October 6, 2025 • 38 mins
Beyond the Numbers: Finding Purpose in Retirement with Fritz Gilbert
In this episode of Something More with Chris Boyd, Chris Boyd and Jeff Perry welcome
Fritz Gilbert, author of The Retirement Manifesto blog and the book, Keys to a Successful
Retirement. Together, they explore the emotional and psychological journey of retirement
and what happens after you hit your financial goals. Fritz shares insights from his own
experience and research, including the four phases of retirement, the surprising link
between retirement and depression, and how identity, purpose, and relationships play a
critical role in a fulfilling post-career life. Whether you are nearing retirement or advising
someone who is, this conversation offers valuable guidance on preparing for the non-
financial aspects of the transition.
#RetirementPlanning #PurposeInRetirement #FritzGilbert FinancialPlanning
#TheRetirementManifesto #FinancialFreedom #LifeAfterWork
#RetirementTransition #IdentityAndPurpose #KeysToRetirement
https://www.theretirementmanifesto.com/retirement-success/
For more information or to reach TEAM AMR, click the following link:
https://www.wealthenhancement.com/s/advisor-teams/amr
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to something more with Chris Boyd.
Chris Boyd is a certified financial planner, practitioner
and senior vice president and financial advisor at
Wealth Enhancement Group, one of the nation's largest
registered investment advisors.
We call it something more because we'd like
to talk not only about those important dollar
and cents issues, but also the quality of
life issues that make the money matters matter.
(00:22):
Here he is, your fulfillment facilitator, your partner
in prosperity, advising clients on Cape Cod and
across the country.
Here's your host, Jay Christopher Boyd.
Welcome.
I'm Chris Boyd.
I'm here with Jeff Perry.
We are both of the AMR team at
Wealth Enhancement and glad to have you with
us.
We have a special guest today, Fritz Gilbert.
(00:43):
He is the author of the blog website,
The Retirement Manifesto, as well as the book,
The Keys to Financial Retirement.
We're going to get a lot from our
conversation today.
And Fritz, it's great to have you here.
Thanks for being with us.
Hey, thanks for the invitation, Chris.
I look forward to talking with you and
(01:03):
Jeff.
Tell us to start with, you have an
interesting backstory that led you to this passion
that you have today.
This wasn't what you've always done, is it?
No, I was a corporate guy for 33
years, worked in the global aluminum business and
got out at 55.
So a little bit of an early retiree
and actually started the blog three years before
(01:25):
I retired as kind of a curiosity experiment
just to say, hey, let's see how this
goes.
And it turned out that I really enjoy
writing and it's kind of gotten some traction
and turned into a thing.
And it's kind of become one of my
purposes in retirement.
So yeah, I enjoy it.
Well, that's what we're going to talk about
a little bit.
Those keys to successful retirement, I'm sure.
How much of starting the blog was your
(01:45):
own process of, what am I going to
do?
Yeah, it's interesting, Jeff, because if you look
through the blog, when I started writing it,
you can kind of tell where my head
was at.
And one of the lines in my earliest,
earliest post, I think it might have been
my first one, this is the story of
my present before it becomes my past.
So it's kind of a journaling exercise.
(02:06):
But really what it is, is here are
the things that I'm thinking about as I
prepare for and then transition into and now
live in retirement.
Here are the things I'm thinking about at
the various stages.
And here's the way I'm going about it.
Hey, I don't care if you use these
tactics or not.
It's just the things that I'm thinking about
and the ways I'm going about it.
And I've had a lot of readers that
are saying, man, that's really helpful because it
(02:26):
kind of gives me a framework or the
way to think about things, make sure I'm
not missing some blind spots.
So it started very much focused on the
financials.
Am I able to retire?
A lot of stuff on the financial stuff.
And then as I moved into retirement, you
can see my thinking shifting more away from
the financials as everybody does.
And into the kind of what's the purpose
of life type thing, which is what I
(02:47):
write more about now.
So it's a good fit with something more.
It fits well.
The something more is really, we certainly can
talk about the how to earn something more
part of things, but it's really the idea
that there's more to it.
There's more to life.
It's not just about the money.
I felt like you were writing to me
(03:08):
when I read that when you were talking
about tracking your net worth is not a
goal.
Well, it was my goal for like 25
years.
Yeah.
And I've had so many friends.
I was kind of in the fire community.
I was out at 55, so kind of
late fire, but early retirees.
And so many of them have said, my
(03:28):
whole goal has been to get to X
millions of dollars, whatever their number was.
But getting to the number, it doesn't really
bring fulfillment.
It's a tool, right?
It's a tool to allow you to go
out and do the things that are going
to bring you real fulfillment.
Having a number as an objective for fulfillment
is sorely lacking once you achieve it.
It's just, okay, it's another day you wake
(03:49):
up.
What are you going to do now?
Exactly the same experience.
We hit the number and I was like,
okay, should we just raise the number?
Is that our new goal?
Yeah, exactly.
That's a great point.
How do you know when you're ready?
Okay.
Now what?
Yeah.
And this kind of led to my book,
The Keys to a Successful Retirement.
(04:09):
What I discovered in a lot of my
research, the non-financial aspects of your retirement
before you get there and exactly those questions,
Jeff, that you were just raising, what are
you going to do now?
And the way I like to think about
it you think about losing the paycheck when
you retire, but you don't necessarily think about
losing your sense of identity, the relationships at
(04:30):
work, your sense of purpose, all those other
non-financial benefits.
Thinking about how you're going to replace each
one of those, as well as the paycheck
before you retire can be really helpful in
making for a smooth transition.
The majority of retirees struggle with the transition
for exactly those reasons that you mentioned.
And the more you can think about those
things before you retire, the smoother the transition.
(04:52):
That's been proven by research.
So my writing basically provided me that avenue
of exploring those other areas and it helped
tremendously.
And my transition was as smooth as could
be.
I'm very pleased with how my transition's gone.
Yeah.
You wrote in the last column, which maybe
we'll have time to review some of it,
but you wrote that retirement itself increases the
(05:15):
probability of depression by up to 40%.
Yeah.
It's a big number and people don't necessarily
think about that.
They think, oh, it's going to be a
vacation.
It's going to be just, I don't have
to get up to the alarm clock.
And everybody has a honeymoon phase.
There's really a viral TED talk from a
guy, Moiley Rimes, that talks about the four
(05:35):
stages of retirement.
It's my most read post because I wrote
an article about that video.
And then I talked about each of the
phases and my experience with them.
And everybody goes through the honeymoon phase, but
what people don't recognize is that phase two,
that kind of disorientation can lead to depression,
that phase two is 85% of retirees
get into that.
And it's not a good place to be.
(05:57):
And it takes some time, typically a couple
of years to kind of work through it.
It's all self-driven.
You've got to find your way out of
it.
You don't have a boss anymore.
And it's all through kind of trial and
experimentation, which is phase three, when you start
finally kind of listening to your curiosity and
just exploring different things.
And with time, like my blog, a few
(06:18):
things start to click and they start hitting
for you and you're enjoying them and then
you're on your way.
And then phase four is kind of when
you found that fulfillment and purpose phase, which
only 65% of retirees actually make it
to phase four, but it's a wonderful place
to be.
And that's where I'm at now.
And I'm loving life.
How does one begin this process?
How to be thinking about this?
(06:39):
Yeah.
I think the biggest thing I would say,
Chris, is make a list of the things
that you maybe don't recognize that you're getting
from work.
Assume you've got a year or two left
to work.
You're going to do the financials.
You've got to do the financials.
So let's just leave that as obvious.
They're necessary, but not sufficient.
And then kind of go beyond it and
say, okay, what about my sense of identity?
My sense of identity is going to be
(07:00):
gone.
Nobody's going to care that I was an
aluminum guy, right?
So what do I want to be?
That's a good point.
I mean, it's hard to kind of envision
that thought process.
I don't know if this is always the
case for women as much as men, and
generalizing, but men definitely tie a lot of
their identity to their work experience.
(07:21):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And I think the challenging part of all
this is, especially those of us who have
kind of been more, I guess, left-brained
or right-brained, I get them mixed up,
but the more analytical side, which tends to
serve you well in your career, is not
really the way you find your way out
of these other elements.
It's more of a creative, artistic exploration, curiosity,
(07:45):
pursuit.
So it's a muscle that you really haven't
exercised probably since you were in kindergarten or
whatever, and you were just free to go
out and play and do what interested you.
And so a part of it is just
learning how to get that muscle back engaged
and trying...
There's a lot of books about this.
I think about Doc G, he wrote his
(08:07):
book about the purpose code, and his whole
thing is just find something that kind of
interests you and intrigues you.
He's talking about baseball cards, collecting baseball cards,
and just start pursuing these things that kind
of interest you.
And that's typically how most people find out.
Charity work, my wife started a great charity
called Freedom for Fido, which I'm very active
(08:29):
in, and finding a way to give back
to a community is a really good place
to look as well, because as you have
more free time and you've kind of met
your material needs, it's a really fulfilling area
to explore helping other people that haven't yet
fulfilled their material needs, and you've got time
and freedom to do it.
So that's a really good way to get
some fulfillment as well as just volunteer with
(08:51):
a couple of charities in your area.
