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Episode #543 - Retirement Plan Live: The Lifestyle We Want in Retirement
Roger: The show is a proud member of the Retirement Podcast Network.
Welcome to the show dedicated to helping you not just survive retirement, but to have confidence because you're doing the work to go off and really rock retirement.
Hey there, Roger Whitney here. By day, I am a practicing retirement planner with over 30 years’ experience walking the journey into retirement, founder of Agile Retirement Management. Over the last 10 years or so on this show, we've noodled on how you do retirement planning, right so you don't make it your next job. You do it so you can go off and create a great life.
Today on the show, we got three big things. We have Mike and Judy, their second installment of our Retirement Plan Live case study, where they are going to share what their ideal retirement lifestyle looks like as best as they can define it today, because this will be an ever-changing thing. They're going to share what their goals are for retirement. If you would like to follow along and iterate on your planning, make sure you're signed up for our 6-Shot Saturday email. You can get that at rogerwhitney.com or 6shotsaturday.com. Every Saturday morning, we send out a recap of the show along with links to resources that we mentioned, and we're going to send a worksheet to think through what your ideal retirement might look like.
In addition to that, we have Kevin Lyles, coach in the Rock Retirement Club, on to talk about four pillars to help us create passion in our life. Not necessarily find it but create it.
Then lastly, I've been getting a lot of questions about the story. What's the ending or current version of our relocation to Colorado? Many of you that have listened have heard my trials and tribulations of wanting to have a house in Colorado and move to Colorado and all the trials and missteps that I've made along the way to get to where we are now, we're in a town home that we own in Colorado, which is wonderful. I feel very blessed. Mark Ross is going to come on as an addendum to the show, at the end of the show for about 20, 30 minutes, and he's just going to ask questions about this journey, hopefully to help you one close the loop on the cliffhanger for those of you that have been asking me, but also as a lesson of walking this journey and how it is not a perfect journey. There's a lot of twists and turns and even in my own life. So hopefully that'll help you navigate yours a little bit better. With that said, let's get on and get Mike and Judy on here so we can figure out what they want in retirement.
WHAT MIKE AND JUDY WANT IN RETIREMENT
All right, we're back again with Judy and Mike.
How are you guys doing?
Mike: Good.
Judy: Doing good.
Roger: Mike informed us that he didn't have his nap today. He gets a 30-minute nap after work every day and he hasn't had his nap. So, you're not going to be too angry. Are you Mike?
Mike: No. I had a good snack. No nap, but I'm good. I'm all right.
Roger: Caffeine. No hangry. Now that we have set some, what do we want to get clarity on, and we, a little bit of flavor for who you are, we want to start with the most difficult question in life, what do we want? It's a hard question that never ends. You think you would figure it out at this vintage of humanness.
So, this is what equate to goals. Right, which we think of in actual planning. But before we get to what do you want, I threw you a little bit of a curveball. And if you had to pick one or two values that when you're at your best, you're expressing those values, what might that value be?
Judy: We've done the value worksheet, but now I can't remember.
Roger: A good example, Mike, would be, like, for me, one of my top values is adventure. Now, you could argue whether or not that's a value or not, but for me, if I don't have adventure in some way in my life, I am not fully who I'm meant to be. So that would be an example.
Judy: Faith, and I don't know if there's a word for it, but like acting faith, like active faith, not just in your head faith and would be one of mine and community belonging, something like that. When we did the worksheet, we talked about when we were, like, our best times, we remember, and it's things with family things, for example, at a big sporting event or at Disney World where people are Disney people or people are fans and we are too, you know, so those are kind of the memories that stick out to us.
Roger: So, what I heard there before we moved on Judy is you are at your best when you're in community, right and happiest.
Judy: Yeah.
Roger: The second thing I heard was you are at your best when you are committing acts of your faith service, most likely to your community.
Mike: Yeah, I think for me, I like to be a participant. I'm not a bystander. I like to participate. So, golf is a passion of mine. So, I like to play competitive events and things like that. I love to, you mentioned adventure, kayaking, snorkeling, things like that. are, they really pull at me. They really draw me in.
I like to be a participant.
Roger: So, on that one, I love that one. I resonate with you. I got you. I'm with you. It's, you want to be in the mosh pit. You don't want to be observing the mosh pit of life.
Mike: Right. Right. Even though athletics, we were big college basketball fans, that's our passion as far as sports go more than any of the other sports, I guess. I like to be there at events as opposed to just sitting in my house watching it on TV. We like to go to them.
Judy: Even sometimes if we can't get tickets to a big game or whatever, we just want to be in the city. Where it's happening.
Roger: Or in the restaurant or bar where all your fans are together, right?
Judy: Then I think the other one, especially maybe for, well, for both of us, but for him is family because he comes from a larger family. I come from a smaller family, but we love to do things with our children. You know, we always want to vacation with our children. We always want to go, when we go places, we go to visit family when we do things here, we do, we're always with family. So, yeah.
Roger: I'm sure there are more that you two can marinate on. But the idea here is that is the beginning of the thread and that thread should continue on all the way down to what tactical tax decision you make on this particular account or investment decision, right?
All those little tactical decisions, you should be able to follow up to the outcome, which is you living out your values and how you live your life, right? If we take that thread and we pull it down a little bit more, we're going to get to goals, which should be expressions of your values. They can be congruent.
Let's start off with goals and now we're getting into sort of financial geeky world or retirement planning geeky world, of let's set some goals. The way I want to think about this, or I suggest we think about this, is three categories.
One is what I like to call our base great life, and there's some categories in there. What are the categories and what does it cost for just the base great life, which means it's not rice and beans spending, but basic travel, basic tickets to the game, et cetera.
Then the second category will be our wants or the more discretionary things that we add on to enhance the base great life.
Then aspirational wishes that can be all the cherries that if we could have them, that would be awesome. So that's the way that I want to think about this.
Let's start off with a base great life, which is you're welcome to include healthcare, but if you had to come up with a number monthly or annual of what a base great life with a little bit of travel, but not all the discretionary stuff. What would be that number?
Judy: Okay, two things.
One, I do have health care in that number, and the health care is based on the insurance and the outflow that we'll have when I am on Medicare. It's through Mike's pension, but it's when I'm on Medicare. I've got the in between years as a want, even though it's kind of a need, but the three years or four years or whatever, till I'm 65, I'm saying it's three years that I put that in a different place.
Roger: So, give me a number.
Judy: Then one other question, we own a property in Florida, and we would like to keep it for, say, 20 years, but we don't have to, so I didn't know whether to put the cost that that cost us annually, the basic cost of that cost us, whether to put that in the base great life, or to put it as a want, since it's not a necessity.
