When I talk about my definition of retirement, I think it sometimes catches people off guard.   In my mind, retirement is not who you are or where you’re at in life, rather it is the transition of your time and money.    In other words, it is a process you go through … not your identity.   The transition for money is a transition from accumulating money to utilizing it.    For time, it is a transition of reallocating the 40-plus hours per week you spent working.   This distinction of what retirement means is an important one to make, because many people identify themselves with their work — but when someone is no longer working, they default to labeling themselves as “retired.”    Here is the problem: This default “I’m retired” mindset leaves people stuck, and they never really progress toward reinventing themselves.   In essence, they have made retirement their new identity, which just seems odd considering when you say something is “retired” it often infers that it has outlived its usefulness.   But I don’t think this is an accurate description for most successful people who have lived a life of purpose, who have gained valuable insight and wisdom from their life experiences and who have refined their talents and unique abilities over decades.   Therefore, retirement should not be a label used to describe who someone is — it’s not their identity — rather, retirement is a term used to describe the transition a person is going through from one phase of life to another.   This is important, because the success of your retirement transition is predicated on how well you grasp this distinction and your ability to shift your mindset in three specific areas.    And if done successfully, you can emerge on the other side of your retirement transition living a life of abundance.   Reframe Your Mindset of Time   In Dan Sullivan’s coaching program Strategic Coach®, he uses an exercise called The Lifetime Extender.®   It is a tool used to formulate a new paradigm around time with the goal of making our future more important than our past.   The idea is that you have the choice to imagine your own future, and when you change the time frame you are operating in, you change the way you think.   For example, Dan is planning on living to 156!   This exercise gives you the freedom to reframe your future and reprogram your thinking about how to live the second half of your life.   There is a lot of psychology around how this works that I won’t get into here, but when you expand the amount of time you think you have left here on this earth, your mind begins to follow that way of thinking.   Now I realize that this may be a little too “woo-woo” for some, but when you consider that none of us actually knows how much time we have left to live, what do you have to lose?    You have a choice: You can live as if you have been set out to pasture to retire or you can live as if you are just entering your second half of your life.   Your future reality is created in your mind, and whatever you focus on expands.   So, expand your time and pick a number, then begin working on your future self.   Reinvent Yourself   St. Augustine said that asking yourself the question of your own legacy — “What do I wish to be remembered for?” — is the beginning of adulthood.   In Bob Buford’s book Halftime, Bob quotes Matthew 13:5-9, which illustrates the eventual harvest of a farmer who sows his seed.   Bob uses this verse to point toward his own epitaph of 100x.   He says, “I want to be remembered as the seed that was planted in good soil and multiplied a hundred-fold.   It is how I wish to live…how I attempt to envision my own legacy…to be a symbol of higher yields, in life and in death.”   The theme of the book is what the title suggests: that wherever you are right now, you are at halftime in your life, and the second half should be the better half.   Every day up until your retirement transition, you dedicated eight or more of the 24 hours a day that you had to someone or something to earn a living.   That commitment of time and what you were responsible for during that time manifests into a sense of purpose.   When that time commitment goes away, so can that sense of purpose.   Your purpose while working may have been closely associated with your daily projects, leading a team, fulfilling a role or other responsibilities. It could have been a sense of belonging to a team, a brotherhood (or sisterhood), a company or group that gave you motivation each day to go to work.   This is all left behind once you retire, and what often happens after the “retirement party” is over is the onset of feeling lost, unfulfilled, bored or even depressed.   This underscores the importance of viewing retirement as a transition, not as your new reality.   When I consult with clients who are retiring, I often encourage them to begin thinking about how they will spend their time once they make the transition.   This conversation is not only important for cash flow planning, but it is the first step in helping them begin to think beyond the transition of retirement and about their purpose.   Playing golf, traveling and spending time with grandkids are all great things, but they are not anyone’s purpose.   When asked what someone does, unless they are a professional golfer, they aren’t going to say they golf. They may play golf, but it is not their purpose.   Author and futurist Buckminster Fuller has a question designed for finding your life’s mission: “What is it on this planet that needs doing that I know something about, that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it?”   The transition of retirement is not the destination; it is the transition to what is next.    It is your opportunity to reinvent yourself and live out the second half of your life with purpose.   Reframe Your Mindset About Money   I dedicate this podcast — The Common Sense Financial Podcast — to helping people align their money with their purpose.   Now, you may think that money alignment is something fairly obvious to everyone, but so much of what people do with their money is not at all in alignment with their purpose.   Nearly 100% of the time, when someone hires my team to plan their retirement transition, I find that their money is either sitting in 401(k)s or IRAs invested for growth or they have large amounts of money sitting in cash.   So yes, I saw a need to dedicate an entire podcast on helping people align their money with their purpose, because I have found that there is a vacuum of common-sense financial information available to retirees.   The goal of the podcast is to bridge the gap between what people dream about in their thinking time and what they need to do with their money to make what they are dreaming about a reality.   More often than not, people tend to envision a life of abundance for themselves or being able to leave a financial legacy for their children and grandchildren. But without knowing how to go about this, people will inherently default to what they know and think they understand — which, when it comes to making financial decisions, is most often rates of return and account balances.   As a result of this misalignment, confusion and feelings of unsettledness creep in when they attempt to retire and then discover that there is a disconnect between what they see their purpose for their money is and what their money is actually doing for them.   It is like having a power cord that is too short to reach the outlet.    You know there is power in the outlet, and the machine you’re trying to power up can do the job you need it to do but you can’t get them to connect, so nothing happens.   This is why measuring your financial success based solely on rate of return or how much money is in your bank account is the wrong measurement.   The measurement for your success should be on how much income you can generate from your assets that is consistent and predictable.   It’s income from your assets that grants you freedom of money and time so you can dedicate your talents to pursue your purpose.   The key to a successful retirement transition is to reframe your mindset about money, focus on maximizing cash flow, expand your concept of time and reinvent your purpose in life, because there is likely more to your story that has yet to be written.   That concludes todays podcast, thank you for listening to the common sense financial podcast.     This is an encore presentation of one of our most popular episodes.

We all have blinders about various things in our life that leave us blind to things we do not know or understand. What is a blinder?  Well, it could be a bias about something, it could be a protection mechanism to ignore something, it could be immaturity about something or it could simply be ignorance of not knowing any better.  In fact, what I have found is that for most people who are experiencing investing immaturity is that once they are provided more education about how to invest, they often move past this stage into more advanced wealth strategies. The best way to look at this is that like anything: We only know what we know.  In other words, the root cause of investing immaturity for most people is simply not knowing any different. To make the most of your investments, you need to think about them in the right way because investing immaturity can hold you back from reaching the next level with your finances.     This is an encore presentation of one of our most popular episodes.

