transcript
Speech-to-text transcription can look a little quirky. Please excuse any grammar or spelling errors.
Episode #500 - 500 Episodes And Still Rocking
Roger: "When I was a young man, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. I didn't want to be a failure, so I did ten times more work."- George Bernard Shaw.
Well, hey there, welcome to the Retirement Answer Man Show.
This is the show dedicated to helping you not just survive retirement, but to have the confidence because you're doing the work consistently to lean in and really rock retirement, have a great life today and tomorrow.
Today is going to be a little bit of a different show.
It is show number 500. So, we are going to pause our normal programming to reflect a little bit, maybe call out some of the highlights over the last 500 episodes and share my thoughts as well as some thoughts from listeners. So, it's going to be a little bit different. I think the quote at the beginning is appropriate.
A lot of failures over these 500 episodes, a lot of missteps, a lot of trials and errors and corrections. That's part of it. That's the consistency part of it, and I'm proud that I stayed the course and have continued to try to iterate and focus on you. And remember to focus on you and what you're trying to accomplish in your life.
Now, this idea of taking a whole show just to celebrate and reflect is a little uncomfortable, because I'm not that great at celebrating. I think most of us aren't. A lot of studies say that we aren't, but I think it was three years ago, I chose the word celebrate as my word for the year because I have such a hard time doing it.
As soon as we achieve something, whether it's issuing a podcast or creating a course in the club or whatever it is, I'm looking on to the next thing and I have a hard time pausing and giving myself an “at a boy”. It's just hard, so it's important that we do that. In fact, if you check out tiny habits, we'll put a philosopher's note in our 6-Shot Saturday email to help remind you.
There's a book called Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg, a Stanford professor, about building tiny habits and celebrate is crucial. He has some good wisdom in there and we'll share a philosopher's note from the heroic structure which will summarize the book and give you a very simple framework for adding or deleting habits, and one of the steps in the three steps is to celebrate. Yeah, that's like me. I did that. So, I'm going to do some celebration.
PRACTICAL PLANNING SEGMENT
So, let's start off. with what I'm proud of about the show. Now, this is not a comprehensive list. This is just me noodling on this this morning.
Number one is, I'm proud of focusing on the purpose of all of this stuff called retirement planning, which is for you to create a great life in the one shot that you have, and that great life has to take into account that you're as healthy as you're going to be now. And you want to squeeze out every bit of life you can right now. But you also want to be okay when you're 80 or 90 or 100. There's that tension between those two. But that's the purpose of all of this, the harvesting of all the wealth that you've created. I'm proud of that.
Number two is I'm proud of not focusing on political aspects, market predictions, and other things outside of control. Now we get into policy, but I'm proud that we're not focused on politics and going down market predictions and what's going to zig and what's going to zag. All these things outside of our control that are important on the periphery but not central to you taking action in your life. I'm proud that we don't focus on that stuff.
I am also proud that I'm not afraid to explore sensitive topics and mention things that might be sensitive to some in passing. A good example is, we did an interview with Amy Bloom on assisted suicide and her journey with her husband. That's a sensitive topic, depending on your beliefs and morals and all sorts of things, you may really hate that show. I know some of you did because I got the emails. But we approached it with curious eyes, not with judgmental eyes to just understand the thinking and getting some wisdom there, even if it doesn't fit something that you think is correct for you.
I think it's an appropriate topic.
Although we don't get into politics, we mentioned names. We mentioned Obama. We mentioned Trump. We mentioned Biden. We mentioned people in passing, but it's always with the intent of trying to make a point about a topic we're discussing about. So, I'm not afraid of that. Those things will just fall where they are.
Number four, I'm proud that we've always tried to stay curious. I use this show, and this was the original intent of the show, is when I'm thinking on a topic, I'm trying to do it in an organized way with fresh eyes, selfishly for myself, because it helps me sharpen my saw when I'm giving advice in my private practice with clients.
So Roth opportunity is a great example of if I had to think through that in an organized way and make sure I refreshed my understanding of the rules and thought through how to get to a decision on, say, doing a Roth conversion, and it's organized in a way that helps me think through it for myself, but I think it also helps you think through it. I always want to stay curious.
