Well, good afternoon everybody. Thank you so much for joining me today for the the home stretch, the seven things you need to do uh the decade before you retire. So, this is one of our uh presentations that I do uh quite often, usually about three, four times a year and in addition to many other topics like social security, Medicare, uh you know, other healthcare and retirement, long-term care, many different topics that we do. Hopefully, you’ve listened to some of those. presentations in the past. Uh but uh my again my name is Joe Gaspari. I am one of the financial consultants here with the Alliant Retirement and Investment Services team. Uh I’ve been here for about 13 years with the with Alliant. I’ve been a licensed advisor for about 23 years I believe and I’ve been doing this for a good long time. And uh again uh today I’m going to be talking about retirement planning and the decade before you retire and what things you should be looking at and preparing for for retirement. As I go through the presentation today, uh if you do have any questions, I’ll be taking the questions at the end of the presentation, but if you think of a question at any time, you can go ahead and chat uh type that in in the chat box or the Q&A, the question and answer box, and I will get to those questions. Those will hold till the end of the presentation and I will uh uh be answering those at that time. Um I will also be at the end of this presentation be uh putting up a survey of would you like to have a one-on-one conversation uh after this. So I’m hoping that you will select yes on there and what the as I go through this presentation we’re going to talk about different uh you know you know investments and you know things. What if interest rates are lower? What if interest rates are higher? What if the market’s up? What if the market’s down? What have I saved enough? Am I on the right path to do what I get what I would like to get out of my own retirement? Um, I do a full complimentary plan and hopefully you will take advantage of that full complimentary plan and learn a little bit about here’s what you have, here’s what you want, are you on the right path. It is tailored specifically for you on what you have saved so far, what retirement income do you have, how much would you like to spend in retirement and do you have enough assets to get through to spend what you would like to spend. Um, and again, it’s a great tool that we do use before I do any investing for people, which is again what I do. But, uh, I like to figure out why we’re going to invest the way we would like to invest. And, uh, that starts with the plan. And again, I’ll be offering that to you complimentary. So hopefully it’s something you will take advantage of in the future. So as I go through the presentation here again, if you have any questions, type away and I will get to those at the end and we will go through that. I do have to share that uh we are not able to record for compliance purposes. We are not able to record or distribute the presentation or the deck itself, the the PowerPoint. uh and I cannot have listeners record and distribute this as well.
I do have some other presentations coming up, planning for long-term care. That’s a 6:00 p. p.m. evening central time on October 6th, learning a little bit more about long-term care. And then I’ll be talking about estate planning. All those important documents of powers of attorney for health care, for financial, for wills, trusts, and all those different things that you should be planning for when you are no longer here. Uh who how do you want who do you want things to pass to and what’s the most efficient way to be doing these things? We’ll talk about that in the estate planning webinar. Some educational resources that you have access to, you could see what other webinars are coming up. You could see in or listen to our invests podcast or our Aerys Aerys meaning Alliant Retirement and Investment Services, our website and blog that you have access to as well. So, let’s dig into the home stretch. The seven things you need to do in the decade before you retire. Seven things. Number one, determine when the time is right. Take aim at your retirement uh target. Maximizing your nest egg. How are you invested? and getting a portfolio checkup uh and create a social security strategy. We’re going to dig into a little bit. This doesn’t get too detailed on social security, but we will absolutely touch on it and build a retirement income stream. And then looking beyond the money. So number one, determine when the time is right. Ado van Bismar chancellor in the late 1800s of Germany came with the plan of having some type of uh income a government sponsored income that you could get and it was created that at the age of 70 that you would get this whatever source however much uh this income would be but basically it’s a retirement income retirees starting at the age of 70. It’s great number one that someone is thinking about this, but number two is the life expectancy was only in the 40s at the time uh and that in Germany. So is how many people are actually going to get this income. uh but again that started that strategy and then now today when we look at uh retirement age in the 60s whether if you want to take your social security as early as age 62 your full