Welcome back to the Excel in Retirement podcast, where we help good people make wise financial decisions so that they may excel in retirement with confidence. Learn more at clientsexcel.com. Now to your host, David Treese.

Welcome back to episode 126. I'm so glad you're here listening. Well, I've developed a packing strategy when I have a trip coming up. It's nothing fancy and you might do something similar. I list out everything I want to take on paper. And when it's time to pack, it creates a more efficient process. I'm not having to think about every day and go here and go there. I have a strategy for what I'm doing. When it comes to what to do when we get there to wherever we're vacationing at, I'm more of a we'll figure it out when we get there kind of guy. Mallory, my wife, on the other hand, she plans every detail and she squeezes in extra activities just on the off chance that something doesn't take as long as she had anticipated. Her objective is to Squeeze that lemonade for all the lemonade she can get out of it. When we're hired for a job, the person hiring us normally sets out some parameters for what we are being hired for and lets us know what our objectives of the position are, right? We have a game plan like we do when we go on vacation. When people come in to visit with us, one of the questions I often ask them is, why has their advisor invested their money in the way that they have? And another question I often ask is, has your advisor discussed with you how to take money out of your accounts and make it last as long as possible? And you may be surprised, but very few people can answer these questions. And it never ceases to amaze me that folks are within a decade and oftentimes five or less years from their target retirement date, but their advisor hasn't thought it was important enough to discuss a distribution strategy. And There's no rationale for the way that they're invested either that the client can explain often. When it comes to important things, it's only natural to have a game plan for what our approach should be. We realize that life is a fluid situation and things come up, but having a strategy allows us to have a reason for why we do what we do. If our goal is is just simply to make money in our retirement accounts, I would encourage you to think about expanding your goals and objectives. We can do more than one thing at a time, and just making money may not be good enough. Maybe you could do more. In our process, we normally spend 60 to 90 minutes with folks in our initial discovery meeting. And our goal with that is just to learn about our clients' concerns and goals. We want to understand where our client's coming from, what's important to them, what they may be fearful about. And we want to come up with a game plan to try to mitigate those things or make assumptions or a game plan about if it is within reason that they can achieve these things that they have as goals. By gathering this data, it allows us to customize a plan to help them meet their objectives and show them what's possible with their money. After our discovery session, we spend a couple hours here internally, depending on the complexity of the situation, putting together an analysis of our client's situation. We illustrate where their funds are now, and what their goals and objectives are. We create their monthly cash flow analysis. We illustrate a future cash flow analysis. And finally, we give some ideas to help them optimize their situation if there are any. That's our goal is to be able to create value and to give them a reason for why they are invested the way that they are. It allows us to have a why. And otherwise, we are essentially just hoping for the best outcome. And you You know as well as I do that hope is not a strategy. When we're hoping for the best outcome on vacation, It might mean not being able to go on a boat tour or maybe not being able to get that umbrella down at the beach or maybe not getting reservations at the good restaurant. In retirement, on the other hand, hoping for the best outcome may mean for you spending through your funds quicker than you otherwise would or need to even. Or worse, it can mean running out of money. Or it may mean paying more in taxes on your accounts than you need to. Or things not being set up properly for your beneficiaries And the list could go on and on, my friend. Many of our clients have worked 40 or more years to save for retirement. I would implore you to take a few minutes to understand if you have a good game plan together. If you don't know how to best take distributions to supplement your social security, or if you don't have an idea of why you're invested the way that you are, let us know. We'd be happy to walk through our process with you. We'd be happy to talk And it's like the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We love

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