The Smart Take:
We often have a lot of unrealistic expectations about retirement. And there’s nothing wrong with that if we reel ourselves back toward reality before making major decisions. Let’s talk about some of the ways our retirement expectations get out of whack and what more realistic scenarios should look like.
Prefer to read? See below for the transcript of the show.
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The Host:
Kevin Kroskey – About – Contact
Introduction: 00:03 Welcome to Retire Smarter with Kevin Kroskey. Find answers to your toughest questions and get educated about the financial world. It’s time to Retire Smarter.
Walter Storholt: 00:16 Thanks so much for joining us this week on Retire Smarter. This is the podcast for you. If you’re in Northeast Ohio and you’re thinking about how you can better prepare for your financial future and for retirement. I’m Walter Storholt alongside Kevin Kroskey
Walter Storholt: 00:29 He’s the President and Wealth Advisor at True Wealth Design with an office in Akron. You can find out more about us by going online to TrueWealthDesign.com. Kevin, thanks for joining us on the show and looking forward to our first ever podcast together. This should be a lot of fun.
Kevin Kroskey: 00:43 Yeah, I’m looking forward to it as well, Walter. Hopefully, we can provide some good content and help a lot of people make some smarter decisions about retirement.
Walter Storholt: 00:50 Well on today’s show we’re going to talk a little bit about being realistic about your retirement, but before we dive into the meat and potatoes of that conversation, Kevin, since this is the inaugural Retire Smarter podcast, take us a little bit behind the scenes as to why we’re using this podcast, why we are a utilizing this medium to kind of connect with clients and folks who are interested in retirement and financial planning, especially in the Northeast Ohio area. What do you hope that people will get out of not only today’s episode but you know the future ones that we do here as well?
Kevin Kroskey: 01:22 Every week. We have a lot of clients coming into the office and we’re taking care of their planning, we’re taking care of their investments, we’re taking care of their taxes and other things that pop up financially that are even tangential to that. And a lot of good lessons come out of that. And although our finances generally are private and you know something that’s not disclosed, there’s a lot of good stories that can be shared to really help people make smarter decisions, help people learn, help educate them, help inform them, help keep them disciplined through up and down markets and just have a good expectations about what to think about the future. And ultimately all this is going to culminate in, you know, more clarity, more confidence and more peace of mind around their finances. So if we can use the podcast to go ahead and reach out to our current clients and just touch them in a way that is conducive, you know, if they can listen on a dog walk or when they’re working out. Even though we meet with them regularly and multiple times per year, it’s just going to be an effective way to go ahead and meet them where they are and keep them educated and keep them informed and keep up their peace of mind coming into and going throughout retirement.
Walter Storholt: 02:30 Well, we’re going to strive to do that each and every week here on the program to inform you and also provide a platform for you to ask questions as well. If you are curious about your own particular financial situation, we invite you at any point in time to check us out online at TrueWealthDesign.com and you can submit questions, schedule a phone call all through the website there. You’ll be able to listen to all the podcast episodes on the website. Also, lots of great information and details. Therefore you have to learn more about financial planning and about retirement as well. TrueWealthDesign.com, your place to go. So let’s get it started. And for our first episode, we thought it’d be a little bit fun to talk about some of those unreasonable expectations that are often out there in retirement. Nothing wrong with having kind of big expectations for what we want to get out of our retirement years.
Walter Storholt: 03:18 I think dream big is something we’ve all been taught is certainly a good thing, but it’s also a good idea to reel ourselves back to the reality before we make major decisions. We know what happens when we kind of let our emotions rule our decisions for us. So on the podcast today, let’s talk about some of the ways our retirement expectations get out of whack. And this is common, this happens to a lot of us, so we’re not pointing fingers or making fun of anybody here, Kevin, but what more realistic scenarios should look like. And I’m sure that you’ve seen some people who have come into the office who have had these really ambitious goals, these unrealistic expectations for what they could achieve with their retirement savings. Do you recall any particular stories, Kevin, of somebody who came in that fit that description?
