Retirement Roadmap

What's Scarier, Death or Retirement?

• Mark Fricks • Season 2 • Episode 28

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Ever wondered why more than half of Americans fear retirement more than death? Join us on Retirement Roadmap with MasterPlan Retirement Consultants, as we unravel this startling statistic with the guidance of Evan and Mark Fricks. We confront eye-opening realities, like the fact that 20% of Americans aged 50 and older haven’t saved a penny for their golden years. Our conversation highlights the potential benefits of personalized retirement strategies, moving beyond the one-size-fits-all advice to craft a plan tailored to your unique financial situation.

Have a topic or question you'd like Mark and Evan to address in a future episode? Email us at info@masterplanretire.com or call 770-980-9262.

https://masterplanretire.com/
Catch all episodes of our podcast at https://www.masterplanyourretirement.com/resources/episodes
Listen to Mark Fricks on Saturdays at 8:30 a.m. EST on AM920 WGKA and 12:00 p.m. on XTRA 106.3FM WFOM.
Sign up for one of our upcoming events at https://www.masterplanyourretirement.com/events
Purchase Mark's Book, The Road Less Traveled: Turning Your Retirement Worries Into an Excursion of a Lifetime on Amazon.com https://a.co/d/4fx94Al

Advisory services offered through MasterPlan Retirement Consultants, Inc., a Registered Investment Advisor in the state of Georgia. Insurance, tax and commodities services offered through Fricks and Associates, I

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Call 770-980-9262 to speak directly with someone about your retirement planning needs.

https://masterplanretire.com/

Catch all episodes of our podcast at https://www.masterplanyourretirement.com/resources/episodes

Listen to Mark Fricks on Saturdays at 12:00 p.m. on XTRA 106.3 FM WFOM.
Sign up for one of our upcoming events at https://www.masterplanyourretirement.com/events

Purchase Mark’s book, The Road Less Traveled: Turning Your Retirement Worries Into an Excursion of a Lifetime, on Amazon: https://a.co/d/4fx94Al

Advisory services offered through MasterPlan Retirement Consultants, Inc., a Registered Investment Advisor in the state of Georgia. Insurance, tax and commodities services offered through Fricks and Associates, Inc. dba MasterPlan Retirement Consultants. The aforementioned are affiliated companies.

Speaker 1

Hey folks, welcome back to Retirement Roadmap with Master Plan Retirement Consultants. My name is Evan. With me, as always, retirement planner Mark Fricks. Mark, how are you today?

Speaker 2

I am great. More importantly, Evan, how are you? I never ask you how you're doing.

Speaker 1

You know, I am just right now. I feel like I'm jumping from task to task, so I'm in go mode, um. But if I were to check in with myself right now, I think I'm doing pretty well, good, good, yes, I understand the task.

Speaker 2

I mean, we have so many things going on with our clients and and new clients and and new prospects, and then they got the show. We got a new week. It's a busy. It's a busy week every week, but I love it. I mean love being busy, I love checking tasks off the calendar it gives you kind of a feeling of completion but, more importantly, just being able to help clients. I mean I come in every morning and I'll have several emails with client needs, you know no-transcript.

Speaker 1

retirement sphere itself and retirement planning. There are so many different aspects to what we do as holistic retirement planners. We really try to be comprehensive with the full retirement picture. So there's always new and different things going on. And then again, like you said, you add in some of the outside tasks, like the radio show, things like that. Yeah, it's not boring, that's for sure At all.

Speaker 2

Again, the day flies by and before I know it it's dinner time and time to go home and maybe get on the exercise bike or something like that Time to put the hungry man in the microwave and turn on the football game. That's right, so anyway a good show today?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I hope so, in light of the fall season. It is early to mid-October right now, depending on when this airs, so we've got a bit of a spooky topic and that is what's scarier death or retirement. I actually pulled some of these numbers I'm about to read out from a USA Today article. What do working Americans fear more than death?

Speaker 3

Retirement Wow.

Speaker 2

Or public speaking, or public speaking yeah.

Speaker 1

So I want to read off a couple of stats to you, Mark, and see what you think of them. So 61% of working Americans are more fearful of retirement than they are of dying.

Speaker 2

Wow, well, dying is a solution to retirement.

Speaker 1

Yeah, it's a solution. It's a certain solution, not a preferred one perhaps, but it's a solution. Here's another one, and maybe this is a little telling on that first fact. There, 20% of Americans who are 50 and older have no retirement savings. Oh wow, 20%. 20% of Americans 50 are 50 and older have no retirement savings.

