“Contact us for your free, no obligation, financial strategy session; $250,000 minimum assets to qualify.” That last part caught my wife’s attention.
On the weekends, one of the radio stations presents a show by a local financial services firm. It is a paid program, where the host pays for their time slot. When we are out and about, we tend to listen because they offer good advice, and because of my intertest in Retirement life. Adding the $250K qualifier was new. Clearly the advisors want to limit the time and effort of dispensing advice to people who have some accumulated wealth.
Many Americans in their 50s are facing a significant retirement savings shortfall. A 2024 AARP survey revealed that 20% of adults aged 50 and older have no retirement savings at all. This alarming statistic highlights the financial vulnerability of a substantial portion of this age group.
For those who do have savings, the outlook is still concerning. According to Federal Reserve data, the median retirement savings for individuals between 45 and 54 years old is $115,000 as of 2022. Depending on the source, when a person reaches 50, they should have anywhere between four and eight times their annual income saved for retirement.
What about those who have done little to no financial planning? What do they do?
Retirement needs to be redefined from a binary choice to work versus no work, to life adaptability. It is a concerted effort to meld professional and personal life into synchronous pursuit of career goals that help translate into the fulfillment of life goals. Let’s see how this plays out.
Financial Clarity starts with knowing what you spend versus your income. According to a 2021 survey by Ramsey Solutions, approximately 47% of Americans aged 50-64 use a budget to track their finances. Less than half!
The best way to introduce options to your post-career life (if there are no savings) is to understand the present but also review circumstances that may arise in the future. Creating a post-career lean and regular budget helps. A lean budget challenges you to see the reality of what you only need to fulfill current obligations. A regular budget starts to add in all the activities you would like to do tied back to goals or aspirations. Either way, you want a plan.
Calculate your budget and compare it against your known expenses. Provide yourself with options to understand where you can save to have more flexibility in your life.
Do you need as much income in the future as you make right now? After you know your budget, that naturally leads to deciding on the level of work you must do in a retirement timeframe. Maybe you’ll always need to work, but not at the same intensity or time as today or in the first part of retirement life.
Retirees seeking flexible Employment can leverage their professional expertise through part-time consulting, pursue remote work opportunities, engage in seasonal or freelance positions, and explore gig Economy jobs like ridesharing or delivery services, allowing them to maintain financial stability while enjoying flexibility and purpose in their work.
Regular readers have heard this before. The average person in a managerial or leadership role spends about 40 percent of their awake time in their job (calculate yours here). A retirement life where there are no savings, may not take the career time to zero, but even if you need the job to be 30 percent awake time, that’s 10 percent that gets to be your time.
Lifestyle optimization for retirees with limited resources involves strategic cost-cutting measures: Downsizing housing, exploring shared living arrangements, aggressively using senior discounts, minimizing discretionary spending, and potentially relocating to more affordable areas to maximize financial sustainability and quality of life.
Traditional retirement may not seem like a reality to you. You are not alone. There are millions of Americans facing the same situation.
To navigate this reality, retirees should create budget scenarios to understand the working reality. Exploring flexible work options like part-time consulting, gig economy jobs, and freelance opportunities, while simultaneously optimizing their lifestyle by reducing expenses, developing new skills, and seeking passive income streams adds necessary flexibility.
The key is not just financial survival, but maintaining a sense of purpose through meaningful work, continuous learning, and strategic financial planning that transforms retirement into a period of personal Growth and engagement.
Whether you have the $250,000 saved to get a free consultation or not, solid financial advice is critical to healthy and time-optimized living. Here are some options for you to explore (ensure you do your own research that best fits your unique circumstances).
David Buck is the author of the book The Time-Optimized Life, coauthor of The Retirement Collective, and owner of Kairos (Time) Management Solutions, LLC. Learn how to apply the concepts of proactive planning and using your time. Take the Time Management Analysis (TMA), the Retirement Time Analysis (RTA), or all the other free resources offered to help bring more quality time into your life.
The post Retirement is Possible with “No Money” first appeared on Infinity Lifestyle Design.
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