobs but purely on Survival expenses
which are basically your four walls of your financial house or in other words food shelter
including utilities Basic clothing and some form of transportation as well as the insurances
that are related to that assuming there are any.
In this case, I'm going to assume that their
survival expenses are right around $3,000 a month. Which means that in order to get a 3-month
emergency fund they would need $9,000 in order to get a six-month emergency fund they would
need to save $18,000. Both John and Jane feel that their jobs are
pretty darn secure and the market is doing fairly well so it's not likely at least in
the near-term that they would get laid off because the company has to downsize so they
decide together that they are comfortable with having just a 3-month emergency fund
of $9,000. So with $83,200 a year in income, $48,000
a year and expenses, plus minimum monthly payments of $100 on the credit card which
is 2% of the balance, $550.78 on the car loans, and $621.83 on the student loans they will
have approximately $1,660.72 a month left over to start building their emergency fund.
However, both John and Jane have been looking
into their finances and researching a lot lately and they become fired up at the possibility
of becoming financially independent while they're still young. So they want to see if there's a way that
they can speed this whole process up. And as it turns out thankfully there are many. After taking a look at the options they decide
that they're going to work as much overtime as they possibly can (for the sake of Simplicity
I'm going to assume that they manage to work on average 5 hours per week of overtime which
will increase their monthly income by about $1,300 a month, meaning that instead of $1,660
a month they will have $2,960 a month left over) and they're going to sell both of their
cars and buy some nice used cars with cash to help knock down some of that initial debt. After putting out a couple of ads online they
managed to find buyers for each of their cars that is willing to give them $15,000.
So they take that $30,000 and use $5,000 of
it to pay off the credit card balance and another $10,000 to buy a couple of used cars
from someone that they know takes good care of their Vehicles whether that be a family
friend or just a mechanic that they Trust. The remaining $15,000 is thrown at their car
loans. This means that the credit card loan is fully
paid off and therefore the hundred-dollar minimum payment is no longer needed. So John and Jane start throwing $3,060 per
month into their emergency fund and get it fully funded in 3 months with a little bit
left over at the end of the third month to throw out their car loan. Over the course of those first three months,
they managed to bring the car loans balances down to $18,423 thanks in large part to the
$15,000 that they threw at it in the first month after selling the cars and also making
the minimum payments in the first three months. Now that their emergency fund is fully funded
however they're able to throw that $3,060 a month in addition to the $550 a month minimum
payment at the car loan and get it paid off in 6 months flat.
So a mere nine months into their Journey John
and Jane not only have a fully funded emergency fund but they also have paid off both of their
car loans. Now there are just the student loans to tackle. And thanks to the fact that they've been making
minimum payments on them for 9 months and the fact that they had a little over $3,000
at the end of the ninth month after paying off their car loans their student loans now
have a balance of $53,263. John and Jane follow the same pattern that
they did with the car loans throwing the $3,600+ which is what they now have left over at the
end of every month because they no longer had a $550 car payment to make and they managed
to get their student loans paid off in full in 13 months. So John and Jane have managed to become debt
free and have a fully funded emergency fund in 22 months.
They have now reached level three and because
of that they now have over $4,200 a month left over to start investing. This brings us to level four coasting Financial
Independence. Let's assume that John and Jane want to retire
by the age of 65. That means that whatever they put in now needs
to be enough to grow to a point where it can support their lifestyle in retirement by the
time they're 65. If we assume a rate of return on an average
in the market of about 10% before inflation and an inflation rate of about 3% per year
on average then we can get a rough estimate of how much John and Jane need to put away
in order to achieve a state of coasting Financial Independence. In this case, since they're 24 about to be
25 they will have somewhere in the neighborhood of 39 or 40 years to let the money grow before
needing to take any of it out. If their expenses were $48,000 a year at age
23 then 42 years later if we assume a 3% rate of inflation they would need a tad bit over
$166,000 each year to live on.
Again assuming we follow the 4% rule to figure
out how much they need once they fully retire to be financially independent that means that
they would have to have at least $4.15 million invested in the market by the time they turn
65. In their case, they would need about $110,000
saved up give or take in order to achieve coasting Financial Independence and because
they're able to save about $4,233 a month now that they’re debt free, they’re able
to hit that goal in 2 years flat.
Meaning that in theory, they would be able
to step down from their jobs to a more rewarding less stressful but probably lower-paying job
just 3 years and 10 months into their financial Journey. That is incredible! But like I said coasting Financial Independence
wasn't their end goal. They wanted to be fully Financial Independent
so they keep working and investing for now. The next level is level 5 Financial Security
which is achieved when your cash flow from your Investments is greater than your annual
survival expenses which remember is $3,000 a month or $36,000 a year in John and James
case. Because they are debt-free, are making good
money at their jobs, and being intentional with their finances they Achieve Financial
Security in a little over 4 years with over $367,000 in their portfolio.
