Retirement For Life

Avoiding the Retirement Planning Void: The CPA, The Advisor & The Chaos - Ep 40

• Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP® • Season 2 • Episode 40

Share episode

To get the full RFL experience, watch the episode here at https://youtu.be/7UF42D1Nlhw


Are you navigating retirement with a team of financial professionals but no real quarterback? You may be stuck in what I call "the retirement planning void" - a dangerous place where critical opportunities get missed between your investment advisor and your tax professional.

Today's episode tackles three major financial issues affecting retirees: the new spending and tax bill, tariff agreements (particularly with Japan), and most importantly, how to avoid the retirement planning void that threatens your financial security.

The spending bill extends historically low tax rates at a time when our national deficit is exploding - creating a unique window of opportunity for tax planning that many retirees are missing. With tax rates 33% lower than during Reagan's presidency, paying taxes now through Roth conversions may save you hundreds of thousands in future taxes.

Meanwhile, new tariff agreements with Japan are projected to bring $2.7 trillion into the U.S. over the next decade. While economists predict these will increase household expenses by roughly $2,300-$2,800 annually, popular Japanese vehicles like the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord won't be affected since they're already manufactured domestically.

The retirement planning void represents perhaps the greatest threat to your financial security. Most retirees find themselves caught between financial advisors who excel at accumulation but lack tax expertise, and CPAs who can complete tax returns but rarely provide proactive planning. The result? No one is truly quarterbacking your retirement strategy when coordination matters most.

Ready to bridge this dangerous gap? Find a retirement specialist who understands both investment management and tax-efficient distribution strategies. Because retirement isn't just about no longer working - it's about navigating the most challenging financial period of your life with confidence and security.

We love hearing from you!! Record your retirement questions anytime at www.RetirementForLife.com


  • Subscribe to our channel for our latest content visit: Our YouTube Channel
  • Elevate Your Retirement with the AIM Secure Retirement Assessment... our most popular tool! Powerful customized insights for retiree's or those nearing retirement. Answer 8 simple questions and receive your personalized assessment including the top three action items most likely to supercharge your chances of Retirement Success.
  • If you're interested in learning more about our trademarked AIM Retirement System, visit: AIMRetire.com
  • Want to connect with Chris? Schedule a 15 Minute Retirement Readiness call to discuss whatever's on you mind about retirement Retire15.com or just shoot him an email at mailto:admin@cyrfincial.net
  • Try out the industry's leading financial planning software on your own. We give RFL listeners unlimited free access to the Free Online Planning Tool

Investment ad...

Intro:

Retirement for Life, your passport to a comfortable and confident retirement. The podcast that's equal parts education and entertainment, where we break down the retirement maze with a dash of fun and a heap of wisdom from your host, Christian Sear, CPA, the passionate retirement specialist and president of Sear Financial Wealth Advisors. The independent registered investment advisor specializing in the AIM retirement system.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

All right, welcome to Retirement for Life podcast. Today we're gonna talk about the new spending and tax bill. Just a little bit. We're gonna talk about tariffs. I wanna tell you something interesting about the new Japan trade deal that was made, and I want to talk to you primarily about the retirement planning void. Let's get started right away and talk about the big, the beautiful spending bill.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Okay, I purposely gave Andrea and Emma you know, the only one here with me is Brooke. Brooke say hi. They did a great job. Last podcast they talked to a college planning specialist. I watched that podcast. There was a lot of great information.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

