PFR-Podcast-20260502_ChangesInRetirementPlanning

Have you ever stopped to think about how much the world has changed over the last 50 years, and how much retirement planning has changed along with it? More importantly, are you still using an outdated playbook without even realizing it? Because if you are, the decisions you’re making today could determine whether your retirement works exactly the way you want, or whether it falls far short of what you expected.

I’m Anthony Saccaro. Thank you for joining us for another edition of the Providence Financial Retirement Show. We are your retirement income source and this is the place where retirees come for income. Really glad that you’re joining us today because we’re going to spend some time walking through some of the most significant changes in retirement over the past 50 years and what you need to know to make sure that you’re staying current and not falling behind.

And of course, we’re gonna take your listener questions along the way as we’ve had several questions that are very relevant to our discussion today. So thank you for taking time outta your day, wherever you might be to join us. And I know you’re going to enjoy the show. When you go back 50 years and you start to think about all the changes that have happened in the last half a century, it’s almost hard to believe.

How did we ever live like that? There were no personal computers. You remember when everything had to be done on paper, all the financial records and budgeting and investing. It was all done manually. You even had to balance your checkbook manually, and of course that doesn’t exist today. There was no internet.

If you wanted to do some research, you had to go to the library, and I haven’t been to a library in many years because everything’s online. Almost all the books in the library, as far as I know, you can just read ’em online. Why go to a library? There were no cell phones. Oh my gosh. How do you live without a cell phone?

It used to be that a phone was tied to a place, right? You’d call someone’s home phone and it had to be home in order for you to talk to them. That was it. And then beepers came along. You remember beepers? Oh, what an annoyance that was. And then cell phones started to get popular. But do you remember the first cell phones, the phones that you had to put a strap on and hang over your shoulder that only the wealthy people could afford?

I mean, it almost looked like you took a payphone right outta the wall and hung a strap on it, and were able to carry it around with you and talk on the cell phone. Oh my gosh. It’s just crazy when you think how far we’ve come with regards to phones, there was certainly no email. If you wanted to write someone a quick note, you had to actually put something in the mail and put a stamp on it.

There was no online banking. Everything was done in person by going to the bank, and you couldn’t just pay a bill by pressing a button. When you used to get gas for your car, there was no such thing as pay at the pump. You had to walk in and actually get gas. I remember when I was a teenager, my mom would give me a $20 bill.

I would walk in, give it to that cashier, come out pump gas, and I would do something that you would never do today with only $20 and that it’s, I would go back and get change. And if you give the attendant $20 today to fill up your tank, it’s not gonna get you more than a quarter of a tank. And the price of things, obviously with inflation has changed as well.

Nothing is going to stay the same forever except for one thing, and that is that there will always be change that’s going to stay the same. As the world changed, though, it didn’t just change, it became more complex. The choices were fewer, there were fewer moving parts, and now there’s more options in every area of life.

And retirement has followed that same path. Essentially, retirements move from a, we handled it for you to a do it yourself mentality. In the old days, systems and institutions generally handled key decisions, but now you are responsible for your own retirement. The speed of these decisions has also changed.

Back then without the technology. Decisions were much slower. There was less of an impact from errors. Now faster decisions are being made and they have bigger consequences, especially because retirement mistakes can be very long lasting. Back then, information was really limited. The choices were a lot simpler, and today when you do research on anything that you’re trying to research, whether it’s retirement related or not, oh my gosh, you can get overwhelmed and often are gonna get a lot of conflicting advice and it requires a lot of filtering from you.

Even life expectancies have changed. The average life expectancy 50 years ago was less than 70 years old. So if you retired at 65 and died by 70, then you had a lot less time. But today, it’s not uncommon for someone to live 20 or 30 years in retirement. And the speed at which all of this has happened really makes it a lot easier to make a retirement mistake.

Because we’re living longer, those mistakes in have a much greater impact, and we’re gonna talk about some of the specific retirement changes that have happened over the last 50 years and what you need to know so that you can be able to avoid them. Before we get into that though, we’ve put together a short animated video that talks about the seven most common retirement mistakes that I’ve seen retirees make over my career.

