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Episode #474 - What Are Brokered CDs And How Do They Work?

Roger: Oh boy. I think I had a curmudgeon moment today when a friend was showing me a new technology that I'm a little worried is going to make it much, much harder for you to learn how to rock retirement. Oh geez.

INTRODUCTION

Hey there. Welcome to the Retirement Answer Man Show. My name is Roger Whitney. I am your host, and this show is dedicated to helping you not just survive retirement but have the confidence because you've done the work to lean in and actually rock retirement.

A friend of mine showed me this new tool called ChatGPT, which is artificial intelligence. It's a software where you can say, as an example, write 20 tweets about retirement planning and this thing will just fly and write 20 different tweets with hashtags and everything else in no time at all and now you can flood Twitter with all your tweets, I guess.

You can actually ask it to write an article on Medicare and retirement, and this artificial intelligence will create an article about that subject. Now they're not perfect yet, but this is just the beginning of where this artificial intelligence is going, for us, in the context of information on the internet where we get all of our information for the most part.

Already, the internet is a game of trying to grab your attention with headlines and with articles to tell you what you should think about, why you should think about, 10 different ways to think about it.

All of it with the purpose to grab your email, to grab your eyes so they can show products to you. It's a big infomercial, it can be very, very confusing. Information is out there. These AI technologies are just going to take this to a whole different level in the amount of information flooding into the internet about all sorts of subjects related to people that are marketing stuff, and they have a right to market stuff. No doubt.

I don't think this tool is bad. It's not good either. I don't think it's either right? It's just a tool. It's all in how it's used. I just see where this might be going in terms of you trying to find safe places to get information and not just information because information is easy. That's just Google, right?

To get wisdom and deeper critical thinking about particular subjects, that's the part that's really hard to find. So, he's showing me this and I'm like, ah. I don't know it. I have no interest in using it. We want to be real. We're committed to being real for you as we work on our five-year strategic plan for the show and everything that we do.

We want to be real. We want to earn your attention. We want to focus on wisdom. Yeah, we want you to be part of our email list, right? Our 6-shot Saturday email list. We share resources. You can give us feedback and there can be some communication. But a real person writes 6-Shot Saturday. Nichole writes it based off of the show.

So yes, we are creating things we think are really helpful for you rocking retirement, but I don't think I want to play the game of having computers just spit out information to grab your eyeballs. It's going to be interesting to see how this goes. I felt like a curmudgeon. I'm like, oh, this is horrific.

When I saw how certain people were using it and it's just started. So that's what I'm talking about. But for today, we're not focused on that. We're focused on you in helping your rock retirement. We'll answer some of your questions.

LISTENER QUESTIONS

Hey, if you have a question for the show, you can go to rogerwhitney.com/askroger, and you can type in that question or you can leave an audio question. If you want to go to the fast lane and try to get the question on the show, we will answer it.

QUESTION ONE

A real human will answer it via this, me talking with you on the show, and our first question comes from a real person named Marlin. Hey, Marlin.

Marlin says,

"I'm a longtime listener. Appreciate the wealth of information on the podcast. While you've discussed certificates of deposits, CDs in the past, I'm not aware of you addressing brokerage CDs and CDs on the secondary market. I've observed that some brokerage houses offer them with higher interest rates than what you can see at a bank. I'm a skeptic at heart and all too familiar with the adage, if it sounds too good to be true... it probably is. What are the risks or downsides of purchasing a brokered CD?"

I think we all know what a certificate of deposit is, right? It's something that a bank issues and you put in your money for one year as an example, and they pay you a stated interest rate for that period of time.

Some of the pros of traditional certificates of deposits are that they earn what's called compound interest, meaning that you earn interest on your interest.

If you put in a dollar and the interest rate is 5%, at the end of the interest cycle, you'll have a dollar and five cents, and then you'll earn your interest rate on the dollar and five cents, not just the dollar.

