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The 4% Rule Is Only a Starting Point, Not a Retirement Plan | Financial Advisor Explains · Well Advised Wealth

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: What you're saving while you're working decides what you can spend when you stop, and how you plan to spend in retirement should decide how much you should save right now.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: If they do that for 30 years and earn six percent a year, they end up with about$2.37 million.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: A million dollars in a pretax 401k is not a million dollars of spending money.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Don't waste time.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Money's not the goal.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Wealth is.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: And time is one kind of wealth you can't earn back.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome in, everybody.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: This is the Well Advised Wealth Podcast.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: As always, I'm your host, Justin Chastain, certified financial planner.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: And every week I help successful business owners and families create wealth that last.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to really answer something on today's podcast that I am getting asked probably more than anything in my meetings with clients, meetings with prospects, as I do a lot of retirement workshops.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is the question that I get asked continually.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really two important questions.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it's about retirement.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: The first one, how much should I be saving now?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the second one is, how much can I spend once I retire?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: And almost every answer that you're going to find online treats them as two separate questions.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Say 15% and then spend four and you're done.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, here's the thing, and here's what nobody is really telling you.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: They are the same question.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: What you're saving while you're working decides what you can spend when you stop, and how you plan to spend in retirement should decide how much you should save right now.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: If we get one of them wrong and the other one falls apart, and vice versa.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: So today we're going to be connecting the dots on these two pieces the good, the bad, and the ugly, of how much you should be saving and what that means for what you can actually spend.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: And let's be honest, why that four percent rule in spending is just only one small piece of the answer, and it's not a hundred percent.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: So whether you're 35 in building or you're 63 and in this red zone era where you're looking to retire and you're about to flip the income switch on your retirement income, this one's for you.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: So let's get into it.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's two terms you need to know before we even talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: And these two terms are going to come up not just in today's episodes, but probably if you have a financial advisor already, that's probably coming up in meetings already, but it's probably already coming up in conversations with your significant other, or if it's just you having these questions amongst yourself.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the first one is your savings rate.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: This is everything that you're saving for your future.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: And here's how you calculate it.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: You divide your gross income by everything that you are saving.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean everything.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Your 401k contributions, your IRA, your health savings account.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you're investing in it, your brokerage account and your employer match as well, these matches count towards your overall savings rate.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's your money, it's just coming from a different place.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: So let me give you an example.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: If a couple earns$200,000 a year, and between the two of them, they put$20,000 into their$401, they get a$10,000 match, they add another$5,000 to a brokerage account.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Their savings rate is$35,000 divided by$200,000.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's a 17.5% savings rate.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Most people have never actually ever done that math.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: They know what their$401 percentage is, but not their real savings rate.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: So you do want to hold on to that.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: The second term is the flip side.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Once you retire, your withdrawal rate is how much you take out of your portfolio each year divided by what the portfolio is worth.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have$2 million and you withdraw$80,000 a year, your withdrawal rate is 4%.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's where the famous 4% rule comes from.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Not my example, but it's just looking at, hey, if we invest 4% in our portfolios, they're gaining if they're invested in the market at an average rate of maybe 5 to 6%.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: If you get more conservative, especially in the retirement income distribution phase.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: But if we do that, we're never pulling below or above our actual withdrawal rate.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: But this is how these two terms connect.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Your savings rate builds the pile, and your withdrawal rate decides how long the pile lasts.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: One is the deposit, the other is the withdrawal.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: So today's whole episode lives in the space between them.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Savings rate and withdrawal rate.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: If you got those, we're good, so let's get into it.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: So let's get into the good.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, in the good, your savings rate is the lever you control the most.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: You can't control the stock market.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: You can't control interest rates, inflation, or what Congress does with the tax code, but you can completely control what you're saving.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: And over a career, that one decision usually matters more than which funds you have picked.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: A common starting guideline is to save at least 15% of your gross income each year.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that's also including the employer match in your retirement accounts.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Let's put a number on what that does.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say the same couple earning$200,000 that I gave previously are saving 15%.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: And they're putting away thirty thousand dollars each year.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: If they do that for 30 years and earn six percent a year, they end up with about two point three seven million dollars.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: They never even picked a hot stock, they never timed the market, they just saved consistently and let time do the heavy lifting.