10 Steps to Creating the Ultimate Retirement Plan

21:45So let's look at what last year's inflation was for 2025. In 2025, I'm looking it up right now, the overall CPI in 2025 was 2.7%. Now, I know some categories were higher, some categories were lower, but overall, what we are looking at right here is 2.7%. So, if you invested$10 ,000 per year, increasing the contributions by 2.7 % means that you would increase your contributions by$270 in next year. Now, doing this ensures that you have the same exact buying power as you did the previous year. And so I like to track the retirement number every year so that I can make inflation adjustments, that I can increase how much I'm contributing.

22:25But also I look at this inflation adjustment and no matter what, the minimum amount that you should increase towards your retirement contributions is at the inflation rate. Now, if you're someone who maxes out your Roth IRA or your 401k, this happens naturally because they increase those contribution limits for you. And so when they increase those contribution limits, you're taking care of business already. You're getting this done because those contribution limits have gone up based on the inflation rate. But if you aren't doing that, if you're contributing to a taxable brokerage account or you're doing a lot of crypto or whatever else you like to do, then increasing the amount that you are putting towards this stuff is very important by the inflation rate.

22:59So I always make sure I do that every single year, no matter what. And so early on, I would recommend that you do that. All right. So we've got our retirement number in place. We're going to track that every year. And I'll talk more about the cadence of when to track that and how often to think about this. But let's go to step three. Because in step three, we're going to map out our income sources. This is the fun part. This is where we figure out, okay, do we have extra income coming in that we can actually reduce our goal of our retirement number here so we don't have to save so much money? We can have a balanced life of living for today, but also saving for tomorrow.

23:33That's the beautiful place to be when it comes to building wealth and building up your finances is if you can do both of these things, boy, oh boy, does it get fun to build wealth. And so when we do this, I wanna make sure that we are going through this step-by-step. So first, we're gonna estimate our social security. Now, is social security gonna be around by the time you retire? I don't know, but guess what? It's around right now, and we wanna focus on the things that we can control. And so to do this, we wanna make sure that we are looking at social security as a real and tangible thing. A lot of things will change with social security over the course of the next decade, for example.

24:05And so in 2035, I think we're going to know a lot more about Social Security and what is going to be happening. But I also think from a political standpoint, someone who gets rid of Social Security is going to be absolutely burned at the stake, politically speaking, if they actually did that. So I, it's opinion, it's opinion. I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know exactly what's going to be happening. But would Social Security go away? I don't think it would ever go away completely, at least not in the short term, unless they came up with some other option. but it is something to just consider.

24:37Now, putting that aside, you can go to ssa.gov and you can do an estimate of what you think your social security is going to be. Now, what I would do is think through a couple of different scenarios. As you get closer to social security age, if you're in your 50s or in your late 40s, as you start to get closer to that age, I would start to think through, well, when do I want to take this money? Every year you delay taking social security, you get a guaranteed 8 % rate of return, meaning it increases 8 % every single year. So if you don't need that money early on in your retirement, if you have built wealth and you are really diligent about building wealth, you can delay Social Security and you can take it later on.

25:14But if you are someone who really is on a fine line and you need that Social Security to help get you over the hump so you can actually retire earlier in your 60s, then maybe taking it earlier is the way to go. It all is based on your specific scenario. So there is no cut and dry, black and white answer when it comes to Social Security, you need to look at your specific scenario. Again, also, if your spouse earned a lot more than you did, then your Social Security considerations are going to be very different than someone who is married and them and their spouse made the same amount of money. So there's a bunch of different things to think through.

25:49And taking Social Security is longevity insurance, not just a check. Now, a lot of folks out there who do not have a retirement, they rely on Social Security completely. They rely on that as their sole source of income when it comes to retirement. And so we want to make sure that that's not our sole source of income. People who live in poverty and retirement only rely on Social Security. I don't want that for any of you out there. So we want to make sure that we are planning all of this stuff out that we're talking about right now. So you don't live just on Social Security. It does not cover all of your costs of living.

26:18And so there's going to be a lot more that you would have to do. And I don't want you living on rice and beans in retirement. We want you to thrive in retirement. We want you to drive the car that you want to drive. I want you to live in the house you want to live. I want you to travel to the places you want to travel. And so that's what we are trying to teach you here. You get the outcome that you want instead of the outcome that you have seen past folks live. Maybe you have grandparents or parents who are living in retirement right now, and you don't like the way they're living. You don't like seeing the way they have to live.

