Welcome to the kitchen table finance podcast where we make retirement planning easy and enjoyable. Discover practical advice to create a retirement strategy that fits your lifestyle and budget. Get ready for market updates, intriguing finance headlines, book reviews, special guests and inspiring case studies. So grab your favorite cup of coffee and join us at the table as we talk about everything, Fine, in retirement. We're here to support you in achieving the
retirement of your dreams. Let's jump right in. Hey Dave. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. Nick. How are you? Fantastic. Shining. It's a podcast Friday. Podcast Friday in the summer. We for our Youtube watchers, I got my floral Friday podcast shirt on. Yeah. Yeah. You look like you are you should have a a lay on around your neck there. I'm getting there. You never know. Yeah. Good. Good. So, Dave, 1 of our recurring episodes here where we... Read the news and parse out the good
stuff, so you don't have to. Right? Yeah. The other... Hey. Last week when we were recording you know, on a specific topic, I I kinda was those chuck and myself that in a way every 1 of our podcast is in some form become a headlines podcast. Right. It's usually, something we've read, something we've just seen that we react to. Right? Yeah. But Sure. You know, So so don't be surprised if you see some of these topics resurrected as we go. Yeah. Absolutely episodes. Right?
So our first article, Dave comes from mornings star and Christine Benz on lessons that... She had in... Looks like taking a sa... For 6 weeks. Yeah. Kind of a retirement test period. Yeah. She took 6 weeks off to see how it goes, you know? And I thought that was interesting. Obviously, a lot of people don't have the luxury of being able to do that. But, you know, the idea even as a mental exercise, I think is worthwhile as you're getting close to retirement to kinda...
Kinda get a feel for what it what it might actually be like. Because as we've talked about a lot over the last 2 years, however long we've been doing this 2 and a half, There's more to retirement just the financial part. A lot of it is psychology. It's interesting because I feel like this... Piece of advice comes up quite often to, like, hey, do a trial, retirement for a couple months. But I don't see a lot of people actually doing it.
Right. So it's nice to get Christine take on, kinda how it worked for her in what lesson she learned. Would love to hear from listeners if you have done something like this, I would love to hear about it. But you're right. In the second piece of this is there is a lot of psychology behind it. And in you've been working for 20, 30 years, you might not be ready necessarily to retire.
And that... There there's a lot of, you know, things that happen when you go from full out work to very little work that... That's a big transition. Right? Right. I actually just heard the store. I don't have the link in here, but there was a, bus driver that drove a city bus for 25 or 30 years. Retired didn't like it very much. Went back to. He's now 94 and driving a school drive bill.
Yeah. So, you know, you see a lot of that where people Mh retire and then decide that, hey, maybe I'd do enjoy working. Maybe I should working. The social aspects of it, just the purpose that it provides. There's lots of reasons. Christine, you know, she breaks it down to a a few lessons she took away from the sa time about, you know, how to think about un schedule time and having a purpose to what you're doing.
And it's it's a good read, and it's a short read, So take a look at it if you're on the fence about retirement or, wondering if it's the right time for you. So our second article, Dave, comes from none other than the Wall Street Journal. And this 1 is money habits that you get from your parents in financial literacy, and I found it interesting because what often oftentimes happens in house holds is we learn by watching. Mh. Don't necessarily have conversations about money and
our money philosophies. It's just kind of something that you undertake by osmosis. Right. Right? And it's very interesting because you might money have 2 siblings that get very different results over what that, learning by watching is. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it's also interesting from the standpoint of retirement that a lot of people, you know, will come in and say well, I wanna have a retirement like my parents. Right? Or I wanna make sure that when I retire it's not like
my parents. Right? And so I feel like we get some of that as well those habits when it comes to retirement too. Well, sure. And where where I notice it to is when we talk about investments,
and spending. Investments and spending, you know, the 2 the 2 big aspects of financial planning, and someone's attitudes about the stock market and investment risk often go back to experiences that they absorb from their parents or they were early on in their own investing career and change the trajectory of of what they do because of those early early things that they saw or felt.
