Navigating Financial Fears, Debt, and Retirement Planning with Confidence

 Welcome to the episode. I'm excited to, you know, dive into part two of this retirement series. Today's topic is gaining clarity and confidence. So this will take you to that second part of the checklist for those who are a About five years away from retirement. If you are new to the podcast or missed last week's episode you'll want to start there. You'll also want to download the retirement readiness checklist. It's been enhanced. I have a checklist running you through if you're 10 years away, if you're five years away, or if you're two to three years away, and I spell it out in individual steps, this series is to. support all of those things on there, you know, explaining in a little more detail about what I mean and what you can do, learning from clients, learning from myself. That is the purpose of this series. It's going to be a four part series. In addition to that, we are taking these topics in this four part series. We're diving deeper into each one of those into a Eight to 10, 12 part series. Not sure exactly as I have not recorded those yet. Those will be in the Retirement Vault, which is a private podcast hosted by myself, where, like I said, we'll dive deeper into the topics you hear on the podcast. So specifically with the series to start, we are diving deeper into this where you'll get a little more granular. You'll have a lot more. numbers and details. And if you're ready to dive in deeper for planning or you need a little more explanation, you're going to want to join us over there. Within that, there's going to be an opportunity to submit questions to be answered on their own episode. And. Individuals who are a part of that will get exclusive emails with bonuses, specials, office hours, meaning you get access to me for free, and other special trainings. I hope you will join me over there, all of us over there. I hope there's more than just me. today's Topic gaining clarity and confidence at the five year mark. As I said, last week. If you're about 10 years, you want to build this financial foundation. And if you're somebody who's at the five year mark and you haven't done that yet, you're going to want to start there. Little more effort, a little more speedily you're going to want to go through this. It's not going to take five years to then reach this section. This is just, you know, these are the things that you really need to be focused on at this point in time. Having said that, the first topic I want to talk about is debt. tackling debt and understanding the role debt will play for you in retirement. So let's first talk about tackling debt. You're going to want to create a plan to ideally get rid of all of your high interest debt pre retirement. Now, you might be somebody who's like, well, why wouldn't I want to get rid of all debt before retirement? Yes. Okay. If you're the one that's saying that, yes, you're going to want to. Now, if you're like, I'm not sure, yes, then don't. Okay. If you're kind of following what I'm saying is. That is, that is the personalization. That is the, I've got to lean into this and understand who I am. I heard somebody say, I will never pay off my home. I didn't inquire any further. I was just like, okay, good for you. There's no right or wrong about this, but really I think the, the takeaway with debt. is that the more you reduce the demand on your money, the less demand you need to have that much income in retirement. I hope you kind of followed that it's almost a dollar for dollar savings. If you want to dispute it, great. You can. But my thought is, is if you're paying 500 to debt every month, And you head into retirement, you've got to cover that 500. Now if you get rid of that before you head into retirement, you're less 500. And if you followed the steps in part one, last week's episode, and have started creating that financial stability, preparing yourself for those unexpected expenses, you won't have to create more debt. If that is why this debt is there. That is the key as well. As you're creating a plan for your debt repayment, and I have an episode about that, that helps walk you through the different ideas, the different you know, plans. There's the debt snowball, the debt avalanche, there's the Robert Kiyosaki method. Go listen to to that as well, but really as you explore that, as you're looking at your debt, I want you to add. Where did this debt come from? Why do I have it? How do I feel about it? Is this necessary? Is this something that's going to continue into retirement ? all of these things. That is the important at this point, being five years away, is how are you going to manage debt in retirement? If you heard last episode, and I'm going to say it again just in case you haven't, the gentleman who was like, how am I going to buy a car in retirement? Well, This is something you're going to have to determine. Are you going to have money saved? Is it going to come from your withdrawals? Or are you going to go into, you know, take out a loan to pay a payment like you've always done, some of those things don't change, but our relationship and the availability of money might not be the same. We really need to get clear on debt, what it does and how it serves us, why we use it, because everybody is different. What one person will do, immediately take out a loan, another person won't. And some people don't ever. None of it's right, none of it's wrong. The best thing I can tell you is that you need to manage your debt. Be actively playing a role in supporting that debt and it's supporting you. I hope that makes sense, but it is very important at this point to get the relationship figured out. And explore those thoughts, those beliefs, and those ideas around debt. The second thing that you're going to want to really focus on at about five years, it is assessing risk tolerance and determining if you're going to work with financial planners. So I probably said a word you're like, I have no idea what you mean. That risk tolerance is if you are somebody who likes to play it safe, if you're somebody who, you know, is a little more aggressive, which is really important to understand what those things mean. And again, Being conservative, being aggressive, is neither right, is neither wrong. The importance is determining who you are and being able to, if you choose to work with a financial planner, explain how you are about that. Explain how you feel. I was working with a client. She came to me because she had just recently divorced. Her husband had been managing the money while she was raising the kids. She had done it prior, so it had been many years. She's like, I kind of feel out of it, so I want somebody to help me get. I'm like, great, let's do it. As I'm working with her and as her life is progressing through this division with a spouse of, gosh, I think they were 40 years, you know, there was a lot to be had. And she says, my son in law, she says, I'm expecting a windfall and my son in law says, I need to put it somewhere that it will make money for me. And as she says this, I can sense that she's, the hesitancy. And so I look at her. She is definitely of the boomer generation. And I, and you know, somebody who's not played in the market at all. And I said, does that scare you? Yes. Why? And we start exploring it. And I start helping her better understand what putting this money somewhere to earn money for her Truly means because she had only heard right the stories of people putting their money there