5 Pillars to Becoming Truly Retirement Ready

0:06Welcome to the Wealthy After 40 podcast, the show for Gen X women and couples who are ready to ditch financial stress and feel confident about retirement. I'm your host, Dailene Higgins, money coach and retirement strategist to help you gain clarity and confidence with your money by creating a spending plan that aligns with your financial goals and dreams so you can spend intentionally, save consistently, and feel at peace about your future. Join me every week to understand your money, simplify your decisions, and take intentional steps toward the life you want.

0:47Welcome to the episode. I'm so excited to help you understand what is being retirement ready. As I've worked with clients for the past several years, pre and post retirement, I've seen more and more gaps. I've gained a better understanding of why my work is so important. There are things that financial advisors, and I'm not saying all of them, but they're missing, they're avoiding or just not addressing with their clients. And so these are the clients who are actually reaching out to me, helping them dial in, solve these issues, solve these problems so that they're happier and more successful in retirement.

1:30Yes, some of them have been post-retirement. So we're making up, we're trying to create a solution on the flip side. So I'm hoping I'm getting a hold of everybody pre-retirement and helping you solve those gaps. If you feel like something is missing, it probably is. So today we're talking about five pillars. And these are the things that I feel are important for being retirement ready, getting yourself there, getting yourself able to take that step and go into retirement when you're there, but have a full understanding of what retirement is. Now, these five pillars are the basis of a new community I'm creating, the Retirement Ready Hub for Gen Xers over on Facebook.

2:20There's a link down in the show notes. I'll share more at the end of this episode, but I hope you'll come join me. We'll just be covering really retirement readiness, what that means for you, the little steps you can take, you know, jumping on a podcast episode has its limitations. I talk for about 20 minutes, 15, 20 minutes. And so I really want to just give you more small doses daily, with some trainings weekly, really have some great experiences. So again, I'll share more about that community at the end of this episode. So let's dive into the five pillars of being retirement ready. So the first one, retirement vision.

3:02It's been a while since I've talked about this, but it's so important to understand how this fits into the overall picture of being retirement ready. This is the foundation. This is you deciding what retirement is actually going to look like for you, not just financially, but in daily life. Here's where I hear people saying, well, I just want to travel in retirement. And that is a great part of your vision, but it is a small part. It is a small part. Even if you travel for a month out of the year, you still have 11 months where you need to figure out how are you spending your time? What do you want to experience?

3:48And what do you value? It's a daily thing and it becomes so much more. Yes, those travel things, those bigger pieces are important for the financial piece and those numbers. But really for success and for happiness, it's all about purpose. And gleaning into that purpose and knowing exactly what it is that drives that. So that is the piece that where clients are like, I don't want to give up my lifestyle. This is that piece. This is where you're really creating and defining what it is that you mean by that. So again, what does retirement actually look like for you, not just financially, but in daily life?

4:35All right, pillar number two. the cash flow reality. Now I've had coaches tell me before, I can't use this term, but I will be using this term more and more because this is the issue that most people are experiencing, is the cash flow understanding of money coming in, money going out. And sometimes money going out does exceed the money coming in. So really, it's important for you to define this cash flow reality, which is your income and your savings capacity and also your expenses, but understanding what you actually have available today. I've been working with a client and really defining cost of reality.

5:21That was a term I came up with. We all have one. It's all different. Yes, it's made up of all of our expenses and we create this reality. So understanding the cash flow in accordance with that is very important. The bigger piece pre-retirement is how much can you realistically save each month? This is a piece that I help you solve on a roadmap to retirement call. We can dive into that, but it's also important beyond that to where is your money going? How are you feeling about all of that flow? And what capacity exists without feeling deprived? We don't need to save so much that we can't enjoy our money now.

6:09That phrase, you've heard it here before. It's important to learn how to balance the now and later. And getting to this and understanding how your cash flow in and out, the demand throughout the year, really is where you're going to see and create the biggest breakthroughs. So again, what is your income? What is your savings capacity? And how is that cash? How is that cash flow moving in and out? Pillar number three, your retirement number. This is your FI number. How much do you need to retire with confidence? It can't be a vague guess. It can't be a generic number anymore. If you're in your 40s or your 50s, that means that we can actually dial into more specifically what are your needs and create a bigger number, not necessarily, but a better number.

7:09The clarity here is going to be huge if you know what your expenses are, if you know what you desire in retirement, then we can tweak it and actually create it to be something for the future. But knowing that number that you need to reach with confidence, knowing that that's the number, It's not from a generic calculator. It's not from the standard, oh, we gotta be saving 2 million now. That may not be the case. We all live in different areas. We all make different incomes. We all have different spending patterns. We can't just have a blanket number. You really have got to understand, again, pillar two, your income and savings, but also pillar one, your retirement vision, and this will help craft a better retirement number.

7:57You know, getting clear, understanding that this is another piece that I can help you solve on a roadmap to retirement call and really start defining what this is. All right, to pillar number four.

