Latest / TaylorMade Retirement with Taylor Demars, CFP® / 5 Things I Wish Every Couple Knew Before Retirement

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5 Things I Wish Every Couple Knew Before Retirement · TaylorMade Retirement with Taylor Demars, CFP®

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Today's content is pulled from Taylor's YouTube channel.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to watch the video version or catch more great content, subscribe by clicking the link in today's show description.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Taylor Made Retirement, where we explore what it takes to build a retirement that works for your money and your life.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: With third generation certified financial planner Taylor DeMars.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: After sitting across the table from hundreds of couples planning their retirement, I can tell you the ones who struggle the most are almost never the ones with a money problem.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because more often, they've assumed they were on the same page because they've been married for 25 plus years and never had any major financial disagreements.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: But then retirement shows up, and then they discover that being on the same page means something very different to each of them.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: She might picture slow mornings and spontaneous travel, but he pictures a structured schedule with projects and a reason to set his daily alarm.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: She thought they'd been saving all along to enjoy life, and he thought they'd been saving to make sure that they never had to worry.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: This unknowingly can set people up for failure because they haven't had the conversations that would have surfaced the gap before it came a daily source of friction.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Taylor Demaris.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a third generation retirement planner and tax strategist.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: And today I'm going to walk you through the five things I wish every couple understood before retirement.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: These go deeper than financial strategies to unpack the relational blind spots I've watched smart, successful people get caught off guard by.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the fifth one is the one I think could save more retirements than any tax strategy I've ever built.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: In almost every couple I sit down with, one of you has inevitably been flying the plane and the other has been a passenger.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: This doesn't always happen consciously.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Often it settles in around a year or two into marriage where one of you is manning the budget or open the first retirement account and the other felt relieved.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then 30 years go by based on that quiet, tiny moment that became the foundation of your financial setup from then on.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: And frankly, I can usually spot which spouse is which within a few minutes of a first meeting.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's two reasons.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: One, it's the first glance where I can ask a spouse a question and they might turn to the other, waiting for them to answer first.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: And second, it comes up around things like paperwork because one of you is going to know where every login statement and password is, where the other one is just waiting on the other to take the lead.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: But let me be clear, I'm not calling out the passenger spouse to make them feel bad.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's not then a competence issue, I say.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's more of just a division of labor.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because one of you probably handles the money side the same way one of you mans up the travel planning or the insurance or the home projects.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: While you're both working, this division of managing the finances can work beautifully.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Busy lies keep it invisible.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: But retirement shows up and changes the stakes on this one particular job completely.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: So here's a test for you to run tonight.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: If I asked you and your spouse separately, if something happened to your spouse tomorrow morning, who would you call first?
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: And would I get the same answer from both of you?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Or would we even get an answer at all?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because I've witnessed firsthand what the first week looks like when the answer is no and something unexpected has happened to their spouse.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the issue isn't necessarily about the money, it's about three things that happen at once.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: First, there's no map of the people.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: So the surviving spouse doesn't even know who to call or what in what order.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's an access problem.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: They need to figure out okay, which institutions do they even need to get a hold of, let alone what are the passwords to get into them.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then third, under all of those, is the analysis paralysis, the fear of not touching anything at all, because what if you mess something up?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Grief is a heavy thing enough to bury.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that first week of a loss shouldn't also become a scavenger hunt.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: But the fix is simpler than you might think.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: I like to encourage clients to build a one-page map together with a specific order in mind, which is to say first, who do we call and in what order?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Often starting with a financial advisor, maybe a CPA, an attorney, the insurance company, you want to know which people to call first because the right first call unlocks almost all the other steps.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Second, you need to know where your documents live, both physical and digital, your estate documents, your insurance papers, and more.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And third, you need to be able to answer what income is coming and from where.
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  SPEAKER_01: In short, the first question you two should be able to answer before either of you retires is this if one of us couldn't handle the finances tomorrow, would the other one know exactly who to call and where everything is?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if that first week picture hits a little close to home, that's exactly the type of thing that we help couples work through.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: In the description, there's a free sample plan we've built around a fictional couple.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: It walks you through our entire planning process session by session so you can even see how we plan for a surviving spouse so that your entire retirement can be set up for success.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's free and you can grab it in the description now.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the cockpit handled of the passenger versus the pilot.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: But knowing who runs the money tells you nothing about what the days are actually going to feel like.
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  SPEAKER_01: The second thing is what couples don't see coming is that the two careers weren't just paying you.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: They're keeping two very different daily rhythms from ever having to negotiate with each other.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: What I often see is for 30 years, clients have each had their own version of a day.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: One might be up at 5 a.m.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: doing a workout and getting their morning coffee, but the other spouse does their best thinking at night, being up late till 10, 11 p.m.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: or later.