Roger: Let's keep it in the base great life, but account for it separately. Does that make sense?
Okay. So, let's start off with the base great life without Florida.
Judy: Okay. 9, 000 a month.
Roger: Okay. Is any part of that a mortgage payment?
Judy: No.
Roger: Okay, and then does that in your mind includes healthcare?
Judy: Yes.
Roger: Okay. Includes the Medicare cost of health care?
Judy: Yes.
Roger: Okay, what else would be in that needs category?
Judy: Well, it's the normal stuff and it's sort of based on what the four-year average has been since I've been keeping track, and so it's all the utilities and housing and insurance and charitable giving, golf, country club membership. Probably more travel than we're allowed, but it is a necessity. It includes a thousand dollars a month in travel.
Roger: Okay. So, there's a way of going about that. I mean that a thousand dollars a month is sort of friction travel, right? If you have a couple of trips to visit people, that's not like your big travel sometimes, right?
Judy: No, it's not a big travel.
Roger: Yeah, it could be.
Okay, and I like the fact that you mentioned the country club because that's usually the example that I use. As to what is a need and what's a want, right? Everybody gets to create their own rules. Right. In your case, I could totally understand that. Mike likes to golf. That's who he needs. He wants to be a participant and two country clubs can have community. Right. So, I can hear.
Mike: Right.
Roger: Okay. So, I'm glad that you pulled both of those because some people, oh, you can't, that's a total discretionary aspiration, but not for you guys. Okay. I like that. I like that.
Mike: It'd be a complete change of lifestyle if it were taken away.
Roger: Right. Yeah, it would be.
Judy: Yeah. I mean, he's there every day. Every day.
Roger: Then you're tracking numbers, you said for how long, four years, four years, four years. Okay. So, you feel pretty good. These aren't just swags, right? It's okay if they are, because you can always refine them later, but you have some data behind us.
Judy: That was without the place in Florida.
Roger: So, let's add the place in Florida. Now we'll keep this in the base great life for now, but we're accounting for it separately. That will actually help us later on when maybe we experiment with Florida. By having them separated, you can pull different levers a lot easier. That's the logic behind it.
Tell me about Florida as far as the annual carry cost. Right?
Judy: So, the way we are currently renting it out, it costs us, it would be about 6, 000 a year.
Roger: That's an interesting way you phrase it is we're only on the expense side of the balance sheet or the cashflow statement right now. We'll get to the income later. That you're renting of it, but what does it cost you to carry Florida if you didn't rent it?
Judy: Yeah, 24,000 maybe.
Roger: 24,000 a year. Is any of that mortgage?
Judy: No.
Roger: Okay.
Judy: The way I sort of have it in my mind is there's this 500 a month, and that is if we kept using it and renting it as we do now.
Then in the wants category, there's some more for if we don't rent it in the winter. And then in the wishes category, there's some more for if we don't rent it at all and just do the gifting that we do right now, we gift it to family some, and if we just gift it and use it, so.
Mike: Yeah, right now, we don't, as our plan stands right now, For our basic needs, I don't get to go there in January, February, March, because that's when it rents so beautifully and brings in a nice chunk of income, but ideally our dream would be, we didn't have to rent it out those months because we would be there those months.
Well, then there's the second country club.
Roger: I already had that in my mind. I already had that in my mind.
Judy: That's way down on the wish category.
Mike: No, it's not. It's really close to mine.
Roger: Let's start off with ideal. So that, you know, the way you categorized it in terms of you were self-editing a little bit, right? So, let's start off with it cost us 24, 000 a year for the taxes, the insurance, the utilities, and the upkeep. We're just going to start there. 24, 000 a year. Trust me on this.
Okay, anything else that you would put in the need or base great life category? What about cars?
Judy: Yeah, I have them out here separately, so I guess that is a need. Yeah, the goal would be We have that listed as big purchases.
Roger: Yeah. Okay. In the future. It's likely you're going to have a car until they convert to, you know, whatever we convert to.
Judy: Right. So, I think we would need to spend 30, 000 on a car. In 2028, 2029, something like that. Then after that 15, 000 on a car, like every five years. The reason it would be more of the first time is I would like to leave one of our current cars in Florida so we can fly back and forth, so that way we wouldn't have that car to trade in or sell or whatever. So, 30, 000 for the first time in 2028.
Roger: Then 10 K every five years. You tend to hold cars for long periods of time.
Mike: Oh yeah, we drive until the wheels fall off.
Roger: Okay. Anything else that was big purchase that you would think is in the base crate life that naturally is going to have to happen?
Judy: Yeah, like a home, like just, you know, There's some things we need to do around the house, so I put down like 10, 000 in probably 2026 and then 1, 000 a year after that or something, 5, 000 every five years or whatever, just when things come up.
Roger: Okay. Okay. I'll put it that way. It's a good placeholder.
Judy: Then the other need that's a big purchase, which is, I didn't know what to do with this, was the cost of my insurance between his retirement and my Medicare. That is 7, 000 a year.
Roger: That would be between which years? When do you turn 65?
Judy: It would be from 2026 to 2029.
Roger: Okay, and then you go to Medicare cause you're young.
All right. Anything else?
Judy: Not as a need, I don't think.
Roger: Okay. Let's go to the discretionary spending, extra travel, country club in Florida, golf balls, a lot of water in Florida. What's in those categories?
Judy: I had just, because I've heard you do this before, just like a miscellaneous, like go-go money.
Somewhere I have notes to what this is but really, I don't know right now, but I put down eight thousand a year for 20 years, somewhere there's notes that explain it, but I don't remember what it is.
Roger: That's okay. You don't have to explain it to me.
Judy: Yeah, but Mike is asking. Just means like you're going, it's in your active years.
Roger: The idea that you'll be on the playground. Eventually, you'll get out of the mosh pit and watch a little bit more and not be the whole time. What else is in that category?
Judy: A truck, a new truck. We have a very old truck. So that would be about.
Roger: You buy a truck lately? Come to Texas, man. They're crazy expensive.
Judy: Well, that's with trading.
Roger: When would that be? If it was possible?
Judy: Probably a couple of years.
Roger: Okay, 2027. Okay. What else?
Judy: Like, we talked about wintering in Florida. That's sort of what I had listed for our wants. Then we were switching now to like the wishes.
Roger: So, wintering in Florida, we're factoring in that it's going to happen as of now.
Judy: Right.
Roger: We might as well see if it's feasible before we back off to giving away all the best times in Florida. In ideal world, assuming it's possible, would Country Club in Florida be part of that?
Mike: Ideally, yes. I don't realistically think it's going to happen.
