Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Any examples used are for illustrative purposes only and do not take into account your particular investment objectives, financial situation or needs and may not be suitable for all investors. It is not intended to predict the performance of any specific investment and is not a solicitation or recommendation of any investment strategy.
Welcome to Reyna Retirement. Reyna Reyes has dedicated her career to helping people make small, smarter financial decisions. Raina Retirement is all about breaking down complex financial concepts into language you can actually understand.
Now here's the co founder of American Federal Benefits Consultants, Reyna Reyes.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Well, I think that Paul McCartney would have been a really good retirement specialist because he had a lot of prep on his mind. For example, he was preparing the question for will you still need me? Will you still feed me when I'm 64?
But that's what a lot of people talk to me about. They're like, hey, I'm retiring, I'm gonna have some concerns, some worries. Obviously, finance is one of the biggest things and that's one of the reasons, you know, we are making these plans and understanding what the benefits are gonna do, make the right choices for these benefits. But he also sang the song yesterday when all his troubles seemed so far away. And that's one of the things we. I was just talking to somebody yesterday. She's like, my goodness, I didn't have all these problems and questions and decisions back when I was a normal middle aged regular employee. Now why do they make seniors and give retirees so much homework and why is there so much effort and why do I have to think so much about this stuff? And why do I have to be concerned about penalties and drama and all these things? So I said, my goodness, what are the biggest things that you have to really plan for? What are the biggest things that people regret?
What are the biggest things, things we want to address? So I just wanted to go over with you some of the biggest things that I've experienced and some of the most common things in general that seniors, retirees have to deal with.
So the biggest, the first sort of segment is like emotional and social type of stuff. The biggest one is loss of routine where I used to wake up, shave the boss, get dressed when maybe it was a uniform, maybe not, and drive or log in and show up to work. And then I had to be there for a time period. I had a scheduled lunch or a scheduled break, and I was kind of on the clock. And it was a very known every day, you know, time to make the donuts, you know, and my baby takes the morning train and You. And then they come back and we know exactly what the schedule is. After retirement, not so much. You have to create it. You have to, you have to plan it. One of the biggest questions I'm asking people is, hey, It's Tuesday morning, 10am what are you doing? What do you see yourself doing? What's your family doing? Who's on you? Who is not bothering you? Right? Are your kids saying to you, hey, you've got to, you know, watch your grandkids? Or is your spouse saying to you, honey, do list. What do you anticipate happening? And do you like what you see? Because if you're, you know, Wednesday afternoon at noon seems like it's going to be super booked and you like what you see, then that's a soft way to say retirement may be blessed upon you and that it's a good plan. However, if it's the opposite and you foresee boredom or you have no plan, a lot of people are wanting me to leave, wanting me to retire them so they can retire away from something, to get away from the bureaucracy or the drama or those perpetrators with whom you work.
And that is fine. Yeah, we want to get away from that. But we also need to be able to retire to something. What are you going to be doing? And hobbies, let me tell you, tire fairly quickly.
There's only so much fishing and golfing in RC Plains that you can really do before you say, okay, you know, I need a more regular, regularly scheduled broadcast.
So the loss of routine is one of the biggest things that is prepped for. So I encourage to prepare the routine that you want to see yourself have in retirement.
Isolation is another one. So I used to be going to work and I would have my little social group there and we would have a good old fun time and make fun of the boss or you know, have a, you know, talk about our family and our kids and our grandkids and get together and maybe it was a wonderful little happy scenario. Maybe you hated everybody you worked with, but now, but you were still with them and now you have retired and you've got your own four walls at the house to look at. We want to prepare for that. Many of you all come to me for Medicare Solutions. And there's a program with a lot of Medicare plans called Silver Sneakers and it's a free gym membership coming that comes with your Medicare plan that allows you to go to the gym for free. And there are classes, there's the workout classes for the seniors specifically. A lot of times these locations are going to have silver sneakers. Specific classes. And the social aspect that develops from some of these is unbelievable. We're talking, you know, every other week, people are having people over to their house, they're having stuff at the gym. They're setting up to go after the gym, to go all to like a smoothie place to get together.
It's this secondary routine that you establish to prevent isolation. We want to be aware of it. Now you may say to me, raina, that's what I want. I don't want anybody up in my grill. I don't need anybody around me. I am fine with, you know, being alone by myself. And that. You may think that now, but then you get this whole, like, you know, my dad used to sing this song. Nobody likes me, Everybody hates me. I'm going to eat a worm. It's this like thing like this silly way to be like, oh, that's. You don't feel that bad. Like, it's not.
