DO THIS for a Happy Retirement (feat. Wes Moss)

Retirement happiness isn’t just about how much money you’ve saved—so what actually matters most? Brian, Bo, and retirement researcher Wes Moss put it to the test with a Retirement Happiness Draft, taking turns building their ideal retirement from 12 choices like $100K of income, eight hours of sleep, close friends, travel, hobbies, a paid-off home, and multiple income streams. Who builds the happiest retirement? Along the way, they unpack new research on happy retirees, retirement planning, financial independence, health, relationships, and purpose after work—and reveal what the data says really separates a fulfilling retirement from an unhappy one. Jump start your journey with our FREE financial resources⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Reach your goals faster with our products⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Take the relationship to the next level: become a client⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe on YouTube for early access and go beyond the podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Connect with us on social media for more content⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Bring confidence to your wealth building with simplified strategies from The Money Guy. Learn how to apply financial tactics that go beyond common sense and help you reach your money goals faster. Make your assets do the heavy lifting so you can quit worrying and start living a more fulfilled life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 1:06Brian Preston?

  Do this for a happy retirement. Just like your favorite Scooby Doo episode, we got a special guest with Mr. Wes Moss today.

• 1:15Speaker 03

  Guys, so cool to be here and I'd love to be in the same camp as Scooby Doo.

• 1:20Speaker 04

  Well, Wes, we are so excited to have you here today because we've known each other. How long's it been?

• 1:27Speaker 03

  It's been over a decade.

• 1:28Speaker 04

  A decade now, right?

• 1:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30Speaker 04

  And you're a pretty big deal, right? In Atlanta, like I know for us, we were like, that's Wes Moss.

• 1:35Brian Preston?

  First time, 2015, I felt like, you know, we saw you at the FinCon and from across the room, I was like, that's Wes Moss. And we were so excited that, because we're Atlanta boys and in Atlanta, you are a huge deal. And then you've, you've also gotten into the digital world, but if you're from Atlanta, Wes is all over WSB. He's like, he gets to hang out with all the cool guys like Clark Howard and you know, but you've got, you've now conquered the digital world too. But for us being Atlanta boys, we were really excited the first time I got to hang out.

• 2:06Speaker 03

  Well, you guys are the ones that probably got me into podcasting. So when we first, yeah, I was looking at your wall of your history wall, which is cool and confusing a little bit because it's, you know, you've got 2006 and then eight. I'm like, wait, Bo, you moved to Franklin and Brian, you moved after. And so the, but you started in 06 originally.

• 2:29Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  And I started in radio in Atlanta in 07.

• 2:32Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  And then WSB starting in 09. So you were before me in the media game.

• 2:37Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 2:38Speaker 03

  You were before me and then you guys transitioned.

• 2:40Brian Preston?

  So what, there was probably 12 people watching that, listening to that podcast back in 2006.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  So, but then you guys have really, it's actually, I've been doing a lot of extra study about the money guys in the last couple of days and I, you guys have just exploded. You're like an overnight success. I know, I know it's been 20 years.

• 2:59Brian Preston?

  20 years in the making.

• 3:00Speaker 03

  But it's, it is incredible and I'm excited and super psyched to see that everything you guys have done. You've got awesome audience, a great firm. It's, your book has been, the reviews of the book are so good. I'm so jealous.

• 3:13Brian Preston?

  I'm gonna start blessing you.

• 3:14Speaker 03

  There's like a thousand reviews. There's zero non-five stars.

• 3:19Brian Preston?

  Except for if they have shipping problems.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  There was one.

• 3:21Brian Preston?

  That's the only one. I keep reporting that one guy who like his book got, looked like the dog chewed on it. And he, and he has, there's a one star review and I keep reporting it saying, this isn't the product. It's, it's Amazon screwed up his shipment.

• 3:33Speaker 03

  There was one four star review and the complaint that is, that's not in Mandarin as well. It was from China. I was like, God, it's a tough audience, man.

• 3:41Speaker 00

  That is a tough, tough audience.

• 3:43Brian Preston?

  You ought to do an AUM show.

• 3:49Brian Preston?

  That was for my own entertainment.

• 3:52Speaker 03

  God bless you.

• 3:54Speaker 04

  Awesome. So, all right. So you've got this new book, right?

• 3:58Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 3:58Speaker 04

  Give us the rundown. What's the new book about? What's the, give us the, the idea around it.

• 4:02Speaker 03

  I started over with research and I really started this research, researching then writing, research then writing back in 2011, 2012, trying to figure out, going from, I wanted, I wondered if I was going to be writing about something to be about the data. A lot like Money Matters, a lot like the financial shows I do. I usually start, I almost always start with the data and then try to allow that to formulate a story that is objective as possible. Of course, we are going to have our opinions and why things are the way they are. But I always feel really, I feel more confident if I can just start with, here, here, here are the stats. And it's the same thing when studying populations

• 4:45Speaker 03

  of success, because the, in the end, we want, beginning with the end in mind is, well, we want to be able to have financial freedom and I want a happy retirement. It's not about the amount of money. That's not where I start. It's really about, let's start with finding the population, studying them, segmenting the happiest group versus the unhappiest group, and then just learning what that happy group does and learning what the unhappy group does, and then being able to compare the two. And that was originally how my first book, You Can Retire Sooner Than You Think. It was really research first. And then I was like, this, there's so many things to learn here from these, this population that

• 5:23Speaker 03

  it became a book. Then essentially 10 years later, I, it had gotten, it's, it was old, right? The numbers were old, the statistics felt old, the world had changed a ton. We went through bear, many bear markets, hyperinflation, scare, the pandemic. I mean, it was, we've had a lot of change and I felt as though that what I was known for, those statistics were just, I felt like they were old. And I was, so I tried to update that book and I spent a year updating it. And one day I was at my kitchen counter and just saying, you know, this update sucks.

• 6:04Brian Preston?

  How'd you really feel about it?

• 6:05Speaker 03

  I was like, this just is not good. It's not good enough. And the, so I just said, I really have to start over from the very beginning because it's been, by that point it was 11 years.

• 6:16Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 6:16Speaker 03

  So I was like, it's getting further and further and older and older. So I was nervous that if I just started all of my research again and expanded it, that it would maybe contradict. It was like, why, like what you said 10 years ago isn't longer right. So I was nervous to do it, but I also was at a point in my career where I also said, I don't care.

• 6:37Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  I don't care if it was, whatever it is, it is. So I, I'll rewrite about that. And the, I guess the good news is almost everything was in line with what I had found a decade prior, in line, but the numbers changed. And, and that makes sense. We've had a lot of inflation. So, so people reported having more money in the happiness zones than they did 11 years ago, which, which makes sense.

• 7:02Brian Preston?

  Sure.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  There was a, I've, I've found more fear. I felt like I was able to understand what is keeping people up at night more today than ever. I felt, I studied community more than I did in the first couple of books and socialization and realized that we're, we're in a friendship recession in America. And socialization is such a big part of the making, having the, the end in mind, which is a happy retirement, full of freedom. The community part of that is so big.

• 7:35Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 7:36Speaker 03

  And I realize how much people are struggling with that. And, and we're in a friendship recession in America and we know demographically it gets even harder as we age. So we, there are all of these factors that you, you all know, that hit us when we're in our mid 50s and then accelerate into our 60s and 70s, that it's a real headwind to continue to have the same level of joy, purpose, happiness, when we are in those stages of retirement. And that's what I feel like Retire Sooner Method, it's a big part of what it teaches, is to be able to say, look, yes, there's some chapters about the finance side, but the lifestyle side is so important because in the end, that's what we're all after. We

• 8:21Speaker 03

  want to have this purpose-filled, amazing next phase. And, and that's a big part of the Retire Sooner Method.

• 8:28Brian Preston?

  Well, we decided, because look, you've been, you've been, you're now on, is this the third book? Kind of on

• 8:35Speaker 03

  Pretty much.

• 8:36Brian Preston?

  Making retirees happy, how to have the best success in, in, in retirement. We were like, why not gamify this? So much of life

• 8:44Speaker 03

  This is a cool idea.

• 8:45Brian Preston?

  Is gamified. So we were like, and by the way, we, because we, we did this, Austin and Robert from, was it Rich Habits? They did this with us on, on another concept on retirement and, you know, but it wasn't the happiness.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Financial tools.

• 8:59Brian Preston?

