Decluttering for Retirement: It's More Than Cleaning Out Your Closet

It's hard to imagine a life in retirement when we are surrounded by the remnants of past versions of ourselves. There are a few times in life, however, when we get a chance to hit a refresh and leave behind the things that don't serve our new identity. I mean, we can look back at our life and maybe it was from high school to college or college to the workforce, maybe moving to a new city, starting or ending a new relationship. retirement is the next big refresh. Decluttering can help you look at retirement with fresh eyes so you can rock it. And this is what we're going to talk about this month on the show. Oh, hey there. Welcome to the show dedicated to helping you not just survive retirement, but to have the confidence to lean into that new identity and rock it. My name is Roger Whitney. I'm a practicing retirement planner with 35 years experience, co-founder of a retirement firm called Retire Agile, my good friend Tanya Nichols. Today, we are going to kick off a month-long series on decluttering our lives, not just the physical stuff, which we all may have a lot of that, but also decluttering our money, decluttering our relationships and our obligations so that we can look at our life with fresh eyes because it's easy to get trapped by what was and let that basically create a funnel for all of our future decisions. And in retirement, you literally can look at your life with fresh eyes. And we're going to talk about that a little bit today when we define the problem. And then along the way, we're going to answer some of your listener questions and hope you take a little baby step to rock retirement so we can do that as well. Now, our intent with this episode is to empower you to have the confidence to lean in and rock retirement. That is the first order intent of what we talk about on this show. And that means to lean into this new season of freedom. Give it your best shot because you're intentional so you can minimize regrets. And to do that, we want to bring the good from all of the years that you've been alive, but shed the things that don't serve you anymore so you can step into this next version of yourself as your best self without all the echoes of the past. So here's the plan for the week. Today, we're going to define the problem, and we're going to define the problem. Next week, we're going to talk about the opportunity that awaits you if you're willing to hit a refresh in this decluttering exercise. In week three, we're going to explore some of the challenges we face because this stuff isn't always easy. And then in the last week, we're going to bring in an expert from Marie Kondo's organization to talk about an action plan to walk the journey. And we're going to look at three domains. We're going to look at your things. We're going to look at your money. Very cluttered. I always see cluttered closets in my practice. And then we're going to look at your relationships and your obligations. So that is the plan for today. Before we get started, we're going to have a rocking retirement in the wild story. and then after we define the problem this week, we will, as always, answer some of your questions. Okay, before we define the problem today, let's hear from someone that's taking this journey and rocking retirement in the wild. And today we got a submission from Will. Will said, a super subtle thing you shared on today's podcast was about decluttering. You're right, Will, because that probably was on my mind. Or letting go of previous versions of yourself. Well, I recently sold a BMW Z3 Roadster that I owned for 20 years. A lot of past versions of myself in that car. After I sold it, it took me a few days to understand I was mourning the loss of my past self far more than the loss of the car. It's given me a lot of momentum to seek out more stuff that is of my past self and let it go. Thanks for the insight today, Will. Oh, I love that, Will. I think that's a great insight that you had. A lot of times it's not the physical thing. It's the memories and the pictures of different versions of yourself that sort of echo that you want to hold on to and maybe relive at some point. And it's all captured in this thing. great job on leaning into that. And I love that insight and good luck on your journey, buddy. All right, now let's get to defining the problem that is our clutter. So in this first installment on decluttering for retirement, I just want to explore the problem of what clutter looks like in our life. So you can start thinking intentionally in the three domains that we're going to review, money, things, and relationships, about where you might have clutter in your life that is defining how you view what your life can be or what you want it to be. So we're just going to define the problem today. And it really comes down to, you know, at this stage where we've been in multiple seasons of life. We've been early career, mid-career. We may have relocated. We may have gotten married. We may have gotten divorced. We may have children. We may have a different relationship now. All of these things happening over the years and the decades, what happens is you just pick up clutter along the way. You're like a magnet walking through a bunch of metal. You're just picking up stuff along the way. And this clutter unconsciously forms your choices. It funnels your thinking to what your life is, and it prevents you from seeing what it could be because you're surrounded by it. So the core issue here is overwhelm. Overwhelm leads to deferred decisions. All that