It is been a mere 87 months or 7 years and
3 months since they began their financial Journey. John and Jane are 30 years old and they are
able to get by on their Investments alone. In theory, they could retire now, it wouldn't
be the most glamorous retirement and it wasn't their goal but it is an option they have. They don't have to worry about losing their
jobs anymore because even if both of them lost their jobs today they would be able to
make it long enough to either find a new job or some other source of income. This is really the first level where you start
to get that piece of mind when it comes to money at least in my opinion. Next is financial flexibility which as I mentioned
earlier in the video has many definitions depending on who you ask but for the purposes
of this video, I'm assuming that it is roughly 12.5x your current annual expenses which for
John and Jane would be roughly $600,000 or about $855,000 if you account for inflation. This means that they would Achieve Financial
flexibility 9 years and 8 months into their Journey not accounting for inflation or about
11 years and 9 months if we do account for inflation.
John and Jane continue investing through all
the highs and lows of the markets until they reach Financial Independence exactly 14 years
into their financial Journey assuming we don't account for inflation or 18 years and 3 months
if we do. So you might be wondering why did I split
up the accounting for inflation time frames and the not accounting for inflation time
frames should we always be accounting for inflation? Well technically yes but the reason I split
them up is because in my experience taking this journey myself as well as seeing others
take it, this journey changes how you view a lot of things and more often than not those
changes lead to you valuing things such as freedom of mobility and location and freedom
of time to be able to spend with the people you love more and valuing more material things
that cost possibly a lot of money less and less. That's not to say that everybody becomes minimalist
going through this journey, I'm not saying that at all but I have seen a lot of people
who have gone through this journey become closer to minimalist than they were when they
started the journey as they find out more and more things that they used to buy just
don’t provide enough value or happiness for them to be worth the purchase.
They find better uses for their money and
time and as a result, they generally tend to spend less. Which means that even though inflation is
technically increasing your expenses by making every dollar less and less valuable over time,
if you're also decreasing your expenses because what you value is changing it may even out
or in some cases, you may even see your regular expenses going down year-over-year as you
continue through this journey. So that's why I split them up. And, before I go, I do want to mention that
based on what I've seen on various articles and forums some people really like to have
even more goals to chase as they go through this journey than what I've laid out today
in this video so if that's something that would help you feel free to break down these
levels even further then I have today this is obviously just the list that I used and
what worked for me, but you could take it even further.
For example, Debt Freedom could be broken
down into three separate stages: One where you are free from all high-interest debt,
a second where you are free from all debts except for the house (if you have one), and
a third where you are totally debt-free. You could tackle the coasting Financial Independence
level in a similar way breaking it down into two stages: One where are you have invested
enough to survive in retirement and a second where you have invested enough in order to
maintain your current lifestyle, adjusting for inflation of course, in retirement.
And the financial independence level could
also be broken down into three stages: Stage one would be where you are at a survivable
level of financial Independence, stage 2 would be where you have achieved leanfire status,
and stage 3 would be where you have achieved full Financial Independence on your current
lifestyle assuming that it is above the leanfire level. So what do you guys think of this 10 levels
system of tracking our progress to financial Independence? Do any of you use a similar system to track
your progress? If so, what is it and what level, step, or
stage are you guys currently on? Let me know in the comments section below. But that'll do it for me today once again
if you enjoyed this video be sure to subscribe and hit that Bell next to my name so that
you'll be notified of all my future uploads.
I generally upload every single Monday, and
if you have a friend that would be interested in this kind of content be sure to share it
with them and let's really get this information out there and start our own Financial revolution..
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]
How To Retire At 30 Living Off Investments
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning
in order to live off of
your investments completely. And I know that the title of this video may sound crazy about retiring by 30, and there are a lot of people
out there selling a pipe dream of you can retire by 30
as long as you invest in this course, or go buy real estate and while that may work for some people I'm not here to sell you guys a course or to pitch you on any
kind of product like that. What we're going to
simply talk about here is how much money you need to have invested in order to live off of your investments and essentially not have
to work to earn your money. And believe it or not, there's
actually countless people out there who have in fact
retired as early as 30 years old, by following this exact strategy
that I'm going to outline. So if this idea of retiring early and not having to work for your money is something that interests you. What I want to ask you
guys to do is go ahead and drop a like on this
video just show your support.
I really do appreciate
that as it helps out with the algorithm and allows this video to get shared with more people. But what we're going to look
at in particular in this video is something called the 4% rule, and that essentially
shows you just how much money you need to have set aside, in order to live
off of your investments. Now you can in fact live off of different types of investments like real estate or the stock market for
example or a business that's providing income for you. But what we're going to use in this video as an example is a passive
stock market investment, and we'll show you exactly
how much money you need to have invested in order
to live off of that income. So the goal here with this
strategy is to simply invest your money and have a large
amount of money invested and then you would
essentially be living off of the interest income or
the growth of that money without touching the principle.
