Hi, guys. Danielle here from
Boomer Benefits. And in today's
interview, I'll be speaking with Josh Scandlen
from Heritage Wealth Planning. Josh has a channel
here on YouTube that covers retirement
topics from a different angle than I've ever seen before. I suspect that the reason
his videos are popular is he talks about how people
can survive retirement on less money than they
originally expected. Josh believes in reality
retirement planning. And you'll see
exactly what he means by that in this interview. Josh is going to tell
you why he believes that you can retire comfortably
on less money than you think. He'll also cover what your
biggest retirement expense will be and how you can
avoid the hidden tax bomb inside your retirement. Furthermore, Josh loves the idea
of using your early retirement years to finally earn
money doing what you truly love to do, and why
you should absolutely consider quitting your crappy
old job to launch an encore career. You'll also
appreciate his advice on determining the
right amount of money you'll need to make ends meet
each month in retirement, and what to invest in if
you're just starting to save for retirement at age 55. So much interesting
material in this interview. So hopefully you can benefit
from the whole new perspective that Josh brings to
the table when it comes to looking at your retirement. Without further ado, let's
dive into this interview with Josh Scandlen. Good morning, Josh. I'm so glad that you're
here to talk with us today about Heritage Wealth Planning. Tell me a little bit
more about yourself. Well, thanks, Danielle. Welcome to the great
state of Georgia. A beautiful but crisp day
out here in April 1st. April fools. That's right. Absolutely. What's going on the
great state of Texas? Is it hot? You know, I was wishing that
it would be hot this weekend. And we actually had a
cool front come through. So it was just cool enough that
I couldn't sit in the backyard and enjoy the sunshine
without a jacket. But I'm not going to complain
because in a couple of months, when it's 110. Yes. I don't want to jinx myself
and predict a hot summer here for Texas. Well, I just put
some seedlings out and I hope that they survived
last night, because it did get to about 32 degrees. So oh! Wow. That was cold. I'm a garden man. You always think it's
always a concern when you plant your seedlings at first. So, no shield, we shall see. Good. Well, I hope they turn out OK. [INAUDIBLE] being here. I appreciate you having me. And I absolutely look
forward to talking to you about Medicare stuff at some
point in the near future, as well. I'm stoked for my audience. And I'm about to listen to
your expertise on that, indeed. Yeah. So I was just noticing how
many videos that you put out. You really have just
a ton of content. So can you tell us a little
bit about your background in finance, and what
you've been doing, and what led you into putting
out so much education here on YouTube? Yeah, absolutely. So my background is as
a poor kid growing up the state of Maine, in a
small island off the coast of Portland, Maine. And on food stamps,
you didn't have heat in your home in the wintertime. You had to go stay with
neighbors and all this stuff. So being poor is something
I've always despised. I can't stand it. And we used to have to take a
boat back and forth to school in Portland and whatnot. So it was a wonderful
life lived on an island. But being poor sucks, man. No other way around that. I remember thinking
that there's got to be a better way than this. And there is. And it's just through
due diligence, taking your time
to learn, not get rich quick schemes, but
just structure, just planning, making things happen. And a work ethic. I've always had a work ethic. I don't know why. But I almost failed
out of high school. I was shocked to have graduated
because I hated school. Still hate school. What Mark Twain says,
don't let school get in the way of your learning. And I hate it and always have. But I did graduate by
the skin of my teeth. And I went in the army for
four years in the infantry. And as most young
men will attest to, the military allows
you to mature. Because young men
are usually not as mature as their
women counterparts. And so for me, it
was just a godsend. And so I got out of the
army and I went to college. But lo and behold, I
remember talking this guy. I mean, I've had so many
different jobs, Danielle just grunt work and stuff. And I was in the infantry so
I wasn't afraid of hard work. Would never guess,
talking to this guy. His brother had hired us
to put up these real estate signs in Fairfax, Virginia. And he had to do it under
the cover of darkness, because it's literally illegal. So you'd punch down a little
sign in the ground that said, KB Homes for sale over here. And you had to do it at
night because the cops would basically
give you a ticket and arrest you for doing. A long story short. So it was fun. It was profitable. But I just remember
talking to him in one night as we're
literally covert operation. He was talking
about mutual funds. I said, what the hell is that? I had no idea what
a mutual fund was. And he started talking about it. I said, really? And so I was in college
already at that point. And I said, that sounds
pretty interesting. And so I've kind of
