65, is that the magic number to retire? I don’t know. Might be different for you. Some people come into our offices, and they say, “I want to retire now.” There are a lot of reasons they say that. I’m going to discuss those reasons, and share some thoughts that might impact you and might help you make a decision of, do I retire now, or do I wait?

One big reason that people are coming into our offices and saying, “We want to retire right now,” is a health reason, and it’s not because they have a problem with their health. A lot of people are coming in and they’re having the wisdom to say, “Hey, my health is good right now. I’d like to retire right now.” Lifespan from birth to death is about 79, but if you reach the age of 60, you’re likely to live well into your 80s. Well, that sounds like a long time if you’re 20 years old, but if you’re 60 years old, you’re thinking, “I only have 15 years left. I only have 20 years left. How many of those years are really going to be years where I’m healthy, I’m wealthy, I’m wise, I’m able to go do things and enjoy things,” so you may want to go after it.

And here’s another big reason I’m seeing right now, all kinds of things are happening in the corporate world right now. Companies are selling. This company’s selling to this company, this company’s gobbling up this company and they’re merging and all kinds of things.  I have so many people coming in to talk to us and they say, “You know what? My company sold. My boss changed. I don’t like my company. I don’t like my boss. I don’t like the people that I go to work with. It used to be such a pleasure to go to work, and now it’s really a burden to get up and go to work.” Well, what’s that going to do to your health over a period of time? It’s probably going to make you older faster from a health standpoint. So a lot of people are looking at that health reason and they’re saying, “Hey, I want to retire now because my health is good and I want to make sure that I get those retirement years in and I have a full retirement of enjoyment before I get to those years where I can’t do anything.”

What’s the biggest problem? The biggest problem is you need to make sure that you can pay yourself during that time, because remember, after you walk out of that employment, you’re self-employed, and the self-employment comes from whatever you’ve saved up, whatever you’ve made in your 401k, your IRAs, and all of that stuff now becomes something you draw on as you’re self-employed for the rest of your life. So if you want to retire now for a health reason, like almost any other reason, you need to make sure that you’re financially able.

Many people come in talking about the financial side and saying, “We think we have enough money to retire.” It’s amazing that as I shoot this show, within the past two weeks I’ve had two different couples come in and both of them, one was 54, the other was 53, the 54 and the 53, one had been laid off from a job and the other one had decided that maybe they didn’t like that job anymore; the other 54 and 53, they were just winding down to what they hoped was close to the end. And they came in with the question, “Are we financially independent enough just to cut the strings right now?” The couple that had been laid off and their job was winding down, “Do we need to go look for another job, or can we at 54 and 53, can we go into retirement?”

That’s really where you need a financial plan. There’s so much stress. Do you have enough money in the stack? How’s it going to be taxed? Because if it’s going to be taxed, it’s not all of your money. How’s it going to turn into income, and is that income guaranteed for the rest of your life? These are the considerations that you need when you’re getting there and you’re getting to what most people do, and most people ask when they come into our conference room, “Can I retire?” I always say that really means several other questions. Can I afford to retire? Do we have enough income for the rest of our life if I retire? Number three, is that income going to last as long as we do? And number four, is that income going to last whenever there’s one of us left if you’re married.

So all of those financial questions really have to do with the second reason that a lot of people are retiring now. They feel like they’re financially independent enough to do that. Are you? That’s probably where you need some kind of financial planner who’s familiar with the area, a professional who’s helped people retire for years, sit down with you and instead of just you… You’ve been a financial genius so far in many cases. You stored that money in the 401k and the 401k is your plan and the 401k is your account and the 401k is your advisor. Now you really need an advisor because you’re not just taking what you’re making and putting some of it away; you’re taking what you’ve made and you’re starting to use some of it every single month.

So are you financially independent enough to retire? Sometimes we get the privilege of telling people yes, and sometimes we get the privilege and the awesome task of telling people, “No, you probably need to work a couple of more years.” You also need to work with somebody who’s not just a professional who can tell you whether you can retire or not, but somebody who’s strong enough to say if it’s not feasible, that you don’t need to retire right now, you might need to get another job, or you might need to work for a couple of more years.

