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Episode #554 - Stories from Unique Retirements
Roger: The show is a proud member of the Retirement Podcast Network.
Welcome to the show. We got a lot to cover today, so let's get this party started.
We are finishing up a month-long series on unique retirement, specifically expat life, and retiring with children with special needs and we've heard from two people that approach it from the advisory end in guiding people. But when you're dealing with unique situations, people that are living the situation generally are the most versed on all the specifics because they're going through it. Today we're going to share three different stories on living unique retirements.
Two stories on the expat life. One from Doug, who I would say is an expert on living overseas full time. He's done it most of his life and is retired in Thailand. Then we're going to hear from Richard, a good friend of mine, who's in the midst of preparing for retirement while two of his children have special needs and managing how to make sure they're okay financially and launch them, but also take care of our retirement. He's going to share his journey and he has another unique perspective because he's living it, but he also has a business called Special Sitters that serves that community and helps place people to help lend a helping hand.
Then lastly, we have Rhoda and Rob who are earlier on the journey of the expat life and they're doing more of a hub and spoke. I think their stories, people actually doing this can be very helpful in navigating your journey. That's what we're going to do today.
A couple of things I want to say before we get to their stories.
Number one, is just a general comment about doing retirement planning that I just feel moved to share. If you're not retired yet, you probably are used to accumulating assets and growing and saving assets and perhaps you're hearing these new terms of decumulation, sequence of return risk, 4 percent rules, all this stuff that is a little bit foreign, pie cakes, and it can be uncomfortable. You're at the beginning of your mastery journey of managing your plan, either by yourself, on your own, or with an advisor, and trying to get the lay of the land. It can feel uncomfortable, it can feel very intimidating, and that is okay. I just want to affirm to you that that is okay and that is totally normal. You shouldn't expect to feel comfortable in understanding terms or doing a process, a retirement planning process that you've never done before or really thought about in detail before. It should feel uncomfortable. That's normal and you just need to put in the reps at whatever pace you're comfortable with. I want to promise you it will become more comfortable and you'll become more adept at planning retirement on your own or being a great client and listening to a podcast like this can help in that journey. But it's easy to be really intimidated because it's so weird and I feel like an idiot here. I don't know any of this stuff. That's normal.
Here's maybe a good analogy or not. I don't know, but it makes sense to me. I am taking golf lessons and I've been golfing for years and I'm not that great. I'm okay. I've been taking lessons. I really like my coach and I'm here in Salida and I've been walking to the golf course with my eight iron and just going to the range, something I've never done before to practice how I'm supposed to swing, which is not how I swing. Every movement, the three or four basic movements that I'm trying to ingrain are really uncomfortable. So I go a lot slower. I put in the reps of trying to live in this uncomfortableness of the way I'm supposed to hold my arm and turn my hips. Then sometimes I'll do one part right and screw up the other part and it's all discombobulated. Very similar. I'm trying to make this normal and become comfortable with this, and retirement plan is going to be the same way. That's my PSA for today.
Now next month on the show, this is the next thing I want to talk about is we are going to do encore shows. We are going to share the shows that we did a year or two ago, about a year ago, actually, that go over the eight pillars that I believe you need to have in place and work on in order to really be in a place to rock retirement.
There are four financial pillars. We're going to go over those and there's four non-financial pillars that can create a solid foundation for living a life that minimizes regret. So, we're going to air those shows next month. That's going to, one, help reaffirm this for you so you can put in some reps and it's also going to help me because we are working on some projects on another master class and we're going to rejigger some of the production of the show to try to improve it for your benefit. So, it'll be a win-win there. I wanted to share that. That's what we're going to be doing next month.
Last thing is before we get to the stories, we're actually going to start with the smart sprint today.
TODAY’S SMART SPRINT SEGMENT
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.
All right. In the next seven days, I want you to identify what kind of community has served you well, or what kind of community you think you want to find in order to help you get to where you want to go.
I want you to put some thought into that, and here's why. One of the common threads I've seen in these unique retirements, but I see very often, is this community aspect of growing. when we're going through changes. So as an example, when you have children, it's very helpful to have some cohort or community of people that already have children, maybe that are four or five years old, if you have a young one, so they can help you have perspective on what you're going through and you can learn from their wisdom. Or me living here in Salida. I've been leaning on and making friends and talking to people that live here and integrating into that community because they know where I should go, what I shouldn't do, how I pay my bills, where the garbage pickup is and everything. They are accelerating my journey to mastery because I can lean on them and to me the questions, I have felt stupid. I should know this stuff, but to them they're happy to help us. It's become clear in these unique retirements that the people that are going to know the most about retiring with special needs children are people that have already done it or that are doing it.
They have such a vested interest. They're going to be in the Facebook groups doing the research. Yes. Someone like Jane or the gentleman we had on to explore retiring with special needs children can help from a planning perspective, but nobody's going to know it better than the people that are doing it. Or an expat life, the people that have actually had to navigate it have a lot of wisdom that they're willing and many times eager to share. Community is really important. I think the same thing about retirement planning, where can you have these conversations to learn? So, I want you to think about that.
With that, let's get on to the stories.
STORIES FROM AN EXPAT
All right, our first story is from Doug, who is a full-time expat retired in Thailand. So as part of sharing the ideas of unique retirements and expat living being one of them, we had a conversation with Jane last week that gave some of the landscape, but I received an email from a longtime listener and friend of the show, Doug, who emailed me originally, right, Doug? About a year and a half ago? I disappointed a lot of people that emailed me then and you reached out again and I appreciate that. Doug has been living an expat life for over 30 years in his professional career and in retirement.
So, give me a profile of how that life unfolded, Doug.
Doug: Long after college. I mean, I lived in Europe in the early years. So travel was kind of in my blood after college. I worked for a couple years in the U. S. and then for 32 years, I worked as an expat for a major U. S. defense contractor working at U. S. military bases and government facilities all over the world, primarily Japan and Germany for most of that time.
That was 32 years, and then almost three years ago, when I retired, my wife and I moved to Thailand and we live in Chiang Mai now, which was her hometown.
Roger: Okay. How many countries have you been to in the world?
Doug: Actually, I've been to more countries than there are states. So I've been to 56 countries so far and I'll be adding Chile in October when I go to Easter Island.
So, travel is one of my addictions on the side.
