On this week's episode, we dive into how inflation is causing many retirees to jump back into the workforce. We're also going to follow up on last week's episode to help you determine whether or not the retirement goals you've set are feasible or not. And lastly, make sure you stay tuned to the end where we're going to discuss what you can do to make sure you are truly satisfied, retirement, all that, and more on this episode of the retire one show.

Hello, and welcome to the retire once show. I am your host, Jonathan Rankin. I'm the founder and CEO of theorem wealth management. And I am joined now by my lovely cohost. Hi, I'm Melissa Rankin. Thanks for joining us. And we have a lot to get to today. There has been a lot in the news lately, and we are not just talking about Elon Musk.

Yeah, very big news story in our house. Yeah, no kidding. Now we've got a, we've got inflation news that we're going to talk about and how that's been impacting retirement investors. Uh, we're gonna follow up on last week's episode about the retirement goals that hopefully you spent the time to set. And then lastly, we're going to top it off with what can you do to make sure that you're actually having a satisfying retirement.

There was a great article that we came across that we want to share with you. So, uh, we're going to get to all of that today, but before we do, what do we want everyday? I want you to like us through the five-star. Thanks, subscribe. Um, um, that's that big red button, dad. Dad, I'm talking to you again. It's a red button, you know, we've been doing this now.

This is episode number nine. And he is still yet to subscribe. So fingers crossed. This is the episode so everybody can join my father and subscribing this week on episode nine, we also want you to head to retire once show.com there. You're going to find access to our retirement toolkit. Uh, you're also gonna be able to submit a question to the show.

We love taking listener questions. Don't we? Absolutely. We got one. Absolutely. Yeah, you could talk to us at any time. Uh, you can also schedule a free retirement assessment. That's one of the things we like to do for individuals who are retirement focused. Don't really know if they're on track or not. We will help you out with that.

So there is a link there, and we're going to link to all of this in the show notes as well to, uh, to go ahead and schedule that assessment. But so from there, I think we have to jump right in, I mean, Aside from, you know, the Twitter purchase of, or impending or whatever. I don't know. This was a very big deal in our house this morning, but one of the other big articles is inflation.

I mean, that's the biggest headline right now, eight and a half percent year over year in March. I mean, that is the highest it's been in what? 40 years? 41 years on, uh, four decades. That's uh, and you know, I saw, I was reading an article that, uh, some of the things that were increasing, uh, meat was up 14.8%.

So hamburgers. Yep. No hamburgers and looks like we are vegetarians. Hello, vegetables and breakfast. Cereal was up 9.2. Our kids are going to be very, very sad that they don't get to eat that as a snack anymore. Yeah, no. I mean, to think that one of the best inflation hedges you could have bought was fruity pebbles, fruity pebbles.

Think about that. If that was just stocked away in your closet and now you're selling them on the, on the, you know, on the black markets. Just be a little stale by now, just to keep it. I don't know. Is that like Twinkies where a fruity pebbles do they go? I think they do, right. I have no clue, but we also know obviously energy prices are up.

I mean, that's why we're not going to be taking any road trips anytime soon. Obviously we got that out of the way last month. That's true. But one of the big stories that came out actually today is we're recording this Amazon for the first time, announced that they're going to charge sellers a 5%, 5%, 5% inflation and fuel savings.

I mean, it is, uh, there's no way that doesn't just trickle right. Past the sellers and right down to the consumer. There's just, I don't see. I feel like being a prime member is going to go up. It has to, yeah, it has to, right. I don't, yeah. I don't see how they're going to make it feasible to deliver all those packages, you know, overnight or even same day.

Sometimes even with a 5% fuel surcharge. The hard part is I don't think that surcharge is ever going to go with. I mean now they've implemented it. Why would they ever take it away? Even if at some point we see inflation come down. I wonder if they're ever going to get rid of that. I doubt they will. I doubt it.

Have you ever seen, I don't know, Netflix decide, oh, you know what? After we increased it for, you know, this many users or whatever, now we're going to give you some money back and now you only pay this again. No, that's true. I mean, even for our cable service, I remember having to fight with. We have, well, we have satellite.