26:44And that is because they did not plan like you were currently planning right now. It is not their fault. Nobody taught them this. Nobody teaches anybody this stuff. And so my goal is to teach as many of you this stuff as possible so that we can make a million millionaires out there. You have a million dollars in the bank, you could draw down$40 ,000 per year. You have 2 million in the bank, you could draw down$80 ,000 per year. You have 3 million in the bank, you could draw down$120 ,000 per year. Why not do it? Why not save for your future so that you can thrive in your future but also live amazing now?

27:14That's what we're teaching you here. Next, after social security, I want you to think through, do I get any pension income? Is there going to be any income coming in from annuities? If you bought an annuity for some reason in the past, annuities have really high fees, not a huge fan, but that's a whole different story. Do you have rental properties and cashflow coming in from those rental properties? Well, that's going to be additional income that can help you retire sooner. Do you want to work part-time or have some passive income? Every single day I drive into my office, which is right here.

27:44You're looking at it if you're watching this. And every single day when I drive in, I usually leave at about seven in the morning. And as I'm driving in, I see crossing guards helping kids cross the street. And they all are doing that as a retirement job. It's a little bit of extra income to help them through retirement. Some of them look like they're well into their 90s. And it is a very cool thing because they're all happy. They're all smiling. They're interacting with each other. And they're having a good time. That's an example of a retirement job. I've walked into different gyms or studios.

28:19where I have seen people doing retirement jobs of things like a yoga instructor, a pickleball instructor, or doing things they're passionate about. I've seen fishing charter captains where that is their retirement job. And so there's a lot of really cool stuff that you could do in retirement to earn extra income. If there's something you're passionate about and you want to stay active and you want to stay doing things, there are some really, really cool stuff I think that you could do. Also, one thing I would say is this. guaranteed income dramatically lowers the failure rate in retirement. Meaning when you look at statistics, if you have guaranteed income, some form of guaranteed income, whether it's that rental property, whether it's some additional income that is out there, that guaranteed income dramatically reduces your risk of failing in retirement.

29:03And so finding ways to earn some income or finding ways to get some cashflow in retirement can be really, really beneficial and thinking through options through that. And so now we need to define what the portfolio's job is. So the formula here is annual spending minus guaranteed income, meaning any income that's going to come in from annuities or rental properties or anything else, equals how much you need for your portfolio. And that's what's going to be left, the portfolio draw. That's what's going to be left there. And so let's say for an example that you want to retire early and you're like, man, I only think I can get to having a million dollars in my portfolio.

29:35And that is just where I am right now. I don't make a lot of money. And so the gap, the difference between my income and expenses is enough to get me to a million dollars. Well, if that is the case, then you can always, always, always in retirement take a part-time job, at least short-term, because as you progress through retirement, studies show that later on in retirement, in your 70s, 80s, 90s, that's where you spend even less than you did in your 60s. And so most people front-load their spending in retirement. And so if you wanna do it later on down the line, then you can think through this and say, okay, well, early in my retirement, maybe I'll earn some extra income, I'll take a part-time job that I enjoy more, but I'm not gonna have to earn as much as I currently do right now, where I can have a million dollars and I can make up the difference.

30:16If I wanna spend$60 ,000 per year and I can draw down$40 ,000 per year, I just need to make up the additional$20 ,000. And so you can work a part-time job and do something like that. So there are a lot of different options and I think people don't think through how flexible finance really is. How flexible your current finances are. You could go work part-time somewhere right now, get some health insurance benefits and get some other stuff and be able to do that. So like, for example, we've talked about barista fire a number of different times. And the reason why that's called barista fire is people used to retire on less than they needed, be able to draw down their portfolio and work a part-time job at Starbucks.

30:50And Starbucks would pay benefits even for part-time employees. They still do this today, last I checked, which was two months ago. And so if you work part-time at Starbucks, they have employee benefits, they will pay your health insurance. And so people would go and do that and it would make up the difference. Instead of working that corporate job that they absolutely hated, they would rather go and do something like Barista Fire. I remember when I first started investing, I kept telling myself, I'll start when I have more money. I didn't feel like I had enough. But what changed for me was realizing it's not about having a lot.

