In this episode, we sit down with Mike Richardson, former SVP and CTO of Nationwide, who retired at 55 to embrace a fulfilling second act. Mike shares his inspiring journey of building a financial plan, navigating early retirement, and redefining purpose. Learn how he transitioned from leading large tech teams to mentoring others as a financial coach, volunteering, and pursuing personal passions. Whether you're planning your retirement or seeking insights on financial confidence, Mike’s story offers practical advice and inspiration. Tune in for strategies, reflections, and lessons for your own journey toward financial independence.
Opener (00:00):
This episode is brought to you by the Boldin Financial Planning Platform, formerly NewRetirement, create a financial plan for free at Boldin.com.
Steve Chen (00:00):
Welcome to the Boldin Your Money Podcast, where we share real stories and practice strategies for building financial confidence and achieving your goals. Today I'm excited to introduce Mike Richardson, the former SVP and CTO of Nationwide, who made the bold decision to retire at 55 and has since joined us at Boldin part-time as a financial coach, which we're going to talk about. And in this episode, Mike's going to share how he built his plan and built the confidence to take the step to retire and how he's investing his time in retirement and some of the strategies that he's pursuing and using to stay confident. And then for all of us listening, hopefully this is helpful as you think about your own lives. And so with that, Mike, welcome to our show. Appreciate your time here.
Mike Richardson (01:06):
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Steve Chen (01:08):
So to get started, we kind of like to let our guests introduce themselves and could you kind of give us a quick few minutes synopsis of how you got to where you are today over the course of your life?
Mike Richardson (01:19):
Yeah, absolutely. So I'll start with just a little bit of a personal background because that'll be relevant for the conversation that we have going forward here as well. So I am 56 years old. I will be 57 this year. I'm married to a wonderful lady named Jennifer. We have five children, all of them are adults. There's a couple of them that are still working their way through college. Three of the kids are from my first marriage and two from Jen's. My first wife passed away in her early forties from cancer back when the kids were pretty young. We live in Ohio actually here in Columbus. I went to Michigan, Jens, Ohio given the Ohio State thing that just happened. I call it the thing that happened. It's been quite energetic in the house for her. But anyways, I was born and raised in Ohio, which actually has shaped part of the way that I think about our finances as well.
(02:11):
And what I mean by that is that I grew up in Toledo in the mid seventies, and if you know anything about that area, it's effectively a suburb of Detroit. And particularly at that time, the Toledo economy went as the Detroit economy went, which went as the auto industry went. And my stepfather owned an auto parts store at the time. So there were a lot of boom years and a lot of bust years that we saw. And part of my financial philosophy that I grew into over the years was rooted into be prepared for the bus when they happened because for us, they were always inevitable from a career perspective. I had a long career in technology, but it actually didn't start that way. I graduated from Miami of Ohio back in 1990 with a degree in economics and a minor in Spanish. I had a job all lined up when the economy turned and all of a sudden my offer was rescinded and I had no job.
(03:12):
So I was telling my story of Lowe to one of my friends from economics. She said to me, I'm going to work for Anderson Consulting. I didn't even know who they were. I said, who are they? She says they do computer stuff. And I said, I know nothing about computers. And even less, the only computer class we ever took was Lotus 1, 2, 3, literally. And she said, well, I have a job and you don't. And she was right. So I called down to the Cincinnati office of Anderson Consulting and asked if they were still interviewing and the lady said, we have one last position if you want to drive down, but we're not doing campus interviews anymore. So I wrote down to Cincinnati, I met with the HR lady, I met with one of the partners, and literally halfway through the conversation, the guy waves his hand at me and says, well, you seem smart enough.
(04:05):
And that's how my career in technology began. Talk about your random incidents. So I went to work for Anderson, spent about four years with them. I left to get my graduate degree from the University of Michigan. Spent two years getting my MBA, did an internship in between over at Kellogg's corporate tax department, then decided coming out of graduate school to go to work for Cooper's and Libr and Audit. I did that for one year. I was a horrible auditor. Did not like it. So I decided I needed to head out. So I went back to technology because I liked the dynamicism of it. I joined IBM held a number of positions over the seven years that I was with them, ultimately making associate principal and then left IBM to go to work for Nationwide where I spent 18 years. And I led a number of organizations early on and ultimately moved into some CIO positions including for enterprise applications, the personal lines business, the financial services business. And then my last position was as the chief technology officer for an enterprise organization where I held organizations like our enterprise data office, enterprise technology strategy, and other enterprise level organizations upon which I retired in June of 2023.
Steve Chen (05:17):
Nice. And here you are today. Awesome. Here I'm today, by the way. It's great hearing your story. So my grant on my mom's side, my grandparents were from Toledo, Ohio, and so we used to go there. Yeah, my grandfather was an engineer, he was a civil engineer. And anyway, he lived all over the place. But it was kind of interesting. I do remember I didn't at the time, I didn't appreciate that it was part of Detroit, but I mean it was a good town and it's kind of cool that we have that overlap. And also I think it's interesting how people's family histories in form how they behave. So people that were born during the depression or afterwards and experienced that they're way more or lived through it and are super frugal. And I think the same thing like the millennials, I think a lot of them had experienced kind of a 2008 kind of draw down. And so that informed their experience, but also their earning power. And it affects how you live your life to some degree.