Let's just go into our own little world of sadness. But it's, it's silly. You're sad for no reason. You know, people do love you and they want to hang out with you. But if we have self isolated, right?
So we don't want to do that to ourself. Make the plan pre retirement for how you're going to be around people, but how you're also going to manage your time because you want to balance that where you have people you're around, but maybe not too much.
So loss of identity is one of the other ones. So they used to need me at work. Nobody could do my job the way I do my job. And you know, it was this feeling of being the guy or the gal.
And in retirement, people start feeling not needed or not in demand.
And there's answers to this. And I'm not, I'm not a social worker. But I will say a lot of the things I mentioned previously are a good part of what you want your routine to be. The, the, the little classes, the gym, the things like that. You can also volunteer your time. A lot of people go to the hospitals, they're holding babies for a couple of hours a day.
They're volunteering at even nursing homes, right to where they are there to. Maybe they play music, maybe they just hang out with people. There's a zillion trillion programs, Boys and Girls Club, Big sister, big Brother, big Sister, all the things where you can give back. I even have seniors fostering kids now because they know that they, they've got these, like, I've got lot I've got life left in me. Why don't I help some other people? Like, I can have a couple kids stay with me and my life is all about taking them to school and all this stuff. In addition to grandkids, there's a zillion ways to do this. Don't limit yourself. This is just the closing of the chapter. This is not the shutting of the book.
You. There are so many ways that I hear people recreate their identity after retirement. But it is inevitable that sometimes you go through a time period where you know, who am I? Is that Zoolander? Who am I?
Is that you?
Zoolander? Classic. So they lose this identity. So there's a lot of ways we want to offset it. I was told there's a really good book.
The no complaining rule says, you can bring the problems, but you don't bring the problem unless you also bring a potential solution.
So I'm saying these are some issues, but these are also some solutions that you want to plan for.
What's another issue?
Boredom. I get this call about eight months, seven months after retirement on the regular.
Raina, I have never been so bored.
What do you think I should do?
Or it's the opposite. Raina, I've never been so busy in my life.
And either one of those calls makes total sense.
One pre filled their schedule, the other one wanted to maybe retire away from something or just said, you know, maybe I'll take this day, which is totally fine, but maybe let's not take this quarter and be doing absolutely nothing for an entire block of time like that. It will make you groggy, it will make you sad. You will feel just bored. And I already mentioned a ton of things you can find your time to do. Even little part time gigs. We got people there working at the rental car place part time, just moving cars around the lot.
We got people that, like I said, they're volunteering.
We have people that they, they like yard work, they like to be out in the yard.
So they've helped some of their neighbors. They just, you know, once a week they go help their neighbors with their yard.
Just different stuff.
This is what we want to plan for.
We know that there's an opportunity to be bored. Let's plan to either fill it or let's not retire yet because you can be bored and broke or maybe you can be bored and not broke.
Either way, we want to plan for what you want to be doing. You got to look and see yourself in the future. And what you want to. What is it you want to See, because it is very common that after retirement happens, the thing you wanted to see is not what you saw.
Now there's financial stuff too. There's some. And that's one of the biggest reasons that we want to make plans, obviously, because my goodness, you're going to live on a fixed income.
And we have somebody says, man, that's great. I wish I could fix my income.
Not that kind of fix. Fix as in it's capped, it's monthly, and it is what it is.
Look, as the Spanish say, and I know what my income is going to be monthly. And that's one of our biggest plans. We want to know what that monthly income is going to be from pension and what that monthly income is going to be from Social Security.
That's primarily for my federal and postal employees. Now obviously other people, we can make different plans, but you've got this monthly take home that you're netting. And ideally, when our, when we do our plans, we want to be sure that it's going to either replicate what you were taking home before or hopefully increase it. If that's not going to work, that's when we start looking to TSP to potentially fix the fixed income, to fix it to be a little bit better.
Now, we'd rather not have a fixer upper for income for sure. But that's biggest, that's one of the biggest part of the plans that we want to do. Be sure that those monthly bills are handled. But we also don't want to teeter the tartar, teeter the tartar too far to where all of our money went to income.
And we don't have enough to grab from when we want to take a trip or reroof the house or buy something for one of the grandkids. And that's a big part of planning. Also, I have people come to me and they've already done something with their money and the advisor to whom they spoke said, hey, we're just going to do this. And they don't necessarily have a distribution plan or they have a distribution plan, but they don't have a bucket of money that they can pull from. So all of their stuff went to income and they don't have a sufficient balance of assets where they can actually grab money to do extra stuff.
So yay, monthly bills are paid. Boo. I can't do anything else.