So if you're a grandparent with a grandkid and you missed that episode, you want to learn more about best ways, best practices, good things to think about with regards to college planning. I highly recommend you go back. I think it was less than 30 minutes. This podcast promises to be less than 30 minutes as well. Brooke's got me on the clock so I'm trying to go as fast as possible, because I always like to talk too much and it's one of my weaknesses.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Let's start with the big, beautiful bill. It was passed on july 4th. We know, if we're paying attention to the things we say on this channel that you know, brooke, you don't remember ronald reagan because you were not born when he was the president, correct? But this man was an actor turned president of the United States, very charismatic. You know. They say good looking people tend to do better. You know, which is why life has been a struggle for me, but you know, by most accounts, he was a pretty good president.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Ok, back in 1986, tax rates were effectively 30, 33% higher. Now let's just be clear about that. What does that mean? Were taxes really 33% higher at the beginning of Reagan's tenure? Yes, if you're in the 20% bracket now that, you would have been in the 53% bracket back when Reagan was voted in office. It means that instead of being the 20% tax bracket, you would have been in around the 30% tax bracket.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Okay, so a lot of people, when I say that number 33%, they just add it it's a percentage. Okay, it's a percentage, but still, if you're making $100,000 a year of taxable income, would you rather pay $20,000 in taxes or $30,000 in taxes? Obviously, the answer is I'd rather pay $20,000. That's the environment we're in right now. We've been in this environment since 2017. Okay, taxes have steadily gone down over the last 40 plus years.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Most of us despise paying income taxes and therefore it kind of goes unnoticed right. It's like okay, you reduced my taxes, I'm still filing taxes, they're still taking taxes on my paycheck. They're still taking income tax distributions when I take money out of my IRA. So the fact is that most people don't appreciate that right now we are at relatively all-time low tax rates. Okay, that's part one of the story. Part two of the story is, as I have been saying, that this new spending and tax bill, it extends these lower tax rates permanently. We'll talk about that in a second. What's that mean? It means that had this bill not passed, you, me, brooke, all of us would have seen a tax increase next year, in 2026. So on the surface we should all be clapping Go ahead, give me an applause on that. There you go.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Yeah, so everyone should be clapping a tax extension. That's really great news. But, as I've said, we should be really aware of this. It's very ironic that we're passing a low tax bill in this current environment, an environment where we're paying $1 trillion a year just in interest. An environment where Medicare and Social Security is causing us about $2 trillion of expenditures a year. In an environment where the total expenditures of the United States government last fiscal year was $2 trillion more than what we took in. In an environment where many, many economists, smart people, are saying we are finally coming to the point of no return. You're hearing this in Congress. You're hearing people complain about the deficit. The budget, this spending bill, by most accounts, did not help that situation out. If you need more money in your household, you go out and get a job that pays you more Effectively. What the United States of America just did is said gosh, we're in a world of hurt. We're not making ends meet. Let's go find a job that pays us less. Let's charge our citizens less money. Let's reduce revenue or keep it low. It's not permanent.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

I've been doing taxes now since 1999. It was my first tax return I ever did. I have seen tax laws, regimes come and go, change. We have a major political outcome when we go to the polls approximately every two years. This whole plan that we just passed permanently feasibly could be gone in less than two years. Okay, with the stroke of a pen it could all just go poof like that in the dust. So does it help us?

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Yes, my listeners, my clients, the people I talk to most on a daily basis, are in retirement or thinking about retirement, planning for retirement. It's coming sooner than later. They're done worrying about saving their money. Sooner than later. They're done worrying about saving their money. They're now concerned about how do we make this money last in the smartest way possible. They are concerned about the debt issues. They are concerned about what should we do in this situation?

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

These people who are 65, the tax bill did give us a little bit of break, right, we are. Now, if we are 65 or older every single one of us 65 or old we'll get a $6,000 deduction. Right? That's supposed to be their way of saying hey, we're not going to tax you as much for social security. It's nice, it's not a huge. It doesn't move the barometer on your retirement plan. Okay. So it's good that we're contained to pay low taxes. But let's really let's really be smart about this.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Retirees. Let's understand that we have this window of opportunity right now where we can take advantage of these low tax rates. What's that mean? It means you know, if you're still working, you're putting money into your 401k. Should you really be doing that? You're effectively delaying your taxes till later. Well, what if later, when you are forced to take out distributions out of that 401k? What if later? What if taxes are 33% higher? Does it really make sense for you to be running away from taxes right now by putting money into a 401k? That's just going to end up costing you hundreds of thousands, in some cases, millions of dollars of taxes later.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Okay, that's something to think about. That's something we talk with our clients and the prospects that we're talking to all the time. Are you sure you want to be putting money into this 401k right now, when taxes are at all-time low rates? What are you really doing? Are you creating a problem for yourself? I think that we have to now kind of shift our focus to tariffs. Okay, I think we have to talk about are tariffs good for America or are they not? Now I just want to kind of give you the highlights or the lowlights, depending on which side you fall on.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

The latest tariff deal we're making deals, brooke, we're making deals. Have you heard that? We're making deals? Yeah, yeah, we're making deals right. You know, when you have an actor as your president, you get like the, the Hollywood version. When you, when you vote a like a deal maker into the white house, you start to get deals right. It's just the background of, uh, of our president.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

