Joe Krause 

I welcome everyone to another edition of roadmap to retirement to radio show along with David Bazar and Brett Elam. I’m Joe Kraus, we thank you for tuning into this new edition of roadmap to retirement, the radio show new edition, because new information, sometimes the information is the same, but still new, depending on who’s consuming it. And who’s listening to it. The hope, David, is that we continue or the listening audience continues to say they are getting better educated by connecting with thrive, and I think that is 100% accurate.

 

David Bezar 

Yeah, Joe, that’s our goal, you know, and, you know, we put on this, this radio show and this content that we go through, because we want to keep people really aware of what’s going on out there, we want to start those conversations that, you know, maybe people haven’t really thought about or thought they needed to have a conversation. We start with that awareness, then we bring it to education, and we hope we’re providing that for folks. And then you know, if and only if people kind of need the leadership, that hand holding process, to make sure that they’re going to achieve success in retirement. And that word success has got so many different connotations to it. And, you know, that kind of reminds me I want to, I want to put out a couple of things before we jump into the show. And just, you know, as you’re listening, I just want to let you know what today’s show is going to be about, we’re going to cover three of the most important questions related to retirement, you know, three pivotal decisions that can really define your golden years. And that’s really what drives the passion here at Thrive. You know, I was talking to somebody called me up about, we get solicitations all the time. And this one was particularly about redesigning our website. And it was interesting, because the web designer was trying to convince us that why don’t you go beyond what you do? Like, why don’t you deal with younger people? You know, why don’t you help people get as like, well, you know, I did that for a long period of time. And that what I learned is where I could have, where Thrive could have where Brett could have the most impact with people was in those critical decision making years leading up very close to retirement, and then ultimately retirement. We want to make sure people navigate. That’s why we wrote that book, right, we wrote the book, navigating your way to financial peace of mind. We also co authored another book called reinventing retirement, and one was more of the financial aspect. The other was really about the all encompassing retirement. And I think we’re gonna put out a new edition of it where, you know, lead a Passion Driven retirement, right? You know, I’m watching my parents are both 81 years old, and what you know, what life has been like for them in retirement. And it really does make you realize that there’s so many different assets, again, we’re embedded in the financial aspect. But there’s so much more to it. And, you know, Brian, I’ve been talking and I don’t know that it’s actually been done yet in, in this area. And I don’t even know if I’ve seen it anywhere else. But we were just sitting around, you know, kind of brainstorming and we came up with this idea of putting on a half a day event, and calling it you know, basically a retirement Summit, and showcasing all kinds of different speakers throughout the area, Delaware Valley area that are specialists in their area examples being like, we have a guy who’s who has spoken at our events, who is a retirement psychologist, right? A lot of people after they’re done working kind of lose purpose don’t really understand. They get bored, they get concerned they get you know, and you know, you’ve seen a lot of people say if I’m never going to retire, because if I retire, I’m gonna die, right? Because I don’t have that perfect. So like a retirement, or retirement psychologists and Medicare specialist, somebody who specializes in continuing care retirement communities, you know, you know, investment portfolio managers, Dr. Berzon, you know, Dr. Berzon, Joe, right. I mean, right, you’d be a great for them, Oh, my God, we’d love to have him come out, speak for a half hour, you know, on longevity and how to improve your chances of that. So as we were kind of thinking about that,

 

Bret Elam 

we’ve got accountants and attorneys, that’ll be there as well. Yeah. I mean, just

 

David Bezar 

across the board, you know, half our speaker said, Hey, buddy, you know, kind of, I tell people, right, the mind can only endure what the rear end will absorb or something like that. Yeah, something like that. I should definitely stay away from saying, I never get

 

Joe Krause 

a theater to mind. We’re in the theater of the mind. platform here. Yeah.

