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Episode #619 - Should I Use My Traditional IRA to Fund My Life or Do Roth Conversions?

Roger: It's the day before Thanksgiving. Let's not just talk about it, let's be about it. Welcome to the show dedicated to helping you not just survive retirement, but to have the confidence to lean in and rock it, create a great life. That's the point of the exercise, right? Hey there. Roger Whitney here. Today on the show, we're going to answer a number of your questions, including should I use my traditional IRA to fund my life or do Roth conversions? Now, before we get to that, I want to talk a moment about thankfulness and gratitude.

ROGER REFLECTS ON THANKFULNESS AND GRATITUDE.

Roger: Now, don't roll your eyes. I know it's the day before Thanksgiving here in the United States and if you are on social media or have a news feed, you probably are seeing lots of articles and comments around the importance of thankfulness, etc. It can get overwhelming. But here's the fact. Almost every study says the core ingredient to living a life of contentment and of happiness is gratitude. And being thankful pretty much across the board to flourishing as a human. Having those qualities front and center are critical. Now, the problem is during times like this, we see so many articles and so many social posts about it that we get overloaded. And what can happen is the message can become meaningless because we tune out. Because of the constant barrage of this, especially during Thanksgiving and around the holidays, thankfulness and gratitude are something we should practice pretty much every day, right? Not just in late November when we get all the articles about it. And that all sort of annoys me, actually. I don't know what that says about me when this overload comes about everybody telling me how I'm supposed to be. And that's sad. It's a good reminder, but it's sad because it can make it meaningless. And take that word, meaningless. When we get overloaded and we just tune out, it's like a parent telling a child to pick up their shoes for the hundredth time. They haven't heard that message after number 50. We don't want this to mean less. We want this to be meaningful when we think of gratitude. Meaningful, full of gratitude. And that's the danger during little seasons like this. This is just the way my mind works anyway. So at the risk of adding to your social feed and messaging about the importance of thankfulness, the importance of thankfulness and gratitude, I want to offer up two suggestions to make your thankfulness more meaningful. How's that? Suggestion number one is to be very specific in what you're grateful for or you're thankful for. Now, this could be in your prayers, it could be in Your mindfulness exercise. It could be when you're communicating to someone else that you're thankful for them. The more specific you are, the more meaningful it is. So, let me give you an example. I am so thankful for the team I get to work with every day. I could tell myself that. I could tell the team that that is very general. There's nothing specific there, so it loses its meaningfulness. So an alternative would be, I am so thankful that Troy emails me periodically when he feels like I'm overwhelmed or he sees my schedule and just says, hey, dude, how you doing? I see you got a lot going on. I know you're doing a lot of work on this. That and the other thing that I can't see are, you hanging in there. I am thankful that he is thoughtful enough to do that because he's thinking of me. That's awesome. That's a specific thing that I can convey to him or to myself about Troy on my team. I could do this for everybody on my team. Natalia, one of the newer members of our team, the other day, she had an oopsie, and her alarm didn't go off, and she came in a little late, and, you know, I think was late for a meeting or something, and she was devastated by it. She could not believe that she had done that. And she apologized. She owned it. We had another snafu related to gifts that we were giving to our team that had the wrong firm name on it because we're merging and we have names all over the place. Some of that was out of her control, but she owned it. I appreciate. And thankful that she has such extreme ownership. No excuses, no playing the victim. Yeah, I messed up. Sorry. I'm working on it. And we all do that. But I appreciate that extreme ownership. I appreciate Tracy on our team. We had a meeting about content planning for you and the club for 2026, and she came and was just totally organized and at her best. And that is a gift I get to receive because it helps keep me on track. It's like gutter bumpers for me. And I appreciate her level of detail. It can be annoying at times, just like I can be annoying to her in my agility. But I so appreciate that she showed up that way. So that is different than I just am thankful for my team. So when you're thinking about thankfulness, whether internally and you're in your prayers or your mindfulness or you're telling somebody, the more specific you can be, the more meaningful it can be.