I mean, I gotta stay here. I can't go unless somebody's gonna cover the bill for grandma. I can't, I can't go because after I pay my bills, I Don't have enough extra to do the extra stuff.
And that's a big part of contributions. That's why when you have the time and you have the income, people say, I can't afford to put into tsp negative. You can't afford not to.
At least your 5% said it and forget it.
But living on a fixed income can be a pretty good deal. You're never stressed about paying your bills.
Problem is, are the bills paid? And then can you do extra stuff? This is a big part of what we, what we want to prepare for in our meetings. What's another one?
We have this feeling of limitation that, that it's not just financial, but obviously what I was talking about before, maybe it's a physical. My body's limiting me, my income's limiting me, so I just don't do it. Let me challenge you to go ahead and plan that thing that you wanted to do. Some people say, I've always wanted to go to Greece. Another person says, I don't really need to travel. I just want to see some of the state parks or the national parks. Never saw Old Faithful. Want to go see Old Faithful?
Make the plan. Make the plan. Even before you retire, you can plan a year ahead. My goodness, Airbnbs are ready, hotels are ready, airplanes are ready, operators are standing by, and you can prepare this. That way you retire and, you know, at least make a skeletal plan. Find the best time of the year to go.
Maybe it's not a trip. Maybe you simply want to go see the Mall of America or, well, that's still a trip. Maybe it's not a trip. Maybe you want to attend something. Maybe you want to go to a theater play, never saw a Broadway show.
Whatever it is for you, you don't have to be limited.
Let's plan it while you have the money. And you know, you do.
Sometimes people feel like after they separate that they say, oh, I, I just want to see what my income is going to be.
And we just planned it. We just did all the math. That's. I just told you what your income is going to be. You're going to make the exact same amount take home as you do right now, or you're going to be a thousand dollars a month short. Are you gonna be 400amonth more than what you are bringing in now while you're working, which is pretty awesome.
But then they still say, no, no, I need to wait and see. Well, we just, we know it's going to be. We did the plan.
Oh, well, I need to wait okay, so we wait, they retire and they say, yeah, it's exactly what you said it was going to be or within 20 bucks or something.
And I just, I didn't think it would be this low. I had this conversation with somebody about two, three days ago. They said, I can't believe it's this, this dollar amount. I didn't know that. I said, hold on now. Hold a ho. Let me bring you back to our notes.
This dollar amount that they're showing you is the exact to the decimal dollar amount that I prepared you for.
That is from leg one only. That is pension. I said, well, you're not getting your second leg yet. That hasn't kicked off. Like waiting on the supplement to start.
I said, no, I just didn't regulate, didn't think it was going to be this low.
And that is a feeling of a limitation. Oh, my goodness.
But, but we plan for it. Listen to your planning session. Listen to what it is. Look at it. Don't, don't let it be white noise. You see what I mean? I've had so many people, like, they just kind of like zone.
And we said exactly what it's going to be. And then it is what we said it was going to be.
And then there's a surprise. Even though the plan was there.
Plan for what you perceive to be a limitation. Plan for that.
And that's a big.
If you hear me saying something again, that's a big part of what we want to talk about.
It's a real thing. This is. My goal, is to prevent the surprise. My goal is to be a verbal amlodipine or hydrochlorothiazide, a verbal blood pressure medicine. Lisinopril. Everybody knows that one. What's another issue? Health and medical bills. Absolutely. I'm concerned for my health insurance.
I'm concerned for my actual health and I'm concerned for what my health problems are going to cost me.
So your monthly, remember your federal or postal health insurance automatically follows you when you retire. As long as you've had it for how long? Five years. As long as you've had that five years of health insurance, you're good to go. It automatically will continue with you. The issue we want to address is Medicare too, because that's another cost. But then there's ways to offset it. You should reach out to yours truly. There are ways to reduce the cost of Medicare Part B, depending on if you live in a place that has one of these available.
And we should definitely look at it. I mean, there's no one Plan for everyone. There's no one way to do something for everyone.
But we, but everyone should consider all options.
So that's one of the biggest things we want to do. Medical bills can definitely be scary in concept, but then when we start reading what our health insurance does, remember there's max out of pockets.
So the most you could spend in a year for most plans is between like six and eight grand like most of them. So you just say, do I have a 6 to $8000 available even in my TSP or my IRA or whatever?
Commonly that answer is yes. Well, there you go. Let's calm your spirit and also let me go back to the whole gym conversation. Let's consider our own wellness.
You know, do those small things every day to take care of yourself. Because if we don't do it for ourselves, there's not a whole line of people waiting to take care of us.
