261. "We’re in our 40s with nothing saved. Will we be ok?"
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Is it ever too late to get financially successful in your 40s?
I'm in my forties and we've felt broke for a long time. We're constantly trying to make things work.
I feel like our personal finances are in a better place than they ever have been.
Guys, these are two different universes. Talk about being on a different page. What's the deal?
Maybe sometimes we're overreaching and it just never feels comfortable.
If you cannot build up a reserve, you are already in a very dangerous zone.
I would love hundred and thirty thousand dollars a year to retire.
I think it could probably be like eighty to ninety.
Guys, that's like wildly off. To get to $130,000, you need $2.35 million at retirement. That means you need to increase your investments to forty five thousand five hundred dollars per year. If nothing changes in the next five years, what happens to you?
We still are not able to retire.
Is it too late for you to be successful with money? Maybe you didn't get started in your 20s. Maybe you woke up one day worried about money, asking yourself, am I screwed in retirement? Well, today we're getting a look into that very question that tens of millions of people ask themselves because I'm speaking with Sebastian, who's 42, and Hope, who's 48. They've been married for 16 years, they have a nine-year-old son, and they recently both became business owners. Listen to this line from Sebastian's application. Quote. We both made a choice to become business owners, but now we are locked into these choices for the foreseeable future. Raising a kid, running businesses, and paying down debt leaves us with barely any money to invest and has us questioning every purchase.
We mostly ignore it and pretend that it is a problem we'll solve later. Unfortunately, this is a story I hear all the time. A couple will come up against some financial challenge, maybe it's debt, maybe it's high cost of living, and they will simply say, I'll deal with that later. Human beings do not like pain, especially when it's not acute. It's much easier to tell ourselves, I'll just deal with that later. Some dull, throbbing thing on your wrist. That's fine. I'm actually curious to hear from you. Have you ever kicked a can down the road until you just couldn't ignore it anymore? What was that moment where it finally broke? Like the straw that broke the camel's back? Head over to YouTube or Spotify and let me know in the comments.
I read every one of your comments. Now, I'm looking at their conscious spending plan, which breaks down how much they make and where they spend their money. If you want my help with your own conscious spending plan, Plan, join my money coaching program at iWT.com/slash money coaching. Their assets, $674,000, investments, $129,000, savings, $11,000, debt $437,000 for a total net worth of $376,000. I have a lot of questions, so let's get started with Sebastian. And hope. You said something in your application. You said, Sebastian, we've been together for twenty years, married for sixteen, and have only recently started talking about investing for retirement. I'm curious, why did it take you so long to talk about investing?
It never occurred to us before. I wasn't taught that as a kid. Um You guys don't talk about uh investing strategy on date number one or two? No.
We talked about a lot of other stuff on date one or two, but Yeah.
We were too busy thinking about adventures and what we wanted to do with our lives right then.
What does Sebastien and Hope’s current financial snapshot look like?
When was the first time you did have a substantive conversation about money?
Well, the first big time was we were living um in another city and and before moving, we kind of wanted to put together a plan and what we were gonna do next. Um I wanted to change careers. And we needed to plan what the next, you know, ten months uh to a year looked like in that transition. And it was the first time we kind of actually sat down for a whole day and uh like mapped out what we wanted to do, what it would take, what we were able to do. How did it feel? Good. It's actually a tradition that we've uh maintained for the last fifteen years so every every January we Take a retreat together and
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Is it ever too late to get financially successful in your 40s?
0:00–3:34
2
What does Sebastien and Hope’s current financial snapshot look like?
3:34–7:42
3
How does their annual “executive household planning retreat” work?
7:42–26:55
4
Why is Sebastien afraid about his wine‑importing business?
26:55–35:31
5
What motivated Hope and Sebastien to buy existing businesses instead of starting from scratch?
35:31–47:35
6
Why do they feel broke even though the numbers say otherwise?
47:35–1:01:44
7
What retirement income do they need and how much must they invest each year?
1:01:44–1:13:49
8
What concrete changes do they make to their CSP (fixed costs, debt, savings, and guilt‑free spending)?
1:13:49–1:30:09
Speakers
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