SPEAKER 03 : 0:00

Welcome to Retirement Unpacked with Al Smith, owner of Golden Eagle Financial. You want a retirement plan that alleviates your fears about the future so you know your money will last. As a chartered financial consultant, Al Smith will help you find a balance between the risk and reward of the market and the safety of your retirement income. And now, here’s your host, Al Smith.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:25

Welcome to another program of Retirement Unpacked. I’ll have some good information for you today, as I hope to every week. And if you have any questions, contact my office and we can sit down and have a conversation. Or if you have any questions right now, you can call the show and ask them to me right here while we’re talking about it. And the first part of the show, I will be talking about the components of having a retirement plan, because I’ve often mentioned how incredibly important it is to have a retirement plan, and I’ve compared it to a a vacation you wouldn’t go on vacation thursday evening and say to your spouse hey let’s go on take off next week and let’s see if we can’t get some reservations and some flights where do you think you’d like to go that’s not the way most people plan vacations I know I’ve been speaking with a lot of people. I’ve traveled a little bit recently, and I know some people plan vacations like a year ahead, and some of them you need to. Cruises and big things like that require long-term planning. And certainly, retirement is no different. So the longer ahead you plan, the better off you will be. And I’m going to talk about some of those components of a retirement plan, of a good retirement plan, not the least of which is a start date. And depending on where you work and so forth, people work in places where you can qualify for a pension after a certain period of time or people work in places where they have a 401k where the company matches and you can do a few projections and one thing or another to come up with some ideas of when you might want to retire selecting date and I think that’s extremely important because depending on your age right now then you can do a little planning with the help of an advisor or if you have enormous ambition and you want to dive into it yourself you can determine what level of income am I going to need on that date or when I choose to retire and you can use the income level that you have now. And I hate to use rule of thumb, but they say you’re going to need to live on about 80% of your pre-retirement income after retirement. And you want to also factor inflation in there. If you’re living comfortably right now on $6,000 a month, 80% of that is $4,800 a month. But if you’re not going to retire for 15 years, you need to apply an inflation factor to that. And then by working backwards, you can take a look at how much you presently have in savings. what your Social Security is likely to be and see if you are on track. Now, one of the most important components of your retirement plan and one of the most important components of nearly everyone’s retirement with the exception of the extremely wealthy, is Social Security. Because if you have a reasonably good compensating job, and if your spouse has one also, your Social Security benefits can be quite substantial. So making, if you have not already gone on to socialsecurity.gov to take a look at what your benefits are, I would highly encourage that because that can become an extremely important component of your own retirement plan. So again, working backwards, looking at that start date that you want, go on to the Social Security website and assuming you’ll be collecting Social Security at that point, see what your benefits will be. and then do some calculations sit down with an advisor and figure out what do I need to do in order to make that happen so that start date becomes extremely important so you can work backwards how much will I need to save in order to generate this level of income that I’m going to need when I turn 65 or 68 or whatever start date that you choose. So a lot of things to think about. Not only that date, but when that date comes around, are you going to completely sever employment or do you plan to work part-time somewhere? or maybe be a consultant in the same field where you work now. I know a lot of people who work in engineering and IT and high-level business, they often work as a consultant far fewer hours than they were working before, but generating more income than they could make working part-time at Home Depot or something like that. Not taking any of that away from people and so forth, but Some of the people in higher income categories can make significant income after retirement as a consultant. Another big thing in your retirement plan is where do you want to live? And I’ve talked about this. A lot of people that I know with whom I have worked have family members in other parts of the country. And what I suggest is if you have family maybe in the Chicago area, if you’ve already lived there, you