Pod Insights The Clark Howard Podcast 07.28.26 Ask An Advisor With Wes Moss About this episode What Are The Money Green Zones? & The Happy Retiree Super Power
Are you flying blind when it comes to your retirement savings? Forget the terrifying headlines telling you that you need tens of millions of dollars to retire—that kind of advice often does more damage than good by making your goals feel completely out of reach. In this episode, Wes Moss breaks down brand-new research on what everyday Americans actually have saved and introduces three attainable, concrete "Money Green Zones" where happiness levels and financial autonomy jump dramatically. Plus, Wes reveals the ultimate superpower of happy retirees that has nothing to do with your bank account, and everything to do with your well-being.
Mentioned on the show:
Betterment Review: How It Works, Pros & Cons - Clark Howard
Best Investment Companies for Investors in 2026
A Key Investing Lesson to Remember Right Now
Plus, Christa shares your #AskWes questions and Wes gives his take. All this and more on the July 28, 2026, Ask an Advisor episode of the Clark Howard podcast. Submit your questions: WesMoss.com/ask
We hope you enjoy our weekly Ask An Advisor episodes. Let us know what you think in the comments!
Learn more about Wes:
BOOKS BY WES MOSS
Wes Moss, CFP®
Wes Moss - Clark.com
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.
0:34 Speaker 01 Welcome to this week's edition of Ask an Advisor here on the Clark Howard Show. I'm here with Wes Moss and my name is Krista Devias.
0:42 Speaker 02 And I'm here with Krista Devias.
0:45 Speaker 01 And we're here to go deeper on all things investing, helping you with your money, answering your questions that you submit at wesmoss.com/ask. And last week, you mentioned the two topics you're going to be talking about today, but you weren't able to go in depth on them.
1:02 Speaker 02 Two of the steps of the retire sooner method.
1:04 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:04 Speaker 02 One is about the financial green zone, so we'll cover that today. And the other is the superpower.
1:11 Speaker 01 Sleep, which I'm obsessed with sleep and trying to improve my sleep. Clark is too. He got me into the Oura ring and now I'm not wearing it today because mine's on the fritz, but I'm gonna, it should be okay by tonight when I sleep, but it is important for so many things. And so, sleeping well, you know, physically, but also mentally, right? It's so important.
1:34 Speaker 02 I just think of you tinkering. It's like you can't open up the hood on the Oura ring, like in a car, there's like something you can work on. The Oura ring is just a ring.
1:43 Speaker 01 I have a really old one.
1:44 Speaker 02 I don't see how those things get fixed.
1:45 Speaker 01 I have a really old one and so sometimes I have to charge it for a couple of days for it to come back to life. It's really weird.
1:51 Speaker 02 All right, so let's meet the money green zones. There's a number that nobody agrees on and depending on who says how much we need for retirement, it could be a 500K, it could be a million, it could be 2 million. There are plenty of folks that say it needs to be so much more than that. 2 million, 5 million, 10 million. It's just not an agreed upon number. It's not agreed upon because it is different for everyone. But it also is flying a little bit blind. And it also, when you hear and read that it needs to be millions and millions of dollars to have financial freedom, I think it can do some real damage because it makes it seem so far away. It's like the hike you're just not going to take. Like you, I can take a five mile hike, but if somebody says it's a 50 mile hike, I might not go on the hike.
2:36 Speaker 02 And I think it's the same way when it comes to financial planning and wealth accumulation. It's got to feel as though it's at least within reach. And my financial green zones that I'll talk about today, I think they are within reach for most Americans. It's not easy, but it is within reach. That's the problem. It's the, how much I do I need is all over the map. I want to, I like having these concrete checkpoints I know will work really, really well for a lot of people.
3:02 Speaker 01 Years ago, when you were first starting your podcast, I remember you talking about at that time, a financial advisor who's well known said you need $10 million to retire. And you poked a lot of holes in that theory.
3:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. And that number's going up even higher for that particular potential financial advisor. And I think there's just some shock value in that.
3:24 Speaker 01 Yes.
