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Episode #615 - Retirement Goal Case Study

“It isn't normal to know what we want. It's a rare and difficult psychological achievement.” - Abraham Maslow

Roger: Welcome to the show dedicated to helping you not just survive retirement, but to have the confidence to lean in and rock it. My name is Roger Whitney. Hey, thanks for hanging out with me today. This is the last of a four week series on better retirement goal setting. I really enjoyed this. I think a lot. I'm getting a lot out of it. Hopefully you're getting a lot out of it. Today we're going to end with some, a couple case studies that are really going to be avatars, not an actual individual, but based off of experience, we're going to do that. We're going to talk about a couple concepts that are important to discuss to set the table when we think about goal setting. And then at the end, we're going to answer some of your questions so we can help you take a baby step to rocking retirement. Before we get to that, I would like to invite you to join me live on November 6th. That's next Tuesday at 7pm Central. We're gonna have an online meetup where we're gonna talk about the anatomy of goals and how to set them. We're gonna talk about the Go-Go years and: how do we maximize those with having confidence? And we'll be able to have some interaction and questions back and forth and hopefully have a rich discussion. In addition, we're going to invite you to join the fall cohort of the Rock retirement club. This is the last cohort for the year where you can join over a thousand other people just like you that are using the retirement planning software, the education and the community to put in the reps to build better retirement plans of record so they can have confidence. So we'll talk about that as well. You can sign up for this at livewithroger.com All right, with that out of the way, let's set the table before we get to our avatars.

THE FIRST CONCEPT FOR TODAY IS THE CONCEPT OF BUOYANCY.

Roger: The first concept I want to set the table with is the concept of buoyancy. What does buoyancy mean? The best visual I have is thinking of a hot air balloon. You know those things where you go on rides and you toast champagne? I've never actually been on one. Actually, now that I think of it, a hot air balloon, its altitude is controlled by displacement. So what I mean by that is they have that, like, heater in the middle that the pilot or the balloonist, I don't know what they're called. You know, they turn on the heat and then, as they do that, they heat the air inside the balloon, which displaces the cold air, pushes the cold air out, and cold air is heavier than hot air. And that makes the balloon rise because it has hot air inside the balloon, and outside the air is colder. Reverse that. When they don't heat the air, the air slowly drops in temperature to what the normal temperature is of air, I guess, to the outside air. And that displaces the hot air and that makes the balloon fall. Right.

So that's how a hot air balloon works. Too much hot air. Excuse, me. Too much cold air. And you, you're grounded. You're not going to go anywhere. Too much cold air. You never actually retire. In goal setting, you preserve your assets and all your resources, but you miss the opportunity to soar and live. That's the cold air. We don't want too much cold air because you're going to have all your money at the end of life, but you're not going to have lived.

Now, let's look at the opposite. Too much hot air can lead to you soaring off into the clouds, and that can lead to unchecked spending, which can result in running out of fuel. Running out of fuel means running out of money. Discovering too late that the risk is there and you've burned too much fuel or burned too much money and also has the risk of becoming a burden on others. So when we think about goal setting, we don't want to be stuck on the ground and die with too much money because we preserved our resources, but we don't want to fly into the clouds with unchecked spending. So like a balloonist or a pilot, they're constantly heating and turning off the heat and making minor adjustments to find what to find. Buoyancy, not floating off unconstrained, but not on the ground either. They find the happy medium of where they want to be. And I think that's a good metaphor. When we think about goal setting, we don't want the extremes.

ROGER TALKS ABOUT MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS.

Roger: Now, let's add another concept. On top of this, let's go to Abraham Maslow, who created the hierarchy of needs. And I'm not an expert in the hierarchy of needs. I've read snippets of Maslow, but I haven't read his work in detail. But he has this pyramid, that we all have maybe seen. And we'll put a link to a resource on that in our weekly email, the Noodle. So his hierarchy of needs starts at the bottom, which is those base needs, the physiological needs we need. We don't want to be hungry, thirsty, or exhausted. We want to have shelter. We don't want to be sick. We don't want to be in pain. That is job number one before anything else. That's why it's the foundation. Once we have those things, we start to move up and think about other things. And that is safety. Now that's feeling okay in the moment. We want to feel safe and comfortable. Once we achieve that, then we start to move up and we want to feel safe socially and feel love and belonging. When you don't, when you're sick or hungry or cold, you're not thinking about feeling belonging, you're thinking about the pain that you're in at the moment. Once we feel safe and loved, then we move up to self esteem, which is status and being admired. And then the top of the pyramid is self actualization, that's floating off into the clouds. Achieving that, knowing what you want in full nirvana if you're a Buddhist, I think. Right. But you have to start at the bottom. If you don't have that, you can't really be at self actualization. So physiological or needs are paramount as a foundation.

