Strategies to Creating Certainty in Retirement #3 – Transcript

Jamie McIntyre
Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode three of the ensemble retirement podcast series. In today’s podcast, we are going to discuss how to help clients discover and find new purpose when they move into retirement. My name is Jamie McIntyre and I will be your host of today’s podcast. I’m a financial planner, and I specialize in helping clients plan for retirement and have the retirement that they want. Our guests today or my guest today is Liam short, old sonus, wealth. Sodus wealth is Irish for prosperity and good fortune. Liam and I share a focus of helping people achieve greater wealth. Liam is a family wealth advisor and SMSF consult. Liam and I will discuss our experiences when helping clients transition into retirement. In our chat today, we will uncover ways we have both helped clients figure out what is important to them what they want from their retirement, and ways we have helped them find a new purpose in retirement, moving from working life to non working life is a significant change for people to navigate. Liam, welcome to today’s podcast.

Liam Shorte
Hi. Glad to be on there.

Jamie McIntyre
Let’s kick off today by talking about the stages that clients go through as they moved into retirement. And tell me what are some of the key stages you see that clients need to work through to prepare for the retirement that they want?

Liam Shorte
Yeah, so one of the first things is deciding how and when they’re going to retire. So more and more, we’re seeing people who are actually transitioning into retirement by cutting down their hours, you’re maybe doing a nine day fortnight, and then down to an eight a fortnight, and you’re cutting back to maybe two or three days a week before they actually do the full retirement. And that’s often you’re tied in with using up the long service leave. So it’s not a bad way to just try retired try before you buy the retirement experience. And it’s certainly good for people who’ve have just worked full on all their lives, to be able to not just have a clean finish, but to actually transition themselves out slowly, sort of wean themselves off work.

Jamie McIntyre
Yeah. And that’s it. That’s the experience that we have with most clients, it’s, I think, historically, for blue collar workers, they would work really hard, go to work every day and be really, really tired and want to retire really quickly. But I think today, we’ve got, well a different workforce, for one, and people are physically able to work for longer. And they’re doing, as you say, the transition across reducing their days over time and getting themselves ready for retirement. And I suppose finding that new purpose, Liam?

Liam Shorte
Yeah, so that’s a big thing, you know, you you’re probably seven, eight hours a day in work, and maybe one to two hours community a day. So you’re looking at about nine hours a day that you got to fill in retirement. Now, depending on the type of job you you’ve had, you may struggle with finding what to do, you know, some people had really demanding roles. And, you know, they were using their brain really constantly to the day and then it was taxing, and in the grid retirement, they suddenly find themselves when no such challenges they haven’t planned. So they find themselves at home going well, what, what’s my purpose in life, I used to be so important, I used to everything used to rely on me. And now it doesn’t. So when we talk to people like that, is they really need to plan their retirement more than somebody who has already, you’re sort of got hobbies, they’ve got interests, they’ve got things that they you know, their whole life doesn’t resolve will revolve around their work. And those people, they fit into retirement a lot better than somebody use that 100% committed to the job, and it’s an intensive job. So it’s a lot about making sure that those people think maybe five years from retirement, exactly what do they want retirement to look like and start planning for then, rather than just having a cold finish, and then end up not being sure what to do? Because that has led to depression from what I’ve seen.

Jamie McIntyre
And look, you make quite a few interesting points with what you just spoke about. Let’s let’s start with focusing on you mentioned five years out from retirement, which seems to me in my experience to be a good lead time to start preparing for, well, the significant change that’s going to occur in their life from being needed at work, to you know, finding something to float to build that in retirement. So let’s go back five years land and one of those sorts of things that pre retirees should be focused on

Liam Shorte
or focused on things like if they’re planning to move house, you know, what sort of house is going to suit them in retirement. So you know, I hear a lot of people talking about downsizing but you know, I’ve got a number of clients who were currencies Yes. So yes, they wanted to downsize but they still wanted a bigger marriage. So for for people I’ve had What, for some of them, what we decided was the best option was, yes, downsize, but also buy themselves a little industrial unit that that they can use as the little mechanics yard and storage for the cars. And for others, it’s revolves around committing to your mining grandchildren and things like that. So we’re telling people to be young, be really careful about that because money your grandchildren, it’s could be a 10 to 12 hour a day, in your 60s or 70s, that can be fairly demanding. You know, ask on your on your body and on your mental capacity. So we sort of said people don’t over commit to those sorts of things with your, your, your children and grandchildren, ease into it, and try and make sure there’s still me time in retirement. For a lot of Ben, it’s a case of that the natural thing is, oh, there’s loads of things for me to fix around the house, while sorry, but normally they’re finished within the first 30 days are rare as they go on the nevernever. So you’ve got to really start looking at things like, is there an association like Probus, or rotary, that our Men’s Shed that they’re brilliant for, for older people, but also your hobbies? People say golf, which can, you know, can play golf five days a week? So it’s really trying to figure out, you know, what are the things you will focus on? And, you know, things like travel, I found, it’s a great experience for men, especially to take over the responsibility for planning trips overseas, you know, where are you going to stay, what cars are going to hire and stuff like that, that really gets them engaged in and I tell wives to give that responsibility to their husbands, so that they’re more likely to want to travel? You know, if they just say I want, let’s, let’s travel, a lot of the men will say, I can’t be I can’t be bothered. And but if they’re actually involved in the planning and the actual logistics of it, they’re much more likely to go on a trip.

