Speaker 1: Okay, So today I am really excited to introduce to
you someone who has spent years helping people make sense
of one of the biggest biggest questions we all face
when we approach retirement. Will I be okay financially? That's
a huge one. Now, Brian Face from Face to Face
Planning specializes in helping individuals and families create I think,
a clear, confident financial plan so that retirement isn't as
uncertain as it can be, but it actually is full
of possibilities. So in this conversation, we're going to talk
about what really matters when it comes to financial planning,
what people often get wrong, and how you can take
more control of your future no matter where you're starting from.
So welcome Brian, Thank you, Thank you for having me
Marine now no problem.
Speaker 2: Thank you for If anybody else doesn't know, Marine has
an amazing Facebook group that she started I don't know
how many years ago, but it has over thirty five
thousand members. So she's putting her time where her I
would say money where your mouth is, but now you're retired,
so we'll say time and effort.
Speaker 1: Well perfect, thank you. Now you if I understand right,
you work with people planning retirement every single solitary day.
So tell me what's what's the biggest thing you hear
from people on a regular basis.
Speaker 2: I would say most people, it starts with the basic thing,
am I going to be okay? And am I going
to have enough?
Speaker 1: Mm hm?
Speaker 2: So you know it starts there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how do you assure them? How do you make
that plan for them?
Speaker 2: I think we try to go back to the basics. See,
most of us think enough is about a dollar figure.
I am in the You're in Canada, so I'm in
the US, so I don't I don't know as much
about the Canadian system. But in the US here, you know,
there's a there's kind of a premise that if we
have a million dollars then will probably be a good number.
Or some people follow another thing called the four percent rule.
But most people, they just hear of certain things or
they read them, and they're different for everybody. And the
biggest thing, I don't think they've spent enough time on
thinking about what do I even want to do in retirement.
They're just assuming somewhat like the life they currently live
will be the same and retirement will be the same.
For the next thirty years if they retire at sixty
five and they say, well, I think I'll live till
ninety Okay, my twenty five years will be the same.
And listening to your videos, you will talk a lot
about those are not going to be the same twenty
five years, which also means you're going to spend differently.
So I think they first come to me about is
there do I have enough? And the reality most people
that come to me have been savers. They just don't
come to me. I'm in the stat I heard from Fidelity.
The last recent statf AT was only three percent of
Americans have over a million dollars at retirement at sixty five, right.
So what that's also saying is that if you're shooting
for a million dollars, maybe that's not a fair number
and maybe you should be shooting for your what you
need to do in your life, what matters to you,
and how you can connect those two instead of what
your neighbor needs, because they're going to be different. So
that that starts there. I always say, like, you need
to talk to somebody instead of make up these things
based on what you may read outline right, or use
chat GPT, which which I know you like AI, which
it's funny. There's a guy that I that I like.
His name is zul and he has a really great
face uh YouTube channel and he did a financial plan
with chat GPT and and then he compared it and
he looked and it was not the same as what
it would be individual it's you know, so yeah, I
would start there just you know, really starting to think
about what does retirement look like and what is that
actually going to cost. The other thing is, you know this,
many things in retirement that actually add value to your
life don't cost any money. Wow, or not very much money?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, grandkids well mic when kids cost for but yes,
grandkids like all of the relationships.
Speaker 2: Yeah, relationships and the more. You know. The reason I
started following what you were doing with the Facebook group
was because I wanted to see what are people saying
that they care about retirement. You know that Facebook group
that you run, there's nothing about money in there. We
actually don't really talk about money. We try to avoid money. Now.
The feelings about money is different because that's actually that
goes through Canada, that goes to the United States. It
doesn't really matter. We all are human. Yeah, so I
think that's really the start of you need to start
talking earlier about what matters to you and what does
this journey look like before you can connect the dots
of how much you really need.
Speaker 1: So you you sound very much like the relationship builder.
Then did you always like finances? How did you get
into this?
Speaker 2: I've always loved numbers. You know, my son, he's nine
years old. I have a nine and seven year old,
and my seven year old is the special needs yess autism.
But my nine year old, he loves to read. That
was not me. But you give me a math problem,
I'll just you know, we'll do these math problems all
day long. Right. The great thing about numbers is they're
black and white, like either it's right or wrong. There
is no gray in a number. You can't really argue
to seven plus. I guess some people could try to
argue these things, but in reality, like they have a number.
My dad was in finance growing up, so that was
probably really where it started. And then at an early
age I kind of learned they say that you start
to learn money your money script, which I'm a big
proponent of learning what is your money script as early
as age two, and that actually comes from you as
a baby starting to see things like you're not really noticed,
you're not really realizing this. But as growing up as
children and you learn things from your parents or your
grandparents that you don't at the time. Aren't putting two
and two together, but that money script actually follows through
the rest of your life, and you probably learned and
realize it more when you get married, because you're going
to have two different money script right, yeah, typically right.