And maybe you don't like the first one,
fine, go to the second and third, fourth,
and eventually you'll kind of find a group
of people.
So what do you get?
You get your relationships, right?
You start getting this network of people that
are working towards a common goal.
You get that feeling of purpose because you're
giving back to something and you get a
sense of identity because you're, oh, you're that
guy that works at Freedom for Fido or
(09:12):
writes that blog, whatever.
Finding a way where you're benefiting others is
a really...
That's fertile ground to plow.
And sometimes that's hard for people to find.
So the best thing to do is just
try and do something.
Yeah, exactly.
If that works, and if that doesn't work,
try something different.
Yeah.
The worst thing you can do is just
sit in your recliner and watch YouTube videos
(09:35):
or whatever.
You've got to get out there and try
stuff.
Absolutely.
There is something worse.
You could watch the news.
In your last article that's on your website,
a lot of great content.
People should check it out and subscribe.
We talk about purpose a lot and we
kind of touched about that, but go on
(09:56):
to structure.
Because I think when thinking about retirement, a
lot of people think the opposite of structure.
I don't have a schedule.
I don't have to be anywhere.
I don't want to have to have any
commitments.
A lot of people approach this newfound freedom,
but that may not be the best case,
you think?
Absolutely.
I think one of the surprises a lot
of people face is, oh, that unstructured life
(10:19):
is going to be great.
But the reality of it is, when you've
gone from a 30 to 40 year career,
even back to your school days, right?
School is structured.
So your whole life since you were five
or six years old has been structured, very
structured.
The time you get up, you've got to
be a certain place.
You've got certain things you've got to get
done.
You've got a certain time you get excused.
(10:39):
You've got structure to your entire day for
40 years, and suddenly you have no structure.
And that's a really disorienting phase.
That's part of why people get into this
phase two of disorientation.
And it's not always intuitive why you feel
disoriented, but a big piece of it can
be structure.
The fact that you went from a fully
(10:59):
structured day to a fully unstructured day.
So what I encourage people to do, and
this is what I did, is I said,
okay, I'm going to add some structure to
my day.
So I joined a local gym and I
took classes three days a week.
So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, seven o'clock, I
was at the gym, right?
I was working out for a couple days.
And I found that adding some structure really
(11:21):
helps.
Now you don't have to fill your day
with structure.
What I've tended to evolve into is kind
of a more structured morning.
That's kind of my writing time.
I'll do podcast interviews, et cetera.
I'll kind of do blog stuff.
And then in the afternoon, I kind of
keep it open and it's kind of a
more serendipitous part of my day, which I
enjoy.
But having some structure kind of keeps you
grounded.
You know what day of the week it
(11:41):
is.
It helps.
So unstructured sounds great, but that's one of
those things that you lose more.
Like the relationships, like the sense of purpose,
like the activities and objectives and things you're
working towards, structure is one of those things.
And it's good to think about before you
retire, how much structure do I want in
(12:02):
my life?
Maybe you think you want none.
That's fine.
You can go into it with that mindset,
but at least have some ideas of how
could you add structure back to your day?
I went to the gym, right?
That's an option.
I'm going to walk a couple of days
a week with my best friend, John.
I'm going to hook up with him and
we're going to start walking together.
I'm going to play pickleball on Tuesdays, whatever.
There's a lot of ways you can add
structure, unlimited ways you can add structure.
(12:25):
So think about that.
Think about ways that you could add it
and experiment with that.
That's one of the levers that you have
to play with.
You made reference a couple of times to
going out and play and a lot of
these, you're going to the gym.
Talk about that notion of the importance of
the physical exercise and just maintenance, if you
(12:48):
will.
In my case and in many other retirees,
I just read a really good article by
Dr. Grumman.
He talked about, he went to a financial
retreat and he said, you know, people weren't
even talking about money.
Everybody's talking about fitness.
Like, what are you doing?
And it's interesting.
I think one of the ways you can
replace that striving that you've had to build
(13:09):
a certain net worth number and all those
things, well, you can redirect that energy to
say, okay, how can I improve myself?
And what can I do to, I read,
what was it, Outlive?
I got it on my thing over there,
a book.
I read a lot of books.
How can you expand your health span so
that you'll get as many years of healthy
activity as you can?
(13:30):
Because if you don't focus on it, you
will naturally atrophy, you know, and younger next
year is a great case.
This doctor writes with one of his clients
about the reality that you can do stuff
in your seventies that you did in your
thirties and forties.
If you stay continually focused on doing, you
don't have to be crazy.
You can just go out and he says
a minimum is like a good 45 minute
(13:53):
walk, you know, maybe six days a week,
something equivalent to that.
So if you can do something where you're
just moving, you're using your body.
And, and number one, it makes you feel
good.
Number two, it adds some structure to your
day.
Number three, you feel a sense of accomplishment.
And number four, you, you increase your odds
of having more years that you can do
the things that you want to do.
You can pick up your grandkids.
(14:13):
Being intentional about that is something you can
do with the free time and retirement that
brings, you know, tremendous benefits.
One of the things that I would ask
you to think about or to comment about
is the idea that, you know, as we
age, we tend to have more chronic health
challenges.
We spend more time going to doctors.
And, uh, how does that, and I think
(14:35):
sometimes that can affect your passion for life,
right?
You know, they can undermine your sense of
enthusiasm and so forth.
And so I imagine, you know, the things
you're talking about, investing in yourself can help
to have maybe less of those chronic issues
perhaps, and more intellectual stimulation or spiritual or
(14:58):
whatever the areas one may choose to select.
But, um, but there are some things beyond
our control, I imagine.
Uh, and that can, uh, undermine some of
this ultimately, correct?
Yeah, it can Chris, but the way I
look at it is, you know, there's only
so many things within our control.
So I control the things I can.
(15:20):
And I've got a friend of mine, I'm
actually going to go have lunch with him
today.
And he's, he's getting to the point where
his body's starting to break down.
He's, he's in his late seventies, early eighties
at 78.
And he's starting to struggle with the fact,
you know, he said, man, he said, I'm
just, I can't do stuff I used to
do.
And he, and he's kind of getting depressed
about it.
You know, it's, it's an, it's a net,
we will all get there at some point,
(15:40):
right?
So the question is, what can we do
now that hopefully delays that process as much
as we can delay it, which you can
delay it a lot, but the reality, yeah,
you're, you're not going to delay it forever.
So the other part is getting your mindset
around the reality that we're all going to
die someday, right?
We're all, none of us are going to
get out of here alive and, and finding
(16:03):
a way that you accept that reality of
mortality, which to me gives more of the
urgency to enjoying and living each day to
the fullest.
Absolutely.
Die with zero, right?
The die with zero concept.
It's not about it's, he talks about the
financial, but I read, I went into this
book thinking this is, this is, you know,
this is ludicrous.
(16:24):
Nobody knows when they're going to die.
How do you, how can you drain your
bank?
That's not the point at all.
The point is think about your life aspirations
and the things you want to do and
sequence them, right?
If you want to climb Mount Everest, man,
you better do it before you're, you know,
50 or whatever the age is that you
can tap, you know, tap out.
And, and if you want to go, we
went to the Arctic this past the summer,
(16:44):
my wife and I, and part of the
reason we went, you know, we're 62.
We're like, Hey, we're in great health.
You know, we can do this.
We can go anywhere we want to go.
Once we get up there, we can hike,
you know, remote stuff doesn't matter.
We're in good shape.
Let's do it now because if we wait,
maybe we can't, maybe I'll get sick, right?
Maybe cancer will pop up.
Who knows?
So it's also recognizing, okay, what are the
things that you really want to do in
(17:05):
your life?
And, and are you, instead of just procrastinating,
are you kind of prioritizing and making sure
the things that you really want to do
are getting scheduled because you don't want to,
you know, get to that point and then
have regrets that you procrastinated on something that,
you know, you're really interested in doing.
So I, there's a lot of facets that
you can look at this thing.
(17:26):
Um, but it's a really important reality to
get your head around and figure out how
you're going to address it.
You know, thinking about, uh, Mount Everest or
anything, the little big, big goals, right?
I don't think people regret something if they
try it and fail.
Correct.
It's the regrets are, I wish I, you
know, talking about Dr. G's books.
(17:46):
I mean, a lot of that's in there,
but if you try something and you're not
successful, you gave it your best effort.
I don't think there's a regret there.
So don't be afraid of failure is, is
important, I think.
That's right.
Look at Mike Drack.
Mike Drack's a Canadian guy.
I enjoy him.
He's, he's written a couple of books.
Um, Retirement, Heaven or Hell is one of
them, but, um, he's 70 years old and
he, he set a goal.
(18:07):
He was going to do an Ironman for
his 70th birthday.
So he goes out and I'm going to
do this Ironman.
He failed, you know, he, he had a
mechanic, mechanical problem on his bike of all
things.
Um, but he said, you know what?
He said, now that I've had time to
think about it, that wasn't the point.
The point was it gave me six months
to train for something.
I got in really good shape.
I was involved in other athletes doing this
and I got so many other benefits from
(18:29):
striving towards this goal that I'm really glad
I undertook the challenge.
And that was his success.
