The Long View: Emily Guy Birken: What to Do in the Five Years Before You Retire

Please stay tuned for important disclosure information at the conclusion of this episode. Hi and welcome to the long view. I'm Christine Benz, director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morning Star. And I'm Amy Arnut, portfolio strategist for Morning Star. Our guest on the podcast today is Emily Guy Berkin. Emily is the author of the 5 years before you retire. She also co-authored Stacked, Your Super Serious Guide to Modern Money Management with Joe Saul Seigh. Other books include End Financial Stress Now, Making Social Security Work for You, and Choose Your Retirement: Find the Right Path to Your New Adventure. Emily received her master's degree in education from the Ohio State University and her undergraduate degree in English from Kenyan College. Emily, welcome to the Long View. Thank you for having me. — Well, thank you so much for being here. We've wanted to talk to you for a while. I know your book, The Five Years Before You Retire, has been such a success. It seems to really tap into people's desire to figure out this time in their lives. Wondering if you can talk about what got you interested in retirement planning in the first place. — It's funny, it's not something I ever thought of as my career path. I like to tell people that I tripped and fell backwards into writing about money. I'm an English teacher by training. — I ended up writing about money because I'm very bad at timing. Uh my husband and I moved after my fourth year of teaching high school English when we were expecting our first child who was due at the beginning of the next school year. and we moved far enough away, we changed states and so I wasn't going to be able to find a teaching job because I would have had to go immediately onto maternity leave. So I was taking a kind of unplanned year off and uh I decided to look for some writing gigs just to keep a little money coming in and one of the first ones that I landed was for a financial website. Now, that wasn't completely out of left field because my father was a financial planner and I was kind of a money nerd throughout my entire life. And as a small child, when my father would talk about his work at the dinner table, my sister's eyes would be glazing over whereas I was fascinated. — So, he would be talking about things and it never occurred to me that it was unusual that I was fascinated. Um, and things like the movie Trading Places, I absolutely loved the final scene where [clears throat] they accomplished that short sale. And when I finally, as an 8-year-old, like got it because to be um, you know, all credit to the filmmakers, they don't explain it to you. So, it took multiple rewatches as a small child to finally get what happened. When I finally got it, I felt like I was on top of the world. I was like, "Oh, I understand it. I understand how that worked. So, so it was not a traditional path to getting interested in retirement. And writing the 5 years before you retire came to me in a very roundabout way. I had been writing about personal finance for three years. And one of the things I love about writing about money is that every day is a little different. Um, I'll be writing about retirement one day, insurance the next, car maintenance the next day, you know, the psychology of money the next. I mean, just there's so much that goes into it. And the publisher of 5 Years Before You Retire had come up with the idea for the book inhouse and then went looking for a writer. And my editor was familiar with my work online and thought I'd be a good fit. And it was actually just kind of perfect for me because what I really like doing, and this is partially my teaching background, I like making complex topics understandable and relatable to people who aren't necessarily inherently interested. So, if I can get 10th graders to really like and enjoy Midsummer Night's Dream, I can make, you know, retirement topics and, you know, Roth IAS and Roth conversions and uh signing up for Medicare comprehensible to folks who haven't always necessarily paid close attention to retirement. So, how did you settle on the five years before you retire as opposed to something shorter or longer? So five years is an amount of time that feels real like it's when you get within five years of retirement that the finish line's on the horizon. You know that is like oh wow this is really happening but there's still enough time that you can really make a

big difference. Whereas even 10 years out, who you'll be in 10 years still feels like a stranger. Whereas who you'll be in 5 years, that's still you. So focusing on that five-year time frame is kind of like the perfect time to kind of strike while the iron's hot. So it gives you that time frame to make the changes that you need to make if you haven't necessarily saved as much as you need to. you know, if you don't have the nest egg you need. And it also still gives you enough time to take advantage of, you know, not necessarily compounding interest, but it does give you time to make some necessary changes so that you're well positioned to have the retirement that you'd like to or at least close to it rather than, you know, if you're panicking the year before or even three years before. A key part at this life stage is getting your arms around enough. So looking at that nest egg, trying to figure out whether it is sufficient