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Retirement Planning in Your 50s and Beyond

Your 50s are an excellent time to get serious
about retirement planning, and that's because at this point in your life, you may have figured
a couple of things out. You might have a decent idea of where you
spend money, what your preferences are, the things you don't care for so much, and you
might also have some financial advantages at this point in life. Perhaps you've paid off a lot of debt maybe. If you had kids, they're out of the house
or almost independent. And you might be in your peak earnings years
because you have gained some expertise and some knowledge in whatever it is you do for
a living, and one big reason to get serious is you might have more money than you've ever
had before saved up so now it really counts. A 10 % loss in the markets, for example, hurts
a lot more than it did when you were 22 years old.

But whether you're just getting started saving
for retirement or you've been doing it for decades there are some important things that
come up in your 50s that can help you pave the way to a smoother retirement down the
road. The first thing to watch for is catch-up contributions,
and this is not the condiment, this is a catch-up contribution that allows you to put extra
into your retirement accounts each year once you reach age 50. The IRS sets maximum limits on how much you
can contribute to those accounts, but at 50, you can do a little bit extra and that helps
to boost what goes into those accounts each year for example in your 401k or 403 b or
governmental 457 you can put in an extra six thousand six hundred dollars per year as a
catch-up contribution on top of the max that you had back when you were 49 years old and
your knees didn't hurt as much.

For traditional and Roth IRAs, for 2022 that
number is a thousand dollars of extra catch-up contributions. Of course, this is assuming that you have
the cash flow to make the maximum contribution and put the catch-up contribution on top of
that, and if you don't, that's okay, it's not feasible for everybody, just do what you
can. But if you are really trying to maximize your
account balances at retirement, those catch ups are a powerful tool. The next thing to do is to look at your Social
Security and pension benefits. It's a good time to start getting a realistic
expectation of what you might get, and that's because you might assume that you're going
to get a lot more or a lot less, but it's really helpful to start figuring out how those
systems work and how much you can expect each month. If you're eligible for Social Security, you'll
want to go through your earnings history and make sure that that is accurate because if
any years are missing you may end up with a smaller monthly retirement benefit.

Your benefit is based on your 35 highest earnings
years, so you want to make sure that those good earning years are in there and that you
don't have any unnecessary zeros in your history. Keep in mind that you may be able to get some
retirement benefits from a former spouse or your current spouse, so if you're widowed
or divorced, for example, you want to research those potential benefits and you might also
be able to get income on your spouse's earnings record if you are still married and there,
are some strategies you'll want to look at as you go through that process. By the way, I'm Justin Pritchard, and i help
people plan for retirement and invest for the future. So, there will be some resources down in the
description below that cover this in more detail and give you some other pointers.

Another smart move is to manage your debts
or make a strategy for them. So, if you have consumer debts like credit
cards for example, you definitely want to plan to eliminate those debts and make sure
that your spending stays within your income limits so that you're not digging yourself
a hole during retirement or as you head towards retirement. But what about so-called "good debts" in retirement? For example, a mortgage. There's a lot of benefit to being debt-free
and not having a mortgage payment when you're in retirement a lot of people really focus
on getting rid of that loan before their retirement date but it's not necessarily the end of the
world to have a mortgage in retirement, and paying it off quickly out of your retirement
funds can cause some problems. As long as you can fit that monthly payment
into your income maybe that's your Social Security, pensions, and some withdrawals from
savings accounts, and you can manage that debt comfortably, then again, it's not the
end of the world, and remember that that loan payment will eventually go away someday which
frees up cash flow for other expenses maybe health care expenses later in life.