It wasn't that I completed the Ironman.
It was, Hey, it gave me a really
good six month period of time here where
I got myself in better shape.
I feel good about it.
And he was really pleased that he did
it, even though he never completed it.
So yeah, I'm just going to put a
caveat to that.
(18:49):
When you're climbing Mount Everest, the exception you
fail there, you fail, you die.
All right.
Extreme example.
Yes.
Talk about social connection for it.
Um, and I've noticed in my, just my,
not my study, but in my personal neighbors,
(19:10):
relationships, people that I know, this is a
harder thing for men than women, but talk
about why it's so important and some, some
strategies that you've found successful.
Yeah, there's no doubt.
It's harder for men.
I don't know why it's just the reality.
Women just tend to be good or better
at getting together and having lunch with friends
and doing stuff.
I don't know what it is, but, um,
again, this is one of those areas, like
(19:32):
we said, besides a paycheck, right?
It's going to be relationships.
And you think those people are working our
friends, but they're, you know, they're work friends.
You're not going to keep in touch with
them after you retire.
You think you will, but realistically you probably
won't.
And since we have in common, we don't
have in common anymore.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And even if you try to go back
in the office and have lunch with them,
you know, a couple of times a year,
they're onto different things.
(19:52):
You can't really relate to what they're talking
about.
There's a new boss in town.
You don't know who the guy is, right?
It's not the same.
So one of the things I encourage people
to do is in your last year or
two of retirement, start thinking about what relationships
do I have that are going to be
here after I'm gone from work.
And typically there aren't too many, right?
You've got your spouse if you're married.
(20:13):
So foster that relationship.
That's huge.
Make sure you're planning for retirement together.
We could, I wrote a whole chapter in
my book about that.
Jeff's brought up that topic.
Yeah, it's a big one.
And so let's say that one's, that one's
obvious, but it, I don't want to undermine
it.
It's not always easy though.
No, it's not easy.
So that's a huge one.
We could do a whole podcast on that.
Beyond that though, I would say, I'll give
(20:34):
you an example.
In my case, there was a little festival
in our town here and they had a
little author's booth.
And I was in the process of, you
know, my blog was getting some traction and
I hadn't written a book yet, but I
was like, oh, there's local people that write.
I should go up to this author's booth.
So I went up to this author's booth
and there was a book laying on the
table about some personal finance thing.
And the guy's name was on there.
(20:54):
And I said, oh, is Ed around?
And they're like, no, he's not working the
booth today, but you know, here's his card.
So I said, you know, I don't know
this guy, but I gave him a call
and said, Hey Ed, I was down at
the author's booth.
I saw your book.
You know, I'm getting ready to retire.
You want to go out and have lunch
together?
And, and that turned into every month for
years, unfortunately he's passed away, but we had
lunch together, you know, once a month, maybe
(21:16):
every other month.
And, and he became a good friend of
mine who was, we had a common interest,
right?
We were writing about personal finance.
And, and I, so I intentionally fostered that
because of this exercise, Hey, I don't really
have too many friends outside of the workplace.
Where, you know, where can I start establishing
some friendships outside of work that'll be there
after I'm gone.
(21:36):
So look at things like that.
Just be open to it.
And, and don't be afraid to call the
other area back to the charity.
I've got more friends now than I've ever
had in my life.
And, and most of them are coming from
this freedom for Fido charity.
We call it the Fido family.
There's a core of volunteers.
We'll get together and go to a micro
brew just spontaneously.
Somebody will shoot out a group text, say,
Hey, you want to go meet up at
(21:56):
Grumpy's, you know, in, in a couple hours
and 20 of us will show up.
And so there's this natural group of friendships
that have developed through this charity work.
And, you know, they're, they're really good friends
and we'll do stuff outside of the charity
with some regularity.
And then the last one I would think
of, if you're not involved in a church,
get involved in church, get in small, you
(22:16):
know, small group Bible study.
You can, there are a lot of areas
that you can develop good friendships, but it
takes intentionality.
And if you don't pursue it, they can,
loneliness is not a way you want to
spend your retirement.
And a lot of people are in retirement.
That's true.
I'll throw one more in there based on
my experience when we relocated to Florida pickleball.
(22:36):
Yeah, sure.
Absolutely.
Yep.
Yep.
Let's stretch.
Somebody must have pulled a muscle.
There's a story there.
There's always a risk of injury, right?
Number one cause of injury in our neighborhood
is pickleball injuries.
I think that's true in the nation right
now for anybody over 60.
(22:57):
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, and you don't have to be
great at it to still have a lot
of fun and connection.
Another thing, like where I live, they have
hiking clubs, right?
I live in a very outdoorsy area.
So you know, look, look, look for opportunities
in your local area of clubs that do
things that interest you and get involved in
a few clubs, reading clubs, anything that interests
(23:18):
you, you know, there's clubs out there for
it.
I really love the idea.
You know, you mentioned the charitable involvement in
a variety of comments.
I just really love the, the idea of
that because it really is something when you
give of yourself, when you go outside of
yourself, you, you really do get so much
from it.
There's a sense of wellbeing that, you know,
(23:40):
you're doing something constructive, you're helping other people.
And something about that really comes back to
you in, in a way that you, yes,
you're, you're really helping others, but um, there's
a, there's a certain, uh, fulfillment benefit that
comes from that.
No, no doubt.
And you know, I think it's, it's people
(24:00):
listening to this will say, oh yeah, but
right.
There's always a, but it's, it's hard to
get the, I'd almost call it courage to
go out and get engaged in something because
it's just easier to just, you know, inertia,
right?
So it, so yes, it's, and if you
read people that have had successful retirements, look
at the percentage of them that are involved
in one way or another in charity.
(24:22):
It's overwhelmingly the majority, right?
So I don't care what excuses you want
to make, just go out there and try
one or two or three, you know, and,
oh, it didn't really work out.
Fine.
Go to another one.
And what you'll find is you'll, you'll, you'll
get the relationships.
You'll get the sense of purpose.
You'll add structure to your day.
(24:42):
You know, you'll, it, it adds so many
elements that you miss when you leave the
workplace.
I think that's why it's so fulfilling.
And, and you'd have that feel good thing
from, you know, giving back to other people.
And it's much more, I would say you
can write a check, right?
That's easy, but you don't get the same
level of fulfillment writing a check as you
do getting involved personally and contributing, you know,
(25:05):
muscle to the effort.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, but, and so it is a commitment
of time and which is a precious commodity,
right?
When we get to a certain stage of
life, you know, but, um, there's, there's the
social connection.
There's the, uh, sense of fulfillment.
There's a lot of the good that can
come out of that, um, over and above,
(25:26):
um, you know, the, maybe the money you
might contribute as well or something like that.
Um, you know, let's just referencing this article,
you know, a portion of it did have
to do with the money side of things.
I think Jeff and I like having a
guest like you on because we talk about
(25:47):
the money stuff regularly, but we don't always
have the chance to talk about some of
these things that contribute to one's fulfillment as
much as we'd like.
So, um, we certainly can talk more about
that, but I do think it's important to
just mention this or these other contents.
And one of them was, you talked about
the idea that you have to plan for
the unexpected, uh, and maybe you could mention
(26:09):
some of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The article that you talked about for, for
the readers, it was three questions that determine
99% of your retirement success.
So there were three questions that I encouraged
my readers to answer.
And the first one was, do you have
a reliable cashflow plan, which basically, if you
projected your expenses, if you looked at how
much income you can get from your social
security pension, if you're fortunate, uh, you know,
(26:31):
safe withdrawal rate from your investments, et cetera.
But beyond just doing that exercise, which surprisingly
few people actually go through it.
It's shocking.
But even, even if you've gone through that
exercise, the second question is, have you made
a plan for unexpected expenses?
And you will have unexpected.
I call them the unexpected, expected expenses, right?
They're expected.
(26:51):
You know, you're going to have to replace
your roof.
You know, you're going to have to replace
your car.
A buddy of mine just got in a
car accident, right?
Unexpected.
Um, you're going to have those things.
So how do you build that into your
plan?
And, and what I referenced, I read an
article, I read a book actually by the
wall street journal as I was planning for
my retirement.
And I really liked the approach that they
went.
They basically amortize that you think of all
(27:11):
the major expenses, you know, mainly around maintenance
for a house, but you know, replacing a
car and you, and you basically say, okay,
if I'm going to have a car, let's
just do an easy one.
Let's say a car is I'll make the
math easy.
It's a little exaggerated.
Let's say a car is a hundred thousand
dollars and it's going to last 10 years.
That's $10,000 a year.
So let's say it's, you add that to
(27:33):
the spreadsheet and you basically go through that.
How much is a roof?
$20,000.
How long does it last?
20 years.
Okay.
That's a thousand dollars a year.
That's a hundred bucks a month.
And you add all of those up.
And what you end up with is a,
is a, is a number.
And mine is, is a, is a thousand
dollars a month, $12,000 a year, roughly,
um, from that exercise.
So what I do is I basically, as
(27:54):
I'm calculating my safe withdrawal rate, every year
at the end of the year, I look
at my updated net worth.
I look at a three and a half,
4% safe withdrawal rate and say, okay,
I can spend that much.
