Hello, my name is Chelsea and I’m your host today on OuiTalkRaw at rBeatz Radio. Today, envision yourself, you are on a beach, you are drinking a ma thai or a coffee or a tea. Imagine that you are retired. That’s right.
So today I have a guest, Joe Roseman Jr. who is an expert in the field. He actually just came out with a book called The StayRetired Model.It is trademarked by him and he’s a national bestseller. This book came out on February 15th, this year. I’m gonna actually go ahead and introduce Joe, thank you so much for coming in today,
Chelsea, thank you so much. Good to be here of course.
Yes. I’m gonna go ahead and read a little introduction on you and kind of give everybody the background, on how you got to where you are today .’cause you’ve been in this field now for 30 years which is quite an extensive career as he is the expert, but it didn’t all start as an expert. Actually, Joe started in North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which is a great college, he has a degree in business administration. And, Joe wasn’t really sure what he was gonna do once he got out of college, which I think is very familiar for a lot of us.
You had several interviews and you kind of landed in a lot of sales positions. Like you did car salesmen, pool, insurance, you did some financial stuff and then you ended up in a cemetery business, of you know, people in, in the final resting spot and kind of planning out how that looks and that actually led you to where we are today. Once you saw the need for that. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?
Well, so, uh, I was in the cemetery business a long time, and I really believed that I was gonna end my career there. And, uh, we were in there for I guess about seven years. The more that I went into the industry, the more I realized it is just really limited to what could be done. We really were limited in, just a real small thing, the final rest place, basically. I really got outta the business, finally made the decision because it was a dying business.
A dying business, literally.
Oh, that’s it. It was dying for me for sure. So, that led me into, back into the financial services industry, which was in 2000. Chelsea said it, for, you know, 30 plus years… we’ve been in the industry, and there was a little bit of a break from the beginning then until the end, but consecutively now we’re in, I guess 24th or 25th year.
That’s incredible. Really, really incredible. Okay, so in this book, we’re gonna kind of break it down for people, So that, if they want to go get it, we’re gonna break it down into some tangible steps.
One thing that I love about this book is that you use real life examples. I am big on reading about, you know, it’s applicable because like, there is a story, let’s say in here. Um, and I’m like, oh gosh, that’s totally me right now at this point in my life. And then you go on to say like, this is what we can do. So we’re gonna dive in now, dive as to, um, the first part of the book is on, it’s not a budget.I hate that word. I don’t actually like the word hate either, but I do not like the word budget. It’s called expense planning. Talk to me a bit about that.
Well, and I even go a little further and call it a spending plan.
Ooh, I like that even better. Gonna write that down.
So when we start planning with clients, we bring ’em in and a lot of financial advisors, what they’re gonna do is they wanna see what you have, right? They wanna see all your accounts and stuff. Right?
Well, so, we do need to see that. But, really the first thing we start with is the spending plan, because when you get to retirement, you really don’t want to lower, especially while you’re young, healthy and retired. You don’t want to lower the amount that you’re spending. And so we call this, we call it a spending plan or a retirement spending plan. And, not a budget, because people hate budgets.
It sounds so restrictive. You know, it sounds like, well now we can only spend this amount. When you say a spending plan, I really think it’s a positive spin on it, like you said, you don’t wanna go more restrictive, especially if you retire younger.
In reading your book I will say Joe had written one of his must haves is cable. That might be an expenditure for someone like me or someone else that’s listening, so I guess you have to look at your financial spending plan and decide what is a need and what is a want. So what are some tools to get to your spending plan? What, what do you find successful?
So kind of the way I back into this would be, especially the first four or five years that you’re retired, we try to give you the same amount of spendable income as you were using while you were working. And not to get into the math of it, but you take out your 401k contribution and your taxes generally are gonna be lower, so now you’ve got an amount to spend. One of the things that I always do and tell folks on my annual reviews when they come in, I’ll say, “Where are you going this year? So you’ve been working all these years, you need to spend some of your money.” And we put it into a spending plan to spend $5,000 a year, or $10,000 a year on that trip to Europe, or you know, go see the Grand Canyon, or maybe you want to take your grandkids and take them to a resort for a week. Or maybe leave your children at home, but bring your grandkids.
I know some folks like to do that, right? But so the spending plan, again, the first four or five years that you’re retired is generally gonna be higher than it might be later because you should be doing more.
Right. Yep. That makes sense.
And I’ll, I’ll tell you leading up to that too, I always encourage folks, those last few years that you’re working, when you are at your highest wage earning status and you’ve got four or five or six weeks of vacation, do one of those big trips while you’re still at work.