since took it upon myself to learn about investing. And then I realized
after many years of being a financial planner,
but really an investment advisor, not knowing anything
about financial planning, how much I did not know. And so I said, I
want to get the CFP. I got that. I started the studies for that
in 2001 and I got it in 2005, I believe. And that was fine. But that wasn't what made me
a better financial planner. I mean, it was OK. But it was actually
getting a master's degree from the College of
Financial Planning. That was by far away
the best education I've ever had when it comes
to financial planning. So that was in 2009 and '10. And so since then, I've been
just a financial planner, not an investment management guy. And that's what I like doing. Yeah. Awesome. [INAUDIBLE] Well, when it comes
to financial planning, I think a lot of
the clients that I run into here, especially
some of the ones that are helping their
parents age into Medicare, they're sort of overwhelmed by
the whole concept of planning. And I'm always happy to meet
adult children like that, because they're an opportunity
for me to explain to them, hey, you have time still. Watch what's going
on with your mom. Medicare isn't free. And when you have it, it doesn't
pay for 100% of everything. And I'm trying to
information dump all the things they
need to prepare for, because we meet so many people
coming into Medicare at 65 who are going to be on
Social Security alone. And that's really devastating. So what do you think are
the most confusing topics out there for people as they
get ready to retire, let's say, in their early 50s
up until age 65? Why is it so confusing? And what are the
topics when you're talking to people that are
so important to break down into easy pieces? Well, the first thing, Danielle,
I know this is a family show, but it pisses me off is that,
we have this in the vernacular that you can't retire-- like Suze Orman. What the-- she said I was going
to need $10 million to retire. It's just is freaking nuts, man. I sit there and all of
these people out there. And then we have
this Fidelity study that they use every year that
you need $286,000 for medical, and that doesn't
include long term care. They have all these just
worry words, negative Nellies out there, telling
people they can't retire. And it just ticks me off. Because it's simply a facade. Bankruptcies-- half
of bankruptcies are not caused by
lack of health care. It's not. I mean, this stuff that's
out there is completely fake, it's completely facade. The Fidelity study, which
says-- and it's true, when they look at
Medicare B and D, and then you look at
Medigap, that you're going to spend $286,000 for a couple. And your health costs
in retirement, well, how much you going
to spent on food? How much you going
to spend on housing? Because housing is far and away,
Danielle, nothing comes close. Nothing comes not anywhere
near the cost of housing by far and away. Yeah, and so many of
them renting these days. I read that, too, recently,
that a lot of times they don't have a mortgage paid off. And so they're heading
into rent and they're going to be paying
that kind of rent all through the retirement. So it's really expensive. Well, even if you had
your mortgage paid off. Your property taxes
don't go away. Your maintenance
doesn't go away. Your utilities don't go away. And so the thing that
just frustrates-- and I actually commissioned
a survey on Google. If you ever go to Google,
they can do a survey for $200. I asked them to ask
1,500 people what they think their biggest expense
is or will be in retirement. And I gave them five choices,
the top 5 from the BLS, which is the Bureau
of Labor Statistics. They have this thing called a
consumer expenditure survey, CES. And the number one
is, without question. 36% to 37% of your
expenditures in retirement will be on housing. And everything else
of the bottom four-- and that's health care, that's
food, that's transportation, that's entertainment--
all the other stuff is within 10% to 15%. And so they're all jockeying for
position number two as you age. But anyway, in every
city, honestly, 70%, 80% of the people
said health care will be their biggest
expense in retirement. It's simply not true. It's just not. Now, will there be
somebody as an outlier? Yes. One of my dearest
friends, her mom is in a nursing home in
Harrisonburg, Virginia for $8,000 a month. Yes. I get that. Which is why I
have long term care because it's a
catastrophic issue which is exactly what insurance
should be used for, for catastrophic illnesses. But that doesn't
happen very much. It just does not. And just because we
have anecdotal evidence, like, I knew someone who knew
somebody who knew somebody, that doesn't mean it's
likely to happen to you. And so all of
these people put on hold the enjoyment
of their lives because they're so
worried about leaving that crappy old job,
which is what I call it, because they're just worried. And it just infuriates me,
because as a Christian, we are put on this earth
to bring good cheer, to bring the good news. And when you're always
worried about things, you inherently limit
your ability to do that. And there's no reason for
that because the numbers are so clear. Anyway, that's my diatribe. That's good, though. That's really good