Kevin Kroskey: 04:01 I have one screaming in my mind, and this is definitely an outlier. This is not normal, but it’s something that is certainly worth sharing. Hopefully a little bit humorous. So it’s been some number of years since this gentleman came into my office with his wife. But when he did come in and he has an engineering background and just ask some general questions saying, you know, how much do you need for retirement? And this was after we got to know him a little bit and they shared about some of the things that they wanted to do and what their lifestyle looked like. But the gentleman gave me a very concrete answer after he paused for a moment and you saw his eyes kind of reach up into the left of his brain and really thinking through his answer that he was about to give he, and the answer that he gave me was he needed $50,000 in his retirement account.
Kevin Kroskey: 04:49 And meanwhile, you know, $50,000 in today’s world, it doesn’t go all that far. I think a lot of people are probably hearing the same $50,000, question mark. And that was my expression. And then some. And so, you know, the next question I had to ask was, well, how do you figure that you only need $50,000? And he paused and he said, well, I was at this options trading seminar and the teacher told me that I can make 10% a month. So if I have $50,000, 10% of that is 5,000 a month. And there’s the money that I need for my retirement on top of my Social Security. And if you do that return and ignore and compounding, if you’re getting 10% per month, you know, it’s well over 100% per year. And I paused, I processed what he said because I was just astounded by it.
Kevin Kroskey: 05:38 But then I asked the question back to him and the question I asked him was, well, what are you doing in my office? If you can go ahead and do that and get those returns. And ultimately the meeting was, was relatively short just because the expectations were, were really out of whack. So while that’s very atypical, you know, most of the two people that come into the office, frankly they don’t know what to expect. You know, frankly, they’ve been working for 30, 40 years, living below their means most of their life. Maybe there are points in times when things change in their life and they’re living at their means or maybe they even had a dip into their savings a little bit. But by and large, they’ve been saving for retirement over time. And you know, you get on that treadmill and certainly may be looking ahead about retirement and wondering if you have enough and you know what retirement is going to look like and how are you going to make some of these big irrevocable decisions about getting into retirement.
Kevin Kroskey: 06:34 However, most of them come in pretty humble. Most of them, you know, have some things that they like to do. But first and foremost they typically want to go ahead and maintain their lifestyle. And then secondly, there’s going to be some things that you know, now that they have the time, you know, now that they don’t have to go back to work after taking a weeklong vacation, maybe they can take some extended travel or, or maybe have a second home. But most people that we work with come in pretty humble, come in really wanting to be educated, really wanting to learn about what they can afford and really if they have enough. And then ultimately after we start going through that process, how do we make sure that we’re making smart decisions to make the most of what we have and make sure our money lasts at least a little bit longer than we do.
Walter Storholt: 07:17 Yeah. It doesn’t have to be somebody saying, you know, get me this 100% return on my investment. These, you know, completely outlandish end of the spectrum conversations. But it may be as simple as somebody saying, Oh, I heard a, my neighbor or my friend at a party was telling me that they were getting, you know, this great return on this mutual fund. Can you help me get the same thing? And it’s kind of one of those situations I guess if you don’t have all the facts, you don’t have all the information or are you sure that you heard them right? But sometimes we hear this, the simplest little comment and we think, well, I can do that too. And that may not be realistic. And I think that’s what puts people kind of often in the wrong direction many times. And why we need reeling in from time to time. And then you said that there’s a lot of people in the middle, but what about the other end of the spectrum, Kevin folks who maybe had expectations that were so low, they were actually in better shape financially than they initially realized.
Kevin Kroskey: 08:08 And these people are really more so the clients that we see on a daily basis the people that again worked hard and they saved, lived below their means and they’d been doing it for, you know, 30, 40 plus years and then they ended up with more money than they ever really thought possible when we started down that path and when they started looking at it, you know, because those spending behaviors that become ingrained over the prior 30, 40 years, a lot of times as their incomes grew, their lifestyle didn’t necessarily grow along with it. Or maybe it grew some, well maybe they bought that, that larger house for their family or maybe they moved into a nicer neighborhood so their kids could go to a better school. Maybe they even splurged a little bit. And you know, bought a little bit of a nicer car than what they had in the past.