That’s brilliant.
Not at work, but…
Why not, Joe, Why not?
Not at work. But, again, while you’re still working and maybe it’s the European trip and it’s, you know, you need to go 10 days or something like that. Well, you take two weeks of vacation and you go.
I think that’s important to use your PTO and that was actually one of the things that you had mentioned in the book, a lot of us just work, work, work, we work some more and then work some more. Use your PTO. It’s there for a reason, right?
Yes, it is. Yeah.
Let’s go into the next section of your book you had written about maximizing your Social Security benefits. Talk to me a bit about that. What is the ideal age to retire and how can you work and still get Social Security benefits?
So social security obviously is the biggest source of retirement income in the country.
Do you think it’s gonna stay around for us?
Uh, that’s a whole different question. I’ll touch on that in a second though.
So I will tell you right now, the way to maximize social security, the way to get the biggest benefit is to wait until you’re 70. Okay? That’s the way it is, that’s when it is at its biggest, however, that doesn’t work for everybody. So let me give you a personal example of how we have set it up in our household. So I’m 65, I know if you see me, you don’t believe that.
No, I thought you were like 45 Joe.
Yeah, yeah. And so, when a couple years ago, my wife retired and then came to work for me full-time. In fact, she’s the only person that has ever gone through our system that has gone back to work, but she came to work for me. Anyway, we decided that when she turned 62, that we were going turn her pension on and we were going to turn on her social security.
So now we’re, we’re digging, you know, we’re getting money from Social Security, but because of the level of income that we create, then we just put that in the bank. We put her pension, we put her social security in the bank. And I’m gonna wait until I am 70 to turn mine on.
Now, you can do it sooner. There are some limitations if you do it before your full retirement age. So if you, if you decide you’re gonna turn your Social Security on at 62 then, and you’re still gonna work, then it’s probably not gonna work because you actually, after you make about $21,000, you have to start paying social security back, on what they gave you.
And so, prior to the word is FRA or full retirement age, which is between 66 and 67 for everybody. Then, once you reach that age, then you can, turn your social security on and you can make whatever income you want from whatever sources. But prior to full retirement age, you have to be careful about the income that you’re earning because it could put you in a position to have to pay social security back.
I see. Okay. Well, my second part to that question is, do you think that social security is gonna be around for much longer?
Congress can…there, there actually are five different leavers that they can pull.
And I’ll go back, give you a history lesson for a second. In 2017, there was a bipartisan bill and it really was bipartisan. Obama was actually still president, and it would have fixed Social security if they would’ve pulled these five leavers. They have got to change the full retirement age for some folks, and they’ve got to change the amount of money that’s being paid into social security by just a percentage or two. If they would’ve done all those things in 2017, then it would’ve fixed social security all the way through the end of this century.
Wow.
But guess what Congress did?
What did they do, Joe?
They did nothing, which they’re famous for. They wanna fight about the short term stuff. They never sit down and figure out the long term stuff sadly.
Right.
And so currently in 2034, social security is set to run out of money. The bad news is that the benefits would be cut down to 80% of what they are now. The good news is it would only be cut to 20%.
And, we have The Stay Retired Model, meaning there are other ways outside of social security that can secure your stay retired future correct, Joe? We’re gonna go into those things such as pensions, asset protection and investment planning. Let’s dive into those couple things.
Mm-Hmm. Correct, so, pensions have gone away for the most part, unless you have a government job, a state, or federal, most of the even the big companies out there have done away with their pension plans. But if you have a pension plan, and my wife has a pension, literally, you should go home tonight and you need to get on your knees and you need to thank the good Lord, because that is money you don’t have to worry about.
It is coming to you every month and you don’t have to do anything to secure the investments on it. You just collect a paycheck. But the real fact is that most people, especially if you are probably around age 55 now, 55 or 60, you probably don’t have a pension. And therefore, you have to figure out other ways to make sure that you secure your retirement.
And I’ll talk in a minute about guaranteed income, because what we do when we build these, the spending portion of the spending plan or the income portion we use is Social Security. And we believe it’s going to be there even though it may be reduced. And then we’re going to pull in the pensions and then we prefer to take a portion of your assets and turn that into a guaranteed stream of income.
Got it. Okay. Okay. I love that I’m making notes as we are going because I find this so fascinating. And honestly, I am a novice when it comes to all of this stuff. You’re breaking it down so easily and I’m easily able to understand it.
And that’s exactly why when I decided to put the book together, I wanted to make it where somebody that was not a financial advisor, that wasn’t, you know, a financial guru could actually go through and say, hey, this, this works for me. And the stories are real people.
