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Fine, in retirement.
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Hey Dave. How are you doing today? I'm
doing great. Nick. How are you?
Fantastic.
Shining. It's a podcast Friday. Podcast Friday in
the summer. We
for our
Youtube watchers,
I got my floral Friday podcast shirt on.
Yeah. Yeah. You look like you are you
should have a a lay on around your
neck
there.
I'm getting there. You never know.
Yeah. Good. Good.
So,
Dave, 1 of our recurring
episodes here where we...
Read the news and parse out the good
stuff, so you don't have to. Right? Yeah.
The other...
Hey. Last week when we were recording you
know, on a specific topic, I I kinda
was those chuck and myself that in a
way every 1 of our podcast is in
some form become a headlines podcast. Right. It's
usually,
something we've read, something we've just seen that
we react to. Right? Yeah. But Sure. You
know, So so don't be surprised if you
see some of these topics resurrected as we
go. Yeah. Absolutely episodes. Right?
So our first article, Dave comes from mornings
star and Christine Benz on
lessons that... She had in...
Looks like taking a sa... For 6 weeks.
Yeah. Kind of a retirement test period. Yeah.
She took 6 weeks off to see how
it goes, you know? And I thought that
was interesting. Obviously, a lot of people don't
have the luxury of being able to do
that.
But, you know, the idea even as a
mental exercise, I think is worthwhile as you're
getting close to retirement to kinda...
Kinda get a feel for what it what
it might actually be like. Because as we've
talked about a lot over the last 2
years, however long we've been doing this 2
and a half, There's more to retirement just
the financial part. A lot of it is
psychology.
It's interesting because I feel like this... Piece
of advice comes up quite often to, like,
hey, do a trial,
retirement for a couple months. But I don't
see a lot of people actually doing it.
Right. So it's nice to get Christine take
on, kinda how it worked for her in
what lesson she learned.
Would love to hear from listeners if you
have done something like this, I would love
to hear about it. But you're right. In
the second piece of this is there is
a lot of psychology behind it. And in
you've been working
for 20, 30 years, you might not be
ready necessarily to retire.
And that... There there's a lot of, you
know, things that happen when you go from
full out work to very little work that...
That's a big transition. Right? Right. I actually
just heard the store. I don't have the
link in here, but there was a,
bus driver that drove a city bus for
25 or 30 years. Retired didn't like it
very much. Went back to. He's now 94
and driving a school drive bill.
Yeah. So, you know, you see a lot
of that where people Mh retire and then
decide that, hey, maybe I'd do enjoy working.
Maybe I should working. The social aspects of
it, just the purpose
that it provides.
There's lots of reasons. Christine, you know, she
breaks it down to a a few lessons
she took away from the
sa time about, you know, how to think
about un schedule time and having a purpose
to what you're doing.
And
it's it's a good read, and it's a
short read, So take a look at it
if you're on the fence about retirement or,
wondering if it's the right time for you.
So our second article, Dave, comes from none
other than the Wall Street Journal. And
this 1 is money habits
that you get from your parents
in financial literacy, and I found it interesting
because what often oftentimes happens in house holds
is we learn by watching.
Mh. Don't necessarily have conversations about money and
our money philosophies. It's just kind of something
that you undertake by osmosis.
Right.
Right? And it's very interesting because you might
money have 2 siblings that get very different
results over what that, learning by watching is.
Absolutely.
And I think it's also
interesting from the standpoint of retirement that a
lot of people, you know, will come in
and say well, I wanna have a retirement
like my parents. Right? Or I wanna make
sure that when I retire it's not like
my parents. Right? And so I feel like
we get some of that as well those
habits when it comes to retirement too. Well,
sure. And
where where I notice it to is when
we talk about investments,
and spending. Investments and spending, you know, the
2 the 2 big aspects of financial planning,
and
someone's
attitudes about the stock market and investment risk
often go back to
experiences that they absorb from their parents or
they were early on in their own investing
career and change the trajectory of of what
they do because of those early
early
things that they saw or felt.
