Retired at 55? Early Retirement Reality Check | Real Client Conversation

Hello everyone and welcome to the Jarvis update. We're going to do something a little bit different today. Uh, my name is Brian Dress. I'm the director of research and also an investment advisor here at Left Brain. We're joined as always by our CEO and chief investment officer, Nolan Langford, and we're also joined by a special guest. Who happens to be the brother of Nolan. That's William Langford. William, welcome to the program.

Thank you, Brian.

It's great to be with you, William. And we will disclose William's a client of Left Brain. And we wanted to have William come in because William is a recent retiree. And what we do here at Left Brain is always getting people ready for retirement. So we wanted to talk to William about the steps that he's taken on his own and the steps he's taken with Left Brain. In order to get his retirement in order and, you know, some of the things that he's encountered along the way. So we'll start out, William, if you could tell us a little bit about yourself, your career, and kind of your life cycle as a client with us.

Yeah. So thank you, Brian. So, and thank you for having me on as well. So I just recently retired after 32 years in corporate America, two large publicly traded companies where I started at the very beginning, early on in my career, right out of college. Entry-level positions and spent 8 years with one company where I got to a middle management position. But then I decided I wanted to leave and go to another larger organization for, for different opportunities. And so I started in similar ways, entry-level position, senior management positions, director and VP level roles. So all of those types of roles across multiple functions within the organization— sales, marketing, e-commerce, acquisitions. And so it was great career. Great brands with the organization. And I ended up leaving the organization just recently as a senior vice president. So from starting very at the beginning all the way to, you know, to leaving as a senior vice president. So really excited about, you know, what I learned in corporate America all of those years. And you asked about early investment strategies. I was very fortunate to have Nolan as my advisor. And there were— I mean, I'll be honest, there were things that clearly I didn't know that I should be leveraging, and Nolan was able to— and some of those things were things that were inside the organization from very simple things. When I started the organization, basic saving for the company's 401(k) benefits. Then I had the opportunity as I continued to move through the organization with the deferred comp opportunity, and Nolan would share how you should use deferred comp all the way to— I got to a certain point in the organization where I was then issued as an executive restricted stock units as well as long-term as incentive program. So there became these basket, I would call them, of company assets that Nolan was able to help me direct while I was also growing my personal investment dollars outside of the organization, which then Nolan was helping me to invest in longer-term opportunities as well. And at that point, I would tell you, I really didn't understand because I'm like, okay, I'll just keep putting in PepsiCo and I'll be fine. But now that I've I have retired and I understand the importance of what Nolan would share with me back then is importance of balance and diversification because clearly publicly traded companies, there's always up, downs, up, downs, and you clearly need to be able to ride them out. Right. However, having other investment options certainly allows you to ride those ups and downs out a lot more favorably.

So, excellent. I want to start a little bit from the beginning. So obviously we're toward the end of the journey here and into retirement. Hopefully you're doing that. But I want to talk to you a little bit about the beginning and how things started for you. You mentioned some of the things that you started with—401(k), deferred comp, and those things. Tell me a little bit, William, about how you knew and when you knew that you needed help with dealing with these things.

So, when I knew is, given the demands of my job, I knew that I couldn't spend time trying to manage. That's what I'm a sales guy. I get paid to sell things, not to be a financial advisor, just like I'm— when I need to go to a— I'm not a doctor. I could go online and look at WebMD, but I can't do what the doctor does. Right. And so to me, it was important that I knew that someone was looking every day, waking up every day thinking, how can I grow portfolios? Right. That's not what I do. That's not what I did in my corporate life. I thought about how to meet whatever the demands of the organization were from that particular day. And being focused on my portfolio is not something that I wanted to do in addition to that because one of those would suffer clearly and I didn't have the expertise to do that. And so I felt like in order to, and a couple things, protect me from myself too, I needed someone who was a professional at doing it because there were a lot of goals and objectives that I had. Like one of the things, and we talked about investing in outside instruments, I put, you know, I have 3 kids and was able to put all 3 kids through college through early investments in 529s. 2 nines, which Noland directed me to do. And so all of those things, you know, as again, as I continued to grow my compensation and wealth, it opened up other opportunities for me to invest in other things outside of the organization.

