Have you ever peered over the edge of the working world and considered the plunge into early retirement? Scott and Rhonda did just that, and in this engaging episode, they illuminate the path they took to trade in their briefcases for a permanent vacation. From confronting the fear of outliving their savings to learning the value of owning a home outright, they provide a candid look at the key decisions and preparations that made their early exit possible.
Retirement brings its own set of emotional challenges and team dynamics, and our guests don't shy away from sharing theirs. They discuss the art of keeping in touch with former colleagues, the smooth transition that comes with a gradual farewell, and how they navigated the complexities of retiring at different times. Their insights offer a valuable compass for those considering stepping back from their careers, demonstrating the importance of syncing retirement plans with life partners to ensure a harmonious journey.
Financial advice can often feel overwhelming, but Scott and Rhonda break it down into attainable steps. They stress the merits of debt elimination, proactive saving habits, and the reassurance found in professional financial guidance. Their story is a testament to the power of planning, as they move from wealth accumulation to savoring the pleasures of life. Whether you're in your 60s or just starting to think about retirement, their wisdom serves as a poignant reminder to prioritize personal fulfillment and honest partner communication for a truly enriching retirement experience.
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.
Have you ever peered over the edge of the working world and considered the plunge into early retirement? Scott and Rhonda did just that, and in this engaging episode, they illuminate the path they took to trade in their briefcases for a permanent vacation. From confronting the fear of outliving their savings to learning the value of owning a home outright, they provide a candid look at the key decisions and preparations that made their early exit possible.
Retirement brings its own set of emotional challenges and team dynamics, and our guests don't shy away from sharing theirs. They discuss the art of keeping in touch with former colleagues, the smooth transition that comes with a gradual farewell, and how they navigated the complexities of retiring at different times. Their insights offer a valuable compass for those considering stepping back from their careers, demonstrating the importance of syncing retirement plans with life partners to ensure a harmonious journey.
Financial advice can often feel overwhelming, but Scott and Rhonda break it down into attainable steps. They stress the merits of debt elimination, proactive saving habits, and the reassurance found in professional financial guidance. Their story is a testament to the power of planning, as they move from wealth accumulation to savoring the pleasures of life. Whether you're in your 60s or just starting to think about retirement, their wisdom serves as a poignant reminder to prioritize personal fulfillment and honest partner communication for a truly enriching retirement experience.
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.
I've recorded many episodes over the three years of the early retirement podcast, but this is my favorite and the reason for that and I promise is you're not just going to have to listen to me the whole time, it is a longer episode. You're going to hear from my clients who actually retired early successfully and how they actually broke up with their employer. What was the process when they actually did retire, how much free time did they actually have and what did they do in their free time? What did they wish they do differently and they shared with me personally. Hey, if I would have seen an episode or heard someone ask these types of questions, it would have given me more confidence into just financially, can I retire when do I know I'm actually in a good position to retire? How does this change, knowing that there's a age gap between my spouse and I our health life expectancy? So hopefully you guys love this episode as much as I did and I'm going to let you guys hop in right now.
Speaker 1:Scott and Rhonda. Thank you guys again for doing this. I appreciate you taking the time and my listeners here are enough from me, so I wanted to have on some current clients that actually retired early and so what I'd like to do today, if it's okay with both of you, is ask you some of these questions, scott and Rhonda, you shared. Hey, this would have been really helpful for me to hear before I actually retired. I wish I would have done this, or why didn't I consider this? So thank you guys again for being here. What I want to start with is just asking you a question what were your biggest fears about retiring early and how did you cope with them?
Speaker 2:I think for me it's the obvious one, which is just not having enough money to live the way that we wanted to. I had, and I think a lot of people are probably in this same boat, but I had a couple of people in my close vicinity that decided they were going to retire but they kind of just picked a date and they're going to retire. They didn't really plan too well for it and one of them is older than me had to go back to work. He has to live with someone now because they don't have enough money to stay to have their own house things like that, and the other one was my father who ended up.
Speaker 2:He worked for the post office, decided he wanted to retire, made up his mind. He had a little bit of a pension, he took less to retire early, ended up moving south. It just had a big impact on me because they were kind of now far away from the family. We're all up in the Northeast. He moved south. They couldn't do what they wanted to do. My mom was kind of trapped down there. They had a way for us to come down to see them, that kind of thing and that really stuck with me on that. As things went further along it got worse where they had less and less money. And then on top of that my dad took non-survivor benefits. He didn't take them. So basically he was saying to us you got to take care of your mother now if I happen to go. Luckily it didn't happen that way there's a lot of that that got into on my end.
Speaker 2:Feeling like I had to save it gave me a lot of anxiety because I wasn't sure what that number would be. So it really got me focused on that and got me to how I coped with. It was really to get a better grip on our finances, which I didn't have until that really started sinking in our budgeting, figuring out where all our money went multiple ways, making three kinds of budgets. I made a budget that was a bare bones budget, kind of mid-range budget, and then a budget on everything. We did no filters on it at all, just like this is how we're living with our kids and everything and that's how much it would cost. And the bare bones one helps me cope in that knowing this is how much we would need Should I get fired. I have no money, I retired too early, all of that, but that was more how I coped with that, but it was definitely the money part for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, powerful stuff, Rhonda. What were your thoughts?