Speaking of expenses, how much are you going
to need to spend? Well, that's something to start figuring out
and there are a couple of different ways to do that this video that's going to pop up
above will give you some pointers on that but basically you can look at your spending
today and maybe adjust that for inflation or you might look at an income replacement
ratio and say maybe I just need 80 percent of what I'm earning now that might or might
not be right for you or you can target a certain level of spending such as $50 or $100,000
whatever the case may be, and with those numbers you can set a goal to start heading for once
you have an idea of your spending and your retirement income sources and your assets
then you can run some calculations and again we're setting your expectations so that you
know if you're on track or not and this can alert you to some potential shortfalls or
maybe let you know if you could retire earlier than maybe you expected there are a lot of
helpful online calculators out there they can do a decent job of getting you in the
ballpark but make sure you understand what their limitations might be so they don't necessarily
get super detailed and you might not be able to adjust all of the assumptions but again
you can get some basic ideas of if you're sort of close or if you're way off on what
you expected another good move in your 50s is to refine your investment strategy so up
to this point you may have been doing some great things to get you to the point where
you are you've built up some nice assets but if you've been using high risk strategies
maybe speculating maybe day trading that sort of thing it's time to ask yourself if that's
something that you want to continue doing at this stage in life it is difficult to consistently
get good results with those high risk approaches and you might have more to lose now than you
did previously.

I'm not saying you can't do it or definitely
don't do it but I would say proceed with extreme caution and maybe just say hey I've done a
good job up to this point maybe I'll reevaluate what I'm going to do going forward. At 50 it's time to start thinking about long-term
care if you haven't already been thinking about it there's a 70 percent chance that
you might need some type of long-term care and that might include everything from somebody
helping you out at home maybe this is a loved one assuming you have somebody at home who
is willing and able and remember it could be physically and emotionally difficult and
it might require expertise but it could include somebody helping you out at home who you know
or you going into a skilled nursing facility and paying those higher costs that are associated
with that higher level of care there are several ways to deal with the costs and that might
include a long-term care insurance policy but those are kind of problematic so definitely
look into them but consider some other alternatives as well maybe instead of maybe to supplement
or maybe you just go with insurance but some other options include saving up assets and
earmarking those for a long-term care event or maybe looking at your home equity as a
safety net to cover some of those big expenses that's not necessarily a fun way to spend
your time so one of the other things you can do is envision how you want your retirement
to unfold and this is a really important step that a lot of people skip it's important to
have something to do with yourself once you stop working you might have gotten a lot of
your social engagement a lot of your meaning and some of your identity out of your work
and you might want to not necessarily admit that but for a lot of people that's the case
it's easy to say that the main thing you're looking forward to in retirement is not going
to work but you probably want to have some ideas on how you're going to fill your time
and that way you're going to number one enjoy it more and number two there might be some
real benefits in terms of your mental and physical health if you are retiring to something
as opposed to just retiring from work, so ask yourself how will you fill your days? What are you most excited about and interested
in? What can you do to find some meaning and some
purpose during that time? And who might you spend time with, and what
are your plans for keeping your physical health as good as you can possibly keep it? So, I hope you found that helpful.

If you did, please leave a quick thumbs up,
thank you, and take care..

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Why Some Retirees Succeed and Others Live in Worry – 5 Retirement Truths

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]

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Why This Investment System Can Help Retirees Worry Less About Their Retirement Plan

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

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Retirement Planning in Your 50s and Beyond

Your 50s are an excellent time to get serious
about retirement planning, and that's because at this point in your life, you may have figured
a couple of things out. You might have a decent idea of where you
spend money, what your preferences are, the things you don't care for so much, and you
might also have some financial advantages at this point in life. Perhaps you've paid off a lot of debt maybe. If you had kids, they're out of the house
or almost independent. And you might be in your peak earnings years
because you have gained some expertise and some knowledge in whatever it is you do for
a living, and one big reason to get serious is you might have more money than you've ever
had before saved up so now it really counts.

A 10 % loss in the markets, for example, hurts
a lot more than it did when you were 22 years old. But whether you're just getting started saving
for retirement or you've been doing it for decades there are some important things that
come up in your 50s that can help you pave the way to a smoother retirement down the
road. The first thing to watch for is catch-up contributions,
and this is not the condiment, this is a catch-up contribution that allows you to put extra
into your retirement accounts each year once you reach age 50. The IRS sets maximum limits on how much you
can contribute to those accounts, but at 50, you can do a little bit extra and that helps
to boost what goes into those accounts each year for example in your 401k or 403 b or
governmental 457 you can put in an extra six thousand six hundred dollars per year as a
catch-up contribution on top of the max that you had back when you were 49 years old and
your knees didn't hurt as much. For traditional and Roth IRAs, for 2022 that
number is a thousand dollars of extra catch-up contributions.