The first 12,000 of that amount I
pull out and I put in a segregated
account for emergencies.
And then I spend the rest of my
safe withdrawal rate.
So I've got, I've got it already baked
(28:14):
into the safe withdrawal rate, so I won't
overspend.
And it's got some kind of logic for
how it's created.
And now you've got a pool of money
and I just have it in a capital
one 360 money market account.
You can segregate those accounts, which is nice.
So I've got a retirement emergency account.
And, and as if something comes up, oh,
I've got to replace the roof.
No problem.
You go in there and you pull the
cash out of that, you know, you're within
(28:35):
your safe spending limit.
That's how I, that's how I manage it.
I love it.
That's great.
That's really good.
Um, and just, uh, you know, very methodical,
you know, and I think you're absolutely right.
I mean, too often people will try to
pretend that they've thought of everything when they,
you know, they really know that there's all
these things that are out there that will
(28:56):
come along, you know?
And so this is a way to do
it.
I like that.
We, uh, we try to think about some
of these issues when we do our financial
planning and, uh, you know, work it into
the, uh, you know, some home improvement costs,
some car replacements, things like that.
Um, but I like the way you've got
that sort of methodically being set aside into
(29:16):
that delayed spending on expected unexpected account.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you know, some people could argue, well,
doesn't that mean you're carrying too much cash,
you know, opportunity costs, right?
Well, yeah, but that's not the reason that,
that, that money is not there to make
money.
That money is to avoid me spending, you
know, above and beyond my safe level.
(29:38):
I'm not as worried about making a return
on that money.
So there's always a balance.
You mentioned long-term care in the article.
And I think that's one of the areas
is most difficult for people to plan for.
Yeah.
You know, we, we know there's a risk.
We can point out the extent of the
risk.
And in some instances, um, well, the math
(30:00):
really should be able to sustain it even
with those big costs.
And then other instances, it could be devastating,
but people really are reluctant to say, buy
insurance or it's not going to happen to
me.
No.
Well, and I, and I wrote an article
about long-term care and my decision to
self-insure.
(30:21):
Um, and basically what I did is I
looked at the cost of buying insurance, option
A, option B is I could invest that
premium every, every month.
And what would that look like over time?
And I just did side-by-side spreadsheets
and ran it out.
And there's a natural break-even point at,
I don't know, it was in my late
seventies, early eighties.
(30:41):
I wrote an article.
I can't remember the name, but let's say
it was 80 years old.
Okay.
That's kind of the way I went about
it.
But then I heard this from Christine Benz
at Morningstar, which I thought was really good.
One of the reasons people underspend in retirement,
big problem, by the way, most people underspend
what they're able to spend.
Bill Bergen's new book says, Hey, 4.7
(31:03):
% is the new safe withdrawal rate.
Right?
So most people underspend and they have much,
much more, if they're been responsible, they listened
to your show.
I'm talking responsible people, right?
Most people significantly underspend.
And one of the reasons they use, well,
I might have a long-term care event.
Fair enough.
But you can't build hedge on top of
hedge on top of hedge on top of
hedge.
(31:23):
You die with $20 million and you know,
your kids get it all.
You could have, you could have lived a
lot more life.
So what Christine Benz recommends, which I think
is really good when you're calculating your safe
withdrawal rate at the end of the year,
right?
Let's say you've got a million dollars and
you're saying, yeah, but I don't, so you
could spend $40,000, 4% safe withdrawal
rate.
(31:43):
Yeah.
But I don't, I don't, I don't want
to spend that much because I want to
save some of her long-term care.
Fine.
What's long-term care costs on average, let's
say it's $70,000 a year.
You're going to need it for three years.
Let's call it $200,000.
So you subtract the $200,000 from your
net worth.
And instead of calculating it off the million,
you calculate it off the 800,000.
And then you say, okay, I've already built
(32:05):
in my safety buffer right there.
I'm going to set that money aside kind
of mentally.
And I'm only going to use my net
worth minus what I think long-term care
is going to cost.
And I'm going to use my safe withdrawal
rate calculation from that.
That that's, that to me is a pretty
good approach.
So that's kind of what I've been thinking
about.
That's kind of how I address it now.
(32:25):
That sounds kind of similar to stuff you've
talked about Jeff.
Well, I've talked about this before.
I had my wife and I each have
a Roth.
We've had it for a while and we
have just segregated, bucketed the Roths, not in
our withdrawal plan for the future.
And so those funds will grow and they're
already adequate to handle a long-term care
(32:45):
event, but they'll even grow more and there'll
be our super old age emergency funding case.
Everything else goes wrong.
We still have that.
I think that the most important point here
is have a plan, have a strategy.
It can be a lot of different things.
There's more than one way to approach having
different cash flows and different composition of the
(33:07):
portfolio and all that.
That's how you want to think about it,
but it's a good point.
Just have a plan.
Have a plan.
And to Fritz's point, don't underlive the life
that you can live because you don't have
a plan.
That's ridiculous actually.
Have a plan and it'll be in your
plan, stay in your plan, meet your advisor
once a year, go over your plan and
you'll be ready for whatever that is.
(33:30):
Fritz, I'm really curious.
We're going to have to have you back
because you're great.
This was a lot of fun.
I hear people talking about guardrails and I'm
always reluctant to encourage people to think about
guardrails because it just doesn't match behavioral characteristics
for most people.
What's your take on that approach?
(33:50):
Clearly, if you look at all the analysis
that's been done, being flexible in your spending.
The way I would define guardrails is this.
You've got a range of spending.
Let's say it's anywhere from 3% to
5% just to pick a number.
You can spend 3% to 5%
of your net worth every year.
That's fine.
(34:11):
What if your portfolio tanks?
Well, by definition, the guardrails say, because your
portfolio is down, you're going to adjust your
spending down.
That's natural human behavior anyway.
You're probably not going to take that vacation.
You're not going to do that home improvement
project you were thinking about because the market's
tanked and you're nervous.
That's going to happen anyway.
(34:32):
That's one thing I think about it.
Then I'll tell you what I do.
The second thing is make sure when you're
building up your expected expenses that you build
some, you're not just covering your necessities.
You can do it in a variety of
ways, but build some discretionary buffer into your
spending so that if you do have to
take down some spending, no problem.
I'll just whack out that category for a
(34:53):
year.
We'll be fine.
It's a natural.
It works.
All the research says, absolutely, guardrails do maximize
your money lasting longer than you do.
It's wise to have some kind of guardrail
approach.
What I do is every year I do
my net worth.
I do a safe withdrawal rate calculation from
(35:13):
three, three and a half, four, four and
a half percent.
I get different numbers that I can withdraw.
I typically try to stay under four percent.
I'm conservative, but I know that if the
market tanks, I'm not uncomfortable going to four
and a half percent.
The market goes down.
I can maybe bump it up to four
and a half percent of that lower net
(35:34):
worth.
Maybe I don't have to take the entire
haircut on my spending, but I'm going to
take a little bit most likely.
Realistically, that's probably what I'm going to do
anyway.
It's a methodology that takes into account the
reality that your portfolio is moving.
Now, fortunately, I retired in 2018.
We've had multiple years of 20 plus percent.
I'm actually having the other problem.
(35:54):
I'm like, man, I got to keep spending
more.
No, you really don't, but I'm trying to
spend more because I can spend more right
now.
We're doing an expansion on the house.
We're doing some stuff.
We're taking advantage of strong markets, not going
over the four percent, but recognizing that, hey,
this is an opportunity.
Listen to the math.
(36:16):
That's a guardrail in the positive.
You can adjust it up and down.
I think it comes down to how disciplined
one is in the way they're approaching the
whole thing.
Exactly.
I had an article that just came out
on my blog this morning.
It was written by Dana.
She writes with me.
It was about Bill Dungen's new book, The
Safe Withdrawal Rate.
He's revised it up to 4.7 percent.
(36:37):
What's more important than the safe withdrawal rate?
The conclusion is what matters more than what
your safe withdrawal rate number is, is do
you have an annual process to monitor it
and keep you on track?
That's what it really comes down to, which
is what we're talking about.
Back to the plan.
Excellent.
Excellent.
Hey, Fritz, thanks so much for making the
(36:57):
time to be with us.
You've been a great deal of insight.
It's fun to have this kind of conversation
with you.
What I love about it is we're talking
not just math, and it's certainly part of
the importance of a good financial plan, retirement
plan, is having the arithmetic behind it, but
(37:17):
it's also the intangibles, the fulfillment part of
it, and making sure that you have thought
about some of these characteristics that you don't
always put on a spreadsheet.
It's really important to have retirement success.
Check it out to theretirementmanifesto.com.
Fritz, thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me, Chris.
(37:38):
Jeff, nice talking to you guys.
I appreciate the opportunity.
I'll surely have you back.
All right.
Thanks so much.
Until next time, everybody, keep striving for something
more.
Thank you for listening to Something More with
Chris Boyd.
Call us for help, whether it's for financial
planning or portfolio management, insurance concerns, or those
quality of life issues that make the money
(37:58):
matters matter.
Whatever's on your mind, visit us at somethingmorewithchrisboyd
.com, or call us toll-free at 866
-771-8901.
Or send us your questions to amr-info
at wealthenhancement.com.