The latest deal with Japan. Just kind of tell me if you, what's your gut instinct when I tell you this. All right, so Japan, we made a deal with Japan. Before the deal, we could not ship anything. Nothing made in the United States went to Japan virtually nothing. Okay, they put up bureaucratic walls in Japan, essentially preventing any imports into their country from the United States of America.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

That has changed. We are now, for the first time, going to be able to ship cars made in the United States of America to Japan. We are now going to increase rice. Now it's interesting Japan rice they eat rice, rice. Now, it's interesting Japan rice, they eat rice. They're going to increase the amount of rice coming from America into Japan by 75%. They're going to start bringing in billions of dollars of agricultural products into Japan coming from America. We're talking corn, we're talking soybeans and fertilizers. So we're shipping fertilizers now from the United States, america, japan. We've never done that. Okay, here's another thing. You've got these cars. You know Japan is known for making really good cars. They ship. Okay, brooke, how many billion dollars worth of cars do you think Japan ships to America in a given year?

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Eight $40 billion of cars coming from Japan. Okay, so now guess what America is going to get as a tariff 15%. Right, you ship a $50,000 car from Japan all the way to America. You know? Now we've got what is that? $7,500,. Write a check to the United States. All right.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

I don't know if that sounds bad or good. It sounds good. Here's the thing the $40 billion worth of cars, folks, that come from Japan. Brooke, what do you think? The number one car on the streets of America that's a Japanese car. What do you think it is? It's got to be a Toyota.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Yeah, okay. Here's the top five or six cars that we drive as Americans that are Japanese Toyota Camry, highlander that's the SUV Honda Accord, nissan Rogue I don't know what that is. What's a Rogue? That's a car I think it's like a SUV, maybe. We don't know, do we? Crossover.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

SUV. Maybe, we don't know, do we Crossover? Crossover, I like that. A lot of the Lexus vehicles are Japanese, okay, and the Subaru Outback, mate. These are the cars that we know and we love here in America. Folks, none of these cars are going to have a tariff applied to them. Why? Because they're already made in the United States, okay. So if you're a Honda Accord lover, you're not going to pay any more money for your Accord because it's made here in America. It's only the cars that we don't buy enough of for Japanese automakers to make them in the United States, okay. So here are actually the top three cars that you will see a 15% increase on Ready Toyota 4Runner. If you love a 4Runner, you might not be happy. The cost of a 4Runner just went up. Actually, it's 13%, because we were already tariffing them 2.5%, so now it's 15%. So let's just call it round numbers 14% increase on Toyota 4Runners. Mazda CX-5. Brooke, what is that car? I don't know. I don't know.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

It sounds like a sports car. I bet you it's it's fast, yeah, well, it's going to be fast, but it's going to be 15% more. And then the Subaru Forester is still made in Japan. 15% tariff. But you take $40 billion and multiply it by 13.5%, which is the effective increase of tariffs going to the United States Treasury. It's a lot of money.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Okay, so far, I've told you that we're going to be able to ship more stuff to Japan. So far, I've told you that we're going to be getting tons of money in tariffs into the United States Treasury. Now, here's the sweetener, here's the kicker into the United States treasury. Now, here's the sweetener, here's the kicker. In addition to all of those things, japan has committed to $550 billion of investments in the United States of America. Okay, this means they're going to be building Japanese companies, are going to be building semiconductor companies here in America, creating jobs.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Another one that was listed is energy. Okay, so you've got that ball of work, okay. Okay, what do you? I'm just going to ask you one more time, brooke does that all sound good or bad? Good, I mean, it doesn't sound bad, okay. So what are the naysayers saying about deals? Okay, they're saying well, if I do like the Subaru Outback. I am going to be paying more money. We're talking about inflation and it is true. Most economists agree that these deals are going to cause us to pay more out of pocket. Inflation could be pushed up, all right.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

So here, just give you some common sense here, you don't know about tariffs, you don't know about taxes. What does this all mean? The consensus from the budget lab at Yale is that these deals, first and foremost, are going to bring $2.7 trillion into the United States dollars into the United States over the next 10 years. Again, that's all good, but this inflation what's it going to cost us? How does it impact us? I'm not getting $2.7 trillion. You're not getting $2.7 trillion. Where's the money going? It's going into the United States government's coffers. So we're going to have to pay more money for our cars. Potentially, we're going to have to pay more money for things that are coming in that are now being tariffed. The average household is going to have an increase in expenditures. This is bad. This is inflation of $2,300 to $2,800 per year. That's inflation. We're paying more for goods coming from other countries. But remember what I just told you about this tax plan. They have essentially said we're going to give you a break on taxes. We just passed this new tax law. Again, back to the income lab at Yale. They're saying look, this tax plan that just went through it's going to save us as a household, right around 2,900, 3,000 bucks a year. So you're paying more for goods Okay, your inflation is going up, yes, but your tax bill remains low. That's kind of the offset at play here.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