Number five, I love that we don't play games and tactics. We don't have marketing tactics or games that we play. Now, that's not to say that we haven't tested things like that over time. We've had advertising, we've had promotions over the last eight and a half years. I've tested a lot of those things mainly because everybody tells you that's what you're supposed to do.
There's this FOMO, am I missing out because I'm doing it the way I want to do it? But I've always iterated and said no to almost all of them because they just don't feel right. I just want it to be about us chatting about how to rock retirement. So, we don't want to play games and tactics.
I love being transparent. I don't worry about messing up my words and I share a lot more than I probably should about my life and my wife.
Lastly, I'll say I'm proud of always focusing on the best of people. When I get emails and when I have conversations with listeners or club members, y'all are a bunch of amazing people. You don't know it because it's just you listening to me and maybe hearing me answer a question, but I interact with a lot of listeners. I'm blown away at how nice and proactive and intentional they are about creating a great life and wanting to be part of the solution to creating a better world. So that's all I'm proud of. I'm proud of that.
Okay, let's move on. To some of my observations on rocking retirement that I've gained from these 500 episodes.
Number one is that the key element that needs to be in place for a retirement plan is confidence in your plan, and confidence is one of those things that diminishes over time. It has to be rekindled periodically, just like a campfire. Doesn't matter how great the math is, how sophisticated the tools are, if you don't have a base understanding and confidence in exactly how the plan is going to work, you still are going to act or play life scared. You have to have confidence in the plan. So, understanding not just that it's feasible long term based on these assumptions is important, but you have to understand exactly how life is going to work and feel like you have control. So, you can have that vision for a better future. You know exactly that you have agency to act to have your hand on the wheel as best you can, and then you have some pathways to use that agency. That's critical.
Number two is, when it comes to you consuming retirement information and wisdom, it's really important to understand that common wisdom for many does not mean that it applies to you. When we look at research, whether it's the 4% rule or anything that is for the masses, and especially things that are academic based, they are focused on what works for the population as a whole and from a policy perspective and in the long-term models.
There's a lot of wisdom and value to be obtained from that research and from common wisdom for the population, but that doesn't mean it applies to you, because you are not the population. You are one iteration of your life, and you have your own unique values, priorities, goals, cash flow situation, and finances, and your only concern is to navigate your retirement. Eek out as much life as you can from it in as safe a way as possible so you can have confidence in it. It's very easy to conflate those two wisdoms that is for the population and thinking that, oh, I just have to go do that. No, no, no, no. That's a macro view. You are micro, you are you, and that's the one thing that counts in your retirement planning.
Number three, my wisdom that I think we talk about is that improving the quality and consistency of your decision making is the best path to rocking retirement. That is the central thing that we should work on because almost every decision you make is going to be a judgment call where it's not clear in black and white. Almost everything is binary or not binary. So, you have to think through things in an organized way in order to make a judgment call for you, and you want to make quality, you want to improve the quality of your decisions, and you want to be consistent in your decision making. That's how you're going to do this. That's why we focus a lot on that.
Number four, and I love math as much as the next person, but math, retirement calculators, forecasts, they provide a false sense of precision. Even though we know their assumptions and we acknowledge that the future is unknown, et cetera, when we look at the results of those tools and the forecast of those tools, we still see it as this is what's going to happen. Just subconsciously we do. In the worst case, it can be used as a crutch to avoid making hard judgment calls. We can rely on the math too much, and math is a beautiful thing, but its utility diminishes when you have a multi factor uncertain environment that has a long-time frame. When you have so many different things coming into play that we can't know.
Math works really well, and can be extremely precise, say, in an engineering equation, where going out a number of decimals can mean more precision. But when you're dealing with a very fluid changing environment, its value diminishes greatly. Doesn't mean you don't use it. Doesn't mean it's not important, but it isn’t everything.
Number five, and this is related, optionality is the most undervalued concept in retirement planning. You have to have options. You have to have flexibility.
Number six, managing uncertainty is the primary concern hence, we've got to improve the quality and the consistency of our decision making.
