Smart Retirement Planning at Any Age: Using Pop Culture to Make Finances Easy

Retirement planning can feel like a wall of jargon and spreadsheets, so we brought in someone who makes the numbers feel human. CPA and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst Jesse Hurst joins us to break down how to start retirement financial planning at any age and why the first step is not picking investments. It is getting honest about where you are today, then turning “someday I want to retire” into real retirement goals you can measure.

We get practical about the questions that trip people up: how much should you put into a 401(k), why an employer match matters, and why starting at 22 versus waiting until 32 can completely change the outcome even if you save the same way. Jesse shares a simple strategy for increasing contributions over time so you still feel your raises, while your retirement savings rate quietly grows. We also talk about the gap in financial literacy for younger adults, and why many traditional wealth management firms ignore people who are still building, even when they have strong income and big decisions like buying a first home, choosing benefits, setting up insurance, or handling 401(k) rollovers after job changes.

Then we move into the part nobody warns you about: the emotional switch from saving to spending. Many retirees have done everything “right” and still feel like they are not allowed to use their money. Jesse explains how a retirement income plan can create permission to spend, and how to prepare for market volatility with a liquidity strategy that helps you avoid selling at the worst possible time. If scary headlines make you want to change your plan, this conversation will help you trade anxiety for a process.

If you find this helpful, subscribe, share it with someone who needs a clearer retirement plan, and leave us a review so more families can find the show.

If you would like to speak with one of our attorneys, please call our office at (503) 227-0200, or visit our website at https://www.pacificcascadelegal.com.

To learn more about Jesse and how he can help you, you can visit his website at: https://www.impelwealth.com/

Disclaimer: Nothing in this communication is intended to provide legal advice nor does it constitute a client-attorney relationship, therefore you should not interpret the contents as such.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Intro/Outro 0:01

Welcome to Modern Family Matters, a podcast devoted to exploring family law topics that matter most to you, covering a wide range of legal, personal, and family law matters with expert analysis from skilled attorneys and professional guests. We hope that our podcast provides answers, clarity, and guidance towards a better tomorrow for you and your family. Here's your host, Steve Altishin.

Steve Altishin 0:32

Hi everyone, I'm Steve Al tishin, Director of Client Partnership Service of Cascade Legal. And today we have CPA and certified divorce financial analyst Jesse Hurst to talk about starting financial planning for your retirement, no matter what your age is, and how popular music, film, and culture moments can translate confusing financial concepts into understandable and enjoyable plans.

Jesse Hurst 1:04

I am great.

Steve Altishin 1:08

Oh, I am too.

Pop Culture That Explains Money

Steve Altishin 1:09

So before we start, uh you want to just talk a little bit about yourself and how you sort of you know got into this issue and and especially the the use and the references to popular music, film, cultural moments to address these issues.

Jesse Hurst 1:27

Yeah, so my wife tells me that I have tons of useless knowledge bouncing around in my head from all kinds of uh musical history, classic rock, jazz, whatever, and uh movies and cartoons and all kinds of stuff. And so every once in a while, like in my head, I hear something, yeah, I hear a concept or whatever, and I relate it, I you know, I relate it to something else that I've that I've seen in a movie or saw on a TV show or Broadway show or whatever. And uh so it's it's easy for me to relate that way. And what I found was that as I started once in a while using references like that in my blog posts, those were the ones that we got the most feedback from and the ones that that that kind of resonated with people. And so my goal in doing this is to make complex and sometimes more dry, boring numbers-oriented materials and making them fun and relatable for people so that A, they want to read them because they're fun, and B, that they remember them because of the pop culture reference that's tied to it.

Steve Altishin 2:42

Oh, I love it. I love it. And it we before we were doing this, we talked about it and you were making references, and it does, it just triggers something. And it's like, oh, okay, now I kind of get it because of this thing you said, which you know, I may not have heard for the last you know 12 years, but it brings it right back.

