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Episode #634 - Healthcare Before Medicare - Retiree Feedback

Roger: Last week, I reviewed our most recent listener survey. Big thank you to everybody that filled that out. Hundreds of people. It's wonderful, direct feedback to help us get better for you, which is the point. And it's clear you're likely here because you're trying to build a level of mastery in retirement planning so you can have more confidence and comfort, whether you're doing it on your own or working with an advisor. So you're trying to get to some level of mastery. And that got me thinking about how do you build mastery in something? And I think you're approaching it in the right way, and that is reading books, watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts to understand the lay of the land. But that only gets you so far. Until you actually go and do it, you're only going to have a theoretical knowledge of it because there's so much more to be learned in practicing it. And that's why today on the show, we're going to share the perspective on health care before Medicare decisions from people that are actually doing it, individuals that are retired and have navigated this decision or are, ah, navigating it now, because there are pearls of wisdom that you can use to go from the academic theory of it to actually making decisions for yourself. I find gold in these feedback sessions and I hope that you do, too. So we're going to get that started, well, right now.

Roger: Hey! Roger Whitney here. I am a practicing retirement Planner with over 35 years experience walking this journey, and we are here to noodle on “how do we have more confidence and comfort in our decisions so we can lean into rocking retirement?” Now, if you like this show, I encourage you to sign up for our weekly email, the Noodle. You're going to love that. It'll give you a recap of the show, links to resources we mentioned, and some exclusive content. One of the best features about our Saturday morning email is that if you hit reply, it comes directly to my inbox and and I do my best to respond or log the question so we can try to help you on the show so you can sign up for that at thenoodle.me. So today we're going to talk about some listener wisdom on navigating health care before Medicare. So without further ado, let's get that party started.

Roger: We recently did a poll of listeners asking, are you counting on Affordable Care act subsidies in your retirement plan? How many people are looking to use subsidies, which is the government scheme that helps reduce costs, and only about 28% of those that answered are planning on trying to get some ACA subsidy, 72% are going to pay the full boat. So that's the broad landscape.

LISTENER EXPERIENCES AND STRATEGIES: ROGER SHARES EXPERIENCES AND QUESTIONS FROM LISTENERS NAVIGATING PRE-MEDICARE COVERAGE. THEY DISCUSS TIMING COBRA VERSUS ACA TRANSITIONS, EVALUATING COMPANY RETIREE PLANS, MANAGING RISK WHEN UNINSURED, AND CREATIVE STRATEGIES LIKE CATASTROPHIC INSURANCE, HEALTH-SHARING PLANS, AND PART-TIME WORK BENEFITS. LISTENERS ALSO EXPLORE USING HSAS AND INHERITED IRAS TO MANAGE COSTS AND MAXIMIZE SUBSIDIES, PROVIDING A BROAD VIEW OF PRACTICAL APPROACHES FOR EARLY RETIREES.

Roger: But now let's go to some specific wisdom on how people are actually doing this because there are some great tips in here to help flesh out your thinking of making this decision. Our first one comes from Scott. Now, I know Scott. He's a friend. He's a longtime member of the Rock Retirement Club. He is a very intentional DIY planner. And he has a wonderful tip about transitioning between COBRA to the Affordable Care Act, which could avoid an unforced error related to deductibles.

Scott: Hello, Roger, this is Scott. I've enjoyed the health insurance discussion and, one topic I don't recall hearing about was, timing of the transition from COBRA to ACA. If that is the route that somebody takes. I think it's a universal rule, but I think if the timing of that transition happens at any point during the calendar year, your deductible resets once you start aca. in order to deal with that, I did have the luxury of time, and the ability to manipulate when I retired. And so I chose the very first couple of days of June. By doing that, I got my company's health coverage for the rest of the month of June. And then starting July, I transitioned to Cobra. I planned to do that for 18 months, which took me to the end of December the following year. And that way I had, you know, no change in deductibles, etc. And then at the open enrollment period, I was able to do ACA and start that fresh. So that's just, something to consider if you have the luxury of being able to manipulate when you retire.

Roger: That's a fantastic example of how to optimize your timing to maximize your deductible in a given year. And it's just thoughtful. Now, how do you think of something like that? You could have a checklist, but it's almost impossible to have a checklist that's usable to think of all these possibilities. That's why, in my opinion, it's very important that you have a very structured process for your thinking. So it's organized because this is where those things will be revealed as you go through it in an organized way. Fantastic idea, Scott. Thank you so much for sharing.

