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.

0:00:31 - Speaker 2

Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of Money Chic, women and Retirement with Sherry Rash and myself. And it's almost Memorial Day, almost a Labor Day. It's almost Memorial Day, so we hope that everybody out there has a good Memorial Day and enjoys the season and the kickoff to summer and remember the reason for the season, though, as we like to say, especially if you're a military family, you definitely know what that's all about. But we're going to talk about retirement statistics and don't click off, because statistics can be interesting sometimes. But I've got some, sherry, that are interesting, encouraging or maybe disturbing, so we're going to share some of these and get your take on it. How are you doing?

0:01:05 - Speaker 3

I'm great. I'm looking forward to the summer and in relaxing and having some fun outside.

0:01:11 - Speaker 2

Yeah, you guys got any plans for Memorial Day? Planning on taking the kids anywhere?

0:01:15 - Speaker 3

Not yet. We haven't thought that far. I'm living day to day. Okay, I haven't really thought too far ahead. Well, it's just around the corner.

0:01:21 - Speaker 2

I imagine you'll be at the shore, if nothing else.

0:01:23 - Speaker 3

That's right.

0:01:24 - Speaker 2

Go to the beach or something, but anyway, I hope everybody has a good Memorial Day for sure, and we're dropping those just a few days before it, so we're taping it a little bit before that, but dropping it right before Memorial Day. So I've got these statistics that we kind of scavenge the interwebs here to find some various different things from notable publications and so on and so forth and different studies and whatnot, and so I want to find out if you find these encouraging or disturbing, sherry, and if they reflect the average client, or at least the average client that you see. If it's indicative of things that you see, and then what? Maybe we can learn from that to hopefully improve our own retirement preparedness based on that information.

0:02:01 - Speaker 3

Okay, Sounds good.

0:02:03 - Speaker 2

Okay, so we're going to start right up your alley here with one about women. Actually, it says women have smaller overall retirement savings accounts than male counterparts. They average $57,000 saved compared to $118,000 for men. I don't think this comes as too big of a shock, but I think it's still a little. To me it's still a little disturbing. I think we're making progress, but we're not there yet.

0:02:28 - Speaker 3

It's disturbing, but not surprising.

0:02:30 - Speaker 2

Yeah, there you go.

0:02:31 - Speaker 3

Because women. There's so many reasons why women can have less money saved for retirement. One they're in and out of the workforce, whether it's to care when they have children or care for aging parents. It's very realistic that women enter and exit the workforce. So then right, then that's less working years, less years you're saving into retirement. So not surprising, but we can always get better, right. So, not disturbing, but not surprising.

0:03:03 - Speaker 2

Yeah, I would agree with you. I'm glad you brought up the, because the children, when everybody kind of goes well, that makes sense, right, we think about that. You leave the workforce to have kids and then maybe stay out for a little longer or whatever, depending on the situation. But I think a lot of times women are the first ones to jump back out for a family member, right, as you mentioned, to maybe care for an aging parent, and sometimes even the spouse's parent, right? So it might not be your own, it might be you know the husband's parent as well. So, and then of course there's still some wage gap disparities, but that's getting better all the time. But either way, this is an area we can do better at. And also, I think, sherry, which is one of the reasons why we call the show Women in Retirement, a lot of the people you work with. You work with all sorts of people, but you are kind of focusing more on trying to help women, because it is an underserved demographic in the retirement planning process.

0:03:51 - Speaker 3

Yes, women are underserved. This is where I get up on my soapbox Go for it yourself.

Women are underserved when it comes to financial planning in general. If a woman wants to work with someone like her, or maybe has a similar perspective, only 16% of advisors are women. So right there, you have a 16% chance of someone that working with you that might have similar life experiences. But then just because we're all women doesn't mean we think the same way or we all get along. So even then, the odds of really clicking with your advisor are slim. So yeah, and there's not as much financial literacy available as we all would like, and women just find that they don't get the attention or the education that they need or want, and that then leads to maybe not saving for retirement if their employer allows it. How much to save? There's so many things. It's kind of like a domino effect how it can impact the lack of financial information available or the resources to women. It's just a domino effect. And can the statistics show it right?

