Ep 242 - Buzzkill Alert - It's Getting Harder to Retire

Hey everybody, Flip and Danny here, founders of the Freedom Real Estate Group family of companies. And welcome to another episode of our.

Podcast, which is called Freedom through Passive Income.

That's right, and welcome to another episode. Now this episode, this one is just called Buzz Kill Alert. It's getting harder to retire.

Yes.

And I think this goes back to our very first episode.

Yes, it does. The Social Security study. Absolutely. I think this is something we instinctively have known and felt as humans, Americans in general, for a very, very long time. And when I got this email, actually this is a section of an email from the Hustle. Hustle is something that you and I have subscribed to and it's like, I don't know, the top highlights of around the world, at the very least around the United States. And it tells you with things that are going on in the world and talking about it, things that are going on tech wise, things that have gone on in history, and it's a very easy read. And how often do we get it? Maybe once a week?

No, it's every day.

It is every day. Okay. I was like, I'm behind on so many hustles, but this one I was like, boom. I always, the headline always captures me and buzz kill alert. It's getting harder to retire. And I was like, man, we've all known that for a long time. So I actually printed out this one. So for those of you who don't have the hustle, I would recommend googling the Hustle, going and signing up for it. It's really just kind of a great daily read and it gives you like, it's just fun. Sometimes I copy paste the fun fact.

Or you can ask for it. We can send out the link to sign up.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Sometimes I copy paste fun facts into our Google chat for work because I'll be like, oh, that's funny. And you know, I don'. Anyways, this was really relevant and we wanted to actually just bring it up and talk about it today.

So a 2018 study found over half of American adults think about retirement at least four times per week in 2022. We'll take the over on that number. Absolutely. Due to several factors, America is in the midst of a looming retirement crisis, per Bloomberg. So what's happening?

So for decades, Americans have relied on an increasingly unsteady three legged stool of retirement consisting of one, pensions, AKA defined benefit plans, which are steadily being replaced by more cost effective defined contribution plans funded and managed by workers. Two, Social Security, which was introduced in the 1930s to protect Americans in their later years. But the fund's reserves are on pace to dry up by 2035. Three personal savings which are down across the board. Only half of private sector workers have an employer sponsored retirement plan and those who do lost a collective $3.4 trillion. That was trillion, I say in the first half of 2022, that's a lot of cheddar. Oh man. For those that do not have enough to retire, rising inflation means they may not live as comfortably as expected. So what's the solution?

Social Security reform is a hot topic in Washington and there have been several recent proposals to revamp the program. There's also the idea of a government backed retirement account that workers can use across employers, but it hasn't gained much traction since being introduced 15 years ago. Until something more promising comes along, just try not to think about retirement if you can help it.

That last line that was ouch was why I printed this out. Because as we said at the very beginning of this episode, we've known that there's a problem for a long time. You and I have consistently gotten more and more worried, more and more worried about what are we going to do in our retirement years, Are we going to have enough money to survive and what we want to be thriving, have more than enough money to be giving back to the causes that we cared about and also traveling, also making sure that we had enough in reserves for all the assets that we own, the businesses that we're still owning at that point in time, if we still own them, which I imagine we will, especially the foc. But I know we plan to. And when I say foc, sorry, family of companies, Freedom family of companies, we always call foc. That particular family of companies is once we really felt like that's going to be a long term thing that we always have. But we're in the middle of wanting to eventually invest and buy other businesses. Now those businesses very likely will be to buy like a house, buy, renovate and sell, right? So instead of renovating, we're going to be, well, in a way renovating the entire, perhaps not the staff you really want to keep on staff if you can, they're good team members. But figuring out where the problems are, fixing those problems, getting the revenue where it should be, making sure that it's sustainable and stabilized just like a multifamily asset and then selling it. So that is just one of the future ventures. And so there's just gonna be different things that we will hold long term versus not. And we've just, it's always been a path of the unknown cause we were never there yet. Right. So as we get to each level, we get a little bit more confident. But this last line in the Hustle scared me. When I hear the Hustle saying, until something more promising comes along, just try not to think about retirement if you can help it. So there's a big scare in the world, right, about what's going to happen and how are people who are living long these days going to be able to retire in comfort and not moving into families homes because they can't, you know, keep on working, maybe due to circumstances. And so I think it's just a topic that we need to stay top of mind. I think it's really, really important. We're not going to keep on talking about the Social Security Administration study. This is far more relevant than that is, quite frankly, because that was done years ago.

Right.

But they're still talking about it and the circumstances seem to get more dire all the time. So I think the admonishment this episode is really keep on following us, keep on following other people who are in the pursuit of passive income and investing in safe, reliable investments that are going to continue to give you a return and help you preserve the capital that you've worked so hard for. I think it's important now more than ever then to know where to put that money as opposed to the volatile investments like stocks or the investments that are getting little to no return, especially with inflation and you're losing money like bonds. I think everybody has to get educated and that's what we're here for.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, that's one of the main reasons why we started the podcast, you know, freedom through Passive Income, you know, teaching people how to get the passive income. What's your freedom number?

Yes.

You know, and now when you start thinking about what's your freedom number and the passive income that makes all of this, this article just. Who cares?

Yeah, exactly. Right. You know, I was so. Thank. I was shocked. Number one, this is why I printed it, that last line of the email. But then I just went, I'm so grateful to be where we are, to be on the path that we're on, that we're not even happy with where we are. We are in the pursuit of much, much more and in the pursuit of helping others do the exact same thing so that those that we are surrounded with are not worried about emails like this because we have done the research and the work and taken the action needed to.

It's a good thing too because when it. When you look back at my life, I was a musician.

Yeah.

And all of the jobs that I had from high school till today, I think I have, like $1,500 in my Social Security. So I think we can live off that for, you know, not even a week a day.

Well, this is a good episode. I had my freedom through passive income shirt on for it. I thought it was just important to share, you know, don't let reality make you stick your head in the sand.

Yep. Exactly.

Listen up. Get educated, take action, and take one step at a time and you will get to where you want to be.

That's right. Well, we hope you enjoyed this episode. Make sure you head on over to our website, freedomcapitalinvestments.com and join the investor club. Get started. Take that first step. If you haven't. We're also on all the social medias. Make sure you get out there. The gang's all there. If you have any questions, requests, anything. But we'd like to end all of our episodes with Invest smart, Live Happy.

Bye, everybody.

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Sam.