Many of our clients come to us with questions about the best time to retire. In this post, we’ll take a look at different perspectives and things to consider.

When asked, “When do you plan to retire?” our clients often respond with, “65.” Isn’t that interesting? Because of a law passed sometime in the Great Depression, people today focus on a certain age instead of how much money they have or whether or not they like their job. It’s just 65.

This idea comes from the fact that you can start receiving Medicare at age 65. In fact, most people think they need to wait until 65 to retire so they can still have health insurance. But now, there are programs in place that make healthcare more affordable than people realize. Maybe it’s time to “retire” the one-size-fits-all idea of retiring at a certain age.

If you’ve been working for 30 or 40 years and earning an income to pay your bills, suddenly stopping that can be quite the change—especially when earning an income has been a source of security all those years. A sense of trust needs to be there to understand that investments are doing the work now instead.

And what about taking marriage into account? Often, one spouse may want to keep working longer than the other, resulting in entering a new stage of life at different times. This is especially common when there is a significant age gap between partners. Additionally, health concerns start to add up once you reach 55 or so, which causes some people to want to retire earlier to enjoy new activities while they can health-wise. Sometimes one spouse will reach these health concerns sooner than the other, which can affect the plan for both.

Luckily, there’s a lot of middle ground when it comes to retirement. Instead of retiring all at once, people can choose to go part-time or take off longer periods of time than a standard vacation. When you’ve gained a lot of experience after working for 40 years, employers may be willing to be flexible.

To help couples prepare for retirement, there’s a program we can take them through together. Some people find out after retiring that it’s not what they expected. Maybe they’re not as fulfilled as they thought they’d be, or maybe they realize they didn’t develop any hobbies over the years of being busy with work. One of the best things we have to offer as life-centered financial planners is help with getting the most out of your life at every stage.

If you’d like to talk about your plans for retirement, we’d love to help! Click below to schedule a free meeting with Mike or Lyndon.

Mike: I’m Mike Proctor with Leading Edge Financial Planning, and today I’m here with Dr. Ron. He’s a Chief Medical Officer of 32 years at the Riordan Clinic. And today we’re having him on just to talk a little bit about how health and wealth are very connected. So, Dr. Ron, over time, you see patients that come in, maybe they have problems, maybe they don’t. But what’s the connection between taking care of yourself, your nutrition and how that pays off for somebody long term?

Dr. Ron: I think it’s mostly awareness—if people were aware of how big a difference their investment and taking care of themselves really made in terms of their life. Because when we’re young, we’re so busy and we don’t have much time, we don’t have much money. But if people would even do the little things like reading up on nutrition, taking a multivitamin, having your nutrient levels checked to see if you’re okay…so what we’ve done at the Rear and clinic is that we have used nutritional testing as a foundation.

I think there’s something in management that says if you don’t measure, you can’t manage. So Dr. Riordan found early on that just to talk to people about nutrition, [they’ll say] “Yeah, I do good nutrition. I try to eat better.” And then he actually started measuring nutrient levels and markers for good nutrition. And if he found that those were off, that information was the biggest motivation for people to start learning more about how to take better care of themselves.

Mike: Nice. Okay. Yeah. I guess I have a little bit of background as far as just my own personal experience, because I didn’t realize I had a gluten intolerance. Is that something you guys would have picked up on?

Dr. Ron: Well, people would come to us with symptoms like, “I’ve got indigestion,” or, “I’ve got an autoimmune disease.” Autoimmune diseases are a little bit further down the road. But if you don’t take care of your gluten intolerance, you’ll get what’s called leaky gut. And if you don’t treat the leaky gut, then what happens is certain bacteria from your gut will get into your bloodstream and the immune system will cross react, and then it’ll start attacking your joints. And now you’ve got rheumatoid arthritis. Gluten intolerance is something really good to know, because then you can make changes in your diet in favor of gluten free foods.

And oftentimes when people go on a gluten free diet, their diet actually improves because a lot of the snack foods, cereals, the breakfast bars and all those things, they are full of gluten, and they’re full of glyphosate, which is another poison that gets into all of our food these days. And that causes leaky gut. So by making that one change and eating more fresh fruits, lots of colorful vegetables, lean meat, you can greatly improve your health and lose some weight and reduce your risk for diabetes.