So that compounds over time and compounding is a very powerful thing, especially over time. If you purchase traditional CDs, there's no purchasing fee. They're simple. They're right at your bank. At the end of the term, you can keep your money in the CD, or you can roll it over to a new one. But the cons are, if you want to get out early, likely there's a penalty, but they have no penalty CDs as well.

Now what is a brokered CD? So, brokered CDs are CDs that are sold by brokers, right? Investment houses and banks from all across the country can offer up CDs for brokers to sell rather than just offer it to customers at their branch. You can see CDs from banks all over the country. That's useful if you have larger dollar amounts that you're putting into CDs well above the $250,000 per customer limit that FDIC has for the single bank.

If you have a million dollars, you could buy four different brokerage CDs, all with different banks, so you get the FDIC protection across those banks. In addition, they can have longer terms, sometimes up to 20 to 30 years, whereas a traditional bank CD is going to have maybe five.

Now, what are some of the downsides or potential downsides of a brokered CD?

Number one is because we have a broker involved, there may be a fee to get into the CD. It could be nominal $20, $30, but there may be a fee to get into the CD. Rates are comparable, but they don't always earn more interest.

Most importantly, brokerage CDs earn what's called simple interest, meaning if you put in a dollar and you're earning 5%, When they pay the interest, they're going to pay you the 5% interest. Then in the next interest cycle, you're going to earn interest just on your dollar. You're not going to earn interest on your interest. So that's called simple interest.

It's not going to have compound interest, which can really change the economics of what you're actually earning because if they pay you out, the interest say of that five cents that we used as an example, now you got to do something with that five cents.

Where are you going to put it to earn interest? Because it'll just sit there probably earning next to nothing interest unless you go invest it in something else. Whereas in a traditional CD, it just automatically stays in the CD and compounds over time, and that's a big deal.

One of the other potential downsides is that brokered CDs may be cull able.

What do we mean by that? So, let's assume you have a three-year CD. With a brokered CD, they have the option, so you'll have to check and do your due diligence if you're buying a brokered CD, that the bank has the right at a future date to pay your money back early. Let's say it's at three year CD and the bank has the right after the second year to say, no, we don't want to do this anymore. We're just going to send you your money back.

Now you have the money back early and you have to go figure out where to invest it. That's the bank's option, not your option. That can be detrimental, especially in a falling interest rate environment where you're happy with your interest at your 5%, interest rates go down and the bank doesn't want to pay that anymore. They exercise that call feature, and now you got to go figure out what to do with the money.

Another potential downside is that if you need to get out of your CD early, it's not going to be a predefined penalty, or no penalty CD as traditional CDs are.

If you want to get out of a brokered CD early, you can ask the broker, say "Hey, I want to get out of this CD."

What's going to happen is the broker is going to try to sell that on the open market, so it's going to become an auction market of who wants to buy this CD from me and what are they willing to pay for that CD?

The price risk is going to have much more of a bond price risk if you try to buy or sell a bond, because it's going to go into the secondary market.

That can be detrimental potentially if you're trying to get out early, because it's not a predetermined penalty of sorts. At the end of the CD's term, if you want a new CD, you're going to have to go through the acquisition process again and just see what's on the open market.

Neither of these are good nor bad, they're just very different. In this environment right now, I think treasury bills are more attractive even than CDs, just simply because of where we're at interest rate environment now. But I think they're both all viable options. You just got to understand the quirks of them, and I'm glad you asked Marlin. Thank you.

QUESTION TWO

All right. Our next question comes from Megan.

And she says,

"Hello, fabulous people. Started listening to the podcast last year and finally finished the last episode today. My husband and I lived overseas for a number of years in the UK and then Switzerland. Then my husband died suddenly this summer at the age of 59, and we were married for almost 39 years. While in the midst of grieving, I am trying to settle estates in two countries and in two languages and trying to make important and impactful decisions. I'm afraid of making a mistake that might have a lifelong impact.