Number seven, this one threw me off as I was examining this. Community is critical for creating a great life. I see that in the Rock Retirement Club. It's my own personal journey. I had a very small community, prior to podcasting for sure, but via podcasting and talking to listeners and other podcasters and going to conferences, I treasure the relationships I have with people like you that email me or in the club where we chat, or we have a quick phone call or we're on a meetup.
It has blown away my life and I've seen the impact of community on others. So, I think that is a central thing that we have to focus on to rock retirement.
All right, number eight, trust yourself, trust yourself, trust yourself. You're smart enough. It just takes intentional action and maybe a little education and a lot of trial and error. Trust yourself.
Number nine, focus on the person that's in front of you, not the person that's next. That's something I learned personally in terms of, with this podcast, I don't care about the person that's not listening to the show yet. I'm not always just trying to get that person. I just want to talk to you and help you iterate your journey in a good way.
Then number 10, begin the day with a smile. Sounds so simple. Seriously, smile and say, I'm, it's going to be a great day. I'm going to have challenges today, but it's going to be a great day.
Those are some of my thoughts in the last 500 and lessons that I've learned. There are countless others, but those are the ones that came to mind.
Now let's go focus on you listeners that shared some of your insights on your favorite episodes, and maybe we can tease out some wisdom that some of you might not have heard or have missed.
LISTENER QUESTIONS
So, what we're going to do in this segment to celebrate 500 episodes is hear from listeners. Nicole in 6-Shot Saturday asked some people to share their favorite episodes and maybe some wisdom they learned, and that might be something that prompts you to find something in the archives that can help you on your journey.
Before we do that, I want to give a big shout out to Larry and Terry. I've known them for a while. They're members of the Rock Retirement Club. They tracked down my home address and sent me custom cookies that had our logo and 500 and huzzah, there was a huzzah cookie and a note that says,
"Congratulations on the 500th podcast episode. We have learned so much from you and look forward to continuing to learn as we enter retirement. Keep rocking."
Thank you, Larry and Terry. Just FYI on that. Shauna has been out of town a lot, and when I got the cookies, I had a few and then I put them on the counter, and I went to have dinner with my nephew who's going off to college. I came back and Sherlock ate, like, four or five of them! Oh, he was in trouble. So, his new nickname is the Cookie Monster. Thank you, Larry and Terry. I appreciate you.
JEANIE HAS GAINED CONFIDENCE IN HER RETIREMENT
All right, let's go to our first message from Jeannie.
Jeanie: Hi, Roger. It's Jeannie from Alaska. I hope you enjoyed your cruise to our beautiful state and are enjoying even more your cruise with your lovely wife to Europe.
Your podcast and joining the RRC has brought me confidence in my retirement, entertainment, and joy. So, bless you and keep up the good work.
Roger: Thank you, Jeannie, and Alaska was amazing with a bunch of RRC’ers. And I'm so glad that you're gaining confidence from the show and the tools that we're providing.
I'm going to talk about confidence here for just for a second. I know I just talked about it in the last episode. Via the Rock Retirement Club, there was a period of time where I had private office hours where I talked to eight or nine people every week for 30 minutes about a particular topic that they wanted that they were exploring in their journey to rock retirement. One of my observations from those hundred plus conversations over however many years was that there is a crisis of confidence and it's a critical thing for a lot of people.
Now we have a big crisis in retirement planning of people that Have not been able to save enough, and they're underfunded for the retirement. That is the huge macro crisis in retirement. That's critical from a policy standpoint. What do we do about that? How do we help these people? One that seems like it's not as important is there are a lot of people either through good fortune or hard work or family or a combination of all of those types of things have saved resources, and have options, they're constrained in their planning or even overfunded. But in my observation of talking to so many in that situation the common thread is the confidence to actually go live life because they're still worried about not accumulating assets, about inflation, about markets, about being okay when they're 90. They're so used to denying themselves and delayed gratification that they're not able to live. That is a crisis.
Now, it's different than people that don't have enough money, but where these two can come into play, in my observation, is that the people that are overfunded, if they could have the confidence to live more fully, they could give more, they could volunteer more, they could help more, and help bring, solve the problem for everybody.
So, I'm glad, Jeanie, that you have confidence, and we'll try to help you continue to renew that.
ERIC APPRECIATES THE WORD "ITERATE"
So, our next observation comes from Eric.
