Yes retirement is important to plan for, and it’s something I do with my clients. But there’s a reason why I don’t talk about it at first and may not discuss retirement until many meetings down the road.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi again everyone Greg Vojtanek here of Fade In Financial. For more free educational material visit fadeinfinancial.com. Today I want to tell you why I don't talk about retirement with my clients.

Well that's a bit of a lie. I'm kind of lying. Of course I do and, yes, eventually we plan for it. And I start planning for their retirement and years in the future. I am a fiduciary. I have a responsibility to my clients. I am a CFP®, a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™, and as all good planners, yes, we obviously have to plan for your future and plan for your retirement. So I eventually get there. But I don't mention retirement to most of my clients for at least the first four or five meetings. So we'll go one, two, three, four, maybe the first six meetings or so before I really even discuss retirement.

Now I didn't find this all that interesting until I actually started talking to other advisors, who were like "wait, what?” So here's the reason why. For most of my clients, and again this doesn't go for all of my clients, but most of my clients are screenwriters and directors or artists in the entertainment industry. Many of them have worked their whole adult lives, and even since they were teenagers, trying to get to this point in their lives. For corporate America, or for people in general with quote-unquote “normal” careers or jobs, they probably get a job right after college or a few years after college. But for this group of people, a lot of my clients, they're fighting and working their whole lives to get this job which means they may not get it until they're in their 40s or sometimes 50s. Some of them are lucky enough to get it in their 20s and 30s. So now they're in their 30s 40s or later years and they've been working the whole time to get their dream job. Now literally their dream just came true and now they have some money in the bank. Their lives are really good and they're super happy and they come to me. And if the first thing I said to them was “Congratulations! Now let's talk about you never having to do this again.”

That's kind of insulting. If I said that to them, they probably wouldn't meet with me a second time. I would probably be fired immediately. So I don't want to talk to them about that because their dreams just came true. Why in the world would they come to an advisor who says “OK let's talk about you not having to do this job anymore right? Let's plan for that.” So no. By the way retirement is a totally different thing to every individual. It could mean they want to retire at 40, 50 or some people don't retire until they're in their 80s or some never really retire. So discussing this and when it is they want to stop working just doesn't work for most of my clients.

So that's the reason. I thought you might find that interesting and if you want some more information like I said, go to fadeinfinancial.com. I hope you found this a little entertaining and a little bit helpful. Thanks.