This week, I’m talking about my must-listen-to podcasts on money. It’s actually pretty hard to find a podcast on money that isn’t geared toward millennials, but Eureka, I think I’ve done it!

Each day this week, I’m sharing with you one of my must listen-to podcasts on money that will help you on your path to financial security in retirement.

Today is the “Must-Listen-To Podcast for Thoughtful Investors” - Money For The Rest of Us

If you are interested in learning more about investing, I recommend you listen to J. David Stein and his podcast Money for the Rest of Us.

I like the variety of the topics in his show, and he takes what can be a complex and sometimes boring topic of investing and makes it simpler and entertaining.

Ok, so a bit more about the show...a new episode comes out each week, and each one is about 25-30 minutes long.

I’ll link to his podcast in today’s show notes, which you can find over on iTunes under episode 248 of the One Minute Retirement Tip: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/money-for-the-rest-of-us/id883011006?ign-mpt=uo%3D4

I’ll also link to a sampling of a couple of recent episode that you might like:

1. What Central Banks Don’t Know Should Concern You
2. Investment Rule One—Avoid Ruin

That’s it for today! Thanks for listening.

My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, money podcast, making money podcast, financial podcast, best financial podcasts, best investing podcasts

This week, I’m talking about my must-listen-to podcasts on money. It’s actually pretty hard to find a podcast on money that isn’t geared toward millennials, but by golly, I think I’ve done it!

Each day this week, I’m sharing with you one of my must listen-to podcasts on money that will help you on your path to financial security it retirement.

Today is the “must-listen-to podcast if you like Dave Ramsey” - The Chris Hogan Show.

Chris Hogan is part of Dave Ramsey’s team, sp you’ll hear a lot of the same advice you might hear from Dave Ramsey. His episodes focused a lot on debt, budgeting, and building everyday millionaires.

I like Chris Hogan because he’s fun, interesting, and kind of reminds me of that high school football coach that you respected but feared. Like, “whatever you say Mr. Hogan. Yes, sir, Mr. Hogan, I will pay off my car like you told me to Mr. Hogan.”

And then he yells “Why aren’t you a millionaire yet?! Drop down and give me 20”. Then I start crying cause I can’t do 20 pushups but you can be darn sure I’m going to be a millionaire now, because I don’t want to do any more push ups.

He’s not a crazy drill sergeant, but just enough to get you to sit up and listen to what he has to say. Or if you just want someone who sounds like Barry White talk to you about money, then have a listen to his show.

Ok, so a bit more about the show...the length of each episode varies - many are about 25-30 minutes, but some are closer to an hour.

I’ll link to his podcast in today’s show notes, which you can find over on iTunes under episode 247 of the One Minute Retirement Tip: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-chris-hogan-show/id1117556964?ign-mpt=uo%3D4

I’ll also link to a sampling of a couple of recent episode that you might like:

1. Why Retirement Planning Must Start With a Unified Vision
2. What Do 79% of Millionaires Have in Common?

That’s it for today, Thanks for listening!

My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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>>> Check out our blog: https://truenorthretirementadvisors.com/blog/

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, money podcast, making money podcast, financial podcast, best financial podcasts, best investing podcasts

Hi there, welcome to a brand new week of the One Minute Retirement Tip. If you like this podcast, you probably like listening to other podcasts, which means you’re probably going to really like this week’s theme.

I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts about money. Some I love and stick with for years, and others I get bored or annoyed with and turn off after a few episodes. It’s hard to find those gems that really provide value. Hopefully I’m doing that for you, but that’s not what this week is about. This week, I’m talking about my must-listen-to podcasts on money.

Unfortunately, it seems like every money podcast out there today is for millenials - how to crush your student loans, how to flee the country so you don’t have to pay back your student loans, how to make six figures as a youtube star.

But what about you, my loyal baby boomer and Gen X listeners? Where can you find helpful money advice and entertaining podcasts geared toward you? That’s what we’re focusing on this week. I’m sharing with you 5 of my favorite podcasts to help you on your path to smart money decisions and a fulfilled retirement where you don’t run out of money.

Podcasts that speak to your in your stage in life to help you crush not your student loans, but crush your retirement.

Each day this week I’ll be sharing with you one money podcast that I love. I’ll explain what it’s all about, why I love it, and give you a sampling of some recent episodes that you can check out for yourself.