So how does this relate to buoyancy and goals? Well, let's bring it back. Self preservation. That bottom part of the pyramid is your need for safety physiologically and psychologically. The hot air. So that equals cold air. The hot air equals self actualization. The top of the pyramid, you're flying off into the clouds. This is purpose, creativity, experiences, becoming your fullest self and all that stuff. What makes the metaphor so powerful? I think when you combine the two, without cold air self preservation, you have no stable platform and you're reckless, untethered, and will crash. Without hot air self actualization, you never leave the ground. You're merely surviving, not thriving. So this idea of buoyancy and this hierarchy of needs to me speaks to what we're trying to achieve in goal setting. Meaning that some of us are going to be pre wired to go right? You know, we're dreamers and we'll talk about this here in a second.

A LOOK INSIDE THE ADVICE LAB ROGER RUNS WITH HIS WORK TEAM.

Roger: So with that table set, let's go talk about our two avatar case studies. Internally we have meaning, my team, we have something called the advice lab where we all get together the same day at the same time for the same amount of time, same agenda. And we get together and we share the experiences we're having. Working with clients, we're talking about what's working well, where we have challenges and insights that we're Gleaning so we can share them as a group and decide how do we improve as each other to better serve. And, now a lot of that comes to the show. That's part of what this process is, is that we're talking about this in the advice lab recently, we were talking about goal setting. That sort of led to this exploration on the podcast. And one of the realizations has been that everybody's wired differently. Wow. Duh. We have this process vision and then make it feasible and then make it resilient, and then look at optimization. It's sort of a hierarchy of needs, but it has to be approached differently with each individual or couple because they have their own family origin stories that have and lessons throughout life that have given them scripts that they run over and over again, and also psychological needs based off of those things. And so the process, those four pillars need to be adjusted, especially initially when it comes to goal setting, in order to help give them what they need. Remember, the ultimate intent is of the process of retirement planning is for you to have confidence to lean into your life in retirement knowing that you can never get certainty and solve it all. And in order to get confidence for you, in addition to having a very sound process that you keep relevant through little conversations, you have to make sure it provides the psychological needs that you as an individual have. It doesn't matter if it mathematically makes sense, if that's not the COVID or the thing that's going to give you confidence. So it has to be adjusted. And that's what we were talking about. So to do that with case studies, what I did was with the. You, know, with the consult of.

INTRODUCTION OF TWO AVATARS CREATED BY THE TEAM — THE GRINDER AND THE DREAMER.

Roger: The team created two avatars. I created an avatar of the. Like an example of the Grinder, the cold air, we'll call it, and the Dreamer, just pure hot air. So I went to the extremes of two different archetypes, that's the word to make a point of. How do you approach it if you're one or the other? Now, nobody is 100% one or the other, but sometimes we end up playing these roles. So it's going to be up to you to think about and reflect on which parts resonate with you more, because you might have a little bit of each, but this might help you in building a plan of record to provide you the confidence and comfort that you need. Make sense?

FIRST, ROGER BREAKS DOWN THE GRINDER.

Roger: Okay, so let's start with the Grinder. And this is just a general profile from doing this for 30 years and trying to pay attention. They typically are. Let's look at the profile. They're the financial provider, maybe the sole breadwinner. They're the strong saver. Their focus is on obligations and tasks and risks. They're the, they're the cold air, not in a negative way. They're the ones that keep everything grounded, think about the future. And they're working away. They are focused on work, probably working a lot, 50 to 60 hours a week. They have little time for hobbies or life or friends, etc. They're working hard. They may manage teams, so they have an obligation. Generally they're good leaders in managing teams because they take on their obligations and they lead them. They get confidence and comfort in being a leader and being dependable for other people. They probably travel a lot. In some ways, they may be addicted to being needed when it comes to their team and achievement in terms of building their net worth and safety. So what's their view of retirement? And again, I'm just generalizing from my observations. Well, retirement is old people. There's some fear and anxiety about leaving work and being needed. There's some fear and anxiety about not making money and about not having enough. There's a little bit of a scarcity mindset where it's like, no, the attitude internally might be, well, you work until they stop paying you. Why would you give up a great paying job where you can make money and save? Now everybody's going to be at some level of that. But, that's their view of retirement. And they may think of it as fixed and shrinking and I have to live off fixed income. Very scarcity mindset.

