Speaker 1: Episode three ninety three, how much to have saved for
Speaker 1: retirement at thirty, forty and fifty.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to
Speaker 2: save money, embrace simplicity, and de liver your life. Here
Speaker 2: your hosts Jen and Jill.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen,
Speaker 1: my name is Jill, and today we are talking about
Speaker 1: how much you should theoretically have saved at retirement for
Speaker 1: retirement at certain ages. We are not going to throw
Speaker 1: random numbers like you should have two extra salary, three
Speaker 1: extra salary. I don't care what your salary is. I
Speaker 1: care what you care about and what you want to
Speaker 1: do with your life.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeow, come at the game.
Speaker 1: You got to You got to make them understand. It's
Speaker 1: not an arbitrary number. It's not an arbitrary calculation. Like
Speaker 1: there are things that you can think about. You don't
Speaker 1: have to know exactly what you want to do in retirement,
Speaker 1: but if you start thinking about who you are now
Speaker 1: and start thinking about what those things cost to be
Speaker 1: who you are, you can start to think about it.
Speaker 4: I still like to have a bit of a metric
Speaker 4: to kind of know, because this is something people don't
Speaker 4: totally talk about because it is a little fluid, but
Speaker 4: still getting some version of a baseline, and I do
Speaker 4: think that we will help you to define what that
Speaker 4: is in this episode. I'm super excited about it. I'm
Speaker 4: excited about these articles. And we also pulled you all
Speaker 4: in the friend letter before we get into those articles.
Speaker 4: So for those of you getting the friend letter, you know,
Speaker 4: at the bottom of it, we always are asking some
Speaker 4: version of a lightning round question. You can answer and
Speaker 4: some and even respond to us give us more information.
Speaker 4: It's a really fun way of engaging. Now we're incorporating
Speaker 4: it into our episodes. So we asked you all how
Speaker 4: much do you have saved for retirement? And the majority
Speaker 4: of you are right in this middle portion of the answers.
Speaker 4: Somewhere between eleven thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 4: is where the majority of you fall. That's a big,
Speaker 4: big span.
Speaker 3: Yeah, most money and numbers.
Speaker 1: Most people are in the eleven you know, eleven thousand
Speaker 1: to fifty thousand, because if you're single, that's going to
Speaker 1: make more sense if your dual income. Our second highest
Speaker 1: answer was one hundred, like one hundred and one to
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand, so that makes more sense
Speaker 1: if you're a dual income household, so that it does
Speaker 1: make a lot of sense. And but we just want
Speaker 1: to normalize. Also, whatever you have saved is good, and
Speaker 1: the only bad thing is if you have if you
Speaker 1: want to have a Rolls Royce in retirement and maybe
Speaker 1: you only have ten thousand saved to forty, that might
Speaker 1: be bad. But the only bad thing about it is
Speaker 1: that you may want to shift away from a Rolls
Speaker 1: Royce and start enjoying toyotas, like that's that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Whatever you have saved is good. Like we got some
Speaker 1: responses feeling like like I feel like I'm so far behind,
Speaker 1: I'm getting closer to pay off my debt and maybe
Speaker 1: investing is not number one on your list right now,
Speaker 1: that's okay as long as you're doing something to improve
Speaker 1: your finances. Don't feel like you're behind, don't feel like
Speaker 1: you don't know enough to catch up or to be
Speaker 1: where you want to be. All this we want to
Speaker 1: normalize and encourage you to do what you can with
Speaker 1: what you have.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this episode is for you. If you're finding yourself
Speaker 4: feeling as though I don't know, am I behind, but
Speaker 4: based on what So let's define it for our different
Speaker 4: life stages.
Speaker 1: But first, if you need more of this outside of
Speaker 1: the front, outside of the Frugal Friends podcast, get the
Speaker 1: friend letter Frugal friendspodcast dot com. We are talking about
Speaker 1: investing stuff. We mostly talk about freebies, savings tips, smart
Speaker 1: buying practices, so like not deals, but how you can
Speaker 1: get really good quality stuff without paying the overage of
Speaker 1: you know, hypie brands and social media viral nonsense.
Speaker 4: Which those things are going to help you save both
Speaker 4: now and in the future. And those are practices and
Speaker 4: habit formation that will carry with you into retirements. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there's benefit across the board and friend.
Speaker 1: Letter absolutely Frugal Friends podcast dot com. And if you
Speaker 1: are looking for more information about saving for retirement, we
Speaker 1: just did a couple really good episodes about your roth Ira.
Speaker 1: We're doing this roth Ira challenge and this is kind
Speaker 1: of the wrap up of that roth Ira challenge. We
Speaker 1: want you to feel confident in saving so that you
Speaker 1: can take advantage of this relatively low maximum threshold investment
Speaker 1: like tax advantage opportunity, so you do not get twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three backs. So few things in life have a
Speaker 1: grace period. Your IRA is one of them, and so
Speaker 1: we want you to take advantage of it in the
Speaker 1: capacity that you have. So we have those and then
Speaker 1: we also have episodes like two ninety one what to
Speaker 1: Do if you have nothing saved for retirement and episode
Speaker 1: two seventy five Understanding your Workplace Retirement Accounts with Delian Barrows.
Speaker 4: So this first article, I'm so stoked on it. I
Speaker 4: found it fascinating. It's from retire Guide and it's called
Speaker 4: average Retirement Spending in twenty twenty three Typical Expenses and
Speaker 4: Budgeting Tips. The whole point with this article was to
Speaker 4: help us understand average spending habits of current retirees so
Speaker 4: that we can inform our own retirement savings plan avoid
Speaker 4: accumulating debt. I think for many of us, retirement can
Speaker 4: feel so far off. We don't really know who we're
Speaker 4: going to be, what we're going to need, what the
Speaker 4: economy is going to look like, and so that can
Speaker 4: be hard to make a plan to save because what
Speaker 4: will I even need, what will inflation look like by then?
Speaker 4: How much money is going to be a worthwhile amount?
Speaker 4: And while a lot of that is still shielded from
Speaker 4: our understanding, it is helpful to learn from those who
Speaker 4: have gone before us, those who are there right now.
Speaker 4: And it may not be an exact description of what
Speaker 4: it's going to look like for us, but it is
Speaker 4: again one of those launching points of well, what are
Speaker 4: they doing? It's probably not going to look too much
Speaker 4: different for me, and or I can make my own
Speaker 4: decisions to make it look a little bit different for me.
Speaker 4: But not that the exact amounts of money are going
Speaker 4: to work for us. But to be able to talk
Speaker 4: in some of these percentages and where is the majority
Speaker 4: of money going, how is time being spent? Is really helpful.
Speaker 4: So they gave this first little statistic that, according to
Speaker 4: the Bureau of Labor Statistics, on average, people ages sixty
Speaker 4: five and older spent about fifty two thousand dollars in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty one, which is fourteen thousand dollars less than
Speaker 4: the average spending of the general population. So sick about
Speaker 4: sixty seven thousand dollars is what the average population spent.