You're shocking me by telling me you got 3 kids through college already. You're looking, looking a little bit too young for that, William. Yeah. Okay. So that's how you knew you needed help. Tell me a little bit about sort of what part of the life cycle of your life, your career, when did you get started with Noland as an advisor?

Oh God, I would say, um, probably, well, when I had money.

Uh, okay, well, that's a good start.

Yeah, yeah, 30 years ago. Okay. When I initially started, because I got out of college and I had my first— okay. Um, corporate role, and you know, there were some basic things that you, you know, you do. I had some student debt, right? So I needed to make sure I took care of that and just learning how to live with a little bit of income. Before, you know, moving it to, you know, to investment things was important for me. So when I got to a point, I felt like when, you know, I was comfortable, most of my other outside, you know, debt, that sort of stuff was paid, and I was leveraging at that point, you know, Nolan early on was advising me to make sure I took full advantage of all the company's benefits. Okay. Um, until I was able to, you know, continue to move through the organization and have more income to invest in other options. So it was like a twofold strategy. Sure. And so I would say early on, 30 years when started, the direction on what to do with the company opportunities that exist. And then, you know, when you start making a little bit more cash and it's like, here's what we're going to do to diversify outside the organizations.

And I'm going to jump in here a little bit because he probably doesn't remember, but he actually started before he had discretionary cash. As you know, the life cycle, you get out of college, you have more bills than you have income. Right. Eventually your income rises and then you get discretionary income when you have extra overflow. Well, one of the things William did that was really smart early on before he had the extra discretionary cash to be funding brokerage accounts or Roth accounts is he did a life insurance plan. Okay. And he did a permanent life insurance plan. So this is one that actually had cash value, but it also had an increasing death benefit. And so he did it when he was really young, early 30s, late 20s. This is a very long time ago. Premiums were very low for pretty decent death benefit. And it was interesting because he got one of the ones that they call death benefit option B. Now all that means is, so for example, generally if you're going to have a level policy like $250,000, you put a lot of money in there in cash. At the end, you either get the greater of the two, either greater of your cash or the death benefit, but not both. William got the plan where you get both. You get your cash value but it also increases your death benefit. So that was the first investment he had before he had any other outside investment accounts. I would say the other thing that William did sort of very well, what he took advantage of, is auto-funding. So there's a lot of plans he had where he could just set it and forget it. So he mentioned the 529, which came along much later. But a lot of these company plans, you know, the employee stock purchase plan, the 401(k) plans, the deferred comp plans, you just tell payroll how much you want taken out of your paycheck, or you set up your bank account, and it just automatically funds it. So it puts it on automatic. I think that was a brilliant move on William's part. So that's something that was helpful. The other thing, you know, we mentioned these company stock plans that he's done. And like a lot of publicly traded companies, if you're an employee there, especially when you get to the executive level, You have a lot of these buckets that you can participate in, um, that's attached to the company stock. And if you happen to work for a stock, uh, company that has a stock that appreciates a lot, you could do really, really well. Unfortunately for William, he works for a consumer packaged goods company and they tend to be more plodding. I mean, they're not tech stocks that are gonna double in a year. You know, they're, they're gonna continue to move kind of slow moving. So you don't necessarily get spooked because they don't generally fall a lot.

And you're taking more advantage of sort of the mechanics of the plan rather than the growth of the stock in that case. Correct.

In spite of the stock not going up a lot, William still did very well. He participated in not only the employee stock purchase plan, stock options, as well as they had an opportunity to buy company stock inside the 401(k). And that was another thing he took advantage of. OK.

Yeah, I want to get it from your perspective, William, and maybe some of the decisions you made along the way and maybe where you went to work and those sort of things. And can you talk a little bit about how you looked at the benefits packages and how you took it, took advantage of them and how that's sort of funding what you're doing now in retirement today?

