21 Things to Do Before You Retire (Are You On Track?!)

Join the community built to help you master your money, stay accountable, and reach financial freedom. 👉 Join Master Money Academy today! In this episode of The Personal Finance Podcast, Andrew reveals the 10 critical retirement milestones most people miss, from defining your dream retirement and hitting 25 times your annual expenses for financial independence, to creating a withdrawal strategy that makes your money last, building multiple income streams, maximizing Social Security benefits, supercharging savings with catch-up contributions after 50, strategically converting to Roth accounts to slash your lifetime tax bill, and protecting your wealth from scams, giving you the complete playbook to retire confidently with more money, less stress, and total control over your future. Listen to The Business Show here. Partner Deals Indeed: Start hiring NOW with a SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at Indeed.com/personalfinance Get 50% Off Monarch Money, the all-in-one financial tool at www.monarchmoney.com/PFP Acorns: Start investing automatically with Acorns and get a $5 bonus at Acorns.com/PFP Chime: Start your credit journey with Chime. Sign-up takes only two minutes and doesn’t affect your credit score. Get started at chime.com/ DELL: Get a new Dell AI PC starting at $749.99, at Dell.com/ai-pc. Policy Genius: Go to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. Shopify: Shopify makes it so easy to sell. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/pfp Wayfair: Shop outdoor furniture, grills, lawn games, and WAY more for WAY less DeleteMe: Go to https://joindeleteme.com/PFP20/ and Use Promo Code PFP for 20% off! Link of the Episode that was mentioned here: How to Pay No Taxes in Early Retirement, Debunking the Mortgage Fee Fiasco, and More! With Katie Gatti (From Money With Katie!) Connect With Andrew on Social Media: Instagram TikTok Twitter Master Money Website Master Money Youtube Channel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• 0:00Andrew Giancola?

  When I started the Personal Finance Podcast, I had no idea how big it could become. I just knew I had something I wanted to share, so I started putting it online. And looking back, I definitely wish I would have started a decade earlier. One of the horror parts about building something online, though, is making it look professional. A website used to mean hiring a developer, figuring out design, and potentially spending thousands of dollars. In fact, on my website, I spent tens of thousands of dollars. That's what impressed me when playing around with Hostinger's AI Website Builder. I told it what kind of website I wanted, and I built the first version in minutes. No coding, no designer or developer needed. And Hostinger doesn't stop at launch.

• 0:44Andrew Giancola?

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• 1:29Andrew Giancola?

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• 2:14Andrew Giancola?

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• 2:28Andrew Giancola?

  On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, 21 Things You Need to Do Before You Retire, Part One.

• 2:52Andrew Giancola?

  What's up everybody and welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host Andrew Founder of MasterMoney.co. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to be diving into 21 things to do before you retire. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the Master Money Newsletter by going to MasterMoney.co/newsletter. And you can also comment with your questions on YouTube or Spotify as well. And don't forget to follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast on. And if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player.

• 3:32Andrew Giancola?

  Now, today, we're going to be diving into Part One of 21 Things to Do Before You Retire. And I am really pumped for this episode. We're going to do a deep dive into personal finance. And so for all my finance nerds out there, we're going to go deep on this episode, going through 21 different things that you should consider doing before you retire to figure out if you are on track. Now, if you are far away from retirement, this is great information to help you prepare as you go through the years and as you start to approach retirement age in your 40s and 50s, you need to make sure that you have some of this stuff in place. Also, if you're in your 20s or 30s, starting to set some of this up early is very prudent on your part if you get the ball rolling on some of this stuff. And so I'm really excited to share this episode with you. I'm going to stop blabbing.

• 4:17Andrew Giancola?

  I want to dive right into it. So we have so much to cover in Part One. So without further ado, let's get into it.

• 4:25Andrew Giancola?

  So the first step to a successful retirement isn't a number, it's a vision. And we're going to talk about your non-retirement plan. Now, this is something I think a lot of people need to plan out first, which is why we have this at the top of the show. This is by far one of the most important things that you need to think through. And now, this is a really fun exercise because if you are married or you have a spouse, I want you to do this exercise with them and kind of go through this. I want you to think through what your dream life is going to look like in retirement. What are you going to be doing in retirement? And how are you going to be spending your time? Now, for most people out there, spending most of your time just sitting on a beach and sipping Mai Tais is not the picturesque dream retirement that you actually have. Sure, we want to spend some time relaxing.

• 5:07Andrew Giancola?

  We want to spend some time resting after we've worked so hard throughout our entire life to get to this stage, but we also want to ensure that we have things to do. We have activities in place. We are living out our dream life. Now, maybe you're going to be spending some more time with your kids or your grandkids. Maybe you want to be spending more time doing some of the hobbies you've always wanted to do. Maybe you're into golf or pickleball or yoga, or you want to really get into fitness. Maybe you want to do an ultra marathon. I don't care what it is. We need to spend more time thinking about the things we actually want to do in retirement because money alone doesn't create a meaningful life, but your purpose does. And so, we want to develop this purpose in retirement because folks who develop a purpose live longer.

• 5:49Andrew Giancola?

  We all need a purpose throughout our entire life and it is actually very important for your health and your wealth to develop some sort of purpose. Because if you don't define what you want, you're going to fall into these default patterns that are just going to drain all of your time. And that is the last thing I want for most of you because people who do that, who sit on the couch all day, they watch TV, they have this bare minimum retirement, they're living off social security, that is one of the most sad pictures you can ever see. So there's a couple of different things that we'll talk about today and why this is so powerful, but I want you to think about what your day is going to be like. Now, one fun exercise that I like to do, and I do this a lot, is mapping out my dream day. So what would your dream day in retirement be? Map it out hour by hour. What would you be doing? And then think through, okay, I've got one dream day in place. Once you do that,

• 6:34Andrew Giancola?