Speaker 4: I found that so interesting that in retirement people are
Speaker 4: spending a little bit less than kind of what the
Speaker 4: general population is doing, which I think we often assume, like, oh, yeah, well,
Speaker 4: I won't need as much. But I always get nervous
Speaker 4: about that, like you might need more though than what
Speaker 4: you needed throughout the majority of your life. But it
Speaker 4: does look like even the spending kind of slows down,
Speaker 4: hits the slower pace.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, at this point, all of your kids
Speaker 1: are out of the house and out of college, so
Speaker 1: they should be financially stable and on their own. You're
Speaker 1: not going as many places, like, you're not taking as
Speaker 1: many family vacations, and when you do take vacations, they
Speaker 1: are a fraction of the price because you're usually not
Speaker 1: bringing everyone every single time. So yeah, like I can
Speaker 1: really see, like so obviously it's you know, twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one spending is very different from twenty twenty four. But
Speaker 1: the article suggests that you're spending in retirement will be
Speaker 1: about eighty percent of your annual pre retirement It says income,
Speaker 1: but I would say, like, what is eighty percent of
Speaker 1: your pre retirement spending? Probably, so you can take if
Speaker 1: you're looking at your budget, looking at your ninety day
Speaker 1: transaction inventory, a very good baseline is to average out
Speaker 1: your monthly spend and then go eighty percent of that.
Speaker 1: So that's going to be like a really you know
Speaker 1: that's that's going to be a bare minimum for you
Speaker 1: to start with.
Speaker 4: But then they give this infographic of the typical spending
Speaker 4: in retirement and at that kind of fifty five thousand
Speaker 4: dollars mark was the average retirement income and average retirement
Speaker 4: expenses was fifty two thousand dollars. So this is really
Speaker 4: painting a paycheck to paycheck kind of picture that only
Speaker 4: leaves three thousand dollars annually leftover on average. That's not
Speaker 4: a lot of cushion month to month with this, so
Speaker 4: what's coming in is.
Speaker 3: Kind of going out.
Speaker 4: And then they break it down into well, where is
Speaker 4: the money going? And this was most intriguing to me
Speaker 4: that even in retirement, for on average these retirees, thirty
Speaker 4: percent of their retirement expenses was housing costs. And idiot
Speaker 4: thought was, I thought in retirement you'd have your house
Speaker 4: paid off And they said that, yeah, right, sometimes they don't.
Speaker 4: But they were like, even with those people who had
Speaker 4: their houses paid off, there still they still broke it
Speaker 4: down into all the different types of expenses, so from
Speaker 4: housing supplies, household operations, that did seem like they added
Speaker 4: in other types of lodging. So I don't know if
Speaker 4: that means they're they're adding in like lodging on vacation
Speaker 4: or different types of things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not one dred percent, but.
Speaker 4: Your taxes are increasing, You're still paying all of your
Speaker 4: utilities on your housing, so it still represented thirty percent
Speaker 4: of their income.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is interesting.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I agree one hundred percent with
Speaker 1: all of the things they included in quote unquote housing costs.
Speaker 1: But for a lot of people, the house that you
Speaker 1: buy is not the house you stay in for thirty years.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people will buy two to three
Speaker 1: houses in their lifetime and you live in each one
Speaker 1: for five years. So it's very likely that when you're
Speaker 1: sixty five you're still going to have a house payment
Speaker 1: if you bought one when you were you know, forty
Speaker 1: or forty five, hopefully not too long into retirement. But
Speaker 1: and then yeah, you definitely have your taxes, your insurance,
Speaker 1: all of that stuff, so you're still going to have
Speaker 1: home expenses, but they tend to drop off. And yeah,
Speaker 1: whether they're thirty percent or not. Again, eighty percent of
Speaker 1: your current spending is just a bare minimum. And if
Speaker 1: you want to shoot for one hundred percent equivalent, if
Speaker 1: you're in your thirties.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: We I mean, we just got I don't remember if
Speaker 1: it was an email or what from somebody who said
Speaker 1: I'm thirty five and I feel like I'm so far behind.
Speaker 1: And I was like, girl, you are a year older
Speaker 1: than me. Like it's not I mean, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: we've been doing this stuff for a while, but it's
Speaker 1: you're in your thirties.
Speaker 5: You are not far behind.
Speaker 1: You are at a good place to start, right The
Speaker 1: people in their forties and fifties are hearing that right
Speaker 1: now and be like, no, girl, you start now. You're
Speaker 1: in the perfect place.
Speaker 4: So yeah, if you're in your sixties and you want
Speaker 4: to retire in the next few years, it is pedal
Speaker 4: to the metal time. But I just I found this
Speaker 4: interesting something to keep an eye on. I think we
Speaker 4: can assume once I own my home, that's the reason
Speaker 4: for home ownership, so that I can rest easy and
Speaker 4: retirement and retirees are currently telling us housing is still
Speaker 4: a major expense for us, so factor that in. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we can be bummed about it, cry about it in
Speaker 4: the corner for a second, but then also realign your
Speaker 4: expectations that housing will still cost you money.
Speaker 1: And I don't rest of your life. And if you
Speaker 1: have a mortgage in retirement, I don't think that's a
Speaker 1: bad thing. If you spent your working years prioritizing investing
Speaker 1: that has a higher rate of return typically than what
Speaker 1: your mortgage is costing you, you still made a good
Speaker 1: financial decision. You're still going to come out on top
Speaker 1: if you were investing instead of prioritizing your mortgage payoffs.
Speaker 1: So the next couple are healthcare, and this is one
Speaker 1: that I honestly think there should be a little bit
Speaker 1: more so. They say it's about eight percent of retirement expenses,
Speaker 1: and I don't know at what part of retirement, but
Speaker 1: they said overall or on average, retirees reported that five
Speaker 1: percent of their monthly spending went toward out of pocket
Speaker 1: medical costs and eight percent went toward medical and health insurance.
Speaker 1: So I guess it is more than eight, you know,
Speaker 1: eight plus five. So twenty percent of adults sixty five
Speaker 1: and older reported out of pocket medical expenses of more
Speaker 1: than two thousand dollars in twenty twenty one, which I
Speaker 1: think is super conservative. We have heard from people like
Speaker 1: financial advisors that say that is the medical costs are
Speaker 1: the main expense in retirement, and so that's I think
Speaker 1: one of the reasons to if you can shoot for
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of your spending, and that's why we
Speaker 1: prioritize making sure our spending is in control and we're
Speaker 1: only spending on the things that we love and not
Speaker 1: mindlessly consuming into impulse spending. Because once you know that
Speaker 1: you're spending, you feel good about your spending. That I mean,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of that is far less than one
Speaker 1: hundred percent of spending on like all kinds of impulse things. Right,
Speaker 1: So that's why we say, get control of it now
Speaker 1: so that you feel better overall about saving for retirement.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The next one on here is transportation expenses being about
Speaker 4: twelve percent, which that's a little shocking to me too
Speaker 4: that it would be more than what you'd spend on medical,
Speaker 4: But they did give this stat In twenty twenty, there
Speaker 4: were about thirty one million licensed drivers ages seventy and older.
Speaker 4: So people are still driving in retirement. So we still
Speaker 4: have the cost of car ownership or if you've got
Speaker 4: a car payment and maintenance and all of these things,
Speaker 4: and then especially if you don't have your license anymore,
Speaker 4: you maybe don't have a vehicle. You might need to
Speaker 4: then be paying people to take you places if public
Speaker 4: transportation is not an option, So still need to be
Speaker 4: factoring in how are we getting around?