Roger: Our next comment comes from a listener and I didn't write down your name, I apologize. But it is two tips on part time work. One is an additional place to consider for part time work is your city. This listener said, when my children were babies, I worked part time, just 10 hours a week at the public library and was able to get a very affordable family coverage through that job. So as we're thinking about part time work, if that's on the table, a city job where you can serve the community, in this case in the public library might be an option. Don't just look at private sector jobs like we talked about in that episode. Great tip there. The second tip that this person had was student health insurance. Now wait a second. If you're retired, how are you a student? Well, they said the university near their home will provide student health insurance for anyone taking three credits or more. That's one class, they say per semester. I was already interested in taking classes after retirement, so this option was really appearing. I found that even factoring in the cost of the class, it was better financially than the Affordable Care act plan. And it has doctors in my network. So rather than work, you could take a course, in this case, one course a semester, qualify for student health care insurance. This is a very elegant solution that can Help Bridge between pre 65 healthcare and Medicare.

Roger: Our next suggestion comes from Mark. He says, hey, I've learned so much from your podcast. They've helped me transition from working to rocking retirement. Huzzah. Awesome, Mark. Mark says, I just listened to this week's podcast and there's another option for health care. Before Medicare, my company allowed me to stay on my company plan if I retire after age 60. 60, they have a formula based on the number of years of service, et cetera. For me that was 30 years and the company covered 75% of the monthly premium for five years between 60 and 65. For myself and my wife, this is much better than the COBRA option. Perfect example, Mark, of we think of cobra. There are all these schemes that the human resources department comes up, especially at larger companies. A lot of those benefits go unused because nobody knows about them. So this is where active discovery and trying to observe what is available and asking these questions can help reveal items like this. So great suggestion there, Mark.

Roger: Now the next listener, Glenn, has a cautionary piece of wisdom related to Medicaid. Glenn says, very thorough explanation of AC options and requirements. I went through this process for a couple of years for my wife and myself. One point I'm not sure you mentioned and it probably may not apply to a lot of listeners, but just in case, Glenn says if one over optimizes for modified adjusted gross income or essentially just has a modified adjusted gross income, that is below the 100% amount of the federal poverty level for their family size, then they may not be eligible for the Affordable Care act at all. Whoa. What does that mean? Well, what Glenn's referring to is if you have too low of income, that actually could make you not qualified for the Affordable Care act, but actually qualified for, you know, the next level of government assistance, which is Medicaid, which is the, the backstop for healthcare coverage. And I actually, Glenn, had this happen, it was a few years back where we actually had to proactively help a client realize income, because they were going to be below the federal poverty limit, and they wouldn't have been able to stay in ACA program. They would have had to go to Medicaid, which might not necessarily be bad, but that's not what it's meant for, and there's a lot less options. So great piece of advice. There is to pay attention to your modified gross income, whether you're trying to over optimize or optimize or you just don't have any and you get thrown into it unintentionally. I keep hitting the mic with my finger. I apologize for that.

Roger: Our next question comes from Lucy, and it's not a bit of wisdom, but it's a question I think is worth addressing. Lucy says, I am 59. I have multiple options. I can stay on the employer coverage until Medicare for about 20,000 a year. I can take Cobra. I can go on the Affordable Care Act, which I haven't done my homework on yet. Well, I would suggest you do that. Yeah, but I heard it's quite costly as well. But what about no coverage? Lucy wants to know my question for you, and I hope you go down the rabbit hole. What if we selected no coverage for the next five to six years? Over the past decade, we've used little to no coverage or health care costs because we use a naturopathic doctor, which isn't covered by healthcare insurance. So we're not a big user of healthcare. Lucy says, I'm really focused on the big math here, but what are the gotchas outside of the obvious big medical expense? Reasonable question. You know, you're here, you're Lucy, you're here. You're 59 years old. You don't use the health care system even though you have coverage. And now you're looking at paying $20,000 a year for five years or $100,000 without any inflation for five years. And you're like, hey, I'm 59. The last 10, 15 years, I haven't had surgeries, I'm not on medication, I'm not using it at all. Why spend the money? Reasonable question. These are the kind of questions you want to hold up and examine. So let's examine this question to hopefully give you some perspective on this potential option.

Roger: Lucy, because it is an option. One is, you know, saying that you're not a healthcare user is something we would call optimism bias, meaning that you're very optimistic about the future use of healthcare given the data that you have, which is that you haven't used it much for the, say, the last 10 or 15 years. So you're very optimistic that this trend will continue. That is a bias because you're making decisions only on what's happened in the past without factoring in that, that you're assuming that's going to continue in the future. And that can be dangerous. And we got to be cautious of that or at least aware of that. So that's thought number one.