  As you get closer to retirement, you can start to expand this out. What would a dream week look like? Or what would a perfect month look like? How am I spending my time? And what am I doing with that time? What are the social groups that I'm going to be a part of? Am I still going to continue to work part-time because I want to stay busy? I want to keep my mind active. Am I going to be doing that? How am I going to learn more about how things work in this world? Are you going to have a learning plan in place? Are you going to travel the world? What does your travel plans look like? All of these are really, really important to map out before you even start retirement. Because I think what a lot of people do is, once they get closer to retirement age, they have no idea what they're going to do and how they're going to spend their time. And so, most of the time, they start to wander through retirement. And I don't think most people should wander through retirement.

• 7:19Andrew Giancola?

  Sure, a lot of your time can be spent doing leisure activities. That's part of what people want to do when they retire. But I also think you should find what your purpose is. Is it giving back to causes that you believe in? Is it continuing to work part-time? Is it being a consultant for different companies and working 10 hours every single week? Maybe you want to start a small business and you want to sell certain things within a small business. It doesn't matter what it is. Figure out how you want to spend your time and find a specific purpose. Every single person needs a purpose. I don't want you going into retirement saying, "I'm just going to lay on a beach all day." Because if you do that, your mind is going to waste away and you are not going to have the optimal retirement. I highly encourage you to do this. Now, you may be saying to yourself, "Well, don't let this guy tell me what to do. I'm going to do whatever I want." Sure, that's fine.

• 8:03Andrew Giancola?

  But most people I know who live the longest throughout retirement and who have a healthy lifestyle throughout retirement, they have a very specific purpose. And they spend time going towards that purpose. Why is this so powerful? Because this gives your financial plan, this is why it comes in with your finances, this gives your financial plan direction and clarity. You have a clear depiction on exactly why you're actually saving this money. You need a why when you are saving money for retirement. Number two, is it prevents overspending in some of your early years. Because when you have this purpose, you have clearly defined what matters to you. And so, you're not going to overspend early on, which is the biggest mistake a lot of retirees make, is within their first

• 8:44Andrew Giancola?

  First five to 10 years, they overspend and then they have to live a leaner retirement later on than the line. Number three is this helps align both your values and your spouse's values. And so because you have both of those values aligned, you know what both of your purposes are. That is going to help you align how you set up your finances when it comes to retirement. And it also anchors something deeper than a number. Again, I'm going to tell you this over and over and over again, the money doesn't matter. The money is only there to be utilized as a tool to get you what you want in life. I talk about money all day long and I'm telling you right now, money doesn't matter.

• 9:23Andrew Giancola?

  What you want to do is use money as a tool, put it in retirement accounts, put it in places that is going to allow it to grow over time. So you can use that money as a tool to live the life you want. I cannot encourage you enough to think about money in this way. Because if you reverse this, if you think money is all that matters, you will live a life that never is fulfilling. It will be an empty black hole and you will be on this cycle forever and ever and ever. Change your mindset about money and when you see money as a tool, it unlocks everything. You're going to make more money when you see money as a tool. You're going to save and invest more money when you see money as a tool. You're going to be able to spend more money on things that you value once you change your mindset.

• 10:04Andrew Giancola?

  But if you are just struggling to try to get a hold of money, that is something where we're going to have to shift that mindset up. Now here's some practical steps that I want you to take to hit this first milestone, to hit this first number. Is first, I want you to define your dream life. Dream life mapping is very important. If we don't think about this and we don't map this out, you are never going to have your purpose set up properly. And so we want to make sure that we map out this dream life so that we can think about this on what our ideal day, our ideal week, an ideal month is. And so as you start to map these things out, I really, really highly encourage you to think through what your perfect day is. I even do this now, a lot of times when life gets really hectic and scattered and I feel like I am going in 12 different directions. I will sit down and I will re-center.

• 10:49Andrew Giancola?

  And the way that I re-center is I'll take out a spreadsheet, I will map out each hour of the day and I will say, What does my perfect workday look like? And on the weekend, I'll do it. What does my perfect weekend look like? And how do I map this out hour by hour? So that I can actually re-center and make sure I'm spending my time intentionally doing the things I actually want to do. Number two is I want you to list out some of these core activities that you should be doing. So identify three to five different pillars of how you want to spend your time in retirement. So what are those pillars going to look like? Well, maybe one is health because you need to spend a lot of time on your health when you retire. Why? Because this is the timeframe when we need to make sure we are expanding our health span, not our lifespan.

• 11:31Andrew Giancola?

  Our lifespan is going to go and follow behind our health span. Meaning, we need to make sure that we are spending time taking care of ourselves so that we have a retirement where you're moving, we are active, and we can live in the way that we want. Two is thinking through, how am I going to spend time utilizing my brain? Maybe you are working part-time. Maybe you have a learning plan in place. Maybe you are doing various things that are going to help your brain continue to work. So my grandmother lived past 100 years old. And she just passed away a couple of years ago. And she lived past 100 years old by doing a couple of different things. One, she walked every day and she would walk multiple miles every single day. But two, and this one is truly, truly important, is she would read multiple books every single week. And she was constantly reading a number of different things. She was a Christian woman.

• 12:17Andrew Giancola?

  She would read her Bible every single day. She would go through and read different books every single day. She would do crossword puzzles. And exercising your brain is a very, very important thing to do if you want to live longer. And so that's number two. Three is what are some of the activities you're going to be doing socially specifically? But then in addition, what are some of the other activities you're going to be doing? So some of these can fall in line with health. For example, we used to own pickleball facilities. And a lot of people would spend time together playing pickleball in retirement. And this was something we saw over and over and over again where these communities would build. So they would spend time with other people in retirement by playing pickleball. Golf is another great one. You get a big group of foursomes together. You play some skins games or you go together on a golf league once a week. That is a great one to look at.

