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Episode #558 - Classic Episode - The 8 Pillars of Rocking Retirement: Passion and Relationships

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

Hey there. Welcome to the show that's focused on you. Yeah, you you're the most important person in the room having confidence to not just survive retirement, but to lean in and feel confident enough to go rocket. My name is Roger Whitney. I'm a practicing retirement planner with 30 years’ experience, founder of Agile Retirement Management and the Rock Retirement Club.

Alright, this is the last episode of the refresher of the eight pillars that I think are needed as a foundation for having a great retirement plan. We're going to focus on the last two non-financial pillars today. Passion. Ooh, la la. That sounds pretty cool. Passion. What I'm referring to is your curiosity, your hobbies, your pursuits.

What are you going to do? What are you going to do with your life now that you're not working? Then lastly, but definitely not least is relationships. How are you going to foster the social capital that supports a great life? As you remember, if you've been listening to the series, we'll send this resource that summarizes all eight pillars in our 6-Shot Saturday email. You can find that and sign up for that at 6shotsaturday.com.

Now next month, we're going to be answering your questions, but I'm going to take some time and do some practical planning on some topics that I think are important. When it comes to creating a great retirement plan so we're going to get it back to original episodes next month, but for now, let's get to the last two of the eight pillars.

PRACTICAL PLANNING SEGMENT

"Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work."

-Chuck Close.

Working on a vision or a feasible plan, trying to make it resilient and optimizing it, we have our moments where we're super enthusiastic about it, but in order to do it consistently, we have to show up sometimes and just do it when we're not really that jazzed about doing it.

No different than the non-financial pillars that we've been talking about. Energy, making sure we eat the right foods and get the right sleep and exercise. We're not always jazzed to do that. I know I'm not. I'm guessing you're not either. But we still have to show up and do the work, and usually when we do show up to do the work, we do get excited about this. Here's what we're going to do today to finish out May, we are going to answer your questions as we always do and go over the last two pillars of what you need to focus on in order to rock retirement. They're going to be the last two of the non-financial four. Today we're going to talk about passion and projects or work and relationships and why we need to be intentional there.

We've been over the eight pillars, or six of the eight on what you want to have a process to focus on being intentional in these areas. In the financial realm, if you recall, it was vision, having a feasible plan, making it resilient, and then focusing on optimizing it. Those are the four financial and then the four non-financial are energy.

You have to show up with energy that's moving, eating, sleeping, breathing, and then you want to focus up with a growth mindset. You want to foster that. 

Today we're going to talk about the last two pillars in the non-financial realm and the first one. I call it passion. 

PASSION

So, what do we mean by passion? Well, I'm talking about work or projects.

The preponderance of the research on happiness and fulfillment identifies that having a purpose, having projects, is a core component of living an enriching full life. Happy people have projects, happy people have projects. I'm going to say that over and over. And so that's what we're talking about here, and then the majority of years that you've been alive, you've been given your projects. Whether it's your chores at home, school, and the projects and the classes and the progression there, and then at work, the projects that you have there and the obligations you have there to improve your skills and grow in certain areas. Maybe not areas that you were jazzed about, but they were projects nonetheless, and they gave you that structure.

When you retire, a lot of those projects go away that were given to you. You have to come up with your own and we can get stuck there. Now, projects don't have to be about changing the world, but they have to be about pursuing curiosity. That could be projects of creating an amazing garden or projects in your community.

I know one gentleman who has a project right now where he's reading. I forget the name of the author, but it's the History of the World, starting way off at the beginning. I think it was written in the 18 hundreds, and one of his projects is to read and digest and marinate and learn through that.

A project can be anything, and it is likely you're going to have multiple projects in your life. Whether that's being a great grandparent, eating at every Michelin star restaurant or every drive-in diner on Route 66, the point here is happy people have projects, and now why is that? What's the objective of having these projects?

Well, at its core it's going to be why am I getting up in the morning? What am I going to donate my time to, to build a growth mindset and be energized. Why am I getting up in the morning? Projects are going to give you a purpose. They're going to give you an identity. I am a researcher. I am a restaurant aficionado; I am an amazing grandmother or grandfather. Projects give you that purpose and help you find that, and they also help you create identities for yourself that you can carry with you and grow as a human. 

Now, what are the obstacles to having passions in projects? Well, one is that institutionalization that I talked about where you're used to just getting projects and you're really adept in those areas, most likely when you're retiring and it's like, okay, now what do I do?

