The Best Time To Plan For Your Retirement Is Right Now
The Hidden Cost of Waiting to Plan for Retirement
Listen to the Wealthy After 40 Podcast on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Your Player of Choice
If you’ve ever asked yourself how to plan for your retirement or where to even begin, this episode will help you get started!
Today we’re talking about retirement planning and why most people focus only on saving money instead of building a financial life that supports the retirement you want.
By the end of this episode, you’ll understand why retirement readiness starts with awareness and intentional decisions so you can take control of your money and make retirement successful.
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
Learn why retirement planning feels overwhelming for so many individuals over 40
Discover why waiting to plan for your retirement can become more expensive and limiting with time
Understand why retirement planning is more than just saving money and how lifestyle plays a major role
Learn how your everyday spending, debt, and savings decisions impact your future retirement freedom
Learn why awareness and intentionality are the foundation of retirement readiness
Understand the first steps to take if you want to start planning for retirement without feeling overwhelmed
If today’s episode helped you start thinking differently about retirement planning and the future you want, the next step is getting clarity on your own numbers.
That’s exactly what we do inside the Roadmap to Retirement Call.
During this 30-minute call, I’ll help you determine how much you need for retirement and whether you’re on track, and help you understand how much you could potentially save over the next 90 days without cutting expenses or restrictions. Just a simple savings system set up.
If you’re looking for clarity around what next steps you should be taking for retirement, book your Roadmap to Retirement Call.
Unedited Transcription of Episode:
Today's episode, we are diving into why do individuals want to keep putting off retirement planning? I hear this from a lot of people who are in their mid-40s, late 40s, and it just saddens me that there's not more of an urgency. And while it doesn't need to be an urgency thing, it is important that we start, planning for our retirement.
And as I've said here more than one time, if you've been a longtime listener, is it's not just all about savings. If you're in your 20s or 30s and happen to be listening to my podcast, welcome. And for you, yes, you've gotta save, you gotta build that, you gotta keep going, but you can also jump and do these steps earlier, and this is how people retire early.
But that's not the topic that I wanna really cover today. But I wanna talk more about why people are delaying, why I hear from, people I'm talking to that they're sharing their thoughts, their ideas with me, and they're like, "I've got time. I'll worry about it later. I've got this going on."
And, putting off retirement planning with managing your own finances I get why it's easy, because retirement maybe is not tangible, you're not clear on what you want, and with the information out there all you're really told is just to save. The other thing I hear is, "Am I saving enough?
Am I on track? Am I gonna be there?" Because the information out there is lacking, and it's "Just save this amount. Just save this amount," and that amount is blanketed for everybody. We're gonna get into all of those details. But just know that I understand why you wanna keep putting it off.
But this episode is going to show you why and how that planning for retirement today is very important. So as you listen to every episode on this podcast, just know that it will support your understanding of the retirement journey, and it's going to help you, learn how to be better with your money so that your retirement journey is easier.
Because guess what? Even though we retire, we still have to manage our money. We still have to budget, we still have to track. So we wanna find a way that makes that easy, because we wanna enjoy retirement in multiple ways. And secondly, if you're stuck and not sure how to start your retirement planning, I would love to have you join my Accelerate Your Retirement challenge inside my new Facebook group community for Gen Xers called Retirement Ready Hub.
The link is down in the show notes. You can also search that. Come find me. And we will be covering in that challenge the first three steps in retirement planning, this will give you a good overview, a good start, a good understanding of what things mean from here, and just know that at that point, right from this point, every little step matters and you don't need to make leaps or bounds.
It's not about finding that one thing that is going to solve everything. That's instant gratification. And in the health and wealth journeys, that's just not going to happen. We've got to put in the work. We've got to find instant gratification in other ways. So come join that challenge. If this is, you're listening to this after June 4th, it's still over there.
Come join us and take those first three steps. And then as I, go live every Friday, subject to change, then, you'll learn some more information, more topics. Those topics are different than what you'll hear on the podcast. So today I want to share like why is now the time to figure this out?