because we do find people afraid to head into retirement. And in today's world, we have
so many people working well past 65. And they can, because it's an
internet-based world rather than a manual labor
type of world. But they still want to retire. Everyone looks forward to that. And so one of the
things I noticed when looking at your videos
on your YouTube channel is that you had different
amounts of savings and how people could
retire on there. So one of them was, can
you retire on just $300,000 in savings? So tell us a little more
about surviving retirement, even if you don't have a
fortune put away today. Well, the first thing
we have to-- let me get my little thing here. So I'm going to
show you something that I think a lot of people
and a lot of financial planners will do this, I hate
to say deliberately, because that would
make it seem nefarious. And I don't necessarily
think it is. A lot of financial
planners are just not truly students of the business. And so what they'll think
is, they'll say hey, you need $50K a year to retire,
and that expenditure will go up each and every year as you age. And there is no evidence
of that whatsoever. None whatsoever. The BLS, again, Bureau
of Labor Statistics, I mean, at this
stage nowadays, it's so well known in
the academic cycles that most people,
what will happen is, they'll go like this. Their initial spending
will probably go up in the first couple years. But then it will drop
precipitously as you age. And a lot of people
will say, well, that's because they're
being forced to. And there's no evidence of that. None whatsoever. I mean, there's
definitely some people who are forced to spend less
because they ran out of money. But we don't have
empirical evidence to state that you spend less money
because you have nothing left. We just don't have the evidence
to support that assertion. There a guy, and I'll tell
you right now, there's a guy, and I wish this guy, I try to
get him to interview with me, but I'm sure he's
just inundated. But he's a guy
named Ty Bernicke. He wrote this article
in the Journal for Financial Planning in
2005, which for me, it just changed everything,
where he used the numbers from the BLS and
the consumer expenditure survey. And he's called it reality
retirement planning. And what that meant is, if this
is true, which it really is, we have evidence of this. It's through the roof. It's not really debatable now. What are we doing? What are we telling
people that they've got to save instead
of for people to save with their
expenditures that go up. That means, essentially,
we're telling people to save too much. That means we're telling
people to work too much longer. And there's a professor out
of Boston University named Larry Kotlikoff, who's
written a ton of stuff on Social Security. I mean, he's the expert on it. And he has this idea of what's
called consumption spending. So basically, what
it is is, hey, man, when you hit retirement age. I'll give you an
example, Danielle. I got four kids. For the longest time,
my wife stayed home. We had one income, four kids. All right? So at the end of the
day, are we going to spend the same in
retirement as we do today? And the answer is inherently no. We're not going to
spend anywhere near. We got four sets of braces,
four sets of classes, four sets of sports. All this stuff. We're just not going to consume
the same amount that we do now. And so for us, just think
that when we hit retirement, if we're spending $100,000
with a family of six in a big house that uses
55 kilowatt hours a day in electricity, that's
just not going to happen. OK. So what Larry
Kotlikoff will say is, if you smooth your consumption
relative to the reality on the ground, you can quickly
see how something like this makes sense. It's just intuitive. But because we're
so fear mongering, the industry as a whole,
which has an incentive to get you to invest your money
so they can get paid on it, just won't share that. Yeah. That really brings up
a good point for me, because my parents are 70-ish. And I know my mom, she worked
a couple of years past age 65. And then, even after
she's retired now, she barely draws from
her financial accounts. And so, I tell her, you've
done such a good job putting away all this money and
you're trying to live on beans. You need to meet with
your financial planner and decide how much you're
going to pull out every year and use some of that to make
your retirement easier, mom. And she still has this
mentality that she needs have this chunk of
money set aside for us. And my brother and I are
successful business owners. We definitely don't need
her money whatsoever and we told her this
on many occasions. But there is this sense of
holding it, being afraid to let go of that pot of money. Whereas, I want to see
her, she worked so hard putting all that money away. I want her to take
some of it every year to be able to enjoy
the types of things in retirement, like
travel and gardening, and some of the things
that she really enjoys. But people are
afraid to let it go. Well, we have evidence
of that, actually. We have what's called
behavioral finance, which a guy named Richard
Thaler won a Nobel Prize for. We've got another guy, Daniel
