SPI 897: Why We Need to Forget About Retirement

SPI 897: Why We Need to Forget About Retirement

Derek Coburn: One in five Americans over the age of 65 are working and not because they need the money. It’s because they missed the contribution and they missed the connection. And so I wanna help people realize that there’s a likelihood they’re gonna work longer than what society is telling them. And I don’t think people realize the financial flexibility they would have by planning to work longer.

You know, let’s say, Tony’s 45 years old. Tony makes $150,000 a year, and he has $150,000 saved up for retirement. He meets with his advisor, they agree 65 is the age for him to retire. And then the advisor tells him that he has to save $2,400 a month for the next 20 years in order to stop working. And that is a non-starter for most people. So he calls the financial advisor back and he says, let’s make my retirement age 75 instead of 65. And the advisor tells him now instead of having to save $2,400 a month. He only has to save $110 a month. It goes down by 96%.

And so I’m advocating, more quality time with your kids, with your spouse, with your friends, more personal care, more fun. But what I’m doing is I’m showing people the numbers. Maybe there’s a little bit more time and money than they previously thought they had.

Pat Flynn: Once you enter the workforce when you are 18, maybe even younger than that, maybe a little bit older, you think about this idea of retirement. We’re already thinking about our future. Which is, it’s great to think about the future. It’s great to plan for the future. It’s great to save and invest for the future.

Or is it?

It’s weird to think about not thinking about retirement because we hear all the time about people who didn’t save for retirement or they’re behind on their retirement. They have to catch up on their retirement.

Now, one of the benefits of starting a business on the side, or even going full-time with it, is you have a lot more opportunity to have a higher ceiling to catch up, to start adding more funds to your retirement account, all those kinds of things.

401k, Roth IRAs, et cetera. However, what about the idea of getting rid of retirement altogether? Retiring retirement? I first heard about this from Derek Coburn, who wrote a book called Let’s Retire Retirement, How to Enjoy Life to the Fullest Now and Later.

And not too far into this interview, I started to understand. It really clicked and it got me really excited. Now this doesn’t mean you should spend all of your money now, but it does mean some things that you can do now to start enjoying life today versus waiting until you are 65. And there’s a lot of great points that Derek makes in this episode, so I’m happy to welcome him to the show.

And just a quick note before we get started, the information, opinions and recommendations in this particular episode are for general information only. This episode should not be considered professional financial advice. Thank you for letting me say that and now on to the interview.

This is Derek Coburn. You can find him at DerekCoburn.com. Here he is.

Derek, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for the time today.

Derek Coburn: Pat. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Pat Flynn: I’m excited ’cause we’re gonna chat about a topic that I know has been on a lot of people’s minds for so long. It’s this idea of retirement, but you’re taking an approach that’s very different, especially coming from you being a financial advisor.

You’re basically saying, let’s retire retirement. Why has this become your passion and the message that you’re driving home today?

Derek Coburn: Yeah, so you know, shortly after I began my career as a financial advisor, 27 plus years ago, I immediately began to question the validity of this idea. I saw people that were making sacrifices to their health, their happiness, their key relationships in the name of saving up a certain amount of money by a certain age so they could stop working and then enjoy those things. And I was simultaneously seeing people who were retiring and arriving at this place and seeing that it wasn’t what they thought it was going to be. It wasn’t filled with all of the moments and experiences that they thought they were going to have.

They didn’t have the health to enjoy. The activities they were hoping to do, they didn’t have the relationships in place that they were hoping to have. And I think the, the unfortunate part is a lot of people when they get there are going back to work. There’s this unretirement movement happening right now where one in five Americans over the age of 65 are working and they’re not going back to work in most cases because they need the money.

It’s because they missed the contribution and they missed the connection. And so I wanna help people realize that there’s a likelihood they’re gonna work longer than what society is telling them. And once they realize they’re gonna be working longer, it means they don’t have to save as much right now.

And if you don’t have to save as much right now, that means you have more time and more money in the present that you get to spend on the people and things that are most important to you.

Pat Flynn: Where did this idea of retirement and working till you’re 65 and then enjoying life really stem from it? It is kind of odd when at least right now, thinking about it, it’s like that’s such a weird way to kind of approach things.