Some people have a hard time with a blank slate. They face what's called the paradox of choice. There are too many choices, so we can't figure out what to choose because we feel like we might choose the wrong one. Lack of energy could be an obstacle. If we haven't worked on our energy pillar, then maybe we're not motivated and don't feel that zest to be able to do that.

Prior to retirement, it may be that you've been so busy running on the projects that have been given to you by your profession, you have never really fostered exploring your own curiosities outside of work. That's a big one for a lot of people. That's one reason why as you start to get closer to retirement, you want to build some boundaries around work.

Probably one of the biggest obstacles today that our society faces is that there are scientific algorithms, created and being refined to suck your time and energy away and to grab your attention and suck you into the matrix. So, what am I referring to? Well, I just had an instance of this, so I'll tell you what happened.

I'm usually really, really good about not doing this, but I went to bed the other day and I was tired. I had my phone with me, first error, and I was looking at a YouTube video. There are a couple YouTube video channels that I follow related to, usually audio, video geek stuff. Then I hit the shorts button, which is sort of like toy short stuff. I’ve never been on TikTok, but it's similar to that, just these little bite size things that keep your attention. So, I watched one and that was sort of interesting, and then it queued up another one that was related and that was sort of interesting, another one queued up. I didn't like that one. I swiped up. Then another one queued up and it started to learn what would keep Roger's attention and it worked. 

About an hour and a half later, maybe two hours later, 1:30 in the morning, I finally say, no more and I go to bed and my brain and my eyeballs from all the light are just bopping all over the place. I think I had two and a half hours of sleep. 

That is likely the biggest obstacle you and I face to discovering and pursuing our passions in life. Whether it's the television, whether it's YouTube or TikTok or Twitter or Facebook, there are some really smart people trying to suck us into the Matrix and essentially cause us to lose our life.

We cannot force ourselves to not be sucked in. It's too powerful in my opinion. So, we have to build our own boundaries to help us have some boring times, because those boring times are what will prompt us to pursue something. So those are the obstacles to pursuing passion, and projects outside of retirement.

So, what's the plan? Well, I think the plan needs to be that you go test a lot of things. You need to just start to pursue your curiosity and those little curious moments will come and go and when you see one, you want to grab it and just start walking and pursuing that curiosity and see where it takes you.

Perhaps a curiosity is to go on a trail hike. That's awesome. Maybe you start on a trail hike. You may discover that trail hiking's not for you, but you may discover that birding is for you, or insects or plants. It's not so much the little projects that you choose initially that have to be right or wrong.

They create this foreign motion where you're going to intersect with things that you never could have imagined sitting on your couch that leads you to something that's totally different than what you ever imagined. The point is that forward momentum and just saying yes and yes and yes to that random coffee or to that group.

This takes a little bit of courage, right? For some of us anyway, it could be reading. I think the plan is to keep pursuing curiosity, keep pursuing curiosity, and know that you're going to get it wrong a lot of times, but it's not wrong because it may lead you to something else that you hadn't even imagined.

So, this is a pillar that we need to work on because why? Happy people have projects. 

RELATIONSHIPS

All right, what's the last of the eight pillars? Last of the four non-financial pillars. That is relationships. What are we talking about here? Well, we're talking about our social capital, the people that we interact with in our life.

This is not the financial social capital that we talk about. This is the actual social capital talked about in academia. This is your spouse, your friends, your children, the person that you interact with at church or at the Starbucks or at your synagogue, wherever you meet people, the people that you wave to down the street when you're walking the dog.

This is your social capital that you want to slowly build up. Why? So, you can have a fabric of a community, whether that's in your family or where you live, or centers that you go to. I know my father-in-law would always go to the American Legion. That's where he developed a lot of his social connections.

This is important because like projects, a lot of the social interactions that we've had were served to us on a plate. You go to school, you meet kids, you find the ones that are your gang and you run with them, and then you meet other kids. You go to college, same thing. You go to work, same thing.

When you retire, the plate is taken away and now you are taking on the responsibility to create that fabric of community. Now, I'm not saying you have to be the one that bounces around all the parties. The key is you finding your people, and that could be one or two people. I like lots of people, but honestly, I cherish a very small number of close, close friendships.

I'm more comfortable there because I can have deeper conversations than just table talk, but some people want all the table talk and the light talk. You need to figure that out, and it's not building a vast social network. It's about building a social network that you can sustain and that enriches you.