Of course, this is assuming that you have
the cash flow to make the maximum contribution and put the catch-up contribution on top of
that, and if you don't, that's okay, it's not feasible for everybody, just do what you
can. But if you are really trying to maximize your
account balances at retirement, those catch ups are a powerful tool. The next thing to do is to look at your Social
Security and pension benefits. It's a good time to start getting a realistic
expectation of what you might get, and that's because you might assume that you're going
to get a lot more or a lot less, but it's really helpful to start figuring out how those
systems work and how much you can expect each month.

If you're eligible for Social Security, you'll
want to go through your earnings history and make sure that that is accurate because if
any years are missing you may end up with a smaller monthly retirement benefit. Your benefit is based on your 35 highest earnings
years, so you want to make sure that those good earning years are in there and that you
don't have any unnecessary zeros in your history. Keep in mind that you may be able to get some
retirement benefits from a former spouse or your current spouse, so if you're widowed
or divorced, for example, you want to research those potential benefits and you might also
be able to get income on your spouse's earnings record if you are still married and there,
are some strategies you'll want to look at as you go through that process. By the way, I'm Justin Pritchard, and i help
people plan for retirement and invest for the future. So, there will be some resources down in the
description below that cover this in more detail and give you some other pointers.

Another smart move is to manage your debts
or make a strategy for them. So, if you have consumer debts like credit
cards for example, you definitely want to plan to eliminate those debts and make sure
that your spending stays within your income limits so that you're not digging yourself
a hole during retirement or as you head towards retirement. But what about so-called "good debts" in retirement? For example, a mortgage. There's a lot of benefit to being debt-free
and not having a mortgage payment when you're in retirement a lot of people really focus
on getting rid of that loan before their retirement date but it's not necessarily the end of the
world to have a mortgage in retirement, and paying it off quickly out of your retirement
funds can cause some problems.

As long as you can fit that monthly payment
into your income maybe that's your Social Security, pensions, and some withdrawals from
savings accounts, and you can manage that debt comfortably, then again, it's not the
end of the world, and remember that that loan payment will eventually go away someday which
frees up cash flow for other expenses maybe health care expenses later in life. Speaking of expenses, how much are you going
to need to spend? Well, that's something to start figuring out
and there are a couple of different ways to do that this video that's going to pop up
above will give you some pointers on that but basically you can look at your spending
today and maybe adjust that for inflation or you might look at an income replacement
ratio and say maybe I just need 80 percent of what I'm earning now that might or might
not be right for you or you can target a certain level of spending such as $50 or $100,000
whatever the case may be, and with those numbers you can set a goal to start heading for once
you have an idea of your spending and your retirement income sources and your assets
then you can run some calculations and again we're setting your expectations so that you
know if you're on track or not and this can alert you to some potential shortfalls or
maybe let you know if you could retire earlier than maybe you expected there are a lot of
helpful online calculators out there they can do a decent job of getting you in the
ballpark but make sure you understand what their limitations might be so they don't necessarily
get super detailed and you might not be able to adjust all of the assumptions but again
you can get some basic ideas of if you're sort of close or if you're way off on what
you expected another good move in your 50s is to refine your investment strategy so up
to this point you may have been doing some great things to get you to the point where
you are you've built up some nice assets but if you've been using high risk strategies
maybe speculating maybe day trading that sort of thing it's time to ask yourself if that's
something that you want to continue doing at this stage in life it is difficult to consistently
get good results with those high risk approaches and you might have more to lose now than you
did previously.