Roger: For those of you that are club members, Doug plans on coming to the roundup in a month or so. If you have a question about expats, I'm volunteering with him without asking him to have a chat with you.
So, it's very complicated because you've lived in different countries, how have you experienced the different rules from different countries? Is this something you really need to be aware of? Or is it more uniform than we think it might be?
Doug: The only uniform part is the way the U. S. treats you. Your income is taxed worldwide, regardless of where you earn it. Then within each country, then you may or may not be subject to local taxation on your earnings in that country and also some may tax worldwide income and want to try to tax you for your income in the U. S. But there are tax treaties between the U. S. and many, many countries, and those lay out the rules for what's taxed where. In retirement, for example, a lot of the tax treaties specifically don't allow the foreign country to tax your social security or tax your pensions and so forth. That simplifies things for retirees anyway, but working as an expat, it became very complicated because even the US taxes you on benefits. So, when my kids were in high school in Japan, their tuition cost was on my W2's income and that and other things greatly inflated my W2 to be much more than my salary. That affected taxes significantly.
Roger: Then like you're in Thailand, do they have a tax treaty? Is that a common thing across the world?
Doug: Yes. Thailand has a tax treaty right now. They're looking at taxing money when it's brought into Thailand if it hasn't been taxed before, they're thinking about doing a worldwide income taxation like the U. S. does, but again, if it was taxed in the U. S. already, you would get a tax credit and it complicates things somewhat. It all depends on the visa you're on and your status. The visa that I'm on specifically exempts foreign income from being taxed in Thailand. So that greatly simplifies things.
Roger: So, the visa that you're on, is it, do they have like retiree visas? That's probably a country-by-country classification as well, I would imagine.
Doug: Yeah, the rules and the criteria for the retiree visa chain is different in every country. In fact, in Thailand, they have multiple retirees categories. You have to be over 50 is the prime issue then you have to have money in a local bank account. The amount varies depending on whether or not you're married to a Thai or you're not married to a Thai. Then they have other categories, which I'm on a long-term resident visa, which I had to prove a certain amount of passive income and there's a number of benefits that go with that. But the key thing is that there, I don't have to worry at all about the potential of taxation of my U.S. income here.
Roger: Okay. Now with taxes and visas. How did you navigate this as you moved around in your professional career and perhaps in retirement? How does one start to get their hand around this?
Doug: During my professional career it was fairly easy because the U. S. government at the different facilities that I was at handled my status in that country, but I had to deal with taxation in the U. S. and those issues. For some years I was forced to be tax equalized. So, a company chosen by my employer did my taxes and charged a crazy amount of money for doing that that in turn was reported as my income. But that Tax equalization was a good benefit for me once my kids were in high school, for example, and my income was much higher than my salary would have been in the U. S. So, they equalized me to the taxes that I would have paid only on my salary.
Roger: Yeah, when you're not working, how are you navigating this? Are you doing it yourself or do you have someone that does this?
Doug: I did it myself. I mean, a number of people that come to Thailand or go to other countries use visa agents.
I'm a do it yourselfer on most things and basically decided to do that. It's not complicated if you just follow procedures. I mean, I'm an engineer by trade and I'm used to just following the steps necessary and persevere when you hit a roadblock and work your way through it.
Roger: When it comes to the tax part of it, if you're going to be long term resident, have you come across any resources that you might mention related to finding your tribe to navigate this?
Doug: There's a number of Facebook groups there, say retirees or expats in Thailand or in Germany or wherever you're looking to go. There are different groups out there and some of them are quite active on Facebook. That would be the first place to look as far as to find people that are already done it and get their advice.
Roger: Okay. Now you are a U. S. citizen, correct?
Doug: Correct.
Roger: You've lived overseas most of your life. It sounds like. If I were to write you a letter, an official letter, where would it go?
Doug: My legal address is in Washington state property there that's in the family. So, we maintain a U. S. legal address, which you definitely want to do to keep your, say your financial accounts on. That's the address I use on our taxes. It's beneficial for whatever your U.S. address is. Ideally, there's no state income tax in that state, especially if you're not going to physically be there all the time, why pay state income tax there? So that's the primary address. I mean, I have another address in the Boston area as well, but I don't really use it that much.
Roger: The Washington address, because you have family property, somewhat convenient. If you didn't have family property and you truly were living as an expat, do you have any wisdom on how you choose and obviously from tax perspective, but from a legal perspective, what the rules are around that?
Doug: There are a number of states that are easier than others. For example, Florida and Texas make it fairly easy to become a resident there and as long as you're moving there or changing your residency to there from a state that's not going to chase you, if you will, like if you're from California or New York or some of those other states with high income taxes, as long as you don't spend time in that state, it shouldn't be a problem. But some of them are very ruthless about chasing people down that they want to get income taxes from, but as far as establishing, say, legal residents in Florida, that's not a complicated thing or in Texas as well.
Then there are services. I think you've mentioned, like, for people that RV all over the place. You there's services where you could have a physical address that your mail goes to, and those services can scan your mail, send it to you electronically. You can have it forwarded via FedEx to you. There are various mechanisms for that.
But in general, you need the U.S. address and you want to maintain a U. S. driver's license, and also you register to vote there.
Roger: Part of having the U. S. address comes to like the financial accounts, right? If you have accounts at Schwab or at Vanguard, etc.
If you move to Thailand, as an example, knowing that you're going to live there long term, you don't want to change your address to your Thai address because that changes things with the financial institutions.
Doug: Some financial institutions, some banks in particular will close your bank account. If you change it to a non-U.S. address, they don't want to deal with any issues with you not being physically in the U. S. Also, the same goes with say Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab, you're just complicating things unnecessarily if you change it to a non-U.S. address, but you're also limiting what assets you can have in your accounts. You can't buy U. S. registered mutual funds if you have a foreign address on your account, and even dividend reinvestment stops. They won't close your account or force you to sell those assets, but you're complicating things.
Roger: You're going to be much more impaired and there's no issues if you don't actually live in the U. S. because it's all about the legal address that they're going to look like. So, it's not subverting a system per se. This is how the structure is designed. I assume.
Doug: Yes, I mean, you have a legal address and you can separately have a mailing address. You can have multiple mailing addresses that you could switch between.
I mean, that's what I had when I worked as an expat for many years. I had to maintain a U. S. legal address and just for various reasons, it was needed.