stuff you're picking up like a magnet, it's not annoying you enough to deal with it. So you just defer the decisions. You might say things like, well, I might need that someday, or that has some sentimental value that I'm not willing to process yet, or that costs a lot of money and it's really good. And so it's worth something, even though I never use it. So I can't throw it away. For me, that would be suits, right? I have maybe 10 suits that were relatively expensive, very nice suits. Haven't worn them in years. Don't want to wear them ever again. but they're nice. They cost money. I don't want to just throw them away. They're worth something, but are they? They're just sitting in my closet. And so I just want you to start thinking about these things in your life. And next week, we'll talk about the opportunity, if you're willing to lean into it, of how this can help you rock retirement. And then we'll get down to some of the challenges and how to actually do it. All right. So we're going to look at this in three categories, and we're going to start with the obvious one when it comes to clutter, and that is our things, the stuff we have. Now, you have, let's start with your house. If you live in a house or even if you're in an apartment in a certain area, it's likely, I feel confident saying this, it's likely that where you live or the house that you're in was greatly influenced by where you work, the commute that you had to your office. That may be why you're in the city and the state that you're in. And the size of that house is probably defined by whether you had children or not, and whether you were getting married or not, and where that house is located within the commuting zone may have been influenced by the school district that you were going to raise your children in. All of these outside influences sort of force us like a funnel down a certain path to find the apartment or the house in the particular city, in the particular location, because it served that version of you. And then if you've ever been relocated, you re-go down a different funnel to sort of get you back to the same place, just in a different city. Well, in retirement, if you're not working anymore, the commute doesn't matter. If you were married or you have kids, you may not need as big a house as you want and you don't have to worry about school districts. You could literally be anywhere you want in the country or the world. But it's very hard for us to see that because we have decades building this castle of ours and organizing our life. Now within that castle, this house or this apartment or whatever it is, we likely have had decades of accumulation of things. Think of early life interests. So in your 30s and your 40s and your 50s and maybe even your 60s, you've had art that you've hung, you've decorated the house, and maybe you've refreshed that. Hobbies that you are doing now or old hobbies that you've abandoned. Furniture, maybe you inherited them or you refreshed them once or twice or you collected them from friends, clothing, you have your work uniforms, you have your hobby uniforms, you have gifts that you received, you have different sizes that you may or may not fit in. Maybe someday you will, someday you won't. All of these things, et cetera. You have tools, right? This could be in the kitchen. This could be in the playroom. This could be in the garage. You have those duplicates because you couldn't find that flashlight. So you bought three others and then you found the one you were looking for or the hammer or the socket set or whatever it is. You bought a tool for maybe a one-time use. You're working on a special project and you need a particular tool. Maybe it was a certain kind of souffle or you were doing something in the yard. You bought the tool because you needed it, but you never need it again, but it still hangs around. I literally think I have a hand riveter that I used when I was in my 20s to hang gutters on my first house. I still think it's in my toolbox. Never use it again. You have gadgets that come in and out of style. Now, technology is another one. You have chargers and iPhones and computers, et cetera. I have a computer that has, I don't even know how to boot it up now, that has all the photos from my kids were young and it sits in my attic because I haven't gotten around to getting the photos off of it so I could throw the dang thing out. There's an example. And then with these things, we have different phases, right? If you were single, you had your own art and furniture. And then if you got married or got a partner, now you have two people's stuff. And some of that stuff comes together and some of that stuff doesn't. A good example here recently, Spencer, my son, is engaged. He lives with his fiancée. and he had art in his single apartment that she won't allow up in their joint apartment. So it's all stuffed in this closet and it's this running joke because it's his single dude art. These things accumulate. And then if you're married, you have two people's stuff, like I said. And if you have children, now you have all the different seasons of stuff that might be hanging around. Think about this stuff in your life. Do a mental inventory of why you live where you live. the different things you have in your house, the current versions and the things that are deferred choices put away. Now, there's a lot of sentimental things too. There's photo and artwork that maybe children or nephews and nieces created for you. There's things that you inherited from your parents that were very special to them, may mean something to