All right, what's another Tip tip number two. And then we'll get on to a retirement toolkit segment and the questions. Tip number two that I practice and these are things I try to do all year that when I'm at my best, I do them. And many times I'm not at my best, but I aspire. Tip number two is to take a mental photograph, notice moments. It could be when you're walking and you see the sunrise or sunset, it could be a moment of great beauty that you just want to capture. Take a moment, stop, really take it in and try to take a mental photograph for yourself. So, for example, about three, four weeks ago, my daughter got married. And there was a moment a little later in the evening. My son Spencer was out dancing with his cousin Graham. They're crazy dancers, they were just all over the place. Emma and her bride Bri were dancing. And then sort of to the side of them standing up by the dance floor was Shauna talking to, I think it was my sister Joanne and her husband Jack. Then my brother in law was over to the side. It was just this image of having all these crazy kids in the middle dancing, loving all of them, family on the sides, having conversation, trying to talk over this crazy music the kids play. And it was just an image. And I was sitting, I think I was sitting at the table just chilling and I just had a moment and I was like, I gotta capture this. So I just took a mental image for myself to try to remember this moment. Seeing the people that I love in their moment, doing different things and all together, it was just beautiful. So tip number one, be specific in your thankfulness, whether you're communicated to someone else or just going through the practice internally. And number two, be aware and take mental images so you can make sure that your thankfulness throughout the year is meaningful. Hope you have a wonderful holiday if you're here in the United States. And with that, let's move on to our retirement toolkit.

RETIREMENT TOOLKIT

ROGER GIVES A QUICK REFRESHER ON THE THREE MAIN TYPES OF ACCOUNTS USED IN RETIREMENT PLANNING AND HOW EACH IS TREATED FOR TAX PURPOSES.

Roger: All right, now it's time to build our retirement toolkit. And I'm just going to do some basics on terms today because there are a lot of terms that we throw out there that get overused and there are different terms that mean the same thing. And it's related to our question about using a traditional IRA to a Roth conversion. So what I want to talk about today is what do we mean by different types of accounts when we're talking about tax categories in planning, we're going to throw out things like after tax accounts, pre tax accounts, all those sort of things. And you may know what they are. And, Great, we'll just put a rep in or you can skip forward. But I want to make sure we understand what we're talking about. So on a high level, there are three types of accounts when it comes to tax treatment. And the first one we're going to talk about is what is generally called an after tax account. Okay, so what is an after tax account? An after tax account is an account where you earn a dollar, you pay tax on it through, say, your payroll or your employer, and then you put that money into an account like a checking account, so it holds money that you paid tax on when you earned the money. So when you earn that dollar from your employer, they do tax withholding. You take what's left over from that dollar, you put it in your checking account. That is an after tax account. So that's what we mean by that. Now, that account has different names. It could be a taxable account. Wait a second. After tax account, taxable account. Why would those be synonyms? Why would they mean the same thing? Well, when we call it a taxable account, the reason we say that is that when you earn that dollar, let's say, from your employer, and they take the tax out, you put it into your savings account, whatever you earn on the money in that savings account, in that case, it might be interest. You will generally pay tax on the savings interest that you've earned. You've already paid tax on the money that went in there. But any money you earn on your money, and that could be interest, that could be dividends, that could be capital gains. When you sell something that is taxable at the time, you earn the money on your money. So two terms you hear that mean the same account, after tax account, or taxable account. Okay, so that's the first tax category. The second tax category is a pre tax account. So let's go back to our working for a dollar. If you work and you earn a dollar, if you have a traditional IRA or 401k, you're able to put money into that traditional IRA or 401 and not pay tax on the amount that you put in. So let's say you earn $2, you put $1 into this pre tax account. That means you didn't pay tax on that dollar. So the whole dollar is there because no taxes was taken out. And then any monies you earn on that dollar, interest, dividends, capital gains, is tax deferred. You don't pay tax as you're earning money on your money until you take it out of the pre tax account. So this account is going to be referred to as a pre tax account, as a traditional IRA, as a traditional 401K, also called a tax deferred account. So this is the account of monies that hasn't been taxed yet and won't be taxed until you pull money out in a distribution generally in retirement. So we have an after tax account. Now we have a pre tax account. The third account is something we call a tax return free account. So this is primarily like a Roth IRA, a Roth 401K. Monies that go into a Roth IRA or a Roth 401K have already been taxed. So very different than the first category of after tax. If you earn a dollar and you put it into a Roth ira, the whole dollar goes in there, you don't pay any tax on it. And because it's a tax free account, that means any growth, dividends, interest or capital gains, you will not be taxed when you earn it like you would in an after tax account. And you won't be taxed when you take it out like you would in a pre tax account. So that would be primarily Roth IRA, Roth 401k. There are some derivatives or other types of accounts that have that featured with some restrictions. So that would be a health savings account or a 529 plan that have restrictions on what you can take the money out and have it be tax free in nature. But it's good to know these terms because sometimes when we're talking about, let's say, the title question that we're going to get to, should I use my traditional ira? They're actually asking, they could say, should I use my traditional ira? Should I use my pre tax account? Should I use my tax deferred account? All of those are meaning the same things. So it's important to understand that because you may not deal with this stuff every day, most likely you don't. So there's a quick primer on that. All right, with that said, let's get to our title question.

