RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:00:00]

BRIAN:  Welcome to Safer Retirement Radio, where you get the transparency you deserve.  With over 35 years of experience in finance and investing we help you stay up to date on market news and retirement strategies.  I’m Brian James Decker, owner and founder of Decker Retirement Planning and host of Safer Retirement Radio.  With me is my co-host and one of the advisors here at Decker Retirement Planning, Clayton Bradshaw.

CLAYTON:  Brian, it’s good to be back.  There’s been a lot going on over the last couple of weeks with the election.  So we’re not gonna talk about that today.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:00:30]

CLAYTON:  We’re gonna talk about common questions that people run into with retirement.  And these are three of the biggest questions that we’ve seen in retirement planning of retirees who’ve come in.  So we’re gonna be talking about those today.  For anybody that’s looking to get a second opinion on their plan or they want to set an appointment, please give us a call.  Our number 833-717-3030.  Again that number, 833-717-3030, you can schedule a call with us.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:01:04]

CLAYTON:  We can do a free 15, 30 minute call to just ask some questions.  We can answer your questions about retirement planning.  And especially with the topic that we’re gonna be covering today, which centers around how retirees can know if they’re gonna be okay in retirement.  So the three questions we’re gonna be talking about today, and I think this is gonna resonate with a lot of our listeners as well, number one, can I retire?  I think that’s probably the biggest one.  Second one is how much can I draw in retirement? So how much income can I take in every month in retirement?

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:01:38]

CLAYTON:  And then finally, what if I can’t retire?  And I think, for our listeners, that’s probably gonna resonate.  There’s a lot of people that, as they’re approaching retirement, those tend to be the biggest questions on their minds.  So let’s start off with the number one.  Brian, how can we and how do we answer that question at our firm?

BRIAN:  So the first question, can I retire?  Yeah, I agree, Clayton, I think these are the three biggest questions in retirement.  Can I retire?  How much can I draw?  And what If I can’t retire?  So I’m really excited we’re gonna cover these things today.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:02:09]

BRIAN:  So the first question, can I retire?  We’re a math-based firm.  I don’t care how smart anyone is, you can’t look at a pie chart and see if you can retire.  So in contrast to that, what we do is we load up, in fact we can probably even link to our income plan, or maybe give it away or something like that.  But our income plan takes your age, the assets that you’ve accumulated.  And it  shows social security, it shows any pension or rental income.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:02:45]

BRIAN:  Mathematically, we add all of that up and we schedule a COLA, Cost Of Living Adjustment, have our clients live to age 100, and then we enter all of that data to find out net of tax how much money you could draw.  And without that information, you can’t know how much money you can draw or if you can retire.  We’re living in these COVID times.  What if you just got laid off at 62 years old and you had, I don’t know, let’s say you had 1.2 million.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:03:25]

BRIAN:  We would do the work to find out if you could retire.  Now, a lot of it requires you to have a budget.  We don’t want someone to retire handcuffed because they can only spend X.

CLAYTON:  Sure.

BRIAN:  And that’s no fun.  ‘Cause then you can’t travel and see the world.  Once you retire you’re gonna want to do things and doing things cost money.  So let’s peel the onion on this topic before we go further.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:03:56]

CLAYTON:  So, real quick, and for anybody that’s listening, I hope that you go to our website, deckerretirementplanning.com.  We have on our Books and Useful Guides page we actually have a sample of the income plan that we’re talking about on there.  It’s a PDF, you can click it, download it, it’s free.  It’s that sample version, so that way you can kinda have a visual of what we’re gonna be talking about today.  So if you need to, press the pause button, go and download that and then while you’re looking at that you can follow along a little bit more.  But we talk about this enough, this is kind of what we live and breathe every day, so we do a good job of explaining it without it being in front of you.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:04:36]

CLAYTON:  But I hope you do take a minute.  Again, deckretirementplanning.com on our Books and Useful Guides page you’re gonna find that sample plan.  And if you’re browsing around on there, there’s a bunch of other things that you can download a couple of books and some other helpful information as you’re thinking about and approaching and planning out your retirement.