If you just think big picture, big picture, there's $2.7 trillion coming from outside of the United States. That's coming into the United States of America. How it gets shuffled around, whether it ends up costing you more money or less money, whether your tax bill offsets some of those higher prices, everyone's situation is different. But at the end of the day, we have trillions of dollars coming into this country. So a lot of negotiators say, yeah, but the inflation? A lot of the people who are in favor of the tariffs are saying this very thing. If you just close your eyes and keep this as simple as possible, there's trillions of dollars coming to the country that weren't coming in last year. All right, we don't know the long-term impacts of this. What we do know is, right now, very short term. What we have seen is unemployment still a nice, pretty rosy picture. Stock market at all-time highs a nice rosy picture. We have not seen anything negative per se from these tariffs, from these deals, yet. So let's keep our eyes open. Let's see what happens to the US economy over the course of the next two or three quarters. Let's see what happens to the United States debt now that we have passed the spending bill, when we actually need more money to pay down the United States debt. Let's see where this goes.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

My perspective is and this is what we've been preaching on this channel for a long time let's pay our taxes now as much as possible. While tax rates are low, let's try and reduce the amount of risk in our retirement. If I am 60 years old and, god willing, I have 30 more years between now and the end of my life, there is risk 30 years of risk. Let's take measures to reduce that 30 years of risk down to something shorter. Let's do a Roth conversion and take tax risk down to three or five years instead of 30 years. Let's do some mailbox money which I can't say anymore Social Security 2.0, and let's reduce the risk of a stock market crash in the future from the next 30 years down to maybe the next five or seven years. Let's continue to protect ourselves.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Put ourselves in a position with our retirement where, regardless of what happens in the unknown future, we feel confident, we feel secure, we feel like we've done everything we can to protect ourselves from long-term risks. That's the name of the game in retirement planning. It's not about how much money you make. If the stock market is going to go up like it is this year, your accounts are going to go up. The stock market, between now and the end of your life, guaranteed is going to crash at least once, maybe two, three more times. Let's put ourselves in a position where, if the stock market goes up because we know it will over the long term right, we know between now and the next 30 years, close your eyes. Stock market's higher, let's just not worry about it along the way. Let's put some barriers and some guardrails to make sure that our retirement is protected as much as it can be, all right. So we've talked about tariffs. Jury's still out. We've talked about the tax and spending bill. Good for now. Who knows what the future holds?

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Last thing I want to tackle today is the retirement planning void. Now I want to tell you about a client that came to us from Arizona, scott. I'll keep his last name out of it. Obviously. Scott was in what I call the retirement planning void, and this is something that's really resonating out there on YouTube.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

When I'm talking about the retirement planning void on my videos, a lot of people don't know. So this is a podcast. This is really just an informational type of venue. This is me, and sometimes, most of the time, my colleagues, talking about something that's interesting on kind of an informal basis. I'm getting 200, 250,000 views on some of these videos where it's just me in a talking head and it's a more formal type of format. Right, it's not necessarily a script, but I'm just hitting the bullet points of something very specific. I'm talking about the retirement planning void on these videos, and it's really resonating. And so here's what the retirement planning void is. So Scott comes to me and he's got a CPA. Now I'm a CPA. I've been a CPA for a long time. I like CPAs. They're good people, they're reliable. Brooke, when you hear the word CPA, do you think like party animal? Do you think like eh? Yeah.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Right, these CPAs like me and we're like eh, we know we can trust these CPAs. We know they're going to get our taxes done in a timely manner. We know we can rely on these CPAs. They're the most recognized designation in the financial space, right. But here's the problem with the CPA Never almost never does your CPA ring you up on the phone and say hey, jim, I got a great idea, we are going to put this plan into place. It's going to take about 10 years to get done, but over the course of the next 30 years you're going to save $600,000 to $700,000 of taxes.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