Kahneman, who also won a Nobel Prize for this kind of things. That people have
this chunk of money that they're very hesitant
to tap into that principal. They'll take the income
from it but they really get nervous when they're
tapping into the principal, even if they don't need it. So if your mom, is she
married or is she widowed? She is. She's married. OK, so here's the issue. I'm just telling you right now. And I wrote a book on this,
and a shameless sales plug. Let's see it. Where is it? Oh, right here. The Tax Bomb in Your
Retirement Account. All of 85 pages. Get it right now. I think it's $10, or I can't
remember what it's selling for. The issues that she
is going to have is, if she really wants to
leave it to you and not to the IRS, what's
happening is, she's avoiding taking advantage
of her married filing jointly tax status. What happens now is,
and I have a chapter 3, is the widow's tax trap. Because the minute one
of those spouses dies, your mom still has required
minimum distributions, but now she no longer has two
standard deductions to take. And on top of that, it's going
to make her tax brackets go up. And on top that, it will put
her Social Security subject to the task, her dividend-- I'm telling you this. Never mind the Medicare stuff. [INAUDIBLE] I see these couples
in retirement who have done such a
good job of saving. And they're just wonderful
salt of the earth people. And they've been told
they need to defer or don't take money
out of your IRA. Your mom should
still be doing that. And she doesn't
have to spend it. She can take it out of
the IRA and at least put it into a side account
and pay the taxes now. And that way, when she
and her husband die, at least you all inherit
that tax free, because of the step up in basis. And so many people
don't do that. They think they're
doing it right. And what they're
truly doing is they're leaving the surviving spouse a
tax bomb, thus the [INAUDIBLE] account. But then, they're leaving you
and your brother a tax bomb, too. Because you'll
inherit that money and have to pay tax on it. It's just sad. Yeah. Wow. That's a knowledge
bomb right there. I'm going to make her watch this
video as soon as I put it out. [INAUDIBLE] I've
got a research paper I got right there in my
window, in my tab right there, talking about the propensity
to spend dividends and not capital. I mean, it's academic research
is through the roof on this. Inherently, it
doesn't make sense. You're like, why does it matter? But it does make sense. People say, if I dip into
my principal, that's scary. Because I can never get
that money back necessarily. So I'd just as soon live on
beans and take the income, and even if I have
this big fat principal. Which is exactly
this human nature. Yeah. Well, and now they
have a good reason to think about that twice. So that's one mistake. What are some of the
other common mistakes that you see people make in
financial planning today? First and foremost, I
think a lot of people assume retirement means
not getting an income. And I don't agree
with that at all. I think retiring
just means you're leaving your crappy old job to
do something else, something that you like. For instance, I left
my crappy old job, where I was making big money,
to do this thing at YouTube. And I enjoy it immensely. Am I making anywhere
near what I was? No, but I love it. And who knows? At some point maybe it
will pay me what I need, which isn't what I
was making before. And I'm comfortable with that. So let's just say,
going back to gardening. You want to raise some
almond [INAUDIBLE].. You want to raise
some asparagus. And you think you're going to
stay in your home for 15 years. You got these asparagus plants,
which are perennials and grow for many, many years. And you have neighbors. Or you can go start, I mean,
you can do whatever you want. You can do classes at
the library, show people. Maybe they pay you $25. Do a YouTube channel. There's a guy out
in Houston named Khang Starr who does a YouTube
channel on just raising stuff. And he's making money. Do anything. It doesn't mean
you're sitting there just smoking cigarettes
and drinking martinis at retirement. In retirement, who
wants to do that? I mean, you're put on this
earth to do something, to bring the good news. And the good news,
whatever it is for you, doesn't mean just sit
back and sit idle. In fact, I can tell you probably
could do this even better than me. Men in particular, they leave
their crappy old jobs at 62. They think they're
going to go play golf. And then they play golf so
much that they get bored. And what happens
is, they get bored, they start watching
Fox News or MSNBC, start watching the
stock channels, and they start getting bitter. I'm telling you. I've seen it happen
a million times. They start getting bitter
because they're bored. They don't know what
to do with themselves. So before you retire,
start thinking about what it is that you might
want to do as a side hustle. And it doesn't even have to
be where you're making money. But just because
you're retired doesn't mean you're not
working, necessarily. That's a big one. I wish people would
recognize that retiring, just in my opinion, the way
it should be nowadays is leaving what you
didn't want to do. Yeah. And go and do something
you did want to do. Go and have an encore
