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Episode #617 - How Do I Build My Initial Cash Cushion for Retirement?

“The concept of loss aversion is certainly the most significant contribution of psychology to behavioral economics.” – Daniel Kahneman

Roger: Welcome to the show dedicated to helping you not just survive retirement, but to have the confidence to lean in and rock it. Roger Whitney here. Excited to hang out with you today. Today on the show, we're going to introduce a new segment called the Retirement Toolbox, where we talk about concepts and tactics that you can use in your retirement planning. In addition to that, we're going to talk about loss aversion from Daniel Kahneman, a concept that came from the book Thinking Fast and Slow. Great book, by the way. In addition to that, our title question we're going to dive into is, how do you build a cash cushion for retirement? We'll also answer a number of your other questions.

PRACTICAL PLANNING SEGMENT

ROGER BREAKS DOWN LOSS AVERSION AND HOW IT RELATES TO RETIREMENT.

Roger: So we got a lot going on here today, so let's get this party started. The first thing I want to talk about is this concept of loss, loss aversion. And this is an important concept in behavioral economics, but I also think in retirement as well, and it relates to the question that we have as our title question. So what do we mean by loss aversion? Well, in the book Thinking Fast and Slow, they talked about how we tend to feel pain of loss more intensely than the pleasure of equivalent gains. And in economics or investing, when we make money, it's enjoyable, but, man, when we lose money, if it's in an equal amount, it feels a lot worse. And that is an important concept in investing, but it's also one in retirement planning that will relate to our question when we get to it. And what made me think about this recently is I got a letter from the irs. Don't we love getting those letters, man, when you. What is it? Well, it was related to my tax return. So I filed my taxes, I don't know, a month or two ago. It must have been right past October. I filed it sometime this year, and they were letting me know that they were changing my refund. So first, oh, boy, letter from the irs. Then, oh, boy, they're gonna change my refund or the amount that I owe. I'm getting worried, right? Oh, my goodness. I don't like those kinds of surprises.

Well, what ended up happening was they actually increased the amount of my refund by five and a half times. Nice, right? Some extra money in the pocket. I overpaid. I got complicated taxes, so it's a little hard to get all that. Right. That felt really good. So they increased it by five and a half times, and it was, oh, yeah, that's great. Cool. We got some extra money and then put the letter aside. Now imagine an alternate scenario where you receive a letter from the IRS, they let you know they're changing the amount of taxes due or ready to be refunded. And rather than getting back a refund, they change the refund down by five and a half times. Maybe you even owe money at that point. Losing what you thought you were going to get. Or going from a positive to a negative would have been dramatic. I wouldn't have just said, oh, that's interesting and then put the letter away. I probably would have been upset or annoyed for a period of time with that negative surprise. That would have impacted me a lot more than what I did receive thankfully was that I'm actually getting a lot more back than I expected. That is an example of loss aversion. The negative impact impacts you a lot more than the positive impact. This is important to remember. That's why when it comes to taxes, it's not that we don't like surprises, we don't like negative surprises. And that can be true in your retirement planning as well. So that's what we're talking about with loss aversion.

Great book by Daniel Kahneman. If you want links to resources that we mentioned in the show, go to rogerwhitney.com and fill in your name and email and you'll receive the Weekly Noodle, which is our weekly retirement newsletter where we get to talk one on one. You hit reply, it comes to me. But we also get to share links to valuable resources.

THE RETIREMENT TOOLBOX - Qualified Charitable Distributions

Roger: Now let's get to the Retirement Toolbox. So the Retirement Toolbox is a new segment that came from a conversation Kevin Lyles and I had with some listeners when we were at the Boglehead conference, the Vanguard related conference about hey, we just need some basic financial stuff. We like that. We go deep into questions, go deep into the non financial as well. But it'd be good to just have some basic literacy when it comes to retirement planning on sometimes geeky topics. So periodically we're going to have the segment so we can share that and I thought we would start with one that's a little bit timely as we come up towards the end of the year. And so today we're going to talk about a tool in the retirement planning toolbox called the Qualified Charitable Distribution.