BRIAN:  So on this first topic, can we retire.  Let me give three or four examples.  So when I was in Seattle, I’ve been doing this for 35 years, there was one guy, Clayton, who came in.  He and his spouse, they were in their early 60’s.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:05:12]

BRIAN:  They had saved about 120 thousand dollars.  And he wondered if he could retire.  And I was going into that appointment that [MAKES NOISE] probably not.  Until there was one detail that, when I went down the page I saw, and I saw that they could.  They were both bus drivers in King County Washington and had driven a bus for the city for almost 40 years.  Like, 38 years.  So guess what you get by driving a public transportation vehicle for 38 years?

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:05:49]

CLAYTON:  Probably got a public pension paid out.

BRIAN:  A pension.

CLAYTON:  [LAUGH]

BRIAN:  And his pension for he and his wife paid them, I think it was almost a six figure pension.

CLAYTON:  Yeah, it was probably great for the both of them.

BRIAN:  Yeah.  So at 62 years old, they could retire if.  There was one last thing.  So we added it all up and saw, net of tax, that they had 8500 and I said how much do you spend?  And they looked at each other, you know they weren’t really well dressed.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:06:21]

BRIAN:  I don’t know that they were very well educated.  But they knew one thing, they said, they smiled when I asked can you live on 8000?  They said we’ve never spent 8000 dollars in our life.  We are so happy if we spend half that.  And so yes, and they were just ecstatic.

CLAYTON:  Yeah.

BRIAN:  They were waiting for someone to tell them that they could retire.  So that’s a happy conversation.  But that’s an example with someone with low assets and a fun conversation.  Before we move one, any points on that before I move on?

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:07:00]

CLAYTON:  No I think with those, in your experiences, you’ve been doing this for 35 years you’ve seen these people that have had this question.  This is why we’re talking about it and so we do have these people that come in that it’s a great-it’s a happy conversation.  So I think you’re gonna probably talk about the flip side as well.

BRIAN:  Yeah.  Here’s the flip side.  And this is sad.  Husband has health issues, he’s 72.  He’s still working part time as an attorney.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:07:30]

BRIAN:  The wife is a nurse and she’s 10 years younger.  She wants to retire, doesn’t like her job.  Very difficult job that she has.  They have assets of about one point six million and net of tax, it’s 12000 dollars.  And they can’t retire, guess why?

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:08:01]

CLAYTON:  Why?  That’s-why?

BRIAN:  [LAUGH] Because, they budget 15 and they can’t figure how to cut their budget any lower.  So she has to keep working.

CLAYTON:  Yikes.  Those conversations are always tough.  When somebody, and I’ve had these as well, where somebody comes in and they can get, on the plan they get a much lower amount than someone else but they spend next to nothing and so it works out.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:08:31]

CLAYTON:  And then on the flip side you’ve got these folks that are getting, relative to other high earners out there, a pretty good, sizable income on the plan.  But their spend is above that.  So this goes back to you talking about a budget and making sure, looking at what you need, what you want, and really categorizing those correctly I think is challenging for a lot of people.

BRIAN:  Right.  So I’ll give you a third.  Anything else on that one…

CLAYTON:  No.

BRIAN:  Before?  So the third example.  Can I retire?

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:09:05]

BRIAN:  I wanna be ambiguous here but there’s the largest airplane manufacturer in the country in the Pacific Northwest, did a major layoff.  I’m being very discreet.

CLAYTON:  I have no idea which company you’re talking about.  [LAUGH]

BRIAN:  And they did it in a way that kind of made me and a lot of people kind of upset.  They started with the oldest people.

CLAYTON:  Sure.