3:24 Speaker 02 And it's, it's a wackadoodle number. But can we retire with less than that? Absolutely. I've seen so many people do it. And this is new research. So, so let me get to the numbers in America though. Empower, through their personal dashboard data, gives us the most recent average net worth in America and the median. The average, I don't think really is worth contemplating because it's so skewed Krista, by the really, really high end. You know, we've got some trillionaires now in America.
3:55 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
3:56 Speaker 02 Right? So we've got billionaires and trillionaires that skew those averages. So we really want to look at the median, so the middle point where most people are in the United States. So here are some of those numbers. In our 50s, the mean or the average net worth is $1.3 million. The median is 190, right?
4:16 Speaker 02 That's a more realistic number. And by the way, that's net worth. That's not liquid. That's total. And a huge percentage of our net worth in America for most people is the equity in our home. In our 60s, the mean averages 1.5 million. That's again, total net worth. That's not necessarily in an account. That's just total net worth. The median, which again, more representative, and by the way, this is the highest category from 20s all the way to 90s, is 290,000. So those are the numbers in the United States of America. That's the middle point. So what are these money green zones? Again, I've done research over the years. In the latest project I've worked on, which is the book, The Retire Sooner Method,
5:01 Speaker 02 I wanted financial data in relation to how people are categorized on a happiness scale. And what I found on what I think are the three critical checkpoints that are, again, I think attainable, not easy, but attainable, are these three money green zones. Where I see happiness levels jump dramatically relative to the average in America. The money green zone for liquid investment assets, there's three categories, kind of like a stoplight. The red category that we don't want to be on is essentially $100,000 or less. It's really 999 and less. The yellow zone, where I see happiness levels that are pretty neutral around the average, which is fine,
5:42 Speaker 02 are from 999, let's call it 100,000 to 999,000. So just below a million. But when we get to that $1 million plus level, and then the next category is the $3 million plus level, happiness levels are dramatically higher relative to the average in America. Doesn't mean that money buys happiness, Krista. Right. It does mean that through our research and statistically, it has a real impact. And that may be well-being. But I correlate that back to a sense of happiness and freedom. And I think that is, that is what we're trying to do when it comes to retirement planning.
6:22 Speaker 01 Less stress, I'm sure. I like that stress of wondering if you're going to have enough.
6:27 Speaker 02 It's not no stress, but it's less stress. So that's the liquid investable asset piece. Again, not counting home equity here. This is liquid money we can get to. Number two is, is household income. So again, many of the statistics we see financially are are per the household in America. So it's, it makes it harder if you're single. It makes it harder to hit these green zones if it's just you in retirement. But for the household, once we crest that $100,000 level in household income, happiness levels again, rise dramatically above the baseline. We looked at the same thing for years to pay off mortgage. This is a financial and time question.
7:11 Speaker 02 When do happiness levels really rise in relation to years to pay off mortgage? If you're 20 to 30 plus years on, on having mortgage debt, lower. That's the red zone. Your happiness levels are lower than the US baseline. From 20 or let's call it 19 years to 10 years, you're in the neutral zone. It's the yellow zone. And once we get to nine years or less or paid off, again, we're in the money green zones because now we see happiness levels well above the US happiness baseline. And if you think about it, all of those pieces in, once we hit that green zone, they're all levels of autonomy and freedom.
7:52 Speaker 02 And every single one of them individually gets us one new pillar or layer of financial autonomy, financial freedom. And you put all three of those together, you're going to be in a good financial position or a great financial position. Not easy to do, Krista. I remember getting pushback when. This is 15 years ago. My first book came out and my, the happiness level I found it was 500K. And people are yelling at me, they're saying, that's too much money. Must be nice. And the reality here is that's just what the research says. So it's not my opinion on it. That is what our research over this past two years has borne out.
8:33 Speaker 02 And I believe very strongly that if we can get to those, and we know those targets, there's power in just knowing a goal. If we can get to those targets, it's a powerful piece of the equation. Not only to, to end up having our retirement GPS get us there a little sooner, but also gives us a higher probability of happiness in retirement. And that's all of course in the retire sooner method. I almost said my old book, the retire sooner method.
