How to Retire At 55 (The Step By Step Plan!)

Transcript:

On this episode of the personal finance podcast, how to retire by age 55. We're going to give you the step by step plan. What's up?

Well, builders and welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of master money. co and today on the personal finance podcast, we're going to talk about how to retire. By age 55, if you guys have any questions, make sure you join the master money newsletter by going to master money.

com slash newsletter. And you can respond to any of those newsletters that we have come out. And I will see those directly myself. And don't forget to follow us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or whatever podcast player you love listening to this podcast on. And if you're getting value out of the show, consider.

Leaving a five star rating and review on Apple podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Now, today we're going to be talking through how to retire by age 55. I'm going to give you that step by step plan. And if you want this framework, if you go to mastermoney. co slash resources, I'm going to give you this framework.

So you can see kind of the steps on how to go through this and get yourself the DIY retirement plan. But what we're going to talk through. Is if you wanted to retire in your early fifties, what are some of the things that you need to be doing? And this is going to be an episode. It's really going to show you step by step on how to plan this out.

Now, from the top, I want you to kind of get with your spouse. If you are married or if you're actually planning this out with someone else in your life and make sure that you kind of go through this plan with them as well. Cause we're going to talk through a lot of things. Like, what do you dream about?

What are some things that you really want to be doing? And then in addition, we're going to go through the steps on what you need to be taking, and there's three big steps here. We're going to talk about. Figuring out how much money you spend and how much you want to spend in retirement. Then we're going to talk through healthcare because healthcare is a huge factor once you hit retirement age, especially if you retire before the age of Medicare, then we need to figure out how to bridge that gap.

So we'll talk through healthcare in this episode. Then we're going to go through how to figure out how to build out your portfolio based on some of your goals and give you some examples there. And we're gonna talk through hobbies and traveling and all those different things. So you can. Factor in some of the big ticket items that you want to do in retirement.

So this is going to be a super fun action packed episodes without further ado, let's get into it. All right. So the first step is we're going to try to figure out how much or where you think you want to be when it comes to spending in retirement. Now, I know this is a very difficult number to nail down.

I've coached some people where we try to figure out what they want to spend every single month and they have no idea and they're getting close to retirement age, and so if you're in your thirties or forties, then you're really. really going to have no idea at this point in time, how much you truly want to spend in retirement.

So the first baseline that we can think through is considering our current spend. And when we consider our current spend, we're going to think through, Hey, how much do we spend every single year right now? And as we start to get that number and we put that number together, we are going to then say, well, do I want to spend this much going forward or whatever that value is in retirement?

Meaning that. Adjusted for inflation. Do you want to spend the same amount that you spend right now? Now you may be saying to yourself, well, I have a lot of different expenses right now that I may not have in retirement. I have things like kids or a mortgage, but we'll talk through that and how to think through that as well.

But first let's get our expenses down. And so how much do you spend right now? Stick it into a budget or stick it into some sort of automated platform. Like Monarch money is what I've been using lately. And Monarch money is absolutely fantastic for stuff like this. We have a. Free 30 day trial through the show.

If you go to monarch money. com slash P F P, um, you'll get 30 days free to check it out, but this will like automatically track your expenses for you. And if you want to set up a budget, it'll actually set up a budget for you based on your past spending. And you could do it in like one click, which is absolutely amazing.

So when you track your expenses, I want you to figure out how much you spend right now. And then what I want you to think about is the changes that you are going to have. So are you planning on paying off your mortgage over the course of the next 30 years? If you're in your twenties or your thirties, or are you getting closer to retirement age and you know, you're not going to have a mortgage or maybe you will have a mortgage.

Well, you can take that expense out and factor that out, or you can ensure that you have that expense in just in case. Maybe you're going to move. You don't know what's going to happen in the future. So you can adjust for those changes. Are you going to have kids in your house by the time you're age 55?

How old are your kids now? And thinking through that portion of it. Also adjust for things like you're not gonna be commuting to work anymore. Uh, you're not gonna be buying a bunch of work attire anymore. So all those costs associated with working, those will actually go away. And so I want you to just think through and adjust for those changes.

