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. 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 to the podcast.

0:00:32 - Speaker 2

Thanks for tuning in to Money Chic, women and Retirement. With Sherry Rash and myself, I'm talking investing, finance and retirement and what to do as you count down the days to retirement. We've assembled a list of priorities to keep in mind as you get closer to that golden time, those golden years, and so we just got some simple things for you to ponder or think about or have on your radar, and some stuff to possibly check off along the way. Sherry, what's going on, my friend? How you doing?

0:00:58 - Speaker 3

I'm great, the sun shining, mother nature is finally allowing spring to come to us, even though it's mid-May.

0:01:05 - Speaker 2

It's weird, hasn't it?

0:01:06 - Speaker 3

I'm happy Winter's been holding on with white knuckles.

0:01:11 - Speaker 2

I mean here in our area, right Mother's Day 50-something degrees on Mother's Day, Really it's crazy, right yeah, brutal, brutal.

So we don't like that. But anyway, yes, I agree with you. Sunshine is good. Go stand in it. It makes us feel good. Matter of fact, that works really well. For my transition into the first one here, Sherry is get healthy and stay healthy is the first thing. Let's, you know, let's just say 50, right, 50 plus. We start thinking about retirement. We're starting to get closer and a lot of us do develop chronic health problems in our 50s. So this is a good time to really maybe put some focus on that. Not only are we thinking about our financial future, but we can enjoy it better if we're healthier.

0:01:49 - Speaker 3

Right. I mean getting outside, getting fresh air, eating right, exercising. All of that just not only helps us physically but mentally. I read a statistic the other day that 80% of adults age 65 and older have one or more chronic illnesses. And we work so hard for so many years. We save our money, we do the right things and then we get to retirement. We want to be healthy enough to enjoy it, right. So doing those small steps now can help to have a long, healthy retirement for you.

0:02:21 - Speaker 2

Yeah, and I was just talking with a doctor the other day who was doing a podcast and I was interviewing and chatting with him a bit and he was talking about how his lifestyle as a doctor like he knows better, right, he's like I know better than to eat.

You know a lot of fast food and this, that and the other. He's like, but my lifestyle all through my 40s was so hectic and so busy trying to build my practice and he's like I I wound up developing cancer and he's like and I'm convinced that the way I was living really added a lot to it. He's gone very naturalistic and holistic and he's doing all these different things and he's gone into remission. That's great to hear, but he's totally changed his lifestyle and his mindset and I get that that's not for everyone, but he's like just the significant improvements to your health from getting more sleep, eating a little bit better, exercising more and I know it's tougher as we age, but as we're getting some of that free time that's leading up to retirement, sherry, it's a good idea to do it. Just get out there and do more of the walks and the various things so that you can enjoy number two on my list, which is figuring out what you want to do now with all that free time. That's a big challenge for people.

0:03:25 - Speaker 3

Right, you're now going to have 40 plus hours a week. That used to be taken with work and commuting and getting ready for work and all of that stuff, and you're now going to have a lot of free time. So what are you going to do with it? That's very, very important to plan for. We might enjoy sleeping in and laying around and doing nothing. That might last for a couple of weeks maybe, but eventually you're going to start to get antsy and need something to do.

0:03:54 - Speaker 2

Oh, without a doubt, and one of the things we talk about here a lot on the show is things from the ladies perspective.

And so when you're looking at things in this arena of free time, a silver lining, if you will, to COVID not that there's many to find is that it forces us to kind of live together a lot more. Right, if you're especially if you were working, and everybody's going their separate ways during the day prior to, and then all of a sudden everybody's working from home together or at home all the time, kind of got like a little glimpse of what retirement could be like, especially if you were a few years ahead of that. Because one thing I think couples struggle with when they get to retirement is being under foot with each other, right? I don't know how many different ladies I've talked to through the years that have been like you know, or advisors that have said you know, sometimes it'll be the running joke in the office that the wife will say he's under my foot, he's in my house all the time. Get him something to do.

0:04:46 - Speaker 3

Right, well, you know what that's called it's the retired husband syndrome.

0:04:49 - Speaker 2

That's okay.