Kevin Kroskey: 08:53 But when you looked at it, their incomes definitely outpaced the spending increases and lifestyle. So when you talk about changing behavior and going into retirement, a lot of times its almost disbelief where we show and we analyze when we go in great detail showing what kind of lifestyle, the assets, and the resources that someone has accumulated, what kind of lifestyle that can go ahead and support. And it’s often much greater than what they’re currently doing. And one, you know, they come into the office, humble in a little bit skeptical and some natural fear because again, we want to make sure our money lasts. We want to make sure that we manage these transitions and make smart decisions on Social Security and health care and our investments and how we’re going to go ahead and create our income. But you know, when they actually see and we walk them through in that great detail and I try to take the confidence and clarity that I have in my mind, you know, after doing this for well more than a decade, and transplanting and putting in their own so they can have the confidence and clarity and make that decision if they want to go ahead and stop working and transition into retirement.
Kevin Kroskey: 09:58 It takes a while for that really to set in. You know, a lot of times people have said, I really wasn’t expecting you to tell me that I could retire today. And they come in the office and when I asked them the question initially, they say, yeah, yeah, I’d retire today if I could. And then literally, you know, I can think of at least 10 or 20 times where a, we can take them through that process and clearly show them that not only can you retire today, you can actually have a better lifestyle than what you’re currently allowing yourself to have today. And it takes a while for that to set in.
Walter Storholt: 10:29 Yeah? I’m curious what the reaction to that is, Kevin.
Kevin Kroskey: 10:32 Yeah, I mean it really does take a while to set in and so we’ve had, I can think of clients, you know, six months to two years where you know, even if they’re financially ready to retire emotionally, they’re probably not ready because you know, after you’ve been doing something for 40 years and getting a paycheck every two weeks or twice a month, and then you go ahead and retire and you look at your day planner and it’s completely blank Monday through Sunday.
Kevin Kroskey: 10:56 Yeah, that’s a little scary too. You know, what are you going to do to go ahead and make sure that your time is filled and you know, you’re still being productive and happy and social and engaged and you know, it’s just, it’s not that you’re going to golf all the time or it’s not that you’re going to do some knitting all the time or cooking, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of time to fill. I’ve had a couple of people argue with me that they could golf sun up to sundown five to seven days a week. But I think they are the outliers.
Walter Storholt: 11:25 Yeah, I like golf. But you’d need a break from it too. I, at least in my opinion.
Kevin Kroskey: 11:30 Or you’d hope you don’t get injured. Right?
Walter Storholt: 11:33 Right. Exactly. Yeah. Now, what do you do that what, that’s a great point though, right? What happens if something happens to you lifestyle-wise that now you can’t do the one-trick pony you thought it was going to fill all your time again, these are outliers. So maybe this is a bit of the extreme, but I think these are the kinds of questions that are worth pondering. So it’s kind of interesting to hear from you, the experience that you’ve gone through and the different attitudes that people approach a problem with.
Kevin Kroskey: 11:54 Yeah. You know, everybody’s different. But making the transition from work after doing it for so long to non-work, it’s a transition and every transition is going to create stress. Some good stress, some bad stress. But having a plan on how to deal with it on how to make that transition, you know, working with somebody that has helped many other families make that transition and not only guiding them financially but also in the nonfinancial aspects of the transition. And certainly with healthcare, which is a big decision. All these things can really help. And you know, frankly, these are some of the stories I, you know, I hope to share on this podcast to help people, you know, learn from others that have made that transition successfully and sometimes not successfully and learn from those experiences and hopefully make better transitions and better decisions for themselves.
Walter Storholt: 12:39 Well we’ve been kind of on the philosophical level if you will, so far on the podcast as we talk about these, you know, realistic expectations and trying to realign our expectations when it comes to what we can get out of retirement. But what about the money side of it. Let me ask you a bit of a gotcha question here and one that maybe doesn’t have the right answer to it, but you know, what’s the reasonable rate of return? Maybe this is the magic question that a lot of people do want the answer to. What’s a reasonable rate of growth I can expect on my investments during retirement? What, what number can I pencil into that expected percentage rate?
Kevin Kroskey: 13:12 Yeah. You know, we use a lot of, not to get too technical, but we get expect to return research from a lot of the big investment houses that people are very familiar with.