Eric: Hey, Roger. Congratulations on 500 shows. I love Retirement Answer Man and where else can you get stoic philosophy along with practical and helpful financial advice and the highest number of uses of the word iterate in any podcast that is currently excellent.
Wish you all the best for the next 500.
Roger: Thanks so much, Eric. Yes. Stoic philosophy is something I have found very helpful and pairs well with my belief in God, they both actually work really well together. The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday would be a great gift for yourself or for someone else. It helps center in that critical decision making.
Iterate. Yes. Iterate. When I taught a course at TCU years ago, at the end of the course, a student gave me a synonym dictionary, I guess you would call it, a physical synonym dictionary, because evidently, I have some crutch words, iterate may be one of them. So, I will take that under advisor and I will iterate on that Eric to try to get better.
MARY ELLEN APPRECIATED THE SHOWS ON THE RV LIFESTYLE
Our next bit of wisdom comes from Mary Ellen related to the RV lifestyle.
Mary Ellen: Hey, Roger and team. This is Mary Ellen from Oregon. Congrats on 500 episodes. While, I don't have a specific favorite. One I think about a lot is a show or maybe a series of shows on RVing and the RVing lifestyle. My husband and I love to travel, and I sometimes get tempted when I see an RV for sale.
But your advice, rent before you buy, always comes to mind and it keeps me from getting too far ahead of myself. It's one of the many pieces of useful tidbits I've received from the show through my years of listening. Thanks for doing what you do. Here's to another 500 episodes.
Roger: I think we actually covered that topic twice, Mary Ellen.
One very early on, like in the first, I want to say in the first quarter or two, eight and a half years ago, and then a few years later.
Yeah, RV, I had my own personal experience there that I shared, and then we iterated on how do you make this decision? So, I'm glad that that has helped you. By the way, in our 6-Shot Saturday email, we will share links to shows that are being mentioned or series that are being mentioned, so you can go back and listen to those if they seem like they might be appropriate for you.
If you're not signed up for our 6-Shot Saturday email, you can do that at 6ShotSaturday.com or you can go to rogerwhitney.com and just put in your name and email and you'll get a weekly summary of the show with links of things that we talked about.
RAY APPRECIATES THE WILLINGNESS TO BE UNCOMFORTABLE
Our next favorite episode comes from Ray and Ray says,
" Out of the sea of retirement podcasts, you guys have found a way to stand out and provide value with a focus on the intangibles of this life phase.
I can get the math and tax law information anywhere. I can get information with a humorous bent many places, but I keep coming back to the Retirement Answer Man show because of the human connection we all need.
The most powerful and memorable episode was the review of Amy Bloom's book and when she shared her story about the end of her husband's life and how they approached it. Keep up the great work."
Thanks, Ray. And I think I mentioned that one earlier. That was a very controversial one. I explored it. I have very strong views related to that in my faith, etc. But I thought it was worth exploring because others had brought up the topic. I think it was actually a suggestion, that topic from someone in the RRC, and I wanted to explore it with curious eyes, even though it's a little uncomfortable.
So, I'm glad that you're enjoying the show, Ray, and we'll have a link to that episode in our 6-Shot Saturday email.
ONE LISTENER APPRECIATES THE WINGS FOR WIDOWS LINK
Our next one comes from Ben, and this is, I think, a critical one. I know that I'm personally going through with my mother-in-law right now. She lost her husband, my father-in-law, a few months ago.
Ben says,
"Episode 479, Widowed in Retirement,” has been a memorable episode for me. I had the opportunity to share Wings for Widows. Wings for Widows is an organization, nonprofit, totally free for widows and widowers that are looking for resources and a guide."
We had the gentleman that started the organization on the show.
But Ben says,
"I had the opportunity to share Wings for Widows as a resource for a coworker a few weeks ago, and she mentioned how helpful it has been as she works through the unexpected death of her spouse. Thank you for bringing the wonderful resource and others to us. This is just another example of the impact of your show."
That's awesome, Ben. Walk with the wise, become wise. I think that Wings for Widows was actually a suggestion from someone else that I went and reached out to in order to have that resource on the show.
If you know someone, or if you are going through the loss of a spouse, this is an organization that can help organize things in an empathetic way. Thanks for sharing that, Ben.