What is the challenge that a grinder faces? Well, they have old scripts, family of origin, scarcity mindset. I think of myself. I was very fearful and didn't have a lot of confidence in my. I was latchkey kid for a good part of my foundational years. Didn't have a lot of confidence. Made money mistakes, A, lot of money mistakes in my 20s, and then started to frame that man. I don't ever want to be that Roger again. So that script got implanted when I was making all these mistakes and I spent my 30s cleaning them up and cleaning up, basically maturing as a person. And my script that I have to work through is not being that guy again. That's one thing that drives me to do this podcast and do the club and serve clients. I want to take a harder path because I feel like I didn't and I want to be worthy. So that's a script I replay and I had to get over that script to buy the Colorado house. So that's an example of a script. So from a Maslow hierarchy of need, or Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we're grounded in self preservation, physiological safety, security, those first two areas of, of the pyramid.

WHAT ARE TRIGGERS THAT MIGHT HELP A GRINDER REEVALUATE RETIREMENT PLANNING?

Roger: So what are triggers that might help a grinder reevaluate and actually approach retirement with a more open attitude than just because they don't have any space to think about anything. They're just grinding. What is a trigger that might be an opportunity for a grinder to reflect? Well, and I call this coming out of the matrix because we tend to, we are our habits, and we tend to be in our habits until there's a trigger. And that's like a clarity moment. That is an opportunity that if we don't take advantage of it, we go back into the matrix. So what are those triggers? One is relationship stress. If you have personal relationships or spousal relationships that are deteriorating and you're getting at crisis level related to a, marriage, let's say, that can bring a moment of clarity. Not for everybody, but it's an opportunity to bring a moment of clarity of what's really important to me. They come up from the grind and say, oh, wait a second, what's going on? So relationship stress can be. Bring this moment of clarity. A very common one is health stresses. Personal. I just had a heart issue. I had that come to Jesus meeting with my doctor. I had a heart attack. Whatever it is, that is a trigger that brings you out of the matrix and is an opportunity to focus on what's really important when you're not busy grinding family health stresses. A spouse with a disease or a spouse that's struggling and in pain, that can be a, trigger and a moment of opportunity. And obviously someone close to you that is struggling with health. It could be a colleague that just keeled over and died. It could be a family member. These things bring into focus what we say is important, but we tend to not always keep front and center because we're grinding. These are opportunities and triggers. So what happens when we have these? How do you.

HOW DO YOU NAVIGATE AS A GRINDER OR AS SOMEONE IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH A GRINDER?

Roger: Well, before we go there, what do grinders crave? They crave safety, they crave certainty, they crave agency. So this is what the psychological cover that they have to feel when they're thinking about this retirement planning process because they're grinding. They are achievement based in a healthy or unhealthy way. So the main objective when you're approaching retirement planning, if this is an avatar that you lean towards, is not thinking about Dreaming big. That's so far beyond the vision of the extreme grinder. Because in their world, they are in the middle of the ocean taking care of everything that they everybody else, and they're just trying to keep their head above water. And when you're gulping water and you're trying to keep your head above water so you can take on the load that you took on either overtly or without even realizing it, you're not thinking about which way you want to swim. You just want to survive. So one of the objectives in retirement planning needs to be more focused on taking away the pain so they can start to give themselves space to detox from all that stress and obligation, so that they maybe can start moderating their grinding and think beyond that psychological need at the bottom of the pyramid so they can move up the pyramid. You need to give them space to move up that pyramid and even explore it. They're going to stay psychological and, or, physiological and safety without giving space. You need to stabilize them so that they can actually think about where they want to swim. When we're thinking about goal setting. So that's. Those are the main objectives that I think of.

HOW DO YOU NAVIGATE AS A GRINDER OR AS SOMEONE IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH A GRINDER?

