7/4: 26 Questions for 2026

So why don't we start off with some of the key ones here and very important to think about.

Do you have a paycheck or do you have just a pile of money getting ready for retirement? Oh, okay.

So kind of an interesting one there.

You know, when you think about it, you may have a 401k, but is that really a retirement plan? No, it's a piece of your retirement plan.

There's many other pieces out there like Social Security, other investments, of course.

So when you sit and think about that, I use the example.

You get all these dollars in different pieces.

and you put them on a kitchen table and they pile up and they look like a lot for your future.

But as you start to spend, are you feeling a little bit concerned? Will your money last as long as you do? And that's one of the biggest concerns for people in retirement because people are living longer than they ever have before.

So will that pot of money last 10, 20, 30, 40 years? And some that retire early could be hovering between 40 and even 50 years, or as long as they were in their careers or longer.

So it's very, very important to think about are you prepared on that? Do you have enough money? And how are you going to spend those dollars once you get there?

I think it's something where a lot of people have the vision for saying, I'm going to get to retirement, I'm going to do all these fun things, but how do you actually financially bridge that gap? We've talked so many times about the vision timeline tool as an instrument.

You know, actually being able to map out what you want to do, how you want to do it.

But, you know, how do you actually turn those dollars and cents into sustainable income? And, you know, it's interesting, you know, on our side, the planning side, you know, it seems so routine to be able to say, well, we're going to draw this up.

You know, here's the buckets that we're, you know, how we're going to map this out for our clients.

but the emotional side is so fascinating to work through with people and it's you know it's tough to say that I've saved I've accumulated for decades and now now I'm not and I have to live off of that it's it's an interesting psyche so you know the next several questions that we have kind of help set the stage for that

yeah and my my very first week in the business back in 1986 to make a Make people know that I'm not 30 or 40 years

old anymore.

That's where Blake comes in.

But anyway, the thing that's really important is my first 10 clients, seven of them wanted to prepare for retirement.

They were really set on that, and they were between 55 and 65 years old, my very first 10 clients that I had in the business way back when.

So the thing that we have emphasized and talked about year after year after year is what's called a retirement income cash flow analysis.

And that's a projection of all the different pieces they've built up to show what is the most tax efficient way to spend those dollars.

So I know a lot of people in our business are talking about retirement income distribution now.

I was talking about it in 1986 when it wasn't being talked about as much.