Speaker 3:Well, I remember sitting down with Scott discussing his mom and dad and my dad also, who lost half of his pension when the market crashed. So, yeah, so we decided then that we weren't going to do the same thing they did. We sat down, we said we got to make a plan, we got to stick to it, and that's what we tried to do. And at that time I always tell Scott I will never retire because I loved my job. It was so physically demanding, I thought I'd be bored if I stayed home. And one day I'm looking around I'm saying I accomplished everything I wanted for my department, right? And I said, hmm, it's time for me to go. And I came home and I told Scott that. And the next day I called up my union and I said let's get everything going. They said, okay, what date do you want? And I told them the date and it was like eight months later. Then I started planning to leave. After that.
Speaker 2:Wow. If I could just add, I think it's a double-edged sword, the things we had that happened with our parents, because it did get us more focused. Especially, I was almost too focused on retirement, but on the flip side, I never felt like I would have enough at that point, just because of what happened with them. It was such a fear that even though I was saving and saving and saving it worked both ways.
Speaker 1:This is what too many people do not focus on, is they go? How much is enough? And too many people go. I'm going to retire on February 1st, because my dog was born on the 1st and the moon was, and all of a sudden there's not actually a strategy to say, hey, here's when I'm really in a great spot to do so. And if markets do this or market, we're still going to be okay. And so I like even Scott you sharing there. Hey, we had three different budgets. Are we going to be okay? Here's the dream world.
Speaker 1:But it all comes from that fear of, hey, my parents went through this, am I going to be okay? And that's all everyone really wants at the end of the day is to make sure they are not going to run out of money. And that's kind of level one. Level two is okay. Do we have purpose? Are we going to be fulfilled? Great, can we leave money to kids? But it is that, are we okay? And so this is why I love planning. So thank you guys for sharing that. The second question I have is how have you guys adjusted to having so much more free time?
Speaker 2:I can tell you that you know, it's not been a year yet for us, but we don't have more free time. It's pretty amazing, you know. I thought we're working, you know, 10 hours a day or whatever. All of a sudden I'm going to have 10 hours a day free. But what we did was, while we were working, we put a lot of things off.
Speaker 2:And I'm like a task maker, like I make. I use Google Tasks, I have everything tasked out and I did it for work, so I also do it for home and I would put these tasks in, but I would constantly be, you know, pushing them off the personal tasks at home, what we want to do on the house, where we want to go, things like that, rhonda. Similarly, she would say like hey, you know, we should try going here and be like yeah, that's good, put it on the task list. As we got closer to our target date of retirement, I started thinking about some, or we started thinking about some of the smaller things, that I put them on the list and honestly, it's a pretty daunting list. Now I can't say it's going to last the rest of my life, but we have a lot of things that we want to do. And then, on top of that, we spend a lot more time with our grandkids, now family things that we weren't doing before.
Speaker 2:Or if we did them, my work would intrude on it. So I would be there physically, but you know I would have a call in the middle, so I would take the call, I would do that, and then, even when I'm off the call, you know I'm still losing mentally. I'm still thinking about what's the solution we're going to do for this, or you know things like that. So I really wasn't there. Now, when we go, it's actual time. We spend more time there, and you know we it's real time, it's not a disrupted time. So, just to wrap that whole thing up, you know we, of the time that we have, we fill it with things that we've always wanted to do, so it's not like, you know, we're laying on the couch staring at the ceiling. You know I play a lot of sports and I've been doing a lot more of that lately Rhonda gardens, those kinds of things that we really enjoy, but we had to cut down and, you know, only do it on Saturday or something like that. Now we do it every day and we go places.
Speaker 1:So love it, love it, rhonda. Anything to add on to that?
Speaker 3:Oh, having more free time. Just like Scott, I fill up my whole day, every day, and sometimes I have to push things off to the next day. So, yeah, having more free time is.
Speaker 2:So it's a fallacy.
Speaker 3:Yeah it's a fallacy.
Speaker 1:And I think that's part of what people need to hear is it's like, oh my gosh, like some people. The truth is is they have worked hard for many, many years and they don't know what they're going to do and they're scared to death to retire because they're worried about boredom. And then all of a sudden it's they hear this and they go and I see, rhonda, you're right there, you're like you're not going to be bored. Listen, there are plenty of things to do. The one of my favorite questions I'll ask them and I'll say when you're on vacation, where are you? Because you might physically be somewhere, but your mind is not there.
Speaker 1:And some people go yeah, I've just got one call during the day, but the reality is okay. Two hours before that I'm prepping, an hour after I have a follow up, and so it's now where are you really? So I love that you brought that up. What are some of those things, just so people can get excited about? Hey, yeah, I'm going to be able to do some of these things. Have you guys thought through I'm sure maybe, scott, it's even on your task list of we're going to take these trips or we're going to focus more on these things? What are some of those fun stuff you're excited about?