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  SPEAKER_01: One of you may always want the TV or some background music on for company, but the other one craves silence to be able to think.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: One of you may be batching all of your errands into one go out of the house, but the other spouse is perfectly happy taking three separate trips to get everything done.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And for many couples, I don't think their work is wiring them to go about their day a certain way.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's just inherent in their personality.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: So the jobs just happen to keep you from ever noticing these frictions from ever colliding.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: You may be in separate buildings, having separate schedules, separate lunches every day.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And retirement just removes that whole separation.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when the collision starts to happen.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: In the first few months, I hear clients bring up micro moments of friction that can compound into bigger ones.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: It can start, for example, as starting like one of you is following the other around the house, either trying to just find something to do, or one of you is kind of mandating chores all day to the other.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Another is the lunch question, where one of you shows up in the kitchen around noon saying, Am I supposed to be making lunch for two people now?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: And the point of friction isn't really about, hey, what are we having for lunch?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Even though it can be hard to figure out what to eat.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's about trying to figure out do I really want to be spending this much time with the same person all day, every day.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Eventually I hear clients say that on a random Tuesday, they have an internal dialogue asking, don't they have somewhere to be or something that they should be doing instead?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now to call out the obvious, how you structure your week in retirement is genuinely none of my business.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: But I am very much in the business of surfacing the question, does your calendar in your head look anything like the calendar in your spouse's head?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because many people have not cross-checked.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: So try this before either of you retires.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Separately, without comparing notes first, want you each to scribble out what an ordinary retirement Tuesday might look like.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Not the bucketless Machu Picchu or Italy trip, just a random Tuesday in March.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: When are you gonna wake up?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Are you gonna have breakfast together, or how much of it is quiet time during the day?
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: How do you picture the day-to-day of an ideal retirement lifestyle?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's worth writing down your version and then trading notes.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: The gap that surfaces between those two pieces of paper is often the best early warning system I know for the first year of retirement.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, one practical note from our clients, what they actually love to do is besides travel, one of their primary goals for early retirement is to take charge of their health.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: So the one block I do think it's worth agreeing on up front is daily exercise.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: When you put it on the calendar, two things end up happening.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: You'll first get accountability from the person that loves you most, and your spouse gets a guilt-free window that's entirely theirs without any justification of what they're going to be doing.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: So the second question answered out loud, you need to have together is what does an ordinary retirement day actually look like for each of us?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: But once you've figured out how you're going to spend your time together, there's a question sitting underneath it asking, are you actually comfortable spending the money it takes to live that lifestyle?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because believe it or not, I often see one of the spouse's honest answers being probably not, and for a specific reason, because almost every couple has their version of this sentence of I'm the spender or she's the saver, or vice versa.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: During the working years, that difference was manageable and it was probably actually productive.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: The spender of the couple is making sure you had a life.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: The saver was making sure that you have a future.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: These are two jobs, both getting done.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: But the negotiation you've been running for maybe 30 years was being referenced by something that you just took for granted, which was your paycheck.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Every month money came in, money went into the 401k contribution.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: And every month that deposit told the saver in your house, hey, we're okay.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: We're still building up our savings.
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  SPEAKER_01: You can book the trip and buy the thing, and the saver in the couple can absorb that because they feel like the tub is still filling.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: But when the paycheck stop in retirement, I see two things hit the saver spouse at once.
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  SPEAKER_01: First, that monthly reassurance goes quiet.
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  SPEAKER_01: And second, every purchase changes meaning.
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  SPEAKER_01: It might be the same trip that they might have purchased two years ago, the same price, but it has a completely different perspective in the saver's head.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: It starts feeling like the warm bath you've been enjoying suddenly had the drain plug yanked out of it.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Only instead of goosebumps, it's causing you anxiety.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't deal with this head on, it might take you years to realize something that I'll highlight up front for you, which is the saver will usually win money decisions.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: Not by arguing, but because what they want becomes the default, such as the trip just doesn't get booked this year, the wish list stops being brought up.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: Not necessarily fighting about it, nobody's actually deciding, but five years later, you're realizing you're living a smaller retirement than either of you ever wanted.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And not only that, but that you could probably could have afforded all along.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want to double check which of you is the spender or the saver, here's the test.