I know. And that’s what I think is so great about this book. Honestly, Joe, I’m not one that’s like, let me go read about retirement or about finances. Sometimes it’s a scary topic, to be honest, to be very vulnerable. And so, I loved that you do use real life examples. I’m telling you, I think that’s what sets this book aside and apart from other books out there, you do have those relatable, you know, real life stories.
You know, in most of the time of the stories, this is exactly how it happened too. Now, there might be a name for grammatical change or there’s always a name switch. Yes. I’m not, uh, I’m not going to out somebody.
Right. Yes.
But yeah, so the stories in there are very relatable and I think they accentuate what the message is in, in the chapter where the stories are.
Absolutely. Talk more about the guaranteed income or guarantee you were kind of touching on that a little bit. Go ahead.
So, it’s all it all goes back, in my opinion, to having guaranteed paychecks while you’re retired. And so you think about when you go to work every day, there’s some expectations you have or may have about, you know what kind of job you have and satisfaction there. But let’s face it, why do we go to work every day? It’s to make a paycheck.
It’s because we love it.
Okay. Yes, Chelsea. Okay. And you do, you do,
I do love the job.
You do. And some people do love what they do. Yeah and in fact, if you don’t love what you do.
Then get out and get to something you do.
Exactly. Totally agree. Totally agree. But when the bottom line is, if we weren’t getting paid, most of us wouldn’t do what we do.
Right. So true!
Why should you set your retirement up any different? Why should you not have paychecks when you retire? And so when we structure the income portion of someone’s retirement, we want to make sure that if your expenses are $6,000 a month, then every month you have from some source a guaranteed paycheck that’s coming in there, then that can be Social Security, that might be a pension, that might be guaranteed income coming from an insurance company.
It could be rental property, which that’s not really guaranteed. But anyway, we want to make sure that if your expenses are X, then we want to structure so that you have that income that hits your bank account every month and you really don’t have to worry then about what you’re doing.
What is the ideal age to start this plan?
You know, it’s interesting you say that because I had an 89-year-old in our workshop the other night. And, uh, that’s kind of too late. So there are some fundamental things that you need to be doing at younger ages. Okay. If your company has a 401k plan, you should be contributing at least, what they’re matching you.
Okay. Yeah.
There is a debate whether you should go into regular 401k or Roth 401k, if that’s available. And I’m not going to get into the specifics of that, but really the best time to start this process, to really start the stay retired process is around your mid fifties.
Okay. That’s good to know.
And I don’t want to say 55 because that’s the middle of it. But really if you’re, if you start thinking about it then, then you can make some strategic moves that will set you up that maybe when you are 62, that you can retire, or 65 or, you know, whatever it is you’re going to be.
But if you start it right then, and really paying attention to it, then those last few years should be your highest earning years, especially if you’re working in a corporate setting.
Right, Right. Yeah. That’s great advice. Great, great advice. Okay. So in your book, you discussed asset protection and investment planning. There’s different forms – there’s cash, income, and growth. Talk and break those down for me.
So first of all, and not to quote others and to cite other people. First of all, did your mom ever tell you needed to have an emergency fund?
Yes. My mom tells me this every single week. She’s like, pay yourself first. I love that. By the way, Mom, thank you very much, Vicki Nolan.You’re amazing. It’s like pay yourself first, but yes, an emergency fund.
So, if you also listen to the financial entertainers, I call them, the Dave Ramseys and the Suze Ormans, what’s the first thing to tell you to do? You got to have an emergency fund.
So guess what? When you retire, you need to have an emergency fund because just because you turn, or just because you quit working doesn’t mean that your refrigerator is going to quit breaking or your car isn’t going to need repairs or whatever. So you have to have cash.
Then the second part of that is income. And we talked about that a little bit, what those sources are.
And then the third is we do believe that a portion of your investable capital should be in the stock market. That’s where the growth is.
But we structure those, and that portion of a person’s assets so that there are some protections in place against the big 2008 situation where the market went down 45%. So we structure the investments so that there are some stop losses, if you will, along the way. So that if the economy starts to tumble out of control, then we can put the brakes on and make sure that you don’t have these big losses that we did back in 2008.
Right. Okay. That’s great. Great information. Can we get to the good part, though? Let’s talk about post retirement fun. You actually have a whole section dedicated in your book about it. You kind of touched on it a little bit where you said, you know, your first five years of retirement plan, those trips. Right? Even do it in the last few years of your actual working career. How can we have post-retirement fun, Joe? Break it down for me.
Let me talk about how we – my wife and my wife, Debbie, and I – have structured our next few years.