 

David Bezar 

So hey, listen, if you’re, if you’re, you know, you’re listening sitting today to us, what I’d like from you, if you can, you know, our text number 2159993272215999327, to do us a favor, because we’ll make the investment we’ll put the time in, we’ll do the due diligence, if you think it’s a good idea to have this event, and it would probably end up being a paid event, maybe like 10 bucks or something like that, I find when people make an investment in something, it kind of creates a much better commitment to it. And he ended up getting more out of it. So maybe 10 or $15, or something like that. But just text whether you think it’s use the word good idea, or bad idea. And we really love to get the poll from and you know, the poll and the polls, you know, from our listening audience and say, Hey, you guys, listen to us, we know we’ve got a pretty good following and a sense of people listening to the show, let us know, just let us know if that’s a good idea. And you would probably attend, or bad idea. And we won’t take it personally, right? We just thought it was a good, we thought of the idea. We’d love to kind of weigh from the audience what they think so 215-999-3272, good,

 

Joe Krause 

good stuff. For people to weigh in on, I think you’re going to be surprised, I think you’ll get a lot of good ideas, I think you’ll get a lot of texts with that. Joe,

 

David Bezar 

I get surprised every time I give a presentation. Every time I do the radio show, you know, we struggle, we get up there and we want to deliver and then you go, Oh, man, I don’t know if I really connected. I don’t know, if I really got the message across. I don’t know if we really gave them enough education. And inevitably, and I’m very thankful for the feedback. We actually do surveys, you know, at the end of all of our presentations that we do, and very grateful, and thankful that the majority of the commentary is, you know, I’ve been to a number of these in the past, this is absolutely the best thing I’ve ever attended. I’m walking out with way more than what I walked in with. And that’s really our goal, right? I mean, that’s, that’s really our goal.

 

Bret Elam 

Yes, in today’s show, we’re going to talk about 10 thought provoking questions that tie into the content that David just kicked us off with. The first one I want you to think about is what would be the impact of your finances is if you lived five years longer than what you expected. Next is how well prepared are you to handle the financial challenges of a prolonged inflation during retirement? Can we just go on through this? And then in light of the recent inflation spikes as How would your purchasing power be affected during retirement if it lasted another 20 years? or longer? Next is what strategies have you employed to combat the devaluing effect of inflation on your retirement savings? Going to have a couple of stories there? And then are you aware of the investments and financial instruments designed specifically to help you outpace and cope with inflation? Yeah, and

 

David Bezar 

how does your retirement plan play into your overall financial health? How do you decide the amount to withdraw from your retirement savings? To make sure you know, you’re minimizing your risk and not depleting your retirement assets over your lifetime? How might you, how might working in additional year influence social security? What might be the long term implications of your retirement lifestyle? And what proactive measures have you taken to ensure you’re not merely surviving but actually thriving in retirement?

 

Joe Krause 

We’ll jump into it after the break. This is roadmap to retirement the radio show back in a moment, Philadelphia’s

 

 

am 990, v answer a 990 v answer.com. Back

 

Joe Krause 

here on roadmap to retirement radio show full house today full show a lot of information to cover and don’t forget that text number David, over to you.

 

David Bezar 

Yeah. Listen, Joe, you know, many people get caught off guard. During their retirement years, they’ve been, you know, very diligent in saving and investing for retirement, only to end up realizing that, you know, when the time comes, they’re a little unsure of the best way to utilize the retirement assets that they’ve amassed over the past 1015 2030 or even maybe 40 years. And you know, Brett and I when we got started giving presentations, one of the things that we talked a lot about was retirement is like navigating transversal transversing. Is that the word? Yeah. Up and down a mountain. Right, getting, you know, retirement is the peak. Right, getting up is kind of the accumulation phase of retirement. And then climbing back down is kind of the years of retirement and distributing your assets. And I’ve always told you know the story and you know, I was always amazed that people who climbed Mount Everest, but more people are unseen. cessful meaning they don’t make it, like literally not one, the going up the mountain, it’s the coming down the mountain. Right, that achievement, of hey, I got here that there was a much higher degree of attention paid the anticipation of getting there. And then once you’re there where people basically do, I’m saying this figuratively as they take a big deep breath, I made it and the kind of the attention, the focus, the energy kind of changes. And that’s why it’s critically important that on the descent, right, the distribution phase of retirement, people have primarily taken their eye off the ball. And we want to help them get prepared for that type of thing. And

