Simple Success Podcast - When Can I Retire?
This is financial life coaching from a happiness perspective, coaching. You are awakening. Napoleon Hill tells a story about it taking years after his famous discussion with Andrew Carnegie, before he actually started writing what eventually became thinking Grow Rich, he called the end of those years his awakening, and you are awakening, and I'm working on balancing your successful investing with overcoming fear and other psychological hurdles. Now, does this not fit your idea of common sense? Well, let me tell you this. If you want to pursue common sense, then you have to be prepared for common results. It's okay to not be great at first, you will never be great until you start. This is financial life coaching from a happiness perspective, coaching happiness, you are awakening.
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Napoleon Hill tells a story about it taking years after his famous discussion with Andrew Carnegie, before he actually started writing what eventually became thinking Grow Rich, he called the end of those years his awakening, and you are awakening, and I'm working on balancing your successful investing with overcoming fear and other psychological hurdles. Now, does this not fit your idea of common sense? Well, let me tell you this. If you want to pursue common sense, then you have to be prepared for common results. It's okay to not be great at first, you will never be great until you start in that spirit. Today's episode is when can I retire? This has been asked in nerd-wallet, The Motley Fool Vanguard and even Forbes magazine. But I'm not even getting into Social Security retirement age. That's a different topic. You can go to www.ssa.gov, if you want the government's help with that, and of course, I can help explain it. But as I said, that's a different topic, at least for today. Your age does not matter. By the way.
People ask, when can I retire? If I was boring, your ex, that does not matter. It could change your expectations about some things, of course, but it's not the be all end all in the decision world. a preacher's four-year-old son dies, then he meets him in heaven. The boy reports the true nature of heaven, family, friends, animals and celestial beings. Is this book factor fantasy? Oh, wait, that's a book called when is heaven for real? Now in some people's thinking, when can I retire? And when is heaven for real? The kind of the same thing.
But let's get past that for now, when to retire can be a complicated question. Mostly because it depends on many factors. The biggest step you or anyone could take toward getting to this goal successfully, is to make it simple and fun and done. Let's get on with some of the things to remember about today's topic, which again is when can I retire? The first one is your making it too hard. Don't distract yourself, don't do this. The answer to When can I retire requires matching your expected income with your expected expenses while having a contingency plan? Oh, it does not.
That's roughly equivalent to Your call is very important to us. Let's examine both the financial and then non-financial reasons for retiring. First, the financial reasons or at least the ones you should have, when I say should have, I mean, as opposed to thinking often repeated by well, meaning people instead of thinking you need to get yours while the getting's good, we need to think what we could do with our wealth, our financial wealth, or our mental health perfectly that will help others. What can we do to preserve or even create a legacy? Our focus on success must be the things that make us happy things that involve having choices, the way we do this, you get to decide not only when you're going to retire, but what your lifestyle is going to be like when you do and even where that will be, you went to pursue things to have fun with whether that's family or children or travel or places to get there, there's a few things you'll have to learn. Maybe you've already learned them, and we just need to connect the dots. That's fine, too.
In fact, it's all good. Now, the really important non-financial reasons, okay, this is kind of an overlap into some financial reasons. Like you have to be able to support this or you have to be able to send your kids to college or you have to be able to retire in a certain place here or fill in the blank. I'll be happy to answer those questions. Specifically, lots of financial people talk blindly about having a budget without even a tiny nod toward the fact that doing a budget. Doing almost anything involving math is for most people, not their idea of a good time. All these things are complex and hard and something that you don't want to do. We're going to turn that around in coming episodes. We're dedicated making something really necessary into something that's not a problem. Why? Because it is fun. Remember, this is financial life coaching from a happiness perspective, coaching heaviness. Having control is what makes you happy. What factors affect when you're going to do this? Do you have to reassess your lifestyle? Is that good or bad? How will you compensate for inflation? Have you prepared for the unknown? This is all about your focus and your busy schedule and your willingness to replace bad habits. With good habits, it's reaching very simply into the realm of habits where we're going to form a 1% better approach. In the future, I'll dedicate an entire podcast to the 1% approach.