probably have some idea what part of that large metropolitan area you might want to live. On the other hand, if you’re thinking of moving to an area where you have not yet lived in order to be closer to children or grandchildren, then I would highly suggest that you rent first for two reasons. You can learn what part of that community would be the best choice to live, and you can also learn if you actually want to live there. at all. Some clients of mine that I worked with after they sold a very nice home they had in Arvada, they moved to one of those retirement communities in Nevada. It’s one of those where everyone drives the golf cart to the grocery store and the bank and everything like that. It was a very nice community. They stayed there less than six months because they had family in another part of the country, in Tennessee, as a matter of fact. And they were fortunate in their timing because they actually made a profit on the sale of their home in Nevada and were able to relocate in Tennessee where they were within 30 minutes of family. A lot of things to think about if you’re thinking about relocating. And so my guidance there is to rent first if you’ve not already lived in that community. Otherwise, you may be faced with buying and selling at a time when the market maybe isn’t all that great. Big question also is what do you plan to do when you retire? Obviously, what not to do is work. You’ll be leaving the workforce, but if you haven’t made specific plans of how you’ll spend your time, then the time will sort of consume you rather than you planning how you want to spend your time. Think in terms of what both you and your spouse, assuming you’re married, may like to do. What kind of things do you enjoy doing now? Would you like to continue those? to a greater degree in retirement. It might involve hiking, skiing, biking, traveling, any of those kinds of things. And if you’re also very much in favor of giving back, think in terms of what are your skills? How can you help those who are less fortunate? For engineers and people like that, they can often be helpful. for younger people who are struggling in school with math. Ways to become a tutor can be extremely helpful for younger people. Hospitals and nursing homes and places like that especially nursing homes, they often don’t get any visitors. About 70% of the people who live in nursing homes get zero visitors. A couple that I know who’s heavily involved in music in our church, they perform concerts in various nursing homes, which is tremendously appreciated among the folks who live there. Because this couple I’m thinking of, they’re only a few years younger than most of the people who live in the nursing homes. So a lot of different ways to give back and to help. If you truly enjoy skiing, Winter Park has a disabled ski program, which would enable you to get discount benefits. tickets yourself in exchange for helping those who are less fortunate and need assistance in order to ski. So a lot of things you can do. There’s another program where adults and children with pretty serious disabilities get the opportunity to ride horses. Obviously, they don’t gallop across the range, but they do get to sit on horses. And they enjoy this tremendously, adults and children with various developmental disabilities. I don’t recall the name of this program, but they do a great job. So there’s an enormous number of places where you can volunteer to be helpful. And what I have found is that the people who do that, they get a great deal of fulfillment and joy even more so often than the people whom they’re helping. Now, as far as the retirement plan, some other components, if you have a pretty long window, if it’s going to be 10 or 15 years or even longer before you retire, make certain that you create some time frames with checks to see if you’re on track. Because if you’re in your 50s and you know you want to retire at 65, Keep reviewing those Social Security benefits. Keep putting into your 401k to the very least to the level that the company matches. And if you’re investing in real estate, I suggest that you take a look at what that’s going to look like once you retire, whether you want to maintain that real estate or or possibly sell it and use the proceeds for some other purpose. So a lot of things to be concerned about, a lot of components to that retirement plan, not the least of which are unplanned but likely events needing long-term care. There’s When you reach 65, there’s about a 50% chance that you will need care longer than 60 days. So knowing how to plan for that, knowing where the money would come from to take care of that, a lot of components to that. Also, some people I know who are retired are caring for parents. There’s also what’s called a sandwich generation where there may be children and parents in your own home, both needing assistance. I know this is not how most people plan their retirement, but that’s why we call those unplanned events. Whole different topic after the break, and we’ll dive into that in just a few moments.

