How to prepare for retirement the RIGHT way
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All right, here we got another see I told you so moment here for the watchdog. I saw this was Wall Street Journal. They were looking at a survey conducted by Alliance where Alliance has found that 61 percent, 61 percent of Americans are more afraid of running out of money and their old age than dying itself. Wow. Again, at the.
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does make a little bit of sense, doesn’t it? Think about it. We’re all gonna die. Running out of money is not something that is inevitable. And that’s skin, that’s where we come in here at Markowski Investments and the Watchdog and Wall Street Show. Again, we like to try to teach people that you shouldn’t look at what you’re doing with your money. You shouldn’t look at it as financial planning. You should look at it as financial preparation.
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What do I mean by that? Life is going to present to you a myriad, endless opportunities, and they’re gonna come across your path, and you’re gonna choose a certain door. It takes me back to when I was a kid. I used to love to choose your own adventure books, where again, you’d be reading along, and your character, if you wanted to do this as your character, you turn to a certain page, something else. But again, it’s life. You get a lot of opportunities, and even I teach my kids.
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If you do the right thing and you say on the straight and narrow path, life is gonna present you that much more when it comes to opportunities. Now, again, this is why I like to call it financial preparation rather than financial planning. Planning is what? You know, what? Wanna make God laugh? Tell him your plans. When I see people saying, oh yeah, I’m gonna retire at 62, I’m gonna retire at this age and they’re in their 30s and 40s, and I’m saying to them, well,
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You don’t know that. You don’t know that. And why would you plan for that in the first place? Because again, you set that date or that goal, that target date out there, you end up passing up opportunities. Because then you say to yourself, oh, what’s more important, my target date, or maybe this business I should get involved with, or maybe this place I might wanna move to. Again.
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I really loathe the idea of picking a date when one is going to retire. Now you have Americans are more afraid of running out of money than death. Well, if that’s the case, well, I guess they’re probably working. They’re not working long enough. They’re not working long enough. I made the suggestion before, you know, listen, the type of medical advances that we’ve been seeing.
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You get to 65, there’s a pretty good chance you’re going to get to 75. You get to 75, there’s a good chance you’re going to get to 85. The government retirement programs are not designed to pay two, three decade retirements, and that’s why we’re running into all sorts of trouble. Back in the 1990s, I talked about this, I warned people, my generation, Generation X, I said, listen, don’t…
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expect to get social security. It’s quite frankly, it’s just, social security, if you’re gonna expect to get it and it’s running out of money, it’s just a numbers game. Sort of try to get across to people. Eventually it’s gonna run out of money and now it’s gonna run out of money in less than 10 years. So if you get it, my suggestion was, if you get it, congratulations, okay? You get it, bonus for you, but don’t plan on it.
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Because again, I don’t like to be reliant upon other people for what’s gonna happen to me in life. And in this case, it’s the government. So again, more afraid of running out of money and death. Do you really think about it? Do you really want to be retired and have to change your lifestyle to that grade of a degree?
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You know, you like to do certain things. Oh, all of a sudden you’re on this massive budget that you can’t, is it smart? I remember writing about this. It’s in our retirement crisis white paper, talking about, hey, you know, why not work three days a week? But why not treat retirement, not so much as retirement, treat it almost like the week of Thanksgiving. I will work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you’re off Thursday, Friday.
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three days on, four days off, wherever you want to structure it to some degree. And you’re gonna have to be able to do that much more. And actually in the grand scheme of things, people you want to take a look at the history of retirement throughout human history, it pretty probably never existed. It didn’t. And it’s actually an invention of you talk about it was like the Kaiser Wilhelm in Germany in the 1800s, mid 1800s decided to come up with this and.
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when the people rebelled against it because they figured out it was a better chance of dying before actually receiving it. Even our social security program, when it was designed put together, you gotta take a look at the mortality at that point in time compared to today. So again, why would you wanna live your life? It’s like being in retirement but having a consistent pain somewhere, chronic pain. You’ve got…
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electronic worry about running out of money. You don’t need to do that. Again, your own lifestyle, what you want to do, that’s entirely up to you. But if you’re prudent and you’re putting your money away on a regular basis and your dollar cost averaging, over time you’re going to do very well. The concept of delayed gratification works, people. It does. It works every single time.