And when we get into working with clients who have either overs spending or under spending issues, so much of that is tied back to childhood experiences. Yeah. I know there was a lot of talk about... The generation, and I'm not good with the names of the generation C q, something like that. Yeah. That going through, like, their first memory of month money would have been around 2008 when we had a big, you know, financial crisis and the concern was
they're not gonna wanna invest. They're not gonna say like they're gonna be money very shell shocked because of that. And, you know, I don't know that that's played out as much as people thought. There is some research on that. Yeah. There were some studies that were done around 20 18 20 19, looking at the early experiences with folks that were in the... In that... There age cohort. And it wasn't as cut this... I'm going from memory here. I don't have the research
in front of me. Wasn't expecting to go down this this path. But it basically shakes out that for some people, it really did you know, shape their willingness to contribute to retirement accounts, willingness. Invest the money in their retirement accounts once it was contributed and just overall, like, faith in the financial system to Yeah. Writ large. It wasn't maybe a sweeping,
and it may... It'd be interesting to see, like, how that's played out now with another 5 years of, you know, overall pretty good markets with some ups and downs in there. Mh. But 5 but this particular article, the money habits I learned from my parents that we that we picked up from the Wall Street Journal is basically, Jessica Chow, 1 of their personal finance writers talking about her own experience with with her mother and what she learned and how that's
colored her outlook. Well, and also of how she had to un learn some of those nonsense. Right? Yeah. And so we've obviously dealt with some of this with clients. And Mh. And we we do use the, money scripts from clots. As... You know, it's kind of the awareness, like, the first up in overcoming some of this is just being aware that it's out there and it may not be in challenging that... Just having that epiphany that Oh, 0,
right. That's why I think this way it probably goes back to that incident when I was in sixth grade and this happened with my parents and money. A lot of times... Is is go... Just being aware gets you gets you a lot of the way there. Let's see. Our next article, Dave comes from the collab fund in 1 of our favorites and that is mister Morgan H. It's talking about quiet compounding,
which I absolutely love. And there's always reading his stuff, it there's always something that I pull or if I brought up Or It's was like, oh, yeah. Makes sense Yeah. He's he's he's a philosopher. Yeah. In in the true sense. Just good stuff in here, and it's it's... You know, for those who are familiar with his books, it's nothing necessarily new, but it's nice in a in a compact blog form here where he's talking about. Like, how how you... The gist of it is,
stop comparing yourself to everyone around you. Make small incremental changes to your own life. It will compound over time and quit thinking about what other people think Absolutely. 1 of the, you know, the the stories that he tells in this article is we've all heard of the heat and the his where is not mine country bump. Limited education and, you know, low wage job that I managed to save tens of millions. Right?
And the way that they did that was basically by, you know, their financial universe was contained in their house, which allow them to play game that wasn't guided by outside forces, and they slowly over time just compounded those investments. And, you know, they didn't have a ton of financial skill, but their Gil was in that. They didn't let outside forces really determine what they should be doing or how they should be investing. They just kind of let Gil the power of compounding over time take
over. You know? And we're we are in this society where people are so nervous about what other people think, really kind of skew how people do things. Right? They go into this where they're either performing for others or copying strategies that might work for other people, but really work for you because you're playing a different way a game, and that can really kind of lead people into making 4 decisions financially. And I love this part about, you know, there 2 ways
to use money. Right? You can either use it as a tool to live better life or you can use it as a yards stick of success to measure yourself against other people. Right? Right. Right. Which is so true when you, you know, if you go on social media, you'll see the yards stick. Right? Everybody's measuring. Yeah. And, you know, so you know, how do you wanna live your life? What you
want? To use money for, and I think most people would obviously gravitate towards number 1 of living a better life, and that means shutting out whatever everybody else is doing in the outside noise. Which also means fighting human nature and not giving into the ingrained urge to make those comparisons. Noise Yeah. Absolutely. And... I mean, and I don't wanna overs simplify it and make it sound easy because it's extremely difficult.
