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June 17, 2025 12 mins
What happens at age 59½ that could change your retirement strategy? Financial advisor Jon Hicks breaks down the key age milestones that shape your retirement decisions—from in-service withdrawals and Social Security timing to Medicare enrollment and required minimum distributions. Learn how each age unlocks new financial choices and why getting a second opinion might be worth it. Whether you're DIY-ing your plan or working with an advisor, this episode helps you think through the critical checkpoints on your retirement timeline.   Schedule your complimentary appointment today: RetirementSolutionShow.com   Follow us on social media: YouTube | Facebook | LinkedInSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Retirement Solution Podcast with financial advisor John Hicks,
founder of jay Hagen Capital.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Glad to have you here with us on the Retirement
Solution with financial advisor John Hicks, founder of ja Hagen Capital,
who is here to share with you insight on what
you need to be thinking about as you get closer
to your retirement. So as you are listening, remember that
you can reach out to begin the conversation with John
and his team. Find us at retirement solutionshow dot com.

(00:31):
We talk about being a certain age when you're thinking
about retirement or that retirement goal line, but really there's
lots of ages that we need to consider in our retirement.
First age though, for me, the first question, I'm always
curious for somebody who is thinking about they need help,

(00:51):
whether or not they have a financial advisor for growth,
they've di wide it if they know retirement's a different
game and so they want to get help in that space,
what's the timeframe that they sho should be seeking help done?

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Yeah, So there's a lot of us out there that
you know, we have good jobs, we make good incomes,
we put that money in our four to one k
we always max it out. You know, we get the
matches as much as we can, and we're probably okay,
maybe until we get closer to either three to five
years before retirement or there's kind of a magic number
around fifty nine and a half. Now, why is that?

(01:23):
Because when we get to fifty nine and a half,
the government and the irs the tax code takes some
handcuffs off and it allows us to do many different
things with our own money. If you look at that
four to one K, many different things that otherwise they
would have penalized us for. So when you turn fifty
nine and a half, you can keep your money in
that four to one K like you've always done it,

(01:43):
or you could actually decide to move that money out
of there and put it in your own IRA through
what they called an in service withdraw. In service just
means you're staying in service with your company. You're not leaving,
you're not retiring, you're not moving on to somewhere else.
You're just in service and you're taking withdraw of your
money without TAXI in rolling it into your own IRA. Now,
people ask me at the time, John, why on earth

(02:04):
would I do this? Well, some of those four to
one k's out there are great. They offer really low
cost options like you know Fidelity type funds or Charles
Schwab type funds or some of my favorite Vanguard type funds.
Because they're super inexpensive. But you may want to decide
to roll it out into your own IRA because many
times the costs are actually less in your own IRA.

(02:26):
But here's a big one. You can control many more
things from a tax standpoint and from a safety standpoint.
So we have a lot of clients you know, that'll
come in. They'll say, hey, John, here's my four to
one K and they have Vanguard mutual funds. I typically
love Vanguard funds. I think they're inexpensive, they're very easy
to understand. If if the market goes good, you're probably
gonna do well. I mean, realistically, you're still need to

(02:47):
diversify and still need to understand what you're investing in.
That I like Vanguard overall. Now when they say Vanguard
mutual funds, now, I don't typically love mutual funds. Number one,
they're a little bit more costly. Number two too, you
cannot hedge them. You can't put like stop losses or
breaks on them. If the market's doing something really odd
or weird. You have to physically go in and sell something,

(03:11):
and you don't get the moment that you sell it,
you don't get that price. You have to wait till
the end of the market day wheneveryone else has flooded
the market with orders, and many times this could cost
you percentage points or in the case of retirement savings,
maybe thousands of dollars even tens of thousands of dollars
in losses that you may have been able to avoid otherwise.
So the way to do that, where you get mutual

(03:33):
fund type diversification, but a much cheaper and much in
my opinion, sexier option is to use exchange traded funds.
So Vanguard offers what they call ETFs, exchange traded funds
that work just like a mutual fund, except you can
put protections on them. You can use derivatives or put options.
So if the market starts going down, you could potentially

(03:54):
not sell that Vanguard ETF but make money even as
the market goes down further. What So, the point is
that anyone should consider doing these things, maybe maybe not.
The point is you cannot do that in a four
to one k, but you could potentially do that in
your own self directed IRA and you can get those anywhere, right, Fidelity, Schwab,
Vanguard themselves, Trope, Right, there's any number of places you

(04:15):
can get those, and you free up the ten percent penalty.
So if you try to take that money out, or
try to do this before age fifty nine and a half,
you would typically pay a ten percent penalty.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Right.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
That's why I say the irs or government handcuffs come off.
So fifty nine and a half is a good time
to really look at another advisor, or not look at
an advisor in general, get a second opinion. Does it
make sense for you to maybe have a little bit
more freedom with your money? Potentially save some money on
that deal by having lesser expensive exchange treated funds. But
then more than that, you might be able to have

(04:46):
a type of investment strategy that fits you a little
bit more, right, because you can invest in literally anything
under the sun, from cedes at a local bank to
a national bank, to hedge funds or gold or commodities
or anything you want. Real estate for that matter, I
got clients that say, Hey, John, I think I want
to buy this four plex apartment complex. Can I do
that my four one K? Well? Now, well could you

(05:08):
do it in a self directed IRA, you absolutely can.
You can actually earn income from that four plex. You
absolutely can if you chose to do that. Do I
think that that's the world's greatest plan? Not for most
of us, but for some people. Doesn't make sense? Of course,
So the fact that the government allows us at fifty
nine and a half to do that, that may be a
good time to seek out an advisor and find out, Hey,
what can I do? Is it making any sense to me?

(05:30):
Is it going to put more money in my pocket?

Speaker 2 (05:32):
Planning for retirement? Saving for a retirement doesn't begin at
fifty nine and a half. But when it comes to
seeking some advice for this next phase of your financial life,
a lot of conversations do you start at fifty nine
and a half? But that's not where it ends John,
when it comes to age milestones. Sure, there was actually
this article that was on kipling are talking about key
milestone ages in retirement. So let's go through what those are,

(05:52):
what people need to know in that space.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
Yeah, So, if you think about it, so fifty nine
is kind of a starting point for a lot of
these things, and the worst of them kind of follow suit.
So if you're between sixty and sixty three. That's typically
when the government allows us to do ketchups for those
four to one k's, right, So anymore, I think in
twenty twenty five they changed it so the limits you
can put up to an additional eleven two hundred and
fifty dollars of ketchup contributions. If you're sixty to sixty

(06:17):
three extra inside those four to one k's, that's great.
If it's money that you would be saving anyway for retirement.
Now you can actually get tax deferral on those types
of things, that would be great. So sixty to sixty
three is the next starting point. Now, somewhere in the
middle of that, sixty two is when you can start
claiming Social Security. Now here's the question should you Eh,

(06:37):
everyone's going to be a little bit different, right, and
it depends on when you want to retire, what your
income is going to look like in retirement. But at
age sixty two you're typically allowed to file for Social
Security benefits. You're going to have a smaller Social Security
benefit than if you wait to full retirement age, which
is usually sixty six to sixty seven, which is another
date to consider, But sixty two is the early filing opportunity.

(07:00):
Some people out there you actually should consider taking it early.
Not everyone. You have to do the math on this,
And this is another one of those situations where I
think it's good just to talk to a skilled fiduciary
advisor to find out does it mathematically make sense for
you to take Social Security earlier or should you wait?
Because there's income, that's a consideration, but there's taxes. Taxes

(07:21):
are another major consideration on if you should take it
early or if should wait. Okay, So moving on down
the age groups. Age sixty five, most of us are
aware that's when we need to sign up for Medicare. Now,
some people are still working, they don't need to utilize
those medical benefits from Medicare, but you still need to
apply for it. Even if you don't start taking the benefit,
you still have to apply. There's a weird rule ninety

(07:44):
days before you turn sixty five and ninety days after
you turn sixty five that if you don't apply those
correctly then it could actually lead to either penalties or
more costs or things like that. So again another opportunity
to talk to a Medicare specialist and or a skilled
fiducier advisor to find out what should you look for,
should you turn it on, should you keep with your

(08:05):
company healthcare, whether you decide to retire or not. So
sixty five is a Medicare issue. Age okay, seventy now
this is most people talk. You know, seventy was the
year of required minimum distributions or seventy and a half.
Not anymore, that's down the road. Seventy is the maximum
age to get the top end of the Social Security benefit.

(08:26):
So if you wanted to wait to age seventy one,
seventy two, seventy three, seventy four, makes no difference. You're
not going to get a single dime more. At age
seventy is the maximum amount. Now, depending on your situation,
some people will make out like bandits if they wait
to collect Social Security at age seventy. But you got
to last a long time, right, You got to typically

(08:46):
live older than the national average for men and women,
which is sixty I think eighty three and eighty six retrospectively.
So typically for you to max out and get the
most money from Social Security, not at age seventy, because
a lot of us are going to pass away before then,
and we wouldn't have claimed as much money. Okay, so
you want to do the math on that. At seventy

(09:07):
is when you max out the possibility of that bucket
of money. But like I said, we've done some math
where some people have different ages of the spouses. Maybe
there's a six or seven or eight year age difference
between a husband and wife and they have both have
longevity in the family. I was talking to one of
our clients the other day and I had forgotten this
this fact. She's ninety one. Her mother just passed away

(09:29):
two years ago at the age of one hundred and nine. Wow,
one hundred and nine, Okay, I completely forget that fact
because her mother doesn't live in the area. She lived
in Arizona, and I had forgotten. Oh my gosh, that's right.
There's so much longevity in your family. There's a great
chance she could live well passed age one hundred. And
this is why we plan for retirement guys, right, We

(09:51):
just want to make sure that as long as we're around,
there's enough money to keep us kicking if we're still kicking, right.
And then the last number, really when you're looking at
all these ages, is age seventy three. Seventy three is
now the new age of when we have to are
required by law to start taking required minimum distribution. So
any money that we have in those IRA or four
to one K type accounts that's been tax deferred, the

(10:13):
government says, hey, hey, hey, guys, you didn't give us
any tax money all those years, and now we want it.
So you're going to have to take out a little
bit each year, no matter if you need it or
you don't. And guys, if you've done a great job saving,
if you've got a few million dollars in those iras,
that amount you have to pull out is not small.
It puts you in a completely different tax bracket. I
had a client the other day, it's going to take

(10:33):
a little bit over three hundred and twenty thousand dollars
three hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year at the
age of seventy three for requirementium distributions. Does that put
them in a different tax bracket? It actually does, so
we have to plan it. We've been planning for years
around this, gentleman, and we're still starting to plan for that,
because that can put you in a good situation, but

(10:55):
it's still a problematic situation if we don't want to
give it all the government. So if we focus on
those dates when we need to do things, those are
also various times when you may want to consider getting
a second opinion from an advisor just to find out
if what you're doing is best for you or what
the other alternatives are.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
When it comes to financial planning for retirement, Unfortunately, it's
not easy and the government is not here to help
make anything more convenient, as case in point by all
of these different rules and laws they have put on us.
But keeping track of it all, you don't have to
do this by yourself. John and his team in jay
Higgen Capital, they are here to help. You know the
boxes you got to check throughout the years of retirement

(11:31):
because there's a lot of to do lists. Sean, there's
lots of boxes that we got to check off. And
I know that people worry about missing something accidentally just
because there's so much that we have to remember and
keep up with.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
Sure, and if you think about it, Ronald Reagan said
the scariest nine words and the American analyticon is we're
with the government and we're here to help. Reagan said,
scariest non words in American culture.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
Well, fortunately a jay Haygen Capital. They are actually here
to help and are ready to help you. So if
you have questions, let's get to work helping you get
some answers. Retirement Solutions Show dot Com is where to
begin that conversation. You can also click on the links
we've got posted in this ship.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
Thanks for listening to The Retirement Solution Podcast with John Hicks.
Begin the conversation about your savings plan with John and
the team at Jayhagen Capital by visiting Retirement Solution Radio
dot com. Be sure to listen to John's radio show,
The Retirement Solution Saturdays at eight am and Sundays at
nine am on NewsRadio eight forty Whas.

Speaker 4 (12:32):
Jhagen Capital Incorporated is not licensed in all fifty states.
To find out if Jayhagan Capital Incorporated is licensed in
your state, please call five zero two sixty nine oh
fifty six thirty five. Ja Higan Capital, Incorporated is not
affiliated with, nor endorsed by the Social Security Administration or
any other government agency, and does not provide legal or
tax advice. By contacting us, you may be provided with
information about insurance and annuity products offered through jjigin Capital

(12:52):
Or LLCNPN number one eight eight two seven zero nine
four
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