0:04:50 - Speaker 3

It's very real. It's a very real issue and it's something that you need to plan for and account for. And yeah, COVID kind of helped us ease into that. Especially if everyone's working from home, Maybe you're not going back to the office and you can just work from home remotely. Now it's a real thing to help and COVID certainly helped us plan for that. But retired husband syndrome is definitely a real thing that you need to plan for.

0:05:16 - Speaker 2

Well, it does go the other way, ladies. Just for fun, though, because my buddy is retired military and he's, you know, get to retire early because of everything he had gone through in his many years of service and when COVID happened, of course, his wife's now home all the time and they've since come up with a plan, but she didn't go back to work and he's like she's driving me nuts. He's like I had a routine, I had a pattern. He's like I got all this stuff that I would do when she's at work. He's like now that she's not at work, it's been a, and it took him a couple of years to really kind of work through a good habit.

So when you're talking about all this free time, that's on our list. That is one thing to certainly not gloss over, because you know, just having all this time together can really change the dynamic. Now, that said, maybe you want to and I could have put number three sharing in with this, but we put post retirement career, but I think careers are kind of a wrong word. Maybe just a post retirement, something Like. Often we say if you're retiring away from a job that you did not enjoy or had just gotten tired of, don't run from necessarily the job to retirement, but retired is something that you're looking forward to. I think that helps the mindset as well, whether it's volunteering or part-time job or whatever activity.

0:06:27 - Speaker 3

Hobbies, something to just get you out of the house, keep your mind busy something to look forward to. I have a client that retired I think a year ago, and she started getting really into ancestry and research and with whether it's her friends or what have you she researches the ancestry. She actually did it for me as well, for my grandfather but she'll also go to cemeteries and look at gravesites and do an ancestry search. It's awesome. She didn't have the time to do that when she was working, but now that she's retired it gives her something to do. It gets her out of the house. She's walking around looking at different cemeteries and old establishments and it just keeps busy. It's fantastic. Definitely thinking about a job Most people are doing the halfway point.

I would say the vast majority of clients I'm talking to now that are planning for retirement, it's very realistic that they're going to do something part-time.

0:07:33 - Speaker 2

I think, as humans anyway, we can only If you really dislike your job or you're just super exhausted. There is that period, I'm sure you see, Sherry, where people go to retirement and they're so looking forward to actually being retired. The idea of doing nothing all day is immensely appealing, but the reality sets in at some point that I think as humans, we're just not designed to do that for long. Something creeps in and we feel the need like okay, well, I don't know, we can only play so many games of pickleball or whatever it might be.

I've talked to guys who are like I played golf so much for the first two years I was retired. I actually hate the game now. There are just different things like that Wow.

0:08:16 - Speaker 1

That's a lot of golf. That's a lot of golf.

0:08:18 - Speaker 2

But to your point, we need something else right?

0:08:22 - Speaker 3

Sure, anyone does. We need something, like I said, to look forward to, to occupy our time. We need something else and you need to plan for that. I think we spend so much time planning our money and our income and how we're going to save for retirement and retirement hits and it's like what now? What do I do now?

0:08:41 - Speaker 2

Yeah, exactly. So definitely think about two and three, or a really big ones, I think. Figure out what you want to do with that free time. Think about some sort of post retirement journey, whether it's a you know careers, a big term, but, you know, maybe job, part-time job, volunteering, activity, whatever that might be, and share. You just mentioned saving. So that brings us to number four, as we're counting down the days to retirement. Well, we also do have and we did a podcast on this a little while back, I believe we talked about some of this stuff but either way, we have this opportunity from 50 plus to sock a little bit more Away if we need to right.

0:09:13 - Speaker 3

The catch-up provisions in 401ks and 403 bees allow you to Sock about $6,500 away extra. In addition, for your retirement IRAs or Roth IRAs you can put an extra thousand dollars in. So now that the kids are hopefully out of the house, maybe expenses are a little bit lower. Take advantage if you have a little bit extra cash and save it, because your future retirement self will appreciate it.

