Retire Fabulously: The 5-Step Gay Retirement Planning Guide | Queer Money Ep. 593

Okay, let's be honest. When you hear the word retirement, do you picture a straight couple, probably white, named Chad and Karen, sipping chardonnay in Scottsdale? Scottsdale? Or do you picture yourself still fabulous at 67, working a part time job at a queer owned coffee shop because your bank account didn't quite get that memo that you're done working? This is Queer Money episode 593, brought to you by PensionBee.

And today we're giving you our three step, no fluff, no shame Kickstarter to go from fabulously stressed to financially fabulous. So if you're tired of being told to skip those lattes, grab that iced coffee, girl, because we're going to get to it. Let's do this. So many queer people feel like retirement is either a fantasy or a punishment. And we get that, right? It's like it always seems like it's so far away until it's like right there. Or it seems like just impossible to achieve. Right?

Because people are saying you need to have $2 million, $5 billion. And it's just, I think for many of us, we're just like deer in a headlights. We're just like, I will just worry about it later. And then later arrives and you email us at 65 and are like, what can I do today? So this is to help preempt that future cataclysmic conversation, to help you come up with a strategy to live the retirement that you want, but also live the quality of life that you want today.

Yeah, it's not that hard, actually. We made major changes in our lives to pay off our $51,000 in credit card debt. And it was when we made those changes that we actually realized that small changes really, really add up fast. And they can make big results, especially. If you have time on your side. So especially if you're like 20 something. Baby gay, 30 something, please do this. Please start this stuff today. But even if you're in your 40s or 50s, if you haven't started, start this today.

If you have

started it, double down on this stuff. Because, I don't know, working until 65 just seems like a lot. No, I don't definitely don't want to do that. So, David. Yeah, so step one here. Get crystal clear on your retirement number. Now, you can't hit a target that you can't see, especially the ones when the lights are on. Most people either guess at their number, they avoid it altogether, or they assume that they need way more money than they actually do.

And when they do that more often, than not, they don't do anything or they save blindly and it doesn't actually serve them, it doesn't excite them, it doesn't motivate them. So what you want to do is you want to break down or try to calculate a number based on what your ideal lifestyle is, what is important to you, what do you want your life to look like? So we want to give you some help. Use the Happy Gay Retirement Calculator.

You can find the link for that in the description of this video or on your podcast player. It helps you get started with finding that number. But there are some things you want. To consider that are unique to you as an LGBTQ person. Exactly. So what is health care going to look like for you? Are you trans? Do you have higher health care costs? Do you maybe not have a supportive family?

So then you're going to have to rely on your own financial needs to take care of everything when you get to the point where you can't take care of yourself. What about retirement locations? Right? Do you want to live in a queer friendly community? There's not many of them, so it's probably going to be a little bit more expensive. What kind of support system do you need again? If you don't have family or you don't have kids, you may need to have the money to take care of yourself. No maybes.

As a matter of fact, you will need because we don't know what the government's going to be able to do. So your right number may be actually less than you think, but you also may want to make sure

that that number is appropriate for you and you actually can find places that are a little bit more affordable. And maybe it's a good thing if you downsize a little bit. Exactly. Step two is to pay your future self first, right? You've heard the adage, pay yourself first, but very often that means for a lot of us is like, oh, I'm going to go out to happy hour tonight because I just got paid and I'm paying myself. We always want to stress pay your future self first, right?

That's the 65 year old who wants to retire. Credit card debt free in Puerto Vallarta. Whatever the case is, wherever you want to go, whether, even if it's the Swiss Alps and you want to go skiing for the rest of your life, you want to be able to prepare for that future person. So pay that future self first. And you can do that very easily, especially if you're at a young age. Right? Even just $5 a month, $25 a paycheck.

Whatever the case may be, whatever you can do, just start putting that money into a retirement account more. For most of us, this is a company sponsored retirement account, like a 401k, a 403b what have you. You can set it up so that your employer will automatically take the money from your paycheck into your company sponsored retirement plan. Make sure that money is invested and over time that'll grow and compound and compound and grow and it'll just be amazing.

If you don't have access to a company sponsored retirement plan, you can open up a traditional or a Roth IRA at most brokerage firms or you can even open up, at the very least, a regular brokerage account. Doing any kind of saving and investing is going to help you with that long term future self. If you don't have access to one of these plans, call me, maybe we'll.

Connect you with, we can connect you with somebody who can help you, walk you through the process of setting up all these types of accounts for you. It's super easy. But again, you don't want to necessarily sacrifice yourself today for your future self tomorrow. Right. You still want to have a good quality of life today, but the trick is to know what that future self is going to want or need. And that way that gives you an idea of what today's self can spend on your life.