We often hear the mantra that debt is bad. Yet that doesn’t stop the majority of people from assuming they will always have bank payments.  For many, using credit to purchase vehicles, take vacations or fund home improvement projects is a normal mindset for making their lifestyle work. They believe borrowing money to fill income gaps is the answer to supporting their lifestyle. In reality, it enters them into a money hamster wheel, which means they work to earn a paycheck and then spend the money they earn to pay bills and make payments to the bank. This is flawed logic and creates a trap or cycle of continuously relying on banks to fulfill your cash flow needs.   Reset Your Thinking and Reclaim Your Financial Situation Let’s take a step back and look at the big picture when it comes to money. That big picture is actually relatively simple: Money is either flowing toward you or away from you.  If money is flowing toward you, you have control.  If money is flowing away from you, you are giving up control. This is the problem with the typical conversation surrounding debt, the focus often centers solely on paying off the debt.  And while getting out of debt is important it cannot be the sole focus. The focus has to be on the source of the problem not just the symptoms.  The source of the problem is poor planning (poor cash flow management and making money decisions in a silo).  The symptom is the debt itself. If we only focus on the symptom (paying the debt off) nothing has been accomplished to fix the problem (poor planning) and is why focusing on the symptom is a lifetime prescription for remaining in the debt cycle.  Therefore, you must first wrest your thinking away from loan terms and how much of a bank payment you can afford and begin to shift toward minimizing the percentage of income you have flowing to banks.  By having less money flowing to banks, you have more money flowing into your control that can be used to build wealth for yourself.   So, if you find yourself with cash flowing away from you and into banks, your goal should be to immediately work to restructure or eliminate those payments.  Notice I said payments…not the balance.   How to Tell If a Loan Is ‘Bad’ The first step in this process is to identify the loans that require too much of your monthly resources and begin to work toward restructuring them to give control of those dollars back to you to focus on building wealth. A strategy we use to determine if a loan is in your favor or if it favors the bank is to divide the balance you owe by the minimum monthly payment. If that number is lower than 50, then we would consider this a bad loan. If the number is between 50 and 100, we would consider this suspect. If it is over 100, then we would consider this a good loan.   For example, an auto loan of $30,000 may have a payment of $670 per month. Using our formula, this loan would be assigned a score of 44. This score suggests that the loan is a bad loan and is pulling too much of your monthly income away from you and out of your control. What should you do about it? One option may be to remove equity from a home to lower the payment to $143 per month and assign it a new score of 209, which suggests this is a good loan.  This strategy moves $527 per month away from the bank and back into your control to focus on building wealth. Next, itemize your current debt balances and minimum payments.  Use the formula explained above to identify the loans that need your attention.   Refinancing to Take Control of Debt Once you have this information written out, the next step is to begin to identify what options are available to you for restructuring the debts determined to be bad loans.  That process begins by itemizing all of your resources, such as cash on hand, investments, life insurance cash values and home equity.  You will also want to include how much money you are contributing to these each month. This will help you identify how you may be able to tackle your bad loans by focusing your available resources on doing so. A note on the home equity, if you take the value of your home and multiply that amount by 80% and then subtract your current mortgage amount, you come up with your home’s available equity.  If you have a positive number, this is equity you can use to help reduce your payment as described earlier with the refinancing of an auto loan.   Your home: You will likely see that refinancing a home to use home equity is going to be the best-scoring option using our formula. A home mortgage often has more favorable rates and terms that allow you to begin taking back more control of your cash flow.  This is not about paying off the home; it is about lowering your bank commitments.  Using a 30-year loan is the most favorable loan and results in the lowest possible payment.   Your vehicle: Sometimes refinancing a vehicle can free up money to consolidate other balances and can reduce payments. Again, this is not about the car loan itself; it is about fixing the problem, which begins by looking at your entire financial picture to determine how to best carry the debt you already have to pay off.  In this case, an auto loan is a more structured and controllable loan compared to a floating rate credit card that also allows you to charge more onto it.   Your student loans: Renegotiating student loans can work if you stretch the balance out and focus on keeping required payments as low as possible. When it comes to extending terms, many people immediately begin to think about interest charges and extended terms.  This is where a utopia collides with reality.  If all you have is a student loan and are paying cash for automobiles and other big-ticket items, then this should not be a focus of yours.  However, the majority of people who have student loans also have auto loans and credit card debt.  All of this is a set of dominoes where a debt payment for something like a student loan can contribute to having limited resources, forcing other bank loans for making ends meet.   Life insurance: A banking strategy using whole life insurance can work in some cases where there is cash on hand enabling us to use the provisions of the policy to consolidate debt and control payments. Cash value life insurance contracts allow for access to loans where the insurance company will use your death benefit and cash surrender value as a collateral.  These loans come with very favorable terms, and depending on the design of the policy itself may have uninterrupted growth of your cash values   When You Have Few Options, Try the Snowball System Unfortunately, there are circumstances where there is no room for changes. For example, if you are maxed out on credit with little if any resources, there may not be many options available.  In this scenario, your best bet is to focus on a debt snowball system, where you pay above the minimum payment on the smallest balances first while paying minimum payments on the other balances.  When a debt is paid off you use that payment for paying down the next smallest balance and so on. Of course, you can take this to another level and begin selling things, downsizing homes and cars and getting a second job, which for some people may be exactly what you need to do.   Your Long-Term Debt Solution Every situation is different, and you may benefit from using some or all of these strategies.  My goal with the information, strategies and techniques discussed here is to help you realize that there needs to be a focus on changing behavior so you no longer use banks to fund your lifestyle.  There are purchases in your past that created the debt that you have and if you dedicate all of your resources to paying those debts off you will find yourself in a continuous cycle of debt.  You cannot neglect the fact that you will have future cash needs, and if you are not planning for those now, you will resort to taking more bank loans. By moving more money into your control and creating a strategic financial plan itemizing all future big ticket needs, you can determine how much of your cash flow should be used to pay down debt and how much should be used to fulfill your future needs.  To get off the hamster wheel of debt requires thinking differently about what purchases you make and how you make them as well as redirecting your focus toward building wealth. If you focus on building wealth and having access and control of the money you have, you will soon find that you no longer need banks to satisfy your lifestyle.     Securities offered through Kalos Capital, Inc., Member FINRA/SIPC/MSRB and investment advisory services offered through Kalos Management, Inc., an SEC registered Investment Advisor, both located at11525 Park Wood Circle, Alpharetta, GA 30005. Kalos Capital, Inc. and Kalos Management, Inc. do not provide tax or legal advice. Skrobonja Financial Group, LLC and Skrobonja Insurance Services, LLC are not an affiliate or subsidiary of Kalos Capital, Inc. or Kalos Management, Inc