• 13:00Andrew Giancola?

  Yoga, fitness classes, those are all fantastic. Maybe there's a book club you want to join. Maybe there's cooking classes you want to join, but how are you going to socially spend your time? And how are you going to spend that time wisely? That is beneficial to you. And then what are some of the leisure activities you want to do? What are some of the extra stuff you want to do? Spend time doing, and then lastly is travel. I think travel is very important for a lot of people. When they retire, if you don't want to travel, you don't have to utilize this category, but I think that is another core activity that you could think about. So what are your core activities? Comment them down below. Let me know what those are and I want to talk through that. Three is build in community because community is very, very important for a lot of people. And as we get closer and closer to the AI taking over the world right now, community is going to be more and more important for each and every single person.

• 13:43Andrew Giancola?

  In-person community and virtual community are both those two things. Spend time with people. I cannot encourage you to do this enough is spend more time with people. Even if you're an introvert, you need that time with other people. This is going to help you feel like a part of something. So you can go to communities, clubs, churches, causes you believe in, go through some of this stuff and really make a big, big difference. Next is talk about it. When you start to think through all this stuff, have a conversation with your spouse and talk through all these options. What do you want your life to look like? I cannot encourage you to do this enough because if you go into retirement willy-nilly thinking, I'm just going to kind of do what I want to do each and every single day, you are going to live a purposeless life. And if you live a purposeless life, a lot of people go into depression

• 14:26Andrew Giancola?

  early on in retirement because all of a sudden they don't have a purpose. I want you to walk into retirement with a purpose and ensure that we have all of that in place.

• 14:37Andrew Giancola?

  Now we've talked about you putting your dream life together, but we got to figure out what our dream life is actually going to cost. And the way that we do that is we figure out what our retirement number is. Now, retirement is not an age. Retirement is a number. And this is how we use money as a tool to buy back our freedom. So anybody out there who is listening or watching this podcast, you know that we utilize money as a tool to buy our freedom. That is one of the biggest priorities most of us as wealth builders have is taking our extra dollars and going out and investing those dollars. Because once we know our investments hit a certain number, we can buy our freedom. How powerful is that concept? You actually have the power to be able to reduce your expenses and/or increase your income.

• 15:19Andrew Giancola?

  And if you do both, the difference between your income and expenses is going to grow. We call that difference the gap. And if you take that gap and invest that difference, boy, oh, boy, are you going to have yourself a grand old time? Because guess what's going to happen? The more you can invest every single month, the faster you can be able to retire and spend your time doing what you want. But we got to figure out what that number is. And that is where retirement planning comes into play. Now, I'm going to give you the quick, dirty, back-of-the-napkin math on how to figure out what that number is. But if you want to get more granular about it, I'll show you how to do that as well. Now, in personal finance and in the financial community, there is something called the 25X rule. Now, the 25X rule states, basically, that you take how much you want to live on in retirement,

• 16:04Andrew Giancola?

  multiply that number by 25, and that is how much you need to have invested in order to be able to retire. So let me give you an easy example on this. Let's say, for example, you want to spend a hundred grand per year in retirement. You say, hey, this is going to cover all my expenses. This is going to help me be able to travel the world. This is going to help me and allow me to spend time doing my hobbies as frequently as I want to. And in addition, I've got some social security coming in. I've got some other things, but I want to cover the difference with a hundred grand. Well, if you want to cover the difference with a hundred grand, then we're going to take 100,000 times 25. Now, for easy math, that means you need $2.5 million invested in your portfolio. And this could be through your retirement accounts, your brokerage account, all three separated. That's completely fine.

• 16:46Andrew Giancola?

  But in total, you need to have $2.5 million if you want to draw down $100,000 per year. And this is based on something called the 4% rule. Now, the 4% rule is up for debate right now, where a lot of people are saying the 4% rule is a little too low. You can actually withdraw even more than that. You can withdraw 4.7 to 5%. Cool, even better. If we can withdraw more than we actually are targeting, that means we can live an even better retirement based on that. But we are still going to look at this as the 4% rule, because when it comes to retirement planning, I like to be cautious. I don't know about you, but I don't want to get caught with my pants down in retirement, not having enough money. Okay? And so we need to be conservative when we do retirement planning, always, always, always be conservative when we do retirement planning.

• 17:31Andrew Giancola?

  So this is going to give you clarity, though. This is going to give you the back of the napkin math clarity. Now, what are some other things that we need to know about this is first, we need to figure out what our annual spending is. So a lot of people, when I talk to them in Master Money Academy and they're younger, they'll say, well, I have no idea how to figure out what my annual spending is going to be in retirement. And that's okay, because we want you to track your retirement number on a yearly basis. Meaning that I want you to figure out, okay, what am I spending right now? Let's say you spend $80,000 per year right now, multiply that by 25, you have $2 million. That is your target that I want you to try to hit to get invested. Because what's going to happen is over time, this number is going to move and this number is going to change.

• 18:12Andrew Giancola?

  It's not a static number that you pick when you're age 25 and all of a sudden you hit it at age 65 and everything went perfectly throughout that timeframe. Now, this number is going to move. You're going to get married, you're going to have kids, you're going to have a lot of life circumstances that will happen throughout your 30s, 40s, 50s. And so we need to be able to adjust and we need to be able to adjust gradually over time. Because if there is a big adjustment that needs to be made and all of a sudden you didn't track your retirement number over the course of the last 15 years. And now you need to make up for another million dollars, that's going to be really hard to do. So if you make these small tweaks year in and year out, it's very easy to make those adjustments, which is why we want to track this retirement number every single year.

• 18:52Andrew Giancola?