for you to retire. It's a tough question, but I'm wondering if you can share any guidance for pre-retirees to know if they're in good shape to retire. This is such a sticky question because, you know, none of us have a crystal ball. You know, there's the joke uh in, you know, oh, it's very easy to figure out if you have enough to retire. Figure out when you're gonna die and work backwards. And uh so, of course, none of us can do that. But what I like to do is I like to tell people you want to like start by dreaming big and then dream small. So in your dreaming big figure out and uh if you have a spouse you know partnered up like each do that and compare and figure out what does your ideal day, week, month and year in retirement look like and like get as granular as you want. Um you know like talking about day like go through an entire day you wake up and what happens you know like what do you have for breakfast? who do you see that day? And go through all of the details and go ahead and dream as big as possible. Act as if money is no object. Okay? So do that for day, week, month and year. And uh you know what are the you know enormous travel destinations you want to go to? What are the things that you want to do on a weekly, monthly, annual basis? So you start with that then go on the other side and say what is the least I would need to feel content with my life and that would be your plan B retirement and go day week and year. What would that look like if things did not work out well and you did not have all the money in the world? What would a day in retirement look like if you had just enough to feel content? And I tell this story of um a woman who uh she was an acquaintance of my best friend who she and her husband went through was the housing collapse and they lost everything. The woman had by the time my friend knew her was a widow and she was living in a group home at that point. nobody's ideal retirements, but she was very contented because she had a roof over her head, three square meals a day, and um you know, access to the local library cuz she was an avid reader. And she said, "This is, you know, all I actually really need to have a happy life. " And so that's what got me the idea of like what is it all that you really need to have a happy life? So now this sounds very woowoo uh and not what a lot of financial planners you don't necessarily go in and this is not necessarily the exercise that they tell you to do. But the reason why I have you go through these two exercises is because most retirements are going to be somewhere in between these two. Most people aren't going to be in the situation that um my friend's acquaintance was. And so when you have those two on either side to be able to figure out if you have enough, what you can do is start building your dream retirement, building the retirement that you actually end up having based on these two extremes and saying like, okay, I'm probably not going to be able to take a month in Italy once a year. that's probably not in the cards, but what is it that I want about that? What is what sounds amazing about that? And how can I build that? And what would it cost? And start kind

of budgeting for the things that you want and start kind of making a budget and then looking at what your nest egg is. And then that will allow you to kind of be intentional about your retirement plans. And then you can compare what it is that you want with the money that you have. And that can be very helpful in giving you a sense of what you have, what you want, what the cost is, and whether what you have is going to be enough. Want to follow up on something, Emily. The point about retirees who manage to be super happy despite not having a lot of financial wherewithal. It sounds like that is not an uncommon thing. We talked to Anne Ferguson from the Wall Street Journal last year and that was an observation that she made in talking to actual retirees. She does these profiles of people who have retired and have various financial situations and she said that has really struck her that she has encountered older adults who manage to be quite happy despite having not great financial wherewithal. So I'm wondering, you know, does it come down to disposition, sort of the mindset you bring to this? Is it happiness set point or something like that? That is the big determinant of our happiness in retirement. [snorts] That's part of it. I think I I believe uh Audrey, the woman I mentioned, tended to be a generally cheerful person, but I think a lot of it has to do with expectations because the like kind of the leading cause of unhappiness is when your expectations aren't met. And so if you go into retirement with this expectation that it's got to look a certain way, if it doesn't look like that, you're going to be unhappy. which is how people who have amazing retirements that don't look exactly what they expected can be unhappy even though you know their retirement is objectively amazing. And so I liken this to when my kids were small. I found that the days that were most disastrous were the ones where I had a very clear expectation of what I was going to get done that day because that did not work cuz I had, you know, little chaos gremlins. Um whereas if I did not try to control or have expectations of what was going to happen that day and just kind of took things as they came, the days were so much more enjoyable and I felt so much more