Right? Yeah. But that, you know, the the kind of So what quiet compounding means in Morgan's words was an emphasis on internal versus external benchmarks. Right? Don't worry about what other people are doing, only worry about what you need and what's enough for you. Acceptance of how different people are in a realization that work. What works for you might not work for others and vice versa, focus on independence over social dunking and focus on long term endurance versus short term comparisons.
So I found it super insightful. Obviously, we'll have all the links to the show notes here. So that's 1 that I definitely recommend people take a look at. So our next article, Dave comes from the 2 street retirement daily and 1 of our friends missing the adams who currently serves on the michigan of f Pa board with me, talking about guidelines for seniors to not
become a victim of fraud. I was actually on the site and Skimming the headlines started reading the article because, of course, it looked like something that I'd wanna share with clients. When I opened it up and sci was written by by Sandy. It was like a like, a bonus. We
need to we need to include this. So it's it's nothing new from our point of View and hopefully, not to a lot of our listeners, but it's great reminders of how to combat, all the myriad, scams, both online, email, text, you know, what have you that are out there trying to separate us from our money and particularly our vulnerable, you know, senior citizens, Yeah. Always a good reminder, refresher. I always like to look at those things because there's always, you know, something new
or some difference. Scam coming out and the more you can kinda make yourself aware of those things, the better off, typically, it is for you because no matter what they're out there at some point, you're going to go down the road. The sooner you can recognize that, the better off it's gonna be. And, Sandy offers some and good warning signs, but then also, you know, best practices to help protect yourself. So our next article, Dave, is when we, check in on our recent retirees or retirement
Rookie from the Wall Street Journal. Yeah. Steven and Karen Y, and just kind of taking a look at what's new with them. I thought this 1 was interesting because a lot of times In retirement, people feel like they need to have a bucket list, and Steven and Karen decided that that was not necessarily for them. Yeah. Yeah. It would I thought was was pretty cool. With gist of it being, you know, you've really gotta think about what makes you happy. You know, there's the cliche...
The idea of a bucket list itself has become a cliche, and the things that often go on people's bucket list or cli cliches. At this point. Right? Right. And so don't build your own list based on what what you hear and what you... What what seems valuable to other people. Are you feeling overwhelmed when it comes to planning for your retirement? Do you want simple relatable information you can use today to plan for tomorrow.
Check out the kitchen table finance podcast hosted by Dave Nick, certified financial planners with shot well rudder bear financial planners. They make retirement planning easy and enjoyable, discover practical advice to create a retirement strategy that fits your lifestyle and budget. Get ready for market updates, intriguing finance headlines, book reviews, special guests, and inspiring case studies.
So grab your favorite cup of coffee and join them at the table as they talk about everything, finance and retirement, Go to sr advisors dot com or search for kitchen table finance wherever you listen to podcasts. Yeah. I loved Karen take on this. Where, you know, she kinda came to the conclusion that she'd rather visit places. She's already been. Mh. To connect with people that she knew.
And that was her priority. And I think part of the problem with potential problem with a bucket list for a lot of people is know, what are your priorities? What do you want to do? And that maybe, if you don't know, you probably create a bucket list to see what you like. But if you are right now, maybe you don't need the bucket list because you know what your priority is are and what you wanna do. Right? Yeah. For sure. And and your priority may be, to experience new...
It can be totally different than, than Karen's idea of reconnecting and re experiencing. It can be go do new things to exciting things. Climb amount and jump out of a plane, whatever. I... But but be conscious of it.
Our next article, we go back, to mornings star and Christine and talk a little bit about whether or not you need permission to spend money in retirement and a lot of this kind of came out, there's been a several different articles with some recent research from David And Michael think where they kind of decided while they did some research on retirees and found that of retirees that had annuities tended to spend more or not it been which retiree yeah didn't necessarily have an annuity.