The CPAs don't do that, and I'll tell you why. Number one they need additional information. To make a claim like that, they need to know things that they don't necessarily know, like your longevity, your other income. They need to understand what your Social Security is going to do for the next 30 years. They have to understand what you're going to spend. They don't know how much you spend. They only know how much you make. If a tax return, if you've ever looked at one, there's nowhere on there that says what's my expenses for the year. There's nowhere on there that says here's how much I spent. All it says is how much did I make and what's the tax on it? There's so many variables. I once had a Roth conversion spreadsheet. It took 67,000 formulas to properly figure out the right Roth conversion strategy.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

These CPAs they just don't have the wherewithal, the confidence or the comfort to put themselves out on the line and say here is a 30-year strategy that's going to save you a ton of money. They just don't. You got these financial advisors. Okay, we're not using spreadsheets anymore, we're using software. We're basically now able to use the easy button, press an easy button and say here is a great tax strategy. The software just told me that you should do this, this and this. This is your Roth conversion strategy. And most guys aren't doing that from a financial advisor standpoint. Why are they not doing that?

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Because when you do a Roth conversion, the dirty little secret in the investment advisory world is that a Roth conversion, folks, is you paying your taxes now so you don't have to pay them more later. Right, pay a little bit now, a little bit, paying now, long-term gain. What you're actually doing, what you're physically doing with your money in a Roth conversion, is you're taking a portion of your money right now. That's sitting there in your account and sending it to Washington DC and in many cases, depending on what state you live in, you're also sending some money to your state capital. All right, that reduces your investment balance. Now, it is generally a good idea. It's generally a great idea to do this because what we talked about earlier pay your taxes now all time low rates.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

But essentially you're looking at a statement. I'll just use a fictitious number. It's got a million dollars in it. You do a partial Roth conversion. Now your statement says $950,000. Why did your statement just go down $50,000? Because you just spent. You just sent $50,000 to Washington DC. That's a Roth conversion. Why'd you do it? Because if you don't do it later, that same $50,000 is going to cost you $200,000 in taxes. That's why you do a Roth conversion. Your balance goes from a million dollars to $950,000. Your balance goes from a million dollars to $950,000.

Brooke Fay:

Brooke, how do advisors charge people in this industry? They charge you based on the amount of money in your account.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Right. So if I'm a financial advisor, do I want to charge you on a million dollars or $950,000? The dirty little secret is that with a Roth conversion, a financial advisor who promotes this idea, who suggests this idea, is essentially saying, hey, here's a good idea that's going to save you a bunch of money, and now I get to charge you less. So you need a true fiduciary on one side, a financial planner, to actually even press the easy button and say let's do a Roth conversion. And you've got a CPA over here who probably will never suggest it to you in his or her life.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

If you do decide to do this massive tax strategy, the biggest financial opportunity for a generation of savers, if you do decide to do this with these two people involved and the advisor was diligent enough to suggest it to you, even though he's going to get paid less. Now you've got these two people and then you go to the financial advisor who suggested you do a Roth conversion. And now it's November and he says, hey, it's time to do your Roth conversion this year. And you say, okay, what's the next steps? And he says, well, you know, our plan was to keep you in the 25% tax bracket. That means I need to know what your taxable income is. And he said what's taxable income? Is that like how much I bring home? No, no, no, no, Taxable income is something different. You're gonna have to go speak to your CPA.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

So you drive across town, you go to the CPA and the CPA says you're doing what? And you're like, yeah, my financial advisor, he told me to do a Roth conversion. He needs to know how much money I'm going to make this year. And the CPA says, guy, it's November, I'm not going to be doing your taxes until like March next year. And you say, yeah, but my financial advisor needs to know how much money I'm going to make because he wants to keep me in the 25% tax bracket and he doesn't know how much Roth conversion to do, because he needs to know how much I'm going to make already and keep me in that 25% tax bracket. Then your CPA who, by the way, only makes money effectively three or four months out of the year. Right, CPAs, what are they doing right now? It is July. What are they doing right now? They're having a hard time coming up with ways to bill you. So the CPA says, okay, that's fine, I'm going to do a pro forma, I'm going to try and estimate what your taxes are going to be this year, even though it's November, but I am going to charge you for that. And why are you doing this Roth conversion again? And a lot of my clients don't do Roth conversions and there's some special forms I have to fill out.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