retirement age which is between 66 and 67 depending on your birth year and then even out up to age 70 if you would like an increased amount of social security income you can defer until age 70 and life expectancy is at least beyond what we uh will as as we get that income, we could expect to live some years uh getting that income. So, you know, kind of a little bit different than the late 1800s as far as when it would start and when uh when how long are people expected to live? So, what age do you think you’ll retire? When we look at age 65, when someone says I’m going to retire more closer to age 60 or I’m going to wait until maybe closer to age 70, as we look at someone’s going to retire later or someone’s going to retire earlier, maybe if someone’s going to retire earlier, if they say they’re going to retire at age 60, maybe the more median age is closer to about 62. Um, so when people want to retire uh closer to that age 62, it’s dependent on many different factors. Uh, sometimes it’s health related, sometimes it’s job loss, downsizing um and or maybe just an early uh retirement uh buyout offers. So, but the majority of times about 70% retirees the reason for early retirement was something out of their own control. It’s not that they said they wanted to retire at 62. Maybe it was forced out of a job. Maybe it was a health it was a health reason. That what happened to my father uh why he retired at 62 to took his social security uh at 62 because he had health issues. His first heart attack being at age 49. Had a bypass at age 51. Another bypass later. And for him to say, I don’t know how long I’m going to be here. I’m going to take it while the taken’s good. Um so again it was that health related early retirement. So nearly half of people retire in their early 60s. Again maybe it’s their choice, maybe it’s not their choice. About 44% of people between the age of 61 to 65. And again some people earlier, some people later uh depending on what your financial needs are. Maybe some people just love what they do and they don’t want to retire. And uh but some people need to have that income in retirement. Planning for different ages in uh for a couple. When we look at um a husband and wife in this case, the male is 25, female 23. And why does that matter so much? It’s not a big difference of only 2 years, which is a reasonable age difference for a couple. But when we look at retirement ages of age 65 and 63. So maybe let’s say this uh the husband in this case was the bread winner and he had the job he had the healthc care coverage and he turned 65 and decides he wants to retire but uh he’s eligible for Medicare but she is not eligible for Medicare in this scenario. So now they’re on the hook for their own health care costs for her in this uh in this case. So sometimes that age difference does come into play. My wife is 2 years older than me. So we’re going to have to work out some of these things. The right now the healthc care is on me. Uh so it’s fine if she does retire earlier. Actually she works part-time. Uh so you know but it might not be that big of a deal for us. But again what is your situation? Then when we look at even in the later years in retirement where he is 82 and she is 80 and now we look at life expectancy that how long is that male going to live? Females live statistically longer than males and even up to 9 years that women can be on their own in retirement because again with that longevity he was already 2 years older than her. So we, you know, that could be certainly be a retirement game changer when there’s only one versus the two of you. Two social security income sources with if you are both here, but if only one of you is here, yes, you get the better of the two, but one source of social security income does go away. So we have to be uh conscious of what uh you know with age differences throughout all of your lives of what does this mean looking at different ages for important ages for retirement. when we look at all of these different milestone uh ages here. Number one, uh 50. Age 50 is when you can actually add a little bit more in your retirement accounts that if you were 49 and younger, you can do what are called catch-up contributions. So, if you’re contributing to a 401k or a traditional IRA, once you get to the age of 50 plus, you can put a little bit more in called catch-up contributions. as early as age 55 is where you can start some earlier uh distributions from qualified retirement plans or maybe some pension income as early as 55 if that’s eligible. uh looking at age 59 and a half. 59 and a half is an important year that you can start to draw from retirement accounts like 401ks, traditional IAS, even Roth IAS and you can get uh and all these withdrawals out without penalties at starting at the age of 59 and a half. age 60 when we look at if uh that an a widow or widowerower is eligible to take social security income early. Um again for widowed situations as early as age 62 if you want to start your own social security uh early as early as age 62. 65 is when you’re going to be enrolling for Medicare plus or minus 3 months there. Age 67 is the full retirement age for social security for most of us. now uh and age 70 for maximum social security benefits. You can take social security as early as 62. Your full social security age is probably 60 close to 67 now for many people. And age 70 is the latest you would take social security. It stops growing at that point. So there’s no need to defer it after that. And then we look at age 73 or 75. If you were born 1959 or earlier, this is these are the ages that you have to start withdrawing from retirement accounts like 401ks and traditional IAS called required minimum distributions. If you were born 1960 or later, though age is now going to be age 75,