We want to do it for ourselves. Medical bills, they don't, don't let them surprise you. And also, this sounds crazy, but don't be in a rush to pay them.
Sometimes the medical facilities are super stoked to send you a bill because a lot of my, a lot of my baby boomer generations are very hurry to pay, Hurry to pay.
Let's reduce that a little bit. Not eliminate it obviously, but reduce it because we want to check the billing. Let's be sure they build you correctly, let's be sure they're not over billing you, and let's be sure they're not balance billing you. What that means is they billed you and they build the insurance and then they're trying to bill you for what the insurance may have denied you if they didn't bill you the right way in the first place. So then they may get double paid because can, you know, they're more than happy to take your money.
But what about when you need the opposite and you need a refund because they over billed you? Takes them way longer to pay you than the amount of time you think you have to pay them.
So let's get less excited to hurry and pay these.
Obviously you know them, you recognize them, you see it. Check the billing, be sure it's what you got a service for. What if you get a surgery that's not really a surgery? People have had something build as a surgery that was like an injection and some injections are legit considered a surgery. Isn't that crazy? But when they asked about the building, they said, oh, we build that incorrectly. My bad. Let me fix that.
Yeah, let's do that this is the kind of thing that we don't want to be worried about in retirement, but we want to be aware of and take time to manage it correctly.
All right, asset maintenance. So what is an asset? Your home, your car, your stuff.
You've accumulated these items over the years and they have to be taken care of. A lot of people say, yep, time for me to downsize. I had the big old honker stuff, now I need less.
Good luck with that. A lot of times, you know, just the thought of moving is overwhelming. So people just don't do it.
Go ahead and start doing this before retirement. Start your weekend clean outs. Tackle a corner a day or a corner a week and then a room.
And a lot of people in retirement start giving things to their kids and their grandkids. They want to watch them enjoy it the way they did.
We can't take it with us. But a lot of people say, well, I don't want to do the maintenance. I mean, my gosh, I have to look out there and see this grass is 8ft high and I'm only 4ft high or 5ft high. I got to go mow this thing.
There's patio homes that have a tiny little patch. There's condos. A lot of my seniors consider renting. They're like, I'd rather have no maintenance. I'm just going to go rent a little condo because I'm the one that goes to my grandkids house. They don't really come to me. There's a zillion ways to look at this paradigm, but that's one of the biggest concern. I got to take care of this house. I have to paint the walls and I have to, you know, be sure that the floors look good. Some of this stuff, it's worth considering and that's a big thing. After retirement, be sure you're happy with your space.
I hear, and I'm telling you stories that a lot of things I'm saying, these are not original thoughts. These are. These are things that my people, my members, my employees, my retirees, my clients tell me I want to downsize. I'm going to go live in a Barndominian with my kids. I want a condo. I'm going to rent.
I'd rather take the equity out of my house and use it and have a buffer than to have this money in a brick that I can't squeeze anything out of the brick.
I'd rather get an rv. I got some kids, some families, retirees that they rent a storage unit or they have Their stuff at their kids garage and they just live in RV and they got the RV and they're just, they live in it or they put the RV on their kid's house, on their kid's property.
That's assuming you got the kid with the land. It's a pretty good, you know, so you need those kind of kids. I'm just kidding.
These are just thoughts, ideas, things that you want to consider. Because when you retire, look around, look around your house, your space and see how you feel about it.
If you're going to start looking, look while you can move, look while you can handle it. Look while there are options. And then maybe there's no options. Keep on the lookout, you know, you got to take care of it. Is it the right car? Can you get into the car very easily if your body starts falling apart? There's a zillion things to consider.
Regret is one of the biggest ones. Now we've all seen the tattoo that says regert and the guy says you don't have any regrets? Nope. Not one letter? No, not any.
Well, this is part of planning to prevent the surprises and mistakes and the regret or the regert. And we want to.
I think it's impossible to not have any regrets, but I would like us to have as few as possible.
The biggest ones are money. What did I do with my money? Am I very happy with how this income is set up? Am I very happy with how I have access to my money? How I've set up these two different plans or three or four different plans?
Did I set up an inheritance? Fast forward. I had somebody come in the office the other day, says I'm paying RMDs and I, I want to pay less taxes. How can you help me? It's like, well, you're here now, you're already here paying the RMDs so we can only kind of work with that. With what you currently have, how can we fix it? Well, you can just take money out and reduce your balance so your RMDs are less. But you're already doing that.
We can QLAC this thing. A qualified longevity annuity contract that hides a little bit, it reduces the balance a little bit.