Speaker 1: Yes, and my favorite cost of food twenty five percent.
Speaker 1: So the thing that changes really between your working years
Speaker 1: and your your retirement is that slightly less on transportation
Speaker 1: and we bump food up to number two. Now, if
Speaker 1: food is already your number two, like, that's you're already
Speaker 1: living the dream you are retired. Congratulations you have achieved.
Speaker 1: But for most people with a car payment, who are
Speaker 1: you know transporting kids have a commute? Stuff like that,
Speaker 1: transportation is usually number two and food will go to
Speaker 1: up to twenty five percent of your spending in retirement.
Speaker 1: They said food was the most common fastest growing expense
Speaker 1: reported by seniors in twenty twenty one. Sorry to seniors
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four. Nobody, nobody could anticipate. I mean
Speaker 1: everybody could anticipate, but nobody could. Seventy three percent of
Speaker 1: the average food budget for people sixty five and older
Speaker 1: was spent on food home. Where's about thirty percent was
Speaker 1: spent on eating out. So that's one hundred and three
Speaker 1: percent of your eating budget.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so.
Speaker 4: Food and housing is always going to cost you, always
Speaker 4: in forever. I mean, what the Big three that we
Speaker 4: always talk about, they're.
Speaker 3: Not going away.
Speaker 1: They are always going to be there.
Speaker 4: The last thing I want to mention about this article
Speaker 4: is they talk about just debt, the crushing debt that
Speaker 4: retirees were reporting. So ninety six percent of retirees reported
Speaker 4: having debt in twenty twenty two. Ninety six percent. That's
Speaker 4: nearly all of them now much'all. Forty three percent of
Speaker 4: those ninety six described the debt as easily manageable, whereas
Speaker 4: eleven percent reported it as crushing, unmanageable. But this was
Speaker 4: a huge takeaway for me as far as where we
Speaker 4: have choice agency in what retirement looks like, that we
Speaker 4: can again learn from those who have gone before. And
Speaker 4: if this is something we don't want to see in retirement,
Speaker 4: then we practice that now. Not having debt. Getting rid
Speaker 4: of debt now will only benefit us when we head
Speaker 4: into retirement. We don't have to be a generation that
Speaker 4: has ninety six percent. Ninety six percent of us are
Speaker 4: in debt in our later years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if we are, there's nothing like to be
Speaker 1: shamed about in that. But we want to do what
Speaker 1: we can to lighten that load on ourselves. We want
Speaker 1: to be able to enjoy those years and we don't
Speaker 1: want to leave our loved ones with, you know, with
Speaker 1: debts that don't go away when we die too. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things to think about. And if
Speaker 1: your plan at the end of your life is to
Speaker 1: just rack up a crap ton of credit card debt,
Speaker 1: like leave it for the last year of your life. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's make sure we're prepared for for all the.
Speaker 5: Times up to there.
Speaker 3: You don't know exactly how long you'll live.
Speaker 1: Right, so, like leave that as your last, last last
Speaker 1: resort and let's just try to plan as well as
Speaker 1: we can.
Speaker 4: This next article comes from Trust and Will, so it's
Speaker 4: describing a guide to retirement savings by age twenties, thirties, forties, fifties,
Speaker 4: and sixties. So, like Jen said, we're not gonna apparently
Speaker 4: tell you.
Speaker 1: We will say the numbers. I will admit that they
Speaker 1: are helpful. They are not helpful when people are you know,
Speaker 1: shoving it down your throat, being like, if you don't
Speaker 1: have two times your salary saved, you better get on it.
Speaker 1: Do some different with your life. It's a mindset problem
Speaker 1: that I don't like that, but.
Speaker 5: I've just been here for too long.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So they start off by talking about the rule
Speaker 4: of twenty five. So this isn't necessarily something that we
Speaker 4: think you have to take on as this is the
Speaker 4: exact prescription for what I need to do.
Speaker 1: But I do like this better than the two extra salary,
Speaker 1: three extra salary. Yeah, I say go with the rule
Speaker 1: of twenty five before you go with any other number.
Speaker 4: And I think it's a helpful Again, just baseline, what
Speaker 4: should I even be aiming for? What do I even
Speaker 4: need to be trying to do here? So they're describing
Speaker 4: that to calculate your retirement savings target, first you need
Speaker 4: to create an estimate of your monthly expenses. So let's
Speaker 4: say they give these numbers. Let's say you can comfortably
Speaker 4: live off of three thousand dollars a month. Multiply that
Speaker 4: by twelve to get your annual withdrawal amount. This would
Speaker 4: be what do you think you can live off of
Speaker 4: per year? In this case, it would be thirty six
Speaker 4: thousand dollars. I don't think these numbers are anywhere close
Speaker 4: to what we need to be considering, but for the
Speaker 4: sake of giving an example, Let's say it's thirty six
Speaker 4: thousand dollars a year that you want to be pulling
Speaker 4: out annually in retirement. Then you want to take your
Speaker 4: withdrawal amount and multiply it by twenty five. I assume
Speaker 4: they're thinking you're going to be in retirement for twenty
Speaker 4: five years.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, so this will just make sure that
Speaker 1: you have that you are If you withdraw at four percent,
Speaker 1: then you're never touching the nest egg. You're only ever
Speaker 1: withdrawing the growth. It ensures that there's at least at
Speaker 1: a at about a seven to ten percent growth rate,
Speaker 1: that the all thirty six thousand every year that you
Speaker 1: withdraw is always going to be annual growth. It's never
Speaker 1: going to be giving that nast egg RK.
Speaker 4: So that would be a savings target of nine hundred
Speaker 4: thousand dollars with this example. And I think that they
Speaker 4: did this example because they wanted to highlight that not
Speaker 4: everybody needs to save one million dollars. That has been
Speaker 4: kind of this, especially within the fire movement financial independence
Speaker 4: retire early. It's always been save one hundred million. So
Speaker 4: then you can withdraw that one.
Speaker 1: Hundred million, sorry one million.
Speaker 4: You can withdraw that four percent, and really, this is
Speaker 4: not a realistic number. It's not thirty six thousand dollars
Speaker 4: a years is not a realistic number. Now, I can't
Speaker 4: imagine it's going to be a realistic number. If you
Speaker 4: are planning to retire in a few decades from now, it's.
Speaker 3: Going to need to be more. I do think we
Speaker 3: need to adjust for inflation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we So some of this takes the seven percent
Speaker 1: growth rate does take into account inflation, because the stock
Speaker 1: market has in the past traditionally grown ten percent like
Speaker 1: over its entirety. But we use a seven percent calculation
Speaker 1: to account for a three percent inflation. But I mean,
Speaker 1: if you've been alive for the past couple of years,
Speaker 1: you know inflation has been far faster than that. But
Speaker 1: we had a really good decade where it was very slow,
Speaker 1: like light inflation.
Speaker 4: So you're saying there could be years where you take
Speaker 4: more than four percent and you'd still not be touching
Speaker 4: the nest egg, correct.
Speaker 1: Right, But you always have you know, those bear markets.
Speaker 1: You will have a bear market at some time or
Speaker 1: a correction at some time in your retirement, and you
Speaker 1: want to be able to have enough to still take
Speaker 1: out the thirty six thousand without touching the next nest egg.