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  SPEAKER_01: If the market dropped 15% six months after you retired, which one of you would want to cancel the trip that same afternoon?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: That probably gives you clarity on which spouse is which.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're looking at one big pile of retirement savings money, it can feel scary to use pieces of it for what feels like an indulgence simply because you don't know whether it's selfish or sustainable.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: So here's what actually fixes it because the answer isn't tightening a budget.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's definitely not one of you lecturing the other.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: In our planning process, we want to break spending goals into needs, wants, and wishes.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: The needs are your gas, groceries, utilities, just the regular spending of every month-to-month regular life.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's going to be in the base of the plan with a bit of a fudge factor built into it.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: So you're not trying to nickel and dime yourself every month.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Then in our discovery session, we're posing specific questions to each spouse to name things that they may not give themselves permission to spend on, let alone voice out loud.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then each of those wants and wishes gets its own line item in the plan.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Not because we can promise each one of them can happen, but because I think you owe it to yourself to find out whether actually possible, especially once optimized planning can potentially start unlocking more income.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the things we've been able to get clients to admit that they really want include a self-care budget where maybe the wife gets a guilt-free ticket to her manicures and pedicures and even monthly massages for years to come.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe the husband wants the ability to have a guy's trip, going fishing in Alaska or making an annual Super Bowl trip with the boys, an annual tradition.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the joint goals are important too, like making sure that you can potentially afford to have the whole family take a vacation once a year, or going for that true stretch goal to say, hey, we're gonna do the full renovation we've been thinking about, but weren't sure was actually possible.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously, depending on the couple, these examples can be completely reversed.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Once these line items are set inside the plan, this is where things get a little strange.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: It can be the same dollars that are spent, but a named dollar in the plan carries a permission that a lump sum of money could never actually do.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: When it's a line item in the plan, the spouse who wants it most gets to stop asking, is this okay?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because they've already settled it in advance that it's been built into the plan.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Knowing that you can afford it becomes a plan to actually do it.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And those are two different things, which makes the third question you need to ask each other, what do we each need in order to feel comfortable spending the money we actually have saved?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to see what those items actually look like inside of a real plan, again, that's what the free sample plan in the description will show you, including a moment that a postponed trip stops being a guilt trip and instead is a line item in the plan.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's free and you can grab it within 30 seconds.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Now, even if you two agree on what your retirement lifestyle should look like, that doesn't mean that you're both emotionally ready to retire at the same time.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: The pattern I see over and over is that everyone has a honeymoon phase.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: That first stretch of retirement feels like a vacation for you because it kind of is.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: But eventually, sooner or later, there will be some Tuesday morning that actually clicks that this isn't just a long vacation.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: This is when you need to settle into not a new lifestyle, but the rest of your lifestyle.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: And there are two predictors I find of whether someone sinks or swims at this stage.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: The first boils down to whether someone is prepared to retire into something, not just retiring from something.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: The people who adjust the fastest are those who have a calendar filled with things that they chose themselves.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: I can't tell you how many of these types of people tell me, I don't know how I ever had time to work.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: The second predictor is finding out how much of your identity has been wrapped up in your job itself.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: And this is one of the things that blindsides financially prepared couples because your job isn't, again, it's not just a paycheck.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: For 30 plus years, work is quietly handing you things that you need to now source on your own.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Things like structure, uh maybe a place to go, people who expect you.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's problems that you're good at solving, uh being needed.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: And if we're honest, it's a little bit of status.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the reality is your two careers weren't necessarily handing you each the same things because one of you may only be giving up employment, the other one might be giving up their structure, their social life, and a sense of being good at something all in the same week without ever realizing that's what was on the table.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: You both might have the same retirement date, but completely different mental losses.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I find two people with the same savings and the same plan can have wildly different first years of retirement.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: So here's a fun experiment for you.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: If your employer kept your job exactly the same, the same office, same people, same projects, but if they stopped paying you, what, if anything, would keep you there?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: And what you might list out is what retirement is now asking you to replace.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: The paycheck, I find, is the easy part.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: We can plan and map out a paycheck.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when somebody enters retirement not emotionally prepared for it, I find there are three negative things that happen at once.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: The spouse who's thriving starts managing the other one kind of like a project, giving them suggestions or signups or gentle nudges in order to keep them happy.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the spouse who's struggling goes into denial, saying, No, everything's fine, I'm fine.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: But the thriving spouse starts feeling guilty, sometimes even hiding how much fun they're having, because enjoying their day starts to feel like they're rubbing it in to the other.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: These are three performances in one house and no one's saying the true, honest truth.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Three things happening at once in the same house, and it doesn't feel like anyone's truly living their full retirement lifestyle.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, the move is to attack this problem before it happens, which is the fourth question you need to answer.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: What is work actually getting each of us besides a paycheck?