Am I Behind In My Retirement Savings? What To Do If You Are

Nothing will mess with your financial confidence faster than comparing your savings to your brother, your coworkers, or that guy on YouTube who claims he retired at 38. Your retirement number isn’t a competition. Let’s talk about what really matters when you’re trying to figure out if you’re behind on your savings goals…and what to do if you actually are.

 

Important Links: Website: http://www.yourplanningpros.com

Call: 844-707-7381

 

----more----

Transcript: 

Speaker 1:

Nothing will mess with your financial confidence faster than comparing yourselves to your brother, your coworkers, or that guy on YouTube that claims he retired at 38. Your retirement number isn't a competition, so let's talk about what really matters this week on the podcast.

 

Hey everybody, welcome into Plan With The Tax Man, with Tony Mauro and myself to talk investing, finance, and retirement. And am I behind in my retirement savings and what to do if you are, that's the topic of conversation this week. Tony, my friend, what's going on, buddy? How are you?

 

Tony Mauro:

I'm doing well. And just back from the Thanksgiving break, trying to get reignited for this last month of the year.

 

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's upon us and always fast and furious, always something going on, right?

 

Tony Mauro:

Yeah.

 

Speaker 1:

So we got to dive in and tackle the work, get it done, especially right after holiday break. It seems like everybody's always like, "Oh my God, I'm so overloaded."

 

Tony Mauro:

That's right. Everybody's got a ton of stuff to do.

 

Speaker 1:

Yeah, got to catch up from the half the week you're off or whatever. So listen, we got an email question in. And so it kind of sparked the conversation here, Tony. So we'll throw this up here. I'll state it for the listeners and then let's just kind of break it down a little bit. So the person says, "Look, I thought I did a good job saving over the years, but it seems as though I'm behind. My brother's got nearly two million saved and it seems that a lot of my colleagues or coworkers are in that similar kind of stratosphere. The husband and I barely have over a million bucks and now we're in our early 60s and wondering what do we got to do to get caught up?"

 

So it's kind of like, well, is a million not enough? With all these conversations period, so whatever the number, forget the number for a second, what to do if you're feeling behind, period. So where do we start with this? How do we identify the real issue, Tony?

 

Tony Mauro:

Well, I think the real issue, and this is a good topic for this time of year, because I think everybody, at least the clients that we serve and prospective clients are all looking at their financial situation. Another year's gone by, another year older and people start to ask these questions. And so I think some of the real issues here probably in this writer's email is basically they're trying to, just like you said, they're trying to compare themselves in a number to other people. And you don't want to do that. You want to get with your advisor and really talk about where you're at with your plan because just because... Well, I guess I can back it up and say, somebody's always going to have more than you, whether it's money, whether it's this, that, things, you've got to really hone in on the real issue of, in your situation, are you going to be ready?

 

And you got to... I mean, the number is important, yes, but it's not the primary factor, I don't think. A lot of times, because, for example, client A might be very happy and very well off with a million dollars, client B, not so much, which I think we're going to talk about a little bit more in depth here. So really the only benchmark is what you're doing with your plan and what it requires and try to figure out then from there, is what you have enough?

 

Speaker 1:

Great point. So you've got to really kind of break each of those pieces down and look at all of them and get the numbers. I mean, ultimately, you've got to have this conversation based on numbers and not how you feel about it, and we'll talk about that in just a second. But if you're reframing the conversation, so what is enough, Tony? What's enough for you? Everybody's different.

 

Tony Mauro:

Everybody's different, so you really have to, again, get with your advisor. I think I've said it before, it's where an advisor lends a lot of value is to take you through these exercises for answering what's enough for you. It really is dependent a lot on type of lifestyle that you want to lead, what your monthly expenses are going to be in retirement, do you have any outstanding debts and other commitments, things like that. You