Kevin Kroskey: 13:21 And then we use that input to go ahead and construct the portfolios for client assets that we manage. And one of the things that I always smirk at when I look at these is they all go to either one or two decimal points to the right. So you know, whether it’s 6.5% or 6.54%. And I always think that anybody that puts a digit past to the right of the decimal point certainly has a good sense of humor because it’s not hard science, investments, and planning. It’s a soft science. It’s not like gravity where you dropped something and it’s going to fall to the earth, provided you’re, you’re on the earth. And not in outer space, but there’s a lot more variability within it. So, and the other thing I would mention is it’s all relative. So I had a meeting earlier today and somebody used the phrase absolute and relative and there are no absolutes.
Kevin Kroskey: 14:16 There are, you know, you can think of interest rates for savings accounts or CDs and they change over time. You go back to 2007 you could get a five year CD that was paying North of 5%. You know you go back a year ago, a five-year CD was, you know, probably paying about 1%, 1.5%. It’s a little bit higher today. So, it’s relative, you know, the markets are going to move over time. Interest rates are going to move. Certainly, they tend to move less than stock markets. Stock markets tend to have a much bigger wiggle factor if you will. It could be really up or really down or somewhere in between, particularly in the short term. So whenever you’re looking at expectations, they’re so important and you have to plug a number in for return expectation into the retirement plan. But one of the key things I want to make sure everybody understands is that it’s going to change over time.
Kevin Kroskey: 15:04 You know, interest rates are a lot higher today than they just were a few months ago at the beginning of 2018 so the interest rates have changed a lot. Stock prices are roughly flat so far this year, so they haven’t changed all that much. But if you look back over the last nine, nine and a half years, the US stock market has been in one heck of a bull market after we went through the Great Financial Crisis. So as stock prices have gotten higher over the last decade, certainly, the future expected returns have now gotten lower. So it’s a moving target rather than give, you know, straight forward numbers. The key is that you’re always looking at what you can expect today, keeping an eye on your plan, certainly using reasonable slash maybe even slightly conservative numbers in your retirement planning projection because the last thing you want to do is be too aggressive and then all of a sudden you’re forced into un-retirement.
Kevin Kroskey: 15:54 Nobody wants that, but it’s always going to be a moving target. When you look at some relative comparisons today, stocks as you would expect, you can expect more from bonds. However, you can expect less of that compared to going back 10 years ago when stock prices had just gotten beat up coming out of 2008 and 2009 so what we do when we’re measuring returns for a client in terms of what they need in their plan, we always think in terms of returns after inflation. It’s what economists call real returns. So simplistically, if you go back and look through, say the last hundred years of market history, and you know the US stock market has done about 10% if you look at aggregate bonds, they’ve done about 6% inflation over that time was about 3% so I’m going to do some quick math in my head here.
Kevin Kroskey: 16:40 I apologize to any listeners, but you can jot this down if you like. If we just have a simple 50/50 portfolio of 50% in stocks earning 10% so I’m going to get, you know, basically half of that 10% expected return or 5%. And then the other half in bonds, you know, which historically had been at 6%, so half of 6% is 3%. So I get an 8% expected return for that 50/50 stock and bond portfolio. I have inflation of 3%. So my after inflation return or the real return is 5%. I can tell you we absolutely do not use those historical returns in our forward-looking expectations today, everybody knows that rates aren’t at 6% and also we think for many different reasons beyond what I want to go into today, you can’t really expect 10% in stocks from the US market or even from international markets.
Kevin Kroskey: 17:30 On the positive side though, inflation has been lower than 3% for quite some time and that seems likely to continue for a while. So we think in those real returns. So whenever we go through the financial plan for somebody, first and foremost, we really need to understand their lifestyle. We need to understand the expense side of the equation and what goals they have, what is really important to them, what are in the needs bucket, and then what things are more discretionary, where if they absolutely did have to cut back, that’s where they would cut back from. So we do have a predetermined plan there. And then ultimately you need to make smart decisions on Social Security, pension and other income sources you may have. And then you come to the investments and you have to put some return expectation in the plan. And again, there’s a different way that we go about doing that.