0:09:43 - Speaker 2

Yeah, and I think you know you might say, well, $6,500, big wolf, well, well, but if you're 50, you know, and just let's just round it off for easy math seven grand, you know, and you don't retire to 67. That's 17 years, you know. With an extra seven grand, that's a lot of money. That's not chicken feet.

0:10:00 - Speaker 3

It all adds up. That's right, especially in a market like we're in right now. It's a buying opportunity, right. Prices are a little bit low and if you're buying into it, you'll see hopefully better returns Soon and that money will just grow even more powerfully for you.

0:10:16 - Speaker 2

Yeah, it's all part of your strategy, right? So what are you doing? You know a lot of people. Obviously. What happens in these times is we get nervous. We've had these great markets for a number of years now. We get nervous with all this choppiness and volatility. We tend to do the wrong thing at the wrong time instead of looking at the Opportunities. And, again, time horizon is the big thing that plays the factor in all this.

So, as we're talking about counting down the days to retirement, you could be at the early days, you know. I say many, many times. I think it's a good analogy. I'll continue to do it. I'll probably do it too often, but we're coming up on Memorial Day. You know, as we're taping this sherry, this is our earlier May podcast but Memorial Day is the unofficial kickoff to summer. We know it's not technically summer, it's like another 20 days away, right but we all kind of treat it that way and I think we start treating our 50s as that Unofficial kickoff to retirement. The countdown to retirement is on. So, you know, take advantage of some of these things and in planning and strategy and talking about Some more of our items on the list, like how to get debt free. In that time period, to your point, we're saving more. Maybe we can now start to get rid of some of that quote-unquote bad debt and maybe have that conversation about the house and so on and so forth.

0:11:22 - Speaker 3

Yeah, carrying credit card debt into retirement is obviously not a good thing. Having a mortgage, though I have this I've been having this conversation a lot with clients that are super focused on having no mortgage in retirement and my usually my response to them isn't exactly what they expect. But I'm okay with. If you have a mortgage in retirement for tax reasons. You could write off the interest. For example, you're pretty much losing most of your other write-offs because you're no longer working, you're no longer contributing to your employer plan, so you do need some write-offs to help keep your taxes at bay when you're filing them. So, having a mortgage into retirement, I wouldn't be so hyper focused on getting your mortgage paid off, maybe if you want to contribute a little bit extra to it. But any other debt, yes.

0:12:12 - Speaker 2

I would be focused on getting rid of that first and foremost before you retire and I get the mortgage conversation too, because even with the taxes right, depending on your situation, with the way current tax laws are, not everybody gets to take advantage of that tax deduction because they may not be itemizing, but that may change when those laws sunset.

But a couple other factors to think about with the house is I've seen a lot of people recently, a lot of advisors, saying look, if you have the money, let's say you owe another 200,000 left on your house, but in your 401k you got a million dollars Well, you got the money to pay off the house.

So if the question is, if it's that well, I'd sleep better at nightish area if I knew the house was paid for. Well, you have the money to pay for the house but doesn't necessarily mean you should take it out and pay for it because you're now losing potential earning power for again, if you're in your 50s and you're not retiring until like 67, that's a number of years that you're not growing, possibly growing that money, you know, in other vehicles. So there's always going to be that to pay off the house or to not pay off the house. But it really comes down to the math and the logic, I think, of your individual plan, and then you could factor in the tummy rule, which is I get it. The math makes sense, but it just makes me sick to have it. It's just paid off, then that's a different conversation.

0:13:25 - Speaker 3

It can come down to an emotional decision at the end of the day. But especially if you refinanced, like so many Americans did, when mortgage rates were super low, then yeah, you could potentially be missing out on earnings power because if your mortgage rates low, you potentially could be making more in the market historically over time. You do annually Right, so just to under-rise it again, exactly.

0:13:52 - Speaker 2

Yeah, so the really low manageable interest rate. If you've got the money and the plan is there, you're paying it off one way or the other. So it's just a matter of what allows you to sleep at night. And we like to joke and look, you're not the money police At the end of the day, you know the client can do what they want to do.

