Wes Moss (6:53)
It's household. Okay, that's household. So that's husband and wife, or depending on if both are working or not work, or maybe just one person is working. But to have a net worth household in the United States that is in the top 10% more than 90% of others is 1.8 million, about 18%. So call it about 1 in 5Americans in the United States. Have a million dollar net worth. Okay, it's about 1 in 5, but only 5% of folks. And again, this is rare sliver to be in. Statistically, only about 5% of Americans have $1 million in just retirement accounts, not counting brokerage accounts. So it's taken you a really long time to get there and you can do it. And this is another great example of someone never making more than around the median income or even less in this question, but he still ends up with this tremendous amount of money. And spending starts to feel wrong because all you've ever done is save and contribute and build and delay and protect and invest and let the balance grow. And then all of a sudden one day you're supposed to just do the opposite of that, which is, well, now I have to start using all that money and sometimes it doesn't feel real. And you say, I can't spend that. What if the money does go away? I hate watching the balance go down if there's market fluctuations. So there's a lot to this transition of you save for 30 or 40 you years and now you're supposed to spend for the next 20 or 30. So the first step in order to overcome what is very much a psychological issue, the psychology of money is so important in the planning that, that we do that I see every day, is to build some sort of written plan that has the inputs that over time should be relatively conservative, but play out conservative market returns assumptions, a real inflation assumption of what it's going to continue to cost to live. When are you going to start turning on Social Security? When are those inputs going to start coming in? What are the guardrails that you may want to think about? I like to look at max spending, meaning that I know what I can take out just to cover my needs. But could the portfolio and my other income streams, what if I really wanted to max this out so that I end up running out of money at the very end? What does that number look like? And I think that's a helpful number because usually it's much higher than what you really need to spend. And that can give you some psychological comfort. And then you look at this over long periods of time, 10 and 20 and 30 years, and once you see that math, you can start to say to yourself, all right, well, this is based on am I following the 4% plus rule, which is a rule that we know that has been tested over the course of market history that can help us understand that we are not going to run out of money as long as we are within these parameters and continue to be able to keep pace with inflation. So if you have a plan and then you understand how your withdrawal adheres to that really important rule, that 4% rule, which today is actually above 4, it's really in the 4 to 4, almost 5%, 4.7% safe range. And I think that acts a little bit like a permission slip to help you get over the worry of, hey, wait a minute, this feels weird pulling money out as opposed to putting money in. And then you can start to think, well, this is not reckless at all. This is what the system that I built, this is what it allows for. This is what it was built for. Step three is to make sure that your portfolio, the way that million or $2 million is situated, you have a good understanding of the balance and diversification and know that there's no way to guarantee market returns over time. But you can do a lot of things and put a lot of things into place where you know that you've built a real fortress around it. And I think that's maybe the third step to give you some emotional insulation around this big change. So you have a written plan, you understand how the, the withdrawing of money still is sustainable. So 4% plus rule, how it works within the plan and you keep a balanced portfolio that really will help you make that millionaire paradox go away, Help you with this emotional or psychological transition. And very simply remember that this was not the lotto we didn't get here out of luck. It was work. And that you earned it and you deserve to be able to spend it. That I think can help folks have the permission to freely spend what you need to spend without all the guilt in retirement. Maybe it'll save a marriage or two.