And as I'm sure you guys can imagine if you're not touching the principle or your initial investment, then your money could
foreseeably last forever. Now, the sooner you're able to retire is all based on how much
money you're able to save up and how little money you are
spending each and every month, and there's actually a
whole movement of people that are following this
exact strategy, and it's something out there called FIRE, and FIRE stands for financial
independence retire early. And there's a lot of
people who are doing blogs and videos and all kinds of
stuff about this concept, and there are countless
examples out there, of people who have retired
as early as 30 or even less. By following these strategies. Alright guys so there's
basically three steps you have to follow in order to do this, and as I'm sure you can imagine, step number one is to be frugal or to spend as little money as possible, because ultimately what
you're looking to do is save and invest enough
money that the interest or the dividends, or
whatever the growth is pays for your monthly living expenses.
And as I'm sure you guys can guess if your monthly expenses
are $6,000 versus $3,000, you're going to need a
lot more money invested to cover those expenses. So being frugal and saving
as much money as possible is actually going to serve
two different purposes here. Well, number one, the
less that you're living on the more of your paycheck
you're able to save up, and the more of your paycheck
you're able to save up, the more you're able to
contribute to that freedom fund, which will eventually be paying for all of your living expenses. And then second of all by spending as little money as possible
every single month, you actually don't need
to save up as much money to potentially live off of the interest or the growth of your money.
And we're going to go over
those exact numbers right now. Alright guys so step number two
that you have to follow here is going to be a tough one, but that is going to be saving 50 to 70% of your take home income and again, if you're looking to
retire by 30 years old, let's say you want to work from 20 to 30, and then not work for
the rest of your life, you're going to have to take
some drastic actions here.
And that is why you need to live off of a microscopic amount of money. And that's why step number
one is so important, by cutting down as much as possible on those monthly expenses. So people who are trying to do this, you're not going to see
them driving brand new cars, you're not going to see
them going on vacations, they're probably going to be,
you know, eating canned beans and doing campfires in the
backyard as summer entertainment. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but they are literally spending
as little money as possible, because they're focusing
on the long term picture of what they are trying to do. So people who are following
this FIRE movement are often aiming to save 30
times their annual expenses, and that will allow them to
withdraw about 4% per year without basically touching that principle and that is where that
4% rule comes into play.
And that is basically where you're able to draw from an account about 4% per year, and over a long period of
time based on the growth of that account and those investments, it shouldn't be chipping
away at the principle which should in theory
give you unlimited money. So what you're aiming
to do here is to lower your monthly expenses as much as possible.
Figure out what it costs
you to live per year, multiply that by 30, and then
save up that amount of money by saving 50 to 70% of your
paycheck every single week or month, or however often
you are getting paid. Alright so now the question
you guys have been waiting for, just how much money do
you need to have saved up and invested to live off of that money following the 4% rule. Well if your annual expenses
are $20,000 per year, they would recommend having 30 times that amount of money saved and
invested, so $600,000. If your annual expenses were $35,000, that number becomes 1.05 million. If you're somebody
spending $50,000 per year on your living expenses
you would need to have $1.5 million saved and invested,
and for the final figure here, if you spent $100,000 per
year on cars and housing and food and all of that,
you would need to have about $3 million to successfully
follow this strategy.
So I'm sure this goes without saying guys, the best way to follow the strategy and to reach that retirement as quickly as possible is going to be
to keep your monthly expenses as low as possible. And just to put it in
perspective for you guys, every additional $100
that you spend per month, if you follow this is
an additional $36,000 you need to have set
aside in that freedom fund to support that $100 of monthly spending. So if you're serious
about this and you want to retire at 30, or even younger, you are spending literally as little money as humanly possible. Alright so the final step
to following this strategy is going to be passively
investing in the stock market. So most people following this strategy are actually following
the Warren Buffett style of passively investing in index funds. And if you're not familiar,
index funds are basically a way for you to have diversified
exposure to the stock market. Where you're not essentially
picking what stocks are going to outperform,
you're just passively owning the entire market.
So people following this strategy are not out there trying
to beat the market, they are not stock
traders or stock pickers they simply passively invest
in these low fee index funds, one of the most popular ones being VOO or the vanguard 500 fund. And essentially what you are doing, is buying a small piece of the 500 largest publicly traded companies out there, and all the different
dividends those companies pay are all collectively put together, and then you earn a quarterly
dividend from that ETF.
And over the last hundred
years or so the stock market, on average, has returned
about eight to 10% per year. So if you were only drawing
4% from that account, based on historical data, you should never be
touching that principle over a long period of time. And that is how you would
be able to live off of 30 times your annual income, if you save that money and invest it. Now that being said that
is the perfect segue into the sponsor for this
video which is Webull. So if you guys are
interested in getting started with investing in the stock market, this is a totally commission
free broker out there, meaning you're not paying
any fees to please trades with them and you can
purchase the Vanguard 500 ETF that we're talking about in this video right on that Webull platform, and not only that, they're
willing to give you up to two completely free stocks just for opening up an account with them. Number one, if you open the account, you're going to get a free
stock worth up to $250, and then when you fund the account, you'll get an additional
stock worth up to 1000.