taking aim at your retirement target. So number one rule of thumb number one is save enough to generate 70 to 90% of your pre-retirement income. Now again this is a rule of thumb. This is not a hard thing that some like uh if you’re making 100,000 a year can you afford to spend 70 to 90,000 uh a year based on 70 to 90% of your pre-retirement income. So when we look at in retirement what does your spending look like? And this is what the plan that I do offer. And again, I’ll be offering this a couple of times throughout this presentation. Is what does your spending look like in retirement? Are you going to have a mortgage? What are your property taxes? How much is insurance on the home? What about car insurance? What about health insurance? What about what about what about all of these different things that are going to be part of your spending in retirement? if you have social security income and other sources and maybe you’re going to be drawing off of your own accounts, 401ks, IRA or savings and how much can you spend in retirement. But some of the costs that will go down, maybe you won’t have a mortgage. You’re not going to be driving as much back and forth to work. Uh clothing, maybe, you know, less purchase of clothes from, you know, you’re not buying work clothes anymore. uh less going out to lunches or dinners if you were doing that at work. Uh so some of these things where costs may go down. Some costs that can potentially go up. Health care costs in retirement could go up. Maybe you have more time to travel. Uh maybe your home and utility, your utility costs are a little bit more expensive because you’re home you’re um and you’re, you know, the heat’s on more or the air conditioner’s on more uh or water. And uh and then home maintenance. If there are some things uh I’m uh looking at something to fix around the house. I finished my own basement. I did some other things around there. But if it’s something if I’m going to have a project, if I have more time, I might have more projects that I’m going to be working on. Costs that go away. So if you’re not having a job income, you’re not paying into social security anymore and you’re not contributing to a 401k or traditional IAS if you do not have earned income anymore. So again just another reminder if as I go through the presentation if you do have any questions uh type in the chat box or the Q&A box and I will get to those at the end of the presentation. So when we look at in uh an income needs of you know so that’s 70 to 90% of your pre-retirement income for some of the expenses that go away some of the expenses that might go up in retirement some expenses that might go down in retirement. Rule of thumb number two, save a multiple of your salary based on your age. Now, this is not a hard written in stone numbers. And you might say, “Oh, I have a lot more than that or I might have a lot less than these uh based on what age.” So, this is assuming a 55year-old uh making 100,000 that you should have six to eight times that uh that salary. So, 6 to 800,000 saved up um each. So now again it’s not a written in stone number but this is just a guide of how much should you have saved um at certain ages.
Rule of thumb number three save enough to generate a 4% withdrawal rate. Kind of an industry standard of if you have a total assets how much can you start to draw out of these assets that you could be assured it’s going to last for a good long time. and 4%. Sometimes people think 5%, but again, we’re just going to concentrate on the 4% here. So, if you have um what you need in order to withdraw four 40 uh 4% over a 20year period of time, if your desired annual income is 25,000 or 50,000 or even 100,000, you would need to get 25,000, you would need to have 545,000 saved that you’re drawing off of. This is if it is very conservative. Go back to when interest rates are a little bit lower and you’re only earning 1.5% on this. So your earnings and your returns on your asset is very important on this as far as how much you can draw. So in this case, if to do a 4% withdrawal rate, you need 545,000. You need a little over a million to get 50,000 of income and over 2 million to get a 100,000 of income. Now, if you got 5% average rate of return, that 545,000 goes down to 391,000 that you would need because again, now you’re earning more. You’re letting your your money work for you as well for with these withdrawals. And so, if you’re going to earn a little bit more, you could have a less of a a a lump sum um to get to your goal of that 4% withdrawal rate. So sustainable withdrawal rates as we look at um you know if it’s 3% um that you know how long that will last if you took 4% out if you took more and more and more obviously the more you take out the less years you could expect to have that asset. So what if you need to save uh for 24 years? So