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Episode #539 - Should I Get A Mortgage For My Retirement Home?

Roger: The show is a proud member of the Retirement Podcast Network.

This show is dedicated to helping you not just survive retirement, but to have confidence because you're doing the work to lean in and really rock it.

Hi there, Roger Whitney here. By day, I am a practicing retirement planner with over 30 years’ experience. Founder of Agile Retirement Management and well over the last 10 years on this show, you and I have had the opportunity to hang out and walk through how we actually do this retirement planning, not so you can make this your job in retirement, but so you can have the confidence to go off and create a great life and rock it. 

Now, if you enjoy the show, you will love our 6-Shot Saturday weekly email, where we give a recap of the show. We share resources that we mentioned as well as some exclusive content. You can sign up for that at rogerwhitney.com or 6shotsaturday.com

All right. So today on the show, we're going to answer a question from Scott related to using a mortgage in retirement to build their retirement home and some things he wants to consider. In addition to that, we're going to answer some of your questions, and then in our Rock Life segment, talk a little bit about mindset.

So, with that said, let's get this party started.

PRACTICAL PLANNING SEGMENT

It's pretty common in retirement to either want to re-nest and make your current home the environment that you want, since you're going to be in it at your home base more than ever before or move to a new location and create a whole new atmosphere. Scott and his spouse are doing this, and he had a question related to getting a mortgage to build that new home for retirement.

So, let's hear Scott's question. 

Scott: Hey Roger, my name is Scott. I've been retired for about three years, listened to the podcast since way before retirement and continue to do so on a weekly basis. Appreciate all your advice and knowledge. I want to pose this question to you for any feedback you may have. 

So, my wife and I have lived in a condo in a town that we believe we'd like to settle in for the last three years. We bought a piece of land. For cash and we're going to pursue a mortgage to do a home build. We're about 60 years old. We would have this mortgage for the next seven years is my guess based on the fact that once we finish the home build, we will sell our condo, pay off approximately half the mortgage, and then do lump sum payments as well as regular payments on the mortgage until it's paid off. Just wanted your input on doing this in retirement. I believe it fits in with our budget, but that's also based on you know, a decent economy going forward.

Any feedback would be appreciated. Thank you. 

Roger: Great question Scott. First off, as you approach this, I would start to explore the mortgage options early for a couple reasons.

One is, there might be a couple ways you can structure this to give yourself more flexibility later on, in the event markets or a decent economy go sideways.

Two, because when you're in retirement, if you don't have guaranteed payments, whether that's Social Security or pension payments or payment earnings from work, sometimes it can be a little tricky to get a mortgage. In that the mortgage factory, which is 99 percent of mortgage companies is all algorithms. It's all run through a computer and it's looking at your ability to support the payment of the mortgage, irrespective of whether you actually have assets to just buy the house in cash or not. If you go to a traditional mortgage company, you're going to go through that factory and they may ask you for proof. Well, they will ask you for proof that you have the income to support the mortgage.

A good example, because I just completed a mortgage. I used Rocket Mortgage, which the experience was good, good. It was not as painful as I've had before in those situations, and because I'm self-employed, I had a lot of paper chase to verify that my income was real because I didn't have a W2 job. So, I had a higher bar that I had to jump over. 

Same thing in retirement. If you don't have a pension or Social Security to support the payment at whatever ratio the factory wants, you're going to have to do a paper chase to show that you're doing these types of withdrawals from accounts and how you're actually getting the income, whether it's from investments or otherwise, to support the payment.

That's why you want to start this a little bit earlier and get your ducks in a row, sometimes we've had clients where they've turned on payments from accounts simply because they wanted to show a consistent stream of payments to the mortgage factory. So, start to think about that now.

If you run into a lot of issues there, then you have to pull yourself out of the factory and go to a custom mortgage company, which will do what's called manual underwriting, where they're actually going to look at the totality of your situation and whether, you know, it's the old-fashioned way, just like a shoe factory versus a bespoke shoe. They're going to look at you and decide as a human, not as an algorithm. Be aware of that. That's why you want to start this a little bit earlier so you don't have any hiccups or you know what you're facing. 