You're listening to Something More with Chris Boyd
Financial Talk Show.
(38:19):
Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services and Jay Christopher Boyd
provide investment advice on an individual basis to
clients only.
Proper advice depends on a complete analysis of
all facts and circumstances.
The information given on this program is general
financial comments and cannot be relied upon as
pertaining to your specific situation.
Wealth Enhancement Group cannot guarantee that using the
information from this show will generate profits or
ensure freedom from loss.
Listeners should consult their own financial advisors or
(38:41):
conduct their own due diligence before making any
financial decisions.
Welcome to something more with Chris Boyd.
Chris Boyd is a certified financial planner, practitioner
and senior vice president and financial advisor at
Wealth Enhancement Group, one of the nation's largest
registered investment advisors.
We call it something more because we'd like
to talk not only about those important dollar
and cents issues, but also the quality of
life issues that make the money matters matter.
(00:22):
Here he is, your fulfillment facilitator, your partner
in prosperity, advising clients on Cape Cod and
across the country.
Here's your host, Jay Christopher Boyd.
Welcome.
I'm Chris Boyd.
I'm here with Jeff Perry.
We are both of the AMR team at
Wealth Enhancement and glad to have you with
us.
We have a special guest today, Fritz Gilbert.
(00:43):
He is the author of the blog website,
The Retirement Manifesto, as well as the book,
The Keys to Financial Retirement.
We're going to get a lot from our
conversation today.
And Fritz, it's great to have you here.
Thanks for being with us.
Hey, thanks for the invitation, Chris.
I look forward to talking with you and
(01:03):
Jeff.
Tell us to start with, you have an
interesting backstory that led you to this passion
that you have today.
This wasn't what you've always done, is it?
No, I was a corporate guy for 33
years, worked in the global aluminum business and
got out at 55.
So a little bit of an early retiree
and actually started the blog three years before
(01:25):
I retired as kind of a curiosity experiment
just to say, hey, let's see how this
goes.
And it turned out that I really enjoy
writing and it's kind of gotten some traction
and turned into a thing.
And it's kind of become one of my
purposes in retirement.
So yeah, I enjoy it.
Well, that's what we're going to talk about
a little bit.
Those keys to successful retirement, I'm sure.
How much of starting the blog was your
(01:45):
own process of, what am I going to
do?
Yeah, it's interesting, Jeff, because if you look
through the blog, when I started writing it,
you can kind of tell where my head
was at.
And one of the lines in my earliest,
earliest post, I think it might have been
my first one, this is the story of
my present before it becomes my past.
So it's kind of a journaling exercise.
(02:06):
But really what it is, is here are
the things that I'm thinking about as I
prepare for and then transition into and now
live in retirement.
Here are the things I'm thinking about at
the various stages.
And here's the way I'm going about it.
Hey, I don't care if you use these
tactics or not.
It's just the things that I'm thinking about
and the ways I'm going about it.
And I've had a lot of readers that
are saying, man, that's really helpful because it
(02:26):
kind of gives me a framework or the
way to think about things, make sure I'm
not missing some blind spots.
So it started very much focused on the
financials.
Am I able to retire?
A lot of stuff on the financial stuff.
And then as I moved into retirement, you
can see my thinking shifting more away from
the financials as everybody does.
And into the kind of what's the purpose
of life type thing, which is what I
(02:47):
write more about now.
So it's a good fit with something more.
It fits well.
The something more is really, we certainly can
talk about the how to earn something more
part of things, but it's really the idea
that there's more to it.
There's more to life.
It's not just about the money.
I felt like you were writing to me
(03:08):
when I read that when you were talking
about tracking your net worth is not a
goal.
Well, it was my goal for like 25
years.
Yeah.
And I've had so many friends.
I was kind of in the fire community.
I was out at 55, so kind of
late fire, but early retirees.
And so many of them have said, my
(03:28):
whole goal has been to get to X
millions of dollars, whatever their number was.
But getting to the number, it doesn't really
bring fulfillment.
It's a tool, right?
It's a tool to allow you to go
out and do the things that are going
to bring you real fulfillment.
Having a number as an objective for fulfillment
is sorely lacking once you achieve it.
It's just, okay, it's another day you wake
(03:49):
up.
What are you going to do now?
Exactly the same experience.
We hit the number and I was like,
okay, should we just raise the number?
Is that our new goal?
Yeah, exactly.
That's a great point.
How do you know when you're ready?
Okay.
Now what?
Yeah.
And this kind of led to my book,
The Keys to a Successful Retirement.
(04:09):
What I discovered in a lot of my
research, the non-financial aspects of your retirement
before you get there and exactly those questions,
Jeff, that you were just raising, what are
you going to do now?
And the way I like to think about
it you think about losing the paycheck when
you retire, but you don't necessarily think about
losing your sense of identity, the relationships at
(04:30):
work, your sense of purpose, all those other
non-financial benefits.
Thinking about how you're going to replace each
one of those, as well as the paycheck
before you retire can be really helpful in
making for a smooth transition.
The majority of retirees struggle with the transition
for exactly those reasons that you mentioned.
And the more you can think about those
things before you retire, the smoother the transition.
(04:52):
That's been proven by research.
So my writing basically provided me that avenue
of exploring those other areas and it helped
tremendously.
And my transition was as smooth as could
be.
I'm very pleased with how my transition's gone.
Yeah.
You wrote in the last column, which maybe
we'll have time to review some of it,
but you wrote that retirement itself increases the
(05:15):
probability of depression by up to 40%.
Yeah.
It's a big number and people don't necessarily
think about that.
They think, oh, it's going to be a
vacation.
It's going to be just, I don't have
to get up to the alarm clock.
And everybody has a honeymoon phase.
There's really a viral TED talk from a
guy, Moiley Rimes, that talks about the four
(05:35):
stages of retirement.
It's my most read post because I wrote
an article about that video.
And then I talked about each of the
phases and my experience with them.
And everybody goes through the honeymoon phase, but
what people don't recognize is that phase two,
that kind of disorientation can lead to depression,
that phase two is 85% of retirees
get into that.
And it's not a good place to be.
(05:57):
And it takes some time, typically a couple
of years to kind of work through it.
It's all self-driven.
You've got to find your way out of
it.
You don't have a boss anymore.
And it's all through kind of trial and
experimentation, which is phase three, when you start
finally kind of listening to your curiosity and
just exploring different things.
And with time, like my blog, a few
(06:18):
things start to click and they start hitting
for you and you're enjoying them and then
you're on your way.
And then phase four is kind of when
you found that fulfillment and purpose phase, which
only 65% of retirees actually make it
to phase four, but it's a wonderful place
to be.
And that's where I'm at now.
And I'm loving life.
How does one begin this process?
How to be thinking about this?
(06:39):
Yeah.
I think the biggest thing I would say,
Chris, is make a list of the things
that you maybe don't recognize that you're getting
from work.
Assume you've got a year or two left
to work.
You're going to do the financials.
You've got to do the financials.
So let's just leave that as obvious.
They're necessary, but not sufficient.
And then kind of go beyond it and
say, okay, what about my sense of identity?
My sense of identity is going to be
(07:00):
gone.
Nobody's going to care that I was an
aluminum guy, right?
So what do I want to be?
That's a good point.
I mean, it's hard to kind of envision
that thought process.
I don't know if this is always the
case for women as much as men, and
generalizing, but men definitely tie a lot of
their identity to their work experience.
(07:21):
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And I think the challenging part of all
this is, especially those of us who have
kind of been more, I guess, left-brained
or right-brained, I get them mixed up,
but the more analytical side, which tends to
serve you well in your career, is not
really the way you find your way out
of these other elements.
It's more of a creative, artistic exploration, curiosity,
(07:45):
pursuit.
So it's a muscle that you really haven't
exercised probably since you were in kindergarten or
whatever, and you were just free to go
out and play and do what interested you.
And so a part of it is just
learning how to get that muscle back engaged
and trying...
There's a lot of books about this.
I think about Doc G, he wrote his
(08:07):
book about the purpose code, and his whole
thing is just find something that kind of
interests you and intrigues you.
He's talking about baseball cards, collecting baseball cards,
and just start pursuing these things that kind
of interest you.
And that's typically how most people find out.
Charity work, my wife started a great charity
called Freedom for Fido, which I'm very active
(08:29):
in, and finding a way to give back
to a community is a really good place
to look as well, because as you have
more free time and you've kind of met
your material needs, it's a really fulfilling area
to explore helping other people that haven't yet
fulfilled their material needs, and you've got time
and freedom to do it.
So that's a really good way to get
some fulfillment as well as just volunteer with
(08:51):
a couple of charities in your area.
And maybe you don't like the first one,
fine, go to the second and third, fourth,
and eventually you'll kind of find a group
of people.
So what do you get?
You get your relationships, right?
You start getting this network of people that
are working towards a common goal.
You get that feeling of purpose because you're
giving back to something and you get a
sense of identity because you're, oh, you're that
guy that works at Freedom for Fido or
(09:12):
writes that blog, whatever.
Finding a way where you're benefiting others is
a really...
That's fertile ground to plow.
And sometimes that's hard for people to find.
So the best thing to do is just
try and do something.