Roger: When you have, let's say Roger sends you a check for 100, 000 because I just love you. Where do you deposit that if I'm living in the U.S?
Doug: The wonderful thing now is that most banks, in my case, you know, my bank through the app, I can just take a picture of the check and deposit it.
Roger: Even if it's over, like my bank limits, no checks above 10, 000 so different banks have different rules.
Doug: I think, as I recall, my limits are much higher than that.
Roger: There's probably a restriction on me, Doug.
So you can just take a photo of the check and it goes to the local bank. If you want to get money from your let's say Vanguard account in the U.S., how do you transfer money?
Doug: There's a couple of different ways. One, which was mentioned on your last podcast, which is Wise transfers. It's a company that moves money around the world. It comes out as an ACH or like a check out of your bank account or using a debit card in the U. S. and then it deposits in local currency in your bank in another country. That's one way.
The other is ATM. Like, If you're going to be outside the US, you want a bank or institution where your ATM fees are refunded worldwide. Schwab and Fidelity and various other ones do that and we can get significant amount out of the ATMs without any fees on a daily basis, much more than we need.
Then lastly, doing a wire transfer, I can go online to my brokerage and initiate a wire transfer online and it goes right to my Thai bank account. For larger amounts, that's the way to do it. When we were building our house, for example, or buying a car with larger amounts, that was the more efficient way.
Roger: Then the banks do the exchange rate. I think if I recall generally, that's relatively fair.
Doug: It's a pretty good exchange rate on larger quantities. Sometimes Wise is better on smaller quantities, but the larger ones I've found that in my tests, I've done a side-by-side tests and they're pretty equal.
Roger: I love engineers. Doug, I'm so glad God made you.
Any other thoughts on the financial institution side? Because I'm going to go towards property.
Doug: No, the key thing is maintaining a U. S. address. I mean, that would be my recommendation. That just simplifies your life by maintaining a U. S. legal address on your accounts.
Roger: Now, you mentioned that you built a house in Thailand and whether someone's going to Portugal, every country has its different private property laws. What is your wisdom on owning physical property in another country? Obviously, you're very versed in this, so maybe you're more comfortable with it, but for those that might not be.
Doug: The laws and rules are different in every country. That complicates things. In Thailand, for example, as a foreigner, I can own a condo, but I can't own land. But since my wife happens to be a dual U. S. Thai citizen, she can own the land. So, we bought this land that we built the house on about 10 years ago with the thought of kind of like you bought your land in Colorado, but we actually built on ours.
The additional factor, I mean, I was comfortable with doing that, but then one factor too could be as if my wife happens to pass before me, I can't inherit the property. But our daughter is a dual citizen so she could own the property and I mean, I have no worries about it, but there are other ways to own property here that are much more complicated legal process that you can have a company on property, for example, so you could establish a company for other reasons and have that own your house and so forth.
Roger: Yeah. I imagine if you did not have a daughter and your wife predeceased you, there would have to be some additional planning in this case with Thailand.
Doug: There are legal mechanisms that you could put in place. For example, I could live here for as long as I wanted and type of thing, but I just couldn't own the property.
Roger: Okay and as we've said and Jane said a few weeks ago, every country is different when it comes to private property ownership, et cetera.
I think a lot of the answers, Doug, as I'm hearing you talk and the reading that I've done is you have to find your groups. If you want to go to Portugal, You want to find the people that have already done it, whether it's Facebook group or whatever tribe or organization and start talking to those people because every country is going to be different and that seems to be the best place to start the research.
Doug: Certainly, that's a good place to start research, but then, like was mentioned last week, is that need to actually go and spend time there and be comfortable with where you're going to go. A lot of people put in different Thailand groups. You know, I'm going to move to Thailand without being specific. There's lots of different places in the country where you could come and they're very different. Where we are in Chiang Mai is very different than the beaches or in the city of Bangkok and so forth. So, Some people love the city, some don't. Some want the beaches and some don't. You just need to go and check out the places, see if you're going to be comfortable there. While you're there, you can seek out people that are already there and learn from them as well.
Roger: That's an excellent point as you're exploring possibilities. Because, think of Texas, right? Where my home state is. If I was from another country, and I said, I want to go live in Texas. I'm going to go explore Texas with my spouse, and we decided to rent for two months in August in Houston. I probably wouldn't want to live in Texas.
Whereas, and I'm a little biased here, sorry, Houston, I love you guys, but if I had gone to Fort Worth, which is North Texas, still hot, but not as humid, just different vibe, I might have been, this is the best place in the world, and Thailand or Portugal, you're going to have the same experience depending on the region and the area, even if it's both two different big cities, right?
Doug: Yes, and Chiang Mai is the second largest city in Thailand, but it's not a big city like Bangkok or New York. You don't have the big high rises. It's just sprawling spread out. I mean, we're only 20 minutes from downtown and we have a mountain view from our house. It's a very different vibe than if you were in a congested city where you have a lot of traffic and it takes you a long time to get anywhere.
Roger: I imagine if you're thinking about a country then you're likely going to gravitate either to some stop you had on a vacation or the big city because that's what you find on the maps easily.
Doug: In some cases, when people ask the questions, some will throw out ideas of here's other places where you tend to have concentrations of expats that might be places you might want to look at.
Roger: That probably would be a good phase one of, if I knew I wanted to go to Portugal, go where a lot of expats are, because you're going to have a built-in social network to help show you the ropes. Then, maybe three or four years from now, you could go to phase two and go find a place in the mountains or whatever your jam is.
Doug: Yes.
Roger: Okay. Now, Doug, I assume at some point you're going to die. So, from an estate standpoint, Does your daughter live in the state? She's a dual citizen. Does she live with you in Thailand?
Doug: My daughter lives in Denver and we have a son that's in Boston.
Roger: Okay, when you and your wife pass, how does the estate work?
If they have Thai citizenship, it sounds like, I would assume is helpful, but how do they navigate that?
Doug: Well, the vast majority of our assets are in the U. S. Everything is either in revocable trust or in passes by beneficiaries, so we don't have anything that in the U. S. that would need to be probated. So that's pretty easy. Both the kids are the beneficiaries of the trust and trustees, so they'll have immediate access to everything.