So a qualified charitable distribution. Let's just talk about what it is first. First off, you're only allowed to do it when you're 70 and a half or older at the time of the distribution. So a good example is in 2025, when this is airing, if your birthday is in January, like mine is, and let's assume that you turn 70 at the time of the distribution, you're going to have to wait until you're actually 70 and a half, even though it's within the calendar year. So it can only happen after age 70 and a half. So that's requirement number one of a qualified charitable distribution. And it's making a distribution from a traditional IRA, an inherited IRA or some other type of qualified account, not from a 401k or an active employer plan. So it has to be an IRA. So it's. You can only do it after 70 and a half. It has to be sourced from a traditional IRA. And there is a limit on what you can do under the qualified charitable distribution. And for 2025, that limit is $108,000. So that's the amount that you can do as a QCD from a traditional IRA in 2025. And that number gets indexed for inflation over time. Now, how do you do a charitable distribution? Well, it has to be a direct transfer from the IRA to a qualified charity. So this is a way of moving money from an IRA directly to a charity. And so what that means is if you were to do a QCD, you're over 70 and a half, you have a traditional IRA, you can do up to $108,000 in 2025. When you execute it, there's special paperwork from your IRA custodian, the firm that you hold your IRA at, that will transfer whatever amount you want to do up to that annual limit per person directly to a qualified charity. It means it has to be a 501. So that excludes private foundations, it excludes donor advised funds or charitable remainder trusts. It has to be like a charity, like the Red Cross. And the paperwork will have the money go directly from the IRA to the charity.

Why would you do a qualified charitable distribution? Well, it will reduce your required minimum distribution. So if you're already taking required minimum distributions from your ira, you can use this to help satisfy whatever the annual amount is that you have to take out that's required by the irs. So rather than take the money, you can do a qualified charitable distribution or QCD to satisfy your required minimum distribution. And when you take a qcd, the tax treatment is that it's excluded from taxable income, so it will lower the amount of taxable income you have on your tax return. And it's important that if you do a qcd, it has to happen by the end of the tax year that you're planning on doing it. So this is what the basics are of a qualified charitable distribution. Now, why would you do one? Why would you send money from your IRA to a charity? Well, there's a couple of reasons. One is it's an efficient way of getting money to a charity because you have charitable intent. Number two might be that you are currently taking required minimum distributions and you would like to not be forced to take that income so it can lower the adjustable gross income that you have, which will lower your income taxes. If you are over age 65 and taking required minimum distributions, the amount of money that you do as a QCD will not impact your income when it comes to the IRMAA Medicare surcharge. So you can do a QCD rather than take the required minimum distribution. And that may help you avoid some of the thresholds when it comes to IRMAA surcharges. It could help lower your Social Security taxation if you have that as an issue. It could help you even if you don't itemize taxes. So you can see some benefits to doing a qcd.

Now, we're talking a lot about reducing your required minimum distributions and the impact when you're already taking distributions. But once you're 70 and a half, depending on your birth date, you may not have to take required minimum distributions right now up to 75, depending on your birth date. It is a good tool even before you're having to do required minimum distributions to start to get money out of your IRA that will help reduce your future required minimum distributions. This is an often overlooked tool for someone that has charitable intent and has monies that they would like to get out of their estate because they won't need it to fund their life. So that is what a qualified charitable distribution is. And it's a good tool to pull out when somebody has charitable intent. They have a lot of money in a pre tax account and it's likely that they're going to have substantial required minimum distributions that could increase their tax bracket, move them up into an IRMAA tax bracket, et cetera. So it's a great tool. In our Noodle email, we will send a cheat sheet on qualified charitable distributions. And that way you can put that in your toolbox to see if it's appropriate for you.

WES ASKS HOW TO BUILD RETIREMENT RESERVES BEFORE RETIREMENT WITHOUT TRIGGERING HIGHER TAXES.

Roger: With that, let's move on and get to our questions. If you have a question for the show. You can go to askroger.me and type in a question or leave an audio question. If you leave an audio question, that's one way to getting closer to the top of the list. Lots of questions, but we love the audio questions. Our title question comes from Wes. Wes says, hey Roger, I'm 60 years old and a little over a year away from retirement. My wife, who is two years younger, is going to work an additional two years. My question is this. You talk about having a six month emergency reserve in addition to the five years of spending in safe investments. All that makes total sense. My question is what strategies do you suggest for building those reserves? If I start taking money out of my retirement accounts, it will trigger taxes and being that we're still working, those withdrawals will bump us up into higher tax brackets. Are there recommended strategies for building those needed reserves or is it just biting the bullet and paying the taxes? That's a great question, Wes.

So let's talk about this. So six months is a default and that's just a cushion for bad retirement spending estimates or income estimates. There's nothing magical about six months. You can dial that to your taste and then pre-fund the first five years of expected spending from your portfolio. Same thing that five years is a default that you can dial up or down based on your taste and how funded you are for retirement. But let's get to your question. Let's assume those two numbers are correct. How do you actually create your reserve and your income floor, that pre funding of the first five years? Well, I think, Wes, the way I'm reading your question is you're thinking that you have all this money in your IRA that you're going to use for the six months reserve and the first five year cushion and that you have to take it out of your IRA or your 401k in order to have it. And I think that's not. Well, that is not how I'm suggesting that you achieve it within your IRA or your 401k. You can reallocate your investment assets to accommodate having enough liquidity money that's not at risk to achieve the result without taking it out of the account and incurring the taxes on it. And I think that's where we're disconnecting from each other. The intent of the exercise is to reallocate your financial assets for the purpose that is coming up in this case for you, Wes. And your wife is retiring in two years. So the intent is to reallocate your assets to serve what you're going to need as you make this life transition. That's the intent. You don't have to take it out of the IRA or the 401k to achieve that intent. So what I would suggest, Wes, is once you come up with the numbers, you can just simply reallocate in your pre tax accounts to achieve the, the cash cushion that you want and the income floor you want within the confines of those accounts and not have any taxes whatsoever in this case. And then the only time you would incur taxes is when you are actually taking money out to use it.

So here's an example I'm going to use. Let's assume that you're retired right now, Wes, and let's assume you need $100,000 from your IRA each year for the next five years. Okay? So that's going to be $500,000. Well, if you need $500,000 to get the liquidity that you want, Wes, one action item, and I think this is the way you're approaching, is just to take out $500,000, pay tax on it and put it in a money market account in your bank. That is not the correct way to do it. What you would do is take your IRA, reallocate so you have that $500,000, $100,000 per year for five years invested within the IRA so that you have certainty on when you're going to get your money back and what yield it's going to earn while it's there. So you might buy a one year cd, a two year CD et cetera, or a Treasury bill, but you can do all that within the IRA and not have to take the money out. Then when you retire and you're like, okay, I need my $100,000, you'll have a CD or you'll have the money in your IRA and then you can take out the money that you need and that's the only amount that you'll be taxed on. So I think that's where we need to think. It's just about reallocating the assets within the accounts that you have. And sometimes within a 401k you have less options. So you have to use either short term bond fund or you have to use a stable value fund. So hopefully it answers your question, Wes, and how do you start to build these cash reserves? You can do it within the retirement account. You don't have to get it all into your after tax account.

ROGER RESPONDS TO JOHN’S CRITIQUE OF THE “PROCESS OVER PANIC” EPISODE, CLARIFYING WHY A RETIREMENT PLAN SHOULD BE TREATED AS A LIVING, FLEXIBLE GUIDE RATHER THAN A RIGID SET OF RULES.

Roger: Our next question comes from John, who is taking issue with an episode I had on April 30 on process over Panic. And I totally get what you're saying here, John, so let me share your thoughts. So here's what John shared. I was listening to the April 30th podcast on Process Over Panic. I see there are several more in the series. This is probably semantics, John says, but I really didn't like how you said many times to not follow your retirement plan. When you create a plan, you try to anticipate what might happen and decide ahead of time what you might do. That way you can make decisions when the emotions are not overwhelming.

That's totally true, John. And that's really… His critique is, well, what do you mean, don't follow the plan? That's why you do the plan. Market volatility is normal, John says, and a good plan should give some guidance on how to handle it. If there's something that someone is worried about that is not already covered in the plan, then they should use their process to analyze the situation to decide what to do. However, if my plan is already good, why are you telling me that I can't refer to the plan? You make a really good point, John. If you don't have a plan, then you're just winging it, right? And maybe I overstated my case here, John. My intent was to say and to communicate that a plan is not rigid. It is living in retirement. You are dealing with a complex problem, not a complicated problem. And there's a distinction there. And we have a link to an episode where we interviewed a professor about this distinction.

So here, maybe this would be a good example. Like if you're building a, toy or an engine, that's complicated. That's why you have instructions, the plan, because you follow it step by step. I'll use Legos, because Andy Panko is on a LEGO kick at the moment. You better follow that plan step by step. It's well thought out. And the reason that works with a complicated problem is that we're in a confined environment where it's difficult. But as long as we map it out, we can solve it. We can solve a complicated problem. So when Andy Panko did the Titanic, as long as he followed the plan, opened up the right bags, because they give you all these different bags that are coded, you better not just mix them all up. There'll be a lifelong project. Then, as long as he opened up the bags in the right sequence and put the pieces together, as the plan diagram showed him, he would solve getting all the pieces into the Titanic. That's a complicated problem. It's Very solved. When you're dealing with a complex problem, and this is the distinction that I think is critical and sometimes maybe I overstate it. A complex problem by its nature is not solvable because there's so much going on that you can't predict. You can't predict what the markets are going to do or what inflation's going to do, or when life happens to you and in what ways life happens to you in the series of all of these things. So with a complex problem, it's not solvable, which means you have to manage the problem. Now I agree with you John. You have to think through, well, what happens if the market goes down, how do I protect myself if there's a long term care decision. That's one reason why the process is more important than the actual artifact of the plan or the instruction manual. Because you're going to be dealing with all of these things that you can't predict how they're going to happen, in what ways they happen. So maybe I overstate my case there. Part of building the retirement plan of record is to have a artifact that does think of all the things that you can think of and make a decision of how much risk you try to mitigate or transfer either through building income floors or buying long term care insurance so that when life is happening, you can use that plan to thoughtfully navigate how to make adjustments along the way. So I think we are talking semantics here, but maybe I overstated, don't follow the plan. It's really that artifact of that you can figure it out just like you might the instructions for a Titanic LEGO process. So I think we're in agreement here.

Those episodes by the way, were 589 to 593. And where I've seen this play out in reality, John, is when a plan of record is in place, it's actually much easier to navigate the markets going down or inflation or bad spending assumptions. But one area that's much more volatile, I think we talked about it last month in our series, are the goals, what people want that is changing as much or more as all these other things because we are different versions of ourselves. So we end up having to. I don't want this now I built my plan for this. But now because of this, that and the other thing we want that, that is as much more volatile. So having it, the scaffolding of a plan of record gives you a framework for improving the plan. So I think we are talking semantics, but hopefully that that helps. So I'm sorry I frustrated you.

FEEDBACK FROM DAVID HIGHLIGHTS WHY FACTORING EARLY LOSSES IN MONTE CARLO SIMULATIONS CAN BOOST CONFIDENCE DESPITE SLIGHT DOUBLE-COUNTING.

Roger: Our next topic is related to the prior two topics and David had some feedback for me as well. And this is on stress testing the feasibility of a plan. So I'm going to read what David shared on the show. Should I do a free retirement analysis episode? Cliff asks why we stress test a feasible plan by taking a large percentage off the top at the beginning. Because the Monte Carlo analysis already includes this in your answer. It seems like you missed the point. If you looked at the failed scenarios in a Monte Carlo analysis, they almost always sequence of return problems at the beginning of retirement. So if you shave off 30% or whatever and then rerun the Monte Carlo scenario then you have guaranteed to double count the poor sequence of returns. This Davis comments here. That said, I agree with you 100 that you only get one shot at this compared to a thousand statistical runs. But. But just like you don't suggest people shoot for 100 feasibility score. I, Part of your approach is to be agile or fundamental part of your approach is to be agile. The feasibility score should really be considered the risk that I might need to be agile and make a change 100 David. So be realistic in your risk return analysis and then be ready to change if that risk of change scenario happens.

I agree with you 100% David. So what he's talking about is when you run a Monte Carlo scenario and this is software, you can get it at Bolden for free. every advisor that's in retirement space uses some form of this. What David's referring to is if you have a plan and you run a feasibility test which just looks at your spending and income and asset assumptions and then overlays the randomness of markets. You get bad markets up front, bad markets at the end, and everything in between. And then you get a thousand scenarios with different market sequences and it says how feasible that plan is from a statistical analysis standpoint. That's what we're talking about in a feasibility score. So it's like, okay, it's 85% of the trials. You were successful. And what David's taking issue with is one thing that I do is okay, 85% is successful, but what if we have a 30% drawdown or bad market or loss right now and then we rerun the Monte Carlo scenarios and aren't you essentially double counting that bad outcome because. And actually exacerbating it because you just doubled it. This is a little bit nuanced and I guess technically you are David. It is captured in those thousand trials, but it doesn't matter what that Confidence number says and this is the reason that we do it, David, is it's what are they afraid of? They're afraid of what happens if a mad market happens up front. And so you can do it in a very heavy handed way, not really acknowledging the nuances or just acknowledging the nuances that you point out. But this goes back to loss aversion is people are much more worried about the downside than their upside. They're much more worried about running out of money than dying with too much money. And this is a very quick way to show them some resiliency testing in their plan and to help inform how we might reallocate. So yeah, it may be, it is too much but based on the individual that we're working with, it may be part of the journey for them to have more comfort and confidence in your plan. So I totally get what you're saying and I don't disagree with you. All right now we had two people that took issue with me. people take issue with me all the time.

