09.29.26 Ask An Advisor With Wes Moss

Here's where I got this idea.

So I was at a financial conference a couple weeks ago.

I sat down with Jean Chatzky.

She has a new book called The Forever Paycheck.

Mm-hmm.

And in that book, she makes the case, looking at a couple different research studies, long-term research studies.

It was called the, the Health and Retirement Study, decades-long research from University of Michigan, and essentially looked at what people are spending relative to what they could be spending.

And the research says, again, and this is where I, I'd be interested to hear what our folks think about this, median-wealth retirees, she claims, underspend by roughly 8%, so that could be a few thousand.

It could be eight, $10,000 a year underspending.

And then wealthier retirees underspend by 47 to 53%.

That's a big, that's a big number.

Now, is that relative to if they-

And I'll tell you why.

Yeah.

I'll tell you why.

Yeah, let's hear that, 'cause-

She gives the example, and I've seen this a million times or many times.

Her own mother had 1,600,000 when she retired.

Her husband had passed away.

She was very comfortable spending her Social Security.

Mm-hmm.

She had a little bit of a pension that he left behind that was monthly, and she was totally fine to spend that.

However, she did not wanna spend anything else, so barely ever took...

Didn't wanna take any other money out of her accounts.

And a lot of people feel like they wanna leave money to their children or charities, and so they purposefully do that, right?