In Thailand, it's a little more complicated if you had transferred a lot of assets to another country that the state and probate rules are also going to be very different in every place. So, in Thailand, just for my wife to get the money out of my bank account, she'd have to go through probate. You can't have a beneficiary on bank accounts here. Similarly with the property, but property is a little easier because they're on the property registration. You have family designated right on it so that would pass more clearly than what bank account that may have a few thousand dollars in it.
Roger: What have I not asked or what other things that you think somebody that's exploring the expat life that you had the benefit of living it professionally and sort of finding your sea legs via the companies that you've worked with and then in marriage.
For someone that's never done that like take Roger as an example, obviously find the groups that you want but what are the things that maybe I should have asked that I didn't?
Doug: The key thing is just really attitude and flexibility.
You need to be able to adapt to a new environment and embrace that new environment as opposed to coming here and expecting to be like Texas, for example, and there are some expats to do that. I saw it a lot on some military bases where I worked is people came from the U. S. to someplace in Japan or in Germany, and they complain that it's not the same. It's like, well, it's not the same. They weren't flexible. The key is flexibility, adaptability, embrace your new environment, embrace the culture. There's a lot to learn and just continue learning there. You certainly see in a lot of Facebook groups, there's keyboard warriors that they must be miserable people. They seem to attack everybody, but it's like, just relax, embrace the environment and enjoy life.
Roger: That makes me think of whenever we get in a car for a long trip. The first thing I ask is, do you have it? Now my kids know, and my wife even knows, and my friends know. It's like, yeah, we have it. It's their GA. You always got to bring your GA, which is your great attitude. It helps you adapt.
Doug, I'm giving you a virtual hug from across the world. I'm excited to give you a literal hug here in a month or so at the Roundup. Thank you so much for being so generous with your wisdom.
Doug: Thanks for having me on.
STORIES FROM A PARENT OF A DISABLED CHILD
Roger: Now let's hear the story of Richard and how he's navigating being a great father to children with special needs and trying to manage his own retirement.
Richard, as we were doing this primer on retirement and special needs specifically, I definitely wanted to talk with you because you've lived this from two different Now, you are a father.
You have four children. You have two that are special need.
Richard: That's right.
Roger: So how old are they currently?
Richard: Sarah and Alex are 27 years old.
Roger: Okay, and what is their disability for lack of a better term?
Richard: They both have cerebral palsy.
Roger: Okay, and you and I have known each other for what, like four or five years now, walking the journey of helping them find independence.
Richard: Yes.
Roger: How has raising two children with that disability changed your trajectory and how you think about retirement?
Richard: Well, it's changed our trajectory on how we live our lives day to day. How we spend our money and how we plan for the future. How it affects our thoughts on retirement, they flow more toward how Alex and Sarah are going to be cared for after we're gone, not only financially, but from a community perspective.
Roger: Hearing that, I didn't hear anything about your wife's retirement. I heard about how they are going to be okay when we're gone.
Richard: That's really the focus of what Kim and I have been doing over the past 27 years.
I think a lot of our needs are put on the back burner knowing that their needs are going to outlive us. I think we're trying to do a better job of working with people who help us set up a plan for us that carries us through our retirement, but also sets them up as well as our other kids for a solid future.
Roger: We were talking about this earlier about, you know, unless you're extremely wealthy, there's only so many resources available right to make sure that, you know, assuming they outlive you that they're cared for, well, that takes money away from you and Kim on whether it's retiring or the type of retirement.
That's going to be hard to balance.
Richard: It is, and I think for most families, like you said, unless you are blessed with the means, you're really just taking it a day at a time and doing the next right thing for your family. The long-term planning does take a back seat to the immediate needs of your kids and how to support them as they're moving toward independence on their own.
Roger: You and I have been in a group where once a month we get together in a room for an entire day and share life and talk about things in a safe spot personally, but also very professional and you know, it's like coaching. We have Nick Kennedy, our mutual friend and coach. I recall you saying at times and you said it earlier while we're driving over to where we're sitting today that early on especially it's just making it day by day. Always making sure the kids are safe and that they have what they need.
Not a lot of forward thinking, a lot of triage and managing the presence.
Richard: It's a lot of survival mentality at the beginning. There's a state of shock once you receive the diagnosis. Then it's just all hands-on deck day to day to maintain your marriage, to keep the family together, to provide the care that your kids with disability need but also to be a parent for your other children who aren't disabled. Also managing the relationship and your time so that your other children aren't disabled still feel they have an active mom and dad in their lives.
Roger: Yeah, that's a lot.
I think you've done a yeoman's job over the last four years thinking forward about what could my life, Richard's life, but also you and your wife's life be and still honoring that journey with the kids.
Richard: Yes.
Roger: In terms of what retirement could be?
Richard: Yes.
Roger: Now, in addition to walking this journey as a participant with four wonderful kids that you're loving on, two with disabilities. It gets to the point where it's easy to think about the ones that need the most, even just in how I said that you have four beautiful kids.
Richard: Kim and I did a great job, I think, in balancing that by including Alex and Sarah in everything we did as a family and including Thomas and Christian and everything we did for Alex and Sarah along their journey. So, there was really never a separation between Alex and Sarah and Thomas and Christian and our family.
We were all in it together. They all went to the appointments together. We all went to Thomas and Christian's sporting events together. We all vacationed together. Thomas and Christian enjoyed the benefits of some of the programs that Alex and Sarah participated in. For example, skiing at Wetter Park. We were able to go skiing with great people because Alex and Sarah were part of the National Sports Center for the Disabled.
We created an environment where everybody worked together. It was a symbiotic relationship between Thomas and Christian and Alex and Sarah.
Roger: Yeah, so on the non-financial side, there's so much to navigate, not just with respecting all of the kid’s needs, but also you and your wife. I mean, just having kids, I recall when Emma and Spencer were in their single digits to teens, you're so busy just with two kids, it's easy for a spouse to lose each other.
What steps have you guys taken to help make sure that that's preserved?
Richard: Yeah, absolutely. You know, we had four under four, is how it ended up working out with the kids. I give my wife the most credit for this, it's very intentional about just being a family. Having dinners together, bedtime routines, book reading, prayers, and having family activities on the weekends.
Just being intentional about creating a family. I think we would have done that anyway. But it became more important to do that with Alex and Sarah as part of our family.
Roger: I heard a phrase of when somebody's facing something difficult or unexpected, is that you feel like you're not capable enough to manage something, and that that's actually true but who you become expands to manage what you have to deal with.