confident about my abilities as a mother of young children. And so it's similar to that when it comes to finances and retirement. And you know, if things don't work out the way that you hope or expect, just kind of being open to the experiences you get rather than the ones that you want or expect, then you can find happiness even in less than ideal situations because there is something good even in not great situations. What if you find yourself in a situation where you're approaching retirement and it looks like you really won't have enough to retire when you would hope to, even if you kind of scale down your lifestyle, what's the most important step to consider in that case? So, if you're approaching retirement and it really does not seem like you'll have enough, there are only a few levers you can pull. you know, one, as you mentioned, is scaling down what your retirement plans are so that you'd spend less in retirement. If that's not going to move the needle enough, another is to work longer so that you don't have to spend as much in retirement. Um, and even a single year can make a big difference in how much longer your nest egg will last. So, that's a possibility. Also, if you can put off accessing your social security so that you um can have that be a portion of your retirement income that you are not counting on early in your retirement. So that you know that it'll be a larger amount because it is the only aspect of retirement income that is as close to a guarantee as is possible in this world. Um then that is something that is also possible if you have scaled down as much as you can. There are also other ways like what have you scaled down? Have you thought

about other options for scaling down? I know of a couple of retirees who have moved abroad because the cost of living is so much cheaper in other parts of the world. So, you know, if you've, you know, scaled things down, have you considered moving to a place that costs less? So, you know, that's where you start looking at like what are the, you know, third rails in your head of things that you're like, "Oh, I can't do that. " that you might start to consider that you could do or you know if you don't want to work longer in your current career. What are things that you could do that could continue bringing money in that could help you hold off on touching your nest egg or hold off on accessing social security so that you can allow that nest egg to continue to grow for a few more years before you need to access it. You referenced the benefits of delaying social security, that enlarged benefit that is also guaranteed if you wait a bit. Many people are disincined to wait. I think there are concerns — probably reasonable about the future of social security and whether there'll be changes to the program. What would you say to people who are within five years of retirement whose plan is to take the money as soon as they are eligible even at age 62? Why would you caution them against doing that? And how would you encourage them to approach the financial viability of social security? How worried about that should they be if they're that close to retirement? So on the first part, the folks who are considering taking social security early, they may be thinking about the break even analysis. And the problem with the break even analysis which is you know if you take it early and generally if you do the math at about age 72 you'll have gotten as much money by taking it early as you would if you waited to age 70 because you get about 8% per year more by waiting. But the issue with the break even analysis is the only way to win is to die young. Is that really the gamble you want to take? Um that nobody wants to assume that. And additionally, the tragedy in retirement is not necessarily dying young. No, that is a tragedy. But the one that is going to be the tragedy that you will experience because tragedy of dying young is what your family and your loved ones will experience. The tragedy you will experience is living to 120 and not having enough money. So that's why for the individual I say it is better to wait to take social security if you can afford to. Um now there are individuals who they don't have a choice. They can't afford to. They need to take it just to keep the lights on. Um but if that is not you then wait. Now, as for the solvency of the uh program, I am a bonafide social security fan girl. Um I like I get out the pompom poms and go rah rosy spoonbos social security. And the reason for that is my third book was making social security work for you. And in researching the program, it became clear to me that while Social Security has its problems and while it leaves people out and there are gaps that people fall through because any program that affects so many millions of people will always do that. Whenever you look at the law of social security, it is clear that everything written [clears throat] into it at every point was made with good intentions and the attempt to protect our most vulnerable citizens. Now, as for its solveny, the United States is the only country in the world that does a 75-year projection for its social and search insurance program. Now, one country does a 100red-year projection, that's Japan. Every other country does fewer years. So, we have known that the social security will be uh facing a solveny crisis around 2033 for a long time. America also likes to run out the clock and do a Hail Mary. And uh so if we are actually at the point where

