5 Financial Mistakes to Avoid in Your 60s

Financial mistakes can happen at any age, but they can have a particularly significant impact in your 60s. This episode offers five common financial blunders to avoid during this pivotal decade.

 

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Transcript: 

Marc Killian:
Welcome into another edition of Plan With The Taxman. We're going to talk about financial mistakes to avoid in our 60s. Financial mistakes can happen at any age, but certainly have a bigger impact in our 60s. So let's get into it this week here on Plan With The Taxman.
Hey, everybody, welcome into the podcast. Thanks for hanging out with Tony and myself as we talk investing, finance and retirement. And we got a list of a few financial blunders we want to try to avoid in this very pivotal decade for us when it comes to retirement. So Tony, we'll dive right in this week. I hope you're doing well, but I'm just going to kick it off and get us rolling. So unnecessary spending, let's just start right there. If we're into our 60s at this point, we want to be focused on making sure that we're getting remaining debt down and things of that nature. We're probably not necessarily looking to be on a budget per se, but let's just not be doing anything super crazy, right?

Tony Mauro:
I would definitely say that this is the best time to make sure that you're on the same page as your advisor with your spending and with how much you've got coming in. And definitely try to avoid some of the unnecessary things. Not saying you can't go out. We talked a little bit about on the last podcast, going out and spending a little bit.

Marc Killian:
Sure, yeah. Live it up a little bit, because that's what it's there for.

Tony Mauro:
Right. But you want to definitely limit and avoid that type of stuff that might be unnecessary. Now, how do you do that? Well, we talked a little bit about that on the last one.

Marc Killian:
Well, you go to number two.

Tony Mauro:
Yeah.

Marc Killian:
Well, number two on my list is ignoring retirement planning, right?

Tony Mauro:
Right.

Marc Killian:
So how do you avoid unnecessary spending? Well, you don't have a plan.

Tony Mauro:
You don't have a plan. So yeah, ignoring retirement planning, if you're already in your sixties, you better get something together quick, even if it's just a snapshot of where you're going to be.

Marc Killian:
Yeah, true.

Tony Mauro:
You may not have as long obviously, as somebody that's younger to plan, but at least you've got an idea to what you are going to have coming in. Because then you can certainly try to avoid the unnecessary spending if you know what you have coming in.

Marc Killian:
Well, Tony, if you're 60 and you're thinking that retirement is on the 65, 66, 67 radar for you, is it too late? I mean, I don't think so. I don't think it's ever really too late, it's just you have to be realistic, in the fact that options will be more limited the longer you wait and the closer you get to retirement.

Tony Mauro:
That's it. I agree totally. I always encourage people to start saving. And we will get that from clients that say, "Well, it might be just too late." It's never too late, but it's managing your expectations like you said.

Marc Killian:
Yeah, start planning.

Tony Mauro:
Because as long as you're realistic and start planning, you're going to know what you have. Now, it's not going to be the same as if you've been doing it for 35 years, but that's beside the point now.

Marc Killian:
Sure, you're there. But don't wait any longer, right?

Tony Mauro:
Yeah, don't wait any longer.

Marc Killian:
All right, number three, overlooking healthcare costs. Again, the topic being mistakes to avoid in our sixties. Hopefully, we're not overlooking these, but there's more of them coming. Maybe you're dealing with other little things that you didn't realize and insurance costs going up, whatever it might be.

Tony Mauro:
And depending on what your health situation is, you start with just the insurance costs and all the [inaudible 00:03:24] that's coming down the pike with that. And as you get to 65 with Medicare and all its supplements and whatnot. But I think you got to look beyond that, especially if you have some ailments and things like that of what other out-of-pocket costs you might have and the cost of care to help you with those. If you don't look at that, again, and it goes back to the other one, if you don't have a plan and budget that in, it's going to be very eye-opening if you need some of that care.

Marc Killian:
Oh, for sure. Yeah. And we all know healthcare costs are continuing to climb, so you've got to make sure you're having those conversations, looking at social security, the different options there, what that's going to all look like and so on and so forth. Number four, is going to certainly be right up your alley, Tony, one that I'm sure you stress quite often. And that's failing to utilize the tax benefits and being tax efficient. Again, in our sixties, and this could be a big make or break for your retirement strategy, is how tax efficient you are.

Tony Mauro:
And it's one of the biggest things we stress for ourselves compared to maybe some of the other types of advisors, is we basically being tax people first, definitely the backbone of everything we do is tax efficient investing and tax efficient withdrawals. Because boy, you can cost yourself a lot of money if you just haphazardly take from the wrong pots of money at the wrong time. And so we're constantly trying to work with clients in their sixties about taking money the most tax efficient way to minimize that. Because if you're doing that over 20 years or so, that could be a big number.

Marc Killian:
Oh yeah, for sure, right? And so tax efficiency, whether it's for you while you're here or even how you leave a legacy, that can be a big make or break piece. And there's so many little facets and parts to the tax efficiency, Tony, that's not even funny. We don't even really realize what it is as lay folks, because we don't do this every day. But you obviously know all the different pieces that you're looking at and it can stack up. I mean, whether it's IRMAA issues when it comes to that tax issue, just the Medicare tax, depending on how you're taking your social security, so on and so forth. Just a lot of little moving parts.

Tony Mauro:
I think that's one of the biggest areas. I mean, it all fits together. And if you continue to overlook that tax stuff, like I say, you're really going to do your heirs a disservice, I think.