 

Bret Elam 

again, we all know that there’s financial twists and turns that can throw you off the path of that enjoyable bull retirement. But here’s the good news is while you can’t have all those risks vanish, with some strategic moves and planning, we can get ahead of most of them overall, again, it’s instinctive as we retire, that you’re going to dip into your savings, because again, those paychecks have now ended. And that’s where we come in again, as financial advisors, we’re here to help folks like you chap chart out the path of that smooth retirement. You’re ready to talk about next steps again. Again, the curiosity today isn’t David talked about it in the first segment? Is us talking about doing a retirement Summit? Again, all these questions we’re going through here about today about longevity and inflation, etc. As again, we’re asking our listening audience about would you be interested in attending a retirement Summit here in the greater Delaware Valley? Again, good idea, bad idea, if you could text good idea or bad idea, to 215-999-3272? Again, text a word good idea. Bad idea is where do you have be of interest of attending a retirement summit with multiple speakers here in the Delaware Valley again, 215-999-3272. So today, we’re gonna be diving into a couple critical questions that could shape your financial future. However, and this is our passion, what we truly love to do is work one on one with our clients, you’re going to hear throughout the show, the word average doesn’t mean anything, everything needs to be specific for you. Again, we love just helping sketch out your personalized roadmap to give you that peace of mind of heading into a comfortable retirement.

 

David Bezar 

So you know, if you’re eager to explore it, we’ll use the word journey today, right? We’ve been using this analogy of up the mountain down the mountain. So let’s talk about descending the mountain, right? Think about this. Many of us spend, you know, 30 years or even more, building up our retirement savings. And then, you know, today people, you know, living longer I mean, that’s what’s you know, statistically what we’re seeing, I think the statistics now from the Census Bureau’s if you’ve got a married couple that reaches the age of 65, together, there’s like a 50% chance that one of the spouses is going to get out to age 92. And then a 25% chance that one of the spouses is getting out at age 95. So, you know, you may spend as much time in retirement, as you did during your working years. So we got to make sure that we’re planning for that. Now. You know, when you got to retirement, we’re on your road to retirement. You know, it wasn’t an overnight success. I mean, you had that 30 years, and it was, you know, one step at a time to basically get there. And the challenge is, you know, not in a mountain climbing situation. There’s a lot of safety and, you know, the ropes and the Tetons, I’m pulling this stuff out. I think the Tetons are the things that they they knock into the mountainside to? I don’t know, I’m never going to be a mountain climber, that’s for sure. But look

 

Bret Elam 

at that bath with your watch. Watch seven peaks again.

 

David Bezar 

So, yeah, I mean, the bottom line is that, you know, you you do have the luxury to make some mistakes, when you’re climbing up the mountain per se, on your road to retirement because you’ve got time on your side, right. So if you make a mistake, you’re going to still be contributing into your retirement plans. You’re going to you know, you may not have made the perfect tax decision, you may not have done XYZ correctly, but that’s 30 or 40 years to get there is all during the accumulation. So making a mistake, not a big deal. On the descent, you know, you’re going to start to pull money out of your retirement assets to supplement your Social Security benefits, which is another important decision picking the right social Security election choice could end up making the wrong decision to cost you over $100,000 Over your lifetime. And you know, every extra $100,000 in retirement help, so making a mistake there. But you have to supplement Social Security, you have to supplement. If you’re lucky, a pension, now you’re gonna go to your retirement assets. And even if you don’t need it, at some point, you’re gonna have to pull retirement assets out because of your required minimum distribution. If you see market volatility and market declines during that phase, what you have to understand is the shares that you pulled out are no longer in the market. That’s why it’s hard to recover from mistakes like that. Yes. On

 