Yeah, exactly.
If that works, and if that doesn't work,
try something different.
Yeah.
The worst thing you can do is just
sit in your recliner and watch YouTube videos
(09:35):
or whatever.
You've got to get out there and try
stuff.
Absolutely.
There is something worse.
You could watch the news.
In your last article that's on your website,
a lot of great content.
People should check it out and subscribe.
We talk about purpose a lot and we
kind of touched about that, but go on
(09:56):
to structure.
Because I think when thinking about retirement, a
lot of people think the opposite of structure.
I don't have a schedule.
I don't have to be anywhere.
I don't want to have to have any
commitments.
A lot of people approach this newfound freedom,
but that may not be the best case,
you think?
Absolutely.
I think one of the surprises a lot
of people face is, oh, that unstructured life
(10:19):
is going to be great.
But the reality of it is, when you've
gone from a 30 to 40 year career,
even back to your school days, right?
School is structured.
So your whole life since you were five
or six years old has been structured, very
structured.
The time you get up, you've got to
be a certain place.
You've got certain things you've got to get
done.
You've got a certain time you get excused.
(10:39):
You've got structure to your entire day for
40 years, and suddenly you have no structure.
And that's a really disorienting phase.
That's part of why people get into this
phase two of disorientation.
And it's not always intuitive why you feel
disoriented, but a big piece of it can
be structure.
The fact that you went from a fully
(10:59):
structured day to a fully unstructured day.
So what I encourage people to do, and
this is what I did, is I said,
okay, I'm going to add some structure to
my day.
So I joined a local gym and I
took classes three days a week.
So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, seven o'clock, I
was at the gym, right?
I was working out for a couple days.
And I found that adding some structure really
(11:21):
helps.
Now you don't have to fill your day
with structure.
What I've tended to evolve into is kind
of a more structured morning.
That's kind of my writing time.
I'll do podcast interviews, et cetera.
I'll kind of do blog stuff.
And then in the afternoon, I kind of
keep it open and it's kind of a
more serendipitous part of my day, which I
enjoy.
But having some structure kind of keeps you
grounded.
You know what day of the week it
(11:41):
is.
It helps.
So unstructured sounds great, but that's one of
those things that you lose more.
Like the relationships, like the sense of purpose,
like the activities and objectives and things you're
working towards, structure is one of those things.
And it's good to think about before you
retire, how much structure do I want in
(12:02):
my life?
Maybe you think you want none.
That's fine.
You can go into it with that mindset,
but at least have some ideas of how
could you add structure back to your day?
I went to the gym, right?
That's an option.
I'm going to walk a couple of days
a week with my best friend, John.
I'm going to hook up with him and
we're going to start walking together.
I'm going to play pickleball on Tuesdays, whatever.
There's a lot of ways you can add
structure, unlimited ways you can add structure.
(12:25):
So think about that.
Think about ways that you could add it
and experiment with that.
That's one of the levers that you have
to play with.
You made reference a couple of times to
going out and play and a lot of
these, you're going to the gym.
Talk about that notion of the importance of
the physical exercise and just maintenance, if you
(12:48):
will.
In my case and in many other retirees,
I just read a really good article by
Dr. Grumman.
He talked about, he went to a financial
retreat and he said, you know, people weren't
even talking about money.
Everybody's talking about fitness.
Like, what are you doing?
And it's interesting.
I think one of the ways you can
replace that striving that you've had to build
(13:09):
a certain net worth number and all those
things, well, you can redirect that energy to
say, okay, how can I improve myself?
And what can I do to, I read,
what was it, Outlive?
I got it on my thing over there,
a book.
I read a lot of books.
How can you expand your health span so
that you'll get as many years of healthy
activity as you can?
(13:30):
Because if you don't focus on it, you
will naturally atrophy, you know, and younger next
year is a great case.
This doctor writes with one of his clients
about the reality that you can do stuff
in your seventies that you did in your
thirties and forties.
If you stay continually focused on doing, you
don't have to be crazy.
You can just go out and he says
a minimum is like a good 45 minute
(13:53):
walk, you know, maybe six days a week,
something equivalent to that.
So if you can do something where you're
just moving, you're using your body.
And, and number one, it makes you feel
good.
Number two, it adds some structure to your
day.
Number three, you feel a sense of accomplishment.
And number four, you, you increase your odds
of having more years that you can do
the things that you want to do.
You can pick up your grandkids.
(14:13):
Being intentional about that is something you can
do with the free time and retirement that
brings, you know, tremendous benefits.
One of the things that I would ask
you to think about or to comment about
is the idea that, you know, as we
age, we tend to have more chronic health
challenges.
We spend more time going to doctors.
And, uh, how does that, and I think
(14:35):
sometimes that can affect your passion for life,
right?
You know, they can undermine your sense of
enthusiasm and so forth.
And so I imagine, you know, the things
you're talking about, investing in yourself can help
to have maybe less of those chronic issues
perhaps, and more intellectual stimulation or spiritual or
(14:58):
whatever the areas one may choose to select.
But, um, but there are some things beyond
our control, I imagine.
Uh, and that can, uh, undermine some of
this ultimately, correct?
Yeah, it can Chris, but the way I
look at it is, you know, there's only
so many things within our control.
So I control the things I can.
(15:20):
And I've got a friend of mine, I'm
actually going to go have lunch with him
today.
And he's, he's getting to the point where
his body's starting to break down.
He's, he's in his late seventies, early eighties
at 78.
And he's starting to struggle with the fact,
you know, he said, man, he said, I'm
just, I can't do stuff I used to
do.
And he, and he's kind of getting depressed
about it.
You know, it's, it's an, it's a net,
we will all get there at some point,
(15:40):
right?
So the question is, what can we do
now that hopefully delays that process as much
as we can delay it, which you can
delay it a lot, but the reality, yeah,
you're, you're not going to delay it forever.
So the other part is getting your mindset
around the reality that we're all going to
die someday, right?
We're all, none of us are going to
get out of here alive and, and finding
(16:03):
a way that you accept that reality of
mortality, which to me gives more of the
urgency to enjoying and living each day to
the fullest.
Absolutely.
Die with zero, right?
The die with zero concept.
It's not about it's, he talks about the
financial, but I read, I went into this
book thinking this is, this is, you know,
this is ludicrous.
(16:24):
Nobody knows when they're going to die.
How do you, how can you drain your
bank?
That's not the point at all.
The point is think about your life aspirations
and the things you want to do and
sequence them, right?
If you want to climb Mount Everest, man,
you better do it before you're, you know,
50 or whatever the age is that you
can tap, you know, tap out.
And, and if you want to go, we
went to the Arctic this past the summer,
(16:44):
my wife and I, and part of the
reason we went, you know, we're 62.
We're like, Hey, we're in great health.
You know, we can do this.
We can go anywhere we want to go.
Once we get up there, we can hike,
you know, remote stuff doesn't matter.
We're in good shape.
Let's do it now because if we wait,
maybe we can't, maybe I'll get sick, right?
Maybe cancer will pop up.
Who knows?
So it's also recognizing, okay, what are the
things that you really want to do in
(17:05):
your life?
And, and are you, instead of just procrastinating,
are you kind of prioritizing and making sure
the things that you really want to do
are getting scheduled because you don't want to,
you know, get to that point and then
have regrets that you procrastinated on something that,
you know, you're really interested in doing.
So I, there's a lot of facets that
you can look at this thing.
(17:26):
Um, but it's a really important reality to
get your head around and figure out how
you're going to address it.
You know, thinking about, uh, Mount Everest or
anything, the little big, big goals, right?
I don't think people regret something if they
try it and fail.
Correct.
It's the regrets are, I wish I, you
know, talking about Dr. G's books.
(17:46):
I mean, a lot of that's in there,
but if you try something and you're not
successful, you gave it your best effort.
I don't think there's a regret there.
So don't be afraid of failure is, is
important, I think.
That's right.
Look at Mike Drack.
Mike Drack's a Canadian guy.
I enjoy him.
He's, he's written a couple of books.
Um, Retirement, Heaven or Hell is one of
them, but, um, he's 70 years old and
he, he set a goal.
(18:07):
He was going to do an Ironman for
his 70th birthday.
So he goes out and I'm going to
do this Ironman.
He failed, you know, he, he had a
mechanic, mechanical problem on his bike of all
things.
Um, but he said, you know what?
He said, now that I've had time to
think about it, that wasn't the point.
The point was it gave me six months
to train for something.
I got in really good shape.
I was involved in other athletes doing this
and I got so many other benefits from
(18:29):
striving towards this goal that I'm really glad
I undertook the challenge.
And that was his success.
It wasn't that I completed the Ironman.
It was, Hey, it gave me a really
good six month period of time here where
I got myself in better shape.
I feel good about it.
And he was really pleased that he did
it, even though he never completed it.
So yeah, I'm just going to put a
caveat to that.
(18:49):
When you're climbing Mount Everest, the exception you
fail there, you fail, you die.
All right.
Extreme example.
Yes.
Talk about social connection for it.
Um, and I've noticed in my, just my,
not my study, but in my personal neighbors,
(19:10):
relationships, people that I know, this is a
harder thing for men than women, but talk
about why it's so important and some, some
strategies that you've found successful.