Richard: I would agree with that. I think when Alex and Sarah were born, we had a lot of support from some church family that we were close to, but then after the initial shock, everybody returns with their other routines and you really understand that it's just going to be your wife and you on this journey.
Roger: I feel bad equating it to this, but when a spouse dies, everybody comes and is there, but then everybody goes back to their life and you're left to manage your new journey for the most part.
Richard: Exactly. Very, very true.
Roger: Okay, let's switch to the more practical side because you have a lot of experience there.
Obviously, you have the experience of managing it within being a parent, but you run a business that serves the same community.
Richard: That's right.
Roger: So now what's the name of your business?
Richard: It's called Special Sitters and that's based in Omaha, Nebraska.
Roger: What does Special Sitters do?
Richard: What we do is we provide in home care for kids and young adults with a disability.
Roger: If I have a child that's disabled, how do you navigate, because there is a decent safety net there. from the way you described it to me previously in previous conversations of Medicaid and getting help and getting special sitters to give some respite for you and your wife, but also to help transition.
Give me the framework for the benefit structure around that.
Richard: The process starts with the diagnosis that you receive for your child, and typically you'll meet with a hospital social worker who will then introduce you a service coordinator with the Department of Health and Human Services in your state. That individual then will meet with your family, identify the needs of your children, and then plug you into a program that best suits those needs.
Once that has happened, you then go out and you either on your own or through a referral from the service coordinator, choose a provider, whether it be an independent provider or an agency provider like special sitters, to provide care for your family. Then it's a matter of just scheduling those services with that agency or independent provider as you need them throughout the month.
Roger: As an example, you get an allotment of hours of a special sitter or somebody that the government program provides and pays for.
Richard: Yes, for example, in Nebraska, where we're based, every family is allotted 30 hours a month for a respite, which provides a chance to go out to dinner with your spouse, go grocery shopping, go for a walk. Depending upon the age of the child and whether or not both parents work, the state will also provide childcare services for you so both spouses can work and we provide services to support families with both of those opportunities.
Roger: It sounds awesome as a support system, not knowing the hours involved as a layman in this area for sure. It sounds like it's a lot to try to coordinate and manage. Do you have any idea of how many people have access to this type of support that either don't know about it, or it's too complicated, so they don't use it?
Richard: I would imagine more so than is publicly acknowledged. Like any government system is set up to be difficult to navigate and a lot of families will just end up giving up and then relying on parents, siblings, to provide care for their family so they can have a break and that ends up being few and far between when a parent gets a break under those circumstances.
What we try to do for families is we're like an air traffic controller, we will take their schedule, match it up with one of our caregivers, and then provide services to that family. Take over from the standpoint of when they call us and say, we need care for John on the weekends, we do all the back-end work for them, and then we present them with a solution that works and if the caregiver is acceptable to them, then we provide services.
Roger: Okay, so you help coordinate care and deal with the filing with the appropriate government.
Richard: Yes. Exactly. Our goal is the only interaction the family needs to have with us or the only steps they need to take is to let us know when they need care. From there we coordinate the care, we coordinate the service authorization from the Department of Health and Human Services, we find the caregiver, we do the scheduling and we follow up and we do the billing on their behalf.
Roger: Now, is this a normal structure throughout the country?
Richard: I think so. In most states, it's like this.
Roger: I'm in Texas here. If I needed this, I'm likely I could go on the internet and find a service similar to yours.
Richard: Yes, you'll probably start with your state's Department of Health Human Services in whatever name it's called, and you'll have to navigate that website to find the correct department.
Roger: I know that you have a need for care. So, if I need my 30 hours for respite, as an example, you may not have enough caregivers to give me the hours that technically I am allowed from, from a government reimbursement standpoint.
So, what happens then?
Richard: We always tell our families that, We most likely would never be able to fill all the hours you request so we suggest that you find another agency to work with us as a backup or vice versa. We've been backup for other agencies as well. We basically take a team approach to providing care for your family.
Roger: Then I just have to coordinate between them, the placement services essentially.
Richard: Yes, I mean, we talk back and forth to make sure that we're not going over the allotted hours that you have, so we don't burn through your hours faster than you need us to or that you want to. So, there's a lot of coordination, like coordination benefits.
Roger: How do you manage as a parent finding the quality aspect, the qualitative part of, okay, we get a body that will come and help from a quality of care, not just the quality of care, actually, because some of this is just, it's not care always. It's just a person being there. What's the state of that generally?
Richard: Well, from our standpoint, we don't hire a caregiver who we wouldn't want to work with Alex and Sarah in our own home. So that's our threshold.
Now, other agencies don't have that kind of a standard. Once we find that type of caregiver, they all go through a vetting process and background checks and training. But then we also go out and visit with the families. We call on a monthly basis and we do a quarterly visit with each family to make sure that we're doing well for them and that the caregiver is working out. We always tell the family, if you're not happy with the individual we send, you just need to let us know and we'll find somebody else for you.
Roger: As someone with a special needs child that is navigating this, there are some best practices to monitoring the placement agency in terms of quality of care and how do I evaluate one from another if I'm looking at them?
Richard: Just as you would, hate to say this, hiring a plumber. You're going to want to get 2 or 3 different references. You're going to want to talk to the agency. You're going to want to be able to visit with some families that use them. You're going to want to ask for referrals and at that point it becomes your own personal decision who you're comfortable with.
Roger: I know you're dealing with this journey as you're thinking about your retirement. How do you navigate or just what's your current thinking on how do we have our retirement and also on if you and Kim aren't going to be there? I think you mentioned when you're 85 or 89, they're going to be 57.
Richard: Yes. In our situation, it's a combination of things.
One, it's our own ability to save and put money aside for them. We're also blessed with some grandparents who had the foresight to provide some resources for Alex and Sarah on their own. It's not just making sure that they're set up to survive It's making sure that they are set up to provide for themselves to the extent that they can.
Both Sarah and Alex have jobs, and they both work, and they both get a paycheck, and they both have bills to pay, so our role for them Is not necessary to replace their income, but to provide a safety net for them, especially during the years that they can work to provide them with things and activities and experiences that they may not otherwise be able to afford without assistance.
Roger: If they're not able to be their own guardian, how do you navigate who would be?