Roger: So how do you navigate this as a grinder or if you have someone in your life that has these tendencies? Well, one is you want to start helping them reframe things. And this can be difficult if it's a spouse, because it's hard to, especially if you've been married for a long period of time. You're in the mosh pit of psychological and emotions with them. So. So in those instances, sometimes if we don't have the vocabulary and the habits of communicating, nobody's getting heard. But they need to begin to reframe from binary thinking to optionality thinking. It's not I must work and grind or I retire. That's binary. There's a lot of in betweens there where you can get creative. You want to help them look at the grayness of things so that it doesn't become polarizing from work or not work. You want to help them gain perspective. Because when you're in the mosh pit of your life, you don't have any perspective. You know, some of the metaphors are, does a fish actually know it's in water? No, they just are in water. They don't know what that means. They don't have any perspective. In negotiation with yourself or others, you want to, what we call, go to the balcony. I think Chris Voss, talks about that in his negotiation book, which is to get outside of yourself to observe what's really going on so you can get perspective. And journaling does this. All sorts of things can do this. But a grinder is not going to have a lot of space. And when you have these triggers that get them out of the matrix, it's an opportunity to maybe help them get some perspective in reframing things. So how might you do this? I think fresh Voices are a great way to do this. And that could be an advisor, it could be a coach, it could be a former colleague that's already retired, perhaps one that's much farther down the path because they have perspective and they were like the grinder. And that's the value of community, where we can talk to people that are farther along in this journey. And they were us, they were grinding. And they can help us see the path and help us, see ourselves in them. So I think Fresh Voice is a great way to help reframe. We can also help them navigate this by reframing what retirement is. It's not the end of your life. It's the beginning of a new season. It's the change of a season. And the stress is an indication that seasons are changing. And perhaps they're just not acknowledging it. They're just in the stress. It's not about fixed income. Help flip it around to a more abundance mindset and a clear path of how actually it works. Because they've never done retirement. All they know is grinding and providing and m work another year. You make more money, you save more money, it feels safer. Help them have a clear path to see that retirement could be safe. So that's one way to navigate.

THE PILLARS OF RETIREMENT ARE A HELPFUL FRAMEWORK WHEN IT COMES TO GRINDERS.

Roger: Now let's loop this into the process of the pillars vision. First then feasible, then resiliency, and then optionality. This is actually a very helpful framework for a grinder, but we don't want to focus equally on, all of them. So when it comes to goal setting, I would say we actually want to underweight goal setting in the conversation. We want to go to focus on what a base great life is with as much detail as needed, but not anymore, because that is where they're at physiological and safety. So we just want to focus on a base great life with a number that they're comfortable with. That one we want to have dialed in. But we want to massively underweight wants and wishes because those need to be postponed until they can get relief from the pain and the grind and gain some space and think about where they might want to swim. Again, a drowning person is not thinking about swimming, they're thinking about just keeping their head above water. So we want to underweight vision in the conversation and not try to even talk to them about dreaming yet because they're not in a place where they can do that and it's not helpful. And we want to take advantage of the opportunity of clarity. So we're going to underweight vision, I'll call it equal weight feasibility. So we want to overweight, helping them see optionality in terms of income, helping them see that there's a there's an in between, between full time work, you're in the grind and no work. And these can be called identity bridges. And that's the value of part time work or consulting, et cetera. You want to start to help them see that not necessarily because they might need the money, but just as an identity bridge to help them turn the dial down a little bit on their grindiness. And that's where again, fresh voices of colleagues that have retired, that have done that. It's just a psychological cover in some ways. And then when it comes to what is feasible again we want to focus on the feasibility at a high level of confidence, meaning 90 plus. If we're talking Monte Carlo numbers of the base great life. We want them to see that this amount, assuming it is right, we got to do the feasibility analysis. But this is the amount that they're going to key on because they care about physiological and psychological safety. So base great life and then we're going to massively underweight the wants and the wishes. If they're going to focus on wants and wishes, it's going to be very low stakes. This is important especially if you have a spouse that you're trying to work with that is this arch, archetype now resiliency. We want to overweight resiliency when it comes to someone in this category. We've already. So once we get to resiliency that means we, we focused on that base great life, the number that gives them the physiological and psychological comfort. We've helped them see that it's feasible and reframed how retirement works so they can expand their horizon a little bit. And then we really want to dive into what could go wrong because they're concerned about that safety, confidence, et cetera. What could go wrong? Market, market crash, inflation. We want to stress test the plan and help them see or not that it is resilient from the stress test. And if there is some exposure, help them see pathways of how they can navigate that exposure. Well, if I die early, well we can buy insurance for that, help them mitigate whatever risks happen to pop up. And then we want them to see exactly how life will be funded, especially in the first five or so years, because they want to have clarity and they want to know exactly how I'm going to create my paycheck if I give up this job, because they're still going to pay me if I stay. We have to have them see exactly where they're going to get that paycheck because they care about safety. And then lastly, we want to map out the transition from accumulation mindset to. To decumulation mindset when it comes to asset allocation so they, again, they don't get into retirement and they blow up their plan because markets go down. And then we want to underweight massively optionality, because we're not in that space. So that would be a case study of how to adjust retirement planning for yourself or for a loved one, if you're navigating someone that leans more to these things.