  Another reason why we want to track it every single year is because if you do not track it on a yearly basis, the shifts in inflation and the shifts in healthcare inflation can each you alive. So healthcare inflation has really risen over the course of the last couple of years. It's between 5% to 7% year over year, just over the last five years alone. If you did not track this every single year, you would have no idea what the impact is to your final bottom line dollar. And so tracking your retirement number every single year means that you can make those micro adjustments instead of having to make one big massive adjustment every decade, like what most people do. Too many people track their retirement number too late. I want you to track it every year. I don't care if you're 22 years old. Start tracking it right now.

• 19:34Andrew Giancola?

  Trying to figure out what it is because it's going to be a big, big difference. Then, as you get closer to retirement age, you can make adjustments. So you may have enough money already in your 50s when you get to retirement age, because social security is larger than you thought. And/or pension money is going to come in, it's larger than you thought. Or you realize, I'm going to work part-time and I'm going to be able to make some money for the first couple of years. And so I can save those extra dollars and retire even sooner than I thought I could. So life circumstance is going to happen. So continuing to track it is very important. So, we've got our dream lifestyle and now we've figured out how much it's going to cost for that dream lifestyle with some quick back of the napkin dirty math. We get way more granular on this kind of stuff in Master Money Academy. And so that's our community where people come together who all are looking to do things

• 20:19Andrew Giancola?

  just like this. And they come together with one common goal. I coach them every single week and we go through the process of the wealth builder's journey and you know exactly what to do with your dollar every single time. So if you want to join Master Money Academy, we'll have a link down in the show notes. Make sure you check that out. It is the place that I like to spend most of my time. And so if you want help from me, that is a great place to be.

• 20:40Andrew Giancola?

  Number three is before you retire, we got to develop a clear withdrawal strategy. Meaning figuring out, you know, we got our nest egg built up here. We are in the game, we are ready to go, but we got to figure out how we're going to spend these dollars. Meaning where are we going to withdraw some of this money? How are we going to withdraw it? When are we going to do it? Do we have RMDs or requirement of distributions? There's all these different concepts that will come into play when it comes to retirement planning. And so we want to make sure we know how much to withdraw every single year. Because if you withdraw too much during down markets, you can deplete your nest egg way too early. Also, if you withdraw from the wrong accounts in the wrong order, you could pay unnecessary taxes that you really didn't need to pay. Or it could also be the opposite where you are fearful of withdrawing money. And so you just build up this nest egg that's way too large.

• 21:25Andrew Giancola?

  And by the time we retire, you have too much money. So I don't want you to retire with this huge nest egg that you worked super hard from and you lived really frugally in retirement. Instead, I want you to spend your money on the things that you actually value. A withdrawal strategy is going to turn your savings into a predictable, reliable income stream. We got to have the right withdrawal. Withdrawal strategy in place. And so that is why we want to do this based on your personal finances and the system that you set up. So one, a withdrawal strategy is going to give you control and clarity over your income. That is what you want. You want clarity over your income in retirement. You don't want to be second guessing on which place I should be pulling this money from, which place I should be pulling this money from. You want full control and full clarity.

• 22:04Andrew Giancola?

  Two, this is going to help you minimize taxes because when you know the order of operations of which accounts you need to pull from, your taxes are minimized and working with the CPA is very important in retirement. So I highly, highly encourage most people to do that. It also prevents emotional or panic driven withdrawals. Meaning you have a plan in place, no matter what is going on. So you're not going to just emotionally go and withdraw money irrationally and/or you're not going to emotionally just leave money in that account because you don't want to withdraw it. Instead, you have a plan in place. You know how much you're going to be taken down and it gives you permission to actually spend money that you worked so hard to save. Too many retirees are scared to spend money. They either have a fear mindset or they spend too much.

• 22:46Andrew Giancola?

  And so I want you to have that balanced, clear mindset where you don't have to stress about it whatsoever. You know what plan you got in place and that's exactly what you're doing. So there's a number of different withdrawal options that I want you to dive deeper. We'll do an entire episode on some of these and we've done some in the past as well. But there's a couple. One is the fixed percentage. So the 4% rule is a great example of this. Just withdrawing, I'm going to withdraw 4% every single year, whether the market's up, whether the market's down. I'm just going to continue to withdraw 4% every single year. So say, for example, you have a million dollars saved and you can withdraw $40,000 per year in year one. And then inflation is 3% the next year. So you withdraw $41,200 in year two. That's how the 4% works. It's inflation adjusted every single year. And so you make those adjustments based on that.

• 23:29Andrew Giancola?

  Now, the pros to this is it's simple to use. It's easy to follow. When you have this fixed rate withdrawal, you don't have to second guess or think about it. It is very, very easy. The cons are is it doesn't adapt to market conditions. And so for some people out there, they want to make sure that they are optimizing their portfolio. So they're not drawing down too much on it when the market is down. So a great example of this would be the dot com bubble or the great recession. Those were timeframes where people started to rethink some of their strategies. Because when the market was down, you could have your portfolio down 50% and then you're withdrawing 50 grand per year. And then you're withdrawing 100 grand from that portfolio when it's already down 50%. Well, that could have been a much larger value in the previous year. And so really, a lot of people need to think through that.

• 24:13Andrew Giancola?

  And if they are okay with just a standard rate every single year. Now, number two is the guardrail strategy. So this is dynamic withdrawals, meaning you're going to set upper withdrawal rates and you're going to set lower withdrawal rates. This is going to mean that you have the initial withdrawal amount, something like the 4% rule, for example. But you also have upper and lower guardrails. So I like to think of this like bowling, okay? Think about when you're rolling a bowling ball and when you have kids, a lot of times, what do you put up? You put up bumpers, especially when you have really young kids like I do. You put these bumpers up because otherwise the kid is just going to roll the bowling ball into the gutter every single time. And so this is what retirement guardrails are like. When the market is up, you can withdraw on the upper limits of those guardrails.

• 24:55Andrew Giancola?