What big changes are going to happen in your life and try to adjust based on that. Then what we're going to do is we're going to factor in lifestyle changes. And we'll talk through more of this as we go on here. But things like hobbies and traveling, we're going to add those in and then inflation. So what we want to always do is account for inflation when we're doing a lot of these setups.

And so when we account for inflation, we want to increase this by our estimated expenses every single year. So if we think the average inflation rate over the course of the last 20 to 30 years is, you know, let's say it's 3%. And if we are going to factor in that, we want to make sure that we do that 3 percent every single year.

And we're going to adjust for inflation and retirement spending as well. And then we're going to consider taxes and we'll talk through taxes, uh, coming up here in this episode. So step one is just figuring out everything that you are going to be spending in retirement. Now you are not going to nail this number down.

This number may change over time. And that is. A okay, if it changes over time, but we want to try to get as close as we possibly can conservatively and try to make sure that we have enough money that we're going to be spending. What I don't want you to do is do the bare minimum when it comes to your spending.

So if you spend 5, 000 right now and you have no kids and you're single, you're not going to be spending that in retirement unless you plan on having no kids and being single for the rest of your life. Now, if that's the case. More power to you, but if it's not the case, then we need to make sure that we are really getting kind of aggressive with how much we want to spend.

Most people that I've talked to, depending on where you live and your location is going to be a huge factor as well. But most people I talk to range anywhere from 5, So it's very personal in your situation on how much you want to spend. Uh, and you really got to think through that so we can set up this plan here.

Now your location, as I alluded to earlier, is a big factor. If you live in New York city, for example, you're going to be spending a lot more on retirement. Then folks who live in the middle of Georgia or the folks who live in the middle of Alabama. And this is why a lot of people, when they reach retirement age, they actually move away to a different state because they can lower their cost of living and how much they're spending and they can become financially free so much faster.

And so your location does matter. And you want to choose a location if you are going to move based on your fulfillment and what you value, you don't want to just do it based on taxes or something along those lines. You want to make sure it actually fulfills what you want to be doing day in and day out.

So once we have those expenses set up, now we're going to think through, well, how much will we pay for in health care? Because this is a huge thing when we get to retirement age. And one thing we got to think through is, well, Medicare is at the age of 65. That's when you can utilize Medicare as part of your health insurance.

But what are you going to do to bridge that gap over the course of the next 10 years if you're retiring at age 55? Well, I'm going to give you one cool free tool. So Vanguard has a tool called the Healthcare Cost Estimator. And in this tool, you submit some information like your name, obviously, retirement age.

You're going to submit information like your tax filing status, which matters, your date of birth, and then Household income at retirement age, and then you're going to put in your zip code because it is location dependent. Then it's going to ask you some questions like what is your pre Medicare plan?

How much is your employer plan monthly cost? And then also employer sponsor plan with medication as well. Uh, and then once you put all that information in, then you select, Your health status and your health status would be excellent. Average poor are the three options they have, and they list out what that would qualify for each segment.

And so you select one of those, and then you can get actually some great information, uh, based on where you live and where you plan on living and when you plan on retiring on what the healthcare costs possibly could be. And so that's a great tool to utilize. There's also some other great tools like calculator.

net has another great healthcare cost estimator that I saw. Um, And they have some information that you can add in there. So you compare a couple of different calculators and try to figure out, Hey, am I getting close to the same number with these? And is this something that I think that I can add into and factor in now?

Some people will work part time just for healthcare costs in retirement, especially for the first 10 years. Maybe you work part time at a place that provides healthcare. Starbucks is famous for this, and this is why people call it barista fire, because a lot of people worked at Starbucks part time. But they retired early because they could get healthcare benefits.

I think you had to work minimum of 20 hours a week, something like that. Um, and so a lot of people would do that so that they get the healthcare benefits, because what this saves you is anywhere from 12 to 25, 000 per year, and possibly even more depending on where you live. And so that's a huge, huge savings where if you think about 12 to 24, 000 per year, if you say, for example, it's at 24, 000 per year, that means you need a half a million dollars less invested in your portfolio because of that.

So it's a big, big. difference for a lot of people, um, when you think through that. So if you want to estimate your healthcare costs and you use some of these calculators and you want to get a little more granular with it, what you want to do is one research or current costs. So research how much you're paying right now in insurance premiums.