Richard: Well, Alex and Sarah are able to be their own guardian. In those situations, what we've set up is more of a trustee for the trust.
Initially we picked the natural family members, close friends, but as time goes on and their lives change, you need to reevaluate that really probably on a five-year basis and then make sure that they're still willing to do that because they may have forgotten what they've offered to do and you want to be fair to them. Typically, you'll have a trustee who is a family member who maybe doesn't have to have intimate knowledge of Alex and Sarah, but enough knowledge about them to know what they like, and who's willing to take the time to learn about them and learn about what they like. You are always going to have a backup trustee that's probably more of a bank or a corporate trustee going forward.
You brought up a guardian. There are some individuals who aren't able to make decisions on their own and you'll have a guardian appointed for them. That individual may be a family member, a close relative, or if there's nobody around like that, you have a guardian appointed by the state to care for and watch over their needs.
Roger: From a services perspective, are there unforced errors for lack of a better term that you see people miss in terms of what is available, whether it's from the government via support or other organizations, things that, oh, wow, it seems like people don't realize that this is there?
Richard: I don't know if I call them unforced errors as opposed to wearing themselves out and trying to find the services, sign up for the services, and qualify for them.
Roger: That's a much better way of phrasing it. If it's just being worn out from finding them, but then navigating the actual system.
Richard: I mean, just take the DMV and put it on steroids, and that will tell you the amount of people you need to talk to, the amount of paperwork you need to go through, the amount of unreturned phone calls you'll receive, and the amount of roadblocks that'll be put up just to try to get services for your child.
Roger: Any advice as someone's navigating that?
Richard: Don't give up. A lot of patience and find somebody close to you who you can vent to about your experience because there'll be days where you feel that you are a failure, and there's no hope.
Roger: Well, then there's that whole other emotional aspect of it that overlays it.
I was thinking, you said the DMV on steroids, I was thinking of my wife when she talks to, because we're on the ACA program, and she's talking to the HMO that we're on. Her frustration in being on hold forever and getting to the wrong person and getting disconnected, I would equate it to that on steroids.
Richard: Yes.
I mean, for example, just this past week, we were supposed to have a meeting with Alex and Sarah's service coordinator to renew their authorization. That person was a no show. I'm sure that happens a lot of times throughout the week for a lot of these families, if you've taken time off work, you've adjusted your schedule, maybe you've had to find care for your other kids who aren't disabled, and so you're dealing with a big bureaucratic machine.
Roger: The people that are in it, At the level talking with you, it's not that they don't care. It's entry level. It's a steppingstone and they're probably overwhelmed as well.
Richard: Yeah, exactly. I don't even know what the ratio is between service coordinator and caseload, but I'm sure each of them is managing 20 to 30 families.
Roger: Is there one thing on the non-financial side from your journey, not just as a provider of care and dealing with lots of families, but being someone that is navigating this themselves in order to help them honor the journey there, but also honor themselves, what would you tell yourself?
Richard: Essentially, I guess I would tell myself to remember just to do the next right thing every day. I would remind myself that I have a life separate from Alex and Sarah. I need to take care of myself and my marriage in order to be the type of parent Alex and Sarah need. It goes back to the put your oxygen mask on yourself first before you help somebody else type of mentality or type of discussion they have on the airplanes.
You need to take care of yourself in order to be there for your kids.
STORIES FROM A HUB AND SPOKE TYPE OF RETIREMENT
Roger: Now let's explore the journey of Rhoda and Rob as they build their expat hub and spoke type of retirement.
Rhoda and Rob, how long have you guys been retired?
Rob: Actually. Well, I retired in 2021 so it's three years. I did a year of absolutely nothing and then gathered my head together to decide if I want to do nothing the rest of my life or whether I want to do something and give myself some purpose. Now I opened my own travel agency and I'm a travel advisor.
Roger: Okay. Part time I assume. Rhoda, what about you? Are you retired? Are you working?
Rhoda: So, I started a second career. I retired many years ago, in 2005 from engineering to raise my children. Then in 2016, I became a certified photo manager. I am passionate about helping people save their stories. So, I have my own company called Sunflower Photo Solutions, and I work with clients to pare down and organize their photo collections.
Roger: That's a big deal. That's a huge deal. I have a computer. I have an old iMac from the early 2000s, I haven't turned it on in forever, but I haven't thrown it away because I know there are photos on there somewhere and I have no idea how to get them off.
Rhoda: You are not alone. You're in good company with many, many people as well as the old phones and hard drives, everything else.
It can be done. It can be done.
Roger: Okay. Well, maybe we'll chat about that.
So I like this idea. Really, you both retired from your full-time career, which is probably more what retirement means because so many people start different ventures that are sort of right sized and in an area, maybe they enjoy a lot more than what their "career" career was.
Before we get to the travel part since Rob, you mentioned the word purpose and I've been working on this with the non-financial masterclass. How critical did you guys think of purpose and identity when you were leaving your full-time careers? Was that something that gave you a lot of angst? Or did you even think about that?
Rob: Roger, it gave me a lot of angst.
This is where you helped me because I was a dentist and my being, my personality was being a dentist and I had to wrap my head around the fact that, okay, now I was not going to be a health care professional anymore. I was going to be like the millions of other retired people out there. It was challenging for me to accept that.
It took me maybe two years to figure that I'm going to be okay with it.
Roger: Really? Two years? How did you navigate it?
Rob: Well, the thing that I miss the most is that when I was a dentist and I walked into a room, people would listen to me.
Roger: I'm sorry, what did you say? What did you say?
Rob: I said, when I was a dentist...
Roger: I heard you. Made a joke.
Rob: My wife got the joke, but I'm so serious about it.
Now I walk into a room and nobody cares what I say. So, it's that sort of thing. I did struggle with it for a little bit. I'd say within a year, that feeling of angst and anxiety about that was gone.
Roger: Was there a moment that turned the corner about that? Or did it just sort of slowly fade away?
Rob: I would say it's a slow fade.
Roger: Okay. Thanks for sharing.
Rhoda: I feel like I helped you with that.
Rob: My wife helped me greatly.
Roger: No doubt. No doubt.
Rhoda: I mean, you know, how many years ago, 20 years ago, I struggled with it, but I got over it much quicker because I was busy.
Roger: Yeah, busy helps, right? Helps a lot of things, especially depression and things like that. Go do something productive, help somebody else.