Speaker 2:We like to go hiking, things like that. We've seen a lot of places. So we're in New Jersey. Pennsylvania has a lot of outdoor things to do, but they're two hour drive hour and a half two hour drive so we never did them. There's a ton of places out there.
Speaker 2:We also like the New England region and between that and then taking a few more probably vacations of longer trips or longer weekends, my son is up in the Boston area so it's about four and a half hours from here so we would see them. We still try to see them quite often, but we're even seeing them more often now so we can go up there. So those are the kind of things that fill up the vacation piece. And then the day to day things are we like working on the house, we like painting, we like redoing different rooms, things like that. So that's the stuff that we have a lot to do on our house. I mean, when you think you're done, you have to go back to the room you did to start with and redo it again, because something else happens.
Speaker 1:Love it. You don't have to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in order to have total fulfillment in retirement. Yeah, rhonda, what about you?
Speaker 3:I was something I have to tell you, this story about Mount Menanda.
Speaker 2:That's for another day.
Speaker 3:That is another time, yes, but yeah, I love spending a lot of time with my grandkids. We find stuff to do. I go on the town page. Sometimes they give you ideas and we'll say, oh, let's go there, let's do this. So really adjusting to free time is not hard to do. You just got to put in a tiny bit of effort.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, love it. What aspects of your old work life do you miss, if at all? I?
Speaker 3:really miss. The only thing I miss is the people that I worked with. That's it. But then I would say also, like I love the structure at work, like I had this amount of time to do all my work and I made sure I got it done. Sometimes I would go in at midnight, sometimes 3 am, sometimes most of the time 5 am, but I made sure everything was done.
Speaker 1:So Okay, scott, what about?
Speaker 2:you. Yeah, on my end, honestly I thought I was going to miss. I had kind of a technically challenging job and I also did management. I knew I would not miss the management and was never something I wanted to do, just kind of happened. But I thought that the technical side I would miss a lot. But really I found getting back to working on the house and everything putting new heating zones in my house, things like that just as challenging, just different type of challenging.
Speaker 2:I do miss a little bit my team. I got lucky that I was able to handpick my team and I think if there's one skill I have I could pick people that I get along with well. So we were friends, our inner core were friends that we talked all day about nonsense and work. They were good technically but we also just had a chat open all the time that had all kinds of talk in there so that I thought I would miss. But what we did was because they were a little nervous with me leaving as well, we kept the calls going after I retired. We had weekly calls anyway and then that kind of transitioned off and we still have the chats open but they're not as active now and I don't.
Speaker 2:Actually with that kind of taper off I don't miss them as much as I did, but I think a hard cut may have been a little. You know you might have had a little void there for a little bit until you adjusted, but with kind of tapering it off made it a lot easier for me. But I still talk to them. But I do miss those guys. You know talking to them all the time and, like I said, some of the technical challenges were good. You know it was annoying at the time but it was also great to solve the problems.
Speaker 1:Awesome Selfishly. Obviously, I know you guys well, but this is very fun for me to hear because we don't even get to get into these full weeds when we're doing full planning stuff. So this is just selfishly fun for me. Now I want to ask you guys something, and this wasn't on the list of questions that I had kind of talked to you guys about before, but a lot of people are asking me like hey, how do you actually leave? Like do I just tell my manager after 10 years, hey, I'm out in two, three weeks, is it? Hey, I'm kind of happy to help with projects the next few months, but just say no, my head's kind of already in retirement. Like what was the process to actually leave?
Speaker 2:Well, it was in a union, so it's a little different for her, so I'll let you.
Speaker 3:It was a little bit different when I told like I waited until it was my time, like I had a specific date I had her retired by. I retired the day after that date and I had to tell my manager and he was like not really that happy, but he was really a good manager, but he didn't want me to leave. But anyway, like I said, I had eight months, you know. So he knew eight months before. So I had time to get ready and make sure everything was going to go smooth after I left. So and I also told him, if you need me any time for anything, you call me up and I will come and help you out. So he said, although he never took me up on it.
Speaker 1:But yeah, scott, I'm going to come to you in a second. But, Rhonda, what you just said, there I'll ask people to say what matters most, because a lot of people will reach out and go hey, my manager's asked me to stay, and so they just want to. They want to stay because it's comfortable, they don't want to disappoint their manager, so they do stay, and then their health suffers or maybe they just don't spend time with family and actually what does matter most? So I think what you did is brave, and what a lot of people do is they just kind of stick in it for familiarity purposes, and I think you kind of did it in the smoothest way, which is, hey, actually I'm retiring because it's what I want to do with most important, you know.
Speaker 1:But at the same time I'm not saying I'm not appreciative of everything you've done. I am, I am here to help and, as you know, it wouldn't be, you know, that kind of hard cut off. You're not breaking up with someone entirely. So I think that that's important for people to hear. Scott, what was it like for you?
