Joe Kuhn: Tools to Decide When It Is Safe to Retire

This episode is brought to you by.

The New Retirement Planner Create a financial plan for free@newretirement.com.

Welcome to the new Retirement podcast. Today we're going to be talking with Joe Kuhn, a former world class plant manager and reliability leader and and current financial independence influencer on YouTube. We're going to be discussing Joe's journey to financial independence and status as influencer and the lessons he's learned along the way. Joe retired at 54 and reached FI financial independence at 52 and is joining us from Evansville, Indiana. So with that, Joe, welcome to our show. It's great to have you join us.

Yeah, I'm very excited to be here and maybe share a nugget or two that can help somebody in the audience.

Yeah, no, I appreciate your time. So I'm going to jump in with some questions. I think generally I like to cover your story a little. I thought we'd talk about how you discovered financial independence and then kind of get into your journey into becoming, getting famous on YouTube and then we'll wrap up with some other questions. But it's pretty interesting. So just in terms of background for everybody, I first heard of Joe through some members of our community who are mentioning, hey, you know, I heard about you guys on YouTube and there's this guy, Joe Kuhn. And I watched a couple videos at that point and then I think it was a few months later, you know, we basically connected and that's how we got here today. But Joe, it'd be great if you could kind of give our audience a few minutes on your background and you know, kind of how you, how you got here and then we'll dive into details.

Okay, great. Yeah, actually my hometown is Evansville, so I'm still in my hometown. I did move away once, but I'm a degreed mechanical engineer and I started with a Fortune 500 company called Alcoa, a big aluminum complex, smelting, rolling, casting facility, few thousand people that work there. And I started as a mechanical engineer at the age of 22 and I just advanced into leadership roles. I just, I like to tell people I was an average mechanical engineer. And so I went into management, but just I had a passion for building teams, for finding talent, developing people. I spent a lot of my free time, you know, looking and reading, listening to audiobooks on how to be a better leader, how to motivate people, how to get more better results systemically. And you know, that's what I focused on during my career. Now at the same time I, you know, had a 401k, 100% company match. At the first 6%, I didn't know any better. They told me to put 6% in. They matched 6%. And then what I started doing is every time I got a raise is I put the vast majority of that raise into my 401k. So like if I got, you know, a $500 a month raise, I would put $350, $400 in that 401k. And trying to prevent a little bit of lifestyle creep. You know, I grew up middle class and you know, I thought I was wealthy as an engineer. So, you know, and then just fast forward, you know, 32 years I retired, you know, so you work that long at a company and I, you know, I, I did my job pretty well. I did, you know, I was fully engaged and I wasn't just punching the clock, you know, trying. I, you know, having a job, I had a career and I pushed, you know, not just trying to get to be, you know, higher and higher in the organization, but just, I wanted to have more and more influence and there were, I loved, you know, one fact about my career is I never had a job for more than four years. I would come in and be in charge of an area and I'd kind of turn it around, build the right team, get the right focus. And then I kind of wanted to do something else. So I had 14 jobs with Alcoa. And then, you know, about the age of 52, I was, you know, all my math made sense and I'm ready to retire. But a couple buddies of mine twisted my arm and they said this particular plant inside of Alcoa, they need you and your skill set. And they were long term friends and they, they, I told them no like six times and they asked me seven. So I worked two more years and then it was time.

Yep. Wow, that's me. That's amazing. Now did you like have professional guidance on this journey or just kind of like saving and made a good portfolio decisions and took the right amount of risks so you could kind of get there?

Yeah, you're talking financially. I didn't really, I'll be honest, I didn't have much of a plan. I just, I grew up in a family that was frugal, that believed in buying things of value. I never, we weren't poor, but we definitely weren't even close to rich. You know, I grew up in a 800 square foot house with a basement and my dad worked, my mom stayed at home. And so when I was working as an engineer. I, I thought I had all kinds of money and I just really was. Didn't let lifestyle creep affect me. My wife and I, I've been married to my wife for 34 years. I have four adult kids all through college. And by the way, they're all engineers too. Very, very proud of them and what they've accomplished. But you know, it's just, I can't, I, it would be lying to say I had this master plan to retire at 52. I knew that, I mean, I was making decisions to be able to, but I had no concept that I would be able to. It was like, hey, just, you know, don't buy, don't become house poor, don't, don't. I, I don't get excited about new cars. You know, I believe in experiences over things, buying happiness and that's just, you know, I grew up middle class and I really tried to stay middle class even though I was probably, you know, upper middle class.

Yeah. I would love to find out if your. Has your lifestyle changed now that, I mean a big lifestyle move is retiring early. Right. So that is like the ultimate gift to yourself, giving yourself that gift of time.

I get made fun of all the time by my neighbors. You know, I drive a. Until recently I was driving a 2005 Camry with, you know, 150,000 miles on it. It was a hand me down, it was my kid's car in high school and college. They passed it and now it's dad's car. And my neighbors are all driving these new trucks and these new vehicles. And they're laughing at me and said, joe, why don't you buy a new vehicle? As they're driving to work, they're telling me I need to buy a new vehicle. And you know, now I'm driving a 2012 minivan. That was a hand me down from my wife. It's, you know, I fix things around the house. I, I cut my own grass. If my, if my sink clogs up at home, I fix it. So no, in, in retirement I'm actually, you know, I do a lot of things myself because I can and I'm in, You know, I got YouTube. I get on YouTube and find out how to fix a garbage disposal or a refrigerator and. But no. Well, it's lifestyle creep that I've. Looking back and reflecting back, I, I would say as I was raised, I was raised not to let lifestyle creep happen to me. And that's one of the lessons that, looking back that I did.

Well, yeah, there's a guy Doug Nordman, he ran a site called the Military Guide. And I asked him, he was on the podcast and I was like, what's the single key? Right, right, or most important thing. And he's like, high savings rate. And I think that's right because a high savings rate implies a lot of things, right? So I mean it implies you've got discipline, you know, you're able to sustain it and hopefully if you're investing it, you know, it can lead to, you know, financial independence.

And you know, people ask me what's the one thing? And I like to get real specific. You know, high savings rate is great, but that, there's still some vagueness of what that is. I tell people, don't let cars be dictate your ego. And if you just do the car thing, right, and drive an old car that's very reliable, 10 year old car that's extremely reliable, you do the math, you know, you'll say five, six hundred dollars a month if that car gets a scratch in it, you don't worry about it and you fast forward that lifestyle for 30, 35 years and you'll have well over a million dollars saved just, just with a car.

Yeah, maybe this is timely. I'm literally like, I understand it around about used cars and like we have a 2010 pilot and with 200,000 miles on it out there and I used 2016 Volvo and but the pilot is literally on its last legs like, and so we're like, man. And, and I have solar panels and I love the idea of getting a plug in hybrid but they're only available new and then they're expensive. So I'm like really having this internal conflict about, you know, so maybe this is timely but we'll see if I can manage my own behavior.

And you know, with a car you do the math exercises on, you know, what you're going to spend on fuel and what, you know, and repairs and all that. Rather than ego, you know, ego gets, I know people that get a new car every year and, and then they're, they're, they make fun of me driving my camera and I'll just say I don't get any, you know, feelings of, of, of, you know, an ego, I guess I keep wanting to use that word is from a car. I, I don't, I actually take great pride when people make fun of me. I just smile.

Yeah, well, I think it's definitely true. A lot of wealthy people, they drive crummy cars or not necessarily crummy cars, but they don't drive Fancy new cars and yeah, buying a new car every year would be tremendously expensive. And by the way, I appreciate the whole engineering background. My grandfather was a civil engineer building bridges in upstate New York. And then my father was a quality control engineer and I was a systems engineer. But I mostly have worked in software technology most of my life. But I don't know if I don't think any of my kids are going to become engineers.

Yeah, my wife thinks I just plotted against her. My wife is, was a school teacher and she ended up being a stay at home mom with the kids, raising all four kids and all my kids became engineers. But I really, honestly, I started working on them early about getting a skill, getting a skill in problem solving something that's unique, not, you know, something that, that could be commoditized or outsourced. And they all decide to become engineers, you know, and they're, they're just doing great.

Yep. Hey, anyone listening? You know, America needs more engineers. So it's always good. And yeah, you're, I think it's great because you're, you're solving problems and you're building things right and that are tangible. Like I remember, you know, my mother would tell stories about her father, you know, saying, hey, yeah, I built that bridge on the bridge we're driving across. I designed that bridge or something. That's kind of, kind of cool, stuff like that. So awesome. So, you know, so you're on this journey, you achieve financial independence and you know, like, how did you. What? I guess as you're approaching it, you know, you're thinking about it, how'd you, how'd you know? Or get confident that you had enough money to retire? Because I'm assuming you're drawing your assets down or did you annuitize or something like that?

No, I'm drawing my assets down. You know, I just, the math is actually pretty easy to figure out. You, you know, I, and what I encourage people to do is get, you know, approach this from several angles. You know, you got the 4% rule out there. So you say, okay, well look at my assets. If I draw up 4%, is that what my expenses are? And you know, you check that box. Then you go to a couple financial advisors that, you know, coach people on this, you know, two or three of them, and they say, yeah, you're okay. And now I add to that the new retirement software and say, you know, you know, you enter your information in there and you do the Monte Carlo, you do, you know, in simulations and you say, okay, now I'm okay there. So I've got three sources of information. My the 4% rule, the new retirement software and financial advisors. And it kind of works out and I guess the first step is before that is you know, what's your budget, you know, how much money are you going to spend? And it is amazing. When I calculated the my retirement budget, you know I'm spending about 70% of what I thought it was going to be. So you're not financing the kids college anymore? You know, I don't have any debt, you know, I'm not funding my 401k. I canceled my life insurance. You know that that was actually one of the hardest things I had to do was cancel my life insurance just emotionally because I have, you know, you've always had that. I've always got to protect my family, always. And you're like, well you know, you're self insured and then getting health care, what are you going to do about health care? And I found an excellent source of a pretty good, a very good health care through Farm Bureau. I love them but it's really understanding your expenses and, and then actually my expenses were you know like 70, 80, 70, 75% of what I thought they were going to be. We cut cable, you know things like, you know, we start hey let's, let's become streamers. I had a lot more time to dive into things that I used to pay for, you know like lawn care service, you know, heck, I fertilize my own lawn. You know just different things like that. It's so I'm ended up spending less and you know, here's another one and this is embarrassing but I used to spend. We have two cars, my wife's got one and I have a car. I drive my car about 2,500 miles a year now in retirement. Well that used to be 10,000 miles more. Well, gas, tires, wear and tear winch, a wiper. I mean it is. Oh my, oh my gosh, look how much money you're saving here and there. So and enclose, you know it's it act it really adds up.

Yeah, I think probably a lot of folks, you know, we saw that too with just the remote work culture. Right. So when you add up like oh, going to San Francisco used to be like I would take the ferry, right. I would drive and I park for four bucks I would take the ferry which was like six or seven dollars each way with you know a little clipper card and then you're eating there and having a coffee. You know it Ends up being like 30 bucks a day or something like that. Just at least, probably 50, right? Depends on how you live. But like, for the, like, you know, the privilege, quote unquote privilege of like going into San Francisco and working and so, yeah, when you're at home, for sure, I've seen that too. We're driving a whole lot less. You know, we're running everything here. You know, we're saving all. You're eating at home, you know, for lunch and stuff like that. It makes a giant difference, you know.

Steve, when I, when I think about my journey, going from working and earning and saving to a spender, you know, and, and this is what my channel, my YouTube channel has kind of turned into. The financial part of that is not really the hardest thing because you, you get your math all to make sense. You know, those three sources, everybody, all of them, you got a yes check mark by them. And then you have to jump and everybody's scared. And that's one of the things I tell people. I'm an engineer, I was a plant manager running a massive organization, and everything makes sense. Got a yes by everything. Oh, my gosh. This is a jump because your whole career, you know, when you're a little kid, you're learning in school, you're learning to be a second grader or a third grader or high school, college. Then you got your career and your moo, and everything is progressing up. And then you're making this massive jump to, you know, retirement. And what is that? And there's so much fear out there. And I, I try to help people with that fear because it's a lonely journey. You know, you, you're doing all this math for your retirement. You're doing it in a little, you know, closet in your house, you know, and you, you don't share that with your friends. And, you know, that's, you know, financial advisors, that's. They make a lot of money off people. They're good. They're very good. And they're in their good solution for a lot of people. But financial advisors are one of their. The needs that they're solving for people is I need somebody to talk to. I did all this math. Is it. Am I wrong? And you're paying them 1% assets under management just to feel good. So I encourage people to get a, a friend group. You know, I have a retirement group that we talk about finances. We're getting together next Wednesday. About once a month, we get together and do intimate sharing. They. There's two other people. I have lifelong Friends and I share every single thing about my finances. Everything I'm spending, every nickel I've got. And their job is to tell me that I'm screwing up, that I. I'm doing something wrong. It's. This is not just be, let's be nice to each other. This is what can go wrong, why I wouldn't do that. And very. In a very supportive, nurturing way. And I think that is so powerful because it is a very lonely journey, and it's scary to make that jump. I was. My math made more sense than, you know, I was in good financial shape. And it's still. It was scary for me. I'm an engineer. I'm a plant manager. I'm used to dealing with numbers, and it was a jump for me.

Yeah, no, it's. It's great to hear your story, and I totally agree with you. I think the getting support from the community or building a community, a small, like, for your own, yourself, your friends, or being part of, like, what you're doing on YouTube and, you know, discussions you have there. And like, we have a community in Facebook and, you know, people, they do. They want to. I mean, I think talking to people that are like you, it's a very different thing that you have to know that they're trusted and they're aligned with you. But, you know, if they're peers, then, you know, it's a similar experience.

I do, you know, I got a link in my videos, and this really just came out of need. Everybody's a lot of people, they just trust me, and I think they trust me maybe because I'm an engineer and, you know, have that background. So they just want somebody to talk to me. So I put a link in my YouTube videos to contact me and set up an hour with me, just because people were trying, overwhelming me, wanting information. And Steve, you would be shocked. I mean, I. In the comment, I'll make a video and in the comments, somebody will write, I got this much money in a savings account. I got this much money in an ira. My wife and I spend this amount of money, you know, I'm like, hey, you know, YouTube comment section is probably not the place to be putting that information, but it shows you how desperate people are for a second opinion. And a financial advisor is a route that can be used. But, boy, get your own friend group, get your own financial group. I think it's very powerful. Powerful and will help you through the fear.

I'm seeing more people kind of create these communities, and clearly you're starting to do it. But, yeah, we hold, like, office hours, you know, we'll have. And we're seeing is, like, people just show up. Our coaches say this. Some people are just throwing up because they want to talk to someone. Yeah. Get that second opinion, you know, in a judgment free zone. I still think that there's something. It's easier when you've been like, so you've done a great job. You're ready, you know, you can do it. You're an engineer. You can run all the math. There's still lots of people. I mean, you're. You're the 5% or the 2%. There's a big chunk of people that are. There's a big chunk of people at the bottom, unfortunately, that are nowhere, you know, or 30% are in very tough straits. And then there's probably 50 or 60% that they're. They've made some progress, but they have serious work to do. And some of them don't necessarily want to show up and be like, yeah, you know, if you're like, hey, I've saved, you know, a million, two million bucks, and they've saved, like, a hundred grand or fifty thousand, then they're probably like, you know, it's like putting people together that are in similar situations, I think is a big part of this because, you know, everyone starts somewhere, and you actually, like, I've seen this in my life, like, you know, family members where they came to saving and investing late, but then got very serious about it and still were able to pile up, you know, material amounts of money by getting. It's like losing weight or getting in shape. Like, they were like, okay, I got religion about this, and I'm, like, going to go nuts on it. But they're starting somewhere.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what. I actually, you know, did a survey on YouTube. There's a feature to ask questions. And. And this, you know, your discussion prompted me to think of it is, you know, I asked, you know, where are you getting your. What's your withdrawal strategy? What are you doing? And it was 68% of the people were using just like, a fixed withdrawal rate, like 4%, 3.5, whatever. So they were using a fixed withdrawal rate or they were using an Excel spreadsheet with. I'm wanting to say, with like, a fixed return, like, hey, the stock market's going to return 7%. My bonds are going to return 4% or something like that. And I'm like, I mean, I actually made a video after that that kind of scared me. I said, oh, my gosh, what are you doing? Because there's so many other factors out there. And I'm an engineer, you know, and I'm, you know, I'm, I'm plant manager. I'm used to looking at finances. I'm saying, oh my gosh, guys, this, I can't do this myself. And your, your software, you know, you know what, you know, Monte Carlo simulation, what can happen? What, What's a pessimistic view, an optimistic view? Taxes, the vat, what? Most people are not even looking at taxes. They're just looking at one year at a time. Stock market went up, I'm going to pull out 4.2% this year. Stock market went down, I'm going to pull out 3.5. Well, what are your RMDs going to be when you're 72? I don't know, I'll, I'll dress that. You know, I'm like, oh my gosh. You know, if you just do, you know, some Roth conversions now or move some money around, it will make all the difference in the world. But, yeah, so there's a lot of people out there, I mean, it's almost 7 out of 10 that aren't thinking long term. Once they're Even when they have money, even when they got a half million dollars or 750,000 or a million, that they're not thinking long term. And it's, it's pretty scary. And I, I think you guys have a great solution. It's helping me, helping me.

Yeah. You know when, if you zoom out and look at this, right, the history of retirement was, well, you worked until you dropped, then we had pensions and the company was taking care of you. And. But they, they also took all that mortality risk. They're kind of, they were acting like insurance companies. And then they said, we don't want that.

Right?

Like, probably Alcoa. I bet they used to have pensions, right? Or maybe they still do for some people. Um, and they said, well, let's put all this risk on the employee. So then every employee has to like, figure out, okay, how much should I save? How should I invest? And someone put it in a great way. It's like, okay, we took, you know, you used to have professional pension managers. Now we took every single person and made them their own cfo. Like, that turns out, bad idea, right? So you've got a whole core of people that are like, and I'm one of them. Like, I was an early 401k person and did some good things with it, but it's still imperfect. And you know, so then we have 401ks. Then we had target date funds inside the 401ks that are a little bit better now. It's actually interesting is we're getting to like in plan guarantees where you can take your 401k savings and start converting it into lifetime income. So it's, but you're kind of doing it like through buying annuities or the company itself offers their own version of this. One of our, we have enterprise customers and one of them is doing that. We also use more nationwide. They're also thinking about this. But you know, it's interesting how it's come full circle, but really, I mean, we still ask people to be pretty freaking sophisticated, you know. And like, look at yourself. You're trained as an engineer. You've managed billion and a half dollar plants with 2,000 people. You still found this somewhat daunting. And then we were saying to like tens of millions of workers, go figure it out. Right? And then hopefully have a good outcome.

So, so yeah, and there's, there's people that manage that well and there's people that don't. And I, I talk to all of them. But yeah, it's, it's, it's a, it's a big challenge. And some need, some people need to go to a financial advisor. I think that is recognizing what your skill gaps are. That, that's a big deal. Don't, don't guess, don't. You don't need to be guessing with your retirement especially.

All right, well, before we jump into the kind of like your journey into YouTube, which I think is fascinating enough, but I want to like any huge regret, regrets about retiring early, you know, do you, do you feel like you made any big mistakes?

No. I mean, I'm wanting to laugh when people ask me that all the time. Did you retire too early? And it's just funny, you know, you do miss the relationships. The, you know, the, the social aspect of work was great. The, the, you know, the pats on the back for doing a good job. But you know, but absolutely not. The. Sometimes I wish I would have retired a couple years earlier, but you know, I was, I was, the work I did was great. I really enjoyed my last two years. But you know, it's, you know what I tell people, it's always going to make financial sense to work another year. But what you're trading is you're probably one of your most healthy years. And nobody that's 85 would trade a year at 50 for, for another year on their Life even. So absolutely no regrets. You know, every once in a while, what was funny is, you know, I've been saying, gosh, I miss the thrill of winning and doing, making an accomplishment at work. And then somebody from my work would call me up just to bounce an idea off me and they would talk about some of the crazy things happening. And I end up telling you, thank you for calling me. I was having a weak moment about maybe coming back to work part time. I mean, it's just, just a, just that seed entered my mind and I wanted to thank you for calling. Now that hasn't. That was year one. You know, I'm working on year four here and I just laugh when somebody asks me if I should have worked longer. Not even close.

Well, you've, you've solved one of the things that a lot of folks, many people need to solve for, which is like, you know, what's your sense of purpose? Like, how are you, you know, you, you're obviously building a second career here. Whether you like it or not. Are you intended to or not as a kind of a YouTube person? Which is pretty interesting, right? And, and, and, and, and having like, you know, having a pretty big influence. I was seeing your videos as part of this. I was like, oh yeah, so three years ago you were doing like videos about plant management that got like 90 views, you know, and then your latest one had like 410,000 views. Like our entire podcast has had like 600,000 downloads ever across 50 plus episodes. So it's like, it's crazy.

It's, it's crazy. You know, the best advice somebody gave me associated non financial advice associated with retirement is to retire to something, not from something. So about three to five years before I retired, I knew what I wanted to do on my schedule and on my time. I wanted to be an influencer with reliability and maintenance of equipment, which sounds crazy to most of your individuals out there, but it's something that I had. I've had some unique training and I was able to put it into practice at my plants for 20 years to get dramatic results. And inside the maintenance and reliability of equipment, there's, at plants there's a lot of pain, there's a lot of suffering, there's a lot of bad stuff happening. You know, equipment breaks on Christmas Day. All the mechanics and electricians are required to work Christmas Day and the day after that. I mean, it's, it's a harsh world and I found a better way and nobody was teaching it. And the, the, I don't know anybody in the consulting space that was teaching it. So I felt, I'll be honest, I just felt obligated. I've got this, this process and talent. I've got to share it with other people. How do I do it? Well, then YouTube came and I said, well, I'll give it away. And I was happy to get 50 people, 50 maintenance managers, reliability engineers, plant managers, to list. I'm delighted with that. You know, and then that went up to 200, 300, 500, you know, even, you know, thousand, 1500 or something like that on my reliability and maintenance videos. And I, you know, even right now, I. This week I was. I spoke at a conference that had 200 people at it. I've spoken at conferences, and they pay me to come and talk to them. One had 800. I've written a book and I've been on some podcasts associated with that. So that was what I was trying to do, to be an influencer in that space. Well, then, you know, you get a lot of viewer comments and a view. One of the viewers, I don't remember which one, you know, said, you know, you look awful young to have retired. How did you retire? So then I left. Hey, here's why I retired. Here's what I'm trying to do. And, you know, and then it just kept snowballing. Well, how much money did you have? How are you managing your money? Where are you invested at? You know, was it hard moving from a spender? So I, it just evolved and I found this just great hole in, I think, YouTube. There. There's a vast number of great people talking about how to invest your money. So I actually don't talk about a lot about that. I talk about the other things. What's the journey been like for me? The personal experience, the fear of jumping from working to spending, the fear of what am I going to do with my time now? What's my health journey been like? What about my friends and my relationships and my social calendar? How am I traveling? How am I withdrawing money? All those things that aren't investment questions. I, my. I'm an expert on my story. I'm not telling you the what's right and wrong. I'm telling you the expert on my story. And so, you know, it's crazy. I'll work an hour preparing a video, and I'll get 5,000 views. I'll. I'll work five minutes on a video and just think of it on a whim, and I'll get 5, 300,000 views and I'll tell My wife that I say, I have no idea what's going to take off. Just no idea.

It's incredible though, right? I mean, I had this thought when we're doing this podcast, you know, this year I've been speaking more and so, like I did a talk for, you know, do a talk for 30 people, then I did a talk for 200 people and I was like, wow, 200 people live get kind of nervous and there's gonna be talking a little bit for like 7, 800 people, which I'm feeling a little better about. But like, I'm still like, that's a serious number of people. And you're up there and you got to be like on. But I'm like, you know, you roll one podcast and we'll get a few thousand people listening to it and you're rolling one video and you might get, you know, I mean, it's hard to imagine, right? Think about 300,000 people. That's like a city, right? That's like not a NFL stadium. That's like 10 NFL stadiums, right? It's kind of crazy when you think about it that way.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And what's funny, I've got four adult kids. My youngest is 25. My daughter and I have three boys up to age 32. Well, my 30 year old, he called me up and said, dad, you got a video with 400,000 views. You got 400,000 people listening to you. I mean, it's just my kids, I love embarrassing them. You know, I mentioned them in the videos and whenever they introduce me, like if we're at a wedding or some social thing, and they'll say, hey, there's my dad, you know, and they'll say, what do you do? I'm a social media influencer. You know, I do that just to make my kids get embarrassed.

That's funny. Well, that's awesome. I mean, it, it's, it is incredible. I think it is amazing that that is one awesome thing about technology and, and, and YouTube and that like, you can reach and educate all these folks and people can decide for themselves, you know, and hey, does this person seem trustworthy? Do you know what they're talking about? And, and I also think back to the trust thing. It's like, you don't really need the money, right, or anything. It's like you don't. There's no alternative motive. There's a guy, Bud Hebler, that was an advisor for us and probably appreciate his story. He was the former president of Boeing. And a journey like yours, where at the time he's like, hey, you know, getting ready for my retirement. He's an MIT engineer. Like, I have all these tools available to me as an executive at Boeing, and. But most everyone else doesn't have these things, and they have to figure all this stuff out. And so he kind of was on this war path, you know, 20, 30 years ago by just writing in the. In the Wall Street Journal and stuff like that. But same thing. Smart, organized, didn't necessarily have the distribution channels. We still got a lot of awareness, but now it's like you can, you know, reach whatever. I mean, who knows? It wouldn't surprise me if you get billions of views on these things.

Yeah, and one of the things that I realized that I loved about my job and work is actually the helping of people. You know, when you're in leadership roles, you're building a team, you're like the manager of a baseball team, and you get to work with the pitcher and work with the shortstop and the, you know, hitting and all that kind of stuff. I love helping people. And that is, you know, the outlet of YouTube has been great for me. And, you know, it's. It's hard to describe. I like, it is humbling to have 400,000 views, but, you know, if I help one person, I'm happy, you know, and really, the format of my channel, I designed it on purpose. I wanted it to be two people talking. And, you know, a lot of my videos, I'm just sitting out on my front front porch or my back porch, and I'm just talking. Like, I'm talking just to one person. I don't have PowerPoint presentations. I intentionally don't do that. I can make PowerPoint presentations, so. And I think that folksy, trustworthy, two people talking format has. Has resonated with a few people, for sure.

Yeah, it's interesting. I was watching some of your videos and I was like, oh, yeah, it's just you kind of talking to the camera. But, you know, I can see why it's appealing. Like, you're definitely a very approachable person. Normal, you know, kind of like, you know, it feels like, hey, you've lived through this and learned a ton of. When we did our podcast, I purposely was like, oh, well, I like the guest format because it's, you know, I just like hearing people's stories and hearing their. And hearing them share their own stories is great, but, you know, maybe we'll have to try. Try this.

No, I like that format as well. I've done that a couple times. Interviewing, but you got to remember I'm retired. So organizing calendars and times to do this with two people is a little more obtrusive to your retirement than just making these videos whenever you want. So I like to try to protect my time. I enjoy this journey that I'm on, helping people. I'm not sure how long I'll be on it, but I really enjoy it. Right now I'm making a little bit of money doing it. I'm an influencer in the reliability and maintenance space as well. I enjoy that and enjoy people want help and have with retirement. I talk to them all the time on that. I mentor people that are like plant managers. I've got a guy, a couple of guys that, you know, every month I'm talking to them about, you know, career and my advice and you know, I wish I would have had more coaches in my career, you know, instead of stumbling through it. I did okay. But still, coaching really can help you accelerate your journey.

So any, what are some of the big lessons that you've taken from your community and also for yourself? I know, like I watched a couple of your videos. You had a couple big aha moments. One of them was about health. I'd love to actually hear that. And then, but also just, you know, then follow like, what are people asking and worried about?

Yeah, you know, you know, I talk about two big surprises that I wasn't planning for in my retirement. And number one, you mentioned it is healthy. You retire and then you. All of a sudden, for me it's like, well, how many more years am I going to be alive? You know, and, and what's going to be the quality of those years? I never thought I was under stress. I met with a lot of people, coached, mentored and supervised a lot of people in my plant manager roles. But, and I mean I was almost always asked, how do you handle all the stress? How do you, you know, you got 2,000 people in this organization. How do you handle all the issues? And I said, well, good people and I let them do their job, you know, and they bring big problems to me this and you know, hey, I can handle. It's no big deal until I retired. And when I retired, it was like setting down a 10 pound weight. I didn't, I was carrying around this 10 pound weight and I didn't even know it until you sat it down and you're like, oh my gosh, nobody's calling me at 10 o' clock at night saying somebody's in the hospital or that we had a spill in the river, or we had this environmental emissions or this. We had a fire here. You know, no little problems came to my desk. And that. That stress just weighed on me. And one of the mechanisms I used to deal with stress was eating, you know, and I was always. I always exercised, always was a hard exerciser. But I found myself overweight. You know, I. I've ended up losing £40. I've lost £40. I eat real healthy. My doctor told me I was the healthiest patient he had the last two years.

I was going to ask you that question, like, how much did you weigh when you retired versus today?

235. Versus 295. No. Versus 195. Sorry. 235. 195. And I lift weights. I love pumping iron. You know, I'd love to lose about 10 more, but it's hard. The last 10. The last 10, for me, I have been five pounds lighter, but it wasn't something I could sustain, so. But I feel great.

What did you weigh in college?

College, I probably weighed about 170, 175.

So you're not too far off.

Yeah, that's amazing. But health is a big deal. And then, so I'm. I'm eating better. I eat whole foods, you know, one ingredient foods. You know, it's not a box of nothing. So then that one. Then time. You know, one of the big myths that's out there is people. And this is an argument. I get in with people, they think, oh, my gosh, I want to retire and I want to do nothing every day. You know, that's. I. I don't know the person that can do that, and it's certainly not me. Is the person that can retire at 54 years old and just wake up, go to the couch, you know, eat Cheetos, and then, you know, go back, go to bed. I don't know the person that can do that. I would feel like a slug. I think people are happiest when they're on a journey and they're making progress. It's fulfilling, and you feel like you have a purpose. Okay. So I tell people to retire to something, not from something. And it's a myth that you can do nothing. You know, if you went to the beach every single day for three months, you'd probably be happy. But after year, month four, month five, that's no way to live. And so, you know, what are you retiring to? You know, I, you know, I've got my YouTube channel. I do personal coaching and mentoring. I've written a Book I've, I'm president of a non profit where we improve our parks in our local town. I've got a meeting tonight in a couple hours and I travel with my wife. We'll take four, five, six vacations a year. You know, going in. My kids live all over the country. We love seeing them and tying that in. So it's, it's really. Retirement is a new journey starting. What's your journey? And most people don't have the answer to that. And that's okay to retire without knowing what your journey is, but you're going to be happier on a new journey. It could be fitness, it could be travel, but I think it needs to be two or three things and hopefully if you're married, you need to be on a couple of those journeys together. But so time, I think is a big one. Health is a big one. And recognizing that I was under stress, I would have told you the last day of work that I had, I would have said, guys, Steve, I did not have a stressful job and I truly believe that and acted that way. And now looking back on it, I say, man, I was under an enormous amount of stress and I was just able to hide it well. And I handled it maybe in a macho way. I would say, hey, I got this, I got this, I can handle it. But those, those are my main lessons that, you know, I, I talk to people about. I talked earlier about fear. Everybody's afraid. Everybody's afraid of making that step. They're afraid of making the, you know, the, the wrong, the misstep. You know, gosh, what if I retire and I missed a negative sign in my math? And that's where, you know, like I said, get three sources to, of financial input to say where you're at. One, use something like the 4% rule, use a financial advisor, see where they're at, see what they got to offer and then use the software package that is out there like, and I love new retirement. Keep saying that, but, and that'll make you feel better. But you know, a plan is the only way to trump fear. You trump fear with a plan. So get your data in line. But in the end it's going to be a jump and, and just, you need to know that everybody's okay, everybody's scared and some. And in that way, hey, if everybody's scared, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm going to go ahead and jump and.

Well, I thought it was great how you, I think another thing is to kind of reframe it. Where you're like, okay, I, you know, time is our scarcest resource. And as you get older, I think you start to really realize one, you'll probably know people that are getting sick or passing away. And I also heard you talk about like looking at the average 80 year old, which is something I do too. Like, I'm like, okay, great, you know, 50 something, pretty healthy, right? But there's no guarantees, you know, by the time you're 80 or late 80s or whatever, everybody's, you're not doing the same things, right. That you were doing at 50 or 60 or whatever, right. And don't over optimize for having like a ton of money or I'm perfectly safe, you know, at 80 or 90, right. When I might be like, you know, who knows, you know, you might be dead or demented or who knows what, you know, it's kind of like, I think you have to be thoughtful about those trade offs where, you know, using your time, having control over it, you.

Know, And a lot of people are, you know, I don't encourage people just to work for retirement. Live your life along the way, you know, on purpose, but, but saving for that next journey. But man, your fifth. When people think about an epic retirement, it's really in your 50s and 60s because you're, you know, 70s, you know. How many people do you know that are 75 that are able to go out to Yellowstone, the Tetons, the Grand Canyon and go on a hike? How many people 75 can do that? Yeah, there are some, not many. So have an epic retirement. So whenever, whenever the math works out, go.

Yeah, right, yeah. What about sabbaticals? I just have. So as a side note, a friend of mine, I just biked with him on the weekend, just took like a five month sabbatical and he's, you know, probably 50 and he's been working for 20 something plus years, right. And he's got plenty of money and all this stuff. But he was like, yeah, the big takeaway was to refocus on relationships, his family and friends, you know, health, right. But it was good. It was like he really could like, no. Email, like, no. And he had a big job, right. And he's like, okay. And I think it really caused him to, to rethink this. Did you ever have a sabbatical or do you know folks that have done it?

No, never able to. I had a friend that, you know, in his job, he got a three month sabbatical every four years. He was a partner in a accounting firm and it was rejuvenating for him. But I never had that opportunity. Yeah, Never ever have. But it is something, you know, first. I've actually given that advice to some people that says, hey, I don't know what I would do to retire or, you know, in retirement. And I said, you know, go to. You go to your supervisor and tell them that you'd like to take 90 days off and just, you know, either to get reinvigorated, to work another five years, or to decide that now's the time. And you never know what they're going to say. And unless you ask, that's awesome.

All right, well, look, before we wrap up, I wanted to kind of share that. That story you share with me about. You mentioned this is one of your biggest success stories. And I'm not here to, you know, pump up our platform at all, but I thought it was just interesting. Do you know what I'm talking about? The three pensions?

Yeah. I had, you know, an individual contact me based on one of my videos. I mentioned new retirement. And this person did three scenarios in new retirement. You know, the op, the pessimistic, the base plan, and optimistic plan. This person, he gave me each one of your reports. They were like 31 pages long. And he. So he sent me 93 pages of analysis, and he sent me like two or three pages in Word of what he had going on. And this guy had a 99% probability of success. And I'm looking at all his numbers. I'm saying, good gosh, this is easy, easy, easy. And, but, but he had three pensions, three great pensions, okay? One had a zero percent survivor benefit. One was 25 and one was 50. That's the highest he can get on these. So I said to him, I said, hey, why don't you. You know, he was, I'm going to live to. I think he had like, 95 in there. Him and his wife are going to live 95. I said, why don't you put 65 in there and see what happens? He put 65 in there and it went down to less than 15. And it just, it terrified him. And it's just like, well, hey, it's good to terrify you while you're still alive and while you can still take action on this. And he just had no idea. And this is why, you know, you have to phone a friend or you have to have a retirement group that can see an obstacle or some challenge that, that you may not. You know, there's just too many numbers and too many scenarios and you got taxes And Roth conversions and Social Security you're trying to manage and debt. And this guy just couldn't see something that, you know, that I, I was able to pick up. It took me about 20 minutes, you know, because there was a lot of. There's a lot of stuff to get through. Took me about 20 minutes. And it just, you know, hey, I. I don't think this is going to solve here. I'm. I'm pretty concerned about this. And the reason it hit. I was able to get it so quick, I think, is because I've been doing a lot of work on when to take Social Security. I made a few videos on that. And you wouldn't believe the vast majority of people want, you know, hey, I'm. I want to take it at 62. I want to get what the government owes me. And I'm like, well, you know, what. What's the impact on your spouse if you die? If you're the primary money earner, what's the impact? It's pretty big. So I, I, you know, it makes sense to me. Your software package, you take it from 62 and you say, you pump it out to 70. It'll say, you know, this is worth, you know, $276,000 and 15 cents. I mean, takes the emotion out of it and says it's worth more money. And that's what, what it was a. I was able to do with this guy. I said, hey, put in 65. Boom. It's not just me telling him I think that's a bad idea, or I'm concerned about your plan. It was like it went from 99 to less than 15, and he was able, you know, he had a bad night of sleep. I set up a meeting with him the next morning because I knew this guy's. This is going to ruin this guy's life until we work through this. So I said, hey, wait a second. He had a life insurance policy on him and his wife. Okay. If his wife died early, it really didn't affect his finances at all. So I said, you know, hey, why don't you try dropping your wife's insurance policy, doubling yours, you know, maybe tripling yours and insert that in, you know, with you dying at 65, and put that in and what's. It's all. He got it up to, like, 91, you know, so he's like, okay, okay. Got a plan. Got a plan. And that. That was the. My most high drama situation. I've. I've talked to countless individuals on Social Security and, and using the software to put a dollar figure on that decision, that emotional decision that I want my Social Security early. Okay. What's the consequence of that to the dollar? And that, that's, that's been hundreds of people, literally hundreds of people with that. And then also looking at taxes. Oh, I'll worry about taxes. When I don't worry about taxes, I just take out 4% a year. And then they get your software package and it sits here and says you're going to be in the 38% bracket and you're going to pay this much in taxes. They're like, holy cow, you can't, you've got to do something. Those are big red bars. I got to do something about that.

100%. Yeah. I think ultimately, like the 401k is not a free lunch. Right. The government wants its money and that's why they have RMDs. Right? They force you to take that, recognize that. And, and if you start living a long time, it becomes big. Like you're suddenly like later years. You're having to take out huge chunks, huge chunks of your portfolio. And that could create massive tax consequences.

Oh, absolutely. And it's easy not to think about that. The graph makes it in your face and gives you recommendations on what to do.

We're definitely going to have to get you on our, on our beta testing group and get a bunch of feedback from you about our platform, like how we can make it better. I'll have our product team call you.

The one thing I have suggested some things into, you know, through the chat box with you guys, I like, I mean, I'd like to see something like on this early death, you know, everybody's worried about running out of money because they're living too long. Well, what if they die early? One spouse, you know, is there a way that the software could kind of run some tests to say, hey, you've got a risk of dying early because, you know, if this person dies, it, you know, everything falls apart, you know, to automatically trigger what I found.

Yeah, we're going to try to, I mean, we're having a better version of the scenario tool that's, that's in, it's been designed, it's gonna, it's being built right now. And then we're gonna, like, we're talking about ways to make it easy to stress test, to identify things. Ideally, the software would go through and just like see that, you know, run a bunch of simulations and say, look, here's the, the number one risk for you that you may not have considered right? Because there, there's also Monte Carlo, like, and like living or historical back testing, like looking at what if there's another Great Depression? What if we have another great financial crisis? What happens, you know, to your situation?

It's not going to be perfect, but it's another much more, you know, rigorous testing than just the 4% rule. And that's what, like I said, 68% of the people that I polled said that they're, they're really not looking at RMDs, they're really not looking at optimizing Social Security. And I think there's a huge opportunity, you know, to get better information. And I think it helps people. With somebody like me that says I can't juggle all these balls, I can't think through the 14 different scenarios myself. So it's okay if you can't.

Well, actually, this is really interesting just, you know, on this topic, I mean, we are in the middle of a massive drawdown, right? So you retired four or five years ago. We. The market's off 25%. Right. I mean, it's very scary. Like, I mean, obviously you have a strong plan and you think about this a lot, but like, how are you coping emotionally? Is it, you know, you seem fine, but.

Yeah, well, you know, my standard answer is I've got a video on that. But I use, you know, my short answer is I use buckets of money. I have buckets of money. I started out this year. I started out my retirement with four years of money out of the market. And then I have four years of money that's in balanced kind of funds, you know, 60, 40 kind of stuff. Stuff. And then I have a bucket three that is 100% in stocks. And what buckets allow you to do it allows you to put a time period on a financial situation. So let me describe that. So if the market has been down for nine months, well, when I look at my portfolio, I've got three and a half more years of bucket one money that's out of the market. So if the bear market lasts three and a half more years, yeah, I'll probably start getting a little concerned. The but if you just got a normal portfolio of, you know, 70, 30, you're panicking. 70, 30. Do I have enough money? I don't know if I have enough money. My mark, you know, bonds have been down, my stocks have been down. Oh my gosh, do I have enough money? And there's a lot of panic. And what I tell people, the number one challenge to your finances in retirement is you, not the market. It's what you do and what buckets. I have so much money out of the market, a little bit more than most, but four years is what I felt was the right. If you look back at history and says, okay, a bear market tends to last around a year, you'll get a recovery that may take a year to 18 months after that. So three years should cover, you know, 85% of historical bear markets. Okay, so I got four. I, I'm doing nothing different. I'm doing nothing. My stocks are down like 28% or something right now. I'm doing absolutely nothing different and not stressing at all because I'm planning on a bear. They happen. They happen.

So basically you will reload, assuming the market comes back. And generally the market does go up over time. Right. As the market recovers, then you'll refill your first bucket.

Exactly right. So I, once a quarter, I get into my software, my new retirement. I do all the math and everything, and I sit there and say, okay, is the stock market up or down? If the stock market is up or near new highs, something like that, I'll top off bucket two and three and go on down the road. Now, if the stock market's down 30% like it is right now, I look at bucket one and I say, it's doing exactly what it should be doing. It's protecting me from making stupid decisions with my bucket two and three money, great. I'm going to do nothing.

So it's really interesting. So, like one construct is you're. You're basically paying yourself every four years and you're just. Well, it allows you to control, you know, as you, how you take this out. But you can really be like, I do this with our 529, so the market's down. You know, I'll decide, do I take money from the 529 for our kids in college, or do I take cash, you know, out of other buckets? And yeah, the market's down. I'm like, forget it. I'm just gonna leave the money in the 529 and do it that way.

Well, if the market, the opposite of that is if the market is going up, I may top off the bucket one every quarter because it needs to be. Its gas tank needs to be full to handle a three to four year, you know, total cycle. So if I've spent, you know, three months worth of money, I top it off. If I spend another three months of money, I top it off. If the market is near new highs, but Then when it drops down, you go, okay, do your job, run the gas tank all the way down if you need to.

Okay. I now have another related question. Given how you're managing this, do you think, are you, are you still accumulating money?

Actually, yeah, I have. Even with the downturn going on. I just looked at this the other day. I'm up about 6% of what I retired with.

Do you envision that continuing? I mean, the data actually shows this, that people, there's two kinds of people in retirement. There's people that don't have enough money and they kind of run out of it. And then the people that have enough money, they keep building it. And also I saw you call something else out, which is people do spend less money every year and kind of every decade, roughly 1% per year, they spend less. So like you told about people like saying, oh, I want to have, I think I'm gonna be spending, you know, a lot more when I'm 95. No, you're spending less. You know, don't plan for that.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Right. I, you know, I'm not. The thing about my wife and I, we're, now that we're retired, we're not going to change our lifestyle and say, hey, I want to start buying new cars and you know, have two vacation homes and start staying in five star hotels. We're not going to change like that. That's not how we were raised and what we're about. So, yeah, if you look, if the stock market performs anywhere close to historical, we will be growing money every single year. Every single year. Especially because the way I'm invested in Bucket three money, it's money that I'm not planning on touching for at least nine years, you know, so then that's, that allows all this drama to play out. But absolutely, I, if, you know, why hit the optimistic on the, on the new retirement software. It looks freaking great. And if I hit the pessimistic, it looks good. So I think I'm in good shape and it's nice to see those charts. But yeah, absolutely. Now the question, you know, if I knew exactly what the market was going to do, I may do some things differently with my money. You may. My wife and I give away a lot of money. But, you know, could, could I give my kids some money early to help them on their journey? You know, maybe help them with a down payment on a house, But I, I don't know what the market's going to do, so I can't give away, you know, we could be in for, you know, a 10 year, you know, neutral market, which I can handle, but I don't have a lot of excess if that. I don't have any excess if that happens.

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think for a lot of our you, not a lot, but some of our users, this becomes a reality. And then you also have to start thinking about like intergenerational planning and like the, the tax rate of your kids, like what's going to go to them. And also the. We should do another podcast about like making sure that you don't over hedge them because you don't want, like I talk, I have some friends, they're like, their kids are going to inherit like way too much money and they're like trying to not to share that with their children. Right. Like, they don't want their kids to know that, like, hey, they might, they might be financially independent because of all the hard work the parents did, you know, in their 30s or something like that, which can screw you up in different ways.

Yeah, it can actually screw up the kids. And I actually had my kids every, all four of them came to me individual and said, hey, dad, we don't want your money. Retire early, as early as you can. Have an epic retirement. We don't want your money. We're not, they're not, you know, they've got good jobs, good careers. You know, a couple of them will, you know, do far better than I did financially. And a couple of them, you know, chose careers where they're, you know, going to be a little more middle of the road. But, you know, I was really proud when they told me that they don't want my money. I think that hurts kids that well, what you're doing, in my opinion, you're enabling kids to live beyond their means. You know, so if you give them, you know, just say something like a million dollars for each kid and well, all of a sudden they're like, hey, I'm gonna buy that new car. I've got to have that new couch. I gotta go on this vacation. You're, you're giving, you're allowing them to develop some bad habits and you think you're helping them.

Yeah, it's, it's slippery. It's a slippery slope. Yeah, it's awesome. No, it's, it's interesting how much how you're raised influences you. And then you have to be really thoughtful about what you do for other people, even if you have the capacity to do it.

Yeah, I credit my mom and dad, you know, for how they raised me. And you know, one of my videos, you know, I talk about, you know, when I started working for the, you know, this Alcoa company, I had a 400 square feet apartment. I had a borrowed lawn chair to sit on in my. And I had a borrowed black and white tv, a card table, four chair, card table that I borrowed from my mom and dad and I had a twin bed that was mine at home that I borrowed from them. That's what I started with when I was 22. So it's not like, yeah, I started off with 2 million and just kind of managed that and fell backwards into this.

The stories that, you know, as we wrap up here, the one thing I've heard is it's really important for your kids to hear the stories of their grandparents and parents and like how they came up because it makes it more real for them, especially if they lived. You know, clearly your kids have grown up at least looking from your background, right. In a bigger, better house than you, your 800 square foot house that you grew up in, right. But for them to know where you came from and that like you're a self made person I think is pretty powerful. Right. And I think everybody, if they can be self made, it's better, right? Because they know they can do it. Like, okay, I can fall back. Worst case is I can go to zero and make it work if I've got the human capital and work ethic to make it make it go in this country. Any parting thoughts for our audience or in your audience, you know, as we go?

Yeah, my last thought is, you know, and I've said this, but it's, you know, retire whenever you can, as soon as you can. Life is short. Start another journey. It is going to be scary, but jump and talk to somebody that's been retired for five years and that's been on a new journey and you know, they'll say they should have retired early, earlier.

All right, well, that was awesome. This has really been a good podcast. And Joe, I really appreciate your time. So I'm just going to close this out. So Joe, thanks for being on our show. For folks listening, you know, I mean, we talked about it, but you know, our goal is to help everyone make good financial decisions and achieve good outcomes in a completely aligned, independent way. And if you made it this far, definitely check out Joe's YouTube channel, Joe Kuhn, you can Google it or you can check out our community@newretirement.com and I'll link to all these things. And this will be available in our show notes. And then finally, I think probably both of us are looking for reviews. I'm sure Joe has a lot more than we do, but it's always good to get feedback and learn how we can do better for podcasting, YouTube channels and software and so forth. So with that, thank you and have a good day.

Thanks, Steven. Sa.