The Lightbulb Moment When You Realize You’re Going Into Retirement | The Retirement Income Show

Mark Elliot: Welcome back to The Retirement Income Show. I’m Mark Elliot alongside the CEO and Founder of Oak Harvest Financial Group, Troy Sharpe, a certified financial planner who has a phenomenal team. If you want to find out more about Troy and the team, there’s some great information on the website as well but the team is laid out right there on the website, OakHarvestfg.com.

The team is growing, OakHarvestsFG.com. The office is located at 920 Memorial City Way right off I-10 in Bunker Hill. Of course, questions, you want to talk to this? Somebody say Hey and Troy, I’m a baby boomer. I’m a social security eligible person. 2021 I hit the age of 62. I’m not starting it because you told me don’t or because I’m still working but there are so many moving parts in retirement that I think it’s really important to have somebody guide us.

We’re talking a new year 2022 is here. What are all the things we need to do? Financially, our personal, side our health side all that because all the wealth in the world doesn’t work if you don’t have any health, health is still I think the number one priority of most of us. We want to be healthy so we can enjoy what we have worked hard for.
At the end of the day, it’s really about having a plan to me the Oak Harvest . You walk people through and starts with investment because a lot of people think their investments that is their plan. Well, no it’s part of it and it’s an important part of it but it’s not the entire plan. There’s investment and income tax, health, state planning, social security Medicare, they’re all in there.
I would think that would be if you’re going to do a resolution maybe it should be Hey I’m within 5 or 10 years of retirement or maybe 2022 is the year it’s time I sit down and actually talk to somebody that actually works in the retirement world. You talked so much about, “Hey if my grandparents were in could come in and sat down with a team like ours, their retirement would’ve at least been different for your grandmother.”

I don’t think you can prevent any health issues like your granddad had but you certainly could have maybe eased a tension and pressure on your grandmother from that health issue that your granddad went through. It’s really about having a plan and having somebody walking side by side with you.
Troy Sharpe: Yes. There’s a lot of mistakes that will get people at 64, 68, or 72 come in and they say, “Troy, if I just met you three years ago or five years ago or if I had just started doing this 10 years ago or even one year ago.” There’s obviously different types of people out there. There are those of you that have never worked with an advisor before.
You’ve never really thought about it because you’re so busy with your family, with doing your day-to-day activities. All of a sudden, retirement creeps up and you’re like, “Oh, my goodness this is a lot of money.”

You start thinking about it and you have what I call the light bulb moment where you realize that if it’s 600,000 or 1.4 million or 3.2 million or how much ever you have inside that retirement account, you realize that I need to generate income but then I’m going to owe taxes. How much am I going to owe in taxes? How much income should I take out? Will I have enough if I take that much out? When should I take social security? What about Medicare? Which options should I choose? How does that tie into the picture? Then the big one that everyone, of course, wants to make sure that they understand is that if something happens to me, will my wife be okay?

Will my husband be okay? Will my children be okay? Those are the big questions and once they sink in and once you realize that, oh, my goodness every single decision that I make impacts every other thing that I just said. How much you take out of your retirement accounts, determines how much you’ll pay in tax. That determines how much money you have left in your account. How much you have left in your account determines how much interest you earn.

If the market goes up or the market goes down which determines how much income you’ll have later in life. When you take social security, determines how much you have to take out of your portfolio which again determines everything as far as taxes you’ll pay. How much money will be left they’re all interrelated? You cannot make a decision in retirement without impacting every other future aspect of your retirement. Once that light bulb comes on, the people out there typically do one or two things.

One, they’re the cow so to speak in that bull and the cow story or the buffalo and the cow story which I’ll go through minute, for those of you who haven’t heard it before, or they actually get proactive and they say you know what? I need to start interviewing firms. I need to start talking to people but then there’s another layer of complexity involved which comes into trust.
How do you know who to trust? I’ve seen a ton throughout my career and the best advice I can give you there is to really, really trust your heart. Trust your God-given instincts, trust your ability to discern when someone’s being truthful with you or if someone’s just trying to blow smoke. We really have to fall back on those innate God-given abilities in order to determine who we feel most comfortable with, who has the team, the resources, the care, the concern, the compassion to really put your best interest first.

Whether that’s us, whether that’s someone else, that is the most important thing I believe anyone can do in retirement, is find someone who is educated, who is experienced and who is compassionate, and has a team that cares about your well-being, your family’s future and can put an action plan in place that shows you how they can bring value and benefit you and your family.
That’s the best guideline I can provide as far as finding who to work with. Once you realize you have to make all those decisions, you can either be the Buffalo, or you can be the Cow. The Buffalo and the cow story is pretty simple, and those of you in Houston, I’ve been saying this on the radio. We’ve been running a set of commercials for the past couple of months. You’ve probably heard this before, but in the Midwest, when the storm clouds come over the Rocky mountains there, the Buffalo and the cow both sense the storm coming.