Judy: Wouldn't necessarily winter in Florida every year. It's just the possibility of it. Then we could rent that place out and use that chunk of money to do more travel during those three months. We would like to spend a winter in Costa Rica or whatever.
Roger: The hard part of doing this exercise a lot is that you have to make decisions to put down the goals, but then you know, you have all these options in your head down the road, so you don't want to decide because that cuts those options. So, you just sort of go back and forth and never decide.
Let's decide today knowing that it's going to change a million times. So, if you were wintering in Florida, would you play public courses or would you want to be a member of a golf club?
Mike: I would like to be a member of the golf club.
Roger: How much would that cost? Swag.
Mike: I'd say it would be about ten thousand dollars a year.
Roger: Okay, and let's put some dates on that. From retirement date, for how many years do you think, realistically, that you'd want to be a member? Again, we're just guessing here.
Mike: Probably fifteen to twenty years.
Judy: I would assume the same amount of time that we would own the place in Florida. Right.
Roger: Yeah, or your ability to golf. I have a client who is a few years removed from a heart transplant. He's playing. Yeah. Not every day, but pretty close. Okay. I put that in there. Why not? Let's see.
You mentioned travel. You already said you had a thousand dollars a month in that base grade life number. Would you want to include a ideal world budget for like every year or every other year, every four years, bigger trips? You mentioned Costa Rica. It's beautiful there.
Judy: Right. Yeah. We kind of thought about doing at least a major trip with each child or each child group, you know, each child and spouse, and, you know, we sort of, we, one of our sons was professional golfer for a while and that son would really like to go to, you know, Scotland and play golf and then one of our Children, as you know, lives in Korea. So, we'd like to meet her family, maybe in Hawaii one year and then one of our Children works at Disney World. We might want to go to Disneyland Paris with them and so we've kind of got that's sort of like a big-big travel that's not just us.
Roger: Okay, so give me a number for one of those trips that we'll use as a baseline.
Judy: 15, 000.
Roger: Okay 15, 000. We could put individual dates on these trips, or we could say every other year for nine years, right, because that would hit all three children.
Yeah, I'd say every other year starting, we want a couple of years of trouble without children first. So, like, maybe starting in 2029. It would actually be six years, wouldn't it, that would hit all three children. I was wrong.
Judy: Four children. All four children.
Roger: Oh, that's right. I'm sorry. So that'd be eight years. Every other year starting in 2029 Okay, anything else in the want category?
Judy: Assuming we're still owning the place in Florida, then we would probably need to do at some point some major improvements down there new kitchen or whatever.
Roger: So, let's put a day and a year and a dollar amount on that just thinking today's dollars.
Mike: Today's I would say like thirty thousand dollars because we got two bathrooms that need to be updated in the kitchen.
Yeah, maybe 50, 000.
Roger: Depends on, you know, where the contracts are. I'll put 40, 000 and what year, should we just throw a year on it?
Mike: I'd say 2030.
Roger: All we're really doing is just putting some pieces on the board that we make some sense knowing that we'll move them around, not just in our planning, but also you would move around as life unfolds.
Mike: Right.
Roger: Everybody else can't see this, but both Mike and Judy have put some thought into this because they're looking, I see them looking down at, I don't know if it's their notebook or their spreadsheet or what it is. So, they put some thought into this. So that's good. Anything else?
Judy: Well, we have, I mean, I don't know when we're spilling over from wants to wishes, but we have a few more things on the list.
Roger: Okay. Give me those things.
Judy: I have 5, 000 a year for 10 years for sports related travel, specifically sports related travel, PGA, NCAA, tournaments, things like that.
Roger: Assuming your team ever makes it.
Mike: That's right.
Roger: I don't even know who your team is. Okay, I got that written down.
Judy: Okay, and then 5, 000 a year again for 10 years for charitable travel or giving in addition to normal charitable giving. But sometimes I travel internationally to most recently to Africa, Mark's gone to Russia and different places on mission trips.
Roger: Your normal giving is in your 9, 000.
Judy: Right.
Roger: Okay. Next.
Judy: Then we have been giving, putting money in our children's Roth accounts since they started working and we've stopped now because we've reached the amount that we had planned to put in that I wouldn't mind giving money to the children to either in their Roths, depending on their income or in college savings for their children or whatever.
So that would be, I just wrote down like 3, 000 a year. I mean 9, 000 but 3, 000 for three children a year just because that's what we've been doing in the past when we were putting it in their Roths.
Roger: Okay, anything else?
Judy: Then one big purchase in a new Disney Vacation Club ownership because a few of our ownerships are expiring in 2042. It's Judy's Country Club, yeah. We own a few contracts in the Disney Vacation Club and Vacation at Disney a lot. We will have owned them for 50 years and when they expire, and then I would like to get one more in 2040 and that'd be about 25, 000 in today's dollars.
Roger: I'll have to introduce you to a friend of mine, Lou Mongello.
Judy: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Mike: You know Lou?
Roger: I do. He's a wonderful guy.
Mike: Wow.
Judy: Yeah. Yeah, we've listened to him. Mike's listened to him.
Mike: We've listened to him a few times.
Roger: Yeah, so Lou Mongello, for those that are listening, is a long time podcaster on Disney, WDW?
What's the name of the podcast?
Mike: WDW Radio, something like that.
Roger: He and I were in a study group right when I started podcasting, and he had been doing it for a while. He helped me a lot on, just create content and love people. Don't pay attention to any statistics. It served me well. Do you know any of his stories?
Mike: I know he's an attorney, right?
Roger: Yeah. Well, he's probably a recovering attorney, but he was this attorney in New Jersey and if you ever saw Lou, he's like this Italian guy. He's just short, dark haired Italian guy.
Judy: Bodybuilder type.
Roger: Yeah, and he started a podcast ages ago because he's a Disney fan boy, and then it became something and he quit law moved.
He lives right outside Disney World.
Mike: It's WDW radio.
Roger: WDW radio. So big shout out to Lou Mongello. He's a wonderful guy.
Okay. Anything else?
Mike: Judy said 10, 000 for home improvement 2026, but a wish of mine would be an exterior building to put things like my mower in and things like that, and then there would just happen to be an indoor golf bay.
Judy: We just happened to be in that building in the backyard.
Mike: Because maybe we don't get to winter in Florida. There is a season where I need to be able to still hit golf balls. So, it's kind of a thing around here. Like it's growing rapidly, but people are putting in, in indoor golfing things and they have their buddies over.
Roger: The technology has gotten a lot better. Buddy of mine has one who lives in Minnesota who was an ex professional golfer.