Now, one interesting aspect of a social network when it comes to relationships, as we get older, the current tends to be smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. You're going to interact with a smaller number of people that have a growth mindset or that have energy or that have projects, the current is going to pull you towards people that are dealing with the same aging issues. If they have those other things, now we just sit around and talk about our issues. Then as you get older, meaning in your seventies and eighties, that network will accelerate in its shrinkage because people start passing away or moving away. 

So, it's even more important that we are proactive in this pillar to build downstream relationships from a chronological or age-based perspective, and also people that have mindset, people that have energy, people that have projects. We want to incorporate all these, these all sort of feed on each other, right? If you have relationships, where people have a lot of projects, you're likely to have a lot of projects. If you have relationships where people are taking care of their health, you're likely to take more care of your health. So, all of these interact together and support each other.

Now, what are the obstacles? Well, we talked about a lot of obstacles. You have to put yourself out there a little bit, right? It's not naturally going to come to you unless you live in a community where they naturally do. And that's one reason why some people love the senior communities or over 50 communities like Margaritaville or the villages, et cetera, because they create those interactions so you can quote unquote find your people and that might be something to pursue. 

This is where your plan could incorporate your projects. If you want to learn karate well, you join a dojo and you meet people that have the same interest. Or if you're into glass blowing, you go learn and pursue that curiosity, you're going to meet people that enjoy glass blowing. If you like mountain biking, you join an organization where they do group mountain biking rides and you're going to meet your people and then you can decide. Are these the people that resonate with me? 

Mountain biking is one that I've always pursued, partly because I love that you can't think a lot while you are mountain biking. You could be very present. You're out in nature. But when I used to do adventure racing and mountain biking races. I really like the vibe of the people. They fit me. They were chill. They were all friendly. They would stop and give you tools. I liked the fact that they were supportive of everybody. And so that drew me more into that community because I want to be like these people. That's where pursuing your curiosities will help you in building that social network. Now, obviously we have the social network of our family, and at the core of all this social network, we want to be present with these people. We want to be connected, and we always want to be encouraging, and we want to curate this social network to support the kind of person that we want to be. 

Like for me, I need to have people that have a growth mindset that is fostering who I want to be. I don't always have a growth mindset. I doom scroll on my phone, as I mentioned, but I want to lean towards having a growth mindset or having energy or having projects, and I don't always do that. I want to foster being around people that encourage and support what I want to do. 

These are the eight pillars.

Now, what you're going to see on the podcast as we answer questions and as we pursue categories, we're going to put them within these pillars. Then in the, obviously in the Rock Retirement Club, we have the masterclass that focuses on the four financial pillars, and we will be building a masterclass focusing on the four non-financial pillars.

Then the organizing principle around all of this stuff is using an agile approach of taking little baby steps to constantly identify risks and opportunities and improving incrementally because this stuff gets all overwhelming and it shouldn't. It feels like a job. It feels overwhelming if we don't take it in bite-size pieces.

The nice thing is that these are guiding lights that we follow and pursue knowing that we're never actually going to reach the distant shore and be done. This is the fun, the adventure of life, and I think that's the perspective we have to keep.

With that, let's move on and answer some of your questions.

LISTENER QUESTIONS

If you have a question for the show, go to rogerwhitney.com/askroger, and you can leave a typewritten question or an audio question, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show. 

The next two months, we're going to be focusing on answering your questions and having some conversations with interesting people, and I'm excited about that. Part of the reason for this and not focusing on a theme is I have a lot of travel coming up in the next couple months, and I feel remiss, and so I want to apologize again, I think for not having an expat theme yet. A lot of you have emailed me. I have a lot of resources. I'll be reaching out to some of you to help share that journey.

It just hasn't worked out the way life and business and everything has, and I apologize for that. But we'll be exploring the expat lifestyle as a month-long theme this year. 

 "A SPOUSAL IRA QUESTION"

All right. Our first question comes from Mark related to a spousal IRA. 

Mark says, 

"Hey, Roger, love the show. My question pertains to a spousal IRA.

I understand that I can contribute to my spouse's Roth IRA if she doesn't have earned income, but I do. Is a spousal IRA a separate account or would we contribute to her current Roth IRA like normal? Hoped my question was clear. Keep up the great content." 

Hey Mark, great question and hopefully my answer will be as clear as your question.

So, this is going to be a optimized question on getting money into account and savings. If you have earned income, yes, you can contribute to a spousal IRA, assuming there's enough earned income eligible to cover that amount. 

You can contribute to her IRA if she already has one. So, you said that she currently has a Roth IRA, so if you were going to make a Roth contribution, you could put it into that account.