But this has been in like just, we’ve all been on automatic mode doing it that way for so long. Where, where did that come from and why is that, or was that, the way to go?

Derek Coburn: Yeah, it’s a fairly new idea. So it first made an appearance in 1889 in Germany. The chancellor at the time, Otto von Bismarck, was setting up the first ever social plan to help out their older citizens.

And they pick the age of 70 where the age that they would start receiving benefit because quote, that was the age people were expected to live until quote, so it was the age that they were supposed to die is the age they were going to start get a benefit, and they lowered that to 65. FDR, a few years later, FDR thought 65 sounded like a good number when he was setting up Social Security in 1935. And the reality is life expectancy at that time was 61. It was in your early seventies if you made it to 65. But if you were gonna retire in the 1950s, you were gonna get a third of your income from Social Security, a third of your income from a pension plan, and those don’t really exist anymore.

You only had to come up with enough money to cover a third of what you needed, and you only needed it to last for about six or seven years, because that’s how long you were going to live. And fast forward to today, life expectancy is 78 and it’s pushing 90 if you make it to 65. Yet everyone still kind of views 65 as the magic number in the age without really questioning it that they need to plan for and retire.

And they’re gonna need to do a lot more to make that money last 25 or 30 years than they did in the fifties.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. That makes sense. How does this change our behavior with money now then? Because if you’re working with an employee that has a employee match, like you wanna take advantage of that, there’s all these tax saving opportunities now to put things away to then enjoy later.

Like it kind of makes sense on paper, but what is the reality of this? And are you basically saying we shouldn’t be contributing to our retirement count at all. What is your stance?

Derek Coburn: No, I wouldn’t go that far. Look, I think close to 50% of people in the United States don’t have anything at all saved for retirement, and that’s a separate crisis, and they need to read a different book and hear a different message.

I am really appealing to the people that have sort of subconsciously bought into this idea and it’s on autopilot because when they met with their financial advisor or went to an online calculator, the financial advisor didn’t say, do you want to retire? The financial advisor said, what age do you wanna retire?

And most people haven’t given it a lot of thought, or they picked the age of 65 because that’s what they read in an article. Or a lot of times the financial advisor will just say to them, well, why don’t we just pick 65? Because that’s the age that that most people pick. And then they just kind of like run their life around this number. And I don’t think people realize the financial flexibility they would have by planning to work longer. And I’d love if you think it’s appropriate, I’d love to share the story that I tell in my book that I made up about a guy named Tony. It’s called A Tale of Two Tonys.

Tony’s 45 years old. Tony makes $150,000 a year, and he has $150,000 saved up for retirement. He meets with his advisor, they agree 65 is the age for him to retire. And then at the next meeting, the advisor tells him that he has to save $2,400 a month every single month, adjusted for inflation for the next 20 years in order to stop working.

And that’s about 20% of what he’s making. And that is a non-starter for most people. But Tony still goes home and he feels like he can’t go to the gym as often. He starts skipping family dinners. They cancel the vacation because he is already behind and he has to catch up. I create this alternate reality where Tony ends up having a conversation with his wife in between these meetings, and she’s like, Tony, I don’t think that you’re gonna be happy retiring at 65. I mean, you like what you do, you like the people that you do it with. And even if you’re not doing this, you have other interests. You have other hobbies. I can’t imagine you’re gonna be happy sitting around doing nothing for 30 years. So he calls the financial advisor back and he says, let’s make my retirement age 75 instead of 65.

And the advisor tells him now instead of having to save $2,400 a month. He only has to save $110 a month. It goes down by 96%. And the reason for this, I have him dying at 95 in both scenarios. In the first example, he has 10 less years of saving, 10 less years of letting that money be able to grow. And he needs the money to last for 30 years when he stops.

And in the second scenario he has. 10 additional years of working, 10 additional years of saving and allowing that money to compound. And then he only needs an amount of money that will last for 20 years. And so, you know, even if he said I’ll work until I’m 70 instead of 75, the number goes down to 600 bucks a month, it goes down by 75%.

So this is a real opportunity for people to rethink how they’re spending their time and their money in the short term if they agree that they probably won’t be happy with a traditional retirement.