desired annual income retirement savings required at a 3% rate of return is 476,000 a 6% rate of return 365,000. So a couple of just more numbers on what you would need to save to generate income and how much does uh your assets need to earn to get to that desired income. Maximizing your nest egg. take advantage of work sponsored plans. So here’s we have an example of a married couple both age 50 in this case. Uh he is an income earnner of 150,000 a year and she is a volunteer with no earned income. How much can they save? And this is assuming they want to work for another 15 years until age 65 and how much can they save over this uh period of time. So number one is the 401k that he can contribute um 24,500 and a 401k and we’ll talk about adding catch-up contributions like we talked a little bit earlier. So in this case, he’s going to contribute 24,500 and he gets an employer match of 4500, but because he is age 50 or over, he can do the catch-up contribution of an additional 8,000 because he is age 50 or over. So the base amount 24,500 plus what the company is matching plus the 8,000. And then we start to look at what else can they add to. So you could see there’s income limits. If they this couple wants to contribute to a traditional IRA, they have to have income of capped at 149,000. Now this case they make 150,000. So he is not eligible to contribute to a traditional IRA. But because they are married filing joint, they can have their income is under 252,000. So he can contribute to a Roth IRA. The base amount is 7,500 plus the catchup of an additional 1,100. And even though she is not working, she can use as long as they’re married filing joint, they can uh she can contribute to IAS as well, staying within those same limits of a traditional or a Roth IRA, even though she does not have earned income because you do have to have earned income to contribute to a an traditional or a Roth IRA. But in this case, because they are married filing joint, she can also do a contribution by doing with the spousal uh income. So she’s going to add to an IRA of $7500 plus her catchup. Again, she’s 50 or over as well. So that is a grand total. So they can put $54,200 a year into the retirement accounts uh that they’re eligible for. Now, is that something in your budget? Can you save 54,000 each year as a married filing joint couple? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s certainly something let let’s let that retirement plan help us determine how much you can save for the next years before your retirement. So now this case it says 51,000, but for the next 15 years, if that money is invested and it earns a hypothetical 6% rate of return, now we’re looking at 1.2 2 million uh that could be saved over and earning over that period of time. So there’s absolutely depending on what age you are, maybe you’re at a great place where you think you’ve saved plenty and maybe you’re in a place where I don’t know if we’ve saved quite enough. Uh should I be adding or starting to max out 401k contributions, taking advantage of the catchup contributions if you’re age 50 or over? And uh so how do we make sure we’re getting to that end goal of where you would like to be for your specific retirement? Getting a portfolio checkup. So with uh today, you know that the average uh number of jobs someone might have had is might be 12 jobs over their working years. uh 60 63% of American workers have access to a defined contribution or a 401k, maybe a 403b or some type of savings plan uh that you can save for retirement. 69% of plans have an automatic enrollment. So, when people do leave these jobs, maybe they have their current 401k, maybe they have old 401ks uh that uh that you worked at previously, but in this case, getting that portfolio checkup. In this uh example, we’re looking at someone who’s like kind of a moderate investor. 60% they want in stock investments and 40% in bond investments. So, a 60/40 investor. But let’s say this person had old 401ks too. One in one job is much more aggressive. Maybe it was all stock. Maybe that previous job number two was a little more stock and bond in there as well. Uh but you have this mix of different investments. And again, this current this person currently wants to be a 60/40 investor, but when you look at all their investments com combined, maybe they’re more aggressive than they thought. So, this is absolutely something when we’re doing a retirement plan, looking at your different investments that you’re doing, should you be reallocating, should you be, even if it stays in the plan, maybe you want to start consolidating plans um and getting things in and getting to your end goal of that proper retirement and how aggressive or conservative would you like to be? you and I would work together on on that appropriate investment um list or options that you would have available depending what’s appropriate for you, your time period, your risk tolerance. Um and again, when you look at those old plans, many people don’t even know how they’re invested in some of these older plans. So, that’s certainly something that you and I can look at together. So, what if you have too much invested in the stock market? So, this is an example of in a three-year time period. So, this person has 900,000. You’re you are here. You’re at 900,000. The goal