social security is not paying out benefits, promised benefits to current beneficiaries. It means we've got bigger problems than social security. And when I say that, it means like zombie apocalypse, bigger problems, meteor about to hit the the planet, bigger problems, like serious bigger problems. So when I say that your social security benefits are about as guaranteed as you can get in this world, they are backed by the full faith and credit of the American government. Um, and when there is a lack of faith in social security, that is actually something that I think is more insidious and more of a problem than the oncoming potential solveny issue in 2033. Because when people lack faith in it, um they're less likely to pay attention when or if there are any politicians or nefarious actors who try to dismantle it. And no one really has at any point in its, you know, 80year history. So all of this to say, I can reassure people as an expert in social security, it will be there. There will be some bumps. We are going to have to wait for Congress to get off their kesters and fix the coming shortfall. And if history is any guide, they are going to wait until the final hour to fix the coming shortfall, but it will be fixed. It's probably going to be painful and a mess, but not for current beneficiaries. It will be for possibly the people who will be retiring right around 2035 would be my guess. But that is a guess not a fact. These are the things where there are always going to be bumps, growing pains and issues. But social security is about as close to a guarantee as anyone can count on. What about younger people? say people in their 40s or early 50s who might be worried about government debt levels, declining birth rate, should they plan or kind of model in a potential haircut to their social security benefits or do you think it's still safe to assume kind of a full benefit that will continue sort of indefinitely? So as of right now after the coming shortfall when we hit that point, Social Security can afford to pay out 70% of promised benefits thereabouts. It's um you know depends each year there's a new calculation and it's as of right now it's about 70% of promised benefits. There are a number of ways to fix that shortfall. One of them being raising the full retirement age for younger beneficiaries. So, uh, as of right now, anyone born after 1965 has a full retirement age of 67. And so, the possibility of raising it for people who are, you know, in their 20s and 30s, you know, the Gen Z, Gen Alpha, that sort of thing, who are far off in the future. That is one way. raising the maximum amount of FICA taxes. You know, if you earn more than that per year, you don't pay taxes above that amount. So, raising that would uh would help fix the shortfall. Um, so there are ways to fix that and that is what needs to be done before the clock runs out in 2033. So for younger folks um folks in their 40s and 50s first of all I think that if you are in your 40s and 50s and you're already looking ahead towards retirement don't plan on social security don't include social security as part of your retirement plan in the first place. No they used to talk about the three-legged stool for retirements. you know, your 401k or, you know, the retirement that you contribute to and then like a pension or other defined benefit plan and then social security. If you take social security out of the equation when you're um making your plans, you're going to be in a much better position because then social security is gravy on top of what you've planned rather than a central part of it. Even though I'm sitting here telling you can plan on social security, you can. But because it is legislation and it is not something that you can necessarily expect. Since it is legislation, it can change with the stroke of a pen. And that happened in 2015 when I wrote making social

security work for you. With the stroke of a pen, they changed a particular strategy that people were using. File and suspend is the strategy with a six-month adoption of that change. So people who were eight months out from retiring who had planned on using that strategy were out of luck. So that is why if people are already planning their retirement strategies in their 40s and 50s, it behooves you to ignore social security until you're in that 5 years beforehand because that is something that you don't have control over. And so focus on what you do have control over and allow the social security to be something that just is there in the background until it becomes something you do have control over because you'll have control over when you take it. So ignore it like assume you'll get nothing because that seems like that would necessitate a pretty heroic savings rate for a lot of younger adults if their social security is going to go to nothing. No, not ignore it as in assume you'll have nothing. like don't make it the third uh leg of your stool. So, you know, I encourage everyone to get a uh my social security account, my social securitycurity. gov, um and get a sense of what you can expect your benefits to be. That is a good thing to do. It's have an idea of what that is. And you know, in part because it also will help you get a sense of, you know, if there's any inaccuracies or anything like that, although those are very rare. It's more that if you start counting on it, that can