career in something that you really enjoy. Oh. 100%. You ever heard of Ric
Edelman, by chance? OK, well he's a big funny, he's,
I think, one of the top three or four registered investment
advisors around in the world. And I'm somewhat
of a fan of Ric. He's a good guy. Somewhat he grates
on me a little bit. But he had a discussion I
thought was pretty interesting. He says, they way
we're living longer, with longevity
expanding, we're going to have three to four careers
in the course of a life. Yeah. I don't know if I
necessarily agree with that. But I think there is some
legitimacy to the idea that what you're doing
today isn't necessarily what you're going to be
doing 20, 30 years from now. So don't just get
stuck in, I'm a welder, I'm going to do welding
for the rest of my life, or I'm an accountant, I'm
going to do accounting for the rest of my life. Find something
that motivates you, that gets the juices flowing. And I'm telling you, it
will change everything. It really will. Yeah. And I think that's
important, too. Because I know, I follow a lot
of financial planning podcasts and things like that. And people get into this mindset
of, they've got a budget, they have a spending problem
or a budgeting problem. And sometimes it's
really an income problem. Oh, absolutely. And so, even if you're
on Social Security, you can earn up to a
certain amount each year before they're
going to tax that. And even if they do, there might
be some things, like you said, that you just really enjoy
that would make it worth that. We have a post on our website
about 50 ingenious ways to make money once you retire. And when we were putting
the post together, I remember being
surprised myself, even, at how many
opportunities there were. Especially we have things
like Uber, and Lyft, and easy driving
things that you can do. But you can pet sit
from your house. There's all sorts of different
little part time things that you can do. So if you don't have
something that's a burning passion that
you can make money on, but you can make just
enough that you keep that principal up, or
that you're not worrying so much about the money
that you're taking out, we do live in a world
where you can make money right here on the internet. And you can find
other things that you can do that would just
earn enough on the side to help you have the funds you
need for day to day living. I mean, absolutely. I mean $300 or $400 a month
is a long term care insurance premium. That's not chump change. It's not. And if you can get that by
doing something you enjoy, as well, that's something. The answer to the question
I can hear people saying, but I can't afford it now. Have you actually
done the budgeting? And this is going back
to your initial question about some of the
things are frustrating my financial planning. We always start with
how much do you have, and if you have $1 million,
we'll take $40,000 a year out. And I said to them, no. We got to start with
how much do you need? How much do you need
of income, right? Because what we find is
that, I'm just telling you, man, that many, many
people in the United States don't need nearly what
they think they do. And we know this. How do we know this? Because the median household
income in the US is $60,000. That means 50% of people
make more, 50% of the people make less. So the median household
income is $60,000. You take out FICA, 7.65%. You take out your
taxes, the state-- well, you're in
Texas-- in Georgia. And then, the feds, that's
probably another 12%. And then you take out
your 401(k) contributions. After all that, you're
only needing $50,000 a year to maintain the same
income that you had before. And I'm telling you, man,
I can tell you, Danielle, how many times I've
talked to people. I say, how much do
you think you need? And they're like, I don't know. I said, think $5,000 a
month would do you right? And that's including Medicare
B, and D, and the Medigap. And they said, yeah. And I said, OK, so if we
can generate $5,000 a month, we're going to be in
a pretty good place. Yeah. OK, so let's go back to that. And now, we see back
in Social Security at your primary
insurance amount. And we know it's so
easy to do this now. We say, OK, we need $50,000 a
year, which is $4,000 a month, roughly. You're going to get $2,500
a year from Social Security if you take it at your
full retirement age. And let's just use
myself for example. My wife will get half that. So that's $2,500
plus her $1,250. That's $3,750 a
year right there, if my trusty
calculator is correct. $3,750 a month right there. That would give us $45,000
a year in Social Security. Yeah. So that gap really might not
be as big as you think it is. No. And people say, well, Social
Security is going bankrupt. It's not. I literally just did a
video on this yesterday, where we dove into every single
aspect of the trustees' report to show how silly
it is, the idea. It's not going bankrupt. Even in 2034, they
got enough coming in. All right? Now their capital base is gone. I get that. But they still have enough
coming in from payroll taxes to pay $0.79 on the dollar. OK. I haven't done anything. And that will be
like that until 2092. And that's the worst case
scenario with Social Security. It's just not going bankrupt. And so not to use
