Is Your Retirement Life a Mess? Let’s Talk

By Stevie @ Adobe Stock

“Is your retirement life a mess? Then call 1-800-get-HELP.” No, this is not a commercial promising to change your life. This is about my conversations with you.

Let’s take last weekend for example. Your Survival Guy was tired of pulling into my garage and looking at the mess it had become and did something about it. That was a Saturday. It was raining. What else was I going to do? One fellow northeasterner commenting to me on all the rain said animals are lining up two by two in his garage.

So, I got to work. And when it was done, I felt good. And when I pull into the garage it’s satisfying seeing everything in its proper place. We’ll see how long it lasts.

In my conversations with you, we talk about how much you miss Richard C. Young’s Intelligence Report. It was how you kept your financial life in order every month. By reading IR you were making it a good month. It was satisfying. It had an opening that got you moving forward, like compound interest, as you built your knowledge from one catchy sub-head to the other. Then you had the charts and Monster Master List to compare with other stuff you’d been reading.

When tax time comes around, we sit and think about our financial life. Are we as organized as we could be? Do we have our income stream dialed in? Is it tax-efficient? When should we take social security? Is the new RMD age 73? (Yes). And every year, promises are made to be better organized for next year.

In my conversations with you, you’ve made some major moves; selling businesses, organizing estates, and studying my efficient frontiers. Creating trusts and assigning trustees, talking with adult children, and developing a plan.

In times like these, it’s nice to have a safe haven like T-Bills to park your money in until the tax man comes calling. We don’t just talk about money, though, because, like Intelligence Report, we usually open with stories about “how you’re livin’?” Which is what makes all the harder stuff more palatable.

Action Line: When you’re ready to get your retirement life in order, leave the heavy lifting to me. I would love to talk with you.

Originally posted on Your Survival Guy.