Speaker 1: And that's why on those good years you don't take
Speaker 1: out more so that it compensates for the slower years.
Speaker 4: And I do want to say, just vernacular, we are
Speaker 4: using the word savings and investing kind of interchangeably, which
Speaker 4: is unfortunate. We're not just talking put nine hundred thousand
Speaker 4: dollars under your mattress. We're talking invest for retirement and
Speaker 4: have this amount in your investment accounts by the time
Speaker 4: you reach retirement.
Speaker 1: So another calculation with the rule of twenty five would be, say,
Speaker 1: maybe five thousand per month is what you spend, and
Speaker 1: you want to start with that conservative like I'm going
Speaker 1: to spend eighty percent of that in retirement, So eighty
Speaker 1: percent of five thousand is four thousand. We multiply that
Speaker 1: by twelve, and we're getting forty eight thousand in a year.
Speaker 1: That's I think that's far better to think. So, and
Speaker 1: then you multiply that by twenty five and you get
Speaker 1: one point two million, So I think that's a far
Speaker 1: better goal. I think one point two million is a
Speaker 1: reasonable goal. May not sound reasonable to you right now,
Speaker 1: but we'll talk a little bit about how to get
Speaker 1: to that goal.
Speaker 4: Well, and this is probably talking per person though too.
Speaker 4: So if you are you know, in a if you're
Speaker 4: married and you've got annual household income that's higher than yeah,
Speaker 4: then yes, take that into consideration.
Speaker 3: So let's get into ages.
Speaker 1: Yes, so let's start with twenties. We don't have a
Speaker 1: ton of people in their twenties who listen to the show,
Speaker 1: but shout out to you if you're starting young, and
Speaker 1: you can still relate to us because we're cool. So
Speaker 1: on average, Americans in their twenties have saved around ten
Speaker 1: five hundred toward retirement.
Speaker 4: I was shocked at that. I did not think that'd
Speaker 4: be the case. I think we have four oh one
Speaker 4: ks to thank for that.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, the mandatory four o one K or the
Speaker 1: opt out four oh one K not mandatory, but it
Speaker 1: automatically enrolls you and you have to opt out. Is fantastic.
Speaker 1: If you are someone who that happened to and maybe
Speaker 1: you left that job, highly highly require you to roll
Speaker 1: over your old four oh one K into an IRA
Speaker 1: that you control, and you can usually actually use capitalized
Speaker 1: to do that. For Free Frugal Friends podcast dot com
Speaker 1: slash capitalize if you can type all of that in.
Speaker 1: But so, yeah, in your twenties is just getting over
Speaker 1: the barrier to start saving. Anything that you can save
Speaker 1: in your twenties will grow. You have like over four
Speaker 1: decades to grow stuff. So, but first you want to
Speaker 1: shore up your emergency fund. You want to get over
Speaker 1: that barrier to entry. So start in your company's for
Speaker 1: owin k plan, open a roth IRA. These are going
Speaker 1: to be like your to do Listen. Fidelity recommends contributing
Speaker 1: about fifteen percent of your pre tax income into retirement accounts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you can, I mean when you're in your twenties,
Speaker 4: I I'm going to move into the thirties.
Speaker 1: Well okay, let's let's talk about like how much you
Speaker 1: would need to contribute.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, so yeah, because that this is what can
Speaker 4: frustrate me about these types of articles is they can
Speaker 4: give this sense as if money is ever flowing, like, well,
Speaker 4: just max out your wrath IRA and just take this
Speaker 4: percentage of your pre tax income. Well, we don't get
Speaker 4: to take home pre tax income, so that's like more
Speaker 4: than fifteen percent of our actual income because of what
Speaker 4: we actually get to take home. And for many of us,
Speaker 4: that's just it's not reasonable. Many of us do not
Speaker 4: have fifteen to thirty percent additional beyond our expenses. Yeah,
Speaker 4: to just like throw at this thing. So I just
Speaker 4: want to I get that all these numbers are on
Speaker 4: paper and telling us the right thing to do. But
Speaker 4: please know you're not alone if you're like, this just
Speaker 4: isn't possible for me. So here's a here's a baseline,
Speaker 4: something that you could be considering, but also know something
Speaker 4: is better than nothing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if you want to get to that one
Speaker 1: point two million, then and you have a forty year
Speaker 1: time price, and so this would essentially be starting at
Speaker 1: twenty five years old and investing monthly. Again, we're using
Speaker 1: a seven percent return rate compounding quarterly. That's going to
Speaker 1: be about four hundred and sixty two dollars a month.
Speaker 1: Your total contributions over forty years will be just over
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty so like two hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars around there, And the total interest that
Speaker 1: you will have but you didn't put in is over
Speaker 1: nine hundred and seventy eight thousand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I did not have that money in my twenties.
Speaker 3: One did not. That's that's a relatively expensive car payment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, it's definitely. So if we wanted to
Speaker 1: move that number to just a million, then that takes
Speaker 1: us down to saving three hundred and eighty five dollars
Speaker 1: a month. Again, pretty steep, especially if you have student loans.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So not everyone's going to be able to start this
Speaker 1: in their twenties.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, but start though, Like, I think that's the
Speaker 4: piece that kind of kept me in some ways from it,
Speaker 4: although there were months I didn't even.
Speaker 3: Have twenty bucks to throw at it.
Speaker 4: But if you're doing better than I did in my
Speaker 4: twenties and you've got twenty bucks, then another month you
Speaker 4: got one hundred, another month you got two hundred. Oh
Speaker 4: we're back down to thirty. Like, just put put it in,
Speaker 4: let it start growing. Don't let this kind of hack
Speaker 4: you out at the legs to begin with, because you
Speaker 4: still will be better off beginning in your twenties with
Speaker 4: whatever you.
Speaker 3: Got to get.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think two hundred is a really good number
Speaker 1: if you can swing it in your twenties, because that
Speaker 1: money will just like compound and compound and compound. It's
Speaker 1: going to be difficult, there's going to be friction, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to be very intentional, but two hundred dollars
Speaker 1: per month, it's a do whoople number. Yeah, it's not easy,
Speaker 1: but it's doable.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, Okay, So moving on into your thirties, I
Speaker 4: felt this one in a real way. We're in our
Speaker 4: thirties and actually whooping back to the person who emailed us, like,
Speaker 4: I'm thirty five and I feel like I'm so far behind.
Speaker 4: I get that I feel that way too, and I
Speaker 4: do appreciate that this article calls it out, because your
Speaker 4: thirties are a time of they're calling it immense growth.
Speaker 4: You might have found some career stability, maybe some raises
Speaker 4: and role changes at work, but this is the time
Speaker 4: when you are entering into romantic partnerships, getting married, having kids,
Speaker 4: buying a home, still likely paying off student loan debt,
Speaker 4: maybe starting to care for parents. Even at this age,
Speaker 4: you might beginning caregiver types of roles. There are so
Speaker 4: many demands on our money at every stage of life,
Speaker 4: but particularly here when we're still just kind of getting
Speaker 4: our foot and so I think this is one of
Speaker 4: the reasons that it can feel like I'm so far
Speaker 4: behind because I don't have endless money to hemorrhage towards
Speaker 4: all of the goals, like buying a home is a
Speaker 4: very valuable goal. Also you can rent. That is fine too,
Speaker 4: because as we saw, when you're retired and your own home,
Speaker 4: you still spend a ton of money on housing. But
Speaker 4: if this is something that you do want to be
Speaker 4: putting a bigger emphasis on, this is a very good
Speaker 4: time to do it. On average, Americans in their thirties
Speaker 4: have saved about thirty eight thousand dollars towards retirement. That
Speaker 4: number is a little bit lower than what we would
Speaker 4: want to see by the time we enter into our forties.