So if you do the math there, that is two completely free stocks worth up to $1,250. Now I am affiliated with Webull, so I do earn a commission in the process if you use my link, but
if you guys are interested in grabbing two completely free stocks that is going to be down
in the description below. So finally, the last
thing I want to do here is to put all of this together, and go through a real
example of how you could in fact follow this strategy and even retire by 30.
Now again, this is going to
require some very drastic saving because essentially you're trying to work for about 10 years of your life and then not have to work
for the rest of your life. So most people will never
be able to accomplish this, because of the amount of
sacrifice that is required, with that being said, let's go ahead and run
through the numbers now. So let's say you're earning
a salary of $75,000 per year from your job, and ideally,
you don't have any, you know school loans,
student loans, medical bills, or anything like that. So you haven't gotten
sucked into the consumerism and you don't have like a brand new car so your expenses are as low as possible.
And I know this sounds like
you know theoretical situation, but this was actually
about the same situation I was in, when I graduated
college I was 20 years old, now I was making about $68,000, so a little bit less, but I had no debts, I had no car payment,
and so I was somebody who could have potentially
followed this strategy. So after you pay your
taxes, your take home pay is going to be around $56,250. Now we know already in
order to pull this off, you need to save 50 to
70% of that take home pay in order to actually build up enough money to live off of that income. So we're going to assume
you are saving 70% of that take home pay. So you would need to live off of 30% of that post tax income, which
amounts to just over $16,000, or around $1400 per month.
Now, is that possible? It absolutely is. Is it easy? Absolutely not, you're certainly not going to be going out to the
bar and buying beers or going out to dinner,
you're probably going to be living in a tiny apartment driving an old car and eating at home for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But if that type of
sacrifice is worth it to you for the long term picture, it is something you may
be willing to do yourself. So each year you would
be saving and investing a staggering amount of money, which is 70% of your take home pay
or just over a $39,000. And that is how you would
be able to pull this off, and assuming you kept that
cost of living the same at around $16,000, just over 16,000. your freedom number, or 30
times your annual expenses, would be just over $506,000. So, how long would it take
you to save up that money? Let's go ahead and answer that now.
Well if you took that
$39,375 per year of money that you are saving and
invested in the stock market, earning 8% return, and
as we said, historically, it's an eight to 10% so we're going to go on the conservative side, well in 10 years at 8%
return career you would have $570,408.40, meaning you could then, if you kept those living
expenses the same, following that 4% rule, not have to work for your
money past that point.
And just to circle back
guys what this really comes down to is the level
of sacrifice involved. Are you really willing to live
off of about $1400 per month, or do you want to have vacations and going out to get dinner
and things like that? So it's not people who are doing this that are out there traveling and dining it's people that are living
as frugal as possible and finding enjoyment
in other areas of life other than just, you know,
spending money on dining and things like that. Now, is this a strategy I
would personally follow? Probably not because I
am one of those people that enjoys traveling, I enjoy dining, and I do spend a little bit
more than the average person, so my freedom number would be
multiple millions of dollars, but instead I follow the
strategy of earning as much as possible and saving a
lot of that earned money, and then eventually allowing
that to supplement my income by having that interest
or the growth of my money paying for a lot of
those things that I want.
And believe it or not,
guys, there are honestly countless people out
there that have followed this exact strategy and
retired at 30 or less. One of the most well known people being Mr. Money Mustache, he has a whole blog where he documented this whole journey of becoming financially
independent and retiring early with both him and his wife. So I'm going to link up his blog down in the description below
as well as a couple of other stories about
people who have followed this exact strategy and
retired at 30 or less. So that's going to wrap
up this video guys, thanks so much for watching. If you're new to this channel, make sure you subscribe and
hit that bell for notifications so you don't miss future videos, and I hope to see you in the next one..
Your Tell-All Guide to Saving for Retirement
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning Tips for Retiree's
I'm Britt, the co-founder of Dow Janes, and
every single week I have someone asked me how they can start saving for retirement
or how much they need or if it's too late to start saving. Today, I'm going to share my
top tips for starting to save for retirement. And don't worry; it's easier than you think.
If you want more ideas for saving, investing, and making the most of your money,
don't forget to hit the subscribe button and the bell so you don't miss any new
videos. And if you liked this video, definitely give it a thumbs up.
All right. So, there are some misconceptions about retirement saving that I want to address.
First, one thing people often ask us is how much do I need for retirement? What's the magic number?
And the truth is it varies widely.
It depends on where you want to live or what lifestyle you
want to have or when you want to retire. Are you trying to retire at 40 or at 70?0.