And when we get
into working with clients who have
either overs spending or under spending issues,
so much of that is tied back to
childhood experiences. Yeah. I know there was a
lot of talk about...
The
generation, and I'm not good with the names
of the generation C q, something like that.
Yeah. That going through, like, their first memory
of month money would have been around 2008
when we had a big, you know, financial
crisis and the concern was
they're not gonna wanna invest. They're not gonna
say like they're gonna be money very
shell shocked because of that. And, you know,
I don't know that that's played out as
much as people thought. There is some research
on that. Yeah. There were some studies that
were done around 20 18 20 19, looking
at the early experiences with folks that were
in the... In that... There
age cohort.
And it wasn't as cut this... I'm going
from memory here. I don't have the research
in front of me. Wasn't expecting to go
down this this path.
But it basically shakes out that for some
people, it really did
you know, shape their
willingness to contribute to retirement accounts, willingness.
Invest the money in their retirement accounts once
it was contributed and just overall, like, faith
in the financial system to Yeah.
Writ large. It wasn't maybe a sweeping,
and it may... It'd be interesting to see,
like, how that's played out now with another
5 years of, you know,
overall pretty good markets with some ups and
downs in there.
Mh. But
5 but this particular article,
the money habits I learned from my parents
that we that we picked up from the
Wall Street Journal is basically,
Jessica Chow, 1 of their personal finance writers
talking about her own experience with with her
mother and what she learned and how that's
colored her outlook. Well, and also of how
she had to un learn some of those
nonsense. Right? Yeah. And so we've obviously dealt
with some of this with clients.
And Mh. And we we do use the,
money scripts from
clots.
As... You know, it's kind of the awareness,
like, the first up in overcoming some of
this is just being aware that it's out
there and it may not be in challenging
that... Just having that epiphany that Oh, 0,
right. That's why I think this way it
probably goes back to that incident when I
was in sixth grade and this happened with
my parents and money. A lot of times...
Is is
go...
Just being aware gets you gets you a
lot of the way there. Let's see. Our
next article, Dave comes
from the collab fund in 1 of our
favorites
and that is mister
Morgan H.
It's talking about quiet
compounding,
which I absolutely love. And there's always
reading his stuff, it there's always something that
I pull or if I brought up Or
It's was like, oh, yeah. Makes sense Yeah.
He's he's he's a philosopher.
Yeah. In in the true sense. Just good
stuff in here, and it's it's... You know,
for those who are familiar with his books,
it's nothing necessarily new, but it's nice in
a in a compact blog form here where
he's talking about.
Like, how
how you...
The gist of it is,
stop comparing yourself to everyone around you. Make
small incremental changes to your own life. It
will compound over time and quit thinking about
what other people think Absolutely. 1 of the,
you know, the the stories that he tells
in this article is we've all heard of
the heat and the his where is not
mine country bump.
Limited
education and, you know, low wage job that
I managed to save tens of millions. Right?
And the way that they did that
was basically
by, you know, their financial universe was contained
in their house, which allow them to play
game
that wasn't guided by outside forces, and they
slowly over time just compounded
those investments. And, you know, they didn't have
a ton of financial skill, but their Gil
was in that. They didn't let outside forces
really determine
what they should be doing or how they
should be investing. They just kind of let
Gil the power of compounding over time take
over. You know? And we're we are in
this society where people are so nervous about
what other people think,
really kind of skew how people do things.
Right? They go into this where they're either
performing for others or copying strategies that might
work for other people, but really work for
you because you're playing a different way a
game,
and that can really kind of lead people
into making 4 decisions financially. And I love
this part about, you know, there 2 ways
to use money. Right? You can either use
it as a tool to live better life
or you can use it as a yards
stick of success to measure yourself against other
people. Right? Right. Right. Which is so true
when you, you know, if you go on
social media, you'll see the yards stick. Right?
Everybody's measuring.
Yeah. And, you know, so you know, how
do you wanna live your life? What you
want? To use money for, and I think
most people would obviously gravitate towards number 1
of living a better life, and that means
shutting out whatever everybody else is doing in
the outside noise. Which also
means fighting human nature and
not giving into the
ingrained urge to make those comparisons. Noise Yeah.
