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5 Common Retirement Regrets (& How To Avoid Them) · Retirement Answers

• 0:02
  Jacob: Positive outcome that could come out of this is that you can say, hey, look, these are things that I'm worried about, or maybe I didn't think about at all. Maybe I should put these things on my radar and then create a plan for them or create a system that I can use to help avoid these same regrets. Welcome to Retirement Answers, a podcast built to answer your most pressing retirement questions. If you're someone who's either thinking about retirement or already in retirement, well, you're in the right place. Hey there.
• 0:32
  My name is Jacob Duke, each week, I'll be walking through different tips and strategies to help you succeed in retirement. So let's go ahead and get started with today's show. Hey friends, and welcome back to another episode of Retirement Answers. As always, my name is Jacob Duke. Today, I've got a interesting episode for us.
• 0:53
  We're gonna be talking about five common regrets that I hear from retirees who are actively in retirement. These are things that that I hear from them because they're like, hey, we're in the middle of this and looking back on the earlier stages or earlier years of our retirement, here are some things that we probably either would have done or done differently. And I wanted to share them with you today because they're like, hey Jacob, if ever have people that are curious about these things, we encourage you to tell them what we are saying as people who have been there and done that. We've been through what people that are in the early stages of retirement are going through, share this wisdom with them. So that's what we're going to do today.
• 1:29
  So we're talking about Regrets. Now, I don't like to talk about negative things for the most part. I'd rather talk about positive things, but I think the positive outcome that could come out of this is that you can say, hey, look, these are things that I'm worried about, or maybe I didn't think about at all. Maybe I should put these things on my radar and then create a plan for them or create a system that I can use to help avoid these same regrets. So that's the purpose of today's show.
• 1:54
  We're going to talk through these five regrets, and then I want to give you two tips or pointers here at the end. That way you can use those to your advantage and hopefully avoid these same regrets that those who have gone before you might be telling you about. So before we jump into that, I wanted to highlight this week's listen review. And this week it comes in from March EW Sun, and they give the show five stars. They say it's helpful information.
• 2:16
  Jacob's podcasts are concise and helpful. We are researching, adding some of his suggestions to our own retirement plan. I look forward to what I will learn next. Well, thank you for that review and that rating. I really appreciate it.
• 2:28
  It means a lot to know that you are benefiting from the show. And if you're someone who is, please do leave a rating review there on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact, for me to know that I'm doing a good job, but then also helps other people just like you find the show and benefit from these same ideas and strategies. So with that, let's go ahead and jump into the five common retirement regrets that I hear, and let's see if these actually line up with what you maybe think that they are going to be. So the first regret I often hear is, Jacob, I wish I would have done this sooner.
• 2:57
  Now, what they mean by that is they wish they would have retired sooner because it's been so good. Now I understand that that's not the case for everyone. So we're going dive into a few other ones here in a second that might apply more to those who are perhaps, not having the most enjoyable retirement. But one regret that I often hear is, Jacob, I wish I would have retired sooner. It's so good.
• 3:17
  I feel like I wasted too much time working at the end of my career, doing things that I didn't have to do or worried about running out of money and I didn't need to worry about running out of money. And I think that there's two kind of sides of this coin here. Whenever we say, hey, I wished I would have retired sooner, there's a positive side and a negative side. And the positive side is that we're just enjoying life, we're enjoying retirement, we're enjoying all the things that we're doing, the hobbies, the friends, the travel, whatever that looks like and whatever a dream retirement looks like to you. A lot of people say, Jacob, I wish I would have started this sooner, a year, two, three, four, five years sooner.
• 3:50
  I wish I would have done that rather than working those additional years because of the fear of maybe running out of money. The other side of that could potentially be, hey Jacob, I wish I would have retired sooner because my health has deteriorated, or my health has gone down, or I'm not able to do the things I thought I was gonna get to do in retirement, or another thing there could be, well, my spouse passed away earlier than we both anticipated, or maybe a family member passed away prematurely that I thought that I was gonna get to spend a lot of time with here in retirement. So those are some of the negative sides of potentially not retiring early enough. Also, you have the fun side of it, Going back to what I mentioned before is, I'm having a ton of fun. Why didn't I just start doing this earlier?