is to get to a million for this investor. And the you got you’re retiring in the next 3 years. So, the thought would be, all right, if I earn an average of 8% in here, I’ll be a little bit more than $1.1 million. I’m going to get to my goal. But what if what if what if that happened in the year ending in 1999 going into 2000 2001 in 2002. If you remember what happened back then we had three years in a row of negative stock market losses in the stock market for three years in a row starting at the end of 99 going into 2000 where we had the.com bust if you remember or the internet bubble. Uh so we had some a time period of not good stuff going on there. The markets were tanking because of uh tech stocks really going down and then we get into 2001 and 9/11 happens. So we have compounded on top of the.com bust. Now we have 9/11 that happens and it kind of shut the world down. I remember I was actually doing lending. I was in the mortgage industry back in 2001, a couple years before I got licensed to do what I do now. Um, but uh, looking at um, you know, the stock market shut down for about a week. Um, I was doing mortgages. People couldn’t lock in rates and we didn’t know where interest rates were going at that point and again the stock market shut down, the bond market shut down uh, for and it was just a brutal time. And then we look at the end of 2001 going into 2002 where we had some corporate scandal things going on. If you remember a company called Enron going out of business. Uh so Enron, WorldCom, Tao, a few companies, Arthur Anderson being the accounting firm for a lot of this. So um they took the fall for some things, but we had three years in a row of the market going down. So, what if you were in that scenario of you’re 1999, you’re three years away and you’re heavily invested and that happens. What if you were a 50/50? It’s kind of 50% stock, 50% bond. You would have gone a down a lot less. You’re not going to dig out of as big a hole. So, it kind of rebounded faster, that 50/50 investor. So, are you invested appropriately for your time period and and your risk tolerance on how you would like to be invested going forward? Here’s another example of a three-year period. Again, you are here, you want to retire in 3 years. This is where some people jump out of the market too fast. So, let’s look at 2007 and 2008. If you remember that one, that was the financial crisis that we went through, the bad mortgage lending things that were happening and defaults and uh again we almost had a meltdown in our financial system and the market tanks in you know starting at the end of 2007 all most of 2008 it’s going down. If you are a 50/50 investor and that’s where you know so your 900 goes down to about 700,000 and you say I’m out. I just want to get into safety. I’m going to put all my money in savings or in very short-term CDs or something like that. I just want safety. And if you were also interest rates went very low at that time as well. So if you were going to jump out of the market and just go to safety like this, the market rebounded, but those interest rates that stayed low for such a long period of time took a long time to get back to where uh if it even made it back to where um it you wanted it to be. So this is where are you invested appropriately for your risk tolerance and your time frame. And sometimes when things take a dive like that in the market, we just kind of kind of wait it out instead of getting ultra conservative after the fact. Updating beneficiaries is another very important thing to do when if you sometimes if you have a new spouse um you know different family then you have younger children if you need a trust. One of the examples that I had, I do know of a couple who got divorced. Um, this is several years ago, but about seven years ago or so, the the ex-husband passed away. He was remarried at the time. So, there was a divorce, he gets remarried, he’s got a new wife, and he ends up passing away. And then they’re going through the assets, they’re going through some things, going through the estate, and there was a pretty heavyduty life insurance policy of about $700,000 death benefit. And the ex-wife was still the beneficiary named on that policy. I know there were attorneys involved, and I know should it have gone to the kids, should it have gone to the new wife, and all these where should it have gone? But, uh, he had named the ex-wife still as the beneficiary. Boy, that could be a big mess. And I do know again there was attorneys involved. Don’t know the result of that but I knew of that case. But uh again making sure your beneficiaries or wills, trusts and all those things are in order. Um see me on one of the estate uh webinars coming up here and uh learn a little bit more about that. Creating a social security strategy. So we’re again we’re going to touch a little bit on social security as I get into that. Another reminder, if you got any questions, type away in the chat box or the Q&A box and I will get to those at the end of the presentation. So, here’s a looking at uh social security where we see the green and then this blue line. The green is years ago when there was that’s the money coming into social security. And what money comes into social security? Out of our paychecks. 