NEXT, ROGER BREAKS DOWN THE AVATAR OF THE DREAMER.

Roger: Okay, now let's turn over the coin to the other extreme, from the grinder to the dreamer. And as a reminder, I'm, describing these people in extreme ways on purpose. And I want you to identify aspects that you resonate with, and maybe you have some that I'm not even thinking of so that you can approach your retirement goal setting better. So I want you to connect those dots, and having the extremes can be helpful. But I'm not saying that this is your one or the other. There's a lot of spectrum on this. Now, saying that when I think of the dreamer, I can think of two or three people that I've worked with that are this to a T. They are the extreme. So what is the profile of a dreamer when it comes to goal setting and retirement? Well, these are the people that eat dessert first. They see opportunities. They're the ones that are willing to miss a meeting at work for an opportunity that comes up for travel or some event. They're okay with that. They can picture their future self much easier than a grinder because they are above water and they're just wanting to swim to a destination so they can see their future selves. Traveling and playing pickleball and going to retreats and laughing with friends. When they view retirement, they see the playground where they have time, freedom, and they're ready to go do it. So that's a natural dreamer. Now, what are the challenges that a dreamer faces? Well, one is old scripts. Everything goes back to the family of origin and scripts that we've Been, you know, unintentionally embedded in who we are and how we operate. We live with those over and over again. And for a dreamer it might be they didn't have things when they were young and they want them now and they're not going to be denied. I don't know. From a Maslow hierarchy of needs, they're very comfortable living in social and self actualization. They are comfortable living as a visionary. Above all the physiological and psychological. They're, they're dreamers. They have faith that it's just going to work out. It's fine, it's going to work out. We just have faith. They're not, they're not like the grinder in that way.

WHAT ARE THE TRIGGERS THAT A DREAMER FACES?

Roger: Now what are triggers that bring them back down to buoyancy or closer to earth? Well, it's going to be financial stress. You know, when they make a bad decision and they look back and think, wow, that was a big one. That will bring them down and they'll suddenly get serious about planning and being more thoughtful about planning or they have a big unexpected expense, they're going to come back down a little bit closer to earth until that pain subsides and then they're going to be more in their natural state. That is the opportunity from a planning perspective for yourself or if you have a spouse this way to make sure that we are buoyant in the goals that you set so they're feasible and resilient. What a dreamer naturally craves. And again, this is all just coming from self reflection from I don't know how many conversations over the year, years that I've had and the team has had. So this is just observation and me thinking through it. What they crave is self actualization. They crave new, they crave permission to go do things. They're excited, they're dreamers. So their main objectives that from a planning perspective if you're this person is how do you give yourself permission. Yes. To go do new things while still being buoyant. How do you give yourself permission to have people join you in this while still being buoyant and not just in the clouds. So how do you navigate this if those are the objectives? Well, one is you want to reframe some ideas around retirement from have it all to prioritization. So if they're easily above water psychologically, they want to swim lots of different places. Part of the way that you can reframe yourself is I have to choose what's most important, what are the priorities. I can't have Everything. What do I want most right now? So you want to go from have it all to prioritization. You want to start to explore. When you get excited about something, especially if it's a bigger financial expense, goal wise, what is it you really want? Remember, it's never the thing. It's the thing about the thing. You want to identify as best you can what it is you really want. Because you might be able to do that by lowering and still lower the financial stakes. You don't need to buy an RV necessarily. You can rent one. And then another way of reframing is have community around you so you can be with your fellow dreamers and some of them that are much older than you. So you can get perspective of ones that have worked out well and ones that maybe flew too high and ran out of fuel. That is helpful. That's where community is so important.

