Season 4, Episode 8 Defeating the Villains: How to Save Your Retirement and Financial Plan from Devastation

[00:00:00] Eric Brotman: Welcome to Don’t Retire… Graduate!: The podcast that teaches you how to advance into retirement rather than retreating. I’m your host and valedictorian Eric Brotman. And we have a guest today who I think is going to be a whole lot of fun for our audience. Pat Strubbe has been a teacher of retirees and pre-retirees, he’s been working with folks for 20 years.

He’s a regular guest on NBC News. He’s written a very cool book called Save Your Retirement from Mass Destruction by the Seven Retirement Villains. And we’re going to have a bunch of fun with pat today. Pat, welcome to the show.

[00:00:35] Patrick Strubbe: Thanks a lot, Eric. I’m excited to be here.

[00:00:37] Eric Brotman: I love the title of your book. I confess having not read it. And though it’s now on my it’s now on my wishlist for the holidays. Can you tell our audience a little bit about you and how you became passionate about this? And then, then we can dive into the seven villains, which is so cool.

[00:00:52] Patrick Strubbe: Yeah. And so I, I kind of was going through high school and college and knew I wanted to be in finance, but didn’t want to didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up like so many of us and kind of stumbled into financial planning and working with people getting ready to retire.

And I had mentors along the way that kind of led me towards an expertise in retirement. And I just had that kind of burning desire to write a book at some point. And I actually sat down and I got, you know, a million notes together. I wrote my whole first chapter and I thought this is so good. And then I put it away and I came back the next day and I read it and it was so boring and I could not, I absolutely could not believe it because I was writing it like, like a textbook, you know?

And so that’s where, that’s where the, the initial Genesis of this idea for this silly title, you know, save your retirement from mass destruction by the. That’s where it came from. I came up with this idea of these people trying to retire in these seven different retirement villains trying to thwart their successful retirement. And then kind of walking you through the book through a story of, you know, what these different dangers are. And of course, most importantly, how you can try to protect yourself.

[00:02:00] Eric Brotman: So this is, this really is a marriage of retirement planning and the X-Men, which is just a really neat idea because personal finance books, first of all, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are millions of them. Having, having written three myself, I realized that it’s a very, very big pond and you are a very, very small pebble in it when that, when that happens most of the time. And to write something different and to write something lively and entertaining and fun and shareable, is not easy. I mean, these are you. Can’t talk about IRA contribution limits to be fun at the same time. Can you? I mean, have you managed to do that?

[00:02:35] Patrick Strubbe: Well, I’ve tried. I will say that. And you know, one of the things, I think I’m fun. I guess if there’s an adjective that we hear most often, maybe not fun, but I think the biggest thing is it’s accessible. And what I mean by that is so many of our clients, we have clients that are passionate about finances, or it’s a hobby, but a lot of people it’s just a necessary evil, right?

That’s the reason they find people like us that, you know, have this passion for this kind of thing, but they want to understand. And I think I’ve had so many people say. What I loved about the book is I don’t understand finance, I’m intimidated by it, but I understood your book. And that, that was really the thing that I got the most out of it.

And of course, like you say so many books, it’s trying to find a way to do it a little bit differently. And if you can actually have a personal finance book be a little bit of a page turner that, and that’s, that’s kind of a, an ideal scenario. I don’t know if I’ve I’ve cracked that code perfectly, but that was certainly the goal.

[00:03:27] Eric Brotman: We, you know, it’s funny when I, when I first started writing Don’t Retire… Graduate! I was joking with the team that if I called it 50 shades of finance, I’d sell a ton of copies. I don’t know that that’s the reputation I really wanted for my professional life, but I was like, there’s gotta be some way to do this, right? So, so let’s dive in. Let’s dive in what. W w what’s the first, what’s the first retirement villain that can create mass destruction in your retirement?

[00:03:53] Patrick Strubbe: Yeah. So what I kind of went through and I’m sure, you know, most of these won’t surprise you at all. But I basically just tried to drill down to the ones that I see all the time. Either people you know, getting burned by or maybe not appreciating the risk to. So I started with a couple of them that I felt like were really foundational risks that sometimes someone who’s just looking at the surface of their finances doesn’t think about. So the first one is lady longevity.

