48 Days to the Work and Life You Love with Dan Miller

08/12/20 • 72 min

What is your retirement strategy? Do you have one? A strategy is born from a process and tactics are born from that strategy. This is why it is so important to make sure that you have a process and strategy in place when planning for retirement. Your strategy will help you drive those important decisions.

Your decisions during the accumulation phase of life were much different than they will be in retirement. This is why I’ve got Dan Miller joining me to discuss his book 48 Days to the Work and Life You Love. Why did Dan decide to change the title of his book?

Dan Miller recently changed the title of his best-selling book from 48 Days to the Work You Love to 48 Days to the Work and Life You Love. He changed the title to reflect the fact that work is just one tool in a successful life. What people really want is a successful life. His book can help you discover what drives you and how to dig in and strive toward building a life you love. Why 48 days?

Dan mentions that although 48 is a somewhat arbitrary number, it is enough time to get you on the road to change your life. No, it isn’t scientifically tested, but if you work at it those 48 days can give you a roadmap to build a life you love. It is enough time to assess where you are, create a plan, and act on it. When making decisions and changes in your life it is important to have constraints. It is much too easy to sit back on your heals and wait for changes to act upon you. By setting a deadline of 48 days you are able to take control of your life. How do you deal with your identity when you leave your work behind?

Our identities are so wrapped up in the titles of our jobs. In retirement or upon leaving any job, it can often feel like we are leaving our identity behind. But this shouldn’t be the case. Who you are should include more than just the work that you do. I

t is important to realize the difference between these three things: vocation, career, and job. Your vocation is who you want to be remembered for, this should include your mission, your purpose, your destiny, and your calling. Your career is simply a subset of that vocation. Your job has an even smaller role; it is just what you do from day to day.

So, what is your identity? How do you define your vocation? There are 3 main problems in retirement

In retirement, three of the biggest problems that people experience are no friends, no money, and no purpose. The lack of money and friends can easily be changed, but what about the lack of purpose. It’s important to really define what your purpose is and what it will be in retirement. You can use your background, training, and network to help you figure out what you really want to do, who you really want to be in retirement. OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE OF THE RETIREMENT ANSWER MAN PRACTICAL PLANNING SEGMENT

[7:31] Why did Dan Miller decide to change the title of his book?
[12:12] Why is there a deadline of 48 days?
[16:20] How do you deal with your identity when you leave your work?
[27:32] Procrastination is the enemy of change

Q&A SEGMENT WITH FRITZ GILBERT

[34:07] Fritz’s spending process in retirement
[40:40] An planned early retirement question
[52:35] Should they stop saving in pretax assets
[57:30] A five year ladder strategy question

TODAY’S SMART SPRINT SEGMENT

[1:09:45] Do you have a strategy in place?

Resources Mentioned In This Episode
Episode 45 - Can Carl Retire?
Retirement Manifesto Resources
48Days.com/Roger
BOOK - 48 Days to the Work and Life You Love by Dan Miller
Rock Retirement Club
Roger’s YouTube Channel - Roger That
BOOK - Rock Retirement by Roger Whitney
Work with Roger
Roger’s Retirement Learning Center

So, what is your identity? How do you define your vocation? There are 3 main problems in retirement

[7:31] Why did Dan Miller decide to change the title of his book?
[12:12] Why is there a deadline of 48 days?
[16:20] How do you deal with your identity when you leave your work?
[27:32] Procrastination is the enemy of change

Q&A SEGMENT WITH FRITZ GILBERT

[34:07] Fritz’s spending process in retirement
[40:40] An planned early retirement question
[52:35] Should they stop saving in pretax assets
[57:30] A five year ladder strategy question

TODAY’S SMART SPRINT SEGMENT

[1:09:45] Do you have a strategy in place?

Previous Episode

Better Retirement Decision Making - The Retirement Choices You Have to Make

I’m excited to share with you this next series of episodes. Over the next 4 episodes, we will explore how to make better decisions for yourself in retirement. Today we’ll examine what a decision is and think about all the different choices you have to make in retirement. Learn how to evaluate your decision-making process and discover how to make better retirement choices on this episode of Retirement Answer Man.

Decision fatigue can wear you down

Every day we are faced with so many choices. Have you ever looked at the number of different kinds of toothpaste there are to choose from? Even that small choice is overwhelming.