If you take anything away from today, I want you to just start saving 20% of your pre-tax
income for your retirement, and you'll be fine. To learn more though, keep listening.
Okay. So how do you start saving for retirement? What you do is you follow the roadmap
steps. You make sure you're doing things in the right order. So we have a whole nother video
on the roadmap steps, but just to recap, the first thing you want to do is make sure
you're spending less than you make each month.
The second thing is to pay off any
high-interest rate debt you have, which is anything with an interest rate over 7%, then
you want to build up an emergency fund.
And then once you have those three things in place,
you're ready to start saving for retirement. So, to do that, you're going to find your monthly
savings number. You can use a simple retirement calculator to figure out how much you want to have
in retirement. I'll link to one in the description below. What you'll do is you'll add in your
current savings, anything you've already saved for retirement already, anything you expect to get
from social security, and then you'll adjust the savings amount to see exactly how much you need
to save each month to be on track, to meet your retirement goals. It's a super easy calculator,
you just enter the numbers. It'll spit out exactly what you need to do, and that number, that savings
amount, that's going to be your monthly goal.
So, if you don't already have an account,
you'll open up a retirement account, and that's where you'll begin to transfer that
savings amount to that account each month.
Where should you save your money? There are
different types of retirement accounts.
So, if your employer offers matching, then you'll
want to open a 401(k) or 403(b). In addition, you can open a Roth IRA or a traditional IRA.
IRA stands for Individual Retirement Account. If you're self-employed, you can also open a SEP
IRA. So for the Roth traditional or SEP IRAs, you can open those at any brokerage places
like Vanguard, Charles Schwab, Fidelity, or with a robo-advisor like Wealthfront or
Betterment. Any of those places offer retirement accounts. So, it's super easy to get started.
Then if your employer offers 401(k) matching, you definitely want to advantage of that.
So, what is 401(k) matching? It's when you save money for your retirement and your company
contributes the same amount that you save. They'll often match up to a certain amount
or a certain percentage of your salary.
So, if your company matches 4% of your
salary and you make $5,000 per month, you could contribute $200 per month towards your
retirement, and your company would contribute an additional $200 per month.
So you basically get
$200 in retirement money for free each month.
It's a way for companies to incentivize
their employees to save for retirement. So, if your employer offers this, definitely take
advantage of it. It's the easiest free money out there. And make sure you're contributing the
maximum amount that they're willing to match.
Okay. The next thing you'll do, if your employer
doesn't offer matching, or if you're, um, if you've already maxed that out, the next thing
you want to do is max out your contribution to your Roth or your traditional IRA. So, each year,
the IRS limits the amount that you're allowed to contribute. In 2021, the amount is $6,000.
If you're over 50, you have an extra bonus. You can contribute $7,000. So, try to contribute the
maximum amount to those accounts each year. So, max out your 401(k) to where your company matches
max out your Roth or your traditional IRA. If you're self-employed, you could also contribute to
your SEP IRA. If you're a great saver and you're saving more than those amounts, you can open
your own brokerage account.
So, a non-retirement account, and save the money there. You can use
that money for whatever you want, but you can know that you're saving that for retirement.
Once you've saved the money in those accounts, what you're going to do is invest that savings. So
for the easiest and simplest way to get invested, you'll invest in target date funds. These
are pre-made portfolios that allocate your money to a mix of stocks and bonds that
are appropriate based on your age.
If you want to invest in index funds yourself,
or if you're picking a fund that your employer offers, then you can use these rules of thumb.
Generally, you want your portfolio to be invested in the percentage of stocks that is equal to
120 minus your age.
So if you're 20 or younger, you want to have 100% of your portfolio
in stocks. If you're 30, you want 90% in stocks, for example. And just a quick
note that if you invest in target date funds, that will do that for you. The allocation
changes the allocation of stocks and bonds changes over time as you get older.
One quick thing to know is that you actually don't need to take your money, your
retirement money, out the year that you retire. You can leave it invested while you're in
retirement and just take out what you need, which means you actually have more time
than you think for your money to grow.
So, hopefully that gives you some peace of mind.
If you're getting started later in the game, if you're wondering how much you should be
saving in retirement savings each month, we have a couple of rules of thumb for you.
And
the bottom line is the sooner you start saving for retirement, the less you actually have to save,
because if you start sooner and you invest that money, it will grow and it will grow over a longer
period of time. If you're starting later in life, you have to save more because it has less
time to grow. So, if you're in your twenties, you can save 15% of your pre-tax income each
month and you'll be set. If you're starting in your thirties, you want to save 20% of your
pre-tax income. If you don't have anything saved and you're just starting to save for retirement in
your forties or your fifties, you'll need to save even more since you're starting later and your
money has less time to grow. If this is you, watch out for our next video on how to start saving
for retirement if you're in your fifties.
All right, the sooner you start saving for
retirement, the easier it is.
