I want to tell you about a conversation I have probably more than any other in my career as a

financial planner. Someone walks in there in their late 50s, early 60s, and we see that they

saved well, they've invested well. When we run the numbers, everything checks out. They could

retire today. But then they say the following, I'm going to work for one more year just to be safe.

But about one year becomes two, two years becomes three, three years becomes five, and by the time they finally retire, something shifted. And it's not their portfolio balance that shifted. It's them, their health, their energy, their vitality to do the things they actually wanted to do in retirement in many ways has passed them by. So today I want to actually show you the math of working one more year.

So let's compare these two scenarios because there's not a one side fits all solution.

But once you run the numbers for yourself, I think you'll see very clearly whether that one

more year truly is worth it or whether today is the time to call it.

Let me tell you about a couple that I'm going to call Mark and Carol.

Both Mark and Carol were 60 years old.

They had about $1.5 million in their combined 401 accounts, and they had another million

dollars in a brokerage account that they had saved up via bonuses and some stock that invested.

He had been in engineering management for the past 30-plus years.

She left her career early to care for her aging parents, and they were at the point where both of them were feeling a little worn down, feeling a little tired and ready for that next chapter. Before telling them, of course, whether they could retire or not, we first had to get a very clear sense on what did they want to spend in retirement. We went through all their expenses. We understood what an ideal retirement it would look like for them. We understood what travel would look like, what family time would look like. And all that came out to $95,000 per year. When we compared that $95,000 to what they were currently spending, it all checked out. So we felt very confident that that was the actual number that would allow them to do what they wanted to do. When I ran their plan, they were in great shape. Everything checked out, but here's the thing. Every year, Mark came up with a new reason to stay, whether it was a market downturn, or, you know what, let's wait to see what happens in this election cycle, or you know what, it couldn't hurt to wait around for one more year to get one more bonus. There was always a reason to stay.

Sound familiar? Maybe you've experienced that same thing. So here's exactly what I did. I said, Mark and Carol, let's work one more year. In fact, let me show the numbers. Let me run the map to show you what that will actually do for you. And as I do that, let's be very clear about one thing. The math for working one more year is very compelling. They were going to be adding another $60,000 between 401K contributions, 401 matching contributions, between saving a portion

of their bonus, $60,000 was going to be going to their portfolio. $2.5 million, assume they even just

got a 5% growth rate on that, that's another $125,000 that their portfolio

would be growing by. So you take those two numbers and $2.5 million is getting closer to $2.7 million.

Not just that, that's one fewer year that they're spending $95,000 from their portfolio.

It's one fewer year that their portfolio has to support all their needs until social security starts.

So you can start to see here how all the numbers made a ton of sense for them to keep working if the numbers were all we cared about.

But here's what I said to them. I said, Mark Carroll, this looks so much better.

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