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35:58Get 12 months special financing on installed carpet projects right now at the Home Depot. Offer valid March 12th through March 29th, 2026. Exclusions and additional charges may apply. For licenses, see homedepot.com slash license numbers. So before we get to step four, you're gonna notice that we're missing something big and a big ticket item that we need to talk about when it comes to retirement, and that's healthcare. And so in step four, we need to plan for healthcare. This is the wild card. This is the wild card risk that we need to think through and how we want to take action on this because healthcare costs are rising as a rapid rate.

36:32If you have been anywhere near insurance over the course of the last five years, insurances are increasing so fast that it is so incredibly frustrating. It is one of those things that you have to shop in order to stay ahead. If you don't shop your insurance, you are most likely paying almost double what you paid for the last four years. And so this is something where we need to make sure that we are always shopping our insurance. By the way, I have a car insurance tool that has been awesome. A lot of people have been using it over the course of the last couple of months. If you're interested in that, let me know.

37:03I'll send it to you. It's like a car insurance comparison tool. We can send it over to you. But when it comes to health care, pre-65, before Medicare starts, is often the most expensive phase. So if you retire at 55, between 55 to 65, that could be a very expensive decade where ACA premiums can range anywhere from$6 ,000 per year to$18 ,000 per year on average, depending on income and region that you live in. Now, post 65, you have a couple of different options. You have Medicare plus Medigap or Medicare Advantage, and then you have out-of-pocket costs. Now, the out-of-pocket costs are what we're going to need to plan for, for sure.

37:36In addition to that decade or that timeframe when you retire prior to Medicare kicking in at 65. Now, Fidelity came out with a study and they estimated that a 65-year-old couple may need about$315 ,000 just to cover healthcare expenses throughout retirement. That number would be a number that I would be comfortable with if I had that in my portfolio and saved in my portfolio, where if I thought through, okay, if I can make sure that I have an additional$315 ,000, and that may sound crazy to you right now, but just remember, as we get closer and closer to the end of our retirement age, and we have a million dollars in the bank, and you have been doing this over the course of the last couple of decades, that million dollars, if you've got a 10 % rate of return, is going to be growing at a very fast and rapid rate.

38:24And so we want to make sure that we are thinking through this logically. If we worked an additional year to make sure that we had enough cash in the bank in order to cover healthcare expenses, that would give us peace of mind in that specific area. And so if this is something that you are thinking through or you want to make sure that you are building towards, there's a couple of different options. One is to use HSA strategically. So your HSA, which we talk about a lot here, can be a retirement account. So it can have a couple of different benefits for you. First, if you retire early, it can help you bridge from those first couple of years.

38:58So if you retire at 55, it can help you bridge from 55 to 59 and a half when you can access your Roth IRA and your 401k. Two, though, it also can be a savings investment vehicle for your actual health care. And so for future health care, you can use your HSA as the place that you are compartmentalizing a lot of these different costs. So you have those triple tax benefits where you don't have to think about it as much anymore. So your HSA is so powerful even for this is I would at least try to target in my HSA. If you're young, try to target in your HSA getting to this number, getting to the range where the national averages are in your specific area.

39:34so that you can at least have enough cash on hand to cover healthcare expenses. The last thing you want to do is have to make a difficult financial decision because of healthcare. And so your HSA is going to help you be able to do that. All right. So again, remember, healthcare is increasing at a rate of 7 % every single year over the course of the last couple of years. And so we want to make sure that we are on top of this because it is a big, big cost and a big, big decision. Now, step five, this is the fun part because now we're going to start to work backwards. In step five, I want you to design the accumulation plan, meaning that how are you actually going to get there?

40:09How are you actually going to save enough to hit your specific goal? So I want you to set your annual savings targets and I want you to think through, okay, well, if I invest X amount of dollars over the course of the next 20 years, I'll be able to hit my savings goal. Now, you can use an investment calculator. Calculator.net has a great investment calculator. That's the one I use a lot on this show. It's completely free. You just log in, go calculator.net investment calculator. You Google it, it'll pop up. I would say that is much more accurate than like throwing something into AI or ChatGPT.

40:39For some reason, ChatGPT gets compound interest calculations wrong a lot, I've noticed. So making sure that you use something that has been around for a long time, I think is very helpful. And then work backwards. So look at your portfolio goal. I want you to look at the years remaining before you're gonna retire. And I want you to give yourself conservative return assumptions. So you hear me talk a lot on this podcast about 10 % rate of returns because that's the return you're going to get or the actual number that you're going to get. When you work backwards, you adjust for inflation. We want to get closer to that 7 % number.