Jamie McIntyre
Yeah, absolutely. I look we consider it from or I consider it from, from three key things that we focus on having discussions on, one of those is their social need. The other one’s their physical need. And the third one is the emotional need. And what ties around all of those is the financial need, as well. You mentioned from a social perspective, a Men’s Shed or you know, something to connect you with a new group of people once you leave work. I think that’s a great example of an option. Another option is playing golf for lawn balls. There there will I think they’re the common ones that everyone refers to, but I mainly am in my experience, not everyone likes golf, or lawn buttons.

Liam Shorte
Yeah, look, there’s there’s opportunities out there volunteering, with charities, with groups like helping hand who supply food through baskets to people, there’s, there’s all sorts of stuff out there. So you’re given little book to clients when they’re turning 60. And it’s 101 things for your husband to do in retirement. And I give that to the wives to give us a presents their husbands because, look, I find that most women to already have a purpose, they know exactly what they want to do in retirement. Or if they don’t, they ask their friends and they talk women talk among themselves, and they give each other ideas. Men are not so good at talking about things like that. So that’s the thing, you know, places like a Men’s Shed are really good. And so you just get in there playing around with the tools and you just end up talking to people. Whereas if you the men are not going to sit around the cafe table and have a coffee and open up about themselves. So it’s got to be getting into those groups that were they just start conversations naturally and build up relations, chips with other people to replace those relationships they had at work previously. You know, I had one client who had a very taxing, demanding job. When he went into retirement, he did cycling. He did motorbiking, you know he did in Thailand, Vietnam, he did road trips in Italy. And then he came back to me after my two years of retirement and said, I’m totally depressed. He said, Everything I’m doing is physical. That’s great. That’s brilliant. But nothing’s taxing my mind. And so you’ll be sat down with him, we went through a few things. And in the end, the challenge for him was we got him to learn French, we took on a one on one French speaker, learn French it really immersed himself in it. And the goal was then the next year to spend three months in France with his wife in just a French village and be self sustainable. That just it just changed his attitude completely. He went to a full lead into it. They had a great I think they ended up saving about five months in France the following year. And now he’s looking at Spanish here. He just he’s looking for that next mental challenge to keep him alive. And you know, the social aspect of when they did go to France. It was a case of he had to go out he had to meet everybody in the local community. So it was just engaging him and keeping his Going back to that was brilliant for him.

Jamie McIntyre
What a great story lamb. I think there’s a perception which which is also changing is your financial planners there to figure out the money only. But really it’s about figuring out the drivers for living life that money fulfills as well, isn’t it?

Liam Shorte
Yeah, no. And also money can be a burden. So a lot of people have worked really hard all their lives to put money away, they’ve done salary sacrifice, they’ve done everything to build up this nest aid. And a lot of the financial planners job nowadays is sort of giving them permission to actually spend that money without worrying because they just feel that they’ve, there’s always something over the horizon that they’re gonna need the money for, well as a financial planner, or job is to go, Look, you can sustainably spend this amount a year. And it’s not going to run out. Or you know, if something comes up and they come and say, Look, I want to do the, the the mountaineer across the Rockies in Canada, but it’s going to be 25,000. It’s a matter of financial planners, then just looking at the finances going, if it’s not going to make a huge difference, then you’re really empowering them to make that decision. Because I keep on saying to people, I don’t have any clients in their 80s that turn around and say, I regret that I went to Europe or regret that I went around Australia and the caravan, but I’ve got heaps of them that say I wish we hadn’t put it off. I wish we’d done it earlier. And so it’s a case of part of the role of the financial planners, specially the big change from 60 to 70, from your working to retirement is is showing people that they can spend sustainably and not fear of running out of money.

Jamie McIntyre
Yeah, I’d agree with that. The generally when they come to us, or if they’re already working with this, the one of the greatest fears is the income tab that they used to, or that is normal for them, which is a salary or a profit share for their business. That taps going to turn off, that’s part of the decision that’s being made when you retire. And it’s about them understanding what comes out of the other tap right? The first fears around money I experience and you meet with clients when you’re starting to map this out. And Jen and for us, we always meet with the husband and wife. And part of that is a little bit of what you spoke about before the men won’t tend to open up to men. And and with the wives present, we can dig a bit deeper and find out to get the what they both want bring them together.

Liam Shorte
And to be more realistic, about what how much they actually need. Because in a lot of cases, the wives have run the the budget of the household. And so they’ve got a better idea of what the basic costs are a lot. So you know, when you sit down with them, it’s important to also understand how their income comes at the moment where they’re working. And your so for example, if somebody’s it’s as simple as if there were paid fortnightly while they were working, can we replace a bit of fortnightly pension in retirement from their pensions, and showing them as you said, where the money is going to come from. So some of that may come from their income streams, some may come from investments outside, and some may come from Centrelink support as well. And just showing them how all those played together to deliver their target income so that they don’t have to worry about all you know, am I gonna have to sell down stuff just to fund my, my lifestyle, if you’re, that’s where we play around the bucket strategy of saying, Look, we want to have at least two to three years money in cash and term deposits. So that you never have to think about where the next year’s money is coming. And that leaves you with the rest of the money can be invested longer term to do what’s best. But it’s that comfort of knowing that there’s two to three years money in cash fixed interest and bonds that you’re fairly secure. So that’s basically they’re the rock and they’re the core retirement funding so that they don’t have to worry about where that next next pension payments gonna come from.