Mike Richardson (06:05):
It leaves a mark on the way that you think about things and what you prepare for and what you don't. I absolutely agree with you.
Steve Chen (06:11):
Yeah. Growing up in Rochester, your experience with the auto industry was our experience with Kodak, where Kodak blew itself up after being around for 130 years or something and owning imaging. But instead of thinking, Hey, we're an imaging company and digital imaging is here, they were like, we're a chemical company. We make a lot of money selling chemicals. Let's keep selling chemicals. They actually had the patents for all of the digital imaging stuff and could have pivoted, but as an example of unfortunately the innovators dilemma where they couldn't get away from how they viewed themselves and ended up
Mike Richardson (06:48):
How you consider your business and how you think about what you knew that for your business, you could be too broad, you could be too narrow, and they both have risks to 'em. Yeah,
Steve Chen (06:58):
A hundred percent. So I'm curious why, I mean, retiring at, I think you retired at 55, right? So that feels pretty young. Why did you take that decision when you're probably at the peak, in the peak of your earning years?
Mike Richardson (07:10):
Yeah, there were really two considerations. I guess the first, and this happens for many people, I already spoke to Amy's passing so early, my dad passed away in 2022. So that gets you thinking, how much time do I have left? And we all go through that conversation with ourselves and that just got me to thinking, Hey, how much time do I have left? Do I have that much more related to technology that I want to do? And the way that I've described it to others is my answer was no. It's time for me to think new thoughts and do new things. And that's exactly what I'm doing. Partly as a coach with Boldin at this point, partly as I'll speak to later as an a RP tax aid, just doing things that are different than what I had done for so many years between considering my own longevity and what might be or what might not be, plus that sense that I've done what I wanted to do in technology and I'd like to do something different.
Steve Chen (08:12):
Was it difficult to walk away? I mean, you have an influential job lot of, and there's a whole social aspect and we do some more of a nationwide too, and it has a strong good culture and community. Was that tough to leave behind?
Mike Richardson (08:27):
Yeah, somewhat. And the reason I say somewhat is because that culture, you make a lot of friends. So it's a very friendly culture and they had a lot of friends. Now has it really impacted me one way or the other? Not so much because I do stay in touch with many people from Nationwide and I have other connections that make up for the gap, I guess, that I had for so many hours for every day over so many years. So I was worried about it, but it hasn't played out to where I feel levels of loneliness or anything like that. But I will tell you, it is a go forward concern for all of us. It's easy to say no, I'm still good 18 months into it, right? 15 years could be quite different. So I think that's part of why you have to be purposeful about the relationship side of things, and I'm trying to do that by maintaining some of the relationships with Nationwides and others.
Steve Chen (09:22):
Yeah. When you think about it, so you did retire to something, right? You're doing the a RP tax stuff, you're doing some work with coaching. I know you're writing a book and you've got your leadership stuff. Do you chunk it up into blocks like, Hey, for the next five years it's going to be like this and then I'm going to do that? Or how do you think about your time?
Mike Richardson (09:40):
I have chunked it into the first approximate five years. I have nothing beyond that because I want to do different things. I don't know how long I'll do any of these individual items that I'm doing right now, but I know I want to do 'em for a little bit. I'm enjoying it. I like the idea of the freedom of saying it's now time for me to do some other type of volunteering that I would enjoy. I look back, even all the way back in high school, I volunteered and was, oh, what do you even call 'em? It was one of the orderlies that pushed the patients around to the different rooms that they needed to go to. I'm like, I could do that again, other than picking up the illnesses, which would be so great at this point in life. But even that felt very useful and helpful, just part of what I'm looking for in my retirement. So I'll continue to do those things, but I expect them to evolve.
Steve Chen (10:37):
Yeah, it's interesting. You go from this world of nationwide, you do work that could influence hundreds of thousands or millions of people and now you're kind of, well, I guess through the book writing you can do that, but individual service, when you're actually helping the end person, you can see and hear them and be in contact with 'em, it's pretty different. I guess that's intentional.
Mike Richardson (10:57):
Yeah, it is different, but I enjoy it very much.
Steve Chen (11:00):
That's awesome. Alright, well I want to chat a little bit more about how you approached it. I mean, you're obviously technical and thoughtful and quantitative. As you were thinking about whether to retire and when and just how to get ready. How did you approach that problem and how far in advance did you think about it?
Mike Richardson (11:18):
Yeah, so well, I'll answer the last part first. I'm thinking about it for a long time. So I am a planner, I am a preparer. Jen is as well. So our natural approach to things is to plan them out, to try to consider what might happen in the future, good and bad and to be thoughtful about it, but the confidence to actually retire. I think for most people it has two components to it. You've got the financial confidence component and then the non-financial component for us and the financial component, there's confidence for multiple reasons. The first is that Jen is still working. She works for Discover. She doesn't have to, she could stop at any point if she wanted to, but she's enjoying her work. She likes the culture, she likes the people and she'll consider each year whether she wants to continue progressing and doing the work that she's doing or when it's her time to think new thoughts and do new things.