Roger: Thought number two is, okay, you're 59. So in the 50s and 60s, those are the times when bigger health issues start to accelerate and past health history may be a weak indicator of future health. This is when a lot of changes in our body start to happen. This is when long term imbalances, and that could be muscular, it could be chemical, it could be hormonal, et cetera. Those things, those imbalances can compound over time and then present themselves in drastic ways. And that starts to accelerate as we get older because we have more reps in. And that's something to be aware of just because you've been super healthy. I see this even in myself now. My cholesterol is slowly starting to go up and I'm trying to address that. My energy levels are going down or moderating. I'm trying to manage this, probably like you, Lucy. It's got my DEXA scan and it's going in the right direction, but things pop up that can be more severe as you get older and that isn't factored in. Well, you should factor that into your thinking.

Roger: Third observation, when we think about covering a risk, a healthcare cost is a risk, it's the tail risk that matters. What do I mean by that? A tail risk is referring to standard deviation distributions. And yes, 98% of the time or 95% of the time, you're probably fine. But if the risk actually happens, what is the severity of that risk financially, and what is the severity of that risk to your financial plan and the feasibility of your retirement? Tail risk? Matters. That's why we buy life insurance when we have young kids or we need to have replacement income, because if we don't and we die, the surviving children or spouse could be devastated financially. And that even though statistically the odds are against that happening, depending on your age, those, those vary, but the severity is so big to your children or to your family that you buy life insurance in order to cover that severity. Very similar here. It's what is my exposure if it happens, is a really important question that you have to examine here, Lucy. If you have a cancer diagnosis, if you have a car accident that's very severe, that costs a lot, you're now getting into the 300 to 500 and even more in cost, or if you have some of those imbalances I talked about rear their head in some ugly way. What's the financial severity of the risk if you don't have coverage? If you had to shell out a half a million dollars to cover a major medical expense over a period of time, what does that do to your financial life in retirement? That's the important question here. I think of, let's use my wife as an example. I've been using her a lot lately, but I think it's a reasonable one. Up until her mid-50s, very healthy. And she's very healthy now. I'm not saying that. But with psoriatic arthritis suddenly not including doctor bills, she is now on a biologic. You know, the one we see all the, advertisement for. It's to help manage psoriatic arthritis inflammation. And Those cost about $10,000 a month. Had no history of something like that before in Wham, it just happened. So that's what we're talking about with severity here, Lucy. So if you have an event, let's say you present with psoriatic arthritis after years of having underlying inflammation that finally presents itself in a serious way. Now, without insurance, you're going to be $10,000 a month to cover the medication if it's the only option. So that's what we're talking about with severity here.

Roger: So let's frame this trade off of choosing no insurance. What you're going to get is a certain gain of $100,000 because you're not paying health care insurance. And if we factor for some inflation, let's call it $111,000, you're going to have that as a certain gain if you don't pay for insurance. But then you're trading that off with, a, catastrophic cost of uncertainty, but devastating, potentially Devastating expenses. Is it worth that trade off or that risk if that tail happens, does it devastate your retirement financially or substantially change your life? That is what insurance is about is transferring risk of the severity of an event happening to a third party. That's what insurance is. This is very similar and one reason why we think about sequence of return risk when we talk about investing, you know, on average markets are up, you know, The S P 500 up, I forget the number. It's say 80, 90% of the time we have a positive event in the market. I don't have that statistic right in front of me. But every now and then we get negative markets, but we worry about the tail risk because if we have a couple negative markets really early, it could devastate the rest of the retirement. And that's the trade off that we're talking about here. So I am not a fan of this for these reasons because it's about life outcomes.

Roger: Now what can you consider that's in between ACA and no insurance since that is something that you're considering? Well, there might be an in between that could get you some of the way there and maybe save some costs if you're trying to over optimize and I would call it over optimization here in this way. One trade off could be using a private health insurance provider to identify some catastrophic private insurance that will have you own a lot more of the cost but will cap you at some level. So if you have that heart replacement, and I've had clients that have had heart replacement surgery, if you had a heart replacement or if you had a major cancer event, you're going to own a lot of financial costs but then they will start to kick in. So it will start to limit the severity in the event that tail risk happens to you. So you could look at catastrophic private insurance to see if that's an option that probably would save you 50% potentially depending on your health situation. And this is an area where, if you're really serious about this, you could look at the health sharing schemes where it's not insurance, but they do have some coverage from the group level, Medicare and things like that, where it's not technically health insurance, where it's going to cost substantially less, but there are going to be holes in it that those might be a good in between to give you some protection from the severity of a storm if it were to arise and limit some of that severity.