8:58 Speaker 01 All right. Well, these questions came in for you, Wes. Kristin in Alaska is the first woman I read. She said, my father will need to go into memory care soon. I'm trying to figure out where to take the money from to pay for it. I've been making sure they stay under IRMA. And when I move investments inside my parents' brokerage account, I took over the investing when his brain started failing. They have about $500,000 in a brokerage and 900K in a Roth. It would be better for my mom to inherit Roth money, but I'm worried that if I pay for the memory care out of the brokerage, they will go over IRMA between social security and pensions. I think they're around 160K. Memory care is $9,000 to $10,000 per month.
9:41 Speaker 01 I've read that the long-term care costs might be tax deductible. So maybe if I did take it from the brokerage, they wouldn't go over IRMA. It's unclear in my research. And I just want to say to Kristin, my heart goes out to you as someone who's also helping her parents. And I have one parent with Alzheimer's. It is a really tough situation.
10:00 Speaker 02 Really hard, Kristin. And it is complicated. So you really do need a CPA. You need to sit down with a CPA on this, but my sense is, remember healthcare is deductible above a certain level, a certain percentage, 7.5% of your, of your overall income. It seems to me from the income picture you're talking about, if your dad's in memory care, it's going to be like 10,000 a month or more. So it's going to be. Hundred and 20 to $160,000 per year.
10:33 Speaker 01 No, she said nine to 10K a month.
10:35 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. So it is my understanding that after that 7.5% of AGI kicks in, then it should or could very well be deductible, which would then make it so that your overall taxes are much lower and it doesn't kick you into a higher Irma issue. So just sit down with a CPA locally where I know you're in Alaska. There's great CPAs in Alaska, but I would have a consultation and get your tax projection done, but I think the deductibility, because it's going to be so high, will make it so that it is a less burdensome tax situation.
11:16 Speaker 02 The other thing to remember, if you're using brokerage money, your taxes shouldn't be that big anyway, because it's after tax money. And the most it really should be would be long-term capital gains if you're having to sell, which should probably be in the 0 to 15% range as well.
11:34 Speaker 01 Okay.
11:34 Speaker 02 So keep that in mind, Kristin.
11:35 Speaker 01 Best of luck with that. And this one came in from Moki in Texas. How would you hold about $350,000 in a short-term account? Savings, credit union, online bank, or CDs? We already have investments and are retired, but we want this to still grow, but stay available. Is this too much to hold as a short-term amount? Thank you for your guidance.
11:57 Speaker 02 Moki, well, it depends. If that's your dry powder, maybe it's not too much to hold. If that's truly your cash account, that's almost like an operating account, then that does sound really high to me. Where would you put this? It's enough that I would say you wanted this to be in a brokerage firm, not necessarily an online bank. And I would be looking at a US short-term treasury type of money market fund. I think that's about as high level of safety as we can get. And rates are still pretty strong with the federal funds rate where it is today. But note that your intuition is that might just be way too much in ultra short-term savings.
12:42 Speaker 02 So I'm a believer in at least three years of dry powder. I know people that like having 10 to 15 years of dry powder. So if that's, if your overall risk profile says that you have 10 years of dry powder and that's a big part of it, that may be totally fine, but it is a lot to have in essentially a cash-like vehicle.
13:05 Speaker 01 Okay. This is from Kevin in Texas. What would you recommend as a good step-by-step guide for setting up and managing the bucket strategy for retirement? What would be a good all-in-one platform for monitoring multiple retirement accounts from different brokerage firms?
