Let's Talk Money

Good morning, and thank you for joining Let's Talk Money on news radio WGY. I'll be your host for today's show, Paulo La Pietra, one of the wealth advisors along with portfolio strategist here at the Bouchet Financial Group. I am a certified financial planner and I'm sitting in for the one and only Stephen Bouche, who is taking a very well deserved break. But I do have my colleague, Samantha Macy with me, who is also a wealth advisor and

certified financial planner. Sam, how are we doing this morning? Doing great? Thanks for having me on with you this morning, Poulo. Of course, Sam, It's always a pleasure, and my memory doesn't mistake me. You just got back from Austin this week. I did. I was in Austin for a conference for a few day, actually got stuck there on extra night because of the weather, but just returned yesterday afternoon. Yeah. You know, traveling, especially deal with flights and the delays. It never fun.

So we're glad to have you back safely, and I'm even more glad to have you on today's show. So folks, of course, so folks. Whenever I host the Bouchet financial group. Let's talk money show. You know, I like to keep it very investment centric, so we're going to go through some market data, market performance this week, some individual stocks, economic data. You're going to get the full slate of it. On the second half of the show. Sam has some great tips on how to retire

early, and that sounds great, right. I think we all want to retire early, so definitely want to hear some insight from Sam on that. But let's start the show off by doing a quick recap of market performance this week. We had the Nasdaq, the tech heavy Nasdaq up one point four three percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average up one point one four percent, and the SMP five hundred up just over half a percent. A lot of

data this week. Even more important, a lot of earnings this week, over eighty percent of the companies and the SMP five hundred of reported earnings. So we got a lot to go through, and let's go in consecutive order, and where I want to start off is on Tuesday. Now, the folks listening to the show, I'm guessing you've listened to Steve over the year. Steve's been doing the radio for just about thirty years, now, and

I want to thank you personally for being loyal listeners. But I'm sure, as you heard Steve say, we predominantly use exchange traded funds within our investment portfolios ETFs. Those are those singular investments that track a certain index. They have a basket of individual stocks that make up that index, and they could track anywhere in the market at a very low cost. They're very effective. But as Steve has always said, when there is opportunity in single stocks,

individual companies, he will not be shy to seize them. He has taught that to me as his portfolio strategists. I've been in this business for ten years. I started my career at Morgan Stanley. I worked with a lot of money managers. I've never worked with somebody like Stephen Bouchet. He does not shy away from volatility. He does not shy away when the markets go down. He looks for those opportunities because in the long run, they're going

to provide the best returns. And where I want to start this conversation off is with Amazon. Amazon is one of the single stocks that we hold for clients in their portfolios. Most clients already have Amazon in the portfolio. We had some new or qualified accounts, so qualified I think Roth, Ira, Ira four one ks that didn't hold Apple and Amazon. We added them this week. The reason being is it comes down the earnings, it comes down

the forward guidance. So on Tuesday one, when Amazon was reporting earnings, the market was a little skeptical. And the reason being was in twenty twenty three great performance, Amazon was up about eighty eight percent. Fast forward, fast forward. This year, Amazon continues to outperform the market before earnings. So before Tuesday it was up about fifteen percent, so the market was thinking, hey, can Amazon measure up their earnings to support this market price.

And then we got earnings. They beat top down. So revenue, profitability for guidance all strong, amazing. Andy Jasse the new CEO that took over for the infamous Jeff Bezos. He has done a phenomenal job of cutting the fat, making the company lean, and making the company profitable. And that's so important in a higher interest rate environment. There can't be excess expenses on the balance sheet, there can't be access spending. Every dollar counts, and

Andy Jasse has accomplished that. And when you peel back the onion on the earnings, you really get to see the juggernaut that Amazon is. So one piece of Amazon is AWS. They're cloud computing. It's one of the most profitable areas of their business when you look at margins, and over the last

twelve months, AWS has grown ninety four billion dollars of revenue. To put that into perspective, that's higher than four hundred and sixty six companies in the S and P five hundred and remember, AWS is just one piece of the business. Amazon also has their online retail space, which I'm sure most of us, if not all of us listening right now, probably have some sort

of prime subscription. They also have their streaming services. Me and the wife just got done watching the Fallout show last week or the week before, great show. They've done great with their streaming services. And then most importantly, they're digital advertising, again, another multi billion dollar juggernaut. When you wrap this all up together, Amazon is projected to grow revenue to six hundred and forty billion dollars in twenty twenty four. Folks, this isn't your mom and

pop's stock here. This is a juggernaut that is a leader in artificial intelligence, that is growing revenue at a rapid up pace and they are profitable. Usually you can't get the two together. If you're growing revenue at such an exponential pace, usually you're also growing in that space profitability is a little weak. That's not the case with Amazon, and we're glad our clients hold it. So that was on Tuesday. Well, let's fast forward to Wednesday.

