Retirement Explained Show

On the 26th episode of the Retirement Explained show, I’m talking about how to prepare for your medical expenses during retirement.

Did you know that the average medical costs for a couple in retirement are nearly $300,000 throughout their life; It’s on average the largest expense most people encounter during retirement and I think it’s one of the least discussed aspects of retirement planning.

In today’s episode I touch on Medicare and understanding some of the costs of healthcare in retirement, including Medigap insurance. I also discuss what a Health Savings Account is and how it can come in handy for dealing with healthcare costs in retirement, and I spend some time on the importance of contesting the high-income surcharge on your Medicare Part B, a very underdiscussed item that most of us deal with.

On the 25th episode of the Retirement Explained show, I’m talking about how to how to construct a purpose driven retirement.

It’s common for financial plans to be all about the numbers and account balances and your exposure to small-cap emerging market (stuff that makes your eyes glaze over) and less about the keys and importance of creating a vision for what your life will look like in the 8000 days you’re going to spend in life after you have the option of not working.

I also spend some time talking about the importance of taking a vacation to kick off your retirement years. Like breaking a champagne bottle on the bow of a ship on her maiden voyage, your retirement honeymoon should be a fun and exciting trip to mark one of the most important things you will ever do in your life, retire.

On the 24th episode of the Retirement Explained show, I’m talking about the nine most overlooked tax breaks for retirees.

Sadly, taxes don’t go away once you retire and often times, if you have a strong pension or social security benefit and you’ve been diligent saving your money throughout your life, your tax troubles might be as bad or worse in retirement.

I cover a lot of ground in this episode and I think it’s great content whether you’re preparing for or are living in retirement since it’s something

Retirement planning is something that is nuanced and different for everyone, and part of the nuance is it’s something that you really have to do over several decades, it’s not a short process, so it takes some finesse to do it, and do it well.

In the 23rd episode of the Retirement Explained show, I’m talking about the ten important age groups that you need to keep in mind when planning for retirement.

Starting from ages 49 and under and going all of the way to 72 and older, I discuss all of the important things to consider and remember in the different age groups leading up to retirement.

Retirement planning is something that is nuanced and different for everyone, and part of the nuance is it’s something that you really have to do over several decades, it’s not a short process, so it takes some finesse to do it, and do it well.

In the 22nd episode of the Retirement Explained show, we’re talking about one of the most important aspects of planning for retirement; your Social Security benefit. Sounds like a dry subject, but it’s on many of our clients minds because it’s a nuanced program with lots of rules that can be confusing and it’s really, really important to the ability for most American to be able to retire.

In the episode, we discuss how the program is funded with payroll taxes for those that are working, how much of your income is able to be taxed (good news is there’s a ceiling on how much of your income can be taxed for Social Security), how your benefit is calculated based on how many years you work, the average benefit that people get nationwide, how your benefit can change depending on what age you take your benefit, and much more!

On the 21st episode of the Retirement Explained show, I talk about annuities; what they are, what they do, and the pitfalls of having them.

They’re not for everyone and they’re also not awful, like sometimes they’re portrayed as.

I think you’re going to enjoy today’s episode because whether you’re a do-it-yourselfer planning for retirement on your own, or you have a financial advisor that’s helping you plan for retirement and other financial goals, you will get some insight as to how I think about annuities and the role they play when I work with clients on their retirement planning needs.

Do you ever stand in the cereal aisle and really look at it? At the endless sea of options, rows and rows of boxes with noisy colors standing at attention, vying for your attention? How do you choose? Should you get Fruit Loops or Fruity Pebbles? Maybe you should try Fruity Flakes, or maybe you should get Frosted Flakes, it’s been awhile since you’ve that particular sugar rush while having Tony the Tiger give you a thumbs-up at 7 o’clock in the morning.

Financial planning and investing is probably more complicated than breakfast cereal and you’re probably more inclined to suffer from decision fatigue when staring down the different decisions you have to make both when considering what you should invest in and how to think about planning your life decades in advance.

In the 20th episode of the Retirement Explained show, I talk about how you can use cutting edge research from philosophers and psychologists about the way we, as humans, make decisions, and how you can use that to make better and easier decisions whether you’re a do your financial planning yourself, or you work with a financial planner.

In the 19th episode of the Retirement Explained show, we’re talking about the importance of keeping the end in mind when investing; retirement income.

Retirement income can be broken down into three key areas: guaranteed sources of income (think Social Security, Pensions, Annuities, etc), non guaranteed sources of income (think investment real estate properties, business income, royalties, etc), and portfolio sources of income (think money you’ve saved in your 401k, IRA, Roth IRA, etc).

I’ve spent the last couple of episodes talking about some of the ways psychology and investing meet and we think that remembering that your goal is to make it to retirement and to stay in retirement is important, it will help you to wash out a lot of the noise that comes with stock markets and investing.

There is a game called Go that I wanted a documentary on where the world’s best Go player played an advanced AI from a subsidiary of Google. What I found really interesting is that the AI wasn’t trying to win each match by ridiculous margins, it was trying to win by one move.

Humans have a tendency of valuing victories that have great margins attached to them. Somehow, we think that a basketball game ending with a score of 100-70 is a better win than 100-99. You don’t need to crush markets, you just need to do as much as you need so that you can replace your work income after you stop working. That is a very freeing thought. It will allow you to relax, to a large extent, and count on your retirement plan and investment strategy to navigate through keeping you from running out of money.

On the 18th episode of the Retirement Explained show, we’re getting to know ourselves a little bit better. We’re talking about personality types and investor bias and how knowing yourself can help you better invest and avoid the pitfalls that come inherently with bias. It's nearly impossible to avoid bias because you're emotionally attached to your money, and of course you are.

Money is the storage of time. Your time, your life is literally stored in those numbers that you see when you pull your bank accounts up and it's no joke! One of the reasons that my clients hire me is because I'm emotionally unattached to their money and I can make better decisions with their money than they can. They're trying to read the label from inside the can, so to speak, whereas I'm looking at the label from the outside.

Whether you're a do-it-yourselfer or you work with a financial advisor, like me, I think you're going to enjoy this episode. I discuss tips on how to use your knowledge of your personality and the biases you're more easily susceptible to better make you able to read the label from inside the can. It's all about process. If you have a process and a plan, you can overcome your biases.

If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe and give the show a 5-star review. I depend on listeners like you to share and rate the show so it grows and it's been growing like crazy! I really appreciate your help!

On the 17th episode of the Retirement Explained show, we’re getting to know ourselves a little bit better. We’re talking about personality types and investor bias and how knowing yourself can help you better invest and avoid the pitfalls that come inherently with bias. It's nearly impossible to avoid bias because you're emotionally attached to your money, and of course you are.

Money is the storage of time. Your time, your life is literally stored in those numbers that you see when you pull your bank accounts up and it's no joke! One of the reasons that my clients hire me is because I'm emotionally unattached to their money and I can make better decisions with their money than they can. They're trying to read the label from inside the can, so to speak, whereas I'm looking at the label from the outside.

Whether you're a do-it-yourselfer or you work with a financial advisor, like me, I think you're going to enjoy this episode. I discuss tips on how to use your knowledge of your personality and the biases you're more easily susceptible to better make you able to read the label from inside the can. It's all about process. If you have a process and a plan, you can overcome your biases.

If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe and give the show a 5-star review. I depend on listeners like you to share and rate the show so it grows and it's been growing like crazy! I really appreciate your help!