Transcription
As a retirement adviser, I get to speak with a lot of people that are in their 70s and 80s, both about what their future goals are, but also importantly for this video and for you and I, about what their regrets were; what they wish they had done when they were younger, when they were newly retired or planning to retire. So, in today's video, I'm going to share with you the top eight regrets, starting with number one: they wish they had taken better care of their health when they were younger.
You know, having a lot of money and and and saving up money and having Financial Independence is super important, and it's a lot easier when you're unhealthy if you have more money; if you don't have to stress about money. But candidly, most people wish that there was more they could have done to focus on their health. Now, there there's only so much in our control, but frankly, there's a lot in our control, particularly until we become about 80. In our 60s and 70s, a lot of that has to do with our habits, and there's a lot we can do to improve our health and to stay healthy. And if if you don't have your health, boy, that million dollars in the bank, it it pales in comparison. Most people that I know that have a million dollars in the bank would gladly give away at least half of it to get their health back. So take care of your health while you still can. Okay.
The next one is they wish they had traveled when they were younger. Many of us have a a list of things that we want to do in retirement: you know, someday I want to do this, someday I want to do do that. Well, unfortunately, as we get older, we're running out of somedays, and at some at some point, uh, someday has to be today; someday has to be, we're going to do this now. I've been fortunate; I've been able to travel a lot. Not only have I I talk to retired people, and frankly, one of the reasons I traveled in my my 50s was talking to my clients, talking to potential clients, talking to friends about they kind of missed that window; it closed a lot sooner than they thought it would. I don't want to see that happen to you. So if travel's important to you, try to do that sooner rather than later. Okay.
The next thing: not only do they wish they had traveled sooner, but many folks wish they had retired sooner. You know, looking at at that that Chasm, you know, looking at at that Canyon between where you are now—most of us are working—and where you want to be in retirement, there there's a lot of unknowns there, and it's hard to take that First Leap into retirement, to have the faith that things are going to work out. Often people will tell me, you know, I haven't retired yet cuz I can't think of anything else that's more fun to do than what I'm doing now, and that's really common; or I'm afraid of going to get bored. But you know, one of the things I like to tell people is, really, in your list of everything in your life, doing your job is the most fun thing. You know what would your 21-year-old self say to something like that? And what happens is, once people retire and they build those new passions, then they look back and say, you know, I wish I had five more healthy years to do this. I'm 60 years old; I recently retired when I was 59, and there's things that you know I wanted to do; I I frankly I wish I had retired sooner. Now that I've taken a leap, it's only been six months, but in hindsight, I probably should have retired sooner, and I don't want you to have that regret. So be thoughtful and deliberate about when you choose to retire. Okay.
The next one: unfortunately, some people are lonely in retirement. A lot of people are lonely in retirement. So one of the regrets is that they didn't take more time to Foster new relationships and nurture existing ones, and and that can be a big regret; that can be something that is painful for people because you don't want to be lonely. In fact, most studies show that the happiest retirees are the ones that that have friends, that have relationships. So if you have relationships that you you've said, you know what, this was a good friend of mine in high school, this was a good friend of mine in college, this was a good friend of mine from 20 years ago, it's never been easier than it is now to reach out and reconnect to people, right? It's easy to find somebody on social media to reach out. I've had a half a dozen of my friends do it, and without exception, I'm delighted to hear from them. So if that's you, think about nurturing your your friends; think about looking at your existing group and group of friends, asking, are these people that make me feel good about myself? Are these people that I truly enjoy hanging out with? And not only do we have to nurture new friendships, but we also have to prune old friendships.
Okay. The next one is people in their 70s and 80s wish that they had done more in the early days of retirement; wish that they had done more in their 50s and 60s to rejuvenate old passions. If you have a family, if you have children, you know, we all had passions that we had to give up during the time when they were young, during the time when we were raising them, because between working full-time and raising kids, there's not a lot of time left for our passions. But as they get older, you know, as they become teenagers and they no longer want to hang out with Mom and Dad as much as they used to, think about spending that time rekindling old passions and finding new passions, because passions passions are the spice of life; passions are what what get us excited to get up in the morning. And if you've lost some or all of your passions in life, consider reinvesting time in iterating through several different things to find out what your next passion might be.
Okay. The next one, and admittedly this, you know, I'm a financial adviser, so I'm a little biased: people wish that they had had a financial plan before they retired or in retirement. And and the reason for this is typically people have one or two things that they end up doing in retirement; they either—and most people, I'd say 80% of people—end up under spending how much money that they could have spent, or they spent too much in early retirement and they they put their future Financial Security at risk. As I said, 80% of us tend to spend too little early on, and and that's the seventh regret is people wish that they had spent more money. Let me go back to the plan first; I really didn't finish that thought enough. Having a plan gives you confidence—confidence that I can spend this money, that I I can do these things. And often times, if you're married, if there's two people in a relationship, one partner wants to spend more, one partner wants to spend less, and that can create a lot of stress. And if you have a plan, you know, the good thing is, use your financial advisor as the bad guy; you know, have the discussion with the financial advisor and tweak it with the financial adviser and come up with a compromise, something that works for both Partners, um, because you want to have confidence. Working with a financial adviser is not for everybody, and if working for a fin with a financial adviser is not the right match for you, at least use good software to help you with this. Too many people use an Excel spreadsheet, use Google Sheets, and unfortunately, you can you can miss things. You want to be you want confidence in your plan, and for that, use professional software. The software that I like is called Balden b o l d i; it's very inexpensive, it's $120 a year, and it's very robust. And if you use the link in the description below, this video is not sponsored, but you'll be supporting the channel, and you don't pay anything extra. So again, uh, Bolden, but look for the link in the description below. All right, enough said on that, and then we talked about spending more; that's that's really important, that that you spent—you you're not going to spend the same amount every year in retirement—and what typically happens is is what we in the industry call a smile, or retirement smile: you spend more in the early years of retirement, then you've kind of been there, done that, you sp don't spend as much, and then towards the end, because of health care expenses, which are an unknown for all of us, it cost can go up as as well.
Okay, and number eight is they W—and this is really important; this is a regret that's not only going to impact your life but could impact the lives of people that that you care about—and that is that they wish they had shared their resources, particularly with their children, if you have any children; they wish they had shared some of that money with their children when their kids were younger. Because by the time we're 80, you know, our kids are already in their late 40s, their early 50s, and they're past the stage where they really, you know, an extra $10,000 could could really have a positive impact on their life. So for more information on that, there's a great book written by Bill Perkins; it's called *Die with Zero*. And also for more information on on one of the regrets here, which was retiring earlier—people wish they had retired earlier—that's why I made this video up here: Why Retiring at 65 Might Be a Big Mistake. I'll see you in that video. Bye-bye.