Rhoda: I think just taking a mind shift on what your identity is and that we can be much fuller than the box that we put ourselves in.
Roger: Thanks for letting me go down that little tributary.
Now let's talk about retirement and travel. So, explain your idea of what you guys have been doing travel wise, because that's not quite expat, but it's sort of a hub and spoke type of thing. So, how are you guys traveling?
Rhoda: So, we've had this idea for a very, very long time, probably since 2010. Rob, you can speak to it, but he read a book called Home Sweet Anywhere and it really was about this couple that sold everything when they were tired and put whatever they didn't sell and they needed in storage, but they didn't have a house and they traveled the world 3 months at a time, really living like a local and soaking up everything they could about different cultures, I guess you would say. They would kind of teeter. Go back and forth between someplace that maybe was more expensive in some place that was less expensive, but it just really resonated with Rob and how he wanted to spend some of his retirement time.
Then when he retired, that was the goal, but we did it a little differently.
Rob: We would call it our dream, prompted by the book, but then we started thinking about how we could make it work. We weren't the kind who were ready to sell everything that we owned.
Roger: Yeah. That's a big move.
Rob: Yeah. So, we wanted to still a base of life in the United States but be free to explore and live like a local. I think that was more important to us. To not be a tourist. To not even be a traveler to a location, but to live like a local.
Roger: So, what was your first iteration of this living like a local?
Rhoda: Yeah, so our first place that we went was Vienna, which is near and dear to our heart because it was our first place, and we went for 90 days, not quite three months because of the laws of being able to stay in Europe.
Rob: The Schengen rules where you have to leave after 90 days in any EU country, you can't just stay forever.
Roger: How did you start to figure this out? Because if you've never traveled before, you're like, Oh, I'm just going to rent something for three months.
How did you start to discover these rules?
Rhoda: For the rest of our time after Rob read that book, whenever we went anywhere and we liked a place, we would say, could we live here for three months? We started to build a list, but when it came time to really make a decision and whether now was the right time to start doing this, there were quite a few criteria that we put down on paper that we needed for where we were going to live first for three months, but also timing.
For us, it was the best time because none of our kids were married or had kids at the time and they were all independent whether they were in school or working. So, for us it was a great time for us to be away for 90 days and not have to feel like we needed to go back home.
Roger: Right.
Rob: We picked Vienna because Vienna was actually our favorite European city of our travels. We've been traveling our whole life.
Roger: Okay. So, this wasn’t new to you. How did you realize that? How did you realize that you could only stay there 90 days? Or how did you even learn that?
Rob: You know, it's just the research you've got to look at the State Department website and the website of the embassy of the country that you're living in. You have to be aware of these things.
You can't just show up somewhere. Some countries require visas, different kinds of visas, et cetera.
Roger: It's a country-by-country basis on, like you said, EU is 90 days.
Rob: Yes, yes, and every country is a little bit different.
Roger: Okay. What was your next country?
Rhoda: We just got back a month ago from Greece.
We decided to be on a smaller island that was a little more remote so that we could really get the experience of, and it's a very different experience than Vienna, which is a big city, of living in a sleepy little kind of beach town.
Rob: It was the island of Paros, it's between Mykonos and Santorini. This time we decided to go only six weeks, only because of the size of the island and we knew that If we'd spend three months, maybe that would be too much, you know, you can live in a city for a very long time and still not experience everything. On the island of Paros, I would say you can experience everything there in two days.
Roger: Well, experience everything I would imagine from checking the boxes of what it has, but then you get into community after that, right?
Rob: Yes, and it's very nice. You meet the bakers and you meet the people at the supermarket and then at the grocery store and everybody becomes familiar with you. All of a sudden, you're chatting with them. You're learning the language bit by bit and it's really enlightening because we all think that the U. S. and the culture that we have here is the best, the only thing to be. We're very high on ourselves here, but you go overseas and you realize that there are other cultures and there's other ways of life and everybody is happy in their own way.
We're not necessarily the be all and end all here in the U. S.
Roger: How did you find this place?
Rob: Paros?
Roger: Yes.
Rob: We decided on Greece first, let's go to Greece. Then we said, are we going to go to Athens, the city? No. Let's really live an island life. Then I did research of all of the islands. Of course, Mykonos and Santorini are the most popular ones for U. S. travelers. We didn't want to go where all of our fellow tourists were, and it turns out we visited Mykonos and Santorini while we were there. There were thousands of people all from the United States wandering the streets. We didn't want to go live in a place like that. We wanted to live in a more authentic culture.
Roger: Yeah. So, this is a different, like we just had someone previously who lives in Thailand full time. Your approach to expat living is more of hub and spoke. You have your hub in the U. S. and the goal is to be three to six months in whatever places you think about. It sounds like one of the profiles is the non-tourist destinations.
Rhoda: Yeah, I would say that. I mean, except when it comes to a city, all cities, whether they're in Europe or somewhere else are pretty much tourist destinations, but definitely on our list, which is both in Vienna and Paros as well as the next ones that we're considering is a good transportation system so that we can go and visit other places.
I mean, Vienna had an amazing, both internal and external train system as well as the ferries, the boats on the river. In Paros, it was a port and you could take a ferry multiple times a day to many of the different islands around there. So, if we wanted to go sightsee or see something different or go to a museum somewhere else, we were able to do it.
Rob: Not only were we hub and spoke because we still have a home in the United States and then we can go on these three-month adventures, but it was also hub and spoke where we went to visit. We didn't want to just travel while we were in Europe, let's say, to go to Prague and to Budapest and live in, let's say, Airbnb’s in each one.
We really wanted to live in Vienna, and then hub and spoke out, back, you know, out to Bratislava and then back to Vienna, etc. We did, like Rhoda said, the same way in Paros. Visit an island for a day or two and then come back to our home.
Roger: How are you renting these homes? Is it Airbnb or how are you finding homes in Vienna or this island?
Rob: Well, we were never Airbnb people. We just love hotels. But for a long stay, you really need to have a home and not live in a hotel, it's just not feasible from an expense standpoint, generally. You want it to be a home, and you want a kitchen, and you want a patio and porch.
So, there are tips and tricks and we could have a whole podcast about Airbnb’s. But I researched it, and I learned how to find the right one, and we've been successful twice. We lived in two lovely, lovely places.