(12:19):
Just hasn't gotten there for her yet. So the fact that she's working gave a level of confidence, although it's not the source of the confidence, we were lucky enough to have pensions with Nationwide. So that gives a level of confidence. Social security, I still believe there'll be a good level of social security there. Even though we won't take our pensions until we're 65, she's a couple years younger than I am. The pensions and social security will still cover the majority of what we need for our must spend dollars. Even with inflation and no cola side to that, it'll still cover quite a bit. So knowing that we have those two legs of the stool, knowing our numbers that we know what we spend every month and track to that and knowing our lifestyle forever and ever, we have lived below our means. That was one of the things that I learned growing up.
(13:08):
One of the things that she learned growing up below your means and save that difference. So knowing your numbers, whether you use Quicken or spreadsheets, certainly get to the Boldin planner if you want the accurate view of taxes and inflation that most people don't account for within their spreadsheets and so forth, but know your lifestyle and you can build up some confidence there. And I guess the last financial component was that we had all the buckets covered, meaning we had the kids' school covered, felt like we've got good contributions to HSAs, the emergency fund is covered. So all of the basics gave us that confidence, which from a financial perspective, we talked about this in a minute, if you want led to the how do you cover all of your like to spends and the other,
Steve Chen (13:56):
Your must spend is covered by guaranteed income or at least today it sounds like Jen's working, there's some income there. Maybe. Are you drawing down any of your savings right now to bridge yourself or are you just able to live on one income?
Mike Richardson (14:09):
A little bit of draw down for certain things like when we take a vacation with the family or that type of, but for the most part we're able to live off of the one salary we've been saving and I'll talk about the house that we're building and just a bit, but trying to save and spend for that more so than for other things. But yeah, that's the financial component. If I could hit just one other thing to the non-financial pace of confidence goes a little bit to where you started, Steve, which is hey, how you maintain those relationships and you're with a lot of people all day long and then there's nobody. I'm at work and it is a very emotional decision. Those people that have done it know and it's not just about those dollars, but you think about it was very busy for a lot of years, what am I going to do? And you said it earlier, if you're retiring to something and not just to go do another set of activities, but something that gives you purpose, then I think that bridge is a lot easier than if you're retiring to go sit on the couch perhaps because you're just done.
Steve Chen (15:13):
Do you have friends that have retired or are you ahead of your friends?
Mike Richardson (15:17):
There are a couple. I'm a head of a number. I have a couple that are older. Jen actually calls us the retirement club. We'll make the random trip up to the NFL Hall of Fame or go bowling and do lunches or beers or whatever. Yeah, there's a small contingent, a couple more that are on their way to retirement pretty soon that'll expand that.
Steve Chen (15:37):
And are those folks pretty intentional you they're thinking about, are they thinking about the same way you are or are they, are some of the merchant retiring, chilling out?
Mike Richardson (15:46):
I would say it's actually about a 50 50 split. So yeah, there are some that are very much, no, I'm just done and I have enough hobbies. We can play pickleball all day long or whatever it is that they're going to do. As we have our conversations, I'm always talk to me in five years and we'll see. Because again, some of these are people that have had very high level positions on the go 24 7, just always something happening. So I'll wait to see how they engage their minds as well as their hobbies.
Steve Chen (16:20):
Yeah, for sure. Back to your household, how does Jen decide every year? Is it just like I'm satisfied with work or is there some other, does she have a set of criteria that she's thinking about?
Mike Richardson (16:33):
If she has a particular set, I'm not aware of it. The conversation tends to be more along the lines of I'm happy, I enjoy what I'm doing. With the Capital One purchase of Discover, there's a lot to very, she's in technology, so a lot of very interesting technology work that needs to occur. She's a wonderful leader, so she has the relationships and the approaches with her team members and growing them while she works with great people who are growing her. So I don't know that she has specific criteria as much as just when she's ready to say, I want to do something different, she'll call it.
Steve Chen (17:08):
Did it change the dynamic in your household having one person retired and one person working?
Mike Richardson (17:13):
What you trying to say? Steve, am I hard to get along with? I'm just curious. Do I need to read into your question?
Steve Chen (17:21):
No, I'm just curious.
Mike Richardson (17:23):
No, I don't. No, actually because of the other things that I'm doing and we've even said had I still been working, the new build of the house that we're doing would've been infinitely harder for the number of times that I've had to run over there and meet with the builder or do something real time that I couldn't have done had I still been working. No, I have enough that's keeping me going during the day that it keeps our stories fresh for one another. Right, where you still get to talk about your day because there's enough variety. We haven't hit that stage yet.