Yeah, I think I was fortunate to work for really large companies who had— and I've only worked for two, so I didn't make a change. I worked one for 8 years and then the other one for 24 years, so I didn't make a, you know, a lot of decisions were not— now I would be honest, during the course of that 32 years, you know, you get other companies reaching out to you. Sure. You know, and you're— and you— and in some, some of those cases, I've, you know, interviewed and gotten to offer stages. And you do get to a point where you're comparing the benefits, right, and apples to apples. And so I would say a lot of the benefits at my previous company were much better than a lot of other smaller organizations. Like I talked about the deferred comp and there were, you know, employee stock. There were a lot of these things a lot of other companies did not have. And I thought were tremendous benefits for me that, you know, that I knew at some point when I did retire, I'd have to— I'd be able to take advantage of that versus going to other organizations that did not have those same instruments. And I felt like even if the other company was giving me a little bit more comp today, right? When I think about the long term, it, you know, because again, they're giving me this comp today at, at a much higher tax rate, you know, that I'm paying anyway, right? But some of the deferred comp things that I was able to take advantage of where other companies didn't have were tremendously valuable, um, to me. And even, I'll give you another example, you know, I tend to give a lot to charity. And our company actually has a 1-to-1 match. So you have a charitable organization you give money to— if I give them $1,000, the company gives them $1,000, right? So there's a lot of these other benefits that I saw, um, that I could use to obviously help myself and my family, but also, um, the community as well. So I looked at those, and, you know, oftentimes what I would do— and a lot of these things I would I learned from working with Nolan in his past is when people would get promoted in the organization and I knew when they got access to those other benefits, I would always tell them, hey, now you're a senior director. Now you qualify for deferred comp. You should do deferred comp and here's why. Right. And a lot of them, because they send you these benefit package with all this stuff in there and you're not reading every single— it's a lot to it. So every— there would be things that I would tell folks when they got to these different levels in the organization, when you got VP, hey, here's now, here's how your bonus structure changes. Here's how your long-term compensation changes. I would mentor and help people understand that so that they could plan appropriately. And we even had Nolan come and speak to a couple groups at PepsiCo about that as well.

So I like, I like all that you said there, William. And, you know, we work with a lot of people that are kind of like you maybe 20 years ago, and they're thinking about, okay, maybe I have a few different offers out there. But a lot of people who are younger maybe don't consider all those different deferred opportunities. They think about, okay, what's salary, bonus, comp next year? And but what, you know, a big part of what we do as advisors is time is a huge ingredient to all that. And what you're saying is you took advantage of a lot of those deferred opportunities and now you're in a great spot, which is, which is excellent. I did want to ask you this, William. Is there anything that you didn't do or any mistakes that you made along the way that you may would have done differently? You know, when you're 35, maybe you made a move and you would have done it somewhat differently.

Um, I think for the most part, you know, and no one did— yeah, I was good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, um, you know, one of the things that, you know, Nolan often talks about, and I'm sure you as well, Brian, like the buckets of money that you have, right? And trying to get more money into buckets that tends to be a lot more free, a lot more liquid. Yes. I didn't do a lot of that. And I think having— if I had done that, probably would probably give me more money to put to work, which would have then created, you know, more— a bigger asset base for me now. Yes. Obviously, we did extremely well, and those are my choices, right? I, you know, I was probably spending too much of my discretionary income being discretionary. You have a little bit too much travel on your way in. Too much, but life, right? You know, you have kids and you want to give them the best and all these other things happen, right? And you, you know, you again, you end up again probably spending more than what you would like to until you figure out, 'cause you're not thinking about being 55 or 60 when you're 35. So you're like, I'm good. And the other point about Nolan, you know, I said saving you from myself, I did all this auto stuff so I wouldn't have to worry about it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, here's some— for— okay, here's the 401k money, here's the 529 money, here's the money that's going to left brain. And then what I— and, you know, and obviously your, your home stuff, your— but what was left was mine. Okay. And so I never felt like I had to then, you know, save on top of that, right? Because if not, then I probably would not be where I said.

Yeah, it was all in place for you, which is— yeah, I think that's great advice for everyone out there is You know, a lot of people say pay yourself first, and that means putting the money in those buckets on an auto basis. That way you don't have to worry about it, and then you get down the line, you get to retirement, it's all there for you. Nolan, I want to bring your— get your perspective on it for William and the things that you did. And maybe you can tell us one or two things that you thought really moved the needle for William and getting him to retirement.