Employees love their 401(k)s, but love can be blind. These plans are riddled with traps, restrictions and caveats that are not apparent until you attempt to access your money out of the plan. Retirement savers need to open their eyes to some serious flaws built into these accounts. A 401(k) is a type of employer-sponsored retirement savings plan utilized in for-profit organizations. Related types of plans are the 403(b), used in not-for-profit and education, and 457 plans, designed for government employees. While all different, each is categorized as the same type of plan, designed for participants to save for retirement.   First, the Good The good news with these accounts is that they are an easy way to save for retirement. Through payroll deductions, you can set a percentage to be taken from your paycheck and deposited into the plan for your retirement. Often this contribution can be tax deductible, reducing your current year tax liability. Some plans even offer a matching contribution, which means that your employer will contribute into the plan, equal to your contribution, up to certain predefined limits that are set by the employer.   Now, the Bad While these plans are popular, there is an inherent problem with them. You relinquish control of your money until specific triggering events grant you permission to access your money from the plan. Once deposited into the account, your money is serving a proverbial jail sentence.  Here are three triggering events that grant you permission to escape: You leave your current employer. Whether you retire, quit or are fired from a job, separation from an employer is a triggering event that allows you to move money out of the plan. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can just pull all your money out of the plan without the possibility of incurring taxes or penalties. You reach age 59½. For some plans, reaching the age of 59½ is a triggering event that allows you to move money out of the plan. However, not all plans offer this as an option. You have a qualifying hardship. If your employer allows them, there are a few life events or circumstance that allow money to be taken out of the plan, such as certain medical expenses or buying a home. If you elect to use this option, keep in mind that you may be subject to a 10% penalty and tax liabilities.   A few things to think about when it comes to tying your money up in these plans are: Distributions from a 401k are subject to an early withdrawal penalty of 10% prior to age 55 if you are separated from employment (59½ if still “in service” with your employer. You have very limited access to the money while you remain employed, including taking a 401(k) loan – something that’s more of a last resort than anything else. For tax-deferred 401(k) plans, you are eventually forced to take your money out through required minimum distributions (RMDs) whether you need it or not. (The IRS enforces a Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) if you reached 70-1/2 in 2019. For those reaching 70-1/2 in 2020 and beyond the new RMD age is 72 thanks to the Secure Act.)   So, overall, these savings plans can be very restrictive. The act of giving up control of your money can limit your ability to fulfill important life events, and it’s seldom in your best interest to do so. The bottom line is that the rules for these plans are set and regulated by our government, and they don’t always coincide with your needs.   You’re Kicking the Tax Can Down the Road Another problem with these plans is that you may misunderstand the actual benefits they provide. When it comes to contributions, you may believe you are saving on taxes because you are receiving a tax deduction in the year the funds are contributed. However, you are merely deferring taxes. A tax deduction through deferral is not the same as a tax savings. In other words, you either pay taxes now or you pay them later. A true tax savings is something you can write off on your taxes to receive the deduction with no future liabilities. With these plans, you are simply deferring taxes to a later point in time when the liabilities await you.   Example: You contribute $10,000 a year into your 401(k), deducting the contribution from your current year taxes. Assuming a hypothetical 8% annual rate of return over 30 years you would accumulate $1,223,000.  Since the $10,000 a year you put into the plan was tax-deductible (you didn’t pay any taxes on the money contributed or the growth) the entire account balance is subject to tax.   So, a few things to think about when it comes to the tax liabilities are: You are deferring the tax liability to a point in the future when you have no idea what the tax rate will be. When you retire you will likely not have the same amount of total tax deductions as you do today. Deductions may include the 401(k) contributions themselves, child credits, other deductions along with home mortgage interest, etc. The IRS does not offer a different tax code for retirees. You have the same tax brackets when you retire as you do while you are working. Granted, you may have less income in retirement, which would move you to a lower tax bracket, but reducing your income is not a goal worth pursuing. The bottom line is that our focus needs to be on how money will be used and structure a plan around receiving the tax benefits at the point money will be used. Postponing taxes for when you need the money can leave you overexposed to tax liabilities later in life.   When a 401(k) Makes Sense If you haven’t figured it out yet, I am not a fan of 401(k)s. However, there are a couple of exceptions … with caveats: If an employer offers matching contributions to your 401(k), it may make sense to contribute to the plan to receive the company match, but only in conjunction with other non-qualified accounts mentioned below. You never want to tie all your money up into these plans, regardless of a match. Some plans offer a Roth 401(k) option. If this is the case, opt for your contributions to go here even though they will not be tax deductible. The advantage is that the money will grow tax-free and doesn’t have the same tax complications down the road. However, the fact still remains that a 401(k) is restrictive and does not offer the same flexibility that other programs offer. One of the primary reasons people contribute to their 401(k)s is out of convenience. We most often opt for the easier, more popular option when it comes to making decisions, which doesn’t necessarily mean it is best.  McDonald’s says it serves “billions,” but we all know eating there is not good for our health.   Some Other Options to Consider Another reason people use 401(k)s is the fact that they don’t understand there are other options.  There are better options to save for the future that include more access and control over your money, depending on your situation. Consider the following: A Roth IRA has no deduction for contributions but offers tax-free growth for retirement. These plans are different from employer-sponsored plans since you are considered the owner. These plans do carry restrictions, but you always maintain access to the money, though taxes and penalties may apply. A non-qualified investment account, such as a brokerage account, can help manage tax liabilities, while allowing you access and control of the funds. That means you are free to access and use the money as you choose with no government oversight or penalties. A specially designed life insurance contract is a high cash value policy that offers access to the account value through loans or withdrawals. Policies have no tax deduction on contributions but do have favorable tax treatment by the IRS. These plans also provide you with easy access to cash at any age without penalties.   These options can work well and provide a more flexible alternative to employer plans when used in the right situations. Just keep in mind that there are no unicorns, and there is no perfect investment. There are positives and negatives for every decision you make. However, one thing is certain: When considering where to store your money, having access and control of your money is paramount.

