10 Smart Money Moves to Retire Confidently in Your 50s

Imagine you’re in your mid-50s — the kids are grown, the mortgage is nearly gone, and you’re wondering if retirement within the next decade is possible. Tony Zabiegala and Derek Gabrielsen from Strategic Wealth Partners break down five practical steps to prepare for retirement without panic, drastic lifestyle changes, or confusion.

From tightening your budget to eliminating bad debt, maximizing tax-advantaged accounts, adjusting your investment mix, and building a second income stream — this episode gives you real-world strategies you can act on today.

👉 Part 2 drops next week, covering the next five tips to help you retire confidently and stress-free.

📩 Questions or topic ideas? Email info@swpconnect.com

Transcript

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Imagine this. You're in your mid 50s and you've got most of the boxes checked off. You raised a family, got the kids on a self-sufficient path. Even. Might have got your house paid off or nearly paid off. Now you're looking in the mirror and say, can I retire within the next ten years? So think about this. You don't need to panic. We are going to talk about ten ideas and tips to get you through the next decade, so you can retire confidently. Hey, Tony. How are we doing today? Not bad man. Not bad. How about yourself? Yeah. You know, pretty good, pretty good. How was, how was Disney? I survived, man. I was seven miles of walking every day. Every day. Dude. And we did a light them. I guess I dove. I mean, I had a cart around a five year old, you know, so I was jealous. I was jealous of my in-laws, man. They had one of those Jazz's like. Oh, yeah. The motorized cart. I wanted one my my not. Everybody's got him out. There. I what how what a point of contention. Yeah I bet Disney community. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Going right to the front of the line. Yeah. It's good stuff, man. It's an issue. They've cracked down on it. Apparently. So, Well good man. I'm glad you enjoyed Disney. We got, ten tips to, you know, helping you retire early or at 65, without changing your lifestyle and panicking and all that. So we're going to hit the first five this week, and we're going to wrap up with the second five next week. Yeah, I mean, that's a good point man. Let's like if you're in your mid 50s and you got a lot of boxes checked off. And you know families that kids are almost in college, maybe they're out of the how who knows. Right. And a lot of debt is being paid off or nearly paid off. And you're like, man, now, now it might be time to aggressively say, how do we how do we do some of that stuff? That's how I look at it. So like you said, we're going to talk about five today. We're going to talk about five next week. We'll break this into an AB kind of show part one. Part two. But number one, first and foremost, like I can't stress this one enough. This is actually a very important one. Get your numbers right. You know, let's get real about your numbers. And what I'm talking about is your budget. Yep. Start. I always tell people this in the beginning of the planning process. Garbage in, garbage out. If we cannot figure out your budget like it's worthless, like it's a it's not an accurate plan. And we can help figure out like I start identifying, you know, I guess what you would call the must haves, the nice to have. Like, do I really need that kind of thing? And and I also did I, I, I've done this with several client. There's mystery expenses that pop up like man I've been been charged this $30. I never realized that I've seen it. It was buried in some kind of credit card or something like, you know, these subscriptions, like, I'm probably notorious that for I'm not just on my phone, my iPhone, I'm probably paying for stuff. I'm like, why am I keep on getting charged three bucks every month? I can't find it, right? Or even think about, things that are maybe a luxury that you can maybe back off or eliminate. So I'll use one example is I we've talked about this a couple times. I'm a big fan of making my own coffee in the morning. You know, because if you go to Duncan, I mean you're probably in it for 3 to 5 bucks and you're. That's just coffee. Right. And, and get a snack yet. Yeah. And. Turn down donuts when you're in the Dunkin Donut line. I know, I'm being honest. Those munchkins. Might. Oh, man, I can talk about I like, I like Dunkin's their their their line up. They do a good job. Rather keto toast is actually pretty good. Anyway, I'm. I'm actually now experiment experimenting, making cold brew at home. But again, it's it's it's like $0.50 plus or minus a cup where it's $3. Every time I would go to go buy it at the store and I, I know it's an experience. I know it's makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside, but we compound that like, I haven't done the math, but, you know, five times, three times 50, right. What is that fifth like. That's 300 bucks a year. That's why money can't be right. Give me 300 bucks I'll make you coffee every day. Anyway, what's your thing. What's your thoughts on that. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's, it even if that seems intimidating, like, you don't have to have your entire budget down to the penny on day one. You just need to have a good idea of what's coming in and how much you're saving. And then you can figure out pretty much figure out the rest. Yeah. So, you know, like, even if you do, you sit down, you go through your credit card statements, your bank statements, and you total everything up and you do it for six months, like you might still be missing stuff that didn't occur in that six month period. You know, just random stuff. Annual stuff. Annual housebreaking. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's another thing. I will probably get to that. But this segways into the next one. Really, really nice. Eliminate bad debt. Yeah, right. We can build a budget where you can start paying down debt if it exists. And that's essentially credit cards are the worst, right? 20 to 35% interest depending on what's going on. Car loans are not fun. Home equity lines. Right. So go down the line. You know, your house, you know your mortgage may be gone or. But it's probably a low interest rate, right? Right. And, here's the thing. It's like, I feel like you're always going to have expenses in retirement. And I have this example with cars, you know, bad debt. Good that whatever it might be, I don't know if a car's good debt or bad debt, paying for cash. I mean, if you can get 0% or 1% financing, like, finance the damn thing. Yeah. I've had discussions about leasing because, you know, like, yeah, it's going to be a constant payment, but if you buy a car kind of same thing because you got to then after the three years you're paying for wear and tear tires, brakes. Well, you know, I can go on and on. Right. So any ideas on that? Yeah. You know, it's, it really kind of like you said, ties back into the overall budget. And kind of this, this thought that you can't have any debt if you want to retire, that that's not necessarily true. You just have to have a handle on where your money's going. So, you know, if you still have a mortgage, you know, 62 and you're thinking of retiring early, that is not going to prevent you from doing it. But if you have, you know,$30,000 of credit card debt and your budget is misaligned, from, from number one, because, you know, you're actually spending more than you're bringing in and you're charging it on a charge card. You know, those things are going to be very, very bad for your financial plan and might prevent you from retiring when you want to. Right? So, you know, you have to have a handle on your budget and you have to have a handle on, on the bad debt for sure. And then and and again, it goes back to number one. But number three is now maxing out your tax advantaged accounts. If you're not doing that by your mid 50s you really need to start considering it. Okay Tony where does the money come from. Let's get back to the budget. Right. And there's so many new rules this year because of the, the one big, beautiful bill. If you're again, this is a weird man. If you're between 60 and 63, you can save nearly an additional. What is it?$33,150. Like, your catch up goes from, 7500 to 11,000. 250. Yep. For I think the next couple of years, it might be a temporary, fix, but it's available right now. And if you make over 145 grand, that money needs to go to a Roth. So there's going to be these gains. But like this is your time essentially the I can talk about numbers and all that is this is this is your time to expedite hyper save. Yep. It's that simple. Is that that one's just a straight very straightforward. What are your. Thoughts. Yep I wrote down save more spend less. Don't be a psycho. So that's not the American way, Derek. It's not. We love to spend money. Yeah. So, I mean, being a psycho, I'm not spending money. Actually. So this goes back to, an episode a few weeks back, where, you know, people, you know, save and then they, they don't spend what, what they can actually afford to do. Yeah. If you again, it goes back to number one if you have a good handle on your budget. We're not saying don't spend any money. Right. You can still enjoy things as long as you are not racking up that. And if you're saving at a proper rate, you don't have to be a crazy person when it when it comes to saving, you know, especially, you know, in your mid 50s, you, you probably got, you know, older kids or probably, you know, want to do a bunch of things with them, all that good stuff. You don't have to be a psycho. Just have a plan. Right? You just, just understand what you're spending, how much you need to save to get there. And you know the rest. You can enjoy yourself. Yep. Another thing is, is now we're talking about saving. Now it translates into rethink your investment mix. Right. You're in your mid 50s when you were in your 30s and 40s. It's like full, full, you know, full guns blazing. And and in this market that's still maybe not a bad idea. Some people will always just be aggressive because, you know, the last 30 years of their life, they've made an extraordinarily amount of money. So, like most investors don't want to get conservative. Right. But building a plan is going to help you understand. Do you really need to take the risk? Because the thing that will kill your retirement account is you're done working, you're done saving in, you're spending, and then the market goes down and now you have to sell security at a depreciated value and you lock in your loss. That is what cripples a retirement plan. Yep. So being prepared and having the appropriate amount of risk maybe, maybe 100% equities is fine for you. You can get away with it. Maybe you can't. So again, understanding what you're comfortable with and what your plans are talking about. So. Yeah, you know the behavioral finance mistakes, we talk about them all the time. You know, if you're doing, you know, one, two and three like we talked about, you got your budget down. You're you're you're not racking up that. You're saving into your accounts. You know, you're doing everything right. You don't want to make huge behavioral finance mistakes to to, you know, set that back right. And especially if you're, you know, 55 or younger, you're probably saving the bulk of your money into your 401 K plan. There's no reason to get to get crazy on the changing of investments inside of your plan. You know, you need to set your risk level, to something that's appropriate for you and your plan. And there doesn't need to be a lot of tinkering. You know, the more tinkering that goes on in there. I would say that the more mistakes that you can make. So make sure your investment mix lines up with your strategy, inside your financial plan. And because it needs to. Right. You know, for, for some people, you know, something might be ultra conservative. And for other people, it might be more aggressive. You know, it just depends on your situation. So make sure you're avoiding those behavioral finance mistakes, because, you know, I hate to see people do do those first three things that we talked about correctly, and then mess it up with, you know, emotional investment choices. Right. All right. And then, number five, the last one for this episode is maybe create a second act of income. And what I mean by that is, you know, the old, the old saying, like, create a side hustle. Maybe you got time for this, maybe you don't. Yeah, right. But an additional income stream can a maybe pay down debt, create an additional, you know, saving stream. Right. Create a saving bucket. So then again, this could be consulting on something that you're, you know, good at or passionate about real estate. You know, if you like coaching, right? I know some people like to, to coach, you know, young athletes, things like that. Maybe that pays, you know, a little wage. But again, you gotta sacrifice the time to do it. But again, you only have a finite amount of time to work because when you when you're retired, you know, yeah, maybe working on, you know, when you're retired, things like that, maybe you can't turn the switch off, but there will be a time where you just can't make money anymore. So make the money while you can. Yep. Absolutely. And again, we're talking about ways to retire stress free, maybe retire early. You know, the easiest way to do that is to to have some sort of side hustle, you know, it's going to help you, save more. Right? It's going to help you feel better, about your budget. So, you know, identifying that, you know, even if it's, you know, 3 or $4000 a year, you know, over a long period of time, that definitely helps. Yeah. And maybe this opens a door for flexibility down the road. Maybe you maybe you found something that you love doing. You're making as much money as you were in a job that maybe you didn't like. I mean, there's a lot of things to think about with that additional side hustle. Yep. So that's it for this episode. Because here's the truth, man. You know, like, there's a lot of things that we can do that can, I guess, like, get us to the finish line without disrupting our life. But it really it's going to take some commitment and and honestly, it kind of starts from the ground up and that's like how much money to spend, right? Because everything else is everything else can be calculated. Right. But it's like like figuring out what your budget is, is so important. So with that, you know, we're going to, you know, have episode number two take us, next week. So take us home. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thanks for listening, guys. We will, finish the, second five next week. But if you guys have questions, ideas for shows, you know, hit us up at info at connect. Com, and we'll talk to you next week. The opinions expressed in the podcast. Are for general informational purposes only, and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any investment, legal, financial or tax strategy. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry. Please consult a qualified professional about your individual needs.