Wednesday we had FED Speak, we had j. Powell and Company come out and give what they're forward guidances and what they're going to do with interest rates. Now there's a lot of speculation in the markets leading up to this meeting. Why is that. Well, we ended twenty twenty three and Jay Powell Company said, hey, we have done a phenomenal job on inflation. It was at nine and a half percent in the summer of twenty twenty two. Now we're sitting at three and a half percent. We've done a good job.

We forecast anywhere from two to four interest rate cuts at some point in twenty twenty four. The markets loved that. We rebounded tremendously in Q four of twenty twenty three, and we carried that momentum into this year. Now, over the last you know, I would say a couple weeks, three four weeks that sentiment has changed. We've had inflation reports come in and they were hotter than expected, they were stickier than expected. Inflation wasn't coming below

that three percent. And this had the market, which was so confident that the Fed was going to cut two to four times, saying can the Fed cut? Will the Fed cut? So there was a lot of speculation heading into Wednesday's meeting of what the forecast was going to be from J. Powell Company, and J. Powell came out and was relatively doubblished. He said they were keeping interest rates at five and a quarter to five and a half

percent, which has been the current forecast. He kind of poo pooed any sort of conversation around any rate hikes, so essentially taking that off the table, which was a positive, and still said that while inflation's remained sticky, they are still winning on the fight against inflation. So the markets liked it. Right. It wasn't overly hawkish. He didn't talk about raising interest rates, he didn't talk about more quantitative tightening. He more or less on the

same path, So the markets enjoyed. That wasn't It wasn't any sort of surprise. That was a positive. Then we fast forward to Thursday, and Thursday was a big day for markets and more specifically our clients. Thursday, after the bell, we received Apple's earnings. Now, Apple is a tremendous company. I know Steve has been a fan of Apple since the early twenty tens, and if Steve's listening right now, he's probably gonna get mad at me. He's probably gonna say, Paula, I've been a fan of Apple

well before the twenty tens, which is certainly probably the case. But this is a great fundamental company from top down. Last year we saw a great market performance for our clients. This year it's been a little different. Why that is, we saw some slowing and iPhone sales in China, some slowing revenue. We have the anti trust case for Apple, and they haven't released any sort of blockbuster AI play. So we saw the stock, you know, trade a little bit down this year, and we're not used to that

as investors. Right when the overall markets up, Apple is always going to be participating in that. So the fact that this year the S and P five hundred, the Dow Jones and as that can all be positive and Apples down is a little scary. It had some big talking, had some big economists say, hey, is Apple the new ge Are they lost an innovation or have they had all their best days behind them? I talked to Steve

earlier this week. Steve said absolutely not. Apple is the future. Apple will always believe in innovation, They will always continue to provide value to their shareholders. I love Apple even more. Apple's down, I love it more. And that convention meant a lot to me. And again we implemented that into client's portfolios. So then we got earnings. And what we got on Thursday was some of the strongest earnings beats that I see in out of Apple,

some of the strongest forward forecast, all positive from top down. And they even increase their dividend, very important, right, showing good financial strength. But folks, what really caught my eye and I had to do a double take, you know, rubbed the eyes, look at the screen. Am I reading the right number? They implemented AE hundred and ten billion dollars

share buy back program. That's right, one hundred and ten billion billion with a B. Now, if you're like me, and when you talk markets, you talk stocks, everybody always throws around, you know, billion dollars here, this company's billion dollars, this company's billion dollars. So it could be easy to misinterpret how much one hundred and ten billion dollars is. So let me make it easy for us. Today, one hundred and ten billion