Roger: All right, our next bit of wisdom comes from Michael related to a part time work example. Michael says at 57, I took Roger's advice and took post retirement job at a senior center. Amazing people. I learned so much from about them, about aging gracefully and even continue to visit years later where I acquired health insurance when it was time to move on. So I obtained health insurance through my wife employers, which then I passed on to Medicare, at age 65. If I had known earlier that health insurance would be such a major factor in retirement and so expensive, I may have continued working in my career. I hope that others consider this path as it worked out for me. I've been very fortunate. So that's an interesting perspective from you, Michael, is that you worked at a senior care, you got health insurance, but also you had the added benefit of relational serving people, building some community, and learning from people ahead of you on how to age gracefully. That's, I think, a great example of really habit stacking, we would call that in habit formation.

Roger: But then I like this last part that you said, which is had I known this had been so expensive, I might have kept working. My guess is, and you didn't say it here, Michael, that you're glad that you figured this out because had you known, you would have kept working. But the fact that you had to work this problem helped you find a solution that worked and probably saved you from working in your career. It's amazing how having to solve the problem because it's right there in front of you motivates you to be creative. So my guess is you're happy you did it this way rather than continue to work. And you can email me back if you think I misinterpreted that. But that's a great example of a win win and a cautionary tale of if we look at this stuff too hard, we can easily close the door on having a more flexible life and just keep on working. so thanks for the, wisdom there, Michael.

Roger: Our next tip comes from Allison. And Allison listened to the podcast and noted you didn't highlight that all bronze level plans are eligible for Health Stat Savings accounts. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't really elevate that, did I Allison? So Health Savings Account is an account that you can contribute to if you are part of a, HSA compliant plan that allows you to deduct the contribution from your taxes and it can grow tax free and that will lower your modified adjusted gross income. And if you are in a bronze plan, those are eligible for HSAs and they will say HSA compliant. That's what you want to look for. and Allison goes on. This is new and can help us as a buffer, to the cliff because money added to a health savings account and a traditional IRA if you have income, reduces your modified adjusted gross income. Plus you can still use the money you put in the HSA towards eligible medical bills. Plus if you're over 55, you get a catch up provision much like you do with an IRA in 2026. Allison says we can reduce our modified adjusted gross income by over 10,000 dol simply by moving money into two HSA accounts. For my spouse and I that enabled us to stay under the cliff. We still hope to improve the system, but this is one way to work within it. So that's a great example, Allison, of hey, if you have a Browns plan, you can contribute to an HSA to manage your modified adjusted gross income to stay below that cliff. Great solution there. Thank you, Allison.

Roger: Our next bit of wisdom comes from Todd, a retired doctor. Thank you for your healthcare series. I'm a former physician who retired at age 58 in 2024. I'm continuing my private insurance out of pocket. This cost has always been factored into my retirement projections. And Todd shared a lot of detail here. But it essentially comes down to be careful on your retirement planning with ACA subsidies, especially if you're retiring relatively early in your 50s because you have what is called policy risk. And policy risk is that the government changes how ACA subsidies are delivered, who is eligible for them and how much they are. And we saw that with a question a few weeks ago where someone did their retirement planning based on ACA subsidies before the sunset of the additional benefit here at the end of 2025. And that did away with this cliff in terms of the subsidies and saw their healthcare premium, I think increase by $800 a month. And now they're trying to figure out fill the hole. That is an example of policy risk. They had their plan built on those subsidies that were enacted in 2021 continuing. And then when the government didn't extend them for the second time and they expired, now they have an extra $800 a month they have to cover. That's an example of policy risk. The government changed the rules or adjusted the rules or let the sunset in this case which put a hole in their plan. And Todd's point is it's tenuous to assume that early retirees, what your need is, will factor into any ACA policy changes because they're not thinking about you as an early retiree. They may change the scheme to do a means test based on the assets you have, et cetera. So it's just a good point of, be careful on assuming that the rules will stay the same. And if your interests aren't the major voting block, you may get left out in whatever future changes happen. So just something to be aware of so you don't fall into the case of a listener a few weeks ago.