And so my dad he used to take me, he
used to help with people's retirement. He did retirement plans
mainly when I was growing up, so helped, you know.
He would take me to a factories where they had
one hundred and two hundred employees and they'd do education
seminars for their four oln case. So, yes, my dad
did many things at the time seemed painful as a
fifteen year old or a fourteen year old, but they
probably they had a lot of value as you got older.
So I think it grew from there. And then the industry,
at least in America is not great to get into.
It's not really great for younger people, and it's more
of a sales industry when at the beginning, so I
kind of got turned away from that because I really
just wanted to help people. I just really said, hey,
I don't want to sell them things that they may
or may not need. And now people pay me. They
just pay me at different various options. But I don't
get commission on anything. So if I recommend something, I
don't get paid commission. So that they're very clear, like
this is really financial planning. I'm really here to help you.
So that the journey started with my father.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, So then after helping so many different people
and seeing so many different scenarios, can you tell us
what you would think the number one? Maybe two or three,
but for sure the number one biggest challenge or mistake
is that we do as humans well.
Speaker 2: No doubt about it. The biggest challenges yourself. And what
I mean by that is fear. You just did a
video in this I'm gonna drop a bunch of videos
that you guys have to go check out. Fear is
probably for all of us, our biggest hindrance, and the
fear of running out of money is very big.
Speaker 1: For all of us.
Speaker 2: And you know, I got all this great software and
we can go through these numbers and I can say, Marie,
you're gonna be okay, Yeah, you can do that. But
the reality is, I can't tell you one hundred percent
sure that all these things are gonna work out perfect.
But I think people think of money a little bit.
We don't think of money like we think of our life.
I mean, I get up every day tomorrow expecting that
they'll be tomorrow, expecting they'll be five years and ten
years and twenty years and thirty years. That's expectation. I'm
going to live my life that way, right, right. But
with our money, there's more fear. We fear more than
our money will be gone tomorrow, then will be gone tomorrow.
Speaker 1: That is so true. I never thought of it that way.
Speaker 2: And I think just because life is. You know, I
was talking to somebody the other day and they have
their plan only out for ten more years, and they're
in their seventies, and they say, hey, well I'm only
going to make it ten more years. Okay, But ten
years ago they told me they only going to make
it ten more years, too, right, And they have health
challenges and they're real things. But that is one thing
I'll throw in, as you know, at your age, is
the thing that we forget about is we always focus
on money, but we completely forget about health. It doesn't
matter how much money you have if you're unhealthy and
you're in the prime age where you see this every
single day with your friends and your family. And and I
think our society is getting better about that. So and
a long way around, you said that the one thing
is fear, right, and then can you go back over
that question because I want to.
Speaker 1: I'll give you one more after seeing and talking to
so many different retirees. What is the number one thing
or two, number two, three things that we make mistakes about?
So we're off. We're very, very scared obviously of pulling
metriger I see that all the time when people are
saying I don't know if I can retire yet. But
from your perspective, okay, so obviously we're scared of it.
What else do you see? What? What other mistakes do
we make?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Those, So I'll go more into like the technical
thing right, as in the fear drives us to make
money decisions that we shouldn't make. Here's the most common
thing that I think about. Okay, you put money in
your bank account versus invested getting into the stock market.
What you're saying at that moment, if this is long
term money, by by the way, not something you're going
to buy tomorrow or whatever. Okay, but you know there's
a lot of people that they only put money in
savings accounts or they only put money in a CD.
Are they only right? What they're saying that they don't
realize they're saying is that, well, this makes me feel
good today. But the problem what they're saying is that
twenty years from now, if they're still alive, this decision
is going to hurt them for sure, just because of inflation,
Like it doesn't even matter, it can't keep up, right,
So they're giving up this future self for this current
self to feel good. Now that was an easier argument.
Speaker 1: Huh, which is probably coming back to the fear. They're
scared to invest in anything a little bit maybe more
risky because.
Speaker 2: They're they're one hundred percent. See. But the problem is,
I think this is how we look at risk. You know,
as as a business owner. My wife works for a company,
and I have a business and I have fifty sixty clients.
So our society says that her job is more stable
than my job because I'm a business owner and she
works somewhere. Yeah, but the second, at any moment, she
could get fired, right right for me, I have fifty
some we'll call them bosses, okay, and they would have
to all not be happy. And so I think that
what I'm saying is that our society has decided what
our fears should be, and so saving is safe and
putting it in a savings accounts that the bank is safe,
and putting it in the investments in the stock Now
there's stuff in between you, but we'll just say investment
in the stock market is risky. A lot of this
are just education and how we've been raised. I mean,
our grandparents put it in their savings account, but they
also didn't have access that we do. I mean, there
wasn't retirement plan access. There wasn't Charles Schwabs and fidelities
and vanguards of the world where you could invest for free.