6.2% of all of our paychecks go into social security. If you work for a company, the company matches another 6.2%. So your income is 12.4% total is going into social security. If you’re self-employed, you could be putting in 12.4 yourself. Uh so there was more money coming in than there was going out. That’s what the blue line is. That’s the benefits that were going out. And in the meantime, while that was happening, all that extra was I’m sorry, went the wrong way. is there was more money coming in than there was going out. So, it was building up a surplus, this big old trust fund that there was a few trillion dollars in. And now in 20121, we see that crossover where there was about the same money coming in than there was going out. So, but there was no additional money go is being saved in this trust fund. And now we’re in this phase of there’s money going out of the trust fund now. So there’s more money going out of on people on social security, baby boomers retiring at record paces. There’s more people going out of their workforce than there is coming into the workforce. So we’re starting to we have seen now that there’s more money going out than there is coming in. Now we’re dipping into that trust fund where that is expected to run out or go to a zero balance in about 20334 somewhere in that range. And what if that happens? If they do not change anything, it’s roughly about an 80% here, 78%. So 20 22% of our social security may not be paid out. So it’s still a pay as you go strategy, meaning that there will still be workers getting that 6.2% 2% taken out of their paychecks funding people currently on social security, but it might not be enough. So, what are some of the fixit? Um, I talk about this a little more in detail on the social security webinar, but some of the things is are they going to change the retirement age from 67, make it later, 68, 69, or even 70 to get their full amount. Uh, are they going to reduce the amounts just like this? Are they going to take away the cost of living increases that are currently happening? It’s a kind of an inflation number. So that comes out every year in October. They should be announcing what is going to be uh the increase for social security starting January of next year. Are they going to eliminate the increases or are they going to uh be, you know, looking at potentially changing what uh is taken out of our paychecks? Are they going to increase the amount another 3.65% 65% in payroll tax would cover the gap. But again, that’s more taxes that we’re going to be paying. So, how are we going to fix this? And I know it’s talked about every administration. I know Congress is talking about this now, but it doesn’t seem like anything gets done on this specific topic, and it’s certainly an important one. So, what is your full retirement age? Your full retirement age for Social Security is based on your birth year, the year you were born. And right now if you were born uh 1960 or later it’s 67. If you were born before that you can pick find your birth year and you could see what is your full retirement age. But uh majority if you’re not already at that age majority starting next year it’s going to be age 67.
So here’s what what do people expect? How much can you get from social security? These are maximum amounts. And so this is starting at age 62 in this case 66 or 67 being the full retirement age or even deferring out to age 70 if you are a high income earner for at least 35 years because your social security income is based on your highest 35 years of working. If you maxed out every year um the how much what that social security limit was for what you contribute uh you would get the most which is let’s look at 67 4200 a year um so or if you defer to age 70 you can get a little over 5,000 5100 not a bad income uh for that but you would have to max out what’s the average now we’re looking a little you know probably a little more than half of that but when we start to look at averages of 26 six maybe you know if you have not checked this out ssa.gov gov will get you there. You would have to create a login, create a profile and you can get every year I get email alerts every year after we file our taxes within a couple of months after that your new social security numbers are, you know, available to look at and I could see what I’m going to be getting based on every year I work. I have a number and it’s, you know, my current income is it’s high in my top 35 years. So hopefully my you know um my income will keep increasing you know before I get social security. But again here’s more of the averages if you’re a single person and or if you are married filing joint times by two and just to see what your social security income will be building a retirement income stream. So looking at let’s look at when interest rates were low very low. If you want to, you know, have a $500,000 investment and you want to draw income from your investments, what if we go back to the times when interest rates were very low and look at these how much you know at 0.1 or 0.51% which is not that long ago during COVID uh time is when we had CDs at about that.5%. And that’s $214,000 a year in income or I’m sorry a month in income. Uh, so not going to probably get you too far as far as living expenses. And same with money markets when we look at different levels of bonds, maybe more