-> Create Your Custom Strategy To Retire Early
So, here's to retiring only once, and doing it confidently!
Email me directly: ari@rootfinancialpartners.com
Create Your Custom Early Retirement Strategy Here
Ari Taublieb, CFP ®, MBA is the Vice President of Root Financial Partners and a Fiduciary Financial Planner specializing in helping clients navigate the nuances of an early retirement.
PS: Before anyone decides to move forward with our services, I want to ensure we're the best fit to help you reach your goals and I personally have the first conversation with you.
-> Create Your Custom Strategy To Retire Early
So, here's to retiring only once, and doing it confidently!
Email me directly: ari@rootfinancialpartners.com
Create Your Custom Early Retirement Strategy Here
Ari Taublieb, CFP ®, MBA is the Vice President of Root Financial Partners and a Fiduciary Financial Planner specializing in helping clients navigate the nuances of an early retirement.
PS: Before anyone decides to move forward with our services, I want to ensure we're the best fit to help you reach your goals and I personally have the first conversation with you.
The audio on this podcast episode is not going to be clear, and it's not because my microphone is broken, but it's because I'm driving and I have a client. That's in my mind right now and I just have to tell all of you this story because I want it to make you feel 1% more confident about your retirement, and if it makes you feel 50% more confident, then that's what allows me to sleep at night. So I could, of course, wait until I get home, but I know the same point will not come across in the way I want it to. So I'm driving right now and I'm thinking about my current client, and a lot of you are familiar with this concept that when you do retire even if you're listening to this and you're one year out, or three years, or five years, or ten years you're going to want to retire from something to something. It's a pretty, fairly simple concept, not rocket science, but right now, a lot of you are stressed out, and I know that because when you download my e-book, you tell me you say, yep, ari, I am stressed out right now because of my boss, or because of deadlines, or because I don't know how long my health is going to be in the current state, and so I just want to make sure I'm retiring in a good position where, number one, I won't run out of money and, number two, I'm optimizing, I'm not leaving anything behind. I'm like, okay, I hear this fairly often.
Speaker 0:So a client comes to me and we've been working together for about three years now, and when they first came to me they were scared to death to retire, not because they weren't financially in a good position. They were coming to me going. I don't know what on earth I'm going to do when I retire. I'm like, okay, if I forced you to retire tomorrow, what would you do? And they went, I really don't know. And I said why not? They said well, I've put so much time and energy into my current role that I actually feel disconnected from all other aspects of my life, and all I said was yes, and. And I stopped. I said yes, and.
Speaker 0:And she really didn't know how to respond to that. And the reason I did it that way is I wanted her to just dive into this Now. I'm not a financial therapist by any means. I love optimizing numbers and tax strategy, and you guys know this by now, but I had to get to the deeper point of what it is that she's really looking for. Because if she retires and then is more miserable because now she's like, what do I do with my life, then there's an argument to keep working, but I find most people fall into the bow of the danger of just continuing to work one more year. They go I'm just going to wait for one more bonus, I'm going to wait six more months, or one more year, or I've got a million bucks. Just wait till I have two million, then I'm done. Or three million, and they just keep moving the goalposts back. Because it's really hard and really scary to think about. What am I going to do if no longer I have this identity that I'm an engineer, or that I'm a doctor, or that I'm you name it. So this is not woo woo why I'm bringing this up.
Speaker 0:I'm bringing this up because a lot of you want to retire from those deadlines, from a boss, from waking up early, from commuting, from all these things that you tell me, and I want to keep this late hearted and fun, and so some of the responses that I do get are alright, I can't wait to pee. You know, right now I just don't have the ability to go to the bathroom when I want to. And some people are like I just can't wait to get off my headset, like my ear hurts from having this microphone on all day. I'm saying, great, when do you want to be in a position to do so? And they'll say, I'd love to do it in a year, I'd love doing two years. I say, great, let's look into making it happen. And then what happens is not everyone, but a lot of people get paralysis analysis and they go oh my god, I don't know what I'm going to spend. Oh my god, social security when do I collect? I saw my parents go through XYZ.