0:05:01 - Speaker 2

As to women having less money saved. Absolutely. I was just doing a show. I was a guest on a show with a gentleman in Arizona and a listener question had come in and it was from a lady asked. She's like when my husband and I are talking with different advisors, we're out scouting right now seeing a few different ones. Typically she's like I feel like I'm not in the room sometimes.

And it's very very frustrating and he got up on his soapbox a little bit as well and he's like I made it a purpose of my 25 plus year career. He's like I never sit across from the husband for that specific reason. I want the wife to understand she's just as important in this conversation and everything is going to affect her the same. So I sit across from the wife as a rule and I was like that's fantastic. It's good to hear that because a lot of women I've seen that many times where they feel like hey, I'm here too. Why are you just talking to him?

0:05:55 - Speaker 3

That's a very real concern. It's very valid and I think also it happens naturally because men and women actually talk about money differently. Yeah, men are much more numbers focused, outcome focused. I returned 17% this year and that's what they're concerned about. So a male talking to a male about money, it's more returns. And the end result where women, they don't care about returns, they just say am I going to achieve my goals? So I could tell someone that their portfolio returned 25% this year, but can I still retire? Like I don't know what that means. Can?

0:06:35 - Speaker 1

I still retire. Can I still?

0:06:37 - Speaker 2

send my kid to college.

0:06:39 - Speaker 3

So I actually, when I'm speaking with couples husbands and wives I'll say okay, so this is how the investment performed and what that means is so I speak both languages within the same sentence.

0:06:53 - Speaker 2

Nice, yeah, I like that, and it's definitely one of those things. Sometimes it's not intentional, right To your point. It just might just be easier for them for the male to be talking to the male, but sometimes, to your point also, there's only 16% of women that actually serve. You know that are the financial advisor, so you know it. Just, it's just one of those things that we're doing better at changing, but I always thought it was silly. Anyway, it's like, why not include? Why make this other person feel, you know, on the outside, looking in, because statistics also show that the man's going to pass away first and you're going to be working with her anyway.

0:07:24 - Speaker 3

So why wouldn't you want her on board? I'm sorry he's not going to. The advisor is not going to be working.

0:07:30 - Speaker 2

He's not going to be.

0:07:30 - Speaker 3

Yeah, he's changed advisors, probably for that very reason. That's very true too.

0:07:35 - Speaker 2

That's a great point as well. So, yeah, so, anyway, point being you know, make sure that you're keeping that, you're being included and self advocate too, right, sherry? That's a lot of it too. You know, make sure. And this this lady did, because she was like we just got up and walked out of several of these places and said I'm sorry, you're not the right fit for us. And that was his advice as well, because, like self advocate for yourself to say hey, you know, I, my voice, has to be heard in this conversation as well.

0:08:01 - Speaker 1

So that's the first way yeah All right, that's our first statistic.

0:08:05 - Speaker 2

got off on a little rant, but that's okay because it's a powerful one. Number two in order to have a complete retirement, experts are currently estimating, sherry, that you need about 1.4 million to retire, a 10% increase from the prior year.

0:08:19 - Speaker 3

I don't like statistics like this. So I'm just going to say I don't like it. It's not encouraging or disturbing, I just don't like it. I don't like Assigning a dollar amount as to what you should have and the stake in the ground, and that's what everyone focuses on. Because someone that has a very good pension one of the few people that have you if you have a high pension and you're receiving Social Security, you're not going to need as much.

Savings right, or if you are solely dependent on your own investment, you've never had a pension, your Social Security may not be very high, then you're going to need more money than the other person, so instead work backwards. How much money do we think we're going to need each year to live your life Comfortably, and then that determines how much we need. So everyone needs a different amount of money. I would agree with the 10% increase. Yeah, just because of inflation alone.

0:09:10 - Speaker 2

Yeah, so sherry you, you, let's say you live a very and I'm not saying that you do, but, just as an example, you live a very flashy lifestyle and you have a pension and I live a completely meager lifestyle and I never leave my house. Right that those numbers change dramatically as to what we both need. Or I live in the I live in a state where it doesn't cost as much to Live, and you live in one that costs more. All these things are factors, right? So just arbitrarily throwing out that million dollars or, this case, million four or whatever, is kind of silly it is, it is.