Social Security as part of your planning, just stupid. I hate to say, it's dumb. You should because it's there. Yeah. You should. And the thing is, you want to
have it not be the only thing. It shouldn't be the only
thing that you have. But it also isn't
something that you want to just discount when
you're putting together how much you need to retire. So a question for you. If you had somebody, let's
say they're 55 or 60. And now, the kids have
all gone through college. And they're starting out flat. They don't have any debt. Or maybe they've
got a little debt that they're working
on paying off. But now they're 55 or
60 and they're just starting to put money away. What would you
recommend for someone? Because I think we
have a lot of people in that boat where, like
yourself, they have four kids. And they do their best. They work through, maybe
both of them are working, but they might be in
jobs that are hourly pay. And we have a lot of families
in that situation today. So if you were 55 or 60 and
you're just now starting to put money away
for your retirement, what things would you have
someone in that situation consider or work on? And we have little to no debt? Yeah. Let's just say no debt. Maybe they don't
have a ton put away, but they also have managed
not to rack up a ton of debt. All right. So let me just touch on
that real briefly, though. I'm telling, the most important
thing you can do in retirement is not have debt
without question. So let's just say someone
has $100,000 mortgage, and they don't have
anything put away. Should they invest or
pay off the mortgage? Pay off the mortgage. I'm telling you right now,
pay off the freaking mortgage. And the reason for
that is simple. Because you're not getting
a tax deduction anymore with the standard deduction. So the interest
write off on $100,000 mortgage payment is not enough
to get you above the standard. It's just not. So you're not getting
a tax deduction. OK. That's a great tip. People say, but I need
the tax deduction. I say, are you even getting it? Uh, I don't know. Have you looked at your 1040? Uh, OK. They're just not. I'd say to those people, you've
got to pay off that mortgage. Now, if I may, too, now let's
say their mortgage is paid off. And they have a 401(k),
or they have a 403(b), or they have a TSP, or something
where their employer is also contributing. OK. Well, you've got to
take advantage of that. I mean, that's par
for the course. And you got to invest that as
aggressively as you possibly can. And that would be like a total
stock index fund or something like that, Danielle. Just something simple. Get the broad market
coverage and don't sweat it. But here's why. It's because, if you
look at your labor, your labor is a bond,
if that makes sense. All right? You're renting your
labor to a company to pay you an
interest rate, which is exactly how a bond works. So I'm working for Joe
Schmo's electricity company. And Joe Schmo is paying me
$100,000 a year or whatever. That is a bond. And so we don't want
to be conservative, because we already have our
bond covered in our labor. And our Social Security
is another bond. So we have the
bond side covered. We've got to get some
equity, some stocks. And not because
stocks are great, because they'll
outperform or anything. It's because of diversification. OK. Stocks are the only
way we're going to make any money in the future. And there's no guarantee
of that at all. But if you look at Social
Security and your labor as a bond, you've already
met that component. And then you got your
home paid off, as well. So I just think you've
got to be aggressive. Look. I have no idea what
the market is doing. I pay no attention at all
because I just don't care. Yeah. And that's what you gotta do. That's what you gotta do. OK. I love that perspective
because I do think we tend to
get a little older, and then we're
more conservative. We don't want to put
as much money in. But if you have a
limited time horizon, and you haven't
saved up until now, thinking about Social
Security and your job as your bond might make
you just relax a little bit and put some money into
stocks, where you do have the capability to
earn those bigger returns, because your time
horizon is so short. It's almost an
opposite approach, but totally interesting. So I have a video called A
Two Budget Retirement Plan, where you have basically
three years of cash, literally in CDs, and
everything else is in stocks. I don't have any
bonds whatsoever. And going back to Dave Ramsey,
I would agree with him on that. He's not a fan of bonds, either. So the reason, again, for
that is because you already have big bonds. When you've got a bond and
Social Security, your home, you can downsize. You can take a reverse mortgage. There's all kinds
of different things you can do with your home to
generate cash flow from that, which a lot of people don't do. And I don't get that at all. But either way,
three years of cash. And you can ladder CDs-- 1, 2, 3 year CDs-- and
then the rest in stocks. But that's the
portfolio you should do as you hit retirement. Obviously, I would
rather have you retire with a billion
dollars than $100,000. But man, you can easily get
by just fine on $100,000, as long as you know how to
manipulate the Social Security systems to benefit, which
isn't really that difficult. It really just means,
don't take it early. I mean, there's no
other way around that. Yeah. I do agree with that. You can lose quite a
bit by taking it early. And I hear from people
all the time, they say, well, I might die tomorrow. Well, statistically
that's not the case. Well, Danielle, they'll
say that their average life expectancy is 78. I said, your average life
expectancy is not 78. 78 if you're a newborn today. Yeah. 65 years old today,
it is not 78. There's a 50% chance
a couple today at 65 will survive, one of
them, until they're 92. Yeah. So everyone thinks
life expectancy is 78, so if I take it at 62, that'll
be better than if I take it at 66, my full retirement age. It's simply not true. 78 is not the life
expectancy for someone that is looking at Medicare. It's just not. Yeah. So you've really got to think
about that for the long term. And sometimes we want to
have the bird in the hand. But when you're talking
about the difference between 70% of your full
retirement age or 124%, that's a really big gap. And if you're working anyway
and you don't need the money, if that happens to you, I think
you've got to, like you say, wait as long as possible. Well, such great
information, Josh. I really love chatting with
you because this perspective, I think, is what
so many people need to hear when they feel fearful. Or sometimes you have
this comparison mindset, where oh, I've got these
neighbors over here. And they've just put away all
this money for retirement. And I'm starting so late. Why would I bother? And the answer is that the
time to start is today. Today is the time. If you've got 5 years, 10
years, 3 years, whatever you can do to help yourself
out, get out there and do it now while you still have some time. You can't do anything
about the past. You can't tell the future. But you can do something
about it today. And that's pay off your
debt, start saving money. And then stop worrying
so much about it. It doesn't make sense
to go through life worried about Social
Security or whoever is in the administration. It just doesn't make sense. Just recognize what you can
control, what you can do. And what you do today should
be to advance the ball forward to live the life that you're
put on this earth to do, which is to bring
cheer and goodwill. Yes. The worry is the
antithesis of that. That's for sure. I totally agree. So where can people
find out more about you? My YouTube channel is just
YouTube.com, backslash, Heritage Wealth Planning,
Heritage Wealth Planning. And I do probably three
or four videos a day, because it's my, I
never get [INAUDIBLE] but I do like YouTube, my
drug of choice, if you will. And I have a podcast,
The Josh Scandlen Podcast is out there, as well. The website is Heritage
Wealth Planning. But YouTube is where
I put everything on, just because it's fun. And there's always
something to talk about. Every day, something
new comes down the pike. And so that's where
they can find me. But I really appreciate
you having me, Danielle. This is fantastic. I look forward to asking
you a ton of questions about Medicare, as well. Because people [INAUDIBLE] I know. Everyone talks about how
confusing Social Security is. You ain't seen nothing yet. Wait until you're
still on Medicare. My goodness. That's true. With these, you had
two videos in a row. You've got a financial
plan and Medicare. People will be afraid
to ever retire. Oh, man. Medicare, just it is nuts. And real quick, Danielle,
I am telling you, get a freaking
broker like Danielle. Because there's no
way, there is no way, there's no way that someone,
a regular human being, can figure all that stuff out. There is no way that can happen. One thing with Social
Security is one thing. But when it comes to Medicare,
it is 10 times more complex. And sadly, make that
mistake, you could you might not be
able recoup from it, given preexisting conditions
and whatnot with Medigap. So do not get a Medicare
without seeking assistance. For the love of the good
Lord and [INAUDIBLE].. Yep. And we're putting out plenty
more videos about that here on our own channel. So thanks so much for
chatting with us today. I really appreciate it, Josh. Back at you, Danielle. Thanks for having me. And folks, go and check
out Josh's YouTube channel and thank him for his time. Have a good day. Thanks, Danielle. Bye. So there you have it, folks. We hope you enjoyed
this interview and that it gave you some
food for thought on retiring to do something that you love. Now that we've
filmed this video, we're curious to
hear whether you plan to start a new part-time
or even full-time career after you officially retire
from your current job. If so, tell us what
you'll be doing. We'd love to hear all about it. Now, if you want to work, but
you aren't sure doing what, you can visit our blog post
about 50 ingenious ways that you can earn extra
money in retirement. I'll drop the link in the
description below this video. Lastly, if you
want more of Josh, be sure to subscribe to the
Heritage Wealth Planning channel here on YouTube. And if you want more
Boomer Benefits, you can subscribe to our channel
using the red button below. Thanks for watching and we'll
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