8:16Understanding where you are and where you want to be. Now, I had a previous episode, I'll link it down in the show notes, understanding your timeline. This is important. And this is where you can understand that gap. Also with a pillar three, we just talked about as your retirement number is where am I and where do I want to be? If you are on track, okay. And if you are, no, you don't need to make any major adjustments. If you are not on track, how much are you off and how can you close this gap? You need to have a plan, you need to start working with those numbers. And this is something that can be really approached from a couple of different angles, exploring your daily finances.

9:07Is it savings that you need to increase that? Or is it getting your debt paid down? Is that another piece? And really working through what is the gap and what makes the most sense to you. It's you have to be able to make these adjustments, enjoy making these adjustments, because we don't want to talk about restrictions or deprivation. We want to be able to go to the place that's going to close the gap with your best step, with your best motivator. If somebody tells you to do something that's way too hard, if you think, if you're not a runner, and they're like, you need to go run five miles, There's a gap there.

9:48This is the same with money. We've got to really find out these minutiae, but powerful momentum pieces that will help you start closing that gap. And if you do it soon enough, bringing in that end goal from maybe 65 to 60, and it's possible. It's just all about, again, understanding where you're at and where you want to be, how you can manipulate. I say that with really such ease to close that gap. What can I do that will give me the greatest moment, get me where I want to be without really having to do a lot of heavy lifting. All right. Pillar number five, this one, it is often overlooked. It is the biggest piece I believe is keeping people from hanging back.

10:43They don't believe that retirement is possible. And so sitting in that space of retirement isn't possible, I'll never be able to retire, I'm going to work until the day I die. You know what I've talked about. I've talked about it before. You've seen it, you've heard it. But really getting into the belief. And again, this can tie back to your retirement vision. I think most people don't believe retirement is possible because number one, they don't want a retirement that they've seen others do. Number two, they don't know what retirement they want. And so that belief becomes not even something they can grasp.

11:24So really that vision, as I said, is foundation, but then believing. So jumping to pillar five and getting into the, yes, I am going to make this happen. I have the ability to make these decisions today that will get me to where I want to be. Working with a client, we talked about her timeline and I'm like, when are you going to retire? And she had the ho-hum, which is another piece of believing, another piece of the vision. And she reached out to me probably two weeks after we'd worked together in her session. And she said, I just told my boss I'm retiring in 10 years. To make that declaration out of your safety net of family and friends to your boss is huge.

12:16And once she did that, it's just given her the confidence to do what she needs to do to get there. We've already, we set the goal, we've set the end line, and now we can really look at how are we making decisions today with our money? How are these decisions supporting us in the future? But as I talked about earlier, not just future, but now. We've got to stay consistent with the both of that, with the maintaining of the both sides of that now and later so that we are not restricted, we're not being deprived, we're not not enjoying life right now, but that we're taking care of future self. You know, future 70-year-old, 80-year-old self, if we don't give them enough money, really it's going to be so hard on us.

13:08But the key is finding that balance. And the key is believing that you can, believing that retirement is possible, and then making those confident decisions that are going to get you there. All right, let me quickly recap the five pillars. Again, these were just a general overview of all of them. We'll be diving in deeper in Facebook group. So pillar one is retirement vision. Make sure you are getting clear on what your purpose, what you desire, what every day is going to look like in retirement. Pillar number two, your income and savings capacity. What is your cash flow reality? How are you actually saving money without being deprived?

13:55Pillar number three is your retirement number, your financial independence number. This is important to know what you actually need so that you can retire with confidence. Not a vague guess, not a generic calculator. We've got to get into who you are, how you spend, and what that number looks like. Pillar number four, what is the gap? Where am I? And I need to be here. So how do I close the gap? That's going to give you the action pieces. That's going to give you where you need to make the best efforts. And then dialing into those pieces and doing the work. Which takes us to pillar five, mindset and decision-making confidence.

14:38Believing you can. believing it's possible, knowing you want it, and knowing it's something that you're going to create and enjoy. So thank you for joining me in today's episode all about how to be retirement ready. What does that mean? And I hope you'll join me in my Retirement Ready Hub for Gen Xers Facebook community. We are going to be, like I said, diving into these pillars as well as some other things, really helping you understand what being retirement ready is, but also how to get there. To kick off the group, I am hosting a three-day challenge, Accelerate Your Retirement, Three Steps to Get You Started.

15:25That is going to kick off inside the group June 2nd to the 4th, be live. It will stay inside the group. So if you're not able to attend live, They will be hosted in there and kept in there. So if you are listening to this episode post June 4th, you can still find that inside the group. If you have trouble finding that, please reach out and I will tag you in this. So excited to kick off this community, be able to support you in a more daily commitment way to give you the little pieces day by day to kind of emphasize what we're talking about each week on the Wealthy After 40 podcast. So please head over there.

16:08Link is also down in the show notes and we'll see you next week.

16:15Thank you for spending this time with me. If you're not already following the show, be sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. And I'd love to stay connected with you between episodes. So come join me inside my Facebook community, Retirement Ready Hub for Gen Xers. It's where we're having real conversations about money, sharing wins, working through challenges, and building a clear path toward retirement. And remember, retirement isn't just a dream, it's a plan, and you get to make it possible.