I wasn't going to go through the provider because we have millions of listeners. I didn't want to promote, you know, one single, you know, we only ever watch Netflix. I feel like I don't want to promote one thing. That is a TV that is direct to you, you know, no one provider, but I remember having to call them and they had discounts that they could offer, but you had to call to make those things happen.

So. Uh, direct TV provider. No, we're not a direct TV provider. Um, but one of the other things that came out on this inflation story was that wages, they're not keeping pace with inflation. So that's you, that's not sustainable. I mean, we know that at some point inflation has to peak let's hope that this is it, but, um, wages are not keeping up with inflation either.

And I think that brings us to the headline that we want to talk about. Okay. I was going to ask you about, so the article that you shared with me was the one from the wall street journal. Everything costs more and that's disrupting retirement for many. Yeah, it was, it was an interesting article when I saw it.

Um, they were talking about RSM, came out with a study where their chief economist talks about how many retirees that were relying on a fixed income. So you think of people who had a, you know, maybe a pension or social security, uh, and they were. Having that in a low rate, low inflation environment, they were okay, well now we're not in the low rate environment.

We're not in a low inflation environment, obviously. So those retirees are now having to go back into the workforce and they're reentering the workforce to try and make up that difference. Now that inflation is, you know, is essentially taken away. I mean, it makes sense if you're on a fixed income and then everything's going up, I mean, Amazon, you know, things like that.

I mean, it's the things that you don't think about that really affect retirees. Well, and I think about what we've seen with clients, one of the biggest impacts are clients that have pensions because a lot of pensions don't have cost of living adjustment. So you think social security? Yeah. That's going to increase in, you know, as inflation increases or their cost of living adjustment, uh, you know, per year, but pensions typically don't so.

You know, you've got this certain amount and let's say you took that, you know, three years ago. Well, now, you know, you're probably 15, 20% behind based on inflation on a real return basis. So it's, there's a huge impact to day-to-day life. So with the pensions and the cost of living adjustment, not being accounted for, I mean, you were saying the fed estimates that what 2.6 million, 2.6 million people retired before they were before they earlier than next.

So you think all, you know, 2.6 million people didn't expect to retire kind of forced to retire because of whether it was health concerns or the pandemic, or just, you know, whatever forced them into that retirement. And now they're dealing with this higher inflation. That's almost causing them to go back to work because they retired before they even expected to anywhere to retire.

And now they're not prepared to be retired. And so now one of the things that's coming out of this is we're seeing a lot of part-time retirement programs that companies are offering. I saw an article and we'll link to all these articles in the show notes, but the article said that 25% of employers have some sort of informal program that will help transition you to retirement by decreasing hours decreasing pay, but kind of go into that part-time status.

I mean, we've seen it with clients. Uh, bridge employment, if you will. Well, one of the things that we've seen, we've seen a lot of clients just leave their job and then go do contract work. But this is actually staying with the same company, keeping benefits, but going part-time. And then, uh, we're also seeing an increase in companies offering, you know, actual, like official programs, like formal programs to help transition people into retirement.

Because now I know a lot of our clients would agree the moment they left. There was this lack of, okay, who's taking over these responsibilities once I leave, because you know, the, the quality of the work wasn't there with whoever they were training. So keeping some of these very highly skilled employees on is a benefit to the company and helps them transition into retirement.

But I think to me, the biggest thing that I pulled from that article, from the journal about retirees, having to go back to work. Was the importance of stress testing retirement. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I cannot, I, I can't stress that enough. No pun intended, but stress testing retirement is extremely important because the amount of people that retired based on some sort of financial planning programs, defaults every financial planning program that you use or software that you use has some sort of default.

You know, 2% or 1.9 or maybe up to 2.4% inflation rate. But if you haven't stress tested your retirement against a five, six or 7% inflation rate and a low rate of return, and you entered into retirement with this kind of pie in the sky notion of I'm going to get nine or 10% of my stock returns, inflation is going to be close to one and you know, of course I'm going to retire.