Why should you do this now? Say you're 45 and you're like, I've got plenty of time. Number one, I don't know if you've noticed time goes so much quicker the older we are, secondly, you are running out of easy time. That easy time, where it's going to work for you or it's going to work against you.
You're coming up against where that shift is going to happen. And the luxury of winging it or hoping it all comes together later is just going to get more expensive faster. And it's also going to get harder and you're going to have to take more aggressive moves and sacrifices if you wait too long,
so we need to get intentional today. Even if you're 55, get intentional today. Welcome to 55. I'm there too. But the longer you wait to get intentional, like I said, the more aggressive you're going to have to be in your money moves, in the sacrifices that you need to make. And that's not a subject I love to talk about is being, restrictive or aggressive.
So take advantage of the time you have now. You're not late. You can get started now. It's not going to be difficult, all of those things that you are thinking. So the very first thing that you can do, and I just did a live in my Facebook group about this, sharing my client's version. And, but I've shared my story on here.
I just wanted to talk about when I decided I was going to get serious. I was in my late thirties. I had an eight-year-old daughter. We were still living life, but knowing and once, once I got specific on I'm going to have that door open for retirement in 13 years, it was just amazing how clear things were.
I was really focused on what I was doing for the short term. Again, I had an eight-year-old. We needed to live life. We needed to create family experiences. Doing that within reason so that I could then still have that door open for retirement 13 years later, I did it at 15, but 13 years later. And there was so much, I built great habits that and I still use today, and the power I saw in the focus I had and the budgeting, everything that I learned in that 13 years serves me well now, but it was just-- it just made life so much easier. And the reason I share those tidbits is 'cause I was recently a guest on a podcast which is due to release late June.
And she serves older women, and she also has older women friends. And when I say older women, we're talking about people who are already retired, not early retirement. They're pre-70, like couple years, post-70, couple years. And she's very filfor- fearful herself to retire because she sees them struggling with money, that they're nickeling and diming, and that they are not enjoying retirement.
She said one of her friends went to work at Chick-fil-A to try and make ends meet, and she only was there for two weeks. I don't know about you, but I don't wanna go back to the fast... I never was into fast food, but going back to that level of work just to get by, so that is the difference of jumping in and starting building now as opposed to waiting and figuring it out later and then be caught up in this what you don't want, what you're fearing.
Because what you're fearing will come true if you don't change the actions you're doing right now, but it doesn't have to be hard. I just wanna let you know that it doesn't have to be di- difficult. I know that a lot of people think, like financial planners have learned a lot, and they have in one very small aspect, and I'm grouping everybody in there.
Not all of them are like that, but they know how to invest money. They don't know how to manage money per se. Very few that I have met know how to do that. I know I don't know how to invest But I know how to manage money. And that's the compliment you need to figure it out. All right. So let's move on to the second reason, or I could go on for way too long.
These episodes, I like to keep them a little shorter. But the second reason that now is the time to figure this out is that retirement is not just a savings problem. That's all we're told, so that's part of the reason why it feels unclear, untangible, and just save this much money. This is also why I get this we're saving, but we don't know if it's enough.
How are we supposed to know these things? When can we, quote, "pull the trigger?" And most people, most information out there is, retirement planning starts with the numbers, and it does if you're in your 20s or 30s. So if you're that age listening welcome. I'm glad you're here, and it is a number.
Keep growing, keep moving. But once you're in your 40s and 50s, that number can be so much more dialed into the actual number you need, okay? One of my financial planner connections, one I truly adore, and he does understand more than just investing. He also had a number, and he was going and going in life.
He was just beating himself, working so hard, striving for a number, and he realized it was more than that. And once he had that realization, the number dropped. That's what you need to do. Not that you need to drop your number, but you need to build that number around the lifestyle that you want now and in retirement,
because being able to retire, getting to retire you're unclear because you're not sure, number one, what retirement costs, because you're not even sure what life costs right now, you're not sure what you want retirement to look like. Again, if you can jump into my Facebook group, I shared about my client and her vision, and it's changing the planning that she needs to do just because she's finally getting clear on that point.