Kevin Kroskey: 18:14 But then you stress test the investment assets against your spending requirements and against whatever is not being met by your income sources. So we go through that process and that’s really called a stress test or measuring your risk capacity and then we back into the return that somebody needs to make their plan work. And we need to have some safety margin in that plan too because life has a way of throwing some curveballs at us. So in a very kind of simple, quick, you know, the one-minute explanation that’s really the retirement planning process and then you come down to those real returns, those after inflation returns that’s really going to drive the success or failure or somebody’s retirement plan
Walter Storholt: 18:50 And it’s not just about the input, but then, as you mentioned as well and started to allude to the output, what our expenses are, what we’re spending, how much we’re taking out. And I think that’s the natural evolution of this conversation is not only, okay, how much can I get going into the account, but now what can I take out of it and what’s reasonable for me to be able to pull out of the investments each year. I guess this is where that old saying the 4% rule kind of comes into the equation is that still realistic that I can just draw 4% down on my balance and kind of live their retirement just fine that way?
Kevin Kroskey: 19:23 That’s a good question, Walter. Let me back up for a moment though. You talked about how much we can get out. So to use an analogy and say a sports analogy the games off to one in the second half, you know, they think back a couple of Superbowls ago, whenever the Patriots were playing the Atlanta Falcons and the Falcons were just whooping their butts the first half.
Kevin Kroskey: 19:42 Then it was the greatest comeback in Superbowl history. And of course, Tom Brady and the Patriots won another one and getting closer to my Steelers and, and they’re six Superbowl rings, which I wasn’t too happy about. So how you’re pulling money out and the distribution plan that you have to create that income can often go a lot further than what you did to get there in the, say, the last few years of retirement. So that’s really, really important to be mindful of. Even if you think you’re, you’re behind schedule or you’ve maybe you haven’t saved enough or you’re earning a lot, but you’re not saving as much as you should and you’re getting close to retirement and you’re wondering if I have enough, a lot of times a really good distribution plan, we’ll go ahead and make up for maybe some poor performance in the first half.
Kevin Kroskey: 20:31 So after you get past that and you’re aware of that, the 4% rule that you asked about, you know, it’s, to me it’s a good way to, to start thinking about how much you can spend from your assets and how much can you create in that retirement income. But you know, usually, it really falls short. When we look at our clients, we serve a little bit more than 170 families and manage approximately $130 million on their behalf and part of their overall planning. There’s probably a couple of handfuls where that 4% rule applies to. And I say that because it’s really an oversimplification of how people’s lives work. You know, people carry mortgages into retirement that, you know, they’re having this large expense that maybe they carry into age 70 and then it goes away. You know, maybe they have a, a pension that’s a fixed amount that isn’t going to keep up with inflation.
Kevin Kroskey: 21:22 So its purchasing power is going to decrease over time. So they’re going to have to make up for it from other assets. You know, people have goals that aren’t recurring in, you know, kind of have this nice smooth spending every year. Maybe they’re going to go ahead and pay for a wedding or two for their kids. Hopefully, the second wedding is for another child and not for the same child. You know, they’re going to buy a car, maybe they’re going to splurge on something for themselves. So they’re going to have some expenses that are very consistent. It’s very much in alignment with that 4% rule and then they’re going to have others that are very lumpy. And I’m that lumpy factor, if you will, in the real world, kind of throws out that 4% in a lot of ways. So with that being said, aside simply the 4% rule, to put some numbers to it, you know, suppose you have $1 million and you pull 4% out per year and you start out, say 4% of $1 million is 40,000 a year or a little less than $3,500 a month.
Kevin Kroskey: 22:17 Now, the research that underlies that simple 4% rule is basically looking at a 30-year retirement. So on average people retire today in the early sixties. On average, they’re expected to live at least the second death for a married couple, about 30 years. And you know, we’re starting to increase that assumption in our retirement plan, a conversation for another day. But that 4% rule was really having an inflation-adjusted income for years in the absolute worst-case throughout US history. Let me repeat that again. There’s a lot of information there, but it was really going back through multiple 30-year periods going back to the 1920s throughout the US looking at returns from stocks or bonds. And what was the absolute worst case? It’s somebody could’ve pulled income out for 30 years taking their inflation adjustment and still had money, at least a little bit of money left after a 30-year timeframe.