So, here's a recap of the steps: One, follow our wealth building
roadmap, so you know what to do in what order. Two, find your monthly savings. Number three, open
a retirement account. Four, take advantage of free money. Five, max out your contributions. Six,
invest your retirement savings, and seven, contribute to your retirement savings each
month. If you want to learn more about how to build your wealth and invest your retirement
savings, then definitely check out our webinar, Think Like an Investor. The link's in the comment
below.
All right. Thanks for watching..
Read More
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
How to Have the Perfect Portfolio in Investment – John Bogle’s view
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning
But now this brings us to the main point of
our discussion with you which is to get your advice for our viewers about what you consider
to be the perfect portfolio now we know there's no such thing as perfect but i suspect that TIFs
will play some role in this what would you say to the typical investor now today looking forward how
should we be managing our wealth well let me um i tried to cover this you'd be surprised at some of
the what i've done in the asset allocation chapter of my book a little bit because i've come to
conclusion there's really not a very good answer and i've concluded that regular rebalancing is not
terrible but not necessary i've come to conclude that it's 60%, 40% portfolio is probably the best
option rather than going from 80 20 to 20 80 in a target retirement plan uh maybe right and i may
be wrong on that and i find it something very individual uh and and you know and clearly i mean
everybody knows this intuitively at the beginning there are no easy answers to this so i'll come
to exactly what i'm doing uh but what i was what i did i got a letter from clearly a young man
who was really worried about how he should be investing and what his allocation should be and he
said you know the dangerous risky world out there and he didn't mention it but of course he's right
you have potential nuclear war global warming much more than just potential and racial division in
the country uh right now uh threats to world trade and division of wealth all over the world but
most often very heavily in the us between the haves and the have-nots all those things
are worth worrying about but i said to him you don't know and i don't know what's going to
happen to any of them the market doesn't know nobody knows so you just have to put them out of
your mind and forget it what you want to think about is how much risk you can afford and that's
very much a personal thing and it has a little bit to do with whether you're investing regularly
and things like that and then i said to him if it's helpful to you i'll tell you what i'm doing
now i'm 88 years old and have an unusual kind of planning my estate and i said i'm 50 bonds and 50
stocks i don't happen to rebalance around that it just seems to come out that way particularly in
recent years and uh it's been higher than that and been lower than that but right
now i'm very comfortable at 50 50. although i spend half my time worrying that i have
too much in stocks and the other half of my time worrying that i have too little in stock and i
think that's the way most investors feel they don't know what the right number is and when the
market's going up they say god why don't i have more stocks when it's going down so your own worst
enemy in all this yes but having some stability without automatically rebalancing i don't think
you need to do that and and it's very clear you know and anybody understanding economist
certainly understands this that the more the less you rebalance the more you're going to
have because you're always selling the better performing asset and you don't know whether it
will do in the long run but i also look at it as as very importantly uh and this is this is kind
of an interesting thing i think the most important thing you need to know about the performance
of the stock market in the next 30 40 50 years is what is the GDP of the united states going to
do corporate profits are correlated at 96 percent s p dividends are correlated at 96 percent with
with the gdp of the united states the GDP doesn't grow quite as fast but not a big difference
6.7 compared to 7.5 or something like that and then they'd be nominal and uh i think so
what interests me is in peter lynch's book something about wall street uh one up on
wall street or something he says there's no number that could interest him less than the gdp
number is it going up or down and what that is is a statement that the short term is more
important than the long term and i don't believe this the short term is more important than
long term and then you even get in freakonomics those wise guys they did a nice interview with
me i'm heard all of it yet but i will someday um say pay no attention to the GDP well it's
everything right but it's not everything today and tomorrow right you know the gdp probably
rose today about two three hundred and sixty fifths of one percent or something whatever it
is uh and uh we don't pay any attention to it but it all comes down to for your you know the
best portfolio is are you an investor or are you a speculator and if you're going to keep changing
things you were speculating because we can't know if you're going to put commodities in there the
ultimate speculation it has nothing going for it no internal rate of return no dividend yield no
earnings growth no interest coupon nothing except the hope largely vain probably that you can sell
to somebody else for more than you paid for it how that could be even considered goals
let's say an investment uh i do not know so it's i'd like to take the mystery out of it and
say that the perfect portfolio first i think for a huge proportion over 90 percent certainly of
the investors should be limited to marketable securities they don't need the liquidity today but
and we may have you know too much marketability and that is too much sensitivity to prices as they
change day by day but you want to get out of the idea that you always have to do something and uh
i have said in my books and you know something happens and the federal reserve does something
and the traders all at the beginning of the day i think it's going to cause the market to go down so
they sell and everybody else says it has nothing to do with anything for you and when you hear news
and your broker calls up and says do something just tell them my rule is don't
do something just stand there and it's it's a lot of the rules that apply
to the investment are not rules that apply to ordinary life right and uh so don't do something
just stand there so get a rough idea of what you want to allocate your money to now i i do i'm
really entirely indexed at my 50 50.