Speaker 2:For me. I had a different concern. My concern was for the team that I had that worked for me. I didn't really worry as much. I would work for a big company. So really the most angst I had was telling them. So I let them know ahead of time. It was, I think I was retiring in May. My plan was the end of April to retire. I spoke to those guys, I let them know that it was coming up and then later on I waited until I think the middle of February. I told my manager or my supervisor or whatever that you know I was going to retire at the end of April. And I did that thing where they said, well, can you please stay a little bit longer? So I ended up staying until the middle of May. But that was. I wasn't going to go further than that. Like I knew they would keep extending it if they could. So I set kind of a hard line there. But yeah, it was really my team that I was more concerned about, because I didn't want to leave them in a lurch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, got it. Now I'll tell you this got. My financial brain was going. I'm OK with the few extra months for Roth conversion purposes and other stuff that I like, but I think advisors too often will even do that and say, yeah, yeah, keep working two, three more years, you'll be in a better spot. And so the risk is that you, if you want to have a great plan, work 20 more years like the plan will look great. But the point here is not to do that. The point is actually what? Am I in a spot where I know I'm going to be OK and even then start to go OK? How can I really make the most of the time while I have my energy and health? So my next question for you guys is how did the age gap between you two factor into the decision making process for your retirement?
Speaker 2:I'll jump in this one because it had a big impact later on. Like you know, Ronda is almost eight years older than me, even though she looks younger than me, and when we were younger it didn't really bother me at all, I didn't think about it. Then, as I got more into my mid to later 40s, I started thinking that how are we going to work this, Because I don't want to be 65 and now Ronda's almost 73. And maybe we missed some really good years there, and I did get a lot of that from online things that you and James talk about. You have that little. What do you call them? The go-go years or whatever?
Speaker 1:Yeah, slow go years and the go-go years.
Speaker 2:And I didn't want to lose them. So then I was thinking OK, maybe I could retire at 62, 63. And that still gives us a little bit of time. But on the flip side of that, I had a little bit of guilt on my end in that if Ronda's working until 66, how is it fair that I'm leaving at 62 or 63? Why does she have?
Speaker 2:to work longer than me, but luckily she's a lot more levelheaded than I am and when we talk about it, the pros on retiring outweighed the cons. Spending the time together is way outweighs any kind of stupid guilt for retiring early. So I think that was the big key for us Because it did really come into play later. I did start panicking about that around 50-ish that wow, we're not going to have a big window like everybody does, we're not both retiring at the same age.
Speaker 1:So that was it for me. Yeah, that's insightful, Ronda. Any thoughts or anything you want to add on to that?
Speaker 3:Well, hopefully, Like I'm a pretty healthy person, Everybody in my family is healthy. They live a really long time, Like my grandmother, great-grandmother over 100.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:They just keep going and I got that from them. I just keep going ahead, going, doing, doing, doing, try to keep up with Scott sometimes, as I don't all the way, but I do a pretty good job. As long as I can still do that, I don't have any theories about it.
Speaker 2:Ian, if I could just throw in, I think that did have a positive impact in that we both knew we need not that you don't need to anyway, but we need to stay in shape, ronda and me, so that we can do things together, because we do have the age gap.
Speaker 2:So Ronda wants to be able to do things, stay up with the grandkids and all of that, and she's a little bit older so she has to stay in shape too and we do things together. So that's why we like the hiking or the walking or whatever we're doing, to kind of stay active.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we don't have our health forever and the truth is we'll be here in our 80s and 90s. But what I don't want to have happened I mentioned this to you guys early on. I don't want you to be mad at me when you're in your late 80s going, hey, why didn't you give us the confidence to go spend more while we have our energy and health, when the money's worth more to us? So I like that way you guys phrased that. Now there's a big myth out there, and the myth is that people start working at 21, 22 years old. They max out their 401k forever. They start doing investing and tax planning right away. They do that for 30, 40 years. They perfectly retire. That's not real life here. When did you guys say, hey, we're gonna start saving and investing and tax strategy? Like, talk to me about that process way too late, is the answer.
Speaker 2:So we had our. We had two kids, a boy and a girl. We had them too early, not?
Speaker 2:too early, but we had them early let's say that They'll probably watch this now. They'll be like but so we didn't really have a lot of money at that point, so there was no saving for retirement or anything. We went through into my mid to late 30s with a lot of bills, no savings, just living week to week, going on vacations, living fine, kids had everything they wanted and all of that, but we had no savings. It got to a point where then it was we've got to pay off our bills and I got almost too singularly focused on paying off bills. But I wanted to get them out of the way so that we could then start saving for retirement. So that took until I was. 44 is the first time I actually started saving for retirement, wow. But along the way was paying off all the bills did kind of that cascading effect to pay our bills take whatever you paid off on one, put it to the next one and so on. Then got to the point where all I had left was the mortgage. And I know there's arguments on should you invest the money or should you pay off your mortgage. But for me and I think for Rhonda too not to speak for her but peace of mind of paying off the mortgage was huge for me, like I wanted nothing to hold me back. So once we did that that was, I was 44.