So, my question is, I will receive a spousal survivor pension from my husband's company for $223,000 per year. Or I can receive $115,000 per year and get $187,000 lump sum payment from the assets accrued In the bonus plan, I have to make one choice or the other, and the choice is irrevocable. In addition to that, we have military survivor pension, an assortment of IRAs, 4013's, 401ks, et cetera.

What should I consider when making this decision, and what questions am I not asking that I should ask? I haven't decided where I will live yet, but the pension will be paid regardless of my country.

With much appreciation, Megan."

Well, big virtual hugs from all of us. I think the first thing to realize here is that you're not going to make a mistake on this decision.

How's that?

You're not going to make a mistake whether you take the full $223,000 per year as a pension or the $115,000 a year, per year and $187,000 lump sum upfront. Regardless of what you choose, you're not going to make a mistake. That's important to know because you have a lot of other things that are much higher priority than this.

Now we can go through which one makes sense mathematically, you're going to get, well that's an 8,000 Δ between the 223 and the 215. That's about a 4% withdrawal off of $187,000 if you take the cash. You'll have some inflation protection depending on how you invest it, whereas you get a higher payout. You're not going to make a wrong choice on this.

I think either pathway is totally feasible. You definitely want to spend a lot of time on decisions that are really impactful. Where you're going to live? What is Megan 2.0 going to be and how are you going to begin walking that journey? Some of the other financial decisions to support that journey, but this isn't one of those big decisions.

What should you consider in this decision? It's about a 4% payout, $187,000 with an $8,000 difference. Do you need more financial assets on your net worth statement? One reason that you might take the payout is because you don't have significant financial assets on your net worth statement, meaning 401ks, 403's, savings accounts, et cetera, and it's helpful to have liquidity.

So that one consideration is, do I need that extra liquidity to move into a retirement account? If yes, then 187,000 cash might be very helpful that would go into a 401K, or 403b in this case.

If you already have ample financial resources in terms of maybe insurance payout or 401ks, 403b, et cetera, then I would probably lean towards just taking the full pension.

Between that pension, the military pension, and the other things you're going to have enough social capital to really have amazing cash flow, to solve and make very simple the financial part of things.

My key message here, this isn't going to be a huge decision. You have a lot bigger ones and you're not going to make a mistake regardless of which one you choose. We wish you the best, Megan.

If you need help with resources, just send me an email, roger whitney.com, and we have some resources on some things to consider. But good luck on your journey. I'm excited to hear how it goes.

QUESTION THREE

Our next question is a little bit lighter, and it actually came from somebody in the club who's newer in the club, but it was related to the podcast. So, I think they were new to the podcast and it says,

"I'm new here but have listened off and on to Roger's podcast for about a year. This might be a regional thing, but me being from the South, I have to ask. What does "Huzzah" mean? Where does it come from, and what's the pronunciation?"

I thought that was a funny question. Huzzah! You have to say it that way. It's an exclamation, right? It's a Huzzah! You can't just say huzzah. I first encountered this word when I was doing the tour in Boston on the Boston Tea Party. The guide, and I don't even know if this is true or not, but the guide animating the story, as they were throwing the tea into the harbor, yelled huzzah!

I just grew in love with the word and it's on my email signature and I've used it on the show, and so it's an exclamation. You can't just say it as a word. From the little research that I've done, and others have done, it looks like it's an 1800's British naval term, and I've seen it on certain historical shows and things like that.

So that is what Huzzah! Means. You can't just say huzzah, you have to say huzzah!

All right, love that question.

QUESTION FOUR

Our next question is an audio question, which is one of the ones that we love most. So, let's hear from Jason.

Jason: Hi Roger. Love your show and thank you for all the great advice you provide on your podcast.