If you were going to make a tax-deductible Traditional IRA contribution, if she doesn't have a traditional IRA set up, you would have to set that account up. But the reference to spousal refers to the strategy, not the account type. So hopefully that answers your question clearly, and thanks for listening. 

"ROLLING OVER A 401K TO AN IRA"

Our next question comes from Beth related to a 401k. 

"Hey, Roger. Thanks for the podcast and the RRC.

I have a question about rolling over my employer 401k to an individual IRA at one of the major custodians. I'm 58 and retired last year. My plan was to keep my 401K in my company's plan until I turned 59 and a half in case I needed access to the money and employ that rule of 55. There is a mix of Roth and pre-tax contributions in the 401k, so the plan was to roll over the 401k prior to my required minimum distributions, so only the pre-tax portion would be subject to RMDs.

Since the Secure Act 2.0 changed 401k RMDs to be from pre-tax only, what do I need to consider before doing the rollover? For example, fees, fund choice protection from judgments, et cetera. 

Thank you for your help."

So what Beth is referring to in terms of the Secure Act 2.0 is prior to the Secure Act, there was a quirk in the 401k required minimum distribution rules that would've required RMDs for Roth 401ks and that quirk was done away with. So, we don't have to worry about that anymore. 401k Roths won't have a required minimum distribution requirement.

So, let's think through this. Beth, what's the framework in thinking of do I keep it in my 401k or roll this to an IRA, and this would definitely be an optimization question.

First, if you're thinking of doing the rule of 55, you definitely would want to keep that in the 401k plan.

You would also want to confirm that the 401k plan allows a rule of 55 distribution because not all of them do, even though it is an option. Just because we know that the rule of 55, which is that if you retire from a company after turning age 55, you could take money from a 401k plan without paying the early 10% penalty prior to 59 and a half.

That is an option. But the 401k has to say, yes, we allow that to be done and they'll spell out how they will allow that to be done. So, if your 401K doesn't have that, It's a moot point in terms of this decision, so you might want to check that. 

So, what kinds of things should you think about when deciding whether or not to roll over a 401k?

You mentioned a number of them. Fees, fun choices, protection from judgment, keeping your options open for Roth conversions. Those are all the great things that you want to consider. 

Let's hit those one at a time. We'll talk about fees and fun choices. This is going to vary from 401k plan to 401k plan. So, you definitely need to check your own, because there are, let's say, from a fee standpoint, there are some that are extremely efficient from a fee standpoint and there are some that are horrible and have very, very high fees.

So, you're going to want to look at your plan. Generally, it's the larger employers that will have the lower fee structure, but it's not always the case. So, and what we're talking about fees here, by the way, is the internal fees of the investment choices. So, if you choose to put money into say, U.S. large cap stock fund, that fund within the plan is going to have internal management fees that can range anywhere from almost zero to one and a half percent of the assets every single year.

So, there's this huge dispersion of fees depending on the funds. That's what we're talking about when we're talking about fees. That said, if you roll it to an IRA, there are plenty of choices now of funds, mutual funds or exchange traded funds or individual stocks that are extremely efficient and low fee.

So, I think this is almost a moot point in terms of fees. If you pursue investment vehicles like ETFs or indexed based mutual funds, you can find many that have really, really low fees. 

Interestingly, I saw this the other day, some scuttlebutt just within. The advisor community. There are a lot of ETFs and "index funds" that have really high fees, so you do want to have buyer beware out there.

Now what about the fund choices? Okay, we talked about fees. You can find low fees anywhere. Beth, what about fun choices? Within a 401k structure, you're going to have the menu of items that the 401k provides for you to choose as your investment vehicles. Again, those can range from four to, like 60. Some funds have a huge menu, like a Cheesecake Factory menu of fund choices. Others have a very, very small menu to choose from. 

Do you need a big menu? Maybe not necessarily, but you want to have enough that hit the major asset classes, fixed income, small cap stocks, large cap stocks, international stocks, emerging markets, and then it can just get more complicated from there. So, fund choices might be a determinant.

One thing that the 401K structure has that IRAs do not have is a choice of something called the stable value fund, which is specific to 401k plans. This essentially serves like a money market, or cash account, and because of how they're structured, they have traditionally earned higher interest rates than an outside money market has.

Now we're in a weird environment because we've just had this big rise in interest rates. So that advantage has been neutralized right now, but I know back over the last 20 years, you could earn interest in a stable value fund within a 401k of say, three to 4%. In some cases where if you were in an IRA and you wanted to have really, really safe money in a money market, et cetera, you were earning close to zero.