disincentivize folks in their 40s and 50s from setting money aside for retirement. — Got it. I wanted to talk about budgeting because that's a huge thrust of your book is like getting your arms around your budget. When you think about the line items in people's budgets that are likely to see the biggest changes in retirement, what are they? If I'm reviewing my budget as retirement draws close, where should I expect to see the biggest changes? So, some of the biggest changes have to do with the kinds of money that you spend that support the cost of working. Now, some of that is like you have line items that will go down because you're no longer working. So, you're going to probably spend less on convenience food, um less on stress reduction activities, you know, less on things like commuting, that sort of thing. So that's the benefit. That's the good side. Um probably also going to spend less on, you know, clothing, but then you are going to be spending more on leisure activities. You know, a lot of young retirees, they want to travel more. Um if you're not living in the same area of the country as like your adult children or grandchildren, you're going to be spending more money on that. and that it can be very easy to kind of lose sight of how much you're spending. Similarly, you might be spending less on convenience food, but you might be going out to dinner more often because you have more time. So, like, hey, why not go out to that nice steakhouse on a Wednesday night? Um, we'd have to get up in the morning. um and uh spending more money on going to the theater or those sorts of things. That kind of entertainment is very easy to lose sight of how much you're spending because you are enjoying yourself and it was something that you were limited logistically before. So you won't be thinking about the financial cost now. So, the thing to be thinking about in retirement is you don't want to budget yourself in a way where you feel stressed about how you're spending your money. Um, you don't want to make it feel like, you know, you're Ebenezer Scrooge sitting, you know, in this cold room and not allowed to have fun. But at the same time, you need to be cognizant of how the money that you spend um is finite. And in your early retirements, when you have plenty of energy, when you're relatively young, you don't want to overspend and feel like kicking yourself when you're in your 80s and you

need money for health problems or things like that you no longer have because you over spent early on. You also advise people to try to forecast what kind of lumpy expenses they'll need to cover in retirement. Things like replacing a furnace or a car, things like that. Can you talk about why it's valuable to go through that exercise? Oh, sure. Yeah. So, a lot of the things we think of as like emergency expenses are often not actually emergencies. They are instead irregular expenses that are so irregular that we just don't see them coming. So, you know, there's the irregular expenses like, you know, your homeowners insurance that you pay once a year. That's an irregular expense that happens regularly enough that you can kind of like, oh yeah, yeah, I gotta remember that's coming. But then, you know, you're replacing a roof, which happens what, every 25 years, that seems to come out of nowhere and all of a sudden you got to have like $15,000 for it. Or having to replace a water heater or a new mattress is the sort of thing where it's like, "Oh, wow. That's a lot of money that I didn't have budgeted because you just don't think of it because it doesn't happen that often. It's once every 10 years or however often these sorts of things go out. And so these can often be like folded into your budget when you're working painfully sometimes, but generally you can kind of put it on credit and get it paid off and it not be that problematic to your budget while you're working and bringing in an income. But when you're retired, if you happen to need to replace your water heater in the same year that you need to replace your car, that could cause a real serious problem for a retiree on a fixed income. So thinking ahead and like as of when you retire, doing an inventory of all of your like high ticket durable goods and saying like, "Okay, how old are each of these? How much would a new one cost? " Okay, so about when am I probably going to need to replace my roof? about when am I going to need to replace, you know, the water heater, the mattress, my refrigerator, you know, all of these things. And okay, so if I can forecast probably around 2030 I'm going to need to replace that about how much money might I need for that and uh do I have a plan for where that money will come from? That means you're not going to be blindsided when it gives up the ghost and all of a sudden you have to have it replaced right away. So, it's not an emergency expense. It's something that you've planned for. — The book goes into a lot of detail about forecasting health care spending, how that might change and affect your budget and retirement. Wanted to ask about long-term care, which you wrote in the book is something that you have changed your mind about, and I love to hear about people changing their minds about things, but maybe you can talk about your evolution on long-term care insurance as a line item in people's budgets. you tend to think people don't need it by and large. — Uh yeah, when I the first iteration of the book, I