And the CPA says, okay, you want to know how much money you're making. Because you want to do Roth conversion, because your financial advisor told you to do so, because he pressed the easy button, You're going to have to go to your broker. You have to back to your financial advisor and say, hey, what are my capital gains going to be this year? You're going to have to go to your HR department if you're still working and look at your W-2, even though they haven't issued a W-2 yet. You're going back and forth and back and forth the financial advisor. You go up to him. You say, look now is this going to change my tax bracket? How is this going to affect my deductions? What's the tax bracket for the 25%? You're asking him these tax questions and what's he say? What's the financial advisor say when you ask him a tax question? He says you're going to have to speak to your tax advisor.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

So, you got this guy who's pressing an easy button, who's never done a tax return in his life, doesn't even do his own tax return, most likely telling you to make this big, huge tax strategy and all the while he's sending you back to the CPA to get the information. You're going back and forth, you're sending emails back and forth. It's a three ring sticker your advisor, you and the CPA. The CPA is not happy. He doesn't really feel comfortable because why? Because he's going to do a tax return now that you have Roth conversion. He's going to do a tax return that ends up in you paying more taxes. You're spending money and everyone's like there's nobody in charge of this circus. There is no general contractor in this who is directing traffic in this overall plan? And the answer is, for most Americans, no one. The answer is the retirement planning void is where most retirees find themselves. An advisor who really only is good at helping you accumulate money, putting you into funds that hopefully are making money. A CPA who's going to do a great job getting your tax return done by April 15th but is not going to come forward and offer you any proactive advanced planning strategies because he doesn't have the wherewithal, the comfort or the expertise to do so, and in the end, you've got some advisor who really only knows how to invest money, pressing an easy button, telling you to do something that he or she really isn't comfortable giving you advice on. In fact, they're telling you I can't give you tax advice. That's the retirement planning void. So you want to think of your financial situation differently once you start thinking about retirement? Okay, when you were 20 years old, the formula is so simple. You know how do you become a millionaire? You work and you save. When you're 30, what do you do? You work and you save. When you're 40, what do you do? You work and you save. This is just a simple formula. As long as you're willing to work and as long as you're willing to save instant millionaire it's like the easiest thing ever. Seriously, I don't mean to put down people who don't have a million dollars, but all you have to do is work for 40 years. That's that Okay.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Once you hit the age where you are starting to think about retirement, it's time to shift your focus. There's not going to be an HR department in your life forever. You are now in charge of your own healthcare. You are now in charge of your own insurance. You are now in charge of that 401k. You are now in charge of thinking about what happens if you need long-term care. You are in charge of deciding when to start social security. That's a million-dollar decision per person.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Potentially it's the biggest joy when you retire, but it's also the biggest financial struggle. Shifting your focus means shifting your focus away from an investment generalist, a person that's going to help accumulate your money, shifting your focus to a retirement specialist. There are retirement specialists out there. Obviously, that's all we do. We're not the only ones. Finding a retirement specialist is the single most important decision or realization that retirees and soon-to-be-retired will make.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Understand that retirement is not just a party where you don't go back to work. Retirement is the beginning of the most challenging financial part of your life. Embracing the idea that spending your money for the 30 years in your retirement 30 plus years in your retirement is a scary proposition and it's not just give me $2,000 a month and I'll be okay. No, there's so much more to it the retirement planning void. You need to avoid it.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Realize that your outcome very likely will be significantly better if you divorce yourself from the fact that you're trying to make money in retirement and understand that you're trying to make money in retirement and understand that you're trying to reduce your risk in retirement, understanding that you don't need you don't want three or four in some cases five people, because we have some people who need estate planning attorneys involved as well. Having three or four or five professionals in your life with no general contractor to be the true turnkey person or team in charge of your retirement, that's what your focus should be on. So that's all for today's show. I think we did it in less than 30 minutes. What do you think?

Brooke Fay:

I have it right here it's 33 minutes and 45 seconds, oh God, all right.

Christian Cyr, CPA, CFP®:

Well, if you stuck with me for this long, I thank you. This is me ranting about the big beautiful bill about tariffs and the retirement planning void. These are my thoughts for this week. I hope you enjoyed it and I will see you in two weeks with another great episode on the Retirement for Life podcast. Thank you and take care.

Outro:

Investment advisory services provided by Sear Financial Inc. Sec registered investment advisor. All content on this podcast is for information purposes only and should not be considered investment, legal or tax advice. Material presented is believed to be from reliable sources and no representations are made by our firm as to another party's informational accuracy or completeness.

Head Shot

Christian J. Cyr, CPA, CFP®

Host
Head Shot

Andrea Brannon

Co-host
Head Shot

Emma Bean, CFA

Co-host