BRIAN:  ‘Cause why not?  You can get rid of a 60 year old engineer and replace him with someone in their 20’s and save a lot of money.  So that’s what they did.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:09:39]

BRIAN:  So these 60 year old engineers were coming into our offices in Seattle.  And they asked this question, can I retire?  And it was critically important because it’s very difficult to go out and try to find a job if you’re 60 years old.  Because with the cost of employee benefits and seeing that you break even, it’s very difficult to find a replacement job when you’re in your 60’s.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:10:09]

BRIAN:  So these people were flooding into our office and we did the work and there were many happy conversations.  Now we’re gonna get to the next point there, but there were many happy conversations.  I wanna emphasize, you can’t know if you can retire or not by looking at a pie chart.  The pie chart is the asset allocation plan and accumulation vehicle that we all used in our 20’s, 30’s, 40’s to get us to retirement.  It’s a great vehicle to accumulate assets.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:10:42]

BRIAN:  You got your paycheck coming in, part of it goes to the 401K, market goes down, you’re happy because every two weeks you’re buying into a down market.  Dollar cost averaging, market comes back up, you’re happy.  You’re living on wages but that all changes once you retire.

CLAYTON:  Well, and the pie chart too, and I’ll add, it’s what most people look at when they look at their statements.  What are my investments account?  Where are my investments done right now and what are my statements showing me?

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:11:12]

CLAYTON:  That’s what people are gonna see, is they’re gonna see that pie chart and it’s gonna be something, well, I know I have this much money.  But what does that translate to in terms of monthly income.  That’s what you can’t know.

BRIAN:  Right.  So let’s talk about the pie chart a little more and cover two things.  One is Monte Carlo’s Simulation.  So you’ve got one point two million in assets, you’re 62 years old.  And we forecast for you, Clayton, that your portfolio, which is 70/30, 70 percent invested in stock or risk and 30 percent-no let’s flip it.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:11:49]

BRIAN:  I’m gonna switch this.  60/40 traditional portfolio.  60 percent stocks, 40 percent bonds.  And historically, that has produced a return of X. And so you can count on, let’s even fill in X.  Let’s say it’s a nine percent average annual return, historically.  Count on nine percent.  You plug that in and you can see that you can spend nine percent of one point two million.  Let’s call it 105 thousand a year.  Do you think that’s gonna work?

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:12:20]

CLAYTON:  No.

BRIAN:  Well, wait, you didn’t think about that.  You immediately said no.  So let’s go with that.  Markets don’t trend, they cycle.  So if you count on a nine percent rate of return to keep you afloat and you retire in the early 90’s, good timing.  ‘Cause that bull market lasted for 10 years.  But let’s say that you retired January one of 2000.  It took 14 years for the markets to come back and took two, 50 percent hits.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:12:56]

BRIAN:  You are not only are not gonna be able to stay retired but your portfolio’s been decimated because in 14 years, if there’s no growth on the portfolio, this is easy math.  Nine times 14 is more than 100 percent, you’ve spent through your entire portfolio.  And you’re in big trouble.

CLAYTON:  Right.

BRIAN:  Does that make sense?

CLAYTON:  Yeah.

BRIAN:  So Monte Carlo Simulation has one flaw and that is history.  It’s assuming a certain percentage on your 40 percent bond portfolio that doesn’t exist today.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:13:30]

CLAYTON:  Right.

BRIAN:  Problem number one.  Problem number two with Monte Carlo’s Simulation is the markets trend on an even rate when they don’t and you have sequence of returns issues.  Sequence of return issues, do you wanna talk about that while I cough?

CLAYTON:  Yeah, so sequence of return issues, I guess the simplest way to explain it is somebody who retires in 1990 that was then followed up by a 10 year bull market is gonna be in a much better situation than somebody who retired in the year 2000 that was followed by a flat market.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:14:03]

CLAYTON:  They’re making money every year, their portfolio’s doing well, so even if they’re drawing a little bit of percentage out they’re gonna be okay for those ten years.

BRIAN:  But that’s reality.  Reality is markets have trends when they’re look really good, like the last, what, 12 years?

CLAYTON:  Yeah.