Jesse Hurst 3:04

Yeah, and every once in a while I pull something out that's really obscure that nobody else maybe has even ever heard of. I wrote one last weekend, uh, a blog post about the Federal Reserve Bank. You know, the Federal Reserve Bank is one of the only global central banks that has a dual mandate. You look at the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, Bank of England, People's Bank of China, they're all solely focused on keeping inflation in check. But the Federal Reserve Bank has two, two dual mandates, right? They have keeping inflation low and keeping employment at us at maximum employment. And the tools that they have to do that aren't really responding to where things are in the economy. So it's like they're trying to bounce two yo-yos at once with the thing. And I found this old Carl Perkins song from the 1950s called The Right String But the Wrong Yo-Yo, that I that I used to frame. And it's like nobody's ever heard it. It's a really cool old, you know, uh rockabilly song, but every once in a while it's not just something that everybody knows, it's something that we uh pull that's unique or fun from that standpoint.

Steve Altishin 4:11

And and and then you get it then. I mean, again, just us who did yo-yos. Yeah, that's cool.

Find Your Starting Point First

Steve Altishin 4:18

Well, so let's talk about making decisions about retirement, which can be overwhelming at any age, no matter what your age is. And it's just so easy to sort of kick the can down that road and just wait. And how do you get past that, especially if you're younger?

Jesse Hurst 4:43

Yeah, well, and I think I think from our standpoint as certified financial planners, right? We lead with the planning process. So we help people, and the first thing you have to do when you start the planning process is have a really good inventory of where you are today, where your starting point is, right? Yep. So the analogy that I always use with that is it's like I always use the analogy of making a connecting flight in an airport, right? So if you've ever flown through Chicago or Denver or Dallas or Atlanta, right? And you get off your plane and you've got to get to gate B-37, right? The first thing you do is you look for that concourse map. And once you find the concourse map, you find the place that says you are here. Because if you don't know where you are, there's no way to figure out how to get to B-37. And I think it's the same exact way with retirement planning is you have to know where you're starting today, you are here, and then it's helping people cast a vision for what their ideal retirement looks like, which is unique and different to everybody. And I tell people there's a big difference between retirement dreams and more defined retirement goals, right? Like, hey, I'd like to, I'd like to retire someday and live a comfortable lifestyle. That's kind of a dream, right? Like, hey, I want to retire when I'm 65 and I want to have $10,000 a month of income so that I can do the things I want to do in retirement and I want to make sure my mortgage is paid off so I'm debt-free. That's a goal, right? It's got to be specific, measurable, and so forth. So once you know where you are and you cast a vision for where you want to go, then you can start looking at what are the income resources that I have, what are the asset resources I have, and start helping people build a plan so that when they get to that transition from work life to retirement life, they can make that transition with confidence.

Steve Altishin 6:44

I love your reference to the airport because I'm thinking to myself, you know, I got here two and a half hours early and no one's here, and I can just wait. I can just wait a while and then I go and it's like you know, a giant line. So how do you get them started? I mean, what you know, it you've got to take that first step.

Jesse Hurst 7:07

Yeah, and I think most of the people who come to us that find us, so most of my clients, so I just turned, I just turned 60 last October, six, seven months ago, right? And so most of my clients came to me when they were probably mid to late 40s, early 50s, and they kind of wake up one day and they kind of realize, hey, I know retirement's starting to creep up on me, but I'm not sure if I'm doing the right things or if there'll be enough fuel in the tank to get me where I want to go. And so a lot of our clients, when they when they first come to us, that's their question, right? Like, like, here's where I am today, here's the assets that I have, here's the income that I have, here's the tax considerations, and so forth. And they need somebody to help them wire that together into a unique financial proposition for them. And and I always remind people, right? Like, if you think about your financial life, it's really built into two broad brush strokes, right? You've got the accumulation phase of life, which starts the day you start working and goes until the day you retire. And during, you know, now I'm I'm out in Northeast Ohio, up between Akron and Cleveland. So I'm out in the Midwest. And there's a very kind of Midwest millionaire next door mentality that you see in a lot of people here, right? Where there's four or five things, right? They they spend less than what they make, they save and invest the difference, they put money in their 401ks, they pay down debt, pay down mortgages quickly. They don't make crazy buying decisions on credit cards, they don't make uh crazy investment decisions from tips they got at the golf course or online blogs or whatever. And inevitably, the cumulative effect of those good habits over time is that they will build wealth. They just don't know whether it's enough wealth, right? So they're trying to get their arm around arms around that. And then you think about it when you make that transition from the accumulation phase of life to the distribution phase of life, which starts the day you retire and lasts until the day you die. When you think about it from that standpoint, now what we have to do is give them confidence that what they've accumulated, they actually have permission to spend and use to accompany to do the things that make life meaningful for them. And that's a that's a whole different psychology piece of the psychology that I think we'll get into as we as we talk about that, right?