So what comes to mind for me is William had a From a career standpoint, the company came to him many times and asked him to take a new job. But like at most places in corporate America today, you have to move in order to take the next job, but it catapults you into a higher income bracket. So that's one of the things that I think was really pivotal and meaningful for him. And he had a big acceleration in net worth when he decided actually to move back home. He probably should have told you this story, but he's moved multiple times. And a big chunk of his life, he moved away. We were born and raised in Detroit. He moved away. And then a good chunk in the mid-career, he actually moved back, and he had a big job. So he had a lower cost of living, but his income went up. And so he was able to actually put more money away. So that really helped. The other thing that helped, you mentioned that he got into— he moved up into the senior ranks. And when he got into the senior ranks, his equity compensation went up a lot. So his cash comp— went up some, but the part that he got in company stock and stock exposure went up geometrically. It went up a heck of a lot. And that was the other thing that really helped and boost his, uh, his net worth. So that was a really crucial, crucial moment. The other thing that I would say is not necessarily career, but I'm going to throw this question out to William. So he has been a very interesting investor because he's lived through 3 really bad bear markets. OK. And never once in 30 years did he ever call and ask about the market being down or why his accounts are down or express concern. So I want to ask him, how is that? And what is your attitude about markets and investing? That allows you to kind of not pick up the phone?

Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, obviously there's, you know, September 11th, there was a housing piece, there was COVID, right? All of that stuff that was happening. A couple things for me, I, um, I look at investment as clearly long-term, right? It's not, it's not like playing. If I wanted to get rich, trying to get rich quick tomorrow, I'd be keep playing a lotto every single day. I'd be playing a lotto, right? Expecting, you know, that lotto money to come. But I also understood longer term that markets are cyclical. And I even think that a little bit of that came from the organization that the companies that I always worked for, right? Because there were things, outside factors that were also, that always impact the company. Commodity, rising commodity costs, rising inflation, rising wages, all these things. But the company, we would always sort of balance, we would adjust appropriately and balance, right? So none of those things made me think, okay, well now that the commodity price and all these items are going up, like this is going to be a problem. We just figure it out. And so I always believed in being in longer term. And I always knew that, you know, you all were making the proper adjustments, like when COVID— hey, where do we move from? Because no matter what happens in any market, somebody's going to make some money. Somebody is making money, right? Rather bull market or somebody is always making money. And it's just determining what the adjustments that you need to make in the investment, the adjustments that your investment firm needs to make so you can follow the money. And so because of that, I never really wondered like what was happening. I didn't look, I looked quarterly at my statement and some of the ones I closed my eyes 'cause they were negative, but then the next one, you see it, you see appreciation, right? So you have to, make the adjustments and the money was always there. It was just valued differently at different points.

Yeah, that's a really good perspective. I'm going to go ahead and call you model client. William. Yeah, absolutely. And that's definitely a great perspective. Again, time is such a huge ingredient in all this. For the most part in America, things tend to go from bottom left to top right over time. And so not getting freaked out and maybe taking advantage of opportunities when they come around rather than selling in the hole, as we call it, when things aren't going so well, really does play out very well for you over time. And it seems to have done that for you. Yeah, please do. Freaked out, right?

And I think it goes back to the point I made earlier about balancing in your portfolio, right? I would get freaked out about my company stock. 'Cause that's a huge percentage. Yeah, it was like, so I would watch, but again, I was there pretty long. What you can't really do anything about, you can't do anything about it. But what I, the reason I didn't get freaked out overly about the company stock as it ebbed and flows, 'cause it's CPG, consumer products and things ebb and flow, because I knew I had other, my portfolio was balanced in other areas. That's a great point. Right, I didn't have it all sitting in the company stock and every day I'm watching it go down, down, down, right? And all these external factors that impacted it. So because, so yeah, I might freak out a little bit about the company stock, but as I looked at my portfolio on a whole and across the 3 buckets, it gave me less cause for worry.

I'm glad you mentioned that because there is a balance here because there's a huge opportunity in taking advantage of your company stock plan, right? But like you said, you did mention there's a risk in taking too much advantage of that and making it too much of a part of your portfolio. So we do want to say, you know, I think people want to take advantage of these programs that are there at work, but also, and this is what you've done so well for William, Nolan, is balancing that out with things that are specifically outside of that consumer products, and you can take advantage of other opportunities. Do you have any perspective on that, Nolan?

