How to create a paycheck in Retirement

Mike: [00:00:00] Welcome to financial planning for entrepreneurs and tech professionals. I'm your host, Mike Morton chartered financial counselor and financial advisor. Today's show is a radio broadcast with my good friend, Matt Robison we discuss how to think about your retirement savings and how to generate a paycheck from that portfolio.

In the pandemic we're recording at home. And while the background starts off with some chirping birds, please excuse my dog that got bored halfway through the podcast and started whining.

, and on that note, enjoy the show.

Matt: [00:00:32] Welcome to real financial planning, broadcast on WK XL available wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Matt Robison I'm joined . As always by Mike Morton of Morton financial advice. Mike, how are you?

Mike: [00:00:45] doing well today, Matt. Thanks.

Matt: [00:00:47] In this modern post blip world in which we live. It has become normal on radio and on podcasts to hear background noises. So many of us are working from home. I have to say that I'm having the delightful experience of hearing birds in the background as we record this, which is pretty amazing. It's bucolic, it's relaxing.

And that puts me in mind of retiring. And so you suggested a confusingly titled episode for today. Because. It's bucket strategy. for retirees. Now I want to clarify. a few things right off the bat here, people cause we're about to like either anger. or Lose half of our audience. If we don't get this right, we're not talking about a bucket list.

or kicking the bucket. I assume. What are you talking about? Mike Morton.

Mike: [00:01:37] So this is the way that I think about your retirement portfolio. It's pretty funny, Matt. I do hear the birds. Luckily you don't hear the beeping truck outside as they do work on the road. That's backing up. Now, if you did, maybe you think of they're backing up a big load of money to pour it into my front yard for retirement, which would be awesome.

But the bucket strategy, not kicking the bucket, not a bucket list, but this is the way that I divvy up a portfolio and think about it mentally for retirees, as they're getting ready to enter that next phase of life. It's confusing, right? I've worked diligently, I've saved and now I've got some money.

I think it's enough to retire. But going from having a steady paycheck to having no paycheck, how do we mentally think about that? And so that's what I would like to describe to your listeners today

Matt: [00:02:28] this strikes me as a super. Useful topic. And I recognize that it's the kind of thing that's going to most hit the ears of people who were, let's say 50 plus because they're the ones most likely to be.

starting to think along these lines, but this isn't a small deal. And I can say from my own experience as

my mom, who was.

A lifelong professional. She worked her whole life multiple jobs,

And as she approached retirement, this is a whole mindset shift that I remember she went through and, she's a highly educated, very thoughtful person and it was a big, change for her. , I remember her describing to me.

Maybe I should get an annuity because I need to have an income. I need to get a check. My whole life

I've gotten a check. I've gotten paid. What is life like if that isn't happening? So this is not a small deal. I know from my own personal experience, there are lots of small ways that you can mess this up.

Or you can maybe set yourself up a little bit better. So super useful topic. Now that we've. Clarified that we're not talking about kicking the bucket. So how do you help your clients? Those who are getting ready for retirement to think about the money they've saved and what to do next.

Mike: [00:03:44] Yeah, first, it's a congratulations of working for decades and saving and investing diligently over time. And coming up with , some money, a portfolio of investments and money that hopefully is enough to secure retirement or that next phase of life, whatever you're interested in doing.

So that is amazing hard work for a long time. So congratulations are always important. Then I think of two things. One, how are we going to actually translate? That money, those investments into a paycheck, whether it's weekly, monthly, yearly, how are we going to get in there and figure out . Where the money's coming from to be able to spend it throughout those retirement years.

So those are the technical and the other is a high level. All right. How do we think about the overall. Portfolio. So that's the one I'm going to start with and that's where the buckets come in. I think of the overall portfolio that you have saved an investment that's ready to fund your retirement in three buckets.

The first is what you're going to use in the very immediate term. The next one to two years. And Matt, if we need that money for the next one to two years, I pretty much want that in cash. I don't want it invested. I don't want it to go up and down. We are going to spend that this year, 2021, we're going to spend it next year, 2022.

That just needs to be in cash so that we can have that available as we need it. That's the first bucket. One to two years of spending. The next bucket is an intermediate, those next say three to seven years. Okay. So from years three to seven we need some monies available, right? And we know the markets could be volatile within that timeframe.

So we may not want to go in with all kinds of investments in the U S market or international stock market. Those could be down for three or four years, that has happened in the past. So we were pretty stable funds. So maybe some bonds, maybe a mix of bonds in that bucket. So that. It's growing a little bit.