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: And how are we going to replace those things?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the fifth thing I wish every couple knew before retirement sits underneath all these other questions because everything we've talked about up until now routes back to the same question that you may never have been asked out loud, which is what's this money actually for?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: In our discovery meetings with clients, before running a single projection, before any software gets opened, that is the question that goes on the table.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because for most couples, then makes the conversation go really quiet.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because for smart, successful people who have been saving for 30 plus years, nobody has even asked them, even an advisor or a parent has ever asked the question, what is all this saving for?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that goes beyond the obvious, which is for retirement or so we don't run out of money.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's when you start asking that hard question out loud, is when the true answers come.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I find that they're rarely the same thing out of each spouse's mouth.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: Or sometimes one spouse will talk about taking care of family or leaving a legacy on one side of the table.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: And while the other spouse might be saying, Well, it's finally our turn to start spending and enjoying what we've built.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: One spouse might be saying, Well, I want to sleep at night and know that there's nothing to worry about financially.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: And the other spouse is saying, Well, I want to finally say yes to everything we've been holding off on.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: One person's planning on creating an inheritance for their kids or grandkids, and the other one's quietly planning bucket list items.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Even last week we had a client conversation where he brought up a quarter million dollar renovation for their home, and she heard nothing of it before that conversation.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Now, these questions show up hard and fast because during your working years, a paycheck keeps this question optional.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because when the income that's coming in covers life and feels relatively standard, what the pile that you're building up for all along never has to get fully addressed.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes the proactive spouse finally says the quiet part out loud in the meeting, which is something to the tune of, I feel like I keep looking at the number we've saved, and I don't actually believe we can use it.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: And the other spouse hears that sentence for the first time and is quite surprised.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: So here's the version of that exercise you can try with your spouse.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Each of you separately can start by finishing this sentence, which is we saved this money, so we could blink.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now you don't want to compare answers yet.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: You want to ask yourself an honest question, which is do you actually know how your spouse would fill in that blank?
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Not what you hope they would say, but what they actually would say.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: And when your answers don't match, that's completely okay.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, that's good news because it starts to bring up things that you can start to align yourselves on.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's no one right answer, but I do feel there is a right order, and the order is the whole trick.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: For us, we feel that it's important to establish this purpose first before planning your projections.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then that can help make decisions that get infused into your portfolio.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: What we want to define is what the money is there to accomplish before any software gets integrated, because software or spreadsheets are a great tool, but they're useless at optimizing a goal that hasn't been properly defined in advance.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: We want the plan to protect a base lifestyle floor that you're already used to and get it in writing.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that changes the entire conversation because then the sleep at night answer isn't worth competing with anymore.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's already built in.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now the real work can happen out in the open and it's prioritization.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Every purpose or goal that you two surface gets sorted out honestly, which ones you want to share, which ones belong more to him or her, and which ones might be worth trading off and leaving to the side.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And importantly, finding out which goals might be competing for the same finite number of dollars.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Most couples have always assumed that everything was mutually exclusive, but have never actually seen things written down and sorted out.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the magic of planning, in my opinion.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because until it's solved, there's a tension there that hasn't been addressed yet.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's only being resolved silently through things like fear, guilt, or just not booking the trip.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you put it out on the table, the resolution is something that we can jointly dial on and adjust together.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: It might mean scaling back an ambitious wish, but it can protect the things that matter most, like peace of mind and achieving those non-negotiable goals.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's not about anyone winning or losing a conversation.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's just that the disagreement stops being a quiet veto and becomes a visible choice you can make together.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: So the fifth question, the one underneath all the others, is what is the money actually here to make possible?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the real reason I put this fifth conversation ahead of every tax strategy we build.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: A tax strategy is there to protect your money, but this conversation is protecting what the money is there for.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if we zoom out, you can tell that these aren't five separate problems.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because for 30 years, your working life was quietly solving all five of these issues together, or at least letting you postpone them.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: The roles, the rhythms, the spending, the identities, and the purpose.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: It all doesn't have to get decided because more money was always coming and your busy lives didn't force the conversation.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: But what nobody will tell you is when you retire, your paycheck, of course, retires too.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: And all those jobs it was handling come home with you the same week.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: So these five conversations should be helpful for you to address these five elephants in the room on purpose instead of discovering them one year at a time.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And the thread that runs through everything today is that fear that the saver spouse carries the one where you've done everything right, but you still can't bring yourself to actually use the money.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: So to help you with that, I made a whole video right here about that exact fear, the fear of running out of money in retirement.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it picks up right where this left off.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.