Mike: Yeah. If you're in Minnesota, you definitely want one for sure.
Roger: What is the cost of this? Just throw a number on all of this.
Mike: In today's dollars, probably 60, 000.
Roger: Okay, 60, 000, and so when would we want to build this?
Mike: Last January.
Judy: No, when we sell the place in Florida.
Mike: No, I don't know. Let's say 2030.
Roger: Okay.
Mike: It's going to take me some time after I retire to do all my research and everything in 2030.
Roger: I'll put 2028. We're just going to cut. All right.
I'm running out of paper, but do we have anything else?
Mike: No.
Roger: I was actually a little worried that you weren't going to come up with much as we started. But I think this gained momentum as we rolled it down the hill, and some of it seems, I don't know, you know, frivolous is, I don't know if that's a good word or not, but it's like, sort of, well, you giggle when you say it. Well, it'd be sort of cool to have this.
Mike: Right.
Roger: But I think it's so important to do that because we may, maybe likely, end up eliminating some of these very easily, but if we end up not being able to do the Florida, maybe we have to bring one of them back in because you don't get the Florida halftime. Better left for these things to be said and on the table than to self-edit it. Not just as a couple, but individually. Because with you two, I know my wife and I, Judy needs to make sure she tells Mike, some things that might be really important to her, even if she thinks Mike will think it's silly because it's not silly to Judy and that can be hard. I'm glad that you guys embraced this and we put some numbers to it. The numbers are wrong and that's okay, but we decided so now we actually have something to work on and move forward with knowing that. We'll be changing things all along the way.
Judy: I'm glad you made us start with the values because I had not thought about that and I'm really seeing it in our notes here.
Charitable travel, the sports related travel, doing this with the children and doing that in community. I mean, I'm surprised at how that thread goes through these things. I didn't expect that as much.
Roger: I think that will also help us, Judy, when we have to negotiate or when you have to negotiate and give away some things because you'll be able to at least do it in the context of what you value the most.
All right, so we're done having fun. Next time we chat, we're going to have to get serious. We're going to have to come bring the balloon back down. The ride is coming to this end and we're going to have to get off and figure out how we're going to pay for all this. I was trying to use a Disney analogy.
Next time we talk, what we're going to do is figure out how we're going to pay for this. That's going to be three categories, right? Y'all have three major resources. One is going to be your social capital, which is social security for those that have it or pension or annuity income, those types of sources of income.
The second is going to be human capital, which would be part time work, or it also will include income from the investment property. We're going to put that under human capital because it takes work to manage something, even if you have a management company. So, we'll put the income side of the Florida property, and maybe even if we just put it at a dollar, because we're assuming we don't have to rent it, then we'll at least have that lever to pull when we have to negotiate. Maybe you can get one of those sweet months in Florida.
Then what isn't covered by those income sources is going to have to come from financial capital, which is your money and your resources, all the normal investment accounts are 401ks or 403bs.
There's also another category that's sort of subset of financial assets, which are use assets. It's like your house is a use asset. It has value. You put it on your net worth statement, but really your dividend or return on it is using it, and your Florida property will be listed under that category because It will be a use asset. We'll have it listed, but not included in our analysis, unless we decide on, say, a test. Well, what if we sold it and made it money? How does that impact everything? So, I want you to think about those things.
If you have a net worth, that's awesome. If you don't, we'll build one together. If you have the exact value as of the day you, do it, awesome. If you have a rounded number for it, that's totally fine, too. So that's what we're going to do.
Judy: So, like a Zillow, like a Zillow number?
Roger: Yeah, or just guess. Yeah, either one, it is the same thing with the investment accounts. We don't need to know what's inside them. Just my 403b is X amount of money. So that's what we're going to do next time we chat, okay?
Mike: Okay. All right.
Roger: So, think about that stuff. Any last questions?
Judy: No.
Roger: Okay, Mike, go take your nap.
ROCK LIFE WITH KEVIN LYLES
Now it's time for another Rock Life segment where we're going to talk about passions. What is it that keeps you busy in retirement? To help navigate this today is Kevin Liles, coach in the rock retirement club. How are you doing Kevin?
Kevin: Doing great, Roger.
Roger: One of the aha moments I had in our Florida meetup with the club, was the four pillars to a balanced life and the fact that you don't necessarily have to know what you're retiring to.
So, I thought we could talk about that and what these four pillars are.
Kevin: Sounds like a good plan. I think people need to quit trying so hard to find their purpose in retirement. Some people can do it and obviously it's ideal if you can plan ahead and know that, but it's not necessary. I think a lot of people, the harder they try to find it, the more elusive it becomes.
Roger: It's a little bit like happiness that way, right?
Kevin: Yeah, it really is. You know, if you're trying to be happy, you're never going to be. You're right. We had someone tell us in the club that he wasn't retiring because he didn't know what he was retiring to.
He had heard all these coaches and retirement planners say, don't retire from something, retire to something. He said, “I don’t know what I'm retiring to, so I'm just going to keep working.” That's not an ideal answer. So, I've got an idea, and that is, as you mentioned, these four pillars to a balanced retirement life.
These are things that I think everyone needs to have some of in their life.
The first one is contributions. In order to be happy and satisfied as a human, we need to be contributing. That can be a big C like a new business or a part time job or it can be a small C. Things like simple volunteer activities, or maybe it's just mentoring someone, or helping with a grandchild.
Just little things can be your contribution to the world, but how are you making the world, or making your world, a better place?
Roger: See, when I hear that word contribution, I start thinking big C, and changing the world. I always feel like I don't really, I'm not involved in my community. I don't really volunteer and I feel inadequate or not balanced as a result of that. So how small can these contribution C's be?
Well, I laugh at you saying that, because you've got hundreds of members of the Rock Retirement Club, thousands of listeners to the podcast, who you help every week. So, you're making those contributions, but it can be really small.
You know, when we talk about meaning, we talk about things that are important to you. It's an intrinsic feeling, and that can be very small. It's whatever is meaningful to you, that you can contribute to, the people around you, the place you live in, that's all it takes.
I think that's where we get off track seeking some big purpose, is we think it needs to be bigger than it is. It needs to give you a feeling that you're contributing, that you're needed.
So could example of this be because one thing that came to mind that is a little C, be if you have a policy of, I just hold the door open for somebody and smile at them.
Kevin: Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I think if you go through life with an attitude of gratitude, sorry for rhyming, but if you're grateful for what you have, then you're going to be nicer. I think holding the door open, giving, just meeting people with a smile. You can make someone's day if they're having a bad day if you greet them with a big smile, you can sometimes turn their day around and yes that is contributing. You're making an effort to contribute to improving someone else or make their day a little brighter.