Speaker 2

Oh wow, 20%. 20% of Americans 50 or older. That's not surprising, but not surprising, but that's sad, I guess more than anything.

Speaker 1

It's tough. I mean, we know the struggle with just the discipline of putting things away. That's one thing.

Speaker 2

But we know also how many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and how sometimes you just don't have that to put away so well and I recall when you know we, our family, was raising young kids, and then teenagers and then college, and you're always trying to make ends meet and you've got to really be disciplined to pay yourself first, and you just say, okay, starting next year because this bill might go away. And then you know of bill comes up and it's just, it is tough. I understand that and we see it and we hear the stories, but you really just have to find a way to pay yourself first, maybe even a part-time job for a while or something, but that's kind of a speaking of scary, that's kind of a scary stat there.

Speaker 1

Well then, taking off of that first one, 61% are worried that they won't have enough money for retirement, and we get that all the time. Really, what we get, more than anything, is just more of a cluelessness. Like there's no one really has a base of what kind of amount of money they need to retirement. They just kind of come to us with their stuff and say this is what I have, what can I do, what do I have? You know, they, a lot of people just don't really have a foothold or foundation for perspective on retirement.

Speaker 2

They really don't, and that's why we run the numbers and let's see where you're at. Are you on track or not, and what will it take to get you on track? I hate these articles that come out and say everybody needs a million dollars to retire. I mean, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. It's like saying everybody needs to be on blood pressure medicine or something like that. So you know, make sure again, we'll be talking later about the complimentary consultation that we offer. It is a chance, though, to look at your numbers and see really, where are you at, not where is the general population.

Speaker 1

It's funny you mentioned that I actually one of my topic ideas for a future episode is you need less than you think to retire generally.

Speaker 2

I like that Well, especially if you do the things we do and make it more effective.

Speaker 1

Exactly and that million dollar number is exactly right. You see that article headline because millions is a sexy number, a sexy phrase. But yeah, it's true, it's just clickbait mostly.

Speaker 2

It's the same thing as when you see if you're age 60, you need to be this much in stocks and this much in bonds. Again, just another ridiculous way to try to sell a magazine or sell a newsletter or whatever, and so don't get caught up in that. Again, it's like taking care of yourself medically by Googling stuff. It needs to be about you, and so these stats are great.

Speaker 1

By the way, people also fear retirement because they're worried about losing their identity and worried about developing expensive health care problems.

Speaker 2

So losing their identity. I guess that's related to I've had two clients this week we have that have come in that are like, okay, the date's set, it's like within two or three months, and we've been kind of working toward it. But I love having conversations with them. It's like how do you feel, you know, and they're like, well, we're scared, we're apprehensive, we're excited, we're you know all these different emotions. But we hear a lot about people from an identity standpoint, because so many people's identity is built into their job and so that you know what's. The first thing I ask them when I meet them typically is what do you do? You know, and it's part of who we are, especially if you've been doing it a long time, and so I can see that, I can see losing you know not only that, but being friends, you know, kind of the community, of your work working toward a goal, things like that as well. So, yeah, absolutely. I think that's right on point.

Speaker 1

I think culturally too. So much of our identity is naturally wrapped up into what we do. One of the first things we ask people when we meet them for the first time hey, what do you do Nice to meet you first time? Hey, what do you do nice to meet you? But it's funny losing your identity. But we also have some clients recently that are starting to reignite their, where they find their identity a little bit. Some folks that we've had as clients for a while, but they've had a really crazy few years. So we're just now getting back in touch and trying to get things rolling with them and they've never really opened up until more recently about some dreams about opening up their own Central American boat service, charter service for fishing, or actually no, scuba diving actually is what it was. They're both extremely passionate about that. They've both been certified and they're like what would it be like if?

Speaker 1

we could retire and have a boat out in Central America, and so being able to move from one stage and reinvent themselves, Exactly exactly. What's that Bible verse Old men will dream dreams again. So it's really interesting to kind of see what, once you start opening up that conversation in retirement and you start to hear more hopes, dreams and okay, if I were to really imagine big, what would I be doing?

Speaker 2

And the flip side of that, too, is folks that love what they do and they're like I don't ever want to retire because I love what I do, but maybe on my own terms. So they reinvent themselves and really doing the same thing, but now maybe they work for themselves doing it or maybe they only work three days a week. I've got somebody that is again, you know who I'm talking about that really enjoys what he does, very successful, but his wife's about 15 years younger and they want to travel and things like this. I said, well, work Tuesday, wednesday, thursday, and then you've got a four day weekend every week, you know, or something like that. And and then you kind of begin easing out of it, but you're still doing what you love. So again, it's not just about quitting, stopping we don't do that anymore. Very often Now it's about what are you going to do, and we spend a lot of time discussing it with our clients for sure.