0:09:40 - Speaker 3

And then also you may hear the four percent rule. You can withdraw four percent of your money and it'll last for as long as you do. That also it's not factoring in anything, it's, it has to be. It has to be based off of you, your circumstances.

0:09:54 - Speaker 2

To Plan for a dollar amount in retirement, yeah, that was a general rule of thumb that became very popular in the late 80s, early 90s and it's stuck around forever. But if you break it down it's it's more like the 2.89 percent rule at this point.

Because it doesn't really work and what and what hangs people up on that one sharing I'm glad you brought that up is so let's go with the easy million bucks, since they were saying a million four, but I'm gonna make it easy to say a million dollars. If you go with a million dollars and you got that in your 401k and you're like, hey, I can take four percent out, and I'm groovy, did you take out the first 300,000 that you got to give the government? You know, because you got a standard 401k there. So now you got 700,000. Okay, so now you're taking four percent off the 700,000. Oh, wait a minute, inflations up over 9%. Did you factor that in right?

So you got to be careful with rules of thumb. They can be nice guidelines to get you started, but you got to dive into the nitty gritty for your unique situation before you kind of put any real weight to it. All right. Number three statistic 55% of workers plan to continue working in some capacity in retirement. I find this kind of both encouraging and or disturbing. If it said 55% of workers here had to work in some capacity, disturbing. But if they're just choosing to work because they want something to do and this says plan on working. I find that encouraging because it means people are being optimistic about wanting to stay active and doing something in retirement.

0:11:15 - Speaker 3

I'm definitely looking at the statistic as a glass half full, so I do find this encouraging. I like this. Just our episode right before. We're talking about keeping busy in retirement things you need to do to have a healthy retirement so I like this. I think that this is great and I'm hoping those that are working are working because they choose to. They want to keep busy, get out of the house or maybe they're starting a hobby income and that's defined as working. So I like this statistic. I also like it because it takes less pressure off of your investments to what we were just talking about. If we now factor in, you have pension, you have a social security and you're going to have some hobby income. That's a very solid retirement income and then your investments can just supplement it. It's a little bit on top. So I like this. I find it encouraging.

0:12:02 - Speaker 2

A little extra cheddar never hurts anybody, right, that's right. A little extra cheese, spend that however you want to. So, okay, so number four, and I think with a lot and this is the case with any statistics, right, we were just talking about the million dollar thing you can kind of bend it any way you really want to.

This one. Here is another example of you could take it either way 25% of Americans increased their financial savings as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdowns. So you go, okay, great, 25% of people, and you know, started saving more. That's fantastic. But then you could also go wow, only 25%. You would have thought it would have been more because there's nothing to do so, either way, I don't know, what do you think?

0:12:42 - Speaker 3

That's true. Yeah, I don't know how I feel about this.

0:12:46 - Speaker 2

I messed you up with that, didn't I?

0:12:48 - Speaker 3

Yeah yeah, because 25%, you're right, that probably isn't very much, considering most of us were locked down in our homes or didn't do much for a significant period of time as a result of the pandemic, which is also a disturbing situation.

But I definitely have clients that are coming to me saying, hey, I accumulated a decent chunk of change because I wasn't traveling, I wasn't doing this or that. Let's invest it, which is great, and if you can keep up with it, that's awesome as well, but also enjoying your life, I think is more, is important.

0:13:20 - Speaker 2

You know, I'm glad you brought that up. Actually We'll deviate just a hair again. So people definitely saved up, or they didn't do as much because they just couldn't. Are you seeing people, or are people reaching out, because everything is really opening up pretty well. Now I'm going hey man, I've been cooped up too long, let's burn through some of this. Tell me, you know, can we take some extra trips, or can we, you know, add some trips back in that maybe we're canceled or whatever?

0:13:43 - Speaker 3

I'm not hearing as many trips. I'm hearing I'm getting my kitchen redone, that's the big one, a lot of, lot of new kitchens out. There is what I'm experiencing, and that works too, you know.