Speaker 0:I know there's tax strategy, but you put out a ton of episodes and I listen to three and now it sounds like Portuguese. I want people to actually take action and the reason I do the podcast and the way I do is I don't want to overwhelm and I listen to a million different podcasts. I like history podcasts myself, so if any of you have any specific ones you really like, send those to me. You can just email me directly and you can see my email in the description of the episode. But the reason I'm telling you this is because I want you to have total confidence that when you retire, you're not going to have to retire again. Trust me, you only want to retire once and I'm not telling you that to scare you.
Speaker 0:But I have clients that are coming to me in their 70s who retired early and you're going well, that doesn't sound early in their 70s. I'm going no, no, no, they're retiring again. Meaning they retired early in their 50s on paper and it looked good and it sounded good and they were done with their work and in the sense of they were stressed out, they wanted out. So they really didn't craft a strategy to tell them how much they could spend and kind of what's the minimum, what's the maximum. And so what they did is they just said I'm done, it looks like I'm in a good spot, and they retired. And then markets didn't perform well, or they did perform well but they didn't have the right exposure or they didn't have a tax strategy to tell them when to do a conversion, or you name it. And now they're looking back, going, hey, what I do wrong here? And so you really only want to do it once, because if you don't now, it's not the end of the world. Of course, and some of my clients are listening to this going, yep, that's me, I'm retiring again and I'm going to, in the future, ask them to come on the podcast so you can hear it from them.
Speaker 0:But the point about this is every one of you has a different story and what you're doing is you're going to be doing a different story. What you want to spend is completely different from your neighbor. That's the reality. So you need a completely different strategy. So what I tell everyone is I will never ask you what is your age and risk tolerance, why it's cookie cutter.
Speaker 0:If, for example, someone's coming to me and they're saying I want to retire from my boss, I don't know if he's just stressing me out or she's stressing me out. I want to find another job, but I don't know if that job is going to pay me enough, because even though I've got a million in my 401k, I've got kids in college right now. So, although the retirement planning might look good for my life, the cash flow planning doesn't. I need income. And so they'll come to me and they're making $150,000 a year and their spouse is bringing in $50,000 or $75,000 a year, so $225,000 is coming in for the family and they're going. I feel like our 401k is in a good spot, but I don't feel that we're going to be able to cash flow college. So I'm just working because really I need to be able to make sure my kids can get through school.
Speaker 0:I'm going to say, great, there's nothing wrong with anything you just said there. But what if you found a job that pays a whole lot less? And I'll stop and they go. Well, all right, I feel like you're not hearing me. Like I need X amount of dollars to pay for college. I say, let's really map it out, how much do you really need? And I did this with a current client and the same clients in my head right now while I'm driving, and it's like five in the morning, which is odd, but I'm going to see a friend of mine, so I just had this thought and want to tell it to you guys.
Speaker 0:And the client is saying, well, I feel like maybe you know, I don't know if they're going to go to public or private school, but here's kind of what I'm mapping out for their expenses. And I say great. And they said, well, if I found a job that paid about 75% of what it pays today, it looks like I could still make it happen. I say what do you mean make it happen? They go well, it looks like it's over a tire when I want to retire about age 60. And I could still make sure that cash flow is good. I said, great, so why don't you go do it? And they're like well, I just don't know. Like I don't know, this sounds good on paper, but I don't know in real life if this is going to work. I say, great, let's really start to map it out now. And they're going okay, let's do it. The whole premise of it it's not a magical story by any means, so hopefully it didn't sound like that. But the point is I want this client to actually go hey, let's do this, let's see if this is possible. And here's why this particular client ended up taking a job that pays 50% as much as their previous role. So they were bringing in about 175. And now they're bringing in, honestly, it was about $100,000. And they were just going to hey, I don't know if I'm going to make this happen.
Speaker 0:And what we talked about is trade-offs. And we said here's what's not going to happen. You're not going to take the same level of travel the next two years because we got a cash flow college. This is the main goal here. But in two years from now, you're going to be able to tap into your IRA and we're going to be able to use that so you can travel like crazy. So, really, it's the next two years that we're up against. Once we're past that, you're in a great spot.