So that is one thing that may not be. Important as of today, but you'll lose that option if you move to an IRA. 

Now let's talk about asset protection. 401K accounts do have higher protection limits from liability lawsuits versus individual retirement accounts. Now, IRAs still have protection against being sued by someone that you got in a car wreck with, et cetera, that personal liability, and there are some quirks state by state where it's more legislated protection than other states. So, you can check the protections within your individual state and how they treat IRAs from a liability protection standpoint. In my 30 plus years, I've never seen this as an issue.

So, is it risk? Potentially if you move to an IRA, you might have a little less protection. It is an extreme outlier risk. I don't know if I would let that influence your decision of keeping it in a 401K or moving it to an individual retirement account. 

Now, there's another consideration you may want to think about Beth, and that is simplification and consolidating your assets into an IRA.

If you've worked at a number of employers, you may have a number of IRAs or a number of 401ks. Moving to an IRA and consolidating all of those can greatly help you simplify the management of your assets. I don't know if this is an issue in your case, but simplification and having less accounts to manage or deal with well helps in just the management of it, but it also helps at some point if you were to pass or be unable to manage these assets. So, the executor or the person that's the power of attorney has access to these accounts. That can be a big advantage over having a lot of separate accounts. 

Another consideration, Beth, is if you're planning on doing Roth conversions or backdoor Roth contributions, keeping money in a 401k and not in pre-tax IRAs could help you avoid the pro rata rule in terms of conversions, that can get really messy if you do a backdoor Roth contribution, make a contribution to a pre-tax IRA and then convert it to an IRA or Roth IRA, if you have a lot of IRA assets, that strategy is not near as attractive because your IRS doesn't see that transaction. They're going to look at all of your IRA assets to determine how much is taxable and how much isn't. So that would move to being in favor of keeping it at a 401k because 401ks aren't counted in that pro rata calculation, but these are the things to consider.

Beth, you're not going to get to the right answer. You're not going to get to the wrong answer, to be honest with you, to phrase it in a more positive realm, but these are the things that you want to think about to just get to a judgment call of what works for you.

That is going to be about 99% of all decisions in life and in retirement planning is. Thinking in an organized way, understanding the trade-offs, and then just making a judgment call that you feel works for you and then moving on. That is essentially what agile and organized decision making is about.

Trust yourself on this one, but you're right on the money on the things that you should think about. 

"A NOTE ON MY WORDING"

The reason I correct myself in terms of you won't get it wrong is Armand sent me some feedback on my wording choices.

"Hey, Roger, love your podcast and have been listening since 2016."

Dude, you're an OG. 

"You helped with some of my early retirement trepidation and I'm now just enjoying the ride. 

Here is a small optimization thought, not a criticism. When you discuss optimization strategies to enhance a solid retirement plan. You frequently say "The future is unknowable, so make the best decision possible for you" I completely agree, then you add, just relax because you won't get it right. 

I would suggest you say, just relax. You won't get it wrong. Just one word substitution to bring the podcast closer to perfection. Keep up the great work." 

Thanks, Armand. I get that. I get that. You won't get it wrong. I get that.

I like that. Thank you. 

"FEEDBACK FROM PEOPLE ON GOING FROM TWO TO ONE"

Now, to end this question in an answer segment, I just want to share some feedback from some listeners related to going from two to one and losing a spouse, navigating that from a financial and non-financial perspective. We have a lot of people in our community that have walked this journey, and the beauty of walking with wise people is that you become wiser.

So, I just want to share a couple tips from people that have walked this journey. The first one comes from anonymous, and they say, 

"I want to mention another aspect of this. Every person needs to establish credit in their name and have a credit card that is just theirs. When you face the devastating loss of a spouse, it is not time to begin financial planning for widowhood or establishing credit. So many poor decisions are made during this time of severe grief. 

Establishing credit in your name now and having a plan on what you would do for the first few months after loss can be critical."

And that's a great point. In fact, as I've been walking this journey with my mother-in-law and helping her set up her own financial system because they managed it jointly. This was a discussion that we had, and Linda in this case had credit in her name. Oftentimes what happens, and this is what this person's alluding to, I imagine, is that we have credit cards, and then one spouse applies for all the cards and gives the other spouse a card off of their account rather than both spouses having a card named as them as the owner, because that will establish their own credit history.

If you don't have that structure in one spouse, the one that owned the account of all the credit cards that the other one had a duplicate card on, when they pass away, those credit cards go away. The surviving spouse, if they want a credit card, we'll need to establish one in their name, but they'll have no or very little credit history.