ROGER BREAKS DOWN THE RETIREMENT PILLARS FOR DREAMERS.

Roger: Now, from a process level, how might you approach it differently than just generic? We're right down the middle and rational. Well, on vision, the first pillar, I think we want to overweight vision. So when you're doing your vision, if you see that you have dreamer aspects of it, really overweight this when it comes to your base great life, because that's critical. That will help you protect yourself from. From yourself. Because that's the line we don't ever want to violate. So you're not running out of money or fuel and you're not becoming a burden on anyone. So that's critical. So we want to overweight that one and feel really comfortable with that number. Because if you feel comfortable with that number, it'll help you give yourself permission to say yes to all the things that you want to do when it comes to your wants and your wishes. You want to overweight low stakes goals. You want to lower the stakes of a lot of your discretionary spending. So what do I mean by that? You want to have a lot of experiments like we've talked about in the last few weeks of don't buy the lake house if it's a big expense, that's a high stakes decision. Or if it's an RV or if it's a big gift, whatever it is, that can have a significant impact on your financial feasibility and resilience if things go wrong. So you want to lower the stakes. This is where optionality is really important. Get what you want, give yourself permission, but at low stakes levels so you can next year pivot or change if you're dealt a bad hand or life happens. So we want to really focus on that Base great life so you can feel secure there so you don't have to think about it as much. And we want to lower the stakes of whatever your wants and wishes are and we want to have a lot of optionality there. So we want to overweight vision in those ways. Now, now that you've set goals that are set up to give yourself permission because you have your base great life dialed in, because your wants and wishes are low stake, it's much easier to get permission for those under feasibility. I think we equally equal weight feasibility. Focus on having your base great life really highly feasible and then think about your near term wants or your fun bucket. Fun bucket is this idea of permission. I'm putting money in this fun bucket that I can blow on whatever I want to do, whatever I dream up. For a dreamer, it's helpful to think of this fun bucket concept so they can give themselves permission within the boundaries of reality, the cold air to go dream and play. It's like I'm going to Vegas and I'm going to play, but I'm only going to bring so much money so I don't unintentionally blow my fuel. So I think we equal weight feasibility, equal think we overweight resilience. We want to make sure that we stress test the plan and mitigate what we can through insurance or other things so that their base great life isn't at risk and so that they can have cover to give themselves permission to play. Maybe we explore protection for the amount they need for base great life in terms of guaranteed income so that they can have permission for their fun bucket. Again, we're focused on buoyancy here. And so if you are a dreamer or you are married to a dreamer, these are ways that we can approach goal setting so they can get permission. And oftentimes I have had clients that are very, where one spouse is very much a grinder or a safety first type of person when it comes to the, ah, you know, the one that has all the obligation and a dreamer. And honestly those two superpowers at the extremes can be very, they can be beautiful when their, their superpowers are in concert because they're moderating each other. That how really works with buoyancy? Well, you get, you get the metaphor. But just like superpowers that are very different, if they're not working well together, it can destroy the world.

ROGER REFLECTS ON HOW HIS PARTNERSHIP WITH TANYA MIRRORS THE DREAMER AND GRINDER ARCHETYPES, SHOWING HOW BALANCING VISION AND EXECUTION CAN LEAD TO BETTER COMMUNICATION AND MORE EFFECTIVE RETIREMENT GOALS.

Roger: Tanya and I, who we merged. Tanya Nichols. We merged a few months ago in our vernacular as how we're operating our business. She is, I'll, call it the grinder. She is what we call the integrator. This is an EOS structure, which is a way of running a business. She is the integrator. She is the one thinking about the details, running the numbers. She is the cold air in a loving way. One's not better than the other. And I am the visionary. I'm the hot air. I'm the hot air. And we are being very thoughtful and have been for the last year or two as we've been working on this, of how do we complement each other and communicate well. So we're buoyant as a business. I'm lifting her up, but she's keeping me grounded. So I think these two types of avatars or arch types for that many of us have traits or lean towards, are important to recognize when we're setting retirement goal setting. So hopefully this was helpful for you. This is the first time I really thought of it in this way and I'm finding it helpful as we're working to have these conversations. And hopefully it's helping you set better retirement goals. That said, let's go set. Well, no, let's not set a smart sprint. Let's go answer a few of your questions.