It does. That you know, these program defaults. I would imagine a lot of people in that article that are having to go back to work relied on some sort of default, probably didn't stress us, their retirement to plan for these things, because why do you think we call it the retire one show? Because we only want you to have to do it once.

You know, the biggest fear that every single person in retirement has said to us is their biggest fear is running out. And we've always said we want people to only go to work because they choose to, because it's something that is going to provide them with fulfillment, uh, to escape a spouse, the spouse, not to.

Yeah. If you listen to last episode, we talked about the nagging spouse, um, only in the rank ALS, but I'm kidding. She's not, she's very lovely. But I made him say that she's kicking me under the table right now, if you can't see. Uh, but I, I do think it is important to make sure that. You know, by stress testing your plan by stress testing that retirement, and you know, the feasibility of it.

Long-term, you're going to know if the market drops by 20 or 30%, how likely retirement successes. You're going to know if we go through a period of high inflation, what that's going to do to your longterm retirement, there shouldn't be the surprise of all inflation was low a year ago. Now it's at 8.5%.

Oh, I've got to go right back to work because you know, It's a short timeframe from very low inflation to this decade, high inflation that shouldn't be in my opinion, that shouldn't be enough to force you to it. Shouldn't be some kind of a shock, some know, something that actually has to. Uh, change for your whole life.

I mean, or, you know, your day to day life and that's, and I think all of that is because of these, you know, because of software defaults of, Hey, I'm going to run my plan, I'm going to put it through a default and you know what, it's going to come out. Okay. Because that's what the program tells me, but really going in there and stress testing it.

That is something that we do for every single class. And important it is. And if you haven't done that, or you don't know where you stand a checkup, the Lincoln in the show description, you could schedule your free assessment where we're going to walk you through we'll stress, test your retirement, make sure that you're on track for higher inflation lowers know market returns, recessions, you name it.

We stress test against as many factors that we can, uh, because we believe that is the way that you're going to be able to avoid big changes like this. You know, inflation hits and all of a sudden, we don't want you to have to call clients and say, Hey, I think, uh, I think you got to go back to work. You got that resume.

No, we're not. We're not in the business of sending out resume templates. Our goal is to help people get to retirement, stay retired and only work when they want to. That's, that's what we do. So, um, with that in mind, if you do all the stress testing and you're doing everything that you should, and you're making sure that your retirement looks the way you want it to.

How do you make sure your goals are feasible? I mean, once you decide to retire and you're going through it, assuming that we don't have anything like this impacting inflation, things like that, how do you know your goals are what they should be? So that brings us to what we talked about last week, where we helped walk listeners through how to set retirement goals and really how to set meaningful retirement goals.

And we talked about needs and wants and you know, the dream categories and prioritizing those. And I think the first thing to realize when trying to determine whether or not your goals are feasible. There's never going to be a definitive certainty on whether or not something feasible or not. And that is something that you have to get comfortable with because markets economies, you know, life events that things are going to be thrown at you over time.

And the goal in retirement is to make sure that you're. Because you got to continue to assess and make changes on an ongoing basis. If you're continuing to assess your retirement plan and you realize, okay, I'm not on a path anymore of maintaining retirement, I'm kind of heading down a path of, I might run out of money in 10, 15 or 20 years.

You've got to be folks. Never want you to be no, not at all, but I think any goals you set, you've got to maintain that flexibility. That's what we believe. It kind of reminds me of, you know, before we got married, we were working with those personal trainers. And every single time I wanted, I kept telling the guy, I said, I want you to give me exactly what to eat and what to do from a workout standpoint.

I want to do this. And I want to look like this is exactly what he told him. And every single time his name is Kelly, he kept telling me, he said, there is no magic. Science is a process and retirement is a process. And just like that, it was frustrating not to have that certainty. You know what you want to get to this level of fitness, then you need to follow this prescription.

It's not a prescription and retirement, isn't a prescription. And that's what I think a lot of people need to realize is that you can run all these calculations all you want, but you have to continue to run them and you have to be flexible. So how would you say to somebody let's make sure your goals are feasible.