Speaker 2:At that point. I didn't pay it off at 44, but we were in pretty good shape, at least bill wise, at 44. That's when I started saving for retirement, putting in 401K, rhonda, the same thing and actively investing my money, like really getting into investing, and being super aggressive Cause I knew at that point I was way behind. My friends had been saving for a while. I didn't have the money to save, so I knew I was behind and it was a good thing and a bad thing because I did.
Speaker 2:I'm blessed with a really good wife that put up with a lot, for I mean, we had some pretty lean years while we were paying things off, but she went through with it cause she knew what the end game was let's get this stuff paid off and be free of that. So yeah, we started late, but I did. Once we got into it, I drove around to crazy with weekly updates on where we were, how much you have, the market's going up, the market's going down. Weekends were great, weekends were horrible because of how the market went and all of that.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it was my mid 40s was when I did.
Speaker 2:I came up with my own way of investing my money too, which luckily worked out. But I just waited my investments on the returns that they got and then I would every quarter review them and make changes based on that, and to me it was just sticking with a plan. Might not have been the best plan, but it was sticking with a plan, not saying I think the new president's going to be horrible, I'm going to move all my money here or I think gold is going to be big this year. I didn't do any of that. I just looked at what was on there and move my money that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, super helpful, rhonda. When Scott was doing all that investing, when both of you were deferring money, were you going? Hey, it's with the pure goal of retiring early and getting towards financial independence early, was it more? So, hey, we just kind of think we should be doing this because we started later than the traditional person. What were your thoughts on that?
Speaker 3:I'm more in agreement with Scott. I just didn't want to carry a lot of debt. I didn't want to again work forever, but when I wanted to make sure and we were on the same page, to where basically because we talked about it so much that we were that we we did. It was tough in the beginning, like Scott said, but we did good. We did good. We both knew what we had to do and then we just did it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you guys did very well and I'm, as you guys know I kind of say I'm one of the meanest early retirement planners, because I don't want anyone to ever retire too early and go. Why didn't I work six more months or one more year, so I could spend X amount every single month for the next 20, 30 plus years. And you guys are not only in a great spot, but you did the hard work which too many people overlook, which is really determining your expenses. What do you want to spend so you have total fulfillment in retirement? Most people don't do that. They go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let me just look at returns and as you're adding new dollars into the market, it's not that you can't go wrong. It is important to invest well, but it's very different from being in retirement, where now the name of the game is not losing, it's less of can we hope to win? And if this does well, it's okay. We're still adding new dollars. Now we're in retirement and now we need this money to last for the rest of our lives. So let's assume you guys could talk to your I'm gonna say 50 year old selves about preparing for retirement. What would you have told Scott? What would you have told Scott at 50?
Speaker 2:I think it would. There's a few things. I think that the first thing would be to budget earlier, to know, like what you were saying, know those expenses. That helped me a lot was, like I said, just keep in track of what we spent every day, not trying to cut back, not trying to do anything like that, but then get a number over a course of years of what was the average that we needed per month to live on and from there then you can figure out how much money you need for retirement, depending on when you want to retire.
Speaker 2:The other pieces yeah, don't accumulate too many bills. That is really easy to do, especially when you're younger. You'll get a credit card here and there and you think I'll just pay it off whenever. So I think it was budgeting. Paying off my bills would be the two things I would say. But also, invest in your retirement accounts that you have from work as early as you possibly can.
Speaker 2:If you talk to well, you know, dina, but if you talk to both of my kids, I never shut up about getting early this is how much you would have if you invested at 20, as opposed to when you invested at 30, that kind of thing, because I learned it the hard way and I was kicking myself the whole way Like if I had just put money in when I was in my late 20s, I wouldn't even be in the spot I was in and I constantly reviewed that. So I think getting in early was that you know what I would say. And then the last thing is when what I would go back and say is once you think you're in an okay spot or you think you kind of have it together, go see someone else that is not connected to you at all but is a financial planner type of person and maybe not paid for it. However, you can do it, but don't tell them what your plan is. Give them your info.
Speaker 2:This is where I am. What do you think my best spot is? And see what they come back with to see if your plan kind of matches up. Are you way off base on it? You know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Couldn't have said it any better, ron. I'm gonna come to you in a second. Two things. Number one I wanna go to the mortgage piece real quick because I use this example for a lot of my clients. But I say, no one's ever ever seen their investments go up by $50,000 and they host a party with friends. They just don't do it. But when you pay off that mortgage you sleep better. You feel you do go. Hey, everyone I pay, I owe my God. There's a weight that goes off.
Speaker 1:So part of my job is quantifying trade-offs and it's saying, hey guys, here's kind of the difference we could pay off this mortgage or we can invest. And sometimes it's minimal and it's guys, I know you go, pay off the mortgage, you're gonna sleep better. You cannot quantify that on a spreadsheet. Other times it's us saying, hey guys, this is, like you know, cutting spending by $2,000 for the next two or three months. This is a bigger trade-off. And then most people go hey, I just didn't really know the magnitude of these decisions here. So I love what you said there, scott, and I'll tell people when they're going to any advisor, anyone. It's hey, kind of what would you do? Here's my different assets, here's what I'm hoping to do and if they come back and say, hey, you're in a great spot to retire at 72, you're like, okay, it's very different from what I was thinking. Where are we off here? So I liked that. You said that. Rhonda, if you could talk to I know you just turned 40 last week big.