Roger: I like that one just contributes in some way. What's number two?
Kevin: Number two and this is one a lot of us think about its wellbeing. It's a little broader, though, I think, than we often think about it.
We think about physical fitness. We think about nutrition and diet, taking care of our weight, exercise. That's important. That's a big important part of wellbeing. But it also goes to mental wellbeing. Emotional wellbeing, the most needed trait of a retiree, resilience, having the right mindset. If you're religious, it can be your spiritual life.
All those things go into your own wellbeing. My point with these four pillars we're talking about is, you need to have a mix of them in your retirement. If one of them is missing, You're not going to be in balance and, you know, we talk about when you're working. What do we always talk about? Work life balance, right?
A lot of us claim we didn't have good work life balance. We're always seeking that. Well, in retirement, you don't think of it, but it's still the same sort of thing. You've got to balance these 4 pillars and taking care of your own wellbeing is important. You need to know what you need. Some of us need alone time. Others need to always be in a group. You need to be your own diagnostician, I guess it is.
Roger: Okay, what's number three?
Kevin: Number three, connections. You might think of relationships, in which we talk about the non-financial pillars. This is connections. This is connections. Most importantly, with your spouse, if you have one, or your partner, but then your family, your friends, everything.
Acquaintances, that person you hold the door open to and greet with a smile, those are connections you're making with other people. All of the research is really solid that this is probably the most important factor to longevity, having those connections in your life.
Roger: I had an exercise that was shared with me that I'm going to incorporate in the non-financial master class.
I don't even think I've shown you this, Kevin. It was, it came, and I don't have the source because it was passed along by Bobby, actually, came from a Harvard professor related to happiness, etc. It was a source of support in your life. The example was to go through an audit of connection, as you're talking about, where it says, my relationship with Kevin.
Right. So, I'll say I put it, I have a relationship with Kevin and then I would rate Kevin in one of these categories of what does Kevin support me with and the categories on the little worksheet that was shared with safety and security, learning and growth, that's a definite check for Kevin, emotional closeness and confiding. I wouldn't say that we have that. Identity, affirmation, and shared experiences. We have some of that as we've gotten to know each other. Romantic intimacy. We don't have that, Kevin. Help, definitely physical and practical and fun and relaxation. The idea is to list your, the people in your life and who fills what buckets.
Kevin: Yeah, I like that a lot. You know, I want to touch on one of those Roger and tell me again.
Roger: There's safety and security, learning, emotional closeness and confiding.
Kevin: That's it. That's the one I wanted. Emotional closeness and confiding don't we really as men have problems with that?
Roger: I don't feel like sharing with that with you.
Yes.
Kevin: Okay. Not me. How many men do you share those feelings with and thought? I think men have a real problem with.
Roger: Oh, we totally do. We totally do.
Kevin: Well, but men especially and the research that I was talking about on the importance of connections talks about the deeper the relationship, the more confiding the relationship, the better it is. That's something that I know I'm trying to do more of with friends is touching on some of those topics that we tend to keep bottled up. I think that's important to think about.
Roger: It is, and if you're married, sometimes it's important to have at least someone outside your spouse to be able to do that with it too, right?
Kevin: Right.
Roger: Another one that hit on this one for me was like fun and relaxation. Like, who in my life is my fun and relaxation friend? Right now, I have a hard time coming up with that.
I guess it would be my son and my daughter. But, this audit, we're going to incorporate that in the non-financial masterclass, but I thought this was a good audit to sort of look for blind spots. I wasn't planning on even sharing it until you brought it up.
Kevin: Yeah, I'm thinking of myself, you know, I have friends when we get together, we'll do golf trips, things like that. I know when you and I get together, we usually try to play golf, we try to play pickleball. So, we do some of that, but I know what you mean.
Sort of fun and relaxation, you need to think about that.
Roger: Yeah.
Kevin: Okay, the fourth pillar to a balanced retirement life is leisure. Here, I think you really want to balance your portfolio, if you will, of leisure activities. You want physical activities, intellectual activities, social activities, some self-activities, especially if you're more introverted, all those things.
You want a balanced portfolio so that your leisure life is balanced. We've talked about leisure before needing to be a diversion from your day-to-day life, maybe a diversion from the contributions you're making. Then it's more leisurely. Leisure gives you respite from your daily life, and so that's why I think you want a balance of these things.
Roger: I love these four pillars. Now, I'm trying to think of how do you go about evaluating them? I have one idea, but did you have anything you wanted to share?
Kevin: Well, it's just to make sure you're touching on all four of them in your weekly life. You're not going to hit all four of them necessarily every day, but if you're not hitting all four of them weekly, you've got a problem and you're not balanced. You're out of balance.
My whole point with these four, and then I'll let you tell me how you would go about filling these buckets of a balanced life. But my point is, if you balance these things, you will have purpose and meaning in your retirement. You don't need to look for it. You don't even need to identify it if you want, you will have purpose and meaning. I promise you, if you feel like you're making contributions, if you're taking care of your own wellbeing, if you are making strong connections with those you love and care about, and if your leisure activities are balanced and fun and exciting to you, if you do that, forget purpose and meaning.
You've got a great retirement life.
Roger: We put so much pressure on ourselves. Me too. I love that. The way that I was thinking about it was, and you can use this in different domains as well, is like, if you think of categories. What we did, and they were similar to these, was what is working right now in this domain?
Right? Let's say relationships. What is working in relationships? Then answer that question. Then the second is, what's missing in this area? Then, what's not working in this area? It could be certain relationships that aren't serving or whatever. Then what's confusing in this area? I thought those four questions were really good ways to take a domain like one of these four and just sort of observe it a little bit.
Kevin: Yeah, and I like the idea of combining them. So, pick a leisure activity that gets you connected with friends, that helps with your own physical fitness and health. Maybe you contribute. You know, I know one of our members helps pick up in the parks as he hikes through the parks, you know, think about that's really combining. All of them, if you do that.
Roger: I mean, we have another member that I think you did a meetup within the club a year or so ago, who is a security expert, cybersecurity expert, and he's actually going to come on the show and talk through some of this AT&T breach and things to do, and that's a way of contributing.
He doesn't have to do that.
Kevin: I'll listen for that one. I got one of those letters too.
Roger: Well, you always contribute in a wonderful way. Thanks, Kevin.
Kevin: Thanks, Roger.
TODAY’S SMART SPRINT SEGMENT
Roger: On your marks, get set,
and we're off to set a little baby step you can take in the next seven days to not just rock retirement, but rock life. Well, you know what it's going to be. It's going to be to grab the worksheet in our 6-Shot Saturday email. You can get that at rogerwhitney.com so you get it every Saturday morning and start to think about what your ideal retirement will look like absent whatever resources you have.