So now, I'm assuming that this is feasible. You said you've Based on your budget, and I'm assuming your understanding of your assets, you say, Oh yeah, this is feasible for us to do this. I don't feel like this is a big risk. So, I'm going to take that at face value. Some of my comments, Scott, are going to be related to making it resilient and giving yourself some flexibility. So, if the world changes, you can navigate it more easily. Then two, just simply some tactics. of things to consider.

All right, so number one is, I would suggest that the mortgage that you do is a 30-year fixed mortgage. So, we can eliminate some uncertainty, eliminate interest rate risk. If interest rates rise from here and you do a variable rate, you could increase your monthly cash flow obligation. If interest rates go down, you can always refinance. Doing a 30-year Fixed mortgage is going to amateurize the payments over 30 years, which will make your monthly obligation to principal and interest lower than a 15-year mortgage. You're planning on paying this off early, it sounds like, in your current plan of record. So, I would suggest doing that because you'll be able to bring down the interest expense if you throw lots of lump sum principal payments to the mortgage and make it a short mortgage regardless. So that's number one. 

Number two, I would consider pursuing the mortgage, looking at splitting the mortgage. So, let's use some just math here.

Let's assume that the mortgage is going to be for 800, 000. Then in a year or two, you're going to sell your condo and receive 400, 000 and then in your current plan of record, pay that towards principal. So, you have 400, 000 left on the mortgage after that, and then you'll have payments on that until you get that paid off over the seven-year time frame you're looking at.

If you do a 30-year fixed mortgage at 800, 000, and let's assume it's a six- and three-quarter percent interest rate. Your principal and interest payment's going to be 5, 189 per month. A year or two from now when you print that proceeds from your condo, the 400, 000 towards the mortgage, It will lower the mortgage outstanding, but your monthly obligation to 5, 189 per month will stay the same until you get these lump sums thrown at it as you described.

One thing you could consider tactically that could potentially give you more flexibility in the event your life changes or The world changes and you need to navigate some storms is doing two mortgages. You could do a first mortgage as an example, and you have to explore whether you can do this. I've done this in the past, but it's been a while. You could explore doing a first mortgage for 600, 000. So, we'll assume same facts. 30 years fixed. Six- and three-quarter interest rate the payment on that for principal and interest would be 3, 892 a month and then do a second mortgage for the other 200, 000 typically those second mortgages are 15 years not 30 years. We'll assume the same interest rate and the principal and interest payment on the second mortgage for 200, 000 over 15 years would be 1, 710 per month. So combined, those two mortgages in this alternate scenario would be 5, 662 per month. So that's about 473 a month more than just doing one mortgage. 

Well, why would I do that?

Some logic where this could help you later on is when you sell the condo and you receive your 400, 000 proceeds, you can use 200, 000 of that to pay off that second mortgage, which would eliminate that 1, 770 a month payment. So now your monthly payment on the remaining mortgage is 3, 892, which is significantly less than if you just did one mortgage.

Let me do some basic math here. It's just shy of 1, 300 a month difference. So, it would set you up, once you sell that condo, to have a significantly less monthly obligation to the mortgage on the house. 

Now you're like, Roger, I'm going to pay this thing off anyway. I'm not that worried about that. No, you might not be right now, but you might be then because when this happens, what happens if the economy goes sideways or you have some complications in your life and you're trying to navigate that storm, having a monthly obligation that's significantly less might help you in doing that, and your future self might make some other priorities if we're not worried about having a mortgage because we want to lower our income so we can have ACA subsidies that are more significant. That means we would prefer to not take as much money out of, say, our pretax IRAs or 401ks. Well, if you have a lower monthly obligation, then that will give you more flexibility for some potential decisions like that down the road.