Speaker 3:I know.
Speaker 1:But when would you could talk about? You know, I would say you could talk to young Rhonda about anything. What would you tell them?
Speaker 3:I would just say that I was happy with the way I did, whatever I did like. I started a long time ago with a 401K from work and I used to take my advice from Ken and Daria Dolan. Never heard of them. Shout out to the Dolans yeah, and you know they really helped me a lot with my 401K and then Scott said he wanted to take it over, so I was happy with that, but I did. We did pretty good on that.
Speaker 2:Well, we still have a couple of investments in one of our accounts from what Rhonda picked that still are good.
Speaker 3:We could talk about them at some point offline, but yeah, it's good stuff that she had so pretty much I was really happy with the way that things worked out, because you really have to work together and you have to listen to each other and make sure that what you're doing is right for both of you. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a team approach. Yes, 100% is. Guys, this has been awesome. I just have kind of one or two more questions to end this out. The question here is what's been the primary role of having both kind of me as your financial advisor, but also the exploration of even hiring an advisor? What was the process for you to even considering hiring me and root financial? What was that whole process like? Really I'm totally honest, I promise.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, really why. I watched a lot of videos. I felt like going up to probably when I was 57. Even I could handle the whole thing on myself. I had done all my investments, I had almost what I thought I needed, but I found myself constantly moving my goalposts because I left myself like an asterisk there. That oh well, you never know what Congress is gonna do in the future. So I think that that ended up giving me an out. So I could say, well, I can't retire now because I need one more year. And I would say to Rhonda, like we need this much money. We would get there and I'd be like, yeah, that's not enough, we're gonna need a little bit more. So for me, that's when I realized I needed somebody, a financial advisor type person, to kind of go through it with me. And if I could just quickly go over how our experience with you was, because it was really super impactful for me and I'm not trying to be a root fanboy here but so we gave you all of our info.
Speaker 2:I didn't really tell you too much about our plan. I think I said I wanted to retire 62, 63, whatever, and we waited for you to come back to us. You did your evaluation and then I was 59 and a half at the time when I was talking to you and you came back and you said, okay, here's what it looks like at 62. You should be fine with that, which made me feel really good. I was like, okay, my plan was good. And then you continued on and you're showing us everything on the screen and you said but let's look, theoretically, you're actually fine at 59. If you retire because this is how it works out with the expenditures that you have and the vacations you wanna take you would still be okay, and I'm thinking in my head I'm like, but wait a minute, I'm 59 and a half right now.
Speaker 2:But it's a lot to take in whatever. So we finished our meeting with you and then Rhonda and I were talking about it and it sank into both of us like we could retire now, as opposed to losing another two or three years, which I thought we were gonna do, because, honestly, at the time I thought 62 was what I was gonna target and I was gonna stretch it out to 63. Like I would say, okay, the end of the year I'll be 62 in seven months, we'll do it then, type of thing. So I think, without that validation from somebody that really knows what they're doing a financial planner, the Roth conversions and the tax planning, all that is obvious, that's what you need a financial planner for. But that showing the actual figures on screen was huge for me. And then the other piece that I'll say that you guys helped me specifically with is reminding me about spending the money that I have is a key part, because I won't spend any money. That's my biggest challenge that I have is, I still don't wanna spend money because I've been saving for so long. I don't wanna do it.
Speaker 2:And we have one of the videos that James Canole put out. Rhonda and I use it to each other all the time. I won't tell the whole thing, but basically you're having a good time on vacation, you're in a hotel, you want a candy bar. It's $10 if you run down at the front desk and get it, or you can get in your car, drive and it'll be $3 down the street and you take the half hour to go out there.
Speaker 2:And he's like, if you have the money, is it worth losing a half an hour or 45 minutes of your vacation time that you're having a good time on to save $7, or do you just buy the stupid candy bar? So quite often it'll be Rhonda telling me, but sometimes I do it to her and just say, hey, remember the candy bar thing, because that kind of reinforcement that you guys give is good. I mean, you and I just had a call, or the three of us just had a call a month, a month and a half ago, where you were still saying the same thing like you guys are in good shape, so do whatever you want, type of thing, and that reinforcement is good, because I still find myself negotiating my direct TV bill and things like that, which I'm losing an hour of my life to save $20 or something. It doesn't really make sense, but it's hard to make a hard cut and just stop doing what I've done my whole life.
Speaker 1:That is awesome. Thank you seriously, scott, for sharing all that. We kind of boil this down to one phrase. We say what's the ROH? And the H stands for hassle. Everyone looks at return on investment. They don't look at return on hassle.