I'm not saying you can't do it or definitely
don't do it but I would say proceed with extreme caution and maybe just say hey I've done a
good job up to this point maybe I'll reevaluate what I'm going to do going forward. At 50 it's time to start thinking about long-term
care if you haven't already been thinking about it there's a 70 percent chance that
you might need some type of long-term care and that might include everything from somebody
helping you out at home maybe this is a loved one assuming you have somebody at home who
is willing and able and remember it could be physically and emotionally difficult and
it might require expertise but it could include somebody helping you out at home who you know
or you going into a skilled nursing facility and paying those higher costs that are associated
with that higher level of care there are several ways to deal with the costs and that might
include a long-term care insurance policy but those are kind of problematic so definitely
look into them but consider some other alternatives as well maybe instead of maybe to supplement
or maybe you just go with insurance but some other options include saving up assets and
earmarking those for a long-term care event or maybe looking at your home equity as a
safety net to cover some of those big expenses that's not necessarily a fun way to spend
your time so one of the other things you can do is envision how you want your retirement
to unfold and this is a really important step that a lot of people skip it's important to
have something to do with yourself once you stop working you might have gotten a lot of
your social engagement a lot of your meaning and some of your identity out of your work
and you might want to not necessarily admit that but for a lot of people that's the case
it's easy to say that the main thing you're looking forward to in retirement is not going
to work but you probably want to have some ideas on how you're going to fill your time
and that way you're going to number one enjoy it more and number two there might be some
real benefits in terms of your mental and physical health if you are retiring to something
as opposed to just retiring from work, so ask yourself how will you fill your days? What are you most excited about and interested
in? What can you do to find some meaning and some
purpose during that time? And who might you spend time with, and what
are your plans for keeping your physical health as good as you can possibly keep it? So, I hope you found that helpful.

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thank you, and take care..

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Transitioning to Retirement Part 2 (1 to 5 years before retirement)

yeah hobbies is a big thing because a lot of people say i don't know what i'm going to do in retirement because i have no hobbies but they'll say i don't play i have no hobbies so you have to you've got five years to start to think about that a lot of people wait till it's too late and there's so much stress on them they have no hobbies they don't know where they want to live they're not talking to their spouse we want to prevent all of that today we're talking about transitioning into retirement and this is part two of our three-part series if you remember and if you watched it the first part is five to ten years out today we're going to focus on your planning and things you need to do one to five years out before you leave your business and enter this third phase you know this is going to be a hard transition in your life if you aren't prepared and if you don't plan when we entered this phase we looked for help we looked everywhere but the only thing we could find was financial planning help and that's not what we needed and that's why we started this company because we realized we were struggling a bit and had to figure out how to pivot to make this time of our life as good as it could be so here we are retirement transformed in part one which was five to ten years out we gave you four strategies to work on the first was planning the second was understanding risks and when we talk about risks in retirement it's things like your loss of identity and creating a new identity your loss of community and creating a new community and those 40 hours of free time that everyone gets back the other thing was building a vision for your retirement five to ten years out you want to start thinking what is it going to look like and you also the fourth thing is start thinking about habits and routines what are some good habits you want to bring forward what are some bad ones you need to stop we want to make sure you go back and watch that episode the link is pasted below in the notes so we're going to build on those strategies today as we look at the one to five years out you know and in this time frame by now one to five years from your retirement date you do need to have a financial planner in place and so you have the financial planner your vision should start being clear and assuming it's your choice to retire you have a time frame and a date you know you have to start getting comfortable with the idea and getting more overall clarity time is going to go by really quickly now you know we both retired a lot earlier than we thought and because of that we weren't prepared you know i was at the peak of my career and i decided to sell my company i was 55 years old and i planned on working another 10.