Yeah, I think today's, in today's market, I think we see the opposite. Okay. So I think William You said he was the model client. He's also the model for probably balance between the exposure you want to have to your company stock and the amount you want to have outside. And I say that not just because he's my brother, but a lot of times we see investors today, they have very little exposure to the company stock, even if it's a good company stock to have exposure to. And I don't think in my career I've ever had a client size up a job opportunity in relation to how well the stock could perform. It's always things like my salary, my bonus, my vacation. And really, if it's me, if I'm weighing— first off, if I'm looking for opportunities, I'm starting first with promising enterprises. Who has the best outlook over the next 5 to 10 years? Yeah. And even if they pay me less, if I'm gonna get exposure to that company stock that probably is going to lean me to a different decision than I ordinarily would make. Right? So let's think today, we're talking about AI, digital security, cloud migration, data centers. You know, as you know, Brian, there's some companies that we followed over the last 2 years where their stock has doubled, at least doubled. Absolutely. Can you imagine how those employees are sitting who had that company stock, those restricted stock units, those stock options? So hopefully those people strategically went to work for those organizations and they're getting the rewards. But how many Microsoft millionaires or Nvidia millionaires have we heard of? I mean, it's a really big deal.

I want to pull a little bit more on that. So I like what you said there, Nolan, and you're kind of— what you're kind of making a case for is approaching your career like an investment in a way, right? So I want you to talk a little bit more about that. And then I also want to talk about because there's a process when you move to another job or you look at a different offer of negotiating through that and getting the most, you know, the most juice out of that orange that you can. So, and I know this is probably something that you've dealt with with clients and maybe with William, is negotiating your comp package and looking at that in the context of also investing in that company for your career.

Yeah, so I think if you were lining them up and you were kind of doing the Ben Franklin T-square and you had Company A on the left and Company B on the right, you definitely have to look at— I mean, the first thing people are going to look at is salary, bonus, all of that. Let's put that to the side. After that, I'm looking at exposure to the company stock. Okay. Can I get it and do I have to pay for it or are they going to give it to me? Right. So let's use the first one that most people think about. So most people are not getting stock options these days. Prior to the tax rules changing, a lot of people got stock options in the early 2000s, and now, you know, you almost need a gun to get somebody to give you some stock. However, some companies do have— still have stock options. William, fortunately, had made it to the level where he was still getting stock options. So the first thing is, if Company A on the left I can't get stock options. Company B, all things being equal, I can. That's a checkmark for Company B. Most companies these days, in lieu of stock options because of the accounting, they offer what we call restricted stock units. And basically these are shares, they're given to you and then they vest. And so usually the most popular is like a 3-year vest. So the year you start, you get $100,000 in stock. Every year, $33,000 becomes owned by you. Right. All things being equal, Company A has restricted stock units, Company B has restricted stock units, same vesting schedule. I'm looking at the outlook of Company A versus Company B. Okay. And which one is more attractive. I've never really seen anybody do that. The third thing I'm going to look at when I'm going down that list is the employee stock purchase plan. Okay. So a lot of companies, not all of them, but a lot of publicly traded companies now have what we call an employee stock purchase plan. That just allows me as an employee to take a certain percentage of my income out of my paycheck and put it in this bucket that's going to buy the company stock. Yeah. And to incent you, most companies will offer a discount, 5%, 10%. Some of them are more generous. And then they all have a different formula for when the stock is purchased. So again, if I'm lining up and I got Company A on the left, they don't offer an employee stock purchase, and company on the, on, on the right side, Company B, they do offer stock purchase at a discount, and a significant discount. I mean, that's cash I actually have to add back to my income because it is a form of a benefit. Yeah. Fourth thing I would look at is whether that company will allow me to buy its company stock inside my 401(k) plan. Right. So again, if Company A is publicly traded and Company B is publicly traded, and one of them does not allow me to purchase it in my 401(k), that's an issue. And if they both allow me, but one of them has a cap as far as how much I can put in, that also is going to affect my decision. So all of those really have to be taken together to determine which is the better opportunity.