Think about your out of pocket costs and then medication. So those are the big three that you want to think through. Um, when you research these costs, then I want you to consider future inflation. Now, when it comes to healthcare, uh, future inflation actually has an annual increase of like five to 7%. Okay.

On average, it has actually increased more than the actual inflation rate. And so if you want a more accurate picture of your expenses over the years, you need to make sure that you get closer to that five to 7 percent inflation rate and increase over time. And if the calculator you're using does not use that five to 7 percent increase, make sure you try to find one that is using that increase over time.

And then you want to explore plan options. And so, for example, if you have a high deductible health plan, we can utilize the HSA, which is beautiful for this retire at 55 plan because the HSA provides a ton of flexibility over the course of that 10 year gap that you need to utilize, and that is. For sure.

If you're going to retire early, I think everybody should have an HSA. Who's retiring early, because this is going to allow you to have a triple tax advantage account B you can invest those dollars. And we'll talk about the HSA more here in a second, but see, you can also take those dollars and reimburse yourself for medical expenses, and you can invest those dollars over time.

They're going to grow and then you can reimburse yourself. But you can also look at things like short term coverage and you can look at short term health plans that cover gaps between employment and Medicare eligibility. They do have those available and then there's Cobra. So if you leave your job for the next 18 months, you can actually stay with your employer sponsored health insurance, but you have to pay the full premium if you're going to do that.

So if you love your health insurances, Now with their current employer, Cobra is a program that's going to allow you to do that as well. So those are some plan options that you can explore, and then you would just want to estimate those costs between age 55 to 65. So once you kind of figure out and do, do some of this cost analysis, then you want to see how much you have here.

And then can you put enough in an HSA? That's going to get you to that point in time where you can pay for some of this healthcare stuff. And in addition, can you make sure you have enough invested for healthcare to cover these costs, uh, and be able to draw down that 4 percent rule when you start to do this.

So thinking through it, estimating those costs from age 55 to 65 is super, super important. And then you can factor in Medicare once you hit age 65. So you need that 10 years covered. Then you can start to factor in Medicare. And then what you want to do is then think through your out of pocket costs with Medicare.

And if you need additional coverage with Medicare, that's the other part of it. So part B premiums for Medicare, if you didn't know those covered doctor and outpatient care, uh, and these are premiums at a regular expense. And then part D covers prescription costs, uh, through Medicare. And then Medigap or Medicare Advantage is, uh, supplemental plans to cover additional expenses not included in standard Medicare.

So, uh, if you have pre existing conditions, things like that, you want to look at Medigap or Medicare Advantage if Medicare does not cover some of those things. So that's how I would think through that. Um, As you go through this process. And in the guide that we have here, the resource, uh, it'll kind of give you an example calculation on how to do that.

And that'll help you through that process as well. Now there are some other tools and resources that you can use outside of the ones that I just talked through. Uh, one is the health insurance marketplace calculator, which estimates premiums and subsidies. Then Fidelity actually has a retiree healthcare cost estimator that I thought was pretty good also.

And then they have HSA calculators out there that are going to help you, uh, think through this as well. Now, speaking of the HSA, let's. Talk about that, because if you retire by the age of 55, the HSA can really be the bridge that helps you bridge that gap from 55 to 65 a for two reasons. One of which is it's going to help you with your healthcare costs.

Okay. And so an HSA can definitely help you with those healthcare costs, but B it'll also help you with your expenses until you get to the age of social security. So if you have a lot of medical costs that you've incurred over the course of the last couple of years that you've had an HSA, the HSA will help you reimburse yourself tax free for living expenses.

If you have qualified medical expenses that you've already spent money on in the past and you save those receipts. And so the HSA has a twofold benefit for people who retire early, which is why I think it should be at the top of your list when it comes to investing those dollars because it allows you for flexibility.

I'll talk to you again. Transcribed It has tax deductible contributions, it has tax free growth, and it has tax free withdrawals, as long as you have qualified medical expenses. And if you've never looked at the qualified medical expense list on the IRS website when it comes to this triple tax advantage, and when it comes to some of the expenses that are qualified, you'll be amazed at some of the stuff that you can spend money on, and it qualifies for an HSA.