Pat Flynn: If Tony is retiring at 75 and only has to save $110. He has now, hypothetically, an extra $2,290 to spend each month on.

That gym membership to remain healthy and happy. The Yeah. Date nights with the wife and the vacations with the family to build memories and experiences. I mean, that’s what I’m thinking about. Yep. When it comes to what I wanna spend my money on now. And then of course there’s just the conversation of, I could literally walk outside and get hit by a bus and, okay, there you go.

Derek Coburn: Absolutely man. No one ever walked into my office with their hand raised saying that they knew they didn’t wanna retire. I would start the conversation, but I would always humor them a little bit. So I would ask a couple, what do you wanna do when you retire at 65? And they would say, we want to travel the world together.

And I would say, great. When was the last time you two went out on a date? And 75% of the time, they would just look at each other and not have a good answer. Or they would say, I wanna spend a lot of time with my kids and grandkids, but they’re not coming home for dinner very often. My favorite may be like, they want to play golf five days a week, but they haven’t played golf in four years and they don’t go to the gym and they just had their hip replaced.

And so I’m advocating, and I’m preaching a lot of what a lot of other people are preaching, which is more quality time with your kids, with your spouse, with your friends, more personal care, more fun. But what I’m doing is I’m, I’m showing people the numbers. ’cause the elephant in the room in a lot of cases is I want to do all these things.

I know I should do all these things, but how do I afford them? I think I’m helping people realize that maybe there’s a little bit more time and money than they previously thought they had.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, man. The traditional financial advisors probably love you for this. I’m being sarcastic. Yeah. You know, they make their commissions off of people putting into these retirement accounts and stuff, and you’re basically saying no, you could put things into experiences and other things.

And so where, where is the balance in terms of what one potentially should save? How does one calculate that if we’re not using traditional retirement calculators?

Derek Coburn: Yeah, I mean, look, I have a calculator on my website that people can use to personalize their own version of a Tale of two Tony’s. You know, I think that ultimately someone’s ability, as long as you don’t hate what you do, as long as it’s not sucking your soul, I think that most people will want to continue to be engaged and continue to work, and as long as you’re in the game that just gives you a lot of flexibility. I have clients who are in their seventies now. Some of them are still working and some of them have completely stopped. And even though in both scenarios they have plenty of money, I spend the majority of my time encouraging them to spend more of it. The people that still have some revenue coming in, even if it’s like a hundred grand just spend their money in so much more of a carefree way than the people who have completely stopped and because they’re just taking it out, they, they’re afraid, I think, to really enjoy everything that they’ve saved up and everything that they’ve worked hard for.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, that’s interesting. There’s nothing else coming in, so they’re kind of like, well now every dollar really matters because that’s the pot that I’m pulling from and nothing’s going into it anymore. That, that’s a really interesting thought as well. And the idea of just enjoying what you’re doing. I mean, this is why when I teach business and entrepreneurship, we try to align it with a person’s not necessarily total passion, but just to have some fun and excitement and enjoyment in that challenge of building that business, whether it becomes a, a side hustle or anything like that. So do you find that for your clients who are enjoying life the most and making the most of it, are they continuing the job that they had into those later years or are there some of them finding other things to supplement and to kind of, you know, maybe try something new or work in a different field?

Derek Coburn: Yeah, most of them have pivoted to something else and so I think that cool. There are a lot of different ways you can approach this. If you have a job that you love, maybe what you end up doing is you scale back the time that you were spending on it, that you are taking summers off or Fridays off, or maybe you’ll work for a year or two and go really hard and then take a sabbatical and take some time to reflect. I’ve got a client that was the CEO of a big utility company in DC who ended up after he retired from that company, he ended up opening up a consulting practice and he had all these clients and all these relationships that he could reach out to and provide his wisdom and skills to.

And, and I think that because especially we don’t have as many younger workers coming up to replace the jobs of the older workers, and you throw in AI on top of that, there’s an opportunity here for people that have certain skills and certain abilities to be able to do things on their terms. You know, if you’re willing and able to contribute, a lot of these organizations, a lot of these companies will be happy to have you however they can get you. If that means like just Wednesdays, if that means like you’re never gonna leave your house and it’s gonna be all over Zoom or it’s gonna just be a couple months a year, I think that you have an opportunity as long as you continue to learn and develop skills to kind of set things up the way that makes sense for you.