BRIAN:  But then, what if we go into a flat market cycle?  And you use Monte Carlo’s Simulation to determine how much money you can pull from that portfolio?  You have major problems.

CLAYTON:  Right.  And even looking back, I think the biggest issue for most people is watching your portfolio take a 50 percent hit and just keep driving down and driving down.  Emotionally, people aren’t gonna be able to hold on for the ride.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:14:43]

BRIAN:  Right.

CLAYTON:  I’ve only ever talked to one person that held on throughout the entire ride.

BRIAN:  I met that guy.

CLAYTON:  And he…

BRIAN:  [LAUGH]

CLAYTON:  It takes a very unique person to be able to hold on to that kind of a ride.  But…

BRIAN:  He was working.

CLAYTON:  He was working and he still had his income so for him he wasn’t dependent.  But for somebody who’s retired, who’s made that decision that I’m done working, going back to work if they were an engineer or an attorney or a pilot, you can’t just up and go back to work.  Making the same income you were making before to offset all of these losses.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:15:18]

CLAYTON:  No, you gotta start at the bottom again.  And that’s why we saw people in ’08, with grey hair showing up again at fast food and the checkout stands and as cashiers and things like that ‘cause it was something to offset.  So emotionally for people, those 50 percent drops are detrimental and people don’t have, I think, the wherewithal, to withstand those kinds of market crashes.

BRIAN:  So cover another thing, Clayton.  We’re talking about the topic can I retire.  What we do is we put it all in a spreadsheet and mathematically go through to see, net of tax, if they can live on X amount of money.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:15:54]

BRIAN:  7000 a month, 10000 a month, 10000, 12, whatever it is.  We mathematically go through, for our clients, to see if they can live on X.  We can calculate X.  But, in contrast to that, there’s two ways that you can draw a conclusion of how much money you can get out of a pie chart.  One is Monte Carlo’s Simulation, we just covered that.  The second is the four percent rule.  Do you wanna cover that?

CLAYTON:  Yeah, so the four percent rule simply put, and I’m gonna call it the four percent rule.  There’s been arguments that it’s three percent.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:16:29]

CLAYTON:  What I’m referring to is any time you’re just drawing a set percentage out of your portfolio every year.  So historically the four percent rule has operated like this, that it’s looked at what’s the average of the stock market?  What’s the average of the bond market?  And okay, those have averaged, stock markets averaged…

BRIAN:  Eight and half or nine.

CLAYTON:  Eight and a half percent over the last, what, 100 years or so?

BRIAN:  Right.

CLAYTON:  The bond markets averaged four percent-ish, four and a half percent over the last 40ish years.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:16:58]

CLAYTON:  And so because of that, if you pull out four percent or three percent or whatever flat percentage out of your portfolio that’s less than four every year, whether you’re invested in bonds or whether you’re invested in stocks, you’re going to make up that.  So your million dollar portfolio is always gonna keep a million dollars in it because you’re just spending that growth every year.  So that’s the idea behind the four percent rule.  Now, the problem comes when you’re taking four percent out of your portfolio when there’s a 50 percent drop.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:17:31]

CLAYTON:  Because you’re digging yourself a deeper hole that you can’t climb out of.  Because if the stock market is down, so let’s say the stock market’s down 10 percent.  You don’t need the 10 percent growth gain in the stock market to get back to, let’s say you have 100 dollars in the stock market.  Stock market’s down 10 percent, you‘ve got 90 dollars.  As the stock market’s up 10 percent you’re only at 99 so you’re still a buck short.  Right, so you need about 11 percent to get back up to that level where you were before.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:18:01]

CLAYTON:  So that’s something to consider as well, that a stock market’s down 50 percent you need more than that to get back to even and if you’ve taken four percent out of your portfolio, that’s that deeper hole I’m talking about you’ve dug yourself into.  And so that’s why, for someone who is retired, that rule of thumb that a lot of the bankers and brokers in the industry have used as a simple answer to their clients of how much should you draw.  That’s why it doesn’t work.  Because, mathematically you’re gonna run out of money.