Absolutely. And... I mean, and I don't wanna
overs simplify it and make it sound easy
because it's extremely difficult.
Right? Yeah. But that, you know, the the
kind of So what quiet compounding means in
Morgan's
words was an emphasis on internal versus external
benchmarks. Right? Don't worry about what other people
are doing, only worry about what you need
and what's enough for you.
Acceptance of how different people are in a
realization that work.
What works for you might not work for
others and vice versa,
focus on independence over social dunking and focus
on long term endurance versus short term comparisons.
So
I found it super insightful.
Obviously, we'll have all the links
to the show notes here. So that's 1
that I definitely recommend people
take a look at. So our next article,
Dave comes
from the 2 street
retirement daily
and 1 of our friends missing the adams
who currently serves on the michigan of f
Pa board with me, talking about guidelines for
seniors to not
become a victim of fraud. I was actually
on the site and
Skimming the headlines started reading the article because,
of course, it looked like something that I'd
wanna share with clients. When I opened it
up and sci was written by by Sandy.
It was like a like, a bonus. We
need to we need to include this. So
it's it's nothing new from our point of
View and hopefully, not to a lot of
our listeners, but it's great reminders
of
how to
combat,
all the myriad,
scams, both online,
email, text,
you know, what have you that are out
there trying to separate
us from our money and particularly our vulnerable,
you know, senior citizens,
Yeah. Always a good reminder,
refresher. I always like to look at those
things because there's always, you know, something new
or some difference. Scam coming out and the
more you can kinda make yourself aware of
those things,
the better off, typically, it is for you
because no matter what they're out there at
some point, you're going to go down the
road.
The sooner you can recognize that, the better
off it's gonna be. And, Sandy offers some
and good warning signs, but then also, you
know, best practices
to
help protect yourself. So our next article,
Dave,
is when we,
check in on our recent retirees or retirement
Rookie from the Wall Street Journal. Yeah.
Steven and Karen
Y,
and just kind of taking a look at
what's new with them. I thought this 1
was interesting because a lot of times
In retirement, people feel like they need to
have a bucket list,
and Steven and Karen decided that that was
not necessarily for them. Yeah. Yeah. It would
I thought was was pretty cool. With gist
of it being, you know, you've really gotta
think about what makes you happy.
You know, there's the cliche...
The idea of a bucket list itself has
become a cliche, and the things that often
go on people's bucket list or cli cliches.
At this point. Right? Right.
And so don't build your own list
based on what
what you hear and what you... What what
seems valuable to other people.
Are you feeling overwhelmed when it comes to
planning for your retirement? Do you want simple
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discover practical advice to create a retirement strategy
that fits your lifestyle and budget. Get ready
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special guests, and inspiring case studies.
So grab your favorite cup of coffee and
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Go to sr advisors dot com or search
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podcasts.
Yeah. I loved Karen take on this. Where,
you know, she kinda came to the conclusion
that she'd rather visit places. She's already been.
Mh. To connect with people that she knew.
And that was her priority. And I think
part of the problem
with
potential problem with a bucket list for a
lot of people is know, what are your
priorities? What do you want to do? And
that maybe, if you don't know, you probably
create a bucket list to see what you
like. But if you are right now, maybe
you don't need the bucket list because you
know what your priority is are and what
you wanna do. Right? Yeah. For sure. And
and your priority may be, to experience new...
It can be totally different than, than Karen's
idea of reconnecting and re experiencing. It can
be go do new things to exciting things.
Climb amount and jump out of a plane,
whatever. I... But but be conscious of it.
Our next article,
we go
back, to mornings star and Christine
and talk a little bit about
whether or not you need permission to spend
money in retirement
and a lot of this kind of came
out, there's been a several different articles
with some recent research from
David
And Michael think
where they kind of decided while they did
some research on retirees and found that of
retirees that had annuities tended to spend more
or not it been
which retiree yeah didn't necessarily have an annuity.
