Anxious About Retirement? Your Timeline Holds the Answer

0:00Have you ever caught yourself saying, I'll probably have to work until I die. or, well, retirement isn't happening till at least 70. I want you to know it doesn't have to be that way. The peace you want about retirement starts with understanding your timeline. When you make peace with your retirement dates, everything starts to feel possible again. Today, we're diving into how to find that peace, what numbers actually matter, and how you can start closing the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

0:37Hey there and welcome to Wealthy After 40. I'm Dalene Higgins, your podcast host and financial coach. If you're a Gen X woman or couple who's worried about retirement, maybe you feel like you're starting late or don't have enough saved, you're in the right place. This show is all about ditching the financial stress and creating a retirement plan that works for your life now and later. So grab your favorite drink, settle in, and let's figure this out together.

1:17Welcome to the Wealthy After 40 podcast, where I help you enjoy your money now and later. So I'm excited to dive into the concept today about making peace with your retirement. And the peace you want starts with understanding your timeline. There are so many individuals in the forums I've been reading, people asking questions, and they really are saying, I'm just going to have to work until I die. There's no hope. There's no belief that they can make it. and or on the other side, they're like, and if a retirement is even possible, it won't be until I'm 70, right? There's just not a lot of hope.

2:02And if this is you, I understand why you may feel this way. But just like I have said before, and I will continue to say, everyone can make retirement possible. And today, that first step is to make sure you make peace with your retirement date. So to explain that concept a little bit better, think about when you have a squabble with a friend or family member. You kind of have this disagreement, somebody hurts somebody's feelings, whatever it may be. At some point, you need to make peace with either the action or with the person to help you move on. And this is no different with retirement. If you continue to just sit there and say, well, retirement will never happen.

2:52I'll have to work until the day I die. You know, and that's not, first of all, that's not good. It's not giving you hope, but you've got to make peace with it and better understand when you can retire. There are two things that I'm going to help you with today that will help you make peace with that. The first one is knowing when you want to retire. So that key word is want. And you might have said it doesn't matter. Some of you might have said, well, now, okay, really think about what you said and why. And if you said now, that means you want to retire soon. That's your date, soon. And for those of you who are like, oh, I can't.

3:39Okay, in a perfect world, when would you want to retire? Setting aside all those, you know, beliefs that you have, those thoughts you've seen or heard or read or whatever, when would you want to retire? As Gen Xers, we've been working a very long time. You know, that's what we've known. And some of us will never not work. But really think about when you want to retire. What you do in retirement is a different episode, but when do you want to retire? And then the second thing you need to know, which I'm going to help you in this episode, is knowing when you can retire. Those are the two things that need to support you in creating this piece, this date with retirement.

4:30And really what we're doing with answering both of these is giving you a range. giving you a range. So to explore this and other aspects of retirement readiness, I'm going to invite you to take my retirement ready quiz at elevatefinances.us backslash quiz. And upon completing that, all of this information is there as well. You will be emailed your results and next steps that you can take to move forward. It's very simple. There's not a whole lot of questions. And it will give you like, hey, this is where you're falling. And this is what you can do next to increase that readiness, which is all we can be doing.

5:12But for today, our readiness is going to hinge on knowing more specifically, your deadline. Okay, we're calling it a deadline or your date, your desired date for retirement. So if you really think about that, I want to retire, and you're like, okay, well, I would love to retire. Maybe there's an age for you. Maybe there's something more prominent happening, like with children or grandchildren or a spouse, and that can be your desired date. This is going to be the soonest that you can or want to retire. And by really saying this out loud and thinking about this will help you get excited, you know, especially if you hinge it on something like that.

6:04Well, my grandchildren would be here or my child would be here. That would just be able to help me do X, Y, and Z. Get you excited. Create motivation. But doing that helps you then do the other steps that you need to do to get there. You know, and it's also knowing that that deadline of when you have to quote, have everything done. Now I want you to think about marathon runners. Okay. What if they just showed up to the race and they started running it and they're like, oh man, is this a half marathon or a full marathon? Them not knowing that is equivalent of you not knowing when you're going to retire.

6:50Because if they're running a half marathon, which I believe is 13 and a half miles, A full marathon is 26. There's like pacing. They've got to be prepared. They've got to stay in the mindset. They're going to do things differently. I talk like I'm a runner and I am not, but I think we all understand running. Whether we do or we don't do it, we can understand that it's a long time. It's a run. We're not talking about the 5Ks or anything like that either. But knowing that they have to prepare for these, that is equivalent to your work of getting into yours. But if they're running the race and they don't know if it's a half marathon or a full marathon, man, okay, so what do I need to do and how do I do it?

7:29And this is just the same as you not knowing when you want and can retire. So really, really explore that want piece, okay? When do you want to retire? I want you to sit with that. I want you to get a date. I want you to leave skepticism aside. I want you to leave, you know, I don't have enough saved. I want you to remove all of that. And in a perfect world, when would you want to retire? It's key. It's key in this. But then I'm going to help you for the rest of this episode, define when you can retire and start building that other piece. This gives you a range. If you're able to finish in the middle of the range, that is great.