41:07We want to be more conservative when you are planning for retirement. I would much rather you be conservative and have more money in retirement than to get to the point in time when you're planning where you put a 10 % rate of return and the market came back and it got you six. I don't want that to happen to you. So being conservative and getting closer, I do all my planning at 7%. You can do whatever feels right to you. but doing it at 10, I think is something where it is a little bit overly optimistic. We want to make sure that we are pessimistic when it comes to planning for retirement. Okay.

41:38Next is as you start to work backwards, now you realize what that number is. I want you to start to maximize these tax advantage accounts. I want you to attack these at tax advantage accounts. So your employer match, your 401k, your Roth IRA, HSA, all of these are going to help you in retirement dramatically. And so attacking those accounts will be really important. If you want to retire early, your taxable brokerage account is going to be your friend. It's going to be your bread and butter. It's going to be a great place to put your dollars because you can take money out of that account whenever you need to.

42:05Now, we just did an episode a few months back talking through the five different ways to access your retirement accounts early and ways that you can do this if you want to retire in your 50s. And so that is a great episode to go back and listen to. There are ways to access this money early, but we did an entire hour-long episode going through all those different ways. Now, once you start to select the accounts that you're going to be contributing to, and you're taking this money, you know how much money you need to be sending to these accounts every single month. I want you to automate those contributions, and I want you to pick a core portfolio.

42:34Now, you can think through, do I want to do a Warren Buffett portfolio? Do I want to be aggressive and do the Simple Path to Wealth portfolio? Speaking of the Simple Path to Wealth, JL Collins will be on the show next month. Really excited for that. Do we want to do a 70-30 portfolio? Do I want to do a three-fund portfolio? Doing your research in those areas is very, very important and we want to make sure that we are looking through this but we want to automate everything automate every single paycheck just like your 401k gets automated into your 401k i want you to think about doing that for every single place you invest okay so that is step five is to work backwards and start to execute your plan we're going to get into step six right after this break all right step six is now what we're going to do is protect our wealth while we're building it And so when it comes to building wealth, I want you to think through, well, how much cash do I want on hand?

43:23Because we're missing a component here when we think about our portfolio is cash. Cash is going to give you safety. Cash is going to help you through rough times. And cash is something that I think you need to build towards when it comes to retirement. Now, I like to have multiple years of cash for retirees. Now, that is not attainable for everyone. But when it comes to retirees, I like for you to have additional years of cash on hand. So first, let's talk about the emergency fund. Now, here at the Personal Finance Podcast, we believe that you need a minimum emergency fund of six months. It takes a while to get there.

43:56You build it up for one month, then you get to three months, then you get to six months. If you haven't heard our episode talking about the 1-3-6 method, highly recommend that you go and check that episode out. But if you want to make sure you're protecting your finances, having cash on hand is very important. Now, in retirement, my goal, personally, is to have a few years of cash on hand. And so I'm going to keep it in a number of different places. Some of which will be a high-yield savings account, depending on CDs. May have some in CDs, may have some in bonds, or T-bills, or whatever else. But it's going to depend on some of the rates at that given time.

44:24There's a bunch of places that you can put this cash on hand so it doesn't get eaten away by inflation. And these are just some of the areas that you can do that. Two is life insurance. Thinking about the life insurance that you currently have, while you're building wealth, having term life insurance is by far one of the best things you can do. So Policy Genius is where I got my term life insurance. They have been a sponsor of this podcast for years now because that's where I got my life insurance. I just updated it again this year. And so with Policy Genius, you can get term life insurance. What is term life insurance?

44:53Well, it's very simple, actually. Term life insurance means that you buy a policy for a specific term. So let's say you're 30 years old right now and you want to buy a policy until you're age 60. by the time you turn age 60, you know you're gonna have a multimillion dollar portfolio and so you're not worried about the difference after that because your family will be taken care of. So during your wealth accumulation years, you buy this term life insurance during a specific term, 30 to 60. Once that term is up, then you don't need that life insurance anymore, it goes away, you don't have those payments anymore and you can move on.