Pat Flynn: That’s great. I had a experience with a older couple. I met them on a vacation and they were retired at around 68, 69 years old. But what was, what was kind of sad about the story is that they had been successful in life, they retired and they just kind of like, we’re just gonna veg out. We worked so hard on our life, so we’re just gonna sit around and enjoy life and watch TV and you know, maybe do a few things here and there.

But they were just, they told me they felt like they got old really fast when they stopped working. Like things just accelerated very quickly. Where I’ve met other people who are much older, who are continuing to work, who feel like they’re young again or they’ve, they’ve got this energy about them. And, and I’ve heard this before where it like, your brain is like a muscle, right?

If you’re not really using it, it’s just like, well, why am I still here? Kind of thing. And then in worst case scenarios, there’s like dementia and other things that can kind of come about if you’re not using it, do you, do you find that there’s also those sort of byproduct benefits of continuing to work and generate revenue at those older ages?

Derek Coburn: For sure. You know, it’s very bad for your health to stop having a purpose. And there’s a study done about 10 years ago by a woman named Barbara Fredrickson out of Chapel Hill, and she divided people into two groups. Group one were people that were prioritizing personal happiness. They were waking up every morning solving for how can I be happier?

Group number two had a bigger purpose, a bigger reason for being here than just kind of making themselves happy. And they hooked them all up to brain and heart monitors and did a bunch of testing on them. And the first group, their bodies had the same response that our bodies have when they deal with a chronic adversity.

So like the loss of a loved one or the loss of a job, their inflammation went sky high, their immunity went down. They were much more likely. To get sick and or pass away. Whereas the second group, it was just the opposite. Their inflammation was low, their immunity was, was higher. They were, they were not getting sick as often and they were happier.

So aside from kind of maintaining a purpose and a bigger picture reason for being here, and I don’t think it has to be tied to your job, but having something that is exciting you and motivating you beyond yourself. Is gonna keep you around longer. And I also think that the key to being happy is to not directly pursue happiness, but rather to think about how you can make a difference.

And then happiness is a natural byproduct of that.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Gosh. Amen to that. For sure.

So I know your book was written for the purpose of amplifying this message, and I think it’s getting out there. I mean, the reviews even on your book plenty are talking about how finally people are starting to wake up to this, which is nice. And so, I know that people who might be a little bit older who are reading this book are getting sort of a wake up call and maybe kind of a just in time kind of call for that and adjusting.

How relevant is the book in your message to those who are a little bit younger now, maybe millennial or even younger, and what decisions should we be making when it comes to our finances and where to put money? I mean, I think. Especially for those who maybe have a business or a side hustle and they’re making some revenue, you know, oftentimes that extra revenue just goes into a retirement account.

Yeah. Where are you suggesting maybe that could be better allocated?

Derek Coburn: Yeah, some of the older people reading in my book, it’s quite triggering for them. You know, I think that I kind of view myself in the regret minimization business a little bit with this book where our society expects us to work our hardest and have our best income producing years during the time when our kids need us and want us the most. You know, I share a stat in my book that Tim Urban shared on his blog, Wait, but Why? That shows where when your kid goes off to college, you’ve already spent 93% of the time that you’re gonna spend with them over the course of your life. And then the inverse of that is also true, where if you have adult parents who are living in a different state, you know how many more times are you gonna see them based on how often you see them right now?

And my kids are. 16 and 13. I have two and a half and four and a half years left respectively with them. And I’m solving for that. You know, I, I sold my practice in 2019 and, and I’m not independently wealthy. It’s not like I never have to work again, but I have some runway. But more importantly, I have the five year from now version of me sponsoring my current lifestyle, it’s almost like I know that that version of me is writing a bigger check in the future.

That’s funding my ability to really lean into spending meaningful and quality time with my kids right now. And so while maybe people that are in their sixties will read my book and there’s certainly some things they can get out of it. I’m writing this book for the people that are in their thirties and forties that have kids at home that are not paying enough attention to their significant other that are not taking care of themselves.