SPEAKER 01 : 13:50

Putting off planning for your retirement another year can cost you tens of thousands. But Golden Eagle Financial can get you back on track to maximize your retirement now. Al Smith of Golden Eagle Financial is a retirement advisor who gets to know you from the very onset. What are your dreams for retirement? What do you want to do when the work is done? Many people want to give back or volunteer or donate time or money. Others might like to travel or learn a new skill. And Al Smith can help make all of these dreams a reality. Whether your dream is giving back to other groups or people, traveling the world, or taking up a new hobby, Al will make sure you’re prepared for the road ahead without financial concerns. He’s a man who has years of experience and can help you make your retirement dreams come true. Contact Al Smith of Golden Eagle Financial on the klzradio.com advertisers page. Investment advisory services offered through Brookstone Capital Management LLC, a registered investment advisor. BCM and Golden Eagle Financial Limited are independent of each other. Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM, but are offered and sold to individually licensed and appointed agents.

SPEAKER 02 : 15:02

Welcome back to the second half of Retirement Unpacked. The next topic, I’ve talked about it before and I will continue to talk about it because I believe it’s extremely important as we move into retirement, as we age. A lot of us have found go out to the parking lot and go to the and you have your keys and you can’t remember where you parked the car. Okay, that is not unusual. That happens to people of all different ages, but as we age a little bit, mental acuity can certainly become a concern. And there’s a lot of things that we can do to make the decline of our mental abilities less significant. And I’ll give first an example, not an example about mental acuity, but an example of the kinds of things that we need to do. um i bicycle i don’t bicycle the lengths that i used to when i was younger but i noticed when i would do some of these longer bicycle rides there were some men like that were in their 40s and some of these events there would be beer afterwards and some of these men in their 40s they would They’ll consume a reasonable amount, but when it came time to ride, they were pretty fit and they could ride long distances. Some of them had a little extra around the middle, but the example I’m making is that’s where the exercise is very much isolated to the legs and the lungs. And the way we exercise our brains is very similar if we do the same thing. But the point I was making about the bicyclists is if one of those who was very fit in, let’s say, riding 60, 80, 100 miles, If he were asked to do 100 sit-ups, that would become very difficult because that’s not part of his exercise regimen. And my analogy here with mental acuity is if you do some things that challenge your mind, but if you do the same things over and over, let’s say you drive somewhere often, Well, what’s highly recommended is that you take a different route each time because it keeps your mind sharp. Just like the exercise analogy, in addition to aerobic exercise like the cyclist, there should be some weight training because that has different benefits. Or there should be some aerobic training that involves different parts of your body. and so forth. And with respect to mental acuity, the more diversity that you can use in exercising your brain, the better off you will be. And I used to give brief classes on memory improvement to service clubs. And one of the things I would often talk about There’s a tremendous book that I read years ago. The name of the book, the title of the book is called Moonwalking with Einstein. Well, that’s kind of a ridiculous title, I would agree. The author is a man named Josh Fior. He’s a journalist. And he spent about a year hanging out with what are called memory athletes. Now, these memory athletes, they have contests where they will do things like memorize an entire deck of cards. And they can do that amazingly quickly. They can also memorize very, very long numbers. And they can also match faces to names. They even have a name for this. It’s called mnemonics. And they also have some terminology. They talk about a memory palace. A great deal of our memory is involved, is spatial. We think in terms of where things are. And one of the authors of a book I’ve read recently, and that’s because many, many years ago, our ancestors didn’t have to worry about memorizing numbers or anything like that, but we had to be careful in our environment. So our memories had a great deal to do with things that are around us. How often have you ever gone to get something and instead of going to the cupboard, you went to the cupboard right next door? Or instead of going to that particular cabinet, you went to the refrigerator, which is right next door to that cabinet? Also something that’s very spatial I found interesting, and there is even research on this, if you go from one room to another in your home to go get something, let’s say you need to go to another room to get a pen and paper. When you walk into that other room, what often happens? You forget what you went in there for. But once you go back to where you were originally, then you remember. And there was some research done that when people pass through a corridor, like going into a different room, somehow that has a tendency to cause us to forget. And this has nothing to do with aging. This was some research they did for people in their 35, 45 years old, all different ages. What they also found is if they went the same distance, but if they did not cross through a corridor, go into a different room, then whatever it is, the memory, the thing they wanted to go after was remembered. I found this fascinating. So what things do we need to do to keep our memory sharp? Well, one of the really, really big things, and there’s a whole book that’s about the benefits of exercise. There’s a book called Spark. The author is named John Rady. He is a physician, and he talks about the research that was done in a school district in suburban Chicago. I believe it’s the Naperville School District. And all of the high school students were required to do vigorous aerobic exercise. I believe they were required to run a pretty good distance every morning before school started. And this was a requirement. And what they found is obviously the obesity rate went down to an incredibly low level. But not long after this program began, the students in this district, this Naperville School District, were tested globally. And globally, that school ranked number seven on the whole planet in terms of science scores. And I’m sorry, number seven on math scores. And they were number one on science scores. And it was largely due to the only thing that was done differently was this enormous level of exercise. And this is found to be extremely helpful for older people to maintain their mental acuity also. And not only aerobic exercise, but they even felt that another article having to do with weight-bearing exercise is extremely important. And the results are incredibly enormous. Weight training, for example, can have benefits for brain health. Some of the research done has been done on rats and so forth, and they find that they go through mazes much more quickly if they’re required to go through some of these exercises. And some of the exercises they get the rats to do, they’ll continue to do those even without a reward so that the exercise itself is providing its own reward. John Rady, the author of this book, Spark, only a small section of it is devoted to maintaining mental acuity. The whole book has talked about how exercise can make it much better to fight depression because of the release of endorphins and things like that. But they talk about the toxins that destroy the brain and some of these toxins. are reduced when people exercise physically. For example, running lowers the blood pressure. That increases blood flow to the brain. Lifting weights helps prevent osteoporosis. And people think in terms of As we get older, our brain doesn’t create any new brain cells. Well, that’s not totally accurate. People who exercise vigorously into older ages, they can actually grow new brain cells. And if that kind of activity is combined with exercising our brain through word games, reading books, socializing, participating, challenging our brains, that in combination with vigorous exercise can keep us very alert well into older ages. Have any of you seen Alan Dershowitz? He’s 85 years old and he’s incredibly sharp. Wow, this 30 minutes went by really quickly. Thank you for listening. God bless you. And let’s continue to pray. For the folks in Israel and our political leaders, let’s hope there’ll be a really safe solution for whatever’s going on there. And again, thank you for listening. Hopefully you’ll be here next week and I’ll hope to have some great information. If you like to have a conversation about your own circumstances as you’re trying to accumulate wealth, safer retirement, call my office at 303-744-1128. Bye now.

SPEAKER 03 : 26:36

But are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents.