Gold Medal Retirement Planning
by SGL Financial
Our 2 Cents – Episode #244
Gold Medal Retirement Planning
On this episode of Our 2 Cents, Steve and Gabriel use the Olympics as a powerful metaphor for retirement, from preparing for your “opening ceremony” to optimizing your financial game plan. Tune in for practical insights on rebalancing, tax prep, and what it really takes to earn your own gold-medal retirement.
- Quotes of the Month:
- “We live by the Golden Rule. Those who have gold make the rules.” – Buzzie Bavasi
- “If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments.” – Earl Wilson
- The Jetsons or Reality?:
- According to this team, flying cars are already here… this has us asking, “Are we living in a sci-fi movie yet?”
- Olympic Lessons for a Successful Retirement:
- There are a lot of lessons to be learned about retirement when you watch the Olympics.
- We’re highlighting the significance of optimization in financial planning, drawing parallels to athletes’ precision and practice.
- February Financial Planning:
- A quick introduction to our Financial Planning Calendar topics for the month of February.
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Podcast Transcript
Announcer: You are listening to Our 2 Cents with the team from SGL Financial Building Wealth for Life. Steve Lewit is the President of SGL Financial, and Gabriel Lewit is the CEO. They’re here to discuss all the latest in financial news trends, strategies and more.
Gabriel Lewit: Welcome everybody to Our 2 Cents. You’ve got Gabriel Lewitt and Steve here. We’re back after a short one-week hiatus, and I believe the last time we talked to you, the Seahawks hadn’t won the Super Bowl yet.
Steve Lewit: They won it now.
Gabriel Lewit: But they did.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, they did.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So not the most exciting game.
Steve Lewit: I turned it off after three quarters.
Gabriel Lewit: I think the only good news was I won our company’s Super Bowl squares.
Steve Lewit: He always wins, folks.
Gabriel Lewit: Which I do not always win.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, he does.
Gabriel Lewit: In fact, if I were keeping track, I’ve lost probably much more than I’ve put in over the years, despite…
Steve Lewit: Number one, you came in number one.
Gabriel Lewit: I can retire on that $96.
Steve Lewit: It’s good. It’s good.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Well, we hope you’re doing great. We hopefully the team you had rooted for won the Super Bowl, and today we’re going to talk to you about another sports themed event, which is the Olympics, which is going to be concluding I think pretty soon. So before that was off of the top of everyone’s minds, we wanted to cover some Olympic-themed financial and retirement planning discussions here today. And this is actually courtesy of a client of mine that I was just talking to yesterday. And he said, “You guys, we were listening to the podcast. You haven’t done anything about the Olympics yet.” And I said, “You know what? There’s still time. So ”
Steve Lewit: Can we still win a gold medal? That’s the question.
Gabriel Lewit: So Tom, this goes out to you, because hopefully we’re going to hit the mark here with our not Super Bowl, Olympic-themed. They’re just two big events. Olympic-themed discussions here today. Now first to kick things off, we’re going to do a couple of quotes of the month. It’s February. We haven’t done these yet. We like to give you these to ponder, to think big about life and all the things that are meaningful to you.
Steve Lewit: Or to laugh at.
Gabriel Lewit: Or both.
Steve Lewit: Or critique.
Gabriel Lewit: So, let’s start with our first one from, I don’t know who this is. Buzzie Bavasi.
Steve Lewit: Buzzie Bavasi was a boxing coach or entrepreneur. I think Buzzie Bavasi it is.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, it might be Bavasi. Yeah, it sounded like a fake name.
Steve Lewit: No, no, it’s a real name. It’s a real person.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, Buzzie. Imagine your name was Buzzy. Says, we live by the Golden Rule. Those who have the gold make the rules.
Steve Lewit: I love you, Buzzie.
Gabriel Lewit: Is that different than the other golden rule? I think so. Which is treat others as you would like to be treated. I’m still working on that with my kids.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Whoa. That’s a lifelong lesson.
Gabriel Lewit: But yeah, those who have the gold make the rules. True or false?
Steve Lewit: True.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, yeah. Many people would say that’s.
Steve Lewit: I’m sorry to say.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s very true. Right?
Steve Lewit: But money is power, and how you use it is one story, but it is power and that is the story and why people like to acquire it.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, and one would hope those with the gold make good rules. Nice rules.
Steve Lewit: Hopefully, but history has other information for us.
Gabriel Lewit: Correct. Yeah. Very often they make rules that are self-serving, that are maybe not so nice to other people. And yeah, so money they say can corrupt.
Steve Lewit: You think?
Gabriel Lewit: Because those with money make the rules.
Steve Lewit: I didn’t know that.
Gabriel Lewit: So yeah, very accurate quote there, sir Buzzie?
Steve Lewit: Thank you. Buzzie Bavasi. Oh no, he might be a baseball. He’s something with sports. That’s what I think.
Gabriel Lewit: Anywho’s. Well, yeah, we could look this up and verify this.
Steve Lewit: I’m probably entirely wrong.
Gabriel Lewit: Watch it be something totally different.
Steve Lewit: It could be.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. He’s an American official
Steve Lewit: Official.
Gabriel Lewit: For the Major League Baseball league. Yeah. So it was something sports related. Yeah, baseball. But it wasn’t boxing. Boxing Buzzie Bavasi.
Steve Lewit: It should have been.
Gabriel Lewit: Baseball Buzzie Bavasi.
Steve Lewit: Well, it’s not bad, but he should have been in boxing.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, if you had lots of money, you could force him to change sports. You could change the rules.
Steve Lewit: I don’t think Buzzy is around anymore.
Gabriel Lewit: No, not anymore. Next one is from, again, a guy that could just be anybody’s neighbor. Earl Wilson.
Steve Lewit: Earl Wilson. Earl Wilson. I know this name. Earl Wilson was… Oh, what did Earl Wilson? I’ve seen him on TV. I think.
Gabriel Lewit: Producer Katie, could you look this up?
Steve Lewit: Oh, I know this name.
Gabriel Lewit: Earl Wilson.
Steve Lewit: Earl Wilson. He sold something. Earl Wilson, cars, was he-
Gabriel Lewit: Think sports.
Steve Lewit: Also sports. What was he?
Gabriel Lewit: He’s an American baseball player.
Steve Lewit: Earl Wilson, pitcher.
Gabriel Lewit: Was a American baseball player.
Steve Lewit: Was he a pitcher?
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Yeah. Let’s see. Pitch. He was born in 1934.
Steve Lewit: Pitcher.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. And played for a couple of the teams. Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers, San Diego Padres, and served as their starting pitcher.
Steve Lewit: If I entered the SGL trivia contest, I might have a chance to win.
Gabriel Lewit: You’re getting there. You’re close. This actually is turning into trivia as well as quotes of the month. Well, his quote from Earl says, “If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments.”
Steve Lewit: These are golden. I like this.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. For whatever reason, people, my wife, actually, I don’t like to put too many things on auto-pay, like some of the bigger bills. For whatever reason, I like to just pay them every month. I could put them on auto-pay. Right?
Steve Lewit: I’m a total auto-pay guy.
Gabriel Lewit: 95% of my bills are on auto-pay. Right? The smaller ones, I’d like to, I don’t know, I’m a control guy or something. So every now and then, once every two years, I don’t know. I get busy. I’m on a trip or something and I’m one day late on some car payment.
Steve Lewit: Out of the woodwork they come.
Gabriel Lewit: I get phone calls, and I get emails and account alerts.
Steve Lewit: Text messages.
Gabriel Lewit: So Earl, you are spot on. The debt companies, the lenders definitely care if you’re alive.
Steve Lewit: Look, I’ve been with American Express for 20 years, and I’ve never, never, never missed a payment. Somehow I missed a payment and my computer, and phone, and text messaging is off the hook.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Yeah. Well, hey, they know that if they don’t do that, people will just ignore them.