Steve Chen (17:56):
Got it. Can we zip back to the dollars and cents side of this? So I was, as we were prepping, we've talked about how you're planning to do income and you're decumulating a bit right now from your assets, but just for our listeners, how you're investing at your age and where you're going, can you give us a little color on how you think about that?
Mike Richardson (18:17):
Yeah, absolutely. So first, just a moment on how we approached it leading up to the retirement, right? So first and foremost was save and don't touch it. Invest that money and don't touch it for retirement. Invest that money for the kid's school and don't touch it. Live below your means. With that. For all of the years of investing, we were aggressive. It's all been in stock funds in the 4 0 1 Ks and the IRAs, not individual stocks to any great degree not in bonds, did target some tax diversification by getting into some of the dollars in the 4 0 1 Ks and Roth contributions than traditional contributions and really just stayed the course over the years. So a relatively, I would say aggressive, but vanilla approach to trying to accumulate wealth coming into age 55, everything was still invested heavily in stock funds across the various accounts. And it wasn't until just last year that I pulled out a chunk of money into a cash bucket.
(19:29):
So basically a money market within the 401k saying, when I look forward, if we need dollars between the ages of 62 until we get to 65 and start to take our pensions and whenever we will decide social security later when we take that, if we need dollars, I want those dollars to be safe. So we're lucky enough that we've had two incomes and good stock market returns, so was able to pull out a chunk of dollars and are just keeping that, not even investing that in bonds because I don't want to see the ups and downs of the bond values as that occurs. So keeping a portion in cash is bucket one and all the rest is in stock funds.
Steve Chen (20:09):
How much time did you essentially hedge out by taking, moving it to dollars? Three years. So you took three years of income and you're like wonk, I've got it set aside. Okay.
Mike Richardson (20:21):
Plus a SCO just to be safe.
Mike Richardson (20:23):
SS
Mike (20:26):
Scot, just a pinch more, right? Just to be safe with it and then I'll look to do the same effectively as we approach 65, we'll see where the stock market is between 60 and 64. We start pulling out and putting some more into a bucket, have some of that available as we might need it to be on the pensions.
Steve Chen (20:45):
Well, it's interesting and now especially with higher interest rates, you feel like at least you're getting some return. It's not like you're getting 0.5%, you might be getting four or 5% on your cash. So
Mike Richardson (20:55):
Exactly the decision I believe would be different if we were still sitting at half a percent interest relative to the four and a half you get on the money market.
Steve Chen (21:04):
Got it. And if you use this money, if you eat into that three years, do you then replenish it? Are you keeping it three years essentially in cash?
Mike Richardson (21:13):
It's A TBD quite honestly. So right now what I figure is it allows us to sleep at night knowing that if we had a need for three years, 62 to 65 because we have enough, keep us going up to them, we have enough, keep us going longer, but get that money safe and we don't worry about it. It's not a true bucket strategy of trying to have the three buckets and then replenish number one. What I'll do is we'll talk about it, is we get into our sixties and say, do we want to pull more? How do we feel about it? What are we seeing within the market? But we'll do something. I'm not just solely targeting three years, we felt like five was the right answer at that point we pull
Steve Chen (21:52):
Five. Interesting. Do you expect to continue to grow your net worth over the rest of your life?
Mike Richardson (21:59):
Yes. Again, when I talked about knowing yourself, knowing your spending habits and even your personality styles, what you do, I'll talk about this a little bit. If we talk about the house a bit more too, we just don't spend to the level at which we saved and what that growth will be. And when you've got pension, social security, you don't have to use all those dollars. You can if you want to, but it's just not how we tend to live.
Steve Chen (22:25):
I mean this is true of a lot of people in our community and not just us, but people that retire and have money, they keep building wealth. I just talked to Fritz Gilbert on the podcast and he's six years into retirement, same thing. I think he retired in his mid fifties now he is in his early sixties actually. He might even be younger. But anyway, six years in, he's got a higher net worth. Now grant, we're in the middle of a great stock market and all that stuff, so we'll see. But it's interesting to think that you've got the guaranteed income, you don't use too much more, and then you have this nest egg that through the power of compounding, you're probably seeing great things happen with to have that orientation. Right?
Mike Richardson (23:03):
But this is why. So here's a good plug for the planner here for you. This is why I like that max spending feature because I do go out and I look at the max spending and say, yeah, we could spend that much more if we wanted to. And then Jen and I'll say, what are we going to spend it on? And if anything, it's on the experiences, we'll give some more money to the kids while we're still alive and watch them be able to enjoy it. We'll pay for the family vacations. It's not in us to just go buy a boat. We're not boaters, do that kind of thing. So there's the growth and we enjoy what we do and we enjoy our time, but it doesn't cost us that much more to enjoy what we happen to enjoy.
Steve Chen (23:48):
No, that's awesome. That's good to hear. When did you start saving money? You're in the generation. We're in the same generation where the 401k was just getting created and actually many people don't have pensions. I don't have a pension. My dad had a pension or house a pension. Pension. You were doing the tax stuff, you kind of got educated financially early or you just knew to do this.