  It was financial tools. So we had the team put together and they went and tore your book apart and came up with all these different, now a few of them are, are kind of to lead us down the, the wrong path. You're the expert on this, but we're going to do a snake draft.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 9:13Brian Preston?

  You're the guest. We're going to let you choose first.

• 9:16Speaker 03

  So, so we're drafting like, like fantasy football.

• 9:18Speaker 04

  And we're trying to build the happiest retirement. That's the goal here. What would it take to be the happiest retiree?

• 9:23Brian Preston?

  And we've, we've got all the, we've got 12 different options and I can go through these really quick. We've got luxury vacation homes, $100,000 annual income, eight hours of sleep, travel and experiences, five close friends, living near family, paid off home, hobbies and volunteering, daily physical activity, a flexible schedule, three income streams and weekly dinner group. We're going to choose between those 12. Each get to do three. You're going to go first. I'm going to go second.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  Oh, wow. That's so funny how that happens.

• 9:53Brian Preston?

  This was not done in a scientific or even luck.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  You came in first place last year. You're last in the draft.

• 9:57Speaker 04

  Oh, fair enough. Fair enough.

• 9:59Brian Preston?

  We, we always make Bo go last so we can pick on him. That's the role. He's, when, when the salt shaker of talent got, you know, dropped on you, where you're good looking, smart, athletic, we make you go last on purpose.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  By the way, I needed, after seeing you guys, I needed to get back in the gym. I mean,

• 10:18Brian Preston?

  I'm glad that you think me sitting next to Bo somehow makes you go first.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  You guys are both big guys. And then this guy's, yeah.

• 10:24Speaker 04

  I love it. Okay.

• 10:24Brian Preston?

  He's a unit according to the, the comments. Hence why he's going last.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  That's what my kids would call you. That was a unit. If you see him, he ran that dude over.

• 10:33Speaker 04

  I'll take it.

• 10:33Brian Preston?

  So what is your first pick?

• 10:37Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 10:38Brian Preston?

  And you can editorialize on why.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  All right, here we go. Here are my drafts.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  So we've got luxury vacation. Ooh. Hundred K in income, eight hours of sleep. I'm thinking the long game here and I might make my pick to throw you guys off.

• 10:54Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Let's see here. I am going to start with the 12th person in the draft, which is the weekly dinner group.

• 11:07Speaker 04

  Whoa.

• 11:08Brian Preston?

  Wow.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  Just throw in WM right there.

• 11:10Brian Preston?

  But who's going to be at this dinner group?

• 11:12Speaker 04

  Did not see that. Honestly was not guessing that was going to be first draft pick. That's, I can't, alright.

• 11:19Brian Preston?

  Okay, I'm going to go with, now look, I'm torn. Maybe I shouldn't give my strategy yet, but I'm going to go with the happiness factor first of going with five close friends.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  Hmm. Hmm. It's a game of poker here.

• 11:35Speaker 04

  Alright, so that's interesting, I guess. And I can't tell if you guys are being legit or if you're just trying to like do this for the audience.

• 11:44Speaker 04

  Cause I'm going to go right off the bat. I know that number, the number one thing that most people struggle and it gets into like getting to retirement is

• 11:51Brian Preston?

  The vacation home, right?

• 11:52Speaker 04

  Do I have enough? Do I have financially, am I going to be okay? So my very first pick is going to be a financial pick and I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to lock in number two, $100,000 annual income. So I've got like a baseline coming in guaranteed, right? I've got money coming in, like Forrest Gump would say, that's just one less thing. I got money coming in now. Now that I've done that, I don't think this will be a surprise. My second.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  Whoa, whoa, whoa. Oh, you get two.

• 12:17Speaker 04

  Yeah. I'm in a snake draft, okay. My second, I'm actually going to say number nine, daily physical activity, because I do believe that health is well.

• 12:26Speaker 03

  Of course you are.

• 12:27Speaker 04

  I do believe that health is well.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  Bo, Bo lifts three times.

• 12:30Brian Preston?

  Retirement requires pull-ups and push-ups and bench press.

• 12:35Speaker 04

  There's no point in having all the money in the world to do all the things in the world if you don't have the health to be able to enjoy it. So I'm going 100,000 annual income and then daily physical activity for my next, for my next draft.

• 12:45Brian Preston?

  Okay, so I get the next pick and I'm going to go, because I was hoping.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  Are we crossing these out as we go?

• 12:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  This is so great. You guys, it's like straight out of ESPN.

• 12:54Brian Preston?

  I want some income, because I've got the friends. So now I need to either be able to fund us doing activities. So I'm going to do the three income streams and I'm hoping mine's even more than Bo's $100,000.

• 13:04Speaker 04

  I didn't pick that, because three income streams could be a hundred bucks a month. You know what I mean? We don't know what, we don't know what that is.

• 13:10Brian Preston?

  But I'm involved, so it's going to be successful.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't disagree with that. Alright, I'm going to go with, you guys have left number two on the board and I'm going to snag that 100K in income.

• 13:22Speaker 04

  No, that was my, that was my first one. That was my first draft pick.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  You already did, that's right. Let me cross this out as we go. Shoot. Uh oh, uh oh. So.

• 13:31Brian Preston?

  Luxury home's hanging out for you though.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, that looks like a little bit of an albatross. That's like, that's a bad first round pick. I like that you guys put that as number one. I am going to go, I'm going to go, oh, another dark horse. I'm going,

• 13:51Speaker 03

  I'm going to go living near family.

• 13:53Speaker 04

  Oh, that's a good one.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  Near fam.

• 13:56Speaker 04

  Not going to lie, that's a really good one.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 13:59Brian Preston?

  Okay, get another one.

• 13:59Speaker 03

  And I get another one.

• 14:00Brian Preston?

  This is your last one.

• 14:01Speaker 03

  And the,

• 14:03Speaker 03

  boom, boom, boom, boom. And then I'm going to take the last one that is financial on the group is paid off home.

• 14:13Speaker 04

  Alright.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 14:17Speaker 04

  Brian Preston.

• 14:18Brian Preston?

  I get the, I get the last one.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  So you had five plus and what was your second one?

• 14:24Speaker 04

  Five friends and three income streams.

• 14:25Brian Preston?

  Okay, I'm like, you know what? This, this works out beautifully. I'm going to end up being the winner here, because I'm going to focus on some health. It will not have the bench press that Bo has, but eight hours of sleep is my last one.

• 14:36Speaker 04

  Alright. That's a happy retiree's superpower, by the way.

• 14:39Brian Preston?

  Oh no, I'm telling you, I have stacked the deck here.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  It's two, by the way, it's two to one. It's, it's the, if you look at the two groups, and this was, again, some of the research that came back. The research company actually infused a few more questions that I didn't even really think about, which was interesting. This is the first time I used an outside research partner to help with this. And, and I needed that to get mapped to the US census, to make it statistically significant, just kind of up the research game. One of the suggestions was to ask about a couple of different health related questions and one of them was sleep that I had never even thought of. And I was like, okay, we'll put, we'll put that in there. And the, it's remarkable, the two groups where they, happy retirees

• 15:29Speaker 03

  say they get enough sleep, two to one relatively unhappy group. So it's over 80% of happy retirees say they get enough sleep and only 41%.

• 15:41Brian Preston?

  Is it self-declared? Is it like, if I feel like I only need six and a half hours of sleep, is that, is that, is that, would that count?

• 15:48Speaker 03

  So I didn't ask the, the hours. I asked enough.

• 15:51Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 15:51Speaker 03

  And enough, by the way, in this book, enough is a, is a number.

• 15:55Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 15:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:56Speaker 03

  Enough is a number.

• 15:57Speaker 04

  For some people it's more, for some people it's less. Love that. Alright, so I get the last draft pick.

• 16:04Speaker 04

  And honestly, I think, you know, because this is one of the things that, that I want to do one day if I ever actually do retire. I'm going number four.

• 16:12Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 16:13Speaker 04

  Travel and experiences, man. I'm, I'm doing that one. Because again, I want to, you know, I spent all this time building up all this wealth, working so hard. I actually want to be able to enjoy it, want to be able to travel with my family, want to be able to take them places. So I'm going travel and experiences. And so now the question for you, Wes, is when you look at these three different camps, you look at how they're drafted. Who has the happiest retirement? And why? And then anything editorializing about the other two?