Can I come back on the employee stock purchase? Because, you know, as I shared with you early on, conversations around how you can take advantage of the company's financial benefits, right? But some of them come to you as you matriculate through the organization. But there are others, like we were talking about employee stock purchase plan, everybody could do employee stock purchase plan and there was no limit and you also got those benefits. So one of the things that I also did very early in my career, even though I didn't have a ton of discretionary income, I always participated in the employee stock purchase program. And as Nolan said, they were just coming out of my check, coming out of my check, and I never, and I never really looked at it. But then one day I decided to look at it and I was like, after 10, 15 years, I'm like, holy cow, like this, I've amassed a decent amount of cash or money that I really never missed, right?

Yeah, I think a lot of time, I think a lot of what we do is it's about protecting ourselves from ourselves on a lot of these matters and having a plan in place that you're always going to stick to. It really helps you, especially in those emotional moments, from making those mistakes.

Because then what you could do is I started early contributing X dollars, but as you grow a little bit more income, you say, okay, well, instead of spending $100 a month or $200 on company stock, I'm going to double that.

Right. Yeah. I like all that. Um, I like a lot of, obviously a lot of what you did has really worked out for you. And I want to close things out by looking a little bit more at the lifestyle side of things. So, um, you know, Nolan here, we do a lot of the nuts and bolts that kind of getting you to that point, uh, of retirement. But a lot of times people struggle with getting to retirement and actually living, living it out. And, uh, William, I want to get your perspective on now that you're a retiree. And you're starting to experience life outside of the corporate world. Can you give me some perspective on how that's working out for you?

And before he answers, I want to add to what you said to give him some more perspective for the listeners. So another thing that makes William interesting from where he is, he's at this perfect midlife point. And we've worked with a lot of his clients from publicly traded companies over the years. And the majority of them, I would say, get to this point and there's a huge crossroads. And you need to go left or go right. Meaning, William is mid-50s. I think if you're mid-60s, it's obvious you're going to retire. Right. But he's kind of in this wasteland between mid-50s and mid-60s. You know, we've seen people go left and go right. I have in my career. Sure. Going left is— I'm good, I'm done. Whatever this money I've put up, whatever lifestyle it would provide, I'm taking it. Okay. And other people go the other way for whatever reason. They're either, hey, I really want my lifestyle here, and if it takes me an extra 5 years of working, right, I'm gonna do it. Other people are like, well, I am still going to work. It may not even be the cash. I just want to intellectually I want to still play the game. Yeah, the engagement. I want to be engaged. And so it's interesting because he's at that point. Tell us how you're thinking about it.

Yeah, I think the first thing was the adjustment. Okay. Right. I mean, I'll be completely honest, the folks out there, this adjustment of every day. And I did a lot of travel and I did a lot of global travel. Right. And so, you know, this adjustment that, hey, I don't, you know, and a lot of my global travel, I'd be leaving on Saturday afternoon, Sunday afternoon, going to India and be there 10, 12 days. And come back. But I think when you get to this point where every day, you know, you're not having to be at the airplane, at the airport at 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning for a flight, dealing with all the stuff that comes with travel and all that, right? It seems strange. Like you're like, you wake up the first day like, well, I'm supposed to, I feel like you're supposed to be doing something, right? So it does take some time. To, I would call it, you know, off-ramp. Yeah, that's right. And to get from, hey, it's not, you know, we used to say it, you know, at the company all the time, like, this is not normal, right? The amount of stress and work that you go through is not normal, although you think it's normal, but it's dysfunctional. But you're so used to it, it's the norm, right? That's what you do. And so I think, you know, that those first, you know, couple of months, like, what am I supposed to do? Now, the good thing is for me I still work out, so I row bike and I go to the gym in the morning and stuff like that. But before, I would be doing all that stuff before I go in the morning to come down and sit on the conference call at 7:30. But now if I do all that in the morning at 7:30, I'm done for the day. And so you do have to adjust and you kind of have to feel like you can feel that time, but the difference is you get to fill it with what you want to fill it with. That's right.

Yeah, I think, I think what it's all, I think what it all boils down to and what we do here, Nolan, is, um, we're trying to save, we're trying to help investors save so that they have options. So that when you get to your point, you know, you can either, like Nolan said, you can go out and get another position, engage, or not. Yeah. And that's all up to you, right? Yeah.