  When the market is down, you can withdraw on those lower limits of the guardrails. And the ball is just going to bounce back and forth, back and forth, year in and year out. And you're going to see that a lot of times you're going to be withdrawing closer to the upper limits because the market goes in one direction in the long term. But some years you are going to have those lower limits. So an example of this would be, let's say there's a 20% increase or a 20% drop, then you can make those adjustments based on that. Now, this keeps your income flexible, allows you to have some flexible years. And in addition, allows you to have increased spending during some of those good years. But some of the cons are, this requires monitoring, it requires adjusting, you got to think through some of this stuff. And it's not a completely set it and forget it system.

• 25:38Andrew Giancola?

  So if you're a set it and forget it person, this one's not for you, but it could be more optimized for some people who are looking to optimize. Now, number three is the bucket strategy. Now, this is a time segmented strategy that a lot of people can follow. We did an episode a while back on this, but you divide your money into three buckets based on your time horizon, okay? So bucket one is short term. This is one to three years of cash and very safe assets to fund immediate living expenses. So for the next three years, you're going to put This in very safe assets in cash like a high yield savings account, something like that. I'm talking extremely safe. This isn't even bonds. Bucket two is midterm. So bonds or balance funds for money that you're going to utilize over the next three to 10 years. And then bucket three is long term, which is going to be stocks for growth for money that you're going to utilize 10 years down the line or longer.

• 26:22Andrew Giancola?

  Now this strategy means that you can draw income from bucket one while letting the other ones grow. And this is a safe ladder system that allows you to set up these buckets and ensure that your money is safe. So a lot of people like to do this in retirement, a lot of financial advisors will put you in a system like this, where you have this bucket strategy in place if it works for you and could be something that may be beneficial for some people. Then there's the blended strategy. So there's people out there who will blend a couple of these different options. And I would even argue that the guardrail strategy has blended the 4% rule plus guardrails. But a lot of people will blend these three options together in some way, shape or form that fits their lifestyle. There is not a black and white answer to this. It means that you need to decide what your risk tolerance is.

• 27:08Andrew Giancola?

  You need to decide how you want the money handled. You need to decide how you want your income streams handled. Do you just want it automatically withdrawn at certain times every single year? Do you want to make sure that you have some of those guardrails in place? Do you want to make sure that maybe just when the market is down, you don't want to spend as much? But when the market is up, you're not comfortable with spending more. That's okay, too. We just have to figure out what that blended strategy is that fits that risk tolerance that you have. Now, one other thing you want to do is when you have this withdrawal strategy, you want to make sure that you are coordinating with tax buckets, meaning that you are giving your Roth accounts, you're pulling from those at the right time, your traditional 401k accounts, you're pulling at the right time, your taxable accounts, you're pulling at the right time, and you want to stress test that plan.

• 27:49Andrew Giancola?

  So there are things like Monte Carlo simulations or ways that you can stress test your plan for bull markets, bear markets, high inflation environments. I highly encourage you to do all those different things because it's a very good way for you to ensure that this plan is actually going to work for me. And so look at some of the worst years. I always like to look at some of the worst years and see how those portfolios will perform. Because worst case scenario, we want to use some historic data and look at this. Once you have this strategy in place, you can automate it. There's a lot of technology now that is going to help you with your guardrail strategy. There's a lot of retirement plan calculators now that are going to help you tremendously bolden. There's a bunch of them out there that you can utilize. We are living in a great time and eventually AI is probably going to help us optimize our portfolios as well.

• 28:32Andrew Giancola?

  So that we know when to withdraw, when to pull back, how much we should be spending based on these different things. It's going to be a very powerful thing for retirement is utilizing AI to do some of the math for us. So that we can have some of that stuff in place. So I think this is a great time to be alive for retirees. Get ready, AI is going to help you tremendously when it comes to your retirement plan. So again, when we develop this strategy, the goal isn't just to make our money last. It's also to use it intentionally to build that life we actually want. So I hope this helps and let's jump into the next one.

• 29:04Andrew Giancola?

  The number four is let's think about our income streams and can we diversify our income streams? Because one of the biggest mistakes people make going to retirement is relying on a single form of income. Usually it's their 401k or maybe the single form of income is just social security. That's a really bad position to be in. Maybe it's just their pension, but having multiple different income sources that you can pull from is really, really valuable in retirement. And it's going to reduce your stress and anxiety when it comes to retirement. So this might work in perfect conditions to have and just pull from one specific place. But if you really don't want to ride the wave of the market completely, or you don't want to have to ride the wave of the real estate market. You don't want to ride the wave of your pension, then making sure that you have some flexibility can be really, really important. So why is this so powerful?

• 29:49Andrew Giancola?

  One is it gives you flexibility. It gives you flexibility to withdraw from different sources based on market conditions or what is actually going on. Number two is it reduces sequence of return risk and lets you avoid selling investments in a down market. Now we want to make sure that we avoid selling those investments in a down market if we can. And so if you have a couple of places that can bring some income in that you can pull from, even better. It also helps smooth out your income year over year, where if you have multiple sources of income, it smoothes out where that money is going to come from. So what are some practical steps to kind of actually hit this milestone? You have multiple streams of income in retirement if you're planning on not working much or not working at all. One is social security. Obviously, we don't know if social

• 30:32Andrew Giancola?

  security is going to be here forever. For decades and decades and decades now, they have been saying social security is going to go away. And we're going to see a couple of big shifts coming up over the course of the next decade for sure, because a lot of people are stating, well, social security is running out. And if that's the case, there's going to be some shifts in Washington. You do not want to be the politician that takes away social security. Most people are relying on it, and the amount of people who need social security is massive right now. And so making sure that that stays is probably something that's going to happen. Now, is it going to be as much as it is now? I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen with it, but that is for sure income stream. Number one. Number two is tax deferred accounts. So things like your 401k, your 457, 403B, all of those types of accounts, IRA, a traditional IRA, all of those types of accounts

• 31:16Andrew Giancola?

  are the tax deferred accounts and give us a different option of something to pull from. Then we have our tax free accounts. So our Roth IRA, our Roth 401k, any of the Roths or the tax free growth, and you could pull those out tax free. Then we have taxable brokerage accounts, which are going to be taxed at different rates based on your income. And for a lot of retirees, if you have zero income, up to about 120,000 plus, if you are a couple, you can save a lot on taxes and pay 0% taxes. But there are other sources of income like pensions. Maybe you have annuities. Maybe you have rental income. Annuities have really high fees. So if you don't know what you're doing, make sure you understand those before you even consider that. Maybe rental income. Maybe you have business income, or you sold your business and you're getting income coming in from that sale. Maybe it is part time work.