Kevin Kroskey: 23:12 And that number was actually was just a smidge higher than 4%. The best case, you know, was probably closer to 10% so you know, the thing that goes with this is interest rates. When you look at interest rates today, and again, everybody knows that they’re not getting the same sort of interest rate down at their savings account at the bank or on any of their bond investments that that 6% historical average. So when you just start factoring that in, there’s a lot of research that shows maybe 3% is more realistic in today’s world, given where interest rates are. And then if you start in stock market valuations, you know, it could even be a little bit less. So it’s a good starting point to think about this, but usually, it’s an oversimplification for our real-life clients. And it’s going to be a moving target.
Kevin Kroskey: 23:58 You know, maybe 4% was the old rule. 3% is maybe the new one, and maybe even that’s a little bit too aggressive because that 4% rule applied in the US if you look outside of the US now 4% rule only worked in about 25% of international developed markets that we have a long history for. So the US had a really, really good experience over the 1900s becoming a superpower, but going forward and becoming a much more mature economy, one that’s going to be growing slower than what it did over the last hundred years. That 4% rule may not hold up.
Walter Storholt: 24:30 It’s just that I’m kind of chuckling on this end of just how expectations have changed over the years. And I recently opened up a, a HELOC, a home equity line of credit. And you talked about how some things are paying practically nothing to the banker as he’s, you know, going through the paperwork. It’s like, and you’re going to get a checking account you know, through opening this up, blah, blah, blah. And you know, so you’ll have our premier account. It’s going to be the best one, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then even he goes, it basically pays no interest. But anyway, you’ll have that. So wasn’t even trying to sugar coat it. That’s basically, you know, not gonna do anything for you, but there it is anyway, so don’t even get a toaster. Didn’t even get it. Yeah, no toaster, no nothing.
Walter Storholt: 25:12 So it’s pretty funny to kind of just see how things have changed, but don’t put that in perspective. I mean, so somebody who saved $1 million for retirement, now you’re saying essentially under these rules, it used to be if you saved a million, you pull out $40,000 a year, is what that’s kind of amounting to. Now it’s down to $30,000 a year. And as you alluded to, maybe even less if to someone who saved $1 million, that may sound ridiculous depending on what their spending looks like. But that doesn’t mean you just accept it for the way it is, but it means you have a further conversation. You look at alternatives. Other more creative ways that you can structure a financial and a retirement plan to navigate around those problems. So to kind of zoom back out here at the end of the podcast and kind of we started broad, went down to some specific technical aspects.
Walter Storholt: 26:00 Let’s go back broad again. How do you handle these conversations with people who have these expectations? They find out that no, maybe you can’t pull out as much as you were thinking you’re going to be able to pull out of your accounts. You’re not going to be able to retire the way that you know mentally you’re thinking you can. How do you guys at True Wealth Design, facilitate that conversation, broach these different topics and, and start putting together a plan that makes sense and that is realistic, but also helps check some of these boxes and achieve the goals that people have.
Kevin Kroskey: 26:28 I’ll answer it in a phrase. Connect the dots. So one of the things you just asked is, you know, if they can’t pull out as much, you know, what does this much relate to what are their assets relate to, it relates to their lifestyle. Everybody that comes into our office, first and foremost, they’ve become accustomed to a certain lifestyle. So even in the absence of specific goals for somebody that specific retirement goals that they have, if we first understand their current lifestyle is a decent base case. If we can just go ahead and maintain what we’ve become accustomed to, that’s a good starting point and then we can go ahead and iterate from there. So implied in that is we have to first understand what their lifestyle is, how much they spend, you know, what’s really important to them, what’s in that needs bucket, what’s more, discretionary in terms of expenses and then, you know, connect the dots between, you know, what, maybe not pulling as much out of their account is how that’s going to correlate to the lifestyle.