Jamie McIntyre
Yeah, I think he makes a really good points there is, is a part of that transition is keeping some things the same, which is, you know, looking for ways to, for them to pay themselves from their retirement assets in a fortnightly way if that’s something they were used to so, so trying to minimize that disruption for them. Let’s let’s circle into you know, finding purpose so, so they need to understand what money they have. They need to understand what income they are likely to need. And there’s a body of work from a we’ll call it from a financial planning perspective and cash flow modeling and things like that. But tell me Lam what, what sort of questions or how do you dig deep enough to understand their purpose and what I would call their real goals most come with a fear that they don’t have enough money. And now they’ll talk to you about oh, can I maybe afford one international holiday before I dive in? With for example, tell me how you go about digging deeper into what they really want. And really to get underneath a bit more around purpose in retirement.

Liam Shorte
So, look, a lot of it’s just, it’s just asking questions around that and listening, you know, really understanding and and that’s what you talked about having the couple there, it is really important to have both on there and get both of their inputs. Because I know a lot of people who all they’ve done is waited for retirement to go on, on big overseas holidays. And yet, they haven’t understood that their partner is not interested in that the partner may be interested in going fishing or, you know, doing art or you’re doing doing a language. And it’s just trying to identify, you know, what the actual goals are for each of them. What are the combined goals, and then also maybe saying to them, Look, it’s not, it’s not greedy to say you also want some me time to do your own thing, you know, to go on your future blog to go off and work on a car, yo, it may annoy his wife that he’s he’s worked all his life that he comes home, and then he’s in the he’s in the garage. But if they’ve talked about that, they’ve agreed that two days a week, that’s, that’s his passion. That’s what he’s gonna do. But she wants his, she wants his time, you know, for somebody else. And maybe she wants to go and do some art, or she wants to go on that, you know, I’ve got a lot of women to go in walking groups, and, you know, just discussion groups, book clubs with friends, they don’t want their husband shattering them and stuff like that. So it’s really agreeing that, yes, it’s time to be together and retirement, but there’s no shame or it’s not greedy to want some of your own me time. And what we said, what we do find is some men who don’t want to travel, we’ve said to their wives will go with a sister, go with your mother, go with a friend on travel, the don’t make it a barrier to you achieving your goals, just because your husband doesn’t want to just agree between you that you have these other separate purposes that you want things that you want to do in retirement, but may not involve your partner. And to be honest, we are seeing also arise in that great divorce, where it just doesn’t work out. And it’s often it’s only on retirement, that they realize that they don’t want to be together in retirement. And it’s talking, you know, talking them through that sort of situation, if that happens.

Jamie McIntyre
Yeah, it’s, and that does happen. We’ve experienced that is well, I think, to not so it’s to sum up that conversation, but what I heard you talking about, and it’s circling back to a word you used earlier, which is the word permission. And I think the husband, the wife, or whomever is sitting in front of you is, is looking for permission to do the new things that are going to happen in their life, when they had that significant change of one or both spouses, you know, stopping working eight hours a day where they were entertained, I suppose, independently in the in those tight braids. So I think I think I circle back to that word permission. And it’s really important for us as the plan is to work through those layers of permission and bring it all together, isn’t it?

Liam Shorte
Yeah. And the defunding of it then comes into it, you know, if somebody’s got, you know, ideas of being an absolute, spending a fortune on something, it’s dragging them back and going saying, you’re reasonably your your, your budget can afford to do this, but you need to pull in, pull the reins on some of your your ambitions, because it’s just not possible. So it is a tough conversation to have with people sometimes. But in most cases, I find that they actually have the money to do these things. It’s just, it’s a reluctance to spend anything is the problem not spending too much. And, you know, I’ve got plenty of clients now that are over 80. And honestly did, they don’t spend that much in at that stage, they have done their travel, you know, they they like small trips that you know, around Australia to meet family or friends, they don’t spend a fortune. So, you know, people still have this big fear of the costs. Now, I do believe aged care will become more self funded. But even at the moment with the caps that are on the fees, if you’re never going to spend all your money on aged care, it’s you know, there are capped fees, and you’re going to retain most of your wealth. That will change over time. But for the moment, I think people just need to understand that what they spend in their 60s, they could spend a little bit more then because they’re not going to spend as much later on in life and a lot of people are looking to help children. We just say look, you’ve got to take care of you first, before you start looking at jumping and giving lump sums to other family members because a lot of them when they get access to the pensions so the access to that superannuation pool, it can be sort of all yellow, we’ve got something we’ve got all this money. What we can do, can we do with it? You know, we Most people, they start thinking about the children, but you can spend on average life expectancy for a female now is 87. A male 84. That’s just the average. So 50% More of those people are going to live well, probably well into their 90s. They’re retiring at 6065. That’s the 3035 years in retirement, it’s as long as your, your working career.

