Arwen Becker - Retirement Strategies for Women

Hi everyone, it's Bill Black, the exit coach from the Exit Coach Radio show. You know, one of the biggest questions I get on the show is what exactly goes into a business exit plan and when should I start creating mine? Well, I always tell people that the best time to start was 5 years ago, but the next best time is now because you never know when you might need it. So we put together a free report that describes what an exit plan is and what you should know. You can get it free by texting Exit plan with no spaces to 44222. That's exit plan to 44222. Again, text exit plan to 44222. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. My next guest is Arwin Becker, and Arwin is joining us from Becker retirement Group. And life with Arwin. We're going to talk about the unique things that affect women and investing today. So Arwin, welcome. Thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. Thanks, Bill. Hi Arwin, thank you so much for joining us. Tell us a little bit about you and your background and how you started Becker Retirement Group and Life with Arwin. Well, um, gosh, you know, I found myself at 24, a divorced zoology graduate, so I kind of had to reinvent my life a little bit at that point because as you can imagine, um, I was doing some pretty cool work which is wildlife rehabilitation, but that doesn't pay the bills, you know what I'm saying. So I actually had the fortunate um role at that time of I got to work with cougars and hawks and owls, and I did blood transfusions between eagles and harbor seals and lots of cool things, but it doesn't really pay the bills. So, um, there are a shame isn't that a shame I was divorced? What's that? I said isn't that a shame that it doesn't you right that. It doesn't support you, yeah, yeah, but it, it was, it was good work while I did it and so there I was having to get what everybody called a real job, quote unquote, a real job, and I actually had a girlfriend who was sitting in a coffee shop and she met somebody who was brand new to the building and had just launched a company and she connected the two of us and that was almost 20 years ago. And that gentleman ended up becoming my business mentor, my business partner, and then 15 years ago, my husband and the father of our three boys, my husband, Randy. So that's kind of how I got into the business. That's a great story. Well, it, uh, I'm sure you learned, you know, as we all do, uh, in watching how wildlife and nature interacts. You, you can learn a lot because, uh, I'll tell you what, my, my dog, uh, communicates without any words very clearly to me, um, and teaches me a lot about about life, so. Yeah, and I think it's also about taking care of the um of those who can't necessarily take care of themselves and so that's really kind of a little bit of a of a parallel that I've seen in working with a lot of women over the last almost 20 years. So do you work exclusively with women or primarily with women, or tell us about your specialty. Yeah, so I, I would say at this point it's primarily, not exclusively, but just over the years, I mean, I got, I got licensed in 2003, my securities license after that, and, and so I've been in the industry for a long time and for many, many of those years my husband did all of the Seminars that we did, the public workshops that brought in new clients and things of that nature. And so I watched him do that for 17 years and I thought at some point in the early part of 2017 that I wanted to take that part over and so he was actually quite happy to allow me to do that part. And I saw a huge need, a huge need to be able to create a safe space for women to be able to come into an event that was just with other women and to be able to get the education that they need about their finances because we do, I mean, so many companies do a ton of marketing and they have, you know, workshops and that's what the majority of of the advisors I'm friends with and that I know through the industry do that. But there's a pretty large segment of the population of women that are just a little bit too intimidated to go into a room that has a lot of men in it, not men giving the seminar, but men sitting at the table. And so when we started offering women's events in addition to our other events, it was astronomical. How many people would attend absolutely astronomical. And so we saw that not only as a need that needed to be filled in our community, but we certainly started hearing more and more stories from women who just wanted the education but just felt a little too intimidated to go and get it. And so that's what we as a company over the last 3 years have really made a huge pivot collectively to serve women in our community in addition to, you know, everybody else, but to really make more of a push to make sure we're reaching those women in our community. Well, I applaud your efforts, and it, it sounds like you've you've built a tremendous reputation there. Um, what are some of the biggest negative effects on women in planning for retirement? Oh gosh, you know, um, there's a number of things. I mean, certainly longevity is the biggest risk that women face now because, you know, uh, it's crazy to think that in the year 1900, the average life expectancy was 47, you