And for me, you know, again, it was getting used to that because I've been working for 32, even before that, right? High school. You've been working since high school, right? Paper route. Like, everybody's been working forever. And so then you get to a point where, okay, what do I want to do now? But I think a couple things for me. One is having the options. I'm healthy enough to do anything I want to do, full stop, right? Um, I may not beat your 4:06 marathon time, but I can run one. Um, so I'm healthy enough to do whatever it is that I choose to do. I'm financially secure enough to do whatever is that within reason, right? But I can live a good life without a doubt, right? And then I'm also young enough where I can go do something else, but the something else would be something that I really want to do because it won't necessarily— I won't necessarily have to be financial. I won't have to make the decision based on finances. And so for me, I've done a lot of nonprofit work and, you know, that sort of thing. I could decide to either you know, maybe go run a nonprofit. And it's not about the, you know, how much I actually make, but it's about the work that you actually do. Yes. Or, you know, I could just decide, you know, that I, you know, want to go back to a corporation, but still not at the level that I was, maybe do something very different. And I know I can contribute to the organization, but having the— it won't be a decision that's purely based upon the finances. It'll be a decision of, yes, I'm healthy enough to continue to do things. You know, I still want to stay engaged, still have a lot to be able to give, particularly when I think about mentoring other people or giving back to the community. It'll be a decision that'll be— that will be the motivating factor versus, I don't know, I got—

I have to go back to work. Yeah, that's— that's— I want to just say, I want to give you great congratulations. You've done a great job putting yourself, setting yourself up in life. With a great assist from your brother Nolan here. But I want to just finish it out with this, and I'll ask you this question. We'll close out from here. Any, any words of wisdom that you have for someone that was in your seat, you know, say 25 years ago? Think about yourself back, you know, age 30, 35. And, you know, these are the type of people that we're starting to bring in as clients. You know, give them some words of wisdom for that part of their life.

The first thing I would say is take your long-term financial security seriously. And in taking it seriously, if you are taking it seriously, you can't do it yourself. You can't. You cannot. Again, going back to the doctor or the attorney, you can't solve these issues before by yourself because you can, but you probably sub-optimize. And you have professionals that can help you with that, right? So one, take it seriously, which means get some help. Two is to do it early, right? The earlier— we talked about time, right? That's right. And how time, and how time, um, has an impact on, you know, growing your, growing your wealth. If you do work for a publicly traded company, make sure you're taking advantage of every opportunities, um, they have. Because the other thing Nolan mentioned, that I, uh, moved— I moved 6 times But one of the benefits of the moving is the company would always have these relocation benefits. And so when I would go buy a house, they were paying the realtor's fees, and they would also give me a couple two points off my mortgage. Oh, okay. Right, like, and that all that stuff, that all adds up, doesn't it? Adds up because it allows you obviously to, you know, in some cases buy a bigger house, which gives you more equity in the home, which allows you to flip that to a, um, to another home. So I would say Take advantage of every opportunity the company has. I would also say make sure that you are very early and you should never be thinking, I don't have enough money now, because if you don't think you have enough money now, then you probably won't have enough money later. So you have to start with what you have now. You have to be very intentional about what you're going to do with that money now and the different instruments. And hey, do I want to put my kids through college? Okay. Yeah, that becomes a priority now. And, you know, sometimes obviously there's other things that we're all trying to manage. But I think getting the help that you need very early allows you to manage your income as it continues to grow because you get habits and you get good discipline and it, you know, obviously, and you can still reach your goal. So having the conversation with, you know, obviously a, you know, a financial advisor helps you reach the goal. Hey, what do you want to do? You know, because there are some parents, there are some parents that don't you know, they're like, okay, here, here's what I want to do. I want to buy a house here. I want to do this. I want to do this. Yeah. For me, it was important to be able to— having gone to school and got a bunch of debt coming out of school was important for me to be able to pay for my kids.

That's all wonderful stuff, William. I want to thank Nolan for being with us. I want to thank Nolan for shepherding William through to his retirement. And I especially want to thank William Langford for being with us today and sharing his perspective on retirement. And we'll see you again next time on, on the Jarvis Update.