Really what you're buying is future optionality here. Doesn't mean that. you can't stick with plan A, it just means that maybe spending a little bit more money and time and exploring this might just be worth the cost for that potential future optionality, whether you use it or not. So just something to consider there.

Those are some tactical things on the resilience phase of things, map out a what if scenario. You have how you're living now, you and your wife, Scott. Create this alternate what if scenario with these new mortgage payments, whichever one you decide to do, and then stress test that alternate scenario for bad markets.

What happens if you get a mortgage, you build this house and you add in the extra costs of a house over a condo and then the bear market happens. What does your situation look like then? This is easily done with software. This is what software is really good to do. Then you can see, Oh, I might mean I might have to slow down some extra travel or some other things that I want to do. Or it might show you. Ooh. This could really put us in a pickle. That's the reason we want to have a process mapped out. So, you can create this what if scenario, in this case, you and the mortgage, and then stress test that alternate scenario to see how exposed you are if the economy isn't decent, as you say.

Those are some thoughts, Scott, as you explore this. 

With that, let's get on and answer some of your listener questions. Now let's get to answering some other listener questions. 

LISTENER QUESTIONS

If you have a question for the show, you can go to askroger.me and type in your question, leave an audio question like Scott did, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show and help you take a baby step towards rocking retirement.

HSA FEES CAN BE MORE EXPENSIVE THAN THE INTEREST

Our first question is actually a share from Laura around health savings account fees. She was navigating doing an IRA to HSA transfer to fund some of her health savings account. So, health savings account is an account that you're eligible for if only if you have a high deductible health insurance policy through your employer or through the Affordable Care Act.

It's not going to apply to Medicare and there are rules around whether you qualify or have an HSA compliant plan. If you do, you can open up what's called a health savings account, contribute money up to the annual limits that are tax deductible, and any monies in there will grow tax free as long as you take it out for qualified healthcare expenses.

We've done segments on these before, but Laura's question was related to health savings account fees. Usually, we come into familiarity with these because you have an employer, you select a high deductible insurance policy and they have you set up an HSA at whatever provider they're connected with. Laura found this out when she was exploring her HSA and she discovered, these are her words.

"I discovered that the custodian of that account was charging me more fees than they were paying me in interest. I told my husband this and when he checked his HSA, he found out he was being charged twice as much in fees as I was."

This is not uncommon. There aren't a lot of health savings account custodians or firms that will set these accounts up for you, and most of them just aren't that great. And they'll have annual fees and administrative fees that are being charged on whatever contributions that you make to those. That's what Laura, her husband discovered and they don't pay much interest.

Now in a health savings account, you can invest those monies in a money market. In a stock in a bond fund in any kind of mutual fund, but I would wager I don't know any statistics that 99 percent of people never do any of that they just leave it as cash and they end up losing money from the friction of all these fees and the fact that they don't pay much in money markets and Laura did what I did, because I have a health savings account. 

The best custodian that I have found for health savings account is Fidelity. They have a nice interface, their fees are very reasonable, and you can easily put that into a money market or invest it for a long term future with the idea that this is a bucket for healthcare expenses much later in life, and so the lesson here that Laura found, learned, and that we want you to be aware of is to look at the fees that you have in your HSA account. You may, just for convenience sake, may need to stick there while you're connected with an employer, but you can have a health savings account anywhere that there's a custodian to be able to do that. It's definitely something you want to be aware of.

Thank you, Laura, for sharing that. 

WHAT SHOULD JOHN THINK ABOUT WHEN DECIDING ON WHETHER TO GET A MORTGAGE?

Our next question is related to Scott's question on a mortgage, and it comes from John about cash flow. 

John says, 

"I am in the process of downsizing. Originally, the goal was not to have a mortgage. That is now not going to happen without dipping into my traditional IRA. What should I think about in the decision-making process? Mortgage versus Pulling money from my traditional IRA, I am still working, but only have about two more years."