• 4:28
  So that's a common regret. A lot of people once they go into retirement and live a year or two in that next phase of life, they're saying to themselves, why did I not do this sooner? Is it because of the fear that I had around maybe not being able to make that decision of, you know, stopping work, something I've done for my whole life, and then go and basically say, I'm not gonna work, but I'm gonna find something to do. I'm not gonna make money, which is maybe the scari part, right? We give up an income and rely solely on our savings or social security or whatever income sources we have.
• 4:59
  If that's, it's kinda unnerving, right? Because you've never done it before. So that's really what holds people back oftentimes is this fear of the unknown in regards to income or do I have enough? But most of the time once people get there, they're like, I've got plenty, can figure out the money side, what I can't get back is time. What I can't get back is my health to an extent.
• 5:19
  And so that's the first regret is people saying, hey Jacob, I wish I would have done this sooner because number one, it's either really good or something has changed my life and I can't get to enjoy retirement as much as I thought I was going to be able to, and so I wish I would have retired sooner so I can enjoy those few extra years while I had the chance. And the second regret that I wanted to talk about today actually plays into the first one. So not all of these are cumulative. They don't necessarily build on each other. They're kind of all separate, but one and two here, they really kind of play together or can be toggled back and forth.
• 5:48
  And the second regret that I often hear is, I wish I would have spent more in the earlier stages of retirement or what we might call your go go years. Jacob, I wish I would have spent more money during that time because I don't need all this money now. I don't need have $10,000 a month coming to me. I only spend 3, you know, like my house is paid for now, everything's done. I just, you know, go grab some food, come home, you know, spend some time with some family, maybe travel to go visit grandkids once or twice a year.
• 6:15
  But I'm not spending the way I was before, therefore I don't need all this money. So many times people are ultra conservative in the first few years of their retirement because of the greatest fear that all retirees face, which is running out of money. We don't wanna do that. And so most people underspend or don't spend enough in their go go years, which that's the time to go and enjoy, right? That's the time when you're the healthiest, that's the time when you have your mental state or even the desire to go and do things.
• 6:44
  And once you get older, typically you're not gonna spend as much because whether that's a health related thing, or maybe just think, hey, I've already gone and done all these things. I don't really have no reason to go spend all my money doing that anymore because I've experienced it already. So the second regret is, man, I wish I would have spent more. I have enough money. I'm not gonna run out.
• 7:01
  I wish I would have used it wisely, which is a risk, right? We have this risk of having all this money and never getting to enjoy it. You've worked, you work your whole life, you know, working, saving, investing, doing all the things you were taught to do. And then you get to retirement and you're scared to spend it. That's the biggest fear is a what if I run out of money?
• 7:20
  Well, that's whenever having a good plan comes into play, but I think a plan ultimately says, hey, you can go spend more than you think. And if we invest correctly, and if we build out your income plan well, and do your social security timing correctly, all these things, you're gonna have more money than you realize. And most of the time, the data shows that once you get to age 70 or 75, you're spending about 40 to 60% of what you thought you needed to spend in retirement. So your spending is gonna go down over time. So use those go go years, use the early stages of your retirement when you're most healthy to go and enjoy and do those bucket list trips.
• 7:57
  Yes, maybe spend more than you thought you were gonna spend in retirement or build that into your plan, but enjoy it while you can from a health standpoint because most of the time people end up actually passing away with more money than they entered retirement with. That's because they're investing it right and so it's growing over time, but their spending is never as high as they anticipated. So we wanna plan on the conservative side for sure, but just know that we build in some flexibility or some wiggle room there to allow you to spend more in the early years. So that's number two, people often wish they would have spent more in the earlier stages of retirement. The third regret that I often hear from retirees actually comes from a recent conversation I had here with a client of mine.
• 8:35
  You know, they're in about month nine of their retirement. They were really hard worker, had an executive position at their company, and we had a follow-up kind of conversation and planning meeting and I asked them how they were doing. And they said, well, things are going okay. And I said, well, tell me about that. What's not going great if you only mentioned that it's going okay.