Bret Elam 

today’s show, we’re talking about retirement planning three of the most important questions as we head into retirement. Those questions are, how long should I expect to live? Is, secondarily we’re going to jump into is how much could the cost of living increase during my retirement affect us? And then lastly, is when should we retire? So let’s dig into the very first question is How long should I expect to live? So David just said some statistics about about a couple. And here’s some additional statistics for a male that reaches the age of 65. Today, new life expectancies as moved from age 82 l to age 84. And for women, that age extends to 86 and a half from the age of 85. People are living longer and longer. But remember, these are just averages. In today’s world, talking about economies where healthcare is great in economies where healthcare is not great in today’s world, one in three people turning 65 will see their 90th birthday, and one in seven will live to celebrate their 95th birthday. Again, most people just think about the now but when we think about all especially our women listeners, the reality is it often includes outliving your spouse’s we see it over and over again, is that this this doesn’t just mean potentially more years and retirement is that it could also mean the need to plan for the potential, we see us all the time, the potential for medical and care related expenses for either partner. And unforeseen costs can quickly accumulate putting that strain on that surviving spouses finances. So many people always think about the now never thinking about what could be coming into the future. And again, we talked about in the first segment, the importance and our passion of sitting down one on one with people, again, of giving them that peace of mind and preparing for those what ifs of what could happen again, we believe that people place far too much attention on life expectancy to sistex when planning for retirement and major decisions are made concerning everything from as David said, when to start Social Security one of the best ways to help combat inflation because at least something is keeping up there to think about when should I start withdrawing money each month without risk of running out of money while you’re still alive? Probably the number one concern we hear from people is will I outlive my assets. And especially with the advancements in technology and people living longer and longer. Again, those actuarial statistics we just sent out are proving that. But using average life expectancy to make such important decisions seems to be flawed in a number of ways. To keep things simple, the primary problem seems to be in a very general sense, to achieve an average for every person who dies before life expectancy. There’s another person who lives be on life expectancy. So living beyond life expectancy can present significant challenges for those who are not prepared. Which means averages mean nothing to someone who lives unexpectedly long life without the money needing to pay bills. And it’s one of the important questions when we ask we meet people for the first time, is tell us about your family history. Let’s talk about genetics, because let’s talk about your life expectancy of what makes sense. So

 

David Bezar 

our advice is that anytime you think about the question, how long should I expect to live, it’s financially less risky to assume that it will be much longer than statistical life expectancy. And look, if you’re wrong, and you don’t live as long as you might have assumed in that planning, it’ll be likely you know, the result will be much more that you got enough money to retire, it’s going to remain in your savings account in your retirement plans. It will provide for critical financial support to your son, your surviving spouse or loved ones. So you know one of the true advantages that if you plan properly, to financially support a long life, you might reduce the risk of possibly running out of money at an older age. Now, the planning that we do for our clients often involves making financial projections far into the future. In order to ascertain the risk of outliving assets. These projects involve making assumptions as to expenses, rates of inflation, expected growth on savings and investments, we actually get very concerned One, we start to see a rapid exhaustion of savings, even though it might not be expected to occur until the client is in, you know, maybe their mid 90s or older. And even though average life expectancy statistics say they likely won’t live that long, there still is that risk and that we want to make sure we mitigate for our clients. We want to avoid that at all, if at all possible. So we use strategies and proper planning. That’s how we can help our clients basically mitigate their risk. So Joe, you know, what we know is we have 1000s of listeners. These are the types of things that we would discuss at this retirement Summit. I’m really, really asking for help on this. If you could just take a minute. You know, most people have a cell phone sitting next to them. Just text to 215-999-3272. Whether we it’s a good idea to have this retirement Summit, or it’s a bad idea. We’d love to hear from you

 

Joe Krause 

roadmap to retirement to radio show we’ll get to a commercial break back in a moment.

 

 

This is Philadelphia’s am 990 The answer?

 

Joe Krause 

Welcome back, everyone to this edition of roadmap to retirement the radio show, don’t forget the text number. And weigh in for David and Brett read over to you, sir.