If you don’t have a framework in place to help you make decisions you can easily get worn down. This type of exhaustion is called decision fatigue. The more decisions you have to make the more your willpower becomes depleted. When decision fatigue sets in people often turn to the choices they have always chosen in the past. What do you do when you become overwhelmed by choices?

There are so many decisions you face in retirement

Think about all the decisions you need to make surrounding retirement.

When are you going to retire? Will you retire fully or ease into it? What will your spending look like? How will you create a paycheck for yourself? How will you protect against inflation? How will you pay taxes? Who will you spend your time with? Where do you want to live?

The list goes on and on.

And with each of those big decisions a decision tree with massive roots and limbs sprouts with new questions. It becomes easier to simply ignore all of those retirement choices and stick with the status quo.

Is there a better way to make decisions?

The goal of this series is to help you build a framework to harness decisions. You’ll learn how to make good incremental decisions so that you don’t become overwhelmed. You’ll discover how to focus on the right decisions, the ones that really impact your life. You will develop a structure to get to the result that serves you the best. As a result, this framework will help you improve the quality of your life in retirement.

Are you ready to learn how to start making better decisions? Don’t miss this series, it could change the course of your life in retirement!

OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE OF THE RETIREMENT ANSWER MAN WHAT'S THAT MEAN?

[2:16] What is a decision?

PRACTICAL PLANNING SEGMENT

[3:55] There are so many choices to make
[9:04] Set some rules to combat decision fatigue

Q&A WITH CHAD SMITH

[16:10] What is the Financial Symmetry podcast about?
[18:12] Does it make sense to have a high yield savings account?
[27:45] How you can access webinar replays
[28:41] What about the SWAN ETFs?
[37:36] Jane did a direct transfer from a 401K to an IRA
[41:16] What’s on Financial Symmetry this month?

TODAY’S SMART SPRINT SEGMENT

[42:30] Premake one decision for yourself

Resources Mentioned In This Episode

PODCAST - Financial Symmetry with Chad Smith

BOOK - The Behavioral Investor by Dr. Dan Crosby

Rock Retirement Club

Roger’s YouTube Channel - Roger That

BOOK - Rock Retirement by Roger Whitney

Work with Roger

Roger’s Retirement Learning Center

Next Episode

Process, Strategy, Tactics: A Formula for Better Decisions

We’ve been talking about decision making for the past several episodes and today I want to help you build a framework to rely upon when making decisions in retirement. This framework for better decision making will help ensure that you are living the life you really want. If you are ready to create a strategy that reflects your values so that you can rock retirement then press play now. Why do you need to build a decision-making framework?

Have you really thought about your values? A person’s values are their principles or standards of behavior. Values are what you feel is important to your life. If you want to build a retirement and a life that you love then you need to live a life that reflects your values. The life that you lead is based on the decisions that you make. So if you want to enjoy a life that stays true to your values you need to put some thought into the decisions that you make. Having a decision making framework in place will help you stay true to your values. How to create a strategy that reflects your values

So now you know why you need a decision-making framework, but how do you build one? You can create a strategy that reflects your values in just 4 easy steps.

Step one is easy to remember. Start with your values! Before you can begin to build your framework you need to establish what is important in your life. What are your values?
Create a vision of what you want your life to look like. This may sound a bit cheesy, but try and picture what you want your life to look like. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be important to you. Try asking yourself this question: at the end of your life what would make you think that your life was amazing?
What’s your mission? This question leads to the how. How you are going to achieve your vision?
Create strategic objectives that follow your mission. What strategic objectives will you focus on first? How will you focus on your mission?

Build your decision-making framework today.
That’s it! Your framework can be as detailed or loose as you need it to be. But if you start taking these 4 steps you can build the strategy to make decisions that will reflect your values. Stay true to yourself and rock your retirement by creating a decision making strategy that you can implement. The ideal framework will reflect your values and set you up to live a life you truly love.
Some real-life examples
If you are curious about how these steps play out in the real world listen in to hear a couple of examples. You’ll discover how I started my firm and how my values are reflected in what I do. You will also hear how this strategy can be applied to life in retirement. You also want to listen in to hear Tanya Nichols help me answer some listener questions.
OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE OF THE RETIREMENT ANSWER MAN WHAT’S THAT MEAN?