Speaker 1:And the truth is, people who reach out to us, they might go. You know what? My neighbor is nowhere close to retiring. So how on earth could I be close to retiring? Or you know what A coworker I know? They've always said they're gonna retire at 63 or 64. So I'm kind of thinking 63, but I really don't wanna work.
Speaker 1:And so it's almost like they're just anchoring things in their head based on what they've heard and what the internet tells us, and all of a sudden they say what are we actually on track for? And then is your advisor stress testing all those things? And do they work with people like you that are hoping to retire early? And so there's a lot of nuance involved that we talk about. And so the people who are reaching out to us, they're not saying you know what's the stock. They're saying, hey, I know the 4% rule exists, but how does that change for an retire early? How does that change if I wanna spend more that retirement smile.
Speaker 1:You've got those slow go years and the go go years and the no go years. And how does spending change? Are we gonna spend 8,000 a month or 10,000 a month or 12,000 every single month? There's that gonna be a whole lot more upfront while we're still doing Roth conversions and other stuff we talk about then. Is it gonna taper down over time? And just having that peace of mind that that's what we find people really want and the fact that you're sharing, that is why I love what I do. So thank you, scott. Seriously, rhonda, anything you wanna add onto that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, when Scott first started looking at your videos online and he said I'm thinking about doing this, what do you think? So I started watching the videos too, and then, because Scott was really unsure about handing everything over to somebody else, and then you know, so we watched it and, like I go by my gut instinct, and I said I like Ari, he's gonna be Ari, guy right. And Scott said yeah. I said, well, at least listen to him and see what he says, and then we can go from there. But ever since there we didn't look back, we just went forward.
Speaker 1:Love it. Thank you, rhonda. There's four criteria I'll tell someone when it's hiring an advisor. It's number one are they a fiduciary? So a neighbor? This is a few months ago. They're like I heard you're a fiduciary. It's like when do we begin? I'm like fiduciary is like a handshake, like nice to meet you. Let's even see if this makes sense.
Speaker 1:Then, are you truly focusing on working people that are just like me? Some people say, yeah, I work with everyone. I go. It's kind of hard to do everyone really really well, so then we have to go. Well, do you like the person?
Speaker 1:Because if all the financial stuff works out but you're not actually excited to meet with them, then it's gonna be a problem. Like, we don't subscribe as you guys do, I don't. If you're falling asleep in my meetings, then we're not doing a good job. So the reason we do all the content and everything is so that people reach out just like yourselves and interview us for hours and hours to go. Oh my gosh, like I think I'd actually enjoy this, versus what most people go is. Oh my God, it's so overwhelming. There's so much. Let me just keep working. I'll just keep making and making and making.
Speaker 1:And the only and I'm just very transparent. As you guys know, the only risk I see is that, scott, you lose more sleep overspending. And here's the just hard truth. The hard truth is you would not be where you are right now if you were the best spender ever, because you just wouldn't.
Speaker 1:Now, if you were the best saver ever and said, oh my gosh, I'm not gonna help my kids or do anything, then you'd have too much money and we'd say, hey, guys, like to your guys point about what's most important. I want you guys to do what you wanna do. I just want you to do it in a way going, hey, we're spending sustainably, and that's what it comes down to. Having a plan to every single year. Yep, we are on track. So love that you guys shared all of that. The very truly last thing I have here on my list that I wanted to ask you guys is what advice would you give to someone who is in their early 60s, so not in their 40s or 50s, they're in their early 60s, they're, they feel they're a few years out from retirement. What would you tell them about preparing for retirement in the next call it one to three years?
Speaker 2:I mean.
Speaker 1:I think, the.
Speaker 2:You know everybody's different, but for me is the again getting some outside input on where you stand for being able to retire. So you have kind of a. I think as I approached my retirement date, knowing what the date was helped me kind of get things in order instead of having kind of a floating date that was out there. So I think you know getting a plan down financially for that is key. And then, like I said before, you know I don't remember anything. So I keep a big, long task list. But even coming up with what you want to do when you retire like that, you do have something to do. So you're not just retiring like the. You know people I talked about. They just decided they're gonna retire and they retired without really any kind of plan.
Speaker 2:I think some people do need to continue to work. They want to work. We know people that you know they keep working even though they could retire, because that's what they want to do. So I think you know people get into this mode where I'm almost 65, I have to retire. Maybe that's not what you need to do, but I think you do need to list everything that you want to do in your life. Does that look like that's gonna fill it up and get you know, figure that out, and then maybe you do want to continue to work or not. So that's the biggest piece for me. You know, outside of the financial thing, the financial thing for me is I know you you'll stress, which is good that it's not the biggest part. You also have to be happy, obviously, or what's the sense of having all the money? But on the flip side of that, knowing where you stand financially is really good.
Speaker 2:I mean, I did have a little bit of anxiety going to you that you know you were gonna say, well, you could retire at 63, but you know I hope you guys like cat food or something you know because that's what you're gonna have. So there is a little bit of that, but you need to have those cold facts of where do you stand, you know, instead of kind of letting it float. So that would be my advice on that.