0:13:54 - Speaker 2

Future-proofing the house for retirement, getting some of those upgrades that we wanted as well. I know some people were doing those kinds of things during the pandemic also. They were calling it the corona purchase. I think people were putting in record numbers of pools, you know that kind of stuff, so they could, you know, have something to do and whatnot. I built a little you know bar in my man cave and put a pool table in there, so people were doing all sorts of things to keep themselves occupied when they couldn't go out and do stuff. So either way, I think, since we're saving more, I'm going to err on the side of saying I think it's encouraging, so let's go to this. One's actually kind of alarming and very interesting as well. It's probably got a lot to do with the pandemic also. But number five, sherry the number of retired workers receiving social security benefits was almost 70 million in 2021. That was up 45 million people from 2019.

0:14:45 - Speaker 3

Yeah, that's wow.

0:14:47 - Speaker 2

That's a strain on the system.

0:14:49 - Speaker 3

That's a strain on the system and you know it's funny, clients rarely bring up the strength or stability of social security, the program itself, and over the past couple of weeks that has been a topic of conversation that clients have brought up. So that's very interesting. Yeah, I mean, I guess it's we can lean towards disturbing in the fact that we know social security has some of its issues and it's going to be a major strain on the system, for sure.

0:15:17 - Speaker 2

Yeah, and it's surprising on the one hand, and not, you know, because you're like, all right, obviously the pandemic, you know, put a lot of stuff in a situation. But many people decided of retirement age, decided, hey, I was going to work but now I'm not, so I'm going to go ahead and just jump out and pull the retirement trigger now and be done. So that probably definitely adds to that number. But then there's also a lot of people who, you know, just retired just wasn't even on their radar, right, and they just we saw that with what they call that, the great resignation that we were going through a few months back where it was like something like 4 million people quit their jobs in October of last year.

I think another 4 million people quit their jobs in March of this year. So you know that puts a. It's a tax on the system, especially when we all have heard those statistics. How you know, for every used to be for like every one person with drawing, there were like 35 people contributing. Now it's for every one person with drawing, there's like two people contributing.

So, there's definitely some, some staggering stuff there, so we've definitely we've got to address it. Who knows what our political leaders will do. But it's that, you know, poker chip that they kind of kick, kick him back and forth, and I don't think anyone wants to be the one to touch it. It's like hot potato, but we'll see, exactly right, that's right.

0:16:28 - Speaker 3

No one wants to make that decision. No, they don't, but that's a lot of people retiring.

0:16:32 - Speaker 2

So it is All right. Number six, and then we'll wrap it up this week. Sherry, retirees spend an average of $6,600 in 2020. They spent excuse me an average of $6,600 on healthcare in 2020.

0:16:46 - Speaker 1

Does that seem?

0:16:47 - Speaker 2

low or.

0:16:48 - Speaker 3

I don't know.

0:16:49 - Speaker 2

I don't know how to read this one.

0:16:50 - Speaker 3

Yeah, I want to dig a little deeper on this. Is it health care? Is it preventative measures? What exactly is it? Obviously anything. You spend $6,000 a year on anything. That's a decent chunk of change.

0:17:04 - Speaker 2

Is that a pocket?

0:17:05 - Speaker 3

I guess maybe yeah yeah, is it out of pocket? We obviously we're all buying more PPE and COVID tests over the past year or so, so is that factored in? Yeah, so I'm neutral on this one. To be determined on how I feel about this, we need to dig a little deeper, I think.

0:17:25 - Speaker 2

Yeah, I was trying to see if I could find a little something real fast. I don't remember exactly where we got this one from, but yeah, there's definitely some interesting stuff out there in regards to how healthcare look. Healthcare outpaces inflation. We know just normal inflation, right, healthcare is always outpacing normal inflation. So it's probably quite terrifying what's going on right now and, with that in mind, I think a lot of people definitely are concerned about what to do with it. Yet it also seems like this is the one people ignore a lot.