Jamie McIntyre
Yeah, well, that’s right with life expectancy now. And, and look, I was curious with your comment, about let’s go at the Australian system for one for the age pension and two, for aged care, the system is got a lot of, I suppose, a lot of protection in it for the client not to spend all of their money before you know they die. So, you know, that can give them a lot of comfort as well, that there we’ve got those provisions in Australia to catch them down the track as well.

Liam Shorte
Yes, certainly, that that sweet spot of having, say, 600 to a million dollars between you and your wife, knowing that as that drops below the 954, as it says, Then you start replacing income from your investments with income from the age pension. And that your it means that once you do start that starts happening, you will end up eating into your capital at a much slower rate at that stage. So you know, when you spend some of your capital, it gets replaced to a degree by by a steady income stream from Centrelink, and just making people understand that interplay that we saw over the last four years that somebody would yield $1.2 million, was often in a worse position than somebody who’s on that 600 or 700,000. Because you’re earning one or 2% Maximum on term deposits, where somebody on the age pension was getting a really good income stream. That gap they had between the could assets could off test and what they actually had. So it’s, you know, it’s a case of it’s not always a bad thing to be spending money, because you’re used to gonna be replaced by that that safety net that comes in from the from the age pension?

Jamie McIntyre
Yeah, absolutely. I think circling into the theme of permission, it’s giving them permission to invest over the long term and, and the axis, let’s call it dividends from chaise or ETS. And, and having the conversations with them about volatility really not necessarily risk there is risk as part of that. volatilities the real conversation, as well. If I, if I circle back to clients and working around purpose, and those that are struggling to transition into retirement after their long working life, what are the what are some of the things that I mean, you mentioned earlier about teaching your client wrench? But I suppose if we speak a bit more generally, how can we help those that are struggling to transition into retirement after, you know, a long working life,

Liam Shorte
but I encourage people to look at what the people before them have done, you know, talk to colleagues who have retired. And just have a quick look, how did you manage after retirement? What were the things you were interested in doing? And what did you do? And what were the struggles? The problem is, I know that most of my female clients all are already talking. And I’ve talked to their friends about this. But what I see with my male clients is that they just haven’t done that. And they just tried to sort things out themselves without, without asking. So in a lot of cases, I just wish there was more forums and more. And I think what I do find is there’s a lot of Facebook community forums, now you’re in the local area, right? I am, there’s dads in the hills. Basically, people just throwing ideas there of what they do, and what should I do for a new career or part time career retirement, and you get the input from people who’ve been there before you. So I think for a lot of lot of my clients will try and do as if I see that they’re struggling, or see that that you know that they just don’t have some purposes, just trying to find something that that will excite them and give them ideas. You know, we have a lot of people who just are not very good at social interaction. And it’s a matter of just finding a way for them to find their people to find a group that suits their needs. So we had we had one group of gentleman who has absolutely no interest whatsoever in sport, no interests whatsoever in tools, everything like that. But he found a group of 10 blokes and all they do is they meet every month for just a meal and they have a good red wine. And they just have a chat about life. And out of that he’s met he’s he’s met some guys that do some other things together for one of the charities So and each bring in ideas that just because anybody who would would like to be part of this, I’m doing this for with such and such a group, we need a couple of volunteers. And that’s great that gets them talking. It’s just something that a really fun blog struggle with, is getting ideas.

Jamie McIntyre
Yeah. I agree with that. That’s, that’s also my experience, I think, caught through this baby boomer generation. Part culturally was the men went to work full time and the women, and I know this is a generalization for that this era. But it’s part of what we’re talking about today is the men have just been thinking about working all their life than and they get a lot of, I suppose their interactions through their work life, and the women, over time, have spent more time with friends and females and males as well. Having conversations about lots of things that’s not work related, and that they’re much better prepared for that transition to retirement. And I think potentially the future labor, if I sort of come off the back end of that, the culture like I’m 46, I think those around by age and younger, the wives or the females, not necessarily the why’s that females are working full time now. And this is probably going to be an issue for them in the future, being those full time workers and not exposing themselves to as much time away from work either. I think that’s something that the common types of conversations will have in the future as well with with female clients,

Liam Shorte
yet another look at you, it can happen to anybody. It’s just that we see it more with men. But you know, in one of my female clients, she was really active person. But then when she got into her 60s, she found was she honestly found that most of the people our age group were boring. And she wanted to be more active. Well, in the end, she picked up a camera, and she started doing graphic design and stuff like that. But now she’s ended up being one of the best yachting photographers in the country. She’s She goes out on the yacht to take Sue during the competitions, she takes live action photographs, through all of them, comes back in your puts those all on the websites, for them for the different groups. She just she did her passion there something that she just thought she would try the graphic design side of it did her course of that. And that led her to photography. And she’s just found that passion for the last five, seven years. That’s just what she just absorbed yourself with. And she’s brilliant.

Jamie McIntyre
That’s, that’s awesome stuff as well. We, for us, we focus a lot with our clients in that pre five years, maybe even 310 years prior to retirement of digging really deep and encourage them to take those trips while still working and using up their long service leave through those periods whilst working. And you know, taking those trips to discover if that’s what they really want in their retirement, you know, that type of travel, you know, I’m sure you’ve had experiences where we’re clients who’ve bought a caravan the day they retired, taking their first trip, and then put their caravan on the market. So I think it’s really important to in the lead up to test things out. And I think you’ve also mentioned that to land and you’ve had experience with that as well.