Marc Killian:
Yeah, for sure. Well, speaking of social security, so that's the next one on my list here. Number five, delaying social security benefits without a plan. So now I said delaying, not turning it on. A lot of the times we hear people say, "Hey, I'm going to turn it on right at 62," and that's a conversation we have. But this is delaying social security benefits without a plan. So if you're trying to max it out at 70, and that may be fine, but have you run the numbers to see what makes the most sense? What's your break-even point? Things of that nature.

Tony Mauro:
And I'm going to put in a shameless plug here, because we do-

Marc Killian:
Go for it.

Tony Mauro:
For ourselves. If you're listening and you want to be on one of our webinars that we do about social security planning and when you should take social security, just shoot me a line and we'll get you on the list for the next one. But we do about four of them a year. But really we go over this in detail in this webinar. It's about 35 minutes. There are a lot of calculators. We have one that we use, and basically, it runs a client through every facet of that, based on their age, what other money they have, their life expectancy based on just their family history and things. So we can give people options of when to maximize that.
Because a lot of people just get it stuck in their head of, "Well, I'm going to take it at 62, the earliest, or I'm going to take it at 65 or whenever my full retirement age is." And sometimes it's better to be in between one of those, or maybe even delaying out till max retirement age at 70, when they make you take it. So it's good to have all that in front of you. Social security's not going to give you all that. They are going to give you a report, which is nice, but they don't know the rest of it. They're just going to give you a report on what your benefit would be. But we take that along with everything else we gather, and give you a nice discussion about what is the best time to take that. So at least you got all of your options and you understand it.

Marc Killian:
And if somebody wants to get involved with one of those, what's the easiest way to do that? Email the office, go to the website, yourplanningpros.com? What's the suggestion there?

Tony Mauro:
Yeah, I would say go to yourplanningpros.com, my site, and just in the contact me thing, type in your email address, say, "Hey, I want to be included on the social security benefits webinar."

Marc Killian:
Okay. All right. So again, go to yourplanningpros.com and they're right there under contact. There, you can just click on the box there. You can fill out the information. You can also email Tony, his email address is on there as well. So just let him know that you want to attend. But filling out the little contact form, it's probably be the easiest way to attend one of those and get that webinar information. All right, let's see, what else can we do here? We'll do one or two more and then we'll wrap it up this week, Tony. So underestimating your longevity. Okay, so if you've made it to your sixties, there's some interesting stats out there that you have a pretty high percentage of making it to your eighties, which is wild.

Tony Mauro:
That's right. Yeah, if you've made it into your sixties, there's a very good chance, and you could just do a Google search just for fun and watch what it pulls up based on male or female. And it may or may not be that accurate, but it's going to give you an idea. But most of the time, we're trying to plan for at least 20 years in retirement and sometimes it's even more than that, based on family history. Because most people, once they get into their sixties, have a really good chance of making it another 20 years. And if it falls short and something happens before then, well at least you've got a great plan that you could pass on to your heirs. But I think most of us when they're in the planning stages, especially early on, don't think they're going to live that long. And the statistics point to otherwise. That's just raw data there. So I don't think you can underestimate that or ignore that.

Marc Killian:
Yeah, no, for sure. Social Security Administration projects that 69% of people who survive to age 65 will live to 80. So basically, almost 70% of people, if you make it to 65, you're going to make it to 80. It's another 15 years, right? So thinking about longevity and planning for that is an important piece as well. And we'll wrap it up with this final one, and that is just don't forget to work on and build an estate plan, a legacy of some kind. If you're in your sixties, I know we just talked about longevity being there, but there also still is the probability that something could happen and you could pass away. We see a lot of people passing away in their sixties and seventies as well. So just make sure that you've got those estate documents and those legacy documents and things taken care of.

Tony Mauro:
And most people think of estate planning, it's only for the ultra wealthy.

Marc Killian:
Right.

Tony Mauro:
They're not going to have estate tax problems, and you may not. But even without that, like you're saying, a will, you want to have that. You want to have some medical directives, some power of attorneys, things like that, so that you can rest assured that your estate will be handled efficiently and the way that you want it, let alone if you want to really do some planning and start talking about trusts and some other things. I think a lot of people overlook that, thinking they don't have enough and then they leave a mess for their heirs.
But I think another thing too, is we didn't really even talk about it, but planning your estate, especially if you need long-term care later on, and that's a whole different discussion. But I think to do that, even people here in Iowa, what a lot of them don't realize, is they may escape federal estate tax, but Iowa has an estate tax with fairly low limits. And if you don't pass everything to a direct heir, anything above $25,000, there's an Iowan inheritance tax. And a lot of people get blindsided by that. So depending on what state you're in, you got to check your state laws too with some of those taxes.

Marc Killian:
Definitely, definitely. So again, some financial mistakes to avoid in your sixties. Hopefully, that we've got a good plan by the time we get to 60, we've got a good strategy in place, and we can definitely benefit from that. But if you don't, again, don't wait any longer. It doesn't mean you've done anything necessarily wrong. You do have limited options. They're going to be a little bit reduced, but so many people still get a good financial strategy in place, even at 60. So reach out to a qualified pro like Tony today, at yourplanningpros.com, that's yourplanningpros.com, to get started with Des Moines Professional Alternative at Tax Doctor Inc. You can reach out to Tony and his team at yourplanningpros.com. And don't forget to subscribe to us on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. Tony, thanks for hanging it out and breaking it all down for us. As always, we appreciate your time. Hope everybody has a great week and we'll see you on the future episodes of Plan With The Tax Man.

Speaker 6:
Securities offered through Avantax Investment Services SM, member FINRA SIPC. Investment advisory services offered through Avantax Advisory Services. Insurance services offered through an Avantax affiliated insurance agency. Investment strategies discussed in this episode may not be suitable for all investors. Please consult with a financial professional.