knew a friend of my mother's who had like primo long-term care insurance and she had purchased it, I think sometime in the8s, just may we all have such fantastic insurance that just took care of everything. Um, the insurance industry has changed a great deal and had in between 2013 when I wrote the book and then 2021 uh the updated version. And in that time, long-term care insurance has become prohibitively expensive for the majority of consumers. And uh there's a study that has found that basically long-term care insurance is going to be useful for a very small subset of people. Those who have a nest egg between about 400,000 and I think it's about $2 million. Um anyone with a nest egg larger than that are going to be better off by self-insuring. And those with a nest egg smaller than that are going to be better off like

drawing down the entire nest egg and then going on Medicaid. And that's partially because there are not enough people buying long-term care insurance to make it a marketplace, an insurance marketplace where there's enough competition to make it possible for people to get the kind of primo insurance that my mother's friend had. And so just the cost makes it so high and then the uh what you get for what you pay for is almost not worthwhile. And uh that was why I'd kind of changed my mind on it over the eight years in between the first and second edition. And the exclusions in long-term care insurance have also kind of concerned me in between those two additions as well, where after having paid in all of those premiums, the amount of time that you have to wait before the long-term care insurance kicks in and how much you'd have to pay out of pocket, it just it seems like there's a lot of money going out without necessarily as much care coming in as one would for how much you've paid. — We also wanted to touch on the cost of health care more generally and this can be a big issue especially for people who retire before the age of 65, especially now that the Affordable Care Act subsidies have expired. What are the best options for people who are, you know, trying to get health care insurance but aren't eligible for Medicare yet? — Unfortunately, it's not a great landscape right now. So, um, I want to say you need to make sure that you get healthcare coverage. My next door neighbor when I first moved into the house where I live in Milwaukee, um he retired early. I think he was 62 or 63 and had decided to just white knuckle it until he turned 65 and could get on Medicare. And unfortunately, he developed cancer and um and passed away because he didn't have health insurance and didn't go to the doctor. And I don't want anyone to be that cautionary tale. So like don't white knuckle it to until you get to Medicare no matter how like even without the subsidies. You need to have some sort of medical insurance. Now if you leave your uh workplace within 18 months of turning 65 uh look into COBRA which is not cheap but it is a potential option. Um, you may be able to, depending on your workplace, to negotiate some sort of way of staying on your health care for your workplace, even as a former employee. That can sometimes be some sort of benefit that you can negotiate. There are sharing ministries that can help you pay for healthcare as another potential option. I don't think that they are ideal, but they can be better than nothing. One other thing that I do think can be helpful if you have access to a health savings account because you had a high deductible health insurance program. Putting money aside within that while you are working can be very helpful since the money that you put in is pre-tax. it can grow tax-free and you can take it out tax-free for any medical expense uh medically related expense. So that's one option. So during that time that can be helpful. I do not know off the top of my head if you can use HSA money to pay for your um ACA premiums. I don't know that off the top of my head, but that would be something worth looking into. Uh, another option that I tell people who do not have access to an HSA is setting money aside in a Roth IRA can be very uh, useful as well for when you are in retirement if you have health issues because that money you can take it out tax-free. It goes in after tax but you can take it out taxree. So if you have any kind of large health problem um where you know heaven forbid get cancer or you break a hip or something like that it will not affect your taxes. So, if you have a very carefully planned out tax strategy in retirement, your Roth IRA can be a way to get a large amount of cash if necessary for any kind of health problem or long-term care or anything like that without affecting your taxes, which could be a major problem, headache, and

