Welcome to One for the Money! In Episode 88, we explore retirement as a journey—and each important stop along the way. From your 20s through your 60s (and beyond), you’ll learn what to focus on at each stage, how to avoid costly pitfalls, and how to test-drive retirement with a mini-retirement that just might change your life.

🔑 In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• The 5 key retirement milestones: Before 50, 50, 55, 60, and 65—and what you should be doing at each one.
• How to use catch-up contributions at age 50+ to turbocharge your savings.
• Why age 55 offers hidden opportunities for penalty-free withdrawals and boosted HSA contributions.
• The “Danger Zone” around age 60 and how to protect yourself from market volatility.
• Why claiming Social Security early (at 62) may cost you big time—and how to decide when to claim.
• What to know about Medicare deadlines at age 65 to avoid lifelong penalties.
• The latest updates to 401(k) contribution limits and Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) ages for 2025.

🧠 Tips, Tricks & Strategies Segment: The Power of a Mini-Retirement

Taking a break between jobs? Consider a mini-retirement—a planned sabbatical where you rest, recharge, and test-drive your future lifestyle. Learn:

• What a mini-retirement is (and why it’s more than just a vacation).
• How mini-retirements can offer massive tax advantages (yes, really!).
• Why experiencing other cultures in your 40s or 50s might beat waiting until your 70s.
• How to time it right when switching jobs for minimal disruption and maximum impact.

📺 Referenced Episodes:

• Episode 6: Making Retirement Meaningful
• Episode 26: Mini-Retirement & Tax Benefits

📌 Key Quote:

“We don’t rise to the level of our dreams—we fall to the level of our planning.”

✅ Action Steps:

1. Review your financial plan at each milestone age: 50, 55, 60, 62, 65, 67, 70, and beyond.
2. Assess your plan using the 5 Domains: income, investments, insurance, taxes, and estate planning.
3. Explore the option of a mini-retirement—especially during a career transition.
4. Talk to a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) to optimize your strategy.

📬 Want More?

👉 Subscribe to One for the Money on your favorite podcast platform.

👉 Ready to plan your ideal retirement? Schedule a free consultation with our team.

Welcome to episode 87 of the One for the Money podcast. Retirement is the ultimate dream for many, but there are realities of retirement that everyone needs to be aware of. Better retirement planning will incorporate these realities so it leads to a better life in retirement.

In the tips, tricks, and strategies portion, I will share ten tips when you are 10 years from retirement.

In this episode...

• Your Biggest Expense Isn’t What You Think [2:08]
• Your Biggest Fear is Misplaced [3:20]
• Regret is More Common Than You Think [4:40]
• The Real Risk Isn’t a Market Crash [5:08]
• Your Most Expensive Years Are… Surprising [5:59]
• Your Health = Your Wealth [6:26]
• Identity Crisis Incoming [6:48]
• Estate Planning is About More Than Money [7:30]

We often forget that retirement is only a recent invention. It hasn’t been around for that long. For most of human history, people worked until death or until their family could care for them when they were unable to work any longer. Retirement allows one to enjoy a life of leisure even though one is still capable of work. It really is a more amazing concept than we give it credit, and it truly is an absolute luxury of both the modern and first world. It’s amazing to think that a person can work and invest for 30-40 years and then live off that work for another 30-40 more years.

Your great-grandparents would’ve thought that was science fiction. And honestly, for billions around the world, it still is.

If you are literally and figuratively fortunate enough to enjoy such a dream as retirement, here are the most important retirement realities as I see them.

💸 Retirement Reality #1: Your Biggest Expense Isn’t What You Think

When I ask people to guess their largest retirement expense, I hear the usual suspects: housing, healthcare, maybe travel, or groceries. But nope. The winner — and it's not even close — is taxes.

Yes, Uncle Sam (and sometimes Cousin State) will still want a piece of your pie. Social Security? Taxable at the federal level and in some states. IRAs and 401(k)s? You bet. Medicare surcharges? Yep, that’s a thing.

But here’s the kicker: the folks who pay the least in taxes during retirement aren’t lucky. They’re prepared. They’ve been implementing smart tax strategies years — even decades — before they stop working. We’re talking Roth contributions, conversions, HSAs, pre-tax vehicles, cash balance plans — all the good stuff.

And to do it right, you need a plan customized to your current and future tax situations. That’s exactly what we do for our clients — because the less you pay in taxes, the more you can spend on what actually matters: time, travel, and tacos with the grandkids.

😱 Retirement Reality #2: Your Biggest Fear is Misplaced

Everyone fears running out of money. But statistically, what they should be afraid of… is dying with too much.

No joke — a study by the Investments and Wealth Institute found that 84% of retirees only spend the earnings from their portfolios. They never touch the principal. It's called the "decumulation paradox." They’ve got the money — they’re just afraid to use it.

Why? Two big reasons:

1. Lifelong savers have trouble flipping the switch to spending mode.
2. The “just in case” fund: just in case the kids need help, or a health crisis hits, or Aunt Sally’s dementia story plays on repeat in your mind.

But here's the thing — the real tragedy isn't running out of money. It's running out of time to enjoy it.

Using the well-known 4% rule, retirees in over two-thirds of cases ended up with twice their original wealth, even after withdrawing every year.

So yeah, have a plan. But make it one that helps you live now, not just preserve your balance...

Welcome to episode 86 of the One for the Money podcast. In the late 1960s and early 70s, a famous psychological study was conducted that has since been called the Stanford Marshmallow test. The study was designed to explore the concept of delayed gratification. In this episode, I’ll share how life might be considered one giant marshmallow test.

In the tips, tricks, and strategies portion, I will share a tip regarding how to not eat the entire marshmallow.

In this episode...

• The Marshmallow Test [0:36]
• Delayed Gratification in Personal Finance [2:23]
• Investing Rewards Patience [10:01]
• Teaching Financial Discipline [10:46]

In the late 1960s and early 70s, a psychologist named Walter Mischel at Stanford University conducted what has become a famous psychological study. The study was designed to explore the concept of delayed gratification — the ability to resist the temptation for an immediate reward in order to receive a larger reward a short time later.

Here is how the Experiment was set up:

600 preschool-aged children, roughly 4-6 years old, participated in the study. Each child was placed in a room with a marshmallow placed on a table. The researcher told the child that they could either eat the marshmallow immediately or wait 15 minutes without eating it. If they waited without eating the marshmallow, they would be rewarded with a second marshmallow.

The researcher then left the room, leaving the child alone with the first marshmallow.

The Key Findings as a result of this research were that Individuals had varied Self-Control: Some children immediately ate the marshmallow, while others were able to wait the full 15 minutes for the larger reward.

Now you might be wondering what a 4-6-year-old eating a marshmallow has to do with personal finance? Well, that’s what was most remarkable about this study was what the follow-up studies revealed. The outcomes were very successful at Predicting Future Outcomes: Over the subsequent decades, Mischel and his colleagues followed up with many of the children who participated in the experiment, and the results were astounding:

It found that the children who were able to wait for the second marshmallow, decades later, tended to have significantly better life outcomes in terms of higher SAT scores, lower rates of obesity, more likely to be financially stable as well as to have greater job satisfaction. The ability to delay gratification was a more accurate predictor of future success than their scores on an IQ test.

Now it should be noted that while the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment became a widely discussed study about the power of self-control, later research showed that the environment in which a child grows up, including factors like trust in caregivers, socioeconomic status, and stability, can influence how well they are able to delay gratification. For instance, children in more unstable environments may have less reason to trust that the promised later reward will actually come.

But suffice it to say, the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment remains one of the most influential studies in psychology, because it exposed the impact that self-control has on later life outcomes.

I’ve read about this study numerous times over the years, but recently it has led me to this thought: is life really just one giant marshmallow test? Is delaying gratification part of the better planning one needs to implement to have a WAY better life?

As I thought about this more, I came to the belief that generally speaking, life is one giant marshmallow test and that individuals can both learn and develop the skills so they too can have much better life outcomes. It also seems to me that businesses and politicians can hijack our desires for immediate gratification to their advantage.

Individuals...