you other than or may not. There mementos lots of mementos At this stage it could be there are things clothing tools that a spouse had that passed away Those things have to be processed It hard to process those things. It doesn't feel right to throw them away. It feels a little weird to give them to strangers. Each thing has a story and a remembrance, so we defer those decisions. And then the practical things like tax returns, legal documents, manuals for things that we don't even own, financial statements, all sorts of things. A lot of stuff in this physical realm that goes into a home that may or may not serve who we want to become. These are the things that pile around us that make it become barriers to leaping to a different version of ourself because we don't know how this stuff will fit into a new version. Or maybe we can't even see a new version. This is a problem. All right, let's talk about money, the second domain. And we're going to keep this thread throughout the month. Money. This is something I see a lot and have to deal with and assist with is if you're in your 50s and 60s, you may have had a few jobs. Which means you may have a few 401ks. Maybe you never cleaned them out. A lot of times there's no reason to. It seems like, oh, it's doing well enough there. I'll just leave it there. And then you start your new job. You get your new 401k. And then you leave that job. And then you get another 401k. These things accumulate. Multiple IRAs, multiple investment accounts, multiple bank accounts because you got a CD for a teaser rate or they had a great money market over there for a while and then you left some money there, but then you went to the new one. These things happen over time. They happen in little decisions that accumulate day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decades after decades. and they're good enough, but it just builds clutter to our net worth statement. And then within each one of those accounts, you have accumulated investments. You thought that was a great idea 20 years ago, so you put money into it. Maybe you hired an advisor and they had some strategy that seemed to make sense at the time, but then you got disenchanted with it. So you left that advisor, but took the investments and then started to add to it because you're going to self-manage it. And then maybe you added another advisor and they didn't really clean up the other stuff and they added all their strategies and great ideas. Or maybe you just had a bunch of great ideas over the years that have come and gone, but the things often remain either because they've made some money and don't want to pay taxes or they're good enough investments. I'm just trying to grow. So as long as it grows, I don't have to worry about it. And I just don't want to deal with it right now because I'm a busy person, right? I see this over and over again. And then we have credit cards. We decide we're going to be a points nerd and we go down the point nerd for a while. So we get a bunch of different credit cards and then we're sort of tired of that, but we still have the credit cards, even if we never use them. Or insurance policies. This is one that they're very easy to get into, very hard to get out of, and they're a little complicated. So let's just defer that decision for now. This is very normal. So if you're in this situation, by the way, money-wise, it's very normal. Oftentimes, we call it a cluttered closet. And it can maybe serve us well enough when we're in accumulation stage because we just want stuff to grow and we don't want to pay a lot of attention to it. But when you're near or in retirement, it really can be a problem. It can be a lot more to manage. And when you're in retirement, Now we actually have to have a purpose for the money to fund your life when you leave your job in the near term and then 10 years from now and 20 years from now. So it's really important to take this cluttered closet of money and simplify it to get a nice tidy closet where every dollar has a purpose. And oftentimes this is what we encounter. I'm trying to think of the biggest case of money clutter that we've encountered. And it's, I can't think of a individual case, but we've had 20 different accounts scattered everywhere. And within those accounts, hundreds of different positions, most of them not big enough to make a difference, but collectively, it just creates this mind boggling, I don't know what to do with all this stuff. It happens. And decluttering that, just like decluttering your home brings peace. And we'll talk about the opportunity next week. So money can be an area of clutter. Now, the last one I want to talk about when we're defining the problem, and this is a weird one, I think, a little bit touchy, is relationships. And when I say relationships, I do mean people in your life. And I mean organizations that you've had a relationship with and maybe have served over the years. Who you allow in your life generally happens by default. Obviously, your family is the most normal default. Whether you want them in your life or not, we feel an obligation at some level to keep them in our life, whether they serve us positively or not. But in other areas, we have our work relationships. We have our family. We have our friends. And like I said, we have organizations that maybe we've served. And it feels weird to de-friend somebody. It's like, I'm not on Facebook, but I think some people have a hard time doing that on Facebook where you just hit defriend or take off as your friend. That even feels weird and hard. But let's be honest. Over time, people