0:17:59 - Speaker 3

Well, who really wants to think about needing to pay for it, right? So, it's one of the least fun discussions that we have or healthcare, long-term care. So I would say though, if the average was about $6,600, $6,700 with inflation alone, expect to keep on paying that plus sum going forward.

0:18:20 - Speaker 2

So I guess that's disturbing yeah this is from the Health View Services Board. I'm not exactly sure what board they're on, but this is the Health View Services Board and it says that the time of retirement healthcare costs can, for a healthy 65-year-old couple living to their actuarially longevity, which I guess would be the estimated age that you're supposed to die, right? So I don't know if it's 82 for men or 82 for women, 78 for men, something like that, but anyway, a healthy 65-year-old couple would spend, will see an increase of about $85,000 to around $680,000 over the course of their retirement. And this report was put out last year. So wow, that's mind-blowing.

That's a lot of money $600,000 over the course of your retirement for a couple. So how do we deal with that? Right, we got to start. It's got to be in the planning. We've got to start talking with advisors and strategizing and looking at different tools in order to get something in place for long-term care and healthcare and not just avoid it. Would that be a fair argument?

0:19:25 - Speaker 3

Definitely a fair argument. Yeah, need to start talking about it, planning for it and being prepared for this major expense.

0:19:35 - Speaker 2

Last question I'll ask you and we'll wrap up this week Sherry, for a lot of people sometimes, what happens when they first go in to sit down with a professional like yourself, a financial advisor? They walk in with a lot of preconceived notions Not everybody right, but people walk in with preconceived notions about a lot of things in life and they say, hey, listen, I don't want to hear about X, y or Z because I'm not interested. That doesn't seem like a smart move because you're automatically shutting off something that might be maybe, depending on your situation, the only viable option for you to tackle something you know, like insurance or something like that. Do you see that? Do you get that? Do you combat that? What do you think?

0:20:09 - Speaker 3

It comes up. It definitely comes up where I don't even want to talk about this, and okay, well, why?

Let's get to the bottom of it Did you see a commercial you didn't like, or do you know someone that had a bad experience with it? Let's get to the bottom and then then from there that usually opens up okay, well, that was a very specific comment or situation. There's something that may be different, or here's why you may have a different experience with it. And I say to clients it's everything's worth the conversation. Let's at least have the conversation, let's do some research. Then we can say yes, I am making an educated, informed decision. We can still not do what you don't want to do, that's okay. But at least I know, and it's my job to educate you on it, to make sure you have the best retirement plan we can get. So I'm doing you a disservice if I just let you get away with I'm not talking about that, or I'm not doing that. So for me at least, let's talk about it and research it so I can sleep at night.

0:21:08 - Speaker 2

Boom. I love that, that's your obligation right.

That's why you're coming to see me. It's my obligation to give you all the facts and then, at the end of the day, it's still your call. But this is all the facts and this is why we might want to at least consider something so fantastic, great way to end the podcast. So, if you've got some questions, if you need some help, obviously there's some interesting statistics in here, but the point of it all is to say look, we all know things are changing and we all know things are constantly on the move. There's a lot going on in our world right now. It seems like there always is.

So just make sure that you're doing something for yourself and your future, your future self, by at least talking with a financial professional about what's the best strategy for you and your unique situation. And, of course, if you need help, as always, you can reach out to Sherry. You can find her at her website. We can't find her there, but you can find all the information at her website, greenwaywelfthadvisorycom. And, of course, you can connect with Sherry through her website, again, greenwaywelfthadvisorycom. She is a financial advisor and money coach and been helping families get to and through retirement and this is Money Chic Women in Retirement. Don't forget to subscribe to us on Apple, google, spotify, whatever platform you like to use. Just feel free to subscribe so you can catch past episodes as well as future episodes.

Maybe drop a review, hit the like or the stars or the whatever they happen to use on the various different apps. We'd certainly appreciate it If you enjoy the content and, sherry, thanks for hanging out. I hope you and the family have a fantastic Memorial Day weekend.

0:22:30 - Speaker 3

You too, thank you.

0:22:31 - Speaker 2

Absolutely. We'll catch you next time right here on Money Chic Women in Retirement with Sherry Rash.

0:22:42 - 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.