LISTENER QUESTIONS

Roger: Now it's time to answer some of your questions. If you have a question for the show, go to askroger.me and leave an audio question or type in a question and we'll do our best to help you on the show. The first two listeners are more comments than questions, but I think they're worthy here.

BARBARA SHARES THOUGHTS ON A RECENT EPISODE.

Roger: Our first one comes from Barbara, who has thoughts on a recent episode. It's episode six one zero. Barbara says thank you for this focus. I retired at age 63 almost a year ago, spurred on by the birth of a grandchild who would be living near me for this year and will get and will get to help spend time with him. I am, however, still worried about spending my assets and my financial plan to the point of sleeplessness some nights heights. I work with a financial planner who assures me my plan is resilient. With 2.4 million in assets not including the home that has paid off, I recognize that my angst comes from deep lifelong place of worry. Growing up poor with a single mom having survived cancer, my marriage dissolving after 28 years, and a maternal grandmother who lived to 106. Realistically, I know these things contribute to my angst. But hearing I am not alone and was helpful. I will continue to focus on rocking retirement and enjoying my life and not hyper focus on the Numbers. Thank you for all you do, Barbara. Knowing that about yourself is really helpful. And you're a great example of some of these scripts that you obviously are very aware of that lead to some of this angst. And it. And it's good to have some outside perspective with the planner. It sounds like in this case, one thing I would encourage you to do, and that is rather than have the planner tell you and or assure you that your plan is resilient, have them show you specifically faith. And their assurance I don't think is enough. I think it is very helpful. And, this is very normal, by the way, in retirement planning, that the resiliency part, it starts to become less clear and more about faith and whatever the, the person is saying than clarity. So I would encourage you to ask them for specifics of how it's safe, how it's resilient, meaning, and especially in the near midterm. So how exactly am I going to pay my bills or get the money that I need over the next three to five years? Where is that going to come from? What is the plan? Is it to sell from equities when I need it? What happens if the market goes down and I'm selling from equity? Show me that this is still resilient. So I think faith is not enough here, and that tends to be where we go because it can get really complicated to explain and it also can be. Get complicated to where it becomes much low resolution, even for the planner. So I would encourage you to get some clarity on that because I think that will help you and it can be an anchoring point. So when you have angst, you can go revisit your notes or whatever documents they shared with you to remind yourself that you're resilient. I think that can help a long way. But this is a great example. You have a lot of attributes of that Grindr person, and we want to make sure you're buoyant. So thank you so much for sharing that.

ROGER SHARES AN AUDIO CLIP FROM TOM.

Roger: Our next comment is from a listener who. This may be the funniest email or question or comment that I've gotten. And he did this in a very thoughtful, with a kind spirit. And this just makes me laugh. So this, I believe, is from Tom. Let me go ahead and play it for you, Roger.

Tom: It's Tom from Florida, one of the legion of longtime listeners who love the show and love that you are a humble, inquisitive podcaster. But count me among the listeners who cringe when you use the word verse, when you should say versus it's been noted by listeners before, but the rut continues as recently as this week's episode. So, with apologies to Dr. Seuss and competent poets everywhere, I offer the. I'm not adverse to the word verse. In fact, quite the reverse. I like poetry verse, biblical verse, or a verse in a song. But when comparing things, saying verse is just wrong. Beware the curses of saying verse. When you mean versus this, versus that. Two syllables are, where it's at now. My treatment for this malady. I hereby nominate the word versus as your word of the year for 2026. If you make it a point to incorporate correct usage in each episode next year you will prove that you are agile and rocking with the English language.

>> Roger Whitney: Oh, my goodness, Tom, I hope you had as much fun, creating and recording that as I did listening to that. I don't know how many times I've listened to that. Listen to that. We know what my words are going to be for 2026 now. We'll see if I can use it in every episode. And that actually would be the way to do it, wouldn't it, Tom? Versus just randomly throwing it in there because it's the repetition that helps correct such bad habits with grammar. I appreciate the spirit and wow, you were. That was incredible. So thank you so much.

ONE LISTENER SHARES THAT DRAWING DOWN THE ACCOUNTS IS A MENTAL CHALLENGE.