change. And it's really important, I think, that we are intentional about who we have in our life. Who is in our inner circle and who is in the next circle outside of that and then who's on the periphery. And we don't have to get rid of anybody in some way of defriending you, but who do you want to spend the most time with that is fueling, supporting who you want to become in this season of retirement? I think that's really important. And, you know, one example I can think of, I won't obviously use names, but we've had a number of friends over the years. And some of them we've just slowly stopped doing things with because it just didn't feel healthy. It just didn't feel like our values were aligned or our interests were aligned, etc. Still like them as people, but we just move them from more of the inner circles to the outer circles and are always friendly with them and wish the best for them. but we're trying to be intentional about who we bring into people we're spending all our time with because that's who we're going to be like and we want to be like people that are supporting the things that we want to do i think that's important to find that cohort of people that are serving pulling you towards the things that you want to be able to do not holding you back. And from a much less deeper perspective, it's just time management. You only have so much time for the people and the organizations that you allow in your life. And you want to, rather than spread your energy and dilute it, you want to make sure it's focused to really invest in those relationships that are most important to you. And this is the thing that I think we need to revisit and be a little bit intentional about? And this includes organizations that we're members of, right? That could be the Rock Retirement Club. Is it serving somebody? We have members that come in for seasons and then the season's over and they move off. And that should be a celebration because it should be serving you. And that includes civic organizations, book clubs, different churches. But this is an area where we can easily clutter because we know so many people and we've done so many things over so many decades. So the high-level concept here is in these three domains, our things and our money and our relationship, we're old enough, we've accumulated some things. And these things can constrict the choices we see for ourself when we're thinking about what we want for this one and only shot of retirement. And the intent is that we give it our best shot with some intention. So when we're old and gray, that we don't look back with regret. All right, so next week in this series, we're going to talk about the opportunity that if we're able to navigate this problem, what it might do for us to help us create a great life. So that's going to be next week. But for now, let's go to some of your questions. All right, now it's time to answer some of your questions. If you have a question for the show, you can go to askroger.me. You can type in a question. If you leave an audio question, we try to bring those to the top. They're like a fast pass at Disney World because we love to hear your voices. Today, we're going to answer a few questions related to longevity. I was really happy with the way that episode came out. In fact, Bobby and I are talking about writing a deeper article on that topic because I think it's something that literally nobody talks about in the planning community. So I'm really proud of that episode. Hopefully, you found it helpful. and have a few bits of wisdom and questions related to that. Let's go to our first one. And this is from, who is this from? Let me get my name here. Lena. Hi, Roger. This is Leanna. Your topic this week of longevity risk versus leaving money on the table really hit home for me. My husband died of cancer four months ago in December. He had been diagnosed in 2020, and we knew statistically that he would likely die in two to 10 years. It's a pretty big time span. It was hard to plan for. Fortunately, he was a firefighter and he was able to retire with a pension at age 50. But having two major surgeries and chemo and radiation, of course, affected his ability to enjoy that time that he did have. I'm a nurse, and I was able to gradually decrease my work hours as he became more ill so that I could spend most of my time with him, especially in his last very debilitated year. I tried to convince him to spend more in those years because I knew we were overfunded, but he was really concerned about me, I think, as well as he was really kind of a homebody guy who would have preferred to keep working. It's really sad he wasn't able to do the things that he dreamed of doing. I'm glad I had joined the club and made a plan of record in 2021. It really eased my mind. I do wish he would have considered some Roth conversions while he was alive because he died right at the end of the year. And we really didn't have any time for tax planning at that point while we're still filing jointly. You know, the widow's penalty is a real thing. But we were well funded and I'll be fine. I'm of course still figuring out what my life can become from here since I'm from a very long-lived family and I'm currently quite healthy I guess my cautionary tale to others is if you can to be realistic about timelines and stress testing your plan I did have a plan for long-term care for him which we didn't end up needing now it's a whole new plan I'm trying to set up as a single woman and long-term care for me sometime in the future seems more likely down the road. As much as you can, talk