I have a question which I'm confident that can benefit many others. My wife and I are 50 and 51 and plan to retire in five to six years. We're currently in the 35% federal tax bracket. I'm a technology consultant and currently employed as an hourly W2 employee, in which case the employer handles all the payroll taxes and I just file my taxes as most Americans do at the end of the year.

I have the option to become an independent contractor in utilize a 10 99 and filing my own taxes. I work from home and do not have a lot of deductible expenses that I'm aware of. I know that as a 1099 employee. I would need to cover these additional taxes, which wouldn't necessitate a higher hourly rate if I move from being a W2 employee.

We currently utilize my wife's benefits from her employer, so I do not utilize any of my employer benefits. My question is how do I make a more informed decision on my new hourly rate to make it worth covering the additional taxes and accounting fees as a starting point, and then to help me determine a rate beyond that for the added hassle of setting up the LLC?

I'm using a tax accountant for the taxation, et cetera. So beyond financial, are there other considerations that I should think about? Finally, I have struggled with finding a tax planner who can provide more detailed planning advice like this. Any advice on how to locate one and is it important to find one locally versus online doing zoom meetings, et cetera?

Thanks, Roger. Look forward to your feedback.

Roger: So that's a great question, Jason. Let's talk about some differences between being a W2 employee and an independent contractor.

First off, even if there's a W2 role at the company that you're looking at, it's not necessarily feasible for the company, just the employer, to simply flip a switch and have you go from one to the other. You can check out the IRS page on the differences between W2 employees and independent contractors at the IRS website.

Actually, we have a resource. We'll have a link to that IRS page that we'll put in our 6-Shot Saturday email.

So, let's talk about the differences between W2 and independent contractor. If you work as a W2 employee, you are an employee of the company. That implies a longer-term relationship where you are working for them and from a compensation perspective, they're going to process your payroll.

When it comes to paying Social Security and Medicare tax, yes, you're going to pay your portion, but the company matches that and pays their portion as well. So, when you pay your Social Security tax out of your paycheck, the company is contributing as well, and all that gets handled and is part of the compensation.

In addition, as a W2 employee, you are going to be part of that company's benefit scheme. If they have a 401k or they have an FSA or a health savings account, you will fall under the eligibility for all of those benefits as an employee of the company. However, the employer has much more discretion to dictate the terms of your employment in terms of when you need to be in the office, what the dress code is, all of those things.

It's expected that they're going to supply all of the equipment that you need to perform your job. because you're an employee. You're going to come in and work under their structure.

Now, if you're an independent contractor, you are essentially self-employed. So, from a tax perspective, that means since you're self-employed, when you earn a dollar and you have to pay the FICA and the Medicare tax, you're going to pay the employee portion and the employer portion because you are self-employed.

That tax will essentially double for you because you have to pay both parts. In addition, you will have no benefit scheme unless you set up a 401k or other types of benefit schemes related to your self-employment. That could be a simple IRA, that could be a 401k. It could be anything in between, it is a self-employed retirement plan.

You would have to set up your own benefits if you chose to do so. Healthcare is part of that as well. When it comes to your work, you're expected to buy your own equipment to do your work because you are self-employed. The company isn't providing you the equipment, you're providing your own equipment.

In addition, because you're self-employed, you get to determine when you do work. There is a lot of gray area here, but you have much more control in organizing how you work and when you work.

The company can't act like an employer to an independent contractor. And there's some rules around that, that the IRS has. This stuff gets very gray in a lot of different ways. And because you own your own business as a 1099 contractor, you can get the benefit of deducting all of the expenses related to your business.

That could be miles, that could be the equipment you buy. Those become business deductions when you're doing your taxes. Generally if you're working as a 1099 for a company, you're going to earn maybe a quarter to a third more on a gross perspective because you have the extra expenses of taxes and your equipment and you have more freedom.

Whereas if you're a W2 employee, there's a lot of other things they're providing for you other than just simply the salary.