• 8:56
  They said, Jacob, I feel lost. I feel bored. I'm not sure what to do. And this comes from someone who is in a very fast paced and very important role within their organization. And so responsibility that comes with that is oftentimes what fuels that type of person.
• 9:13
  And so whenever they get to this thing called retirement, and it's not all that it was cracked up to be from what we hear on the outside, they mentioned that, you know, this is hard, right? I'm used to a fast pace. I'm used to having things to do every day and too many things to do every day to now I have virtually nothing to do. So I feel lost, feel bored. And this is one of my greatest fears for my clients is not having that what I call purpose or identity or that why to your retirement years, because that's really the opposite of what we're looking for.
• 9:44
  We want retirement to be fun and enjoyable. And so what what what do I think you can do to help avoid this this concern or this regret of of being either lost or bored in retirement? Well, I think the first thing you can do is is start living like you're retired today. So I don't necessarily mean from a time standpoint, mean from a what you're doing standpoint, right? So if you say, hey, I am going to start gardening in retirement.
• 10:13
  I'm gonna say, are you gardening now? And you're gonna say no, because work's too busy. And I'll gently reply back and almost with a 100% certainty say, you're not gonna garden. And if you do, it's not gonna be for very long. The reason for that is because it's really hard to start something, especially if we're not doing it.
• 10:30
  So what I say is is start living as if you were going to be retired very soon, even if you're not. Like start doing the things that you hope to do in retirement. And I think what you'll find is that whenever you start doing those things, it be gardening or playing pickleball or running or walking or whatever the thing is that you have in your mind that you envision for your retirement, what you might find is whenever you start doing that before retirement, you're gonna find out you maybe don't enjoy that as much as you thought you would, and therefore you can figure that out on the front end as opposed to getting to retirement and saying, I thought I was gonna play golf every single day, but turns out I'm really bad at golf and it kind of frustrates me, so I'm not gonna play it anymore, but now I don't know what to do. So that's something that I think you can correct or overcome by actually starting to live as if you were gonna be retired. Start doing that now.
• 11:22
  Start doing the activities or things today that you plan on doing in the future, and if you enjoy it, great, you get a head start. If you don't enjoy it, perfect. You still give yourself enough time to figure it out before you get to that day of retirement, and then you don't walk into the unknown and ultimately be left bored or anxious or lost about not having anything to do. So my question to you here is what are you gonna do? Who are you gonna do that with?
• 11:46
  Why are those things important to you? Why do you enjoy them? So that's the third regret is I hear that a lot of people feel lost or kind of bored or just uncertain about what they're even doing in retirement. And this goes back to, you know, the purpose or the why of what they're doing, with their lives. So that's number three.
• 12:01
  Okay, number four is Jacob, I feel lonely. I feel like I don't have friends or family or community around me. And it's really hurting my mental and my physical health. And it's just retirement is not very fun, right? Because I don't have people around me.
• 12:16
  And part of you know, comes naturally as, know, obviously as we age, we, none of us are guaranteed the next day, so we will all pass away at some point. And so this is naturally going to happen in terms of friends or family, like we are going to lose loved ones over time. And so that community starts to dwindle. But I think that whenever we focus on building up the people around us or growing our community, whatever that looks like, that will help you live a longer and more fruitful retirement. So, so what are my my suggestions here for for not having a good community or not feeling like you have connection to those around you?
• 12:50
  Well, I say start building the community before retirement. Now, why do I say start building it? Well, most of the time, who are in fast paced or really important jobs that takes most of your time. And so what happens there is it ultimately forces you to neglect those around you. Maybe that's family, or maybe it's just your community through charities or churches or sports or hobbies or whatever it is that you like to do outside of work.
• 13:15
  Our jobs typically take away from those things. So whenever our job stops and we don't have those things, it makes it that much harder. So start building your community today, or if you have a good community, continue to grow that, continue to foster that, whether that be family members or friends. Again, this goes back to, you know, starting as if you're living a retired life before retirement. I think building that community, thinking about it as like, this is an investment for the long haul, trying to find the people I want around me in retirement or finding the people that I want to be able to share in some of these different struggles with.