know, that's only 120 years ago. So if that, you know, now we're well into our 80s, but yet people are still retiring at, you know, in their mid-60s just like they were when Social Security came online in 1935, we're having this really long period of time that we have to stretch our income and our savings out. And so that's the biggest thing that I see that, you know, is inherent for most women, but it's so many other factors that contribute to that. So women will spend 15% of their working years caring for kids or ailing parents. And yet compare that to a man who will only spend 1.6% of his working years out of the workforce, and that's usually due to just job loss, not because they're staying home with kids or taking care of ailing parents. So that of course is affecting how much they're saving, whether or not they're putting into a company plan or contributing to a SEIRA or something like that, and then also how much is going into Social Security. So they're not paying as much and then certainly wages are affected by that if they're spending time out of the workforce, going back in to try and, um, you know, start a new job or a new career at 50 is a lot more challenging to find reasonable wages in comparison to their male counterparts. So. You're getting these pieces that are working against them, yet a woman needs to be saving about 14% of her income in order to have this long, healthy, secure retirement, whereas a man might be closer to 11%. And so it's just all these factors that are working against women, um, yet they're, they're needing the help. So it's about educating and helping them understand what they, what they can be doing and how we work against those things. And of course, being widowed, average age of woman as widowed as 59, that certainly affects a woman and how things go for her future and divorce. I mean, that's It's a huge piece of the planning process that we have to do for a lot of women just because they've been married for 25 or 30 years and getting divorced is devastating. So how do you get all the pieces but most importantly, how do you, um, make it work even even under those possible circumstances? Yes, I hear the term gray divorce is a trending, a trending issue, and, and you mentioned longevity, and it seems like, you know, the one of the, one of the problems is we do we do a good job of really predicting how long people will live because the pace of change in medical technology and diagnostics and treatment. It is so rapid that we've seen life expectancy change pretty dramatically, but what happens when we, as we get even better at it, uh, how many women will live to age 100 and beyond. Yeah, absolutely, and then you also have the now increased risk of of a healthcare need because you know you're living that much further, the likelihood is of course greater that you're going to need some form of health care and if that's inflating it nearly 5% a year, that is, I mean, it's a devastating thought. I mean get this bill that I heard this from a Um, from Sarah Gerty, she's the VP of BlackRock, and she and I were talking, and she said that MIT did a study and they had a bunch of retirees in the room and they put a number up on the screen. The number was 1.2 million, and they asked everybody, what do you think this number means? And so everybody was throwing out ideas. This is how much you need to save for retirement, this is that. And they said, $1.2 million is what your first born daughter is financially worth to you. Because of the fact that a woman, a daughter, especially, especially the first born, is most likely the one to bear the burden of caring for her parents, that is what she is financially worth to her family and her parents in retirement, which is crazy. And so if you think like I was just talking to a gal I sat there with yesterday, she doesn't care for her mom for 6 years. And 6 years was a really long time to feel like she had to put her life on hold, and she said my brother was completely useless in the process, and I'm not here to bash a brother, you know what I'm saying, I understand that's because women, women usually that burden falls on. So they said you better have a daughter or you better have a daughter-in-law because the likelihood that you're gonna need some, some form of care and care is so exorbitantly expensive, um, it was just a really interesting statistic that certainly made me go, wow, that's pretty significant. Yeah, and that's, that's true in my family situation, so be nice to your first born daughter. That's the right. If you're going to need them, you're going to need them down the road. And so, you know, so the problem is longevity, people leave, you know, leave the workforce. What percentage of women would you say, if you know the statistic, need to continue to work past age 65 in some capacity because they're they're not quite ready to take on that burden of all of those years of retirement. I don't have the exact statistic to that exact question, but what I do know is over over 50% of individuals, couples think that they're going to work to age 70, and about 25% actually make it because health is the number one reason, about 6, I think about 60%, 62% of those that think they're going to work longer can't, and that's due to health challenges. And so a lot of people have