How to help clients retire well

What day of the week do you spend the most money? What day of the week do you go golfing or hiking? Get your nails done? Get your hair done? For most people that day is Saturday. Well, the day you retire, every day is Saturday!

And you’re not just going to just need paychecks coming in; you’re going to need some play checks coming in too, so you can actually enjoy your retirement. I’m going to talk a lot about why people are not enjoying their retirements and what you and your clients can do differently to enjoy theirs.

Here are the first three steps to retiring happy and successful. These steps are based on math and science. Because of that, these steps will work anywhere in the world.

1. You’ve got to have a plan. How can you get anywhere if you don’t have a roadmap or a plan of how to get there? I also say you have to work with a financial professional — retirement is not a do-it-yourself project.
2. Understand and maximize your government retirement benefits. Did you realize that for most of your clients, their government benefits are the largest retirement asset they have? Yet people spend more time planning their summer vacation than learning how to maximize those valuable benefits. 
3. Consider a hybrid retirement. Too many people are trying to retire too early; they haven’t saved enough money. If I could get your clients to work just a couple of extra years, even part-time, I could increase their success in retirement significantly.

Tom D. Hegna is an economist, author and retirement expert. See four more steps to help clients in retirement in Hegna’s presentation from the 2019 MDRT Annual Meeting . (MDRT member-exclusive content)