13:21 Speaker 02 That's the second question in reference, Texas. Hey, Kevin in Texas. First of all, it's an important thing to do. I'm a big believer that you really need to know your allocation, AKA your buckets. And I guess I should probably develop a website that puts everything into buckets, Krista, because that'd be cool, but I haven't done that yet. You do want an aggregator, though. If you've got Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard, and Power in multiple different brokerage accounts, it's impossible for you to tell with any one of those brokerage firms what your true bucket allocation is. There are plenty of different aggregators where you don't have to necessarily have an account, that you can still link your accounts, and they will give you an allocation
14:06 Speaker 02 and keep it live and tracked to some extent. Now, you may have to go in and mess with the categories and make sure you're identifying a fund that may be a balanced fund or international, it doesn't pick it up perfectly. But I think a company like Betterment can do that, where you aggregate and you can see the big picture if you're not using one particular brokerage. But smart, Kevin, to do. I think you gotta do that.
14:31 Speaker 01 Coming up straight ahead, we're going to talk about something that actually does not put me to sleep because I find it so interesting, and that is the power of sleep. And yes, it has a lot to do with happiness in retirement.
14:43 Speaker 00 This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.
15:13 Speaker 02 Welcome back to Ask an Advisor. I'm Wes Moss along with Krista DeBias here on the Clark Howard Show. We're going to talk sleep. You actually have kind of a funny story about this. I love that you love sleep. And if you have an Oura ring, you know, somebody is prioritizing sleep.
15:29 Speaker 01 It's important. I mean, Clark's passed on his obsession to a lot of listeners too and viewers. But yeah, recently I had an incident where I was like, I got up, I worked out and I came in and I was working with Clark and he had to pre-record some episodes because he was going out of town. And then I was recording with you. So it was a busy day.
15:48 Speaker 02 Long day.
15:49 Speaker 01 Lot going on and I just kept getting more and more tired throughout the day. And I was like, what is wrong with me? Cause usually I have a lot of energy.
15:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
15:56 Speaker 01 And I just couldn't figure it out. And then.
15:58 Speaker 02 You were getting sick? Like you were.
15:59 Speaker 01 I did.
16:00 Speaker 02 Like you're feeling like you're sore. You're like thinking, maybe I have the flu.
16:04 Speaker 01 I was like, I just don't know what's wrong. Something's really wrong with me. And then I realized I had accidentally taken my night supplements, including melatonin, stuff to help me sleep in the morning. And I took a nap on the desk in here because I was so tired.
16:22 Speaker 02 In your defense, I remember when you woke up, you were totally kind of, whatever it was, you were like back to normal.
16:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, almost. I mean, I tried to be, but you guys have relentlessly made fun of me since and I totally deserve it. So.
16:34 Speaker 02 Well, so Nurse Lynn, my wife, has two roles at our house. And this, by the way, we're talking about the happy retiree superpower, which is sleep. One is hydration and one is sleep. And it's a constant argument. I have four boys. So in the house, like bedtime, for literally a decade, it's always like a little, it's always this battle a little bit. But she is always so adamant about sleep. Hydration may even be more. I mean, the first call I usually get, I'll land at one of these, you know, sporting events in another city. And before we even get to the field or the hotel, she'll, her first call say, have you, have you stopped at CVS? Have you, have you gotten a case of water? Did you get some liquid IV? And then she'll ask about bedtime.
17:18 Speaker 02 The boys are playing at eight, they need to be there at seven. That means they need to be in bed at nine. It's a constant thing and our kids always roll our eyes, but mom is right about it. And the amount of sleep we get is enormously important as we're growing, of course. And then as we get into retirement, it's enormously important for our own, just our psychological well being. And one thing that really surprised me in the health section of this research that I did recently, that ultimately helped become the retire sooner method, had to do with sleep. And it was a really simple question. Do you get enough sleep? Not, not do you get the most sleep? Or not that, are you able to get by on little sleep? It was, do you get enough sleep?
18:01 Speaker 02 And almost 70% of retirees who ended up, or who are also in the happy camp said yes to that. 70%, almost 70% compared to only 38% of you, Rob's unhappy retirees on the block. So it's two to one. The happy retiree group in two to one says they get enough sleep. We live in, it's almost a little laughable, this culture of, we get celebrated like, oh, I don't need a lot of sleep. Like the great billionaire entrepreneurs, they only need two, three, four hours of sleep. That's not me. And it's not those who are wearing the Oura ring usually, but it is a little bit of the culture. And it's hard to turn it off when we get into retirement because we've been working and working.
