If your only consideration for retirement or in your working life, for that matter you’re missing out. There’s another, equally important consideration. Consider modifying a money-driven goal but adding purpose. Thiago Glieger, of RMG Advisors, joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: And Thiago, you don’t often hear money people saying you should have purpose in your life in retirement, but that’s exactly what you’re saying.

Thiago Glieger: That’s right. I think as we start the new year, I really encourage people to think differently about their finances. The big thing is that people tend to miss out on really having a better retirement if they’re just focused on the money. There’s a lot of things out there that talk about the top five financial moves for year end and the three biggest mistakes you should avoid and that’s fine, but what are we truly solving for? I think that’s a really important question.

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Tom Temin: Yes, I remember a realtor many, many years ago when we bought our home and we have a nice house. It’s basic suburban center entrance, colonial tract house, like everybody else. And she said, ‘You could have a bigger house, but you won’t be any happier.’ And I think that’s kind of what you’re driving at.

Thiago Glieger: That’s right. A lot of people get to this place of understanding, ‘Hey, we need a financial plan.’ But in reality, what does that really mean? And what we encourage people to do is to think about true planning, being the intersection of what makes good financial sense for you and what truly makes us happy as we live our day to day.

Tom Temin: Right. So what is some specific advice you have for getting to that point? Because at the point of retirement or close to retirement for most people, it’s pretty hard to radically change what their financial situation is. If you’ve saved a million, a million and a half in your TSP and your two years from retirement, you’re not going to have 5 million by the time you retire.

Thiago Glieger: Right. And so we do need to make sure we’re doing the things that are going to lead up to that success. Paying ourselves in the future, investing for growth in the long term, making use of the TSP match using the CSNI funds, right. Maxing out those contributions. But eventually you get to a place that you have to really start thinking about if every day is going to be Saturday. What really makes me excited to get up in the morning? Is it more golf? Is it more travel? Is it spending time volunteering? And and this is where I like to use a Venn diagram. If you picture on the left hand side is what really makes us happy. And on the right hand side is what is the most financial important moves for us to do and the reality of what a happy and fulfilled retirement plan looks like is that intersection point in the middle. While we are doing things that are fun for us to wake up to and feel like we’re still contributing to having purpose. There are smart ways to do that financially, so somewhere in the middle is going to be the best thing for someone in retirement.

Tom Temin: Right. You could have maybe this volunteer and the leisure activities that you like, but then you could also have a little income type of that could be fun and purpose driven, but you get paid for it a little bit.

Thiago Glieger: And that’s a really popular approach because you get to kind of satisfy both of those needs. The primary concern for people as they’re approaching retirement obviously is, ‘Hey, are we going to be OK? Are we going to have enough money to be able to do the things that we enjoy doing, take care of ourselves, be able to support our lifestyle?’ And so it’s often hard for people to allow themselves to think creatively and say, ‘If money were no object, what would I really be doing with my time?’ So one way that people help kind of meet both of those needs is exactly as you said. They find something that they can earn a little bit of income on the side, but it’s something that there may be more passionate about. Often it involves some of the skill sets that they’ve had throughout their career because it often feels weird for us to just hang our skills at the end of the career and do nothing anymore. So you wake up still feeling like you’re contributing and you have a purpose, even in retirement.

Tom Temin: Right. I just wish there was a way that I would never have to fly coach again. But it’s a horribly expensive prospect not to unless you’ve got all those points or something. And but that’s my personal, well anyway, for another time. But what are some mistakes you can make and maybe go overboard one way or the other when you retire, such as shoveling too much money because people sometimes feel this compulsion not only to travel, but to tell the whole world about their travel.

Thiago Glieger: Yeah, I think one big mistake we see people making is that they don’t plan for the long term. There’s a lot to be said about considering health later in life, right. This element of long term care and what is it going to truly cost to take care of yourself if you don’t have something like long term care insurance or if you have a really expensive health event? And so there is kind of like a seesaw. There’s a delicate balance of how much can we spend today, enjoy our youth, enjoy our time and our kids and our family, but not overspend so that we are being irresponsible with our future should we need it.

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Tom Temin: We were speaking with wealth adviser Thiago Glieger of RMG Advisors of Rockville, Maryland, and the idea of that in retirement. You may have to stick with or even maybe for the first time have some kind of a budget. That’s a creepy feeling for some people because budgets go with the poor, but maybe budgets also go with a wealth-oriented thinking for the long term. Fair to say?