dollars is the same market cap as Boeing. Apple implemented a share buy back program, a size of the company of Boeing, which brings back shareholder value to their investors. Makes EPs more attractive and continues the momentum through this year. The markets loved it. Friday, we saw Apple trading up about six percent. This is the way that Steve's always managed the portfolios. The way that Ryan manages the portfolio is the way I help with the portfolios when there's

opportunity in the market. We're not going to be shy about it now. Friday. To wrap up the week, we get the job support. Job support was important, as we know that's a pivotal piece to the inflation expectations and the inflation forecast. If the job market continues to grow rapidly, if wage growth continues to grow rapidly, that's only going to flame the fireflames of

inflation and continue to perpetuate inflation higher. So all eyes were on the job support this Friday, and it couldn't have been a better job support for US. Jobs came in at one hundred and seventy five thousand that was below the estimate of two hundred and forty. Unemployment ticked up to three point nine percent, above the expectation of three point eight percent, and most importantly, wage growth came in below expectations. So let me sum this up in Layman's terms.

It shows that the job market it starts continuing to grow, but in a more sustainable pace in wage growth, so how much companies are paying their employees is starting to come down, which will hope, you know, help on the overall inflation fight. And again the markets rejoiced that yesterday markets were up across the board, including the tech heavy NASDAC leading the way. We

need more progress on this to help against the fight against inflation. While it's been our consensus here at the firm of a higher for longer interest rate environment, and that's how we position the portfolio with profitability, with dividend growth, with free cash flow that hold up in a higher interest rate environment. The overall market needs some reprieve at some point to help create sustainability. Folks, five and a half percent federal funds rate is restrictive. You might be listening

and say, okay, five and a half percent is restrictive. Well, I don't even know what the federal funds rate means to me. I'm not borrowing any federal funds rate. The federal funds rate still has its tentacles on all aspects of consumer borrowing. So where you feel this is, maybe you're looking for a new home, you go into your local bank, you take a look at a thirty year mortgage seven and a half percent. That's indicative

of the federal funds rate. You go to buy a car, astronomical interest rate prices, So it has its tentacles in all areas of the consumer lending market. So eventually, the Fed needs to help the consumer contain and maintain consumer spending. And the only way they could do that is eventually ease rates. But they can't do it until they get inflation in a place where they're

comfortable, and we're just not there yet. And again that's been our consensus here at the firm going all the way back to twenty three a higher for longer interest rate environment. So we focus in on profitability. Why is profitability important, Well, it's important to be profitable in a higher interest rate environment because that means after all the revenue that you grow and then your expenses, you're in the positive, you're in the green. And when you're profitable in

a higher interest rate environment, you could do multiple things. You could do a share buyback program like Apple's done on Thursday. You could see how the markets rejoice that Apple being up six percent. You could increase the dividend, so providing income back to your investors. Again, the market will reward you for that. Say you're in a growth mode, you want to grow the

company. Great, if you're profitable, that is self funded. Right, Those are the important metrics of why profitability is a key metric within our portfolio. Now, if you think about companies that just are growing the revenue, they're not bottom line positive, they're not profitable. Let's flip it on its side. In a higher interest rate environment. Technically, the nonprofitable companies usually reside more in the small in the mid cap space. So small companies,

mid cap companies, and what do they want to do? They want to become large companies. They want to grow. Well, when you're not cash flow positive and you want to grow, you have to go out and you have to service debt, and when interest rates are as high as they are, that is not easy to do. That eats into your margins, that makes you not attract them from an investment standpoint. So that's why profitability has been such a major key for our portfolios. Dividend growth has been another area.

So companies that have consistently been growing their dividends over the last fifteen years. Why is that important? Multitude of reasons. You pay a healthy dividend, you have a strong balance sheet, cash flow positive, You're paying income to your investors, and investors want that when you could go out on the treasury curve and get five and a half, you know, depending on where you are on the treasury curve, you want equity investments that are also going

to pay you income. So the dividend growing positions in our portfolio do that. You know. What I also want to talk about, and since I already brought it up with interest rates, is our outlook on the bond market. And we just got over the last decade where the bond market has really been in the graveyard. Interest rates have been so low it just has not been attractive to invest in bonds. Who's excited in you know twenty fifteen, Oh, let me go buy ten thousand dollars of a ten year you'll me