Steve Lewit: Well, they think it’s a sign of trouble because somebody missed a payment. But yeah, thanks Earl, and thanks Buzzy.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. So there’s your sports-themed quotes and trivia for the day. And we’re also going to just quickly touch on something I just thought was really cool, and maybe something you could invest in for the future if you were so inclined to be a bit more speculative. Which is, and we hinted at this last time, I believe, the world of flying cars may be closer than you’d think.
Steve Lewit: Oh, I can’t wait.
Gabriel Lewit: And to prove that, there’s a company called Alef. Alef, I don’t know actually how you pronounce it, Aeronautics. Aleph Aeronautics.
Steve Lewit: A-L-E-F?
Gabriel Lewit: Aleph. Yeah. Yeah. Well, apparently they have successfully demoed the world’s first flying car, the Alef Model A Ultralight, which in theory you could supposedly buy this year is what they’re saying.
Steve Lewit: What was it? $300,000? $1,000,003? What was the price?
Gabriel Lewit: Well, yes, the pre-sale price is $300,000.
Steve Lewit: $300,000.
Gabriel Lewit: This is a cool $300K.
Steve Lewit: You see, if I were super wealthy, I’d be in line for that car. I think that is the coolest idea. Imagine folks flying over traffic.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, let’s talk about that here. So yeah, Jim Duchovny, the CEO, said, “We’re happy to report that production of the first flying car has started on schedule.” And apparently there are some videos online. We Googled these, and it did start behind a parked car. If these were all real and not AI-generated, it did lift itself up and it was a little wobbly looking, I will admit.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, well it’s an aircraft.
Gabriel Lewit: It did soar over the other car at what appeared to me to be a whopping two miles per hour.
Steve Lewit: Slow.
Gabriel Lewit: And then it did set itself back down, all while blasting some jet stream or air beneath it and kicking up dust. This was quite the production, but it did look like a car. And then the car did lift off and fly over another car and set itself back down.
Steve Lewit: And you can drive it,
Gabriel Lewit: And then you could drive it. Now, should you go and dump your money into the stock? Well, let’s talk practicality. How is this going? It’s really cool. Okay, let’s put that out there.
Steve Lewit: Come on. You’ve seen all the sci-fi movies where they have thousands of cars flying around.
Gabriel Lewit: Of course. Now, by the way, this thing looks like it’s straight out of the movie. Cars 3. If you’ve ever watched Cars 3 with your kid.
Steve Lewit: There it is. It looks cool.
Gabriel Lewit: It looks just like it. It looks like Jackson Storm from Cars 3.
Steve Lewit: I want one. Maybe when my lease runs out.
Gabriel Lewit: But here’s the-
Steve Lewit: What do you think the lease payment on that would be?
Gabriel Lewit: This particular one, what are you going to do with it in real life?
Steve Lewit: You’re going to fly it. Where is your futuristic mind thinking?
Gabriel Lewit: No, I love the idea of-
Steve Lewit: Where’s your imagination?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Super grids of flying cars in the movies. But no, this particular one, other than just showing it off to your neighbor, which is admittedly very cool, you probably get drunk and you hop in and you fly around your neighborhood at two miles per hour. Yeah, that’s going to be really cool. But it certainly isn’t going to get you anywhere faster at that speed.
Steve Lewit: Here’s the problem. Here’s the problem, folks. You’re on the Kennedy at the merge, all right? And traffic is all backed up, and you just push a button and lift off and then you go forward.
Gabriel Lewit: But traffic moves at faster than two miles per hour.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, but here’s the play. Where do you land? Is somebody going to let you in? No.
Gabriel Lewit: I don’t know. This screams problematic to me, but that’s just as we call this show My 2 Cents. Right. But yeah, it’s certainly really cool and it’s a really cool sign of where we’re headed. I’m not sure I’m quite ready to buy the IPO on this one or sink your money into it, but the future is coming, folks.
Steve Lewit: I’m buying, man.
Gabriel Lewit: Go online and look it up. It’s really neat. And it does have a 220-mile driving range and 110-mile flight range. Although again, it does appear that it flies very, very slowly.
Steve Lewit: Do not fly on a windy day.
Gabriel Lewit: What I’m really curious, and then we’ll move on, is how are they going to figure out? They’ve obviously got to have, you can’t just have lots of people flying in random directions in the air in multi-thousand-pound vehicles that can fall and crash on things.
Steve Lewit: Oh, I bet they’re already working on a whole signal traffic system, 100 feet off the ground.
Gabriel Lewit: My question is, what happens when the jets or the rotors on this thing fails, and this 3,000 pound thing comes falling down?
Steve Lewit: I think that’s called a crash.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, these are going to be pretty spectacular crashes. It falls on your house, they’re going to have to do these over existing… I don’t know how they’re going to do it. It’s very interesting. Anyways.
Steve Lewit: Buy it now.
Gabriel Lewit: The future shall be entertaining.
Steve Lewit: It shall be. It always is.
Gabriel Lewit: All right, well, let’s talk a little bit about the Olympics before the Olympics is over. And I think we talked maybe a little bit about this was coming up, but I’ve tuned in quite a bit, been watching a lot of the late-night specials that have come on after work, and seeing a good chunk of figure skating, and downhill skiing, and snowboarding and luging and skeleton. The skeleton guys and gals, by the way.
Steve Lewit: They’re crazy. They’re crazy.
Gabriel Lewit: Are nuts.
Steve Lewit: They’re totally crazy.
Gabriel Lewit: 80 miles per hour down this ice luge with face first.
Steve Lewit: Face first with nothing.
Gabriel Lewit: Good for them.
Steve Lewit: They’re crazy.
Gabriel Lewit: Good for them.
Steve Lewit: You didn’t bring up curling.
Gabriel Lewit: Curling. Well, so I’m going to bring that up actually in our discussion here.
Steve Lewit: Oh, I love curling.
Gabriel Lewit: And of course it’s a great time. I will miss it when it’s gone. I couldn’t watch it nearly as much as I would like to because I have a full-time job. But I know many of our clients that are retired have tuned into many hours of it, and I’m jealous.
Steve Lewit: Well, yeah. Well, these athletes are just spectacular what they can do. Even the guys that come in third, or fifth or seventh.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh, absolutely. They’re all world-class.
Steve Lewit: I was watching the speed skating last night. Oh my gosh. Those guys, do you see the size of their legs?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, tree trunks.
Steve Lewit: I was like, oh my gosh.
Gabriel Lewit: The one that I thought, it was on the other night, and I just thought it was pretty boring and I turned it off. Its four guys synchronized speed skating, or gals, holding onto each other as they go around the track.
Steve Lewit: Well, they’re pushing each other actually.
Gabriel Lewit: Or pushing or whatever. And then there’s another team on the other side. And so it doesn’t actually feel like they’re racing. It is about the best time, but it didn’t catch my excitement for some reason.
Steve Lewit: You know what? I did and I loved it.
Gabriel Lewit: Although one time, one guy clipped another skate and they all went crashing down.
Steve Lewit: That was fun. But the coordination is amazing.
Gabriel Lewit: It is. It’s incredible, I’m sure.
Steve Lewit: They are exactly on time with each other. That’s what I liked about it.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, we’re going to talk a little bit about that here today. Okay, so let’s start-
Steve Lewit: So what does this have to do with money?
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. Again, I’m going to say specifically retirement planning is the we’re going to use here. And we’re going to start with the opening ceremony of the Olympics. The games are here. It’s a big to-do. You celebrate. Well, this is your retirement date. It’s the opening ceremony of your Olympic Games, your personal retirement Olympic Games.
Steve Lewit: That’s great. That is. I like that.
Gabriel Lewit: Thank you.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Oh, I really like it.
Gabriel Lewit: I whipped these up last night into today.
Steve Lewit: I’m not just saying that.