Finding Yield In a Low Interest Rate Environment    It is no secret that savers are having a difficult time knowing how and where to hold their cash in this low interest rate environment.  Storing money in traditionally “safe” places no longer makes sense and has pushed some into more risky alternatives — such as fixed income securities like bonds and, in some cases even the stock market — in search of yield. However, while fixed income securities may offer a potentially higher yield than deposit accounts, they are not a “safe” alternative for storing cash since there is potential risk of losing principal due to longevity and interest rate risk. So the question is, what do you do when traditional methods for storing money are no longer working?  There is an answer, but you must first understand two things: The future is looking to be much different than the past Looking back, we find that interest rates climbed for 40 years (early 1940s – early 1980s) then changed direction and began a steady decline for the next 30 years (early 1980s – late 2000s), when interest rates ultimately hit zero and then flatlined. This declining interest rate environment made for an ideal fixed income bull run that has since faded into a stagnant corner of the market. What worked in the past may not work in the future Fixed income experienced satisfying returns during a time of declining interest rates.  However, this is no longer the case.  The fact is that interest rates have no room to the downside left without going negative, and since fixed income investments like bonds have an inverse relationship to interest rates, there is no remaining upside.  We have to assume that when interest rates begin rising, fixed income will eventually be negatively impacted.   The truth is that it is difficult to see how this will all play out until it is actually happening, but savers need to accept the reality that things are not what they used to be.  Savers need to think outside of the box to find ways to protect their cash, take advantage of the current interest rate environment and be positioned for what happens in the future.   What you find outside of the box may surprise you A few years back a colleague of mine asked me what I thought about the idea of using dividend-paying whole life insurance as a way to get clients higher yields on “safe money” without the interest rate risk of fixed income and without tying money up long term. At first I dismissed the idea — like some of you may be doing right now — but the gravity of the problem made me curious enough to investigate and test the hypothesis with anticipation of finding a viable solution.  Here is what I learned through my research…   But The Truth is that Not all policies are created equal While whole life insurance is a broadly used term for a type of permanent insurance, there are in fact many variations to choose from, leading to much of the confusion that exists about how they work.  What makes a dividend paying whole life insurance contract different than other forms of “permanent” life insurance is its consistent growth through contract guarantees and dividends and ultimate ownership of the death benefit. Compare these features with other forms of ”permanent” insurance and you’ll discover that a dividend-paying whole life insurance policy is arguably the only form of insurance that has the characteristics to function as a bank or bond alternative.  Hybrids, such as variable, indexed, universal life or even non-participating whole life (non-participating means there are no dividends paid) have design flaws that prevent them from functioning as a viable option, and here is why: Variable and index contracts rely on stock market performance in determining their returns. If markets are negative or flat, the contract fees and cost of insurance can cause negative returns making the performance unpredictable. A dividend-paying whole life policy, on the other hand, does not rely on stock market performance. Company guarantees and dividend tables determine the contracts’ growth, both of which are interest rate positive which means they react favorably to rising interest rates. Variable, index and universal life contracts have perpetual contract fees and insurance costs that are deducted from the cash value of the contract. These can erode your equity over time. Meanwhile, a whole life policy has a defined funding period (usually modified at seven years) that leads to having ownership of the policy with no future cost or premiums due.   Now the debate often is associated with premiums, costs and fees but this is the wrong conversation Some like to debate that the death benefit of a whole life policy is too expensive compared with other forms of life insurance, leading to this paradigm that whole life insurance is a bad deal.  But I want to clarify that this is not about debating whether the death benefit is too expensive … that is the wrong conversation to be having.  We are not discussing death benefits and cheap rates for coverage. We are talking about having a place to put money that can generate 3% to 4% net of costs, fees and commissions in a low interest rate environment. Let me repeat that…. We are talking about having a place to put money that can generate 3% to 4% net of costs, fees and commissions in a low interest rate environment. If you get mentally caught up in the insurance debate you will miss the benefit of what is being discussed.   But realize that there is no perfect investment or product The truth is that whether you put money in a bank account, the stock market or an insurance policy, there will be certain things about each of them you do not like. Maybe there is too much risk, too many fees or low returns.  Regardless of the issue, there is no perfect investment — and whole life insurance is no different. These contracts have a couple drawbacks that should be considered: There are premium (deposit) requirements for 5-7 years depending on the design. Policies have some cash restrictions in the early years that decrease over time allowing more access each year that passes. (In year one, 65-80% access to cash and increasing to 100% by years 8-10 years depending on the design) But knowing this to be true, we have to weigh the negatives with the positives and then consider the alternatives. Here is a quick comparison of popular options for storing money to highlight the attributes of each of them side by side:     Whole Life Insurance Fixed Income Deposit Account Consistent Growth x x   No Market Risk x   x Tax Free Access x     Access to Cash x   x   When you evaluate the three options, you find: A low interest deposit account paying close to zero. A fixed income option paying below 3% with volatility, tax liabilities and with interest rate risk. A dividend-paying whole life insurance contract with consistent growth of 3% to 4%, not subject to market risk, tax-free growth and access to cash.   Clearly not a unicorn, but when comparing the attributes of these contracts to deposit and fixed income accounts, whole life insurance does prove to be a “best” option.  I have been in the financial planning business for nearly three decades and have had my own personal roller coaster relationship with life insurance over the years.  It wasn’t until I was challenged to set my personal biases and opinions aside to look at the facts that I able to see the possibilities of using specially designed life insurance. The truth is that most of what you hear or read about whole life insurance are repeated thoughts and opinions from one person to another with little if any testing or vetting of the facts. Knowing the facts and avoiding too much opinion when making decisions will help you navigate these decisions and lead you to the answer you are looking for. You can learn more about this in other podcast episodes: Life Insurance as a Bank Alternative and Life Insurance as an Asset Class.