The first thing I would consider, John, is your reasons for downsizing. You may have already settled this but given that you would have to pull from your IRA to do a mortgage because of the cost of things right now, new construction, and buying a house is not cheap because of there's a lack of supply.

Given that, and given that your home is either paid for, you have a mortgage, which most likely has a very low interest rate. What is your reason for downsizing? I would just revisit that. Maybe this has settled for you, but perhaps you could simplify where you're at currently rather than pursuing having a smaller home just for that sake, maybe it actually will cost you less in the long run.

I don't know, but I just want to have you at least question that assumption. This is what's happening on a broad scale, especially with people with very low mortgages and no mortgages is they're not moving because they can't get anything better from a cash flow perspective or financial perspective by buying something new or buying current owned. The costs are just too much right now and they're staying in place, which exacerbates the supply constraint that there is in housing. I would just have you evaluate that for yourself, John. Let's assume you have that settled. Do you pull from your traditional IRA or do you have a mortgage?

What downstream impacts do you want to think about? 

One is the taxable consequences from pulling from traditional IRA to pay off the house in a couple of lump sums, whatever the difference is that you need, versus the increased cash flow over time for the mortgage, which may cause you to pull from a traditional IRA, but just in drips and drabs rather than all at once.

You say you have two years before retirement, so depending on what tax bracket you're in, do you do that now while you're working and potentially in a higher tax bracket? Or do you do a mortgage and then in that first year of non-work, when assuming all your income goes away, then you pull out the traditional IRA money and pay off the mortgage.

I think the main thing to consider here, John, is go through the process of qualifying and getting approved for the mortgage and then create a what if scenario from your current plan of taking the money out today and not doing the mortgage versus doing the mortgage and then in a low tax year, taking money out of the IRA to pay off the mortgage.

Versus, like we talked about with Scott, doing the mortgage and having this increased obligation for longer. Because the downstream impacts could be, obviously, your tax brackets. Could be your ACA health care premium subsidies, if you're going to use those. It could be IRMAA, which is the surcharge on Medicare, what happens if you take money out of an IRA and that bops you up into the IRMA bracket?

Better to do that once than ongoing. So, these are some of the downstream impacts I would consider. As long as you know this whole process is feasible, John, you just want to think through it in a logical way like we outlined and then just make a judgment call. But those are some of the things I would suggest that you consider.

ON USING REVERSE DOLLAR COST AVERAGING

Our next question comes from Doug related to the episode we did on reverse dollar cost averaging. We actually did a video of this that's on our YouTube channel just to demonstrate this. We'll put a link to that in our 6-Shot Saturday email. So, here's Doug's question. 

He says, 

"I think you missed the mark in answering the reverse dollar cost averaging withdrawals.

Your response went into detail to demonstrate sequence of return risk, but this is going to be a risk regardless of how people structure their withdrawals. A better answer would have compared performance of reverse dollar cost averaging to alternatives such as annual withdrawals or attempts to time the market.

Also, you mentioned the five-year cash floor as an alternative, but to me the cash floor and dollar cost averaging are not exclusive strategies. You can combine those things."

I totally agree with that, Doug. What is better performing is a framing that doesn't necessarily serve what the outcome is in creating a retirement withdrawal strategy, in my opinion.

What do we mean by better performing? 

To me, Doug, it's not which one gives us the better returns, if we manage it correctly. It is what is going to give us more optionality to make judgment calls As life unfolds now, those judgment calls, you know, so guardrails do that a little bit, right? There's some analysis and we've had some discussions on guardrails, especially with Michael Kitsis.