THE "PRE-TIREMENT" HAS HELPED EXPAND JOHN'S VISION OF RETIREMENT
Our next comment and wisdom comes from John related to pre-tirement.
John: Roger, my wife and I were preparing to retire early in our fifties. We're both professionals and we were really confused as to what we were going to do for the rest of our lives.
We had never even considered what you termed “pre-tirement” and it completely blew us away and opened our minds to new possibilities. We are now "pre-tired" and loving it. Can't thank you enough. Keep up the great work and congratulations on the 500th podcast, unbelievable.
Roger: John, that just makes me smile to hear that something we talked about helped expand the vision of what you two could accomplish in retirement, and I hope you're rocking it.
So, we're going to talk about pre-tirement, but I want to talk about a premise related to pre-tirement and work and retirement. We tend to frame decisions as binary. I am working, and then I retire. That binary framing can really limit our creativity in creating a great life, and that binary framing can be applied to a lot of things.
So, this concept of pre-tirement is, rather than think about it as working and retirement, what if there's an in between where I can work, but at a slower pace and in return that will give me income and more time freedom, and I can slowly evolve towards full retirement rather than just simply flipping a light switch. There can be a lot of advantages to that obviously the income of working halftime or working part time in something completely different than what you're doing but also, it can give you a purpose, some structure to your day while you figure out what you're going to do with all that time freedom.
That can be advantageous for someone who has been so involved in working at such a hard pace that they don't have a lot of time or haven't had a lot of time to explore who they are outside of work. I think it's a really sweet spot for retirement and from a societal or economic standpoint, there is a brain drain going on with losing people like you. Seasoned veterans, not just with a particular skill set, maybe in an industry, but with life wisdom and judgment that is leaving the marketplace. So, there's more opportunity than ever to find either half time at work or part time at work or doing something totally different where there's a win win where you get some time freedom you get some benefits and some money, and they get your wisdom in return.
So exciting to hear that John, keep thinking in non-binary terms.
ELAINE APPRECIATES ONE OF MY COMMENTS
Next one comes from Elaine related to uncertainty.
Elaine: Hi, Roger.
This is Elaine from Massachusetts. Congratulations on episode 500. I've been listening to the podcast for about two years now, and I've also been listening to your old episodes every day on my exercise bike. Now on episode 81, my favorite Roger-ism is that no one can predict the future. Thank you and your team for all your hard work.
Roger: Wow. Thanks for sharing Elaine and hope you're having a great ride. It amazes me when people go back to listen to older episodes and managing uncertainty is the central issue we have in most things, but especially retirement. So, thank you so much for sharing.
KEVIN'S THOUGHTS
Last but not least, we're going to hear from our own Kevin Lyles, who shared a audio comment.
Kevin: Hi, Roger. This is Kevin Lyles. 500 episodes of the Retirement Answer Man podcast. Wow, what an achievement.
My favorite episodes are those Coach's Corner segments or Bring It On segments, where you bring me on to talk about the non-financial side of retirement.
But seriously, thanks, Roger, for helping me and thousands of others to rock retirement.
Here's to 500 more episodes, buddy.
BRING IT ON WITH MARK ROSS
Roger: Now it's time to bring it on and focus on the non-financial domain of rocking retirement, and to help us along with some words on finding a passion is Mark Ross.
Mark: Roger, always a pleasure to be here with you.
Roger: Mark, we've recently had a lot of conversation in the club about what I want to do in retirement. I don't really have any passions or things I'm interested in. Some people I think are delaying retirement because they think they're supposed to have some already. How do we navigate that sort of boat stuck in the water?
Mark: Yeah, great question, because I have heard that, like, I don't have any passions, and it's almost like some shame in there sometimes to admit that, to say it out loud.
There's some intimidation, you know, as young people in school, if you think back on that when you were growing up, it's like a peer pressure kind of thing. Well, sometimes we can feel peer pressure in our retirement season, in that stretch of life where we have a lot more choices than we've had in a long time. One of them is passion. It's like, what does that really mean?
Passion is just a deep devotion to something that interests us, and we pursue it, and they turn into projects often, and so sometimes we say, hey, I don't have any passions, but don't you? Maybe you do.
Roger: Yeah, I think first off, we need to get over the shame part, right?
I mean, shame is a strong word, but of either wow, those people seem to have one right and I don't what's wrong with me and then the other part of that I think can be theirs is big, mine is this and this is not that significant compared to what I'm hearing. So, it's like mine's not as important as somebody else's.
I think those are two roadblocks, too. That's why all we hear about people that supposedly have them including me and you and others. We’re the most vocal but the majority don't really feel like they have one or what it is, it doesn't have to be about changing the world outside of yourself.
Mark: It really doesn't. You talk about the comparison Roger, one of our friends in the rock retirement club recently well, two of the friends and they are completed the hike up to Mount Kilimanjaro to the top and he actually asked me, one of them asked me if I wanted to go on, I go, oh, I don't think so.
He says, well, there's never a time like now. I said, but the deal is that I don't have an interest in that. I don't really want to do that. I've climbed a mountain before without ropes and protection, but I don't want to do that. It just doesn't interest me. So, is that a passion of his? I don't want to compare myself to him. I have other things that interest me and other passions, but I think that sometimes we get stuck like either I don't have a passion or is it okay to have more than one passion?
The answer to the ladder is you can have multiple passions throughout a lifetime. Let's go back to the beginning. What if I think I don't have a passion?
Maybe one of the replies to that is, so what? Maybe you don't, and that's okay. But if you want one, here's a couple of things to keep in mind that you may explore.
One is just to try new activities. Maybe if you haven't been climbing up Kilimanjaro, maybe that's something you might want to try.
Roger: Congratulations, Dan and Bob.
Mark: Exactly, exactly. That's phenomenal. We saw pictures to prove it. You can sometimes reflect on past experiences, things you circle back to when you were a kid and maybe there was something there that intrigued you and you've kind of let it just kind of flare out over time, but it could be something.
By the way, I'm debating because I have a passion for the whole surfing world. I'm debating, I got back into long skateboards, but the other day I started poking around the Internet looking for a surfboard. I thought. I only live 50 miles away, I have an automobile, I can slip it in the back, I go, oh, I just have a passion, I don't know, we'll see, we'll see.
So, I'm exploring my youth again.
One more thing is that you can just take a course or something, get familiar with it, there's so many opportunities to learn today. But I think what I want to say is that if you think you don't have a passion and you're feeling bad about it, here's permission if you accept it, stop. Just don't worry about it.
On the other hand, if you say, I just, I really want to have a passion, then start with an area of interest and it may grow into an area of deeper devotion and passion that you'll pursue over a longer period of time.
Roger: Don't put so much pressure on yourself. I always would beat myself up because I would be really into triathlon for a while and then really into adventure racing, and then really into karate or whatever over the years, I mean, over a long period of time.
I'm like, why don't I just commit myself to one? I've started to say, no, I have a big passion for just learning new stuff.
Mark: I really believe this, that anyone listening today who makes that declaration that I don't have any passions, I bet you do, you just haven't named them.
Roger: Yeah, I love to try new stuff. I mean, I like to explore. Absolutely. If you pull it back a little bit. Great, so great advice as always. So, the one thing that somebody needs to do, remind us.
Mark: Just whatever you heard today, if it sparked an interest, lean into it, take a step and see where it leads.
Roger: And with that, let's go set a smart sprint.
TODAY'S SMART SPRINT SEGMENT
On your marks, get set.
And we're off to set a little baby step we can take in the next seven days to not just rock retirement, but rock life.
All right. In the next seven days, I want you to choose one thing and do some celebration around it. Doesn't have to be big. It can be small. Choose something to celebrate. It's a little uncomfortable.
I know this whole episode was a little uncomfortable for me. But I wanted to take the time. 500 episodes. Walking this journey with you has changed my life and I want to celebrate that. I want you to celebrate something in your life, so I'd be excited to hear what it is.
CONCLUSION
All right, next week we are back to answering your questions, and the title question is going to be a fun one, and that is, should you use historical or projected returns as assumptions in your retirement planning.
Until then, we are dedicated to helping you take baby steps forward in rocking retirement, and I'm so proud to be on this journey with you.
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 are 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.