Speaker 4: So they're recommending one of their baseline recommendations is that
Speaker 4: you've saved the equivalent of your annual salary by your thirties.
Speaker 4: So this, i would say annual household income, not just
Speaker 4: your salary, but if you're planning on retiring with the
Speaker 4: person you're currently living with now, if you're just starting
Speaker 4: in your thirties, then the percentage of our pretext income
Speaker 4: that we want to be putting into our retirement investment
Speaker 4: accounts does ramp up. So in our twenties it was
Speaker 4: fifteen percent. Now in our thirties, if we're just starting,
Speaker 4: we want to increase that to somewhere between eighteen to
Speaker 4: twenty three percent of our pretext income. So quite a spike,
Speaker 4: but not nearly as much of a spike in percentage
Speaker 4: as it would be if we were just starting in
Speaker 4: our forties, and of course if we're just starting in
Speaker 4: our fifties, so it still does behoove us, get started,
Speaker 4: gets started, Get started.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if we're looking at like, if you did the
Speaker 1: most in your twenty five and I'm going to start,
Speaker 1: I'm honestly going to start these decades in the middle,
Speaker 1: I like like twenty five to thirty five, thirty five
Speaker 1: to forty five. It just makes it easier. So if
Speaker 1: you did the most, so you did your four hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty three a month in your twenties, then starting
Speaker 1: at twenty five, by thirty five, you'd have eighty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars and you only put in fifty five just over
Speaker 1: fifty five thousand of it, Okay, So that's doing that's
Speaker 1: doing the most. Though, if you just did two hundred,
Speaker 1: then you would have thirty about thirty five thousand saved, okay,
Speaker 1: and so and you would have put in about twenty
Speaker 1: four thousand of that. So if we look at that,
Speaker 1: let's say you started, you know, with the two hundred
Speaker 1: dollars a month, you've got thirty five thousand dollars saved,
Speaker 1: and we're going to put this into our calculator. We're
Speaker 1: still going to use this first calculation to do the
Speaker 1: one point two million. So if you're starting thirty five
Speaker 1: with thirty five thousand dollars saved, then and you want
Speaker 1: to get to one point two million, it would jump
Speaker 1: super up to you then need to save seven hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty nine dollars a month to get to that
Speaker 1: one point two million, which if you're a dual income
Speaker 1: household starting at thirty five, it's not impossible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's less than a duel income
Speaker 4: maxing out both of your four or one k's. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, roth Iris, sorry to confuse you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it is a lot higher though, which is why
Speaker 1: starting your twenties is so great, and if you're not
Speaker 1: your twenties, you should encourage people in their twenties to
Speaker 1: start investing. That goes down. If you want to just
Speaker 1: do one million, then that's just under six hundred bucks
Speaker 1: a month, So it's total, it's very feasible if maybe
Speaker 1: you just have thirty five thousand saved and this is
Speaker 1: after this is the thirty year time horizon, it shortening
Speaker 1: it to thirty years. If you have about thirty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars saved and you want to get to a million,
Speaker 1: still really doable. Still, that's three hundred dollars from each
Speaker 1: of you, and it's it is a friction, but.
Speaker 3: Doable, not impossible.
Speaker 1: We start when we get to these later, when we
Speaker 1: have fewer years to compound, fewer decades to compound, like
Speaker 1: twenty and ten, is when it starts to become harder.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so what happens in the forties, Jen, So in.
Speaker 1: Your forties you should and I'll just touch on THEE
Speaker 1: one X your salary, I would say, by honestly, like by.
Speaker 5: The end of the decade.
Speaker 3: I think that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't have to have it by the time
Speaker 1: you turn thirty, but before you turn forty. So in
Speaker 1: your forties, a person often gets to begin experience the
Speaker 1: rewards of their hard work and diligence when they.
Speaker 5: Reach their forties.
Speaker 3: I sure hope so.
Speaker 1: And this would be I would say forty five, not
Speaker 1: at forty. The forties decade for our episode is starting
Speaker 1: at forty five. Say, on average, americans in their forties
Speaker 1: have about ninety three thousand, four hundred saved toward retirement.
Speaker 1: And so they say, at age forty you should have
Speaker 1: three times your annual salary already saved. And that sounds difficult,
Speaker 1: especially if you're starting in your thirties. It's but your
Speaker 1: money at compound interests pretty much. It's like a rule
Speaker 1: of thumb. Compound interest will double your money every ten years.
Speaker 1: So if you put ten thousand dollars in the stock
Speaker 1: market in a total stock market, you know ETF for
Speaker 1: index fund, in ten years, that money, if you don't
Speaker 1: touch it, will probably look like twenty thousand, and in
Speaker 1: ten more years that twenty thousand will look like forty thousand.
Speaker 1: And so that's why this article is assuming you start
Speaker 1: in your twenties and then buy your forties. Yes, of
Speaker 1: course your money has tripled. So it's you know, it
Speaker 1: makes sense, but it's harder the later you start.
Speaker 4: Okay, so we're getting into our fifties, and this is
Speaker 4: where the article says it's time to put your retirement
Speaker 4: preparation on full steam ahead. Most Americans are far behind
Speaker 4: and meeting their savings targets. It is understandable cost of living,
Speaker 4: still supporting children through college usually in your fifties, paying
Speaker 4: for home repairs, increased medical cost definitely in caregiver roles
Speaker 4: in your fifties, that kind of sandwich generation of you're
Speaker 4: still kind of there for your kids as well as
Speaker 4: your parents. So a lot of pressures happening here. But
Speaker 4: if you do plan to retire this when we talk
Speaker 4: about prioritization, this should be at the top of the list.
Speaker 4: On average, Americans in their fifties have saved about one
Speaker 4: hundred and sixty thousand dollars towards retirement. Again, we would
Speaker 4: want to see that number be a little bit higher
Speaker 4: when you're just less than ten years away from retirement age.
Speaker 4: So this is where an aim can be having six
Speaker 4: times your annual salary saved, and this is where we
Speaker 4: can really be maxing out catch up contributions whenever possible,
Speaker 4: putting any additional money that you might have fine.