BRIAN:  I’m gonna say a little bit more on what you said.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:18:36]

BRIAN:  If we’re in a bull market and the market keeps going up, then Monte Carlo’s Simulation is good and the four percent rule works.  It’s these flat market periods that decimate the pie chart four percent rule or Monte Carlo’s Simulation numbers.  So let’s say that you retired January one of 2000 and the markets drop 50 percent and you’re pulling four percent out for that three year period, 2000, ’01, and ’02.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:19:07]

BRIAN:  You’re down 62 percent, markets come back 100 percent from March of ’09 to August of ’07 but you don’t get all that because you’re drawing four percent for those five years and then you take that hit in ’08, plus the four percent that you draw.  And that’s what, like you said, that’s where we saw millions of grey-haired people coming back to retail, fast food, banks.  They had to because their portfolio blew up and they had to find a plan B which is to go back to work.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:19:42]

BRIAN:  So when it comes to can I retire, we take the mathematical approach where we find out, with conservative assumptions of rates of return, we find out how much money you can draw.  Critically important, number one, in fact, because this is so important, commencer with that, or attached to that, is the number one fear in the country which is running out of money before you die.  Our clients don’t have that fear, Clayton, because they can see how much money they can draw.

CLAYTON:  Right.

BRIAN:  Okay.  What’s number two?

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:20:21]

CLAYTON:  So next question, [OVERLAP] how much can I draw?

BRIAN:  Okay.

CLAYTON:  And we’ve kind of allude to this, we’ve talked about this a little bit that the pie chart falls short with that.  You take a flat percent out, there’s all those issues.  I know that there was a recent change in the 401K requirements that if you look at your 401K statement there’s gonna be a number on there that says this is what you can draw in retirement.  I don’t find that to be accurate because it doesn’t take into account a lot of the variables that we do take into account.  So when we build these plans, and again I hope you’ve gone to our website at deckerretirementplanning.com, downloaded the PDF of this sample plan so we can kind of talk you through it.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:20:59]

CLAYTON:  Because this is where, really, we help answer that question of how much somebody can draw on retirement.  And we lay it all out on one page so you can see all right, I know where, okay, here’s my investable assets.  And I’ve got my sources of income here so you’ve got your rental income, your pension income if it applies, your social security, which by the way, we do give a social security optimization report when we’re building these plans out for people so people can know how to optimize their social security.  And I’ll talk about that really quick ‘cause one of the things that some people come in and they, I think the one thing that’s lost on some folks, is okay I can maximize my social security and if I wait ‘til 70 I’ll get this much money.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:21:40]

CLAYTON:  But there’s a lot of other variables to take into account and so the report will take and it will optimize social security but it’s in a vacuum ‘cause it only looks at social security.  But then when you take all the other variables into account, and I’ve seen a lot of different situations and some of this might apply to our listeners, some of it might not.  Everyone’s a little bit different, but pension incomes will start at different times for people.  Rental incomes can start and stop and change the amounts depending on when you’ve paid off your mortgage or when you’ve paid off a loan against the property or whatever the case may be.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:22:14]

CLAYTON:  Business investments will be paying out or, and I talk to somebody, he sold a business and part of the business payout was he got paid for 10 years.  All of those things are different variables that can adjust when someone should draw their social security.  The other thing I see is that if somebody wants to retire at 65 but they wait until age 70 to draw their social security, they’ve gotta cover that five year gap from 65 to 70.  And if they don’t have enough money to cover that gap or if they have a small amount of assets they’ll run out of money before they get to the point where they draw social security and then they’re only living on social security.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:22:52]

CLAYTON:  So, the other consideration is, are you healthy?  What’s your longevity look like?  So, that’s a consideration to take into account because if you’re not healthy, waiting until 70 doesn’t make sense ‘cause you’re not gonna get the best benefit back.  So these are all variables that we take into account when talking about social security and I think there’s a theme here for us, that expands to just like how we look at social security with all the variables, we look at everything.  We look at everything that we can with regards to retirement planning as far as income needs.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:23:27]