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's the good news.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: That lever matters most than the one sitting in your own hands.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, under the good.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Saving more helps you twice.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: This is the part almost nobody talks about, and it's my favorite idea of all of retirement planning.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: When you raise your savings rate, you win in two directions at once.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Think about two couples.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Both earn two hundred thousand dollars a year.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Couple A saves ten percent, couple B saves twenty-five percent.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: On the surface, couple B is just saving more.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: But if we look closer, couple B is also spending thirty thousand dollars a year less, and they've gotten used to living on less.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: So when they retire, they don't need to replace as much.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: So let's run it.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: At a four percent withdrawal rate, every one dollar of annual spending needs about twenty-five dollars saved.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: So spending thirty thousand dollars less means couple B needs roughly seven hundred and fifty thousand less to retire.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, they're saving thirty thousand dollars more every single year to get there.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Over a course of twenty-five years at six percent, that extra thirty thousand a year grows to about one point six million.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: So they need less.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: They have more.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's the double win.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the reverse.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Every dollar of lifestyle you add while working is a dollar you'll need to fund for 30 years of retirement.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Your savings rate isn't just how fast you build, it's the size of your target.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I see this a lot in where a lot of people don't think about this, but there is such a different mindset in retirement income distribution than there is in accumulation.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: And more likely than not, you're gonna be spending more in your go-go years of retirement than you are in any other phase.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: And there's nothing wrong with that.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: But if we haven't saved enough, remember one adjusts the other.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Number three, under the good.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Retirement spending is so much more than one rule.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: So now let's flip to that spending side.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: The 4% rule just says you can withdraw 4% of your portfolio in the first years of your retirement, and you raise that dollar amount for inflation every year, and your money should last about 30 years.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's a useful starting point, but let me just say this it is only a starting point and not a plan.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there's a lot of research out there generally every year.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Morningstar puts one out that's pretty good.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: And for someone retiring in 2026 using a fixed withdrawal that never changes, their research for Morningstar put the safe starting rate at around 3.9% for a 30-year retirement.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: But when they tested flexible approaches like spending a little less after a bad market, starting withdrawal rates when as high as about 5.7.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the person who created the 4% rule, William Benjamin, now argues for around 4.7 and different methods for different answers.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: So here's the good news.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: You have options, right?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: You can use guardrails where you spend more after the good years and trim a little after the bad ones.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: You can use something that we call buckets, keeping a few years of spending in cash and bonds while the rest stays invested.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: And the approach I use most with clients, cover your essential expenses with guaranteed income first, like Social Security, any pension income, potentially an annuity.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not recommending that.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying if you need guaranteed income, but then let your portfolio fund the lifestyle.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: I call that your retirement security ratio.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: How much of your essential spending is covered by the income you can outlive.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: The closer that gets to 100%, the more freely you can spend the rest.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Pick the method that fits you best, not the one that you've searched and gotten some headline.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Now let's move into the bat.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: The rules of thumb are built for average earners.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: So here's the problem with just saving 15% and plan to replace 80% of your income.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: Those rules quietly assume Social Security covers a big chunk of your retirement.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: For the average worker, it may.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: For high earners, it does not even come close.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of reasons for that.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: But Social Security's own actuaries publish this every year.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: For someone retiring at full retirement age, Social Security replaces about 41% of career average earnings for a medium earner, and that's around$72,000 a year.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: For a high earner, around$115,000, it's about 34%.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: For someone who earned at the Social Security wage cap their whole career, which right now is$184,500.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you've earned more than that, you were no longer putting into Social Security.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now there's other taxes you paid, but that's when out of your payroll tax you're no longer paying that 6.2% for Social Security.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, guess what?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's only about 27%.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: And if you earn$300,000, even the maximum benefit replaces only around 17% of that income.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: So again, high earners, if you're following a rule built for an average worker, you're probably under saving.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Your portfolio has to do far more work because Social Security does far less.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the fix.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Stop using a percentage of salary and build your own number from your actual spending.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Take what you're actually spending, think you're going to spend in retirement, subtract out estimated Social Security, potentially any pension if there is one, or an annuity, and the gap between what your portfolio has to cover.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Multiply that gap by 25 for a rough target, then back into the savings rate that takes you to get there.