How would you go about that? Like where are we? So I would say the first thing to do is start with prioritizing those goals that hopefully you set from last week's episodes needs and wants with your spouse needs, wants, and then dreams. And we're going to focus on that needs category. So just your, your living expenses to maintain your life.

We'll get to the wants and dreams a little bit later, but making sure that you have enough to maintain your life is the most important thing. So the first thing we do is we figure out that number of. What does it take to maintain your lifestyle? Know once you have that number, then we're going to look at the income side because we know that's the output.

That's what you've got to spend, but now we gotta look at the input. So what incomes do you have coming in? Are, do you have a pension you're likely to probably have social security. Uh, and then from there, are you doing any sort of part-time work or earning any income? We want to look at the income sources because then there's going to be a difference.

You know, let's say that your goals are going to cost you. Just for round numbers, a hundred thousand and with your pension, social security and any part-time work, your income is 70,000. So now we know we've got to make up a $30,000 difference and that $30,000 difference to cover your living expenses.

That's going to come from savings. That's going to come from whether it's 401k.

Or cutting out meat, cereal, car washes, maybe, uh, maybe Amazon, maybe TV that is not direct to you. Um, there's so many ways you can cut out expenses if you need to cut that number to do that. But once you figure out that number of what you need to withdraw from your savings to meet those needs, then you want to fix.

Okay. Is that number feasible Fred long period of time. And what we do is we do use some of the top retirement planning software in the industry, and we stress test that withdrawal number over a very long period of time. That's where we go through all those different scenarios. You know, whether it's high inflation, market variations, everything yup.

Market, you know, having subpar performance, you name it to see if that 30,000 withdrawal. Is feasible for the next 30 years or even longer. And then we start getting into the wants and the dreams category of, okay, now you want to take a trip. All right. Let's factor in that trip for a certain year. Let's throw that on top of the 35.

And now let's stress test that entire thing. And then every single goal that you want that's in that wants and dreams category. That's where we just start adding that to that picture. And we stress that every single one, we never want there to be a scenario where, you know, there's a danger of running out of money because you decided in your late sixties that you want to take a, you know, a lavish trip around the world.

And when you're 80, we're having the conversation about your, uh, your resume again, that's what we don't want. So the only way to do that is start with those, the basic living expenses, make sure that's feasible. And then from there add one goal after another based on priority. Okay. That's kind of our general philosophy on it.

And I want to shift gears a little bit here, because this is something that I found found was really odd. Um, we go from talking about goals and setting them and making lists, which I'm a very big fan of lists and all that. And then you were telling me about an article that you read, um, in the Atlantic. I think it was, yeah.

It's kind of contradictory to that. I mean, w I guess you want, yeah, that was the, it was an article by, uh, it was in the Atlantic and it was by Harvard professor and bestselling author, Arthur Brooks, and the title of their article is how to want less. And really who wants to want less? There's a couple things in here that he breaks down and I think are really, really fascinating.

He talks about the satisfaction formula. So we talked. Retirement. You want to be happy. You want to be satisfied. Well, the way that he defined satisfaction in the article was satisfaction equals getting what you want. So you're only satisfied if you're getting what you want or that's a factor of it, which it makes sense that that's a, I don't know.

I think, I think for me personally, when I hear satisfied, I want to be more than satisfied. I want to be happy. I want to, I understand too, I guess I don't know. It was the point that he's trying to make to get to happy. You have to be satisfied. I think those are probably two terms that some people use interchangeably, but I think part of why I thought that, I dunno, I've never asked honey, are you satisfied?

No, but she has just to make sure that I'm happy all the time. And now I think where I found this article fascinating was, you know, last week we had asked listeners to write down everything that they want, everything they need, everything they wish they had have. And my guess is that there are going to be things on those lists.

If you do that exercise that no matter what financial planning software you use, or however we slice it, it's not going to be feasible. Now. I think the. That I thought to myself is, okay, well, if being satisfied means getting what you want, does that mean that if you don't get everything you want in retirement, that you can't have a satisfying retirement, that's kind of the, what I took from this is, you know, I see it's a very unique perspective, I guess, because it just seems.