So definitely look at that, uh, because it gives you more flexibility. And when we want to retire early, flexibility is the name Of the game. So it gives you a, that long term growth. You want to make sure your HSA dollars are invested. So if your employer doesn't offer an HSA, the best place I think by far, and this is not sponsored, I don't have any association with them is Fidelity.

I've done tons of research on different places to open an HSA and Fidelity has the lowest costs and they have the best investment options in my opinion. So that is a great place to open one. They also have the highest ratings. If you go on a bunch of different websites and look at reviews, like Morningstar has them as number one.

And so they just have the best investment options out there, which is what you really care about with an HSA and HSA. You don't really plan on spending it until you get to retirement age. You want to grow that account for the most part, unless you have a medical emergencies or things like that, you want to grow that account long term.

Now, this is very different from an. FSA or a flexible spending account where you have to spend those dollars every single year and take that balance to zero and HSA, you can invest and grow over time and it can grow to be a very large account. And if you don't use the money for qualified medical expenses, then you can use those dollars.

And it's very similar to like an IRA or your 401k works the same way. So lots and lots of benefits to the HSA. And I think everybody should probably have one when they consider health insurance and retiring early. Now, The other side of it is I want you to just think through long term care and how you are going to handle long term care.

So do you have kids? If you don't, are you going to need long term care services? Do you think you'll need assistant living? All that kind of stuff. Just plan that out a little bit. And the HSA can also help you bridge those gaps. Um, that'll help you kind of think through that process as well. Now we're going to dive into step three, which is travel and hobbies.

All right. So let's talk through travel and hobbies here for a second, because this Definitely needs to be part of your planning. When you start to plan this stuff out, I want you to have the best retirement you ever had. And that's what money is there to do. Money is there to be allocated towards the things that you actually value.

And for most people, traveling hobbies are a huge thing that they're looking forward to when they retire. So why not plan to have the maximum amount that we could spend on traveling hobbies? I want you to be a maximalist when it comes to spending on these things that bring you value. And so. Studies show that 63 percent of Americans age 50 and older say that travel is a very important retirement goal.

And yet more than half worry about the high cost of travel that could derail their travel plans. So if that's the case, let's go through and start to plan this stuff out. So I'm going to give you some steps to go through here. Uh, to plan some of this stuff out. First, I want you to create some sort of bucket list.

If you don't have one already, um, this is something you should do as early as you possibly can. Maybe you're in your twenties, your thirties, your forties. Listen to this podcast, start that now, start that bucket list now, because you can start to check off some of those things that you want to do. And in addition, you'll be able to actually have a travel plan in place as you start to approach retirement age.

So put together that bucket list plan. Then I want you to discuss these travel ideas with your spouse or whoever else you are planning on traveling with, uh, and start to have these conversations, start to dream a little when you have some of your money conversations and think through, Hey, how can we actually do some of this stuff and make it a sustainable life for us?

And so I want you to get. Specific. I want you to be realistic, and I want you to put costs in there on how much you want to spend on each trip, and then you can start to map this out. So say, for example, you want to travel the world, and you want to travel maybe three months out of the year. Well, if you want to travel three months out of the year, let's say it's going to cost you another 30 grand to travel those three months.

So 10, 000 per month. Okay. And so you start traveling for 10, 000 per month, and you want to go through Europe, year one and all that kind of stuff. Okay. Well, once you start to factor that in, you get that number correct, you can add this into your portfolio and bake this number into the amount that you want to have invested.

So you have a plan in place when you reach retirement age that you're going to be able to travel as much as you possibly could want. And so having that available is really, really cool stuff. And That's it. In addition, studies show that most of retirees will do a lot of their traveling in the first 10 to 15 years of their retirement.

And the majority of them will do it with, you know, by the time they turn age 65, they start to slowly slow down their travel a little bit more. And so when that happens, It's definitely a consideration for you to kind of front load some of that travel and that travel expense. And maybe you can draw down a little more than you want to in the first couple of years.

And if you think your travel is going to slow down as time goes on, then you bake it back a little bit. So maybe the first couple of years you want to travel three months out of the year. And then as you start to progress and you've seen a lot of different places, then it goes to two months. Then it goes down to one month a year for the rest of your retirement.

