Retire with Purpose with Joe Curry

george grombacher 0:00
Hey, what’s up? This is George G. And the time is right, welcome today’s guest strong, powerful Joe curry. Joe, are you ready to do this?

Joe Curry 0:08
Absolutely, George.

george grombacher 0:09
All right. Let’s go. Joe is a CFP CHS he is the president and financial planner with Matthews and Associates, he is the host of the your retirement plan simplified podcast. Joe excited to have you on tell us a little about your personal lives more about your work, why you do what you do?

Joe Curry 0:29
Sure. So on the personal side, I’m married had two young boys, Luis and Harry are four and six. So they keep me pretty, pretty busy, pretty occupied when I’m not working. On the work side, I am a financial planner. Specifically, I focus on working with people approaching or into retirement, which is something that George’s we’re talking a little bit before the show is that I kind of evolved in and transitioned into that space over times, something I really enjoyed doing. I had a previous mentor who I was a succession plan for their business, he had, you know, a lot of clients in that space. So it’s been a lot of fun working in that area. But the reason I got started, I always tell people, I actually got started probably around 2000. So you know, 23 years ago, when I was still actually in high school. Well, my dad’s also in this business, and I can remember him coming home during the.com crash. And he was just, you know, had a proud look on his face. Ask him what was up and you just let me know that he received the client from one of his one of his widowed clients who call them just to say, Lawrence, my dad, Lauren, I just wanted to call him that, you know that, you know, there was a lot going on in markets right now. But you’re the reason I can sleep at night. And so that was really inspiring to me. And I didn’t at that point, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. And you know, most people don’t grow up wanting to be a financial planner. At that point. I was think I was probably still thinking hockey. But that really kind of got me started looking into this business a little bit more. And obviously, 23 years later, here I am.

george grombacher 1:57
I love it. So loosen Harry, do they have skates on right now?

Joe Curry 2:01
Yeah, they’re they’re both playing hockey. So they both started when they were three.

george grombacher 2:06
That’s so funny. I, you know, I told you, I grew up in northern Minnesota. And I think I was probably around that age to pushing a chair around around the ice rink. And it was just a literal parking lot that that they flooded. And that was the ice rink. So

Joe Curry 2:21
and you can do that in northern Minnesota to probably better than where I am here in Canada.

george grombacher 2:26
Maybe I love it. All right. So folks that are that are right around that that retirement age. So you hit 50. And you start really seriously thinking about it. What are what are some of those considerations? It’s, it’s certainly a lot.

Joe Curry 2:42
Yeah, so I mean, you know, when it comes to financial planning, everybody thinks about the the financial side of it. But what we try to do is help people make sure before they get to retirement, they’re thinking about what they’re going to retire to not just retiring from something. And so that starts with a couple things. One is really getting clear on your values, your core values. So a lot of people, they have their core values, and they probably think they’re living in alignment with it. When we look at spending a lot of times people are not spending in alignment with their values. And they’re not even living in alignment with your values. So that’s something where, you know, we have this, you’d call it worksheets, we have a navigator document. But one section really is about helping people identify those core values. And so part of it is just thinking through, you know, what comes to mind when I think of core values, and then we also provide people with a list that they kind of go to after, and then we get them to kind of narrow it down to maybe three to seven. And so this is kind of an important first step. And this could be done for anyone, not just someone approaching retirement, but it’s a good time to do it when people have it because it starts to help you think about what your identity and your purpose is beyond your work, right. And so that’s kind of that next step is figuring out what is going to get you out of bed in the morning when you no longer have to get up to go to work. So when we talk about purpose, a lot of times I think the word purpose really scares people. And they think they have to have, you know, some almost godlike mission for life that they have to carry and live to their last dying days. But really, when I’m talking about purpose, it’s, it’s literally what’s going to get you out of bed, what’s going to get you excited to get up in the morning when you’re no longer working. And it doesn’t have to be one thing, and it could be some some things that are changing. So right now for me, you know, my kind of three priorities, what really is our priorities instead of purpose. My three priorities are my family, my health, and my business. So that’s, you know, where I focus my attention. And when I’m trying to think about how I’m planning my days, my weeks, my years is, I’m thinking about how am I prioritizing those areas, and those are the things that I’m excited about. So it’s no different for someone in my stem. My situation and someone who’s getting closer to retirement is a lot of people have never really thought about that. And all of a sudden, you know, we all heard stories of people kind of, you know retiring, have a bit of a the honeymoon phase, but then all of a sudden, you know, they go into a deeper depression have health issues and you know, sometimes unfortunately, don’t live long into retirement. So that really comes back to having retired from something and not figuring out what’s next and figure that purpose. So really thinking about those things are just as important as figuring out where you are from a financial standpoint, right? Financially, obviously, the earlier you start planning and building towards retirement, the better. But when people are really getting serious about it a few years out, I mean, you don’t want to wait until okay, I’m retiring tomorrow. Now I need to figure out if I can retire, right? So I tell people, at the very least, you know, start a few years out of there getting really serious about figuring out where you are and from your finances. Figuring out what your cash flow is gonna look like in retirement. And so I don’t know George about you, but I have a lot of people might say, I think you know, I can live off of this in retirement. But that’s not the reality once they actually get to retirement start spending money. So what I like to try to do is tell people, you know, let’s figure out what you think the cash flow needs are going to be. And then at least a year ahead, we move basically all your income to a separate account. And we’ll just drip into, you know, a different checking account where you do all your spending the amount you think you’re going to be able to live off in retirement. And we try that for a year or more just to see if it’s working. So before you’ve committed to retiring and leaving your career where you have that income coming in, we have a good idea if you’re, you know, able to meet your cashflow needs. So those are a few things kind of leading up to retirement that you want to be thinking about. Obviously, we could go all day about all the different financial planning pieces, but those are kind of some of the things I feel like people haven’t really given a lot of thought to, that can help as you’re approaching retirement.

george grombacher 6:47
Yeah, those are super powerful. I think that that’s really cool. I love I love the idea of what are you retiring to? Versus what are you retiring from? So many things are just a simple little shift. But that simple shift is so profound in the way we think and what our perspective is. And if we’re not thinking about what it is, I’m going to be doing what what is my purpose? What, what, what, what, what is going to matter to me to make sure that I’m maintaining my health and my relationships and all those things. Well, then I’m just going to miss out on stuff. And no, it’s not going to be optimized.

Joe Curry 7:24
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I mean, some people, they, you know, they just don’t miss a stride and jump right into it. But you know, a lot of people really dedicated themselves to their careers. And you know, for a lot of them has been a bit of a grind, too. And they haven’t really had time to get their head up and think about what’s next. Right? And so all of a sudden, when those days aren’t filled by analysts obligations, it says a totally, totally different situation that not everyone adapts naturally to so given us some thought ahead of time is definitely helpful.

george grombacher 7:52
Yeah, in a lot of ways I can I see myself, you know, when I’m 4044 years old, and whenever I decided to step away from my work, if I do, it’s like, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do? A lot of ways I feel like I’m a beaver, you know, if you threw me in, if you threw me in Manhattan, on on on Wall Street, I’d start building dams. Right. And so all of a sudden, if I’m not if I’m not a beaver anymore, what what what in the world am I get to do?

Joe Curry 8:19
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, for some people, you know, that doesn’t doesn’t have to be retirement either, right? Like a lot of people love what they do. And if you’re productive, and it gives you purpose, and you still have balanced to do other things in life that are important to you, like, you don’t have to retire. That’s a, you know, a word that it’s almost something that some people feel obligated they need to retire when they hit a certain age, but it’s not always the best thing. Right? So and I know I’m probably something like you like I don’t, you don’t see a point where I’m just gonna stop and not being a doing any kind of work, right. So maybe I’ll just do a little bit less work or narrow that the focus of what I’m actually working on. But to me, retirement isn’t a big goal, maybe financial freedom, knowing I don’t have to go to work, but less less so actually stopping.

george grombacher 9:05
Yeah. And I also love the love the practice of I just wrote down trial run for a year, let’s figure out what it is how much you think that you’re going to be spending and try to simulate that.