LISTENER QUESTIONS

Roger: Now it's time to answer some of your questions. If you have a question for the show, you can go to askroger me and type your question in or leave an audio question. Quick hint there. If you leave an audio question, that's like a fast pass at Disneyland. It moves closer to the front of the line. I can't guarantee it will get on the show, but we definitely try to prioritize those.

ROGER WALKS THROUGH HOW TO APPROACH THE COMMON DILEMMA OF USING A TRADITIONAL IRA FOR LIVING EXPENSES VERSUS DOING ROTH CONVERSIONS.

Roger: All right, our title question is, should I use my traditional IRA to Fund my life or do Roth conversions. All right, so how do we think through this question to get to a decision that we're comfortable with? The first thing to acknowledge is that you're not going to get it wrong or right. There is no right or wrong answer here. It's just one that you feel comfortable given your particular makeup and financial situation. So how should we think about this? Well, one is, there's a premise in this question that I have is that if you're asking this question, that means you've already created a vision and you know what it costs. You've already organized your financial resources and assessed that it's feasible and you already have a version of how you're going to manage sequence of return, long term care risk, et cetera, and know that the plan is resilient. I am assuming that you have all those things done. If you don't, this question is premature. You need to do that work first because that will give you version one of your plan of record, which is going to put you in a much better position to answer this question. All right, so that is the premise that I see in this question. So let's start with observing. We're going to use like an OODA loop. Okay, the first O of OODA is observe. What should we observe to start to get our hands around this question? Well, the first thing we should observe is do you need to take IRA distributions to fund your life? If you do, then this is a real quick answer. Do that because you need the money to fund your life. That's what the IRA is there for. Now you may have some after tax assets. So we want to observe how much after tax assets you have. So as an example, let's assume you have 300,000 in after tax assets and 3 million in an IRA. Traditional, you say, well, I have after tax assets, so maybe I do Roth conversions. We want to know how long that after tax asset will last if you don't take IRA distributions. So in this example, let's assume you spend $100,000 a year. Well, that after tax account is going to be zero after three years, which means all you have is an ira. And now any dollar you need for that extra trip or that new car is going to have to come from the IRA and you're going to lose some optionality in how you realize income that might lean you more towards doing qualified distributions. If you have significant after tax assets, you also want to observe what is the cost basis of those assets, how much tax liability if you were to have to sell those because you were doing Roth conversion. So we want to get how much do you have in after tax assets? What's the tax liability if you had to sell those assets? In terms of how you're going to fund a life, that's going to be important to observe. We also want to observe what your income profile looks like, say over the next five years. What income sources do you have to fund your life and what tax brackets might those income sources put you in year by year over the next five years? That's going to be helpful. Also, want to observe whether you're planning on doing qualified distributions. Want to observe what your future required minimum distributions might be. You want to observe how old you are, how old your spouse is. If you have a spouse, observe how old your family tree is in terms of your children and grandchildren. These are just things that we want to have that can be put into this first plan of record.