Well, that is a really cool thing that you can do and you can plan all this stuff out. Secondly, I want you to consider those costs. So put those costs into place. What are flights going to cost you? What's lodging going to cost you? And what type of traveler do you want to be? Do you want to be luxurious and travel in luxury?

That's a big goal for me is I want to travel in luxury. I don't want to make this some confined thing where I'm traveling hostel to hostel. Instead, I want to have a nicer hotel. I want to get a nicer flight. that's something for sure that I would consider when I'm looking at my finances. But if you don't care about that stuff, then maybe it is less of a priority for you.

Also consider traveling for the holidays to see your kids or your grandkids. That's another big factor you want to have in place. And then also you can plan for, maybe it's something where you plan out your expenses. and social security can cover the rest with travel as well. So think through social security, uh, but have that list of wants and needs, have that bucket list in place.

Um, and then factor in things that really, really matter for you on the travel side. In addition, the same thing goes for hobbies. And so when it comes to hobbies, you know, hobbies are getting more and more expensive as time goes on. And if you're someone who is really interested in very specific hobbies, you know how much those hobbies cost.

And so you want to make sure that you factor those in so you can do those things daily or however frequently you want to be doing those. You want to be doing different stuff every single day anyways. And so, for example, for me, as I start to age, there's things that I would definitely love to be doing more of, which is things like.

Golf playing more pickleball. Um, those types of things would be something I would factor in to my retirement plan and some of the additional dollars that I want to make sure I'm saving up. Now you may be saying to yourself, well, pickleball is free, but there's a lot of indoor facilities that are opening up now where you could pay and have memberships for pickleball.

Same thing goes for golf. Maybe you want a golf membership. And or you just want to play a bunch of different courses. Clubs are expensive. Golfs are really expensive sports. So if like you're someone who is interested in golf or fishing and and some of these expensive things, that is going to be definitely something you want to factor into your plan because obviously fishing, you have boat, you have gas, you have bait.

There's tons of different things you have to factor in there. And then for golf, you have clubs, you have greens fees, you have all these different things, lessons, whatever else you want to do. Um, all those are going to factor into your costs and then pick a ball is the same thing. I'm just kind of talking through some of my hobbies and my experiences, but you can pay for lessons.

You can pay for indoor facilities. You can pay for different paddles and trying out different things and gear and all that kind of stuff. Tournaments is another big one. So All these hobbies are going to have costs associated with them. You got to factor those in so you can actually do what you love.

And that's what's really, really important. And so create that budget, allocate funds to those hobbies, and then plan for flexibility and track that spending. So that's the most important thing when it comes to this next let's talk about. Income. So when it comes to retiring early, the next question I want you to ask yourself is, are you going to have any income when you decide to retire early?

Well, where's the majority area income going to come from? Most likely for most people, it's going to be their investment. So it's going to be either your portfolio. If you have index funds or target date retirement funds and your invested dollars, that's where the majority of your money could come from.

It also could come from real estate investing. And so investing in real estate, people do that. So they have cashflow. And when that cashflow comes in, is that where. A portion of your income is going to come from. And then also people also factor in things like if you own a business, will you have income coming from that?

Will you try out some side hustles to make some side income in retirement? Cause you have a little more time and you think you're going to be a little bit bored and you want to stay busy. Like for me, I'm going to be building businesses probably as long as I possibly can, cause I enjoy the process. And so that's going to be something where I'd factor in that income and what I kind of think could be there, uh, based on that timeframe.

And then you can adjust that income as time goes on. But how much income are you going to have? Then once you hit age 62, then you have social security that can come into play and you can start taking it, um, coming up there. So that's where you want to think through, Hey, am I going to use social security?

What age am I going to take it at? And use some of those calculators to think through that as well. I think that's another powerful way to come up with some of the numbers that you need to come up with. One thing that some people do is they save the social security and they will wait longer to take the social security because they get more money if they wait longer.

I like to take it early. Um, I've done the math a couple of different ways and I think taking it early is interesting because then if you're not going to use the money, just invest those dollars and let those compound instead. Um, but you do what's best for you. There's some great calculators online that show you how to do that from the IRS website, but I'd rather have my money in my hands so that I can control what I'm going to do with it instead of the IRS just hanging onto it for a free loan.