I think guardrails does that from a financial perspective. Okay, when I bump into a guardrail, what is my reaction? It tries to create an algorithm to solve this, but even that is not enough. I think, Doug, in this I agree, this is a five-year income floor. You still have sequence of return risk. The difference is you have a lot more flexibility in how you react throughout the period that a storm is happening when it comes to bad market returns. Because this is not one dimensional in my opinion, you're not going to react just simply to the market algorithm and what you do next. A year or two from now, when those markets go bad, your life is going to be different than the beginning point of the whole exercise. You're going to have different priorities. You may have different spending goals or income that's happening. So having the five-year income floor, you're still going to have sequence of return risk. This is not something that you can eliminate Per se, it's something that you manage and having that buffer of liquidity is giving you the ability to manage sequence of return risk, not optimize the performance of the whole exercise.

By having the ability to manage it, that gives you agency and that gives you flexibility, which is going to help lead to a lot more confidence, not just going through the storm, but give you much more confidence in spending your dollars today before the storm.

I definitely get your point, Doug, and I think we're probably saying mostly the same thing, but it's not a scientific exercise to compare what performs best. It's more qualitative of what gives you the most flexibility to be able to manage life. 

CAN WE USE ROTH CONVERSIONS TO DO RMDS?

Our next question comes from Ann, related to Roth conversions during RMD rules. 

Ann says,

"I am age 60. My husband is 66. We have been doing about 25, 000 a year in Roth conversions and paying taxes out of pocket in order to give us more flexibility in the future while staying below the IRMAA income limits.

When the time comes for us to do our required minimum distributions, can we use Roth conversions to satisfy part of our required minimum distributions so we can keep the money in retirement accounts and not have to pay taxes on future earnings?"

That's a great question, and The short answer is no, you can't.

So, when you get to required minimum distributions, let's assume you have to do 50, 000 a year in a required minimum distribution, you have to do that distribution or either in the form of taking the money or a qualified charitable distribution that can cover the required minimum distribution, giving the money to charity.

You cannot do a Roth conversion to satisfy your RMD. Now you're able to do Roth conversions over and above that RMD, but you can't use your RMD just as a Roth conversion. Depending on where you're at, one thing you could consider is do the forecasting and what those RMDs are going to be. It sounds like you have some sense of what that's going to be and you're doing this 25, 000 a year amount and you have a number of years left to be able to do that. So, you should be able to take out decent amounts from your pretax accounts. You might consider creating a what if scenario of what if you batched and did larger Roth conversions, but for shorter periods of time, and isolated any IRMAA surcharge impact.

Real quick example here, Ann. You are 60, so you're not on Medicare. Your husband is 66. He is on Medicare, I'm assuming. If you look at the IRMAA surcharge bracket, which is the surcharge on Medicare. The first bracket for married filing jointly is between 206, 001 and 258, 000. Right now, if you did a Roth conversion above the IRMAA bracket, two years from now that's going to hit your husband, it wouldn't hit you. Because you'd be 62 at that time. If you hit that first bracket, that's an additional 993. 60 a month looking at 2024 numbers. Obviously, that will change over time. So, it's an extra 1, 000 to get into that first bracket for your husband. Because it's just going to apply to him, not to you, because you're not on Medicare.

The next bracket for Irma goes from 258, 001 to 322, 000. If you hit that bracket, the extra IRMAA surcharge two years from now would be about 2, 500 for your husband. So, I would suggest you at least explore maybe batching them earlier between you being 60 and 62, because then that won't impact you because it always looks two years behind as a conversation for another day for other people. But I would explore maybe batching this a little bit if this is something you're concerned about.

We'll put a link to our 2024 important numbers worksheet, which has all the tax code Brackets, it has IRMAA surcharges, it has IRA contribution limits, RMD calculations, and everything else. We'll put a link to that in our 6-Shot Saturday email. 

UNDERSTANDING INVESTMENT ADVISORY FEES

Our next question is related to investment advisory fees. 

A listener sent us a copy of their advisory account statements along with a question about fees. So first off, really appreciate the trust in you sending us your actual account statements. Please don't do that. 

One is, it may have account numbers on there. Email is not safe for sensitive information, and we can't review specific account statements and talk about your specific situation. I appreciate that. But let's talk about fees. So, the first question is, how much am I paying on an annual basis?