So I think those decisions. And then there's the other
side of it, which is extreme savers. So I deal
with a lot of extreme savers, and I start thinking
about we need what's called savers anonymous. Now you know
you have alcohol, Now we have savers anonym because and
I'm gonna. I can be an extreme saver. If it
wasn't for my spouse, I would be an extreme saver. Yeah,
and that's not a bad thing. But we think about
is we keep thinking about if I take this trip,
this trip costs me five thousand dollars, but since I'm
actually I have knowledge in a computer in calculations, this
trip really cost me fifty thousand dollars. Well, but what
I've missed. The point of one of my favorite books,
Behind Me Die was zero is uh memory dividends. See,
I'm focused on money dividends, but I start to forget
about memory dividends. I have a child that are seven
to nine years old. So my memory dividend life currently
is the next ten years? Your memory dividend life. If
you're fair to yourself, I'm not going to ask Marines age.
She might tell everybody, but if she, oh, yeah, is
the next we'll say your go go years. You're in
your go go years clearly, right, So that's your like
that like be honest with yourself like and that's where
I think people in their sixties always say, I say,
write your future. We'll maybe we'll talk about this if
you ask me questions. But I'll say, I tell clients
write your future. Okay, if you're seventy, your seventy five
year old self, write a letter back and tell you
if you thought this was a good decision, because you
might not be able to do it at seventy five.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe you spent the money today and
you can't do something at seventy five. But what I
can tell you is if you don't do it today
and then at seventy five you have the money but
can't do it, you're not going to be happy about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I always say I use an analogy. I
think it was Tony Robbins that I heard it from.
But when you're ninety five, whatever year, seventy five, eighty five,
nine five, whatever, you're sitting on your rocking chair looking
back at your life, will this have mattered? Would Now?
Am I going to be thinking about, Ooh, I should
have taken that five thousand dollars and invested it. Or
am I going to say, Ooh, I'm so glad I
took that five thousand dollars and went on a trip
with my kids, my grandkids. Whatever that might look like,
That's what I'm going to be thinking about when I'm
not hopefully if I'm get to ninety.
Speaker 2: Five, sitting on my rocking chair.
Speaker 1: Yes, so writing a letter? Okay, so tell me more
about this letter process. What do you what do you
write to yourself? So I do?
Speaker 2: I use it in different thing. There's a guy I
listened to and he was a I don't remember his name,
but he was a doctor and a teacher at cal
University I believe in California. You talk, and he's a
He wrote a book about future self and current self. Right. See,
right now, we are all making decisions based on our
current self and what we think our future self is
going to feel about that decision. Okay, right, But what
we don't realize is we all feel differently today than
we did five years ago. We have different thoughts, different feelings,
we might look different, you know, oh those things, and
so we are not going to be the same person.
We think we're going to be the same person That
seventy seventy year old thinks they're going to be the
same person at seventy five. It's just they're going to
be five years older. But nothing else is going to change.
And that's not being honest with themselves. So what I
asked them to do in those situations is say, hey,
when I'm making a decision. This typically happens when people
are fearful of making a decision about going on a
trip or doing or making a decision some kind of
money decision, which is usually what they're asking me, you know,
is would my seventy five year old self be happy
that I took this trip even if I'm not going
to be poor. But maybe I don't have the money
to go to Europe anymore, But now I can only
travel around in a car and take a day trip, right,
and make that decision that because you might have the
money seventy five, you don't know that, but you can't
go back right. And so almost we want to stretch
that go go years as much as possible, just like
I am trying to work on myself stretching my forty
fives because I'm trying to put more focus on memory
dividends and saying, okay, all of us want to save enough.
But where the challenge comes in, I think a lot
is most people don't come to me until they're sixty
five years old. So they tried to make good decisions
at forty forty five and they probably thought this is
the best thing for me. But my argument is this,
I'm not sure you working in extra ten hours a
week to save some extra money so that you can
have money in retirement is really what your kids care about. Yeah,
you think you're doing the right thing. I think they
mean well, but I think what it is is you've
never even seen Is this Am I on the right track?
Speaker 1: Maybe?
Speaker 2: Again, most savers are extreme savers. We don't have a
lot of in between people in America. They say about
sixty percent of people can't even afford a four hundred
dollars unexpected cost. Well, they're not coming to me unfortunately, right. Yeah,
so you're pretty much saying, hey, there's a group of
people that are not gonna probably have any money at retirement,
so they're going to live on Social Security. And then
you have a group of people that are gonna have
way too much money. But this is the thing, once
they get there, I could tell them that they have
way too much money and that's not going to change
how they feel about making decisions because that the switch
from a saber to a spender is a muscle that
you've built your whole life. You've been a heavy lifter, right,
and now you're suddenly like I'm going to change this muscle.