There's a lot of benefits of either, the key is just to understand the journey that you're on with each of them. So as an example, I am technically an independent contractor, and so I pay quarterly taxes where when I take money out of my company account, which you'll want to have if you're a 1099, you generally have an account that your business account.

When I pay myself from my business account, I have to pay my income taxes and I have to pay my Social Security and Medicare taxes on a quarterly basis. You'll want to have some structure set up around that. This might be a good thing to build a decision pod on within the club structure so we can help people navigate this.

I also have my own 401k plan that I established, and I pay to establish that. In my organization, we have a mix of W2 employees that are a longer-term employee, and we have a decent number of independent contractors that work for us part-time. One of the advantages of being an independent contractor is that they also work for other people in various roles. They're not exclusive to me. I think there's a value to both of them.

Becoming a business owner can be a great experience for the right person. But there's also scenarios where it can get a little bit too complicated and you could run down some bad holes in terms of not keeping up on your payroll taxes, et cetera.

So those are some of the pros and cons of that. Hopefully that wasn't too rambling there, Jason, but thanks for the question. With that, let's move on to the bring it on segment.

BRING IT ON WITH MARK ROSS

Bring it on. You realize you are the hero that you've been waiting for, don't you? Well, let's go.

Hey, Mark Ross, how are you, sir?

Mark: Yes, sir. Oh man. Doing good. Love being here with you. Roger.

Roger: Coach in the Rock Retirement Club. We are going to talk about passion today, and passion is just really the projects you have in your life that, that energize you, right? Essentially.

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Roger: Okay. What are we going to talk about today under the passion umbrella?

Mark: We're going to talk about work. What does this, how does this work fit retirement?

Roger: Wait a second here. We're re we're talking about retirement. Why are we talking about work?

Mark: Well, we're going to find out. Just keep leaning in.

I think that work is an overlooked word for many in the retirement space. It's misunderstood. Maybe let's talk about it, huh?

Roger: Well, I think people think about work as binary, I'm either working or I'm not, and there's a lot of in between. So, what do you mean by work in retirement?

Mark: Well, for this conversation, we're really talking about the question of should I work for money in retirement?

Should I make that kind of commitment?

How does that fit with my plan of record financially and for the non-financial side of things?

I also want to touch on what work really means in the context of retirement, whether it's for a fee or not.

Roger: Okay. Well bring it.

Mark: When we're working, and many of you listening still are working in that sense, you have a commitment to generate income.

You have an allegiance to your own business or an entrepreneurial pursuit or to your employer. When you leave that, everyone knows this, but we don't think about it until we think about it or experience it. That is, what do you really leave behind?

Here's five quick things, and I think there's more, but big categories.

We leave behind what some may consider financial security.

You know, a paycheck and the benefits and all the stuff that goes with that.

We leave behind some structure, some time management.

We leave behind some identity and some status that we may not get around the house. It's a different story.

Social connection, big thing. Most of the retirees that I talk to, that's the biggest thing they miss the most.

Then a sense of purpose.

These are things that many of us want to find replacements for at some level in some way. How does work fit into all that? Do you have to go get another job? Do you have to start a business? No, necessarily, but I just wanted to talk today about, for those who are struggling with that, should I work in retirement and how do you answer that question?

Roger: I imagine step one is to think of the categories that you brought up and to evaluate how much are you losing and how important are they to you because that will help drill down as to whether work's important for you.

I imagine as an example, if our fear of losing a paycheck is elevated, working halftime even if it's a lot less money or quarter time will be training wheels financially to start to feel comfortable and also give you more freedom to go to pursue other things.

It can be a happy medium, so work could solve that fear by giving you some training wheels. I imagine that's an example.

Mark: I mean some, some might call that “pre-tirement”. You dial it down a little bit. You begin to diff a different pace, different level of commitment. Some of the stress begins to melt away a little bit, depending on your profession.