What I want you to understand right now is the result or the goal, after that's in place will introduce the system, you need to reach the goal. When you do this, you will have a fun lifestyle and a fun path to get there. In the television, cartoon versions of the peanuts characters, the occasional parent characters, always off screen have voices which sound like trumpets, representing stern reminders of adult things. I'm pretty sure lots of people will hear well-meaning investment and budget ideas just like that, like trumpets of doom or something, and then they wonder why people don't want to do it. Hello. When your goal is a happy life. Where does someone yammering about inflation fit in? Really don't misunderstand.
There are a lot of important questions, and we can't be ignorant of any of them. But what we don't need is reasons to not take action. None of us needs any help failing at something. Instead, we need to picture the long-term goal and start to faithfully follow the steps day after day until we suddenly in air quotes reached the goal. If we overshoot, well, let's go to we'll just have more with which to do something else. overcompensate and it will be fine. So yes, do it. Just be slow, careful, and patient. Here's a great personal example. I have this idea that when I decide to get serious about something, the first thing I should do, no matter what anyone else says is so stupid in the detail. I am in the process of learning how to turn things from being hard to being easy in a mindset, not in the underlying reality of the difficulty of the task simply in how I think about it. Remember, as a man thinketh specifically, in this case, I could decide that it's just too overwhelming. There are just too many factors. What happens to Texas? What if I, what if he What if she What if it? What if, or I could calm down and make a decision and plug onward, letting the stress go? And realizing that I could change my decisions and my direction at any time? You're usually far better off doing something with the attitude that you can fix it than you are standing still in fear of what if I turn the question around this time into a statement? A question, what if becomes the statement? Yes, I will. It's flipping the script, which we talked about a lot. haven't done that everywhere yet. Don't feel bad. We all need to do this every day. Remember, this is financial life coaching from the happiness perspective, coaching happiness, we've got a few pieces coming up here to both reinforce and enhance these ideas. In the past, I've always just written off my tendency to fall into those holes as being just something I do. That's a form of letting go, of course. But as you'll see, it's better to bring on experts to do the enhancing part followed by questions from all of you.
And to remind you, everyone listening can head to that voice message link in the show notes to record a voice message for a future podcast. Anyway, to wrap up the story. When can I retire? The first thing I do with anybody on coaching is to really simplify that question. In the last podcast, I mentioned that I like other financial advisors, one of which I used to be could give you a 100-page report answering that question in dozens of ways with really great graphs that would put you to sleep. Instead, I only need to know how old you are right now, and about how much you need for everything in a month. That's it. Then I explained my thinking to make sure we're on the same page. Can you do it? Yes, you will. That's part of changing your thinking, which we'll get into later, sooner if you want me to notice that I am being repetitive in addition to being positive.
The Psychology concept behind that is just like last week, the familiarity principle, also known as the mere exposure effect. I've linked to that in the show notes. Now, since you want more of this, you start by subscribing and I told you why all podcasts where you just subscribed, then you pick your goal, then you start doing it. We know you need help. We have one on one coaching for you. You have to take the first steps though. And the biggest one is your attitude. If you love and follow what we're doing here, then when asked for anything you think and say only one thing, and that is Yes, I will. Next week, we're going to look at another concept. And that is this is a test. This is only a test. I don't know how old you guys are, it really doesn't matter. But back in the 60s and 70s there was a programming break that was a test of the Emergency Broadcast System.
It was a way to test the ability, at least in theory of the government to get our attention focused on a major disaster such as a hurricane or tornado or a nuclear war. This usually involves broadcasting atone for 30 seconds that would presumably have been replaced with specific instructions in a real case. Obviously, there wasn't a real case because you're listening to this podcast, but then it was key for them to follow that tone. With the announcement that this is a test. This is only a test they always finished up by an announcing that we will now return to our regularly scheduled programming.
Next week, we're not going to return to our regularly scheduled programming. Rather, we're going to keep learning more about how to move beyond such limitations. We're going to bring this into the world of investing. It's going to be a great episode. But for now, remember, all you need to do is practice after which you'll get good glasses per se jar. I'll appreciate it.