I'm going from being a heavy lifter and now I'm
gonna be a marathon runner, right, And you just can't
do that. You better start running to your mailbox first
before you try to be running twenty twenty six whatever
a marathon is, because I don't run. I'm definitely never
going to be a run what is it twenty six
point five or whatever? Right? Too? Five? Right? Okay, I
do Yeah. And that's the other thing that I've been
thinking about later with lately with retirees, and it is
too many times, and you know this, a lot of
people don't actually work out, like they just never have.
That hasn't been their thing, right, and they get into
their sixties and now people are telling them. I mean,
if you go to the doctor, they're going to tell
you two things. You need to eat work out, you
need to eat healthy, no matter what the thing is. Now,
to be fair, they might be telling us the truth
and we just never listen. Like if you move your
body and you eat good food, it's real maybe these
good maybe good things will happen, I don't know, yeah, or.
Speaker 1: The chances of good things happening increase, for sure.
Speaker 2: Yes, So, but I started thinking about this thing instead
of saying, you know, the doctor says you need to
do thirty minutes a day of cardiovascal or you know, running,
and da da da and as soon as he says that,
most of us are saying, yeah, I'm good. Yeah, I
hear what you're saying. Sounds like a good idea, but
I'm not. So then I started thinking, why don't we
have a different conversation? And to me, the different conversation
is what am I willing to do? Now? What am
I not willing to do? Because I might be willing
to walk down the road five minutes a day, why
don't I start there? Okay, right, with anything? It could
be with saving money, but eating healthy is another one. Well,
am I willing to eat an extra apple? I remember,
years and years and years ago, I made a decision
that every time I I'm not sure this is super healthy,
but it's there was a step in the right direction.
Every time I had a sub I stopped getting chips
because chips are just empty calories. Right, So okay, we'll
start there. Now I eat pretty healthy. Now that is
completely because of my wife. But I do find it
funny now is once you start, you go into your pantry.
Now this is a right, we're supposed to be talking
about financing, but this, to me, I think this goes
hand in hand. I go onto my pantry, right, and
you look at your pantry, and if you just ask
yourself a simple question, is anything in here actually good
for me?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Does it actually is my body?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Yes, give me that, and it's going to be good
for you? Right? Like probably not right? So, like, but
then you go to your fridge or you go to
you go to that garden, the stuff that your grandparents
grew up on, and it's like, okay, this is some
good fuel I'm putting in me. So anyway, so that
also goes hand in hand in my mind of like,
you need two things in retirement. You need health first
because you cannot control that, right, and then you do
need money. I'm gonna throw a third that we can't control,
and that's called time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that good. Good ones. And I talk a
lot about the health and the time and not as
much about money because I'm not that expert that you are.
Help Obviously, you said earlier that most people come to
you when they're sixty five. If you could reach out
to the younger people, what would you tell them? What
advice would you give them?
Speaker 2: So I do have younger clients, but they're your typical
people that are lawyers, doctors, right, So they're hiring coome
earners and they typically So you know our society, there
are in the States there are hourly planners. It's becoming
more popular. You could have some things. I would start
by saying, like with younger people, try to figure out
a happy median, like make sure you're saving some. But
I don't think they know what some is or enough is.
And that's the part that's so hard, is like if
I have no map to look at. You know, I
was thinking about with the retirement, most people are living
on a map that is based on something that was
made one hundred and fifty years ago, right. I think
in the eighteen eighties in Germany they decided sixty five
was a retirement age. Well, those people on average lived
till forty six years old at that time. Okay, so
having a sixty five, you know they worked until the end. Right,
So with retirement, most people are just saving whatever they
think they can. But they don't really know. So I
would say, first and foremost, go talk to somebody, even
if it's one time, you pay him for a couple hours.
Get some kind of guidance, because what I don't want
you doing is because what most people are going to
do is they're just going to take that trip right
or wrong, Okay, to Disneyland. I saw Dave Ramsey's was interviewing.
It wasn't David's guy that works for me. He's down
at Disneyland asking how much debt they had and how
much the trip costs. And I'm like, I'm just looking
at this and believe me, us taking some kids to Disneyland.
I understand the situation and it kind of blows my mind.
But and so I think I would get guidance. Would
I would set up automatic things. That's the key. Make
it easy. If you make it hard, it won't happen.