Speaker 0:Now here's what I want you to do. You told me that you are scared because you don't know what exactly you're going to do beyond travel. You're like, hey, I want to travel, but if after a few years, I'm like, okay, this was great, what do I do now? I need you to have a plan for it. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to look into jobs that pay a whole lot less, that you think you might enjoy. I don't need you to be perfect on it no one ever is but that paralysis analysis is not what's going to happen. So what I want you to do is look at a few roles.
Speaker 0:We had a conversation and they were an educator and they educated for many, many years, and now they're going okay, I don't know exactly what I'm going to do, but I do like teaching it. Just they didn't want to do what they were doing because of the politics involved. They said, great, let's look into this. And so now they're teaching at a software company. To all these different characters. I'll just put it nicely that way. And the reason I say it that way is because a lot of these characters, they were an educator for children for many years. And now this client told me I'm kind of telling it to them because I know this client is going to listen to this and they're adults and he says they're more like children.
Speaker 0:So the reason for this is because when clients come to me and they're going, hey, I don't know how to think about planning, we have to start with. What on earth are you actually going to do when you retire? And I'll tell them to close their eyes and say you're waking up. What time Is it 8am, is it 830? What time is it? What's that gonna mean for you on a Monday versus a Friday? And is every day gonna be like Saturday? Because I know it's a fun joke. And when you retire, all of you are gonna have friends that say every day is Saturday now, and they hear that and some people go okay, great, and other people go like, no, I can't wait, that's what I really want. I've got a laundry list of things I can't wait to do.
Speaker 0:So some of you listen to this are like, no, ari, this is not even a problem, just financially, tell me, when am I in a good spot to retire early and never run out? I say, great. That's level one. Level two is saying what's the most you can spend, and so a lot of you have heard this dopey joke, of course, but all my clients know him by now, which is a client came to me and this was a few months ago and they said Ari, I'm gonna be one of your best clients. And I said why is that? They said well, I have a super low withdrawal rate. What that means is I'm not gonna have to take a lot out of my portfolio, so I'm not gonna run out of money. I said you'll be one of my worst clients. Like what do you mean? I thought a low withdrawal rate was good. I went.
Speaker 0:The goal of life is not to have the lowest withdrawal rate. If that was your goal, here's what I want you to do. I want you to work 30 more years and spend half of what you want to spend, your plan will look awesome. That's not the goal of this. The goal is to have the highest withdrawal rate without running the risk of running out of money. So when you're traveling or doing whatever you want to do and spending time with grand babies, you are not worrying about if Mark gets to XYZ. Am I going to be okay? And that's really what all of you want. At the end of the day, you want to be okay, and once again, that's level one is being okay. Level two is not leaving anything on the table. Most people think of leaving something on the table in terms of financially, and that's not what I'm talking about in this instance. There are instances where I talk about that, but I'm talking about fulfillment. I don't want you to retire and go. Everything looks good on paper, but I don't know what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 0:So let's go back to this client and then I'm gonna summarize for you guys. The client found a job that was very different still in the education field but they loved it so much more that they went. All those plans we talked about, those are shifting. So what do you mean they will? I actually want to continue working past what I was planning on, and it's because I enjoy what I'm doing now. Yeah, please, a whole lot less.
Speaker 0:And I just didn't know I could make it happen. So what I did not do is I did not change the client's life by running the most complicated projection scenario with a Roth conversion and a donor advised fund and all these fancy techniques. What I did is say, hey, let's find out if this is possible. How much do you need to bring in so you can cash flow college, because you're gonna be in a great spot when you retire? That's all we were up against, and they just never took the time number one. And I'm not, and I have the clients listening to this. So, you listening.
Speaker 0:I'm not gonna say your name, of course, but sometimes it's as simple as taking action and saying, okay, I'm gonna look into this on Saturday. I've got a lot of deadlines and work stuff right now, but on Saturday I'm gonna look into this. And, whether it's working with an advisor or not, I want you all to at least understand when are you in a position where you can retire? That's it. And some of you are gonna go, wow, it's longer than I expected, this sucks. Some of you are gonna go, wow, this is earlier than I expected. Some of you are gonna go. You know what? I don't know exactly if I'm planning for the right things. And if you are wondering, of course I do have tools for this for free to all of you, because all of you are not gonna work with me and I understand that. And I want you to go into my description of my episodes and see my cash flow planner, which is how you can start to build out for yourself. Hey, how much am I gonna spend in retirement? How should I think through this? Do I have the right investments, and so on.