Speaker 1: Well at at fifty five I can't remember, it's fifty
Speaker 1: five and a half or I'm sorry, I'm not consult
Speaker 1: your investing experts, but you do get an extra thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in your IRA extra a certain number in your
Speaker 1: four h one K, and so you can at fifty
Speaker 1: five contribute more to these tax advantaged accounts than somebody
Speaker 1: who's fifty four or younger, and you should take advantage
Speaker 1: of that. If you have obviously less than especially less
Speaker 1: than three times your income, it becomes almost almost impossible
Speaker 1: to reach a million dollars if you only have one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty thousand dollars saved at fifty five. But
Speaker 1: I mean if you want to have you know, if
Speaker 1: you have one hundred and sixty thousand dollars save and
Speaker 1: you want in your targets maybe six hundred thousand over
Speaker 1: ten years, If you are investing sixteen hundred dollars a month,
Speaker 1: which with kids out of the house a lot more
Speaker 1: disposable income, you're still working, that becomes again difficult friction,
Speaker 1: but not impossible. In those years, you can still get
Speaker 1: to six hundred thousand. So that's you know, one hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety four thousand you're putting in, but two hundred
Speaker 1: and forty two hundred and forty five thousand of interest
Speaker 1: that you did not put in. So again, sixteen hundred
Speaker 1: dollars is no joke. But there are still ways to
Speaker 1: make that last ten years really work for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what about our friends in their sixties. We got
Speaker 4: some friends in their sixties listening to us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my mom's in her sixties. She's very excited to
Speaker 1: get to the point where she can get you know,
Speaker 1: between working and getting social Security for her Ami dad,
Speaker 1: she's actually going to be getting a raise. Whoa so,
Speaker 1: I so, And this is in like three months she
Speaker 1: does this. So she's going to take us out to
Speaker 1: dinner with her new rais.
Speaker 3: Ow to caravas, to caravas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this is I mean, we do have
Speaker 1: some people in their sixties listening to this. So the
Speaker 1: article says it's no longer appropriate to sugarcoat things. This
Speaker 1: should be a time in your life where you can
Speaker 1: sit back and relax. Unfortunately, most Americans are nowhere near
Speaker 1: the recommended savings target. I think a lot of our
Speaker 1: listeners are outside of that majority. But Americans in their
Speaker 1: sixties typically have one hundred and eighty two thousand saves
Speaker 1: towards retirement. And that's nothing to laugh. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: nothing to like, turn your nose up at like one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty two that can get you a long
Speaker 1: way if you're also coupling that with part time income
Speaker 1: and you know you're.
Speaker 5: Medicaid all that stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, supplementing your medical expenses absolutely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So definitely what you have is what you have,
Speaker 1: and so at that point you need to evaluate your
Speaker 1: non retirement assets. See what you can monetize, see what
Speaker 1: you can sell. Don't forget to take advantage of those
Speaker 1: Social Security benefits when you turn sixty two. If you
Speaker 1: still love your job or enjoy what you're doing, you
Speaker 1: can delay those benefits and then that will get you
Speaker 1: more money later on, Like my mom has delayed her
Speaker 1: benefits as long as you know possible. So you can
Speaker 1: also consider investing your Social Security money in non retirement
Speaker 1: accounts if you feel comfortable doing so. This is the time, though,
Speaker 1: where we get really conservative with our bond funds, So
Speaker 1: I don't know that would be something to talk to
Speaker 1: your financial advisor about. This would be the time to
Speaker 1: get a financial advisor. I think the five years before
Speaker 1: you retire is a good time to be working with
Speaker 1: someone and then be sure to factor in the cost
Speaker 1: of medical care. Again, just like fine tuning your retirement
Speaker 1: income to make sure you are not that you can
Speaker 1: be as little of a burden to the people you
Speaker 1: love as possible.
Speaker 4: Start now, we recognize there's not any one singular goal
Speaker 4: for our money. There's so many different things that we
Speaker 4: can be putting it towards, and the closer and closer
Speaker 4: we get to retirement, the more and more this needs
Speaker 4: to be prioritized. But definitely recognize if you're in your
Speaker 4: twenties and thirties, you have to take all these other
Speaker 4: things into consideration. Definitely do something, but know that if
Speaker 4: you can't do all of the things.
Speaker 3: It's okay. You will be okay. Yeah, So just.
Speaker 1: To reiterate, general recommendations for your thirties, is one x
Speaker 1: your salary, but by the time you turn fifty, it's
Speaker 1: three x your salary, and then by the time you
Speaker 1: turn sixty it's six x. And if you're not there,
Speaker 1: don't be discouraged because what you're you could earn more
Speaker 1: than what you'll spend in retirement, and that's hopefully what
Speaker 1: we're helping you do here. But again, just starting with
Speaker 1: that two hundred dollars a month, I think just starting
Speaker 1: with something and then reevaluating and always be upping it.
Speaker 4: And if you're really pinched and you can't meet any
Speaker 4: of these goals. Then then reevaluating the jobs that we're
Speaker 4: in and our income streams and our skill sets. So
Speaker 4: finding these different inroads, but start somewhere. Do you know
Speaker 4: what also is encouraging? And I don't want a delay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want it one hundred.
Speaker 3: X by the time we turned thirty five.
Speaker 5: By the time I turned thirty five.
Speaker 2: The bill of.
Speaker 6: The week, that's right, it's time for the best minute
Speaker 6: of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and
Speaker 6: his name is Williams. Maybe you've paid off your mortgage,
Speaker 6: maybe your car died and you're happy to not have
Speaker 6: to pay that bill anymore. Best bills, Buffalo bills, Bill clion,
Speaker 6: This is the bill of the week.
Speaker 7: Hi, fregal friends. This is the habit my husband and
Speaker 7: I have implemented that have helped us save on multiple bills,
Speaker 7: multiple expenses, things like that. So what we do is
Speaker 7: every week, typically on Saturday mornings, we'll make mimosas and
Speaker 7: it will spend like fifteen to thirty minutes talking about
Speaker 7: past expenses of that previous week. So for example, we'll
Speaker 7: go through what we spent on groceries, how much we
Speaker 7: have left in the grocery budget. We'll go to the
Speaker 7: next category. Oh, this is our miscellaneous shopping budget. This
Speaker 7: is what we spent, This is how much we have
Speaker 7: left for this budget, Utilities, things like that, and then
Speaker 7: it kind of gives us like a good bird's eye
Speaker 7: view of that past week and a good bird'sye.
Speaker 1: View of what we have left for the month.
Speaker 7: We also talk about like maybe unexpected expenses thanks coming
Speaker 7: up that we were like invited to and we have
Speaker 7: to like bring a dish for so that might be
Speaker 7: more towards the grocery category. Things like that for example.
Speaker 7: It's really fun and just having that little pocket of
Speaker 7: time to be transparent about budget finances spending habits each
Speaker 7: week has really helped us long term because we have
Speaker 7: that built in time to talk about it instead of like,
Speaker 7: I don't know, just like a random Tuesday when we're
Speaker 7: kind of like unprepared. We have that time to really
Speaker 7: connect and remember our goals, and it helps having that
Speaker 7: weekly reminder so it's always fresh in our brains. And
Speaker 7: who doesn't love them? A mosas so you can even
Speaker 7: do this at night after kids go to bed, get
Speaker 7: like margs or a glass of wine. Things like that,
Speaker 7: but just having that habit of it being a weekly
Speaker 7: fifteen to thirty minute pocket of time has helped tremendously.
Speaker 7: So just wanted to share if you wanted to try.
Speaker 1: You know what, Jill, I might budget more if Travis
Speaker 1: would drink mimosa with me. Maybe that's why I don't
Speaker 1: like it, because I mean, I've never tried drinking and budgeting.
Speaker 3: He would drink the orange juice.