Joe Curry 9:19
Yeah, yeah. So that’s through experience of working in the space for quite a while, you know, I’ve seen some scenarios where the plans kind of blown up because spending was nowhere close to what we had planned in, right. So that’s me, maybe taking clients word a little bit, a little bit too much with their data a little deeper into it, right. So now we have a little more refined process and helping people figure out what that cash flow will probably look like and then doing the trial run. Ideally, I mean, we do this more than a year out. So there’s still some some time to I guess you could say build more of a buffer or pivot, whatever the case may be, but at least a year out, so that’ll lead You know where you’re at once you once you hit that date?

george grombacher 10:03
Yeah. So the famous, everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the face Mike Tyson quote, and it’s like, is your plan going to survive? It’s collision with reality? And, yeah, a year is great a couple of years is is way better? Because it’s just not going to go the way you expected, though.

Joe Curry 10:20
Exactly.

george grombacher 10:22
That’s funny. That’s not really funny, you know, bad. So you want to be able to pivot and make whatever changes are necessary. In terms of our people, they’re already engaged with you and doing planning is that are they amenable to these things? When you start talking about values, you start talking about these trial runs, as it makes sense to them?

Joe Curry 10:48
Yeah, so you know, it’s interesting, because I’ve been doing this for a while now. So the more recent a client has come on, or our, you know, potential clients we’re working with, are definitely very amenable to all this and implement. So where I have a little bit more trouble getting some buy in is where we didn’t do this in the first place. You know, if we go back a number of years, and we weren’t already doing it, and we tried to go back and add some additional value, put in some, you know, additional strategies and start getting more to the values, that kind of stuff, or I get a little bit more kind of pushback from those older relationships. So I, you know, I have a pretty tight relationship with, from, you know, because we’ve been working together. But change is always hard for people, right? And a lot of times, they feel like, you know what, Joe, you got me on a good track, and I’ll see you I need, we need to make some changes. So that’s not everybody. But that’s where I would get more pushback, anyone who’s coming to work with me today, or has come in the last couple of years. I mean, this is this is part of the process as we onboard as part of the conversation and our initial meetings. So it’s, we just kind of run with it. And no one really knows any different. And, you know, the feedback is has been great.

george grombacher 11:54
Yeah, it certainly makes sense. And being able to have those conversations, is I think, probably intellectually, most of us do have a good understanding of the importance of having core values and to be revisiting these, but it’s one of those things where I know I’m supposed to be doing it, but I don’t necessarily do it, or it’s been a long time since I’ve really thought about it. How often do you how often you always hate to say should? What is a healthy time period to be revisiting all these things?

Joe Curry 12:28
Yeah, so I mean, I think at least annually, probably more often. So we’re gonna have a process to keep that in front of you. So for example, what I have my core values in my office and frame, so I just have in a frame, I printed it off, put it in there, it’s not overly fancy, but it’s in front of me. So whenever I go my office and look at my bookshelf, I see my my core values there. So that’s a bit of a reminder. And then so like you, George has to get up really early in the morning. So I usually take some time to myself to kind of review my goals plan out my week, in part of that process is I have those core values in there, along with some other affirmations and things like that. So that’s kind of my process, I feel like most people are probably not going to review things that much just on average, especially when they never have in the past. So some kind of an annual, you know, planning or State of the Union for the family type of process would be definitely helpful, at the very least right? For clients, it’s something that we keep on we have a bit of like a cheat sheet, I guess you could call it for prepping for a review is kind of keeping all that important information in one place for the clients. And when we keep those on there as well. So we kind of keep it top of mind for our conversations with our clients. And when we’re talking about spending, trying to kind of weave in the values to how they’re planning out their years and their goals, that kind of stuff.

george grombacher 13:45
I appreciate that, in terms of, of identity, and kicked around this in a couple of different ways. It is it is tricky to try to figure out what’s what’s next for me, found with goal setting, I want to have some great future that is pulling me towards it, versus me trying to push through kind of uncomfortable things and push through and any changes that I feel like I must make to actually get to where I want to go. But not everybody is like that. And so I I imagine that you reserve judgment, you’re not making judgments on what it is that your clients are telling you that they want to be doing. If they say you know what, I just want to sit on my butt and watch TV or watch watch hockey every day. And that’s it. But I’m sure you get all kinds of answers.