Some professions. That's just really not practical. It's not going to happen. That's one approach to this. Another is, and, and I'm going to use myself as an example, when I retired from a long career, I had the intention of starting a new venture. I didn't know what it would be, but I had a starting point and I really wanted to lean into it, and I did for the first few years.

I started to realize when I looked around, it was about that time that you started the Rock Retirement Club, and I started hearing stories of other people who were doing things a little bit differently. They were active in retirement, but they weren't necessarily working in retirement.

I started looking at that and saying, you know what? I want a hybrid of this. I want more boundaries. I don't want to put in as much effort on the work piece. Even though I was working for a fee, I wanted to do some work just for me, things that interest me.

So fast forward, that was seven years ago, I retired, and now I have this blend of working in retirement, but at my pace, my lifestyle, and it really fulfills the meaning and the purpose side for me.

Here's one of the considerations and why some people look at this as an obstacle is like, what do I have to give up in the way of freedom to pursue this work that might be important to me?

Only you can answer that question.

Roger: I know with painting, because you're a painter, we learned that last month. It's different in painting, you've gifted a few paintings to me, it's different painting and then giving than painting on commission. There's a little bit more obligation and I got to get it to them. They paid me and it creates more obligation that you may not want.

Mark: Yeah, I don't like that kind of pressure.

You find ways to work through these things and figure them out that work for you. I know for those who are highly driven, big accomplishers in their careers, men and women, it's hard to let go of that stuff. Even if we feel burned out, it doesn't take long to start looking around saying, okay, now that I'm retired from that, how can I feel my time?

 You can circle right back around to, wow, I'm so deep into this stuff and I'm doing it for a fraction of the price I used to do it for, and am I really happy doing this or am I just filling time with accomplishment because I'm so driven?

Roger: It's okay to make money. The key is to make the conscious decision to do it.

Would you consider volunteering work?

Mark: Anything with the intention of accomplishing a predetermined objective is work. If I want my grass to look good, I got to go out there and hire someone or go work. If I want to get paid for something, then I'm going to have to put in the time and the effort to do that.

Here's three categories of work that I think might be helpful for all, all of us to hear.

One is, do I really want to work for a fee? There's obligations and commitments that go along with that. You have to sort through that and see what you're willing to trade off in the way of time and other resources.

If you're in a partnership, if you're married, especially, it's not just you, it's y'all. Your partner may not be on the same page as you. Especially in those beginning days of retirement, my wife wasn't thrilled with me wanting to let go of one career and start in a new direction. Working again.

It's like, man, I'm looking around at all my friends and they're doing this and that, and you're away working. Those are things you got to work through.

It's work for a fee, meaning there are tradeoffs.

Work for free, which is volunteer most of the time, and you can volunteer yourself to death if you really want to. So take some caution there, and that's the second category.

The other is just work for me. Things I may have to pay for out of pocket that interest me. For example, I love art, as you mentioned, and I both show and sell. If someone wants to buy it, I sell it. If someone wants to commission it, if I'm interested, I'll say I'm going to do it because it interests me and I'll give you the first right of refusal, and usually they buy it and that's cool.

But I don't feel pressure with that kind of stuff with my private coaching clients. I wouldn't do it if I didn't get a lot of pleasure from that. That's a combination of me for working for a fee and working for me when I do the kind of work that I do. But here's the deal, if you hear nothing else, lean into this one folks.

There's a tradeoff for everything.

You decide not to work in retirement, not to volunteer in retirement, not to do something that brings you fulfillment. There's a tradeoff for that, and if you want to do something for fulfillment, there's a tradeoff for that.

My calendar is more complex now than it was when I had a career because I have so many choices and I have to plan ahead more than I used to because I've discovered that doing life the way I do it, I call it rocking life in retirement. It takes a lot of intentionality, which is part of what drives me and part of what I love. So, what is work? It's anything you do with a meaning and a purpose that has to fit you.