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening!

My name is Ashley Micciche...and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, money podcast, making money podcast, financial podcast, best financial podcasts, best investing podcasts

It’s Sunday, which means...It’s recap time!

The theme for this week was: Do You Know Where Your Money Goes Every Month?

I really tried to cram down your throat why you must have a solid understanding of your income and expenses in retirement BEFORE you transition in retirement, and hopefully after listening to the tips this week, you are motivated to start a budget.

Here’s what we covered this week:

• Why a Budget is a Must Before You Retire
• Why the 80% retirement spending rule of thumb is worthless
• What to do if you will need to lower your spending in retirement
• How to Find a Budget Tracker that Works For You
• And...how to complete your budget in just 2 weeks

If you missed any of these episodes, you can find them on iTunes or Google Play by searching for the “One Minute Retirement Tip with Ashley”.

Tomorrow, come on back, because we’re starting a brand new theme: My list of Must-Listen-To Money Podcasts. If you’re listening to me, you probably enjoy listening to other podcasts as well, so I’ll be sharing with you my favorite podcasts on money that can help you on your path to a successful retirement.

That’s it for this week! Thanks for listening.

My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the “One Minute Retirement Tip”.

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, budgeting, budgeting tips, budget, retirement budget, budgeting app, how to track spending

How long do you need to track your spending for until you get a good idea of your budget and what that actually looks like? A month, 3 months, 6 months of spending? That sounds cumbersome, doesn’t it. But what if I told you that you can get a really good idea of what you spend, just by tracking for 2 weeks?

Back in 2016, I volunteered with the Financial Wellness program with Catholic Charities of Oregon. It’s a great program that places people who are in some pretty tight spots financially with coaches like me who can help them take control of their finances.

One of the biggest hurdles for people in the program was the budgeting part. It was an essential first step because I couldn’t really help the person I was working with until I had a better handle of the numbers around their income, bills, debt, and spending.

Tracking this for a period of months wasn’t realistic for someone who was financially stressed and needed help now, so we told the people we worked with to just track for 2 weeks.

That’s it. 2 weeks. Then you double that number, subtract any one-time expenses, add back recurring expenses that didn’t occur in those 2 weeks, like your mortgage payment, and viola - you have a pretty good estimate of your spending.

Now, in an ideal world, tracking your spending for 3 months is ideal, because you’ll have a much better idea of your actual expenses if you track over a 3 month period, but the important thing is that you get started. And you can get started by tracking for just 2 weeks, so give it a try!

That’s it for today. Tomorrow, we’re going to recap the week and I’m going to give you a little preview of next week’s theme.

My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, budgeting, budgeting tips, budget, retirement budget, budgeting app, how to track spending

Do you know where your money goes every month? When you retire, you’ll need to figure out how much money is coming in the door, which is often pretty simple. The hard part is figuring out where your money goes every month, yet it’s essential to do that before you transition into retirement, so you’re not blindsided by too little coming in and too much going out.

I’ve spent most of the week so far, talking about why a budget is so important, how much or your pre-retirement income you’ll need in retirement, and what to do if your income in retirement isn’t enough, so today I’m hoping that you’re ready to get started on a budget. I’m talking about finding a budget tracker that works for you.

In my opinion, there are 3 basic ways to track your income and expenses that work for most people. Personally, I prefer a budgeting app, and that’s what my husband and I use now, but I still use a spreadsheet style budget for my company, and I’ve used pen and paper as well.

Those are the 3 methods that I think work the best, and depending on your preference, you should pick the one that your most likely to stick with in the long-run.

Ok, so first we have the budgeting app. Popular examples of budgeting apps are Mint, PocketGuard, Wally, and many others. Do a little homework and pick a budgeting app that works for you. I recommend an app that will sync up with your debit cards, credit cards, and your bank account so that it can track and categorize all of your expenses for you. One of the biggest benefits of these apps is that they take most of the work of budgeting off your plate, so take advantage of that.

And just a pro tip here, to make it even easier to get started...once you pick an app to use, sync it up with just one card. Then use that card for every purchase for the next few weeks while you’re testing the app; that way you don’t have to sync everything up to the app when you get started - just the one card.

