Kate Phelan

You may have your Scott, I think, calls them the golden years of retirement where you're out and you're traveling and you're doing stuff.

And later in retirement, you're probably not able to.

Now you've got medical expenses, things like that.

So that's a lot to think about all at once, which is why I like to sort of, you know, zoom back to what am I doing right now?

I need to make some choices about what I'm doing long term.

And then know that that's a journey and that's going to change along the way.

Having a financial plan is super helpful to help you get rooted in that and just know what your picture is.

But I think when you can balance that you have short and long term priorities, it makes it feel a little bit more achievable because you don't have to achieve everything all at once today.

It is truly a journey.

into the idea of calculating your own mortality like not my most favorite activity it's an important point though right it's expensive now it's probably going to get more expensive and if you do end up in a situation where you're retired for a very long time your expenses are going to change and things like what is it going to cost if i'm not well for part of my retirement i'm

then you need to think about that.

And it's not as easy as just saying, here's what it will cost, right?

There's not a straight line formula that you can apply.

And because of the way that we're seeing, particularly in these younger generations, this much less linear and consistent way that people are working and living their lives,

you can apply that to the way that you look at retirement as well.

So I think the bottom line is that you have to account for it, especially now with the kind of longevity that we're seeing.

You have to think about the fact that your healthcare expenses are almost certainly going to be a part of that analysis.

So first off, I'm really sorry about your house.

What we saw in LA earlier this year was just gut wrenching.

At the risk of sounding a little bit like a negative Nancy, my best advice when it comes to these kinds of things is you have to accept that bad things are going to happen.