Dream big here, and then next week we'll start to organize the resources. So that's your task this week.
ADDENDUM: MY COLORADO UPDATE WITH MARK ROSS
So, this is an addendum to the show for those that have an interest in what is going on with Roger and his relocation to Colorado. I share bits and pieces, but I try not to be too open about it because the show isn't about me. It's about you and rocking retirement, but we're on this journey of relocating to Colorado, and it's taken a lot of twists and turns that many of you have asked me about.
I've gotten a lot of emails saying “Roger, close the loop. It's a cliffhanger.” What's going on? So, we thought we would come on here at the end of the show for those that are interested and just talk about it. To do that, rather than me talking about it, a really good friend, Mark Ross, who is on the show and coach, is curious. I thought I'd let him be curious with me and just ask me what he wants to know.
Mark: Well, Roger, thanks for this opportunity for all of us just to learn more about the journey and what we can learn from you in this process. I know it's not you alone. It's you and Shauna and families involved in all this, I'm sure.
But here you are. I'm looking at you sitting in your townhome in Colorado, where did this idea begin the townhome or the idea of Colorado, the idea of Colorado?
Roger: Okay, because I'll tell you the townhome wasn't even an idea two and a half months ago, which we can get to that maybe. I had been in Colorado on business decades ago and wanted a mountain bike and raft, so I pulled out Google or whatever the search engine was at the time and I found this town called Salida, which is two and a half hours away. So, I added on a couple of days and rented a car and drove down there and that's how I found Salida, Colorado and had come back periodically when I was visiting by myself.
That was my first introduction to Salida and that was decades ago. Then in 2018, Shauna and I did a Colorado trip to Estes Park, which is north of here a ways. We arranged, we went to Fort Collins and then we spent a night or two in Salida. That was her first introduction to it, but we had always imagined that we wanted to be what I called hub and spoke.
We wanted to always stay in Texas and then travel to different places and I would work for a month or two at a time. Salida is one of those spokes and we imagined doing lots of other spokes, other directions, and a lot of that just didn't really materialize.
Mark: Yeah, so these earlier conversations that you had with Shauna, what was that like?
Roger: I wouldn't say they were like project management intentional. They were casual conversations of, I had worked previously, as a lot of people know, too, you know, my business is location independent. So, I didn't start that way 10, 15 years ago. Most of my career wasn't. I was intentional about trying to do that, so we would be able to work and be in different places. This was, thinking about a hub and spoke was, okay, now we are somewhat location independent. The team's virtual. Everyone we work with is all over the country. So, we have that freedom. Our kids were launched to college. So, I wouldn't say it was these big intentional conversations.
It was more of just following trails that made sense.
Mark: Which one of you is maybe more optimistic? Like, yeah, this can really work.
Roger: That's totally me. I'm totally, oh, this works. Yeah, we can do that. Let's go try it. Shauna, in this area anyway, is much more settled and not thinking about what possibly could be, at least in our conversations.
I'm always the one that's driving these types of conversations. Because I'm always wanting to go explore and adventure is one of my core values. The concept of, I remember when we, after going to Salida, the concept of renting a house for five weeks, which we did, I think in the first time in 2019, that was outside of her perception of possible.
Well, how would we do that? What would we do with the dog? Can we even rent a house? It would be way too expensive. That was sort of her response to it, and then she agreed to test it. Then she started to see, oh, well, it's not too expensive. They allow dogs and it works out house wise and everything else. I'm definitely the driver of these types of things for good and bad.
I've had the driving of this where I didn't have a governor and I've gotten myself into issues mainly in my twenties and thirties. But, you know, God willing, we're a little bit more mature about it now.
Mark: So, what was the first time you realized, Hey, maybe we really could move here, and what was the decision that you made that helped make a big step forward?
Roger: I would think it was in 2020, which was our second trip. Then we did another one in 2021, it was 2020. You're like, we could have a place here. You know, the kids are launched financially. It was feasible. I think going back is why, right? What are the drivers to even think that it might be possible?
That might be a better place to start is. I love hiking, I love mountain biking, I love rafting, Shauna loves hiking, she loves outdoors. Where we live is getting more and more congested. You know, I'm tired of freeways, she's tired of freeways. The weather, we live in Fort Worth, Texas, where it's hot and it's humid and it's really, really, really, really hot and really, really, really humid.
Shauna health, you know, around this time in 2019 or so, she was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis, and that's been a journey for her, and every time we went to, like, we would visit Florida, and she would feel horrible because of the humidity and all of that, and the heat, and whenever we visited Colorado, she felt much more active and healthier and happier. For her, I think it was that realization. She has this condition, it's manifesting itself in certain ways, and she is a lot healthier and happier there.
She realized it, and I realized it, and that internally for me was a driver of, and selfishly too, because I like all the things I do. stuff here too, but I need to get that for her because she's more of who she is without all the, as much of the aches and pains.
Mark: Oh yeah. That's a big deal in a relationship. You know, we each want both of us to be happy and we sometimes have common happiness factors and other times like the physical part is like, man, if I feel good, I can live almost anywhere, right?
Roger: Yeah, and then you start to get that. I didn't really think of it in this term, but you know, life becomes more asymmetric as you get older.
I'm 57 and she's 58 and we started this in our, you know, this journey in our mid-fifties of realizing our kids are launched. We're finally financially in a place where we have some margin, which felt good after a long period of not at times, you know, and she's articulated this. She's not sure how long she'll be able to do the things that she loves to do.
You know, and just like me, she has injuries, past injuries, but she has the overlay of this. So, we started to think of time and that wow, if we want to do certain things, we better get doing them, because we might not be able to, or at least at the level that we want. So that pressure to live a great life today and not deny was there.
How do you do that without still not hurting yourself when you're 80 financially? That was, but those are the things that were pushing us towards these types of things. It started with those month long trips every summer.
Mark: Hmm. A lot of members in the Rock Retirement Club are facing questions like this.
Some of them really want to go and move and experiment with this and see how they can make it happen. All those things you mentioned and more are factored into this because we are at a season life. Many of us where we want to go-go while we can. And that means different things to different folks.
So, let's talk about how for a moment. How did you. Really get to the next step in this process, this journey of where you're sitting today. I mean, where did that really take place and walk us through that?
Roger: So, in 2021, we bought a lot, a lot to build a house just outside of town. In hindsight, it wasn't as well thought out as it should have been or could have been.