Roger: And maybe this is more comments today than questions. This comes from another listener. Says drawing down the accounts is a mental challenge. We're used to adding to them, seeing them grow over time, and then suddenly we're supposed to change to not having an income, not adding to them, not getting that affirmation that they're going great and actually draw them down. That is just uncomfortable. It feels like we're going backwards in life, not forwards again. This is attributes of that grinder, that obligation mindset that is. It's accurate, it's true. These things are happening and it's important to acknowledge them outwardly so we can go to the balcony and moderate them, to have buoyancy, to get over ourselves in a bit, to become somebody more comfortable with rocking retirement. This stuff is real and it's hard. And goal setting and thinking about goal setting, so much of it gets into the investments, et cetera, that we miss all of this stuff. And this is the important part. Remember, the intent of the process is for you to have confidence, to create whatever life you want to create in retirement without regret, rocking retirement. And so that's what the process needs to be focused on. Thanks for sharing that message.

ROD ASKS WHAT PORTION OF A 71-YEAR-OLD’S $5–6M RETIREMENT PORTFOLIO COULD GO INTO LOW-RISK PRIVATE CREDIT.

Roger: So let's actually get to a question before we get to the smart sprint. So I keep my promise. This is from Rod. He says, I enjoy your podcast. Hypothetically, if one had 5 or 6 million dollars in retirement savings and was 71 years old and about to retire, what percentage of their portfolio might make sense to roll into private credit? Such as, I'm not going to name the provider quoting 9 to 10% returns with low risk on your principal going down. Thanks, Rod. What percentage would be appropriate as a default, Rod? Zero. This is unneeded complication. To achieve the job of having a plan of record that is focused on your vision that is feasible or resilient, there is no reason to add more complication by going into a private placement, whether it's equity, debt or otherwise. It's optimization. And optimization is optional. So that's the default answer. And I believe that it's important. Elegant simplicity. Now, if you have a vision for your plan, you know it's feasible and you've made it resilient and you are overfunded for your life and you've taken care of those foundational things, we can move up the hierarchy and start thinking about optimization. It is perfectly appropriate to say, I am going to take X amount of money and speculate with more complicated products as a sidecar to my main plan. And how much of your five to six million dollars you want to do that with is something that you will need to determine. And then this could, quote, unquote, juice returns if it gives you the 9 or 10% estimated return with low risk, quote, unquote. In my mind, I don't believe it. This will juice your returns, which will give you more money, but if it blows up or drastically underperforms, it does not put at risk of your life, your retirement life, and all the things you. And if you're married, you and your spouse want to do. So that would be how I would approach it. This is totally optional. It's optimization, and it shouldn't be part of the main plan in any significant way because it just adds more unneeded complication. All right, I did get to one question, didn't I? With that, let's go set a smart sprint.

SMART SPRINT

Roger: Now it's time to set a little baby step you can take in the next seven days to not just rock retirement, but rock your life. All right, in the next seven days, I want you to just reflect on where you fall on the spectrum from dreamer to grinder, and think about that the next time you're refreshing or setting your retirement goals of what part of the process. You should overweight or underweight. You don't have to make this a big production, but this is the reps that we get in to better plan for a great life. I feel like mentioning this again. When I originally started this podcast, it was so I could actively think about what I do in an organized way. And teaching it changes how you journal, changes what you read. It makes you much more acute in listening and observing as you're doing the act of retirement planning. And here, we are 11 years later. I respond and try to focus on what is important to you, but I also focus focused on improving my craft. And so today's episode was a really good example of that. This concept for me anyway, of the dreamer and the grinder. I don't even know if those are the right names, but those are extreme profiles and there's a lot of in between that came from me thinking about this intentionally. I'm m like, wait, I have a process and the intent of the process is help the end to help the individual have confidence to live what a life that's important to them. And that process we call the Agile retirement management process. We want to have fidelity to that, but it needs to be, it needs to be informed by what the person needs to have confidence. Everybody needs something differently and that's what we need to key on, not some objective. This will give you confidence and so this is by far a work in progress. I just want to acknowledge that and let you know that there's a lot more to do here, which I'll be doing internally, which will come up on this show at, periods of times. But I appreciate you being a thinking partner with me and understanding that nobody knows how to do all of this stuff. We're all figuring it out. So we just want to be active listeners and be curious. And I always am trying to do that.

The opinions voice in this podcast are for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All, performance reference is 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.