How Intentional Decisions Shape Your Retirement Dream
Why Financial Freedom Goals Require More Than Just Saving
Listen to the Wealthy After 40 Podcast on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Your Player of Choice
Financial freedom (retirement) doesn’t happen by accident, and it doesn’t come from savings alone. It’s built through intentional decisions, a clear retirement dream, and the confidence to design a life you’re excited to live.
In this final episode of the Retirement Ready Framework series, I dive into Phase 4: Your Money Freedom, the phase where everything comes together. This is where you stop managing money on autopilot and start intentionally shaping your financial future around the life you actually want in retirement.
If you’ve ever thought, “I just hope it all works out,” or wondered what retirement will really look like beyond travel and time off, this episode will help you define your financial freedom goals and create a plan that supports both your life now and your retirement dream.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
What money freedom really means and why it’s more than just being able to retire
Why intentional decisions are the bridge between saving and creating your retirement dream
How to design a retirement lifestyle that includes purpose, identity, and fulfillment
Why most people skip this phase and the risks of doing so
How your retirement vision directly impacts your financial freedom goals
How to adjust your money systems and plans to support your retirement dream
The role clarity and confidence play in retiring without regret or fear
Ready to take your retirement dream from vision to reality? Schedule a free Retirement Clarity Call with me and we’ll walk through how the Retirement Ready Framework can help you make intentional decisions, close any gaps in your plan, and confidently move toward your financial freedom goals.
Unedited Transcription of Episode:
Welcome to the final episode of the series. This is part four or phase four of my retirement ready framework. You called your Money freedom. This is the culmination of all your efforts. This is where we are all wanting to get to money. Freedom, right is your retirement money. Freedom means you no longer have to trade.
Time for money you get to if you want to, but getting to this point is all in phase four. So why is this phase different? And why is this the final phase? This phase after you have built, you've got your reality, you've built your systems, and you've started understanding how to handle the decisions that come about in life for the now.
Dealing with emergencies, family members, kids, spouses, job loss, like all of the things, that was what is really going on in phase three is the here and now, and knowing how to navigate those and how those are not going to derail us, we've gotta get a handle on those. To then come to phase four, your money freedom.
This phase is different because you're not just saving, you're not just paying off debt, you're not just trying to manage your money. You are shifting from autopilot or now living to intentional design, making intentional choices. And building toward something specific. This phase is very crucial. This phase, in addition with the one question in phase one is very crucial and I think often overlooked for those of us thinking about retirement.
I. Didn't think about it. I did. At the very end, I realized how important it is to be prepared to be living this life to, it's more than just the money, money still goes on. So money in retirement is phase three, but to get to retirement, we have to be in phase four. Most people skip this step,
they just figure if I just keep saving, if I just keep waiting, working long enough and get social security if I just, and most of you are not even thinking about the possibility of retirement or declaring when you want to retire. All right. We talk about that in the workshop now.
The workshop's already happened, but there is another one coming up in April, August, and October. I would love to have you join me. You can learn more at Elevate Finances US Black slash workshop. What that all entails, what the exact dates are, what the exact price is. But that is phase one in a sense.
But it also is a question of that helps you shape a phase four. So as you enter into phase four, you're moving into your money freedom. We talked about it being intentional. We talked about it, building toward something specific. We have to start answering well, asking ourselves the questions first, and then answering them.
And some of those questions are going to be, what do you actually want retirement to look like? To be like to, all of those things. Now, for those of you who are like I'm gonna go travel. Great. Most people do. Most people don't understand why I don't wanna do that. But what are you gonna do Monday through Friday that you're not working, or I mean that you're not traveling?
What are you gonna do? What is retirement gonna look like? This is where you run into one of two things. If you're not being intentional, you sit in the chair all day, you get unhealthy. And you pass away within a year. I know. Pretty heavy. I had a discussion with my brother. He retired from the railroad.
It was his second retirement. But he was talking with individuals of, I think HR is what he said. They were anyways of the railroad and they were trying to figure out why most of the railroad retirees passed away within a year. It's 'cause they had no purpose. They had no vision. They had no dream. So there's gonna be a portion of this.
I'm gonna talk about money, but really we have to start visioning. What do you want? What do you not want? What could you do, possibilities can be endless. Are you retiring with a spouse? Same time around the same time? What is in their heart, having these conversations, doing vision exercises are so very important.
Now, I think we should be dreaming. I think we should be exploring, and retirement isn't just a week of vacation from work. It's more than that. It can be a humdrum if you're not prepared. All right. So then moving into the money side of it, as you are creating your vision may have some steps, some things that you need money.
What is that impact? So in this phase, we begin building your estimated retirement budgets, we start exploring your current expenses, which ones are not going to be there, what are new from your vision? And we start building those in. Now, in phase one, we create a financial independence number, meaning the amount you need to save to retire.
But as you get into phase four and you start, removing some expenses, adding some new ones, this is going to tweak your, total savings amount you need, positive or negative, it could go up or it could go down. And so exploring this. Without compromising your financial security is crucial, but it is a intentional step.