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It’s trying again, that’s what we do at Markowski Investments. Again, I’m not here, I guess I’m Mary Poppins. I’m not here to sugarcoat anything. Because again, it takes work, time and effort. You wanna retire at a certain age, okay, that’s up to you. But put the work in so you can actually enjoy that time. You get to that goal, oh geez, 62, I’m retired. But then all of a sudden you find yourself being worried every day and counting pennies.
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and worrying to get by that. That’s no way to live. It’s no way to live. Anyway, another story here, talking about the state of the American consumer. Consumer debt. You got American households are basically tapped out. You got $17 trillion in consumer debt at this point in time.
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Yeah, self-reported financial wellbeing fell sharply and was among the lowest observed since 2016. Share of adults who said that they spent less than their income in the month before fell from the prior year, while the share who said that their credit card debt increased rose. These are not good signs by any stretch. And trust me, I get the situation that we’re in.
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when it comes to inflation and how it is taxing people and their budgets, well, you’re gonna have to adjust your budget. You have to, you have to make some changes. There’s been some interesting stories. One that I saw one from Macy’s and Costco as well, deciding that they’re gonna be, the consumer is buying a little bit differently now. It’s starting to actually affect them. But then again, you also take a look at
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the amount of people that are out and about traveling and the numbers are exceeded over Memorial Day weekend, exceeded pre-COVID numbers. What to make? I’d wrap this all up. You have to get your house in order, people. And you have to be honest with yourself. Know thyself, know your own situation. And I’ve told this story at plenty of occasions.
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over the years on my radio show. I’m gonna share with you again here. I can’t tell you how many times, how many times over my career, how many times over my career where people come in to our offices, my brothers meet with us, talk with us over the phone about getting their financial house in order. They wanna start saving for retirement. They wanna start putting money away for their kids’ college education. Now on the face, that’s all great and wonderful.
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But then I dig a little bit deeper. I dig a little bit deeper and I see the type of debt in particular credit card debt that these people are in. And again, you take a look at the facade, nice car, member of the club, nice house, boat, all of these things, but there are also tens of thousands of dollars in debt with credit cards. And I have to explain them. I said, listen, you’re gonna have to make some changes in your lifestyle.
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You’re going to have to cut some of these things out because the reality is, you know, I think we do a pretty darn good job, but, you know, more often than not, our overall performance in our portfolios doesn’t exceed 20 plus percent a year, which you’re paying on your credit cards. So you’ve got to take care of that first. You must pay that down as soon as possible. You got to slash and…
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cut and do all of these things to get rid of that. And what do you think happens? You know, there’s usually, if it’s a phone call or whatever, there’s usually a silence for a period of time, or people, if I’m meeting with them, they’ll look away and they’ll like, okay, we’re gonna do that, but then I never hear from them again. It happens all the time. People unwilling to make those changes and financial woes people, it’s not good for your relationships in life.
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It can do ungodly damage to you. And again, like I said, it’s not just the monetary side, it’s what it’s gonna do to you mentally and the type of stress that’s gonna put on you and your family. There’s nothing wrong, nothing wrong with going back and making some changes and making some sacrifices. Going through life and not being knee deep in debt is, it’s liberating.
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But we as Americans, unfortunately, been conditioned from the time we’re young on through, you know, go ahead and buy, go get that credit card. I remember, you know, walking into the student union when I first got to college decades ago, and you know, every credit card company handing out t shirts, sign up for a credit card there. You don’t have to do that. I mean, I love credit cards, I use them for points.
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The credit card, going into debt on your credit card should be for emergency purchases only. And let me tell you something, Christmas gifts are not emergency purchases. As story goes along with this, Americans are still working to pay off their Christmas presents. It’s June. It’s June. If you bought Christmas presents in November, they should have been paid off in December. If you bought them in December, they should be paid off in January.
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I said I use my credit card for everything. Just pay it off in full every single month. And I know, like I said, I know everyone’s situation is unique and different, but it’s great to go ahead and buy people gifts and do things for holidays. And you have to live within your means, people. You do. The distress that all of this stuff can put on a human being, it’s just not healthy.
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Anyway, it’s what we’re here for. And again, we recommend getting to our website, signing up for our personal CFO program. And again, this is where we structure things for people to help get them back on the right path. Again, our website, watchdogonwallstreet.com. You can sign up for it there, watchdogonwallstreet.com.