• 32:01Andrew Giancola?

  All of these can be redirected and help you have diversified income sources. Now, if you can get a part time job or just something that you enjoy, I think that is a really great thing just to help your mind and also help you have something to do in retirement. And then next, if you do have different income sources, this is going to allow you to mix up with your withdrawals. So for example, in down markets, you can lean on some of your cash reserves if you have those on hand, Roth or other sources to avoid selling at a loss. And then in strong markets, you can take from some of your tax deferred or taxable accounts. And be able to utilize those. And then in low income years, you can do some Roth conversions strategically. Now, we've had episodes talking about that. If you want to learn more about that.

• 32:43Andrew Giancola?

  Also, tools like annuities or pensions can help create a floor of guaranteed income. If you are looking for that floor of a guaranteed income, if you want to have that in place. But again, annuities are complex products. You need to understand them fully because the fees are very, very, very, very, very, very high. And for most people, you need to make sure that you understand what's going on before you do that. Now, one quick side note really quick on annuities. If you are going to buy an annuity, have an advisor who is a fee only advisor. Look at that annuity and tell you about all the fees and all the impacts of what is going on and not the person who is selling you the annuity. That is the big key overall. So when you diversify your income streams, you are going to control your retirement income and it's not going to be controlled by the market. And that's what we are trying to do is make sure that we have a couple of different streams

• 33:27Andrew Giancola?

  so that we are not just controlled by the market. That's very, very important. And most people need to note, that's what we are trying to do is take control back.

• 33:37Andrew Giancola?

  All right. It's kind of amazing how much can change in just a single year. Every summer, the kids are a little bigger, a little more independent, and life looks a little different than it did the year before. And it reminds me that while we can't predict the future, we can prepare for it. That's one of the reasons I like PolicyGenius. See, PolicyGenius isn't an insurance company. They're an online marketplace that lets you compare life insurance quotes from some of America's top insurers, side by side, for free. And their licensed team helps you compare coverage, prices, and terms, answers your questions, and even handles the paperwork so you can get the right policy without the hassle. For me, having life insurance isn't about expecting something to happen.

• 34:20Andrew Giancola?

  It's about knowing my family is protected so I can actually enjoy these moments together instead of worrying about what comes next. And with PolicyGenius, you can find 20-year life insurance policies, starting at just $276 a year for $1 million of coverage. Head to PolicyGenius.com to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and see how much you can save. That's PolicyGenius.com. If you've been listening to this show for a while, you know it's not just me anymore. It takes a great team behind the scenes to make everything happen. And if I had to hire someone tomorrow, I'd want someone who could jump right in and make an impact. That's why I'd use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. When workplace chaos hits,

• 35:02Andrew Giancola?

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• 35:45Andrew Giancola?

  to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. If you've heard any recent episode of Health Corner, you know that I have spent the last few years trying to optimize my sleep. I've tried sleep trackers, cooling my room, changing my nighttime routine, all the different things. But nothing really matters as much as having the right mattress. And that's one of the reasons I love Lisa. A great mattress is one of those things that you use every single night

• 36:29Andrew Giancola?

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• 37:14Andrew Giancola?

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• 37:55Andrew Giancola?

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• 38:37Andrew Giancola?

  That's S C R I B E dot H O W slash P F P. Number five is one of your ultimate goals should be having your portfolio cover your essential expenses. Now you hear me say this all the time, is that focusing on the things that you can control is one of the most powerful things you can do when it comes to retirement. Because when you focus on the things you can control, then we can make sure that our essentials are taken care of. And then everything else is gravy. Your social security is gravy. On top, your pension income is gravy on top and everything else can be taken care of. And so the way that we do that is figuring out, hey, how much do we spend every year? Tracking that retirement number every year like we talked about already. And then making sure that you can cover those essential expenses. So everything from your housing costs, your electric costs, your healthcare costs,

• 39:23Andrew Giancola?

  all of those different things, if those can be covered by your portfolio, you're in a really good position when it comes to retirement. Now, this is going to remove financial anxiety from your daily life because you know it is at least covered by your portfolio, your portfolio is large enough to cover those things. Then everything else you can utilize for things that you actually want to do. It also gives you leverage. It gives you the power to work on your terms and you can walk away from any job you want to entirely, whenever you want to. And it gives you a very strong foundation in retirement. Because when you have this foundation in place where your portfolio is going to cover all your living expenses and then everything else is gravy, you don't have to worry as much. And so not everybody has the luxury to be able to achieve this. But for those of you who are young, I highly encourage you to make sure this is one of your main targets.

• 40:04Andrew Giancola?

  It also creates a mental shift from having to worry about what the market is going to do and having to worry about how your retirement is going to go to actually owning your retirement. You are now in complete control and you own what is going on. So defining your essential expenses is the first part of this journey. And really defining those expenses year in and year out and tracking that retirement number is how we get there. This is another big reason why we want to track that. And then we figure out what our floor is going to be. What is the bare minimum we need to at least cover all our essential expenses? Maybe not some of the variable expenses or the extra expenses that you want to for your wants, but just covering all your baseline expenses, your needs. What does that look like? What does that feel like? And trying to make sure we calculate that.