And how you can avoid them. I wanna send this video to you absolutely free of charge. We’ll email it, but we need to have your email. And if you wanna receive this animated video, all you need to do is go to providencefinancialradio.com/video. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/video. Leave us your information, and in a short time you’ll get this video, so you’ll be able to watch it, and it’s fun to watch too, because it’s animated and it’s short.

It’s only seven or eight minutes, but it’s pretty powerful. You’ll learn in that time what the most common mistakes are that I’ve seen retirees make over my career, and what you need to know to avoid them. To get your free animated video again, just go to providencefinancialradio.com/video and we’ll get it right out.

I’m Anthony Saccaro. Thank you for taking time outta your day to join us. You are listening to the Providence Financial Retirement Show. We’re talking about all the changes that have occurred over the last 50 years, and that includes changes with regards to retirement planning. As I was preparing for the show and really starting to think about all these changes and do a little reflection on my own, the first thing that came to mind is that IRAs and 401Ks and pre-tax type of retirement savings accounts, they didn’t even exist 50 years ago.

You didn’t have all the options of where to save your money 50 years ago. You generally put it in a savings account or CDs, or you put it in some basic stock market investments. There was no structured tax advantage system like we have today, and yet what didn’t even exist 50 years ago is how most people save Today.

Most people have 401Ks, most people have IRAs. Most people have some type of pre-tax retirement account that didn’t even exist 50 years ago. And I know it’s hard to believe, but that’s very true. It’s actually hard to believe that our entire saving system today is built around something that just half century ago didn’t even exist.

And with this change also comes a complexity. It’s a lot harder to figure out today what’s the best way to save because of all these changes. The responsibility also changed from corporations to the individual. It used to be that the majority of corporations or governments would give you some type of a pension.

They had a retirement system in place. They contributed on your behalf. They were responsible for the growth. They were responsible to make sure that when you retired you would be able to live retirement and get the income that you need and the responsibility was on them. But that has changed. And what the advent of defined contribution plans like 401Ks and 403Bs, that responsibility is no longer on them.

It’s on you. That also changed the responsibility of how you withdraw those funds. When you had a pension, you didn’t have anything to think about. At a certain point in time, like 65 years old, you would just start getting an income that you know would last the rest of your life. It was guaranteed now that the responsibility for saving has shifted to you the responsibility of how to withdraw those funds.

That’s also shifted to you. Whereas you never had to worry about running out of income with a pension. Now the biggest fear of retirees is worrying about running outta money, and that’s because it’s now your responsibility and because we’re living longer today than we were 50 years ago, these decisions how to save, where to save, whether it’s pre-tax or post-tax or tax free or not, they all have a huge impact on what the rest of your retirement’s going to look like.

And these are all things that really didn’t have to be considered 50 years ago because it’s gotten a lot more complex, it’s created a lot more confusion, and it certainly makes it a lot easier to make a mistake. And what might’ve been a little mistake 50 years ago because life expectancy was so short, today becomes a big mistake.

And the number of mistakes that you can make in retirement is just about limitless. And that’s one of the reasons that I wrote my book, More Life Than Money. In More Life Than Money, I talk about the most common retirement mistakes that I’ve seen retirees make and what you need to know to be able to avoid them.

I wanna make this book available to you absolutely free of charge, no cost, no obligation. We’ll send it right out to you and you’ll be able to read it to make sure that you’re not making any of these mistakes. And if you are, you’ll learn what you need to know to correct them. If you’d like to get a free copy of More Life Than Money, really easy to do, just go to providencefinancialradio.com/book. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/book. Leave us your information and we will get it right out. You’ll have it show up on your doorstep soon. One more time. To get your free copy of More Life Than Money, go to providencefinancialradio.com/book and you’ll have it very shortly, just in a few days, I promise.

But I know that you’re gonna enjoy reading it.