Now we gotta orient, now that we have this data and this scaffolding around us, we have to orient. Is it better to do qualified distributions? Is it better to do Roth conversions? And how do you do that? Well, software is really good here in that if you using financial planning software and you have your just base plan of record, and it will assume usually that you're draining your after tax first and then to your pre tax and so forth, you can go into a good software tool and say, okay, here's my base plan. Now let's assume that I do qualified distributions. That's basically taking money from an IRA for five years and calculate the amount that I do to get me up to the top of a tax bracket, let's say the 12 or the 22% tax bracket. The software can easily create that scenario and then tell you relative to your base version where you don't do either, what the potential lifetime tax savings could be given that by doing these qualified distributions, you're lowering your required minimum distributions. It has all of these simplifying assumptions on tax rates and RMDs and IRMAA and all those other things, but it can easily do this over a 30 year lifespan to say, oh yeah, if you did that, you did qualified distributions up to the top of the 22% tax bracket. Because of this, that and the other thing, you might save $200,000 in taxes lifetime. Cool, that sounds nice. So you can easily create that scenario in software to explore and then you can explain relative to the base plan, not the qualified distribution, do the same thing, but do it with Roth conversions and it will ask you, where are you paying the tax from the Roth conversion? And you can make that determination. You can do it to the same tax bracket and I would do as much of the identical scenario as possible, but you'll just have to determine where you're paying the tax and then it will tell you the potential lifetime tax savings or not from that scenario over whatever period of time the planning is being done for. Very easily. You can start to compare your base plan, which assumes you do none of this, to doing qualified distributions and then doing Roth conversions and give you a dollar amount of potential savings.

Now it's important to know that this is not a certainty that you're going to get that savings. There's so many simplifying assumptions in software, especially when you're doing 20, 30 year models with tax rates. I mean, just think how complicated all this stuff is moving around. It's not going to be certain that you are going to get any benefit from doing this, but it can help tease out where there might be some opportunity. And that's where software is really good. It's good for proof of concept to go a little bit deeper. It's not good for creating a multi-year strategy that you're going to do because it's just too complex of a scenario with so many unknown variables happening in the background. But it's a good proof of concept. But that will tease out whether there's some opportunities here. And then the next thing you want to observe is what might be some second order consequences that aren't being caught in just simply the income tax equation of Roth conversions versus qualified distributions. This could be your gifting strategy. And whether you're going to do qualified distributions or not from your IRA to charity, it could be coupling Roth conversions with large charitable giving, et cetera. Just orient yourself as to some of these things.

The next thing you can do. And this, I would recommend doing this on paper like journaling is writing out, okay, if I do a qualified distribution or take money from my IRA to fund my life, what benefits do I get from that? Well, I get to lower my IRA amount, so that lowers my required minimum distributions later on. It allows me not to have to drain my after tax assets. It allows me potentially not to have to realize capital gains and hold on to highly appreciated assets that my kids can get up as a stepped up cost basis later on or my wife can, or my husband can just write out all the benefits of doing a qualified distribution and then write out all the benefits of doing a Roth conversion. You get to lower your future RMD you get to have money, grow tax free, etc. Write all of those out and then write what it is you're trying to solve or why are you thinking about this optimization question in the first place? What is it you're trying to solve for? And it's important, I think, to write this out rather than just do this in your head. Because, we have a hard time sussing things out and organizing things in our head and our minds play tricks on us. And by writing it out, my brother and I were talking about this the other day. It helps us organize our thinking better, but it also helps us identify incongruencies in our thinking and areas that we haven't fleshed out near as much as we thought we had. And focus on the question, what am I trying to do here? What is the end result I would like to have? Writing that out is very helpful because there is no black and white decision here. If you're in a position where you have after tax assets and you don't need to take IRA distributions and you know you have low income tax years, taking an IRA distribution and choosing to pay the tax and having that extra money to fund your life is a great idea. So is doing a Roth conversion and paying the tax bill. Both can be beneficial. So writing out why you're trying to do this will help you get to a better judgment call. And the last thing I'll say before you get to your decision is because you're going to have to decide. Like if it's November 2025 right now, you're going to have to decide, but you're only going to have to decide for 2025. In 2026 it's a blank slate. So you can redo this with your new version of who you are and your priorities. Maybe this year you do, a qualified distribution because it would be nice to have some extra money so you didn't have to realize some taxes on assets to sell or you're shoring up the amount you have in after tax assets and it just feels right. And then maybe next year you feel like, no, I got enough in after tax assets. I'd really like to start having money that I can have tax free later for long term care expenses or for my children, it's okay to do one, one year, one the next year. It's also okay to do a little bit of both. And to be honest with you, many times that's what we do. We're going to do a little bit of qualified distributions to help fill up a tax bracket, and then we'll do some Roth conversions to fill it up. So it's okay to be anywhere in between there. And that can help you decide only for this year so you can take action on it.