Mike Richardson (24:11):
I always had the interest in it since college, right, since my days as an econ major from that grew an interest in personal finance as well. And I don't know exactly when I started reading Kiplinger and Money Magazine. Remember Money Magazine when that was still around Kiplinger. I still have the subscription. I read it every month, right? Nice. The retirement report, the investing for income report. But I just built that awareness early and a little bit of fear goes a long way. And as I said, there were many years growing up where there was fear. You don't have enough money in certain years and it so you'll work hard to avoid that feeling. And that's what I did. So I learned, and to answer your question around the time it was in my late twenties that I started, started just putting a little bit of money away, a little bit more money away a little bit. And most people you see that savings balance grow and that feels good. So you keep doing it.
Steve Chen (25:14):
And how about investing? Were you, there's saving and then there's investing.
Mike Richardson (25:18):
Yep. Started with saving through all of the reading, making sure the typical things. Again, there's a relatively vanilla approach, which was make sure you get your emergency savings in place and the two types of emergency savings. The emergency savings of, oh, I got to pay for my car that just broke down. Or the kind of emergency savings, which is, Hey, I just lost my job and I need six months worth of savings to cover that. Focused on that first I had some debt coming out of Michigan. I had enough money that I had saved to be able to pay for one year, but pay down the debt. In addition to that, then I started investing and putting money into an IRA and into the 401k little bits and then just grew it over time.
Steve Chen (26:04):
More recent generations are getting educated on this way earlier and hopefully doing the right things out of the box. But I think earlier generations they didn't know you have to save and invest and do it for 20 years and see that pattern and then you're in a great place and then it accelerates as you start taking advantage of compounding.
Mike Richardson (26:25):
Well, and a lot of it is expectations specifically. I'm trying to remember back to some of the conversations when I was at IBM, we had a pension at IBM as well. So if you're expecting there to be a pension, behave in a particular way, you're expecting social security to be fully there, behave in a particular way. I think in today's world you have so many more people that don't expect there to be a pension because there aren't, and there's some expectation that their social security may not be fully funded. So behaviors shift to drive people to become hopefully more aware and better learners and better investors because of those expectations.
Steve Chen (27:07):
Yeah, for sure. Interesting. One thing I saw in our notes was you have this idea of take a knee. Can you explain what that is?
Mike Richardson (27:16):
Yeah, absolutely. This comes to the concept in football of you won, you're at the one yard
Steve Chen (27:23):
Line,
Mike Richardson (27:24):
You're already up, you're going to win, take a knee. You don't have to go for it and possibly fumble have a problem. Part of our financial strategy is absolutely rooted in take a knee, meaning that we will leave money to the kids simply because of our lifestyle, but we're not trying to maximize every single dollar to leave as much as we possibly can. We're not being stupid about it, but it's not our goal to say the next incremental dollar that gets divvied up five ways across them is what we're going for. So we're looking and saying, are we comfortable? Do we feel good about where we are? We set, we'll continue to have assets grow. We'll take a knee. I'm not going to get any more aggressive or say, Hey, don't pull the money out between 64 and 65 for what we need because we want that to grow. And then I'll peel a little off. Don't need to.
Steve Chen (28:18):
It's so good that you see that. It's interesting when you're young, you have an appetite for risk and you want things to happen fast. So I think a lot of people, especially young men, they take a lot of risk and they take the kind of risk where you could, in crypto for example, it could go 10 x or whatever super fast, but it could also go to zero. Very often it ends up, if you have high volatility, you can end up with nothing. So you get this excitement of like, oh, maybe I'm going to get rich, but then you can go to zero and then you end up burning time. Versus if you buy things like equities in companies that have intrinsic value, you're guaranteed you were buying a basket to not lose money, assuming if you buy the whole US stock market, assuming the US economy doesn't grind into a halt and we keep getting more productive, you'll be good. And that's a good bet,
Mike Richardson (29:07):
Which is likely right. And there are also only so many places to put your money. So even when the market takes a dive, there are only so many places for you to be able to invest and everybody wants to be able to do that. So it's far more likely that the market is going to recover that it's not. Right. Yeah. I guess for us and what we've talked to our kids about is slow and steady wins the race. If you don't do slow and steady and you find yourself many years from now kind of behind the eight ball, then yeah, all of a sudden Bitcoin looks pretty good because you're trying to put the money out to have the big win until you don't.
Steve Chen (29:42):
Right? I'm assuming, did you inherit money?
Mike Richardson (29:45):
No.
Steve Chen (29:46):
But your children are likely to do that. This will be an interesting generational thing. I mean the numbers vary widely, but people are saying 60, 8,000 trillions of dollars, we'll go between generations. And when I hear stories like yours and even in our life, yeah, I mean I think that's the goal is to, I think it depends on how long people live and it depends on the cost of long-term care. We'll talk about that in a second, these other considerations. But I do think that you're starting to see this and it can really change people's lives. If people do end up inheriting money that funds their retirement or gets them started buying a house, that will change the course of people's lives.
Mike Richardson (30:24):
And I mean with the trillions of dollars that are out there for those that are listening, I just like them to know that I can be adopted.
Steve Chen (30:34):
There's still time. There's still time. I promise to behave. Okay, I lied about that part. I want my inheritance. I want my inheritance. So I think I'd love to talk about a little bit some of these other considerations in your plan. And this is a very real thing. I see this, we're all living longer good. Our parents are living longer too. We're all becoming the sandwich generation. But there's parents, there's your kids, there's things like your house that you're building and being tax efficient across all that. We'd love to get your color on how you think about this part of your planning.
Mike Richardson (31:07):
So for the other considerations, it absolutely does begin with the aging parents, multiple sets of parents that as their time comes, we want to be able to help. So even our new build, we're building an in-law suite so that they can come and stay with us as they're not able to stay in their current residences. As that happens over time, that aspect of it is really emotionally draining for people. I remember how hard it was when Amy was sick and the design of the house that we lived in and her inability to move around that house
(31:47):
With stairs and narrow doors and these kinds of things. So even the new house that we're building with the three foot doors and the ability to be one story ranch, be able to move around in it easier and have that place for the aging parents so that they can move around in it easier as they come to live with us at different points. Another consideration, we've got the kids, I talked a little bit about leaving the legacy, but it'll also be let's do more together that we pay for vacations and give them gifts as we proceed. Managing taxes always an important aspect, but it's interesting, especially again as I do the coaching with Boldin and look at people's different perspectives, Roth conversions and when to do them when not to do them. And I've a personal perspective that said, I'm trying to optimize taxes across the generations if I can.
(32:47):
I'm not trying to leave the kids most dollars in a Roth that I possibly can. So our income tax rate is generally higher than their income tax rate and may very well stay that way. So if we're paying all of the tax at a higher rate, moving to a Roth and then leaving them fewer dollars than if we had left them the traditional and that they're being taxed at their own rate. So there's some interesting articles that are out there around, Hey, watch your raw thinking for lack of a better way. You say that think across the generations on the taxes and you can come to some substantially different answers as to whether to do them or when to do them.
Steve Chen (33:31):
We talked to this company, Daffy, they're doing donor advised funds. They try to make it easy, but as people think about gifting money, it can be to other places, but being tax efficient across time and being able to look through your situation to your kids or how you move the money around is pretty interesting. I do think that's going to become, especially as we're talking about these big pools of money being efficient with how you move it is going to become a much bigger opportunity.
Mike Richardson (33:59):
The far bigger issue that I see when I speak with my friends and I'm just having conversations with my friends and how they are planning for retirement, how I plan for retirement, lots of people miss after one spouse passes away, it ain't, but the next year before the living spouse is now paying taxes at a single tax rate much higher. So I look first and in the conversations with Jen, we look at, hey, what might be necessary? Assume I pass first that she has options to manage taxes over her lifetime, working with someone without necessarily having to just get completely hammered at a single tax rate.
Steve Chen (34:48):
That's so interesting. Yeah. I know that Joe Kuhn, who's one of our folks, he's on YouTube and he covers our product and he does things like they'll have a couple and maybe one person has a pension that has no joint survivor benefit or no survivor benefit and be like, you think you're good, but what if your partner who has the pension passes away? What happens? And people don't always realize this, but they'll do that scenario and they're like, wait a second, everything's just changed. The tax thing that you just suggested is really interesting. I really believe that this idea of intergenerational planning is becoming a thing, especially for people that have money. It's interesting tension. Give people some visibility or the people in your family some visibility like, okay, maybe I'm willing to do this. Maybe I'm willing to help pay for your kids' education. Or maybe I'm willing to help you with a down payment and how much to share about what's happening and what you're willing to do. And it all depends on the family and their dynamics and you want to prep good incentives too for people.
Mike Richardson (35:49):
A lot of dynamics that can happen in those conversations, right?
Steve Chen (35:53):
A hundred percent. I talked to one of our members today, he's a former lieutenant general and he was like, we gift money to our kids, but what we do, they're just doing their own personal matching. They're like, if you show me that you saved $10,000 this year in your Roth, I will match that to some degree your Roth. They're like behaving like a company. Yeah,
Mike Richardson (36:15):
It's a heck of an incentive though, right? Heck of an incentive.
Steve Chen (36:19):
I thought that was a pretty clever idea. Alright, great. So I'm curious back to how you spend your time. So we've talked about your money and stuff and I know you've given some signals, but any color on how you are investing your time and how you think about segmenting that as well? Do you bucket that time up? I've talked to friends that are like, okay, I think I have this window of being super mobile, this window of maybe being a little bit less active and I'm not quite sure. So I'm actually going to front load my spending and my activities to try and take advantage of my human capital.
Mike Richardson (36:53):
Yeah, I'll begin with. I referenced we're building a new house and just how much time actually goes into that? Anybody who's ever built one actually knows it. This is our first. So we've learned that as we've gone along. But one of the things that I would say about it is that a side note that I think is really important for people is Jen and I sat down and actually said, how do we like to spend our time? What do we do? Because we were like, Hey, should we move south? We love lakes, we love the ocean. Should we go somewhere different? Would it be great to live in a condo in a city and all of these because we like to do different things. But at the end of the day we said for the majority of our time we're actually pretty quiet. We like to sit, we like to read, we watch a little tv, not we like to go to dinner, we like to exercise, we like the elliptical.