And of course the idea there is we are living longer, pensions are less and less common. And so this idea of outliving our money is it’s a very real, very scary thing to so many people as they are prepping for retirement. So she’s the first one. The second one I called the invisible enemy which is of course referencing inflation, which of course is a big topic right now. And the funny thing is when I hired my cartoonist, he was upset at me. He said, well, you can’t call anything invisible and expect me to draw something. So

[00:04:47] Eric Brotman: Well, wait a minute. Wonder woman had an invisible jet and we all saw it.

[00:04:51] Patrick Strubbe: See there, you go.

[00:04:51] Eric Brotman: In fairness you can do your, your, your cartoonist needs, needs to reboot some things there. Come on.

[00:04:56] Patrick Strubbe: Thank you. Thank you. That’s exactly what I probably should have told him.

[00:04:59] Eric Brotman: Absolutely.

[00:04:59] Patrick Strubbe: And the reason I jumped into both of those is of course, I always say, you know, the two of those work together and it’s that compounding inflation. Inflation for one year might be kind of annoying if the milk costs a little more or something like that.

But it’s of course inflation over 10, 20, 30 years that can just have this massive effect on us and our finances over the course of our lives. And so that’s why I always like to kind of introduce those two together.

[00:05:24] Eric Brotman: Okay. Well, the, you know, the invisible enemy you’re right. Inflation is definitely the stealth tax it’s been called and it is something we’re we’re coping with now.

I think it’s interesting that millennials and gen Z’s have never seen it before. You know, I don’t know how old a fella you are, but if you have 20 years experience, I assume we’re somewhere in the contemporary range here. That means we have some idea what it means when things w when prices are hired next month than they were last month on just about everything, that can be a very alarming thing, particularly for folks who are on a fixed income.

And even more for folks who are on a fixed income as retirees. So, and then of course, lady longevity, you know, outliving your money is scary. It used to be, we, we worried so much about what if we don’t wake up tomorrow now? It’s what if we turn 113.

[00:06:09] Patrick Strubbe: Yeah, and you make such a great point there about people. And you’re right. We are contemporaries. Certainly people that are younger than us, they’ve literally never seen inflation. They’ve only known 0% interest rates for everything, you know, the lowest mortgage rates, the lowest savings rates and things like that. And of course, no one knows what the future holds, but we know that things change over time. And when there is significant inflation, exactly. Like you said that’s a, that’s a frustrating, difficult thing if you’re 30 or 40, but when you’re fully employed there’s an, there’s an understanding that generally your, your income is going to keep up or more than keep up with that inflation.

But yeah, when you’re living off of a fixed pension off of social security and off of your nest egg, that is just an incredibly difficult thing to manage. And it’s just one additional thing. That recent retirees haven’t had to, had to deal with either. So

[00:07:00] Eric Brotman: I saw a statistic this week that that recent or that this year U S employers gave raises or cost of living increases averaging 3.9% for folks at which, which is one of the better rates in a long time. We also read a couple months ago, social security is doing a cost of living adjustment. That’s like 6.2% or something, or 5.9. Is it 5.9 maybe, but it’s the highest in 40 years. So this has already begun. I mean, I don’t think this is a, what if this is a we’re here, right?

[00:07:30] Patrick Strubbe: I certainly think so. And you know, I’m, I’m old enough to have learned my lesson about predicting the future. So I’m not going to say, I know exactly what’s going to happen, but a man alive. I mean you know, why would we think there’s significant inflation for one year and it stops and it goes to zero that that’s, it’s just not logical.

You know, we haven’t seen that historically with inflation. So it’s certainly appears that we have a challenge with inflation and I’ve, I’ve been saying, you know, I don’t know if you feel the same way. I felt like the last 10 years or so. It’s one of the most difficult times to retire because most retirees would love to just plunk their money into a 7% CD and live off of the interest.

And of course, rates are next to zero. The only good thing for retirees lately is low to no inflation, and now that’s coming up as well. So it’s just adding another layer of challenges for retirees.

[00:08:17] Eric Brotman: Yeah, no, this is, this is not a math problem that gets easier. As we live longer and as things get more expensive, it doesn’t get easier. And all the rules of thumb that were thrown at us, I don’t know when you did your training. Some of the rules of thumb that I used to hear 30 years ago were you need 70% of your preretirement income to retire with dignity. And I consider that a plan to fail. It largely, if you’re taking a pay cut, when you stop getting your paycheck, you haven’t done, you haven’t done what you’re supposed to do, which is to preserve your lifestyle.

So let’s, let’s move on because the next villain is I think the single, if I had to pick one villain who scares me the most and who would keep me up at night, it would be evil uncle Sam.

[00:08:59] Patrick Strubbe: It’s a, it’s a controversial villain, but yeah, the idea here is. Of course you know, most of us believe that America is the greatest country in the world and we love it so much. And we understand there needs to be a tax. You know, the government, there needs to be something provided by the government, but we also all know that politicians don’t always have our best interests at heart. We know there is tremendous waste in the government. So when we have to pay more taxes that grates on all of us, especially if we’re working hard to try and save and accumulate for retirement.

So, Evil uncle Sam just simply represents those taxes that we pay in retirement. I agree with you 100%. This is, this is very high on our list right now. Our clients are very, very worried about future taxes as our government builds debt and spends like crazy. What tax rates are going to be in the future is anyone’s guess. But this is an area that we really think people should be thinking about proactively right now.

[00:09:54] Eric Brotman: Yeah, I think not only is the government broke or deficit spending at just about every level, but we also have fewer and fewer people in the workforce and more and more people not in the workforce, which means there are fewer taxpayers who have to pay a total amount that’s larger and you can see where that’s going.

If we graph that out, eventually we’re going to have a problem. We’re going to have Jeff Bezos, the only person working and paying taxes. It’s. I look at at the regulatory and, and tax environment and Congress, and generally politics as the single biggest threat that we face from a from a financial standpoint, because most of the time, particularly legislators are legislating on things they don’t fully understand because they also didn’t learn financial literacy in school any more than the rest of did.

[00:10:41] Patrick Strubbe: Correct. Yeah, no it’s and I, you know, we work with a lot of people that are maybe, you know, 5, 10, 15 years from retirement. So they might be in their fifties or early sixties. And I always say, you know, you were, you were told one thing throughout your entire adult life. Just plow all your money into your 401k and defer your taxes because to, to the point you made just a moment ago, Eric, you’re going to need less income in retirement. You’ll be in a lower tax bracket. Everything’s gonna work out great. And we’re where are we right now? I’m thinking, oh my goodness. I’m deferring all my taxes. What if they have to Jack up the tax rates just to cover this incredible debt that they’ve built up?

And so this is a, this is a very real villain, a very real concern. And we think regardless of anyone’s age, they should be thinking very thoughtfully about if they’re saving for retirement, how they’re doing that and how that money is going to be taxed in retirement.

[00:11:30] Eric Brotman: There’s there, there are lots of resources out there to try and preserve wealth from, from evil uncle Sam. It, you know, I even put one out myself at lowtaxbook.com trying to say, here are the places where you can put money where it’s never taxed again. Everyone has bought into this 401k theory. You’re absolutely right. And this idea that w we’ll pay the taxes eventually, and then you run into required distributions and it re and that not only raises your tax bracket, it raises your Medicare expenses. It re it, it eliminates certain deductions that are available to you, depending on what state you’re in, it can really clobber you. I mean, I, I think the, the, the wave of boomers retiring is, is also starting a demographic. I think it’s already begun, but a demographic migration from high tax states to low tax states, simply because if the federal government has to raise taxes by five or six or eight or 10%, And you can, and you can reduce that by moving, it starts to make sense. Or maybe it’s a must that you move.

[00:12:27] Patrick Strubbe: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. This is, this is a huge issue. And to your point, it’s all about understanding the risk and then understanding that there are a variety of potential solutions. And to your point, you need to, you need to be really thoughtful about, you know, your long-term plan and that that can involve so many things. So I think you’re absolutely right. That there’s, that’s one, one great example of something that should be on everyone’s kind of what they’re watching for.

[00:12:52] Eric Brotman: So your next villain is one that is not intuitive to me. So you know, I, I looked at these and I thought, okay, I’ve got five of them I really nailed. One of them I’m not a hundred percent sure. And this one now I, I really don’t know. So I’m, I’m curious, Sarah self-pay. Actually, when I read it, I thought it said self pity, which I thought we were going to get into behavioral finance and like poor Sarah. But, so, so tell us about Sarah self-pay. What is, what is how is she a villain?

[00:13:21] Patrick Strubbe: Yeah. So she is for anyone who’s looking at the book or has the book, it’s a, it’s a nurse and she’s holding out a stack of medical bills at you. So she represents anything out of pocket that we’re paying for medical costs. This one got me into some serious hot water at home because my wife is a nurse. So she was saying, wait, are you saying that nurses are horrible people or something like that? So I’ve tried to blame that one on the cartoonist as well, but one example I go through, Eric, in the book is w let’s stop and actually think about you know, most of us know, you know, what types of things we have to pay ourselves for medical costs.

What’s covered by insurance. What’s covered by Medicare. And, but if you stop and think, how did the system start? And if you go back and think about it, what’s, what’s kind of crazy is let’s say you’re 65 and you’re on Medicare and you have a horrible heart attack and you have to go through a bypass surgery and you have all these different things that go through that.

And that could cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Well, Medicare is going to generally cover that. But what if you have a friend on the same day they’re diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and they need, you know, a decade of nursing care? Medicare basically covers almost nothing of that. What is the logic behind that?

And that’s the point of the book is if you stop and think about it, I don’t know that there was any grand master plan for that to be the way our system works. But the point of that chapter, the point of talking about Sarah self-pay is just to make sure people understand as they’re going into retirement you know, what things are going to be covered, what things are probably not going to be covered. And it’s not necessarily saying you need to have long-term care insurance or anything like that. It’s really just saying let’s we want to make sure you understand that there is a risk that there is some significant out-of-pocket costs to various medical costs in retirement. And we just want to make sure you have a plan for that.

[00:15:00] Eric Brotman: So, pat, do you share my enthusiasm for health savings accounts?

[00:15:05] Patrick Strubbe: Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:15:06] Eric Brotman: I mean, I can’t think of a I can’t think of a better tax strategy or saving strategy to, to defend against Sarah self-pay. And if the cartoonist had a photo of your wife, when, when he drew the cartoon, you could still be in hot water, you do realize that?

[00:15:21] Patrick Strubbe: Praise the Lord that he didn’t.

[00:15:23] Eric Brotman: Know, when I, when I picture evil nurses, I picture big nurse from a Cuckoo’s nest. So that’s, that’s what that’s what I’m picturing. I don’t know what she looks like, but if she looks anything like that character, I’m going to lose sleep there too.

All right. So let’s move on. Iceberg Ivan. I think I get this idea. I think this is the big mistake where the, you know, the big catastrophe, but tell us how you, how you dreamt him up.

[00:15:45] Patrick Strubbe: Yeah. So this is one if you’ve heard the term there’s no such thing as an original idea. This is the one that I’ll argue is basically in my 24 years of experience maybe the only original idea I’ve ever had. So so I’m I was a little bit proud of it. It’s it’s a little bit aged now, but the idea is just the fact that everyone on wall street everyone who offers savings and investments, we all know they’re not, you know, charities. They’re trying to make money off of us and the industry since my first version of the book, there’s been some better disclosure and there’s been better trends in our industry, but the bottom line is it’s very difficult to truly understand all the different costs of your savings and investments, whether that’s a mutual fund, whether it’s a 401k, wherever your money is.

And so the idea here is that the costs on your savings and investments are very much like an iceberg. And if you’re like me, most of your knowledge of icebergs comes from Titanic. And but, but as I was researching the book it’s they say about 90% of a typical iceberg is hidden under the surface.

And so that’s the idea of Iceberg Ivan. He represents all of the costs and the fees as you’re accumulating your nest egg that you’re losing. And much of it, you’re not even aware of. And it’s not to say that every fee is bad. What we want to do is we just wanna make sure you’re aware of them and we want to make sure you’re getting value for those fees.

You know, if you’re paying for active management on an account, what are they doing that is driving value that makes them worthy of those fees? And so that’s, that’s what that chapter represents.

[00:17:11] Eric Brotman: Interesting. Okay. So I completely misread Ivan. My apologies to Ivan. But, but, but you’re absolutely right, and I’m glad you bring this up because most consumers have no idea what they’re paying for financial advice, financial services, financial products vehicles and other things.

And lawyers over the last couple of decades and regulators over the last couple of decades have decided that the answer is more disclosure. And if you’re anything like me, if you’re anything like me, when you get a 300 page prospectus, it might as well be blank because people are not going to digest that.

They’re not going to read it. If they read it, they’re not going to understand it. And if they read it and understand it, they’re not likely to do anything with that information anyway. Like th th th the disclosures are so pervasive. Why this isn’t simpler I don’t know. And every time, you know, we, as, as professionals try to simplify and be transparent, we run into new, surprising hurdles in the, in the financial universe that, that make that harder. W how do we tackle this guy?

[00:18:11] Patrick Strubbe: Well, that’s a great question. I have to say, first of all, cause I love the point you made about the 300 page prospectus. One of my favorite newspaper headlines I’ve ever seen was from the LA times, and it’s maybe 10 or 15 years old now, but it was kind of this headline that was supposed to shock the reader.

And it said let’s study shows less than 10% of investors actually read the prospectus and I don’t know about you, but I literally laughed out loud when I saw that. And I thought, well, 10% would be a, it would be a dream of a regulator because I’ve been doing this 24 years. And for 99% of the people that I’ve talked to, they look at a prospectus and they just start laughing. Like, are you kidding me? You’d have to literally be a Philadelphia lawyer to look at that and say, oh, I can’t wait to read that now.

[00:18:50] Eric Brotman: So the, the new study is that it says that 90% don’t read it 10% lie about reading it, but a hundred percent recycle it. So, so there’s that. We have that going for us.

[00:19:00] Patrick Strubbe: That’s great.

[00:19:00] Eric Brotman: Geeze. Oh my goodness. All right. Let’s let’s move on. We can talk lawyers and politics over a adult beverage, but a as at, at present, it’s 10 o’clock in the morning so I don’t want to do that. Let’s talk about Systematic Sammy. Why is systematic Sammy oh, a villain. I systematic dollar cost, average averaging. I was told was good. What is systematic sammy?

[00:19:21] Patrick Strubbe: Such a good, such a good way of putting that question, Eric. Yeah. So systematic Sammy. When you’re, if you’re looking at the book it is a, it’s a wolf with a literally with, with sheep’s clothing. So, so Sammy is exactly to your point. He is telling you, this is a great idea.

And many of your friends might say, it’s a great idea. And there will even be financial professionals that tell you it’s a great idea, but it is one of the biggest dangers in retirement. And to you, what you said is exactly right. We are all taught in finance that dollar cost averaging, which I always use the example for anyone who says, what on earth is that. That’s like literally when you sign up for your 401k at work, that’s dollar cost averaging. And the math proves that when you are putting money into your nest egg, dollar cost averaging always works out to your advantage.

And the re the reason is if you’re putting a hundred bucks in per pay period, and the stock market goes down, Well, you’re buying more shares at a lower price. So it is wonderful the way the math works. So the reason I put this in the book is I find even when I wrote the book a little while ago, and even today, it’s just not our brains don’t understand that the, it doesn’t work the same way coming out.

And so you accumulate, you save, you save, you save, let’s say you got a million bucks, and now you’re going to ride off into the sunset and enjoy this amazing retirement. And you start just draft that you have a mixture of, you know, stocks and mutual funds or things like. And everything’s going great. And you’re drawing, you’re systematically drawing money out every month.

And then all of a sudden, 2000 or 2008 happens and the market crashes in half. Well, what’s actually happening is you’re doing the exact opposite of dollar cost averaging. Now, when the market is down, you need to sell more shares to make your income every month in retirement. And this is something I don’t know, Eric, when you started in financial planning, I was the beginning of 97.

So the, you know, the markets were booming and everyone was saying, everything’s changed. It’s always going to go up now. And just a few years in the market crashed in 2000 and 2001. And that’s when I was starting to see this conversation where people were completely blindsided and realizing this is a really big deal.

So that’s the reason that this is one of, to me, one of the most important villains that I can convey to readers and to our listeners.

[00:21:24] Eric Brotman: All of us are programmed. We spend 50 years of our lives, Pat, building the nest egg, doing the dollar cost, averaging, adding every paycheck, every month, every year funding things. And the mountain charts, they don’t lie generally. That is a reasonably sound thing. And we’re programmed to do it for most of our adult lives. What no one knows how to do intuitively is figure out how to use the money. Because every dollar is not treated the same. Some dollars have a mortgage on them in the form of, of ordinary taxes due.

 Some have capital gains taxes due. Some have other restrictions or, or, or liquidity issues on them. So every dollar is not the same. And if you’re just using that total return strategy, and you’re just pulling out three or four or 5% a year, whatever your number is. It, it you’re, you’re one bad market away from chopping trees down in your financial orchard. It makes no sense to me and people do it every day.

[00:22:19] Patrick Strubbe: And people do it every day. And they’re told by people who are supposed to know better, that it’ll work because the truth is if the, if everything’s going up, it does work. The only problem is it doesn’t always go up. So that’s, and again, this isn’t to say, you know, sometimes people say, well, pat thinks I shouldn’t ever have any money in the market when I’m retired and that’s not at all what I’m saying.

 What I’m saying is you shouldn’t be drawing your income out of the principle of your money that’s in the market because there will be a day, like you say, where that’s going to, that’s going to devastate you. So just, just understanding that, and that’s one of those things like exactly, like you said, mentally, it doesn’t make sense to us and we just have to be educated and understand that.

[00:22:54] Eric Brotman: Well, a systematic Sammy is that’s great. And that I think is unique also, by the way. So I’m giving you credit for two.

[00:23:00] Patrick Strubbe: Oh, wow.

[00:23:01] Eric Brotman: Last one. Yeah, no, no. You’ve gotten extra credit already and we’re going to get an extra credit assignment from you and it’s probably going to be pick your favorite, favorite villain and stomp them you know, in some way, but let’s talk about antiquated Andy.

Because Antiquated Andy, I think, I think I think I’m related to some of those people. Tell me about, tell me about him.

[00:23:20] Patrick Strubbe: Yeah. So he’s a caveman and a little bit of behind the scenes. I had originally written this as a, as a, a buggy, a buggy whip manufacturer before, right before cars were introduced. And the idea of antiquated Andy is simply that so many things that are taught in personal finance are antiquated and they don’t change. And so it’s very related to systematic Sammy. You know, if you go to you know, we have people all the time who come to us who maybe are with a big international brokerage or, you know, large firm that just, that says, Hey for example, bonds, aren’t performing very well.

So we think you should have all your money in the market. And they only think in these very simple terms of all your money being in stocks and bonds. So we believe that there are other places out there kind of like you say, with tax planning, there’s different, there’s all kinds of different solutions out there.

Why not be more comprehensive and look at all the different areas where you can have your money? So the idea that this is simply something that’s outdated, that hasn’t been updated. I really liked the buggy whip manufacturer because that was completely put out of place by cars, but the cartoonist said it was too hard to convey that in a cartoon. So he, he went with the caveman.

[00:24:27] Eric Brotman: Well, the, the buggy whip thing reminds me of Danny Devito in other people’s money. If you remember that movie, there’s a scene about saying this company manufacturers buggy whips and I don’t care if they’re the best buggy whips you’ve ever seen. There’s not going to be a need for them very, very soon.

So it’s, it’s sort of an interesting thing. So, so we’ve talked about the seven, first of all, I absolutely love this. I’m going to buy your book. I’m going to read it. And I’m going to tell people about my experience with it because this really, I know I’m a bit of a money nerd and I’m a self declared money nerd and comfortable with that.

But this is fun for me. It’s also really nice too, to put a spin on something in a way that is, you said accessible. It’s very much that. So I appreciate what you’ve done with this. What are the defensive mechanisms? What are the things that you recommend that people can do sort of on a macro level to watch out for all of these ills.

[00:25:21] Patrick Strubbe: Well, I think you know, the, the two answers, which both are both are honest, but also a little self-serving one is just to be educated. And I think if, if someone’s listening to this right now, that’s phenomenal. That’s, that’s a great place to be. Right. Obviously that’s. I know that’s one of your passions is educating people on these ideas.

So listen to the podcasts like this read my read books, like my books and that’s number one. And then the second one is it’s the most boring thing that I can say, but it’s the absolute truth is get a plan. Either figure it out yourself, hire a planner like us find someone that, you know, your philosophy meshes with because you don’t want to wing it with retirement. Retirement is just way too important and having a plan and implementing that plan and managing that plan is just, it’s just, it brings tremendous value, tremendous comfort to so many people. And that’s, that’s, that’s what we’re, that’s what we’re always touting and trying to get out into the masses.

[00:26:14] Eric Brotman: Well, that is both simple and sage advice. And I, and I couldn’t agree with you more. I think you’ve, you’ve hit it right on the head. We’re unbelievably almost out of time. This has been a phenomenal conversation. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it. How can people find out more about you? Where can they buy your book?

[00:26:30] Patrick Strubbe: Yeah. So the easiest is of course, Amazon for the book. My nephew, my last name is Struby S T R U B B E. It’s difficult to spell, but the good news is if you get it in there, there’s no other competition. So save, save your retirement. And I do have two that have been bestsellers on Amazon. Save your retirement, which is definitely the one that’s more fun.

So that is a more comprehensive. Retirement planning a book the newest one is the retirement secret, and that is instead of villains, we have three retirement mentors and that’s more focused on investing as you get close to an in retirement would love for everyone to check out the books. We’ve gotten wonderful feedback on both of those.

Amazon is the fastest, easiest, least expensive place to go. And if you want to find out more about us, the easiest websites retirewithpat.com, but I think the book is, is certainly the best place to start.

[00:27:16] Eric Brotman: Phenomenal. And it’s it’s time for your extra credit assignment. And you’ve, you’ve given us so much wisdom and so much value today, but if there were one thing, one thing people could do right now, having, having spent a half hour with us, what would the extra credit assignment be for them to save their retirement?

[00:27:32] Patrick Strubbe: Well, the amazing thing Eric is I think we’re kindred spirits. So my, my extra credit is you actually mentioned it earlier, which I was going to say take a look at the book. Even if you don’t buy it, you can look at everything, you know, on Amazon and understand who those villains are. Pick the one that is most important to you and an understand what your strategies are to protect yourself from them. Of course, we would love for you to understand all of them, you know read the book which also talks about this, you know, the various solutions to each of these. But of course you can’t do seven things simultaneously. We know that’s not possible. So pick the one that’s most important to you and get started and take those first steps to making sure you’ve protected your retirement.

[00:28:09] Eric Brotman: I absolutely love it. Pat, you’ve been an amazing guest. I thoroughly appreciate your time, your wisdom and everything you’re doing in the industry because our, our financial advising industry needs more Pat Strubbes.. So thank you for doing what you do to educate the masses and to, and to help people navigate what is really complicated.

It’s been great having you on don’t retire, graduate.

[00:28:30] Patrick Strubbe: Thanks, Eric. Very much. I really enjoy all that you do as well, and really enjoyed it. Thanks.

[00:28:36] Eric Brotman: I’d like to thank all of you for listening. If you like, what you hear, please subscribe to our podcast and leave a review on apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Please also check out our books, workbooks and online financial literacy resources at brotmanmedia.com. We’ll be back next week with another installment of office hours and in two weeks with another engaging guest. For now this is your host, Eric Brotman reminding you don’t retire. Graduate!

[00:29:01] Narrator: From this day forward, let us begin changing the way we view retirement. Today, I implore you, don’t retire. Graduate! Visit our website at brotmanmedia.com to subscribe and please like us and post comments on social media.

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