Speaker 0:The point of this is, I want you to just understand when are you in a position to retire early and retire early with confidence? You all know it by now and I'm kind of like a beaten horse at this point, but there's two people out there, people that retire early, people that retire early with confidence. And I don't want you to retire going. I did it on paper and now I'm second guest, going out to eat and I'm second guest and taking that big trip and I don't know what health insurance is gonna cost. So I'm just gonna keep working. It's one more year of not dealing with that health insurance cost and how to think through it.
Speaker 0:What people fail to do is go. What if you kept your income low and qualified for subsidies and you would be in a great spot. What if you, instead of looking at health insurance and that like, did Roth conversions because it's gonna yield hundreds of thousands of dollars? So the reason I'm obsessed with this stuff probably to an unhealthy degree, that's the truth is because I want you to know that none of us know how long any of us are gonna live. You know that.
Speaker 0:Okay, I'm not gonna do science, but I want you to know that there are clients that come to me that have all these awesome plans and it looks great, until you get a scary health diagnosis and it's. We've got all these travel plans and you've got all these things mapped out in your head and the reality is it's just not gonna happen. And it's not gonna happen not because he didn't plan well. It's not gonna happen because life is gonna throw stuff at you and unfortunately, I see this more often than I'm not gonna say physicians, okay, because they're constantly actually seeing this, but I'm seeing people come to me so excited about their retirement that all of a sudden, their spouse is in poor health, or their children, or they're in poor health and they weren't expecting what actually was going to come. And now they're going well. All those plans shifted. So I wish I retired earlier, when I had my energy, when I had my health.
Speaker 0:So if there's anything you do from this episode, it's you think a little bit differently. I try to keep it short, it's about 15 minutes. If you think a little bit differently, you find out when are you in a position to retire early? And you close your eyes and go what am I really gonna do when I retire early? So on staff, here at Root, we have someone who's a retirement lifestyle coach. I could call myself that, but I'm not okay.
Speaker 0:I love optimizing numbers for your plan. We have someone on staff and all she does all day, every day, is speak with people about what on earth they're gonna do to feel fulfilled. And some people go I'm gonna spend time with friends, I'm gonna spend time with family. That's all great stuff, but beyond that, is that enough fulfillment? For some of you, yes, for some of you, no. It's like, hey, I really don't know what I'm gonna do and I'm gonna need a plan for it. So we have someone on staff who says, hey, if your plan looks great and your tax strategy and your state plan fall, that's awesome, but your life doesn't look awesome because you don't know how you're gonna have fulfillment. You know what you wanna retire from deadlines, boss, you name it but you don't really know what you're retiring to. Then there's a problem here Because we do a ton of guidance out there.
Speaker 0:I talk about it here, excuse me, I talk about it here on the show. I'll talk about 401K strategies and tax planning and all this cool stuff, but in my opinion, too many people don't talk about what are you actually gonna do? And so, even if financially everything looks great, they just don't take action and actually say it is time to retire. I know I'm in a great spot. Or you know what I have to work five more years longer than I expected. But I'm doing that because I wanna do it and I'm going to work every day, knowing this is not forever. I'm just doing this until I know I'm in a spot where I don't have to do this and in the meantime I'm gonna consider alternatives. What if I did part-time income? What if I looked at tax strategy? So people say once again why do you love this, they go. I don't love tax strategy. I love that you could implement cool tax planning and retire two years earlier and you didn't work any longer, you didn't attend more meetings and you spent more time with your family. Good luck quantifying that on your health. So the point of all of this and the reason I'm telling you this story is because there are 10, 15, 20 clients of mine in my head right now going.
Speaker 0:Ari, please tell your audience that when it comes to retirement, it's more than just financially. What are you on track for? I've got a ton of other episodes where I go into the details on tax planning and so on, but I'm gonna probably post this episode today for all of you because I just want to get this message out. And let me just summarize by saying I didn't know this podcast was gonna become what it has become, okay, so I'm very grateful to all of you. So thank you, of course, for sharing this, because that's what allows me to reach my goal of helping a million people retire early. I've had CNBC reach out, I've had someone from Netflix reach out, and those are people that are listening to the podcast going.