 

Bret Elam 

Yeah, again, on today’s show, we’re talking about retirement planning three of the most important questions to consider and the last segment we spoke about is how long should I expect to live? We’re gonna get ready to jump into how much could the cost of living increase affect my retirement? And then lastly, we’re going to jump into is when should I retire? So when we talk about how much could the cost of living increase my retirement is? Is it did you catch the news last year, it was June of 2022, where inflation had hit 9.1%. It’s the highest it had been since 1981. It’s amazing. People don’t even know what the word inflation was for decades. And my gosh, we’re sick of that word for the last three and a half years. And while those numbers are definitely simmered down, again, especially here and things that happened this past week with the Fed not moving on interest rates again, and some maybe some hysteria of maybe a soft landing, and we’re nowhere near that end yet. So people talking about soft landing as nuts. But again, while inflation may have simmered down as inflation seems to be sticking around, kind of like an uninvited guest. And while there’s no crystal ball to tell us whether inflation will continue to climb or take a dip in the coming years, it’s important to think about back in like the 1980s. And it was really the 70s and 80s. Think about this in the 80s, we experienced stomach churning inflation rate of 13 and a half percent. It gives you some perspective, a thicket about those interest rates and those rates of return again, talk going back to the last segment, importance of thinking about things like social security and standpoint, how can I fight inflation, but we always say inflation is kind of like the Boogeyman. boogeyman was always a scary one for the kids. And it’s scary when you’re in retirement as well. And especially for the people who have hung up those work boots, and are embracing and enjoying that retired life. Again, when you’re working in a good year of inflation, you probably get a raise to help soften that blow. But once you retire, you’re on your own to deal with those higher costs. I think about my mother, who retired 20 years ago, who got a pension. And David talks about we talked about all the time, the importance of pensions, and sustainability of quality of life and retirement. But guess what most pensions don’t do. They don’t move with inflation. So understanding what how far that pension may have stretched you previously. It’s a lot less today and be an understanding and the importance of understanding how can I combat that. So again, but once you retire, you’re on your own to figure that out over the next 30 or 40 years, especially with the life expectancies that we spoke about. But your income remains the same again, even as a cost of living, even just inches up. And if you talk about just even 2% inflation, which is the historical average, forget the high rates that we’ve been talking about 13 and a half percent. It’s like trying to run uphill, with weights on. Here’s some here’s just some numbers from back and 22. And some of the highlights and statistics that are going on right now about the rising costs and just things that are affecting people. Back in 2022. You saw foods prices spike about 14 and a half percent higher than the previous year. Eggs 32% cereal and bakery goods 13%. And you have gas prices. I mean, they bob up and down, you have a volatility of that we can’t forget David’s famous chicken soup, about how that costs $14 A quart that when he was just looking at it a couple months ago, I think about all the crisis that’s going on of what’s coming in in the next couple months related to the auto loan industry. What’s going on in the housing industry. Rates are at an all time high commercial loans are going to defaults. There’s concerns about banks, because people are just handing them their keys on commercial buildings and housings. You have student loan debt that just came back online literally three months ago. Credit card delinquencies an all time high energy bills, people are being squeezed healthcare costs continue to go up. But we’re heading for a soft landing. There’s a lot of division out there, what the heck is going on? So be careful of the news. And let’s talk about reality of what is happening happening to you. Because if you’re shaping your retirement dreams without answering, what the heck is going to happen when cost of living goes up, it makes for an icy wake up call.

 

David Bezar 

Yeah, just talking about that for a second, just taking a slow down and take a pause for a second.

 

Bret Elam 

Thank you.