honestly as a couple when there are health challenges about how not only to take care of things now, but for the single survivor down the road. Do you have some good resources that you'd suggest for this kind of situation? I'm betting that you do. I really appreciate your deep dives and thought-provoking conversations. I think without your help over these years, I would feel much more lost financially than I do. And having some financial peace of mind when you lost a spouse it just really so valuable And thank you so much again Leanna thank you so much for sharing your story and your wisdom in such an articulate way. You have a very kind voice. I really like your voice. It sounds kind. Obviously, sorry for your loss. Losing a spouse is devastating. I have not lost a spouse. I've been around a lot of people that have in my practice and in the club and in life. I've definitely lost people close to me. One thing I want to affirm to you, and I don't know if you're in a position to hear this or not. So if not, wait until you are. But I think it's important, and it sounds like you've processed this, is as sad as it is to lose your husband, at some point you want to affirm, you're going to have a great life. This sucky thing happened, but you're still going to have a great life. And it's going to be different than maybe what you imagined with the two of you and the things that you were going to do. It's definitely going to be different, but it's still going to be great. And you're going to renew from this in a time that's right for you. And that's one thing I hope for you. In terms of resources, I want to make sure I understood what resources you were talking about. When it comes to long-term care planning, when you're single, it's important to do an assessment of not just simply the mechanics and money part of long-term care, but the social network aspect of aging as a single person, assuming you stay single, in that who's going to come over and check on you? Who's going to help you get to doctor's appointments? There are services outside of our social network that we can hire over time, and those are more in their infancy, but growing because there's such a need. But there's definitely an opportunity as you reinvent yourself to intentionally build a social fabric of people where you can help each other. And I know I have a number of single friends that have done that here in Colorado and in other places. But I think that's going to be on your list of how do I intentionally build this social network for all of the logistical things as well as the money things. Now, if you're referring to resources about recreating a whole new plan for Leanna by herself, it sounds like you're well-funded, so you feel confident there, which is wonderful. You had some clarity and you were involved in building that plan of record. It sounds like you were the lead on that. That goes a long way, so you know you're safe, and that's a good first place to get. You know financially you're safe. that gives you space to process because it's likely your new single version of your plan of record is going to change a lot because you're still in the process of shedding some of the skin of who you were. And you're going to have to experiment of what Leanna's life looks like as a single person. So I would really give yourself time. And there's not a lot of triage you have to do because you're fine financially, as you described, but I would just start creating versions of a single plan for yourself, but do it with a very light pencil and don't put a lot of weight in any of the decisions. Just play for a while with different versions of what your new life could be. And ultimately, you'll start to settle into a version that really feels comfortable and you can slowly start leaning into that. And I know you can do it because I can think of two or three, four clients just in the last three or four years that have walked this journey and have come out with a great life, a different life, but a great one. I want to thank you so much. and roger at rogerwoodney.com. If you have any questions or you are looking for more specific resources, just shoot me an email and I'll do my best to help you. Okay. We have one more question related to longevity and this one comes from Eric. Hi, Roger. This is Eric from Seattle. First of all, I'm a longtime listener and I want to thank you for your show. It has been fundamental to my planning process. With respect to your show this week, I just want to congratulate you on an excellent show with Dr. Du Bois. This is a subject that I've given a lot of thought about, and I thought I'd share with you the approach that I've come up with. First of all, I'm 60, and I've been retired for five years, and I use both my actual aerial age for my actual table as well as 90 as a longevity age. And I calculate both my Monte Carlo probabilities of success and fundedness ratio from both of these longevity estimates. And I come up with a probability cone using both of those ages. So for example, at age 60, the actual table that I started using five years ago says that I have 23 more years to live, which first of all is kind of stunning when you look at it in those terms. But that gives me an actual age of about 83. And so when I run my Monte Carlo simulation at age 83, currently under my current spend, I come up with a probability of success around 93%. If I run it at 90, I come up with a probability success of about 84. And my fundedness ratio respectively are significantly overfunded for age 83 and slightly overfunded for age 90. You know, based on your