Roger: So our next question is related to an inherited IRA and medical withdrawal. And this listener says, my income allows me to qualify for the healthcare subsidies, but it's still quite pricey. I suffer from post traumatic ankle injury that limits my ability to walk and deal with daily pain. I have a prescription and letter of medical necessity from a doctor for purchasing a home based swim spa to alleviate chronic pain and exercise. My question is, I would like to take funds from an inherited IRA to cover the cost of the spa to and write off the medical expense on my taxes from my adjustable gross income. But the $40,000 withdrawal would put me over the healthcare subsidy limit with which I collect monthly. Now, would my doctor's prescription be used to lower my adjusted gross income so as not to affect my subsidy? That's a great question. And this is definitely something you want to look at your specific situation with a tax professional. It doesn't even have to be a CPA, but go to someone that knows your specific tax situation and all sources of income to help you navigate this. But let's see if we can give you some guidance.

Roger: Number one is any withdrawal you make from an inherited IRA for any reason is going to be taxed. If it's a pre tax account, it doesn't matter what you use the money for. So the fact that medical or not isn't going to impact the action of taking money from an inherited ira, it's going to be added to your adjusted gross income. Now what about deducting medical expenses? Well, for 2026, your federal tax income remains about 7.5% of your adjusted gross income. If your medical expenses are over 7.5% of your AGI, then you can start to deduct them from your adjusted gross income and that could help you. Now a caveat here is you have to itemize. If you're taking the standard deduction, that's going to go away. So this is something, I think you want to talk to a tax professional that knows your specific situation in the form of your income to see how to navigate this. Now how else might you navigate that outside of just the rules around this specific topic in order to get the relief that you want or need in this case, without having to think about ACA subsidies, what are some options that you have?

Roger: One is, I would brainstorm, what alternatives are there other than spending $40,000 for this medical spa in your home? Now, obviously you deal with daily pain and you limit your ability to walk, but what within the capacity of that are you able to do? Are you able to go to a facility that has the type of spa that you need? Is it close enough? Is it fit within your ability to be able to walk and manage pain? Because that's likely not going to be $40,000 upfront. Obviously it's going to cost something, but look for options around that. Second, talk to your doctor about options like that because they likely have dealt with people with, in similar situations and they might have some ideas of therapy or centers that allow you to get maybe not perfectly what you would get if you had this in your home, but enough to help you manage this pain.

Roger: And then lastly, talk to them in whatever resources you can find about. Are, there programs that can help subsidize this or support you because you're dealing with these particular issues related to your ankle? There may be programs available from drug companies, from PT companies, from nonprofits that help people mitigate some of the cost of dealing with this type of stuff. So I would encourage you to be creative on just how do you get what you want? Because, and I'm not saying the home spa, I have no clue. I'm not saying the homepage isn't the solution, but oftentimes when we have a solution, we tend to close off any other options. And I just want to encourage you to try to be creative using AI and using the Internet and using your doctor and whatever local resources you have. But I would meet with an accountant, somebody that can understand your taxes, to navigate your particular situation here to see if it's possible.

Roger: All right, our last bit of wisdom comes from Lee. Lee says, I wanted to point out a misleading statement in this week's publication of the Noodle which stated, before you retire, increase your options by building up after tax savings and tax free investments. Withdrawals from these accounts will not increase your modified adjusted gross income for healthcare premiums. And then Lee says, selling investments in your after tax brokerage account to generate retirement income can result in capital gains which will increase modified adjusted gross income. That is true. And also the dividends and the interests will contribute to modified adjusted gross income. I don't think it was totally misleading. Many people hold mostly equities in their Brokerage account. I would actually argue that that is not true. People own all types of assets and if you're building up liquidity cash that is going to earn interest. But that could be available to help us to subsidize all of these things. But I think the important point here that you're trying to make sure that is pointed out is that if you have after tax assets, money's in a brokerage account, in a savings account, you're going to have interest, you're gonna have dividends and you're gonna have capital gains. If you own stocks or mutual funds that throw off capital gains or if you sell stocks and those are gonna be counted and you're correct, Lee, that is a moving target. And we talked about that with mutual fund distributions in a previous episode. So thanks for pointing that out. Now on your tax free assets, your health savings account and your Roth IRA or 401, those will not have that issue where you could strategically take money out from stock, say from a Roth IRA and it not affect your adjusted gross income or modified. Thanks, Lee.