Liam Shorte
Yeah. The try before you buy. It works for retirement and using the transition to retirement. But also things like if you’re looking at a caravan, maybe go on to Capitol fire or hire a motor home and try one. I have had people who’ve bought a Winnebago set off on a trip around the country. And then for me up, oh my god, we hate it. We absolutely hate it. I had clients who moved out, they wanted to move down to barrel Mossville area. They thought they were going to travel in their caravan all around the country. So they they they just like they took the advice and rented first and and in moss Vale happened to rent a big property with a big garden. You know, sort of when they did go traveling in the caravan found that didn’t like it. But what it did love was the big garden, which they never thought they would have in retirement. And so they fit their retirement totally got rid of the caravan. And they bought the house that we’re renting. It’s got about an acre of gardens. And they they bought spend most of their time taking care of roses. And then the actual gardens look absolutely beautiful. So it’s a pleasure to go and see them. But it’s also a pleasure to go out and see that they found what they love doing in retirement. And they had meat they hadn’t suffered from buying a townhouse or a villa and suddenly discovering that they needed to move to get what they want to do with a garden. So with most of my clients now I asked them, especially if they’re moving out of Sydney, whether it’s the Central Coast or to, you know, to the Midwest, try it for three, six months or even go on Airbnbs for one or two weeks at a time and in the high season in the low season. Because what we do find is a lot of people Do you want to return to their favorite holiday place? While it might have been the ideal holiday place for one week or two weeks of the year, but 52 weeks of the year that in some of those areas is just it’s not a great lifestyle, there’s not great access to health care, they’re having to come back down to Sydney to see specialists. And the Caddy will find bulk billing doctors or, or even a doctor in a lot of those areas, they’re so booked out. So yeah, it’s a matter of try before you buy, and make sure that you don’t make the big costly mistakes, because stamp duty on a million dollar home is very expensive. If you have to do it one or two times, because things don’t work out. They can really hurt your budget.

Jamie McIntyre
Absolutely, it can. And that certainly impacts the capital that you have available to support your income needs throughout your retirement. One thing to speak about as well, we’ve had clients and we’ve talked about their holiday houses that they they they bought along their journey, and their, you know, their vision, all that holiday house, and I come back to what you’re talking about, which is needs for services as well. We’ve had many clients who have sold their holiday houses, to use the term to liquidate those funds and invest them. So they had that flexibility to actually go and travel to new and unique places. Because the holiday home that they knew is not the holiday home, they wanted retirement as well.

Liam Shorte
Yeah. And also they have this dream of, they’d be at the holy house and all the grandchildren would come up and they would stay the weekends. And it would all be great. And then you discover that well, no, they got their sports on the weekend or ballet on the weekend. And they just stuck, the house gets used five or six times during the year. So what a lot of our clients have done exactly that they’ve sold a holiday house, they’ve invested some of the money. And then what they do is they take the family on a trip to different places a different place each year. And they can have their cabin and the family can have their cabin. So the end of the night, the peace and quiet, they go back into their own their own rooms, it just works out much better than you know, I did have a client up in Port Stevens who, you know, they bought a double storey house. And then they were told the grandkids weren’t coming up because there was no pool there. So they thought about putting in a pool. And then we looked at them and going, you know, one, the double storey house wasn’t working because both of them had issues with their their knees. And they had no interest whatsoever in putting a pool in. So in the end, they’ve downsized to a villa, then save themselves a fortune. And now each year, they spent about 10 to 12,000. They take the family away to a different Big Four caravan park around the country and have a great time with normal responsibilities of taking care of the pool for 52 weeks of the year. And that’s

Jamie McIntyre
right, all the capital that was required to put that pool in, has definitely preserved their retirement capital as well, for income purposes. And I think that’s something that we’ve worked through with clients together and they get that they get great satisfaction out of the interaction with their family of where will we go this year, were paying with you know, we’re in good shape. We’ve we’ve built some capital out of that holiday home, and they go off and have new experiences as well which, which seems to, you know, really satisfying for the grandparents that wasn’t it?

Liam Shorte
Yeah, I think, again, I got back to it. But it gives I get most of the grandfather’s the grandpa folder to actually do the planning. That’s his challenge. And they start, they start finding, finding even more quirky places to stay that they know that the grandkids will love. And it becomes a family tradition. And that’s what you want to build up you want to build up experiences, memories, because giving your grandkids you know, a new iPad or a new Playstation, they won’t remember it. But you take them away to your Northern Territory, or you take them off to back Queensland for a week or you’re just to a coastal place where they have memories of on the beach and barbecues on the beach, those memories stick with people for the rest of their lives. So I really focus on saying to clients, don’t be afraid to spend money on experiences rather than things.

Jamie McIntyre
I really love that. And I want to talk a little bit more about how you focus on getting the grandpa to organize these events. And I think there was a key word for a be there, which is in a way it forces grandpa to be connected with everybody. And it creates a level of connection and communication that’s on a you know, a deeper level because they’ve got to interact with all of this decision making and give me your feedback on that from your clients or how that plays out for them.

