Today we’re going to talk about the top retirement concerns of people who are approaching retirement. Hey, it’s important for you to know what the top concerns are for people who are approaching retirement, especially if you are, if one of those. If you are soon to be retiring, we call it the red zone. We call it the time that you’re just about to score that retirement and you’re able to walk out of the job and you’re happy, you’re going to go have a great retirement. What are the major things that people are going through? And if nothing else, maybe this YouTube podcast, however you’re watching this or listening to this, maybe it will help you understand that you’re normal. Now, nobody wants to be average, but nobody wants to be abnormal as well. So let’s talk about the top retirement concerns that people who work with people who are about to retire are having.

And I’m a retirement planner, so I was very happy to realize that I can solve the problems of the number one, because the number one concern for people who are about to retire is they have a concern for financial security. They just want to make sure because when you walk out and you retire and they give you a party, or maybe they don’t give you a party or they give you flowers or whatever they do. When you are no longer working, you really are self-employed. And the resource, the will that you have to draw upon is the resources that you’ve created over the time that you’ve been working, your 401(k), your IRA, your pension, your Social Security. Whatever you’ve built, that is what you’re drawing from for the rest of your life. So people have a great deal of financial concerns.

And the number one concern is running out of money. Rutgers University did a study, it’s about eight years ago now, and they found out it was pretty funny. People under 55, their major concern, their biggest fear in life was not dying. Their biggest fear in life was public speaking. The people that were 58 years of age and older, and I don’t know what happened in the survey to the 56 and the 57-year-olds. But people 58 years of age and older, their number two concern was dying. Their number one concern was running out of money before they passed away because we’re living a lot longer. As a whole, we have a lot less pensions than the previous generation had, that annual income that just paid you a gradual, guaranteed increasing income for the rest of your life through a pension through work. And we are historically lower on the amount of money that we’ve got saved for retirement.

So, the number one financial concern is running out of money before you run out of time. The second concern is investment risk. I mean, I used to love roller coasters. I’ve said that on previous shows, but now I don’t love them anymore because I just can’t take the ups and downs. Well, when you’re in retirement, it’s really tough to take the ups and downs of the market if you’re continuing to do the same thing that you’ve always done to get you to the point. When you’re 25 years old, who cares if the market goes up or down because if it’s down, it’s a great time to buy. If it’s up, your stuff is up, your investments are up. So it’s all a good thing. But when you’re 65 years old and you start taking money out of your retirement and the market goes down, you have to take more units or more shares or whatever you’re invested in, you have to take more out because it’s at a lower value.

So investment risk are a real concern. We used to look at the market and we’d look at it year-to-year, and then we started looking at it month-to-month, and then we looked at it week-to-week and day-to-day. And now you can look at it through the day and it can be up 300 at one point and down 300 the next point. So investment risk are a really big concern. And I think one problem with that just to maybe give a solution at this point, one problem with that is people still are invested highly at risk in the market. And so therefore, they do have to watch it. And they are concerned because unlike a 25-year-old, they don’t have 40 years until they need it. They need it now. So investment risk are a real big concern.

Another thing is Social Security. So many people are afraid. The biggest question, and we do social security workshops in the areas of our physical offices all the time. Every week we’ve got a Social Security workshop going on somewhere. And the biggest concern is, could Social Security go broke? Absolutely, it could. They’ve got to change it. Or by 2034, they’re telling us now, “Social Security may go broke.” Well, that’s an average according to the survey. The average survey is about 40% of the income a retiree gets in the United States. So wow, if 40% could go broke or 40% could drop down to 30% is all they’re paying you, if they have to cut it down to 75%, that becomes a real concern. Now, in addition to financial concerns, people when they approach retirement, they have health concerns.

And a lot of this, and this is just 28 years of experience from having people in my office. A lot of this has to do with their still caring for 85, 90 and 95-year-old parents who are still here. As I’m shooting this show, I just got off the phone one hour ago with a lady who is down in this area. She watched our TV show and she’s been here for six weeks because her 85-year-old mother fell and broke her hip, and she’s been caring for her for the past six weeks. So when you’re in that red zone about ready to retire, you’re not only concerned about “Am I going to run out of money?” And it could cause you to run out of money faster. “But what happens if I have health issues because my parents did or I know other people who have had health issues?” So there’s a lot of things. They are the general healthcare issues.

