In this solo financial‑planning video, Mark Moss walks viewers through a practical method for identifying and closing a retirement liquidity gap when a person’s net worth appears large on paper but most of it is locked in illiquid or tax‑inefficient accounts. He starts by establishing a clear annual income target (minimum viable vs. ideal lifestyle) and subtracting any existing income streams (Social Security, pensions, rental income, dividends) to calculate the shortfall. Moss then shows how to map each asset by its primary role—growth, income, or collateral—and to extract liquidity without selling the assets, emphasizing the advantage of remaining an owner in a debt‑based monetary system. He explains low‑volatility borrowing against real‑estate (home‑equity lines, first/second mortgages) to achieve positive carry, and contrasts that with high‑beta assets like Bitcoin, where higher loan‑to‑value ratios are possible but loans are shorter‑term and marked‑to‑market, illustrating the “buy‑borrow‑die” strategy. A detailed case study of an 80‑year‑old couple heavily invested in Bitcoin demonstrates how to choose between selling assets for cash flow versus borrowing against them to preserve appreciation and estate value. Throughout, Moss stresses the importance of aligning the plan with personal comfort and long‑term goals, offers a QR‑code for a free gap‑analysis consultation, and teases a follow‑up video on the three engines of his Wealth Operating System.
Chapters
Imagine your balance sheet says you're worth $3 million, but most of the value sits inside retirement accounts and maybe a paid-off home. Your lifestyle still requires about $180,000 a year. So the question is not whether the $3 million exists. You have that. The question is which dollars can fund the next 5 years without forcing a bad sale or an inefficient withdrawal? So today I want to show you how to calculate that retirement liquidity gap with one simple math. You ready? Let's go. All right, so there's a problem that a lot of people face, especially older people who got the benefit of inflation for years, right? You bought that house decades ago, maybe it was $100,000, and now it's worth millions of dollars. And so now maybe it's paid off and it's worth millions of dollars, but you don't have the income that you need to live. And so what do you do? Do you sell the house? Or what are you gonna do? Well, here's how we think about this. So the first thing you need to do is understand what is your target. If you don't know where your target, then your path will never be clear. So how much income do I need? And if you're not yet at this retired path, it's how much income do I think I need, or how much income do I want to have in order to be financially free? So I like to think of typically 2 numbers. What is my minimum number that I need, minimum viable number, so I'm not homeless? This is my rent or my mortgage payment, my electricity bills, medical bills, et cetera, my minimum number. And then like an ideal number. Where maybe I take a vacation or 2 a year, I go out to dinner and things like that. So what is the number? What is the number that I'll need annually or monthly? Okay, we start there. Then once we have the number, then it's a math problem. How do we get there? So at this point, if you're sort of already towards the end of, you know, closer to retirement, maybe you already have some other forms of income coming in. Maybe you own some apartment complexes, maybe you have some sort of dividend stocks, or maybe you have Social Security or Medicaid or some sort of pension coming in. So the first thing I would do is I'd take the total amount of income that I need, and then I would deduct any other income that I have coming in. We're trying to understand the shortcoming or the gap that we have so that we can then go engineer a way to get the difference from the assets that we have. So number 1, what is the target? What is the number that I need? Number 2, what do I already have coming in? And then I get the true number of the number that I'm going to need to engineer from the assets that I have. Now, just real quick before we get into the last part of the engineering, I just want to say that this is why a retirement statement of like, you know, your assets, is not a retirement income plan. And if you want, there's a QR code I'll put on the screen right now that you can just scan. And my team can help you calculate the gap between your lifestyle you want and the capital currently designed to fund it. So scan that code, because now we need to map which accounts can cover each and every year. All right, so how should the assets be placed on the map? Okay, so now what we need to do is figure out what assets do we have, and how do we use them to get liquidity to fund the life that we have after we've already accounted for what we have coming in. What's the gap? How do we do that? Now, what we don't want to do, I don't want to do, is I don't want to sell my assets to do that. We always want to stay in the owner's column. You see, the system that we're in today, the debt-based monetary system, the tax system that we have today, it benefits owners. It benefits people who own assets. And if you're a consumer, you're going to get completely wrecked. Now, it's not about if you own a business or you're a W-2 employee. It's not about that. It's about what I do with the money after I own it. And so if you've bought the assets, you're now an asset owner. And those assets can go up in value without you paying tax on that. So the tax system doesn't penalize me. But if I sell the assets to now pay for my life, now the tax system penalizes me. So I want to remain an owner, I want to keep the assets, I want them to continue to grow. I don't want to pay the tax on that. But the other thing about a debt-based monetary system is that it rewards collateral. So I want to keep the assets for collateral, for liquidity. So what does that mean? Well, that's how we fund the gap. So we want to think about the