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, not all savings spend the same.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Here's one that catches people at the finish line.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: A million dollars in a pre-tax 401k is not a million dollars of spending money.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Every dollar that comes out as tax is ordinary income.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you're in the 22% bracket in retirement, that million is really worth$780,000 to you.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: And if your savings sits in one type of account, which means you don't have a taxable, tax-deferred, or tax-free.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you only have a tax deferred, like qualified accounts.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Then guess what?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: You have no control over the tax bill when you start withdrawing.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: So when you calculate whether you're on track, you have to look at what kind of money you're saving, not just how much.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Two families with the same balance can have very different power in retirement.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the fix.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Build all three taxable, tax-deferred, tax-free buckets while you are working.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Pre-tax accounts like traditional 401k, Roth accounts, and regular taxable brokerage accounts.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Each one is taxed differently when it comes to the money coming out in the distribution phase.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Having all three lets you choose where each year's spending comes from so you can stay in a lower tax bracket, manage your Medicare premiums, which we talked about with Irma planning in our last episode, and keep more of what you save.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly why the Roth Conversion and Irma episodes were about.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: We even talked about backdoor Ross.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Number three, a lifestyle creep.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: This one is sneaky and it sounds weird too, like it's a documentary on Netflix about Jeffrey Dahmer or the Unibomber, but it's not.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: This one is sneaky because it feels earned.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: You get a raise, you get a bonus, you have a great year in the business.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: And spending quietly goes up to the match.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: A nicer car, a bigger house, more expensive vacation.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I'm not saying that we shouldn't have those things, but none of this feels reckless.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: We don't really see where that money is going, but here's what's actually happening.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Every time your spending rises, your savings doesn't.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: You're doing two things at once that are working against you.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: You're raising the size of the retirement you'll need to fund, but you're not increasing what you're putting away to fund it.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's the double win from the good section running in reverse.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: So here's the fix.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it's simple.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Save at least half of every raise.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: If you get a ten thousand dollar raise, bump your savings by five thousand.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: And listen, here is what I'm telling you.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Enjoy the other five thousand.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: Go and travel, go and do things.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Listen, you still feel the progress, your lifestyle still improves, and guess what?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Your savings rate keeps climbing instead of shrinking.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: You do that for a decade and you'll be amazed at the difference.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because what we're trying to accomplish is living a life well lived.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: And we do that by making small changes that can have big impacts.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now, here's the ugly.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, there's a cost of waiting.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Time is the most powerful thing you have in your wealth bucket.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the one thing you can't get back.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: If you lose a minute today, I can't get you that minute back.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you lose a dollar today, I'll figure out how to make you three tomorrow.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Don't waste time.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: So let me show you an example.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Someone that saves ten thousand dollars a year and they start at thirty, and they let's just say they're earning six percent in an investment account.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: By sixty-five, they'll have about one point one million.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: Now, someone else who waits until forty-five and saves the same ten thousand dollars a year, by sixty-five they have around three hundred and sixty-eight thousand.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Same savings, same return, but a third of the money.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: To catch up and reach that same one point one million starting at 45, they'd have to save about thirty thousand dollars a year.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's three times as much.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's the price of a 15-year waiting period.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the fix.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you are a late starter, you're not out of options.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: First, if you are in retirement plans, you have a catch up contribution.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: If you are working and you have a 401k at 50 and older, you can put an extra$8,000 into your 401k in 2026.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you're between 60 and 63, that extra goes up to 11,250 second.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Working even two or three more years helps that time runway.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it might not be the most enjoyable, but it is an option.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: And third, the double wind stills apply.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you trim spending now, and here's what I'm encouraging you, not on the things that you value, but on the things that you're wasting, you'll need less later.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Late starters can absolutely catch up.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: They just have to be more intentional in giving their dollar a job.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to spend just a few seconds here.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: When I work with clients and we're working through a spending plan, see I don't call it a budget, but when we're working through a spending plan, I never tell them cut here if it's something they value.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: I get them and I have them write down what they value personally, professionally, and financially.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: And the places that we look to cut are the places that you're not adding value.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: And if you look at your spending plan now, you're probably spending money on things that you have not used in years.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Then get that out of it so that you can take more trips to Europe, or you can buy another car, or you can go and visit family.