Do you hate the thought of working past 55 or 60 do you hate not being able to live the life you deserve today? Do you hate not knowing what your financial future looks like? It's time to stop doing what you hate, here's your host, Mr. Harold Green.
00:20 Hello and welcome everyone. By now we're probably a few weeks into the new year and hopefully it's going really, really well for you. And I'm super excited for the new year and know the new things that it's going to bring. And just really a super excited time around new year's. Now I'm sure you've made your new year's resolutions and hopefully you will be able to see them through. But for me, I stopped making new year's resolutions because I, I just couldn't keep them to be honest. Things would always pop up and you know, kick me on track. So what I did was every time I realized something needed to change in my life, I took some time out. I took a day off and just thought through what I needed to do and put myself on a path to just making some simple progress in that area every single week. And that's how I, how I built rapid retiree.
01:14 It was a week by week, month by month, and a year by year. Now you may be saying, Harold, I can't afford to take time off or take a day off. And I understand that. And when I ask clients to come in for their checkups, some of them tell me just that right now I just can't afford to take time off. So I'm open. I'm open on Saturdays just because a, understand how they feel and I've been there. So even if you can't take the day off you, you still have days off, right? You don't work seven days a week and, and hopefully you don't. It's just a matter of how and where you're investing your time and your talents. Let's get into today's show. Don't be stupid. Save for retirement. A very wise man once said, when you waste your time and talent, you're in Vegas, you're investing in a future of poverty.
02:03 Let me say that again. When you, when you waste your time and talents, you are investing in a future of poverty. Now I'm going to go back and back up for a second and change my show title because I don't think it should be. Don't be stupid, safer retirement. I think it's don't be stupid. Invest wisely for retirement. Why you see, I think there's a very big difference between saving and investing for retirement and I'm sure you know that, but why do mostly everyone say, how much are you saving for retirement or are you saving for retirement? Now the grand differences investments have a certain level of risk. Saving money also has a level of risk, but as it sec, it's extremely low. Now on pure investments lose money. You may or not get that back right depend on view, hold it or or when you sell it.
02:57 It just all depends. Only way you lose your savings is if someone steals it or the bank goes under. Now if the bank goes under, your money is insured up to a certain amount, so you get the point right. It's all about the level of risk and on my next show I'm going to talk about how investing is so easy. Even a monkey can do it. All right? It's that time again. So one, two, three, let's get it now. Last time I talked about the percentage of people who won't have what they need to last them throughout their retirement. It was roughly 97% that's a big number. Why is it that, why is that? Why is it that only 97% of the people or 3% of the people in this country has enough while the other 97% don't? When I was presenting on paying for college, I would, I would send out this invite to invite parents to come and attend, you know, identify function that we had and I would, I would speak on saving for college and all the different things that people go through when faced with paying for college.
04:00 And the title on the invite went like the 73% of parents say that sending their kids to college was more important than saving for retirement, but they had no plan to pay for it. Now, if something was that important, should the person have some kind of plan to pay for it as it's like taking a trip, a road trip across America with no navigation system. Now, let me give you a piece of fiduciary advice that's going to save your life. Your financial plan is your navigation system. It will keep you on track and when things present themselves, okay, things come up or people bring things your way and you confused, you're not sure what to do, always go back to your plan. Now, that's a big problem because a lot of people don't have a plan. They have ideas. They have ideas on how they're going to say we're investing for retirement.
04:49 They have ideas on how they're going to do certain things, but they don't have a step by step plan that's guaranteed to work every single time with little to no risk. All right, we'll talk about some of that. Ultimate later on. But we all know that retirement is important, but many people, they just simply, they don't have a plan to pay for it. And I watch TV, I read the internet just like everybody else do. I consume information and I heard something from one of the talking heads on a investment show that I was watching, I think it was last night. And they said roughly 40% of Americans have less than $400 in the bank. Wow. What my ex-coworker from Memphis, he had this funny saying and you know, every time something would be weird or strange or not going a certain way, he would say, what y'all doing out there mind is just slang term.
05:37 But the economy is supposed to be booming, right? Unemployment is supposed to be at an all time higher, a all time low. Right? But the, the, the numbers are true. But what it doesn't consider as the number of crappy jobs that have been created. So a lot of people, quite frankly, are underemployed. They're working two, three, sometimes four jobs, depending on, you know, how bad things are for them. So number one, why people don't have enough to retire on is they just don't make enough to pay their bills and to put money away. A lot of people in this country are still living paycheck to paycheck. You know, they keep finding themselves stuck in a vicious cycle of just trying to make ends meet. Now I want to be honest, I don't think, I don't think this is you, my listener, but if it is, I have some good news for you, things to be honest with you, they don't have to stay this way.