Speaker 1:Love it and I'll just, ron, I'm gonna come and do it in one second. And for people that say, hey, I want to retire early which just for most of you, just so you know anyone before 65, that's kind of how I view earlier time, kind of that range of 50 to 65, anywhere in there that there's a lot of strategies out there. They're not bad the 4% rule, there's so many out there. But if you want to do really good planning and make sure you're actually in an amazing spot to retire early, there is nuance involved, not just the tax planning that you see me do all my videos on conversions and harvesting and fun stuff, that stuff I nerd out over. And so, scott, you're right, you absolutely need to make sure that the kind of cold hard facts are there that you are gonna be okay.
Speaker 1:And sometimes the feedback's not so rosy, where people reach out and it's hey, I want to retire and I want to spend 14,000 a month and I've got million dollars, and then it's, hey, that's just not feasible based on this, unless that's for one single year, they go, no, no, that's forever. And then it's like, okay, let's have a conversation. It's on our job to say what to do or not to do. It's here's kind of the facts, and then from there, okay, do you have fulfillment and purpose and what are you gonna do? And so I like they brought that up, scott, because it's true Rhonda, what would you tell you know, one to three years out, someone wants to retire early. Maybe there's a significant age gap as well. Like, what would you tell that person?
Speaker 3:I would say you really have to look inside and know who you are, what you can accomplish. You have to be honest with your partner. I can't do this, I can't do that, or I can do this, I would like to move forward with it, and then you know. Then you go from there. But it's got to be like you know, two person decision, because it affects Scott, it affects me. So I know what I can do and I tell him Scott. I tell Scott what I'm capable of and I keep up pretty good with Scott, except he does walk really fast and he takes big steps that I have all the time keeping up with. But other than that, you really have to think about everything. Don't rush into anything. You can start planning three years out there's nothing wrong with that and just do what you need to do for yourself and then explain it to your spouse and come to incision.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just I'll throw in there. I do think that's key, you know, knowing what you want and being able to say to your spouse or your partner or whatever it is, no, this is what I want to do, type of thing, not go in there saying, well, he really likes this. So you know, I'll try to, I'll try to make this work with that. You know, that's not good. Just kind of what my mother did with my father was she was like, well, he wants to retire, so we're retired. She knew, because she did the bills, that it was going to be tight, but she did it because my dad wanted to retire and it just, you know, it backfired. So not to keep bringing that back in, but that was a.
Speaker 2:You know, another, another piece that is really important and that's why, you know, rhonda and I talked about it a lot and you know, where did we feel we were going to be comfortable. So I think that that honesty is really it's a, it's a key, because there's no going back. That's the, that's the big thing. You know, switching jobs, you can do whatever you want, but once you quit and you retire, you're supposed to be done at that point. So now you're, you know that's the finish line there.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you brought it up again. And, guys, this has been amazing. I'll kind of say one quick story to end here, because this happened two hours ago. But I had someone come to me and said I want to retire early, I'm 73. I said doesn't sound like it. They said no, no, no, I'm trying to retire early, I'm 73. I said doesn't sound like it. They said I'm trying to retire early.
Speaker 1:Again, they left out the word again. I mean, they did retire early, but they didn't spend what they wanted to spend and so they went back to work and they weren't invested. Well, they had too much in one part of the market and it put them in a really tough spot. So to exactly, you said there, scott, you want to retire early once, you want to do it once, you want to do it successfully, you want to be an awesome spot. And I can tell you, guys, the world would be a better place with more Scott and Rhonda. So thank you, guys, for taking the time to do this. Is there anything else at all that you want to share today?
Speaker 2:No, just thanks, Ari. I mean, I will say your help has been monumental in me being able to retire, because I would not be retired right now, honestly, if we didn't go to you. And it's not just because we're doing a podcast with you, like that's where we were. We talked about it right before this podcast that I would still be working and I'd be saying you know, I'm pretty sure maybe next year we'll be able to do it, and it would just keep extending and extending. So yeah, that was key. So thanks for that.
Speaker 1:Yep, and that's what wakes me up in the morning. That's why I love doing what I do. I don't people go. You love Roth conversions? I go. No, I don't. I love the fact that if you're smart with numbers, you can spend more time with your spouse Like that's cool. I love the fact that if you're good with investing, you can retire two years earlier and have more grandbaby time. That's cool. So, thank you. Seriously, I love working with both of you. This is awesome and once again, guys, thank you.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to another episode of the early retirement show. If you have a question that you want answered in a future episode, you can always go to my website, early retirement podcastcom. That's early retirement podcastcom, and you can go ahead and submit a question that I'll look to answer in a future episode. Thank you all for listening. Please do rate it, review it and share it with someone who you think would benefit from this information. If there's anyone out there that you know, I certainly appreciate it and I will see you all each week. Hey guys, it's me again. Please be smart about this. Nothing in this podcast should be construed as financial, tax or legal advice. Consult with your tax preparer or financial advisor before taking any action. This podcast is for informational purposes only.