I’m trying to reach them so that they hopefully have less regrets when they get to the age of 60 or 65. Then maybe if they wouldn’t have come across what I had to share. And then I’ll also say on top of that, just to finish answering your question, I think that like the majority of the great. Things that I have in my life right now, including the flexibility to design my life the way that I have, is directly correlated with the fact that I was working 80 hours a week in my twenties and early thirties, and so I’m not sure if there’s anyone that maybe should not heed my advice, you know, for this more of a balanced, integrated approach to living. It’s, it’s people that are really just kind of getting going that don’t have the kids yet, that are not married yet, that can really just kind of build up their skills and their bank accounts to give ’em more flexibility in the future.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, I mean, it’s about living life now, not working now to live later. And especially with the kids. I mean, my kids are about the same age as yours, 15 and 13, and there are only so many summers we have left with them to enjoy. So we’re trying to maximize it and this is why. You know, we do spend a little bit more money on the vacations and the experiences where, of course we could save that for later. But who knows what later it’s gonna be and how much time we’re gonna have, or if they’re gonna have families and just not have the availability. We have the availability with them right now, so let’s take advantage of it. What are some of the objections that people experience, or you’ve heard from maybe your clients or even readers who hear this and they’re just like, no, this is not the right way to go about it.

Maybe they’re too ingrained with the old model or what maybe objections or maybe myths are they thinking about?

Derek Coburn: You know, I’m not trying to save everyone, you know, I think that a lot of the people that reject what I have to share, it’s usually tied to them planning their flag to justify the choices that they’ve made up until now.

Right. I was recently having a conversation with someone who. Who was refuting a lot of what I had to say and she’s getting ready to retire in two years and her son is 17. And so again, like I think that there are some people that hear this and it’s just, in order for them to embrace what I am sharing, there would have to be a certain level of admission that maybe they didn’t do things the way that they could ever or should have done it in the future, you know?

But I think to your point, like earlier about maybe you won’t be around tomorrow, like some people say, well, what if you get disabled, and what if something happens and you can no longer work? Well, I’ll even feel better about all the time that I spent with my kids and the travel I did and the concerts that I went to, if I, God forbid, find myself in that type of a situation.

So I also think there’s a lot of people that just really don’t like what they do. And I started writing the book. I was using language like find a job that you love. And I backed off that a little bit and I started using language like find something that you don’t hate. Because I really don’t feel like everyone has to find their purpose and it has to be what they do for the rest of their lives. I think that that’s ideal, and that can be great if it happens, but I also think that maybe someone’s purpose is, they’re the ones that plan all of the family vacations or the neighborhood parties or the annual trips with their longtime friends and having a job that you enjoy somewhat, that the people are enjoyable and it keeps you active and interested and, and growing can fund a lot of that as well.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, I love that reframe. Don’t just try to find that job that you’re passionate about. That’s a hard thing to do because many of us are multi-passionate or just don’t know who we are yet as we are growing up, especially in trying to find ourselves, but find a job that you don’t hate. That is great because a lot of us I know, and I remember getting close to that point where I was hating my job because I was 60, 70 hour weeks as an architect, and I was trying to find the pockets of it that I did love, which is what kept me going.

But for the person who maybe listened to that and is triggered because they are in a job that they absolutely despise, hate waking up for, how would you recommend they then go about. Discovering a job that they don’t hate.

Derek Coburn: Yeah. So I think definitely don’t leave your job right away, especially if it’s funding your ability to maintain your rent right.

And pay your bills. But I think there’s an opportunity, and you know this better than most people to find side gigs to explore and experiment with other sources of revenue in addition to your current job. So there’s, are you familiar with the story Adam Grant shared about him being approached by the founders of Warby Parker to invest in their company?

Pat Flynn: No.

Derek Coburn: I think it’s from Originals. And he was teaching a couple of these kids and they came to him to invest in the very first round they were doing and they were all in school. And Adam’s like, I’m not gonna invest my money with you all ’cause you’re not really focused on building this business yet. And they came back to him a year later after they graduated, only one of the three was gonna be working full-time at Warby Parker.