We might have a little bit of inflation, but we know that money is going to be around then finally in the last bucket, anything for five to 10 years plus. That's going to be dollars. We're going to spend five years from now or dollars. We're going to spend 10 years or 20 years from now. Those could be in more volatile investments in the stock market because we know we're not spending those for quite a while.

So that's how I mentally break up a single portfolio into those three buckets. And it helps people really understand, Oh yeah, I need that money for the next one to two years. I know the money's in the medium term, should be pretty stable and then money for further out can be more aggressively invested.

Matt: [00:06:19] so I want to ask something that isn't strictly about. Technical details of financial planning. I want to ask about

what you do, because it's always struck me that people who are financial advisors go through a tremendous amount of. Training schooling study to understand the technical financial aspects of different investment vehicles and economics and a lot of mathematics.

But a lot of what you do day to day Is actually applied psychology. You're helping people. A friend, a marriage . We should do an episode by the way.

on what do you do? If two spouses have very different financial strategies, that would be awesome.

And what we should do is we should Bring in a couple that doesn't agree on this and, have them go at it.

Mike: [00:07:04] Matt, maybe we could just have you and your wife show up for an

Matt: [00:07:07] You know what we've solved, the problem that. I do, the financial planning. And I basically just do whatever you tell me. And She just says, yeah, whatever.

you've decided is fine.

We've solved this problem. Although I think if you dug deeper, you could unearth plenty of disagreements there, but it strikes me that a lot of what you do. Really at this phase, it is, as you say, it's a next phase of life and it's a mental change. I wanted to ask about one of the things that , again, I remember advising my mom on is, you've saved your whole life.

You've built up these assets that are really important to you. They reflect your life's work. You are also starting to think a little bit about estate planning, leaving something for your kids and your grandkids. And when people talk about electric vehicles, the big thing in electric vehicles these days is called range anxiety.

Worried that you don't have enough charge to last you until your next charge. It strikes me that there's a lot of anxiety in making this change about what if I don't have enough? How do I pace this out appropriately? How do you do that? How do you deal with your clients? How do you help them through thinking about this?

It strikes me that your bucket construct is super helpful as a first stage, but do you find this, do you find that there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of difficulty is the bucket division the way you help people work through that?

Mike: [00:08:29] Yeah, it's a really good point. Matt, learning for financial advising, there's lots and lots of technical stuff. Anybody has been through this with schooling, right? We learn a whole bunch of technical things. Think back to those math classes and. Figuring out equations and all that. And do you actually use that in your day-to-day life?

No, but it is in the background of their decision-making. So in terms of financial advising, you're exactly right. We use all kinds of tips and strategies and rules and regulations and all kinds of stuff to bring to your life. What's most important how we're going to accomplish those things, but most of the conversations are all on.

What are you interested in accomplishing? And then how are we going to get there? Then advising on the actual strategies for making that happen. So it is a lot of conversations around all these topics, specifically with the retirement. You bring up a good point around getting people comfortable with the range anxiety.

I really liked that. Here's the way that I do that. And it'll tie back to the buckets. We look at expenses over time. And so that's one of the things you really have to have somewhat dialed in. What are your expenses heading into retirement? So I always pull actual expenses for the last few years. What are you actually spending and project that out.

And now we know. What is reasonable for the next few years, and maybe we use inflation beyond that. So you have to know that and be comfortable with, yes, this is what I'm actually going to be spending. And then we have a graph that kind of has that amount every year. Then you have income, maybe you have social security, maybe a pension, maybe you have rental income, whatever it is, and that can offset some of those expenses.

All right. And then we have dialed in income and expenses projected out for the years. We can show that graphically, get the nod of the head from the couple. Oh yeah, that looks pretty reasonable. And then come the buckets. Okay. The next two years we need 50,000 of $50,000. And then the following five years, we need another 250,000, and then the following years is going to be beyond that.

So now you are getting comfortable with. Projecting out in a graph, but at a high level, he each year income expenses and knowing how much you need in each bucket.

Matt: [00:10:38] got it. And so if I started with a million bucks, you chunk it out that way into these bite sized nuggets that people can start to grapple with, because look let's not kid ourselves. Part of, what's really hard about this mental transition is the uncertainty about how much longer are you going to live?

And that's a really hard question to deal with in any circumstance, let alone thinking about your finances. So it sounds like in the example you were starting to develop here. You just break the question down. Into all right. Here's your starting amount. Here's the expenses. Here's any other sources of income and that includes social security,

Mike: [00:11:19] Yeah. So let's go through a specific example here, Matt. So say you have saved a million dollars. Congratulations. That is great. We've got a million dollars. And the next years, you have 50,000 of expenses per year. That's how much you're going to spend. That's about 4,000 a month. And anybody can be all over the place.

Okay. But let's just start with that. So 50,000 a year, and that's 5% of your portfolio. Now, 5% . Might be a little bit high. For spending overall, but I'll get back to that in a few minutes. All right. So 50,000 on a million, but your social security is going to kick in in five years, you decide, okay, I'm going to wait five years.

There's all kinds of decision-making around that, but just for assumptions in five years, Social security is going to kick in and cover half of that 25,000 per year out of your 50,000 of expenses. So for the next five years, we know we need 50,000 per year. For five years, we need $250,000. Okay. Then after that, for the next five years after social security is kicked in, we only need 25,000 per year because social security is covering the other 25.

So that's 125,000. All right. So in the buckets we've got two years, a hundred thousand in cash. But we need a total of, for 10 years, 375,000. All right. So it's about 40%. So about 40% of your port folio is in bonds and 60% is for beyond 10 years and we can invest that more aggressively.

So that's how we get from the buckets to the overall strategy.

Matt: [00:12:51] got it. And you mixed in there a little bit of explanation, not just on. The amounts, but also where you hold those amounts. So you've referred already to the fact that your first bucket your near-term use that's in cash. Functionally that's, no risk, easy access, no penalty to access.

And then you have this medium term bucket that's going to be low risk and you referred two bonds. So what do all of those buckets look like in terms of where you're holding that mix of

Mike: [00:13:27] Exactly. So now we have to actually use the money, right? And so in this first year we need that cash available. So that needs to be in an account where we have access to it. It can't be something where I can not have access to the cash cause I'm going to spend it this year. So it could just go and step back.

We, got the buckets we took , from our expenses, we came with income and expenses that drove how much we need in our buckets for the first couple of years, the following few years and beyond. And that gives us to an overall portfolio strategy of how much to invest in cash and bonds versus stocks.

That's how we get to that maybe 60, 40 portfolio or 50 50, or whatever it is. And that's got an all lineup and look reasonable. Now we're going to sleep, create that paycheck. Now this is going to be different for everybody. Okay, because it all depends on the account types that you have tax deferred, tax-free taxable.

And then how old you are, are you 59 and a half. And so you can withdraw from your IRAs penalty-free then just pay income taxes if it's tax deferred. So it's going to be really unique to your situation, but of course, you've got to have the cash for the next couple of years in an account that you can use it.

So that could be a taxable account, just your savings or checking account, or if you're over 59 and a half, it could be an IRA and withdrawing it. So there's different strategies, how to actually create the paycheck depending on your unique situation.

Matt: [00:14:45] And since you invoked the T word, let's not forget that just because you've retired and you're not. Earning an income from a job doesn't mean taxes are all done for you. The only two things are certain in life. And any other strategies for mitigating your tax exposure as you enter into retirement?

Mike: [00:15:05] Yeah. So this is a great time to be looking at your tax brackets, especially as you're getting close to retirement. And then especially in retirement, figuring out a tax planning strategy now with taxes. Your accountant and filing taxes are always looking backwards. They're looking at history, what happened last year and filling in the forms.

What we like to do in tax planning is look forward and how can we make the most of where we're headed in terms of a tax strategy? So let's break that down. Say you need that 50,000 a year, and you've got some money in just a checking savings accounts, you've got a hundred thousand dollars.

So you could easily just spend the money from those taxable accounts. Without really having any income, any taxes at all in that case, or you could say you had tax deferred, a 401k account could pull the 50,000 from your 401k and you'd have 50,000 of income and you'll pay taxes on that. Not a tremendous amount because it's only 50,000.

So you have a choice. There should be. She used the money from your taxable account, or should you use the money from your 401k account? So that's where tax planning and tax strategies are really useful. There's no one size fits all in this. It's just going to be your situation, trying to figure out how you can save the most in taxes over time.

Matt: [00:16:18] Do you find yourself in situations where you can't in the words of George W. Bush make the pie higher, you have the assets, you have the social security you're going to get. You can do all the tax strategies in the world, but you just face a fundamental missing match over the time horizon that you want to plan for between the assets you have and the expenses you have.

Do you find yourself counseling your clients around? Look, you've got to, change your lifestyle a little bit. You've got to reduce the expense side. Is that a situation you find yourself in

Mike: [00:16:49] Yeah, absolutely. Right. I mean, Everybody faces that situation all the time. Hey, I want to afford this thing. Can I afford it? And most of the time you're just winging it. Oh yeah, think we have enough or I've got enough in the bank account. We can afford this purchase or this vacation or this experience or whatever it is.

So that's fine on a year to year basis to wing it because you sorta know how much money you have and your savings are fitting into your budget, you kind sense of, yeah, we can afford this, but when you're projecting out five, 10, 30 years of retirement, That's where the mind can play tricks on you.

And it's very hard to know, and that's why a lot of retirees come into financial planning or get some advice, because it's hard to break and you want to be really sure. You only have one chance at this if you quit your job. And so you want to make sure that you have enough. So one rule of thumb to start for people that are trying to think about this is what we call the 4% rule.

All right. And the 4% rule is just a rule of thumb. I don't want to put too much weight behind it, but it's just a good starting point. And it means that you can spend 4% of your portfolio within a year. And that should sustain you for about 30 years. There's a lot of research done around this. So if you had a $1 million portfolio, that's about $40,000 that you could withdraw from that portfolio and be able to spend that.

It goes up with inflation. So there's all kinds of statistics around it, but it's a good starting point take whatever you want to spend per year, multiply it by 25. And that should be about a portfolio that you would need in retirement.

Matt: [00:18:25] that's super duper helpful, actually, because just so I have that, what you're saying is if you withdraw. That 4%, again, a million bucks as a nice round number. So you're withdrawing 40,000. Once you factor everything else in the inflation and the rest of your portfolio is going to continue to grow in whatever mix of investments you have.

That's about the right level to make sure you have enough for third years.

Mike: [00:18:50] Yeah, that's what the research was done for

Matt: [00:18:52] That

Mike: [00:18:52] years. Yeah. So it's a great starting point just to get you in the ballpark, now, remember too, that's withdrawing from the portfolio. If you have social security, Then that can add to your expenses. So it's not total expenses.

It's just saying withdrawing from that million dollar portfolio, maybe 40,000 a year is reasonable. Now there's other tax strategies that, boost that number. And if you live longer, it might be less all these kinds of other things, but it's a good starting point.

Matt: [00:19:19] well, speaking of which you're always a fount of great, weird tricks and other ways to think about things, anything we haven't covered that kind of fits into that category.

Mike: [00:19:28] Yeah. The one thing I want to mention, I said earlier you could take the 50,000 per year from your taxable account, or you could take it from your tax deferred and have 50,000 of income. And you just have to figure out which is a better tax strategy for you. What's mostly going to be a great strategy is if you are in the years before your required minimum distributions at age 72, so you don't have to take it from your 401k or your traditional IRAs.

And if you have money. And just checking savings accounts that you can spend, you can do Roth conversions. So from the tax deferred for your 401k or your traditional IRAs, Over to a Roth IRA convert the 50,000. So spend your 50,000 from your taxable, just for your expenses for that year convert 50,000 from the traditional IRA to a Roth IRA, you pay taxes on 50,000 of income.

That's how it works. But now that 50,000 is sitting in a tax-free account forever with no RMDs. You can do that every year. For a number of years, if you're retired before those RMDs and those systematic Roth conversions are typically a great strategy.

Matt: [00:20:33] and I imagine this is all about tax consequences and we've covered a lot of this before about pay taxes when you're in the lowest bracket, the possibly can. And just take advantage of where you are in that cycle.

Mike: [00:20:46] yes. And this is where you'd want to hire somebody just to go through that tax planning. You could just do it one time, but just to know for these next 10 years, how I'm going to do these systematic conversions can save you tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's amazing.

Matt: [00:20:59] which again, when you're talking about a 30 year time, horizon and interest, that all really adds up. All right. Mike Morton super helpful. Very good practical advice as always on real financial planning. I'm Matt Robison thanks so much.

Mike: [00:21:14] Thanks for joining us on financial planning for entrepreneurs. If you like, what you heard, please subscribe to and rate the podcast on Apple iTunes, Google play Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can connect with me on linkedin or mortonfinancialadvice.com. I'd love to get your feedback. If you have a comment or question, please email me at . Until next time thanks for tuning in