The Buffalo immediately, they start charging west into the storm, and what this does is this minimizes the amount of time and pain and frustration that they experience because, by the time they get through the storm, they’ve maybe spent 10, 15, 20 minutes getting wet and rained on, et cetera. The cow, on the other hand, they see or sense the same rumblings coming over the mountaintop and they turn and they run away from the storm.

Of course, cows don’t run that fast. The storm catches up to the them and they maximize the amount of time, frustration, anger, and they just continue to do that. They don’t ever learn. In retirement, when you have that light bulb moment, and again, maybe it’s five years before retirement for most people, in my experience, it’s really not until you get to about six months or maybe a few weeks before you retire.

You realize, “Oh, my goodness”, the severity of the consequences of me making bad decisions, or me allowing my emotions to dictate my investment strategy or not knowing enough about taxes and how the complex aspects of the tax code can either work to my benefit or my disadvantage. Once you start to understand all that, and you have that light bulb moment, you have a choice at that time.

You can be the cow that runs away from it. The storm will catch you. There is no doubt about it. You will hit 72. You will be forced to start distributing money from your retirement accounts. We will go through recessions. The market will be volatile. Are you going to get out? Do you have too much money in the market? Are you going to power through? Are you going to say, you know what? I just can’t take it. The market’s down 25%. This is all the money I have for the rest of my life. I need to get out. I need to preserve it. You’re actually causing yourself tremendous harm.
You’re staying in the storm much longer and that storm may never pass the severity of the consequences of your decisions in retirement they matter, they’re significant. Then there are those of you that are the Buffalo, that light bulb moment comes on and you say, you know what? I am going to run to this storm, get through it, and I’m going to be in a place on the other side where the sun is shining, the rainbows are out and I feel good about my decision. That is what I want you to do. That’s who I want you to be. I want you to be the Buffalo.

Again, whether you work with us, whether you work with someone else, I don’t care about that. Our mission is to help as many people in this country have a risk management plan, an income plan, a tax plan, in an estate plan, done under one roof by professionals that also focus on providing world-class customer service. That is our mission. That is who we are. If you want to reach out to us and sit down and have a conversation, please give us a call 1-800-822-6434, visit the website, go to YouTube have tons of videos out there.

If we’re not the firm for you, that’s fine also, but find someone that is that firm for you that in your heart and your soul you trust you believe that they not only have the team that’s capable, experienced, and willing to do whatever it takes to make sure you understand the plan that you have. They also are fiduciaries and they have your best interest at heart and that’s when we talk about a new year and, new goals and objectives and what we should do. If you’ve had that lightbulb moment, if you’re four or five, six months away years away from retirement, take what I’m saying at heart, think about it, pray on it, believe in it because it’s the truth.

Mark: You can tell Troy’s passion when he talks about the importance of the clients and having a strategy a plan the Oak Harvest  path that they create for all their clients and every scenario is different because every individual or couple that choice sits down with all their hopes and dreams are a little bit different. There’s some similarities I think we could all agree on but at the end of the day, the Oak Harvest Path that Troy and the team creates in conjunction with you because, remember, you’re the CEO, look at Troy’s team as your CFO, if you will, or you’re the pilot, they’re the co-pilot here to help guide you, but it is about you.

That’s why it’s important, I think, to sit down with somebody that actually works in the retirement world, operates in the investment world as a fiduciary morally, legally ethically obligated to do what’s in the client’s best interest. They can also help you in the insurance world as well and the Troy has talked about 2022 is a year of the new tax team at Oak Harvest, just building the team to help and service his clients more and more all the time.

It’s all about you at Oak Harvest but for that to happen, you’ve got to reach out, you’ve got to give him a call because we’re not calling you. I think that’s why Troy does his show to really kind of educate you in a way about some of the challenges of retirement, some of the great things that you can hopefully achieve in retirement because it’s just another phase of our lives.
It’s not the end. It’s a new beginning, if you will, when you get into retirement 800-822-6434 is the number. Again, there’s no cost for this. There’s no obligation, there’s no pressure and there’s no judgment either. We’ve all made mistakes. 800-822-6434 is the number, 800-822-6434. Back with our final segment right after this. This is The Retirement Income Show with Troy Sharpe, the CEO, and Founder of Oak Harvest Financial Group