one point five percent? No thanks, I'll go invest in stocks. They annualize about a ten to eleven percent return. Why would I lock out my money for ten years for one and a half percent. Now that dynamic has changed. That's one of the positives of the FED raising rates. Bonds are yielding real cash now. And on top of that, and something I talked to clients about often is the outlook for bonds, So not just necessarily what the cash are paying us now, but what are the returns going to look

like three, five, ten years down the road. Bonds have something called an inverse relation to interest rates, so as interest rates go up, bond prices go down. We saw that in twenty twenty two. That was a tough year for the sixty to forty portfolio, or frankly, the more conservative portfolios there might be some of They only had forty percent in stocks, sixty percent in bonds, and that's because they don't like volatility twenty twenty two that

flipped that right on its head. Bonds were down almost as much as stocks. Barkley Zager get down. Bond index down about thirteen to fifteen percent. That's because bonds have an inverse relationship to interest rates. Now here's the positive. Because of that inverse relationship, the Fed is most likely done with this interest rate hiking campaign, the quantitative tightening at some point. And it's hard to say some market data that's saying July, some market data that same September,

some market data that's saying no interest rate cuts this year. But at some point the Fed will need to cut rates to help ease this restricted policy that we're in, and that's going to be a tailwind for bonds. Remember, as interest rates go down, bond prices are going to go up.

So the outlook for bonds are great. And then finally, the other piece that I just want to quickly touch base with before we go into the second half of the show is our alternative sleeve using defined the outcome ETFs that use derivatives or covered call strategies to enhance income. This not only creates diversification, but it provides some real returns, so, folks, on the second half of the show today, we're going to talk about how to retire early.

Sam Macy is going to lead us off in that discussion. I hope that you stay with us through the break and we'll see you on the other side. Thank you when I wake up in the morning. Love, good morning, and thank you for staying with us through the break. My name is Paulo La Pietra, one of the wealth advisors along with portfolio strategists. I'm sitting in for the one and only Stephen Bouchet, but I have a great guest on today's show, another wealth advisor here at the firm, Sam Macy,

Certified Financial planner. Sam, I'm really excited about the second half of the show, something that means a lot to me. I know I'm still early on in my career and I love the Bouchet Financial Group. I truly want to work here for the next forty years. But everybody wants to retire early, right, That's something on everybody's mind, and we have some great key points and topics of the Thus Sam, so really excited about this.

Why don't you kick us off? Yes, thank you, Paulo. Hi, everyone, I'm Sam Macy, as Paulo said, a certified financial planner, a part of the Bouchet team, and I wanted to talk about planning for early retirement today because I've had this topic come up quite often lately in client meetings and it's an interesting as they expressed this desire to retire early and

we dive into these discussions. So what I thought was interesting was as we talk about it and I learn more about what this means for them and we look at their specific early retirement goals, I started to see that based on the conversations and the certain clients I was speaking with, these goals looked drastically different from conversation to conversation, And not only were these spending needs different for these clients, but their goals for retirement age hobbies that they planned to do

in reach retirement, legacy planning discussions. The list goes on and on. So I just thought today we could talk about this topic and what this looks like for people as they start conceptualizing this idea of what early retirement means for them. And I have a couple of examples just to get those gears turning for you. So one example is a mid career couple that does not have

children. They're high earners, They're very much focused on saving as much as possible right now, and their goal was to completely retire by fifty five if possible. So we had a lot of discussions centered around that, what do they need to save, how can they save those extra dollars? Is fifty five something that is feasible for them and they plan to completely retire at that point, So from fifty five on we had discussions around how are they going

to enjoy their retirement years together and what that looks like for them. On the flip side, I had a recent discussion with a separate couple where one of those spouses is retired already and the other one would just simply like to

retire earlier than the average. I'd like to retire before sixty but then work part time because they love their job, and frankly, they fear that they'd be too bored in retirement as they don't know what else they would do with their time at that point, and that's a huge factor when thinking about is

early retirement a good fit for you? So we had conversations around that and what this truly represented to me is the idea of early retirement can really vary from person to person based on their values, and there really isn't a one size fits all when it comes to strategizing for achieving this goal. So as we talk about planning for early retirement, the first thing that you really want