• 40:47Andrew Giancola?

  Then we can calculate a safe withdrawal rate based on that. So really that is one big thing I want most of you planning for retirement. Try to get all of your baseline expenses covered by your portfolio at a bare minimum. And if you can get more than that, you're going to live a really great retirement. All right, number six is let's talk about social security because achieving 35 years of earned income for social security is one of the biggest guaranteed income streams in retirement right now. And people are going to say, well, it's not guaranteed. We don't know if it's going to be around for a while. And again, they've been saying that for a very long time. I don't know if it's ever going to get taken away, but you do have an income stream, at least at the time of recording this, you have an income stream in social security. It is something we have to at least factor into our retirement plan.

• 41:29Andrew Giancola?

  Now, I like to factor in social security as an extra. So in the last point, we want to try to cover all our baseline expenses and then social security can be extra to do other things. And so what cool thing I think to utilize social security is maybe you want to travel a lot. Well, if you want to travel a lot, your social security number could cover all those costs that help you travel the way you want to or take some of those big trips each and every single year. Now, the cool thing about social security is that the benefits are inflation adjusted as long as you live. And so social security provides a steady guaranteed inflation protected income stream for life, which is very cool for those who live in the US. And the higher benefits reduce the pressure of your investment portfolio. And there's a strong guaranteed income floor with social security that can

• 42:12Andrew Giancola?

  help you through that timeframe. Now, each additional year of strong earnings can replace a lower year because your 35 year history is what matters when it comes to social security and your 35 best earning years are very, very important. And that's what your social security is based on. And since it's indexed for wage growth, even income from decades ago counts more than you actually might think. Now, a larger guaranteed income floor reduces the sequence of returns risk when it comes to your portfolio and making sure we have that on hand. So social security is going to help with that. And best of all, this is income you can't outlive. So this is income coming in that you can't outlive. And so at least the time recording this, we have that stepped in place. So your 35 best years is how you maximize your social security number. If you work for 35 years. And so

• 42:55Andrew Giancola?

  for a lot of folks out there, that is one of their targets. If you need to rely on social security is making sure you get those 35 years in. Number seven is catch up contributions. So you need to make sure that you are taking advantage of catch up contributions. And for a lot of people in their 50s, the 50s could be some of your highest earning years. And often the moment when retirement feels real. But the good news is the IRS gave us this little gift called catch-up contributions, where we can add additional funds into our retirement accounts. And so, starting at age 50, you can contribute more to your retirement accounts than people who are below the age of 50. Now, why does this matter? It gives you the ability to make up for lost time. It also accelerates compounding over that timeframe and lets you build a larger nest egg with serious tax advantages.

• 43:40Andrew Giancola?

  So, I highly encourage anybody over the age of 50 who is listening right now to make sure that you are taking advantage of those catch-up contributions. So, in your 401K and 403B in 2025, when I'm recording this, and this is going up next year, by the way, you can put $23,500 if you're below the age of 50 into your 401K. The catch-up contribution is $7,500 for those over the age of 50. And there's actually a super catch-up contribution. That's $11,250 on top of that standard limit if you're between age 60 and 63. Now, for your IRA, the catch-up contribution is going to be an additional $1,000. You could put seven Gs into an IRA right now, $7,000, and your catch-up contribution is going to be $1,000 over the age of 50.

• 44:24Andrew Giancola?

  Now, these numbers can change with inflation, so always check the current numbers because they go up pretty much every year over the course of the last couple of years. And so, making sure you're checking the current ones in 2026, again, they're going to be going up. And so, this is a great tool that you need to use if you're over the age of 50, making sure you take advantage of those catch-up contributions. Now, number eight, we can talk about in retirement is having a diversified tax plan. Now, diversified tax plan is going to be something where you're taking advantage of all three tax buckets when it comes to retirement accounts. And so, within this plan, we can think through, well, there are three different tax buckets. One is tax-deferred. So, that's going to be your traditional, your IRA, your 401K, where you get the tax break today and you pay taxes later on down the line when you withdraw the money.

• 45:07Andrew Giancola?

  The IRS always wants their money, and so, you're going to pay those taxes later. And they're subject to RMDs or requirement of distributions later on in retirement. So, that's one tax bucket. A second one is the tax-free tax bucket, where you have tax-free growth and you can pull the money out tax-free, but you pay taxes. Taxes when the money goes in and there are no RMDs in the Roth IRA. So you don't have to worry about withdrawing money later on and it has excellent long-term flexibility and tax control. And then lastly, we have the taxable brokerage accounts, which is ultimate flexibility. Not as many tax advantages, but you can get some really, really good tax advantages. And if you qualify for long-term capital gains, meaning you held your assets inside that account for longer than one year, then your tax benefits are going to be much, much better.

• 45:48Andrew Giancola?

  And so you need to look at where your assets are today and then you evaluate and put a plan together on which of these buckets you want to pull from. Now you work with your CPA on this is the way that the best way to do this is figure out which accounts are the best to pull from and put those in place. But having a plan for these is a prudent way to think through retirement. Now number nine is having a Roth conversion strategy. So for many people, retirement comes in two phases. One is your working years and two is retirement years before RMDs and social security. Now, the second phase creates a powerful tax planning window by strategically converting a portion of your pre-tax accounts, like a traditional IRA or a 401k to a Roth IRA.

• 46:28Andrew Giancola?