• 13:47
  I think that's a proactive way to say, not gonna be lonely. I refuse to be lonely or bored in retirement. Therefore, I'm gonna do the hard work now of building and growing a community around me, whether that's one person or five people or a 100 people, whatever that looks like, find a group of people to be with that you enjoy being with and can trust. That's really what it's about. So that's the fourth regret, not having family or friends or just a community around me, therefore I feel really lonely.
• 14:10
  The fifth regret that I wanted to share with you today might be self serving, so I totally get that. So you can write it off if you want to. But it's Jacob, I wished I would have asked for help sooner. And this is primarily on like the retirement planning, the money, the investing, the social security, all the decisions that have to come up, actual financial planning part of it. Many people often wish they would have asked for help with that sort of thing sooner.
• 14:35
  And there's a couple of different reasons I think for that. Number one is peace of mind. Whenever we start making decisions on our own, the easiest thing to do is second guess ourselves. And that's with anything, whether it's financial or non financial, anything in life. If we're making decision on our own, it's really easy to second guess ourselves or perhaps even never reach a decision or conclusion in the first place because of analysis paralysis.
• 15:00
  So having almost a trusted partner, whether that's a spouse, whether that's a family member, whether that's a professional, whatever that looks like, whatever decision is, having someone to bounce ideas off of and then say, hey, what's the best thing we think to do here? And then having a collaborative approach, that's useful and helpful in every situation throughout life in my opinion. Rarely does making a one person decision end up being the best thing because of either your fear of that not working out and you're second guessing yourself or it truly just was not the best decision. I think peace of mind whenever it comes to retirement ultimately is the thing that unlocks the best retirement for anyone, regardless of the situation they find themselves in. Because if you can sleep at night, knowing that you're taken care of on the financial side of things, that helps you go enjoy life the way that you want to go enjoy life.
• 15:47
  But if you don't have that financial peace of mind, you're never gonna go enjoy life because you're gonna sit around all day worrying about, do I have enough money to pay my bills this month without going outside of my projection range on my income for the next thirty years? Like, that's a tough place to be. And so many people say, I wish I just wouldn't have done that. I wish I would have said, hey, can I just hire someone and have them monitor all that for me and really just bring me in whenever something is either out of whack or something needs to be adjusted or changed? But other than that, I don't have to think about money, just let me go enjoy life.
• 16:20
  And I think that that's a place that you have to grow into a lot of times, no matter where you find yourself. Some people obviously are always gonna do it themselves and that's totally fine because I believe that not everyone needs a financial advisor. I believe that many do though. And the reason for that is maybe even just the non financial side of things. I tell people this all the time, you're probably smarter than I am just about life.
• 16:41
  And I'm not the smartest advisor out there, nor am I the smartest person out there. Google knows more than I do and you can find everything you want there. What people really come to me for is this peace of mind, having a trusted partner that they believe in to walk through them through the good and the bad of retirement, and then also know that someone else is looking out for their best interest. That's really what people come to me for. It's not because I'm smarter than anybody else.
• 17:03
  So that's the first thing that I wanted to say there is people wish they would have asked for help, number one, for a peace of mind. But number two is what happens whenever I pass away? What happens to my spouse? Because most of the time we kind of all assume different roles within, especially within a marriage, right? One person is better at one thing, one person is better at the other thing.
• 17:23
  And so typically, not all the time, I'd say maybe 95% of the time, there's one spouse who is more in tune with financial side of things than the other. And it works well that way. Until at some point, the spouse who was the one that was leading all things financial is no longer here. And the spouse that was not the financial mind or didn't really care to learn all those things, they're the one left with all these accounts that are spread out everywhere with income streams and life insurances and all these different things, and it's really confusing. So a lot of people end up saying, wish I would have found someone before I got older, before I had to make this decision during harder health situations or harder times, I wish I would have got that lined up beforehand, instead of having to make decisions whenever tough things were happening.
