Keen On Retirement™

Giving back is one of our core values at Keen Wealth. Every year, my wife Carissa, who leads our Keen Community Impact Committee and the Keen Wealth Foundation, works with the committee to bring philanthropic opportunities to our broader team. Together, we identify key initiatives to support through fundraising, volunteer work, and our financial expertise. If you visit our offices during the week and see a couple of empty desks, it's a good bet that our team members are pitching in at one of these causes and trying to make our community a little brighter. I'm especially grateful for our relationship with the Veterans Community Project (VCP), which is working to end homelessness among veterans by building "tiny homes" and offering outreach to our heroes. Keen Wealth has contributed over $500,000 to the VCP's mission, provided hundreds of hours of community service, and helped found and continues to volunteer at its "Operation Clay Storm" skeet and trap shooting fundraiser. I was honored to be a part of the ribbon-cutting ceremony when the VCP broke ground on their new Veterans Navigation Campus, which will expand the support services they're able to offer veterans in our community. On today's episode, we follow up on a recent webinar I co-hosted with VCP Co-Founder & Chief Project Officer Brandonn Mixon and Keen Wealth Senior Financial Planner Jeb Flynn and discuss giving strategies that can help folks do the most good for the causes that matter most.

In financial planning, we sometimes refer to your working years as the "accumulation years." A large part of your time is spent working and earning so that you can support your family, achieve milestones like buying a house, and secure your financial future. But during those years, you're "accumulating" more than money. You're gaining relationships, hobbies, interests, skills, experiences, memories, and, yes, possessions. By the time you reach retirement, your life is probably as full as it's ever been. Too full, maybe. As you move through the various stages of retirement, your identity is going to change along with your interests and priorities. And part of change is letting go so that you can make room for new people and new experiences that are going to make every step of your journey more fulfilling.

Dolly Parton's songs and movies will live on forever. But when the 80-year-old entertainment icon passed away last month, she also left behind an impressive financial legacy that we all can learn from. In a 2020 interview, Parton made it clear that she had no intention of becoming another celebrity cautionary tale about poor estate planning, saying, “You don’t want to leave that mess to your family for people to have to fight over. You need to take care of that yourself." Parton's $450 million estate is protected by a trust with executors and successor trustees, as well as a team of legal and financial professionals. And while one of the benefits of establishing these kinds of protections around your estate is that many details may remain private, I’m guessing a good portion of Parton’s fortune will continue her extraordinary philanthropic mission. Most of us won't write hit songs and build our own theme parks. But we can follow Parton's example by being proactive about protecting our legacies and giving back what we can to make the world around us a little bit brighter. Another important part of shoring up your own financial plan is making the most of your Social Security benefits. On today’s show, we follow up Matt Wilson’s recent webinar, Maximizing Social Security Benefits, by answering some questions from our audience.

A recurring theme in my series of blogs about The Adaptable Retirement is that your financial plan has to account for a constant that seniors often overlook. Change. As you near the end of your career, I doubt that you have the exact same goals, relationships, and interests that you had when you started working, or when you and your spouse first met. What you do every day has changed. Who you do those things with has changed. How you spend time when you are and aren't working has changed. Your body and health have changed. Your understanding of the world and other people has changed. In many ways, you’re a different person with a different identity. And this continual process of growth and renewal doesn't stop when you stop working.

"Save more than you spend" sounds like a timeless piece of money advice, as true today as it was two hundred years ago. But in the mid-1800s, many folks believed you needed to spend your money as soon as possible. In fact, saving too much back then could lead to financial ruin! That's just one example of how Americans' attitudes about money have evolved throughout history. But it's not just rules of thumb and hand-me-down wisdom that's changed. It's the nature of money and our relationship to it. On today's show, we welcome author Joseph S. Moore to discuss his new book, How to Get Rich in American History: 300 Years of Financial Advice That Worked (& Didn't), and the surprising ways five money philosophies have shifted over time.

In my previous post, I explained why a 30-year retirement plan cannot be treated as a "one and done" checklist. From unexpected health events to shifting personal priorities, your life should determine how and when your financial plan needs to adjust, not the other way around. But not every change requires a new financial strategy. And that's where the true tension in retirement planning lies. On the one hand, underestimating the effects of a meaningful change could put your long-term security at risk. On the other hand, overreacting to every market dip, unsettling headline, or argument with your spouse about money can cause lasting damage to your wealth. The goal for retirees should be thoughtful adaptation, not constant reaction. Before you overhaul your portfolio, ask yourself these six questions to determine if your plan truly needs an adjustment.