If you're gonna wait till the end of the month
to send money in, probably not going in right. Like
it's just you pay off all your bills, and then
if you have kids, that's a whole other level. So
I think too many people focus on the money memory dividends,
and they for forget completely about the money. Yeah, right,
we kind of need a happy median. I don't think
at the end of your life you're gonna If I
had to choose, I would say, and this is a
little bit of the yolo kind of deal. You know,
there is something that I really think is special about
the people that drive a motorcycle without a helmet on,
and they're just living their life and they would live
paycheck to paycheck and they don't care and they just
love life. Like I completely think that's awesome. I don't
know how to do that. That scares me. I need
to have a plan. I need to have a helmet on,
I need to you know, all that jazz. But there's
something I think we can learn from those people and
can be a combination. It doesn't have to be that
I that I make sure that I wear my seat
belt so tight and I drive sixty five and I
don't go any anywhere I drive anywhere I shouldn't drive,
and you know, like like there has to be a
combination of the accounting type of people and the people
that are just yolo in it out right. And so
the younger generation start because it's easier to save when
you're younger. Even if you only save a little bit,
you're young due to compound interest. Right, is if you
save two hundred dollars a month when you're younger versus
waiting twenty years and now you got to save one
thousand dollars a month to get the same result. And
once you start saving, I heard the other day of
the average car payment in America. It was like eight
hundred dollars, like semi fifty to eight hundred dollars. So
that's the other thing I tell young people is like
I'm not trying. I'm not the person to tell you
don't go by the lattes at Starbucks. If you love
lattes at Starbucks, go do it. But you got to
give up something like expend you know, uh, spend money
on the things that matter to you. But you got
to evaluate what matters to you. Most people don't evaluate.
We just put everything on auto right and subscription and
we all got ten subscriptions that we didn't even know
we had and we could be spending that money on
a vacation.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, just real quickly, for those that don't know,
the yolo is you only live once, so if you.
Speaker 2: There might be a slang word in America.
Speaker 1: So I don't know that it's all around, but just
in case. So you only a lot of people, especially
I think the younger generation maybe have that attitude you
only live once, let's do it, and so they don't
think about the future as as much. I think, yeah,
or I see it anyhow, with generation right now, they
just that's fair future.
Speaker 2: I think they start to think more about it in
their forties. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I was gonna say, what surprised me too was
when we were like, we got married young, we had
kids young, and we were so broke. We had no money,
no money whatsoever. And in fact, you know, went into
that much just to pay for the kids to play hockey,
et cetera. And then all of a sudden, the kids
got to in an age where I always say this
as my analogy, we had little kids in a big mortgage.
All a sudden we had big kids and a little mortgage,
and life just changed and it changed just like that.
It was so fast where all of a sudden I
could save. But I think back too, if I could
have and I'm the saver, I'm the like I could
be obsessive about saving too. But if I could have
saved when I was younger, the compounding would have made
such a difference. I just don't know how I get.
I don't know how. I don't know. But it was
just life. We just lived our lives and did what
we had to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you were in the different See. I didn't
have kids till mid thirties, and I always think there's
a difference, right if. I always say because I used
to take my kids a daycare and I remember, you know,
the two of them in daycare was like over twenty
grand and I was thinking, how to these people and
they're twenty three or four years old? How they affording
these right? I mean I could afford it. But it
wasn't a good time. I mean, that's for sure. And
so there's good and bad. But now I always say, like,
I'm going to be fifty eight or nine years old
when my when my youngest is graduating high school. So
it's like, okay at that point, you know, close to retirement.
Speaker 1: Twenty two and twenty four when my boys were born.
But then I was forty. I had just turned forty three,
and I was a grandma. So at forty three on
my grandma, which is fairly young, and now I have
six in the little suckers, six grandchildren. But it was
just different, and we just muddled our way through. I
don't know. I don't know. Some days I look back
and go, what we didn't know a darn thing nothing,
But here we are, And I don't know.
Speaker 2: I always say, and maybe it's not even maybe it's
not even something people should compare, because I'm always like,
I've thought about it, which way would be better, like
for my own life, not for right yeah, like, and
I don't know, you know, because if you get me later,
then you had these years to explore in journey and life.
But if you get married younger and have the kids,
then you have you have more time to kind of
journey as a couple, right And in that so I
have no id, And at the end of the day,
it doesn't really matter because.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure there's a writer wrong. I just
know right now. And I've done a few videos about this,
and then we'll get back to finances in a second.
But I've done a few videos about this where I
have a ton of guilt. Right now, I'm in Arizona
right now. We're going home on Friday to go back
to Canada because I have two grandsons and hockey tournaments
this weekend, so I want to go. When's this weekend?
When's the next weekend? So we're going back to see
the hockey tournaments. But I want to be here because
I want a golf and it's beautiful weather. But I
want to be home because my grandkids are there. My
mom's all alone now my dad passed away. I feel
guilty I'm not with her. It's like, oh my gosh,
I have it's that sandwich generation. But for me, it's
grandkids and my mom and golf. But it's tough. It's
really really tough. I don't know, don't know what the
answer is.
Speaker 2: I think that's like one area that you're talking about
that if there's one thing that I wish people would
realize about retirement is that there's going to be a
bunch of things that are pulling on you that you
didn't think we're going to pull on you and you
so you if you did any planning in your mind
of what retirement looked like, you forgot that your parents
may need help and that your grandkids may need help,
and that might not be exactly so those trips that
you thought you were going to take may not happen,
not because of money, but because of other factors that
you feel responsible for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and bringing it then full circle, not that we're
like GOB's wealthy, but we're okay enough financially that I
can go home for ten days and see the boys
play hockey, Thank goodness. So that's the planning from your
perspective that I hope everybody finally gets to where they
can take that trip home and go see their grandkids
or whatever is important in their lives.