And we also have a plan that While you're taking RMDs, the inheritance exponentially increases.
One of them kicks off with a 55 increase to the inheritance, which is very interesting because if I put in a hundred thousand, I pass away. The family gets 200 and something. 205 or whatever. And then it keeps increasing exponentially. So I'm taking RMDs off the 100, but if I pass away, the family gets the 200. It's a pretty good.
Pretty good deal. What did I just do the math. 150. Duh. 55% of a hundred. 155,000.
Pardon that I do math.
Things to consider to prevent regret. Because that's one of the biggest regrets. Like, hey, I did this. And, like, I'm not. I feel like I'm not leaving anything to my family.
The other side of it, what if you. Maybe we don't have heirs. We're not married, don't have any kids.
Let's not leave money to nobody. That's another plan, too. We want to maybe squeeze the benefit out and be sure that you're getting yours.
Numero uno, baby.
If that's the case, let's make a plan to where you know you're going to get the benefit out of this, and there's ways to do it. Absolutely.
Other regrets? I retired too soon. I waited too long to retire. You can't really fix some of that because hindsight's always 20 20.
So try to not allow yourself to truly regret some of these decisions. Not. Not big ones like that. Because I've had people do quite a bit of planning, and then still, you know, two, three years later, like, oh, I. I feel like maybe I should have just kept going a couple of years, but then I wouldn't have had the experiences that I had. I wouldn't have been able to, you know, pick up my grandkids from school every other week. Or I wouldn't have been able to do X, Y, Z. Those are the things worth retiring for.
Those are the things that you cannot replicate. And those are the things that the family or the friends with whom you're making those memories will never forget.
A memory I believe is probably a thousand times more valuable than an item.
Sure, Souvenirs, Cool. A memento. But the memento triggers the memory, and that is what many of my people want to create.
So this is not here to be some online therapy session, but it is meant to be a lot of. Let my hindsight be your foresight. Let the other people from whom I've heard these stories share with you. So they, having walked already through the minefield, can be your guide through it. So you don't walk on the proverbial, you know, shell that could cause a problem.
So many things. So many things. Hey, I've got this money now. Let me start giving it to my family now.
Watch them Enjoy it. Hey, I've got this money now. My church needs something, let me give it to them. We get a tax break for that. So that's, duh, let's do some of that.
Hey, I've got this money now.
Let me.
Let me save some animals. Let me save some people. Let me foster some kids. Let me. There's a zillion things you can do that will make the world a better place.
And your retirement just might be the chapter page turn that you needed to see some of these other things that you can be doing now. Don't let this be all happiness and rainbows.
If we're going to be running out of money, let's make that plan before we do so. We don't want to do that. That fixed income issue, if this is you, if some of these regerts. I'm sorry, I think I'm funny. If some of these regrets affect you, if some of these issues affect you, or if you want to prevent some of these issues, reach out to myself and my team. 850-450-6500. We can meet with you, plan with you, help prevent some of these things.
I don't think any plan is perfect because even the perfect plan has life that can be a wrench to it.
But I think if we start putting some of these items into the plan, retiring seems a lot less daunting and a lot less empty, a lot less lonely and a lot less full of regrets. Look forward to talking with you to make a plan to.
To hear some good stories from you. That's the part that I really love is hearing people say, hey, Raina, I did what you said and it worked. It's great. Hey, Reyna, remember that person that told you to do this? Well, tell them I'm doing it and life is good.
Those are the kind of stories I want to make. Give me a call, we'll make a story.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to Reyna Retirement. With a strong commitment to ethical standards, Raina works hard to find the right solution for each individual or family who reaches out for advice. To contact reina directly, call 850-450-6500. That's 850-450-6500. Or to reach the team at American Federal Benefits consultants, call 1-800-872-8857. That's 1-800-872- 8857. You can also go online to AmericanFederal.org not affiliated with the United States Government. Opinions expressed are subject to change without notice. These opinions are not intended as investment advice, nor do they predict future performance of any product. All information provided is believed to be from reliable sources. However, we make no representation or warranty as to the accuracy of any statement. The information is intended to be educational in nature and does not provide a guarantee or specific result. All copyrights and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. American Federal Benefits Consultants is an independent organization, not a government agency or affiliated with the Federal government or any state government. The terms csr, fers, fegli, and FEHB are all registered trademarks of the US Office of Personnel Management. American Federal Benefits Consultants, agents, consultants, or any independent contractors do not provide tax, legal, or investment advice and do not engage in the solicitation or sale of securities. Consult with your tax advisor or attorney regarding specific situations.