show today, I may increase my spend. I'm still relatively young, so I'm kind of conservative with the amount that I spend. But at any rate, this has been a great show. And I kind of encourage you and your listeners to think about the longevity issue in terms of a probability of each and running it each way. So you can just kind of see where your plan falls if you live to your statistical number or if you outlive it and are fortunate enough to live into your 90s. At any rate, thank you for your show. It's been invaluable to my planning process. Keep up the great work, Roger. Bye. Well, that's great to hear, Eric. And I think that's a good approach of running them concurrently. And we don't have to be math nerds to do this either because we can get those tables relatively easier. It's in our important numbers worksheet that we have in our resource center at rogerwhitney.com, which shows you the longevity tables. But I like this idea, Eric, of running them concurrently. and then as you gain more information related to your actual health, you can tweak those a little bit based on your health as that unfolds as well as the tables get updated. And where that can make a difference, Eric, is like you said, you may be able to spend more. And I think when we're thinking about spending more, if we're running, say, 83 and 90 in your version, and if you're already relatively overfunded for both, you're probably even more so if we really got into the math nerd part of it. But when you're thinking about what do you do with this information? I think it is. It comes back to today of life choices of could I retire a year earlier or could I take less investment risk if that's your preference or could I spend more? These can help inform decisions because none of the software stuff or spreadsheet stuff is going to give you a green light. Not even AI is going to say, yes, you're okay. Go do it. It's only going to help reveal some information and perspective to help you make a judgment call, Eric. So don't rely too much on any tool. It's just information to help inform your judgment. And I say that because when it comes to spending money or not, You say you might do it this year, given what you're looking at, but you did qualify that. You said, well, but I'm still young, so I might not. I would approach it a different way in that look for things that pull you to do something that you think is going to enhance your life and then count the cost of that and then run it through your software to make the judgment call. because it's not about spending more money just because it says you could. Start to identify things that are going to pull you. So when you get opportunities that excite you that you think are going to enhance your life, then you can evaluate that one-time spend in your models rather than saying, well, I could spend $10,000 more a year for the next 10 years. That hardwires it and it makes it more theoretical. Whereas, huh, I have an opportunity to go to Bali and it's going to cost me $10,000. But this is really cool because there are a lot of friends going that I want to go. And there's this event that I want to attend. I'm saying that because I'm speaking in Bali and I was just talking to Amy, the organizer of it. And find something that pulls you and see what it costs and then just run that one number. So in this case, it's not can Eric spend more in his retirement theoretically, but hey, could I spend 10 grand this year to go do something cool? Those kind of goals are a lot more achievable. one, because it's just a one-time goal that you're testing within the framework of whether you die at 80 or 83 or 90. And two, it's a lot more meaningful. This is how you create experiences and memories, et cetera. So I love that approach, Eric. And I think there's a lot more to explore here that I have on the docket to do. Okay. We've got a couple more audio questions, non-longevity related. Let's go to this next one on the advice that John is getting. Hey, Roger, really love the show and the variety of topics that you have. So here's the setup to my question. My wife and I are 63 years old. I'm retired and she retires next year. We currently have about 1.5 million in investments with a roughly 70 to 30% equity to bond fund mix. I receive about 6,500 monthly in pension and disability benefits from the military, where my wife retires, she'll receive about 2,800 in retirement monthly. We don't have any mortgage or any other debt, and we will both likely collect our Social Security at 67 with a combined amount of about 5,600 per month. So here's my question. I recently partnered with a retirement advisor who's a CFP, and he recommended that we put about 30% of our investments into a fixed index annuity as a risk reduction measure. I'm not a huge fan of annuities, and given our guaranteed inflation-adjusted pensions, I'm probably less risk-averse than most people. We could easily live off our pensions without touching our investments. And for what it's worth, his commission on the annuity would be about 0.075%, where his management fee is roughly 1.1%. He would not charge a management fee on the annuity. So I'm wondering what are your thoughts on his recommendation, and are there some other things I should be asking him? Thanks for your help. And if I didn't say it, my name is John. Hey, John. Thank you for the question, and it's very well organized. So you're 63. You've got $1.5 million in investment assets. mainly 70% stock. And between your pension and disability, your wife's pension, plus your social security, you have your life covered. And