A third reason people come in and they want to retire now is they have a dream. Walt Disney said something like, “All our dreams can come true if we have the courage just to pursue them.” I’ve had people in 29 years of being a financial planner come in and say, “I might need to work a little while longer. I think I have enough. Can you help me decide that because I have this dream I want to pursue?” And it may be a pleasure dream, it may be another vocational dream. I have one person right now who’s been very successful in the last three years. He retired from a major aircraft builder locally here in our area in southern California, and he went out and started his own consulting firm. And the last time he came in, he said, “I’m happier now. Nobody’s telling me when to get up, when to go to bed, when I can go on vacation, when not, and I’m making twice as much money as I’ve ever made before.” Why? Because he’s pursuing his dream.

And it might not just be monetary. It might be you have a dream of visiting… One person told me recently they have a dream of visiting all of the national parks in the United States. What a great dream. You can check off all of them. He was asking me how many I’ve been to and what were my favorite parks because he was building a list. He would go to a certain area… His goal is to go to a certain area each year and just visit all of the national parks in that area. That’s his dream.

Other people have family dreams. They want to take their family places. Now all of that stuff costs money, so therefore, if that’s your dream to either start your own business and maybe retire early, retire now, or to go and do things with your family, or if you have a dream of your own to go visit all the national parks, you need to make sure that you’re going to be able to fund yourself for the rest of your life. You fund your fun, so to speak, and you need to make sure that it’s there for you to pursue your dreams. But I’ll guarantee you, when you’re on your deathbed, you’ll never sit down and say, “I really regret pursuing my dreams,” because pursuing your dreams is something that’s going to keep you alive longer and enrich the years that you have.

So number four, let’s talk about instead of a reason you might want to retire now, a reason you might need to retire now, and I would call that family obligations. Recently a survey was done by Johns Hopkins University, and they found that 18 to 41 million Americans are giving somebody else care, depending on what level you look at, giving someone else care in America right now. And a lot of people that have to retire need to retire because they just need to give care to someone else. It may be a spouse, if you’re married or if you have a partner, or someone that you’re living with that’s just a good friend and you guys have decided to live together so that you can share expenses. It may be a child. A lot of people that we deal with have special needs children. If you’ve got a special needs child, many times that’s going to be care you’re going to have to give for the rest of your life, and all of that care gets more and more and more expensive, and the family obligation need might come into play where you need to retire for just that family obligation.

I’m also seeing more and more people be totally responsible because of our society and the way it is right now for their grandchildren. And their grandchildren, it’s not just something they’re financially responsible for their grandchildren, but they are physically responsible for the care of the grandchildren. I know from when our children go out of town and they leave their children with us, grandchildren were meant to be grandchildren, not re-children for grandparents, I promise you. Because if you want to get tired, you work a job or even not work a job and you care for your grandchildren all day, and it’ll tire out a grandparent in a hurry. So it’s not just something you may want to do or it might be a desire you have or a dream you have, but it might be something that you want to retire now because it’s just cheaper to take care of the person that you’ve got to take care of than it is to hire it done. Plus, you’re going to probably do a better job of it and it might be financially feasible for you to retire now to take care of family obligations.

So number five, I think it’s a big reason. We’ve touched a little bit on it and some of the others. But you just want to give yourself time. You want to give yourself time for retirement. You want to give yourself time for your grandchildren. You want to give yourself time even sometimes for your great-grandchildren, or you want to give yourself time for your parents. They’re still alive. They’re healthy. You don’t have to care for them. You just want to spend time with them. When you get close to the end of life, you look more at this and say, “What have I spent my time doing? Has it been valuable? Has it been productive?” But when you get close to the end of your life, valuable and productive might change a little bit. It might be the legacy you want to leave. You want your grandchildren to know you.

Many of us have grandchildren that are living out of state. How often do we see them? Well, if we’re working a full-time job and we haven’t retired, probably not that often. When we take off and go there, when they take off and come here, we get to see them, what, two weeks, three weeks out of the year max? But some of you might want to say, “I want to spend time with my children and my grandchildren before I’m gone.” Some of you, I’ve had people take off and they’ve said, “I want to spend time with my parents.” And I said, “Oh, really? Are your parents needing care?” And the answer that came back to me was, “No, I just want to spend some more time in my life with my mom and dad or my mom or my dad who’s still alive.” So what do you value? It all comes down… At this point in life, you’ll get to a point where money’s not the ultimate factor. But money is not what you value so much as maybe spending some time with your parents, your grandchildren, maybe taking care of people in the family, maybe doing the things that you want to do. It all comes down to you.