CLAYTON:  When different income streams should start, when they should stop, what you should do as far as your assets, how it should all be laid out and this plan, this income plan that we’re talking about, it does that.  And so it spells it out from here’s your investments and you’ve got investments in an area that’s safe and protected from loss of principal.  You’ve got a section over here that’s invested in the market.  And we’ve talked about those, those are the two-sided models, the momentum models that can go up and they can make money in up and down markets.  You’ve got your emergency cash as well.  So all of these different things we’re taking into account and building it all into a single income stream that somebody can look and say, all right, here’s how much I’ve got in taxes, here’s how much I got in monthly income and yearly income, and we’ve got it set up to be gross or net.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:24:14]

CLAYTON:  And then we run you out from your current age all the way to age 100.  And going to age 100 isn’t that we think our clients are gonna live that long, and there might be some that will, but we know that not a lot of people make it into their late 90’s for age and so the idea of the plan is to have your money outlive you.  But really what that goal of seeing, okay I wanna retire at age 62 or 65 or 60 or 67, whatever the case may be, you can see what that income looks like.  And it answers that question of how much can I draw in retirement.  And anything else that you want to add to that question, Brian?

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:24:50]

BRIAN:  No, you nailed it.

CLAYTON:  Okay.

BRIAN:  Okay, so we answered the first two.  What’s the last of the three?

CLAYTON:  So this is one that comes up when folks look at the amount of money that’s coming in and they think, well, that’s just not quite enough for me.  I want to be able to be able to do X, Y, and Z in retirement.  I don’t want to have to, I want to be able to do more.  Whatever the case may be.  And for everybody it’s a little different.  Some people retirement, it’s defined differently, I think for a lot of folks.  And so we as planners at Decker Retirement Planning want to make sure that our clients can enjoy the retirement they want.  And for everybody it’s a little different.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:25:29]

CLAYTON:  Some people it’s they wanna go do volunteer work, other people it’s they wanna be grandparents, other people is I just wanna play and have as much fun and see the world and travel and get my RV and drive around the country.  Whatever the case may be.  And so for everybody it’s a little different but there’s a number that people need and so for some people it’s not quite there so the question is what if I can’t retire?  So what happens then, Brian?

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:25:52]

BRIAN:  So at 62 years old or 60, whatever age someone comes in and we find out that the number that they can draw is X, let’s say it’s 6000 a month, net.  And they know that they can’t live on that.  Then we look at options.  So some of the options are, can you work longer?  Do you have assets to sell?  Like, for example, we just had a client that had two homes they were asset rich, cash poor.  And so they needed to unload some properties to generate the income.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:26:32]

BRIAN:  Those weren’t income-generating profits-properties, they had a house on Hood Canal and then they have a house in another area.  They needed more and wanted more income than their plan could allow but they had the assets to sell to generate the income.  So they had options there.  The other option is to-we look at everything when we try to get someone retired.  Is there an inheritance that’s coming in?

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:27:11]

BRIAN:  We try to factor that in.  But we look at every-math is math.  We can’t change math.  I wince when I say this last one, we have them live to age 100, what is they lived to age 92 [LAUGH].  And we try everything to get them retired but it is a math based question.

CLAYTON:  Right.  Well, and too, so let’s say somebody comes in and they have a desire or goal to retire at age 60 and they come in, they sit down, they’re 55.  They’re 5 years away.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:27:44]

CLAYTON:  And they say, well, this is what I wanna do in retirement, this is how much it’s gonna cost me.  And we look at inflation and we look at those kinds of things as well as we’re building out the plan, but they sit down and say all right, well, you know, I probably could make it, but I’m not quite there.  I want another couple of years and I’m okay working another couple of years.  And so we lay that out and we map it out so that they can see, okay, age 62, that’s when I’m good.  And they get everything lined up.  And these are some of my favorite conversations, for the people that I would much rather have this conversation where it’s several years down the road that somebody says, okay, yeah I can extend another year or another two.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:28:21]

CLAYTON:  Not a big issue.  Because I have seen it go the other way that somebody was, oh I can’t retire ‘til I’m 65.  But the plan said they could go at 62 or 63.  And those are great conversations to have.  So when mapping all of this out and being able to lay out, okay, you can’t or you don’t want to retire at this point, then we can set it up so we know when they’re going to retire and we can help with the growth on the investment side to get their asset level to where they want it to be at retirement.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:28:51]

CLAYTON:  Because I‘ve talked to people that have had goal of, well, my goal is to retire at a specific date or my goal is to retire with X number of dollars in my bank.  Or my goal is to I’m only gonna work five more years.  Or until I pay off this piece of property or whatever debt.  Everyone’s different on how they approach retirement.  And so with that being the case we can look at all of that and map it all out.  So, for somebody that’s thinking, well, this is how much I need, these plans do that.  But it does it for a lot more, it’s for people that, hey I want this much money.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:29:30]

CLAYTON:  We can help you get there.  Or I need to be at this point in my life.  We can help you get there.  But we do build flexibility into the plans ‘cause we’ve set a plan up for someone and a couple years later down the road a pivot needs to happen.  We can help change in the plan and get things set up so that if a change, ‘cause life events happen.  People will get divorced, a spouse will pass away, they’ll have to move to help out with a kid in a different state.  Things like that will happen and do come up and these plans are built to be able to adjust to help accommodate those kinds of life events.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:30:07]

CLAYTON:  So, Brian, in talking about the three questions today, can I retire?  How much can I draw?  And what if I can’t retire?  We talked about the income plan and how it can help solve and answer those questions for people, I mean really those are the three biggest questions facing retirees as they come in and talk to us.  What do I do about this and as we go through we flesh out a lot of little details that people just don’t think about or didn’t think about.  And then at the table we can talk and say, all right, here’s your contingencies if this doesn’t work out.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:30:38]

CLAYTON:  Because we do like to have a plan A, B, C, D, E, F, all the way down to make sure that people can pivot and adjust and that they can enjoy their retirement the way that they want to.  ‘Cause ultimately our goal is to help people enjoy having a safer retirement, that they can have confidence in their plan.  And it’s been great this year as we’ve gone through this period of some pretty heavy volatility, though 2020, that we’ve gotten great feedback from our clients.  That they have even more confidence in the plan that they have set up, ‘cause they’ve seen how it goes through a period of volatility so it’s been a lot of fun.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:31:15]

CLAYTON:  So for anybody that’s interested in getting a plan set up and learning how it can apply to your situation, asking any specific questions, please give us a call 833-717-3030 or if you’re just looking for more information go to our website, deckerretirementplanning.com.  We’ve got loads of articles, we’ve got information that can help you with various questions that you might have related to retirement.  I hope that you’ve subscribed to our podcast, ‘cause we do give a lot of great content on the show as well.  But again, if you have questions, feel free to reach out.  We love chatting about this, this is what we eat, sleep, and breathe.  So we look forward to talking to you next week.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:31:54]

CLAYTON:  Investing involves risk, including the potential loss of principal.  Any references to protection, safety, or lifetime income, generally refer to fixed insurance products.  Never securities or investments.  Insurance guarantees are backed by the financial strength and claims paying abilities of the issuing carrier.  This radio show is intended for informational purposes only.  It is not intended to be used as the sole basis for financial decisions, nor should it be construed as advice designed to meet the particular needs of an individual situation.  Decker Retirement Planning is not permitted to offer, and no statement made during this show shall constitute tax or legal advice.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:32:22]

CLAYTON:  Our firm is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the U.S. Government or any governmental agency.  The information and opinions contained herein provided by third-parties have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed by Decker Retirement Planning.

 

RR S4 E26 THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS RETIREES ASK [00:32:36]