We actually started this back in 2018. And leading up to that, my wife’s parents were both ill and in 2018, her mom did pass away. Well, previous to that, my wife was driving from here to Charlotte, North Carolina. 40 weekends a year.
That’s a lot.
She didn’t work on Fridays. She would leave Friday and she’d come back Sunday. She was taking care of her mom and dad. So you can imagine
how much time and what we did as a couple. We didn’t do squat.
And so I started taking a look at that. In 2018, we went to Niagara Falls. And since then, we have made a vow to take a big trip. It doesn’t have to be that big, right? But every year. And so, we encourage people, and here’s the big kicker, Chelsea. Do you know how long it takes for the average inheritance to be spent?
Ooh, that’s a good question. Um, I guess it depends on the amount.
I’m talking average.
Okay. Average. Okay. Um, let’s say 10 years,
18 months.
Wow.
And so the point I want to make here is that, as an individual that’s getting ready to retire and you’ve educated your kids and you’re giving stuff to your grandkids and all, make sure that while you’re alive, you get to do the things that you want to do. You’ve been thinking about doing because guess what? When you die, your kids are going to take that money and do the stuff you wanted to do and they’re going to blow through it.
Wow, in 18 months?
Yeah. Average 18 months. Again, that doesn’t mean everybody blows through it in 18 months, but it’s just, that’s the average.
You might as well, the work that you put into it, to earn it, you might as well use it, right? I think the fear out there is like, what if you run out though? So, I understand. And in my brain I’m like, you know, the practical one, that says, well, let’s just use it modestly.
I do like the idea, though, that you had mentioned, you know, in the last five or four years of your working career to go ahead and take those trips that you’ve always wanted to take. I love that.
And then, in the first few years of your retirement, build into the spending plan for those trips. So realize that we’re probably going to spend a little more money right in those first few years while you’re healthy. Because let me tell you, if you’ve ever traveled much at all, guess one thing you do when you travel? You walk. And if you’ve got a bad hip, a bad knee, you know you have to do this stuff while you’re healthy and while you can enjoy it. Because if you don’t, then it’s miserable traveling when you’re not. I recently traveled, I went to a conference and had a bad knee and I’ve got them, you know, they put me in a wheelchair, moving me around and stuff. And it’s just not fun.
Not fun. Now, that is not the post retirement fun we want to talk about. We want to talk about taking those trips and with your book, we will get there. We will get there and we will stay retired. Okay.
Let me say one more thing. You just brought that up. Really the idea here is to retire, stay retired, and not be forced to go back to work. Through the last 24 years of what we’ve done and through the entirety of our career, we have never had a single client that went through our system, and this was before we had the book, that has ever been forced to go back to work.
That in itself speaks layers upon layers upon layers, Joe. That’s profound.
I believe it is. I really do. That was why when we started thinking about really putting together the model that this was brought to my attention about five or six years ago, that we’ve not had anybody there at that point, that ever went back to work.
In fact, I only have one person in this entire time that ever, ever did go back to work. And what happened was she retired from her nursing job to take care of her father in law and then he lived about another year, then he passed away. Well, then she went back to her home and was watching the grass grow.
And so she hadn’t gotten it out of her system. And that’s another thing about retirement is, when we’re getting down to those last couple of years, I will always encourage people, if you don’t have a really good plan of what you want to do post-retirement, then put another year in, stack some more money away.
No, I love that. Speaking of after retirement, let’s review long term health choices. You had discussed a little bit about that in your book. Tell me about that. How do you navigate it?
So long-term care. Long term health care is the single most devastating financial event that you will ever face.
Let me say it again. It is the single most devastating financial event that you will ever face, because most folks, unless you’ve maybe had a business, are not going to have never been in a position where they’re going to spend $8000, $10,000, $12,000, $15,000 a month, depending on the state you’re in to pay for care in a facility, memory care, assisted living, those kind of things.And so one of the things that we do in our planning process is we help folks generally to segment an asset, take a portion of an asset to take care of that eventuality.
And the cool thing is the way these current products are set up is that if you don’t use that money for long term care, then your family still gets the benefit. The family is still going to get the money.
So amazing. It’s a win win. I will say my grandmother is 95 just to take it my perspective. But she’s a memory care. She’s been in an assisted living nursing home for many years. And I’m like, I mean, you never know how long you’re going to live, right? She’s 95 and still ticking, and I don’t really see an end in sight. So it’s like, you know, they were very smart with their planning and they’re still able to, you know, financially provide this care for her.