When my kids were growing up, many days my wife would sit with them on the floor putting puzzles together. They would laugh and talk as they worked together arranging the pieces to create the picture on the box. When the kids were young, the puzzles consisted of 20 pieces that could be put together without much need for the picture on the box. The older the kids got, the more complex the puzzles became and the more important the picture became for them to fully study, understand and refer back to in order to complete the puzzle. The same is true for a financial plan. When someone is just getting started with his or her financial life, the process can seem rudimentary without much consideration. However, as assets are accumulated and life becomes more complex, the picture on the box becomes the most important part of assembling the puzzle.   The Importance of the Picture on the Box Think of your personal financial situation as a puzzle made up of dozens of pieces.  The pieces represent all of the products, programs, thoughts, decisions, purchases, ideas, investments and anything else involving your financial life. The picture on the box to your puzzle is your CASH FLOW. It’s where everything flows from and where everything originates. It’s where the most important decisions are made and is the most important aspect of planning to understand. You simply cannot fully put the puzzle together without the picture. Yet, most people work around the edges of their puzzle and don’t take the time to study the picture. People will spend their time talking and debating about the pieces without considering the picture on the box.  It’s similar to what often happens during financial or retirement planning. Instead of working to fulfill the picture on the box, focusing on the completion of the puzzle rather than the individual pieces, they go from one idea or adviser to the next focused on products and rates of return. The puzzle is never complete.   What is cash flow? Cash flow is understanding where money originates. It’s about strategically using money to not only live your life but to create more income sources for yourself.  When you put your focus on cash flow, it solves a hundred other decisions.  The confusing part about cash flow is that too few people understand what this really is. They believe that a monthly budget represents their cash flow.  It doesn’t. A budget is used to track expenses. It focuses on limiting them to stay within your means in order to save money. It is a mindset of scarcity and is like using a rearview mirror for managing money. A budget is merely a piece of your puzzle. Cash flow is the picture. It focuses on where your money needs to go to fulfill the goals that you have for your future.  It is like looking through a windshield to see where you are going and allows you to direct money toward creating wealth and ultimately more income. It is an abundance mindset, not a scarcity mindset. The purpose of cash flow awareness is not simply to make ends meet, but rather to properly organize the flow of money, which allows you to create wealth and avoid debt.    How to Build a Plan Based on Cash Flow Developing the picture on the box and assembling the pieces is a fairly straightforward process. It doesn’t require a great deal of time if you follow a few basic steps.  When you think of your cash flow, break down your annual expenses into five groupings: Debt payments Tax payments Regular monthly expenses Savings and insurance transactions Irregular expenses throughout the year   Then list in chronological order the big-ticket items you plan to spend money on in chunks over the next five to 10 years.  (This would include education, transportation, home improvements, etc.) It is important to include the assets you plan to purchase or invest in to create more income on this list.  This may be a business, rental property or some other income-producing asset you plan to acquire. During this stage of the process, don’t think about how you will pay for these big-ticket items, just list what they are, and then circle back later to strategize as part of a financial planning process to work out the details. Take a few minutes to complete this exercise. Once you do, you’ll discover whether your current cash flow is in alignment with your plans or if adjustments need to be made.  Defining your intention for the money you have allows you to begin assembling your financial plan in a strategic, chronological manner to seek opportunities for developing new income sources. The goal is to ultimately generate enough income from your assets to satisfy these big-ticket purchases and support your entire lifestyle. That is how financial independence is achieved.     Securities offered through Kalos Capital Inc., Member FINRA/SIPC/MSRB, and investment advisory services offered through Kalos Management Inc., an SEC registered Investment Advisor, both located at11525 Park Wood Circle, Alpharetta, GA 30005. Kalos Capital Inc. and Kalos Management Inc. do not provide tax or legal advice. Skrobonja Financial Group LLC and Skrobonja Insurance Services LLC are not an affiliate or subsidiary of Kalos Capital Inc. or Kalos Management Inc.

The Chinese proverb “rags to rags in three generations” says that family wealth does not last for three generations. The first generation makes the money, the second spends it and the third sees none of the wealth.   The Chinese aren’t the only ones who acknowledge this as a problem. In the U.S. it is referenced as “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations,” and in Japan it’s “rice paddies to rice paddies in three generations.”   These sayings contradict what I hear clients tell me they want their money doing for them after death. After nearly three decades of assisting families with estate planning, what I have found is that the majority have a deep desire to leave a legacy for their family. The idea of leaving a thumbprint on future generations seems to give meaning to what people spend a lifetime accumulating. So the question is, if people have an inherent desire to leave a legacy for their families, why is there such a high failure rate among generational wealth? I believe the answer lies in how estate planning is defined and how it is approached. A common definition goes like this: Estate planning is the process of designating who will receive your assets and handle your responsibilities after your death or incapacitation. The very definition of estate planning omits any mention of generational intent. That’s a problem. Once the first generation passes away, the estate plan has essentially fulfilled its purpose once the second generation has access to the estate. The idea for generational wealth is not new. Two of the most referenced figures related to generational wealth are Cornelius Vanderbilt — whose famous last words to his family were, ''Keep the money together” —  and John D. Rockefeller. The Vanderbilt’s didn’t follow their patriarch’s advice, and the family fortune dwindled away, but the Rockefellers heeded the advice and are now in their seventh generation of wealth with billions in assets.    The Making of a Generational Plan Leaving a legacy necessitates a written strategy designed to equip future generations with the information they need to carry out the plans set before them. This written strategy is in addition to traditional estate planning documents. The legal documents are needed to hold the assets, but a written generational plan is what actually keeps the money together. There are three foundational components needed for you to begin a conversation with your professional team of advisers to create and implement a generational plan.  Once you have these worked out, you can begin to build the framework for what could be one of the most meaningful things you ever do for your family.   First: You Need the Right Mindset When you are thinking about your legacy, it’s helpful for you to “blur the faces” of your heirs. The reason for this is that your goal is to reach as far into the future as possible to include generations you will never meet. At this stage of planning you’re thinking big picture about your legacy, and this is difficult if you have your kids and grandkids front of mind. It doesn’t mean you can’t have as part of your estate plan specific gifts to living family members, but that is a separate part of this process.   Second: You Need to Be Open with Your Family You need to be open with your family about your assets and your intentions. In general, people tend to live as if their money, their beliefs, their values and their wishes are a secret and miss the opportunity to communicate knowledge and wisdom to their children or grandchildren. To have a generational plan, you cannot have a mindset that assumes everyone in the family knows what you know and that they will learn what to do through osmosis.  Your children may have a good education or a successful career, but that does not mean they understand financial or generational planning. It is the giver’s responsibility to offer guidance and leadership to the family for them to know what to do when you pass away. I have had clients in my office in tears many times over the fact their parents will not communicate anything with them. In some cases, no guidance is being offered for managing the inheritance coming, and the heirs have to wait until their parents’ death to learn what is going on. There could be a number of reasons for this situation. Some holders of wealth either don’t care what happens after they pass away or simply do not want to deal with having the conversation. If this is you, then the idea of generational planning may not be for you, and that is OK. It’s your money, and you can do with it what you wish. But for those who do have generational aspirations, this is an opportunity for you to bring your family together to cast a vision for the wealth you have and outline your vision of a family legacy.  This can spark meaningful discussions about what your family stands for, what values you share, what wealth strategies are in place, and outline what to expect as one generation dies and a new one is born. This has the potential to pave the way for each family member to understand his or her role and responsibility to perpetuate the legacy.   Third: You Need to Put Your Intentions in Writing Legal documents can be a guide for administering the plan, but the truth is that the heirs of the estate will be the ones instituting the plan after your gone.  So it is critical not only that they know and understand your intentions, but that they are put down in writing so that they are transferrable to future generations. To maintain generational wealth, the goal should be to set specific provisions for how money is to be used, placing restrictions on how money is accessed and how money is to be replenished. For instance, many of my clients are not interested in helping their kids get out of debt or drive fancy cars. What they really want is to see their family investing in themselves (i.e., a higher education, business startup or expansion and charitable donations that support the family values) while growing the assets in the plan. Most successful people will tell you that experiencing what it took to create the wealth is also what helps them keep and grow the wealth. What it takes to create wealth is not transferrable to those who have never created wealth for themselves. So, the idea is to offer your heirs the means to be able to get a higher education, to earn more money or to start a business to generate wealth for themselves and experience what it takes to not only create the wealth but to keep it. Put your plan down in writing, possibly as part of a family constitution or set of bylaws that can be passed down. Each generation has a fiduciary responsibility to carry forward the intentions of the previous generation with the sole purpose to leave the estate better off than it was when they received it for the benefit of the next generation.   How to Keep Your Estate’s Assets Growing for Generations When you think of money and growing wealth, the tendency is to assume that investments are the primary driver behind the strategy.  However, when it comes to a generational plan, a specially designed whole life insurance policy, I believe, is the primary catalyst for growing and protecting the assets while also providing access to cash. The reason these contract designs are so effective within generational planning is due to their risk-mitigation characteristics. The inherent features of these contracts (if designed properly) guarantee the results and have everything needed to give a generational plan predictable results one generation at a time:   Guaranteed Death Benefit. A life insurance death benefit is guaranteed to pay a large tax-free lump sum at the insured’s death without the need for taking on market risk.  This death benefit has a multiplying effect, because it is purchased using discounted dollars (the total death benefit is greater than the total premiums paid). Once a policy owner passes away within one generation, the death benefit proceeds can be used to purchase new life insurance policies on select people in the next generation; thus creating new wealth for the next generation.   Guaranteed Access to Cash.  Through the special design of a whole life policy, the high early cash values offer access to cash through policy loans. This loan privilege allows the beneficiaries of the generational plan to have access to cash while the cash values of the contract continue to grow uninterrupted. Policy loans allow a private banking system to form within the generational plan and allow for unique repayment capabilities, because the insurance company does not require payment on loans until the death of the insured. By keeping money continuously flowing into these policies, new death benefits are established that create new future wealth while simultaneously driving cash values higher, allowing more access to cash.   Guaranteed Cash Values.  There are two parts that make up the cash accumulation within these policy designs: the guaranteed cash and dividends.  Benefits and guarantees are backed by the claims-paying ability of the insurance company, and dividends are the result of low mortality along with profit sharing of the performance from the insurance companies underlining assets.  The total cash value accumulates at a consistent and predictable growth rate that is tax-free and without market risk or volatility concerns.  This allows for easy cash flow planning due to having consistent and predictable growth.   Of course, life insurance is not a unicorn and could potentially have unintended consequences if the contracts were mismanaged.  For instance, Income and growth on accumulated cash values are generally taxable upon withdrawal. Adverse tax consequences may result if withdrawals exceed premiums paid into the policy. Withdrawals or surrenders made during a surrender charge period may be subject to surrender charges and may reduce the ultimate death benefit and cash value. Surrender charges vary by product, issue age, sex, underwriting class and policy year. A MEC or Modified Endowment classification can trigger adverse tax consequences by violating IRS funding rules. Policy loans and withdrawals will reduce available cash values and death benefits and may cause the policy to lapse, or affect guarantees against lapse. Additional premium payments may be required to keep the policy in force. In the event of a lapse, outstanding policy loans in excess of unrecovered cost basis will be subject to ordinary income tax.   The Bottom Line on Generational Wealth To wrap up, the success or failure of a generational plan rests on three things:   Articulating your vision for the future and getting buy-in from your family for the vision.   Communicating your vision through a written document that details your vision and equips future generations to carry the plan forward.   Having proper legal work and life insurance designs in place as the catalyst for bringing your vision to fruition. Finding competent professionals who have a full understanding of generational strategies will be important.   You can visit visit BUILDBanking.com and brianskrobonja.com for more on this topic.