How am I going to get healthcare? When I call to get healthcare now, people tell me it takes six weeks to get an appointment. And if I’ve got something urgent and something I really need to get care for, how am I going to get that care sooner rather than later? It’s the normal day in, day out, week in, week out, healthcare concerns that people have as they grow older because by and large, unless you go quickly, you’re going to have healthcare concerns at the very end stages of your life. And you might also have long-term care issues where your family can’t take care of you. And so therefore, they have to put you into a nursing home or a care facility. So those are the major things that are percolating there in people’s minds as they approach retirement. And again, we’re just saying, “Are you normal?”

Because if you say, “Well, I’ve got those same concerns,” that’s exactly what we’re presenting here is to tell you you’re normal, but you can care for it. You say, “Well, what do I do?” Well for Medicare, Medicare is going to take care of a lot of your health issues. But for long-term care, Medicare is not going to help you with that other than about 21 days is all they will help you. So what you’re going to need is either a long-term care policy, which are pretty exclusive and pretty hard to get. Or within your whole portfolio of your retirement assets, you need to have a plan as to “That’s the money that I’m going to use, that’s the money we are going to use if we face long-term care issues or long-term care needs.” Now the third thing, not only financial concerns but health issues, but when people start to approach retirement, they’re concerned, and these all somewhat work together.

They’re concerned with maintaining their lifestyle. In other words, they say, “I don’t want to earn enough money or save enough money for retirement and have a retirement plan where I feel constricted.” Now, there’s some people that come to us and to God be the glory, they’ve just got more money than they’ll ever spend in their lifetime. You want to be friends with them, and you want to be relatives with them, close relatives. And then there’s some people that come to us. Yesterday I was on the phone with a lady, and she just needs to work as long as she can, save as much as she can because she hasn’t done that up until now, and she’s 65 years old next month. So there’s a lot of people that are on both ends. Not much of a chance of a great retirement, just almost anything they can do.

But the middle of that is a constricted retirement. And a lot of people say, “We’ve saved some, we don’t know if we’ve saved enough. And so therefore, we are concerned about do we have enough money coming in? Will we have enough money coming in that we’ll be able to maintain our lifestyle?” That’s related to the first thing. We talked about financial concerns. But they also have concerns, “Will my health maintain itself? Will I be able to still be healthy, so that I can maintain the lifestyle I want to have?” That’s the second thing we talked about. So here’s the thing. I’ll go over one more time. I’ve said this many, many times. But when you are in retirement, you need to have a plan so that when you first retire, you’re probably going to be healthier than you’ll ever be in the future.

You’re probably going to have more money than you’ll ever have in the future. So that’s the go go stage. You better go to Europe, you better go to Bora Bora, you better go to the Seychelles and watch the greatest snorkeling in the world over there. If that’s what your deal is, “You better get her done,” as the comedian says because that’s the go-go stage. And if you’re not careful, you’ll end up going and sliding into the slo go stage where your lifestyle, you want to maintain it, but you just don’t feel like it or you don’t have the health for it. And then if God gives you a longtime to live on this earth, you’ll slide into the no go stage where you just don’t go anywhere, you’re just there. And it’s okay to know that those stages are coming, but you certainly don’t want to sit around and not have a plan and be feel so constricted with what you’re getting in the middle there.

You don’t have far more than you’ll ever need or far less than you’ll ever need, but you’re constricted. You got to really, really watch it close and be careful. And a lot of times, that’s more nerve wracking than either one of the other sides. So being able to maintain your lifestyle is important. Hopefully, I’ve said something that you like, financial concerns, health issues, maintaining your lifestyle.

If you have any questions, you can shoot us an email at info@mosleywealthmanagement.com. If you’re watching or listening to this and you’re in Southern California, you can go to mosleywealthmanagement.com. And you can come to some of our seminars where we talk about Social Security, we talk about something we haven’t mentioned so far, taxes, and then we have a retirement masterclass. And we have a lot of people who sign up online and then they meet us live at those classes. So we’d be welcome to have you come there, or you can call us 714-421-4288. Reach out to us. We’ll help you in any way we possibly can. But today, we’ve been talking about the top retirement concerns of people who are about to retire.