THOUGHTFUL LISTENER DISAGREEMENTS ARE WELCOMED AS A WAY TO DEEPEN UNDERSTANDING AND IMPROVE RETIREMENT PLANNING INSIGHTS.

Roger: And I want to talk about that for a moment because this came up related to some comments we got about the organic discussion that Bobby and I had and I get it from time to time on things like this will never be able to address all of this comprehensively in a 30, 40 minute show and seeking knowledge. We have to have this kind of tension. I like that David doesn't agree with me. He points out something and he's right and I like that John points out something. This is how we all put our reps in to build knowledge around these nuances because we're not all going to be right and there are different perspectives that we need to be curious about. I appreciate these emails, especially when they're done thoughtfully and not in a mean spirited sort of way because I am a seeker of improving my retirement planning chops just like you are and I've been doing this for 30 years. So these are great discussions and I love it when it, when it's productive because it's not as clear cut as we all think it is. So thanks so much for the feedback.

THOMAS HAS SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT GETTING STARTED WITH A RETIREMENT PLANNER.

Roger: Our last question comes from Thomas related to getting started with a retirement planner. So Thomas says we're getting ready to engage a retirement planner for the first time. We've talked to a few. Thank you so much for your download on how to interview a planner and we think we found someone who would be a good fit. They're a flat fee planner. We're starting with a short term engagement op option that includes three to four meetings with some planned deliverables at the end of the process and an option to go forward in an ongoing relationship. I just had a few questions about what is typical as someone establishes a relationship with a planner that I didn't see in the handout. I found credentials and the advisors firm history on the sec. But. And this is where Thomas has some questions and I'll just try to answer them one on one. Should I ask for additional references? Past colleagues or current clients?

I would think no, Thomas, you can definitely do that. I know that. Current colleagues. What are they going to tell you? They're going to, you know, they're going to give you colleagues. That would tell you something. Good clients. I've been asked for client referrals and I don't give them. I'm not going to ask my clients who we have. We, they're confidential to us to share their experiences with someone else. I think that's too big of an ask. And I think if I did give a client referral, then of course they're going to be people that think we're awesome. but I would never put my client in that place. It doesn't mean someone else would. So I would say that's probably not going to help you that much.

Should I expect to sign a contract at the start of the process? That's a great question. Yes, you should. Once you've had the interviews and you've decided that you're going to move forward with a planner, then you're going to sign a financial planning agreement, which is going to be the official engagement agreement for the financial planning relationship. And it will have a lot of standard verbiage, but it also will outline what the fee is and what the deliverables are for the process. So that's going to be the official engagement letter from a legal standpoint. So yeah, you should sign that before you begin the process. And then Thomas goes on to say, I assume it's pretty normal to fill out a questionnaire and provide information, but what level of personal information is usually requested? Social Security numbers, account numbers. And what level of personal information should I be willing to provide? It's another good question, Thomas. So you're working with a flat fee planner. That is a limited term engagement. So not an ongoing engagement, just for now. So you shouldn't have to provide Social Security numbers or even account numbers because they're not going to transfer any assets or manage any money. But you will likely need to provide a copy of your Social Security statement. I would want to receive that, even if you redacted the Social Security number on that. Because that's going to give me a lot of detail as a planner and I would know how to read it because I've read so many and likely they have as well. So they may want the Social Security statement, but they don't need the Social Security number. I would say the same thing with the account statements. If you have a number of financial accounts, we would ask for all of the statements of those accounts. Now if you're very conservative, you can redact the account numbers of all of those accounts because really all they need to know is who is the owner? Is it just Thomas Thomas and his wife, or is it just his wife's account? What type of account is it? Is it an IRA? Is it a Roth IRA? Is it a 401k? And every detail of the account from a position level, how much they have in cash, what the individual positions are that they own, they own this mutual fund, this stock, and then all the data related to that in terms of what the cost basis is, what the current value is, etc. That data is going to be very helpful for them. And the easiest way to get them that data is an account statement. But they shouldn't need the account number because they're not going to be transferring the account or managing it for you in terms of personal information in this context, because this is a limited time engagement, at least at the beginning. It depends on the planner. I mean there is the process of building, you know, just the. A feasible plan of record is not that difficult. It can be done pretty quickly with software and then building out a reallocation plan. There's going to be lots of questions around what your desires are, what your fears are, what your dreams are, etc. And that's going to be how much you divulge of that is going to be based on the scope of work that you're hiring them to do. If you're just looking for analysis and you don't want them to help tease that stuff out, well then maybe you can hold it a little bit closer to the vest.