If the app route doesn’t appeal to you, then I recommend old school pen and paper. Just be sure to always ask for a receipt everywhere you go and sit down to record at least once a week, so the pile of expenses to record doesn't get too big.

Pen an paper works for a lot of people, but I think a more secure and better tool is a spreadsheet. The other benefit here is that there is less room for error, since you can let the spreadsheet do the adding for you. You can often find templates for budgets online that you can import to the spreadsheet software you have on your computer.

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening and happy budgeting!

Before you continue on with your day, please take a moment to leave a review for the One Minute Retirement Tip in Amazon. If you’re getting any value from these tips, it’s a great way to share the love. And thank you to those of you who have already taken the time to write a review.

My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, cybersecurity, cyber security, why is cybersecurity so important, email security, identity theft, 2 factor authentication, two factor authentication, password manager

Do you know where your money goes every month? When you retire, you’ll need to figure out how much money is coming in the door, which is often pretty simple. The hard part is figuring out where your money goes every month, yet it’s essential to do that before you transition into retirement, so you’re not blindsided by too little coming in and too much going out.

This week’s episodes have been building - I started by talking about why it’s so important to budget and track your spending before retirement, then I talked about how to find out what you’re likely to spend in retirement.

I’ll spend the rest of the week talking about how to find a budget system that works for you and the quick and easy way to get started with a budget that’s designed for those of you who hate budgets.

But before I do that, today, I want to talk about spending habits. When you start tracking your spending you’ll likely have a few surprises. Maybe you discover that you spend more on your dog than your mortgage every month. Believe it or not, I’ve seen that. Maybe if you’re like me, you think you don’t spend much on eating out until you realize that your Egg McMuffin breakfast habit is getting out of control.

If you have a shortfall in your budget where you will have more money going out in retirement than coming in, you probably don’t have to start eating rice and beans every night, and sell your car for a 1994 Toyota Camry. But you will want to pay attention to those 1 or 2 areas of spending that seem a bit high, and experiment with how you can cut back in those areas.

Again, it’s critical to do this before retirement. It would be a real bummer to discover this after you retire, and feel like you have to pinch pennies all the time, so find a way to cut back now if you have a shortfall in your income vs. spending.

Here are a few ideas to get you thinking that have worked for me:

1. With personal care - are you willing to DIY your own nails, or use (gasp!) haircolor in a box? Or dare I say, even easier and cheaper would be to let those wisdom hairs grow in. That’s code for gray hair. So ask yourself, “what am I paying for right now, that I’d be willing to stop paying for altogether or switch to DIY?
2. This one I call the cart trick. It works really well for online shopping. If you are buying something online, go ahead and put it in your cart and leave it there for a week. If you forget about it, then you didn’t need it or want it that much anyway. If you come back to it a week later and you still want it as much as you did before and you’ve been obsessing about it all week, then go ahead and make the purchase. Keeping something in your cart for a week before you pull the trigger, will help reduce your spending and curb your impulse spending.
3. If you’re someone who likes games and challenges, try a “No spend week”. Make sure you have toilet paper and groceries before you start the week, and then buy nothing all week. No eating out, no coffee, nothing. Don’t open your wallet...at all! This helps to condition you not to NEED to buy things. Also, pay attention to how it makes you feel. It always helps me realize that I’m just as happy and satisfied when I’m not buying stuff, and that stuff doesn’t bring happiness.  

Everyone is different, so find something that works for you.

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening!

My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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----------

Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, budgeting, budgeting tips, budget, retirement budget, budgeting app, how to track spending

Do you know where your money goes every month? When you retire, you’ll need to figure out how much money is coming in the door, which is often pretty simple. The hard part is figuring out where your money goes every month, yet it’s essential to do that before you transition into retirement, so you’re not blindsided by too little coming in and too much going out.

Yesterday I talked about why creating a budget and tracking your income and spending in an absolute must before you retire. Today, I want to talk about another topic that will help you budget your spending in retirement, which is how you can expect your spending to change in retirement.

The fact is, your spending will change in retirement. A popular rule of thumb that governs much advice in this area is the 80% rule, which suggests that you should plan to need about 80% of your pre-retirement income to maintain your standard of living in retirement.