Gabriel Lewit: Because I just talked to my client yesterday about this, so I had to brainstorm some of these. Yes. And funny enough, this particular client is actually retiring in, I think he said 101 days. So yes, the opening ceremony is on the horizon. You have a big party, you fly in celebrities, you have musicians, you light the torches and you drink a lot.
Steve Lewit: The jets fly overhead.
Gabriel Lewit: The jets fly over, and you hit that milestone, that very exciting retirement planning date milestone. And it’s the beginning, not the end. It is the end of a wonderful career, I’m sure.
Steve Lewit: Then you say, “What do I do now?”
Gabriel Lewit: Well, it is the beginning of your Olympic Games experience.
Steve Lewit: Yes. And it becomes the gold medal chase for your money.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I’m just going to put this out there. For many, the opening ceremony, there’s tears and there’s laughing, and because this is an exciting time.
Steve Lewit: And there’s nervousness about what is to come.
Gabriel Lewit: Exactly. Now hopefully by the time the Olympic ceremony has kicked off, they have planned out the Olympic Games. They know what they’re doing.
Steve Lewit: Do you think?
Gabriel Lewit: I assume they don’t just wing it at that point. So I would say even at this very starting point, if you’re about to retire, let’s make sure you’ve got your game plan. You retire day one, and maybe your first plan is just to do nothing. Because you’ve decided you want to just do nothing. Maybe your first day you take a vacation, whatever it is, map it out. Think about your first year. What are you going to do? Where are you going to go? Start to think through all these different things.
Steve Lewit: Absolutely. Because you just don’t want to start this phase of your life with that question. I don’t know what to do now. Honey? What do you want to do today?
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, exactly. And okay, now number two is, well, all the athletes that just have celebrated the Olympic opening ceremony, where do they live? They live in Olympic Village, and it is a very exciting place, and very raunchy place from what they’ve said in all the news with all these athletes. I couldn’t resist. I had to say that, but it’s all over the news.
Steve Lewit: It’s worse than that.
Gabriel Lewit: We won’t go too far down that.
Steve Lewit: It’s party town.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, party town. It’s party time. But the point is everyone’s very excited to be in Olympic Village. It’s the place to be. And the question is, where’s your Olympic Village in retirement? I just had a client that says, “I’m retiring the end of this year and I want to move to The Villages, Florida.” It’s a very hip and popular retirement community. For some people, that’s their-
Steve Lewit: They love it.
Gabriel Lewit: Olympic Village. Others-
Steve Lewit: They love it. Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: Their Olympic Village is exactly where they are today, and that’s where their friends and family are, and that’s where their things that they enjoy are. And that’s where they find fulfillment. But the question is, where do you think you want to spend the bulk of your retirement? And have you thought about it? Is it somewhere new? Maybe I’m making you think about it now, and there’s somewhere else you’d love to spend some time in. Think about that Olympic Village analogy here. Where do you want to spend the bulk of your retirement?
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Is it possible? A lot of people say, I’ll never move, but maybe it’s good to open your thinking and say, what if I move to not, what did you call it?
Gabriel Lewit: Oh, the Villages?
Steve Lewit: What would that be like? Even though you’ll never do it, take a trip down there.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, that’s what my client just did, and he really liked it. Now he’s buying a house.
Steve Lewit: Just experience it and open your thoughts to things you might have never done before.
Gabriel Lewit: Exactly. Exactly. So that’s the idea there. Where do you think you’re going to live during your retirement Olympic Games?
Steve Lewit: Retirement is such, I hate that word, retirement. I really don’t like it. Okay, you stopped working, but you’re not retired.
Gabriel Lewit: Lifement, you want lifement?
Steve Lewit: Everyone says next phase or something. I’ll think of another word soon.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. You can change the world with that one.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: All right. Well number three, before they actually compete in their actual events, all athletes prepare and practice. In other words, they were tremendously prepared.
Steve Lewit: Oh my gosh.