Uh although oh my and i can't give you the proportions
because i don't remember them but my bonds that are in my retirement plan are
bond index funds and the bonds that are in my my uh personal account are municipal vanguard
missile bond short intermediate and so i'm reasonably comfortable with that so i think
i'm too conservative for the average investor so i'd say the perfect portfolio and it should
be well let me just mention one other issue and try a little bit differently uh blair academy i
have a scholarship fund that i'm allowed to manage and i don't i don't want to spend any time on
and i don't so here is exactly what i've done on the assumption that nobody will touch it for
a long time and when i'm gone i mean maybe they will maybe they won't but what i did this is
probably ten years ago um we say put half of it in Wellington Fund and have it balanced index
fund the idea was not all on balance index fund because there could be things that happen that a
manager needs to adjust to neither of them have an international component and that's fine with
me that's i believe that's the better strategy so that's and they would be together 90 of the fund
and then against two contingencies um just in case i put five percent in the emerging market index
and i hope you're sitting down five percent in gold really yeah in the event just a five percent
hedge against some kind of catastrophe now i wouldn't call that the perfect portfolio but
i i mentioned only because that's one there's distinctive meaning you cannot touch it and uh at
least theoretically can't touch it it's designed to be held through all extremes and so that's
going to give you with the two balanced funds uh roughly 62 percent in equities that's going to
be with wellington fund more corporate bonds than the index fund has i think the index is something
that we should be very very careful about because it has the one of a better expression too damn
much in governments right i don't think any individual would have a a bond account 70 in
governments and 30 corps right maybe it should be the reverse i think that makes more sense can
i prove that no i'm sorry i can't so it's looking at the long term looking at the numbers looking
at cost above all there's no there's no ideal portfolio perfect portfolio that ignores cost
now you know i've seen these articles saying well for example commodities no internal rate
of return silly including gold except that's the if nobody's gonna nobody's looking and we
have something explosive that will help and it probably shouldn't hurt you too much this
portfolio actually had done rather well in the last couple of years and it's fine in the long
run and uh so you know and actually it may be doing better than my own but i don't but i look at
my performance because i'm so conservative right uh i look at i look at the funds yeah but it's
almost all indexed and i do have wellington fund from those days with Mr Morgan and i wouldn't give
that up as a sentimental matter but but i should
6 Retirement Essentials (Most people only prepared 2 or 3)
Jason 0 Comments Retire Wealthy Retirement Planning Tips for Retiree's
I'm planning for retirement most people focus
mostly on marshaling together enough money you know Financial Resources so that they can last
the distance and then maybe at the back of their heads they have some vague plan right perhaps
two or three things to fill the time with a lot of the times this is stuff like travel family
well unfortunately I'm gonna say that's not quite nearly enough for Preparation we ourselves
have been retired for two years and going looking back on the past two years I kind of see like
six essential things that if you prep for it beforehand before your retirement starts I think
this can really make such a positive difference to your retirement so that's what I wanted
to bring up and discuss with you guys today number one first and foremost of course we have
to talk about money most people's concern is the amount of money that they have in retirement
whether it will last them till the end come comfortably and allow them to afford the Hobbies
like travel good food Etc but I actually think after going through the last two years building up
our financial Acumen is just as important if not more so what do I mean by Financial Acumen I mean
stuff like budgeting tracking projecting investing I mean if you think about it the money in your
bank account can always be squandered we all know that story I think more importantly what's
going to make your retirement more fireproof is having an ability to generate more money where
it came from in the first place so the second essential thing that you can prepare for so that
you have a wonderful retirement it's definitely the ability to be self-directing and disciplined
self-direction definitely helps so much with spending your retirement days meaningfully right
after all there are no more like work schedules or like demands from colleagues or bosses to help
shape your days anymore you have to be the person to take charge in retirement there's a study out
there actually that shows that for happily retired folks most of them actually have about 3.6 core
Pursuits that's what they say and the unheably retired folks tend to have less than 3.6 corporate
suits coming in at about 1.9 call Pursuits that's what the study reflected I guess it kind of just
shows in retirement you really need to fill your life to the brim and keep busy with activities
you love and that is a really great formula for happiness and self-direction will help you
to achieve that state as well as discipline because if you think about it like discipline
directly affects the state of your finances right it affects whether you stick with your retirement
planning whether you keep fit and active and you get to maintain your health in retirement even
whilst you're left up to your own devices even to find your cover suits if you don't have any
when you're starting or in your retirement so discipline and self-direction will be like
the building blocks for enjoying your life in retirement the third essential thing you might
want to work on and cultivate or happy retirement is people skills right so studies and research
have reflected very consistently that the main determining factor for happiness and Longevity
for most of us is actually relationships Human Relationships friendships relationship with
your spouse and with your family I guess if you look at most of us you know we all have
a little need of work on some social skills in some aspect I mean some of us are a bit shy
paper hats or graph or maybe socially anxious working on our people skills really will help us