Speaker 1

Absolutely. Here's a couple of more. Actually, I want to meet this too from what I just mentioned fear of developing expensive healthcare problems.

Navigating Retirement Challenges and Transitions

Speaker 2

So I'm not sure where that comes from, but it's interesting. When we see people retire, it seems that sometimes things do start deteriorating. Now I know we're aging If you're 60 or 65 and you're retiring and I'm in that age range and there's always little things that are cropping up. But I wonder if it's because, maybe because of retirement, would it be because of, maybe, the unhealthiness of not knowing what to do with yourself?

Speaker 1

Making a routine for yourself, making sure you set something up, I think is vital for so many people in retirement, especially if you are used to the nine to five or you've got purpose and it's really purpose driven. It is goal driven purpose driven Absolutely, and if you don't have that, then it's so much easier to fall into non-patterns. Bad habits, exactly Bad habits Sleeping late.

Speaker 2

I mean that's okay occasionally. But I mean watching TV all day long, drinking more. I mean maybe that could be something. All of a sudden you've got time on your hands. What do you do when you're tired Mental?

Speaker 1

health crisis too. You know, if you start to get depressed because you're not as active, you're not seeing as many people socially at work, your coworkers, things like that One thing can tend to follow another. We saw what happened in the pandemic when people were shut off from each other, substance abuse went out the window. So that's certainly something that sounds a little dark, but I think truly that's something that you have to really plan for yourself. As much as you have to plan finance, budget, income, things like that. You really do need to consider the social side of your life and making sure that you're mentally healthy, physically healthy, keep your health patterns rolling as well.

Speaker 2

I think it's probably also more dangerous if you're single, like if you've lost your spouse, divorced your spouse. If you're married, you've got somebody to do stuff with, you kind of have common goals. We have a client we picked up in the last year or so that he had lost his wife and that's when he came to us because she had handled all the finances and he's struggling to find things to do and he's picked up some hobbies, but I mean he's really trying to replace purpose in the community of his spouse and so that's tough. I mean that's bad timing, that's sad, but it's reality and we talk to him and try to give him ideas and things like that and he's making progress. That's a good part. But I am concerned about clients like that health-wise and mentally as well as physically.

Speaker 1

Yeah, and even if there's not a tragedy that might be prompting your retirement or something like that, I think it's still really helpful to try to be honest with yourself and analyze the kind of person you are. Okay, when my wife is away for the weekend, how active am I? Am I just sleeping in.

Speaker 1

What's actually going on here? Sometimes a full break into retirement is not the best step. Sometimes you pull back some of your work hours. Maybe you go part-time or just take on contracting work with your company or something in a similar field and you take it incrementally because not only is that going to help financially if you've got some of that income still rolling in, mentally it's going to help you start to move into the next phase slowly and not feel like it's all of a sudden overwhelming change into one phase of life to another.

Speaker 2

Well, we're also so much younger when we retire, and I don't mean necessarily age, just age, but also I can remember my grandfather retiring. He worked at the mill for 30, 40 years and he was 65 when he retired and he was old. I mean, even looking back at pictures, he was old. And you know, I look at people my age and which is about close to his age and we look so much differently. We, you know better healthcare. I don't know what all the other reasons are for that, but we're not. We're. We're younger as a and we're living longer. Yeah, so now, instead of five or 10 years in retirement, it'd be 20 or 30. So again, another good reason people want to retire earlier and earlier.

Speaker 2

We've got federal workers we work with that they're able to retire as early as 56, 57. They've got long retirement hits. So a lot of them are finding new things to do and reinventing themselves as well. So it certainly is, and I know we're talking a lot about this today, but this is what we do with our clients. We talk about this kind of stuff because it is just as important as a financial side. So it has changed. It's not a grandfather's retirement anymore.

Speaker 2

So, and you know what's really neat is if you visit the website MasterPlanRetirecom.

Speaker 2

We've got a lot of guides on there that talk about not only you know these are things you need to accomplish before you retire, but it can also get into some of the conversations we're having as well.

Speaker 2

But getting back to the financial, I think the guys are great, masterplanretirecom also a great place to schedule a time to sit down and maybe have this kind of chat with us, right? Maybe it's not just financial, but it's about what are you going to be doing with your life in retirement, things of that nature, about what are you going to be doing with your life in retirement, things of that nature. And then to run those reports that we run are so revealing numbers-wise, about how's your money looking, what happens if taxes go up, what happens if you do lose a spouse, what happens if you have a long-term care need all these different areas we look at to illuminate the pitfalls, the potholes, things like that that can really trip us up in retirement. So I hope you take advantage of that. If you're listening today or on a podcast or on the YouTube channel, on the radio, wherever you may be listening is to check out masterplanretirecom, schedule that time, but also bookmark it for future, because we're always adding classes and webinars and resources for you as well, or do it the old-fashioned way 770-980-9262.

Planning for Longevity in Retirement

Speaker 1

So hope to hear from you Absolutely. Thank you, mark. Yeah, masterplanretirecom. So back to the healthcare concerns in retirement. We're seeing more people consider, because healthcare is getting more expensive, we're seeing when they can start drawing Medicare as a potential point of retirement. It is becoming more and more centered around healthcare for some people Okay, so I can't draw Medicare till 65, so maybe I'm working less a little bit until then or whatever. Maybe if I can stay on my spouse's health care, that's one potential consideration.

Speaker 1

But then you also mentioned something earlier too that I think is important. We are living longer. We want to make sure that, as much as we can, as much as what is in our control, we maintain our health so that the majority of those years that we are living we have our, we're aware of ourselves, we're not reliant on on other people to for our ADLs, right activities of daily living, things like that as best as we can, because one of the downsides to our medical advances is that it can keep you alive for longer, even though you might not be fully present or have a great quality of life.

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's why we see so many new assisted living centers pop up, nursing homes, memory care units is because of the fact that we are living so much longer. They're able to keep us alive longer. I mean, used to, you had a major heart attack. You were gone. Now, if you get to the hospital in time, within a few days you're back out and within a few weeks and months you're back to how you were before, and so so many advances and that's going to exponentially increase.

Speaker 2

Um, you know, hopefully, um, god willing, we'll find some answers to alzheimer's, things of that nature, so that at least that, which is such a sad disease we've all experienced it. I think everybody here in this office has had a loved one experience it. It's just, you know it's devastating and sad, but so many other health issues as well, because we are living longer and then it gets more expensive Again. The long-term care costs things of that nature. So you know it's with every good comes some negative, you know for sure, and that's kind of the title of the show.

Speaker 2

You know the scariness of what's ahead, but by having a plan we take a lot of that scariness out, and that's why it's so important to have a retirement roadmap that maps out what happens if this occurs, if that occurs. It's so important to have these what-ifs, these strategic turning points, if something happens, to be prepared. And that takes a lot of that stress, and that's what a lot of our clients tell us and say. Having a plan takes the stress off of my retirement, gives me the peace of mind so I can enjoy my retirement and not worry about, oh you know, what if this happens, what if that happens, things like that, and so it's just a powerful thing.

Speaker 1

We've also noticed more people doing preventative care before they retire and they're still on their employee plan to help preserve more of their nest egg in retirement. I start to knock out more of those before you retire and really backload. It wouldn't be front load backload the last few working years while you have your employer insurance there as well.

Speaker 1

So there again, there are so many different strategies and approaches, and also everyone's situation is different. Here's a couple more for you, mark, most Americans anticipate needing between $100,000 and $1 million saved for retirement. Okay, pretty general numbers.

Speaker 2

Can't talk about that one.

Speaker 1

But most have between $10,000 and $500,000 saved. What age is that again?

Speaker 2

What age was that? Did it give an age or just?

Speaker 1

most. No, you know what that second one doesn't, but I anticipate it'd be middle age plus in the retirement planning phase, when you start to consider that Most Americans anticipate needing between $100,000 and a million dollars saved for retirement, but most have between $10,000 and $500,000 saved. Well, and that's.

Speaker 2

I think, the power of having a plan. I hate to keep coming back to that, but it's so important. But we also, by having that plan, we take every segment of their retirement, whether it be growth, whether it be income creation, whether it be lowering taxes in retirement, all of those work together to make their money more efficient. And so that you know, I've had people come in and maybe they had a half a million, but we were able to stretch it out much further by doing some of those things. And so I think you know, I don't know where they go get those numbers from. It sounds like they just interview people and what do you think? And I don't know where they go get those numbers from. It sounds like they just interview people and what do you think? And you know, I don't.

Speaker 2

I don't know where that thinking comes from. Is it from articles or whatever? But again it's, each individual is different. But also, whatever you've got, start now. You know, if you've got five more years to work, let's see how we can more efficiently save some money and grow some money. If you've got one year to work, let's see what else we need to do. Maybe we do work part-time the first five years to not have to touch that money for a while. There's so many different options. We've seen so many people. Are you?

Speaker 1

surprised. Maybe you don't have to get that part-time job. Maybe you choose to do that for your own activity.

Speaker 2

We don't know until we look at the numbers. We really don't, and so that's why I still think it's so important. And I think a lot of people don't realize. You know, they look at their dads or granddads or grandmoms or whatever, and they didn't have a retirement planner. Why do I need a retirement planner? Well, the world has changed drastically, as we've discussed already, and so again, if you want to optimize, just like you know, 50 years ago I'm sure people didn't go to the doctor every six months for a checkup when they were 50 or older or whatever. They were more like stay at home and take medicine and do the best you can. We've just become more proactive because we've found that it works better. Same thing with your finances.

Speaker 1

Yeah, and the market's a perfect reflection of what you said too. You know we have that. We have a great handout that we use for illustrations with clients called Not your Father's. Stock Market 1980 to 2000,. The general trend is up. There might be one or two shifts in trends, but do you remember the average return?

Speaker 2

17.75% annual average return for those 20 years.

Speaker 1

Can you believe that, being in the industry at that point, I was a child. But what we know now and the reality we're living in now is so much different. What is it now?

Speaker 2

6.97?, 6.5-ish over the last 20, since the year 2000. And the biggest drop from 1980 to 1999 was just under 10. The biggest drop over the last 23, 24 years was 38%, I believe, and if you combine an 18-month period it was 56%. So it's much more volatile. There's a lot of reasons why. Maybe one day we'll get into that more in a different show. But the world has changed. It's not going back. We're not going back to the nice steady and not that the stock market's always been steady, but it's been much less volatile than it has been over the last 20, 25 years, and so you have to treat it differently.

Speaker 1

So that's a great point. Yeah, the game has changed and that's the thing. So many people look at these individual topics or facts of like, oh well, this many people don't consider long-term care important, or this many people are prepared for a long-term care strategy, or this many people are not concerned with taxes and retirement or think that they'll be in a you know every individual bubble. This percentage of Americans have emergency savings built up to this. All this kind of stuff. It's overwhelming. There's so many different things to consider that you kind of get the what is the term? Decision paralysis or something like that.

Speaker 2

Yeah, there's a paralysis by analysis or something like that. Yeah, again. And so that's why we want to look at every piece, but it can be so confusing. There's so much bombardment of information, a lot of it not good and almost all of it not applicable to your particular situation. Whether it be social media, whether it be, again, these things that pop up on our news feed or whatever, most of the time somebody's trying to sell you something anyway. So it's not really about you, it's about them, but it it is so many pieces of company, and this is this is the hard part of it.

Speaker 2

As you know, just when we have an answer on something, it changes, whether because of the market, whether because of laws, whether because of whatever, and so I mean we've had several changes between the SECURE Act I, secure Act II, some things in between that are happening Right now. We've got new politicians coming into Washington. Whoever that may be over here in the next month or two. They're going to have new ideas, they're going to make other changes. I'm reading about Social Security, ways to change it, and so it's just so much going on. Even I have trouble keeping up with it, but I can imagine I don't think anybody that's not in the industry can keep up with it. So again, just let us help you out, let us give you some guidance.

Retirement Planning Radio Show

Speaker 2

We keep up on this stuff. We've got people. I've got a lot of experience. I try to keep up with it. We've got younger advisors here that definitely can probably do a better job because they have younger minds. I don't know, but we're always trying to keep up with everything. So just you know. Again, visit the website. We've got to wrap this up today. We're running out of time. But, masterplanretirecom, I would love to see you face-to-face have a chat, but until we see each other again, remember plan well and prosper, take care. This was Retirement Roadmap Radio with Mark Fricks of Master Plan Retirement Consultants. To schedule a complimentary consultation, go to masterplanretirecom or call 770-980-9262. Thanks for listening and remember plan well and prosper.

Speaker 3

All matters discussed during the show are for informational purposes only. Each individual situation may vary and the opinions expressed here may not apply to everyone. Materials presented are believed to be from reliable sources and no representations can be made as to its accuracy. All ideas and information should be discussed in detail with one of our qualified representatives prior to implementation. Advisory services offered by Master Plan Retirement. We'll be right back.