Retirement IQ
Retirement IQ is the podcast designed to help you thrive before and during your retirement years. Hosted by retirement wealth coach John Stregger, each episode tackles the real questions facing people in their 50s and 60s - how to turn savings into income, when to take CPP, how to reduce taxes, and how to build a financial plan that’s as solid as blueprints for a home. With over 25 years of experience guiding clients, John shares practical insights, proven strategies, and conversations with experts to help you make smart decisions with your money and create the retirement lifestyle you’ve dreamed of.
Retirement IQ
Episode #2: Why You Need a Retirement Plan (Not Just an Investment Plan)
In this episode of the Retirement IQ Podcast, retirement wealth coach John Stregger explains why a true retirement plan goes far beyond investment strategies. Discover how to align your money with your values and goals, the difference between a retirement plan and an investment plan, and why your plan should be a living document that evolves with life changes, markets, and tax laws. Packed with real client stories and practical advice, this episode will help you build a retirement strategy that ensures financial security, reduces taxes, and supports the lifestyle you’ve always envisioned.
To learn more visit www.freeretirementreport.ca
Episode #2: Why You Need a Retirement Plan (Not Just an Investment Plan)
John Stregger: 00:09 - 08:59
Hi, welcome to Retirement IQ. I'm John Stregger, and I'm a retirement wealth coach who helps people approaching retirement not only plan for but execute the kind of retirement that they only dream about. If you listened to our previous episode, you heard me allude to the fact that everything we do with clients, every financial decision, every proposed strategy, is centered around their retirement plan. Since the plan is such an integral part of our process, I wanted to spend time talking about what a good retirement plan is and why it's so vital to have a plan to lean on to make all of your important financial decisions. So what exactly is a retirement plan? I find a lot of people confuse the term retirement plan with investment plan. Your investment plan is important but it's really just a part of your overall retirement plan. The investment plan simply dictates how you're gonna invest your money, whereas your retirement plan is really the engine that drives every decision making that you have to do for all of your financial decisions. The retirement plan takes into account things that are not just investment related, but will definitely impact your retirement income. Things like, how should I pay off my mortgage if you still have one? When should I start taking care of the pension plan? How do I reduce my taxes in retirement? You know, we view our client's retirement plan as the engine that drives the decision-making process, not just what investments he should buy. Now, when we start a new relationship with a new client, we really want to understand what their core values are and what it is about money that's important to them. You know, once we start to learn about our clients as people, their families, their values, goals, and aspirations, we can start to map out how their finances are aligned with those goals. We view money as fuel, which will help you fund the hopes, the desires that are important to you. So while money doesn't create happiness, it can certainly help fund a lot of the activities which do bring you joy. base level of income. We definitely want to make certain that you're going to have a base level of income to make sure that you can pay the bills and fund your lifestyle. But we also want to start building out a plan to make sure that you're accomplishing everything that you want to accomplish in your post-working years. After all, you only get one retirement, so why not make it a great one? Having that base level of income is definitely vital, but in my experience, what will give you true happiness in retirement is you having a clear sense of the goals that you want to accomplish over the rest of your life. Everyone is different. Many people make travel and fitness a priority. Maybe yours is a philanthropic in nature. Others want to share as much time with them and resources with their kids and grandkids. There's no wrong answer, but the sooner you are able to get clear on those values, the sooner you can start living your life with purpose and then align your money to fuel that purpose. A collaborative approach. Our planning process has evolved over time in the fact that it has become far more collaborative with our clients. You know, gone are the days of feeding a bunch of information into a computer and the printer spitting out a hundred pages of spreadsheets and trying to make sense of all the numbers. Now, a good plan needs to have clear, actionable items that get you moving in the right direction. When we initially start planning with clients, we start with their current situation, their present plan, as we call it. We start by illustrating what you can expect going forward financially on your current path. And our modeling software takes into account everything. The income taxes that you're projected to pay, what we can expect inflation to do to your dollars, how that's going to affect your spending, what you can expect from Canada Pension Plan, OAS, we look at rates of return, we look at everything. We then see how that matches up with what you're hoping to accomplish. No, sometimes you're in good shape, sometimes not. Either way, we then have a baseline to measure our advice against. Now, this is where the fun begins. Today's version of planning involves working with information and technology to run multiple simulations to measure the effectiveness of all kinds of strategies. It's my opinion that the planning software that we use is the most comprehensive software available in Canada. I find it powerful because we can model all kinds of situations and run experimentations and see how those strategies shape up over time. It's a lot like how airlines and pilots use flight simulators to measure how pilots and planes operate under variable conditions. You have the opportunity to test different scenarios and strategies without exposure to real danger if the strategy doesn't work the way you think it's supposed to. The other great thing about establishing a plan is that it then becomes a living document. A retirement plan isn't a set it and forget it process. It's a document that we revisit on an ongoing basis to make sure everything is current. A good planning process will update values, look for opportunities, update your goals, adjust investments. Markets change, tax law changes, life changes. And so will your plans. You could say that a great retirement plan isn't just one plan. It's a series of 30 or more annual retirement plans constantly being updated to evolve with your situation. No Mulligans. Now, when you hit retirement and you stop working and you're not saving any more money, you need to be really careful. You don't get a mulligan or a do-over for a financial mistake. The last thing you want to have happen is to make a major financial mistake that costs you real money and forces you back into the workforce. In my mind, simulating and testing your ideas is imperative. Now I can't help but think of a client interaction I had a couple of years ago. Here was a married couple, late fifties. She was a senior executive. Very high income-er. but she really didn't like her job. You know, it was very demanding, time-wise, very stressful, but she really felt tied to it because of that high income. Now, she wanted out, but she really didn't think she could. At least, she thought she was working to 65. So we ran their numbers, plugged in a few strategies, and when we landed on some opportunities for improvement, she was absolutely thrilled to realize that she definitely didn't need to work past 60 to retire on the income that they needed to have. Now, this was a real game changer for she and her husband. The light bulb went on and that led to a deeper discussion about what they really wanted in life. which was ultimately time together to travel and time, more importantly, to spend with their young kids and grandkids, I should say. She even reconsidered whether or not she should work to age 60. Well, fast forward about 12 months ago, she and her husband ended up retiring, booking their first retiree trip to Scotland to play golf, a bucket list for both of them. Now she didn't fully retire. She realized after she left her demanding job that she still enjoyed mentoring and working with people. So she set up a consulting business and now she's self-employed, but doing it on her terms. This is what I love doing. Helping people figure out what they want, build a structure around it, and ultimately collaborating with them to build the financial life that will support their goals and dreams for the future. I find that very rewarding. Want to learn more? If any of this information resonates with you and you want to learn more, we have the capacity to take on about six more clients this year. We offer a completely free retirement assessment for individuals and families where you can get your retirement report and see where you stand with respect to your retirement plans. All you need to do is go to freeretirementreport.ca and you can get all the details and information on how that might work for you. Again, freeretirementreport.ca. Until we meet again on our next episode, I'm John Stregger. Thank you for listening to Retirement IQ.
Narrator: 09:10 - 09:27
The information provided in this podcast is general in nature and should not be relied upon as a substitute for advice in any specific situation. For specific situations, advice should be obtained from the appropriate legal, accounting, tax, or other professional advisors.