I feel a little bit of embarrassment about that. I think I'm a really good retirement planner. Much easier for other people, but I'm in my own mix of emotions. So, I frame buying that lot as me buying the mental image of what I want in my life and letting the emotional part drive that particular purchase, just like you might buy an RV on a whim or something like that. You're buying the mental image of it. I could have been more diligent and had a better pace, but it filled a major emotional need of planting a flag, I guess, in hindsight.
Mark: Let's pause there for a second. So, in retirement talk, there's the acknowledgement, at least the way you see it, the way you've articulated it, that sometimes we need to make decisions and we want the right decision. We want the perfect decision. We want a decision that will give us the results that bring certainty. And did you think that that was the wrong decision? Or how do you really look at that now looking back at it? What would you say?
Roger: Well, I haven't quite reconciled. I would say financially, it was the wrong decision, but I had never used the term of planting the flag. Is it metaphorically or symbolically to plant the flag of we will have a place here? It was the right mental decision.
Mark: Okay.
Roger: From the financial standpoint, and I've walked with people that have done the similar type of things in the past, it was a financial misstep, we'll call it, but the fact that we paid cash for it and didn't do debt for it, and the fact that the cash that we spent on that lot was not disastrous, it wasn't below the death line, if you think of good to great, made it a lot easier to deal with, whereas if I had not really, if I'd been really constrained and I used a loan to buy a lot, I had enough margin to where it was a bad bet that's not going to really derail your life. So, I feel good about that part of it.
Mark: It sounds like it was a calculated risk. You didn't just say, where's my pile of cash and I want to buy a lot and plant a flag.
Roger: Yeah, it was calculated risk, but I think I could have been more thoughtful about it in hindsight, but that's hindsight and I'm an emotional dude.
It's easier to plan when you're not inside the bottle of that mix of emotions and desires and fears and all that.
Mark: Well, it didn't sink the ship.
Roger: Didn't sink the ship.
Mark: Yeah. So, what happened next?
Roger: The next iteration was in 2022, when we did another trip out to Colorado, we went to the lot, we had a builder, we had an architect and we walked the lot of, okay, how are we going to build this? There are some complications with the lot that I should have been aware of but wasn't when I bought it in terms of groundwork, et cetera, that was going to cost a lot more than the gentleman that we bought the lot from shared. I didn't do due diligence at that time. That was really going to increase the cost just to get the lot ready to build and, in the neighborhood, there was another lot for sale that is, some people are rolling their eyes now, just like I am, that had didn't have those issues, you know, this area doesn't have a lot that comes up, which was much higher. It had river access. It was like on a little ridge where you had great views and you started to do the calculations.
This is me talking. The amount of money to get the lot that we own prepared for building was a third to a half of the cost of this other lot, and the other lot had a lot of attributes that were much more attractive. So, I started to do mental calculations. Again, we all know where this is going, and this is the part that it's not embarrassing, but I guess I still haven't reconciled it, is Okay, we did that.
Paid cash for it. Within margin, it wasn't going to kill us. Then we got to the business of selling the first lot, which we have not sold yet.
Mark: Okay.
Roger: So that was the next iteration. See, this is a little transparent, right? It's a little, not embarrassing, but I'm the one that's, I'm the answer man. I'm supposed to have all the answers, right?
Mark: Hey, we're all in search of these answers through our filter and experience and just curious if you're willing to go here just for a moment, just because I think it would help all of us to identify just to say, yeah, we've been there to in other ways. What was it like for you and Shauna? What were the conversations like about, okay, this lot won't work. Now this lot looks better and forward moving guy.
What were the little conversations you like to talk about like at that time or were there?
Roger: To me, it was a slam dunk. Oh yeah, we got to do that. It was a slam dunk. It just made so much more sense if we're getting to a place where there's a permanent decision.
Right, where we're going to stake our flag and where we're going to have our place. The views were much better, the walk out to the river, everything. Then financially, it was, you know, assuming we sell the lot, the delta wasn't that big and Shauna came around to it quicker than I expected.
Mark: Okay.
Roger: Yeah, quicker than I expected.
Mark: That I would imagine is because y'all done a lot of life together. There's trust built up. You're a forward moving guy and you haven't sunk the ship yet.
Roger: No, I haven't, and I came close in my 30s, but I had learned a lot of lessons and we've grown a lot together between then and now.
Mark: So, yeah, which says a lot.
So, there you are with two lots. I remember you mentioning a while back and you're laughing now. This is so good, Roger. We want to hear all this because we can all identify in our own way. What was the next step? I remember you talked about having an architect on board.
Roger: So, the next step was to have the architect create the plan. We went through that. So that's from 21 to 22. Well, let's say we know in 22 to 23, we bought the second lot in 22 and then we contracted with the architect working with the builder who is an independent builder, got the plans done, right, got, you know, went through the process of the plans, which is not inexpensive and is a drawn out process we had, you know, so that was a journey that both of us were on for about a year and then the plans were done and then the builder took the plans. In 23, the intent was to break ground fall of 23, the plans were created, you know, done in mid-23 and the builder came back with the plans and it was about 50, 60 percent higher than what he had been estimating it would be in terms of the cost.
I remember when he sent us the calculated cost. It actually helped that it was so high because it was like, ain't going to happen. It really made the decision easy because it was so laughably high relative to what we understood that it would be and what I won't say he guided us to what it would be. But that's a hard thing to do, and I understand that.
Also at this time, because there's some family considerations there. That we have during this time in 2023, Shauna's dad passed. So, we live about a mile and a half from Shauna's parents and from Shauna's twin sister, and in 2023, her dad passed, had a stroke. Her mom, Linda, is 82 years old and lives about a mile and a half from us. So, she's been going through the journey of that after being married 40 plus years. We knew this wasn't our full-time home. This would be a part time home until Shauna mom's journey passed. We're not going to leave her cause she's grounded in her church and her community and her neighborhood. That made it even easier to say, no, that ain't going to happen because we're not going to be there full time because we're going to honor that journey with family.
That's where we were. So, we. For 24, we once we said, but once we laughed at that number for 24, we rented a house or a VRBO for 5 weeks for June.
Mark: Now the plans. Where are they now? Where they rolled up, where they filed?
Roger: Now the plans. In February and March of this year, we were excited. We have family coming out for summer in Colorado and we had always been just casually looking at what's on the market and things like that. Again, I was the driver of what the heck are we doing?