Yeah, there's no doubt.
It's harder for men.
I don't know why it's just the reality.
Women just tend to be good or better
at getting together and having lunch with friends
and doing stuff.
I don't know what it is, but, um,
again, this is one of those areas, like
(19:32):
we said, besides a paycheck, right?
It's going to be relationships.
And you think those people are working our
friends, but they're, you know, they're work friends.
You're not going to keep in touch with
them after you retire.
You think you will, but realistically you probably
won't.
And since we have in common, we don't
have in common anymore.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And even if you try to go back
in the office and have lunch with them,
you know, a couple of times a year,
they're onto different things.
(19:52):
You can't really relate to what they're talking
about.
There's a new boss in town.
You don't know who the guy is, right?
It's not the same.
So one of the things I encourage people
to do is in your last year or
two of retirement, start thinking about what relationships
do I have that are going to be
here after I'm gone from work.
And typically there aren't too many, right?
You've got your spouse if you're married.
(20:13):
So foster that relationship.
That's huge.
Make sure you're planning for retirement together.
We could, I wrote a whole chapter in
my book about that.
Jeff's brought up that topic.
Yeah, it's a big one.
And so let's say that one's, that one's
obvious, but it, I don't want to undermine
it.
It's not always easy though.
No, it's not easy.
So that's a huge one.
We could do a whole podcast on that.
Beyond that though, I would say, I'll give
(20:34):
you an example.
In my case, there was a little festival
in our town here and they had a
little author's booth.
And I was in the process of, you
know, my blog was getting some traction and
I hadn't written a book yet, but I
was like, oh, there's local people that write.
I should go up to this author's booth.
So I went up to this author's booth
and there was a book laying on the
table about some personal finance thing.
And the guy's name was on there.
(20:54):
And I said, oh, is Ed around?
And they're like, no, he's not working the
booth today, but you know, here's his card.
So I said, you know, I don't know
this guy, but I gave him a call
and said, Hey Ed, I was down at
the author's booth.
I saw your book.
You know, I'm getting ready to retire.
You want to go out and have lunch
together?
And, and that turned into every month for
years, unfortunately he's passed away, but we had
lunch together, you know, once a month, maybe
(21:16):
every other month.
And, and he became a good friend of
mine who was, we had a common interest,
right?
We were writing about personal finance.
And, and I, so I intentionally fostered that
because of this exercise, Hey, I don't really
have too many friends outside of the workplace.
Where, you know, where can I start establishing
some friendships outside of work that'll be there
after I'm gone.
(21:36):
So look at things like that.
Just be open to it.
And, and don't be afraid to call the
other area back to the charity.
I've got more friends now than I've ever
had in my life.
And, and most of them are coming from
this freedom for Fido charity.
We call it the Fido family.
There's a core of volunteers.
We'll get together and go to a micro
brew just spontaneously.
Somebody will shoot out a group text, say,
Hey, you want to go meet up at
(21:56):
Grumpy's, you know, in, in a couple hours
and 20 of us will show up.
And so there's this natural group of friendships
that have developed through this charity work.
And, you know, they're, they're really good friends
and we'll do stuff outside of the charity
with some regularity.
And then the last one I would think
of, if you're not involved in a church,
get involved in church, get in small, you
(22:16):
know, small group Bible study.
You can, there are a lot of areas
that you can develop good friendships, but it
takes intentionality.
And if you don't pursue it, they can,
loneliness is not a way you want to
spend your retirement.
And a lot of people are in retirement.
That's true.
I'll throw one more in there based on
my experience when we relocated to Florida pickleball.
(22:36):
Yeah, sure.
Absolutely.
Yep.
Yep.
Let's stretch.
Somebody must have pulled a muscle.
There's a story there.
There's always a risk of injury, right?
Number one cause of injury in our neighborhood
is pickleball injuries.
I think that's true in the nation right
now for anybody over 60.
(22:57):
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, and you don't have to be
great at it to still have a lot
of fun and connection.
Another thing, like where I live, they have
hiking clubs, right?
I live in a very outdoorsy area.
So you know, look, look, look for opportunities
in your local area of clubs that do
things that interest you and get involved in
a few clubs, reading clubs, anything that interests
(23:18):
you, you know, there's clubs out there for
it.
I really love the idea.
You know, you mentioned the charitable involvement in
a variety of comments.
I just really love the, the idea of
that because it really is something when you
give of yourself, when you go outside of
yourself, you, you really do get so much
from it.
There's a sense of wellbeing that, you know,
(23:40):
you're doing something constructive, you're helping other people.
And something about that really comes back to
you in, in a way that you, yes,
you're, you're really helping others, but um, there's
a, there's a certain, uh, fulfillment benefit that
comes from that.
No, no doubt.
And you know, I think it's, it's people
(24:00):
listening to this will say, oh yeah, but
right.
There's always a, but it's, it's hard to
get the, I'd almost call it courage to
go out and get engaged in something because
it's just easier to just, you know, inertia,
right?
So it, so yes, it's, and if you
read people that have had successful retirements, look
at the percentage of them that are involved
in one way or another in charity.
(24:22):
It's overwhelmingly the majority, right?
So I don't care what excuses you want
to make, just go out there and try
one or two or three, you know, and,
oh, it didn't really work out.
Fine.
Go to another one.
And what you'll find is you'll, you'll, you'll
get the relationships.
You'll get the sense of purpose.
You'll add structure to your day.
(24:42):
You know, you'll, it, it adds so many
elements that you miss when you leave the
workplace.
I think that's why it's so fulfilling.
And, and you'd have that feel good thing
from, you know, giving back to other people.
And it's much more, I would say you
can write a check, right?
That's easy, but you don't get the same
level of fulfillment writing a check as you
do getting involved personally and contributing, you know,
(25:05):
muscle to the effort.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, but, and so it is a commitment
of time and which is a precious commodity,
right?
When we get to a certain stage of
life, you know, but, um, there's, there's the
social connection.
There's the, uh, sense of fulfillment.
There's a lot of the good that can
come out of that, um, over and above,
(25:26):
um, you know, the, maybe the money you
might contribute as well or something like that.
Um, you know, let's just referencing this article,
you know, a portion of it did have
to do with the money side of things.
I think Jeff and I like having a
guest like you on because we talk about
(25:47):
the money stuff regularly, but we don't always
have the chance to talk about some of
these things that contribute to one's fulfillment as
much as we'd like.
So, um, we certainly can talk more about
that, but I do think it's important to
just mention this or these other contents.
And one of them was, you talked about
the idea that you have to plan for
the unexpected, uh, and maybe you could mention
(26:09):
some of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The article that you talked about for, for
the readers, it was three questions that determine
99% of your retirement success.
So there were three questions that I encouraged
my readers to answer.
And the first one was, do you have
a reliable cashflow plan, which basically, if you
projected your expenses, if you looked at how
much income you can get from your social
security pension, if you're fortunate, uh, you know,
(26:31):
safe withdrawal rate from your investments, et cetera.
But beyond just doing that exercise, which surprisingly
few people actually go through it.
It's shocking.
But even, even if you've gone through that
exercise, the second question is, have you made
a plan for unexpected expenses?
And you will have unexpected.
I call them the unexpected, expected expenses, right?
They're expected.
(26:51):
You know, you're going to have to replace
your roof.
You know, you're going to have to replace
your car.
A buddy of mine just got in a
car accident, right?
Unexpected.
Um, you're going to have those things.
So how do you build that into your
plan?
And, and what I referenced, I read an
article, I read a book actually by the
wall street journal as I was planning for
my retirement.
And I really liked the approach that they
went.
They basically amortize that you think of all
(27:11):
the major expenses, you know, mainly around maintenance
for a house, but you know, replacing a
car and you, and you basically say, okay,
if I'm going to have a car, let's
just do an easy one.
Let's say a car is I'll make the
math easy.
It's a little exaggerated.
Let's say a car is a hundred thousand
dollars and it's going to last 10 years.
That's $10,000 a year.
So let's say it's, you add that to
(27:33):
the spreadsheet and you basically go through that.
How much is a roof?
$20,000.
How long does it last?
20 years.
Okay.
That's a thousand dollars a year.
That's a hundred bucks a month.
And you add all of those up.
And what you end up with is a,
is a, is a number.
And mine is, is a, is a thousand
dollars a month, $12,000 a year, roughly,
um, from that exercise.
So what I do is I basically, as
(27:54):
I'm calculating my safe withdrawal rate, every year
at the end of the year, I look
at my updated net worth.
I look at a three and a half,
4% safe withdrawal rate and say, okay,
I can spend that much.
The first 12,000 of that amount I
pull out and I put in a segregated
account for emergencies.
And then I spend the rest of my
safe withdrawal rate.
So I've got, I've got it already baked
(28:14):
into the safe withdrawal rate, so I won't
overspend.
And it's got some kind of logic for
how it's created.
And now you've got a pool of money
and I just have it in a capital
one 360 money market account.
You can segregate those accounts, which is nice.
So I've got a retirement emergency account.
And, and as if something comes up, oh,
I've got to replace the roof.
No problem.
You go in there and you pull the
cash out of that, you know, you're within
(28:35):
your safe spending limit.
That's how I, that's how I manage it.
I love it.
That's great.
That's really good.
Um, and just, uh, you know, very methodical,
you know, and I think you're absolutely right.
I mean, too often people will try to
pretend that they've thought of everything when they,
you know, they really know that there's all
these things that are out there that will
(28:56):
come along, you know?
And so this is a way to do
it.
I like that.
We, uh, we try to think about some
of these issues when we do our financial
planning and, uh, you know, work it into
the, uh, you know, some home improvement costs,
some car replacements, things like that.
Um, but I like the way you've got
that sort of methodically being set aside into
(29:16):
that delayed spending on expected unexpected account.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you know, some people could argue, well,
doesn't that mean you're carrying too much cash,
you know, opportunity costs, right?
Well, yeah, but that's not the reason that,
that, that money is not there to make
money.
That money is to avoid me spending, you
know, above and beyond my safe level.
(29:38):
I'm not as worried about making a return
on that money.
So there's always a balance.
You mentioned long-term care in the article.
And I think that's one of the areas
is most difficult for people to plan for.
Yeah.
You know, we, we know there's a risk.
We can point out the extent of the
risk.
And in some instances, um, well, the math
(30:00):
really should be able to sustain it even
with those big costs.
And then other instances, it could be devastating,
but people really are reluctant to say, buy
insurance or it's not going to happen to
me.
No.
Well, and I, and I wrote an article
about long-term care and my decision to
self-insure.
(30:21):
Um, and basically what I did is I
looked at the cost of buying insurance, option
A, option B is I could invest that
premium every, every month.
And what would that look like over time?
And I just did side-by-side spreadsheets
and ran it out.
And there's a natural break-even point at,
I don't know, it was in my late
seventies, early eighties.
(30:41):
I wrote an article.
I can't remember the name, but let's say
it was 80 years old.
Okay.
That's kind of the way I went about
it.
But then I heard this from Christine Benz
at Morningstar, which I thought was really good.
One of the reasons people underspend in retirement,
big problem, by the way, most people underspend
what they're able to spend.
Bill Bergen's new book says, Hey, 4.7
(31:03):
% is the new safe withdrawal rate.
Right?
So most people underspend and they have much,
much more, if they're been responsible, they listened
to your show.
I'm talking responsible people, right?
Most people significantly underspend.
And one of the reasons they use, well,
I might have a long-term care event.
Fair enough.
But you can't build hedge on top of
hedge on top of hedge on top of
hedge.
(31:23):
You die with $20 million and you know,
your kids get it all.
You could have, you could have lived a
lot more life.
So what Christine Benz recommends, which I think
is really good when you're calculating your safe
withdrawal rate at the end of the year,
right?
Let's say you've got a million dollars and
you're saying, yeah, but I don't, so you
could spend $40,000, 4% safe withdrawal
rate.
(31:43):
Yeah.
But I don't, I don't, I don't want
to spend that much because I want to
save some of her long-term care.
Fine.
What's long-term care costs on average, let's
say it's $70,000 a year.
You're going to need it for three years.
Let's call it $200,000.
So you subtract the $200,000 from your
net worth.
And instead of calculating it off the million,
you calculate it off the 800,000.
And then you say, okay, I've already built
(32:05):
in my safety buffer right there.
I'm going to set that money aside kind
of mentally.
And I'm only going to use my net
worth minus what I think long-term care
is going to cost.
And I'm going to use my safe withdrawal
rate calculation from that.
That that's, that to me is a pretty
good approach.
So that's kind of what I've been thinking
about.
That's kind of how I address it now.
(32:25):
That sounds kind of similar to stuff you've
talked about Jeff.
Well, I've talked about this before.
I had my wife and I each have
a Roth.
We've had it for a while and we
have just segregated, bucketed the Roths, not in
our withdrawal plan for the future.
And so those funds will grow and they're
already adequate to handle a long-term care
(32:45):
event, but they'll even grow more and there'll
be our super old age emergency funding case.
Everything else goes wrong.
We still have that.
I think that the most important point here
is have a plan, have a strategy.
It can be a lot of different things.
There's more than one way to approach having
different cash flows and different composition of the
(33:07):
portfolio and all that.
That's how you want to think about it,
but it's a good point.
Just have a plan.
Have a plan.
And to Fritz's point, don't underlive the life
that you can live because you don't have
a plan.
That's ridiculous actually.
Have a plan and it'll be in your
plan, stay in your plan, meet your advisor
once a year, go over your plan and
you'll be ready for whatever that is.
(33:30):
Fritz, I'm really curious.
We're going to have to have you back
because you're great.
This was a lot of fun.
I hear people talking about guardrails and I'm
always reluctant to encourage people to think about
guardrails because it just doesn't match behavioral characteristics
for most people.
What's your take on that approach?
(33:50):
Clearly, if you look at all the analysis
that's been done, being flexible in your spending.
The way I would define guardrails is this.
You've got a range of spending.
Let's say it's anywhere from 3% to
5% just to pick a number.
You can spend 3% to 5%
of your net worth every year.
That's fine.
(34:11):
What if your portfolio tanks?
Well, by definition, the guardrails say, because your
portfolio is down, you're going to adjust your
spending down.
That's natural human behavior anyway.
You're probably not going to take that vacation.
You're not going to do that home improvement
project you were thinking about because the market's
tanked and you're nervous.
That's going to happen anyway.
(34:32):
That's one thing I think about it.
Then I'll tell you what I do.
The second thing is make sure when you're
building up your expected expenses that you build
some, you're not just covering your necessities.
You can do it in a variety of
ways, but build some discretionary buffer into your
spending so that if you do have to
take down some spending, no problem.
I'll just whack out that category for a
(34:53):
year.
We'll be fine.
It's a natural.
It works.
All the research says, absolutely, guardrails do maximize
your money lasting longer than you do.
It's wise to have some kind of guardrail
approach.
What I do is every year I do
my net worth.
I do a safe withdrawal rate calculation from
(35:13):
three, three and a half, four, four and
a half percent.
I get different numbers that I can withdraw.
I typically try to stay under four percent.
I'm conservative, but I know that if the
market tanks, I'm not uncomfortable going to four
and a half percent.
The market goes down.
I can maybe bump it up to four
and a half percent of that lower net
(35:34):
worth.
Maybe I don't have to take the entire
haircut on my spending, but I'm going to
take a little bit most likely.
Realistically, that's probably what I'm going to do
anyway.
It's a methodology that takes into account the
reality that your portfolio is moving.
Now, fortunately, I retired in 2018.
We've had multiple years of 20 plus percent.
I'm actually having the other problem.
(35:54):
I'm like, man, I got to keep spending
more.
No, you really don't, but I'm trying to
spend more because I can spend more right
now.
We're doing an expansion on the house.
We're doing some stuff.
We're taking advantage of strong markets, not going
over the four percent, but recognizing that, hey,
this is an opportunity.
Listen to the math.
(36:16):
That's a guardrail in the positive.
You can adjust it up and down.
I think it comes down to how disciplined
one is in the way they're approaching the
whole thing.
Exactly.
I had an article that just came out
on my blog this morning.
It was written by Dana.
She writes with me.
It was about Bill Dungen's new book, The
Safe Withdrawal Rate.
He's revised it up to 4.7 percent.
(36:37):
What's more important than the safe withdrawal rate?
The conclusion is what matters more than what
your safe withdrawal rate number is, is do
you have an annual process to monitor it
and keep you on track?
That's what it really comes down to, which
is what we're talking about.
Back to the plan.
Excellent.
Excellent.
Hey, Fritz, thanks so much for making the
(36:57):
time to be with us.
You've been a great deal of insight.
It's fun to have this kind of conversation
with you.
What I love about it is we're talking
not just math, and it's certainly part of
the importance of a good financial plan, retirement
plan, is having the arithmetic behind it, but
(37:17):
it's also the intangibles, the fulfillment part of
it, and making sure that you have thought
about some of these characteristics that you don't
always put on a spreadsheet.
It's really important to have retirement success.
Check it out to theretirementmanifesto.com.
Fritz, thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me, Chris.
(37:38):
Jeff, nice talking to you guys.
I appreciate the opportunity.
I'll surely have you back.
All right.
Thanks so much.
Until next time, everybody, keep striving for something
more.
Thank you for listening to Something More with
Chris Boyd.
Call us for help, whether it's for financial
planning or portfolio management, insurance concerns, or those
quality of life issues that make the money
(37:58):
matters matter.
Whatever's on your mind, visit us at somethingmorewithchrisboyd
.com, or call us toll-free at 866
-771-8901.
Or send us your questions to amr-info
at wealthenhancement.com.
You're listening to Something More with Chris Boyd
Financial Talk Show.
(38:19):
Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services and Jay Christopher Boyd
provide investment advice on an individual basis to
clients only.
Proper advice depends on a complete analysis of
all facts and circumstances.
The information given on this program is general
financial comments and cannot be relied upon as
pertaining to your specific situation.
Wealth Enhancement Group cannot guarantee that using the
information from this show will generate profits or
ensure freedom from loss.
Listeners should consult their own financial advisors or
(38:41):
conduct their own due diligence before making any
financial decisions.
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