8:14That is the goal, but we've got to have some driving force. This helps us get that going. Okay, so as you define these, and like I said, you'll have basically an early and a later, then you can close that gap and hopefully fall in the middle. So to better calculate the can, when can I retire? I'm going to talk about retirement accounts, savings accounts, And the first one I'm going to talk about, there's not a lot of people working under these. There are still some people. I have talked to some on free calls, so I know that there are listeners. That is those working under a pension. If that is you and you don't know when you qualify for that pension, you need to do that today.

9:05That is going to tell you at what age you can get that pension. Who knows when that's going to be? I can guarantee it's probably going to be between 60 and 65 unless you started late. But there's exceptions. Really contact your plan and ask them, when do I qualify? I don't even care how much right now. I just want to know when. We're working on that date. Okay, so then we're going to the next one. And everybody with very, very minor exceptions will have access to this. That is social security. there are three withdrawal time periods. I'm going to call them early, mid, or late. Now, I've heard people say, oh, they keep moving the retirement age.

9:53That's not true. So as I explain these three, I want you to listen closely. Early, you can withdraw Social Security at 62. Regardless who you are, what generation you are, you can withdraw at 62. You can withdraw at the mid, which means at your age qualifying. And this does change for generations. You'll probably either be 65 or 67. And then there's that full, you know, the full amount, which is the late one. It's 70. And I believe that's the one they're thinking about moving to 72. But you can still get Social Security as early as 62. So how do you know you need to understand these three withdrawals?

10:41Go to socialsecurity.org. You probably already have an account. If you don't create one, it's going to give you these three withdrawals. It's also going to give you some amounts. And you're going to see, knowing how much you're going to get early as opposed to waiting longer, but these will factor into that deadline. These will factor into when can I. All right, the next one is going to be 401s, whether it's a traditional or a Roth, or if it's an IRA, any of those do have age restrictions. You cannot withdraw out of these without penalty. Okay, that's the key word. You can still withdraw out of them without penalty before 59 and a half.

11:32With the exception of if you leave employment at the age of 55, you can withdraw out of a 401 as long as you keep it as a 401. Okay, if you were to change it to an IRA, which I think a lot of people do, you can't touch it until you're 59 and a half. So again, there's another deadline, there's another date. And if you're like, well, I really wanted to retire at, you know, 52 or 55 and I don't have a 401, the other ones you're going to want to look at are outside investments. These are going to be what you're going to find with Vanguard, Fidelity, Robinhood, Betterment, you know, they still do have IRAs, 401s, those types of things, but this would just be investing in stocks and bonds.

12:26There's no quote penalty. They don't have that and you can access them earlier. This is how individuals retire early. If you've heard of the retire early movement, most people have put a lot of money into this. So this would need to cover that before you're able to get into those others with their, with the age restrictions and all of that. Okay, so we've covered a lot about the accounts and the age. I hope that helped you better understand social security shouldn't just be taking information from co-workers, friends, families. You need to research and understand it yourself. There are three withdrawal.

13:11I think that is the biggest thing. And social security ages does not determine retirement age. Okay. Now you can disagree with me all you want, but that is something that they did create as a retirement, but it's not enough anymore. It's not enough. So you've got to fend for yourself outside of that, understanding what that's going to look like and how that's going to work. So really understanding those things that you have, pension, social security, 401, or whether you want to actually retire before the age of 55, you're going to need to look at outside investments. So it gives you a starting point.

13:53I know it's a lot of information, but determine your want and your can, and then determine on your want what accounts you need to invest in. Again, like I said, this is a lot of information, hopefully educational, but I am still looking for what do you need from me? I'm going to be holding that Retirement Ready 101 workshop in January, and I would love to build it around what your needs are. If today's episode, you're like, oh, I would like to know more about that, head down to the link in the show notes for SpeakPipe. You can leave me an auto message. There's also an email. If you're not on my email list, and if you are, you can hit reply and send me any reply, any message at that.

14:40Or like I said, head over to Instagram. Send me a direct message over there. What topics, what subjects, what questions do you have? And then I can really focus this workshop around you and your needs. Okay, so what did we talk about today? Knowing when you want to retire. Remember, want. And I want you to spend some time on that. You deserve it and you should give yourself that time and that allowance. And I want you to dream with that. I want you to dream with that. Then knowing when you can, looking at those other things of what do you have? What do those look like? Do those have age restrictions and what can be that other age?

15:25so really dive into those two things get those things going look at your accounts what you can do reach out if you have questions about i've done this now what i would love to support you and again speak pipe below i can send you a message back as long as you include your email or over on instagram i'd like to have a chat with you over there so i thank you for tuning into today's episode and I look forward to you in the next one.

15:58Thank 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.