Liam Shorte
Yeah, well, look, it’s the old traditional thing where a mother will talk to her daughter on the phone for an hour or you should talk to her for under two minutes. Because men just are not traditionally great on the Phone. So what I did find with a lot of retiree clients is that all the communication ended up going through the mom. So you know how you ask how the family is going, the husband would just turn around to his wife and go, will you tell him? I’d tell you? Have you ever been away with them? Have you seen them, or we’ve come down for one day or content two days, with a friend, the grandfather has to plan a trip, he’s got to take everybody’s needs and their own sort of quirkiness into into consideration and actually gets to be in touch with them organizing the times of the years, the right time, or where, where they can go. And they’re actually talking to their grandchildren talking to their own children. And that is definitely develops the relationship. You know, sometimes it can cause issues, but you had rather somebody was actually talking to the children than just letting it all go through the the partner?

Jamie McIntyre
Absolutely. I attended a conference about 10 years ago now. And one of the presenters at that conference was a doctor in the in the psychology field, and the doctor, it was a really great presentation. But one thing that stuck with me, so I had good knowledge on this was the doctor explained that women they’ve done studies and measurements, women will speak approximately, I think it was 30,000 words a day, and men will speak 10. And that’s just on a study and women will communicate their way through things a lot better than men. But, but for me, that was a bit of a aha moment to make sure in meetings that I explored enough information from the males in the meeting. And I think that circles back to what you’re talking about there getting grandpa involved in organizing things that pushes him to communicate more.

Liam Shorte
Yeah, look, I do get some pushback initially from some clients, when you start asking personal questions about your lifestyle and things like that. Because men are just, they’re not naturally open to sharing it, they come in to get financial advice from me, what am I doing, talking about where they’re going on holidays, and you know, who they’re taking on holidays. But after the first couple of years, you know, the relationship builds. And that becomes probably the main thing we talk about, in their in their review appointments, rather than just focusing on investment performance, they’re not gonna be able to sector investment performance, I don’t claim to be an investment guru, what I want to do is make sure they have the most enjoyable retirement as possible. And with my new business, we have a little tagline create, enjoy and transfer, create the wealth and a good foundation for your time and, but then actually enjoy it to have a balance in life, not just in retirement, but before it, enjoying your wealth, enjoying the fruits of your labor, and then transferring some of that wealth, whether it be through estate planning, or more and more often, now, it’s happening younger than what people are alive, because if they’re dying in their 90s, the kids are in their 60s, when they’re inheriting so most people want to help out their children and more so that grandchildren now so a lot of it’s about working with them on intergenerational transfer. Now, rather than waiting and just doing a true estate planning, so I have a number of of grandfather’s where what they’ll do is we set up dollar for dollar matching with it as our grandchildren start working. They’ll they’ll just promote with them, you’re getting them useless putting some money away and saving. And we use the first home Super Saver scheme for for people, we just say, you know, if you sell your sacrifice $2 into that your grandfather is gonna give you $1 back and the grandfathers run that, that with them and keep them accountable to it as well. And find the deal put more in as a bonus, just from the see the kids have done something good, like, pass the job or done they’re got the plates or whatever. And it’s just it’s a great step on just training that next generation about the value of money. Because I get a lot of grandparents talking about not wanting to spoil a generation by giving them too much money too easy? Well, the best way you can do it is by educating them on how to value and appreciate money along the way, rather than just leaving them a big lump sum and in an estate plan. Yeah, I

Jamie McIntyre
think that’s a great approach. It Liam’s are for how to teach the next generations all, you know all through your through your family tree of how to accumulate money, yourself thirst and how to use money. Well over time. We look, we experienced something similar and we have conversations with our clients. It’s a suppose it’s about that financial planning piece and that and their understanding of their assets and their cash flow and if they have excess assets, and then you get to a point where you recognize that they’ve got too many assets and let’s call it in their mid 60s, late 60s, early 70s. And we have a saying that we say to clients when we have established that is, you know, let’s have a conversation about your estate, which you’re always talking about anyway, right. So it’s part of our, our role and our responsibility and having their estate planning wills in place. We talk to clients at that point about, would you prefer to give with a warm hand now, or a cold heart. So it’s the ability for them to share that wealth in some ways to, you know, get some enjoyment out of that wealth flowing through their, their family tree as well. So let’s look, that’s, that’s one thing that we do talk about a lot, as well.

Liam Shorte
And that displayed over into these in that as well, because, you know, we talked earlier about not having to do everything together in retirement. So one of the things we try and push with some of the grandparents is, when your granddaughter hits 18, or your grandson hates 18, go on a grandmother granddaughter weekend away, or you’re off, I’ve had one who’s granted granddaughter to Paris, her husband was never interested, her granddaughter was just blown away by the idea of getting to Paris at 18. They saw everything. But at the same time, the grandfather took the 16 year old away to Bathurst, and they did the whole sporting weekend, motoring weekend. Everybody was happy. But it’s getting spending, spending time and experiences with your children and grandchildren, rather than just paying for the next car or paying for school fees or things like that. It’s about giving them the experience that build their character and build their resilience, because they’re probably gonna go through 10 or 15 careers, in that, you know, their, their financial life is probably not going to be as steady as you know what most of us have experienced. And so by giving them the ability to manage money, manage tough times manage good times, understanding, you know, an investment that promises 50% is probably, you know, just as likely to lose 50%. So, you know, teaching them the value of money, and the value of doing research on stuff is really important.