Speaker 2: And as someone who loves hockey, I love hearing what you're.
Speaker 1: Saying is growing up six years One of them is
only six years old and he does this his.
Speaker 2: First That's fun watching hockey. Six year olds are real
fun watching.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's so, it's awesome. It's awesome. Now when
now do you help people then actually pull the trigger
and say, hey, I'm I'm done. This is it. I'm
going to hand in my retirement. Notice. Do you get
to have that kind of a conversation with you?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, I would say most people don't just show
up after they make the decision. They usually come to
me a year or two before the old famous I'm
gonna work one more year. It is the most common
most common phrase I hear.
Speaker 1: Four years later, there's gonna work one more year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's definitely more of a I would say
that's more of a guy thing like that. It seems
like the husband is always well, I'm going to work
one more year, and you know, I've changed my mind.
I don't. This is the other thing that people don't
get when they when they kind of try to DEI
why their own retirement stuff. Every day somebody asked me
a question that I don't know the answer to, right,
And so we don't know what we don't know. And
some of it is like when should somebody retire?
Speaker 1: I get asked that a lot, right.
Speaker 2: I probably am further from that answer than I was
fifteen years ago. I would have said, oh, you got
to do this because you've got to live your life.
But then I'm always also like, this is your life,
like does it add value? Purpose? And I think a
lot of guys do, And I don't know why it
is guys. I think guys have a harder time like
creating a community and and that and like what am
I gonna do? I can only mow my lawns so
many times a week, and I can only go fishing
so much, and I can only golf like they think
they can. Some of them think they can golf like
seven days a week. But they'll find out that that,
you know, the honeymoon phase even if golfing will slow down.
And so the trigger is usually a year or two
before they come to me because they want to see
am I on track? Do I need to work longer?
Also that it's good to go a couple of years
before because if there's any well, this is one thing
that always kind of like I don't want to say,
breaks my heart, but it makes me think, like, gosh,
I wish they would have came earlier. Sometimes people come
to me and they could have retired three years ago,
and they wanted to retire by the way, they didn't
enjoy their job. They didn't And it's like, man, if
you wouldn't. And so that's the other thing that I think, like,
you can never go like, no, if you come to
me at thirty five, this is probably not going to
be a great you know. But I think once people
get in their fifties, if there's people that have interest
in retiring early, they don't enjoy their job, and if anything,
in today's world, there's a lot more work optional that
people are looking for. Yeah, right, like not feeling that
you have to work. So if I'm like Maureen, you
know what, you could retire today and or you could
retire and go work part time somewhere fifteen hours a week,
would that you know what? Do you think your life
would be more satisfied doing that so you can do
other things?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I never thought about that. That is an area
where I think most planners do a very bad job.
I've had people come to me to say, well, my
financial planner told them I couldn't retire, and I'm saying
I said yeah, I said, well, well did you What
did you guys talk about? And I remember one this
lady told me, well, I was going to go work
at Costco part time. Well did you tell him that? Well? No,
he never asked me. Okay, Well that's that's a problem.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I usually want to ask people what the plan is
and what are you thinking? Because there's always creative ways
that you know, you you can come up with if
you need to make more money. People are getting When
I read an article the other day about people going
to work at Starbucks so they could get health insurance. Retirees. Yeah,
so yeah, you know. Anyways, they usually come to me. Yeah,
a year or two before is with their goal, year
or two before when they think they're going to retire.
I have a lot of husbands that the spouses want
them to retire, and so we need you know, I
feel like, okay, and the person that deals with the
money is normal who comes to me right at first,
and it goes down the spectrum. Could be wife, could
be a husband. One of them is always dealt with
the money. That's who typically comes to me.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's say, well I am I'm sixty three.
So let's say I'm a sixty three year old if
I was an American and I would come to you,
what would be the best advice you could give me
if I'm getting close to retirement.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll start I'll start there. We're going to start
at the conversation like what does retirement look like for you? Marine?
Speaker 1: I love that, yeah, because I think me money, of course,
is one aspect. And we kind of got on this.