18:45 Speaker 02 And there's a little guilt associated with sleep, but there is no shortage of evidence that if we're depriving ourselves of at least seven hours of sleep, even in retirement, then we have health issues because of that. So Harvard says that they followed nurses over decades, chronic short sleep, less than six hours, associated with higher rates of heart disease and stroke. National Institute of Health followed people who consistently slept poorly, more significant to develop dementia. I mean, these are real consequences. So in a hustle culture. Where it's every year or so, I'll see a new article. My favorite from last year was
19:28 Speaker 02 Wall Street Journal. It was no sleep, no booze, no fun. That was the title. Entrepreneur touts winning formula. No booze, no sleep, no fun. No kidding. Of course. And the story was about how this guy, he wanted to get to 10 billion before he slowed down. 10 billion before he started to slow down. 90 hour work weeks, zero vacation in like a decade. And I think that's great.
19:55 Speaker 02 Yeah. If you're so driven and you're singularly focused on making money, which some people are. And there's zero worry about a kind of a well-rounded quality of life, then that's kind of the only way to do it. But for 99% of Americans who do want to enjoy our time on this planet before we go, then sleep is part of the equation. So as we, and it stays part of the equation all the way through retirement. It's not just being a teenager and you need your sleep. The other big piece of it, I think, is, this is an elixir to help with that, is reducing financial anxiety. It's such a big part of why we don't sleep well at night. We're worried about our finances. We're worried about our plan. We're worried about being off track.
20:39 Speaker 02 We go back to that great insidious worry, which is running out of money, that people even with $10 million worry about. The elixir to that, of course, is having some sort of structured plan that you get to revisit on a fairly regular basis. You don't need to look at it every week or even every month. But if you're doing, if you're revisiting your cash flow model with conservative assumptions once or twice a year, it's the melatonin of personal finance. And it helps you not have that constant mosquito buzzing. Ooh, is, am I doing something wrong? Is my, did I plan to count for that? And it's power, it's a powerful sleep well at night elixir.
21:22 Speaker 02 And it just so happens to be one of the core tenants of being a happy retiree and the retire student method. So I think it's an important thing not to give short shrift.
21:33 Speaker 01 Okay, we're going to go to questions. Patrick in Massachusetts sent this one and he says, hi Wes, I'd like to retire at 60, but how do I pay for a constantly rising healthcare costs before becoming eligible for Medicare?
21:47 Speaker 02 Patrick, if you don't have Cobra, which it sounds like you're, you said you're retired. So you likely do not.
21:53 Speaker 01 We said he'd like to retire.
21:54 Speaker 02 He'd like to retire. Okay. So this is where healthcare.gov comes in. And I remember much earlier in my career, there, there really wasn't a solution to this issue. When you retired before 65, you would have to go out and get a private plan that was really expensive. And if you had any sort of anything wrong with you, you couldn't get coverage, period. So you're just, you're totally uninsured. Healthcare.gov is the exchange that we all know of that now we can go and find coverage in our state and through a reputable healthcare provider, healthcare insurance provider.
22:35 Speaker 02 And it might be 1,200 bucks a month. It might be $1,400 a month. So it's not cheap, but it's doable. Now, if you can manage your income, Patrick, and this is the cool thing about it. And yes, some of these, the subsidies have gone away. But if you go to kff.org, which is the Kaiser Foundation, Family Foundation, there's a calculator there for you to be able to plug in your zip code and your income, which you may be able to manage as low as possible in retirement. And maybe you don't end up having to pay full freight for the plan that you would like when it comes to coverage.
23:12 Speaker 01 Joe in North Carolina says, "I'm a recent retiree and my wife retires next year. We're both 63. We have approximately $1.5 million spread across various investments. Our advisor has recommended that we put about $300,000 into a fixed annuity of 10 years in order to mitigate risk in our portfolio. He was open and said that he would collect a commission of 0.75% on the annuity, but we would not have to pay a management fee for it. The management fee for our other investments with them is approximately 1.1%. We can easily live off our retirement income and social security, so I'm not risk averse. Because of that, along with Clark's distaste for annuities, I'm reluctant to go with the annuity. Yet, since the annuity commission is lower than our management fee, maybe it's
23:56 Speaker 01 not such a terrible idea. What am I missing and what are your thoughts?"