Everyone wants to work to 65 right but i only worked for five and you know simultaneously my company was sold to a competitor and i stayed during the integration for three full years but i found that it wasn't going to work for me anymore so together in december of 2018 we left together and our entry into retirement was rough you know we we spent a year traveling the globe we went to italy uh florence uh where else are we london london bora bora bora bora was great but we did that we entertained family and friends for a summer that felt like a year we realized we didn't really have a purpose and one day we looked in the mirror and neither of us liked what we saw no we didn't we didn't we didn't we didn't look good and we didn't feel good and the thing is we don't want that for you this transition is hard and the more prepared you are the better chance of success you'll have so here's some additional steps that you should be taking one to five years out before retirement now this comes from our experience our success and our failures but also from many of the clients that we work with you know the first thing we're going to ask you to do and you might roll your eyes is to buy a journal aligned or unlined journal a cheap journal just something to start writing in something you can start documenting your thoughts and we're going to give you a little structure on that but writing is better than electronically typing it start recording your thoughts your feelings your struggles and your successes you know the reason that writing is better than electronic is it forces you to actually slow down you can't get the words out fast enough so you have to actually think of the words and write them and you retain it better when it's electronic even if you're a good typist you can just bang them all out you're not really allowing your brain to slow down and focus so journaling and writing is really important it's funny when you said bang them all out because you're a one finger typer two fingers this one and that one anyway be a place for you to gather your thoughts but more importantly to break up your journal into buckets and i'll tell you one of the buckets can include our five pillars physical wellness mental wellness relationships that you want to deepen or let go of your spouse partner alignment or misalignment wherever it might be and the last bucket is wisdom sharing you want to start thinking about what is it you're going to do after your career ends to get fulfillment to make good use of all of your skills and your experiences to to to serve others in a way like what jody and i are doing with this business and you want to start listening to your voice and writing it down and we're actually going to go deeper on wisdom sharing today because that's for the next five years you really want to start thinking about how that's going to fit into your life so this journal is going to incorporate kind of where you are now and you're going to put some reaching statements in to figure out where you'd like to be and then you're going to be able to do some research and organize your thoughts right and some other areas to put in the journal to start thinking about is travel plans if you want to travel write it down and figure it out and start thinking about it we have the greatest travel agent by the way that helps us figure some things out but you also might want a vacation home right and you also might want to think where do you want to live in the next 30 years right and how's that going to impact or affect or include your children and family how does that where you live how does your location impact your hobbies yeah hobbies is a big thing because a lot of people say i don't know what i'm going to do in retirement because i have no hobbies or they'll say i don't play i have no hobbies so you have to you've got five years to start to think about that a lot of people wait till it's too late and there's so much stress on them they have no hobbies they don't know where they want to live they're not talking to their spouse we want to prevent all of that we also want to give you a place where you can put down some aspirational hobbies yeah maybe learning a language or going to an art studio or picking up a new sport start painting start painting yeah mark's laughing at me because i want to start painting i just haven't had the time four years ago i gave you the whole painting kit the easel and all of the things and they're still in the closet maybe i'll go now okay okay there you go all right second thing to do we're going to focus the rest so the first is the journal that was all the big journals get a journal and start writing right and you know write and then put it away take it back out again put some tabs in there on these different sections i think you'll really enjoy it but let's talk about wisdom sharon because this is really a core component of your retirement transformed and one of the things that we did ourselves and we do with our clients and we share with this in a very deep way in our online course is to figure out some things about yourself so we want you get a blank piece of paper and we want you to put five columns in there going left to right and the first column really is to list all of the jobs and the roles you've played over your entire career or your life in the last 30 or 40 years and sometimes it's easy to break it into buckets the last 10 the previous 10 whatever it might be sales role ceo and you want to go back as far as you're comfortable with i know for me i went back 20 years i know for mark he went back to his first job out of middle school which was cutting lawns paper boi oh paper boi paper boi when did you cut lawns after that because you went all the way back i wasn't allowed to use lawnmower it was too little so you pick the time frame that works for you but in that first column you want to list all those jobs that you had and then put the date because the date the second column the date just so you kind of have a reference but really where it gets interesting is the third column we want you to write down what did you love about that job what what excited you about it why did you like it so much what emotion comes to mind when you think about being a paper boy or cutting lawns or right i happen to be the world's greatest waitress which helps me helps me be a good mom of six kids carrying plates the fourth column is perhaps what did you dislike about that role because if you didn't like it you clearly do not want to take up that type of job right or that that service in your retirement if you don't like it and then the fifth column is what has this job or role taught you and then to sum it up you want to go through those sheets and do a whole bunch of them pick your top five it's critical it's all we want you to do is what were the top five jobs or roles that you played in the last 30 years so that's probably a pretty big and a pretty busy sheet for most people the second thing we want you to do is list your strengths and values as they speak to you go through and list them and get a top five for each strength or value and once you have that combine that with your top five jobs and see where you land and start writing about it you're gonna start getting a little clarity on what it is you think you might want to do the other thing to do as you're writing and thinking about it you've got you know one to five years left of work start paying attention to your to your days now so you went backwards now going forward if you have identified sales leadership as something you like really pay attention when you're doing it now you know if you're a finance person and you love working on spreadsheets is that really what you see yourself doing after so it's really important it makes makes me think of that what was that book that uh we read um wisdom at work by chip conley yeah we'll put those notes down below wisdom at work by chip conley the making of a modern elder an awesome read it's a really interesting book about his role in airbnb and the other thing to do during this phase if you're not already is start volunteering in any way shape or form you know it could be at the food bank it could be anything but you want to find a way to volunteer board service well i'll tell you it makes it easier to find your volunteering niche after you've gone back and you've looked at what inspires you in different roles and what your core values and competencies and where you get your juice from and then you figure out how much time you have now with the one to five years still working and then you figure out how to launch into a volunteering role and every community needs you now look these next five years are going to be a challenging time they're going to go fast we don't want you just to coast and all of a sudden end up thinking oh my god i'm leaving in 12 months the next video is about the last 12 months but we want you to do everything we talked about in the first video and this one to get you ready for that and that way you'll land in this phase fully prepared and listen if you enjoyed this please share with your friends and also please subscribe by clicking the subscribe button below and don't forget to join our free facebook community the link is in the notes as well it's a great place to start to build a community for your retirement phase thanks so much for listening and we look forward to being with you again soon you