Joe Curry 14:45
Yeah, so that’s a You’re right. I mean, I don’t give too much pushback. But I try to make sure we’re asking the questions having the conversations. Give me the examples of why it’s important to be thinking about this kind of stuff and kind of guide guide the conversation to see what they have thought I’d have and kind of go from there. So every one of those conversations is a little bit different. And yeah, I’m not going to try to push my values or anything else on anybody else. But it’s kind of like charitable playing, giving. And it’s kind of the same idea those as a conversation I have with any new clients coming in and current clients, and it’s if that’s not something that someone’s interested in doing or planning, that’s fine, but we’re making sure we’re having those, those questions or those conversations and asking the question, so that people are aware of how that could fit into the plan. And so it’s the same idea. And then the process we put into our navigator is it kind of helps people with something they can take away. So again, it’s kind of like a worksheet. And it really just kind of helps people get a framework for how they might put together those, like I said, if your top three priorities, as opposed to thinking of it as purpose, and you know, part of it is just going back to you know, when we’re all kids, we all had ideas of what we wanted to do when we were older, and we had money and all that kind of stuff. And most of us never ended up doing a lot of those things that we thought alright, so that’s a good place to kind of go back to you now you’re gonna have free time you have financial independence. So are there things that you’ve always wanted to do? You’ve never done? And for a lot of people, I just say, you know, what, what about just trying to think of one of your priorities as just figuring out what you want your priorities to be right. So just experimenting, trying new things, and seeing if something sticks, right, maybe some volunteering and some new activities, maybe a side hustle, or whatever it is, but just kind of trying different things. And that can almost be that priority, or that purpose, or one of those to get you motivated, that might lead into some other things in the future.

george grombacher 16:39
Yeah, I think that that’s awesome. It’s like asking people what, what’s most important to you like, woof, that’s tough. But if you said, You know what, from from your physical health standpoint, what is most important, oh, I’d like to be able to play with my grandkids, I’d like to be able to go for a good go hiking. So I think we all have kind of passing ideas, but just helping people to drill down and realize what’s kind of possible help probably helps people organize their thinking.

Joe Curry 17:05
Yeah, yeah, I mean, just like any kind of conversation, we start guiding, and narrowing this discussion a little bit, then starts giving people more specific ideas, and they can actually relate to it and come up with some of their own ideas. I

george grombacher 17:18
mean, with with, with my kids, the last thing I want is for them just to be disinterested. And I suppose, with my, with my parents, and maybe with your parents, and certainly with clients, it’s, you know, I want to make sure that you’re having a rich life, and you’re doing all the things that you want, I just don’t want you to be sitting around, you know, sort of, for lack of a better term wasting away. So helping people to have these kinds of conversations, I think is so valuable.

Joe Curry 17:45
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it just depends on everyone’s background, and, you know, kind of their life journey. But for some people, this kind of stuff comes natural. And for others, it’s just something that’s never been on the radar, they haven’t really thought about it, because they’ve always had those kind of priorities almost determined for them that they’ve been chasing. And so this this next stage of transitioning into, we’ll call it financial and time freedom is a whole other world that have really haven’t considered how they’re gonna figure that out.

george grombacher 18:16
Yeah, fascinating, right. And everybody’s different. So, for sure. I think you have job security for a while, Joe. Yeah. The demographics are looking good for retirement planning. For sure. I love it. Well, Joe, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can people engage with you?

Joe Curry 18:35
Sure. So we have a new website, which is basically all retirement planning, type education, it’s retirement planning simplified.ca. You can also find me on LinkedIn at Joseph curry, BSC CFP, and those are probably the two best places and I guess maybe the last one would be my podcast your retirement planning simplified.

george grombacher 18:56
Beautiful. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, show your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to retirement planning simplified.ca Check out all the great resources that Joe’s put together. If what we’ve talked about is resonated get in touch take advantage that retirement navigator process that we’ve been talking about find Joe on LinkedIn which I’ll link in the notes as well and then check out the your retirement plan, simplified podcast wherever you listen your podcasts. Thanks again, Joe. Thanks, George.

Joe Curry 19:29
It’s been fun. Until next time,

george grombacher 19:31
remember, do your part. Doing your best

Transcribed by https://otter.ai