I think you said there was the three but money
is one aspect. But without knowing what your retirement's going
to look like what you want to achieve in retirement,
what you want to do, and what gives you a purpose,
the reason to get up in the morning. Well, money's
just a piece of paper.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think of money as a tool. It's like
gasoline for your car, right, Like, none of us buy
a car. Well, there are some car people. I do
like cars, but we're not really buying Most people are
buying cars for transportation to get us to somewhere, right,
and we need the gasoline to get us there. But
the gasoline is fairly irrelevant to our lives, I mean, right, Like,
we don't really care how that car gets powered, whether
it's gas or electric. As long as that thing goes
down the road and goes where I wanted to go
to take my kid to practice, or to go on
that vacation, or to go to work. That's the point
of that. For your money, it's the same thing. Like
we give too much credit to what money is. Money
should just be the fuel of our lives and to
help us actually create the purpose that matters to us. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So you know, I use a different software that I
started using about a year ago, and it's different most
planning software is and I'm not sure how it is
again in Canada, it gives you what's called the probability
of success. Okay, what's your probability of success? You tell
me everything you need. If I ask the right questions,
you might write how much money you need to spend
blah blah blah. The last year I've been using a
different software and the way it works is it gives you.
Instead of you telling me that you need ten thousand
dollars a month to live, I tell you how much
money you can spend your max spending. And I've found
that to be so much more powerful for clients because
because in reality, which typically happens from savers, they're spending
ten thousand dollars a month. I'll lower that number because
I don't want it to sound because everybody's you know,
in their own mind right, So lots of people I
would say where I live. I live in Michigan, I
live in the Midwest, and I live in a fairly
inexpensive place to live if you compare it to the
rest of the country. Okay, so most people that might
be spending five, six, seven thousand dollars a month to live, well,
when they came to me, that's what they were spending.
But with this software gives these guard rails, and it
might say, well, you could be spending ten thousand a
month at your current what your current plans are and
the current investments you have, and what the guardrails is is.
It might say, well, if the stock if your portfolio
went down fifteen percent now instead of ten thousand, you
can only spend ninety seven hundred. Okay, so make adjustments.
But see you are only spending seven So if I
told you could only spend nine tenty seven hundred, that
doesn't scare you. But at least you have something to
look at. See, probability of success doesn't really give you
a lot to look at. And this is the thing
everybody wants ninety to do one hundred. Here's the problem.
If you have ninety or one hundred probably success, your
likelihood to die with a lot of money is very high. Right.
But if I told you that you had seventy percent
probability success, which actually all that means is there's a
thirty percent chance that you might have to make an
adjustment to your spending, right, which isn't bad, no, but
it's scary. Wait, hold on, I want I don't want
seventies seventies a c right. So anyway, so what that
also does that guardrail system that I think really has
helped clients, is it says, hey, I spend seven, I
could spend ten. So when my grandkids come over and
I take them to dinner, now I don't feel bad
when they get the extra you know, appetizer because true, yeah,
we're questioning if that appetizer's worth the value, right yep.
And I remember a client told me after I started
using the software, and this is this is what's important
to me, she said, And she was one. She's a
client who is a single person, but she goes on
lots of trips and she and she loves to travel,
and she's a she's been a great saver. She's just
savor numbers person. And once we saw there was a
good barrier there, she just said, the confidence of making
that decision to go to Hawaii that she wanted to
do was huge. I got a message the other day
with a client that I'm talking to a client of
mind and she and we're talking and she wants to
know can she go to Paris this summer? Can she
go to this right and she sends me a message,
this is Friday night. I booked the Paris trip, and
I want people to get that. That's what it's supposed
to be about. Now it doesn't have to be Paris.
It you took the grandkids to the you know, amusement
park or whatever. It's it's that that's the focus in
this client, in particular, she has some friends that have
a lot more money than her, and they don't do anything.
They just sit because they're too worried. See. You think
that the more money you have, the less worried you'd get.
But the great Rockefeller he said, and when they asked
him if you had enough money, he said he just
needed a little bit more. Wow. And so what psychology
has taught us is the more money we have, this
is kind of weird, but we actually are more concerned
because we have more to lose in our minds.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm not telling you don't have money. I'm just.
Speaker 1: Sure. But that's one of the things I think that
really made me think about you more often from a
financial planning is you're all about that relationship. For a
client to call you on a Friday night to say
they booked the trip. That's a relationship built.
Speaker 2: They emailed me. I just want my clients to know
they emailed me. There, you know, perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's that's great for somebody to do that
and to trust you and to know that you would
be excited for them. That's freaking awesome.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, no, yes, no, it just it made my weekend, right, Like,
this is why I do what I do. I don't
know why other planners do it. This is why I
do what I do is I want people to live
a better life and if I can help a little
bit with that. The same reason you're making this YouTube channel,
the same reason you have the Facebook group. There's no
you know, the benefit for you is that hopefully you
can help some people have a little bit better life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. My sort of tagline is I want to
make your retirement remarkable in whatever situation your life is in.
So okay, now, as we're winding down slowly, I know
you have that die with your who's the author of
that one?
Speaker 2: Bill Perkins?
Speaker 1: Bill Perkins? So you say that's your number one book?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so I have to preface that book because
people have an opinion before they read it. Because the
titles called die with Zero, which sounds very provocative. And
when I whenever I say the word die with zero,
you know, if I say it to myself, that sounds
very scary and fearful. And I tell people you need
to think it's really about dying with zero regrets. It's
not about dying with zero dollars, right, it's dying with
zero regrets? And how do you time bucket your life?