And I'll share in a future episode, but I just... it's would make this episode too long. But it's also important for you to know what your retirement, what you want to look at, what it to look like, it builds that number, but it also builds the investing vehicles you need, the savings vehicles you need, and what that looks like.
But also, you need to start connecting how today's spending is building you to that tomorrow freedom so that you don't have to go work at Chick-fil-A, so that you know how to prioritize what you truly want from your money. With all of that unclearness- you're not sure, you're not sure how to get there, so much information.
You really just wanna push it off and say, "I'll worry about it later." And it's at that p- at the point that my p- clients come to me and they're like, "I don't wanna give up my current lifestyle in retirement," because they hear those, should I say, horror stories that I just shared of those older women, and they're like, "I don't wanna do that."
But they tag it onto their current lifestyle, but honestly, they don't know what their current lifestyle is. So if you don't define that lifestyle, you'll accidentally build a financial life that you can't support or that isn't going to serve you well. Your fear basically will come true. So retirement readiness,
we- that is what we're here for, to get retirement ready, is built in our everyday decisions. And the decisions you're making through debt choices, taking on debt, paying off debt, how long you're planning to keep debt how you're building your saving systems, not just that you're growing a savings account to a big number, and yay for you, but you have no idea when to use that or why.
You're not aware of what your spending habits are to make them enjoyable, we talk about it's not about restriction. I really don't do restriction in my coaching. It's not effective, it's more detrimental, and it just doesn't work for the majority of us. But as we build in these everyday decisions, there becomes boundaries, bump- bumpers, and we're more intentional.
And those intentional decisions that you start making today are going to lead into the intentional decisions and reflect what you want in retirement, these intentional decisions are going to build your future because they're building your now, they're supporting your now. And honestly, retirement financially isn't going to look much different.
There are some things that are changing and moving. Those blanket statements of how much you need to save off of what you're currently making, they aren't truly accurate either. So you've got to get clear on what are you trying to build today that you want to take into retirement in the future.
So with all of this, you stay stuck in the sense of that's way too much. I don't know where to start." So complicated that you avoid looking at where your money is going, what you truly want and need in retirement, what adjustments need to happen. Those patterns are keeping you stuck,
you're staying stuck. It's going to build into those horror stories. I'm sorry, but truly it is. So the goal right now isn't perfection The goal is for you to start building awareness on number one, what you want your money to do for you now and in retirement. Tomorrow is never guaranteed, but we still need to honor our future self if we arrive there,
we get there, we haven't honored her, she's gonna be really sad and hurt by our younger self. So just know that you still have time to fix this, to change this, to build a strong financial future. And it's not about perfection, it's about intention. So I'm gonna share with you two action steps, two intentional action steps that are simple, that I think will come through as not complicated, and that will get you doing what you need and start moving closer to retirement.
The first thing you can do is start creating a retirement vision. And this isn't just, "I wanna go travel in retirement." This is, no, what is it going to feel like? We're building an ecosystem. We're building a next life chapter, and it's more than just not working, going traveling because I'm getting old,
there's gotta be more than that in there. So create that vision. Once you find something that you absolutely love, the motivation to make changes is going to be right there. You're gonna be running and racing, and it's gonna be so easy. The second action step, you don't have to do both, you can do one or the other, but the second action step is to get clarity with where your money is going right now.
Not building a new budget, not creating one off the 50/30/20 'cause you've never done that before, where is your money going right now? And are those choices supporting the future you want? Are those choices... Now, not everything goes to retirement, but most things go to retirement. And are those choices determining the future that you want in that vision,
so if you can do both, that would be great. But just know that there's no time like now to get started with retirement planning. I've given you two action steps without really dialing into a whole lot of numbers. And if you're ready, please join the Accelerate Your Retirement Challenge: The First Three Steps to Retirement Planning to help you understand what that path is going to look like moving forward.
Thank you for listening, and I will share more with you next week.