Speaker 0:I think people need to hear this message, which is we're not gonna do the traditional retirement from 65 on. We're not gonna just keep working because our parents did. We're gonna look at how long do we need to do this and show people that this is possible. So if you guys haven't seen Blue Zone on Netflix, it's awesome I think it's Blue Zone's actually plural where you can go and see how do people live like. Where are they actually getting happiness from? The value of having community, the value of saying you know what? I'm gonna prioritize my health, not waiting until retirement begins, but starting now.
Speaker 0:And a lot of you are going. I know already I wanna do it. I just can't because my job doesn't allow me to prioritize my health. I say, great, then we're looking at something else. They're going. Well, that's scary. I bring in a lot of money right now. If I change, it wouldn't be as much. I go. I know and I don't care. Let's look into it. Not saying you're gonna make a move. I'm saying let's look into see what's possible. That's really what planning is about. Planning is seeing what is possible. Can we make it happen?
Speaker 0:So when I started this podcast in the first year, I got a thousand downloads total. Okay, that's very few downloads on a monthly basis. A lot of people go hey, why are you even doing this? You know, very few people are even listening. I said you know what, if thousand people care enough to tune into the show because they have an interest in seeing what strategies exist to retire early, then I'm gonna keep doing it. Last month crossed 40,000 downloads for the month and that's telling me that this is resonating.
Speaker 0:So what I need from all of you what I ask, should I say is to let me know what resonates the most. You can go on my website earlyretirementpodcastcom slash, submit your question and I don't need you to put in there. Oh, my gosh, I need another pension analysis and if you do wanna put that in there, that's okay. I've got content about all of these topics, I assure you. Now there's still topics I've got on my list. I wanna go over universal life insurance index policies, how to think through surrendering and annuity, all these things. I've got a list of topics. I can't wait to do more episodes on that you guys have submitted. So thank you, I'm gonna get to all of those.
Speaker 0:But the point is, if you go, you know what this was helpful. I want more episodes like this Client stories, reframing how to think about retirement Great, I'll do more of this If you're going. You know what, no, like the reality is. I am tuning in because I wanna know how to execute a backdoor Roth IRA. Say, great, let me do that as well.
Speaker 0:What I'm probably gonna lean towards right now, as you know, I'll do episodes every Monday and then, on top of that, if there's a topic I think I'll resonate, I'll just put it out. But I wanna lean towards more of Mondays is gonna be that traditional podcast episode of A Deep Dive where I'm going through a Roth conversion, I'm going through investing a certain way, I'm going through tax laws, harvesting, whatever it is, and then, on top of that, I wanna release episodes maybe Fridays and I'm just getting your guys' thoughts on this honestly where I'm either bringing in a guest or I'm bringing on a client and I'm saying, hey, talk to me in real life here, not just financial life. What's it like to retire? What is helpful? Because I want this to be your go-to show, where every single Monday or every Friday, I just can't wait for this to be released, because I have two or three shows that I listen to and that's how I feel I'm like, tuesday is my show for XYZ. I can't wait for it, and every week I just get excited, and I want this to be the same for you, because, unfortunately, I find a lot of these podcasts or financial content that's out there, it's overwhelming and it'll scare people to the point where they don't take action, and so if I give you a bunch of amazing tips but you don't do anything about it, then I really don't think I've done my job well.
Speaker 0:So, with that being said, I hope that this was helpful for all of you. If it was, please do let me know. You can, of course, leave a review in the Apple Podcast. It doesn't allow you to do so on Spotify, but you can do that on Apple Podcast If you're listening to this, or just shoot me an email and once again I'll put it in the description. But my email ari my name at root that's R-O-O-T. Financialpartnerswithan-s-on-the-endcom. Now apologize once. Apologies, should I say, because I know this audio was not as crisp as my other episodes. It won't always be like this, but I just had this thought and I wanted to get it all out to all of you. So, with that being said, I hope you guys have a great rest of your Friday, which is when I'm recording this, as well as your weekend, and I will see you guys on Monday. Thanks, love you guys.