the idea that they're going to work longer and the hope that they're going to, but the actual reality of being able to do that successfully is a lot less. And so it certainly speaks to the fact that we all need to be taking greater responsibility of our current financial picture and what that could look like in the future because we don't know. And we don't know if we're gonna need, you know, some form of healthcare. I mean, a lot of us think that we're, we're gonna be the one that's immune, but 7 out of 10 of us will. So how do we pay for that? Yeah, I think it's really interesting that, well, for instance, AARP developed their whole section of their website called Life Reimagined to help people understand what their opportunities were in this new world of, you know, digital opportunities. It's not just, I don't know, as a guy we always thought, hey, I just want to be that guy that's the starter at the golf course, the guy that sends off the golfers, you know, that would be. The ideal retirement gig, but there's only so many of those jobs. But because of technology and the knowledge culture that we've developed, there are potential opportunities, and I would think that that would be a big part of coming to see someone like you is to say, hey, maybe you should think about what you're going to do if you, if you retire from your, your career. Um, to generate some part-time income because chances are it's not going to hurt to have that. Number one, you know, a lot of people, a lot of people die in retirement because they get bored, right? They just get bored right. Sorry, sorry to you so what you're saying about the part-time job is I had a gal who actually one of the things that she wanted to do was um is was spend some time at Yellowstone, so she came up with this. I think she's a brilliant plan. She got herself a job at the gift shop. And so it allowed her to spend 6 months there, really enjoy actually getting involved in everything that was going on in the community and fully experiencing that part of it, but still having a little bit of income coming in, so she wasn't taking such a drain off of her Social Security and her retirement assets. So I think it's a brilliant way. It's just people need to think outside the box and not just about the vocation that they're retiring. Yeah, and it's so, so the, the job of retirement planning, that the job that you have, it has kind of become a lot more holistic than just thinking about the dollars and cents and the numbers and the products, right? It's, it's becoming a a a person that can help people understand, hey, you're going to enter a whole new phase of life. It's almost like I'm going to help coach you in certain ways, I would imagine um. Yeah, lot of, I call it a money therapist. Sometimes it's like a money therapist or a lifestyle coach. However, back to your original point, um, that type of work doesn't always pay the bills, right? It'd be nice to just be the um the the retirement therapist, but you work with with products and services and advice and planning, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, and it is about taking a holistic approach because I, what I see more often than anything, the biggest thing that we help people solve for is helping to go from looking at the individual pieces kind of like I call it like a microclimate, they're looking at just their Social Security and talking to Social Security and maybe they're talking to the pension provider and then they're speaking with their CPA or accountants and then they're talking to their investment person and then they're talking to the insurance guy or whatever and all these pieces don't work. Collectively and so people often will make a lesser decision because they don't see how the whole thing functions together, and that is the biggest piece about planning that we do. It's to bring clarity to the whole picture to be able to say, OK, all these things I have massed over my life, my income, my, my, you know, my investments, maybe I have a little, you know, term insurance over here and, you know, I've got this house and this rental and a little income. How do all those pieces function together so when we do make Decisions on like when to take Social Security or should I delay it or should I put survivor benefits on my pension if I'm fortunate enough to have one and I, you know, I have a spouse, should we have some survivor benefits or how do all these pieces function together and that is the biggest issue that I see is people are making decisions without understanding how all of it functions together and so they often don't make the best decision because of it, not necessarily harmful decisions, but just not necessarily the best one. I'll tell you my quick analogy is that if you were going to build your dream home, you wouldn't just schedule all the contractors to show up and start building without having a blueprint and doing that planning work up front and knowing, right, it would be a mess. So, so it's very important what you do and tell us in the last couple of minutes we have here, where should women women start in the planning process? What's the first step? Well, I think, I think first, honestly, is it, it, it all depends on the age in which people are. But if we're talking about retirees, it is about sitting