 

David Bezar 

You know, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit an all time high this past week. And you have to think about it right with all the things that Brett just talked about. I haven’t seen food prices come back down. Right, Chairman Powell spoke, the New York Fed governor spoke on Friday, they decided not to raise rates. The market went up when Chairman Powell spoke. But then when the Fed governor spoke, the futures on Friday morning fell dramatically. Because what he said is we are not having discussions about cutting interest rates. Now, the hour before that commentary, all that was spoken upon on Fox Business News, or CNBC was three to four rate cuts in 2024. So look, I’m not a conspiracy person, Joe, but I’ve been doing this for 35 years. The idea in the stock market is to buy low and sell high. The one thing that the people listening to our radio show, don’t have the luxury of is access to the media, the influence of the media, right, we end up kind of whatever happens happens. But if you really thought about who owns the media, you thought about Wall Street, you thought about big corporations, they’re the smart money. And the old adage of buy low and sell high is really at the end of the day reserved for that group of people. So if they get on the media, and they’re talking about how great things will be in 2024. And people start coming off the sidelines and dumping money into the market, when money enters the market, obviously, it’s going to go up. And that’s exactly what the big corporations and Wall Street want to have happen. Because they were fortunate enough to buy low during the pandemic because they had money sitting on the sidelines. And now the market is much higher than it was. And now they’re ready to sell because everything that Brett just covered, really does not sound like the metrics for a soft landing and a good economy. We see people every single week, I asked people to raise their hands in our seminars about has this changed? Has this gone back down? Or is it easier for you today? Are you more worried than you were? You know, they answer the right way. And people are, you know, middle America right now is not feeling great. And it’s not a political statement. But look at the current president’s approval rate. It’s the low I mean, it’s lower than any other president in the history as long as they’ve been taking a look. It’s not a political statement. It’s just people feel that things are not going the way and the thing that people really moves people to make decisions is things that hit their wallets. Yep, border, you know, immigration, you know, political division. But at the end of the day, people want to live a good life. And if that ain’t happening, it really just changed things around. So listen, if you if you are thinking, well, we’ve mentioned this thing about a retirement Summit. And that summit would be we’d hosted at a hotel somewhere, you know, kind of centrally located between Montgomery bucks Philly, Chester County, and we would showcase for maybe four to five hours, the important types of topics given by you know, kind of the the specific topic leaders in the community to help you really understand all the things that you need to think about for retirement planning, and have a q&a session and all that and we’d maybe have some booths out for people to gather information. So if you think that’s a good idea, or you think it’s a bad idea, we’d love to hear from you. It’s the simplest thing in the world to do just text on your phone. 215-999-3272 good idea or bad idea,

 

Joe Krause 

man, I felt like it In Rocky Balboa there, Brett was hitting me like he was Clubber Lang with those bullet points. I mean, just unbelievable. On all those different things that are impacting our lives. roadmap to retirement the radio show back in a moment, Philadelphia’s

 

 

am 990 V answer a 990 v answer.com. And

 

Joe Krause 

back here on roadmap to retirement, the radio show our final segment of this one hour edition of roadmap to retirement, David descending the mountain ascending and descending very good visual descending boy, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of rocks kind of way back down, it’s

 

David Bezar 

a good way to put it yo. So just kind of picking up from what we talked about, you know, there are things you might want to consider incorporating into your planning to help protect against that prolonged high inflation rates. So one of the things we saw on it, you know, it’s been pretty volatile is the interest rates that fixed income type solutions are providing. So what we would tell you is consider avoiding long term fixed income investments, right fixed income investments, like corporate bonds, money markets, Treasury accounts, they pay a specific amount. And if you own these investments for 1520 or 30 years, inflation may eventually outpace the return and ultimately negatively impact your retirement income. Like us right now, we’ve got a lot of people in fixed income, but it’s six month, three months, six months, maybe a 12 month, and they’re still earning over 5% as compared to the 10 year, the 15 year and the 30 year. Now also look for equity stocks that can pass through increased earnings. So during times of high demand, companies can actually increase Prices, prices, and positively impact earnings. So they may end up passing these over to investors through dividends. Look for strategies to help provide guaranteed income. Now some products with guaranteed payouts like fixed indexed annuities, those are insurance products that may be able to help your savings actually outpace inflation. A fixed indexed annuity combines the benefits of tax deferral, with the potential for interest earnings based on positive changes in an external index, something like the s&p, the NASDAQ 100, something like that. Now, the good part about is your act, you’re not actually participating in the market, they’re just using that as a as a benchmark. Now, annuities may be subjected to certain restrictions, surrender charges, holding periods, early withdrawal penalties, and that varies by, you know, the insurance carrier. And that’s why it’s important to work with a fiduciary who’s kind of going through the work to figure out what’s in the best interest of a particular client’s needs. And with some annuities, you can actually pay for an optional rider that helps your payouts keep up with inflation. So if retirement is on your horizon, or you’re already kind of like in the middle of it, and you really like maintaining the lifestyle that you worked hard for, it’s kind of time to roll up your sleeves and get pretty strategic about what you’re going to do to fight inflation.