your advisor is recommending a indexed annuity for 30% of your assets. And you state that you're really not that risk adverse because you know that your combined social capital or guaranteed payments are going to cover your life. I would really dive in John as to what problem are you trying to solve with purchasing a fixed indexed annuity What is the basis for the recommendation within the context of your entire plan Because if you have a vision for your life and you know what your base grade life costs, you know what those extra discretionary things are, and you've counted the social capital or all these guaranteed payments, and then you have this 1.5 million in investment assets after the fact, how does taking 30% of your assets and putting it into this product make your life better? And what problem is it actually solving in order to make your life better? I would focus on those types of questions. and then whatever the answer is, ask a second or a third question related to what is the problem and how is this actually making my life better? If there isn't as sound of basis or if it's not well thought out, asking that second or third question usually will reveal that the thinking isn't as deep or the problem isn't as defined as it may have sounded in the first answer. So I think that would be the way that I would approach it is what problem do I have? And then why this? What other things could solve this? I don't have anything, well, like I say, I don't have anything fundamentally against fixed indexed annuities or indexed annuities. I try to be agnostic when I look at something. But everything has a cost benefit. And an indexed annuities cost is, yes, the internal cost, but the other costs related to it are they're easier to get into, they're harder to get out of. They're very complicated in terms of how they work and what the illustration says relative to what actually happens because it's all a synthetic product. It's not organic. In my world, it's not an organic investment. It's a Twinkie. It's a manufactured product that nobody asks for. It's something that financial engineers create in order to market that they say solves a problem because you're taking on just different kinds of risk. Whatever risk it's solving for, you're just taking on different kinds of risk. You're taking on the risk of the formula that the return sequence is based off of. You're taking on the risk of the promise of the insurance company and the counterparty risk related to it. Now, those may seem not that important, but I just be very careful of this. I am just not a fan of highly manufactured products because I think you could have a great life and have a reasonable allocation of your assets without overcomplicating it. unless there's a serious problem that it's solving to make your life better. So my gut reaction is I just don't like Twinkie products. I just don't. But those are the kind of questions I would ask. And I don't think it has, I'm going to give the assumption that there's no nefarious intent here because a lot of advisors believe that these things are really solving good problems and they're good products. So I'm not, you know, I'm not going to question the intent, but just go back to what problem we're trying to, why make it more complicated than it needs to be? So John, those are some of the things I would suggest exploring. But my gut reaction is like, unless it's really making your life materially different, keep it simple. Okay, let's get to one more question from Sue. And again, it's an audio question. Loving these audio questions. I'm telling you, it's the fast pass. Hi, Roger. I'm a longtime listener and really enjoy the show. I am 60 and my husband is 63 and will be turning 64 this year. We have just under $3.5 million in assets, $2.1 million in pre-tax, $1.3 million in taxable, and $80,000 in Roth savings. And we also have $300,000 in cash. I'm currently working and plan to retire at the age of 62. This year, I started to maximize my 401k Roth contributions because our Roth accounts are a little low. However, I would like to stop saving for retirement and use the cash for projects around the house, about $100,000 before I retire. Does it make sense to stop contributing to increased cash flow for the projects or continue contributions until I retire and use the cash we currently have on hand? Your thoughts on the pros and cons of stopping contributions would be really appreciated. Thank you, Sue. Hey, Sue. Thanks so much for the question. All right. Should you stop saving in your Roth 401k in order to fund your home projects, or should you use $100,000 from the cash that you have? I'm going to make an assumption here, Sue, that you have a retirement plan of record in some form where you know that you are on a feasible path for your retirement goals. So I want to make that assumption that you have enough money for your retirement. And this is a tactical or an optimizing decision. So the nice thing about having a retirement plan of record is that it's very easy to just create what-if scenarios of what if I spend $100,000 from my after-tax money and continue to save in my Roth 401k, how does that change the feasibility of my plan? and compare that to a version where you don't spend $100,000 from your cash, but you stop saving in your Roth 401k, how does that change the feasibility and long-term outlook of your plan? The nice thing about having a plan of record, that is the current version, is that you can create these one-if scenarios to see the impact of different decisions. And this is a good example of being able to do that. you may discover, which would be my guess, that it really doesn't matter. Either one is going to probably keep you on a similar trajectory. That's just my guess, just from listening to you. Or you may discover, wow, doing this one really puts us on a much better trajectory than, say, spending our after-tax cash or vice versa. You may discover that one is a lot better than the other. So that would be my suggestion of how I would try to figure this out. But given that, with the information I have, my thinking is it's probably better to continue to save in your Roth 401k and use your after-tax cash. And the reason is, again, it's all optimization. It just gives you a little bit more optionality in that if you use your $100,000 in after-tax cash and you continue to save in your Roth 401k, and say three years from now, you realize, wow, we don't have as much cash as we needed in our cash reserves, you can always take the money from your Roth. If you're over 69 and a half and you've held the account for, had it open for five years, you can just replenish your cash from your Roth 401k. And if you don't need the money, then your Roth 401k will continue to grow tax-free forever. So you maintain that ability for it to grow if you find that you don't have to replenish your cash in any way. Whereas if you stop saving in your 401k in order to preserve your cash, you lose that option on the money that could have been growing tax-free forever. So you can end up in the same place. So I would probably use the cash and continue to save in your Roth 401k. Now, if you have a couple of years for retirement, you could always build up some cash in your after-tax account over the next period of time until you retire, depending on how your cash flow looks. So I probably would continue to save in your 401k. With that, let's go set a smart sprint. On your marks, get set. And we're off to set a little baby step you can take in the next seven days. It's not just rock retirement, but rock life. All right. In the next seven days, I want you just to ponder your things, your money, and your relationships. And just start to think about the things that you've accumulated in those domains and whether they are serving you and serving where you're going. what are a lot of the deferred decisions that maybe you've put off on these things. I just want you to observe them. You can just walk around and think about it. You can get a notebook out and journal on it. You can go inventory your house or your net worth statement, whatever level you want to do. But just start to think about the things that are in your life in these domains that may not be serving you. Don't do anything with it yet. Just start to be awareness. This is an awareness exercise. And then next week, we'll talk about the opportunity if you choose to address it. All right. I want to end the show with two little tidbits, just on things I noticed. We got a review in Apple Podcasts from Semi-Retired in Colorado. And I think this was on the investment portfolio episode of you, how to build a diversified portfolio. And they said this episode starts with a what if I know nothing approach and builds up to a much more sophisticated Q&A for an investor with $10 million portfolio. That's what I love about the 600 plus episodes. There's always a new nugget you can build upon if you stomach the redundancy or fast forward. It reinforces sound advice about timeline and building the three key buckets, contingency, liquidity, and growth funds. Thanks, Roger. Oh, I love that. Stomach the redundancy. Yeah, I don't script. I think out loud. I may be redundant, but you know what? I used to have a professor that was very redundant in one of my certification programs and it annoyed the heck out of me, but it helped me remember things. So thank you so much for the review. Love to get those reviews. They do help people find the show. Last thing I want to talk about before we say goodbye is the survey on the noodle live. So about a month and a half ago, we did a live Saturday morning event where I just had a zoom room open and anybody could come in and join. And we just spent an hour. So talking about rocking retirement and financial planning and life, et cetera. We had, I don't know, I think a couple hundred people on there and the noodle live. So the noodle is our weekly email where we share wisdom and tips on how to rock retirement. It's a great way you can hit reply. It comes right to me. And so we did a live version. Say, hey, let's hang out on a Saturday morning and chat. And so I thought it went extremely well. So we sent a poll a few weeks ago on, would you like to see these things? Did you enjoy these things? And how often would you like to see them? And overwhelmingly, we heard monthly or quarterly. One is we only got less than 1% said never again. So I think it was a good experiment. It was a positive. So we plan on doing this at least quarterly. We're going to figure out the rhythm of that, but I thank you so much for the responses on that. I hope you have a wonderful day. Next week, we're going to answer more of your questions and we're going to get into the opportunity that awaits if you address the clutter in your life. The opinions, voice, and this podcast are for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance reference is historical and does not guarantee future results. All indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested in directly. Make sure you consult your legal, tax, or financial advisor before making any decisions. This podcast may include testimonials and or endorsements.