to get along and live happily with our spouse and family members and also importantly to make
new friendships at whatever age we all know that making new friends gets a lot more difficult
as we get older I mean I haven't heard anyone say otherwise for me personally making new friends
as I get older is the biggest challenge there's this huge feeling that nothing can replace
friendships with people who have known you all your life but it is also a challenge as I
have chosen to exercise through Arbitrage in our retirement and we've moved away from home
so those friends aren't with us in our present I find that it takes a lot of intention I have
to consciously push myself to broaden my Social Circles and make the effort to get to know people
on a more intimate basis I am also very happy to be able to say that it has paid off in that for
the last two years in Bali I have actually made two or three new friends that I'm happy to say are
kindred spirits and not just social acquaintances so that's very nice and it's a huge Comfort to our
daily life here in a foreign land away from home now before we move on a big thank you to
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MooMoo ad using my link in the description below now back to the video the fourth essential
thing that you can definitely work on and that will benefit your retirement tremendously it's
actually courage you're definitely gonna need lots of courage in retirement and I guess this isn't
a skill exactly it's kind of more of a quality but in retirement you need a lot of courage
to even plunge into retirement you need the courage to you know take that leap of faith to
stop putting it off due to fear of the unknown feel or financial insecurities so then it's all
about courage at that stage not let fear and insecurity rule your life and your decisions it
is also the courage to recognize that in life at the start at the end in the middle the Domino's
you need are never all nicely lined up you know at some point you just got to jump into it and
then learn to cross the obstacles as they come so for retirement long term I guess the
biggest issue most commonly is always money but my perspective on this is that hey budgets
can always be reduced money can always be earned or recouped or whatever happens so I still
think that you know it is actually beneficial to Advocate an approach whereby you get to
a point where you feel that you have most of your Ducks lined up you've planned well you've
prepped for it grab hold of your courage with both hands and then take the plunge people tend
to think of retirement as the end but it's not it's the start of a new phase where you should be
trying so many new things new Pursuits new ways to live and for each of these new adventures
you're gonna need courage to take action and once you have taken the plunge you'll find the
next fifth thing very very useful and that would be a mentality of resilience especially in early
retirement there are a lot more decades ahead of you you know and therefore a lot more chances that
they things can go wrong whether it be down to bad financial planning or perhaps an unexpected Health
catastrophe or even sometimes natural disasters whatever comes I guess you will always need that
strength of Will and the resilience so that you can roll with the punches and then get back up
you want to know that you have the mental strength that even if things go pear-shaped you won't just
give up and lose hope and certain Corner you've got to Marshall what you've got inside you go out
there find Solutions perhaps if necessary you've got to go back to work but know that later on
you can return to retirement and try again so the sex essential thing that I believe will benefit
everyone in retirement is to cultivate an attitude of gratitude we all know life is a very long
journey hopefully at least and so much of what we Chase using most of our years actually doesn't
really matter in the big picture once you have taken a step back and then at that point is when
you start realizing the earlier you cultivate and attitude of gratitude and that appreciation for
the simple little things that are probably around you everywhere every day the happier you probably
will be and it sounds silly but it's not really automatic I mean we all live and grow up and
work and go to school in a society that kind of innovates us with messages that we need to reach
for more have more ambition gives us you know that High definitions of success in life that we
have to try to jump to reach and nobody sings the Praises of the pleasures of a simple cup of
tea you know the importance of family time with your loved ones or or just the pleasure of being
able to take an evening walk on the beach with your dog so I think that it's very important that
somebody reminds you that you know you can not overload what you already have what you're already
surrounded by growing that muscle of appreciation so that in each and every moment you are present
in your own life you see all the little Joys that you're surrounded with every day and if you
live life like that I think that will help you achieve contentment with just the small stuff
around you and that's what majority of your life in retirement may be about is just a small stuff
every day but in my own retirement here in Bali it is what makes me so grateful and so happy every
day that I am surrounded by my loving husband and very interesting and independent little dog
that's very very cute you know that we have very comfortable a bit simple house we have the ability
to enjoy good food even if it's simple stuff from the war rooms locally we have a garden and
beautiful things are growing around us every day the weather is great you know stuff is good yeah
I think this is one of the most essential simple things that's often overlooked simply because it's
a matter of mentality but I believe this essential quality or characteristic could make all the
difference for you so these are the six essential things that I believe are very very important for
you to cultivate and prepare for in the leader to actually taking the plunge into a return then I
think that if you have these six strong skills and qualities going for you you will be in a position
much more well placed to make the best out of your retirement however long that period may be let me
know what you think of my suggestions whether you agree or if you think they suck let me know why
but in any event I really appreciate you tuning in and sharing my thoughts for this week and
wherever you are in the world I'm wishing you a happy Saturday evening and let's speak again
next week till then you take care and bye for now
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