Steve Altishin 9:44

Oh, yeah. The other thing I remember we talked about this a little bit was on the mentality of why do I need to start now? What's the advantage? I'm I'm 22 years old, and and I'm and you know, I'm I'm no one's no one can teach me anything. I know everything, and I just want to have fun. Girls just want to have fun.

Why Starting Early Changes Everything

Intro/Outro 10:12

Right, right, right, right.

Steve Altishin 10:13

And so what will you know, what would you say to someone like why why start now? Why should I start putting my money away now? I could start 40 years from now.

Jesse Hurst 10:25

Right. Well, and I think the big issue with that, and just think about like somebody who comes out of school and is maybe making, you know, 60, 70, 75,000 a year to start whatever, if they start putting away 5, 6, 7% of their pay in their 401k plan and their employer matches a few percent, so that between what the employee puts away and the employer puts away, you get about 10%. So let's say, let's say they're they're putting away, uh, and I'm just I've got a financial calculator right here in front of me because I just want to illustrate this. Let's say they're putting away $7,000 a year. Well, if they do that starting at age 22, and they do that until age 65 for 43 years, just that 10%, $7,000 a year, and just very conservative rate of return, 7% rate of return for the next uh for the next 43 years, by the time they reach age 65, it's grown to $1,734,000. Right? If they wait 10 years to start, right? So if they start at 32 instead of 22, instead of 1.7 million dollars, it's 832,000. Yeah, it's literally the time value compounding of money. And the younger you start, and the it doesn't have to be huge because it's it's really the time and the compounding as much as it is the contributions, you know, to make up that same differential at age 33, you'd have to save two to three times as much each year if you start 10 years later.

Steve Altishin 12:12

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I I talked to my daughter about that, and it was like, you know, start at $50, start at whatever you want to start at. I mean, it's like you spend twice that much on coffee every morning for a month, just put that much away. And it's like it will really compound.

Jesse Hurst 12:32

Is that true? Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think some of that's just casting that vision, helping them see what it can be. And we found that a lot of our clients that are of retirement age or even their, or even the next generation up. So it's our clients, you know, it's it's the parents and grandparents trying to help that next generation that's just coming out of school. They'll have us sit down with them and hey, when you get your first job, make sure you're putting at least five, seven, 10% of your pay into your 401k. And I I tell them the same thing that you just said. Start at 5% a year. And each year, when you get your raise, if you get a 3% raise next year, take your 401k from 5 to 6%. You'll still feel like you got a pay raise, but now you're doing that, and five years from now, you're putting 10% of your pay in, and and you never even noticed it, right? You never even felt it, but it makes a huge difference over time.

Steve Altishin 13:28

Yep. You, now that my brain is going in your direction, I'm thinking teach your children well.

Jesse Hurst 13:34

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yep. Yeah, no, no question.

Affordable Planning For Younger Adults

Jesse Hurst 13:40

Yeah. Well, that's one of the reasons, and I think we talked about this before. We actually built into our, we're one of the few financial planning, you know, wealth management firms that I know that has a next gen offering where we charge a monthly subscription fee. It's really built for people 25 to 40 years old because if they go to the big, you know, wirehouses and so forth, they don't even want to talk to you unless you have at least 250 or 500,000. Or if they do, if they do consent to open an account for you, you get relegated to a call center and an 800 number. And every time you pick up the phone, it's 1800 dial a prayer, and nobody you don't know who's picking up on the other side, and they don't know you from Adam. We've we've set up for 50, depending on the level of service they want, $50 or $75 a month. And a lot of our kids, you know, the next gen, that 25 to 40 year old, they get it because they look in and go, oh, this is just like my Netflix or this is just like my gym membership or whatever. It's just another subscription. But then we can help that next gen, you know, with real live questions that they have. How do I, how do I buy my first house? How do I save for my, you know, if I have children? How do I set up college education funding for them? How do I make best use of my group benefits from my employer? Do I need life insurance? Do I need a will? All of these things that are real questions that nobody's really trying to help that next generation with. And and financial literacy and financial education in the school systems are awful. Nobody teaches it.