And there's a bunch of things in there. The guy
is a rich guy, so I tell people take it
with a grain of salt. I think he's worth over
one hundred million dollars or something like that. Right, So, no,
you're not going to do everything he's going to do.
But it completely chang I'm going to tell you this.
It completely changed the way I live my life from
being a saver not to a spender. I'm not going
that dror. I'm not like, hey, but there's a but
there is spending, okay, and the other way. The big take.
I won't give out too much stuff, but something in
there that really I think about for all people. The
Federal Reserve says that average inheritance goes to people when
they're sixty years old. So what I say to people is,
if you get an inherit, it's at sixty marine right now.
If you got inheritance at your age and you've been
a good savor, it's not adding any value to your life.
I'm not saying the money is bad. I'm just saying
this is you're not suddenly going to go do a
bunch of things that you wouldn't have done. So why
do I say that, I'm not Most people don't want
to give their money to their kids until the end.
I think there's a couple of reasons. One is that
they don't want to run money, which is a fair thing.
But then a lot of them aren't even gonna come
close to running out of money, so then it's really about.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 2: You can give money to your kids without giving money
to your kids. And what I mean by that is
if they haven't under standing and what they may get
they might make. Most people that are good savers their
kids are good savers. By the way, this is kind
of a goes down if they have an understanding that
they will probably get a decent inheritance as long as
the parents don't spend. If they spend it, they spend
it that they might take their kids on a family
vacation because they didn't think they could. And so you're
not actually giving them any money. But what you're giving
them is power to make different decisions and memories.
Speaker 1: Maybe again, like we talked about more memories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I read an article about a gentleman that him
and his wife. They live in Florida. I don't remember
their names, but they he was, you know, two kids
saving their living paycheck to paycheck. They don't have any money.
They just have enough to live and they have good jobs.
They're just whatever right life. They they think their parents
are okay, but that's all they know. Comes to find
out that he finds out his dad has over ten
million dollars and he's over here struggling and he can't
take any vacation with his kids. His dad doesn't know
him anything. But the reality is, I'm not sure if
his dad wants that for him either. It's like, if
you could just pay for your kit, you take the
I'm not even telling you. Memory dividends re it right, grandparents,
take your kids and your grandkids on a vacation if
they can't afford it, enjoy it for yourself. You say,
I don't Okay, I don't like drive the scooter around Disney.
You don't got to go on the park. You know.
It's like we gotta think differently. That's what I want
people to get from some of those things is in
these conversations is open up, open up a little bit
to ideas that you didn't know existed, because if you
want to create. There's a there's a book called Happy Money,
which I don't know if there's two Happy Money books.
One is by doctor Dunn, and that is about they
do all these experiences giving money and how it impacts
your life. And then there's the other one that's I
think he's I think he's a Japanese guy, and that's
more of a different thing about Happy Money. But they're
both great books. But that's not what you had a
question about two books. I gave you that one and
then the other one, The Psychology of Money, is a
great one by and actually he just wrote a new
book I haven't read yet, and that is how I
think it's called How the Art of Spending Money, and
that's the Psychology Money is by Morgal Hausel, and there's
a lot of great takeaways. But even as a financial planner.
One of the takeaways that I took from that book
was everybody does as good as they can do with
the information that they have. Yeah. Yeah, right, So the
person driving that expensive Ford f one fifty, it's amazing.
I'm sitting here and saying expensive Ford f one fifty
and it's your neighbor, and he doesn't have any money,
but he's got a thousand dollars car payment, and you're thinking,
what's wrong with that person? I'm over here driving my
toileta camera that's paid off, and I'm a millionaire next door.
What are you doing? He's using the information that he has,
so judging doesn't really serve you know, anybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really that's good. Okay, well let's leave that
at this today. Thank you. Any Anyhow, if there is
somebody out there that would like to have a conversation
with you, how do they get a hold of you?
What's their best thing? Your website or how do they
do this?
Speaker 2: Yeah? You can probably EASi this way as I have
a thing on my website. My website is face the
number two face planning dot com. So I'm Brian Face,
and yes there's a there is a you know name
my last name and the name of the business is
so yeah. There's a fifteen minute intro that if you
want to chat, you can chat. You obviously have an idea,
you know what we're focusing on. Then I am in
the United States, as we talked about, so I work
with clients in the United States, and that's that's probably
primarily my knowledge base. I guess i'd say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'll put your link in of your website
into the comments when we do this. So thank you.
I really really really appreciate this. I don't focus on
money a lot, and so it was very enjoyable to
hear your side, which aligns so much with my side
of a lifestyle rather than just focusing on the dollars
in the technical aspect. So thank you Brian for having
this conversation with me.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me