You see how there's no formula for this? And I was at a, presentation, I think I mentioned this. It's like people that have certainty on this. Oh, you must always do Roth conversions. You're crazy if you don't do Roth conversions. Rah, rah, rah, rah. I'm sorry, that's just not true when you're actually doing the work of planning. Because every person has their own priorities and some people are very adverse to paying more tax right now for future benefit. And that's okay. Remember, this is optimization. We don't have to do any of this. This is just enhancing the plan. So if we're going to enhance the plan, it's really going to be qualitative about what you're trying to enhance. Are you trying to enhance a future asset for your children and not creating a tax liability for them? If that's priority number one. Okay, do Roth conversions. You feel comfortable paying the tax today? If it's, I want to have more liquidity so I can get myself to spend on some of these things that I really want to do. And I don't want to sell some of these assets I have in my after tax account. Okay, take the qualified distribution, pay the tax, and now you have liquidity and say, this is money I'm spending on these things I might not otherwise do. Remember, the goal of this exercise is for you to have confidence to create a great life. That doesn't always come down to a spreadsheet, but I would go through this type of structure to get to a place that you're comfortable with.

DOMINIC ASKS WHY QUALIFIED CHARITABLE DISTRIBUTIONS CAN’T BE USED TO FUND A DONOR-ADVISED FUND, EVEN THOUGH THE DONATION IS TAX-DEDUCTIBLE.

Roger: Now let's get to one of our fast passed audio questions from Dominic.

Dominic: Hey, Roger, My name is Dominic and I've been listening to your show for a couple years and I've learned a great deal. Thank you very much to you and your team for all the good information that you've provided. My retirement is imminent, just a few, few months. And over the last couple of years I've developed a framework in my mind for how to, how to approach retirement, how to ask the right questions, and how to prepare. I'm looking forward to it and I appreciate all you guys have done before I ask my question. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. and my question is, you may not know the answer to this, but how come we can't use qualified charitable distributions to fund donor, advised fund. We get the tax deduction for it in the year that we donate, but we can't use it for daf? Anyway, that's my question. And, I'll catch you later. Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you.

Roger: Good question, Dominic. And again, happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. I hope you have some very specific things to be thankful for. I'm sure you do. All right, so Dominic. Dominic is asking about qualified charitable distributions. We call. We talked about that in a retirement toolkit. And that is where you can give money directly from an IRA to a charity, a 501C3, like say the Red Cross, but you are not allowed to do that to what is called a donor advised fund, which is sort of like your own little private foundation where you donate money to your donor advised fund and then you can dole that money out to charity year by year in dribs and drabs. So Dominic wants to know why can't we put money from a IRA via QCD to a donor advised fund? You're correct, Dominic. I don't know the exact answer to this, but they both have been around for a very long time. So it's not like donor advised funds came about after QCDs were a thing. My understanding is that the intent when these rules were written were to help get money directly to charities immediately. And that's my guess as to the reason why we can't go to a donor advised fund. Because if you do a qcd, qualified charitable distribution to a, donor advised fund, you don't have to do because of their structure, distribution from that donor advised fund each year, it can be done infrequently. It could be done by 5% donations every year. So let's say you started a, you had $100,000 that you wanted to put into a donor advised fund from a qualified charitable distribution. Well, if you put it into a donor advised fund, you might only pay out 5% of that or $5,000 each year to a charity, meaning a Red Cross or your church or any organization that you want to support. So the benefit immediately to an actual charity is going to be say 5% in this example. So that doesn't have the impact in the moment that a. The way the current rules are, if you do a qualified charitable distribution, it has to go to a Red Cross or some other organization and they're going to have that money to go to their operating account to have change. Now that's my guess as to why? They don't, allow it, but who am I to say?

BB AND SHELL ASK WHETHER CONTRIBUTING TO A ROTH VERSUS TRADITIONAL 403(B) AND 457 PLANS MAKES SENSE GIVEN THEIR HIGH CURRENT TAX RATE AND PLANS TO RETIRE AND MOVE TO A LOWER- OR NO-TAX STATE.

Roger: All right, now let's go to our next Fast Pass audio question from BB.

BB: Hi Roger. I'm having a difficult time figuring out whether my spouse and I will be better off if I contribute to a Roth versus traditional 403 and 457 government. Any monies contributed to the Roth will be taxed at approximately 36%. This includes federal, state and local taxes. I am 65 and I plan to retire in one year. We are hoping to move from Oregon to a much lower tax state or a no tax state in the next couple years. Additionally, our, federal taxes are, are likely to go down once I retire. Please let me know your thoughts. Best regards, BB and Shell.