Roger: Our last bit of wisdom for today comes from Robert related to how to evaluate your health care plans. Now Robert says one thing you can do is upload the plans that you're looking at in the healthcare.gov app and get the summary of benefits. Upload that into an AI like chat or Claude, et cetera and have it evaluate how they compare and contrast with deductibility. CO pays all of the, you know, the details on the financial responsibility. AI is a wonderful tool for this. Robert. Thank you so much for pointing that out because that stuff can be very confusing. And this is actually something I did last fall because yes, you get the charts within healthcare.gov to look at Plan A versus Plan B versus Plan C, but you still have to do the fairing. That's one thing that AI is wonderful at. So that's a great example. On a side note there, Robert, AI and how we use that to improve our retirement planning is slated as a topic for the future because I think it can be very helpful.

Roger: All right, now we're going to move to a rocking retirement in the Wild story. And then I'm going to share some feedback from our listener survey because it's interesting and it's fun.

ROCKING RETIREMENT IN THE WILD: JENNIFER RETIRES AT 59½, DISCOVERS WATERCOLOR PAINTING, FITNESS CLASSES, AND INCREASED SPENDING PATTERNS IN EARLY RETIREMENT

Roger: Rocking in retirement in the Wild is where we tell stories from somebody already retired and what's going on in their life, good, bad and otherwise, and the challenges that they faced and many times overcame to help give you perspective. And this one comes from Jennifer. I'm just going to read it. As she wrote it, she says, hey Roger and Nicole. I've been listening to the podcast for the last few years and really enjoy it. I've learned so much which helped me take the plunge to retire at 59 and a half on January 31, 2025 after a 34 year career as an attorney litigator. The last year has been great. I don't miss working at all. Work was stressful, high stress and lots of hours, which did not leave me a lot of time for hobbies and my grown children. I spent the first few months of retirement selling my house and moving into my partner's home. And we live in California and enjoy lots of outdoor activities like walking my dog, running and hiking. After selling my house, I signed up for a drawing in watercolor class and an outdoor circuit training class.

Roger: The biggest surprise of retirement has been discovering how much I love watercolor painting. I wake up every day excited to paint and I know I'll be trying other art forms in the future. Between doing art, exercising, reading, cooking and planning and taking trips, the days go by fast and I usually wish they were just a few more hours in the day. How did you ever have time for work? Jen is a common refrain from retirees. Next, besides discovering my love of watercolor painting, the other big surprise in retirement has been finding out that it is very easy to spend more money than when I was working. I thought it might go the other way, that I'd spend less because of more time to cook and do the chores and that I previously hired out. We are not big spenders as most of the things we enjoy doing are free. But I still spend about 40,000 more in my first year of retirement than I did in prior years.

Roger: Some of this is due to some big ticket items like a family trip for my 60th birthday. Some extra spending is due to the fact that I have more time to spend money. For example, when I was working, I didn't have time to shop for clothes, so I just ordered the basics online. In retirement, it's been fun to go to local boutiques and an outdoor mall to to jazz up my casual wardrobe. Also, painting and exercise classes cost money, as do painting supplies and framing. Finally, the travel is an expense even when we don't go first class and we've taken four major trips this year. Anyway, I, thought your listeners who haven't yet retired would appreciate hearing my perspective. It is quite possible to spend more in retirement than anticipated. Thanks again, for being such a big help in making me feel ready and able to retire.

Roger: Jen, that's awesome. Yes. Early spending in retirement is a thing. I call it re-nesting. You know, you have all the things that you need to build for your new thing. In this case, it's watercolor activities and fitness and a lot of go go errors. One thing, Jen, if we look ahead of you, it's going to be a little bit individual, but that trend may continue, but it may slow down sometimes in the first three or four years, sometimes it keeps going until later life and then slows down. But yeah, that's very normal. So that's a great perspective on, hey, spending can go up because you're doing a lot of stuff if you go to a store. I always say if you go to a store, at least I. If I go to a store, I'm buying something. That's what I do. I'm a hunter and killer when I go into a store. And so the best way not to spend money is not to go into a store. For me, my wife is the opposite. But do you have time to do this stuff? That's wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing your perspective. I also want to pull briefly on the thread on watercolor coloring and exercising, etc. Now, that is what you chose to do. I've known people that have chosen, you know, to build fly fishing rods, make syrup, all sorts of things. It doesn't matter what it is, but you have room for that curiosity and I love that you're leaning into it. All right, now let's go to the listener survey.

SURVEY INSIGHTS: ROGER SUMMARIZES KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM OVER 400 SURVEY RESPONDENTS.