um could affect your entire tax and withdrawal strategy in retirement. I looked it up really quickly, Emily, while you're talking. It doesn't seem like in most cases you can use your HSA for those ACA premiums. — I appreciate you looking that up. Thank you. — I was curious, too, because I know there are some very specific rules around that. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask a perennial question for people who are getting close to retirement, which is if they've got a mortgage, but they also have additional retirement savings that they would like to make, how should they approach that decision about whether to pay down, pay off that mortgage or invest more for retirement? So, it depends on what you're paying what your mortgage interest rate is. So, if you were lucky enough to purchase your home when interest rates were low, then I would recommend putting money aside for retirement because it is likely that you're going to get a better interest rate on your money in the market. [snorts] So historically the market gets about 10% per year thereabouts. I prefer to think of it as about 8% per year. And so if your mortgage is 3% per year, your money is doing more for you by being invested. If your mortgage is, if you're paying an interest rate of 10%, 9%, 8% on your mortgage, paying it off more quickly is going to do more for your money because you'll be getting rid of that high interest rate, higher interest rate than by investing your money. So trying to pay that mortgage down more quickly so that you can free up money to invest is going to be better. It's the same logic that you use of you want to pay down high interest credit card debt before investing. Now, I will say that with the caveat of if you are close to retirement, even if you are trying to pay off your mortgage, always try to find an extra hundred bucks or something to throw towards your retirement because whatever extra you can put towards retirement, you're going to be glad you did. For our last question, we wanted to ask how working on books about retirement planning and specifically the updated version of this book has affected how you think about your own retirement plan. Oh, that's a good question. So, I I've definitely gotten more aggressive about my own retirement savings. I had a little bit of um like the cobbler's children go without shoes. Now, my dad always tried to take care of me in terms of financial planning and um and get things set up for me. And I also am very much like an outward thinker with money. So, I was very focused on building my kids 529 accounts ahead of building my own 401k and Roth IRA. — Mhm. — Which it took until after I'd written the first version of uh the five years before you retire. And that's not to say I didn't have a retirement account and I didn't contribute to it, but I mentioned that to some colleagues who um very [clears throat] gently peer pressured me now. and I was in my uh mid30s and they were like really and some of that has to do with just the way that I think about money and legacy and children and what I want to give to my kids and then also the way that I think about work. I absolutely love what I do and I can't imagine retiring in the traditional sense. I want to eventually work less and only do work that I choose, you know, have fewer assignments that are less interesting to me. You know, only have work and assignments that I'm like excited to jump out of bed and work on in the morning. So, like that has something to do with it, too. But I have definitely become a much more aggressive contributor to my retirement. And I've gotten a little more aggressive in my asset allocation as well in choosing my asset allocation rather than being kind of passive in uh just allowing my money to go into whatever

target date funds um my dad might have chosen for me originally. Well, Emily, this has been a great conversation. Congratulations on the book and thank you so much for being here. for having me. Thanks, Emily. Thank you for joining us on The Long View. If you could please take a moment to subscribe to and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can follow me on social media at ChristineBenz on LinkedIn or at Christine_Benz onx and at Amy Arnut on LinkedIn. George Cassidy is our engineer for the podcast. Jessica Bevel produces the show notes each week and Jennifer Garrett copy edits our transcripts. Finally, we'd love to get your feedback. If you have a comment or a guest idea, please email us at the long view@orningstar. com. Until next time, thanks for joining us. This recording is forformational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. Opinions expressed are as of the date of recording and are subject to change without notice. The views and opinions of guests on this program are not necessarily those of Morning Star, Inc. and its affiliates, which together we refer to as Morning Star. Morning Star is not affiliated with guests or their business affiliates unless otherwise stated. Morning Star does not guarantee the accuracy or the completeness of the data presented herein. This recording is forformational purposes only and the information, data, analysis or opinion it includes or their use should not be considered investment or tax advice and therefore is not an offer to buy or sell a security. Morning Star shall not be responsible for any trading decisions, damages, or other losses resulting from or related to the information, data, analyses, or opinions or their use. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. All investments are subject to investment risk, including possible loss of principle. Individuals should seriously consider if an investment is suitable for them by referencing their own financial position, investment objectives, and risk profile before making any investment decision. Please consult a tax and/or financial professional for advice specific to your individual circumstances. Morning Star Investment Management LLC is a registered investment advisor and subsidiary of Morning Star, Inc. The Morning Star name and logo are registered marks of Morning Star, Inc. —