I really feel like it goes against the grain of what we're used to like create this work toward that. And once you get it, you're going to be more than satisfied. You're going to be happy. I mean, I feel like being satisfied is almost like the bare minimum. Well, yeah, I guess I don't know. It's interesting because there was a quote that I love it.

Um, he says in the article, our urge for more is quite powerful, but stronger still is our resilience to. Now which that is based on the principle of loss aversion, which we covered in a previous episode, but it's the $20, but it's fascinating to now he writes it in a very Pulitzer prize winning way. I mean, that's a very, let me read that.

Yeah, but the, I think the thought there is, you know, if we're looking for a new house and I start looking at $25 million homes and I start loving these $25 million homes, and I say, I want this, I really want this home. And then I show it to you. We fall in love with it. And then we go, it's not going to happen.

This isn't feasible. It technically feels like we lost that. That's kind of his point is that it, by wanting all these things. Yeah, you're setting yourself up for, like you said, you're always going to want something different. That's kind of what he defines as the treadmill effect. Now, even if you got everything you wanted, you're likely to want something else.

So one of the things that he talks about is it the human effect I get it is, it is, it is in a way, but what he's trying to redefine is the satisfaction formula that it's not satisfaction equals getting what you want. It's satisfaction equals. What you have divided by what you want. And so the secret dissatisfaction there is not to increase the things that we have.

So it's not going out and buying more things. If you think of this as a math equation, it's not going out favor. It's not going out and buying more things, but if you're able to reduce or decrease the amount of things that you want. That's the denominator in this scenario. So by default, your satisfaction is increased because there's less things that you want.

So it's almost like being more realistic, I guess, about your actual, I dunno once. Well, he did offer practical advice in the article and one of the things that he suggested, which I found very interesting was he talked about making what's called a reverse bucket list and, you know, you're willing to not.

Yeah. It, well, no, not necessarily, but he, you know, we think about bucket lists almost like we ask listeners to do last week and what we do every single year, every year on new year's. We sit there, not resolutions. We do not create resolution or not resolutions. It is a bucket list and it is a, it is, it is our, what we do to try and attempt to stay up to midnight, which I am proud to say we have still done even with two young children.

Our goal every year is to make it to midnight, just to say that we did it. Um, I think it's just something holding onto that last bit of youth that I, I feel. Yeah, our youth has gone well, but you know, he talks about how bucket lists are temporarily satisfying, you know, because it stimulates dopamine. It gets you thinking of all these things that you want to actually just creating the act of creating one.

But eventually it creates this attachment and eventually dissatisfaction because you think about, if we go, let's go back to the house. If on our bucket list, it was, you know, this mansion, this mansion, this mansion, this mansion, and then ultimately. Well, we're not, you know, those are, those are good bucket list items at one bay.

Let's hope we get, but that's not what we're getting and that's going to lead to some dissatisfaction. So, so what the author does is every single year on his birthday, he makes his bucket list just like a normal everyday person bucket list of these are the things I want. These are the things I want to do, but he takes it a step further.

Now, when he talks about in the article is he imagines his life five years from now. And what does life look like? You know, in a perfect world, uh, with a sense of happiness, meaningfulness, you know, a life with sense of purpose. Uh, one of the, no stuff, no stuff, just a life of peace. What does that actually look like five years from now?

And. You know, then he'll make a list of all the forces that it takes to fulfill that list. So you think of happiness, sense of meaning, sense of purpose, all of that stuff. Those are intrinsic things. That's not, you know, a new car isn't going to fit in that list five years from now internal stuff. So the point is then to compare the kind of that intrinsic.

With Alyssa stuff and you go, okay, I've got this bucket list of all the things I want. Now, if on there is I want to get a new car and I want it to be this kind of new car sports car or whatever it is, or this toy is that toy going to help fulfill a sense of purpose five years from now. And he redefined his life by working towards and pursuing the things that are going to lead to that satisfaction, as opposed to what are the things that are going to get me, the stuff that I've listed.