So, um, For me, that's specifically how I would do it as well. So think through that income side. Now, Vanguard has a really cool tool also. That's called the Retirement Income Calculator. In this calculator, you can put in some simple information here of how much you think you'll need in retirement, when you're going to retire, how much you make now, how much you're saving, all that kind of stuff.

And it'll tell you and spit out some information on how much income you should have available to you. Also, if you have a portfolio 4 percent rule. We've talked about that a number of times in this podcast. And basically what that states is that you can draw down 4 percent of your portfolio every single year, and then you adjust for inflation every year thereafter.

Uh, and with that, Bill Banging came up with that originally in the original studies. And when he came up with that, that was to preserve your portfolio over the course of 30 years. Now, other people are coming out saying, well, Hey, this isn't aggressive enough. You could probably pull more money out. And then some people say it's too aggressive.

So, um, when we talk through that, the safe withdrawal rate, or you can do a dynamic withdrawal rate. And when the market is up, then you are drawing. 4 you are drawing down less money if you're comfortable with doing something like that. Uh, you got a lot of options there, but when it comes to how much your income you're going to have from your portfolio, the 4 percent rule is a nice round middle ground number that's going to help you think through that.

Um, and so I would utilize the 4 percent rule. Now if you retire before 50, if you're in your forties and retiring or even your thirties and retiring and you're pursuing financial independence, then I would change the 4 percent rule. I'd probably adjust it down to three and a half, 3 percent maybe. Uh, and so you need to make adjustments based on that.

So that's another option that you can think through as you start to do this. Next thing we're going to do is now let's project all this out. And so we put this information together, uh, and we want to project all this out. So one tool I like is FICalc. app and FICalc is a great tool to use to put in your portfolio information and how you're going to draw down on that portfolio and see the probability of success.

It's a completely free tool. Uh, so that's a great option for you. And you can fill in all your portfolio info and see how it's actually going to work. Now, two things I like to look at on FI calc one is portfolio projection, seeing, you know, how that portfolio is going to perform over time. And then also the chance of portfolio success is the other side that I love to see when it comes to FI calc.

So those are two great options there. And then you can also use things like portfolio visualizer, which has some free tools in it. I like that one as well. And that's going to be another great option for you. And then. Step seven. If your plan is in place and you think you're not living your dream retirement yet, and you don't know why, then let's make some adjustments.

So the first adjustment we can look at is we can look at, can you spend less? Is your plan assessing for way too much spending? Are you just overspending and you'd be happy spending less if you could not work anymore? Well, that's one thing you need to look at is could you spend less? The second thing though, is could you earn a little bit more in retirement?

Maybe you plan on stopping working, but could you kind of earn Earn some additional income based on some of your hobbies or your interests. That'd be another great option that you could look at. And the next is, does it work just fine? And that's great. Continue on with that plan. But then lastly is, can you change your plan now so that it can work in the future?

So if it's not working right now, we can make the adjustments right now so that we can have the dream retirement that we want. And how can we make those adjustments? Think through. Can you earn more and put more dollars towards your retirement? Can you spend less and put some more of those dollars towards retirement?

How can we make those adjustments so that we can have that dream retirement? Now, the next step after we look at some of those adjustments is our tax strategy, because taxes are a huge factor in retirement. Now, I was going to dive into taxes on this episode, and as I started to map all of this out, I realized this is an entire episode.

So we don't even have enough time to cover that in this episode. So one week from today, we're going to dive into some of the information on taxation and how we want to think about taxes in our retirement plan. And so we're going to talk through that on the next episode. And I'm going to give you a ton of things like dynamic withdrawal strategies, meaning what order to withdraw from your accounts.

And how to think about that. I'm going to talk through some ways to save on taxes and some ways to talk to your CFP or your CPA on how you can actually help adjust some of your taxation burden. And so that's going to be a fun episode that we're going to do one week from today. So one week from this episode airing, we are going to do that episode, that tax strategy.

Episode. So listen, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and this step by step guide. If you guys have any questions, again, join the mastermind newsletter, go to mastermoney. co slash newsletter, join the newsletter there, and you can respond, uh, and I will answer questions as they come in and you may get your question on the show instead, and I'll answer it directly on the show.

So, uh, really excited to have you guys here today. Thank you so much for investing in yourself by listening to this podcast. And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week and we'll see you on the next episode.