Gabriel Lewit: For what they’re about to do at the Olympic Games. And for many of our clients, they have worked with us for many, many years to build out their plans before they reach their retirement. And then they do some last minute retirement fine-tuning or re-review. Re-review your routine one more time. So the point here is, they’ve started preparing way before the Olympics. Way before the Olympics started. And the point is, by the time you’re there, hopefully you are well-prepared. And in this example or analogy, if you are 10 years away from retirement or five years, let us help you prepare for that. Map out everything and make sure we can give you the guidance that you need. And I didn’t specifically put it on this list for you, Steve, but I just wanted to also add to that.
Steve Lewit: Are you preparing me for retirement?
Gabriel Lewit: No, no. What I’m saying is also every single athlete, while they’re preparing, what do they have?
Steve Lewit: They have a coach.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes.
Steve Lewit: Actually, they have many coaches.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes.
Steve Lewit: They have a whole support team.
Gabriel Lewit: Every time you’re seeing them before they get their scores, you know what the camera owes pans to?
Steve Lewit: Before they get out on the ice, who’s talking to them?
Gabriel Lewit: Their coach.
Steve Lewit: And before they start skating, what are they saying to each other?
Gabriel Lewit: Stuff.
Steve Lewit: God, am I nervous?
Gabriel Lewit: They’re saying something. Well, actually, when I was watching the downhill skeleton, the coach was like, “Go, go, go.”
Steve Lewit: Go, go, go. He’s screaming at the guy.
Gabriel Lewit: The coach is there to train, to prepare, to mentor, to guide, to soothe fear. Some of these are young athletes, they’ve never done this before.
Steve Lewit: But here’s the thing, Gabriel, that impresses me is that especially take the ice skating. They get on the ice and you know they’re nervous and they admit they’re nervous. But when that music starts, they’re on automatic. They’re not thinking about this. And folks, if you are retired and you’re thinking about your retirement, how am I going to do this? Will my money last? Imagine you are at the Olympics on the skates and saying, “How will I do that jump? Will I fall? Or I didn’t do it so well last time.” They are totally prepared for that.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And well, the other thing about when they’re practicing, okay, is what are they trying to do with every run that they do? Every routine that they do? What are they trying to do on every time they practice one of those runs or routines?
Steve Lewit: Well-
Gabriel Lewit: I’m quizzing you here to see if you’re on the same wavelength as me.
Steve Lewit: Well, I just can draw from my own professional experiences that when you practice, you’re looking for what you do well and where your weakness is.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I’m going to use a word. You are correct, obviously, but I’m using a specific word we use a lot in our planning, which is optimization.
Steve Lewit: Optimization. Yeah.
Gabriel Lewit: These guys, it’s so incredible how every athlete is, you could have 20 athletes and they’re all within less than one second apart. We’re talking 10th of a second, the top ones. So precision and optimization and just a little bit better is the name of the game in the Olympics. And the same goes for your retirement planning. Can we make your income a little bit more precise, and your budget a little bit more precise, your portfolio a little bit more optimized, a little less risk, a little better return? That’s the goal as you practice and practice, and prepare and prepare, it’s to optimize your plan and then pay attention to this. And some of these people have multiple runs even in the Olympics, and they try to best themselves each run.
So think multiple years of your retirement. This year we are going to be precise with your taxes, and then we’re going to get a certain amount of income, we’re going to get a little less risk. Next year we’re going to do the same thing. We’re just going to try to get a little bit better every single year, and refine and optimize your plan over and over again.
Steve Lewit: Yeah, no, I’m going to add one piece.
Gabriel Lewit: A little less taxes.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. I’m going to add one very important piece. I think everybody understands optimization, but what I think a lot of people miss, look, we meet people all the time, Gabriel?
Gabriel Lewit: We do.
Steve Lewit: And no matter the wealth, some people, most people are worried. They worry about, and then there’s a group of people that are confident, a much smaller group, they have what I call a hidden advantage. And that hidden advantage is they understand optimization is not piecemeal. You just don’t optimize your investments out of context with everything else. A skater doesn’t say, “I’m just going to work on my Quadruple spin and not do everything else.” Because everything is connected. So optimization has to be considered in the whole, rather than just I’m going to optimize this one thing, which is what most people do. They focus on one thing, they say, “I’m doing really good on that.” And forget the rest.