45:23Now here's the great part about term life insurance, it is the lowest cost way to get life insurance. You can get a million dollar policy for like 35 bucks depending on your age. For some people, if you've had health conditions or other things, it might be a little higher. Or if you're a little older, it may be a little higher. But for those of you out there, term life insurance by far is the cheapest. And every single person should have it if somebody depends on you. If somebody doesn't depend on you yet or you don't have someone who depends on your income, you don't need it yet. You only need it once someone depends on your income.

45:50And then disability insurance is also another thing you can look into to protect your income because your income is your greatest asset. Now, secondly, is to make sure that you have a plan in place to protect your finances online. Because if a scammer gets a hold of your information and they steal some of your information, I have seen people's entire retirements get wiped out because they did not have a financial protection plan. And this is the one thing that a lot of people do not do, is they do not have that financial protection plan in place. And so making sure we have multiple episodes going through how to make sure that you have that financial protection plan in place.

46:23If you don't have a financial protection plan to place, I highly recommend thinking through and putting that together, making sure A, you're freezing your credits, making sure that you are doing these safe things with your passwords. You have a password manager and every single password is unique. But in addition, you're doing the right things like paying for things in the correct way so that you can't get scammed. In addition, you're also removing your personal information online from online data brokers. See, online data brokers can give out your personal information to anyone on the internet.

46:53And so you need to make sure you get that removed. And the way to do this is to use a service called DeleteMe. DeleteMe is going to help you get that personal information removed from those data brokers because there's no laws around how these data brokers actually have to manage your information. So if some scammer out there gets a piece of your information, they can Google your name, your address, everything else. They can find a data broker who has the rest of your information and they can go and open a bank account in your name or open a credit card in your name or open a student loan in your name.

47:20and that could be detrimental to your finances. And so Delete Me helps you remove your personal information because if you tried to do this on your own and you tried to go out there and get all of this done and all of this removed, it would take you hours and hours. You have to go to these shady websites and it is the biggest pain in the butt. So instead, I use Delete Me and Delete Me does it all for you. And then throughout the year, they go and check all these data broker sites again and make sure your information is continuously removed. And so if you go to joindeleteme.com slash PFP20, that is the best place to go where you get 20 % off of Delete Me.

47:55And their month of plans are really low cost. So I would highly recommend getting Delete Me. It is the best dollars I spent. My entire family is now on Delete Me because it is by far the best service I have ever used. And it saves me so much time. So go to joinDeleteMe.com slash PFP20 and you can save 20 % there. Also, if you want to manage your risk, you want to make sure that you are looking at your asset allocation. If your asset allocation is out of whack and you have a really bond-heavy portfolio, you're never going to be able to accomplish your goals if you are 30 years out from retirement.

48:25Or if you are really close to retirement age and you are 100 % stocks and you are not happy about that, and if the market dipped, it would ensure that you could not retire, then you want to take a look at that asset allocation. So it's very important that you make sure that you are doing the right things and working on the right steps when it comes to your asset allocation. Now, step seven is something I call plan the transition. And what that means is that when you are thinking about transitioning from your working years, your wealth accumulation years to your wealth preservation years, which are going to be the years where you are preserving your portfolio, how are you going to plan that transition?

48:59Well, first, let's talk about withdrawal order. What order are you going to withdraw from your accounts? What's common for a lot of folks is they go taxable, then tax deferred, then Roth, and they do it in that order. But for you, it could be very different based on your income or based on your financial scenario. And so you have to have an understanding of what order you're gonna be withdrawing from these accounts and how you're gonna be doing this. This would change for tax brackets. This would change for Medicare surcharges. This would change for legacy goals. All of these could be very, very different for you specifically.

49:30So one, you wanna determine your withdrawal order when you get to retirement age. Two is planning for RMDs. So if you have a lot of money in pre-tax accounts, then you want to make sure that you are planning for RMDs because that could increase your tax rate. It could increase where you stand when it comes to taxes. And by your early 70s, when you have to start taking RMDs, this could change a lot of different things, including your Medicare IRMA charges. And so we want to make sure that our conversions are earlier and we can smooth out those conversions and think about how we want to do conversions.

50:00Also, just thinking about that cash bucket again. So if you are building up that emergency fund during your wealth accumulation years and you have decided, okay, I actually want to have a couple of years of cash on hand, then as you get closer to retirement age, let's build up that cash bucket so it makes sense. And we can reduce sequence of returns risk, which means when you're withdrawing money in a down market, you want to make sure that you're reducing the risk of having to do that. And so cash isn't just for returns. It is also to help you sleep better at night. And so that's what the big thing here is that we are looking for.