Steve Altishin 15:21

Yeah, you really hit on the head when you said you need to have 250,000 or five of them. I mean, it's like they don't want to touch you unless you already have the money. I'm trying to, I'm trying to have the money, but I need help to do that.

Jesse Hurst 15:35

Well, one of the other things that we found with those next gen uh clients, right? You you take a young couple. I got referred yesterday to a to a young couple that that found us on a Google search, right? Now, I'm not gonna be the advisor working with them. One of the other certified financial planners in my group, one of our younger ones, is gonna be working with them. And part of that's going to be because it's 60 years old. This couple's 37 and 36 years old. So if they want to retire when they're 60, 23 years from now, I'll be 83. I mean, I want them working with a younger advisor who's going to be there for them. But you take a look at this young couple, and he's a software engineer, she's a nurse practitioner between the two of them. They're making $270,000, $280,000 a year. They've got two 401ks. Each of them have $150,000 to $200,000 in their 401ks already. But nobody at any of the big banks or wirehouses would talk with them because they don't have $250,000 or $300,000 or $500,000 for the bank or the warehouse to manage. We can help them through this. And guess what? On average, those younger generation people, they tend not to work at one company for the next 40 years, right? Like their parents did. They tend to change jobs every three, five, seven years. And when they do, they have 401k rollovers and those kind of things. And we help manage those assets. And what we find is that three, five, 10 years from now, they're on the start to be an awesome client. And these are going to be your ideal clients 10, 15, 20 years down the road. You just have to help them now.

Giving Yourself Permission To Spend

Steve Altishin 17:15

Yeah. You had talked about the the changing from saving to spending. And it was fascinating that that you you mentioned something like, I I have to tell people that it's alright to spend. There's a whole other sort of older person dynamics going on because I've been you know saving my whole life, isn't there? It's just a it's a it's an emotional transition.

Jesse Hurst 17:50

Oh, I do I was just in a meeting, like literally five minutes before I jumped on with you. I've I just uh finished a meeting with a couple that have been clients of mine since 1992. So they've been with me for 34 years. They're uh they're 73 and 68 now. And uh they've never spent a dime of anything they've invested with me, right? They're well over a million dollars today. They started out 30 some years ago with almost nothing, you know. They they were, you know, they they you know, 30 some years ago, they would have been like uh late 30s, late and mid-30s. I was probably at that time, you know, 27, 28 years old as their advisor. And here we are 33 years later, and they've accumulated. And I'm like, guys, so so let's just use, I'll just use a base number. Like, let's just say they had a million dollars in their investment assets, right? And between both their social security, some rental income, and uh a little bit of pension from an old hospital. She was an RN, so old hospital pension that she had, they bring in about six thousand dollars a month, they're debt-free, so $72,000 a year. And I asked them how cash flow was, and they said, well, cash flow feels pretty tight. You know, inflation's up, expenses are up, gas is up, foods up, eating out's up, and all that stuff. And I'm like, Well, we've got a million dollars over here that you've never touched. If you assume the 4% rule for withdrawals over a 30-year retirement, we could create $40,000 a year or $3,300 a month of additional cash flow. And she's like, oh my gosh, we couldn't do that. And I'm like, yes, you can. Like, like I said to him, I said, if we're sitting here today with a million dollars and we look out seven, 10 years from now, and it's grown to a million five or a million seven, and you haven't done everything you wanted to do in life, we failed. Right? I'd much rather see that million seven, you know, five, seven, ten years from now, be a million two, and them have used the cash flow and income from it and done everything they wanted in life. That's why we did this, right? This is why you worked and saved and so forth for years. But it's really hard. You know how I said those habits that people have that help them accumulate wealth, those habits that they build into their psyche that help them accumulate wealth are the very same habits that keep them from spending it on the other side. They're like, hey, I have this because I did this for 40 years. If I change my habits and start, you know, start distributing money out, I might not have that anymore.