down with somebody and figuring out first where in the world am I. Where, you know, I always say it's like going to the, the mall and you're looking at the directory and you're finding the sunglass. You have to figure out first where you are because it doesn't matter where it is if you don't know where you're starting from and so being able to get inventory of the things that you have, um, it's oftentimes much better than a lot of the women I talked to when they say it's, it's bad. I don't think I'm ever gonna be able to retire or they're just real fearful about it. It's, oh, I'd say 95% of the time better than they think. And so just getting a handle of basic inventory of what you have and then how those pieces interplay with one another. That's why holistic planning is so important because there's so many little pieces that go into it and I think for women that that's the biggest thing, um, but I would say probably the even greater caveat that I would say as a woman who's married also to a retirement planner. Nobody else is responsible for your financial security. My husband is not responsible for my financial security as much as I thought he should be. I thought my first husband should be, but I've realized as I've gotten older and certainly the more women that I've talked to, it's not his responsibility. I need to get educated. I need to understand what I have. I need to get the basics down because the likelihood is I will be the last woman standing, and most of the women I talked to will fall in that same category because 80% of men die married and 80% of women die single. So we need to have a good handle on what we have and how it all functions together. It's so important. Yeah, I think that's a lesson. Anybody in the business that's worked with a widow or a widower of someone else that took care of everything and the the shock and surprises that the disorientation that they feel would testify that getting a good, a good handle, a good understanding on the big picture is critical, right, first. And then, then, you know, turning myths into into facts and saying, OK, look, it's not, you're not going to die broke necessarily, but we have to watch your spending along the way. Just because you retire with a big, a big 401k account doesn't mean you're, you're a Rockefeller. You got to be able to, you got to, got to have a good story to tell people who come, come looking for money. So there's there's a lot to do in this area. And unfortunately we can't cover it all in 20 minutes and we're out of time, Arwin, but I really appreciate you coming on. So it looks like to me you have a website that's www.ecker B E E retirement. It's all one word, no hyphens, Becker B E C K E R retirement dot com. And is that the best way for people to access you and your information and what would they find there? Absolutely. So that's we have all of our events. I have all of my events scheduled between now and December 2020. I do 30 women's events a year and we do 8 of our, I guess, mixed couples events. We do those every quarter as well, so those are all on there. And then just some more information about really what we do and how we serve in our community and what we're passionate about, which is ultimately leaving people better than we found them. That's a good creed, and you're in the Bellevue, Washington area, so you do these workshops in and around that, that area, correct? Yep, around the Seattle, let's say around the Puget Town, the Seattle area. Yep. So if someone wanted to call you by telephone, what's the best phone number if they're, if you have a pencil ready, get ready. She's going to give you Arwin's going to give you her phone number. It would be 425-822-8282 4258228282. And Arwin, do you mind if people just call and say, hey, I heard you and uh I wanted to talk to you a little bit about about my situation um uh let me share, share my, you know, concerns or uh my situation for a few minutes. Yeah, not at all. We'll schedule a 15 minute phone call. That's what we do. We have webinar, webinars that are running currently and so that's how we always start. Happy to do it. All right, so if you have a financial question, and especially if you know if you're a female and you're you're concerned about the future, but you don't have to be a female, you could be any, any gender, you could be the male gender even. But if you have questions about, you know, the future and what you're going to do about it, what you need to do about it, give Arwin Becker a call, Becker retirement Group, and we didn't talk about life with Arwen. Can we, what is that? So that is my training company. So I actually train advisers nationwide to give women's events because it's just a very untapped area of the market and yet there are a lot of nuances with it. So I have a full training program of how to help those people to be able to tap into just some underserved people in their community. So life is for ladies inspiring financial empowerment. Ah, OK. All right. And can they find out about that at Beckerretirement.com as well? Yes, they can. All right, a real pleasure to have you on. I hope we'll get a chance to talk again in the near future. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me, Bill. Appreciate it. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio.