Ready For Retirement
Ready For Retirement
Retire Now If you Answer "Yes" to These 5 Questions
Retirement isn’t just about the numbers—it’s about time, health, and the life you want to live. Too many people delay retirement, chasing "one more bonus" or "one more year" without considering the bigger picture.
In this video, we’ll walk through five key questions that can help you decide. If you answered yes to any of these, retirement might be closer than you think! Watch now to gain clarity on your next steps.
Questions answered?
1. How do you know if it's the right time to retire?
2. What are the risks of delaying retirement for financial reasons?
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Timestamps:
0:00 - Is time passing you by?
2:30 - Is your health suffering?
3:40 - Want more time for relationships?
4:50 - What is your life and health span
6:25 - Are you financially ready?
7:59 - Wrap-up
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I remember meeting with a client one time who I thought was in an excellent position to retire. But this specific client they wanted to keep running and rerunning and rerunning retirement projections, agonizing over the smallest little details about their retirement. That's when it dawned on me that this particular client and so many like him were asking the wrong questions to understand. Are they really ready for retirement? So in today's video I'm going to walk through five questions and if you answer yes to any of these questions, it may be a sign that it's time for you to retire now. This is another episode of Ready for Retirement. I'm your host, james Canole, and I'm here to teach you how to get the most out of life with your money. And now on to the episode. This first question that I asked my client and you can ask yourself is do you feel that time is passing you by? So, going back to my client, he couldn't get beyond the fact that if he was to retire now, he'd be saying no to next year's bonus, he'd be saying no to next year's new vesting of stock options that he had. It was very difficult for him to get past that. The projections clearly showed how much that extra bonus, how much the extra stock added to his portfolio at the end of the day, but I had to remind him. So the financial projections that we're looking at, by nature these are only focused on the financials. So, as obvious as that sounds, of course the longer you work, the better off this is going to be. But at what point is that too much? At what point is life passing you by and the experiences that you have available to you today are going to be missed, and that's a permanent opportunity cost. And I point out to him that, of course, the longer you work, the better these projections are going to look. So if we get too focused on just the financial projections, we're going to miss the bigger picture, which is your life will pass you by. And as we discussed that, I shared a real client story with him. I shared how I was working with a client and this client could not wait to retire. But they kept pushing it back and they finally retired at the age of 65. Within 12 months she had passed away. She had waited all her life, she had deferred retirement till this time and when she finally was there, she didn't actually get to enjoy it.
Speaker 1:So what we have to realize is that time is the only non-renewable currency. We can always work more. We can always make more money, maybe increasingly more difficult, but it's always something we can do. We can never get this time back, but I think in general principles, the older we get, the less valuable money becomes and the more valuable time becomes, so we have to strike that right balance. Of course, you can't retire too early. You don't have the financial resources to support the time you want to spend in retirement, but if all we do is keep working, there's going to be an opportunity cost to that, and the opportunity cost is the one thing we can never get back, which is time. So ask yourself do you feel as if time is passing you by? If the answer is yes, it might be time for you to retire.
Speaker 1:The second question to ask yourself is this is your health suffering? The thing about retirement and those years before retirement is this is typically coming on the tail end of 30, 40 plus years of working, of paying off a mortgage, of raising a family, of increasing responsibilities at work, and by the time that we get there, it's not uncommon for our health to be suffering pretty significantly. This is why you see all kinds of studies showing the increase in things like depression, anxiety, heart disease, stroke all things happening earlier and earlier in retirement because we're getting less and less healthy as a country. So, as we look at this, we can't just look at retirement from the financial side of things, to use my previous example. Of course, the longer you work, the better your financial projection is going to look. But could it be quite literally that every year you work is actually starting to take years off of your life because you're neglecting your health? And every extra day, every extra month, every extra year you continue to neglect your health, you run a greater and greater risk of not having that health as you go into retirement. So really look at that. Ask yourself the question is your health suffering? And if work is causing your health to suffer, it might be time for you to retire.
Speaker 1:The third question you need to ask yourself is do you long to spend more time with friends and family? Now, in many cases, work can be wonderful. You have 40 to 50 hours a week that you get to spend with really amazing people that are doing great things and you enjoy your time with them. But when you spend 40 to 50 hours there, then add a few hours in for a commute, add a few hours in for chores, add a few hours in for running errands, taking care of tasks around the house, how much time is really left for friends and for family? Now the quality of our lives is largely going to be determined by the quality of our relationships and work. Relationships are wonderful and hopefully there are a lot of friends that you have at work. But if that's not the case, are you saying no to the relationships that really matter by continuing to work? One of the greatest benefits of retirement is having your time back, having that blank slate where you get to intentionally say here's who I'm going to spend time with or not spend time with. But as you ask yourself the question, when you look at your friends, when you look at your family, ask how much longer, how many more times are you going to get to spend time with these specific people in your life? The older we get, the lower that number is going to be. So how can we recognize that and how can we prioritize relationships with the people that matter most in our life?
Speaker 1:The fourth question that you need to ask yourself is are you looking at your health span and not just your lifespan. What I mean by that is so often people think about retiring and let's assume they want to retire at the age of 65. They might think they have 30 years left to live because they've got longevity in their family, and let's assume we could guarantee that to be the case. So even if you retired at 65 and I could guarantee you had 30 years, that doesn't mean all 30 of those years are going to be created equal. The first years are going to be your healthiest. You're going to have the most energy, you're going to be the most vibrant. You're going to have the most opportunity to do things in those years, far more so than you will in your 70s, your 80s or your 90s. So when you look at a 30-year retirement, understand the first four or five might be the best and there's going to be a sliding and maybe decreasing scale over time, hopefully.
Speaker 1:Going back to point two, if we prioritize our health, we're extending the health span that we have in retirement. But if we're not, we might have a very narrow window, even if we have a long lifespan. But to reinforce this point, I want you to imagine for a second all the things that you want to do in retirement? Playing with grandchildren, traveling, playing pickleball, yard work, things that you want to do for fun, for adventure, whatever those things might be, imagine them. I want you to imagine doing that thing as a 65-year-old versus doing that thing as an 85-year-old. You can start to see the difference that even if you have that life and that lifespan, it's going to be a very different experience. So how do we make sure that we get back the best years of our life, which are often going to be the younger years? By not continuing to push retirement back longer than it needs to be.
Speaker 1:Then, finally, the final question that you need to ask yourself is are you financially ready Now? This should go without saying. You cannot retire, you should not retire if you don't have the financial means of being able to support your desired retirement lifestyle. But as obvious as that sounds, too many people, like the client I was mentioning, in some way get addicted to seeing their financial projections grow, to seeing their financial outcome improve. You work all these years, you work 40 years and you see the impact of working.
Speaker 1:One more year or two more year adds tremendously to the long-term value of your financial projections at the end of your lifetime. It's hard not to get addicted to that. It's hard not to say you know what. Just six more months or 12 more months, or one more bonus payment or one more. You fill in the blank, but think about one more year. Is it never actually gets here?
Speaker 1:One more year is always going to be the temptation. One more year is always going to be the thing that's pulling at you because it's one more bonus, it's social security increasing one more time. It's another year of maxing out your 401k. It's another year of putting money aside in savings or paying down a mortgage. One more year is always going to be beneficial from a financial standpoint, but one more year is always going to have an opportunity cost, and an opportunity cost is doing the things that you might never be able to do again with the same level of energy or health or vitality. So how do you strike that balance? Good financial planning should be just that. It should be a balance. It should be prudent planning for the future with also a balanced living for today, aligned living today to ensure that neither the future nor the present is costing the other.
Speaker 1:So, as we wrap this up, the message that I want to get across is not that work is bad. I think work is wonderful and I hope that many of you listening have a wonderful work environment where you get to do things that you care about, with people you care about, for clients you care about. But if that's not the case and if you're starting to get too drawn into just the financial projections and the impact of one more year, start to ask yourselves these questions or do you feel time is passing you by? Is your health suffering? Do you wish to spend more time with friends and with family? Are you looking at your health span and not just your lifespan? And finally, are you financially ready? If you're financially ready and if you answered yes to any of those other questions, now might be the time for you to retire.
Speaker 1:Root Financial has not provided any compensation for, and has not influenced the content of, any testimonials and endorsements shown. Any testimonials and endorsements shown have been invited, have been shared with each individual's permission and are not necessarily representative. Hey everyone, it's me again for the disclaimer. Please be smart about this. Before doing anything, please be sure to consult with your tax planner or financial planner.
Speaker 1:Nothing in this podcast should be construed as investment, tax, legal or other financial advice. It is for informational purposes only. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Ready for Retirement podcast. If you want to see how Root Financial can help you implement the techniques I discussed in this podcast, then go to rootfinancialpartnerscom and click start here, where you can schedule a call with one of our advisors. We work with clients all over the country and we love the opportunity to speak with you about your goals and how we might be able to help. And please remember, nothing we discuss in this podcast is intended to serve as advice. You should always consult a financial, legal or tax professional who's familiar with your unique circumstances before making any financial decisions.