• 16:44Speaker 03

  Guys, I did a, I was at a golf tournament last, a couple of weeks ago. It was like old guys versus young guys and there were, there were 50 golfers on each, in each big group. And it was a two-day tournament and at the end of the, the end of the Sunday, the young guys had like 600, it was 687.2 points.

• 17:07Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  And the old guys had 687.2 points. And at the end, we were all tied and everyone hated it. Like you can't, you gotta have a winner.

• 17:18Speaker 04

  You have to have a winner.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  My point is that these are very close, but we still need to have a winner. And because I'm the guest, I'm going to go tie goes to the hosts. So I'm going to say I don't win, but I'll explain why. And oh.

• 17:38Brian Preston?

  Can I give an editorial comment on those?

• 17:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:41Brian Preston?

  Bo makes $100,000 a year of income. He's obviously very active out there making the Instagram posts every day. But he's, and he's traveling the world, so I think he's a lonely vlogger who's out there, has zero friends, but he has a whole audience that's following.

• 17:59Speaker 04

  You ever been to a gym, bro? You got friends. You go to the gym every day? You got friends.

• 18:03Brian Preston?

  Bo is traveling the world, but, and he's looking beautiful on the beach, but he's very lonely.

• 18:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:08Brian Preston?

  No friends.

• 18:10Speaker 03

  Well, okay, I'm going to go, let me, let me criticize Brian for a second, because I agree with you. I think that he's out, he's one of those bloggers, you're right, with an Instagram page. He's got a lot of followers, but does he have a lot of real friends?

• 18:23Speaker 04

  You know what? Follow me at Bonus. Follow me right there.

• 18:26Speaker 03

  The, Brian, you, the five close friends thing, you nail. By the way, I did weekly dinner group as a, as a sub way for that, because that is an evolving, here's the problem with five close friends today. It's great and it's essential, but friends move, friends die, friends get hurt. And you have to continue to replenish that. That's one of the tough things in a retirement. A weekly dinner group, if I were to advocate for my team here, is an evolving group that can continue to grow.

• 19:00Speaker 04

  People coming in, yeah.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  And part of maintaining that community is to have a flexible amount of community that can continue to expand. If somebody goes away, moves, gets divorced, et cetera. So I'm going to beat you on that one. Three income streams, what are they? What if they're all like, like Bo said, a hundred bucks each?

• 19:19Speaker 04

  A hundred bucks a month, man.

• 19:20Speaker 03

  Hmm. Yeah. So that's, that's, that's not a great pick for you. Eight hours of sleep is a good pick, but, but I don't know if that's enough for you.

• 19:31Brian Preston?

  I agree. I think, I think we can land on, there's a reason you've written the book.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  So I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say Beau wins. I'm gonna say I come in second because I'm an evolving community.

• 19:44Speaker 04

  I love this.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  By the way, living near family, we don't, it's like, it's a hard one to nail because your kids move. That's a really hard one. But if you can nail that, that's a really big deal.

• 19:57Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  You are forever with your family and your adult kids. You real, actually, you need to live near at least 50% of your adult kids. And then a paid off home is good for me because then I have shelter for life and no worry. Now I still property tax, et cetera.

• 20:11Brian Preston?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 20:11Speaker 03

  Um, so Beau wins. Um, I'm sorry, Brian, let me, Brian wins, Beau second.

• 20:17Speaker 04

  You said it first.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  Brian wins, Beau second, and I'm third because I'm the guest.

• 20:23Speaker 04

  See, here's the, your five close friends, if they're still working and you're retired, you know what I mean? Like, you gotta have five close friends in the same financial situation. They can enjoy it.

• 20:33Brian Preston?

  The good news is, I have like five close friends sitting in the room, including producer Rebi, who's gonna kinda open this thing, open this thing up.

• 20:43Speaker 03

  Work friends don't count.

• 20:46Speaker 04

  Oh, look at.

• 20:47Brian Preston?

  I might as well go ahead and bury the hole. You missed last week's last stream.

• 20:52Speaker 03

  I'm kidding.

• 20:52Brian Preston?

  Right behind you here is gonna be a glass case where they lean me up against down the road.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  Of course they count.

• 20:58Speaker 05

  You're gonna be on the set.

• 20:59Speaker 04

  How we can put Brian on the set.

• 21:01Brian Preston?

  The mummified version of myself.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  That is, that is one of the, that is a tough thing because, especially for entrepreneurs, right? Because we're all working kind of all the time. Now, you guys do have a good, like, work-life balance. Not everyone does. And you can end up almost being so overly involved in work and then your community's work. And then when you do something else, that's a, that's, that's a harder transition for some people.

• 21:25Speaker 04

  Well, I think the reason, one of the reasons Brian did so poorly in this draft is he's already let it know. He's never gonna retire. So he, he doesn't wanna be a happy retire. He wants to be a happy worker. And I think right now, you've already got the five close friends, you got a couple income streams. I don't know if you sleep eight hours a night or not, but you're already doing the things in retirement right now that would make you happy. And I think that's awesome.

• 21:46Speaker 03

  Let me, even though you came in. Beau, you bring up a really, this is an interesting point. Again, this is surprising when I, when I get this data back. And the, one of the, it's the most arduous part of this whole process, but the kind of them, maybe the most fun, because it's almost like you're sifting for gold. And once in a while, when it shows up, you're like, oh, wow. Whoa, that's something. This chart, guys, where this is a question that was asked through the research on, are you able to say yes to this question, which is, I am retired? Or I'm in a position to not have to work? Even though I may be working, I'm in a position to say yes to that.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 22:30Speaker 03

  It really is a financial freedom question.

• 22:32Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 22:32Speaker 03

  But it's also, I really don't have to work and I'm not working for some people. The difference between the non-retired group and the retired group relative to the happiness baseline. So I look at this as like alpha. If you're above this line, you're doing something right. If you're below this line, you're doing something wrong. There's a 21% jump when you say, I'm in a position to stop working.

• 22:53Speaker 04

  Yeah. Financial freedom.

• 22:54Speaker 03

  21%.

• 22:55Speaker 04

  Financial freedom, it's huge.

• 22:56Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  It's one of the reasons why we do this is because we do believe that, we do believe that it's possible and it's attainable. And it's something that everyone can achieve. It's why we choose every Tuesday at 10:00 AM to show up right here to answer questions and load our folks up. So right now, what we have is we have the team out in the wings collecting questions. And if you're willing, we'd love to just kinda answer some questions from our audience. Rebi will throw them to us. So if you have a question, you want us, you wanna get our take, you want us to weigh in, make sure you get it in the chat. It can be about financial planning stuff, it can be about retirement, it can be about happiness, whatever you wanna get our take on. Uh, we believe there's a better way to do money and we wanna load you up. So with that, Creative Director Rebi, I'm gonna throw it over to you.

• 23:42Speaker 05

  Yes, I've got a retirement question queued up from Travis. But first, to my Money Guy family, remember to go to moneyguy.com/earlyaccess today, if you haven't already, because we have a secret project, big announcement going on behind the scenes. And if you want, uh, we've already had two hints, um, sent out to this list. We've got a third one coming very soon, plus actual early access to this secret project. So if you want in on the secret.

• 24:11Brian Preston?

  Well, can I share one of them? Because I saw it this week on the newsletter.

• 24:14Speaker 04

  Can we share the hints?

• 24:15Brian Preston?

  I saw one on the newsletter and I was like, ooh, I finally can say that out loud. It's free.

• 24:20Speaker 05

  It's free.

• 24:20Brian Preston?

  It's free. That was revealed on the newsletter this weekend.

• 24:24Speaker 05

  Whatever the secret project is.

• 24:26Brian Preston?

  It's completely free.

• 24:27Speaker 05

  It's completely free. Um, so yes, go to moneyguy.com/earlyaccess, get on that list today. So you can actually see that third hint drop, um, be part of the guessing, be part of the secret channel in the money verse, and then also actually be the first to know and get the early access. I don't want you to miss out on that. So I just wanted to throw that out there.

• 24:46Brian Preston?

  Hey, can we give away tumblers today? Or is it not a Tumblr day?

• 24:50Speaker 05

  We can give away tumblers.

• 24:50Brian Preston?

  Let's give away tumblers. And by the way, I'm doing a renewal on the tumblers. They've gone up 15 to 20%. So you're now getting tumblers that are worth, that are literally appreciated.

• 25:00Speaker 04

  So we're gonna start charging.

• 25:01Brian Preston?

  They're literally appreciating with how things cost for us to replace.

• 25:05Speaker 05

  All right, let's head back to Travis's question. He says, once I retire, in what order should I draw from my taxable brokerage, traditional 401k and IRA and Roth accounts to minimize taxes?

• 25:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, we get this question all the time. We talk about like when you're building, when you're saving, when you're adding in retirement. There's generally an order that makes sense to follow. We call that order the financial order of operations. Brian, you hold the thing up.

• 25:31Brian Preston?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:31Speaker 04

  If you're following the financial order of operations, you're likely naturally filling your buckets in that way. You're getting money in the Roth and then in the pre-tax. And then usually, I ask you get money in the after-tax bucket. When it comes to distribution, or even as you talk to retirees, Wes, where, where do people's money come from? Like, when they go to start creating an income stream, how do they think about pulling the money out?

• 25:53Speaker 03

  Well, it's, it's a smart question. And it's one of the, I would say, the unsung hero when people stop working is that, is management of your tax bracket. And you, we have so much control once we have stopped wage income. We've got distribution. We can choose which accounts we wanna take out from. And the, there's, there's a lot, of course, there's the Roth, right? That's the, that's the, the quan of all accounts, because it all comes out tax-free and that's amazing. So we could always look at that, depending on the balance, depending on how large of a, a piece of the equation the Roth is. But I love being able to, and again, depending on the balance of the, and this is why it's

• 26:34Speaker 03

  so important to have after-tax money as well as retirement money. But if you, let's say you have a relatively good proportion of each, then what I'm thinking about, if we're not talking about conversions, let's say we have a low, we stop working, excluding Roth conversions here. I love to be able to look at an individual account and see where I have my gains or not. And if I can manage taking 50,000 out for, or if a client can take 50,000 out and have zero taxes, because you're essentially looking at positions that

• 27:11Speaker 03

  don't have big embedded gains, then you can, you can dramatically drop your overall effective income tax in retirement. I mean, you can have, you can be close to, you can be at zero in long-term capital gains. You've gotta have a lot of wiggle room, even taking gains. If you have, if your other income sources maybe don't get you over a certain threshold. So I like going individual supplementing with the Roth. And then at some point, you're gonna have to take 401k money because of the RMDs. But that, we have little choice unless we've, unless we've already converted.

• 27:50Brian Preston?

  I'll, I'll add a little bit of flavor. I always say, because Beau alluded to it. If you think about the financial order of operations, you're gonna probably, you're gonna fund your Roth first, because that's step five. Then you go load up the 401k and the, the, you know, traditional side of things, the tax-deferred. So that's gonna be your second savings account. Then usually, most people, not until step seven, do they really have, beyond their emergency reserves, do they have the ability to start doing taxable brokerage saving. So you think about that. You did Roth, traditional, and then you did after-tax. In retirement, you go the exact opposite order. You go after-tax, because exactly what Wes said, you can get access to that money very easily. And then I like, because, and I'm, I'm not gonna take Roth conversions off the tables, because the second,

• 28:34Brian Preston?

  you're probably going to have the ability, because of the manipulation you were talking about, to do, you're gonna get the tax rate so low, you'll start do, turning that traditional into Roth assets. So that's why, and then even after you start living, after beyond the Roth conversions, you'll probably start pulling out of, because you want, you're on a race with the government on those to, to beat the required minimum distributions. So you'll probably hit the traditional. And then you save your precious. Because I know everybody in, in the FIRE community and so forth, it tells, hey, you can go get access to your basis for your Roth. You'll wanna use your Roth. No, you won't. You'll wanna, because your Roth turns into your legacy. You, you, because you're like, my kids can inherit this and get 10 years of tax-free growth. I hate paying taxes. I want my kids

• 29:18Brian Preston?

  to inherit this awesome tax-free growth. So the last account you'll touch is your favorite child of the three accounts, which is your Roth. So you're gonna do it the exact opposite way.

• 29:27Speaker 04

  I, I agree with that. The only thing, the only small thing I'll add, uh, is in practice, like, this is all like academic and theoretical. In practice, what actually happens is the order changes a lot based on a number of things that you have going on. I just wrote down a few. Uh, when you take social security will affect when you begin to draw to different accounts. Once you start that, it's gonna, uh, when, how you handle Medicare. If you're gonna hit with IRMA surcharges, when you have to take RMDs, the size of your RMDs. Are you an early retiree and you have to figure out how to stay below some sort of subsidy level? Are you available for 0% caps, capital gains bracket? There's a number of different years, times, seasons, uh, and periods where your strategy might change. It's why personal finance is so personal. It's, it's why oftentimes, this is the stage

• 30:12Speaker 04

  where it does make sense to retouch a professional, to think about hiring someone to help you navigate that. Because maybe your strategy from 55 to 60 looks different than your strategy from 60 to 63, from 63 to 70, from 70, 75, and from 75, all the way out to 100. And you wanna make sure you're doing that well. I think it's not a one-size-fits-all.

• 30:30Brian Preston?

  Way to bring it all together, Beau.

• 30:32Speaker 04

  I do what I can.

• 30:32Brian Preston?

  Thank you for that.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  I do what I can.

• 30:33Speaker 03

  That was good.

• 30:37Speaker 00

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• 31:04Speaker 01

  Blowing ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them? That's bull spend and marketers are calling it out in dashboard confessions.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it, it wasn't.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

• 31:35Speaker 05

  Well Travis, thank you for the question. Just email [email protected] if you would like a Tumblr since Brian has dubbed this Tumblr day. You're welcome.

• 31:41Brian Preston?

  I think, you know, I felt like I would punish myself even more.

• 31:44Speaker 04

  This is a Tumblr. This is a Tumblr. Do you want to tell them about what's so special?

• 31:48Brian Preston?

  Okay, it's actually a transforming Tumblr. You are using it since it's holding nice crisp cold water in it. You're actually using it as a Tumblr. If you notice, quark, quark, quark, quark, quark. It just shifted and changed into a koozie.

• 32:02Speaker 04

  A koozie. It's a dual purpose.

• 32:03Brian Preston?

  So this thing, it is a dual purpose. It's like the Swiss Army knife of beverage.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's a mustache on there. I know your ass. That's a mustache.

• 32:12Brian Preston?

  That's because I can't grow mustaches. Bo can't either, but he attempts to try. So I felt like to be in solidarity with my friend Bo, you know, I would put a mustache on my Tumblr.

• 32:21Speaker 03

  There has been Tumblr inflation.

• 32:23Brian Preston?

  There's been Tumblr inflation and you are the beneficiary of that Tumblr inflation.

• 32:28Speaker 05

  All right. Next question is from RiverSniper09. It says, hello, Money Guy team. Currently expecting and due in March. So congrats on our baby. We have an HSA with a $3,600 annual employer contribution. Recently, you have mentioned Cadillac plans for years of birth and things like known medical expenses. Is it worth changing plans? The classic question. Should you keep that HSA or consider the Cadillac plan?

• 32:59Speaker 04

  I, I hear you talk to young people all the time.

• 33:02Brian Preston?

  Yeah, but me and Wes, we've been out of the baby stage for a little bit. You're, you're probably the closest on this. So I'll let you, I'll let you.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  I'm 10 years out.

• 33:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay. I'm not that many. Well, I am, but I just kind of kept rinsing and repeating.

• 33:18Speaker 04

  Yeah. So we tell people, obviously, we think it makes sense at open enrollment to review what health plan makes sense every single year. It's not like just to set it and forget it. And we love HSAs. We love high deductible plans because you're able to get triple tax advantage. You put money in, you can grow, you can pull it out tax free. But in those years, when you know you're going to have big medical expenses and for young people, one of the biggest medical expense years you'll have is when you do start a family, when you do start having babies. If you have a highly subsidized, very low cost plan, or even if it's not highly subsidized, it can often be more expensive. If the coverage is great and you know you're going into a year where you're going to have those types of procedures, those types of costs, I think it makes all the sense in the world to probably

• 34:00Speaker 04

  switch to the Cadillac plan, even if it's a little bit more expensive from a premium so that you can have that covered. And then once you've done that, once you've made it through that expensive year, once you've made it through the childbirth and all those sorts of things, next year you go right back to the HSA. I think there's nothing wrong with that. And I see a lot of people, a lot of, a lot of young people do that, but you add to the spreadsheet, add up what you estimate the cost to be under both plans, what the premiums are under both plans, what the tax benefit is, what the employer subsidy is, and then figure out mathematically which one puts you on top.