But I want to make sure and not get away from the fact that all of these things are potential for you, but they may not be possible financially for you. And so underlying all of these things, I don’t want to overlook these things and somebody go off on a tear and say, “Well, I’m just going to do that because that’s my dream.” Can you fund your dream? “I’m just going to do that, I’m going to spend time with all these people because that’s my dream.” Well, have you put enough away so that you can do that? That’s where financial planning comes into play, that all of these things could be possible. They’re all potential. They could be possible, and maybe even probable in your life, but that’s where you need that solid plan in place.

All right, a sixth thing that you might want to consider if you just say, “I want to retire now,” a lot of people just want to travel. They just want to go. I call this the bucket list deal. You’ve got a bucket list. “I want to go to Italy. I want to go to Greece. I want to go to Bora Bora,” okay? “I want to go on an African safari.” Why do I mention those? I’ve got clients who in the last two or three months who’ve done all of those, okay? It’s their bucket list. It’s what they want to do. And I’ll guarantee you, if you’re going to go on a safari in the southern part of Africa, you’re going to probably need to be younger and healthier than you are going to be at 80 or 85 or 90 years of age. So you need to, as the comedian says, get her done if you’ve got a bucket list.

I’ve said for years, and I’ve stolen this from someone else, but they’re the go-go years of retirement where you’re young, you’re healthy, you’re wealthy, you need to travel. You need to get the bucket list done. Number two years are the slow-go years where you just don’t go as quickly anymore. You slow down. You move a lot slower. You can still go some, but not as much as you could during the go-go years. And then if God gives you a long period of time on this earth, there’s the no-go years. So you go from go-go to slow-go to no-go. So travel and adventure number six, the bucket list, the go-go years, get her done. Get out there. Get your bucket list.

Actually, sometimes people have had their nose to the grind so much in saving for retirement, and they’re great at it, and they’ve got large amounts of money. Recently had a couple in the office, $3.8 million, and they’re not spending anything. It’s just continuing to grow. And I told them, “You guys are doing one thing wrong,” and they both looked at me across the table. I said, “You’re not spending enough money, because you need to go.” And this is a couple that just in the past five or six years, all of a sudden, boom, they’ve inherited some money and their money’s grown like crazy. And they’ve never been in this financial position so that they could go have a bucket list. The lady even said, “My bucket list was always to be able to afford groceries at the end of every week,” and she said, “Now, it’s hard for us to get used to this.”

Well, a lot of people get to retirement and the kids are out of the house and the student loans are paid off and the house is paid off, and all of those things are done, and you’ve still got this massive money and you think, “Oh, I’m so afraid we’re going to run out.” That’s where you need a plan. If you don’t have a plan, you’re going to sit around and worry, “Am I going to run out?” If you do have a plan that addresses your income for the rest of your life and guarantees your income for as long as you live, as long as both of you live if you’re married, then you say, “Well, that’s my paycheck. That’s my income. All the rest of this money is my paycheck. I can use that to travel, to have my adventure, to enjoy my go-go years because that’s my play-check.” Your paycheck is taken care of. It allows you to spend your play-check. So a lot of people, you need this.

One guy called me one time, a great story… It sort of sums this whole show up. He said, “Tom…” I was already working with this guy and his wife, and he said, “Tom, can I retire?” And I could hear noise in the background like he was on the road. I said, “Yeah, Ken.” I said, “I’ve looked at your stuff and I know, yes, you can retire.” He said, “Good.” He said, “I’m getting off at Weir Canyon and going home.” He said, “I can’t fight the 91 traffic here where we live anymore.” Okay? Probably you don’t need to retire that now, if you understand what I’m saying. But if there’s some reasons in your life we’ve touched on in this show as to why you should retire now or want to retire now and you want to find out… The bigger question right now before you do anything is find out, could I retire right now? Am I going to run out of income the rest of my life? Am I going to still have enough to have the play-check so that I can go play and have the fun money and enjoy my life? That’s what goes into a plan.

Hey, are you out there and you say, “I want to retire now. I need to find out if it’s feasible for me to retire now”? Well, I’ve done a whole video on that. If you’ll check out our YouTube video, “How to Build A Retirement Plan” it’ll walk you through what a plan looks like and the things you need to address if you want to retire right now. If you want our help on it, go to our website, www.mosleywealthmanagement.com and click on the contact button. And if you liked this information subscribe to our content and you’ll get it notification every week that it’s coming to you. We really do appreciate you. Listen, like I always say, every week if you’ll give me 8, 10, 12, 15 minutes, I’ll do my best to increase your financial knowledge.