Life & Retirement is a Conundrum
by: Cory Carlton
Neither our lives nor planning for retirement is simple. They are complex. Dynamic. Ever changing. Difficult, often in wonderful ways. That’s why we call them a conundrum.
There is no one clear, or right, answer. There is no one way to solve these issues. Each day we find a new challenge and then we find a way through.
It takes hard work. Focus. Determination. Motivation. And the outcomes are better when you don’t go at it alone.
“A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.” Someone really wise wrote that down years ago when it comes to solving the conundrums that are life and planning for retirement, it’s true.
If you went back in time five years and looked ahead, would your five-year vision look like your current life today? For some of us, sure. It’s the same. Or it’s better. Or worse. Or incredibly different than anything you could have guessed.
When you’re dealing with a conundrum you need to be flexible and open to all solutions. You need to be able to react quickly and adjust your plan when something new comes along.
Sticking to your plan only makes sense if nothing has changed. Let’s look at the conundrum that is retirement.
This life is full of uncertainties. Various factors influence our short-term and long-term goals and they come out of nowhere.
Things like health issues, career changes, pandemics, wars, taxes, market volatility, and inflation. You get the point.
If life were predictable things would be easy and to a degree less interesting. But when these conundrums occur it’s our preparedness that allows us to come out the other side unscathed.
It’s the things we don’t see coming that we’re not prepared for that can derail everything.
That’s our job. To plan and help you prepare for the things you don’t see coming. Obviously, we here at Both Hands FG can’t steer the country away from way, pass laws, or influence the market (we’re not part of the group controlling the world that conspiracy theorists believe is pulling the strings of the world).
But the repercussions of events like that, or significant health issues, or job changes, or family changes, or simply making sure you don’t run out of money in retirement. We handle that and have multiple ways of taking care of our clients.
Here are some examples of the conundrums we’ve helped our clients with…
One client, when she was in her later 30s had her third child. After delivery, she suffered a stroke. She is in great health now and the family is great. But after the stroke things were tough. She had to focus on getting better and her husband had to take more time off work to take care of their newborn. This went on for about six months and they went nearly that long without a paycheck.
And they were fine. She was able to focus on getting better and dad was able to take care of the family. How? Because part of their planning included a life insurance policy that has something called living benefits that let them use the death benefit because of the stroke.
They were able to not worry about money because they had a plan for something like this.
Another client sadly became a widow in her mid-60s. Her husband handled all the finances and everything. All the bills, the house, the estate planning, everything. He was the one with the retirement plan and how that was going to go. So, she was lost.
Her husband began working with us on his estate planning and passed shortly after we set up their trust. For her, we were able to help her get everything organized and put a simple plan together that she understood and had confidence in so that no matter what she would not run out of money, and everything would be passed to their children and preferred charity as planned.
We have clients that didn’t lose a penny in 2022. We have clients that don’t have to worry about income taxes in retirement. We make sure our clients have plans for the things they don’t see coming.
This conundrum is your story. You’re the hero. We’re the guide. The Yoda to your Luke. Think about your current financial plan. Is it ready for things you don’t expect?
If the answer is “no” or you’re not sure, we should talk.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Cory Carlton is the CEO and Co-Founder of Both Hands Financial Group. Our clients matter to Cory. He takes his time getting to know them, listening to what's important to them, what they want to achieve, things they want to do, and who they love. Then, Cory puts a plan together for their needs to help them be the person they want to be. When Cory's not helping our clients he is spending time with his wife and four children. They spend most of their time outdoors and more recently building Lego castles.