Gabriel Lewit: Exactly. Yeah. Well, let us try to round this out here. Every Olympian is going for gold or maybe a medal position. Typically, they’re trying to. And for you, for your retirement, my thought there is make it as good as you can be. Whatever that is for you. What’s your gold medal? It isn’t necessarily for everybody maximizing how much dollars they have in their bank accounts when they pass away, but for some it might be, especially those very legacy minded. Maybe going for gold is I want to just quadruple my money over the next 30 years, and leave a massive amount to my kids. Others might say gold medal for me is a super low-stress, Easy Street retirement where I don’t have to worry about money.
Steve Lewit: Gabriel, these words are wisdom personified. And here’s what I’m hearing from you, is that you are who you are. You cannot be that person on the ice.
Gabriel Lewit: I am who I am.
Steve Lewit: But you can go and ice skate, and really have a great time and not look over your shoulder and say, “But I’m not like them, or I’m not as rich as them, or I can’t buy the car that they have.” But within your own frame of yourself, what you’re saying is you can be the best you can be. And that’s the gold medal.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, I’ll say it a little differently, if you were lying on your-
Steve Lewit: I like the way I said it though.
Gabriel Lewit: I agree. But if you were lying on a sickbed in your late 90s.
Steve Lewit: I thought I said it already. I don’t know why you have to restate it.
Gabriel Lewit: Most Olympians don’t want to go home being like, “Shoot, I should. I could have done better. I didn’t try my hardest.” They want to go, even if they lose, they want to look back and be like, “I gave it my all.”
Steve Lewit: Everything. Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: I gave it my everything, is the best I could have done.
Steve Lewit: That’s right.
Gabriel Lewit: And I think that’s the same concept for your retirement. You don’t want to look back later on and be like, I should have done this, and I could have done that, and I should have spent time with my grandkids and I should have traveled more, blah, blah, blah, blah. Those things are those regrets.
Steve Lewit: And we hear that all the time.
Gabriel Lewit: We do sometimes, you want to try to avoid those by living your best retirement life, going for your own personal gold.
Steve Lewit: Amen. I like the way you said it better than the way I said it.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, so that’s our Olympics.
Steve Lewit: Such wisdom.
Gabriel Lewit: Yours was good. I just wanted to-
Steve Lewit: No, mine was better than good.
Gabriel Lewit: Great.
Steve Lewit: Thank you.
Gabriel Lewit: You left it all out there.
Steve Lewit: It was the best that I could do.
Gabriel Lewit: It couldn’t have been any better.
Steve Lewit: It was the best I could do in that moment. It was fantastic.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, yes, yes.
Steve Lewit: I’m so proud of myself.
Gabriel Lewit: Well, if that sparked anything for you, lit the flame, so to speak. Give us a call, 847-499-3330 or go to sglfinancial.com, click Contact Us and of course we can help you with your retirement planning and make yourself an Olympian champion. Now with a couple of minutes left, I don’t want to spend a huge amount on this today because we’ve talked a little bit about this before, and maybe we’ll actually do a part two on this next week. We will dig into this a little bit further on our next podcast, but earlier in the year, we talked about a financial planning calendar for the year. And each month we were going to talk about a key topic in a little bit greater detail. So today I just want to introduce this, and then next week we will talk more about this.
Steve Lewit: What’s on the calendar today?
Gabriel Lewit: Great question. So we are going to in more depth talk about reviewing and rebalancing your portfolio. And so today I’m just going to give the quick hit of what that is, and then next week, or next show we’ll talk about how do you actually do this? Whether or not you’re using a money manager, or yourself, we’re going to dig into that a little bit. But rebalancing is this concept of, let’s just say you had stocks and bonds, $50,000 in stocks and $50,000 in bonds, and stocks went up 10% in a year. So your $50,000 is now 55. And let’s say bonds made zero, just for an easy example. So they’re still 50.
Steve Lewit: Yes.