Roger: Hey BB and Shell, congratulations on your pending retirement. This is a difficult question to answer because I'm lacking context. I know that you're 65. What I don't know is the amount that you have in after tax assets, the amount you have in pre tax assets, the amount you have in Roth assets, if any, what monies you're going to need to live on and where you plan on getting that money from. It could be a pension or other things. So it's a little bit difficult to answer, but essentially the question is you got a short time frame, you're in a high tax bracket now, you'll likely be in a lower one in a few years because you're going to retire. Is it best to save the tax bill now by putting it in a traditional 403B, save a 36 cents on every dollar you put into it, or is it better to pay 36 cents and have the money be in a Roth long term? That's essentially the question. The answer to that question can be sussed out if we look at how much money are we talking about? Are we talking about a $7,000 contribution? Are we talking about $20,000 contribution? It's likely it's not going to be that material either way to the long term viability of your retirement. So this is optimization. I could go either way on this one. I think doing the Roth, I've done like I'm in a high tax bracket. I've done Roth 401k contributions and paid the tax and I've switched it to traditional IRA to not pay the tax. I've gone back and forth on either one myself. BB and I'm, I'm younger than you are. Part of that had to do with my income in my appetite to pay the tax up front. Versus putting it in a traditional account. For me, I don't have a ton of. I'm not way overweighted in traditional IRAs, so I felt, okay, put money in traditional IRAs or 401ks in this part, because unlike many people of my era, that's not where most of my assets are. So for me, putting money in a traditional ira, I wasn't exacerbating a required minimum distribution or a huge stockpile that I was going to have to figure out later in life. So for me, it was relatively simple. So that is one thing you'd want to look at. Bb, is putting money into your ira. Is it going to exacerbate a future tax problem later because you have so much in there that it's going to put you or your spouse in a pickle later in life? If not, then save the 36 cents now and take it out a little bit later. You know, take it out, you know, when you're in retirement and in this lower state or tax bracket. But I'm totally cool if you put it into a Roth IRA, as long as that's not hampering your ability to pay the tax. So I would say unless we're talking about very large amounts that are going to have a material impact on your retirement, I would lean into what you feel most comfortable with, and you're likely not going to notice the difference either way. And if you are, that's just going to take more detailed planning. And with that, let's go set a smart sprint. 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.

SMART SPRINT

Roger: All right, in the next seven days, let's practice making thankfulness meaningful by telling someone specifically why you're thankful for them. It'll be more impactful for them and I bet for you, too.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Roger: I don't know if you can tell sometimes, but I struggle at times with the podcast and answering questions. I always feel like I don't have enough context. So I'm not giving enough meat for you to take action in your life. You know, like Bebe there, I don't know enough information. And it's contextual. It's not just simply a math problem most of the time. And I would love to come to you with certainty. This is the rule. Do it this way. And, it's very attractive to have someone. This is what you should do. Okay, great. I respect them. They know what they're talking about. They said, do this all the time. That is very attractive, and there are moments where I'm able to do that, but it's so contextual, and I want to make sure that you have actionable things that you can take away from this. So I'm going to work harder to make sure that that's the case because I want this to be useful to you. I am thankful for you as a listener and those that email me for the encouragement, the affirmation, specifically sometimes, of how we've helped people change their lives. I am also thankful for the people that call me out when they don't think I'm being kind or I have a blind spot or when I'm using words wrong. I am thankful for that. It's hard to receive sometimes, but I know that people want the best for me. But I want to let you know that I am thankful that I get to do this every day with you and that you are giving me feedback in a graceful way. Because we're all trying to create a great life and we're trying to be good retirement planners. Knowing that this stuff is really confusing. It's hard. I've been doing this for 30 years. It is complicated. There are lots of nuances. And so for you to be doing this for yourself, maybe having not thought about it for decades, is impressive. And, I want you to understand, if you think I have it all figured out and I'm there, I'm not. So that's scary because I've been doing this for so long and I've been very intentional about it. But it's also freeing, realizing that we need frameworks more and we need to trust ourselves more and remember why we're doing this stuff so we don't feel like we have to be Mr. Or Mrs. Perfect. With that, I'm just thankful for you. Hope you have a wonderful evening.

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