50:31Now, step eight is to integrate Social Security strategically. We're going to do an entire episode on how to think about Social Security strategically and how to think about when to take it. But you want to make sure that you are coordinating with your spouse first. If you're married, when and who takes Social Security first matters. And so you want to make sure that you are thinking about this because survivor benefits make delaying the higher earner especially powerful, meaning that if you delay the higher earner, then the Survivor benefits are going to be much, much better overall. And the great thing about Social Security is it's actually going to reduce your portfolio stress more than people realize.

51:06If you get to a point in time where Social Security can cover a lot of your needs, then your stress around your portfolio is not going to be big at all. You're not even going to have to worry as much as you would in other scenarios. And so that's where I like Social Security is it's a hedge against specific risks that you don't have to worry about as long as you have this in place. And so as you get closer to retirement age, that's where you can decide when to take it. And you can decide when is the best time to make sure that we do this, because that'll be a big, big difference overall. Now, step nine is I want you to think through this now.

51:38And I want you to think through some of the big risks in your legacy now. I'm going to talk more about that here, because there's a lot of things that we want to make sure that we are identifying. One is long-term care decisions. So about 70 % of people over the age of 65 will need some sort of long-term care. Now, long-term care is one of the most expensive things that will ever happen, and you need to start having conversations about it now. There are way too many people out there who never have conversations with their children on what their will is for long-term care. And so they end up in places they do not want to be because they never had the conversation or they never set themselves up financially.

52:19What do I mean by that? Well, a lot of folks end up in a nursing home that they never wanted to be in. And the reason why they end up in that nursing home they never wanted to be in was because they never sat up or had conversations about what they wanted their long-term care to be. It is very costly for you to not speak up. And it is very costly for you to not have those conversations. Now, if you're in your 30s or 40s, it's very hard to think about this right now. But if you're in your 50s or 60s, it is a very real thing that you need to have a family meeting and sit down and start having this conversation.

52:48because long-term care and your long-term care of where you want to be is going to be something that is very important. I have seen from my parents and my in-laws having a long-term care journey that is difficult. It is a difficult time for everyone involved. And so to make this seamless and to make it less stressful for everyone, I highly encourage you to have that conversation. Now, there are things like long-term care insurance. Now, to be honest, long-term care insurance is a very complicated product. It is a very expensive product. It is a product that is very difficult for most people to understand.

53:23And so when you look at long-term care insurance, you have to understand what you're getting into before you even start that. Secondly, would you rather self-fund your long-term care? Depending on how long you live, let's say you go into a nursing home or you go into assisted living. Depending on how long you live, that is hundreds of thousands. And I've seen people stay at really nice ones and they have paid over a million dollars for assisted living. And so this is so important. And most people just don't have the conversation. But also, do you have family support or do you have public support?

53:54Is your family willing to take you in? In some cultures, families are not willing to put their parents into a nursing home. And if your will is to never go into a nursing home, make it known to your kids. Make it known that that's not what you want to do. But you need to have a plan in place. If that does happen, your kids have to go to work each day or work in their career that someone is going to be there to help take care. Those are just some of the things that I want you to think through when it comes to long-term care. And start to have those conversations now. Please start to have those conversations now.

54:24Secondly is legal basics. Do you have a will in place? If you don't have a will in place, now's the time. Do you have powers of attorney in place based on a lot of different things like healthcare directives and those types of things? Do you have beneficiary reviews there? This is often forgotten, but you want to make sure that you are looking through your investment accounts and you have those beneficiaries in place, you want to make sure nothing goes into probate. And then asset protection and titling. So I have a trust. My family has a trust. If you are getting to the point in time where your assets are over a million dollars, you should probably have a trust too.

54:57If you have businesses, you should definitely have a trust. Making sure that that is in place is very important. And then coordinate titling with state law and liability exposure. So making sure that you have this titling in place is important. Here's the thing. Is estate planning and doing all this stuff is a gift to the people you love? so that you're not a liability. So the things that you give them is not a big deal. And so you got to make sure that you were planning through this stuff. I know it's boring. I know you don't want to do it, but you got to do it. It's part of those things. If you don't have a will, if you don't have a trust in place and you need to have one, then you are really, really doing yourself a disservice and your family a disservice.