 

Bret Elam 

So today’s show talking about retirement planning, three of the most important questions, again, three pivotal decisions that can help define your golden years. We just went through how long should I expect to live? And then we jumped into secondarily, there’s a topic related to inflation, and how can I combat and David just talked about some of the solutions that are out there and thinking about how can I combat inflation in retirement? And the last one that we’re going to talk about here today is talking about when should I retire? So the decision of when to retire? Absolutely can greatly shape your financial future, your lifestyle, the dreams, just everything you’ve ever imagined? Again, it might be imperative to ponder deeply about that time, and it’s one of the biggest things that we give people is that peace of mind of when can I hang it up? So that what if what if and what if happens, that I am now bullet proofed to make sure that everything is sustainable? But and why is that so important? The stakes are high, retire too soon. And you may find yourself running through your savings quicker than you anticipated. Meaning we now need to adjust that lifestyle downwards. And again, on the other hand, holding off retiring for too long, and you could miss out on some of the best years of your life of what we will call your gogo years ago when David spoke about what he’s experiencing with his parents right now. Mine are a couple of years younger than him at seven as his 77 and 76. And they’re not doing well either. They are definitely not in the middle of their gogo years there are in the transition have probably slow go to No go. So again, be careful not working too long. That’s giving people that peace of mind of when they’re gonna retire is such a big deal of being able to not look Like what’s right in front of us, but in the peripheries of what will happen into the future, and it’s just a years and years of experience, that David myself, the whole team here at Thrive of just giving people, that overall peace of mind. Now, the intricacies lie in grasping the ripple effects of retiring a year earlier, a year later, it’s not just about the money. It’s about what money can’t buy, which is time. And it’s talking about experiences, volunteering, spending time with the family traveling, and all those opportunities. experienced financial advisors have tools at their disposal. Think of them as those like compasses. They help them estimate how long those savings will last. But again, you can’t just be an average that plan needs to be curtailed to your individual situation. And most importantly, that plan these tools factor in all the different variables, like growth and savings, expected Social Security benefits, when should I take them, the creeping influence of inflation, tax implications, and so much more, there’s so much more that we need to consider of when is the right time I should go to retire.

 