That should be a number that you don't have to know off the top of your head, but with a little bit of research or just asking the question of your advisor, they should be able to tell you. How much do I pay on an annual basis. So just observe what I am paying? 

The next question I would ask is what am I paying for?

What is it they're doing for the fee? Is it investment management only? Is it robust financial planning or retirement planning? Because there's nothing wrong with paying fees. I have a coach, I pay a lot of money every single year and have for years, and it's totally worth it to me. Even though I can't put a specific return on investment number to it, I know that It is worth what I'm getting for it in terms of the progress that I make.

So, one, what is it that you're paying? It's good to understand that periodically, and then two, what am I paying for? Because you may have different expectations on what they're supposed to do than they do. They may think that it's their investment management and their view of the markets, whereas you want retirement planning.

That's usually where a lot of the mismatches are. You may discover that, oh, for the fee that I'm paying, I want retirement planning, but they don't go deep on that. Now you've identified mismatch, which can make the relationship more congruent to what you want. The advisor, oh, they want detailed retirement planning, not just investment management and accumulation. Let's do that for them. So that might help them serve you better or it might identify the gaps of you not getting what you want because they don't deliver it. 

It will also help you answer the next question which is, am I getting enough value for what I'm paying for that advisor? I'm happy to pay for say the Peloton and the monthly description because I like the curated content and the fact that it's on demand and it means much more to me than going to the gym and having to organize all of this myself.

For the fees that you're paying. Even if they're delivering what you want, let's say retirement, are you getting enough value from the work that they're doing? Are they delivering on a consistent basis, realizing that humans make mistakes? Do you value having a decision-making partner and not just a planner?

We'll go back to my coach. I pay a lot of money to my coach every year and have for years. When I have higher stakes decisions, he doesn't have to get caught up to speed, and we talk on a consistent basis so we can actually get to work on me helping me get to the balcony of my decision, and I think it improves my decision making.

Then you just evaluate, is it worth the fee? If not, have that discussion and move on. This should be very transparent from the advisor side, and they should be willing to have these conversations, and they should be willing to disengage and not argue the point if you found that it doesn't fit the season that you're in.

Those necessary endings happen. We actually proactively have those with clients. And just recently we had a client proactively have that conversation with us and they were able to give us constructive feedback and they found a better solution. But I think that would be the order that I would go in and figuring this out.

TOM'S PERSPECTIVE ON HIS RETIREMENT

Based off of a request I had a few episodes ago, Tom emailed in who has been retired for, I forget how long Tom, I know Tom actually. He has been retired for a while and wanted to share his perspective from being in retirement for a number of years with those of you that are on the other side. So let's hear Tom's comments.

Tom: Hi, Roger. My name is Tom. 

My last day of work was December 31st, 2014, at which time I was 68 years old. I really think I hit retirement right for me. I had plenty of time to prepare myself for the change from full time work to retirement, so there was no shock of that nature. I had spent a lot of time and effort preparing financially for retirement and had that aspect under control too.

With the change of routine from getting up every morning to go to work, to no special time to do anything, I felt like I needed to rethink it up each day. If that was having coffee with my brothers or playing golf or working on a project or volunteering, I just wanted something to maintain a purpose for every day. I don't regret anytime I spent with family or friends, but I do think that early on in retirement, I engaged in too much volunteering. I had to wean myself off of some of that. Now I'm down to one volunteering position, and I think that that volunteering has given me an opportunity to share some of the talent and energy that I have back to the community. I know I've been blessed in many ways and I enjoy sharing some of those gifts. 

Since my early forties. I'd been running, biking, weight training, and doing other types of exercises. I also cut my weight down. My diet was healthy most of the time. I have no family history. All my blood tests were good. I have normally low blood pressure, and I still had to open heart surgery when I was 64 years old to bypass two arteries that were nearly blocked. The reason I mention this is a reminder to take care of yourself. Listen to your body. Get regular checkups. We only get one rocket ship to go around this earth on. Take care of it. Also, a reminder that tomorrow is promised to no one.

