Today's episode is a client story. Now, I apologize in advance because the audio is not as crisp as my other episodes because I recorded it while driving. And when I was driving, I didn't have my microphone on me, but I wanted the message to come across in the state of mind I was in as opposed to waiting until I got home. So with that being said, I hope that you do enjoy this episode. It was one of my favorites to record.

And I hope that it makes you feel a whole lot more confident about your retirement. Let's hop right in.

So I'm driving right now and I'm thinking about my current client. And a lot of you are familiar with this concept that when you do retire, even if you're listening to this and you're one year out or three years or five years or 10 years, you're going to want to retire from something to something. It's a pretty fairly simple concept, not rocket science. But right now, a lot of you are stressed out, and I know that because when you download my ebook, you tell me. You say, yep, Ari, I am stressed out right now because of my boss or because of deadlines or because I don't know how long my health is going to be in the current state. And so I just want to make sure I'm retiring in a good position where number one, I won't run out of money. And number two, I'm optimizing. I'm not leaving anything behind. I'm like, okay, I hear this fairly often. So a client comes to me and we've been working together for about three years now and when they first came

to me they were scared to death to retire not because they weren't financially in a good position

they were coming to me going I don't know what on earth I'm going to do when I retire I'm like okay

if I forced to retire tomorrow what would you do and they went I really don't know and I said why not

they said well I put so much time and

energy into my current role that I actually feel disconnected from all other aspects of my life.

And all I said was yes and. And I stopped. I said, yes, and. And she really didn't know how to respond to that.

And the reason I did it that way is I wanted her to just dive into this.

Now, I'm not a financial therapist by any means, but I love optimizing numbers and tax strategy,

and you guys know this by now. But I had to get to the deeper point of what it is that she's

really looking for. Because if she retires and then is more miserable because now she's like,

what do I do with my life

then there's an argument to keep working but I find most people fall in the boat of the danger of

just continuing to work one more year they go I'm just going to wait for one more bonus I'm going to

wait six more months or one more year or I've got a million bucks just wait till I have two million

then I'm done or three million and they just keep moving the goalpost back because it's really hard and really scary to think

about what am I going to do if no longer I have this identity that I'm an engineer or that I'm a

doctor or that I'm you name it. So this is not woo-woo why I'm bringing this up. I'm bringing this up

because a lot of you want to retire

from those deadlines, from a boss, from waking up early, from commuting, from all these things that you tell me. And I want to keep this latehearted and fun. And so some of the responses that I do get are, all right? I can't wait to pee. You know, right now I just don't have the ability to go to the bathroom when I want to. And some people are like, I just can't wait to get off my headset.

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