Thank you for staying with us. You are listening to the Providence Financial Retirement Show. My name is Anthony Saccaro. Really glad that you’re here. We’re talking about all the changes that have occurred over the last 50 years, and that includes changes to retirement planning. We’ve already discussed the fact that 401Ks and retirement accounts didn’t even exist 50 years ago, and yet today everybody has them.

It’s an entire financial system, something that didn’t even exist a half a century ago. You can’t talk about changes over the last 50 years though without also talking about Social Security. If there’s been one place that there’s been really, really significant changes. Social Security is that place. The rules have changed.

Social Security used to be really simple. When your parents were filing for Social Security, they really had one decision to make, and that was when to go to the mailbox to collect the check. Today, Social Security doesn’t even come by check. It’s an electronic deposit into your account. Oh, and by the way, electronic deposits didn’t exist 50 years ago either, right?

Any payments that were owed to you came by a check, and it used to be that you’d go out to the mailbox and look every day to see if that check was there. Well, today that’s not the case today. You’re gonna look at your bank account every minute to see if that deposit showed up. What a big change. Of course, that’s not the only change though.

There’s been a lot of changes in Social Security. One of the changes has to do with this thing called full retirement age. That’s the age at which you could get your maximum benefits. 50 years ago, full retirement age was 65 for everybody. Today, full retirement age for most of you is gonna be around 67 years old, and on top of that, you have some choices today that you didn’t have 50 years ago.

You’ve got the choice of whether you want to take Social Security early or whether you want to take it at 70 years old. Those options didn’t exist 50 years ago. It was just much, much simpler. 50 years ago, Social Security wasn’t taxed. Social Security taxation didn’t come into existence until the eighties.

And all these changes around Social Security have created just a huge level of complexity. You didn’t have any decisions to make 50 years ago, but today you have a lot of decisions and those decisions potentially are gonna have a huge impact on what the rest of your retirement’s going to look like.

And a bad decision could cost you a couple hundred thousand dollars of lost income over your lifetime. You have to think about things like, not just when do I want the money, but you have to think about your longevity and your income needs and spousal coordination benefits. And one decision, one bad decision can affect decades of your retirement income.

And this is all a result of all the changes that have occurred in the Social Security system. This takes us to our first listener question of the day about Social Security. It comes from Alyssa in Laguna Miguel. She wrote in this, I’m 62 years old and I’m trying to decide when to take Social Security. I keep hearing I should wait until 70, but I’m not sure if that’s right for me.

How do you actually make that decision? Well, Alyssa, you are not alone, and it really fits in with everything that we’re talking about here on the show, especially about Social Security. It’s become very complex because 50 years ago you didn’t even have the option to wait till 70. For those of you that might be coming up on Social Security and want a brief primer, let me give it to you right now just so you have a basic understanding.

Your full retirement age, again, for most of you, it’s gonna be 67 years old. That’s the age at which you would get your full benefit. If you take it as early as 62, you’re gonna get a reduced amount, and if you wait until 70, you’re gonna get a much greater amount. That often begs the question that Alyssa is asking, what do I do?

Take it early for longer, or wait until a later date, get less years of Social Security, but get a much larger amount. The answer is, it depends. There is no one size fits all answer. There are many times when I recommend that someone take it as 62. There are also many times that I recommend someone wait until 70 years old.

It depends on things like your income needs. It depends on your marital status. It depends on the longevity that runs in your family. It depends on your other resources. So I can’t sit here, listen and say, you need to wait till 70, or you should have already taken it already, because either of those might be wrong for your situation.

When you really start to dig into the numbers, and again, look at Social Security from a mathematical standpoint. If you waited until you’re 70. You’ll live to 90 years old, you’ll get a whole lot more income than if you were to claim at 62 years old. So generally speaking, waiting till 70 is what usually makes the most sense.

But again, there’s a lot of exceptions. Alyssa, thank you for taking the time to write in the question, and I certainly hope that the answer I’ve given you at least gives you some thought, so you could go do a further analysis if you happen to be approaching Social Security and you have the same question as Alyssa, wondering when to take it, take it early or wait until 70.