Rhoda: One tip I would say that and I didn't do any of the research because I leave that up to him as far as like where he has narrowed down to like two different places, and then I'll look at it.
This helped a lot in Vienna. He went on to a Facebook group that was expats, and he asked a number of questions. Best time of year is debating between two different times, and then area. So, he determined what area we wanted to live in the city and then also what time of year. I think for us, it was an amazing time of year because it overlapped between the summer and the fall, but it was also festival season. So, every week there was a different festival where you could kind of feel just the change of the season and the change of the culture and celebrate it. It was beautiful.
Rob: These Facebook expat communities are so welcoming. I posted, when should we come? I got back 45, 65 responses and they were so informative and I did that in Austria and I did that in Greece as well.
Roger: That's definitely one thread when it comes to whether it's expat living or this hub and spoke concept, or even when we explored retiring with special needs children, is the thread is community. Go find the people that are doing it or dealing with the same issues and that's one positive thing about, I guess, the Internet, right? You can find people that are like-minded that can help give a hand up.
So, from a financial standpoint, did you mainly use credit cards or how did you manage the financial part while you were away?
Rob: You know, it didn't used to be this way years ago when I had a young family. First, we used to travel with what American express travelers checks, do you remember? Those are gone now. When you exchange cash, they really take a bite out of it, dollars for euros, let's say. So, credit cards are taken almost everywhere, even at the littlest mom and pop shops on a small island in Greece, so 95% was paid with credit cards. So, I didn't have to deal with much cash.
Roger: Okay. What were some of the cultural surprises, I mean, whether was language good and bad, that might be things to look out for?
Rhoda: Well, one I'll say is that when we first got to Vienna, Austria, we started learning German self-taught like through an app and we were diligent every, every day. We were practicing, but it turns out that Austrian German is not the same as German German.
So even in our bad accents, the Austrians would just switch to English and talk to us. So, and the fact that we didn't really need to know German very much, except for when we were reading signs, which we learned, we learned how to read signs, which was nice.
Rob: To hold a conversation as a whole different animal. So, after two weeks of taking this online German class, we looked at each other one day and said, Everybody's speaking English. Why are we doing this? So, we didn't really need to speak the language, but it's really interesting to communicate with the people who live where we were. You know sometimes people are stern, but once you start even saying thank you, good day, goodbye, excuse me, in their language, All of a sudden, we get the biggest smile because many tourists or Americans in their eyes just don't take the time or effort to speak language.
Rhoda: What's the one word in German that we learned everywhere we went?
Rob: My favorite word, Geschlossen. It's a great word. It's just a fun word to say. It means closed. So, because we would constantly go to a store and it's like, yeah.
Rhoda: They would just close whenever, like you would go to this restaurant that you literally walk 30 minutes to get to, and it would be closed because that's just the way it was.
They didn't have to announce it. They would just put a sign up and it happened time and time again for many things.
Rob: Yeah.
Roger: The rhythm of stores and restaurants is very different. Even the sense of when you go to a restaurant. You have the table for the night and especially in Europe, right? You're not rushed out in any way.
That's my experience, anyway.
Rob: Yes, no one will ever come and give you the check unless you ask
Roger: it's very weird if you're not used to it as an American, what about transportation? Did you always use public transportation or did you guys drive?
Rob: We only rented a car for maybe two days in Greece. In Vienna, we never rented a car.
I mean, that was kind of one of the reasons we chose the places we chose that we could move about without having to rent a car for six weeks or three months. That would be prohibitively expensive in a lot of places.
Roger: Where's your next region to go to?
Rhoda: We're still discussing it, but top of the list is Buenos Aires.
Roger: Okay. So, it is a very different region than the EU.
Rob: Very different. You know, why go back to the same place over and over? This is the whole part of exploring life and cultures. Again, we've only been there once and we were only there for three days, and we absolutely fell in love.
Roger: What are the visa rules there? Do you know yet?
Rhoda: No, because we just got back. The issue, not total issue, is that going there the time of year is important and so to go there to be comfortable would be from late fall through spring here, which is their summer. So, it's too quick for us to get there now. So, it’ll be another year from now. So, we have to just start planning.
Rob: Yes.
Rhoda: I'm excited to check in whether it's six months or a year from now to hear about the next one and maybe this, we can get a debrief about Buenos Aires once you return.
Rob: Be happy to do that. Can I just mention something else financial?
Roger: For sure.
Rob: Both in Vienna and in Greece, we were really surprised at how inexpensive it is to live there.
So many people would say, yes, you know, it would stretch my budget to go live somewhere for three months. The fact is, yes, of course, you're paying for the rental of where you're staying. But we have found that we spent about half as much money living in other places than we do here in the United States for meals, for entertainment.
In Greece, it was so wonderful to go sit down at a taverna and you just order the house wine. They bring you a carafe. It's four euros for a carafe of wine.
Rhoda: Yeah.
Rob: Spectacular. Here, what is a glass of wine?
Roger: If you're at a Marriott, it can be $40.
Rhoda: Here's the thing in the tourist area, even on Paros, there's a tourist area, Naoussa, and you go there and we always say it's like New York prices. If you get a cocktail, it's $25.
But if you're in the small town and you don't have to eat fancy and you have a beautiful meal because the food is amazing and you just order house wine and it's great and you're not spending that much money and also living like a local includes going to the fruit and vegetable stand and going to the butcher and cooking at home and enjoying that whole experience as well and having people over.
You're not going out to dinner every night.
Roger: Thanks so much for sharing your experience, and we'll chat when you get back from Brazil.
Rob: It's our pleasure.
Roger: Or is it Argentina?
Rob: Argentina.
Roger: Yeah, as soon as I said that.
Rob: Do you want to do that again?
Roger: No, I let my mistakes go right out there. I corrected myself, though, didn't I? I caught it. I caught it.
Rob: I was letting you ride with that, too.
Roger: I noticed that. Safe travels, guys.
Rhoda: Thank you.
CONCLUSION
Roger: As always, thanks for hanging out with me today. We're excited for the future of the show and improving it in order to help you have the confidence to rock retirement because you're doing the work and you're not wasting your time on things that are going to be a distraction.
The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance reference is historical and does not guarantee future results. All indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested in directly. Make sure you consult your legal tax or financial advisor before making any decisions.