And that is unusual because usually folks that spend that length of time there, and so let me tell you also, we may need to talk afterwards, but, there are some, there are some products out there now that can help, even at that age can help extend the money that people have. To help folks actually protect some of the assets that are still there.
See how helpful you are. I mean, everybody needs a Joe Roseman, Jr in their life. I’m telling you right now, we are going to close out this interview in a couple of minutes. But first, you know what we’re going to do? We’re going to finish with a legacy in life insurance. That was the last section in your book. Can we just like, break this down in a few easy?
So here’s the cool thing about life insurance, it’s the leverage. You can spend X amount of dollars and the benefit is going to be more. So the way that I position life insurance in a person’s portfolio, if you will, a couple of things. Number one, do you have somebody like a charity or something like that, that you want to leave money too? Well, life policy is a good thing to use. You also can use life insurance to fund long term care. But the real reason that I position life insurance in people’s portfolios is it gives you permission to spend your money.
I love the sound of that, It gives me the permission to spend my money.
So what I mean by that is if you have half a million dollars worth of life insurance, just picking a number, and you spent all the rest of your money, then guess what? You still have that half million dollars that is going to go to your heirs. So it really gives you permission, if you need it. And, some folks really do. Some folks I gotta tell you, I have clients that just don’t want to spend money. I mean I really have to encourage, look, “have you planned your trip next year”…”well, you know, I don’t know if I’m going to do it”…”well, no, you need to go”. So life insurance to me is best used to give you permission to spend the money that you have because, you know, there’s a certain dollar amount that’s going to be left to your heirs.
I love that, we are gonna be playing a short but fun game with Joe Roseman Jr. We’re gonna break it down for maybe a musician, since we are a radio station to kind of play on that. We’re gonna ask him a few questions that are regarding musicians and how we can take some of this financial knowledge and bring it to them.
Okay, Joe, if someone were to play the piano or use their hands for instruments or anything like that, red light, or green light?
You’re gonna throw up a red paddle if it’s STOP or don’t do that and green would be YES, go ahead. Green Paddle! Tell me why. What are the benefits?
Well, so in that case your hands are your brain. They’re your intellectual property, if you will. It’s just like a company that has some kind of widget or some kind of manufacturing process. Then they absolutely should have that insured. Now, if you’re just doing it just for fun and a hobby, then maybe not but if you’re doing it as a business this is your livelihood as a musician then absolutely green
We heard it from the experts here, guys. Any musicians out there, anybody that is like this is their livelihood. Definitely, definitely please insure your hands. Let’s keep it up…second question.
Would you save from each payout for taxes as a 1099 musician?
Joe, what do you think? Expert? Whoa, two for two, green .
So the last thing you want to do is have the IRS hounding you, knocking at that door. So you should figure out, based on the income that you’re going to earn that year and you may or may not know the exact amount, but there should be some money put aside out of each paycheck to cover taxes. Now, the good thing is, as a musician, as an independent contractor, there’s a lot of things you’re going to be able to deduct.
Okay, we’ll get to that. That’s one of our questions coming up. So let’s not dive too fast.
I won’t go there yet, but you absolutely should. You should pay yourself first and then put some money away for Uncle Sam. Always. He’s not very nice sometimes. And the state of North Carolina, if you’re North Carolina, if you ever owe them money, it is a bad day, they don’t play nice. Not that that’s ever happened to me, but…
Right, that’s good to know. All right, next question.
Writing off taxes – attire for gigs on taxes? That’s what we were just talking about. Green! That means, yes.
There are… and you should have an accountant to do this, I’m not an accountant … .But you should have an accountant that you’re using. And the list as self-employed individuals even if you you’re if you have an LLC or generally have a structure, you can write off a lot of your expenses legally. And I’m saying don’t try to write off stuff that’s not legal, right? Because then that’s even worse. But things that you can write off, obviously travel to the gig, your musical equipment, those types of things you absolutely should look at. Talk to an accountant and figure out how to write them off.
Perfect. I love that advice. How can a musician contact you for more information on how to manage their money, Joe?
So, the easiest way would be to go to my calendar link. www.talktoroseman.com. or you could call my office here in Charlotte, 7 0 4 9 3 5 2 5 5 3 and you’re gonna be talking to my assistant Vicki. She would set up a 30 minute conversation, consultation, we call it. I’d be glad to talk to whoever is listening to the show that would need that kind of advice.
Awesome. It has been such a pleasure to have you in here today. We are listening to #OuiTalkRaw. We had author, who has written The Stay Retired Model, Joe Roseman, Jr, who has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming in today.
Chelsea, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.
Have a blessed day, love and light your way. Thank you.