So that can be a big deal, but it seems not that important at the time when you're not thinking about those things. 

Our next story comes from another anonymous, 

"Hey, I listened to your going from two to one. You're and feel intrigued and curious. I treasure openness in how you support and courage the others on their past.

You rock."

Hey, you rock too, 

"I have an anonymous share. Several years ago, my friend's wife passed away. Suddenly he shared with me that the grief still visits him and he's working through it. He regrets that he didn't have the foresight to have any recordings of his wife's voice, no videos either. He remarried in the last few years and recently retired.

It was wonderful to see how loving he is with his new wife. So, I've learned a pro tip from him. Take short videos of themselves as they enjoy their life together, see it as a way to have memories of each other just in case I've taken that to heart and have started doing something similar with my wife for both of us and our family."

That's a great idea, and it's so easy today that we almost do it without knowing. With iPhones and smartphones and videos and photos, we definitely have the photos taken care of, the audio part is a little trickier that we have to be a little bit more intentional. Those short clip videos and stories, because we will forget their voices, other than photos we will forget the smiles are the subtle nuances of their expressions or gestures. 

Those things are important, and it's so easy to do today. I remember when my grandmother passed away in her nineties. In her eighties, I went out and visited her and brought a camcorder and asked her permission to just sit there and have it running.

We were watching playoff football because that's what we liked to do together, and I would ask her about how she met her husband, Ziggy, about my mom, about what she did for work, et cetera. It was wonderful. I had some intention, but I didn't make it an interview. I just made it as casual as I could, and I was a dummy and I put the camcorder in my suitcase, and it got stolen.

So, now I don't have any of that from my grandmother. So, thank goodness technology has evolved. But this is something that we can easily do, and I often imagine my children or my grandchildren listening to the archives of this podcast and hearing my journey. Hopefully it will be one outside of just simply the retirement content that they can feel gives them a sense of who I was.

One last story before we get to our smart sprint, and this comes from Mike. 

"Thankfully, I've not experienced the death of a spouse, but I have observed from difficulties for my stepmom when their father passed away in 2009, all the financial accounts, the home and the vehicle, they all were owned either joint or had payable on death instructions except for one brokerage account, and the small bass boat. 

This necessitated a probate situation, which costs months of aggregation and about $3,000. The frustration is that it only takes one account or property to force probate. My stepmom subsequently established a living trust, and we are doing the same thing."

Great point. Even with the living trust, if everything is not in there, if something is in a person's name, let's say in Roger's name, and Roger passes away. Let's say it's this brokerage account.

Probate, if you're not familiar with this, is the process of essentially closing out the business or personal financial life of a person and vehicles like a living trust, joint accounts with rights of survivorship, a transfer on death titling gives an asset, a pathway to pass to whomever you want it to pass to, just like an IRA beneficiary gives that pathway.

But in this instance, if Roger owns a checking account or a brokerage account that's not joint, doesn't have any pathway, when Roger passes, what happens is a financial statement is made for Roger and that statement along with the will, if there is one, goes through what is called a probate process, where this brokerage account, we have to decide who gets this brokerage account and the probate process decides that, which means there is courts involved, there's potential of attorneys involved.

Probate can be easy or very hard. It can be inexpensive, it can be very expensive depending on what state you're actually in, and just one account or asset can cause you to have to go through the probate process. It's something to think about. So that's a great tip Mike and I appreciate that. With that, let's move on and set a smart sprint.

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 one thing that you are curious about. It could be a drawing. It could be reading. It could be learning how to fly fish. It could be learning how to snap your fingers. Find one thing that you're curious about, and just pull that thread, figure out how to snap that finger or read a fly-fishing magazine and just pull that thread a little bit.

 ROCK RETIREMENT PLEDGE

We have our retreat; my company retreat this Friday. Everybody's coming to town. We're focused on what we're going to build to try to help you rock retirement, but that's the thing. We believe that you can, regardless of markets, of inflation rates, of interest rates. Regardless of all the major financial mistakes that you might have made and the small financial stakes you might have made, I still believe you can rock retirement.

It's not about the money. Money sure helps with giving you choices, but rocking retirement is something that we all can do just by being intentional and focusing on the things that we actually have control over. That's where the power is, regardless of what's going on in the world, and I believe you can do it.

We believe you can do it, and we're all in on trying to do it ourselves and work with you to empower you to do it too. 

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 references, historical and do 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.