My frame in that right? We... Or we
should we should just clarify that when you
say spend more, we mean in a healthy
way.
Mh. Not overs spending. What he's... What they're
getting at is
well, we should back up and frame it
a little different maybe that we tend to
see retirees, retirees at higher financial planners, don't
spend to don't tend to spend enough of
their money if you will. As low sure.
Or it's
reluctant to spend as much as they could.
I think it's is maybe the best way
to put it, not that we would encourage
overs spending, but just
maybe are cutting themselves short of from doing
things they'd wanna do because they're afraid of
overs spending.
Yeah. You and I both have clients, who
could spend more than what they currently do,
and choose not to. And, you know, sometimes
there's good reason for that, and sometimes like
you said that's a fear or a concern
of
making sure they have enough when we can
kinda already see that they're gonna to have
more than enough. Right? So And so what
what they're getting at here is if if
you're getting a paycheck from an annuity,
and instead of having to withdraw money from
an investment portfolio
or take money out of savings, the psychology
is different and frees you up to spend
more from a from a psychological standpoint, not
necessarily changing the math, just changing the the
way you look at the money I take
this to mean not everybody needs an annuity,
but maybe we need to think about
and be conscious of how we're categorizing,
our money. As a practitioner,
I can see taking this to the step
of saying, okay, what if we were to
take this part of your portfolio and just
take it off the board. So you don't
even think about it and send you a
paycheck. From it. Right. How would that change
your your point of view,
Whether we literally do that or not, would
remain to be seen or it would depend
on the circumstances
Right. And that's, you know... So Christine gave
4 different 5 different options actually, and 1
of those was like, have your... Work with
your adviser or have them you what you're
spending limits are and, you know, have them
kinda dole it out to. Right? And don't
worry about it. The other 1 was obviously
the annuity which came from some of the
research that we talked about couple other options.
You could tilt your portfolio more towards current
income production and just take the income piece
of it. Could also tie your portfolio withdrawals.
Portfolio performance. So if you had a really
good year, you could take more of that
year,
and that might help from a psychological
spend or standpoint
and then
plan for spending to trend down. And so
what she means by that is, like, yes,
when you're early on in retirement, you can
spend a little bit more because your plan
is eventually, that spending will go down. I've
been I've been actually thinking about this topic.
Quite a bit lately from another point of
view. And I... And why I think this
is gonna be 1 we're gonna probably come
back to here in the near future as
of an expanded topic
Because while, you know, like, as you just
said, a lot of our clients don't spend
as much as they could already, and they're
basing that on us, and what we've been
telling them they can spend. And then I'm
seeing research from very good
people I trust us industry saying we're being
too conservative a lot of the time. You
know? Oh, right. You know,
it's
interesting conundrum
that deserves some a lot of a lot
of thought from from both the industry and
then our clients as well.
Future podcast alert. This is probably something We'll
take a deeper dive into, but I thought,
Christine did a great job of kinda laying
out some of the basics. And some of
the things that best we've had conversations on
and need to kind of do a deeper
dive in as well. So... Right. Right.
Our
last article here, Dave comes from
Scott Rick, and he actually wrote a book
on this topic as well, but that is
the topic of spending
and, you know, 1 of the interesting things
and this is just an article preview the
book.
So if you're... You wanna read the full
book, you can start with the article and
see how that goes.
But it's kind of trick thing where, you
know, there's some research around spending that and
and kind of lays it out where everyone
experiences the pain of pain. Right? Right. And
the difference being that people who don't experience
enough pain are what we would deem as
a spun thrift. Right? Mh. And people that
experience too much pain are what we would
deem a tight watt. Right? So someone who
will technical germany. Yes. Yes.
And then what I love about this is
this that neither are happy with how they
handle money. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's miserable. You're
1 or the other in an end you're
miserable regardless. Right?
And so it's just a very interesting. I've
always long stated of that, you know, you're
either a saver or responder
Mh. There's usually not a lot of people
that manage those things well and fall towards
the middle naturally. Like, there's things that you
can do to recognize your behavior a push
yourself more of the middle, but from a
natural standpoint, we just don't see people
who can naturally balance both of those things.