Kevin Kroskey: 27:22 If we see that, you know, they’ve done a good job and they live below their means and they’re going to only need a small rate of return after inflation to go ahead and make their plan work. Well, we may be living in a lower return environment, but how that’s going to impact their lifestyle is, is not at all. You know, certainly, there may not be as much in the accounts as they get older and maybe as they leave on for an inheritance, for their kids or for causes that they support. But if they’re going to be able to maintain their lifestyle, we make that very concrete and measure that and say, okay, the lifestyle that you guys have become accustomed to over the last 10 years, you’ve been okay with that. Right. And you usually get the head shake and then the shakeup and down by the way, not left and right, but you get that head shake up and down and we measure that and show them that, okay, you’re going to be able to maintain your lifestyle.
Kevin Kroskey: 28:08 And then you know, maybe they’re going to be able to do more than that. So we can go through that process. But if we go through that process and we don’t come to that conclusion, maybe they are going to have to cut back. Maybe they are going to have to work a little bit longer or change, you know, some of the goals that they do have. We want to make that very concrete and connect those dots and show them, you know, how that cutback is going to impact their lifestyle. Because if we can make a very clear and very concrete for them, then they can go ahead and make a very informed decision about what’s going to be best for them and something that they feel comfortable, you know, living with and have the peace of mind around and doing. You know, if they, on one hand, you know, don’t want to work longer or maybe there’s some sort of physical impairment or just the stress or they’ve kind of had enough, or maybe there’s even a layoff or something of the sort, whatever it may be.
Kevin Kroskey: 28:56 If they don’t want to keep working and they can see that, Hey, okay, I may have to cut back a little bit, but it’s really in this discretionary bucket that, Hey, we can travel say maybe for the next 10 or 15 years until we’re in our mid-seventies but we’re probably not going to be able to travel after that. And you know, we’re not going to be able to go down to Florida until we’re 85 if we can make that very concrete and they can go ahead and, and see, okay, is it worth it for me to keep working, to know that I can go to Florida until 85 or am I, okay knowing that I’m probably only going to be able to do till 75 but that’s good enough and that’s, that’s worth it to me to go ahead and retire today. That’s our job.
Kevin Kroskey: 29:33 And I would argue that’s anybody who’s a financial advisor, that’s their job to make it very concrete, do all the technical behind the scenes work, but then simplify for the client and make it very concrete so they can make an informed decision that’s best for them. So if anybody’s listening to this, that a is not a current client and what we’ve been describing is something that sounds good to you, something that you would want to learn more about and maybe how we can help you or you have a question about something that we touched on the podcast today. If you go ahead and visit our website at TrueWealthDesign.com there’s going to be a button there. It says, “are we right for you“ so you can learn more about us, who we help and what makes us different compared to other advisors and is go ahead and click that button to schedule a 15-minute call with an experienced Certified Financial Planner to go ahead and talk with you, answer some of your preliminary questions and start determining are we right for you?
Walter Storholt: 30:26 And again, we’ll include a link to this as well on the description of today’s episode, so you can either just go to TrueWealthDesign.com or just look in the description of today’s episode and click on that link that’s in that description and it’ll take you to that page as well. Schedule your 15-minute retirement phone call with an experienced financial advisor with the True Wealth team. Talk about the situation that you’re in currently, what might need to be done to improve your financial standing going forward. Go to TrueWealthDesign.com or click on that link in today’s description and if you want to do it the old fashioned way, you can always call the team and have your conversation directly or set up a time over the phone. It’s (855) TWD-PLAN. That’s all (855) TWD-PLAN.
Walter Storholt: 31:14 Or the full number version (855) 893-7526 well, Kevin, thank you for the guidance on our inaugural podcast of Retire Smarter and we’ll look forward to another great conversation with the next time around.
Kevin Kroskey: 31:26 It sounds great, Walter. Thank you.
Walter Storholt: 31:28 That was a lot of fun for Kevin Kroskey. I’m Walter Storholt. Thanks so much for tuning into the show. We’ll talk to you next time on Retire Smarter.
Disclaimer: 31:41 Information provided is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment, tax or legal advice. Information is obtained from sources that are deemed to be reliable, but their accurateness and completeness cannot be guaranteed. All performance reference is historical and not an indication of future results. Benchmark indices are hypothetical and do not include any investment fees.