It's just going to be hey, looking at your specific situation and numbers. Here's the recommendation. But I absolutely do what you know is going to be best for you. So risk. That's another one Number six on the list here. As we're getting closer to retirement, we should be de-risking a bit I'll get your opinion on this as we are moving through our fifties, getting closer to 60. The old I guess the adage would be like the 60-40 portfolio, sherry, but I'll get your opinion on this. But any way you want to look at it, I know that doesn't necessarily work anymore at 60-40, but if you're 60, you probably shouldn't be investing like you were when you were 30, just common sense.

0:14:43 - Speaker 3

Correct. You should not be investing the same way. You should have had your portfolio reallocated. Or the way I work with my clients that are in their late fifties, early sixties. That retirement is just a few years away is start buckets. Start bucketing your money and start separating it out. What money are we going to live off of first in retirement, and that should be super conservative, almost near cash. So market volatility has no impact on that money. And then the next buckets get a little bit more aggressive because we're going to be using them later on down the line. So I don't treat all dollars the same when it comes to retirement, or just have a rule as far as a 60-40 portfolio.

I believe in buckets. So protecting yourself against the market volatility, which is reducing risk, but also protecting yourself against inflation risk, which is very real right now. And then also longevity risk living longer than your money.

0:15:42 - Speaker 2

And that's the big risk multiplier, right, the longevity multiplies everything else because we're around longer for all those things to kick into gear.

0:15:51 - Speaker 3

And when we're around longer, odds are we're going to be paying more for healthcare, so our expenses could potentially be much higher than we could have anticipated. So definitely, longevity risk for women especially, is a big one that we have to consider.

0:16:05 - Speaker 2

Yeah, absolutely. Well, that does it for my list of seven things, or, excuse me, six things that I had on there. Anything that I might have missed, sherry, that you want to chime in on, that we need to cover.

0:16:14 - Speaker 3

One thing. It's again. This is coming up a lot. I don't assume you're going to be paying less taxes in retirement.

Oh yeah, I hear that come up a lot and I would definitely say to second guess, that if you are living a similar lifestyle staying in your home, like we said earlier you're going to need something to do to take up those 40 hours extra hours that you just found. Odds are some of those things are going to cost you money. Same thing plan on needing roughly the same amount of income post retirement date as pre-retirement and in turn, your taxes will probably not be lower, but we can talk that out.

0:16:50 - Speaker 2

No, absolutely. I'm glad you brought that up, because I just had that conversation like two days ago. I play in a band and the drummer he's like 52, I think, or 53. And he's like well, my taxes. He was talking about the market falling a little bit right. And he's like, oh, my 401k is taking a beating, he's like, but at least I'll pay less on taxes when I get the retirement.

0:17:10 - Speaker 1

I was like dude?

0:17:11 - Speaker 2

no, not necessarily man you got to look at. Every situation is a little different. So definitely make sure you have a conversation and, like anything that you hear from our podcast or any other, you know, just check with a qualified professional like Sherry before you take any action. It doesn't have to be Sherry, of course, but you know we're sharing this information so that, you know, just find someone who's the right fit for you. And of course, sherry, you know, does a lot, obviously with ladies here. That's why the show is called Money Chic Women in Retirement.

It is an underserved demographic oftentimes when it comes to this stuff. So if you've got some questions, need some help, stop by her website, greenwaywealthadvisorycom. That's GreenwayWealthAdvisorycom and there's lots of good tools, tips and resources on there. Unlock your money blocks there's just some cool stuff you can check out. And, of course, sherry is always here to help. Make sure that you reach out to her again at the website GreenwayWealthAdvisorycom before you take any action on anything you might hear on our show or any other, and don't forget to subscribe to us on Apple, google, spotify, all that kind of stuff.

You can subscribe typically by hitting the heart button or whatever it is on the various platforms. Maybe drop a review if you'd like as well, and let us know if we're doing a good job, or send an email straight to the website that way as well, if there's something you want us to talk about. We appreciate your time, sherry, as always. Thanks for hanging out with me. I hope you have a good start to May and I'll see you right before Memorial Day.

0:18:25 - Speaker 3

See you soon.

0:18:26 - Speaker 2

Thanks All right, we'll catch you next time right here on Money, chic, women and Retirement with Sherry Rash.

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