Jamie McIntyre
Absolutely, I think a bit of a theme that I’ve I’ve since coming through and our our chat today, and he is one word is mission. And one word is purpose. And, and really, it’s how those tie together. And if we go back to someone leading into retired, they’re seeking purpose or a new purpose for their life. But I also think that they are seeking permission from from us as the planner, from their spouses, from their children from their family. And so I think there’s a big linkage between the purpose the new purpose they’re looking for, and and getting that permission. It talks to me about how you see that leakage land,

Liam Shorte
you know, I think with the purpose, the big problem is a lot of people don’t haven’t thought about what happens in retirement. So the purpose is really up to its either their partner, or their financial advisor, or somebody has to raise that issue with them, at least, you know, a couple of years or hopefully five years out from retirement. But look, what are you? What are you going to do in retirement? Know, most most blokes I talked to haven’t really thought about it past, you know, the first year of retirement, and the ones who actually sit down and think about it, they actually make great plans for what they want to do. So it’s just giving that giving somebody I would imagine you talk to 70% of guys, if you said what your purpose in life, they would, they’d go blank on you. But if you actually say, look, I want you now to plan for what you’re going to do in retirement, I’d come back to me at the next review with some ideas. And we can start working, if you’re working that into your budget for retirement says you don’t worry about the financial side of it. And then your, your wife can also plan her what she will do in retirement. And so that little bit of extra planning. One, it eases the move into retirement, the fear of cutting off from work suddenly is dissipated, because they’ve actually got a plan in place. to it, it’s more enjoyable, because it is a stressful time giving up that regular pay regular salary, to move into retirement and study the into your nest egg. If they’ve got a purpose in life to and things to do, then the second part of that is the permission if they come back with those ideas, and we work through it and go Well, you know that’s that’s not it’s not such a crazy idea to spend 120,000 on a on a unit, the small little unit to hold your your car and your mechanics tools. It keeps them away from the house where it’ll drive your wife mad having parts of car sitting around the place. Or you know, I’ve had it where we’ve agreed to put on a little small extension or to the house and made it into an art room for the for the wife. What it actually was for the husband, he did Late last year, the window panes where you do the the lead different down colors. And the year that went from somebody who is doing a very mundane job day to day in retirement, how he’s actually making and selling those doing art at weekly markets around the the area where they live up in the Hunter Valley. So it’s it’s really, but he they never thought they could afford to do something like that. But it actually added value to their home, that the home a lot more easy to use, because they weren’t leaving their stuff around the place. It just went into the art room. And it worked perfectly. But if he hadn’t, he would know he would have just gone into retirement. And he probably would never follow that passion unless he had that space to actually do it in.

Jamie McIntyre
Yeah, absolutely. But just another another example of how to find purpose in retirement. I’ll go back to where we’re talking about. And look, we’ve we’ve spoken in the context of males and females, I break that down and talk about in the context of the breadwinner, and the non breadwinner or the support to the breadwinner. And I think this is a bit of a critical thing to work through with with clients. The breadwinners focus has been to be the breadwinner to be the provider to be the provider of money and have a steady flow of that money coming in each week each fortnight each month to cover the things that they’ve wanted to do through their accumulation phase. I find the breadwinner as the hardest transition because they’re moving from a position of Well, I suppose I’m delivering something pretty significant to their family unit two, okay, I’m not needed for that anymore to show me how we’re going to do it. And am I still going to be needed? Now? Do you know what I mean? When I say to? Liam handloaded? That’s a really tough part for the breadwinner, isn’t it?

Liam Shorte
Yeah, because at the same time, they’re giving up their job. So they’re losing that, that sense of me, you’ll be in control of my job, and then me be the deliverer of the money to the family. And so we really talk about that for the budgeting. That’s where the idea of setting a budget and retirement and then knowing what’s going to be there to spend what the pensions are going to be coming through. If there’s age pension, what that’s going to be like, it’s making sure that they know because one of the big things I’ve seen over the last 10 years is when a breadwinner loses somebody who’s been in control of the money and you’re working full time where they lose their job to retrenchment or illness, or you know, for some reason, they’ve had to retire early. They really struggle. And we, a lot of them, go to the extreme then of trying to control the money down to minute beer. Alright, so they start running the household budget, as if they were running the business that they had been in previously. So they started to the we call it spreadsheet itis. It’s where the everything goes into a spreadsheet. You know, I remember one case where one female client came into immediate, she said, My husband went through my purse to pull out all the receipts. And he found my net, you know, where I got my nails done. And he went on the internet, he came back to me, he said, Oh, there’s a better place cheaper, you’ll just down the road that she should go to she said, I don’t want him telling me where to get my nails done. But he thought he was doing the right thing by the family, finding a cheaper, you know, service her. And he just it was driving a wedge between them because he was just trying to control everything down to that minut level of detail. That just didn’t work. And he honestly didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. He thought he was doing the right thing by the family. But that that could have veered on your control. After you know, it was becoming a control issue. So in the end, we have their family budget, we have the he spends, and we haven’t Hearst ends, there is no argument about what she spends her spends on. And she doesn’t argue that what he spends his spends on. So it’s really about making sure that you have those clear delineations of of your what the what the budget is for and who controls it. And not you’re not getting yourself into such, you know, wrapped up completely in in what you’re spending in retirement. It’s meant to be about enjoying life and enjoying your time after having worked all your career. Not not a time to be worried about what a 20 Pay 20 cents gets sent.