um, you know, safer, maybe more a little more high risk like high yield bonds will get you more yield and that’ll be you know 500,000 getting 2,700 a month. Now you’re talking that okay, I can get better income but it’s still an opportunity of interestbearing accounts. That’s what all of these are things that will generate interest. Uh but what I can say interest rates fluctuate over time too. So this is not a guaranteed income. Uh amounts of income these income levels can go up or down based on interest rates changing. What if you just did systematic withdrawals? What if you had a stock account in this example of a $500,000 investment? This is saying that you have a 100,000 shares and it’s currently at $5 a share and you want to generate this income. You want to get $1,500 a month out of your investment. So, what you have to do in this, you have to sell shares to get your $1,500. Share prices fluctuate. So, going forward, let’s look at if the share price goes up to $6 a share, you only have to sell 250 shares to get your $1,500 that month. But what if the share price goes down to $4 in this example? Now you have to sell 375 shares. So in in a rising price, you’re selling less shares, but in a falling stock price, you’re selling more shares. So now you’re dipping more into principle on these things. So looking at the examples of the or the difference between an income producing like interest rates uh you’re not distributing from your savings but your income will fluctuate because interest rates change. What if you have the systematic withdrawal plan you have consistent income that was the $1,500 a month nice and consistent but now you might be dipping into the principal on this account.
looking beyond the money. As I get again, I know we have a few questions already, but looking, this is just looking beyond the money now at what your retirement is going to look like other than just income. So, the happiness curve, the human happiness curve, when we’re younger and we have less responsibility, we might be happier. Now we’re getting into ages where we have children, we have college costs, we have life going on, and it seems like that happiness curve goes down. And then in more in retirement when there’s less responsibilities again, now our happiness curve goes back up. Looking at happiness factors, so your health number one, and friendships, family, how are you spending your time? Uh, eeky guy, Japanese term, something to live for. What you love, what the world needs, what you get paid for, and what you are good at. Your eeky guy, creating your retirement living plan, uh, contributing to a cause, visiting family and friends, pursuing hobbies, traveling, starting a business, going back to school. So, again, what does your dayto-day look like? How are you living in retirement? Maybe it’s a lot of travel. Maybe it’s you’re homebound and people coming to you. Uh but uh again, how does that look for you specifically? Things accomplished by uh uh people at age 65 plus. And so Peter Roier invented the thesaurus at age 73. KFC started at uh age 65. Madonna beer uh triathlete at age 72. Grandma Moses, age 76, started painting and can you imagine climbing Mount Everest at the age of 80. Um, that’s uh taking on something big there. So, um, what does your retirement look like and what things would you like to accomplish? Retirement is wonderful if you have two essentials, much to live on and much to live for. Uh, so again, a little reminder, the seven things to do before retirement. and then I would love to work with you. Hopefully, you will say yes. I’m going to put up the survey in just a moment here and then I’ll go through some of the questions that we do have already. And again, if you do have another question, uh go ahead and type it in uh and I will get to that at the uh as soon as I go through these and put up the survey. So, here’s a list of products and services that I do offer as well. If you’re just looking for that uh the completed financial plan, the second one down on the left, uh many different uh retirement accounts that I can certainly offer. If you want to be more aggressive, if you want to be very conservative, I have many different investment options that we can certainly discuss to get you to your end goals in retirement. So, I’m going to go through some of the questions here and I’m going to put up the survey. You see a QR code on the screen here. If you would like to uh schedule a time to meet, again, I’ll put up the survey. Please just say yes on there. If you happen to have your camera ready or your phone, put your camera app on and hover over the QR code, click on the little yellow thing that pops up and you will get access to my calendar. You could even do that right now. It’ll be up here for a few more minutes uh as I go through the questions. So, let’s dig into the questions that I have here. So, first I’m going to do is I’m going to put up the survey. And as I go through the survey, I’m going to put that up. So, hopefully you see that up on your screen. Again, just respond to that as I’m going through the questions here. And uh uh and if you do say yes, I’ll be contacting you in the next day or two to schedule a time and you and I will get together and go over your specific plan or whatever you would like to discuss regarding your