The 7 Worries Of Retirement

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Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Medicare, IRAs, long-term care, life insurance, investments, and taxes. Now, let's get started with Finishing Well. Well, welcome to Finishing Well with certified financial planner, Hans Scheil. And man, what a fun show we get to do today because almost every show you've ever heard us, in fact, every show you've ever heard us talk about has to do with the seven worries that are in Hans' book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning, Foreign Living, and Retirement, the seven worries of retirement. And so today's show, we're gonna explain those. But, you know, as I was thinking about this, Hans, I just couldn't help but relate that God loves that number seven.

He just does. And one of my favorite passages in the Bibles, in Isaiah 11, we see that God has seven spirits, or there are seven spirits that are actually the flames in Revelation that are before the throne of God. And we see those in Isaiah 11 are the anointings that Christ would receive, and those anointings in order are wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, fear of the Lord, and delight in the fear of the Lord. And so it's fascinating to me that all those are very much connected from a standpoint of, let's just take wisdom. For example, the Bible will tell you that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Well, you can see you just hit three of the spirits of God with just that one fear of the Lord. And understanding and all those things are very much related. But that's exactly the case with your seven.

Well, it is. I mean, we go through Social Security, Medicare, long-term care, IRA 401k, money you haven't paid taxes on yet, but you will, retirement income and not running out of it, estate planning and life insurance, and then income taxes. So there's seven of them. And what I've been wanting to do throughout this whole journey, or we can call it a ministry, is to get people to look at all seven of these things when they're approaching or they're in retirement. And the danger in my business is people are going to come to me about the most burning issue as they see it. And it's tempting, and I do this on my part, where I'm going to use Medicare, and I'm going to throw out Medicare as a subject because people want to talk about it.

I'm very knowledgeable about it, and it's a way to bring people in the door and to solve a problem for them. But yet it troubles me when we just take care of somebody's Medicare and we don't do anything more for them. And we need to have a discussion about the other six. And it's not just with Medicare.

I want to get the people that work for me in my office. And Tom's pretty tuned into this, but everybody that's doing this and our clients thinking about their retirement in terms of the seven worries. So I want to put it back to you, Robbie, because I want to finish the discussion of the seven.

Yeah, well, it's beyond cool to me. When you think about the connection between these ideas is that, for example, if you say these seven, wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, fear of the Lord, delight in the fear of the Lord, all those things are connected from a standpoint of you're going to need every piece of that puzzle, but in order to be the complete package. And God used that number seven to do things completely. You got a seven-day week as a complete week. And so the seven spirits of God is going to get a job done completely, which brings, by the way, that idea of peace.

Shalom in Hebrew has to do with completeness, and completeness has to do with that number seven. And so in the same way, from my standpoint, in order to get the total package, which we know Jesus is the total package, right? You got to have, you know, these seven ideas of reality, you know, that you're connected with. And so I love how Jesus brings us into a reality based on, you know, these seven ideas. But again, what you've done through your book, through your ministry, through the radio show, is try to bring up somebody's reality to what's real, because there are certain things that we all would like to avoid, like death and taxes, and you got both of them in the seven-way. Tom Well, sure, and long-term care.

I mean, let's throw that in there. Yeah, it's just, this is a complete way of looking at the problem, which is we're retiring if we're going to stop earning an income from work, we have certain assets, we have things we've accumulated, things we've prepared and gotten ready, but we've got a number of problems facing us that we need to look at beforehand and prepare for so that we can have a very enjoyable and fruitful retirement. And so this is really something that you can tie to me and to tie to God. I mean, I just, what I am just struck by is I wasn't thinking about the seven spirits when I designed the seven worries. In fact, I wasn't even thinking about the number seven. I was just writing this down in outline form, even before I stopped my business, started my business of what are the subjects that I am and want to be a specialist in? What are the seven items or things or problems or worries or whatever we're going to call them?

What are the seven things or what are the categories, the main categories? So this was designed over time. And it just, what strikes me is that God is at work with all of us all the time. And so even though I'm not consciously aware of the hand of God and the preparation and the development of the whole structure that I use to put forth retirement planning, God's there all along. And through you and through our relationship and doing this radio show, I'm learning a lot.

Darrell Bock Yeah, me too. Undoubtedly, that's the beautiful thing about it. And I can't help but note, you know, just to kick it off, right, that the first of the seven spirits is wisdom. And your first is social security for a lot of reasons. Social security is a basis as is wisdom on, you know, the whole process.

Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. Well, and so, you know, social security affects everything about your retirement. Okay, every piece of your retirement, all seven of the worries, it affects it. And it doesn't matter whether you're rich, whether you're poor, whether you're somewhere in between.

Everybody in this country that's a citizen that works, and even if they don't work, if there's a spouse of somebody that did work, they're entitled to a social security check. And that social security check is fundamental to the whole retirement. It's where we start.

It's position number one. But when we get that when we get that taken care of, when we get the decisions made, it just doesn't go away. It affects the other six.

And it affects every single one of them. And as we go through this, and we do a financial plan for somebody, or we're just serving them with Medicare. I mean, when you're on worry number two, Medicare, when you're signing up for Medicare, you know where you go to do that? Dr. Darrell Bock Social security? Dr. Darrell Bock SSA.gov. I mean, you're at the Social Security Administration. Dr. Darrell Bock Now that I'm remembering, yeah, it's exactly, you know, exactly where you do it. And it's fascinating to me that the relationship again, between wisdom and understanding the first two spirits of God is it's, they're very much connected, that wisdom is this idea of aha, but then you got to be able to apply that somehow with understanding. And so it's fascinating that, you know, that your first two are connected in such a way to Social Security and Medicare, which are both, you know, just point right to the season of life that people are at when they're finishing well, right?

Dr. Darrell Bock Well, sure. And then let's just go to number three, which is long term care, like long term care is who's going to take care of you? How are you going to be taken care of when you can't take care of yourself anymore?

And I'm not talking about laying in a hospital bed. I'm talking about where you need help with the activities of daily living, just getting about your day, there's most of us, we just take for granted that we can get up, get out of bed, go downstairs, make coffee, walk the dog, get showered, get ready for the day, get dressed, go on about our day, get out to the car, drive somewhere, just that people take that for granted. And there's a point in most of our lives, where we're no longer going to be able to do that stuff without assistance, or some level of it. And then that's the third worry that people struggle, I get a lot of people just want to skip right over that one. Ah, you know, look, Social Security affects that. Because when we start paying for that stuff, the first place we're going to go for money, when we start paying for home health care, when we start paying for an aid to come into your home and take care of you, the first place we're going to go for money, if you're 85 years old, is your Social Security check.

And second place is Medicare, by the way. And so you end up with that third one, which by the way, getting back to the spirits of God, the third one is, is, is counsel. And the idea of counsel, really, when you look at that word deeply in Hebrew, which I love to look at words, has to do with picking the right path. And often, our inability to see that the path we're on is not actually a reality. And that was what really happened with me and my ideas of long term care is I had no idea of what reality was. So I actually needed counsel for somebody to put me on the right path to know, okay, you've been avoiding this idea of incapacitation. And you've been avoiding, you know, something you don't want to think about when you're 30. But when you're 65 or 66, all of a sudden, these things start to come into view. And you need counsel.

You need somebody to show you a path that would be good for your family and all those things. So it just, it's amazing to me how these things line up. Well, if you come to me, I've got a box I'm going to check. And if you just tell me, no, I'm not talking about it. I don't want to do anything. I'm going to say, great, we just need to have a short discussion. I'm going to check the box.

You'll never hear from me again. But we're going to talk about it. And I do that. And I move a lot of people in that short discussion, saying this plan that we're doing for you is incomplete.

And you're not even going to know it was incomplete, because when it happens to you, a lot of times you're just focused on other things. And you're just, you're much older, and your kids are much older. And they're the ones that are going to bear the brunt of that if you haven't prepared for this properly.

Yeah, that's why we call you the goad. You're going to bring us into reality, which is good counsel, you know, it really is. It's really, really good counsel.

I love the discussions we've had on long term care have been really, really helpful. So what's next? Well, the next one is IRA 401k, money you haven't paid taxes on yet.

Okay. And, you know, you're looking at it, it's a balance to you, you don't have to take any money out now till 73. And maybe if you're still working, you're still adding to it. It probably took a hit in 2022. But you still you've got this hunk of money, and you haven't paid taxes on it yet.

But now when you retire, or when that day comes, you're probably going to need to pull out a little bit of that, or a lot of it or something every year to live off of. We had to go to a break, but you can see where we came right through it. It's amazing to me how amazingly God connects things.

It's just absolutely beautiful. And as you can see, we've got a lot more to go. We want to remind you the show is brought to you by cardinalguide.com. That's cardinalguide.com, where you're going to see a seven worries tab, and you're going to see what these are. And again, there'll be show notes about today's show, all sorts of interesting stuff to look at there at cardinalguide.com, as well as the book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living in Retirement, which again, is based on these seven worries.

We'll be right back. Well, welcome back to Finishing Well, a certified financial planner, Hans Scheil, and today's show, The Seven Worries of Retirement Explained. How fun, along with the Seven Spirits of God from Isaiah 11. And so we had finished up through wisdom, understanding, counsel, might. And so those were the first four of God, and yours were? Social Security, Medicare, long-term care, and IRA 401k.

All right. So what's up next? Next is lifetime income and investment. So now we're not—this includes your IRA 401k back from number four, but it also includes your other savings, and it includes your social security check, because that's income. It includes any pensions that you've qualified for, and it generally includes any money that we have separate from that, or your 401k. It's your retirement income, the money you're going to live off of, and then the money you're going to pay taxes on some of it, because you can't live off the tax money. So it's all of those factors, and the real focus in this section is around avoiding getting into your 80s and running out of money.

Yeah. And fascinatingly, of course, you know, the next one on God's list is knowledge, which is really cool. When you think about knowledge from a standpoint of income, it's something you get day by day. Hopefully, you've never stopped learning, right? And you get it as you go through as long as you employ yourself. You know what I'm saying? If you're trying to get knowledge, you'll get it.

If you're trying to get income, you can get it, but if you don't employ yourself, you got nothing. Well, yeah. And so if you have this lifetime income, and we've projected that, and then we have to decide when you might pass away, and then when your spouse might pass away, and those are all statistics. But what happens if you live beyond that? Okay, the one thing, and we spent all your money in the plan, or you spent all your money, and we've accounted for that. So to put you at ease a little bit, your social security check is not going to stop until you die.

Okay. I mean, so that's nice. And we also can use income annuities. They also pay you a monthly check, just like your social security, and they don't stop till you die.

Even if the principal inside of the annuity gets down to zero, they're still sending checks. So I mean, that's a whole area. And then within that area, we talk about investment. Some people think that's all we do, is we invest people's money. And that's a piece, and it's important piece, but it's a part of this fifth worry where we're investing for income purposes.

Right? And so number six? Number six, estate planning and life insurance. So what's going to happen to your stuff after you pass away? And if you're married, and you're a married couple, we've got to take a look at the first benefactor of the state is going to be the surviving spouse. And you may think you know which one of the two of you that's going to be, but it may be completely different.

All right, and here you go. Number six, fear of the Lord. And so I think that lines up beautifully, in that, oh my goodness, we do need to realize that at some point in time, we're going to need Jesus. And that's the estate that not only do we move into, but our whole family is the estate plan. Like, what happens after you die?

If there ever was a place where you need the fear of the Lord, let me just explain. I mean, I have this estate plan, and the main one, you know, is obviously, you know, is asking Jesus in your heart. So that's pretty cool that they line up so beautifully.

Well, they do. And, you know, the last one on my of the seven, the number seven, is income taxes. And I actually put it last, because I don't like it to be first. When people come to me and they view me as a tax avoidance guy, or whatever, or they just, in their own deal, they want to minimize their taxes, that's a worthy goal. But if it's your whole deal, which it is for some people, we need to have a discussion about that. And one of the ways I do that in the discussion is I wait to make them wait until the very end to hear about the tax plan I'm going to cook up for them. It's number seven. So I just want to put it in its proper order.

But then it's an important thing to talk about. Yeah, and it's actually my favorite of the seven spirits of God is this one. And it lines up perfectly with taxes, in my opinion, which you're gonna find this a little bit distasteful at first, but work with me here. The last of the seven of spirits of God is a delight in the fear of the Lord. And the concept of a delight in the fear of the Lord is, man, my dad is so big and bad, I don't really have to worry about a thing, okay?

Because when you realize that God is who He is, and if He loves you, nothing can go against you, you got it made. Well, taxes fit into that category for me, right? I mean, that simply, you know, this is how the government runs, and these are things that are necessary for other people to get Social Security, for other people to get Medicare, and for other people to get the help they need, and that God has taken care of all of us through the way He's handling this, and my job is to figure out what my job is. You know, my job is to trust God and leave these tax situations to the people like you that can deal with that, but I love that that's the last one, and I think that it too has to do with your whole idea of being complete. Like, a complete plan would have to include taxes, and a complete plan, as far as God is concerned, is a part where do you trust Him at the end of all this plan? I mean, are you gonna trust Hans? Are you gonna trust God? You know, it's because without faith you can't please God.

It's not possible. So it's a big, big part of the complete plan is you gotta believe in the person that's doing the planning. Yeah, I mean, the government's gonna get their money, but it's possible to use their rules, and especially through charitable giving and giving to the church, and especially through QCDs for people that are over 70 and a half, but generally the government doesn't really need anybody to look out for them. The IRS does a pretty good job of that, and so what we're gonna be doing is looking out for you and trying to be smart about our taxes, and smart in such a way that you don't do things that cause you to pay an inordinate amount of tax, leaving you with enough retirement income to have an enjoyable retirement. So it's really cool. When people come to you to get their plan, right, you kind of sit there with your framework that you've devised, you know, as you've done your book and these radio shows, and so can you share with our listeners kind of the check-off things that you go through to kind of evaluate their situation?

Well, yeah, I mean, it's just I don't have a specific form that I use in what we call fact-finding or discovery. I just have a blueprint of these seven worries in my head, and I'm gonna start anywhere on the spectrum you want to start. If you're calling me about Medicare or long-term care or you're calling me about your 401k, we're gonna start there, and then we're gonna cover all seven of these. Now, I do a YouTube at Cardinal Advisors every week, and I do them in advance of the radio show, so if you want to go get the whole presentation on this, you go to Cardinal Advisors. Now, in that YouTube, I just gave you a couple pieces of advice on each worry, and I just want to go through that quickly. Like on Social Security, number one, think long-term.

Think about your 80s and 90s when you're making your decision about when you're going to start it, and then think about your spouse. Think about your spouse and the survivor, and think about the income taxes that you're gonna pay on your Social Security check. Now, if we go on to Medicare, you're gonna need to think about, do you want original Medicare and a supplement? Do you want to have that, or do you want managed care? Do you want to be in a deal where you gotta get approval, you gotta go into a network of doctors? There's advantages to both, but that's something with Medicare I want you thinking about.

It's one or the other. Do you want original Medicare, or do you want to go with the managed care? Think about Irma. Irma is the tax on the well-to-do for Medicare.

It's the Medicare tax, and think about the timing of your signup for Medicare and penalties. With long-term care, I want you to think about your family. Think about the people that are younger than you. Think about your spouse, and think about the situation they're gonna be in when they gotta look after your care. Think about making these decisions in a crisis, because that's when most people make them, is they're in the middle of a crisis.

And think about your spouse in that situation, and then if they outlive you, the same thing for them. IRA, 401k, I want you to think about beginning your distributions earlier than most people are gonna tell you. Beginning them in your 60s instead of waiting till you're 73. Think about Roth. Roth equals tax-free, and the ability to live off of tax-free income in retirement.

Think about QCDs, qualified charitable distributions, being able, over 70 and a half, to give money to the church and to do it in a very tax-advantaged way. Think about income taxes on your IRA, 401k, because the government's certainly thinking about it. It's like you have a mortgage on that money, and we need to have a plan to reduce the cost of that over your lifetime. When it comes to your retirement income, the fifth worry, let's think about lifetime income. Let's think about what you're gonna be living off in your 80s or 90s, or your spouse makes it that far.

I mean, the two of you, there's that possibility, maybe a probability, we need to be in good shape for then. Think about inflation, because that's really gonna affect you then if you're in your 50s or 60s or 70s now. With estate planning, don't think about just death, think about incapacity, because part of estate planning is that period of time where you're incapacitated, and somebody else has got to look after your estate and look after you, so there's a period of time included in that. We want to think about avoiding probate, and we have some simple ways that we can do that so that you don't have to have your money tied up for two years after you die, and you can use beneficiaries, that sort of thing. Think about your spouse survivor.

I mean, that's really the first priority is how is your spouse gonna make out after you pass away, and then vice versa. And then the last one is taxes. Know your tax bracket that you're in. I'm helping you, Robbie, with a little problem just personally, and that's one of the things I'm gonna do is put you in your tax bracket. We're gonna sit down and talk about that.

Know what yours is. I can help you with that. We have other videos on that. Know that your spouse survivor is gonna be in a much higher tax bracket, because once the first one dies in a married couple, you go from married filing jointly to a single filer, and the tax rates go way up. And we want to plan around that.

And then think about the taxes on Social Security, the income taxes, and think about the IRMA, the Medicare tax. Wow. It's a mouthful. But we ran out of time again before we ran out of show, so great stuff. We want to remind you, it's all there at cardinalguide.com, the seven worries tab, the book.

It's all there at cardinalguide.com. Thank you so much, Hans. Great show.

Thank you. The opinions expressed by Hans Scheil and guests on this show are their own and do not reflect the opinions of this radio station. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable, although it should not be relied upon as such.

Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Investments involve risk, and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Past performance cannot be used as an indicator to determine future results. Any strategies mentioned may not be suitable for everyone. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for you. Before acting on any information mentioned, please consult with a qualified tax or investment advisor to determine if it's suitable for your specific situation.

Finishing Whale is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject covered. Investment advisory services offered through Brookstone Capital Management LLC, abbreviated BCM, a registered investment advisor. BCM and Cardinal Advisors are independent of each other.

Insurance products and services are not offered through BCM but are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed agents. Cardinal Advisors is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Social Security Administration or any other government agency. We hope you enjoyed Finishing Whale, brought to you by cardinalguide.com. Visit cardinalguide.com for free downloads of this show or previous shows on topics such as Social Security, Medicare, IRAs, long-term care, life insurance, investments, and taxes, as well as Hans' best-selling book, The Complete Cardinal Guide to Planning for and Living in Retirement and The Workbook. Once again, for dozens of free resources, past shows, or to get Hans' book, go to cardinalguide.com. If you have a question, comment, or suggestion for future shows, click on The Finishing Whale radio show on the website and send us a word. Once again, that's cardinalguide.com. Cardinalguide.com. This is the Truth Network.