You need to do. Identifying the gaps as you're moving closer, as you're getting closer, not just saying, I've solidified that from phase one. No. Will you redo it again in phase four. Now that we've got everything under control, we know how to make our money decisions. We know what is impacting. We know what is, you know what we're going to let impact us.
Now we can have different gaps, bigger gaps, smaller gaps, but we can start looking and strategically close them just like we did in phase one. So then we move into adjusting your plan. You want to incorporate these big dreams. You want to dream about retirement and not just dream.
We want to take action. So it's time to go back to your systems, back to those money decisions and start adjusting your plan. Start adjusting the system that will support your freedom. Your freedom might look like. A post-retirement cruise for three weeks, it might look like I'm just going to go part-time work,
or I'm actually gonna downsize my home. So what does that shift make? What does that do? You start making confident adjustments as you plan life changes.
Phase four is where everything starts coming together. You have the freedom of knowing money stops feeling scary, and it starts feeling exciting. Actually, I think it's retirement, because retirement is scary. Am I gonna have enough? I've seen people that didn't have enough. If you don't pay attention until it happens, you're going to struggle.
So let's face it now, you'll have the confidence to say yes to many opportunities. You'll be able to create opportunities. You'll be able to hopefully avoid some of those things that are going to derail you or plan better if they're going to happen. You will be living your best life now while also preparing for later.
You've heard me use that phrase now and later. Phase four is the ultimate, culmination of those efforts so that you are not sacrificing the lifestyle you think you want, that you want to carry over. We really dial in here. I don't know how many people I have said, I don't want to give up the lifestyle I have.
That is done in phase four, that is created in this realm of, what does that mean, we've gotta create those visions. We've gotta dial in, because typically when I hear people say that, they'll be like we've got to get detailed. We've got to know what we're thinking. We've got to know what we're doing.
So what does phase four help prevent? It helps prevent us from settling. Just going I guess I don't get to go do that, or I'm not going to do that, or, it'll just be okay. Remember I talked to about the railroad workers, they weren't okay. You will prevent unnecessary worry without action.
As you dial in, you'll see where you need to make changes. You'll see what action steps you need to take. You'll know how to take those at this point, you've been through phase one, two, and three. So really coming to the culmination and help you overall prevent reaching retirement and wishing that you had planned differently, wishing that you had thought more about those Monday eight hours, those Wednesday, eight hours, those extracurricular activities,
a slow morning is amazing. I love mine. But if I did not have what I do right now, I would have to go find something else. Or at the risk of I don't like retirement, I don't enjoy it. We have created such a identity in our work, in what we do, whether you like your job or not. It's now time in phase four to create that retirement identity.
As you create that, you're going to step into that. You're going to be excited, and you're gonna be able to res retire successfully. All right. Your action step from this episode is I want you to spend 15 minutes this week. Envisioning your ideal retirement day, not your travel, not your going to spend time, with your grandkids, things like that.
Unless that is a daily thing, I want you to envision your ideal retirement day, maybe even your week and your month. How are you going to be spending your time? I love to hear when individuals, retirees are saying, I don't know how I worked. I have so much to do. That means they are successful and that's what I hope for you.
So this wraps up the series. This is phase four. I've talked a little bit of how they all come together, we have our money, reality of all of our efforts up to today. What does that mean? Phase two, we've gotta get our systems into place. If we don't have something giving us results, telling us what action steps to take, we're not gonna reach retirement.
And then phase three for our decisions. Knowing how to make those decisions, knowing how to be prepared to make those decisions. Using the tools and the systems that we had, it's, I can't just give you a system and a tool and say, okay, goodbye. I've gotta show you how to use it and make it effective.
And then phase four, the ultimate retirement redialing into retirement reality. What do all those numbers mean? What do I need to have? Am I getting there? Can I create all these possibilities? That's what I want you doing. That's what I want you thinking. Your financial life can run on clarity, intention, and confidence.
You won't have any more guessing, worrying, or hoping. It will all work out. You have the framework. Now it's time to use it. I've given you action steps in each of these episodes. Hopefully you've done those. If you haven't, go and do those. I am going to invite you to a retirement ready q and a call to discuss what coaching you through this exact four phase would look like.
Could look like. I know you're thinking I have special situations. Let's discuss them. Head over to elevate finances, us slash ready. Schedule that call. Let's spend 30 minutes together to see what that will look like. I am excited to support any of those you of you who are ready through these four phases.
Again, to learn more about coaching, you can head over to Elevate Finances us slash coaching, where I share. The framework, but it also share what specifics you will get from it, what you won't get from it, who's it for, who is it not for, and how much is it? So I hope you will go check out that sales page.
Let me know if you have any questions. Schedule that call, what is 30 minutes? Invest in yourself by finding 30 minutes of your time to jump on a call with me and let's discuss how these four phases could work for you. Thank you for being a part of this. This series, we had the overview with the four phases, so if you've missed any of the last five episodes, please go back and listen to them.
I also, again, encourage you to do those action steps. Those will help you see that you can take these steps to start making change and start making retirement possible. Thank you for joining me, and we'll see you next week.