They typically fall on 1 camp for the.
The other. Yeah. And and, you know, and
anecdotally, that fits with our experience while I
shouldn't speak for you It fits with my
experience.
The other, as a financial planner that people
people are either either are spending too much
or spending too little and the people that
are in the middle and healthy
spending the right amount our are few. Yeah.
So it's just an interesting,
you know, way to frame that a lot
of research behind it.
Which with I thought was great, and, you
know, I really, like, just like, some of
the other stuff we talked about, dave. The
first step is, like, identifying that, hey.
This is me. This is... These are the
things that need to look out with because
that's the best way to kind of get
through and understand
why you have so much pain around spending,
and then maybe you can work to change
that and have a little bit less pain
when you... Spend. So... Yeah. Super interesting.
Probably more to come on that 1. I
actually just ordered the book. And we'll bring
back our vantage a book review. It's been
a long I think that'd be a good
idea, especially in this case. And
yeah. So I do have a bit of
a surprise for you today, Dave.
We on this podcast and, you know, have
been talking about inflation a lot lately. And
this seems to be on everybody's mind. The
feds,
and every day we can find a new
article on inflation.
So I actually brought you
the deep
deflation breakdown for June of 20 24.
Okay. This isn't this on you. This was
not on our list.
I've got a list of things that actually
went down in price year over year from
June of last year. Alright? Care to take
a guess. At what some of the top
items on my list here are.
Boy. I'll give you a hint.
First category is food at home.
Okay. Food at home. Has gone down over
the last. Yep. Okay. So, here that's Sick.
Specific types of food,
we actually get down to the actual level.
So any guess on what has gone down
the most in terms of food.
Eggs are not on my list.
I I haven't looked at the price eggs
lately, but I know what you're. Everybody was
talking about how bad Alright have have gotten.
So that was that was just me playing
the ying and yang of what goes up
must come down. Show It's a good guess.
Actually, your first guess is on my list.
Gasoline.
Automotive regular gasoline is down 2.6
percent since June of last year. So Yeah
You got that 1. Right?
Knocked it out of the park.
The top
food at home,
deflation is actually apples are down 12 percent,
the year compared to last year.
So there buy a lot of apples. I
should've known that. Apple a day keeps the
doctor away. And now it's even cheaper. Yeah.
Some other items, of, food items that have
gone down hand, down 4.3 percent. Potatoes down
3.9,
rice down 2.4.
Cheese,
2.1,
coffee, 1.7.
So there is there is some hope out
there. Some light interesting.
Interesting. Well, you know, to that to that
end, we don't want general deflation.
So Just on the just on the items
I need to buy next. Just... Yeah. Just
it'd be nice to go to the grocery
store this afternoon and and seal.
Yeah.
So some other items on my list.
Telephone hardware and calculators down 12 percent
were washed calculated. When when.
Well, when was the last time you bought
a. Standalone calculator in the world of smartphones
and computer
wow. I had to get my daughter a
graph calculator for
high in high school a couple of years
ago. So... Yeah. Okay.
Let's see. That was dishes. I was gonna
say the cf if key exam is probably
keeping the calculator
industry exactly.
Dish dishes is flat down 10 percent, to
use car and t. Actually down 10.1
percent. So that doesn't I should have guessed
that. Mh.
And men's suits down 9 plus 4 percent.
It's Well, maybe we'll, I have to step
up our dress code for the office now
that it's more affordable. My floral shirt isn't
cutting hands. Is that what saying You know
go wanna just throw code over that? Maybe
a time.
We'll. Tune in Next week.
Youtube to see if I
take advantage of the men's suit. Being down
90.4
percent. You probably just doubled our listeners partnership
right there, Nick.
Shall.
So it's as always, Dave been a pleasure.
That's all we have for today,
our listeners have any articles you would like.
Us to read and give our opinion on.
We'd love to hear him.
Send us
an email at info at SRB
advisors dot com.
Dave has always been pleasure.
Thanks, Nick.
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