Taking Control Of Your Retirement With Roger Whitney

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Summary:

100 – Retirement planning can be stressful. From bloated retirement plans to risk management, it can be difficult to actually enjoy your retirement.

In this episode, Jeremy Keil celebrates the 100th episode of Retirement Revealed with guest Roger Whitney. The two discuss Roger’s business, Agile Retirement Management, along with his Rock Retirement book and Rock Retirement Club. Roger emphasizes the importance of an agile retirement plan approach and accepting uncertainty as a healthy part of retirement, which can ultimately reduce retirement planning stress and allow you to enjoy your retirement.

Roger discusses:

• How Agile Retirement Management makes retirement planning engaging for the client
• Why accepting uncertainty is a healthy part of retirement
• How priorities define the big picture
• His book, Rock Retirement: A Simple Guide to Help You Take Control and Be More Optimistic, and why he founded the Rock Retirement Club
• And more

4 Ways to Take Control Of Your Retirement

A lot of your retirement can feel out of your control. From unknown risks and emergencies that may unfold to the uncertainty of the market’s future, many pre-retirees are not confident enough in their retirement to truly enjoy it. 

You only retire once, so we want you to do it right — and to live it to the fullest. Here are 4 tips for taking control of your retirement from our conversation with Roger Whitney in episode 100 of Retirement Revealed to help you enjoy the retirement you deserve:

1) Agile Retirement Management

Financial advisors try to cover every detail of retirement planning with their clients in one sitting, which can be overwhelming for clients. 

Collecting, organizing, and discussing all the data for a retirement plan is a lot for both the advisor and the client.

After years of experience with traditional planning, Roger Whitney saw the need for a different process. One that doesn’t rush and overwhelm the clients or the advisor. An agile process.

At Agile Retirement Management, Roger walks clients step-by-step through retirement with an engaging process broken down to focus on the most important things — rather than making it a big, bloated project.

Focusing on the most essential things allows you to stop waiting around forever for the “perfect retirement plan” and avoid needing to scrap the whole thing and start over again if something changes. Agility and flexibility are key!

2) Accepting Uncertainty

When it comes to retirement, uncertainty is a healthy part of the equation.

Things will change and bring uncertainty along with it. 

Learning how to manage uncertainty is the key to taking control back from a situation that makes you feel out of control. Accept the possibility of changes and then prepare for it.

If you have surprises in life such as health risks, unexpected bad markets, or increased inflation, you can’t avoid them, so you need to prepare for them with intentional planning. Make incremental changes in your plan to focus on the biggest risk or opportunity that you have instead of making an overwhelming, big change that might become outdated if your risk priority changes.

Every retirement process needs to focus less on certainty and more on creating systems to manage uncertainty and knowing when to make those incremental changes.

3) Defining the Big Picture With Priorities

Prioritizing your priorities is crucial to making the right choices.

Many people worry about smaller parts of the big picture, like whether they should invest in a specific stock. They don’t realize that what they invest in is such a small priority in retirement planning.

You need to plan for and answer the more important questions: 

• When are you going to retire?
• How much money are you going to retire with for an income? 
• What are you going to do with your pension and Social Security? 
• How do you feel about risk?
• How much money do you want to keep in the bank?

These questions, and many more, take priority over learning about different stocks when it comes to planning for retirement.

Addressing the concerns with higher priority first allows you to take control of your retirement by helping you focus on what you want to achieve and disregard the noise of unnecessary concerns that don’t benefit you.

4) Giving Yourself Permission

A lot of people focus on retirement from a crisis standpoint.

What if I live past 90? Will I be able to afford long-term care if I have a sudden health issue? Will my family be able to afford to take care of me if I need them to? 

You need to balance planning for the worst-case scenarios and enjoying retirement in the moment. Roger’s advice from his book, Rock Retirement, is to grant yourself permission  to live a little bit more today.

Even if you don’t have to spend more than what you need to, you should still give yourself permission to spend that money and do the things you enjoy doing, so you can take back your control and enjoy your retirement.

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To learn more about Agile Retirement and the Rock Retirement Club, check out the resources below!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us or our guest Roger Whitney using the contact information provided below!

Resources:

• Agile Retirement
• Rock Retirement Club
• Rock Retirement: A Simple Guide to Help You Take Control and Be More Optimistic About the Future
• The Retirement Answer Man Podcast
• Free Retirement Planning Video Course: 5stepretirementplan.com
• 3 Things You Should Know Before Choosing A Financial Advisor
• 7 Questions That Could Make or Break Your Retirement
• Subscribe to Retirement Revealed on Google Podcasts
• Subscribe to Retirement Revealed on Apple Podcasts

Connect With Roger Whitney:

• LinkedIn: Roger Whitney
• Twitter: Roger Whitney
• Contact: RogerWhitney.com
• Facebook: The Retirement Answer Man

Connect With Jeremy Keil:

• Jeremy@keilfp.com
• (262) 333-8353
• Keil Financial Partners
• LinkedIn: Jeremy Keil
• Facebook: Jeremy Keil
• LinkedIn: Keil Financial Partners
• Book a call with Jeremy

About Our Guest:

Roger Whitney, CFP® certificant, CIMA®, CPWA®, AIF®, RMA® is a Senior Financial Advisor at Agile Retirement Management, the author of  Rock Retirement, founder of the Rock Retirement Club and the host of The Retirement Answer Man podcast. He has been a certified financial planner for over 25 years and uses every channel possible to help people live well today without sacrificing tomorrow.

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