I’ve got good news for you. We’ve put together a commission report that’s called Understanding and Maximizing your Social Security Benefits. And when you read the report, you’ll learn a lot of the information that you probably don’t know that will help you make that decision. I’m gonna email you this report. Absolutely free of charge, you just have to let us know that you want it, and you can do that by going to providencefinancialradio.com/report. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/report. Leave us your information and this report will be sent to your inbox and your email very shortly. Go to providencefinancialradio.com/report and you’ll have it soon, but you’ll learn what you need to know to maximize your Social Security benefits.

If you just hopped on Dave for joining us, you are listening to the Providence Financial Retirement Show. My name is Anthony Saccaro and we’re spending our time today talking about all the changes that have happened in the past 50 years, especially when it comes to retirement planning. It used to be a lot simpler, and now today it’s a lot more complex and requires a lot more conscious effort and a lot more decisions, and that means you can make a lot more mistakes because people are living longer.

These mistakes also have a much larger impact on the rest of your retirement, and if you’re not familiar with what some of these mistakes are, you might be making them and not even know it. Unfortunately, though a lot of these mistakes don’t even come to light until you’re in the latter half of retirement when there’s not much you can do about ’em anymore.

We’ve just talked about some of the many changes that have occurred when it comes to Social Security over the last half a century. I wanna shift our attention though to some of the changes that have occurred when it comes to retirement income. It used to be that when you worked for a corporation, you would have a defined benefit plan, and that simply means that your benefit, which is a monthly income for life, a pension was defined.

You knew exactly when you started working, that if you worked there for 30 years or 40 years, how much income you were gonna get when you were retired. And all of the investment decisions along the way and the contributions that was a responsibility of the employer. It wasn’t on you. All you had to do was keep your job and as long as you did that, you kept working for the company, you knew that when you retired you would’ve this guaranteed income for life.

And the pension is what’s referred to as a defined benefit plan. Over time, though regulators have made it increasingly difficult for employers to offer defined benefit plans and because of the strict regulations surrounding these plans and all the liability that employers had, many employers today don’t even offer traditional pensions like they did 50 years ago.

Instead, many employers offer what are now referred to as defined contribution plans. These are things like your 401Ks and your 403Bs. Unlike a defined benefit plan, which would give you a guaranteed income for life defined contribution, plans offer no such guarantees. Plus the investment responsibility is on you, not on the employer.

If an employer messed up when they were managing your pension, it was on them. If you mess up when you’re managing your 401k, it’s on you. And that liability shift is something that has occurred over the last half a century as well. This also changes the responsibility of who is responsible for actually guaranteeing you an income for life.

It used to be that the employer was, but now it’s on you. With the older pension plans, you didn’t ever have to worry about running out of income. It was guaranteed. But what these defined contribution plans. Whether or not you have enough income to last, the rest of your life is gonna be on you. And unlike before where you can never really run out of income nowadays, if you make bad decisions, you could be very well putting yourself in a position to have to worry about running out of income.

And that’s why it’s become the number one concern of retirees even over the concern of dying. Can you believe that? More retirees are worried about running outta money than they are dying, but that’s where we are. Why? Because the responsibility for getting lifetime income is now on you. It’s no longer on the employer.

This is why here on the Providence Financial Retirement Show, we focus on income because the success of your retirement is all about the income, and ultimately how you invest your portfolio is gonna determine how much income you can get and how long it’s going to last. In my new book, More Life Than Money, I spent an entire chapter chapter five talking about how you can turn your portfolio into a steady stream of income, just like the old fashioned pensions.

If you’re intrigued and wanna learn how to get income from your portfolio the right way, the more conservative and safe way you’re gonna wanna read Chapter five. I’ll send you a copy of More Life Than Money, absolutely free of charge. All you have to do is ask for it. You can do that by going to providencefinancialradio.com/book.

Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/book. Leave us your information and a brand new copy of More Life Than Money. We’ll show up on your doorstep in just a few days. To claim your free copy of more life than money. Go to providencefinancialradio.com/book and we’ll get it right out. By reading it, you’ll learn what you need to know to turn your portfolio into an old fashioned pension, just like used to be offered in the last half century.

If you just joined us. Thank you so much for tuning in. Really glad that you’re here. I’m Anthony Saccaro. You’re listening to the Providence Financial Retirement Show. We are your retirement income source, and this is the place where retirees come for income. We’re talking about all the changes that have occurred when it comes to retirement planning.

Over the last half a century, we’ve touched on the changes that have been made with regards to Social Security. We’ve talked about the changes when it comes to pension plans, the fact that the responsibility used to be on the company to make sure you could retire, okay, and now the responsibility is on you.

And we even talked about the fact that 50 years ago, IRAs and retirement plans didn’t even exist with the creation of retirement plans, 401Ks, 403Bs, et cetera, IRAs even. That adds another change that has occurred over the last 50 years as well, and that is RMDs or required minimum distributions.

These plans allow you to put money in tax deferred, which means that you don’t pay tax on the contributions you make in a particular year. But the trade off is that at some point down the road, the government wants their tax dollars, so they’re going to force you to start making withdrawals from these plans.

Claiming those withdrawals as income and now you have to pay tax on those withdrawals. And that is the process that is referred to as required minimum distributions or RMDs. And the fact that RMDs even exist is a change over the last 50 years because 50 years ago retirement plans didn’t exist and RMDs are specifically tied to retirement plans even within the entire RMD concept, though they have changed over the years.

Until recently, it used to be that once you turned 70 and a half years old, you became of RMD age and you had to start taking withdrawals once you were over 70 and a half. But that’s increased now. The age is 73 if you’re going to be 73 and 2032 or before. But if you’re gonna be 73 and 2033 or beyond the required minimum distribution age for you is gonna be 75.

So the RMD age is no longer 70 and a half. It’s either 73 or 75, depending on when you were born. As part of the RMD process, the government determines through a formula how much you have to take, and you are required to take that amount. And if you miss your required minimum distribution, there’s gonna be a significant penalty.

And even that has changed. It was only six years ago that the penalty was 50%. That’s a massive penalty. And the IRS recently changed the rules to where the penalty now is only 25%. And if you correct it pretty quickly, then it might be reduced even down to 10%, but even a 10% penalty on your money from missing a distribution just because you didn’t know that you had to take it or because you took it from the wrong account.

That’s absolutely huge. That’s gonna take us to our next listener question of the day, and it comes from Trevor in Oxnard, and he wrote in this. I have multiple retirement accounts. IRAs, an old 401k, and a rollover account. When it comes to RMDs, how do I know which account I should take the money from?

Well, Trevor, that’s a very good question and it’s a question that I know a lot of our listeners have as well too. It can be very confusing, and not only would you be subject to a 25% penalty by missing an RMD, but you could also be subject to a 25% penalty just because you took the RMD from the wrong account.

So it’s very important that you take the RMD from the right account when it comes to IRAs. Trevor, like you said, you can co-mingle those accounts, so I don’t care how many IRAs you have, you can add ’em all up, figure out what your RMD’s gonna be and take that RMD from any of those IRAs that you want.

When it comes to 401ks, though that’s not the case, you have to take an RMD from each 401k. You can’t commingle them, and you can’t take one RMD from a 401k to satisfy an RMD for another 401k. They have to be taken individually from each 401k, and as I mentioned a minute ago, if you take an RMD from the wrong account, then you could be subject to that 25% penalty because you did not take it from the right account.

Thank you Trevor, so much for taking time to write in that question, and it’s probably a good time to remind you that if you have a question for the show, really easy to ask, just go to providencefinancialradio.com and you can ask your question there. Maybe we’ll get a chance to answer it in a future episode.

Just go to providencefinancialradio.com. If you’re approaching RMD age and you’d like to learn more about required minimum distribution so you don’t make the mistake that costs you 25%. We put together a short but powerful animated video that talks just about required minimum distributions. I wanna send it to you free of charge.

We’ll email it to you, but you have to give us your information, and you can do that very simply by going to providencefinancialradio.com/video. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/video. Leave us your information and we’ll email this video to you shortly to claim your free animated video about RMDs.

Go to providencefinancialradio.com/video and you’ll have it shortly. I’m Anthony Saccaro. You’re listening to the Providence Financial Retirement Show. We’re talking about a lot of the significant retirement changes that have occurred over the last 50 years, and we’ve talked about the fact that IRAs and retirement accounts didn’t even exist 50 years ago.

So that by itself is a huge change. And of course, that brought required minimum distributions, and that’s a big change in itself that we’ve just spent some time talking about. Now that we’ve touched on retirement plans, though, there’s another account that didn’t exist 50 years ago. As a matter of fact, this account didn’t even exist 25 years ago.

And that is the Roth IRA. They’re a pretty new addition when it comes to retirement planning ’cause they were introduced in 97, if you’ve heard the term Roth IRA. But maybe you’re not familiar with exactly what that means. Well, it’s the opposite of what you might be familiar with, which is a traditional IRA.

The traditional IRA and pre-tax retirement accounts allowed you to save taxes when you made a contribution, but then you’re gonna have to pay taxes later with the Roth IRA. You’re gonna pay taxes on your contributions, but it’s gonna grow tax free. You’re never gonna have to ever pay tax on that money again.

And that includes the capital gains and also the income that you’re gonna be able to get from it. In retirement. No taxes ever completely tax free. And that one change gives you a huge myriad of decisions that you have to make. Do you contribute everything to pre-tax retirement accounts and defer your taxes to a later day, or do you pay tax now and put everything into a Roth IRA so that you can have a tax-free retirement, or do you do some of each?

The answers to those questions are just gonna depend on your situation, which is why it’s important to work with someone who understands the rules and complexities so they can guide you depending on your situation. I can tell you though, having been a retirement advisor for 27 years, that my clients who have the most flexibility are clients that have some of each.

It’s usually not all or nothing. And this really gives you the best of both worlds. In retirement, you’ll be able to control your tax brackets, but now you’ll still get some tax deduction while still creating tax free income later as well too. So it really is a good balance. Usually it’s not one or the other.

That can take us to our next listener question of the day, and he wrote in this. Hi Anthony. This is Carlos from San Diego. I’ve been told to consider a Roth conversion, but I don’t understand why I would voluntarily pay tax now instead of waiting until retirement. How do you know if that makes sense?

Well, I think that’s a great point. I have this conversation with many people all the time, and the number one reason why most people don’t even think about Roth conversions is because they have to pay the tax. Now, unfortunately though, you’re gonna have to pay the tax at some point, whether you do it on your own terms now, throughout conversions, or whether you just wait until required minimum distribution age and let the government force your hand.

Let me just give you a couple quick things to think about because as always, it really depends on your specific situation. Oftentimes though, I’m gonna even say most of the times, it’s better for you to be proactive instead of reactive. If you do Roth conversions, now you know how much tax you’re gonna pay, and because of the tax cuts and Jobs act that Trump put into place during his first term, taxes are the lowest they’ve been in many, many decades.

So it’s a great time to do conversions because you’ll pay less tax than you most likely will if you were to wait. On top of that, if your accounts are gonna grow over time and you don’t do a conversion, you’re gonna wind up paying a higher percentage of tax on a bigger amount of money. So converting some part of your funds usually makes a lot of sense and when you do that, you pay the tax now, but the decades ahead of you where that Roth IRA is growing will be all tax free.

It’s a trade off just like everything else. Pay tax now and get tax free income later. Or take a tax deduction now and gotta pay a boatload of taxes later. That’s the trade off. And I thank you, Carlos, for taking the time to write in that question. When it comes to retirement, there are a lot of mistakes that you can make and just kind of poo-pooing Roth IRA conversions because you gotta pay tax.

Now that’s a huge potential mistake. It doesn’t mean it’s right for you, but I think the mistake is not even considering it. But it’s one of many mistakes that you can make. And in my book, More Life Than Money, I talk about the most common retirement mistakes that I’ve seen retirees make over my career.

I want to give you More Life Than Money, absolutely free of charge. You just have to let us know you want it, and you can do that by going to providencefinancialradio.com/book. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/book. Leave us your information and we will get a copy of More Life Than Money right out to you, but you’ll learn about what the most common mistakes are and find out if you’re making any of them that you don’t even know of.

Just go to providencefinancialradio.com/book to claim your free copy and you’ll have it in just a few days.

Thank you for joining us here on the Providence Financial Retirement Show. I’m Anthony Saccaro. We are your retirement income source, and this is the place where retirees come for income because in retirement it’s all about the income. We’re spending our entire show today talking about the significant changes that have been made when it comes to retirement planning over the last 50 years, and we’ve chosen a couple of really big topics and talked about ’em already.

We’ve talked about the fact that retirement accounts didn’t even exist 50 years ago. We’ve talked about some of the changes to Social Security. We also talked about required minimum distributions. And we’re gonna continue our conversation by talking about Medicare and the entire healthcare structure, which has evolved over time as well.

Medicare, although it’s relatively modern, has been around over 50 years. It was introduced in 1965, but key parts of it didn’t exist at that time, and the program has just evolved significantly. One of the things I can think of is that the prescription drug program, which is Part D, that didn’t even come into existence until 2006.

Before that retirees were often on the hook to pay out of pocket for their medications, but Part D solved a lot of that, and it’s really become a core part of Medicare planning. It still involves premiums and deductibles and there’s still gaps that you have to be aware of, but it’s a big part of planning that really only started about 20 years ago.

There’s also Medicare Advantage plans, and this has changed how people receive coverage. It’s an alternative to traditional Medicare, and it often includes bundled services and there’s a lot more choices, but that also means there’s a lot more complexity. Healthcare has actually become one of the largest expenses in retirement, and that’s just because of longer lifespans.

As I mentioned towards the beginning of the show, people are living longer than ever. It used to be 50 years ago that when you retire, you would be lucky to have 10 years in retirement and with such a short retirement. Healthcare expenses weren’t all that big of a deal, but with people living 20 or 30 years in retirement, they become very expensive and Medicare doesn’t cover all those expenses.

Long-term care is another area that has just grown out of control almost over the last 50 years as well too. If you are only going to live 10 years or so in retirement. Long-term care wasn’t that big of a deal, but because of the advent of medical technology and longer lifespans and so on, there are people in nursing homes today that have been in nursing homes longer than a lot of people would’ve been retired just 50 years ago.

And if you’re gonna have a long staying in nursing home, oh my gosh, it could cost you millions of dollars. And that’s simply an expense that you have to be prepared for. And unfortunately, many people think that Medicare covers this expense, but it does not. Another change with regards to Medicare that has occurred is with regards to the Medicare Part B premium.

It used to be that it was one premium, it was $35 per month per person, and that was it. Now it’s based on your income. There is this thing called Irma, which stands for income related monthly adjustment amount. And the higher your Irma is when you file your taxes, the more your Medicare Part B premiums are gonna cost.

And it could cost you $750 per month per person if you are a higher income earner in retirement. And Irma certainly didn’t exist 50 years ago. So again, just another big change when it comes to Medicare. And I personally have found that one of the biggest mistakes retirees make is not even understanding Irma at all.

And of course, that’s a big mistake. But it’s not the only mistake. There are a lot of retirement mistakes that you could be making, and I talk to people day in and day out who are making these mistakes and are not even aware of it. If you feel like you might be making some of these mistakes and you wanna know what the most common mistakes are, well, I’ve got great news for you.

We’ve got an animated video that’s short, but we’ll talk about the seven most common retirement mistakes that I’ve seen retirees make. And what you need to know to not only identify ’em, but also to avoid them. I want to email you this video absolutely free of charge. You’re gonna have fun watching it because it is animated.

It’s only seven or eight minutes, so it’s short. But in that time, you’re gonna learn about the most common mistakes and how to avoid them. If you want us to email you this video, go ahead and make your way to providencefinancialradio.com/video. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/video. Send us your email address and we’ll send it right over.

You’ll have it shortly to claim your free animated video about the seven most common mistakes that retirees make and how to avoid them. Go to providencefinancialradio.com/video and you’ll have it in your inbox very soon. I’m Anthony Saccaro. If you just jumped on, you’re listening to the Providence Financial Retirement Show.

We’re spending our time together today talking about all the changes that have occurred within the last 50 years when it comes to retirement planning. We’ve talked about changes to retirement plans. We’ve talked about changes to Social Security, and we just touched on some changes that regard Medicare, and as I’ve alluded to throughout the show, one of the biggest changes over the last 50 years simply has to do with life expectancy.

People are living significantly longer than they did 50 years ago. It wasn’t common 50 years ago for someone to retire and then pass away within five or 10 years, and that makes planning completely different. But with advances in medicine and lifestyle and healthcare, it’s not uncommon for someone to live 20 or 30 years now in retirement and retirement’s no longer a short phase.

And if you’re gonna ask me what’s the most impactful change that has occurred over the last 50 years, I’m gonna say that living longer is probably the most impactful because it changes the math completely. Your money has to last much longer. As we talked about earlier, companies are no longer responsible for making sure that you have income that lasts for the rest of your life.

That responsibility now falls on you, and if you’re gonna live 20 or 30 years in retirement, you have a long ways to go, a long time to manage your money and a lot of opportunity to make fatal mistakes that really weren’t a big deal if you only had five or 10 years in retirement. The fact that you might live 20 or 30 years in retirement changes everything.

It changes how to file and when to take Social Security. It changes how to handle your required minimum distributions. It also changes whether or not you should be using Roth conversion strategies like we’ve talked about, and it changes how you need to plan for your healthcare costs. Everything is changed and much of that change boils down to the fact that people are living longer.

50 years ago, it was just so much easier. You just had a lot fewer decisions. You didn’t have to figure out when to take Social Security. It showed up at 65 years old. You didn’t have all the complexities of Medicare that you have today. It worked the way it did, and you took it the way it came, and you really didn’t even have to worry about outliving your money because life expectancies were so short.

But all of that has changed over the last 50 years. The responsibility for getting lifetime income has shifted from the company’s responsibility to now. It’s your responsibility. And with all of these complexities, it’s made it very easy to make a mistake. And it’s no wonder why the number one concern of retirees today is running outta money before you run outta life.

Because all the decisions that used to be someone else’s 50 years ago are now all yours. But if you’re invested right, you don’t ever have to worry about running outta money before you run outta life. And that’s why here on the Providence Financial Retirement Show, we focus on income in retirement. The system of Wall Street and Investments does a great job of helping you accumulate your portfolio, but it does a horrible job at telling you what to do when you retire, and how to make withdrawals from your portfolio.

And if you’re invested wrong, then you might have to worry about running outta money before you run outta life. But if you’re invested the way we teach here at Providence Financial, you’ll never have to worry about that. If you’d like to learn more about how to get income from your portfolio that you know you can count on year in and year out, regardless of what’s going on in the world around you, income, that’s dependable.

You wanna learn more? Well, that’s why I wrote More Life Than Money. That’s an Amazon number one bestseller in multiple categories, and you’ll learn what you need to do and how you need to start getting income from your portfolio so that you never have to worry about running out. I wanna send you More Life Than Money, absolutely free of charge.

You just have to ask for it. And you can do that by going to providencefinancialradio.com/book. Again, it’s providencefinancialradio.com/book. Leave us your information and we’ll get a brand new copy of More Life Than Money right out to you. You’ll have it in a few days. To claim your free copy of More Life Than Money, just go to providencefinancialradio.com/book and you’ll get it shortly, but you’ll learn what you need to know how to invest in retirement so that you can get income from your portfolio that you know you can count on.

I’m Anthony Saccaro. I certainly hope you’ve enjoyed today’s show where we’ve talked about many of the major retirement changes that have occurred over the last 50 years. I certainly hope you’ve learned something that you didn’t know before, and more importantly, something that will help give you the peace of mind that you deserve in retirement because that’s why I do this show week in and week out.

Thank you for joining us for today’s Providence Financial Retirement Show. Have a great week everyone. God bless.