Gabriel Lewit: So, what does your portfolio now look like? You have $55,000 in stocks and $50,000 in bonds.
Steve Lewit: Oh, I have more stocks than I wanted.
Gabriel Lewit: Let’s say you were aiming for a 50/50 mix. Well, now you have a 55/50, and if that kept going, you might end up with a 60/50 or a 65/52. It starts to get out of weight.
Steve Lewit: And that’s called portfolio drift.
Gabriel Lewit: It is.
Steve Lewit: You drift into a ratio of stocks to bonds if that’s your portfolio, that you didn’t want.
Gabriel Lewit: Correct. So one thing you want to do is review it and rebalance that. Again, next time we’ll talk a bit more about what that is. You want to check how you’re diversified. And in fact, we just did a market outlook event last night. We didn’t want to bore you and cover the same exact thing today as we did last night, for those of you that listened to both. But we did talk about diversification quite a bit and how important it was. And as a side note, if you didn’t catch the market outlook, we do have a recording that will be becoming available shortly. And diversification is this concept of different asset classes, different strategies, because you can’t predict the market. And so if you can’t predict the market, you can’t just pick the winner, because you don’t know what the market’s going to do. And everything performs better or worse in different conditions. And so you can buy a wide range of different things, and that’s known as diversification.
So we want to check that. We’re going to talk a little bit more next time about how you do that. Certainly in February, if you haven’t yet done so, you want to gather your tax documents. So it’s about investment and tax readiness. So tax preparation time is here. And if you haven’t yet done so, this is your polite reminder. Don’t forget.
Steve Lewit: Do your taxes?
Gabriel Lewit: Do your taxes.
Steve Lewit: Thank you.
Gabriel Lewit: Oh, that’s another one I’m sure that-
Steve Lewit: The IRS will let you know.
Gabriel Lewit: They’ll let you know too if you don’t pay your taxes.
Steve Lewit: They’re not ignoring you.
Gabriel Lewit: All right, and then last and not least, and we’re going to talk more about this one next time, there’s not much more to say about ‘gather your taxes.’ So I think we covered that one.
Steve Lewit: That’s an easy one.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah. Next time we’re going to how to evaluate or better evaluate your financial habits.
Steve Lewit: Yeah. Cool. Yeah. We all have financial habits.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes. So we’re going to talk about what are financial habits? How do you know what they are? How do you evaluate them? How do you change them? These are some of the themes for the year that we’re going to focus on here in February.
Steve Lewit: Absolutely. Gabriel, I’d like to remind everybody, urge everybody to take a listen to the market outlook when they get the replay on it. Thank you all for at attending though, we had a great attendance. Because folks, we cover things that are on your mind, like what’s going on with gold? Is the dollar going to go away? It is stuff that you’re thinking about and we give our opinions on, our 2 cents on those that might be helpful to you. So take a listen when you get that in your email.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, I think we try to balance the line between technical and high level so it’s not too dry and it’s not too detailed, depending on where you’re at. And we try to have a little bit of fun along the way as we do generally on the shows here as well.
Steve Lewit: We do, we do.
Gabriel Lewit: That’s what we got for you today. We hope you had a good time traveling through Olympic land with us and retirement.
Steve Lewit: Go practice.
Gabriel Lewit: Yeah, go if you’re in retirement, go get gold medals right for yourself. If you’re not yet retired, let’s plan for your Olympic Games. And anything we can do to support you there, please let us know. You can reach us again, 847-499-3330 or go to SGLfinancial.com, click Contact Us or email us info@sglfinancial.com.
Steve Lewit: Well, stay well everybody. Be healthy.
Gabriel Lewit: Yes, have a wonderful rest of your day and week, and we’ll see you on the next show.
Steve Lewit: See you.
Announcer: Thanks for listening to Our 2 Cents with Steve and Gabriel Lewit. For any questions about your finances, give SGL a call at 847-499-3330, or visit us on the web at sglfinancial.com, and be sure to subscribe to join us on next week’s episode.
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