You know, it's clear we're not going to build that house for a while, maybe 10 years. This is where we want to be. What are we doing? Asymmetric, you know, Shauna's health issues, our desires to be here. What are we doing? So, we started looking and we found a townhome that was half the cost of what we were going to build. Actually, bigger and right in town on a green belt. I started talking to Shauna about that and she was like, there's no way we can do that. I'm like, well, when I look at it, we can do that if we want to. So, we very quickly, we had been to the town a lot so it's not like we didn't know the area and places, but we did a tour. Via FaceTime, put our offer on it, got it accepted. Then we were, Oh, well, you should probably fly up there and actually walk it. So, we flew up there in a snowstorm and walked it. It was everything we thought, and so we ended up purchasing it.
Mark: Wow. So, you rewind the clock and years ago, you find Salida, fast forward to back in the 2017 -18 range.
Maybe we can move here. Let's buy a lot. Let's plant a flag. And by the way, planting a flag in our mind, in your case with the cash, you did it. You’re committed. Along the way, here's the drumroll for the question. Your whole theme, I think this, and I think you'll agree is like, we can't figure all this stuff out in advance. There's always going to be uncertainty, but I believe in this agile process of thinking about how do we Rock Life in a retirement? What is that really going to be like?
So, here's the question. How would you describe your alignment in this journey with the agile process that you talk about so much?
Roger: I think it aligns well, because if you think visually, we're all standing on a teeter totter, and we're balancing in the middle, and on one end we want to have a great life today and we realize the asymmetrical nature of time as we get older, and health, and everything else, and we want to have a great life on one end, But we also want to be good stewards and have a good, great life when we're 80 and financial constraints are a reality for virtually everybody.
There's a balance between those things and family and emotions and mixes. When we bought the townhome, and I've had coaches and friends in my life and I've made a lot of financial mistakes in my past, just like all of us. I was too far towards living a great life today and not really being a good steward for tomorrow in my twenties and thirties. I was so, I have this optimistic can-do nature and it wasn't governed. I went through the punches in the face and the face plants and all that other stuff. For my thirties and forties, overcorrected to being very conservative on the financial part because I didn't trust myself and all the mistakes.
In the process of buying the house, I had some come to Jesus calls with a good friend and coach to give me perspective of, am I really making a disastrous mistake here? Can I really afford this? What can go wrong? You know, cause when you're a business owner, you think everything can blow up tomorrow, which technically it could. I had to have my own outside perspective to help validate no, you're not stretching yourself. You actually can do this. Yes, there's risk. There's always risk. But you're okay. I had to have that because I got very, the voice outside my head is what the heck are you doing? So, I think I have followed it from an agile perspective and part of iterating is having to take small losses, right? Of, oh. I invested in that friendship for a year and it really didn't work out and I need to iterate and not have that person in my life or go view another direction. That could be a way of thinking about it.
Well, that's a loss, right of time and resources. Just like a lot is a loss. I think what made it where I feel comfortable with it is, The losses on that first lot, which we probably won't sell for what we bought, the second lot the idea was once we move here permanently, then we can build that house, but I don't know if that will happen, is all of the losses in these cases were within the margin to where yeah, they're annoying. I'm a little embarrassed, but they're not devastating, right? I think back to the Retirement Plan Live case study we did in January with the couple that got married late in life.
They got married very quickly. I don't know the end story of all of that, but it appears that that was a very big risk where the pain is going to be a lot bigger than it maybe needed to be had they gone a little bit slower. So, I definitely think it fits the agile process. I am trying to find my balance just like everybody else's.
Mark: Yeah. Wow. So, you've been there in the townhome officially since May 18th for the summer for a week or two or three. Have there been any moments of new clarity since you've been there?
Roger: Oh, this is awesome. Now we're both wondering, will we ever build a house? This is really nice. It is, you know, I think, you know, we grew up always having a house and, and that sort of, you have a house in your yard. Now we're in a townhome, zero landscape. We walk everywhere. We definitely feel we made the right decision. Yeah, by far.
Mark: What would you say to anyone out there that is listening to this and they're kind of beating themselves up about some. Call it what you will, mistakes, financial blunders, whatever. What would you say to them to encourage them?
Roger: I think it's okay to beat yourself up, right? I think it's okay to beat yourself up and go through a grieving process or a processing of why did I do that? What were the drivers of that? What worked in it? What could I have done better? So, you can, you know, improve your decision making. I think you definitely have to do a debrief, but that's what you have to do, a debrief, you know, that mistake.
For the longest time, the mistakes I made in my twenties and thirties, Subconsciously defined who I am and my trust in myself and that was part of, you know, the coaching work of I'm not that person anymore. I'm a different person, but I'm still acting out of those fears and emotions as if I were that person when I'm actually a totally different person.
I think it's important to go through that debriefing process and then start trusting yourself again. Because we're all making mistakes. Everybody is making mistakes. And all of this stuff is supposed to be challenging. Nobody has this all figured out. We think of, put in your mind, think of the person that you think has it figured out in life, and if you actually go talk to them, they're a mess inside, and they're doing all the same stupid things that, not stupid, but, you know, mishaps that we all are.
Mark: What's encouraging to me is number one, I've known you for a while, and so we're not like strangers in this conversation, but here's somebody who works with lots of people over a long period of time trying to figure this stuff out, and you still are figuring your own stuff out, even though you know way more than many of us about the intricacies of all this.
When it gets right down to it, it's all about making decisions. What matters most? What's the calculated risk? How do we mitigate regret in the future? It's just like it brings great comfort to know that I can think of several things for me in the last couple years and go man, I wish I had done that in reverse because that would have been better financially But you know what in the big game in the big picture? It's just it's not going to matter. It's just not going to matter.
Anything else that you want us to know before we go?
Roger: Well, I do think it's critically to have people in your life that can be, you know, I think Arthur Brooks talks about, I think it's Arthur Brooks, people that can be in the balcony and building this ability to be in the balcony to get perspective on what's going on.
My coach and my friends do that for me in the club. I think we do that for each other. You know, the role that I play when I'm working directly with people is I'm in the balcony. I don't have an emotional attachment to things. I don't know the answers, but I can help make sure that we have perspective, right? Because when you don't have perspective, it's you're just going to act out of fear or desire or whatever, like I did with the first lot and made up my mind and not, you know, it's more about improving decision making.
So, having that ability to get perspective from somebody is very helpful.
Mark: I like to think of in order to, as we say, rock retirement, meaning really live your best life with all things considered it's a team sport. It really is. It is.
I have one suggestion for you, something to consider. Is somewhere if you don't have it already out on your deck of your beautiful town home, put a flag out there, thinking back, I planted a flag and here's my flag. It's just a reminder of big ideas that can come true. And there's no straight line to get there most of the time.
Roger: Ooh, I love that. I love it. Yeah. Thanks, Mark.
Mark: Thank you, Roger. It's been awesome.
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