06:28 I live paycheck to paycheck for years and it wasn't fun. It was hard and I don't know what your religious background is and I'm not going to get into that with you, but you know, I just want to take a minute and share something that that happened to me. Now I've always wanted to own my own business, but I just wasn't sure where to start, where to turn. And so I, I did like everybody else. I just winged it and you know what? I tried and it failed miserably. It felt like the worst possible time because my wife was eight months pregnant and we had a five-year-old and we fell on some, some really hard times. And to be honest with you through a lot of prayer and just, you know, plain old, not giving up. I finally got a decent job, but it didn't, it didn't pay that much, but it was a step in the right direction.
07:17 And so once I got that job, I started to set some goals. And then as a side note, now I live in a place that I used to drive by quite often. When I worked that job, I would go on outside sales calls and I would go visit clients in their homes when I worked for this company and I would, I would go to some really nice houses and you know, the next thing you know, I just began to look at that and look at that and I got that in my head that, you know, maybe someday I too could, could, could live there. Did I set a plan for it? No. But it was just something that was always in my mind. But anyway, nothing hard, just setting some simple goals in or before I knew it, my mind began to do some crazy things.
07:58 You know, my mind started leading me to things in places that would help me achieve my goals. And quite frankly, I really think you tend to get what you focus on the most. You focus on the positive, you go and get the positive, you focus on the negative, you're going to get the negative. And so one Friday morning before work, you know, I used to have this ritual that, you know, I would get up very early in the morning and I would go and you know, do some Bible study and just kind of, you know, focus my mind on, you know, things of the day, things of work, my future, where I wanted to be. And I was in my early twenties still. And throughout that process, my mind simply led me to a Bible study hosted by a very successful businessman here in Hawaii. And his Bible study was held outdoors in a park where homeless people slept.
08:47 So I was like, okay, this is going to be interesting. We've got a homeless people and around here and there, but you know, I got some goals and I just want to see what this is all about. Now I'm not sure how it's going to help me at this point, but I, I went there anyway. I attended some really nice folks, was there and what I heard, it didn't come from the speaker but from a lawyer who was there and it was after everything was over and we're just kinda out there hanging around, mingling. She said, you know, the first step in getting anywhere financially is counting the cost or creating a budget. Have you sat down and figured out a budget, what goes in and what goes out? And I said, no, I mean, you know, we don't make a lot of money.
09:24 So I, we know what goes in and what goes out and it's just not enough. And she said, well, you're going to have to sit down and put that down on paper. And so again, I, I knew about budgeting, but more importantly, this was about being accountable for every single dime that came in to my wallet and out of my wallet. The bottom line is that I had to stop being lazy and pretending like I didn't know any better because I did essentially, or I was in my life at that point. It was my own fault. So long story short, my wife and I, we did it. We sat down and we started budgeting. I didn't like it because it exposed areas of my financial life where, you know, I was out simply being stupid. So I had to humble myself and we kept at it.
10:08 And before I knew it, I had, I started another business that also ended up failing. But as soon as that one failed, you know what I did? I took what I had love, which was, which was about $238 and I started a new business that eventually evolved into my current firm, which is bright tree financial group where we dream plan and we accomplish it. So it's not how you start. It's how you finish. And if you're faithful in the little things, you're definitely going to have opportunities to handle much greater things. Now you all know that, but why are so many people still struggling to put away for retirement? The second reason I think is, is just too hard. I just shared some of my story and it was really hard and we had no money to put away and save for retirement. It was buying formula, buying diapers, paying rent, you know, all of those things that that young couples do.
11:00 And that's why when I talk to young kids today, I really sit them down and share with them how important it is to plan your future plan, your family. Things are not just supposed to happen. You have to plan these things out. My kids, you know, they came home for Christmas and the new year, and I really sat them down and I just shared with them all over again what the moral of the story is and what they need to do to make sure they don't repeat some of the same stupid mistakes that I made. And number three, people can't save or put away for retirement because they just simply make bad financial choices. Now, along my journey, I've made some bad financial choices and choices and some, some very bad investments, you know, from the type of cars I bought to the places we lived. And I've always been a big dreamer, but I've been a big dreamer without having you know, the solid plans to, to help me, you know, achieve those dreams in the right way.
12:00 You see, I just didn't know what I didn't know. Again, I didn't know what I didn't know I was financially illiterate. At some point I was financially ignorant and someday I'll tell you the story about how I actually got into financial planning, but when it comes to investing for retirement, if you can put away money, you're going to be faced with a lot of different options. So let's go through some of them and take a look. The 401k is the 401k the right thing for you to do. We talked earlier about companies automatically enrolling people and therefore one K's. Is that right or not? You're investing in something and you have no plan should you put away 10 to 15% of your income for retirement, but then ended up like so many people having to finance the rest of their way through life with death, right?
12:43 So I see that all the time. People come in the office, they have, you know, they have homes that are worth millions of dollars or a million and a half or whatever it might be, and they have a lot of equity in the property. And then they also have maybe half a million dollars in their IRAs, 401ks TSPs pensions or whatever. But the problem is is that they don't have a plan. They have a lot of money in retirement, retirement accounts, but they don't have a plan. They don't have a plan and pay for college because the mentality is saved money for retirement. Get the house paid off. Question is is, is that the right way for you to go the stock market? Is it the right thing for you to do? Should you just buy a bunch of mutual funds and then set it and forget it? Should you buy into the hype of the stock market is really hot right now?
13:28 Should you do that or not? Is it the right thing to do? Annuities? Should you put some of your money in annuities because they promise you a stream of income for the rest of your life? Is that a good strategy? Right or wrong? Who knows? By the way, how big is that stream of income? I hear a lot of seniors, they talk about, again, being on a fixed income, a lot of seniors have annuities because they're safe. You know, they, a lot of them guarantee your principle and you're never going to lose, but at the same time inflation is still there. Inflation is, it is, there is 3% or so and it's going to continue to eat into that stream of fixed payments. And so we got to figure out a way to create a stream of income that is constantly rising to meet the rising cost.
14:13 That is very important. I understand it's one thing to be safe and to have concerns, but you know, if you're working with the right type of fiduciary and they have your best interest in mind, they should be setting up your accounts based on a short term, intermediate and a longterm mindset. The truth is is you know you, if you have all your money on safe mode and you retire, all right, you retire and you're getting 3% because it's not a lot of risks. You have your whole entire portfolio set at low risk. You're eventually going to run into what they call a portfolio failure. And that's why investment advisors are trying to stick with a 3% withdrawal rate. And we'll kind of talk about that in the next show about investing, but you have to understand whether or not those things are right for you.
14:55 Again, life insurance, is that right for you? Should you try and invest and save through a life insurance policy? There are a lot of pros and cons about life insurance. We'll talk about life insurance in a later show, but I, I believe it's one of the best things that you can do along with having a solid financial plan where you know that life insurance policy is the foundation of your financial plan and you're building on top of that. Nobody builds a house without laying down a slab of concrete. You know, you've heard the story about the man who built his house on the sand and the man who built his house on the rock and things like that, right? Where are you building your financial future? That's very important. Real estate. Should you start trying to buy and flip real estate? I see these TV shows and it looks cool, right?
15:38 A lot of them, they do make money. It's time consuming. But it is that your thing. Do you have gifts and talents in that area? Now, as you can see, there are a lot of things you can do and only, and I only mentioned I handful of them, here's the problem. You really can't decide where to invest until you have a financial plan that guides your investment strategy. Otherwise, I feel you're gambling because you have no idea how it's gonna turn out. And that's why only 3% of people in this country are going to have enough to last them their entire lives. Everybody else is gambling. So I want you in that 3% and I'm sure you want to be in that 3% but you know what, you're gonna have to make some changes. And I'm five touched on some things you're currently dealing with and you want some help.
16:23 Do me a favor and go to retire now, retire while.com and download that rapid retire brochure. Complete the game changer forum. And I'll get in touch with you, okay? To help you stop doing some of the stuff that you hate. So if you're tired of making new year's resolutions that you can't keep us, find a way to stop that. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, and I know a lot of people are and it's a very out how to stop that. Okay. If you've been making bad investment choices with your money, let's figure out how to stop that now and using rapid retire, there's going to be no guarantees made that you will be in a position to retire seven to 10 years sooner or any specific period of time. Results of the program will vary and past performance is no guarantee of future results. All investments, including real estate, are speculative in nature and involves substantial risk of loss. We encourage our investors to invest carefully. We encourage our investors to get personal advice from their own professional investment advisor and to make independent investigations before acting on any information of [inaudible] in our shows. Until next time, one, two, three. That's good.
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