So when you engage a planner, let's summarize this, you're going to interview them, understand exactly what their process is. And this is that interview worksheet. Have them really define it and then you're going to, when you start the engagement, they're going to have a financial planning agreement which you're going to sign and that will outline the fee as well as what their deliverables are. I do think as a non official document, it would be good. Thomas, is for you, you and your spouse to really define what you want to get clarity on. So a good example is when we engage a client, the first thing we do is set a, okay, six months from now, what is it we want to have in place and things like might be. I want to have my reallocation plan in place. I want to consolidate my accounts. I want to get a plan of record in place, so I know what I can expect to live on and what you might want to have clarity on. So what you want to have in place at the end of this engagement and what you might want to have clarity on. I want to have clarity on how I'm going to create my paycheck. Specifically, I want to have clarity on whether I should pursue Roth conversions or whether they're not that important. The better. You can define those things and put those in writing to them and say, hey, these are things I want to have answered. Now you have your own personal benchmark. So as you're working with this planner, you can check those off. And towards the end of it, hey, we haven't talked about this one yet. And I said that was important to me. And that way you can begin that conversation. So I think that is probably one of the most critical things. When you sign the financial planning agreement, how do you pay their fee? So if you're paying them, X amount of dollars, do you pay all that upfront? If it's a flat fee arrangement, do you pay half now and half at the end or something in between? It's going to be different with everybody and they'll have their process and they may not deviate. No, we want it all up front. Or like, I think like Scott on our team, when he does flat fee plans, we take half up front, half at the end. Just like working with any kind of contractor, they're going to, they'll generally have their terms of how they want to work, and some of them are going to be rigid to that and some of them won't. So hopefully this gives you some standard operating procedure. But the more you can be organized, the better the result that you're going to get in that type of arrangement.

One last little tip is at the end of every meeting that you have in four or five arrangements, it would be good that you, you and the planner spend a little bit of time saying, okay, these are the action items that we identified from this meeting, and this is who is assigned those action items because they may need More information you need to be, you know, you may need something from them. So outline the action items that you agreed upon and then schedule the next meeting. Always have the next meeting scheduled. That way you can keep momentum and not let large periods of time lapse because somebody gets busier or the other thing. So hopefully that gives you some ideas. Best of luck to you, Thomas.

SMART SPRINT

Roger: With that, let's go set a smart sprint. On your marks. Get set. And we're off to take a little baby step that you can take in the next seven days to not just rock retirement, but rock life. Right in the next seven days. If you're within three years of retirement, map out your liquidity and start to think of how might I reallocate my assets so I don't have to worry about the markets, at least for the first couple years of retirement. If you're close to retirement, now is not the time to keep trying to grow more if you know you're going to need money within the next three to five years. So take a look at your assets, see if you have enough liquidity to give you some room to navigate so you don't have to make rash decisions if things go sideways for a while.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Roger: So recently I've been exploring building a personal library and looking at books like, Everyman's Library, which is an English company. I use Juniper Books that has a great website that has, I think it's Everyman library editions. But then they have these really nice covers to really make it pop on your library sin check out juniperbooks.com they have some really cool ones. I bought the Orwell series, the Kurt Vonnegut series, and the Classic series. So far, you can really go down a rabbit hole here. Now my intent is not just to simply have pretty books on my shelf. I'm going to read every one of them. So I'm trying to build a classics list to read. I know there are many out there. Sometimes they're over heavy on some of the fiction books. I want to include some nonfiction books. If you have any suggestions, hit me back in reply to The Noodle and I'll start to collect a list for all of us.

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