Retirement planning doesn't have to be boring, and it doesn't mean you have to sacrifice today to afford a better life tomorrow. In this episode, Retirement Answer Man Roger Whitney and I discuss the different strategies you can try to plan for a better, richer future.
Long episode description:
Roger Whitney sure is the Retirement Answer Man. Not only does he have his own personal finance blog and podcast focused on retirement, he’s also a CFP®, CIMA®, CPWA® and AIF®. That’s a lot of designations, so he I knew he’d be the one to turn to to chat about retirement planning.
Now, Roger has a very interesting story. I definitely encourage you to watch the video I’ve included below where he goes more in-depth about his background, but for the Coles Notes version Roger is so passionate about educating others about retirement planning because of his mom. You see, he was raised by a single mom who worked tirelessly to provide for her family. Her plan was to work hard today so she could relax and enjoy life in retirement. Unfortunately, she passed away at an early age and was never able to experience that quiet and calm retired life she always dreamed of.
Roger believes you shouldn’t work hard today for a better tomorrow. You should work hard today for a better today, and a better tomorrow. The traditional idea of retirement is that we all work hard and save as much as we can so once we retire at 65+ we can finally enjoy the fruits of our labour. But that’s not realistic is it? Not one of us can predict how long we’ll live, or if we’ll be physically able or healthy enough to have that perfect retired life we see in all those life insurance ads in our twilight years.
That’s why it’s time to chuck that old idea out the door and replace it with a new one. One new idea would be to do mini-retirements like Roger and I discuss. Instead of holding out to travel the world in retirement, why not take a year off from work to travel now, then go back to work after? My friend Stephanie Williams, who was one of my first podcast guests, does this every six months and I know more of us could be doing this too.
As I mentioned earlier, Roger has his own podcast, and he even encourages his listeners to send him questions he can answer in a later episode. If any of you have some specific questions about retirement after listening to my episode, click here to send Roger your question. He’s got over 24 years experience in the field, so I doubt you’d be able to stump him.
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Shownotes: jessicamoorhouse.com/43