Steve Altishin 20:39

Yeah, a lot of people that age think of that. And I know you talk about the herd kind of theory, like, you know, well, they're not doing it, they're not doing it. But it's like they're afraid they're opening Pandera's box. Once I dip into that, you know, I'm I'm going to it's like it's all gonna spill out and I'm and I'm just gonna keep doing it and keep and it's gonna go away.

Jesse Hurst 21:06

Yep. Yep. It is, it is really, it's really hard for people. And and the first time I ever really realized this, I'll I'll try to keep this short because I know you know we're on a timeline here, but in 19 in 1990, I was referred to a couple, right? I was 25 years old. I'd been doing this for about three years. I got referred to this couple, and they invested $150,000 of money with me, right? Now, at 25 years old in 1990, it was hard for me to believe anybody trusted me managing $150,000 of their money. But you know, the 90s were pretty good. At the time they were referred to me, they were uh 62 and 59 years old. 10 years later, right, their 150 is now 425. We went through the big up from the dot com years and all that. Markets did pretty well. I think we did pretty well with our uh Investment allocation and so forth. And so they're now 72 and 69. And I said to him, I'm like, okay. And they're living on both their social securities and his black lung pension that he had from working in the coal mines. And I said to him, I'm like, look, you got $400,000 here at 4%, right? You could take out, you know, $16,000, $17,000,000, $18,000 a year, you know, $1,400, $1,500 a month. What are you going to use this money for? And I'll never forget it. It was like the longest minute of my life because they just kind of looked in the corner and they looked at the floor and they looked at each other. And the wife finally looked at me and she goes, it never really occurred to us that we were allowed to spend any of this money. We were always told to save money for a rainy day. We were always sold to save money in case you need it later when you're old. And so I said, if we had an extra $1,500 a month, what would that do for you? And they started talking about maybe taking a trip to Alaskan cruise, taking a trip to Israel to see the Holy Lands, maybe buying a new car or whatever. And the wife looked at me and she said, But you don't understand, we'll never be able to do that. I'm like, Norma, why? And she goes, Well, his health has gotten to the point now that we can't do all these things. And it's kind of like it was the light bulb for me that said, as a certified financial planner and wealth manager, we had done everything we were supposed to do to help them accumulate money, invest, allocate, and build more wealth than they ever thought they were going to have. And it didn't do anything for them. Right. And you kind of went, oh, I'm not going to keep letting this happen with other clients. And that's when I kind of said, this is some. And they actually ended up taking out money and gifting it to their adult kids and grandkids so they could see their kids and grandkids use some of it and the benefit of it while they were still living, but they never used any of it for themselves.

Steve Altishin 24:01

A lot of that, it seems like, is that I'm retired, I have to live on less, which is not necessarily true, but it feels like it. And what if the markets go down? I mean, how you know Bike Command said, well, you know, the markets go down now, it's good, but if they go down, we're just we're just crushed. I mean, how do we spend?