and then losing it all. And then why would I do that? And that was that generation. There's probably still a little bit of that going on. But yet that That fear was huge. So I helped educate her and I knew who she was going to work with to, you know, implement that windfall somewhere. I was also able to help educate her to be prepared to speak to him when it happened. So we are doing this prior to the windfall, but really understanding risk tolerance for yourself so that the financial planner doesn't tell you what to do. Number one, I don't. I think a good financial planner doesn't want to do that. From the other perspective, I don't think somebody should tell you what to do just because. I think you need to have an understanding of what that means. Now, there's not just two ends of the spectrum, even though that's what I've described, there's aggressive and there's conservative, and there's within the middle. But there's also other terms to start learning, to start understanding. You've got asset allocation. You've got withdrawal rate. You've got all of these things that become part of this financial world that most of us don't ever know, understand, or have a desire to learn. But yet it can be very important in this relationship you have with a financial planner or you understanding and so then you choose not to have a financial plan, it's just part of the learning process and I think that at this point is so important to begin learning some of these things that are outside the box of, you know, retirement funds and I put money in there. Well, it's a little more than that. The third thing that you need to be doing, it has to deal with your retirement vision, but it's really about what you feel and believe. If you have any fears or doubt about fight about retirement, those are the things you need to start resolving right now. I don't know if I'm going to have enough money. Okay, spend some time working on that. We talked a little bit about it last episode, but, you know, thinking about running out of money, and what is that? Why do you believe that? There's a lot of things that can contribute to, you know, contribute to that, and as long as you don't take the actions to either understand the fear or, you know, Go, oh, yeah, I don't need to worry about it, that's kind of the point we're headed. Then you can healthily move on into retirement instead of constantly having that worry. I'm gonna run out of money. I can't enjoy my life. I can't do this. I can't, we don't want to take that into retirement. Some of those things are, well, I don't know what I'm gonna do every day. Okay, start thinking about that. Anything that has you doubting or worried or fearful, you need to spend some time and diving deep. How can you, again, face that fear, eliminate any, you know, hesitancy with it so that you feel more confident, so that you are going to have a better go at this retirement. If you're like, well, I don't know what I'm going to do and you never address it, or if you're like, I'm not going to have any purpose and you never address it, what happens when you actually do retire? There's a lot of that that really needs to be addressed at this point. You're five years away. Let's put those little voices, those little fears, to sleep. Let's put them to sleep and let's go. You know, calm those, see what else comes up. Cause sometimes those can be such the loud, you know, voices. And then we don't hear the other things. And so clear those up to be able to move on to the next, to be able to move on to the next, this will just continue to add to your solid foundation. This will continue to add to you needing to learn. I think a lot of us are fearful about anything in life because we don't understand it, there's something that has been miscommunicated to us or we have seen but we haven't done the legwork, the homework for ourselves. I think the biggest detriment, I saw it so much, and I would just kind of shake my head, and I really spent time with those I cared about most trying to correct them, but co workers giving information to other co workers, I don't know where they got their information from, and them running with it, when I hear something, and it doesn't matter what it is, finances, or anything else, I try to find a lot of information about it, so that I can go, Oh, okay. All right. Like you start getting really focused on what they truly meant by what they said, because the way they presented it had you thinking one way. And in actuality, it wasn't quite that big of a deal, or it doesn't impact you. At this point, there's going to be a lot of knowledge gained. learning, education, you know, that is where I was able to find my growth on my journey. If you've been here for a while, I talk about the things that set me up for success. And at the last step that I have in that was that I did this knowledge thing on rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. And I can't stress that enough. I used to read blogs because they were the big thing. They were, you know, they were what, what's going on. And now it's, there's still some blogs out there. It's really podcasts and learning and growing. Dive into those subjects. Dive into those areas that you feel like you need to bolster up. Don't take all of them at once. That causes overwhelm for sure. Pick one. Learn about it, resolve it, see what else you need to learn about it, grow. It just kind of is this rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. And like I said at the beginning of the episode, one place you can do that is the retirement vault. It'll just build up on all these parts that we are talking about. We are just finishing up part two. We have two more parts and in the retirement vault, there's going to be at least eight. Maybe 10 where we're diving deeper into these individual things. I hope you will join me over there. I hope you will be able to build up your clarity and confidence. And these are the steps that help you start doing that. Knowing who you are with debt. Knowing how it's going to serve you. Start learning the terms if you think you're going to need to work with a financial planner. Or maybe you are and you need to have better conversations. This is how you do that. And then address any of your fears and your doubts. So that you can see if there's anything else going on behind those loud, loud voices. Work on those now. This is for those at the five year mark. Again, if you want to get there quicker, this timeline will rush you through. That's really why I made the timeline. It's not a hard and fast. You have to be here. You have to be here. You have to be here. These are just the things you need to know. And if you're five years away, you're going to want to do everything on the 10 year and everything on the five years. Again, if you have questions, please. Either join the private podcast or there are links down in the show notes to connect, to send me messages, to have me answer them. Maybe the retirement vault's not for you yet. There are other ways to get your questions answered. And one I haven't mentioned for a while is the free retirement vision session. Bring your questions there. Let's help you get over your challenges and hurdles and moving along this path. Thank you for tuning into this episode and I'm excited to continue this series with part three, where we're going to close the gap, final preparations. Join me next week as we talk about the things that you need to be doing in those final years. But also it's a time to make things accelerate.