(37:49):
So what we did for the house was we designed it. She likes to cook. We designed it for how we like to spend our time. I'll have a nice office in it because I like to sit in the office and write. She's going to have a big garden outback because she likes to garden and she likes to cook. So we designed everything for the house in terms of how we like to spend our time and then made it ready for us to age in as we talked about just a little bit ago. And that really pulled us back from the what do we go into a Laker an ocean for let's go visit because we like to visit, we like to go to different places. In that vein, I did decide to have foot surgery, which I've always had ever since I've been a kid.
(38:32):
The foot doesn't point the right way kind of thing. So they basically reconstructed my foot because I want to be able to travel. We're going to Italy in October of this year. You got to be able to walk around on the cobblestone doctor said I could wait. I said let's not, let's get it done. Don't want to end up falling before my time kind of thing or anything else. But if you have medical things that need to be addressed, highly recommend thinking about 'em and getting them taken care of while you're on someone's insurance and at the beginning of your retirement so that you can enjoy the rest. So those are two big things. We have other travel. I reconnected with a friend from Mexico that I hadn't seen since high school. That was wonderful fun going back down to Monterey and it connected just like it was back in the eighties by good man when we saw each other.
Steve Chen (39:21):
How did you know this person in Mexico?
Mike Richardson (39:23):
He actually went to my high school as a foreign exchange student and we met in Spanish class, they put him in Spanish and you stayed in touch
Steve Chen (39:31):
For 30 plus years, 40 years.
Mike Richardson (39:34):
It was on and off and kind of random. And then we got tighter at the end and I said, let's come and visit. And it was absolutely fantastic. So getting back to some of those older connections, we've had a couple of others of those too. Friends in Denver and so forth, but that makes a big difference for that sense of feeling and retirement for me. Outside of those things, I guess the rest of what I'm doing is all rooted in the concept of just trying to be helpful. So as you mentioned earlier, I started a small LLC, it's called the Richardson Leadership Group. I write a blog that's titled Practical Advice for Leaders, which is the same as this book that I wrote. And what I saw in a lot of leadership books and in the blogs is that these things tend to be written for the CEOs or their direct reports. And I'm writing my stuff for leaders that are two, three, and four levels below the C-suite. Things that leaders of organizations actually have to do on a daily basis. Sharing stories of where I had success and failure and that kind of stuff.
Steve Chen (40:33):
What informed us, I mean you've gone through, you had 18 years at Nationwide and did you have mentors or were you reading books along the way?
Mike Richardson (40:41):
All of it. I actually had notes all the way from my days back in Anderson. Things that were fun, IBM where I took, I write down funny things that would happen or hey, you got to remember this kind of thing. All the way up through my time at Nationwide, including things that I had been coached and mentored around and things that I coached and mentored others around and put it all in this book. And now writing the blog to be able to share those learnings with people.
Steve Chen (41:08):
Nice. How's that going?
Mike Richardson (41:10):
So the blog is just fine. I've got whatever it is, 30 or 35 or something posts that I've got out there and I get some comments via email and some on the website and stuff. Send out the weekly newsletter and people seem to enjoy that. The book I did slow down because I had just started. I'd like to be published traditionally if I could, but there's a lot to that. I won't go into it, but right as I was getting into that process, I had the surgery and that slowed down a number of things for me. So I basically been focusing on the blog during the time that I've been hobbled.
Steve Chen (41:42):
I think it's a good strategy. I mean I've definitely seen people they'll build through blogging or social media, they'll build an audience and build awareness and then when they publish their book, they have a built-in group of people that know about it. So
Mike Richardson (41:54):
Anyway, I have no expectation of making any money off of this book, but it would be wonderful to know that people said, Hey, I read your book and it really helped me think about whether it's behavior, communications, vision and strategy, coaching others or my own career and all of these topics. That's what I'm looking for quite honestly.
Steve Chen (42:14):
Yeah, you can totally see spinning up a mentorship group and just doing it online as well.
Mike Richardson (42:18):
Exactly. That's what I would extend into as we proceed. Then the last two items just real quick is I do act as an A RP tax aid, which is a wonderful program for helping people do their taxes that aren't tax literate or don't have the money to go somewhere to have someone else do their taxes. And then of course I am a coach with Boldin. I love doing that. I spend 15 to 20 hours a week between the coaching and prep and other things there and wonderful people in your organization, Steve? I completely believe in the mission, the approach and learn so much from all of the customers as I speak with them every day.