Mike: Awesome. Diabetes is expensive one, too. But really, I wanted to talk a little bit more on just a long term payoff, because if we start investing in a young age, that compound interest really turns into some huge benefits on the back end. But likewise, if we don’t take care of ourselves, the negative compound effects can really stack up expense-wise in retirement. Now, some people are more genetically predisposed to dementia and Alzheimer’s and those sorts of things, but I was curious, what have you observed as far as Alzheimer’s patients, memory care patients, and maybe what led up to that? Does nutrition play a role in your mental health leader on in life? And how does that affect someone financially?

Dr. Ron: Most of your conventional doctors will say, “Well, we don’t know what causes it.” Well, what causes it is little things over a long period of time adding up: deficiencies adding up, gastrointestinal, digestive problems. It’s a little bit at a time, but over time it shows up as more and more cognitive problems. And there are people out there that have written books about using nutrition to correct it. But it’s almost like what we were talking about earlier when you get to retirement. If you haven’t invested all along the way, it’s really hard to make up time in that you can’t force nutrition.

You can’t suddenly fix nutrition, much like if your garden or your lawn is out of shape, you can’t just suddenly sow some seeds and say, “Okay, now I want to green healthy lawn or a robust garden.” You have to kind of do a little bit at a time along the way. Once again, by measuring it gives you markers that you can start to work with because there’s a lot of different nutrients out there. There’s a lot of different diets. And so I think it has to be individualized based upon what we find when we measure people. We do even genetic testing now to find out what foods work best for you genetically.

Mike: So is there a way to reduce how much time someone may experience Alzheimer’s if they’re going to have that type of disease? Or maybe cut down on how long they would need to be an extended care towards the end of life? Because that can get really expensive.

Dr. Ron: Again, what we find is that it happens slowly. But as you get closer to older years, it’ll start to crescendo on you. So I encourage people to look at the early signs, something like gastritis or something like diabetes. We now know that diabetes leads into something called metabolic syndrome and metabolic syndrome leads into heart disease and vascular disease. And it’s also causing something called type three diabetes, where your insulin and your blood sugar can’t cross the blood brain barrier. And it’s all due to blood sugar problems, which, if a person would have learned to eat whole foods earlier, colorful whole foods clean foods and measure their nutrient levels, they can take action early on and avoid these kinds of problems.

Mike: Right. So even maybe if they cut off a year, that may cut off $90,000 expense.

Dr. Ron: Yeah. Dr. Riordan, the founder of the Riordan Clinic. He made that point many times because people would say, “Well, gosh, this is more expensive than getting my car tuned up. But I need my car.” And so the fact is, we need our health probably more than anything. I mean, you can replace a car, but you can’t replace bad health. So taking better care of yourself all along the way is probably one of the best investments you can make, both in terms of your life and your happiness.

But also in terms of your wealth. Health is wealth, and many people, they may actually save money and they actually are wealthy. But if their health is gone, it doesn’t serve them as well.

Mike: It’s hard to enjoy [wealth] when your quality of life is low from your health, right. How many times do you meet someone that comes in as a patient or they have symptoms and they’re used to a low quality of medical health, but through treatment, through going through your program, which maybe hopefully you can talk about in just a moment, your testing—how often do they improve quality of life so that they can experience life to the fullest?

Dr. Ron: Well, it’s probably very similar to what you do. You don’t just have someone come in and say, “Well, I don’t make enough money,” and you give them a couple of tips. You probably do a more complete financial analysis looking at their assets and their liabilities. And in many ways, we also spend 90 minutes with a new patient going through what sort of symptoms they do have, what their family history is, what their lifestyle is, how they eat. And then we do a very robust laboratory testing of all the essential nutrients, the vitamins, the minerals, the fatty acids, the amino acids.

And we look at things like hormones, thyroid hormone. We look at things like methylation factors, which is a whole new area. People who are under methylated, they are more prone to Alzheimer’s. And so there’s some key markers like homocysteine and some key nutrients like B12 and B6 that generally don’t get measured in a standard office visit. So we’re looking deeper than just the, you know, the superficial evaluation of a person’s finances. The deeper you go, the more you find, the better you can intervene and then we see them hopefully regularly. We try to see them every year, maybe every six months, early on and do some follow up testing to make sure that they’re on track with whatever plan we put together with them.

Mike: Alright.

Dr. Ron: Sound like what you do?