Roger: So every year around the first quarter, we do a listener survey. And the intent of the survey is to listen intently to you on who you are and what you share in your own words about what you want in the show, what you don't want in the show, what you're excited about, what you are, worried about, etc, so that we can enter those conversations to help you actually do this stuff. All, ah, with the theme of, we don't want to just talk about this stuff in theory. We want to be about doing this stuff. So thank you for that. How many 400 plus people that completed it? So I'm going to go with the statistical facts of who you are as a group and you are one of them. And then I'm going to share some random comments. All right.

Roger: We have 29% female listeners and the rest are men. And that has held relatively steady. We saw a trend of females listening more. We would prefer that to be more balanced. How we do that I don't know, but we would like to. 29% female. 83% of listeners in general are married. 15, 16% are single. How old are you? All right, the largest contingent which surprised me actually of 36% are 61 to 65. The next largest contingent at 23.4% are 56 to 60. And then the next largest at 23% are 66 to 70. And then our smaller segment, which makes sense, are under 50. All right, are you currently retired? 54% yes and loving it. 9 and a half percent. I am in pre tirement. I left my full time career but I'm doing something fun. 14% are. I plan to retire within the year. 17% are. I plan to retire the next five years. See, this helps us know who we're talking to. Talk to people that are retired. Sometimes we don't do that. We talk about the preparation for retirement rather than being in it. This informs that. Maybe we should balance that a little bit better. All right, what is your approximate net worth? We have, let's see you go here. 5 to 10 million in net worth is about 20% of listeners. 3 to 5 million is about 30% of listeners. 2 to 3 million is 19.4% of listeners. 1 million to 2 million is 19.9% of listeners. And we have a small contingent under a million and a reasonable contingent over 10 million.

Roger: All right, are you a member of the rock retirement club? 67% said no. the rest were either our current members or our cast members, which we love both. We love everybody. All right, my biggest challenge is. And this is where chat GPT or we use Claude is helpful AI it helps summarize. Or we redact everybody's name and email address because we don't want to put anybody's stuff out on that stuff. But the summary of what your biggest challenge is as a group is financial confidence and spending. Then number two is taxes and withdrawals, purpose and time management, health care coverage, and then it goes down the list. All right, my next challenge is. That's the biggest challenge. My next biggest challenge is the non financial retirement purpose, activities, identities, then financial planning and strategy. So very. I think that's pretty normal. Does that resonate with you, Mr. Or Mrs. Listener? And then my final challenge is health and wellness, purpose and activities, etc. Do you use a financial advisor? Is a question we ask. And 54% do not. 46% do, which I find very interesting and actually great. Hopefully if you're one of the 46% that are using an advisor that you are becoming a better client with them and helping extract more value from them by having retirement specific knowledge to bring to the table to make sure that you're building a plan that's right for you. I love that. Where else do you get retirement planning information? Other podcasts is the biggest one. And then books. What would you like to hear more or less of on the show? More practical planning from Roger. Gotcha. Let's see, expert interviews, everything else was sort of about the same. So we love that. What topic do you want to hear on the podcast in 2026 and beyond? Number one response, tax optimization and strategy. Health care and insurance, where we just hit that this last month. Non financial aspects and lifestyle spending, withdrawal strategies. Case studies. Good. This is very helpful. And then we ask a bunch of other questions. Let's see which ones might be interesting to you. What would make you not listen to the show or read our email? And that really comes down to, you know, advertising and things like that. Politics, both of those. We don't talk politics. Love not talking politics. So we can focus on your life. and we're not into advertising, so. Good, that's going to continue.

Roger: We always ask a sort of odd question, and this is, if your retirement was a vehicle, what would yours be and why? Number one was reliability and dependability. Camrys, Highlanders, Accords, pilots, that was the number one. The second level response was versatility and adventure. A significant number of responses favored SUVs, RAV4, Highlanders, Lexus SUV trucks, et cetera. And then the third was comfort and luxury sedans. And then fun and freedom and unique water and sports, et cetera.

Roger: Then our last question in the survey is tell us something you want us to know, which is always fun and honestly can be a little bit difficult as well. So I'm going to read just a, spattering of some of the comments. Some very short, some very long. I won't read. I'll summarize the long runs, long ones. But these are wonderful because they're just you sharing something about you or the show or us or retirement that is important to you. Now, we have a rule when we do this, because this could be hard, because this is getting public feedback. We delete anything that seems mean spirited and we get those. So we just delete them. It's not worth us listening to. If they don't feel like they're productive or they're coming from a mean spirit, we'll read them, try to see if there is something helpful they were trying to share, and then we delete them, because that's just not where we play.