And the other two got actual jobs at consulting and I think investment firms. And he, once again, he’s like, I’m not gonna, if you aren’t all in, then I’m not going to give you my money. And then he’s like, of course, that’s the worst financial decision that I ever made. And it led him to digging up some research that showed two groups of entrepreneurs.

The first group were folks who left their job, left a source of income to go all in on a new venture, and the second group maintained the source of income that they had while starting this new venture. And the second group was significantly more likely to succeed with their business. And the conclusion that Adam Grant drew from this was, even though entrepreneurs are often associated with being great risk takers, they’re actually really great risk mitigators.

And by having some steady revenue coming in while you’re starting your new thing can allow you to build that in more of a pure way and more of an enjoyable way in, in a way where you’re not working with people that aren’t a good fit, making exceptions for clients. And so I think that there’s an opportunity to explore something like that.

Pat Flynn: You know, that’s a really interesting thought because we have a lot of students in our community who do work a nine to five job, but they’re working on a side hustle and they, we, they’ve found success and I think a lot of that is a result of not having the stress of that risk that you take by going all in, where almost every decision is life or death at that point, which can make it tough to make a decision.

And then you start to see people procrastinate or kind of not publish the thing because they’re worried about it being perfect. ’cause every part of it matters versus, well, I’m gonna try this, but you know, I have a escape route or plan B just in case. And it’s just really interesting that you call that out because we often feel like in order to make it work, we have to go all in on it and it’s either all in or nothing.

And so that’s where people get into trouble. And I remember Chip and Dan Heath wrote a book called Decisive, how we as humans just have this binary thinking of things. It’s either a yes or a no or all in or all out, but there’s a lot of happy mediums in there that we wanna explore. And that’s where I love that you brought up the idea of that side hustle of that thing.

And so that can happen as an offshoot of the work that you’re already doing, or it could be something that you’ve have once had in your life that you wanna go back to, like maybe singing and teaching singing lessons, or whatever it might be. I think the most important thing is to just, to just try that and to try to have fun and just kind of experiment and explore.

And again, because you have your job that you’re already doing, there’s less risk and therefore you could do it for the good fun part of it. Also, not just for, well, I gotta make this work, and then you end up maybe succeeding in a business that you don’t even really enjoy.

Derek Coburn: For sure. I did this in 2010. I had about 300 wealth management clients and I was looking around at a lot of the advisors that were 10, 15 years, my senior, and they all had like 2000 clients and didn’t really love working with the majority of them and, and I was starting to, to sense that I got really good at growing in the early years, but I ended up with a lot of clients who weren’t taking my advice or who were questioning everything and just wasn’t an enjoyable experience for me. And so I like the good old 80 20 rule. I, I went down to 75 clients from 300, and then my wife and I started a community called Cadre, which we still lead today for CEOs and entrepreneurs.

And we’ve always done a really nice job curating that. And I never had a great answer for why the curation was so good until one day I blurted out the revenue that I generate from my wealth management business, pays my bills, and allows me to be really picky about who we bring in to the community. And then it works the other way as well.

And so one of the really nice ancillary benefits that I found out pretty quickly with having two businesses going side by side at the same time, is that I could be more selective and more choosy and more demand, yeah, of the people that I was working with in a way that I’m not sure that I would have the courage or the confidence to do if I had just maintained one thing.

Pat Flynn: That is so correct and. For example, I’m doing a lot of stuff in the Pokemon space right now, and I’ve built that into its own business, and the YouTube channels exploded to a couple million subscribers. And you know, I have a lot of people come my way throwing money at this brand because it reaches so many people. And I could say no to all of them.

And I, I get to work with who I wanna work with because I have SPI and all these other things that are happening in the background as well, you know, that is supporting me revenue-wise, where, you know, a lot of people recently asked me like, Pat, how did you mentally approach the Pokemon stuff to make it so successful?

And I said, I just did it because I wanted to have fun, not because I wanted to turn into a business, and that’s why it turned into a successful business.

Derek Coburn: Amazing. Yeah.

Pat Flynn: So I think that there’s a lot of lessons to be learned, whether that business you have now is a nine to five, or a current more automated business that you have that you wanna work on and have other itches that you wanna scratch.