to understand about your own financial circumstance is understand your future spending needs. And no matter who you are and what your goals are, and that is something that you do need to understand when you think about early retirement, and it takes some careful consideration as you account for all of your future expected expenses one off goals. You know, maybe you want to be a snowbird, or you want to purchase a second home somewhere else, and you need to plan

for those future outflows. You also need to consider inflation as you plan out, you know, ten twenty thirty years into the future, and there are going to be other sources of income you'll have besides your portfolio, such as your Social Security benefit, maybe you have a pension, maybe you want to

do part time work. So all of those inflows and outflows are important for determining your future spending needs, and it can be challenging nailing that down, you know, as I was saying, as you're planning out for the future ten twenty three years down the road, there are a lot of considerations, and that's where working with an advisor can really help you as you navigate those

conversations. Now, some people do a rough calculation for this, not taking into consideration all those specific details, and they follow what's called the rule of twenty five. And essentially what this is is a rule that says you should have saved twenty five times your planned annual expenses by the time you retire. Again, this is definitely a rough calculation, but it can give you something

to work off of and work towards. We actually encourage our clients to consider something called the four percent distribution rule, and we focus our planning conversations around that, as this is a good rule of thumb when thinking about your retirement distributions, and the four percent distribution rule represents a safe withdrawal rate for portfolio to have a very low probability of running out of money during a thirty year

retirement. So again we really focus about that and it really helps you understand where your portfolio needs to be and what you can get out of it once you retire. If you look at that four percent distribution figure. You know. Another piece to this conversation, other than planning for future expenses, is what's your timeline? And obviously this is the one people like to dream of, like to dream about, and so we spend a lot of time talking

about what makes sense for your situation. And there are a lot of factors that go into this, but really put some thought behind this goal retirement age. Think about what suits your lifestyle and your personality. Do you want to fully retire maybe earlier at fifty eight. Do you want to retire earlier than that, maybe let's say fifty five foot work part time for five years. There are a lot of different variations of that. And think about what will

you do with your time once you're retired. You have hobbies that you enjoy doing that will bring you a fulfilled life at that point, and what does your spouse desire? Does your spouse desire for you to retire at the same time, does your spouse want you to retire earlier than you would like to to retire? But you need to work together in that conversation. There are a lot of different conversations to be had when determining the timeline for this.

Now, Paulo, I'm sure you've had a lot of these conversations yourself with clients about these concepts over the years. Can you share a little bit about the mentality shift it takes when people are transitioning into those early years of retirement and maybe some struggles that they go through. Sam, absolutely and go. When you went through that list, you know, I'm thinking, hey,

I want to retire early, no idea. There were so many inputs, and that's so important to think about those things right and in order of importance as well. So timeline, spending savings, got to start planning now, plant those seeds, plant the foundation if that is going to be your main goal. But as Sam brought up the mentality shift, we see that a lot with clients. You spend your whole life working, putting money away, having that money grow, with the expectation that at some point you're going to

get and going to take distributions from your portfolio. But when you actually get to retirement age and you start taking those distributions, we find that some clients have difficulty doing this. You've trained your mind and your work ethic for so long, you know, ten twenty thirty years of work, save work, save to now start not working, taking money from your retirement accounts and using

that for spending. That's a shift in mentality. It's a struggle. But what helps alleviate that struggle is detailed planning, when you take the numbers floating in your mind and you actually get it down to pen and paper through strong financial planning tools, working with an advisor, doing financial forecasts, looking at year over year distribution, looking at the effects that inflation will have, looking

at rate of return year over year. That type of hard data will help alleviate that stress because you will get to that retirement age, that early retirement age that you've been fighting for, that you've been working for, that you've been planning for, that you want, and you'll come to it with comfort ability because you have a plan put in place that lays out one hundred upon thousands. So if you're a client of ours, we run a thousand different

iterations of what could happen do something called Amani Carlo analysis. That's a calculation that runs all of those variables that we were just discussing, inflation, spending, rate of return, and runs a thousand different trials using one thousand different market return probabilities because we all know, year over year the markets could give us anything. Markets are more up than they are down. Steve's always said that. Steve's always been right on that it pays to be an equity investor,

but in any given year we could have volatility. So running all those different variations again helps us plan for the unplanned, the unpredictable. And it's that type of specific, in detailed, in depth planning that will put you in a good spot to retire early, but most importantly, in my eyes, give you peace of mind. And peace of mind is worth unlimited money. Steve has always said and made our model here at the firm Health Wealth

for Life. It starts with health, your mental state going into retirement. That that's part of your health. So let and allow planning to do that. But Sam, again, I'm glad you brought this up. Retiring early has to resonate with so many listeners. You know, so many people out there, and again we would love to hear from you. That's one eight hundred talk wggy. That's one eight hundred eight two five five to nine four line. That's one eight hundred eight two five, five, nine four nine.