Jamie McIntyre
Yeah, I agree with that. Totally that it’s really important to Well, I think for us, the first thing we do and this helps build purpose on the back of that is let’s work through what you spent in the last 12 months. Let’s look at it moving forward, what that would look like and we all have great budgeting tools that we use. We use the term spending planner we like it to be bored looking. So they’re mapping it out. But there’s two key elements in that as we work through it with the with the with the couple. And it’s Hersteller similarities to you, Liam. And we have two lines on the budget. And it’s called Don’t ask money, husband, don’t ask money wife. And it’s don’t ask money. So a bit similar to what you’re talking about there, having the data is money allocation, it just removes a ton of friction, right, and everyone signed off on it agreed to it.

Liam Shorte
Yeah. And the thing is, if a lot of people when they’re working, they don’t, they don’t budget at all, they just work off, I’ve got my salary coming in, we know the expenses for the salary or x, at the end of the end of the month, we’ve either got a little bit left over, or we’ve eaten into our savings a little bit. But in retirement is sort of becomes much more of a focus about eating into their capital. So you really do have to do with just something simple like you talking about budgeting tools, we just start off simple. Just use the my budget planner from Money Smart, the government’s one, sit down with the last three to six months of debit cards and credit cards, and just put that in there. So you actually know what you spend at the moment. And then look at the ask for retirement survey. You know, they’ve got the average that a couple spends in in Sydney, and it breaks down their budget. And to say, Look, these are the things you can expect to spend in in retirement, go through it and see if there’s things that you feel sorry for you, you want to spend extra, and put them in there as your dog ask him the dollhouse car, so that there aren’t surprises. You’re on it. But you will find that a lot of people, the idea of sitting down actually going through what they spend is really difficult for them because they’re afraid of what the answer is going to be.

Jamie McIntyre
Yeah, absolutely. And from the bow perspective, the don’t ask money, it’s mandatory, we go through that with each client. And when we talk about that there could be the husband or the why, well, let’s, let’s assume for a minute, it’s $100 a week per husband. And the wife may not be a spender in over the course of 20 weeks, she may accumulate $2,000 and buy the husband or the grandkids, something really, really nice, that’s really important to her, or vice versa. And we have that conversation. In the meetings. However, it’s don’t ask money, right? So you make the call on what you spend it on.

Liam Shorte
And you Grandmothers will always have a grandkids budget. You know, they’ll they’re always the ones who take care of birthday presents, they’re always the ones that, you know, they know when the special occasion is coming up for them. So they will they will always have been putting money away then what we do with the blokes, it’s they pay for the big things, they take the other 10 Take responsibility for those but and it’s only wants to retire started looking at their budget. They’ve realized how much your their wives have actually managed money over the years and budgeted to cover those things like birthday presents and your days out and stuff. And suddenly the there’s a lot more respect for what the wife has done during that over that period. And they’ve probably both worked full time jobs as well.

Jamie McIntyre
Yeah, the person who doesn’t manage the budget in accumulation days, has some real aha moments when they start to have a full awareness of you know, how that’s been managed over time. And they’re going to be part of a future journey, don’t they? Yeah, definitely. Liam. Today, in our episode, we have spoken about purpose in retirement. And I hope we brought some great value to the listeners today in we’ve moved around in many different areas. And the two key phrases for me were permission and purpose. Making sure our job is the advisor is to uncover what they want, and help give them the missions so they can, you know, move forward into their future retirement life with purpose. And for me, that was definitely our theme for today and and what I’ve taken out of today, have you got some final comments before we we close off today’s podcast?

Liam Shorte
Yeah, all I’d say is, as an advisor, don’t just suddenly change the way you do things. You know, if it’s something you haven’t addressed before, ease into clients, as I said, you’ll get pushed back to start with, if you’d be just focused on strategies and investments. And you suddenly start talking about personal things, you may find that the clients push back. So introduce it by having, as I said, that little book that I give to people is great, just to find things that you can give to people about planning for retirement, and to start a conversation. And then you can develop it from there. But don’t try to don’t try to just the whole as Paul was saying, Oh, I’m certainly going to be a lifestyle planner, because it’s going to come across very badly with clients just ease into the conversation. Test the water with your clients. In some cases, you may have to have conversations with them separately. to address issues before you bring them together to talk about the actual retirement budgeting.

Jamie McIntyre
Yeah, and I think it’s really important if you’re going to move more into that area is to, you know, position it and seek permission to ask those types of questions as well. Definitely. Liam short, thank you for your contribution today. We’ve had a great chat. And I think we brought some great value to our listeners. And, and thanks again and have a great day.

Liam Shorte
Thank you very much.