My frame in that right? We... Or we should we should just clarify that when you say spend more, we mean in a healthy way. Mh. Not overs spending. What he's... What they're getting at is well, we should back up and frame it a little different maybe that we tend to see retirees, retirees at higher financial planners, don't spend to don't tend to spend enough of their money if you will. As low sure. Or it's reluctant to spend as much as they could.
I think it's is maybe the best way to put it, not that we would encourage overs spending, but just maybe are cutting themselves short of from doing things they'd wanna do because they're afraid of overs spending. Yeah. You and I both have clients, who could spend more than what they currently do,
and choose not to. And, you know, sometimes there's good reason for that, and sometimes like you said that's a fear or a concern of making sure they have enough when we can kinda already see that they're gonna to have
more than enough. Right? So And so what what they're getting at here is if if you're getting a paycheck from an annuity, and instead of having to withdraw money from an investment portfolio or take money out of savings, the psychology is different and frees you up to spend more from a from a psychological standpoint, not necessarily changing the math, just changing the the way you look at the money I take this to mean not everybody needs an annuity, but maybe we need to think about
and be conscious of how we're categorizing, our money. As a practitioner, I can see taking this to the step of saying, okay, what if we were to take this part of your portfolio and just take it off the board. So you don't even think about it and send you a paycheck. From it. Right. How would that change your your point of view, Whether we literally do that or not, would remain to be seen or it would depend on the circumstances
Right. And that's, you know... So Christine gave 4 different 5 different options actually, and 1 of those was like, have your... Work with your adviser or have them you what you're spending limits are and, you know, have them kinda dole it out to. Right? And don't worry about it. The other 1 was obviously the annuity which came from some of the research that we talked about couple other options. You could tilt your portfolio more towards current income production and just take the income piece
of it. Could also tie your portfolio withdrawals. Portfolio performance. So if you had a really good year, you could take more of that year, and that might help from a psychological spend or standpoint and then plan for spending to trend down. And so what she means by that is, like, yes, when you're early on in retirement, you can spend a little bit more because your plan is eventually, that spending will go down. I've been I've been actually thinking about this topic.
Quite a bit lately from another point of view. And I... And why I think this is gonna be 1 we're gonna probably come back to here in the near future as of an expanded topic Because while, you know, like, as you just said, a lot of our clients don't spend as much as they could already, and they're basing that on us, and what we've been telling them they can spend. And then I'm seeing research from very good people I trust us industry saying we're being too conservative a lot of the time. You
know? Oh, right. You know, it's it's interesting conundrum that deserves some a lot of a lot of thought from from both the industry and then our clients as well. Future podcast alert. This is probably something We'll take a deeper dive into, but I thought, Christine did a great job of kinda laying out some of the basics. And some of the things that best we've had conversations on and need to kind of do a deeper dive in as well. So... Right. Right.
Our last article here, Dave comes from Scott Rick, and he actually wrote a book on this topic as well, but that is the topic of spending and, you know, 1 of the interesting things and this is just an article preview the book. So if you're... You wanna read the full book, you can start with the article and see how that goes. But it's kind of trick thing where, you know, there's some research around spending that and and kind of lays it out where everyone
experiences the pain of pain. Right? Right. And the difference being that people who don't experience enough pain are what we would deem as a spun thrift. Right? Mh. And people that experience too much pain are what we would deem a tight watt. Right? So someone who will technical germany. Yes. Yes. And then what I love about this is this that neither are happy with how they handle money. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's miserable. You're 1 or the other in an end you're miserable regardless. Right?
And so it's just a very interesting. I've always long stated of that, you know, you're either a saver or responder Mh. There's usually not a lot of people that manage those things well and fall towards the middle naturally. Like, there's things that you can do to recognize your behavior a push yourself more of the middle, but from a natural standpoint, we just don't see people who can naturally balance both of those things. They typically fall on 1 camp for the.