Most rules of thumb are worthless pieces of garbage, and this one is no exception. Sorry, but it’s just too simplified to plan for your changing expenses in retirement with this 80% rule of thumb. For plenty of Americans, particularly working class Americans who can’t afford to live it up in retirement, they will be spending a lot less than this in retirement out of necessity. They may only have social security and little else.

If on the other hand, you make $100,000 a year and I tell you that you’ll need $80,000 a year in retirement because of the 80% rule, that may seem reasonable to some and ridiculous to others. No client has ever told me: “Ashley, I’m so excited to retire so I can downgrade my lifestyle”. Or, “I can’t wait to cut back on all the fun stuff I used to do when I had a job!”

Am I right? For many, expenses don’t necessarily go down, but they do change. You might payoff your mortgage at some point during retirement. You’ll usually spend less on gas and parking, especially if you had a long commute for work, but you’ll likely spend more on travel, hobbies, or home projects now that you have the time to tackle those things.

So forget the rule of thumb, and just track your actual expenses. Then look at the expenses that will change based on the lifestyle you envision in retirement and ask yourself if you’ll need more, less, or about the same income as you have today to cover those expenses.

That’s it for today! Thanks for listening.

Before you go, I have a quick freebie for you. If you want to forget the rule of thumb planning and get answers to your specific questions around retirement, send me an email at [email protected]. That’s [email protected], and I’ll send you a link where you can schedule a free, 15 minute retirement strategy call with me at a time that’s convenient for you.

My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

----------

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, budgeting, budgeting tips, budget, retirement budget, budgeting app, how to track spending

Do you know where your money goes every month? That’s what I’m talking about this week, on the One Minute Retirement Tip.

Today, I really want to stress the importance of why you absolutely need to budget and know what’s coming in and what’s going out every month BEFORE you enter into retirement.

Let’s say you spend $5000/month. Currently, while working, your take home pay is $6000/mo. That’s great. But what happens when you retire and your income drops to $4,000/mo. For people who don’t budget, they get blindsided by this. And they usually either live in denial and keep spending that $5000/mo even though they can only afford to spend $4000, quickly draining their portfolio, or they make drastic decisions, that are sometimes unnecessary - like getting on one of those tiny house or couponing shows.

But when you budget and understand what you’re spending and what you’ll need to live in retirement, BEFORE you retire, you’ll have the breathing room to make smarter decisions about what to do about that $1000 shortfall. You’ll have more options. Maybe that shortfall is just too big, so you decide to work another year. Or maybe you can do some part time work to cover the shortfall...whatever it is, we need to know the gap so you can figure out how you’ll close it.

The budget is the only way you’ll figure out what the gap is and how big it is, so you can deal with it in a smart way.  

Or, better yet,  if you don’t have a shortfall, the budget will give you peace of mind that you really can afford to retire.

That’s it for today, Thanks for listening! Tomorrow, come on back because I’m answering a question I get asked all the time - how much do household expenses for Americans really change in retirement.

My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

----------

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, budgeting, budgeting tips, budget, retirement budget, budgeting app, how to track spending

Do you know where your money goes every month? If you’re like many Americans, the answer is a yessy maybe, or a hesitant “eh, kinda?”. So this week I’m talking about that dirty B word - no, not that sister in law of yours that you can stand...not that B word. I’m talking about budgets.

The word “Budget” gets such a bad reputation, because it conjures up images of carrying around envelopes of cash, and restricting yourself to one starbucks a month, and definitely no target runs! That all sounds like a bad dream.

But what I mean by budgeting within the context of this week’s tips is just getting a handle on where your money goes every month. How much do you actually spend on your mortgage, groceries, eating out, travel, etc.

Budgeting doesn’t have to be this suffocating overlord, trying to ruin every pleasure you have in life. Instead, knowing where your money goes every month and tracking your income and spending gives you freedom!

So this week I’m going to share with you why you should never retire without having a budget in place, how to plan for changing expenses in retirement, ideas for course correcting if you have a shortfall, how to find a budgeting tool that works for you, and the quickest and easiest way to get started with a budget if you aren’t already tracking your spending.

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening!

My name is Ashley Micciche...and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

----------

>>> Subscribe on iTunes: https://apple.co/2DI2LSP

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Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, fee only financial advisor, financial planner, budgeting, budgeting tips, budget, retirement budget, budgeting app, how to track spending