24:00 Speaker 02 Joe in the Tar Heel State, one of my favorite states, by the way. What I would say is that the fixed annuity is...I don't like it. I might dislike annuities more than Clark because I've been in the financial industry and for a long time when I was younger, I was very exposed to annuities. And I even sold a couple of annuities before I was a fiduciary. So I know these things. And when I was much younger, and they're not...there are some okay things around annuities and they do have some benefits. But as I got older and I got more experience in the investment world, what started to
24:41 Speaker 02 bug me about them is the idea that, number one, they are a product. They're not a solution. And the product may make a lot of sense today or next year, but it's a product and it's done and you're locked forever. And what I've learned over a long time in the financial advice world is that people, things really do change. For the majority of the time, things are really different five years out. Now, not for everyone, but things really change. And when you lock yourself into something that is like cement... Then it can become something that you wish you didn't do. And think about how long 10 years is.
25:25 Speaker 02 So I don't like it because of that. And I don't like it because I don't like annuities because of the fact that you're betting on that one annuity company for 25% of your assets. So I don't like that either. So the product itself may make some sense. I just don't know if it will make sense every year for the next decade for you, Joe. So I would be steering clear of that. And I wouldn't let the management fee that's lower talk you into a financial solution that you're locked into. Just see if you can negotiate the management fee, which is a little on the high side. The other, that other 1.1%. I do believe financial advisors should get paid and a fiduciary. Well, I don't know if this is a fiduciary, Krista.
26:11 Speaker 02 So the advisor does have to do a lot of work and takes on a lot of responsibility for the entire relationship. So they have to get paid. Maybe discuss the overall fee with them and steer clear of the annuity.
26:25 Speaker 01 Tom in Texas says, my wife and I are retired with a very good financial 6040 portfolio. With interest rates predicted to keep falling, what is your opinion on using structured notes for dry powder? My financial advisor is very selective with high barriers and interest rates. I absolutely love your show and can't wait to read your new book.
26:43 Speaker 02 Tom, I absolutely love your question. And I don't know how we have, we've had so many great questions from Texas lately. Do you remember what I call structured notes?
26:52 Speaker 01 No.
26:53 Speaker 02 Food analogy? Yes, you do. Financial burritos of destruction. Because you end up with all these different layers of options and backed by a certain credit, which is backed by a bank, all wrapped up into a product, not a solution. What did we just talk about? We just talked about a product. Products can make sense and this, these do. They really do make sense in a lot of ways. But do they make sense for the duration of the product? And the answer is a lot of times they don't. And people, again, I've seen regrets when it comes to these, hey, I'm locked in. And, and not to mention, and maybe I'm ultra conservative about this, but I remember being
27:37 Speaker 02 a young financial advisor in the financial crisis when Lehman Brothers went out of business and they had. I don't know the number, millions, maybe billions. I don't know the number. A huge amount of money out there in these great structured notes. They ended up being financial burritos of mass destruction because the backing of them was the bank itself, and that didn't work out very well. The credit of who backs these is an issue or can be an issue. So I'd be leery of a structured note. They do sound good on paper. They do make sense when it comes to how they formulaically are designed. It's just that there, to me, there's too many moving pieces that can go wrong.
28:19 Speaker 02 I'm a little more of a traditionalist and I'd be looking more for the safety of higher quality fixed income instead.
28:27 Speaker 01 Okay, that does it for us today, Wes.
28:30 Speaker 02 Does it for us, okay.
28:31 Speaker 01 Yep, we will be back next week with a new episode of Ask an Advisor. Hope that you will share this episode with a friend if you enjoyed it or learned anything. And please subscribe wherever you listen or watch the podcast. Have a great rest of your day.
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