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Retirement Planning in Your 50s and Beyond

Your 50s are an excellent time to get serious
about retirement planning, and that's because at this point in your life, you may have figured
a couple of things out. You might have a decent idea of where you
spend money, what your preferences are, the things you don't care for so much, and you
might also have some financial advantages at this point in life. Perhaps you've paid off a lot of debt maybe. If you had kids, they're out of the house
or almost independent. And you might be in your peak earnings years
because you have gained some expertise and some knowledge in whatever it is you do for
a living, and one big reason to get serious is you might have more money than you've ever
had before saved up so now it really counts. A 10 % loss in the markets, for example, hurts
a lot more than it did when you were 22 years old.

But whether you're just getting started saving
for retirement or you've been doing it for decades there are some important things that
come up in your 50s that can help you pave the way to a smoother retirement down the
road. The first thing to watch for is catch-up contributions,
and this is not the condiment, this is a catch-up contribution that allows you to put extra
into your retirement accounts each year once you reach age 50. The IRS sets maximum limits on how much you
can contribute to those accounts, but at 50, you can do a little bit extra and that helps
to boost what goes into those accounts each year for example in your 401k or 403 b or
governmental 457 you can put in an extra six thousand six hundred dollars per year as a
catch-up contribution on top of the max that you had back when you were 49 years old and
your knees didn't hurt as much.

For traditional and Roth IRAs, for 2022 that
number is a thousand dollars of extra catch-up contributions. Of course, this is assuming that you have
the cash flow to make the maximum contribution and put the catch-up contribution on top of
that, and if you don't, that's okay, it's not feasible for everybody, just do what you
can. But if you are really trying to maximize your
account balances at retirement, those catch ups are a powerful tool. The next thing to do is to look at your Social
Security and pension benefits. It's a good time to start getting a realistic
expectation of what you might get, and that's because you might assume that you're going
to get a lot more or a lot less, but it's really helpful to start figuring out how those
systems work and how much you can expect each month.

If you're eligible for Social Security, you'll
want to go through your earnings history and make sure that that is accurate because if
any years are missing you may end up with a smaller monthly retirement benefit. Your benefit is based on your 35 highest earnings
years, so you want to make sure that those good earning years are in there and that you
don't have any unnecessary zeros in your history. Keep in mind that you may be able to get some
retirement benefits from a former spouse or your current spouse, so if you're widowed
or divorced, for example, you want to research those potential benefits and you might also
be able to get income on your spouse's earnings record if you are still married and there,
are some strategies you'll want to look at as you go through that process.

By the way, I'm Justin Pritchard, and i help
people plan for retirement and invest for the future. So, there will be some resources down in the
description below that cover this in more detail and give you some other pointers. Another smart move is to manage your debts
or make a strategy for them. So, if you have consumer debts like credit
cards for example, you definitely want to plan to eliminate those debts and make sure
that your spending stays within your income limits so that you're not digging yourself
a hole during retirement or as you head towards retirement. But what about so-called "good debts" in retirement? For example, a mortgage.

There's a lot of benefit to being debt-free
and not having a mortgage payment when you're in retirement a lot of people really focus
on getting rid of that loan before their retirement date but it's not necessarily the end of the
world to have a mortgage in retirement, and paying it off quickly out of your retirement
funds can cause some problems. As long as you can fit that monthly payment
into your income maybe that's your Social Security, pensions, and some withdrawals from
savings accounts, and you can manage that debt comfortably, then again, it's not the
end of the world, and remember that that loan payment will eventually go away someday which
frees up cash flow for other expenses maybe health care expenses later in life. Speaking of expenses, how much are you going
to need to spend? Well, that's something to start figuring out
and there are a couple of different ways to do that this video that's going to pop up
above will give you some pointers on that but basically you can look at your spending
today and maybe adjust that for inflation or you might look at an income replacement
ratio and say maybe I just need 80 percent of what I'm earning now that might or might
not be right for you or you can target a certain level of spending such as $50 or $100,000
whatever the case may be, and with those numbers you can set a goal to start heading for once
you have an idea of your spending and your retirement income sources and your assets
then you can run some calculations and again we're setting your expectations so that you
know if you're on track or not and this can alert you to some potential shortfalls or
maybe let you know if you could retire earlier than maybe you expected there are a lot of
helpful online calculators out there they can do a decent job of getting you in the
ballpark but make sure you understand what their limitations might be so they don't necessarily
get super detailed and you might not be able to adjust all of the assumptions but again
you can get some basic ideas of if you're sort of close or if you're way off on what
you expected another good move in your 50s is to refine your investment strategy so up
to this point you may have been doing some great things to get you to the point where
you are you've built up some nice assets but if you've been using high risk strategies
maybe speculating maybe day trading that sort of thing it's time to ask yourself if that's
something that you want to continue doing at this stage in life it is difficult to consistently
get good results with those high risk approaches and you might have more to lose now than you
did previously.

I'm not saying you can't do it or definitely
don't do it but I would say proceed with extreme caution and maybe just say hey I've done a
good job up to this point maybe I'll reevaluate what I'm going to do going forward. At 50 it's time to start thinking about long-term
care if you haven't already been thinking about it there's a 70 percent chance that
you might need some type of long-term care and that might include everything from somebody
helping you out at home maybe this is a loved one assuming you have somebody at home who
is willing and able and remember it could be physically and emotionally difficult and
it might require expertise but it could include somebody helping you out at home who you know
or you going into a skilled nursing facility and paying those higher costs that are associated
with that higher level of care there are several ways to deal with the costs and that might
include a long-term care insurance policy but those are kind of problematic so definitely
look into them but consider some other alternatives as well maybe instead of maybe to supplement
or maybe you just go with insurance but some other options include saving up assets and
earmarking those for a long-term care event or maybe looking at your home equity as a
safety net to cover some of those big expenses that's not necessarily a fun way to spend
your time so one of the other things you can do is envision how you want your retirement
to unfold and this is a really important step that a lot of people skip it's important to
have something to do with yourself once you stop working you might have gotten a lot of
your social engagement a lot of your meaning and some of your identity out of your work
and you might want to not necessarily admit that but for a lot of people that's the case
it's easy to say that the main thing you're looking forward to in retirement is not going
to work but you probably want to have some ideas on how you're going to fill your time
and that way you're going to number one enjoy it more and number two there might be some
real benefits in terms of your mental and physical health if you are retiring to something
as opposed to just retiring from work, so ask yourself how will you fill your days? What are you most excited about and interested
in? What can you do to find some meaning and some
purpose during that time? And who might you spend time with, and what
are your plans for keeping your physical health as good as you can possibly keep it? So, I hope you found that helpful.

If you did, please leave a quick thumbs up,
thank you, and take care..

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Retirement Planning During Bear Markets – Especially if It’s Your First One In Retirement

bear markets can feel a lot different when you're retired and you're no longer earning income from work especially if this is your first bear Market since you stopped working when you were younger you know you had time on your side you know you may have even seen drops in the market as an opportunity because it gave you additional time and you got to purchase more shares well things were on sale so to speak but now most likely that's not the case the relationship between our money and our accounts now are of money going out versus money going in to put it simply and plus you may have noticed that there's this psychological component now around money and not wanting to mess things up because the decisions we make really carried much more weight now when we're close to or in retirement and it's really that's not only psychological or emotional it's true because planning the distributions is much more complex than the the planning around around saving and putting money into the investment accounts what led to our investment success the last 30 years is a lot different than what's going to lead to success the next 20 or 30 years or at last that's at least what we've been seeing at streamline Financial since 1998 since we've been around so I want to share how to endure through bad markets if you're close to retirement or you're already retired and then what you can do to actually take advantage of of this even if you're already retired and you're no longer saving money and we're going to do that because we know a universal law of physics that can't be disproven and we can actually apply it to our retirement and make it a little bit better if you're thinking Dave what the heck are you talking about here's a brief explanation so Newton's third law of motion is that every action there's an equal and opposite reaction right you've heard that before so the way that I see it is there's a positive to every negative and the same thing there's a negative to every positive it's the law of polarity so I want to share what the positive is to take advantage of during bad markets and by the way if I haven't met you yet I'm Dave zoller and Tim and Luke and I and Sean we run streamline Financial it's a retirement planning firm and we've been around like I had said since 98 so we've seen clients really go through it all the.com bust the financial crisis and then covet and then all the things in between all those uh you know those mini panics that we've had so we created this channel to share what's working and what has worked for them and so that you can hopefully glean some wisdom from them and then apply it to your your own life so the first thing we need to be aware of is that the previous 30 years there were four bear Market Corrections so that's a drop of 20 or more and then the 30 years before that there was a total of five bear Market Corrections so the main takeaway is we need to expect these bear markets to happen during our retirement during that next 20 30 years right the second thing is we don't want to make a change solely on an emotion right and it's not not just making a drastic change like selling everything and putting everything under the mattress right it's we were just talking to someone yesterday and emotions can cause us not to take an action when we know doing so is actually the Smart Financial thing to do for instance during March of 2020 when it wasn't easy to rebalance your accounts it was very difficult to do but if you did follow through and and do the correct rebalancing system or strategy if you were looking back now it could have made a lot of sense the third thing is update your income plan because that helps guide us and make really good planning decisions around our investment plan so it's really start with the income plan you've heard that before and that helps us make the investment decisions versus the other way around and updating your income plan during bad markets that can also give you some confidence as well as you're looking at where we are today and then looking at over the next few years and and seeing that things maybe aren't as bad as it might seem at least when you've got those two things of the unknown and then the known updating the plan is the known and you can get a little bit better picture on what the future might look like for you now to the two things that maybe could give us an advantage during a time like this this is back to the law of polarity so the possible things that we might be able to use here are well first before I say it as always this is not specific advice to you so we're not looking at your your plan together so before you do anything just talk to a financial professional but idea number one to think about is tax loss harvesting that could be a way to write off some of the losses while still keeping your investment strategy intact and I talk about this concept a lot more in other videos so I'm not going to go into details on it today but just keep that in mind the one thing to to really pay attention to though when we're we're talking about the law or talking about tax loss harvesting is that wash sale rule right so look for the other videos or talk to that Financial professional before thinking about doing that the second thing that could be a possible opportunity for really the first time in a very long time is that ability or option to lock in higher yields in that conservative bucket as you know the the bucket strategy you've seen that before where we've got the possible three buckets and having that conservative bucket here is a great way to plan out and prepare for for bad markets and now at the time of this recording some of those historically conservative asset classes are paying a higher interest a higher yield than what we've seen really over the last decade which could be a silver lining during this period of time so those are just two things possible things to look at which maybe could be taken advantage of by you for for your benefit so those are just two things to think about during this period of time that we're in right now if that short video was helpful please like this and then share it with others if you think it could help them too and if you'd like to talk more about your plan feel free to reach out to me in the in the description below or go to our website streamlinedplanning.com for get you click on the get started button we don't always have space available but you'll hear back from me either way so I hope that was helpful and then I'll see you in the next video

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Pay This Off Before You Retire – Retirement Planning Tips

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

As found on YouTube

Retirement Planning Home

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Pay This Off Before You Retire – Retirement Planning Tips

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

As found on YouTube

Retirement Planning Home

Read More

Pay This Off Before You Retire – Retirement Planning Tips

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

As found on YouTube

Retirement Planning Home

Read More