Mike: Yeah, definitely.

Dr. Ron: It’s the same idea: if you want to get healthy, you have to plan for it. Instead of just hoping that you are healthy when you get older, right?

Mike: You got to measure it. So can you tell us how to get in touch with you? What resources are out there and how we can stay in touch and learn more?

Dr. Ron: Sure. Our website is riordanclinic.org. We’re a not-for-profit, and so we have a lot of good material on our website. Recently we have launched the Real Health podcast, it’s been really popular. You can access 30 years of our newsletter—Health Hunters—where we encourage people to be hunting for better health. And these are short articles with very timely topics and they relate to nutrition, hormonal health, better sleep, better diet, exercise, toxicity, all the various things that can destroy your health if you’re not looking out for it. So it’s loaded with good information for the average consumer.

Mike: Thank you, Dr. Ron, for coming on and sharing with us how we can invest in ourselves and our nutrition for a higher quality of life and a better return on life.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Money can’t buy happiness,” but we’re not completely convinced. I’m Mike Proctor, and today we’re talking about how you can actually buy a little extra joy.

One easy way to get more satisfaction from your life is by outsourcing one or two things that you really don’t enjoy. Whether that’s laundry, mowing the lawn, or general household cleaning—you can pay a little money for someone else to take it off your plate.

No matter where you fall on the financial spectrum, doing these chores probably takes away time that you could be spending with your family or on doing things you love. In an article Jeff Haden wrote for Inc. Magazine, he referenced science that shows how spending just a little bit of money on outsourcing can generate a lot more life satisfaction.

A financial planner can help assure you that spending money on outsourcing tedious tasks is possible and a good thing. With a financial planner, it’s easy to take a look at your financial trajectory and how well you’re balancing your present with your future. It’s important to remember that any money you have left when you die is money you could have used to get more satisfaction from your life on earth.

One way I outsource is by having my done laundry done through Eastridge Cleaners in here in Wichita, KS. They pick up my clothes, wash them, dry them, fold them, and drop them back off at my house. Laundry has never been something I enjoy, so I’m glad I no longer have to worry about taking care of it myself—plus, now I have more free time to spend with my kids.

Our team of life-centered financial planners really cares about what you get out of life, and we’d like to meet and discuss your current situation. Click below to schedule a meeting, and we’ll see you soon!

Today we’re going to talk about the biggest financial asset you have, which is probably hiding right under your nose.

Your income.

Many people look at income as money in and money out, but the reality is that it’s the lifeblood of your lifestyle. Your income pays the bills for you and your family and puts food on the table, a roof over your head, and gas in your tank. Most people don’t insure this asset with as much disability insurance as they should. If you become disabled are not able to go out and earn your income, that money needs to come from somewhere else if you want to keep paying your bills.

Let’s say your income is $100,000 a year. Over the course of 30 years, that’s $3 million, but once you consider inflation, it’s more like $6 million dollars. Most people don’t think of their income as a $6 million asset, but they should. It’s an asset that allows you to keep meeting your basic needs.

You have auto insurance on your car and home insurance on your house, so if you’re underinsured on an even bigger asset, we should talk. Schedule a meeting below to learn more!

Benjamin Franklin famously said, “In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes.” Although not certain, it is more likely than not that someday you will need long term care.

Statistics say that 52% of those over 65 will someday need long term care. And 58% of women over 65 will someday need long term care. Of those in long term care facilities, about 7 out of 10 have some sort of cognitive decline—which means that when you reach the point of needing long term care, you may not be able to make that decision on your own. This means that it’ll probably come down to family members making that decision for you. This can cause a lot of stress and even division among them.

The probability of long term care is often seen as just a financial planning issue. In reality, it’s also a life planning issue. There are seven questions that I think you need to answer ahead of time before you actually need long term care:

1. When should I no longer take care of my home and yard?

2. When should I no longer cook and clean?

3. When will I need help paying my bills?

4. When should my checkbook be taken away?

5. When should the keys of my car be taken away?

6. When is the right time to move into long term care?

7. When I reach that point, where is it I want to go?

These seven questions should be answered before you reach the point of long term care while you still have the cognitive ability to do so on your own.

If you’d like to discuss how to incorporate the possibility of long term care into your financial plan, please let me know, as I’d be happy to help. You can click below to schedule a meeting.