My apologies on that. We would love to hear from you. I'm sure somebody listening to today's show is thinking about retiring early. We would love to go through more specifics on your situation. So, Sam, when you're sitting with clients and they tell you I want to retire early, you just did a great job of running through all of the important information that's needed to create a detailed plan to say yes you can or no you can't, and

what we need to do so you can. But for the average listener that maybe does not work with a certified financial planner, that doesn't have access to a detailed financial plan, where do you think they should start? Where should really be the foundation and should it be you know, choosing when they want to retire, should it be choosing how much money they need to save, how much money they're going to spend. Where do you think they really need

to start? Yeah, that's a great question, and I did put together some next steps. I would say for those that are looking to work towards early retirement, you know that the average person is told to save between ten and fifteen percent of their growth income for a regular retirement timeline, and for those looking to retire earlier, those individuals are going to need to save twenty percent or more of their income, so they have to be committed to accelerating

those savings and starting as early as possible for that. And some ways that you can accomplish that is, first off, maximizing your employer retirement contributions, the saving into your four to one K, your four or three B as much as possible, and once you turn fifty or older, you can make

an additional catchup contribution as well into that plan. And I would recommend set up monthly automatic contributions or bi weekly whatever you receive your paycheck and be as aggressively invested as possible when you're younger in mid career and have those conversations with family members as well, to just be on the same page that you are putting your money to work for you in those plans and taking advantage of your

employer plan. They often have company matches as well employer matches on those contributions, and so you want to make sure you're getting that match. You can also contribute to a roth IRA if you're eligible, and another type of account that would be great for planning for early retirement is a taxable account, as this provides flexibility and allows you to access those funds earlier than fifty nine and a half without penalty. Some people also have HSA accounts and you can actually

start maxing out your contributions to an HSA for future use in retirement. And this can be particularly helpful during the years that you do not have an employer health insurance plan, don't have health insurance coverage because you've quit your job earlier than Medicare age, and so you have some gap years in your health insurance and so you want to make sure that you have a plan for this, but also having an HSA allows you to have some funds set aside for that

already. And lastly, I would say take advantage of other opportunities that you have deferred comp plans, employees, stock purchase plans, any other employee benefit you have available to you to help you build your wealth in addition to your regular employer retirement plans. Some additional considerations which I have kind of already hit

on. But accelerate your savings as early as possible to let the power of compound interests work for you over the years, and you also want to plan ahead and be aware of the point that you cannot access your retirement accounts until age fifty nine and a half without incurring in an early withdrawal penalty. So if your goal is to retire before then, investing in a tax bill account to supplement your spending needs during those years is a great plan for you moving

forward. And now there are actually a couple of ways you can get around

the early withdrawal penalty, and I'll briefly talk about two options here. So the first one is called the rule of fifty five and this states that you can withdraw funds from your current jobs four oh one K or four or three view plan without the ten percent early withdrawal tax penalty if you leave that job in or after the year you turn fifty five, So you still have to pay ordinary income tax on these funds, but you would not have the early

withdrawal of penalty. The other rule is called the rule of seventy two T. This is another exception to the standard penalty for early withdrawals. It's for an IRA and so this allows you to establish a schedule of frequent withdrawals, either a singular annual payment or partial installments from your ray. These are called substantially equal periodic payments through a specific calculation to get that amount, and the payments must be for five years or until you reach fifty nine and a half

years of age, whichever comes later, so that's important. Whichever comes later. You still pay ordinary income taxes on these withdrawals, but of course no penalty. Again, the downside is being locked into a payment schedule that might go longer than you would like because it's again five years or until you reach fifty nine and a half, whichever is later, and possibly depleting your retireants safe early if you lock in an amount that's actually too high of a withdrawal.