So it's just kind of looking at a different, and you know, it goes on to talk about the life or the explosion of that minimalist. Uh, you know, that whole downsizing your life, Lisa. Gosh, I was just going to say that's like the, the lady who throws out stuff, if it doesn't bring you joy, what? I have no clue because I think Marie Kondo maybe or something like that, it's like, if it doesn't spark joy, you have to throw it out.

I don't know. I'm a pack rat and I something he's never done. I don't think I've. I don't throw things away. I am this I'm this close to being a hoarder. So a very close he's very, very close. So this isn't saying that you never want anything because by nature as humans, we're going to always want stuff.

But I think part of it is just putting it into. In a perspective, you know, is maybe be more realistic about it. Yeah. What is, is what you want really going to have, you know, deliver a meaningful and happy satisfying life down the road? Or is it just something that I want because it's kind of a toy, you know, I think about if I wanted a new set of golf clubs and you'd go, well, where are you going to find the time to golf with two young kids?

But if I, if golf was my hobby and I wanted a new set of golf clubs, just because. Is that really going to lead to a sense of purpose on the other list, if you have created it. Exactly. And so that's the, that's the whole point of the article, but it was a really good read. Uh, we'll link to that in the show notes.

I suggested everybody really take a look at that. That's what I was gonna say. So how do you think that that ties into. Retirement. Like what we were talking about initially, like with, I think retirement and what is kind of what we talked about with the inflation side of it, where people are having to go back to work because inflation's higher.

I think there's possibly right now this, you know, this thought of there are all these things I want. There are all these goals that I had, or, um, you know, this perfect retirement that I pay. And then you realize, okay, it's not like that. Or I can't have all these things, but I think putting that in perspective might be able to, and I hate that.

I'm going to say this minimum, you know, kind of have that minimalistic approach to retirement goals and you think of, okay, if it's really not important going to deliver that sense of purpose, throw it out, take it off the list, take it off the list. And so, um, part of that also is just being comfortable, whether you're the type of person that's going to make that bucket list and be okay.

With saying, okay, these are, this is the pipe dream. I'm never going to get this, or are you the type of person that's going to look at something and go, I'm never going to achieve that and that's going to bring you dissatisfaction. So I think what you're trying to say is that, regardless of which side, you're on, either the making the bucket list and then your realistic list and wanting less and being the minimalist or shooting for the dreams and creating all the other lists, whatever side you're on.

Basically what just be realistic, be realistic and plan for it. And when it comes to you financially planning for goals, whether they're the needs goals you have, or the wants goals, you know, we talked about it over and over and over again. You've got to stress test that plan. You've got to make sure that you are kind of battle proofing that retirement, you know, Figure out what I know that's a term I just came up with.

Um, but you want to, you want to make sure that you are going through all the scenarios that could impact that because that's where people end up with surprises in retirement, which you don't want surprises in retirement is, is likely not a good thing. It's never a good thing. There's not a, I don't think there's a good surprise that you could find your return.

So when it comes to your retirement goals and determining whether or not they're financially feasible or not. And we talked about where to start, but, you know, I would imagine there's a lot of people out there that, I mean, the wall street journal article talks about it that are having to go back to work, or maybe aren't as confident as they'd like to be in, in their retirement feasible.

Can we be happy to go through retirement assessment with you stress, test your retirement, to make sure that it is kind of battle tested and gone through a market correction or high inflation or wherever those other scenarios that you know, we're going to test against. We want to go through that. And there's a link in the show notes to get that scheduled, because we only want you to go back to work if you really want to.

That's our goal. That's why it is called the retire. Want show? Not because you have to. So that's why we named it. The retire once show. Uh, with that, what we want people to do, Mel, we want you to subscribe. We want you to like us. We want you to do the five stars, all that good stuff, all that good stuff.

We're going to, everything that we talked about today in the show notes and description below, but make sure you had to retire once show.com or you can access our retirement toolkit. And also you can schedule that free assessment for your. And we're happy to help you start that journey today. Thanks for listening.

I'm Johnathan Rankin I'm Melissa Rankin. Thank you for joining

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