 Do you really want to work in retirement? If you do, is it going to be for a fee, for free, or just for you?

Roger: That's awesome. Thanks for so much for sharing, Mark. Next month we're going to talk about values and virtues, right?

Mark: Yeah, and I wanted to say a call to action for those who want to take a little smart sprint here.

One is first all, do some soul searching on yourself. Get to know yourself again. Do some self-assessments if that helps you, but what drives you? We'll talk about that next month in values and needs.

Second thing is do some research. That's an outside job. The first one's an inside job.

Things that interest you that you might want to work on. If you're not retired, do some research ahead of time, talk to people, think about it.

Then number three, if you really want to go deeper and faster, find a good coach that's a good fit for you who can help you kind of sort through this stuff and invest in yourself.

So that's what I have to say about work. I love working in retirement and we're all working at something, whether we're retired or not.

Awesome. Now let's go set that smart sprint.

TODAY’S SMART SPRINT SEGMENT

On your marks, get set...

Roger: We're off to take a little baby step you can take in the next seven days to not just rock roll retirement, but rock your life.

All right, in the next seven days, say Saturday when we send it to you. Download the relational nutrient card that Nick was gracious enough to give us and review it within the context of the conversation we had and maybe share it with your spouse.

Look at those four quadrants, and then the next time you want to talk to your spouse or to a good friend about something, preface it with, this is what I need from you. I need you to provide me some reality. I need some quadrant three from you. Provide me some reality.

Or maybe it's quadrant one, I just need you to be present and just hear me. Don't need to be fixed. Just be present, let me just get this off my chest.

Tell the person what it is you need so they can serve you better. A great idea, isn't it?

It's hard to remember to do. The other day Shauna and I were walking Sherlock like we do every day, and that's our time to chat and talk.

I'm working on this five-year vision for what I want the podcast and the business to be. I know the purpose, the reason we exist, that's to empower people to rock retirement. That's very clear, but I haven't really defined the mission of what we want to build over the next five, six years. So, I've been doing a lot of thinking on that.

We're walking. and I wanted to share with her some of my brainstorming of what we could build, and really what I wanted is just for her to be present. Just let me wax over what could be, that's all I needed, but I didn't tell her that. So I started to cast all these grand visions, and in her mind she's thinking of all the gaps and all the things that it's going to take to potentially do one of those things.

She was rightfully pointing those out and challenging, being a great sounding board from that perspective, but that wasn't what I was looking for. But she had no clue what I was looking for because I didn't tell her what I was looking for. It was a great learning experience for me and a reminder, tell people what you need for them when you're going to have a conversation about something a little deeper.

So why don't you try that this week?

ROCK RETIREMENT PLEDGE

At this time of the show, I want to remind you of our pledge to you who has honored us with listening to this show week after week as you work towards Rocking Retirement. It's really an honor to be on that journey with you.

As I mentioned, is our purpose is to empower you to rock retirement, and that is the full integration of all of your money and all this financial stuff with your authentic life.

You get those things integrated; you're living with integrity.

That's our focus and we want to help you have hope, which is having an inspiring goal, having agency and identifying pathways. And we want to do that in an authentic way. No pretense, no chat GPT or artificial intelligence.

We want to be humble; we want to be respectful, and we want to remain curious so we can approach everything with fresh eyes and hold our own beliefs.

To hold how to do that journey up for examination so we can confirm and solidify those beliefs or adjust them as reality unfolds.

We want to have freedom for you, meaning that we want to be free from big financial firms.

We want to be free from product.

We're never going to talk about product for money. That's not what the show's going to do. We're not going to use gimmicks, going to try to be as authentic as possible, and we're going to focus on action, on you taking incremental action, you expanding your perspective.

We want you to rock retirement. I'm all in on that.

Let's do this.

The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance references, historical and does not guarantee future results. All indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested in directly.

Make sure you consult your legal, tax or financial advisor before making any decisions.