And you know, as long as you kind of contain that curiosity and maybe work on one additional new thing at a time, you can explore and find new avenues. What are some of the other obstacles that people have when it comes to their future planning that maybe red flags or things to look out for.

Derek Coburn: We can get into some of the specifics from a financial planning perspective if you want.

I will say that you had brought this up earlier, 401k plans became all the rage and I would argue are still all the rage, mainly because of this idea that you get to put away money right now, while you are working at your current tax rate, and when you pull the money out, since you’re not gonna be working, you’re likely going to be in a lower tax rate.

So the arbitrage works in your favor. By doing that. Well, once somebody realizes that there’s a chance they’re gonna be working into their seventies or maybe even longer then, then maybe it doesn’t check out. And maybe it’s not the no-brainer choice that we think it is right now, because maybe you’re gonna be making even more money and maybe once you throw in the fact that you are gonna be required to start pulling money out of these accounts when you’re 70 and a half and pay taxes on them, that you could potentially be in a, in a higher tax bracket.

And so I’m not saying that they’re bad, I’m just saying that. I, most people, when I meet them, they have the majority of their savings for retirement saved in accounts that are subject to income taxes on the way out, and they’re not utilizing things like Roth IRAs or standard brokerage accounts that will ultimately be taxed differently. And so I, I’m always a big fan of, of preaching the importance of diversifying how your money’s ultimately going to be taxed. The same way that we would preach the importance of diversifying your assets between different asset classes. Because you know, let’s say you get to 75 and you know, tax rates are right now historically low. I mean, they’re, they’re quite low. They could end up being a lot higher 20 or 30 years from now. If you have money in accounts that are tax free, when you pull the money out, you have a lot more flexibility with the way you get to use and spend your money than if you have the majority of it in accounts that are subject to income taxes.

You’re sort of at the whim of whatever the government decides at the time. That makes sense.

Pat Flynn: And I mean, you had mentioned it and I, I was gonna bring it up, but the, the Roth, which it gets text on the way in, so that’s of benefit, so that by the time it grows and then you know you still want your money working for you.

Right? We’re not saying keep everything in savings. We’re saying let’s put it into different places that are based on the future that we want, and also have the ability to have that life that you want now too, not just, not just wait till later. So the Roth is great in brokerage accounts and thankfully I’ve gotten into those as well.

So it’s still important to think about the money coming in and not just spend it all, we need to kind of smartly. Do you find that there’s clients who maybe get eyes wide open when you tell ’em about this and they’re like, oh, I don’t need to save for retirement. I can just spend everything now.

Derek Coburn: Yeah, we don’t wanna do that, you know.

But I do think that there are other things that you might want to consider saving for that you previously hadn’t considered. So you mentioned earlier 18 summers, which a lot of us have heard that. My friends Jim and Jamie Shields kind. Talked about that a little bit and wrote a book about it and, but what I, what I believe and what I feel is like if we do those 18 summers really well, then we’re gonna get a lot more than just 18 summers.

And my North Star in life is that I wanna make choices right now that are going to increase the likelihood that my kids are gonna want to spend more time with me when they’re adults. And I do see certain scenarios where my kids are at different parts of the country and they’re working different jobs and maybe they married someone, maybe there’s some tension in our family at a given time for whatever reason.

And I think that our ability to be able to, to say, Hey, we’re planning this amazing trip and maybe we do it every year and it’s so seductive and it seems so amazing that they’re gonna just drop whatever they’re doing and show up to spend time with the family. And so I think that’s something where, you know, it’s not something that a lot of people are thinking about saving for or, or something that they’re thinking that they’re gonna spend their money on if they keep working.

But I think for people like you and me, like our ability to plan these amazing trips for like our kids and our grandkids is a way to get our families together for epic experiences, you know, every single year is a pretty cool way to think about how we’re gonna use our money.

Pat Flynn: I’d rather have that than a whole load of money for me to do what?

When I turn 65, I would just do the same things I’d probably be doing. I would just have more money. Like, like what else? It doesn’t like unlock anything for me to have a whole load of retirement money now available at 65, in my opinion that that’s what I’ve always thought.