Thiago Glieger: Yeah, that’s absolutely fair to say. I think that when we are looking at a successful retirement plan, there is discipline throughout the whole process. There’s guardrails that you can begin to create for yourself and say, ‘OK, well, you know, instead of calling it a budget, we’ll call it a guardrail and say we can’t spend over this amount as opposed to trying to stay within a specific amount.’ And changing the mindset around that allows you to still feel like you are in control and not feel like you’re just being restricted now that you’re not earning an income anymore.

Tom Temin: And let’s talk more about that planning Venn diagram you mentioned on each side. One side is the finances, one side is the activities. How do you create that? What do you do and is there a priority on each side once you’ve decided what’s on each side to begin with?

Thiago Glieger: Sure. A really helpful exercise that we’ve used with clients is I often tell them to just imagine that I wired you $5 million right now. How would that change what you would be doing with your time? And if you start from the place of not feeling like you’re restricted by your finances, now we’re getting somewhere. Because what was truly worrying you is that the fact that you don’t know what you’re going to do, you don’t know how you’re going to fill your time or is it the fact that you’re just not completely confident that your wealth is going to support those things that you really want to do? And if we can solve for understanding a sense of fear, then there’s a way to create a plan that allows you to feel comfortable. If we’re solving for, ‘Hey, we need to have X dollars of income for this activity,’ then there’s a plan and a strategy that you can use to fill that as well. Obviously, we don’t want to be unrealistic with our goals, but if we start on the left hand side, what do we love to do? We can often back into it and say how do we meet those objectives financially? And sometimes the answer is, ‘Hey, we can’t. Those are some lofty goals.’ And if you want to do that, here are some other areas where maybe we have to cut back a little bit. But working with what you love to do always works out better than starting with how am I just going to be financially safe?

Tom Temin: And what about the day-to-day living? Because I think sometimes people wake up or you hear people that have gone to retirement and they try to consult or they try to do this or that and they go back to full-time employment and say, ‘Well, I was really bad at retirement.’ And that’s kind of sort of a backhanded way of saying I’m such a work-oriented hound while you slobs drool in your retirement. I’m still productive in the world. But I think it also maybe expresses a lack of security about oneself to say I’m bad at retirement, so I’ll keep working to death.

Thiago Glieger: That’s true.

Tom Temin: Personal opinion.

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Thiago Glieger: No, I think you’re hitting on something here, Tom, because if we think about, I consider there to be four different categories of wealth. We have your health. You can be wealthy with your health and that you still have it. You have your wealth in relationships, right. This is one we often really take for granted until we lose them our time and then also our money. And so what you’re talking about is people who are just looking to be wealthy in the way they are contributing or in the money that they have. What about what you’re giving up? You’re giving up your time. You’re giving up your relationships in some cases where you don’t know how long you’re still going to have here. And we’re spending that balance of time without really knowing what our true balance is. And so that’s where I like to focus on what’s going to make you the happiest and then figure out how do we make the money meet those needs.

Tom Temin: In some ways, wealth begins in your head. There’s an old saying the wealthy person is not the one with the most stuff, but the one who’s most content with what he or she has within limits, I mean, you don’t want to live on the street. But I remember an elderly couple of relatives that retired to the most modest condo in Florida you could ever imagine. And I remember they had like a 20-year-old Rambler. You know, they were the happiest couple I ever knew. He wrote letters to the local papers and got them published. And they were on the condo board and this, that and the other. And yet you’ve known people bouncing around in big houses in old age that are utterly miserable with the world.

Thiago Glieger: Sure. And who did it right? The person who died with millions of dollars in the bank and lived a miserable retirement. Or the couple who really made the most out of retirement and died without regret and really feeling happy about the life they lived.

Tom Temin: All right. So it is now early 2025, kind of a nice not round number, but it’s not an even number, But a quarter of a century into this crazy century we’ve had. Let’s sum it up. Your best advice for nearing retirement and living in the moment.

Thiago Glieger: I would say truly try to identify the things that make you the happiest. If it’s the people in your life, if it’s the work that you do and structure your life in a way that allows you to fill your days doing those things. If it’s meeting with your grandkids, if it’s volunteering, that’s going to allow you to have more purpose. And that’s truly what is something that allows us to be fulfilled in retirement. More money doesn’t solve problems like everybody knows. Helps us be comfortable and we need to be safe. But not doing so at the cost of being unhappy.

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