David Bezar 

So, you know, Brett talked about tools. Before, as we get close to wrapping up the show, I thought maybe this is good idea to address some of the tools that get used. But I think that’s a really good point, that people who try to navigate retirement on their own, don’t know what to do. And it’s more about like, kind of sketching it on the piece of paper than actually having the professional tools available to do the assessments, I can give you a give you a little bit of a peek into something that we’re using now. And it’s a tool called bucket bliss. And what it basically does there, you know, there’s two strategies that come related two buckets. One bucket is what’s the tax treatment of the money that you have, right, there’s four buckets in that category, there’s a bucket of taxable, there is a bucket of tax deferred, there’s a bucket of tax free, and then there’s a special bucket that typically gets reserved for incredibly wealthy people. Like if you were a client of Goldman Sachs, or Morgan Stanley, private bank, you would hear about it and nose. And that bucket has all kinds of things that provide tax credits, top line tax deductions, additional tax deferral things of that sort. So where your money resides, we call that asset location is critically important. And the goal should be prior to your retirement or as close to when you enter retirement, is to have all of that money, have all of that money, move out of taxable and tax deferred accounts over into tax free accounts. So that’s a freebie right there the idea how to do that. And that’s a process of doing Roth conversions. And it’s a process of knowing how much to do, what the tax bill is gonna be where to pay, where do you where do you pull the money out to pay the tax bill? And is there tools available? Are there financial solutions available, that can actually mitigate the tax bill, meaning either reduce it, or possibly even eliminate it? So you want to go from four ever taxed to never taxed? We help now, You got to understand folks, that takes some tools. We’ve got pretty sophisticated spreadsheets, we’ve got analytical tools that will let us know how to prescribe the proper medication to make that happen. I say that figuratively. The second bucket strategy is where do you pull your money from? Right? We have this saying in our offices, that every dollar has a purpose, right? It’s not a random philosophy. It’s not a random action of how you should be distributing your retirement assets. So we divide up things into three or four buckets based on longevity of a particular client. So let me describe those buckets really quick. And this all ties into the show today, right? Because we want to outpace inflation. We want to pay the least amount in taxes, all the things we’re talking about really do set you up for that proper type of retirement. So the idea behind the bucket bliss strategy, is we want to divide up your money, where for the first 15 to 20 years of your retirement. You have two buckets that you can spend freely from maybe even two To the point where you spend them down to zero over that first 15 to 20 years of retirement, without worrying anything, right? So that you don’t have to tap into any of your risk based investments risk based meaning in the stock market, right, the fluctuations of the ups and downs, what we know statistically, and Brett knows the number probably better than I do. The average rate of return if held for any 15 year period of time, Brett, let’s say in the s&p 500,

 

Bret Elam 

you’re probably like, right around nine to 10%. Right. So

 

David Bezar 

now, if you’re getting yours, yeah, if you’re in and out of the market over that period of time, you’re not going to get that return, right, because everybody, it’s a timing thing, so on and so forth. But remember, you may have to pull money out of retirement assets to either supplement Social Security or print out a pension, or you got to start taking out for required minimum distributions. So we are our objective is to leave money sitting in bucket number three, or bucket number four, without touching it at all, for 15 to 20 years, you pretty much give yourself insurance, that you will have more money, you would have performed great in the market over that period of time. So the first two buckets, we need to fill up with solutions that are not going to be risk based, that you’re going to be able to spend freely from. And that way you live off of that money. In addition to Social Security, maybe the pension, leaving those retirement assets alone, you pretty much give yourself a bullet proof. And that’s why we call it bucket bliss. So two requests. One is if you think the idea of this retirement suppot Summit is a good one. Text us the word. Good idea. Good idea. 215-999-3272. If you think it’s a bad idea, same number 215-999-3272. And the last thing I’ll tell you is while you’re at it, if you’re texting, you could tell us hey, I’d like to come in for that bucket bliss analysis. It’s free. We’ll just run it for you. You’ll actually see year by year how that money gets distributed and what bucket it should come out

 

Joe Krause 

Yeah. Wow, really great stuff, the ability to see what is actually going to happen. Pretty amazing roadmap to retirement the radio show and thanks, everyone for tuning in. On behalf of David Bazar, and Brett elimine. All of our listeners tuning in to this edition of roadmap to retirement the radio show. I’m Joe Kraus. See you next time, everybody.

 

 

Thanks for listening to roadmap to retirement, the radio show from Thrive financial services. If you’re like most Americans, you have more questions than you do answers about what to do with your retirement savings. If you have a question about your IRA or your 401 K, pension or other tax deferred accounts, if you have a question about reducing taxes, generating income, or filing for Social Security, whatever it is, David Caron and Brett are here to help. Often your questions can be answered in a simple phone call. Just call 21579890882157989088. And so you know no statements made during roadmap to retirement the radio show shall constitute tax, legal or accounting advice. You should consult your own legal or tax professional on any such matters. information presented is for educational purposes only, and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investment or investment strategies. investments involve risks and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial adviser and or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed here. David bizarre Brett Elam and Karen bizzarre of Thrive financial services and thrive Capital Management are licensed to offer investment advisory services through Thrive Capital Management LLC, an SEC registered investment advisory firm