Derek Coburn: The last chapter of my book is called Investing in You. And I essentially say, hopefully, by now I’ve convinced you there’s a good chance maybe you’re gonna work longer than what you previously thought.

And here are some of the ways I would think about investing that money in a non-traditional way, but in a way that could ultimately lead to more money for you. And I talk about everything from how I’ve spent $250,000 on couples therapy for my wife and I over the past 20 years. And most of that time is spent talking about how to deal with people that aren’t in therapy, but should be.

But it’s allowed us to carve out an Ability to communicate really effectively. And so I’ve stopped short of putting that into a calculator to see what it’d be worth right now if I would’ve been saving that money. But here I’m at 48, just an amazing place with the relationship that I have with my wife and creating from that place of being clear and feeling loved and feeling secure in that relationship.

And I think, you know, I think that ultimately. The best person for anyone to be getting advice from is the best and most optimized version of themselves. And I think a lot of people are just a far cry, the person that’s maybe working the job that they don’t like, that’s feeling the stress, that’s feeling the anxiety, maybe they hear what I’m saying and they realize they can take a few months off to catch the breath.

They can start sleeping better. They can start going to the gym more. They can start investing more time with their kids and then this version of them that’s showing up, even though they might be spending less time at the quote unquote office, they’re a different person showing up with different ideas, different creativity, different energy, that a lot of times and the data supports us, can lead to them making more money.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, absolutely. Derek, this has been eye-opening, I’m sure for so many listeners, and it’s gonna be something that I feel many people listening to this may bring to their spouse and their partners and say, Hey, let’s listen to this together so that we can have these honest discussions about what we’re doing with our money and where we wanna go, and what could we do now?

It’s very similar to, I heard a, a, a buddy of mine took an Uber to an airport recently and he was telling me this story after we got together and he said he likes asking questions about people’s dreams and ask the Uber driver what he wanted to do. And he said he really wished he could just spend more time with his kids and that’s why he was working to spend more time with his kids.

Anyway, just long story short, the thing he wanted to do, he already had the ability to do it. He was just in automation mode and it kind of brought the Uber driver to tears because he had felt like he was wasting all this time when he could have already done this stuff, where he thought he had to have all this money to be able to do it.

There were things that they could do that cost no money that they could do now to still bond and, and all that stuff. Anyway. Just this un automation component is, is sort of a theme of, of my book Lean Learning, a theme with yours as well. Like, let’s zoom out a little bit and really start thinking about where we’re at and what we wanna do.

And I, I appreciate you really going head on with something that’s sort of been ingrained in us, which is retirement and kind of thinking about that very differently. Derek, where can people go to grab your book and where might you recommend they go to see more of you?

Derek Coburn: Yeah, my website, DerekCoburn.com is a great place.

It’ll have links for where you can buy the book, and I’m still writing a lot. I don’t know about you, but I had this period where after I turned in my final manuscript, I started getting more ideas and different ideas. And I had this week where I was like sad because I didn’t include them in my book. And a few of my friends, like, I think you have some mutual friends like Marcus Sheridan and Joey Coleman, they gave me a pep talk and said, this is gonna continue to happen. So I’ve been writing and adding to it, and I would just love to, to find people that the message is resonating with and continue to share with them and, and hopefully put them in a position where they can show up more present right now to make a impact and live the life that they wanna live right now.

Pat Flynn: Amen to that. Thank you, Derek.  DerekCoburn.com. Go get the book. Thank you so much for your time today.

Derek Coburn: Thanks, Pat. This was great.

Pat Flynn: All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Derek Coburn, author of Let’s Retire Retirement. He also has a co-author, Sara Stibitz, who is on that book as well, and she wasn’t able to join us today, but incredible.

Hopefully this is inspiring and gives you some thoughts, and like I said in the episode, something that you and your partner should listen to. And re-listen to, to have these serious discussions about, well, what is important now and what is important later, and are you putting resources into things that can help you enjoy life today?

So thank you so much to Derek. Thank you for listening all the way through. I hope this was a eyeopener for you because even in the conversation itself, it was an eyeopener for me. Thank you so much and I’ll see you in the next episode. Cheers.