Staying Steady Through Market Drops

Jesse Hurst 24:21

Yeah, well, and and that's the you've got to have a process for managing that, right? So, so I I told you I started the business in August of 87. So about six, seven weeks after I started the business, we went through the Black Monday stock market crash of October of 87, right? And I always tell people one of my claims to fame is that I was actually in the business doing this in October of 1987, and none of my clients lost any money, primarily because I was so new to the business that I didn't really have any clients at that point, right? So, so uh, so but like I've lived through the stock market crash of 87, two Persian Gulf wars, the dot-com 9-11, you know, scenario. I've lived through 07, 08 with the financial crisis and Lehman Brothers and AIG, fiscal cliffs, COVID, Russia invading Ukraine, you know, Liberation Day, trade tariff stuff. Like, I so when clients say if the market goes through a downturn, I'm like, no, no, no. It's not if, it's when the market goes through a downturn. Well, I've I have counted since I started in 1987, I have counted in my 38 years that we've been through 19 either geopolitical, economic, or healthcare crises. When you say healthcare crises, everybody thinks COVID. Who remembers SARS, right? Who remembers swine flu? Who remembers the Ebola scare of 2014 when that lady got, and this is so funny because this is in Northeast Ohio where I am. There was a lady who was wedding dress shopping about 15 minutes from where my office is, who got on an airplane in Cleveland and flew to Dallas and they found she had Ebola. And it was the headlines on the news for the next five days. Nobody's ever gonna fly again, and so forth, right? So there have been 19 of these. So it's not if it's gonna happen, it's when it's gonna happen. You've got to have a strategy so that you're okay. So when markets go through upturn, so let's let's use that client example there. You had somebody with a million dollars, they need $40,000 a year from their portfolio, 4% a year. What we try to do is make sure that we're at least two, and with our most conservative clients, three years ahead in their liquidity needs. So that means we're gonna have $80,000 to $100,000 that we've created. You make money by buying low and selling high. So when the markets go through upturns, you trim one or two percent off their portfolio, put it in short-term bonds and money market, and then you sit there and go, if we have $80,000 to $100,000 in those short-term liquid investments that don't fluctuate, and we have all of our dividends paying in cash, then I know that when the next Liberation Day or when the next Iran-Middle East issue happens, or when Russia invades Ukraine or COVID happens, I know that we've got enough liquidity in their portfolio to cover their cash flow needs for the next two to three years, sometimes three to four years, so they don't have to respond to today's headline and do the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Steve Altishin 27:38

Right, right. And and we're almost out of time, but I just gotta say you're the kind of financial advisor that people should have because you can also tell them yeah, it's always gonna go down, then it's always gonna also come back up. It's it's not ever gonna go down and stop going down.

Jesse Hurst 27:57

Yeah, yeah. So so I had a client, and I'll I'll finish with this because I know we're at time. I had a client in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine and the Fed started raising interest rates, the stock market dropped 26%. Because the Fed was raising interest rates, bonds also went down. So I had a client call me in October of that year. We were meeting in a couple weeks in early November, and he had to take his first required minimum distribution. He's like, Jesse, he goes, I know we're meeting in a couple of weeks. He goes, the stock market's down, the bond market's down, and I've got to take my first required minimum distribution. What do you think I should do? And I said, Well, Dick, when the stock market was up in late 21, we sold enough with the market high to cover your required minimum distributions for 22, 23, and 24. So, what I think you should do is turn off the TV and go play some golf or go hang out with your grandkids because we don't have to worry about this right now.

Steve Altishin 28:53

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Wow, we just blew through that 30 minutes. Now this is really, really good stuff. I love the fact that you take something really complex. But the stuff we were talking about was really complex, but make it understandable. And if you can make me understand it, you can make anybody understand it. So you know, thank you so much for being here today.

How To Reach Jesse And Close

Steve Altishin 29:19

Before we go, can you let people know how they can get a hold of you?

Jesse Hurst 29:25

Yeah, so so my firm, Impel, I am I Amazon Mary, Impel Wealth Management. You can just Google Impel Wealth Management, find our website. You can see me, Jesse Hurst, on LinkedIn, my book, Poponomics, you'll find it on Amazon. There's a Poponomics website. Jesse Hurst's author is out there on Facebook and Instagram and so forth. So it's pretty easy to find me if you if you if you're looking. So I love it.

Steve Altishin 29:50

I love it. So again, thanks for being here today.

Jesse Hurst 29:54

Thanks. We had a great time. I knew it'd go fast, but uh as long as we have fun, that's good.

Steve Altishin 29:59

That's exactly right. So, everyone else, thank you for joining us today as well. If anyone has any further questions on today's topic, you can post it here or you can connect yourself straight with Jesse. And until next time, stay safe, stay happy, and be well.

Intro/Outro 30:15

This has been Modern Family Matters, a legal podcast focusing on providing real answers and direction for individuals and families. Our podcast is sponsored by Lander Home Family Law and Pacific Cascade Family Law, serving families in Oregon and Washington. If you are in need of legal counsel or have additional questions about a family law matter important to you, please visit our website at landerhomelaw.com or Pacific Cascade Family Law.com. You can also call our headquarters at 503-227-0200 to schedule a case evaluation with one of our state of attorneys. Modern Family Matters, advocating for your better tomorrow and offering legal solutions important to the modern family.