assets that we have and then what kind of assets are they? Are they assets that we're buying for growth? Are they assets that we've bought for income? Are they assets that we use as collateral? And we want those collateral assets. And that's how we're going to start mapping out the gap. So then rather than looking at our assets and going, which one could I sell to go spend the money? We think about which assets do we have that have capital in them, equity in them, that we can pull the equity out without having to sell the assets. So what assets do I have that could work as collateral? So for example, I own a house. Free and clear, or it's 50% LTV. Well, I could get another loan against it. I can get a home equity line of credit, or I can get a first loan or a second loan against that. And I'll get liquidity against the house without having to sell the house. All right. So for example, I could get a home equity line of credit, or a first loan if I don't have a debt or a second loan. And maybe I'm paying 6%, 7% on that. And then I take that money and I go make 8%, 9%, 10%, or 15% on that. So now I have a positive carry. So now, I've used some credit to pull some liquidity out to now produce income and cash flow for me. Now, if I have assets that are going up much faster, they're appreciating much faster. The average home's going up about 5%. But let's say that I have an asset like Bitcoin with a very high beta. It's having about a 30% 4-year rolling compound annual growth rate. Well, now I could use a lot more credit against that asset. So for example, if the asset is going up faster than the rate of debt, I could continue to do that in sort of perpetuity. It's the whole buy, borrow, die strategy. So I'm starting to look at what is my funding gap that I need? What are the different assets that I have? What type of funding do I get from each asset? So for example, if I pull it from the home, I get the benefit of almost no volatility, and I could lock that up for 5, 10, or even 30 years. So I love taking low volatility debt that's not marked to market that I could get for a long period of time versus Bitcoin's easy to get loans against, but now it's marked to market on a daily basis. And maybe I can only get a 1-year loan. So I'm looking at the assets that I have. I'm looking at the rate of growth, because the higher the rate of growth, the more appreciation I can harvest. I'm looking at how easy it is to get liquidity against that asset. But I'm also looking at the duration of the credit against the asset that I have. Now through that, I need to make a map. So here's the funding gap that I have. Here's the portfolio that I have. And here's each asset. Think of each asset like a player on a basketball court or a football court. Each player is serving a different role on the field, and my assets are as well. And once I've mapped out the playing field, and I've mapped out the assets on board, then I can sit down and make the map. Let me give you an actual real-world example. So there's an older couple that I'm working with, and they're both in their 80s. And as old as they are, they're really into Bitcoin. They love Bitcoin, and they believe in the long-term growth of Bitcoin. And so they're talking about, you know, the shortcoming of their income right now. And so they have Social Security coming in, they have some disability coming in, they have some income from some income properties that they have, but it's still only about half of the money that they need, or I should say want to live with. Now they have about $900,000 in total assets. Most of that is in Bitcoin and some of it is in some other types of investments. Now they have a couple options. The goal is how do I turn the $900,000 of capital into cash flow? So there's a couple options. So number one, you could just take the whole $900,000 and you could put into something like Stretch that's paying 12%. And all of a sudden that's going to turn into, you know, whatever, the $100,000 $120,000 that you're going to need. Okay, well, that's one option. But the problem is for them is that they don't want to sell the Bitcoin and put it into stretch because while stretch provides a really good cash flow, there's no appreciation from that asset. So they believe in Bitcoin. So they don't want to sell the Bitcoin. What they want to do is sell the other assets, put it into Bitcoin, and then get the cash flow from Bitcoin without selling it because they believe in the future. They want to be able to pass some of that Bitcoin down to their, their heirs. And so another plan might be that what they could do, they could sell the other assets, put it into Bitcoin, they could then take a percentage of the growth each each year and pull that out with debt without paying taxes on that, without interrupting the compounding. And they can live off that credit because that credit is not taxable and they can spend that liquidity any way they want. But they're able to maintain that Bitcoin and then eventually have that to pass down to their heirs because they believe that in 5 years, in 10 years, it's worth $1 million or more. So why would they sell it today when it's not even $100,000? Now, this is one example. You might think Bitcoin is the stupidest thing in the world, or you may not have enough conviction to go all in. And that's fine. There's no one-size-fits-all answer. The key is, is to find what is it that you need? What do I have that could work? And then am I comfortable with that plan? And if not, make the plan that you're comfortable with. So hopefully that makes sense. I know, I know you're looking for the answer, but without understanding the destination, your starting point, and your comfortability in the route, there's just no way to tell you that. But in the next video, I do want to show you why having more assets is not necessarily making you wealthy. I want to break down 3 engines behind the Wealth Operating System. I'm going to put the video on the screen right here, and I'll see you over there.