55:31Now, step 10 is I want you to create a review rhythm for all of this stuff. We need to think about retirement at least once a year. We need to think about our plan once a year and adjust our plan in a given year. Even if you're 25, the time is now to get a lot of this stuff set up step by step because we can adjust that number in any given year and we can know exactly what we're going to be doing. So I want you to review your spending every year. I want you to review your portfolio every year. I want you to review your asset allocation every year. And I want you to think through your withdrawal rate every year.

56:03Bill Bangen has a new book that is very good on the withdrawal rate that I would highly recommend a lot of you read. And then adjust those things for inflation. I want you to adjust those things for market shifts or even life changes. Your spending is going to change a lot over the course of the next couple of years. Because inflation rates are higher, the cost of living is higher, but in addition, lifestyle is going to change. Same thing when it comes to your portfolio. Maybe you are 100 % in stocks and as you get closer to retirement age, you're trying to move it towards that preservation portfolio.

56:31You add in some bonds and some other things. Your withdrawal rate may change or what you think the withdrawal rate should be. If you were planning on retiring very early and you were at a 3 % withdrawal rate and then all of a sudden realized, I'm going to work a little bit longer and now it's going to 4%. Well, that's going to change a lot of your different plans. And so you want to make sure all of those are thought through. Then I want you to also think about and review life events, marriage or divorce. If you get married or you got a divorce, that's going to change all of these plans. If you have more kids, that's going to change a lot of your plans.

57:02If you have health changes, that's going to dramatically change a lot of your plans. You can have every problem in the world, but once you have a health problem, you only have one problem. And that's the big thing I want you to note. Career or liquidity moves. Maybe you move careers, you make a lot more money now, and all of a sudden you can invest more. Or maybe you decided to take a step back and you make less money, and so you have to adjust your plan based on that. These matter more than all the market noise. And this is the thing that most people don't realize, is the market is gonna give you day-to-day noise and people look at what the market is doing day in and day out.

57:31What matters is this real life stuff here. These costs are what matter. These are what you need to react to. You do not need to react to the market day in and day out. Instead, you need to react to what actually matters, which is your life, your specific financial situation. Everybody's financial situation is different. That's why they call it personal finance and not general finance. Personal finance is personal. And so there are personal decisions that you need to make. And so if you want to put together a one-page plan, if you're young, you can do that. And the way to do this is to put your target age that you want to retire, your spending goal, your portfolio target, the current progress that you have made, what your plan is, writing out some of that plan, your allocation, and then some of your key insurance and estate decisions.

58:14You can literally do this in one page if you wanted to to start off and really have something in place that you can adjust year in and year out. That retirement number is very important because you need to make sure that you're looking at it every single year. You're adjusting it for inflation. You're adjusting it for how much you spend every single year. And you are looking at this more frequently. So I highly encourage everybody out there to start to develop their retirement plan. If you need help, you can go to an advisor. Just watch out for those fees. But this can be something I think every single person can benefit from.

58:42Now, for everyone out there, I want to invite you to join Master Money Academy. Master Money Academy is where we are helping hundreds of people every single week learn how to build their financial plan. We give you the step-by-step of exactly what you need to do with your next dollar based on exactly where you are. And we call it the Wealth Builder's Journey. But in the Wealth Builder's Journey, we tell you exactly what to do. In addition, I do weekly calls inside Master Money Academy to answer your questions. We also are doing monthly masterclasses on a specific topic. So every month is different.

59:14Talking through things like financial relationship planning, to taxes, to increasing your income, to investing, to real estate, setting goals, everything in between we talk about. We're doing masterclasses on a monthly basis. The value you get is way beyond what we're charging for this. And so I would highly recommend that you join Master Money Academy. If you are serious about getting your finances together, I'm going to leave a link down below in the show notes for you to check it out. and in that link, I'm going to give you a discount. In 2026, because I truly believe in Master Money Academy, I'm going to give you a discount for your first month so you can try it out.

59:48So make sure you go down below, check out Master Money Academy and I can't wait to see you inside. Thank you so much for being here on the Personal Finance Podcast. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you and we will see you on the next episode. Thought sweet green was just salads? Think again. There's a new way to do sweet green. Wrapped and ready. These handheld wraps pack bold flavor and 40-plus grams of protein into something hearty, satisfying, and built for life on the go. From craveable sauces to satisfying textures, they're designed to keep you going without slowing you down.

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