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: As I go back, the five forms of wealth are extremely important.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's not all financial, but money is the tool that gets us to that end goal.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Number two under the ugly, following the four percent rule right off of a cliff, here is the spending side version of ugly.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Four percent rule only assumes you take the same inflation adjusted amount every year, no matter what.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: But what happens if the market drops right after you retire?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Say you retire with a million dollars and you plan to take$40,000 a year.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: The market falls 25% in your first year, your portfolio is now$750,000.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: But if you follow that rule rigidly and still take that$40,000 plus an inflation raise, you're now pulling out more than 5.3% from a smaller pile.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Do that through a couple of bad years early on, and the damage can be permanent.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's called the sequence of returns risk.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: A bad market in your first five years of retirement does far more damage than the same bad markets 20 years in.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the fix.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Keep one to two years of planned spending in cash and short-term bonds so you're never forced to sell stock after they've dropped.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Pair that with spending guardrails, so if the market has had a rough year, skip the inflation raise or trim the travel budget just a little, not completely.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Small temporary adjustments in the bad years are what let you spend more in all of the good ones.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Number three, saving so well you forget to live.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: This last one surprises you because it happens to the best savers I know.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Some people are so disciplined about saving for 35 years that when retirement finally comes, they can't flip the switch.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: They watch every dollar, they skip the trips, they don't help the grandkids with college because what if?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then they die with far more than they ever needed.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's been research after research around this, and it's created some underspending, is a real risk for a lot of retirees.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: I see it a lot.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because of our mindset, we spend so much of our career in save mode, we are afraid to enjoy our loved ones when we have an opportunity to do so.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's not ultimately financial failure, but it is a failure of the plan.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because the whole point of saving was never the balance.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Money's not the goal.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Wealth is.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: And time is one kind of wealth you can't earn back.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: So here's the fix.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Your plan needs to define enough and run the numbers so that you know what you can safely spend.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: Then give yourself permission to spend it.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Build in the travel, build in the gifts, build in experiences.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: A good plan doesn't just tell you whether you'll run out of money, it tells you what you can do with it while you're here to enjoy it.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that kind of leads us into our weekly wealth minute.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: This week, what I would encourage all of you to do is calculate one number.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: If you're still working, what's your real savings rate?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you add everything up that's going into your 401k, your health savings account, your brokerage accounts, your IRAs, your ROS, and then you divide that by gross income.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: If you're already retired, calculate your withdrawal rate instead.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Last year's withdrawals divided by your portfolio balance.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Just see what that gives you because most people have never run either number.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Once you have it, you'll know whether you're on the right track ahead or need to make some adjustments.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you'll know it from your own life, not from somebody else's rule of thumb.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: And as I always say, money is the tool, and knowing the numbers is how you put that tool to work.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: Keep this in mind with the four L's of retirement.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: When we talk about the lifestyle you want to maintain, liquidity that you need to maintain, your longevity risk, which is the fear of running out of your money, and legacy.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: How do you want to give your money?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to do an episode on charitable giving and also estate and legacy planning.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: And there is no right or wrong with this, but don't live so in the moment that you forget wealth is not just about your finances.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's your weekly wealth minute.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the good, the bad, and the ugly of how much to save and how much you can spend.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: And remember, they're not two questions, they're one plan.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I know calculate your savings rate isn't the most exciting homework you've ever been given.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's right up there with flossing and reading and terms and conditions.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: But unlike the terms and condition, this one actually affects your life.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And unlike flossing, you only have to do this one once a year, not the flossing.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, you're doing that daily.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: All right, I'm gonna wrap this up like your employer match, quick, free, and you'd be crazy to walk away from it.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're looking at your own numbers and wondering whether you're saving enough or whether you can afford to spend more in retirement, reach out.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is exactly the kind of conversation that I have with clients each and every week.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'd be glad to have one with you.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: As always, I'm Justin Chastang.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening to the Well Advised Wealth Podcast.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, build wealth and live well.
• 22:01
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• 22:10
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• 22:18
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• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Opinions expressed herein are solely those of parallel financial LLC, unless otherwise specifically cited.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Material presented is believed to be from reliable sources, and no representations are made by our firm as to another party's informational accuracy or completeness.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: All information or ideas provided should be discussed in detail with an advisor, accountant, or legal counsel prior to implementation.