• 34:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, the, it's, it's hard to not want to continue to contribute to HSA long-term, but I guess in, to, in real life, if you have a really expensive year, you're going to end up spending, you might spend all of the HSA money. It might be gone in a year. And that's the lumpiness of parenthood. I've had, I have four kids and I go back to some of those years of the, the initial year is always really expensive. So maybe the Cadillac plan works even better, but then there, then you've got potential extra medical costs. If you have a kid that gets sick and you don't, that's the other thing that you don't know when that's going to, if or when that'll ever happen. And I've

• 35:14Speaker 03

  had that happen in my family. So it really, you gotta assess your family situation.

• 35:22Brian Preston?

  I would be curious, because it said the employer is contributing $3,600.

• 35:27Speaker 04

  Which is huge, by the way.

• 35:29Brian Preston?

  That's big. Cause usually that, most employers, you know, you realize most employer health insurance, they're usually doing like at least a 50% subsidy behind the scenes. So and then for them to come on top and put a $3,600 contribution in the HSA, I mean, I would consider this to hug your employer today. You know, go to work, actually say thank you to your employer. They're being so generous.

• 35:54Speaker 04

  That's not an official HR recommendation.

• 35:55Brian Preston?

  But it is one of those things. I'd be curious if they're that generous with the HSA, what are they doing? What type of insurance are you doing on the Cadillac side of things with the PPO? Because you might find, I mean, look, my wife on our first job, she worked for a Fortune 500 company. I kid you not, I think our first child caused us the first $10 copay.

• 36:15Speaker 04

  That was it for the entire job?

• 36:17Brian Preston?

  She was Fortune 500. I mean, the, the benefits would, believe me, when, when she left that job, so we, you know, it was a big, it was like, holy cow, are we really giving up these type of benefits because they loaded you up? So I think it is back to Bo's point. It's a math equation. Some of these plans on the PPO side are so generous that, that you probably want to be strategic, especially on years that you're growing your family. But do the math. Don't, don't just assume, because you know what that does to you. So just, just actually go through the mathematics of the exercise and I think you'll be, have, find a clear winner.

• 36:50Speaker 04

  Congratulations on the pending baby. That's awesome.

• 36:54Speaker 05

  Love that. RiverSniper09, just email [email protected] if you would like.

• 36:58Brian Preston?

  What's a river sniper?

• 36:59Speaker 04

  A fisherman.

• 37:01Speaker 04

  Someone who fishes and they're like.

• 37:02Brian Preston?

  Is that like somebody that's doing fly fishing, you think?

• 37:05Speaker 04

  I would guess.

• 37:08Speaker 04

  Cause it's a river. That kind of gives away the fly fishing thing. I would think that's what it is.

• 37:11Speaker 03

  Bo hangs out with a bunch of operators. You could be also a fish, you could be gigging as well. Fish gigging. That's a thing.

• 37:18Speaker 04

  That's a thing.

• 37:19Brian Preston?

  Could be the sniper.

• 37:20Speaker 05

  Let's move back into the topic of retirement with Devo6912's question. How do people with guaranteed retirement income, AKA a pension income, then delayed social security differ from people that exclusively are living off their 401k investments and take social security before 70?

• 37:41Speaker 04

  I'd be curious, in some of the research you did, did pensions come up a lot? Did guaranteed income streams come up? Does that lead to a higher level of happiness amongst retirees knowing they have fixed income? Do they think about retirement differently than others?

• 37:54Speaker 03

  To me, so here's the, I know that we, in our industry, we'll get every month, there's a new study from someone that says Americans say they need this in retirement, right? It's like this insurance company, this annuity company, this wealth management company, and it's, you know, 1.25 million or 1.75 million or the, so there's a lot of research around the amount you need to have in order to fund your lifestyle. I, my research is actually, is in reverse. It's really not that. It is, all right, what's the happy population have? And what is the, how are we moving the meter? What I call happiness alpha, which is above

• 38:39Speaker 03

  the US baseline. So we take the whole population set. This is the average happiness level. The money green zones I talk about in this book are based on what level of assets moves the meter on the happiness level. And that, and I'm, and a lot of that comes back to the peace of mind and, and the war against the fear of running out of money, which 39% of millionaires still say one of their primary feels is running, fears is running out of money, even millionaires.

• 39:11Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 39:12Speaker 03

  It's still one in four with the 3 million plus group.

• 39:16Speaker 04

  Are still afraid of running out of money.

• 39:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. As a, as a top or primary concern. So the, the way I would look at this is that I would look at, I think of it a little bit more, because there's a separate money green zone on the amount of income. And we had, had it in the draft. It's an important 100K plus. That's a money green zone from an income perspective. But, but what I would say to Devo, my real thought is that a pension can influence your investment allocation because you can look at the pension and then essentially look at the value of that and say, well, that's, that could, that's a big part of my fixed income.

• 39:55Brian Preston?

  Right.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  So I look at that, it's great to have multiple income streams, but if we're, if we're safely able to get to the 100K level of, of annual household income, that's a money green zone as well. So I would look at the pension and say, well, what is the pension worth? You take the annual number divided by 5% or 6% and you get a larger amount that's, that you could say, oh, well, that's worth 500K. If it were an asset, that means I've got an extra 500K in safety assets. And so I look at it as, how does that impact my long-term asset allocation?

• 40:29Speaker 04

  Love that.

• 40:30Brian Preston?

  I had, I had written down two big things and both of them, I think we've covered kind of both of them. I, I look at if you have a pension or guaranteed money, um, the size that you need to have that happy retirement is probably going to be much lower. That's why you, you see a lot of studies that teachers are, are good with money. But I think a lot of it is same with retired military people. They have huge pensions that come in, good pensions that come in. That means that they, you know, they very well, you can have a very successful person that doesn't have a million dollars, but their retirement cash flow is covered. But Wes is exactly right too. The second thing I wrote was asset allocation is impacted because I, I had a conversation with two retired educators. One was retired as a, as an assistant principal and administrator.

• 41:13Brian Preston?

  And then his, his spouse was a, an educator and they have so much money coming in that they're now thinking legacy. Because they, they don't even spend what the pensions come in. So now their asset allocation is going to go beyond their life. So they can think about grandkids, educations and other things like that. So that's what Devo, when I'm looking at this, you have to ask yourself, what, what, what camp do you fall into? Does this impact your savings rate? Because maybe you, you, you have your employer putting in 12% a year for you. So you don't have to, to put as much into it. Or is this impacting your retirement and how you'll shape those, that asset allocation?

• 41:51Speaker 04

  And then I would just note that not all pensions are created the same. One thing I'd want to know is okay, based on this pension, if I am going to let it change my allocation or change my savings rate, how confident am I that that pension is going to be there? And be fully funded by the organization or entity that's funding it, that I have an extreme level of confidence there? Cause what you don't want to do is say, okay, I'm going to count on this retirement income to be there for the rest of my life. And then something happens and it goes defunct and all you have is some fraction of that. And if you are a person that has a pensionable benefit that's coming to you, it's going to affect the planning you do in other areas. If you have pension income coming in, you may very well decide to delay your social security as long as you can to get out to age 70,

• 42:32Speaker 04

  because you've at least got your living expenses met. It may affect how you think about Roth conversions, how you think about the other planning that you're doing in retirement. So I definitely think, again, this is another area, personal finances, personal. It's certainly going to have an effect, but it's going to affect a number of different pieces, not only your investment allocation, but also your cash flow, your tax allocation, how you're navigating your legacy planning. Uh, it's certainly a consideration to take in.

• 42:58Speaker 05

  Thank you to Devo6912 for that question. And if Devo, if you don't have a Tumblr yet, email [email protected] to cash in on that. And Wes, where should they go if they want to read more about the data that you shared? I just wanted to make sure we told them where to go, they can get your book.

• 43:15Speaker 03

  Thank you for that. Yeah. The, the, in the book, so retire sooner method.com. That's the easy place.

• 43:22Speaker 05

  That's the place. Amazing.

• 43:23Speaker 03

  That's a place to get the, and we're still pre-sale, a couple of weeks until the book is live, live, September 1. But in the next couple of weeks before that.

• 43:31Brian Preston?

  Oh, this is game time then.

• 43:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:33Brian Preston?

  You guys remember this?

• 43:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:34Brian Preston?

  Oh, yeah. But, but. You're eating and sleeping promotion right now.

• 43:39Speaker 03

  Right. By the way, thank you guys for having me.

• 43:41Speaker 04

  No, I'll be.

• 43:42Speaker 05

  Well, we had a couple of retirement questions, so I just wanted to make sure. They wanted to do some extra reading. They knew where to go.

• 43:47Brian Preston?

  So, but it's also in all the, the book, like if you went on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, it's, it's available on all those things for pre-sale right now.

• 43:55Speaker 03

  It is. And the, and you just take your, your order code and you go to retire sooner method. And that's where you get the four bonuses prior.

• 44:05Brian Preston?

  Oh, bonuses.

• 44:06Speaker 05

  Well, about some bonuses.

• 44:07Speaker 04

  Love that.

• 44:08Speaker 05

  We love it.

• 44:09Speaker 04

  Love that.

• 44:09Speaker 03

  Four things you can get if you do it pre-sale.

• 44:11Brian Preston?

  Okay.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  One's a retire sooner workbook. The other thing that is cool that I did in this book, and I've never done before, is that there's a secret QR code in here and it goes to this, it's a black and white. I, I wanted, I was thinking about doing a color book, but it, it ended up looking like a coffee table book, which the, the pages have to be thick.

• 44:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:32Speaker 03

  You can't really do a color book. So I did all the, so they're all black and white, obviously, but there's a QR code in the book that goes to a webpage that unlocks all these charts in color.

• 44:43Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 44:44Speaker 03

  And there are, there's 30 charts in the book, and then there's another 18 in addition to that, that didn't even make the book. So there's a, there's a, like a secret goldmine of content.

• 44:54Speaker 04

  I love that.

• 44:55Brian Preston?

  So you heard us talking about in the bottom of, back of our building. I don't think I'm breaking any confidence. We have a speakeasy in our building. So you've essentially created a speakeasy.

• 45:04Speaker 03

  Speakeasy inside the book. In vivid, in, in vivid color, speakeasy.

• 45:08Brian Preston?

  I like that.

• 45:09Speaker 05

  I love that. All right. Let's hit another question from Matthew. It says, what is a reasonable amount of time to rebuild an emergency fund? Should it be right, a rice and beans approach, like get it done as fast as possible? Or is there more flexibility in being able to spend on the quote unquote, nice to haves? Give them some guidance here, because step four is emergency reserves. It's very important.

• 45:32Speaker 04

  My, my opinion is it depends on how depleted your emergency fund is. If you're someone who's supposed to have a six month fully funded emergency fund, and you have this thing that happens and it drains you down to four and a half months. I don't necessarily, necessarily think you need to go to rice and beans to get that built up as fast as you can. Although not a bad strategy, because the emergency fund is there to protect you from emergencies. But if you're someone who you just went through a thing, you had a thing happen and you have depleted your emergency fund and you are literally now paycheck to paycheck. And if that next check doesn't hit your account, you're going to have some problems. I do think that's where you have to go scorched earth. You have to get that emergency fund built up. It's why, Brian, you hold the thing up for me. It's why we put it so early on in the financial order.

• 46:15Brian Preston?

  Two steps.

• 46:15Speaker 04

  But financial mutants, they always, they always struggle with this. Like, oh, I don't want to pause my Roth. I don't want to pause my 401k. I don't want to.

• 46:21Brian Preston?

  Oh, let's just go. Financial mutants hate cash reserves.

• 46:24Speaker 04

  I know.

• 46:24Brian Preston?

  They think cash is trash.

• 46:25Speaker 04

  I know that you don't want to do that. And that should be motivation to do it, build it up quickly, cut everything, cut all the nice to haves, all the not have to haves, get it built up and then get back to saving money. That's what I would tell Matthew.

• 46:38Brian Preston?

  Wes, what do you think?

• 46:39Speaker 03

  Economic shutdown. That's what I call it. My term for rice and beans is economic shutdown, which is as soon as you go beyond or below that level, that makes you feel comfortable. Because a huge problem in personal finance is fear. And when we, when we were, and that's why, again, you guys having the FFO is that it's an early thing to make sure you have. If you don't have it, you have this cloud of fear and it makes you make bad decisions.

• 47:07Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 47:08Speaker 03

  My term for my family is economic shutdown. That's what I was building up back in the days of getting my reserves. And I call it economic shutdown, which means spend nothing on anything until we have the base.

• 47:21Speaker 04

  I love it.

• 47:22Brian Preston?

  I always, the one of the things I always tell people is that you, if you, how close to the edge are you? You really need to be, because it's, it's back to the fear method. If you really are, if you're naked out there on the, the risk and making desperate decisions, as Wes was laying out, you probably need to go full stop on everything. But if you're nibbling around the edges that yes, you had an emergency, um, but you're not, you're not so desperate. You don't have to freak out, but you just need to be honest with yourself. This is a three month, six months. I wouldn't let it be more than really a six to nine month correction period. Because, and that's why it's, it's back to, and I know there's a theme with all this, you have to do a personal triage on your financial life and be honest.

• 48:04Brian Preston?

  I think sometimes us, especially if we're good with money and we, and we think that cash is trash. We do everything in our, in our mind to justify why we don't need a cash reserves. But you probably need to be honest to avoid the desperate decisions on how close are you really to losing your job? Or having the car blow up or having the water system go out. These are the type of things that, and be honest and then act accordingly.

• 48:29Speaker 04

  Love that.

• 48:30Speaker 05

  Yeah. Great thoughts. Matthew W, if you would like a money guy Tumblr, just email [email protected]. We would love to send you one. Next up is Kelly S. It says, at 58, when should I shift from aggressive to more conservative investments? Since I'm still building my savings, what investment mix would you recommend to balance growth and protect what I have saved?

• 48:56Brian Preston?

  Yeah. This is one where you, you, it's back to the, you have to triage. I don't know if you're behind the curve, ahead of the curve, or right where you're supposed to be. Because look, if you read our comments, everybody's just going to say vu for life. And then, you know, you slam, you, you cross over the retirement threshold. And then I guess you just hope that the S and P 500 just keeps rocking and rolling forever. I always give it the analogy of that, that feels like a flight plan to where all of a sudden you're flying smoothly. And then you decide you go retire and you just slam the plane down to the runway. And yeah, you might survive it, but emotionally you're going to be devastated and probably never get on an airplane again. What's much more appropriate is to, while you're in cruising speed, think about how you're going to run, you know,

• 49:41Brian Preston?

  land the airplane and hit it as smoothly as possible. If you've, know any commercial pilots, they'll tell you they're constantly trying to think about, how do I land this plane so that it doesn't impact people? And that's why I want you to think about your retirement so that you can adjust that glide path or landing path for your retirement. So it doesn't stress you out. But it also is going to be contingent upon, are you ahead of the curve, behind the curve? Because sometimes you have to make really hard decisions if you're way behind things.

• 50:09Speaker 03

  Do you guys remember the movie, I think it was Batman, Dark Knight Rises? And Batman fought Bane down that cane.

• 50:17Brian Preston?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was, he's like, oh, yeah, I can't remember.

• 50:20Speaker 03

  Do it again. No, no, it's, give me, give me one of the lines.

• 50:24Brian Preston?

  And the actor in that, who's the actor in that?

• 50:26Speaker 04

  Uh, Tom Hardy.

• 50:27Brian Preston?

  Tom Harden. Is it Hardy? Hardy?

• 50:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, Tom Hardy.

• 50:29Brian Preston?

  Yeah. You know, that dude does like, he wins like jujitsu competitions.

• 50:33Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:33Brian Preston?

  He's like, he's a bad, bad dude in real life as well. Well, back to your point. Sorry. I just got, I started thinking about this.

• 50:40Speaker 03

  Like you bring up that movie to any, any guy.

• 50:43Brian Preston?

  He's got a really cool voice in that movie.

• 50:46Speaker 03

  Well, Batman turns off the lights and Bane says, oh, you think you have an advantage in the dark? He's like, I was born in darkness. I was born in darkness.

• 50:55Speaker 04

  You really adopted it.

• 50:56Speaker 03

  Exactly. Look at that. You are a nerd, huh?

• 50:59Brian Preston?

  Meaty nerd.

• 51:01Speaker 03

  So my point here is that the, we have been on a run. Every bear market we've had lately, even COVID, is, was a really quick snapback. So the world is, is, has this idea that markets just go up and up and up and up. And when they go down, they come right back. Well, if you were born in darkness and you started in the investment business when we did, and this is, I always wonder when I would start being able to reflect back. When I, my first couple of years, I was like, the old guys in radio, they really can be like, when I remember that. The

• 51:33Brian Preston?

  We're here.

• 51:34Speaker 03

  When the Dow hit 10,000, it was the late 90s and people were wearing hats. Then it, then we had a couple of really bad years. We had the, we had the 2001, we had September 11th and the, the dot com crash. It took 11 years. Essentially, my first 11 years in the investment business to get back to 10. Went to 10 and then squander and squalor. And then 11 years later, we got back to 10. The people that retired in 99, 2000, 2001, that didn't have some risk tolerant management, which is exactly Kelly's question, are the people that had to, they answered yes to the question,

• 52:18Speaker 03

  I'm retiring. Then they had to recoil and say no and go back to work. And that was a brutal life experience. I was a super young advisor and I remember people that were really out on the ledge, leveraged, that said that this can never go down. They're the ones that had the most turmoil because they had to, they blew up their plan. That was also back in the day when financial plans were being run at eight, nine, 10% a year. That was also a giant mistake.

• 52:44Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  So as long as Kelly, at this age, you're getting to the point where you're going to need some safety, in my opinion, you said it's not, you know, index 100% equities forever. And having three years of safety assets, spending wise, what you're going to need to pull out when it gets to retirement, to me, that's a starting point for the safety spot in the asset allocation. That's just, in my opinion.

• 53:11Speaker 04

  I was going to say, people think it's just a gravitas change. I've, I've got this allocation and then I retire and immediately it's this like different allocation. And I think they're amazed to see, it's way more gradual than that. It's way more of an adjustment. The thing that changes the most in the first year leading up to retirement, to the first year after retirement, is your cash allocation, right? You go from that three to six month emergency fund to 12, 18, 24, whatever makes sense in your situation, that naturally pulls down your aggressiveness without you having to go from 70% equities to 30% equities. If you're thinking through that well, it shouldn't feel like something like, oh, okay, what day do I pull the trigger? What day do I pull the trigger? What day do I pull the trigger? You get to do it gradually and systematically over time so that you almost don't notice that it's happening,

• 53:56Speaker 04

  but you have to pay attention to it.

• 53:58Brian Preston?

  Wes brought up a great point that kind of took me back in time a little bit because I can remember that lost decade, that's the decade you're talking about, the, the 2000s. I can remember in 2001, the quarterly reports where even though the stock, the S and P had gotten crushed because of small cap, because of real estate and because of bonds, we had clients that still were making money. And that was one of those years I was like, wow, asset allocation crushed what happened with the S and P 500. Fast forward to the, you think about the 2008 where the market was down over 50%. I can remember that clients who were diversified, they had half of the vol, they still lost money.

• 54:38Speaker 03

  Still painful.

• 54:38Brian Preston?

  They still, they still lost half, but it was half if you were just voo for life. And look, I love the S and P. If anybody knows, watches our content, you know, we love index investing, but I have experienced it in my career where you were very thankful if you had asset allocation, especially when you, it wasn't risk tolerance, it was what we call risk capacity, meaning that you're actually living off these assets and you just don't have the time to wait 11 years for the money to come back to good before you need to go pull money out of it. And that's the thing I always remind people, because we are, asset allocation has been a sucker's bet for really, I mean, we're going on close to 15 years.

• 55:18Speaker 04

  S and P has been the top performing asset.

• 55:19Brian Preston?

  I mean, now look, we had 2022 where it got its teeth kicked in a little bit and 2020 to a degree for a moment in time, but I don't think people, I think that we're living in times now where people have forgotten that the volatility can bite.

• 55:34Speaker 03

  That's true. And, and it will bite again. It will bite again. There's no question about it.

• 55:39Brian Preston?

  And by the way, we're talking about the 90s and 2000s. Go talk to people from the 70s. I mean, because that was, you know, the 70s was a decade that people were like, every assumption they thought about investing kind of blew up in their face. And it took a while for, then we got into the 80s where it was good time, rock and roll again. But, but there, there are periods where people, what you, once you think you've got it figured out is probably when you're going to get kicked in the face.

• 56:02Speaker 03

  It's kind of that choppy water analogy too, that are, that a boat can be in the middle of a storm and it's choppy water and it can still survive fine. But if the boat is in the harbor and it's in a, it's close to a dock, that, that, that something bad happens.

• 56:18Speaker 04

  It's got bad, it's a bad outcome.

• 56:19Speaker 03

  So it depends, meaning that it depends on when you need the money, depending on your, the location, your environment, your time. And if you need to start pulling money and markets are down 20, 30, 50%, which can happen.

• 56:32Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 56:33Speaker 03

  And if you don't have an asset allocation that has some non-correlation to help smooth that out, if you don't have some dry powder assets, some safety, then if you're too close to the edge in rocky water, that's when things can go wrong.

• 56:48Brian Preston?

  That's right.

• 56:49Speaker 05

  Well, Kelly, you got some great thoughts for your question, a Batman analogy and a Money Guy Tumblr. So thank you for asking your question. Just email [email protected] to cash in on that Tumblr.

• 57:00Brian Preston?

  You know, Bo did so well. It's because he's a big, big fan of Robin.

• 57:05Speaker 03

  I knew you were going to get him today. I knew you were going to get him today.

• 57:11Speaker 04

  That's awesome.

• 57:11Brian Preston?

  Big fan of Robin.

• 57:12Speaker 04

  That's awesome.

• 57:13Brian Preston?

  We probably have a picture somewhere that we could pull up at some point.

• 57:15Speaker 03

  Here we go.

• 57:19Speaker 04

  That's genius.

• 57:20Speaker 05

  Okay. All right. Let's, let's fit one more question in. See if you guys can name your, each of your three things.

• 57:29Brian Preston?

  Let's face it, you would fit in the Batman costume much better than me, but it sure is fun. I'd look more like George Clooney in it.

• 57:36Speaker 03

  There we go.

• 57:37Brian Preston?

  Because I think he's the least favorite.

• 57:38Speaker 05

  Different versions of Batman. Well, we have a question from our friend Mel. Mel, you have a Tumblr. I'm pretty sure. If not.

• 57:44Brian Preston?

  Mel definitely has one. Mel probably has one that I, I gave to him when he was coming and hanging out.

• 57:49Speaker 04

  Mel has one of every season of Tumblr.

• 57:50Speaker 05

  So just, I would love to hear kind of your top three things from each of you, just kind of quickly. What are the top three things someone should do for an effective transition from working to not? He's talking about the psychological journey in particular, because it is true. It's a big part of what retirement actually is. So I would love to hear each of you run down your top three things.

• 58:14Brian Preston?

  Now, just to give you perspective and also to kind of filibuster, so we have a little more time for you all to write answers.

• 58:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:19Brian Preston?

  Mel is a friend of the show. He's also a fellow author, a CPA. He, he's brilliant. He's, he's super successful in his own right. So I think, and he's also super curious on life. So this is probably a teachable moment, but also he knows, he's, he's swimming in the waters that are very similar to his own.

• 58:39Speaker 04

  All right. I'll go first, only because I wrote mine down already. Three things, three top things to think about with your transition, if you'd like to have a successful transition. Number one, I put what you are retiring to. So often people say, I know what I'm retiring from. I know what I'm running away from. I know what I'm getting out of, without putting enough time into thinking through, well, what is it that I'm retiring to? How am I going to spend my days? What's the, what's the thing that I'm going to actively fill my time with when it's no longer going into my vocation, into my work, into creating wealth? So that's number one, know what you're retiring to. Number two, I do think if you're going to have a successful retirement, you want to have a success, a lot of peace of mind, you have to stress test it. Have you done the stress test?

• 59:21Speaker 04

  Have you run through the Money Carlos simulation? Have you made sure that you've done the hard work of saving what you need to save to be able to account for all the things that you want to do? That's baseline living expenses, that's taxes, that's travel, that's replacing automobiles, that's helping with the kids, that's all the things that you might do in retirement. Have you actually put it down on paper, run it through a stress test and make sure, even if there's a bad outcome, if there's a bad sequence of returns, even if I get unlucky in the year that I retire, is there a high probability of success that I'm going to be okay? And then number three, I think this is something, not just for people that are transitioning into retirement, but for everyone, as soon as you, from 18 all the way till 80, know what your why is. What's the thing that you're?

• 1:00:03Brian Preston?

  I'm going, me and you go fight.

• 1:00:06Speaker 04

  What's the Is he stealing your answers? What's the thing that gets you out of bed? What's your purpose? What's the reason why you were put on this earth? And if you can answer that question and live your life in such a way that aligns with that, I think it's going to allow you to have a successful transition when you go from this thing you've probably spent 30 or 40 years doing to the next 30 or 40 years, it's likely going to look very different from a day to day standpoint. That's what I got.

• 1:00:31Brian Preston?

  I'm gonna let you go next Wes, and then I'll probably cuss you a little bit too, because I bet there's gonna be more overlap here.

• 1:00:36Speaker 03

  Okay, so the, there's this thought that we find, and it was, those are, I agree with Bo. So, all I can do is try to add some more color to that, because you're right. The, one of the, what I've noticed over the last 20 years is that we live in a world that is very much about, we think about finding our purpose. And that's a great thing. Like, it'd be great if we found it. And it, the, but purpose, particularly when your next phase, so we got like our adolescent phase, our working phase, our retirement phase, it doesn't come and knock on the door. And it, and we think that it's going to be found. In the reality, it is created.

• 1:01:22Speaker 03

  It is up to us to create a new purpose. So, one of the reasons behind having five plus core pursuits, which I talk about in the Retire Sooner Method, and the, and the happy group spends more time per week, they spend almost 20 hours versus 13 hours in the unhappy group. So, the, the happy group is creating their purpose through these five, I call them super activities, core pursuits, hobbies on steroids. And that takes some work. It really takes some, some insight and some introspection to figure out, what is my new schedule going to look like? Do I have five, six, seven, eight of these super activities that are helping me create

• 1:02:05Speaker 03

  my daily purpose that rolls up to my yearly? So, I think that to me is such a big piece of the equation on the, on the non-financial side. You mentioned a plan, so the plan is probably number one, because the plan reduces our anxiety and gives us enough, and it gives us the, the mental security that we're in the money green zones and we're fine, and we can afford those core pursuits. And by the way, adventure is, is a, there's a lot of, the core pursuits are almost unlimited, but I've found that more adventure core pursuits, adventure related, again, higher propensity to land in the happy camp.

• 1:02:47Speaker 03

  And then finally, the, when I asked this, I had one open-ended question when I did my research, it was what is the one activity, the one thing that brings you the most joy in retirement? You could only say, it's one sentence. Give me one sentence. And there's a huge variety, as you can maybe imagine. Travel's big, gardening was big, a lot of creative pursuits. I found people were playing music, they're painting, they're pottery, they're doing all sorts of creative things. So, I have this great pie chart around it, but what, if, if you go, I went, I actually, I, this is earlier days of, of AI, and I tried to have AI figure out like what the

• 1:03:31Speaker 03

  top things were, and it got confused, because most of the sentences had two or three things in them. So, I just went through it manually. So, I've got like a thousand lines of sentences of what brings me, one thing I found in the majority of those answers was the word with.

• 1:03:51Speaker 03

  It was doing XYZ with

• 1:03:54Speaker 04

  Someone.

• 1:03:55Speaker 03

  Someone, whether it's friends, family, doing some, doing XYZ with. So, the, the, the community piece, the five, the four plus friends, it's only four, so you don't have to get a five. Five's a lot.

• 1:04:08Speaker 04

  Five's a lot, a lot of people.

• 1:04:09Speaker 03

  It's five plus corporate, four plus close, personal connections. And if you can maintain, create, maintain that community, that would be my third thing as an essential for a happy retirement.

• 1:04:23Brian Preston?

  So, here's mine. I've had the most time, so, now, I didn't write a book on this part of it, but, but it is, I wrote plan, folks, fulfillment, meaning what gets you out of bed.

• 1:04:34Speaker 04

  What was that second word?

• 1:04:36Brian Preston?

  Folk.

• 1:04:37Speaker 04

  Folks, like, like friends.

• 1:04:39Brian Preston?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:39Speaker 04

  Like people.

• 1:04:40Brian Preston?

  Got it.

• 1:04:40Speaker 04

  Just making sure.

• 1:04:41Brian Preston?

  Cause, you know, so, so, so, here's a plan. Where are you going to? Folks is, hey, what are you going to do fun outside of work? Because I think a lot of people, if you don't have somebody to hang out with, I like the with that you said, that was really good. And then, look, this last one, fulfillment, what gets you out of bed in the morning? This is gonna be bigger than you. If you look at all the research on happiness, it is the people you hang out with, and then also it gets into spiritual or things bigger than you, that you actually feel like when you wake up in the morning, you're making the world a little bit better and you have purpose. We've, I've heard that from both why, purpose. So, I think that you've got to lean into, what are the things that actually is going

• 1:05:23Brian Preston?

  to make you wake up and feel like you actually have something to do on this planet? Because I think that's the thing that scares, and I've dealt with clients, they retire, and it's just not what they thought it was gonna be. And then they usually go right back to work, because they're like, man, this thing was not what I thought it was gonna be. So, you better go ahead and spend some time on that. And then I'll put the book in, because this goes back to the original plan, what are you going to do? Is just do the math. You've got a stress test, and that's what, that's where we, and I'll kind of put the, the, the bow on this, because we just did a show on, when is a financial advisor worth it? And are they worth it? And I gotta tell you, you're gonna want, when you cross that, that threshold that you've never been, you don't know what your blind spots are, you don't know where you're going

• 1:06:06Brian Preston?

  with it, and a lot of you sitting out there, you're smart, you're brilliant, you're good with math, you're good with numbers, and it's, you're gonna find out, and that's why I love that Mel asked this question from a psychological standpoint, is because just because you have all the skill set in the world, doesn't mean that you know everything. And you're also gonna want, yeah, you could get a single plan, but you know what's really great is when you call your advisor and they actually know who the heck you are, they don't have to go look at their notes, they know your wife's name, they know your, your children's name, they might know your dog's name. And, you know, because you're dealing with the same people over and over, you actually have a relationship. And that's why I love taking the relationship to the next level, is because you actually build something that's pretty meaningful, and you help people live their best life.

• 1:06:51Brian Preston?

  You might even call it their great, big, beautiful tomorrow.

• 1:06:55Speaker 05

  On that note, two important things. Go to retiresoonermethod.com if you want to keep deep diving on retirement and take part in Wes's cool preorder bonuses and buy his book, check that out. And then for the Money Guy family, go to moneyguy.com/earlyaccess to get on the secret list, get our final hint for what's coming.

• 1:07:15Brian Preston?

  Not AI.

• 1:07:17Speaker 05

  Get our final hint for what's coming, and get early access to the thing. This has been really fun. We'll be back here every Tuesday at 10 a.m. Central. Make sure you check out those two links. In the meantime, lots more to dive into there.

• 1:07:31Brian Preston?

  Wes, this was a blast. This is like, you're like, we're like best conference friends, so it was great having you in the office to kind of do the conference experience.

• 1:07:39Speaker 03

  No wonder you guys have so many followers. This is, this is just a really good show. I appreciate it.

• 1:07:43Brian Preston?

  We had a blast. Guys, thanks so much for tuning in. We love, please take advantage of all the free resources. It's moneyguy.com/resources. We literally load you up. That is the abundance cycle. I want you to learn, apply, grow, become the best version of yourself. I'm your host, Brian, joined by Mr. Bo and Mr. Wes Moss. Money Guy team, out.

• 1:08:02Speaker 05

  The Money Guy Show is hosted by Brian Preston and Bo Hanson. Brian and Bo are partners with Abound Wealth Management. Abound Wealth Management is a registered investment advisory firm regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission in accordance and compliance with the securities, laws, and regulations. Abound Wealth Management does not render or offer to render personalized investment or tax advice through the Money Guy Show. The information provided is for informational purposes only, may not be suitable for all investors, and does not constitute financial, tax, investment, or legal advice. All investments involve a degree of risk, including the risk of loss.

• 1:08:42Speaker 06

  Hey, Bo's here. When your next track starts, listen for the decisions that the artist makes. The vocal pushed right up front, the bass that waits half a beat, that sample from a 70's underground gem, every choice deliberate. With Bo's, you'll hear it all. Your music deserves Bo's.

• 1:09:10Speaker 00

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