All right, so I'm just going to read a spattering of ones. I won't read the mean ones. We deleted those already. funny ones. You are not the kind of people I'd like to associate with. The excessively positive attitude annoys me. I can't believe people fork over a thousand dollars for your club. And I told you that's not a mean one. Why do you listen to the show? There's plenty of other ones out there. Go listen to another one. And I. My. Am I excessively positive? Maybe I am, but I think it's because I'm trying to be proactive in looking for solutions and not complaining about what is. but thanks for the feedback. All right, number two is know you guys love the touchy feely, but if your finances are wrong, you can't enjoy any touchy or feely. I think you can. But, yes, I agree. Financial stewardship is the foundation for feeling confident and comfortable in your retirement path. I hundred percent, 100% agree with that sometimes. And, I get what I can be guilty of is leaning too much away from the finances because I feel people put too much emphasis on it. And I'm trying to be balanced, but sometimes I can overdo that. I agree. All right, number three, I like ice cream. All right, number four, I like more content for divorced and single people. We were talking about this one internally. Thank you. In that we, in our language, we automatically talk to married people, and it sometimes is very overt, but sometimes very subtle. And we're going to try to be better about that and not just assume people are married. So thank you for that feedback. number four, I wouldn't have the confidence to retire if I hadn't been introduced to your podcast. I'm glad that we helped your journey. Number five, thank you for not having perfect pronunciation in language. It makes you so honest and relatable. Oh, God bless you. Nichole, did you read that one? I just am who I am.

All right, the next one. My father's quickly progressing dementia means he likely won't be around a year from now, and we're going to have to move or look after my mom. All right, that's a. That's a rough season that a lot of us experience. That's definitely a topic we're going to bring back again. And how lucky your mom and dad are to have you be part of this journey. And be willing to be part of this journey. That's a beautiful thing. And then the trick is, how do you capture not putting your life totally on hold while honoring that? That's the. The eye of the needle. We got to figure out how to thread here. And I hope I wish you the best of luck. Next one. Thank you for helping me to question and revise our plan. Pivoting has become an essential skill, but going back to my values helps so much with decision making. Perfect. Next one. Series. Series. Lack of focus on couples, relationships with each other, adjusting to retirement. No discussion of married women specifically adjusting to retirement. Men and women are not all the same in this respect. You are correct. Thank you for the feedback. Heard you. Next one. Roger is a bit woo woo for me personally, but it's more than made up for his commitment to financial education. Woo woo. I'm probably not as woo woo normally as I am on the show. I don't know, I'll have to ask the team for that. Woo woo. Okay, next one. I'm so appreciative of all the work done for the podcast and the RRC. I found both after I became a widow and they plus the RRC solo group have given me great comfort and joy in planning my retirement. All right, just some random feedback from listeners you, and who you guys all this will inform. We try to listen and improve so you may see some new things happening with the show. and as always, if you are subscribed to the Noodle, you can hit reply and it comes right to me. If you're snarky or mean, I'll delete it. Otherwise, I will take your feedback as constructive criticism. All right, let's get to the smart sprint.

SMART SPRINT: ACTION STEP: IDENTIFY YOUR “HOMIES” FOR RETIREMENT PLANNING. NOTICE HOW YOUR CLOSEST RELATIONSHIPS INFLUENCE YOUR RETIREMENT EXPERIENCE AND TAKE ONE STEP THIS WEEK TO STRENGTHEN THOSE CONNECTIONS.

Roger: And now we're off to set a little baby step we can take in the next seven days to not just rock retirement, but rock life. All right, in the next seven days, I want you to grab a cup of coffee, a pen, a notebook, a computer, something of the sort, and I want you to write down who you walk life with when it comes to retirement planning and retirement life. Who are those people who you surround yourself with and the things that you talk about and the depth that you talk about them is a big factor in rocking retirement or creating a great life. Who are your homies? And examine that. And you can have different homies for different things. I have people that I go do adventures with. I, have people that I geek out on retirement planning with. I have people that I talk about books with. Sometimes they overlap, but what your cohort is, who you associate with and where they are is going to pull you to become something similar. So it's important that you do that intentionally. So take a quick inventory.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Roger: All right, next week on the show we're going to take a right hand turn and have Wade Pfau from retirement researcher on to talk about retirement. We're going to do that this week, but we had to pivot some things. So we're going to talk about financial discipline, talk about his retirement workbook and get into more of some technical things in his current thinking on retirement best practices. Have a great day.

The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance references are historical and do 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. This podcast may include testimonials and or endorsements.