retirement. So let’s look at question. Does the 25 times rule uh take into account gross or after tax amount needed to retire in your 401k. So this is looking at so when I do the plan just to to kind of go with that I look at what your spending is going to be. So if you have a 401k that everything is taxable coming out, uh we need to gross that up to net what you wouldn’t like to spend. Maybe you have a lot of money in savings. Maybe you have a lot of money in Roth IRA. That’s all tax-free coming out. Obviously, we don’t have to gross up some of those because it’s taxree. You don’t have to pay taxes. But with uh depending where your assets are and when I plug in assets in the retirement plan that I do, I look at uh where everything is, what types of accounts and what’s the order of operations we should be taking out. Should we take savings first? Should we take 401k next? Should we take Roth IAS last? Or what is your specific order of operations that we would do? But just know that if it is 401k assets and I’m looking at spending, we do need to gross up to net. what you would like to spend. Uh let’s see. If I retire at 57 but wait till 67 to take social security, will I get the full amount uh that I would have gotten if I worked until 67? Um so possibly possibly not. Again, it’s based on your uh top 35 years of working. And uh if you are 57 when you go on the social security site there is an assumption the initial assumption is that you’re going to work until at least 62. That is when your number your final number is calculated. Um so but if you work at 58 59 60 and this is part of your top 35 years of of income every time you work a big number goes on and a lower number goes off. Um, so just know that. So, uh, the assumption is that at 57 that you’re going to work some more years. If you don’t, uh, if you, uh, don’t have 35 years of higher income, the assumption of future income is there. So, the income could potentially be reduced. Not guaranteeing that that will happen, but it could. Uh, when do you start adjusting in the portfolio prior to retirement? 5 years, 10 years. uh the uh adjusting the retirement, it’s always going to be the risk tolerance time frame, how much other assets do you have? Some people have more aggressive accounts if they have more conservative accounts as well. But adjusting your portfolio should always be based on your risk tolerance in your time frame. Um so if you have 5 years to 10 years to go to retirement, um again, it’s the number of assets that you have. Where are these and how are they invested? Do you need any money sooner than later? Um, and again, the plan helps us figure this out as well. Uh, conversion. When should I convert a 401k or traditional IRA to Roth IRA? We didn’t touch too much on really on Roth conversions today, but that’s a big part of the planning process that I do as well. um some people that are heavy 401k and many of us are in that scenario that we have more assets in our 401k. That’s where we’ve done the most of our long-term savings is in a four uh 401k and but it’s all taxable coming out later. uh if you retire at age 65, let’s say, and you have to take out your required minimum distributions at either 73 or 75, depending on your birth year, but you got all those years that you don’t have job income should you be converting from traditional IRA, which is a taxable event, uh to a Roth IRA. So, it’s potential that we can do that staying within lower tax brackets. And again, the retirement planning uh tool that I do use takes that in con into into account. We could say, I want to convert, but I don’t want to go higher than the 12% bracket. How much can I convert in given years? And the plan helps us determine that. So, absolutely, it’s something that we should be looking at Roth conversions uh if it fits in your plan. And I do this with many different people typically, you know, usually October, more in November when people get a feel of where their total income is for the year and where their tax bracket is estimated to be and can we convert from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA. Again, every dollar that you do is taxable, but we just want to stay within lower or certain tax brackets. Do you offer Roth conversion strategy? Yes, I just I just Sorry, I didn’t even see that question yet. Uh but absolutely uh simulation running the numbers if it makes sense to annually convert. I just kind of said that so I apologize I wasn’t even looking at your question yet but that is certainly something that we do. Uh Roth conversion strategy is a big part of that plan. Um 6 years 2 months and 8 days for me for retirement. Boy, you got that down to the day. Uh and we’re getting toward the end of the day. uh add maybe two more hours um for today. But uh hopefully that retirement is going to come and again I would love to work on that plan with you. Let’s see if we have any others. That was all the questions that I think I had here. I’m just going to wait another second. Uh again, yep, that looks like all the questions that I have for right now. Thank you all so much for your time and attention today. If you did say yes, we’re going to talk soon. If not, hopefully we’ll still have a discussion in the future someday about your specific plan. Thank you all so much and have a great rest of the day.