So you have to be strategic with how much of withdrawal you're setting up in those periodic payments during that set payment schedule. Now, beyond those planning items here, there are a few potential risks to plan around for early retirement as well, and I the list could go on and on, but I

have a few here that I think are important. The first is longevity, So you want to make sure that you're not running out of your funds early, that you are prepared for taking on some of the risks such as inflation, market fluctuations, one off emergencies. I talked about one off goals earlier, making sure that you have that built in. You have some sort of buffer built in for the amount that you're saving and have at retirement. Healthcare

expenses also very important to plan for. If you're retiring earlier. In the Medicare age, you do not have an employer insurance plan through your retirement package in terms of healthcare, so you're going to have to supplement your insurance needs with private insurance during those few years. Again, and HSA is great for this. You can contribute to an HSA now and be saving for that. Another risk is are you even capable of saving enough for an early retirement plan.

You can have the best plan in the world, but maybe you haven't considered some of the things that are just going to happen in life, growing a family, trips that you may not be able to go on because you're saving extra. You know, maybe it's buying another home at some point. It's all things that those are all things that you need to plan around and be prepared for if you're going to be planning towards early retirement. And I can attest to this. I have an eight month old daughter now and I'm

just experiencing the cost of parenthood and already is more than I expected. So I can only imagine it's going to get more and more over the years. But I can see now how those are things that you mentally know, but maybe you haven't exactly planned for, and that's going to impact your funds and frankly the longevity if you don't plan accordingly. And I talked about this one earlier as well, Boredom. That's another huge one of you can plan for

early retirement, but is that really what you want? You need to make sure that if you are planning for that and you're working towards this, that whatever you're giving up to get there is worth it to you at that point. Now, I'm not saying having extra fund is ever a bad thing in retirement. It's awesome to have more funds, say than maybe you need at that point. You want to have that buffer, But just think through,

do I want to fully retire early? Do I want to instead scale back and enjoy retirement partially that point because I do enjoy my job even socially, Will you have friends and family also retired early at that point as well, do you have people to do things with that you enjoy. Maybe you love golfing, but golfing oftentimes is more enjoyable with a buddy. So making sure that you've kind of thought that through, that this is a good fit for

you. So before I hand it off to Pollo, just want to reiterate that early retirement is certainly possible, but it requires commitment to your goal, and I would encourage you to really think about these strategies and tools I shared with you about working towards that and make sure it's a good fit for you. And if you really enjoy this topic and you want to learn more about it, We're actually having a webinar coming up on May fifteenth at noon.

It's called Retire on your Terms, Financial Planning for early Retirement. You can find it on our Bouchet Financial Group Facebook page. It's going to be presented by Marty Shields and myself, So again March fifteenth at noon, it'll be a thirty minute webinar and we hope that you can join us. We'd love to have you, Sam. That is going to be a great webinar.

I highly encourage everybody listening to attend again that resonates with everybody. Everybody wants to retire early and really focusing on all the points that Sam went through, and there are so many to really start putting into place to put you in the best spot possible to achieve the goal that you have. If I had to wrap it up, what I would say, as quickly as possible, start saving. Now. I've talked to so many four to one K participants.

We have a four to one K side of our business that aren't contributing to their four to one guy. I'll say, you know, mister Joeans, Missus Jones, why aren't we contributing to your four to one guy? Well, my budget's tight, my mortgage is high, my rent's high, my student loans, my car payment, my childcare, the list goes on. Things can be very expensive. I understand that. But somewhere in the

budget you have the opportunity to save something. And so many times when I press that upon a participant say Missus Jones, mister Jones, well you have money, and you know they'll be like, well, it's only a dollar, it's only ten dollars, it won't count. What I'm telling you was start somewhere. Sam brought it up the law of compounding interests. The earlier we start, the better spot we're going to be in. So have that

mentality and you will be putting yourself in a better place for it. So, folks were coming towards the end of the show, I really appreciate everybody listening and tuning in. We wrapped up the market. Sam talked about retiring early and this was all great things and if you have any questions, feel free to call into our office. But folks, thanks for listening to Let's Talk money, brought to you by the Bouchet Financial Group, where we help

our clients prioritize their health while we manage their wealth for life. Thank you and have a great weekend.