I’m an entrepreneur and just so happen to be in the business of providing other entrepreneurs with financial advice.   But I don’t typically offer up the usual status quo advice that tells you to do things that aren’t always in alignment with growing your business.   My views originate from my experiences and at times are contrarian to what’s being recommended by the usual tax preparer and other financial advisers, because I am in the trenches running a business just like you.   I know what it takes to grow a business, make payroll, deal with IRS notices and manage cash flow.   The truth is that being an entrepreneur can be isolating at times as a result of being wrapped up in the day-to-day of running your business.   When you are hyper-focused on your business, it is difficult to also be an expert at managing the profits of the company.  You may be great at making money, but once it’s made, what do you do with it?   Thinking differently about your company and how you will use it to build wealth is the key to true financial success.   There are five strategic ways you can shift your mindset about money to transform how you define and operate your business and approach your financial decisions.   It will help you visualize what you really want and that is to have what Dan Sullivan calls A Self-Managing Company®.     Mind Shift No. 1: Understand that Retirement Savings Plans Don’t ‘Lower’ Your Tax Bill   As a business owner, you are probably time-starved and used to making fast decisions.   And you may be tempted to make fast decisions at tax time, especially when your tax preparer suggests that tax-deferred investments are the answer to lower your tax bill and save some money for retirement.    Easy enough, right?   This is what I like to call a half-truth.   It’s true that you’ll get the deduction for that year’s taxes.   But the other half of the story uncovers the problem with the use of SEP IRAs, 401(k)s and other tax-deferred options to “lower” your tax bill.   The reality is that you are taking money from your business where you have some level of control and redirecting those dollars into the stock market where you have absolutely no control.    The money is tied up until you are 59½ years old and face potentially higher tax liabilities than you previously owed with no access to your cash if it is needed for growing or sustaining your business.   When you own a business, the half-truths you hear from many finance professionals and the mainstream media can at times negatively impact your ability to grow your business and protect your interests.    I have found there are other, more productive ways to build wealth outside of your business, beyond the base-level concepts of investing or putting money in an IRA or 401(k).     Mind Shift No. 2: View Your Company Not as Your Job, but as a Tool for Building Your Wealth   If you run a healthy business, you have a long-term strategy.   You know what the end-goal is. You think about the business as a whole, rather than focusing on simply the day-to-day tasks.   We’ve all heard the old adage: Work on your business, not in your business.   That’s because if you’re working in your business all the time, you’ve only created a job for yourself.    The goal is to build systems and develop people to slowly work yourself out of the role you have and allow the business to run on its own.    The sooner you shift your mindset to this way of thinking, the sooner you can begin to experience the results.   First, carve out the time in your day to think about your business.   Many business owners I talk to don’t do this, because they are buried in the work.   Take time to talk to your future self about what you want your life to look like in the future.    What would your future self say to you about the decisions and choices you are making?    It helps to outline your thinking time, keep a journal of your discoveries, meditate to de-stress, and use the time to reflect on what you are trying to accomplish in the business.   Next, think about your business as a piece of your financial plan.   How much time and capital are you investing into the business, and what are you getting out of it?    What is your ROI?    I’ve found that a business can offer the biggest opportunity to build wealth, and in many cases — depending on your results — it can offer more than what you might get from investing in the market.   Finally, think with the end in mind.   At the end of the day, what are you trying to get out of your company? To build wealth through your business, you must identify what will build its value.   Building value revolves around creating a self-managing company, one that runs without you and has a strategy to sustain itself into the future.   This allows you to sell it for maximum value, or even create a passive income stream without actually having to work in the business.   Shifting your mindset is important, because you probably didn’t start your business that way.   Many business owners don’t, and that’s OK while you’re getting things up and running.   But it’s important to remember that what got you started will not get you to the next level and will not build the wealth needed to successfully exit the business.     Mind Shift No. 3: Master Your Cash Flow   I tend to bust a lot of myths when it comes to financial matters, and one of them has to do with cash flow.   This is especially important to understand as an entrepreneur.   Your cash flow is not there to simply pay your bills. Yes, you must pay your bills of course, but there is more to it than simply making payroll.   Cash flow is a tool to help you build wealth and the value of your company.    Healthy cash flow allows for you to control your money, and there are strategies you can explore to help you maximize it.   I recently spoke with a partner of a business who was earning a W-2 salary of $400,000 per year.   In working with his CPA, we were able to rework his partnership agreement, removing him as an employee and adding him as a consultant of his own LLC.    While this simple strategy reduced his tax liability by $20,000, implementing this strategy was about more than just lowering taxes.    This was about cash flow – everything is always about cash flow.    By making this little tweak, he increased his cash flow by $1,666 per month.   I’m not a CPA and don’t provide tax advice, but I ask a lot of questions and propose many scenarios for the tax professionals to consider – scenarios that can increase cash flow for business owners.   Increasing and optimizing your cash flow should be a top priority for your business.     Mind Shift No. 4: Be Your Own Bank   Companies with cash are able to do many things without having to rely on a bank or other source of funding. In essence, they can be their own bank.   Think about it.   When you have cash, you can use it to work on your wealth-building strategy.   You could buy a company, invest in equipment, hire more people (maybe even a replacement for yourself who can run the company while you collect passive income), buy property, or take advantage of any other opportunity that may come your way.   But there is another way you can be your own bank.   Maybe you’ve heard of the concept of “BUILD Banking™,” a cash flow strategy using a specially designed life insurance contract.   It’s a strategy that I use personally and with many of my clients who want to have greater control of their cash flow.   It frees them from dependence on banks for capital infusions and avoids government red tape when they need to access their money.   For more information about this strategy of BUILD Banking™, you can visit www.buildbanking.com. This strategy enables business owners to grow assets tax-free and have access to those funds whenever they’re needed.   In essence, you’re accessing cash when it is needed while having uninterrupted compounding growth for your future.     Mind Shift No. 5: Understand Your Legal Exposures and Protect Yourself   You likely have some form, or forms, of insurance in place for your business.   And you may believe that these policies have you covered.   Well, they may, and they may not.   The coverage you need goes far beyond liability, even extending into punitive damages.   It’s important to work with an insurance professional who specializes in business coverage to ensure that you have the right type of policies and the proper level of protection for your specific business.   There are also certain types of insurance policies (including the BUILD Banking strategy I’ve described above) that can serve a strategic purpose for your business.   It’s common, and valuable, for business owners to have a life insurance contract as part of their succession plan, acting as a funding mechanism for the beneficiary to purchase the deceased owner’s share of the business.   Again, you will want to have a collaborating team of insurance professionals who have expertise in their vertical and who understand your business, your goals and what you are trying to accomplish.   It’s also a good idea to include your CPA, attorney and financial planner in on those discussions.   These five financial planning tips and mindset shifts will help you use your business as a tool to start building wealth (or build greater wealth).   They may be things you’ve never thought about, or things you’ve considered but haven’t been able to implement.    Putting these ideas to work can get you on the path to true business success.     Results may vary. Any descriptions involving life insurance policies and their use as an alternative form of financing or risk management techniques are provided for illustration purposes only, will not apply in all situations, may not be fully indicative of any present or future investments, and may be changed at the discretion of the insurance carrier, General Partner and/or Manager and are not intended to reflect guarantees on securities performance. Benefits and guarantees are based on the claims paying ability of the insurance company.   The terms BUILD Banking™, private banking alternatives or specially designed life insurance contracts (SDLIC) are not meant to insinuate that the issuer is creating a real bank for its clients or communicating that life insurance companies are the same as traditional banking institutions.   This material is educational in nature and should not be deemed as a solicitation of any specific product or service. BUILD Banking™ is offered by Skrobonja Insurance Services LLC only and is not offered by Kalos Capital Inc. nor Kalos Management.   BUILD Banking™ is a DBA of Skrobonja Insurance Services LLC.  Skrobonja Insurance Services LLC does not provide tax or legal advice. The opinions and views expressed here are for informational purposes only. Please consult with your tax and/or legal adviser for such guidance.

When I talk about my definition of retirement, I think it sometimes catches people off guard.   In my mind, retirement is not who you are or where you’re at in life, rather it is the transition of your time and money.    In other words, it is a process you go through … not your identity.   The transition for money is a transition from accumulating money to utilizing it.    For time, it is a transition of reallocating the 40-plus hours per week you spent working.   This distinction of what retirement means is an important one to make, because many people identify themselves with their work — but when someone is no longer working, they default to labeling themselves as “retired.”    Here is the problem: This default “I’m retired” mindset leaves people stuck, and they never really progress toward reinventing themselves.   In essence, they have made retirement their new identity, which just seems odd considering when you say something is “retired” it often infers that it has outlived its usefulness.   But I don’t think this is an accurate description for most successful people who have lived a life of purpose, who have gained valuable insight and wisdom from their life experiences and who have refined their talents and unique abilities over decades.   Therefore, retirement should not be a label used to describe who someone is — it’s not their identity — rather, retirement is a term used to describe the transition a person is going through from one phase of life to another.   This is important, because the success of your retirement transition is predicated on how well you grasp this distinction and your ability to shift your mindset in three specific areas.    And if done successfully, you can emerge on the other side of your retirement transition living a life of abundance.   Reframe Your Mindset of Time   In Dan Sullivan’s coaching program Strategic Coach®, he uses an exercise called The Lifetime Extender.®   It is a tool used to formulate a new paradigm around time with the goal of making our future more important than our past.   The idea is that you have the choice to imagine your own future, and when you change the time frame you are operating in, you change the way you think.   For example, Dan is planning on living to 156!   This exercise gives you the freedom to reframe your future and reprogram your thinking about how to live the second half of your life.   There is a lot of psychology around how this works that I won’t get into here, but when you expand the amount of time you think you have left here on this earth, your mind begins to follow that way of thinking.   Now I realize that this may be a little too “woo-woo” for some, but when you consider that none of us actually knows how much time we have left to live, what do you have to lose?    You have a choice: You can live as if you have been set out to pasture to retire or you can live as if you are just entering your second half of your life.   Your future reality is created in your mind, and whatever you focus on expands.   So, expand your time and pick a number, then begin working on your future self.   Reinvent Yourself   St. Augustine said that asking yourself the question of your own legacy — “What do I wish to be remembered for?” — is the beginning of adulthood.   In Bob Buford’s book Halftime, Bob quotes Matthew 13:5-9, which illustrates the eventual harvest of a farmer who sows his seed.   Bob uses this verse to point toward his own epitaph of 100x.   He says, “I want to be remembered as the seed that was planted in good soil and multiplied a hundred-fold.   It is how I wish to live…how I attempt to envision my own legacy…to be a symbol of higher yields, in life and in death.”   The theme of the book is what the title suggests: that wherever you are right now, you are at halftime in your life, and the second half should be the better half.   Every day up until your retirement transition, you dedicated eight or more of the 24 hours a day that you had to someone or something to earn a living.   That commitment of time and what you were responsible for during that time manifests into a sense of purpose.   When that time commitment goes away, so can that sense of purpose.   Your purpose while working may have been closely associated with your daily projects, leading a team, fulfilling a role or other responsibilities. It could have been a sense of belonging to a team, a brotherhood (or sisterhood), a company or group that gave you motivation each day to go to work.   This is all left behind once you retire, and what often happens after the “retirement party” is over is the onset of feeling lost, unfulfilled, bored or even depressed.   This underscores the importance of viewing retirement as a transition, not as your new reality.   When I consult with clients who are retiring, I often encourage them to begin thinking about how they will spend their time once they make the transition.   This conversation is not only important for cash flow planning, but it is the first step in helping them begin to think beyond the transition of retirement and about their purpose.   Playing golf, traveling and spending time with grandkids are all great things, but they are not anyone’s purpose.   When asked what someone does, unless they are a professional golfer, they aren’t going to say they golf. They may play golf, but it is not their purpose.   Author and futurist Buckminster Fuller has a question designed for finding your life’s mission: “What is it on this planet that needs doing that I know something about, that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it?”   The transition of retirement is not the destination; it is the transition to what is next.    It is your opportunity to reinvent yourself and live out the second half of your life with purpose.   Reframe Your Mindset About Money   I dedicate this podcast — The Common Sense Financial Podcast — to helping people align their money with their purpose.   Now, you may think that money alignment is something fairly obvious to everyone, but so much of what people do with their money is not at all in alignment with their purpose.   Nearly 100% of the time, when someone hires my team to plan their retirement transition, I find that their money is either sitting in 401(k)s or IRAs invested for growth or they have large amounts of money sitting in cash.   So yes, I saw a need to dedicate an entire podcast on helping people align their money with their purpose, because I have found that there is a vacuum of common-sense financial information available to retirees.   The goal of the podcast is to bridge the gap between what people dream about in their thinking time and what they need to do with their money to make what they are dreaming about a reality.   More often than not, people tend to envision a life of abundance for themselves or being able to leave a financial legacy for their children and grandchildren. But without knowing how to go about this, people will inherently default to what they know and think they understand — which, when it comes to making financial decisions, is most often rates of return and account balances.   As a result of this misalignment, confusion and feelings of unsettledness creep in when they attempt to retire and then discover that there is a disconnect between what they see their purpose for their money is and what their money is actually doing for them.   It is like having a power cord that is too short to reach the outlet.    You know there is power in the outlet, and the machine you’re trying to power up can do the job you need it to do but you can’t get them to connect, so nothing happens.   This is why measuring your financial success based solely on rate of return or how much money is in your bank account is the wrong measurement.   The measurement for your success should be on how much income you can generate from your assets that is consistent and predictable.   It’s income from your assets that grants you freedom of money and time so you can dedicate your talents to pursue your purpose.   The key to a successful retirement transition is to reframe your mindset about money, focus on maximizing cash flow, expand your concept of time and reinvent your purpose in life, because there is likely more to your story that has yet to be written.   That concludes todays podcast, thank you for listening to the common sense financial podcast.

We all have blinders about various things in our life that leave us blind to things we do not know or understand. What is a blinder?  Well, it could be a bias about something, it could be a protection mechanism to ignore something, it could be immaturity about something or it could simply be ignorance of not knowing any better.  In fact, what I have found is that for most people who are experiencing investing immaturity is that once they are provided more education about how to invest, they often move past this stage into more advanced wealth strategies. The best way to look at this is that like anything: We only know what we know.  In other words, the root cause of investing immaturity for most people is simply not knowing any different. To make the most of your investments, you need to think about them in the right way because investing immaturity can hold you back from reaching the next level with your finances.