So if you want to travel, great. You can strategically save for travel today and retirement tomorrow. Budget for DragCon, but also save for your 65 year old self who wants to retire in Malaga, Spain. When we were paying off our credit card debt, like David said, initially it was just small payments. It didn't, wasn't exciting. It was like correcting

the direction of the Titanic. But eventually we got the momentum and all of a sudden we were in under 3 years debt free when we thought it was going to take us a lot longer. Yeah. Step number three here is to stop focusing on other people and focus on yourself. Stop comparing yourself to everyone else, especially to straight people. Your retirement timeline, your plan, your lifestyle, it doesn't look like Chad and Karen, thank God. And that's a good thing, right?

Many financial standards that are built out there today around retirement are heteronormative. Right. They make a lot of assumptions that you either have dual income or you have kids or you have family support. That's not necessarily the case for you, right? LGBTQ people may start at a completely different place. Whether it's systemic discrimination, we have our own traumas that we're dealing with or financial insecurity.

All those kinds of things affect the kind of retirement we're going to be able to have when we stop trying to match our timeline, our lifestyle, to some ideal timeline. We find freedom. We find flexibility. It gives us the ability to choose who and what and where that we want for retirement. I will say, I know our a lot of our straight friends would not like our lifestyle. They would not, in part because they have kids, but they would not like our lifestyle.

And but they're starting to seem a little bit jealous now that we're talking about retiring early because they don't have that option. Yeah. So what does your ideal retirement look like? Do you want to work part time, maybe at that cool queer cafe and make a little extra coin, or do you want to work for a nonprofit that you've always wanted to and still bringing in a little extra money? Great. Do that. Do you want to move to Portugal? Let's make a plan for it.

Do you want to open up a BNB in with your partner in

Aiki Mexico? Slay. Do it. Just send us the affiliate code so we can get a discount. Right? Exactly. Because we'll stay at that BNB for sure. Step number four is to consolidate your retirement accounts. It's so easy, especially as you get into your 50s and 60s and you've worked. I think the average worker has 12 jobs over their lifetime. So that theoretically could be that you have 12 different retirement accounts scattered all over the place.

David actually just found a retirement account of his from who knows when. We don't even know who the employer was, but it was currently held at Fidelity that we just haven't known where it has been for the last several years. Right. We didn't even know it existed. Right. So what you want to do is figure out where all those accounts are and then get them all into one single place. That just makes it easier to manage.

You know, we talked about the debt lasso method here at Ad Nauseam on this podcast. According to some of you. You know, we're kind of considering this sort of the retirement account lasso. Right. Reining in all those accounts into one location to just make your life a lot easier. So consolidate all your 401ks from past jobs

into the same place. Click the Pension be link in our podcast player if you're listening the description of this YouTube video or scan the QR code on the screen here today. So step number five is to start researching the place where you want to retire and have that fabulous retirement. Your fabulous retirement Is living where with and how you choose to live, right? Is that maybe mid century modern style, like Matt Bomer can't remember what his real character is in the show is.

Or is it Blanche Devereaux, right? You're doing the rent, renting out to all your friends, or maybe you got all the coin and you're going to do it 10 McQuoid style, right? So whether it's Wilton Manors, Palm Springs, Puerto Vallarta, Malaga, Spain, start finding where it is that you want to fabulous. Have your fabulous retirement. Research things like your moving costs, especially if you're moving outside of the country.

Think about what are you, what does it cost for residency to live in those countries and what kind of activities do you want in that chosen location? What do they offer? Do they actually have the things that

you want? Will you be able to live fabulously? Or is it maybe not the place for you last week if you missed it and shame on you if you did. We shared great places to retire in Spain. Next week we're taking off for all the hot spots in Mexico, right? So make sure you join us if those are the locations you want to retire in. Check out those episodes. So in conclusion, we have five steps for you. Start taking action today. And these are the action steps you suggest.

One, get crystal clear on what you want your retirement to look like. Figure out what it's going to cost to make that happen, to pay yourself. First, think about him or her in the future so that they have the quality of life that you want them to have without necessarily sacrificing today. Three, don't try to retire like straight people. Create your own retirement and give yourself the freedom to think about what exactly that looks like, where exactly that is. Right?

You're not necessarily following their prescription. You're not a charon. Four, consolidate your accounts. Like we said, it's hard to manage your accounts when they're all over the place. And also it's hard to keep them appropriately invested according to your goals, your timelines, your objectives if you can't see them all in one place. So we can help you that with our. We can help you do that with our friends at pension B. And 5, plan where you want to live, right?

Do you want to retire in the United States? Great. If you want to retire abroad, great. But let's start having that discussion now so you can create the retirement that you want. You can do this. We've done it. Thousands of people have done it. We can help you do it too. Right? So if you're feeling fired up about planning your fabulous retirement hit.

Subscribe Leave Us a Review Share this episode with your Ride or Die friends who still thinks that retirement is something only people in other universes do. Thank you for joining us for another episode. Until next time, stay fabulous.