The other. Yeah. And and, you know, and anecdotally, that fits with our experience while I shouldn't speak for you It fits with my experience. The other, as a financial planner that people people are either either are spending too much or spending too little and the people that are in the middle and healthy spending the right amount our are few. Yeah. So it's just an interesting, you know, way to frame that a lot of research behind it.
Which with I thought was great, and, you know, I really, like, just like, some of the other stuff we talked about, dave. The first step is, like, identifying that, hey. This is me. This is... These are the things that need to look out with because that's the best way to kind of get through and understand why you have so much pain around spending, and then maybe you can work to change that and have a little bit less pain when you... Spend. So... Yeah. Super interesting.
Probably more to come on that 1. I actually just ordered the book. And we'll bring back our vantage a book review. It's been a long I think that'd be a good idea, especially in this case. And yeah. So I do have a bit of a surprise for you today, Dave. We on this podcast and, you know, have been talking about inflation a lot lately. And this seems to be on everybody's mind. The feds, and every day we can find a new article on inflation.
So I actually brought you the deep deflation breakdown for June of 20 24. Okay. This isn't this on you. This was not on our list. I've got a list of things that actually went down in price year over year from June of last year. Alright? Care to take a guess. At what some of the top items on my list here are. Boy. I'll give you a hint. First category is food at home. Okay. Food at home. Has gone down over the last. Yep. Okay. So, here that's Sick.
Specific types of food, we actually get down to the actual level. So any guess on what has gone down the most in terms of food. Eggs are not on my list. I I haven't looked at the price eggs lately, but I know what you're. Everybody was talking about how bad Alright have have gotten. So that was that was just me playing the ying and yang of what goes up must come down. Show It's a good guess. Actually, your first guess is on my list. Gasoline. Automotive regular gasoline is down 2.6
percent since June of last year. So Yeah You got that 1. Right? Knocked it out of the park. The top food at home, deflation is actually apples are down 12 percent, the year compared to last year. So there buy a lot of apples. I should've known that. Apple a day keeps the doctor away. And now it's even cheaper. Yeah. Some other items, of, food items that have gone down hand, down 4.3 percent. Potatoes down 3.9, rice down 2.4. Cheese, 2.1, coffee, 1.7. So there is there is some hope out
there. Some light interesting. Interesting. Well, you know, to that to that end, we don't want general deflation. So Just on the just on the items I need to buy next. Just... Yeah. Just it'd be nice to go to the grocery store this afternoon and and seal. Yeah. So some other items on my list. Telephone hardware and calculators down 12 percent were washed calculated. When when. Well, when was the last time you bought a. Standalone calculator in the world of smartphones and computer
wow. I had to get my daughter a graph calculator for high in high school a couple of years ago. So... Yeah. Okay. Let's see. That was dishes. I was gonna say the cf if key exam is probably keeping the calculator industry exactly. Dish dishes is flat down 10 percent, to use car and t. Actually down 10.1 percent. So that doesn't I should have guessed that. Mh. And men's suits down 9 plus 4 percent. It's Well, maybe we'll, I have to step up our dress code for the office now
that it's more affordable. My floral shirt isn't cutting hands. Is that what saying You know go wanna just throw code over that? Maybe a time. We'll. Tune in Next week. Youtube to see if I take advantage of the men's suit. Being down 90.4 percent. You probably just doubled our listeners partnership right there, Nick. Shall. So it's as always, Dave been a pleasure. That's all we have for today, our listeners have any articles you would like. Us to read and give our opinion on.
We'd love to hear him. Send us an email at info at SRB advisors dot com. Dave has always been pleasure. Thanks, Nick. Gather round and follow the kitchen table finance podcast. To learn about money in simple ways you can invest right now. You can find more practical advice at Sr advisors, doctor dot com and contact the team for personal planning by emailing info at s sr advisors dot com a This is a cd media production.