  These lower income years can lock you into lower tax rates now and avoid bigger tax bills later. Now, the cool thing about this is this is going to help you reduce your required minimum distributions. The IRS is going to want you to pull that money out, but you can do it in the lower tax bracket years. And so it lowers your future tax brackets, Medicare surcharges and social security taxation. It also shifts money into an account where growth and withdrawals are tax-free for life. This is a very powerful place to be. Now here's why this is really, really powerful. Okay. First, it converts taxable income into tax-free income now. That's number one. Number two is this is going to provide flexibility and control over your future withdrawals. It also protects against future tax increases.

• 47:10Andrew Giancola?

  If there are going to be future tax increases and if you're worried about that, it reduces how much your retirement income is exposed to IRS rules. And so really it helps optimize your estate planning. It helps put all of these things in place where you have more control over this. And so understanding what a Roth conversion is and when to optimize those is a very important conversation to have with your CPA on when. To do those, we've had a number of episodes on how Roth conversions can even reduce the amount that you pay in taxes to zero if you do them the right way. We did an episode with Katie Gaddy from Money with Katie and she talked through step by step on how you can do that. So if you haven't checked that episode out, make sure you check that one out. Now, number 10, this is one that not enough people talk about. And this is one I'm very, very passionate about, and I think

• 47:53Andrew Giancola?

  a lot of people need to think through, is you need to have an online protection and security plan in retirement. So who is most susceptible to scammers and spammers? It is going to be people who are entering retirement age. Why? Because they are not as sophisticated with the advancements of technology as people who are younger traditionally. Now, there are some people who are in their 60s and 70s who know way more about technology than I do. But traditionally, there are a lot of people who are older that are targeted for a lot of these different online scams. And so having an online protection and security plan is very, very important because the consequences can be devastating. Getting your social security stolen is a big one that's happening right now, or even retirement benefits. Compromised investment accounts are a big one. Tax refund fraud is

• 48:38Andrew Giancola?

  another big one we've been seeing. And credit damage that takes months or years to clean up in retirement can also be happening. Now, the problem isn't just bad actors. The problem is your personal information is already floating around online. And in retirement, protecting your digital footprint is just as important as protecting your portfolio. So here's why this matters. Number one is your nest egg can be compromised with one single bad investment. Number two is financial scams are increasingly sophisticated. With the advancement of AI, they can make your voice sound like anything, and they can really target older Americans with that. And proactive online protection plans are really going to help a lot of people with their understanding of how to defend what they've already built. So here's some practical steps that I think every single person planning for retirement needs to take. Number one is you need

• 49:23Andrew Giancola?

  to scrub your personal information from the web. So your home address, your phone number, and family info are often publicly listed on data broker sites. And removing that info drastically reduces your digital exposure. So this is where services like Delete Me come in. They continuously scan the web and they remove your information. From data broker websites, so scammers can't easily just come out and target you. And so I love this service from Delete Me. They've removed my information from thousands of different websites. Because all these different data brokers are allowed to just sell your information. So if somebody gets a hold of a part of your social security number, or they find your name and address and they want some more information about you so they can scam you in some way, shape or form. They go to these data brokers, get the rest of your information and buy that information from them.

• 50:07Andrew Giancola?

  And then they have it so they can open student loans in your name or other accounts in your name. Delete Me helps protect you against that by removing your information from these data brokers. So if you go to joindelete.me/ pfp20, you can get 20% off your plan at Delete Me there. And it is by far the best service that I have utilized over the course of the last couple of years. They have saved me so much time. Again, I tried to manually remove my information from these places. And it took so long just to remove it from a couple of different websites. And I've tried to find a solution that worked better and Delete Me was that solution. So go to joindelete.me/ pfp20, you'll get 20% off there. The second thing you need to do when it comes to your plan is locking down your accounts. So making sure that you use a password manager for all of your different passwords is very important.

• 50:52Andrew Giancola?

  And also turning on two-factor authentication. Obviously, a lot of us know to do that, but we need to have two-factor authentication. And I would also highly encourage you to use an authenticator. Meaning using something like Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator. I've been using those a lot, lot more where they generate a very specific code just to you is very important. Three is freezing your credit. So every retiree, in my opinion, should have their credit frozen. A, you're not opening a bunch of loans or credit cards when you're in retirement. Instead, you're spending a lot of your time living off the money that you have created. And so because of this, your credit needs to be frozen so you cannot get scammed. I cannot stress this enough that step by step, your credit needs to be frozen. People need to make sure that they are doing this. And you can do this with all three major credit bureaus.

• 51:36Andrew Giancola?

  It is one of the simplest and most effective protection steps you can take. Also, is having alerts set up. So having alerts set up to your email on your phone and monitoring some of those alerts can be very important. Identity monitoring services can be helpful when doing this. So that you know if somebody is trying to open up something in your name, you get Alert it immediately and then create a security checklist. So keep your personal security plan in one place and have things like, okay, I'm going to utilize delete me to scrub my personal info. I'm going to do two factor authentications on all accounts. I'm going to make sure I freeze my credit and I'm going to do an annual security review. That I think is really, really important because just like automating your finances, automating your security plan is going to be the way to make this sustainable. Most people don't want to do it. They don't want to think about it. Well, guess what? You got to do it in this day and age.

• 52:20Andrew Giancola?

  Otherwise your information is going to get stolen. And as AI keeps advancing, we're going to keep talking about this more and more and more. It is so, so, so important. I had my identity stolen, so I know what this feels like, which is why I'm so passionate about this. And really, really, really want to make sure that you are taking care of this stuff as well. Well, listen, thank you so much for listening to the personal finance podcast. Again, if you want personal help from me, join Master Money Academy. It'll be linked down below in the show notes. That is our community of other wealth builders who are all working towards a common goal. And we show you step by step exactly what to do with your money. Thank you so much for listening to personal finance podcast. Part two is coming up next, so make sure you're subscribed to this podcast. And if you have any questions, leave them in the comments below or shoot us an email via the newsletter. Thanks again for being here and we'll see you on the next episode.

• 53:19Speaker 01

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