Speaker 1: He absolutely wouldn't. I can get tiny I could get
Speaker 1: tiny champagnes for me.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, you're inspiring us a weekly meeting over mimosas
Speaker 4: about money.
Speaker 3: It's alliteration and it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: I just wish we had time on Monday so it
Speaker 1: could be a Monday morning mimosa meeting.
Speaker 4: Actually we should probably those for us, your friends Monday meeting.
Speaker 1: This is not the direction you thought this bill was going,
Speaker 1: and it's here.
Speaker 4: What a good tip because you are implementing a routine
Speaker 4: and a habit that can potentially follow you throughout life.
Speaker 4: But it's not a huge time commitment, and you've made
Speaker 4: it fun. You've broken down some of these barriers to
Speaker 4: communicating about money. It's all so beautiful with a beautiful
Speaker 4: bill of the week. If you all listening, have a
Speaker 4: bill about Mimosa's meetings, mondays.
Speaker 3: Money or your name is Bill.
Speaker 4: For over podcast dot com slash Bill. Leave us your
Speaker 4: bill and now it's time for being around.
Speaker 1: Me. Oh okay, So how much longer do you have
Speaker 1: until you hope to retire and what do you need
Speaker 1: to shift in order to be prepared?
Speaker 5: Jill?
Speaker 4: Okay, So I did Wow, I know I want to
Speaker 4: be retired today. Actually, actually I did try this. This
Speaker 4: is a side note for your vulnerability around Jen. I
Speaker 4: went to this wedding Mexico a few months ago where
Speaker 4: I didn't really know many people at the wedding and
Speaker 4: I did not feel like talking about myself.
Speaker 3: I know that you.
Speaker 4: Don't like this very much because you're like, do you
Speaker 4: need to tell them about our podcast? And it's just
Speaker 4: like not my m o. So I tried on for size,
Speaker 4: just telling people I was retired. Oh my god, Like
Speaker 4: when they asked me what do you do and I
Speaker 4: literally said I was retired, there were zero follow up questions.
Speaker 4: Attention went off of me onto other things. We were
Speaker 4: able to talk about all the cool things they were doing.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: I actually I do hate telling people.
Speaker 5: I have a podcast.
Speaker 4: This is true, though, it just feels so complicated, and
Speaker 4: I was tired and I didn't want to talk about it,
Speaker 4: so I said I was retired.
Speaker 1: Nobody would believe me. If I said I was retired,
Speaker 1: would think, oh, you're stay at home mom.
Speaker 5: Cool.
Speaker 4: We were in a group of people who, I think
Speaker 4: all of them were relatively independently wealthy, so no one
Speaker 4: really bad than I, and that, you know, that was
Speaker 4: the benefit of being around a ton of wealthy people
Speaker 4: is it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 3: You could kind of just be yourself.
Speaker 1: Anyhow, or be not yourself because you're not retired to it,
Speaker 1: you'd be somebody different me.
Speaker 4: Apart from my work though, just me showing up with
Speaker 4: nothing to prove. So I did write twenty two years
Speaker 4: in all reality because I thought that, like fifty six
Speaker 4: might be a decent retirement age.
Speaker 3: But I don't think that's a classic retirement.
Speaker 5: It's it's not.
Speaker 1: So The statistics actually are most people plan to retire
Speaker 1: at sixty five, and the average retirement age is around
Speaker 1: sixty two. And that's not by choice, not because people
Speaker 1: get so wealthy they get surprised and retire early. But
Speaker 1: a lot of people are forced out of the workplace
Speaker 1: because of illness, physical disability, caretaking, a relative pushed out
Speaker 1: just because of you know, their industry is going toward AI.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but yeah, that's that's a lot of
Speaker 1: the reason.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I would want to plan more for that.
Speaker 4: I would hate to be surprised like, oh no, I
Speaker 4: really needed to hold out for another four years and
Speaker 4: I can't. I'd rather be prepared for sooner whether yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean hopefully by choice, but if I am forced sooner,
Speaker 4: I want to prepare for that.
Speaker 3: So fifty six is my goal? No, all right, so
Speaker 3: I got twenty eight years. If it is sixty two, wow, okay,
Speaker 3: I don't want to work for that long.
Speaker 4: But but what this is telling me is I'm I'm
Speaker 4: with that thirty five year old woman who emailed us
Speaker 4: like I got I got to increase this thing.
Speaker 5: Why do you hate your job so much?
Speaker 4: I don't hate my job, that's not it. I'm just tired,
Speaker 4: just and it's not this. This is actually what's very
Speaker 4: life giving to me. It's my like decade and a
Speaker 4: half working in social work that exhausted me, and I'm
Speaker 4: still recovering. I think this is helping me to recover
Speaker 4: because I do still have to work even though I'm
Speaker 4: burn out.
Speaker 1: But she's a woman and the people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it will, it will shift.
Speaker 4: I know that things will be restored to me and
Speaker 4: my inner being. But at this moment, working for another
Speaker 4: twenty eight years does sound exhausting. But I'm encouraged to know,
Speaker 4: like we can find life giving work.
Speaker 3: We can do.
Speaker 4: Work that's entirely different, that exercises a different part of
Speaker 4: who we are. That can like, we can work even
Speaker 4: when burnt out. If it's in a different way area,
Speaker 4: then maybe the field that burnt us out and we
Speaker 4: may return to that field in the future.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's great perspective.
Speaker 3: Thanks. Yeah, okay, what about you?
Speaker 1: So, as I look at my retirement planner on Empower,
Speaker 1: it's saying that I can comfortably retire at sixty and
Speaker 1: that is my goal. My actual true goal is to
Speaker 1: retire when my first child has my first grandchild.
Speaker 3: That is when I want to retire.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Nice, So I would like to be prepared by for that.
Speaker 2: Bye.
Speaker 1: So I had Kai at thirty, So if he has
Speaker 1: a child at thirty, then that would put.
Speaker 5: Me at sixty.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 1: But he could have a child earlier.
Speaker 3: You have always predicted that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I though it may be Atlas at this
Speaker 1: point he is a renegade, so it could be fifty five.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I would like to prepare somewhere
Speaker 1: between fifty five and sixty. It really will be that
Speaker 1: grand baby that determines it.
Speaker 4: Okay, and is there anything you need to shift to
Speaker 4: be prepared?
Speaker 1: No, ePower says, I am in good shape. They forecast
Speaker 1: I have a ninety four percent chance that my portfolio
Speaker 1: will support my goals.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you just stay the course. The amount of
Speaker 4: money you're currently investing can stay the same.
Speaker 1: It changes, and well, it has decreased over the years.
Speaker 1: The amount I have invested has decreased. We put We
Speaker 1: went really hard in our twenties, Like we went super
Speaker 1: hard before we had kids. There was a year, one
Speaker 1: year we maxed out iras, two iras and one four
Speaker 1: A one k, right, so we went super hard so
Speaker 1: that we could ease.
Speaker 5: Off when we had kids.
Speaker 1: Well done, So I mean if you yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's great. It has really worked out for us, and
Speaker 1: we still do. We prioritize our iras over our kids
Speaker 1: five twenty nights, so as you should yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we Yeah, we still in back.
Speaker 3: Gift to them that they won't have to care for
Speaker 3: you financially.