• 18:07
  So leaving a spouse behind with a trusted advisor becomes that much more valuable, I think for most people. But I think that if you start looking at that now and finding that trusted advisor you want taking care of your spouse one day, if you get hit by a bus, that's I think invaluable. And so that's number five is I wish I would have asked for help sooner or found a trusted partner for all of this sooner so that if I get hit by a bus, going back to this peace of mind thing, then I know my spouse is taken care of and I know that the right person is going to be taking care of them. So those are the five, I guess, common regrets. I'm sure there's more out there and I'd love to hear what yours might be if you're someone who's in retirement or maybe you've heard others that have gone before you.
• 18:47
  Shoot me an email. I'd love to hear what your thoughts or regrets might be, just so I can learn more from you and be able to advise my clients better. So shoot me an email if you feel led to, but I wanted to give you maybe two different tips here that I think might be helpful in avoiding or doing some of these things better in your retirement. The first one is ask those around you who you know, or if you don't know any, go find someone who has been in retirement, go ask them what they did well and what they did poorly and learn from them. So I think that experience is a great teacher here.
• 19:21
  Go find people who've been there and they've done that. Go find those people, ask them, hey, your early years of retirement, what did you do well there? What do you regret there? What do you wish you would have done differently? And now that you're in the stage of retirement that you're in, what are you doing well there?
• 19:36
  Or what's different than you thought it would be? So go learn from those who have gone before you. And I think there's plenty of ways to do that. Obviously you probably have friends or family who have retired or maybe in that same stage of life as you are. So go ask them, have conversations with them.
• 19:49
  Don't feel like you have to do retirement on an island or on your own. But also there are plenty of different online resources or forums out there of people that are retired just like you or have been there doing that longer. And so you can learn from their same mistakes or their suggestions. So that's number one is is find those around you who have been there and done that, ask them and they can help you avoid some of the mistakes that are out there. And then number two, I would say do the hard work of the introspection or just thinking about your retirement.
• 20:19
  I think this is really tough because it takes time. It takes effort to really just look at yourself, evaluate, hey, what are the things that I like? What are the things that I want to do? And how am I going to do that? So where am I going to live?
• 20:30
  You know, who am I going to be with? What am I going do? And when am I going to do it? And honestly, is really hard work. Like thinking through all of these things, it's not easy to sit down in our fast paced world and just dwell you know, what does retirement look like?
• 20:42
  And I don't necessarily mean dream because we all have dreams about it, but really say what's the plan for it? What is what is actually gonna happen here? And really begin building out this this action plan or this action list of things that can help you succeed in retirement. So with that, I hope this has been a helpful or insightful episode for you. These are five, you know, common things that I hear from folks I'm communicating with, whether they're clients or not clients that I'm just having conversations with other retirees.
• 21:10
  So just know that these are real life situations. People wish they would have retired sooner. They wish they would spend more early on in retirement when they had the health and the opportunity to go and do things. Many people end up feeling lost or bored. So how can we overcome that?
• 21:22
  Well, I think we can start living life as if we were retired, start that before retirement. And then number four, you know, how are we building community? Do we have a community? How do we continue to foster that and develop that? Or if we don't have one because our jobs are so demanding, how do we build one before we jump off into retirement?
• 21:39
  And then finally, many end up wishing they would have had help along the way to give themselves peace of mind about all things financial and non financial. So that's what I wanted to share with you today. If you feel like there's more to add to the list, feel free to reach out to me, shoot me an email, I'd love to hear from you. So thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode of Retirement Answers. My name is Jacob Duke.
• 21:58
  We will see you right here next week. Hey, it's Jacob again, and I wanted to extend a quick offer to you. If you have a question and you would like to have it answered here on the show, please email me at jacobretirementanswers dot net. And I'd love to answer that question for you right here on the show. Also, wanted to remind you that nothing discussed in today's episode is meant to be financial, legal or tax advice.
• 22:21
  Retirement Answers is for educational purposes only. Thanks for tuning into this week's episode. I look forward to talking with you again next week.