I came very close to having a heart attack that could have ended my life here on Earth or severely changed my life. After the operation, I was blessed with not only very good health but a better appreciation of all the things that I've been blessed with and the material things, frankly, are a long way down that list of what's important to me.

Enjoying retirement will likely be affected not only by your health, but the health of all those in your family. Obviously, the health of a spouse would have an impact, would have a major impact, on what you do or how you manage retirement. But the health of a child or grandchild would also likely have a significant impact. So don't post phone pleasures, and I never pass up an opportunity to get my heart rate up. Relationships matter more and more every day. I use the golden rule, I believe in treating other people the way I'd like them to treat me. It gets me through most situations. It works for family, friends, and strangers, frankly.

Forgiveness is important. Forgive, forget, and go on. Life really is too short. Don't watch too much TV. Much of the news is very upsetting, and what goes on, and what good does it do, I guess, to know all the gory details? I don't want to be oblivious to what's going on, but I don't get consumed by all the details either.

In the late 60s, Portions of most major cities in the United States were literally ablaze. I was in my late teens and early 20s. I'd love to know what my parents thought of what was happening to the USA in those days. Here we are, almost 60 years later, it still seems like the U. S. is going to hell in a handbasket.

I pay attention. I vote my conscience. I support people, projects, and positions that agree with my philosophy. But I don't get bogged down in all the details of the things I can't control. I spend as much time around young people as I can. My mom always said that being around young people keeps you young, and I believe that.

Even if the young people are older than years than me, they can still be young at heart. I went roller skating last Saturday with my granddaughter. I had a great time, created some memories, and quit when I thought I was getting too brave before I fell. I don't need a broken hip at this point in my life. I think it's very important to keep moving as quickly as we safely can. 

Last, what I'm going to say today is, as I get older, I have more opportunities to need and use my faith in God. Tough times will come, and I need faith to get through some, through those tough times. Faith provides me with an opportunity to help others too.

I can pray for them, and that helps me feel good too, and that's it. Thank you. 

Roger: I know Tom. Tom is a thoughtful guy and you can tell he really thought about sharing those comments. Thank you, Tom.

ROCK LIFE

Now it's time for our Rock Life segment where we are going to focus on mindset, cultivating a mindset where we can show up with a growth attitude, resilience, and agency. This is going to be really short. This is something I've been thinking about. 

Thinking about life is very different than acting.

You do have to contemplate, but it's our actions that create a great life. We can't just think about it. I oftentimes find myself thinking about being tougher. Being more disciplined. Being kinder. I'm reminding myself to just simply be. If I want to be kinder, be kinder. If I want to be more disciplined, be disciplined.

You know, a good example is, I was, just a minute ago, downstairs. I was walking into the pantry and we just had our garbage picked up and we had our recycle bin that was full because the other one was full and it finally got picked up yesterday and I was saying, Shauna, I'm going to take this out today. I was thinking that and I mentioned it to her and then I stopped myself. I just picked it up and I took it out. It's so easy to think about things and project things rather than just actually doing them. 

So, if you want to be better at your retirement planning, be better at it. If you want to be more intentional, be more intentional. Now let's go set a smart sprint.

TODAY’S SMART SPRINT SEGMENT

On your marks, get set,

and we're off to take a little baby step we can take in the next seven days to not just rock retirement, but rock life. 

All right. In the next seven days, I challenge you to catch yourself when you're saying, I should do this. I challenge you to be, to take a thought and do it right at that moment.

CONCLUSION

So next week on the show, we're going to have an in-news segment on identity theft. I got a letter in the mail the other day from AT& T letting me know that I'm one of over 70 million people that had some of their personal information compromised. 

We're going to talk about how I'm navigating that and perhaps how you can navigate protecting yourself from a crazy, crazy, Internet world.












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