Speaker 1: We even have let off the gas a little bit
Speaker 1: more during this renovation and Travis's job shift, and you
Speaker 1: know we're still in track. It does put that fifty five.
Speaker 1: It has moved that fifty five to sixty, but we
Speaker 1: can always catch up later because we have the foundation
Speaker 1: we built.
Speaker 3: I love that. Well, Jen's crushing it. I've got work
Speaker 3: to do. I thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: I put in the work when I had the capacity,
Speaker 1: so that now when I do not have the capacity,
Speaker 1: I don't feel so bad about it.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: And so maybe you're maybe you didn't and you feel bad,
Speaker 1: but know that in the future there will be additional
Speaker 1: hard times. Right, So maybe right now is a hard time,
Speaker 1: so when you get out of it, you can go
Speaker 1: hard and prepare for the next time when you're capacity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we ken swindled.
Speaker 4: Ever go back, but collecting information now and informing ourselves
Speaker 4: now is still better than later. I mean, imagine not
Speaker 4: getting this information until ten years from now. So do
Speaker 4: what you can with what you've got. We're all on
Speaker 4: different journeys, yep. Thanks for listening. Many of you know
Speaker 4: that we do have a newsletter. It's called the friend Letter.
Speaker 4: We talk about it all the time. It goes out
Speaker 4: three times a week. We send out freebie savings tips,
Speaker 4: life hacks to help you save money. And when you
Speaker 4: email us back, when we send you an email and
Speaker 4: then you email us back, we get it. This one
Speaker 4: comes from Alex, who just said thank you for all
Speaker 4: the valuable materials.
Speaker 3: God bless us the team richly. Thank you.
Speaker 5: Alex.
Speaker 3: I was like, wait, what.
Speaker 4: Is this last sentence saying that's amazing? What a lovely response.
Speaker 4: Thanks for getting the friend Letter. If you're not getting
Speaker 4: the friend Letter, you totally should.
Speaker 1: Frugal Friends podcast dot com.
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Speaker 1: Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni Jill tell everyone
Speaker 1: real quick about your.
Speaker 5: White glove service.
Speaker 1: Arilogies for that sound.
Speaker 4: Eric and I on a Friday night to this night
Speaker 4: market where this produce stand was set up. It wasn't
Speaker 4: a typical produce stand where you could just buy from them.
Speaker 4: They were advertising their service. So they are a company
Speaker 4: who buys fresh produce for local restaurants in Saint Pete,
Speaker 4: and they end up with so much additional produce that
Speaker 4: they've started a side business where they deliver their leftovers
Speaker 4: to residences in Saint Pete. So you could sign up
Speaker 4: for a weekly or bi weekly produce box from them.
Speaker 4: So they go and they shop. There's apparently a farmer's
Speaker 4: market somewhere in Tampa that operates seven days a week,
Speaker 4: so they send people to go shop for the restaurants
Speaker 4: every single day to this market, and then they're leftovers
Speaker 4: they send out to people who want to buy the subscription.
Speaker 4: So forty five dollars for one duffed box of an
Speaker 4: incredible variety of fresh produce. I was like, I'm signing up.
Speaker 4: I got a discount code to sign up for the
Speaker 4: subscription and I signed up. They ended up delivering me
Speaker 4: a box the day I signed up. I was expecting
Speaker 4: to get it two weeks later, but that hour showed
Speaker 4: up two hours later with a box to my door, delivered.
Speaker 3: From an electric vehicle. This is their whole thing.
Speaker 4: Like, the reason we can get it too cheap is
Speaker 4: because we're already buying it for the restaurants we're delivering
Speaker 4: it to local restaurants. We're already in the area. We
Speaker 4: drive a car that doesn't cost us gas, and sure,
Speaker 4: we'll get it to your door for forty five bucks.
Speaker 4: So I get this box and I'm like, well, well,
Speaker 4: we'll just see, we'll see if it's all it's cracked
Speaker 4: up to be. Holy smokes, Jen, it was so much stuff.
Speaker 4: It took up when I took it out of the box.
Speaker 4: It took up my entire island. And I had to
Speaker 4: price compare. I just had to. I couldn't move on
Speaker 4: with my life. I couldn't do other work until I
Speaker 4: did this.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 4: So I went onto Walmart, which is typically where I
Speaker 4: kept my produce. Now it's where I shop and price compared. Now,
Speaker 4: I don't know if all the things that I got
Speaker 4: in the box are organic, but they're at least very fresh,
Speaker 4: and most of it locally grown by local farmers. But
Speaker 4: even compared to non organic things, So if I had
Speaker 4: bought all those things from Walmart, it would have been
Speaker 4: forty four dollars and two cents versus the box being
Speaker 4: forty five dollars, although I had a discount code, so
Speaker 4: it was actually thirty eight, So I definitely made out
Speaker 4: on this one. But four of the things that I
Speaker 4: got in the box were not available at Walmart. So
Speaker 4: I was able to see what would Walmart charge for this,
Speaker 4: but they didn't have it. Rude a baga, pineapple, poblano peppers, grapefruit,
Speaker 4: I would not have even been able to get, but
Speaker 4: I got it in this box. And so it was
Speaker 4: a combination of citrus berries, squash, kale, root, vegetables, like
Speaker 4: so many different things that is now gonna kind of
Speaker 4: fuel the flame a bit for me. And what do
Speaker 4: I even make this week? Because I do get in
Speaker 4: a little bit of a rut even though I love
Speaker 4: I'm learning to cook at home and repurpose ingredients. I've
Speaker 4: now got all these ingredients I wouldn't typically have purchased,
Speaker 4: and I'm finding new recipes.
Speaker 3: To try with my love.
Speaker 4: Those that was delivered to my door for forty five dollars.
Speaker 4: And I'm so sorry for all of you listeners that
Speaker 4: you all don't live in Saint Pete No.
Speaker 1: But so many places have these secret like co ops
Speaker 1: that you don't know about. Yeah, and it's just the
Speaker 1: co op goes to like a like a church or
Speaker 1: a civic center. And usually you can like pick up
Speaker 1: a box every week or every other week yours special
Speaker 1: and that it was delivered to.
Speaker 3: You, delivered to me.
Speaker 1: But in these these are in a ton of cities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it does even if it if it like gives
Speaker 1: you the same price, right, you're not saving if you
Speaker 1: can freeze stuff, if you can if meal planning is hard.
Speaker 1: It gives you a guide on like what to look for.
Speaker 1: So it definitely is for you know, a season, no
Speaker 1: pun intended trying one of these out.
Speaker 4: I like the variety of Yeah, it's not going to
Speaker 4: necessarily work for every person, but for me, it's exciting.
Speaker 4: And I was even reading their reviews on their website
Speaker 4: and a couple of people said, like me and my
Speaker 4: kids get excited to see what's in the box. And
Speaker 4: then she was describing how she found buy in with
Speaker 4: her kids in trying new things and making new dishes
Speaker 4: because they were kind of along the journey like what
Speaker 4: did we get this week? So that's also kind of
Speaker 4: an a bonus point for getting your kids to eat
Speaker 4: vegetables and try new things.
Speaker 3: If it feels like this fun.
Speaker 1: Surprise, Yes, highly highly recommend.
Speaker 3: Cool. That's my white glove service, love it