Steve Chen (42:54):
Wow. It's amazing that I love telling the story about you joining us and helping us. And also just hearing we were talking about how you're learning with our audience and I think seeing a way for us to, we're thinking hard about how do we scale this business. We have a lot of enthusiasts that are like you. Well-informed, planning natives, planning enthusiasts, power planners, that's what we call folks, but it's like other folks that are newer to it. How do they learn these things and get into this motion that can lead to real long-term success, but how do you make that approachable and a safe space for people? And I think you've asked us some really good questions about how to think about this
Mike Richardson (43:39):
And you have quite a mix. So yes, there are power planners out there, but there are a lot of people that are just trying to figure out, am I okay or not? And the thing that no matter how much money I see in the accounts, everybody has the same basic questions and the same basic need. I'm trying to feel good about this. I'm trying to know that I'm okay. And those two aren't even the same all the time. People say, I know I see the numbers, but I don't feel like I'm actually okay. And there is a lot of emotion. And I spoke to the emotion of retiree. There is a lot of emotion wrapped up with this because you start with fear and you end with relief, hopefully. Hopefully.
Steve Chen (44:29):
Well, it's interesting. There's one of our first customers and users was a doctor from Kaiser who was a psychologist or psychiatrist, and he was saying, we talked about some kid stuff and he is like, anticipatory anxiety is the biggest anxiety. And I think that's what we all suffer from, and especially around these huge life decisions. I'm making money and now I might step away. Can I afford it? Will I have something to do? Well, there's all these things that are tied up with it. And how do you, I think part of this is interviewing folks like yourself that have kind of crossed the chasm, okay, I've done this, it's okay. It could be great. And there's a lot of other things going on. And so I think that's a big part of this is sharing these stories.
Mike Richardson (45:14):
I love the way that he described that because that is exactly what it is, right? The anticipatory anxiety and that's real.
Steve Chen (45:21):
That's real. Alright, well just to wrap it up here, any, I think thoughts or insights you've had or concerns or regrets that you want to call? I mean, I know there's a lot tied up in there, but that kind of jumped to mind for you is having made this transition.
Mike Richardson (45:37):
So two things in there that I heard so around regrets, not from a career perspective. I enjoy my career, loved my companies. They were good companies, they were good to me. So nothing like that. Still too early to say I have regrets around. I didn't maintain relationships because I'm maintaining enough of them that I don't have that. The financial regret, of course is that I don't have all my money and after tax dollars, right? Everybody wants the traditional 401k when they're working and everybody wants the Roth after
(46:10):
They're done working, right? So yes, it would've been nice to have some additional dollars after tax versus pre-tax and the implications of that, but oh no, I don't regret retiring and I don't regret the way that I'm spending my time and I feel like I'm adding some value, which was the goal to the messages component or whatnot. I would say the primary message is, especially for younger people, life is lived on the margin, wealth is made on the margin. The difference between overspending every year by 10% and saving and investing every year, that 10% dramatically impacts your life and your wealth. So encourage everybody, especially as you're starting younger, live under your means and save, invest that additional 10%, you'll be far better off than if you hadn't done that.
Steve Chen (47:06):
And do you think, okay, so you've done a good job saving, investing and you're happy living the way you're living and you're not feeling like, oh, I should go spend more money. Do you think if worst case scenario you got sick and you had less time, you only had five years to go, right? Would anything change or would you be like, no, I've lived my life in a way that I'm happy with?
Mike Richardson (47:30):
That's a great question. Everybody at some point feels some level of regret for something, but I had a friend, another friend who had said to me at the time that Amy had passed away, which was, you can have regrets perhaps about what's happened and the way that you lived and the way she lived. Somehow you're feeling that you didn't do enough for the time she was here, this kind of thing. But he said, it's hard to have regrets if you're looking forward and doing your best stuck with me. So I try not to think about regrets of the past as much as say I can simply be better and the best that I can be going forward. Does that make sense?
Steve Chen (48:17):
Yeah, no, it does. I think that's the way we want to look forward, not backwards. You can get caught up in the water under the bridge stuff, which is like, Hey, we all make mistakes. And I think all of us would look back, why did I own a bunch of Bitcoin? Or why don't I buy a bunch of Nvidia or whatever it is, or do this or that. But yeah, mostly it's like learning from what we've done and trying to be thoughtful about how we're investing our time and going forward.
Mike Richardson (48:43):
Agree. That last point is so important. How are we investing our time? What are we doing to enjoy ourselves and make things better for others? I think if each of us does that, then we're living a pretty good life.
Steve Chen (48:56):
Nice. Okay. Well look, Mike, thanks for joining us on this episode of the Boldin podcast. I think your story is great and hopefully a lot of good lessons, hopefully younger folks are listening to and taking it to heart and kind of seeing, hey, it can really pay off. I liked what you're saying about living life has lived in the margins and make those good decisions over a long period of time. So for folks listening, if this has been helpful, hopefully it can leave us good review. All questions and feedback are welcome. And also if you like this, hopefully try out our platform or refer us if your customer refer us to your employer. We're definitely interested in talking to our employers and finding us as a benefit. Mike, thanks again for joining us and hopefully we get a lot of good feedback on this.
Mike Richardson (49:40):
Thank you. I appreciate it.