0:00:00 - Speaker 1
Discussions in this show should not be construed as specific recommendations or investment advice. Always consult with your investment professional before making important investment decisions. Securities offered through registered representatives of Cambridge Investment Research Inc. A broker-dealer member, finra, sipc Advisory Services through Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. A registered investment advisor Cambridge and Greenway Wealth Advisory are not affiliated.

0:00:20 - Speaker 2
It's time to dive into some insider secrets of investing and retirement planning To make your retirement as smart and as elegant as possible. This is Money Chic with Sherry Rash. Hey, everybody, welcome into another edition of the podcast. You're listening to Money Chic Women in Retirement. You already know that, since you're tuning in and we appreciate your time, as always, as Sherry and I talk investing, finance and retirement, and we're going to talk about what is being set out there in the aspect of the arena of retirement planning. When it comes to the most important part, we've got a kind of a wide smattering of things we've taken from the internet Different sites, different professionals so on and so forth to get their take on some of these opinions and, sherry, I just want to see how you agree or disagree with some of their thoughts and maybe put your own spin on it as well. So, first of all, how you doing.

0:01:09 - Speaker 3
I'm doing great and I'm excited to talk about this. I love talking about retirement planning with my clients and I like hearing other opinions out in the universe, so yeah, yeah, get out of the universe find out what's going on out there in the interwebs.

0:01:23 - Speaker 2
As I like to say. I just like that saying I don't know why everybody's like interwebs. I was like it's just fun. I don't know Better than internet. Internet gets bored.

But anyway we're going to talk about some of this good stuff. So if you've got some questions or concerns as always, folks make sure that you, before you take any action, when you're listening to our show or any other, especially when it comes to opinions or thoughts when it comes to your financial situation, you always check with a qualified professional like Sherry, who is a financial advisor and a money coach at Greenway Wealth Advisory. All right, so I'm going to give you the person here and I'm going to give you their statement and then we'll just kind of go back and forth a little bit on it. So we've got.

Tom Mark who and I hope I get all of these names right, so if I don't, I apologize in advance but Tom Mark of Jocelyn Rhodes. He says the most important part of retirement planning is deciding what you want to do with your time. You agree or disagree?

0:02:11 - Speaker 3
I agree that that's very, very important and it's oftentimes overlooked. I think that when folks are approaching retirement, they're kind of thinking of it as a destination. Okay, I'm retired now, I just got to, I got to get to retirement, and that's what they're thinking about but they're not spending time thinking about what are you going to do with your time? I mean just the getting ready and commuting out, out to work and home. Now, that hasn't been happening as much over the past couple of years, the commuting part of it, but that's a big chunk of time. Do you anticipate sleeping in? Do you still want to wake up early and drink your coffee, read the newspaper? How are you going to fill up your days? Are you going to volunteer or travel? It's very, very important to think about that part of it, because I would argue that probably the sleeping in and staying in your pajamas all day only lasts for a couple of weeks while you're enjoying that transition, but then you need something to do.

0:03:15 - Speaker 2
Yeah, you get a little bored, right. It's like, okay, I can only do this for so many days.

0:03:19 - Speaker 3
That's right, that's right.

0:03:21 - Speaker 2
Okay. So I would agree too. I think that deciding what you want your retirement to do or look like and do with your time is definitely going to be pretty high on that list. But the whole point of this and I think this is the fun takeaway of this area is that maybe one person listening to this totally agrees with that. That's the number one thing for them, and for someone else it might be the fourth thing, right. So everybody's retirement is going to look a little different. Ron Lieber of the New York Times said the most important advice about saving for retirement is this start now.

0:03:51 - Speaker 3
I agree. I agree with that one. The saying goes when's the best time to plan a tree? 20 years ago the second best time today.

So absolutely start now, start early. When I'm talking with my younger clients, I'll say I get that you just graduated college or you just started your career and it sounds ridiculous to start planning, thinking about retirement when you just started your career. But you have to start as soon as you can, so every little bit helps. So if you haven't been saving as aggressively as you would have liked to in the past, just start now.

0:04:28 - Speaker 2
Yeah, don't keep waiting right.

0:04:29 - Speaker 3
You know like don't find yourself going.

0:04:31 - Speaker 2
Well, it's too late for me, you know. Don't do that to yourself, right? So don't add yet another day or another year or another, whatever. So just make the move. You know, get started today. So I would definitely agree with that one as well. Well, even for those again who feel like they're behind and have taken too long or didn't do enough, get started today. Reach out to an advisor and start talking and get a plan put together. So all right. So this one we don't have a name, but it was financial advisor in New York- so there's a lot of those.

The most important part of retirement planning is understanding how much income you're going to need to live comfortably.

0:05:06 - Speaker 3
If you didn't tell me this was a financial advisor saying this, I would have guessed it's a financial advisor, because that's such a hard question. I mean when you say to someone okay, how much income are you going to need?

0:05:21 - Speaker 2
I don't know. That's why I'm here, to see you, right.

0:05:24 - Speaker 3
Right, right, I don't even know where to start with answering that question. So instead, start at a micro level and work your way up to that bigger macro thought, which is how much income you need. So, are you going to stay in your home? How much is left on your mortgage? Are? Your expenses are going to be pretty similar if you're staying in your home. Right, you know what your property taxes are. The electric company doesn't care if you're retired or not. The cable bill is going to be the same. So you can get a good idea of what your expenses are going to be post retirement. Hint, they're going to be similar to pre-retirement. And start from there and then add on. Okay, do you plan on traveling? Yes, how many trips a year? Okay, let's ballpark that number and then get to that bigger number. But no one has ever come into my office or I've spoken to them and said I'm going to need $100,000 post retirement income to live comfortably.

It just doesn't happen, you've got to work to get to that number.

0:06:27 - Speaker 2
But it is very important, definitely very important. And again, I think all of these are probably going to be quite important, at least the top, maybe five, six, seven, eight, you know things that you think about when you get close to retirement. But so it all comes down to which is the most important for you and then making kind of a list and that's really kind of the part of a retirement planning process is saying, okay, here's the things that are important, let's tackle these. How do we go through and kind of build this up? This next one I'm assuming this is a RoboAdvisor platform. It says RoboAdvisor Betterment, so I'm guessing maybe that's like a service, but anyway, it says how much you would like to spend during your retirement is the most important driver of your retirement plan, but it's often the hardest to predict. Kind of similar to what you just said.

0:07:12 - Speaker 3
Exactly. The one part I would probably change a little bit is how much would you like to spend? I mean, I'd like to spend a million dollars a year I can't, but I would like to so again working backwards to that number. How much do I need to spend to live? And then what's also nice on top of it? So just a slight adjustment in my opinion.

0:07:36 - Speaker 2
Yeah, that's a great point. Well, I'd like to spend all the money, right? But?

0:07:40 - Speaker 3
then you could be retired for a year.

0:07:42 - Speaker 2
Yeah, but yeah, that's true, but my budget says no. I think it was the King of the One Liners Henny Youngman, one of those old classic comedians who said I've got all the money I'll ever need for retirement. It's only gonna last me four days, but I got it all. So all right, let's move on here. We've got Julia Kagan of Investopedia, which is a very popular website as well for people to go check things out. A proper portfolio allocation that balances the concerns of risk aversion and retirement objectives is arguably the most important step in retirement planning. So I'm gonna ask you to break this down, because that's a little wordy there.

0:08:24 - Speaker 3
I would say a proper portfolio allocation that manages the risks that you are gonna face in retirement appropriately is important as far as the retirement income planning goes. So being aware of the risks that you're gonna face in retirement which are retiring in or near a down market, inflation risk and longevity risk having a portfolio that answers those risk issues is important as far as the allocation goes.

0:08:58 - Speaker 2
Yeah. So it's kind of a really fluffy way of saying, okay, here's my plan, can I handle the level of risk that I'm taking right? Or here's the things that I have. Am I comfortable with this and does it meet the objective that I'm trying to set for myself Exactly? Okay yeah, so it's pretty fluffy. It's a best of pedia, so it's not surprising.

All right, so yeah, and again, objectives of your retirement plan are quite important, right, the objective is to retire comfortably, retire in the way and maintain the lifestyle that you currently have. I mean, a lot of times people say I imagine they don't say you know, Sherry, I'd like to go backwards in retirement. Right, I'm gonna have less of a lifestyle than what I have currently. Right, we wanna maintain at least, or?

0:09:42 - Speaker 3
better, Of course, and to that point I'll have many clients that are pre-retiree say well, I'm going to be in a lower tax bracket in retirement. And odds are you're not going to be, because if you're staying in your home, like I mentioned before, your expenses are going to be pretty similar to what they were pre-retirement. And then also you're also assuming that tax rates are going to stay at the level they're at right now, which is low, and that's probably not going to happen. So don't also assume that your taxes are going to be lower in retirement.

And that's also important when it comes to retirement planning is managing your taxation yeah.

0:10:18 - Speaker 2
Because if you're looking at some, if you just want to do some napkin math real quick, let's just say you want, you know, need $10,000 a month, or you're making $10,000 a month in your working years and you go into retirement and the initial setup that you've got, you know, is going to provide you with, let's say, 7,000 of the 10, and you've got to use your investments to create the other three. Well, you know, you're still at $10,000 a month, or $10,000 a month, so you're still kind of in that same overall general bracket, right, so don't just assume it. And then, of course, as you pointed out, we don't know what's going to happen with taxes, but more than likely they're going up. So, exactly, all right, financial advisor in Minnesota. Good, no name, just financial advisor in Minnesota. Your retirement plan may be missing the most critical piece how to make your retirement genuinely fulfilling. Now, I think this is a good piece of advice, though.

0:11:07 - Speaker 3
Absolutely. I completely agree with that, and it is often not thought of Again. How are you going to feel fulfilled? What's going to fill your days? Because you need to think about that and plan for that when it comes to retirement. It's not just the financial aspect of retirement that you need to plan for. How are you going to feel fulfilled every single day? Yeah, you want to enjoy retirement, right?

0:11:32 - Speaker 2
I mean, if it's sitting on the front porch, Whitland, well then, hey, cool, that's great. But, if it's not, and that's what you're forced to do, because you don't have enough money to retire the way you want to then you wouldn't be as fulfilled. So pretty good advice there as well, all right. Final one Mark Holbert of MarketWatch said picking the right financial planner and advisor can make all the difference. I definitely think we're going to agree with this.

0:11:55 - Speaker 3
Yeah, I obviously agree with that one. But, as you can tell from what we've talked about in many differing opinions, there's a lot of pieces to the retirement puzzle A lot of it financial, but some of it emotional as well, and it serves you well to have a resource, a trusted resource, that you can go to to talk about these things and get asked the questions that maybe you didn't think of, to ask yourself or bring up points that could benefit you. So, absolutely, having an planner advisor to talk you through all of the puzzle pieces of retiring can make all the difference in the world.

0:12:35 - Speaker 2
Yeah, definitely so. At the end of the day, you know, these are all varying, different opinions, and that's what even going to your advisor is a little bit like sharing. When you come, someone's coming in to talk with you for the first time. They're giving you their hopes and their wishes and their thoughts on things, and then you're sharing the information back, you're creating a plan and saying, okay, this is what you know, this is my recommendation on what we should do. But at the end of the day, that's part of your job is to extract from them what is the most important part of retirement planning to them, or their retirement needs, right?

0:13:05 - Speaker 3
Exactly.

0:13:06 - Speaker 2
So do you have a specific one? Is there something? How would you answer that question? What is the most important part to you? Is there any one thing you could put your finger on?

0:13:14 - Speaker 3
There is not one thing that is the most important part. There's so many pieces to the puzzle, like I said, but I definitely think making sure you have a plan for your retirement what are you going to do with your time but also making sure your investments are aligned and protecting you from the risk. So what are you most concerned about when it comes to retirement? Outliving your money or stuff just costing more or the cost of health care, and then shaping a plan around your concerns so you can sleep well at night?

0:13:49 - Speaker 2
Exactly Yep. For somebody it might be taxes, for somebody else it might be health care, for somebody else it might be longevity. So everybody has got a different feeling on that. So how do you handle it? Well, you get a plan put in place and you do that by sitting down with a qualified professional like Sherry Rash. So give her a call if you've got some questions.

As always, before you take any action, as I mentioned earlier, you should always check with a qualified financial professional. She's an advisor and money coach at Greenway Wealth Advisory and you can find all the information at GreenwayWealthAdvisorycom. That's GreenwayWealthAdvisorycom. You can take the money sheet quiz as well. Lots of good stuff you can do. There's insider secrets for women in their retirement. There's just a lot of good information at the website, and you can subscribe to the podcast while you're there as well, on whatever platform or app you like to use Apple, google, spotify, so on and so forth. So if you enjoy the podcast, hit that heart button and subscribe, and that's how you typically do it on a lot of the services. So that's the case. Then you're all set. You can find all the information again at GreenwayWealthAdvisorycom.

Sherry, thanks for hanging out with me. This was fun. Thank you, I enjoyed it. I appreciate your time, as always, and look forward to talking to you again soon. This was our second episode in February, so at the time we're dropping this one out, valentine's Day has just happened, so hopefully everybody has a great Valentine's Day. Do you have any plans on the horizon, sherry, or not sure yet?

0:15:07 - Speaker 3
Not sure yet. Just eating a lot of candy. All right, I can roll with that.

0:15:12 - Speaker 2
Well, we hope you have a great Valentine's and we'll be back with more episodes in just around the corner In March. We'll see you next time here on Money, chic Women and Retirement.

0:15:26 - Speaker 1
Discussions in this show should not be construed as specific recommendations or investment advice. Always consult with your investment professional before making important investment decisions. Securities offered through registered representatives of Cambridge Investment Research Inc. A broker-dealer member, FINRA, SIPC Advisory Services through Cambridge Investment Research Advisors Inc. A registered investment advisor Cambridge and Greenway Wealth Advisory are not affiliated.