Best Selling AuthorJason Parker Reveals Proven Strategies On How Much Money You Need To Retire (#262)

Jeffrey Feldberg: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast where you learn how to extract your business and personal Deep Wealth. 

I'm your host Jeffrey Feldberg. 

This podcast is brought to you by Deep Wealth and the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience. 

When it comes to your business deep wealth, your exit or liquidity event is the most important financial decision of your life. 

But unfortunately, up to 90% of liquidity events fail. Think about all that time and your hard earned money wasted. 

Of the quote unquote "successful" liquidity events, most business owners leave 50% to over 100% of the deal value in the buyer's pocket and don't even know it. 

I should know. I said "no" to a seven-figure offer. And "yes" to mastering the art and the science of a liquidity event. [00:01:00] Two years later, I said "yes" to a different buyer with a nine figure deal. 

Are you thinking about an exit or liquidity event? 

Don't become a statistic and make the fatal mistake of believing the skills that built your business are the same ones to sell it. 

After all, how can you master something you've never done before? 

Let the 90-day Deep Wealth Experience and the 9-step roadmap of preparation help you capture the best deal instead of any deal. 

At the end of this episode, take a moment and hear from business owners like you, who went through the Deep Wealth Experience. 

Jason Parker is the best-selling author of sound retirement planning and recently published a new book called retirement calculator. How much money do I need to retire? He is the host of the podcast Sound Retirement Radio, which has more than 1 million downloads and is a top podcast in the category of retirement planning. 

Jason has been a frequent guest on [00:02:00] ABC, Fox and MSNBC. He's the inventor of retirementbudgetcalculator.com. A FinTech SaaS that helps people achieve clarity, confidence, and freedom as they prepare for retirement. 

Welcome to the Deep Wealth Podcast, and you heard it in the introduction. I have a fellow thought leader, podcaster, bestselling author, and you know what you wanna get to know him because before your liquidity event, the last thing you wanna do is do it and realize. Geez. I never really planned for life after the Exit.

I don't think I have enough money. What a horror story. So Jason, welcome to the Deep Wealth podcast. An absolute pleasure to have you with us. Jason, there's always a story behind the story.

So what's your story? What brought you to where you are?

Jason Parker: Jeffrey, thank you so much for the opportunity to share some of the work that we've been doing. With your community, this is awesome. The reason that we're here right now today is because of the retirement budget calculator. This is software as a service. It lives in the cloud.

This is a tool that we developed for the [00:03:00] DIY person who's trying to get some clarity. Confidence and freedom as they make the transition into retirement. But I have started a registered investment advisory firm out of Seattle where s e c Registered Investment Advisory 

Firm, and my specialty for the past several years has been retirement planning.

So I wrote a book called Sound Retirement Planning, and my new book is called Retirement Calculator. How much Money Do I Need to Retire? 

And what I found the podcast I do is called Sound Retirement Radio. We have a little more than a million downloads on the podcast. And what I found with our podcast listeners specifically is a lot of them are people that are in the D I Y camp.

They're people that don't necessarily want to work with an Advisor. They wanna do this on their own. They want the education, and we were providing the education through the books and the podcast, but we didn't have any tools specifically for them other than, you know, webinars to teach them. It was all.

Several years ago, I said, Hey, let's start building a tool, an online tool for people that they can use, rather than trying to create these [00:04:00] complex spreadsheets where it's easy to make a mistake in a formula, let's create the tool so that people, we cannot just educate them, but we can empower them.

To really help them understand whether or not they're gonna be able to retire. Have they saved enough? Are they gonna run out of money in retirement? are they gonna be able to live this life of their dreams? Are they gonna have anything left to their kids? What are some of the tax planning issues that they need to consider?

And that's the reason that we're here today, is because we've been building the software. We've got thousands of people that are using it. And I'm excited to share with your community the work that we.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so Jason, it's terrific to hear how you're paying it forward. You really found a blind spot or what? A Deep Wealth we call a skeleton in the closet. That can really be devastating. By the time you find out about this, it's likely too late. And so we'll dive into some of the details. Big picture wise though, where are people so far off base?

Where are they making the low hanging fruit mistakes when they're not factoring in all these different life events and factors and expenses, that they're just really missing the boat on it.

Jason Parker: Yeah, I think our [00:05:00] communities are very similar in that we tend to serve and the people that we surround ourselves with are higher net worth individuals. So doctors, engineers, pilots, business owners, they tend to be people that have really high income. 

And the biggest mistake that people with high income always have is because their income's so high, they don't really have to pay attention to the spending side of the equation.

They can pretty much spend what they wanna spend, do what they wanna do, go where they want to go. They're good savers. They're saving a lot of money. 

But the difference is when you make this transition into retirement, you are entering into a period of extended unemployment. In some instances, 30 or 40 years of unemployment where you're not working anymore.

And now what you have is what you have, and that has to support you for the rest of your life. And so the biggest mistake that people make is they don't really understand how much money they spend. I'll never forget one time I met with some people, they had saved a little bit more than $10 million for retirement, and they asked me the question, are we gonna [00:06:00] be okay?

Can we afford to retire? Now, most people hear that and they think well, of course You've got $10 million. How could you not retire? What's wrong with this picture? When we dug into it, we found out that they were spending about $600,000 a year. So when you've saved 10 million, but you're spending 600,000 a year, that 10 million just isn't gonna last that long at, with that burn rate.

And so understanding your spending, see, it's one of the things that makes with the work that we're doing so much different than the rest of the financial planning community, most people in my world, they wanna say what's a safe withdrawal rate? So they say, okay, I've saved a million dollars. All the studies show that you can take about 4% out per year.

Assume you have a 60% stock, 40% bond portfolio, so maybe $40,000 a year of income out of that million dollar portfolio, and you have maybe some social security or some other income, and they, everything is based on withdrawal rates. So that's called the 4% withdrawal rule. Some people do this dynamic spending strategies or bucket strategy or just all these strategies about how much you can spend, we flipped [00:07:00] the whole thing on its head and we said, no. If you really wanna have confidence heading into retirement, it's not understanding the withdrawal rate that's gonna give you that confidence. It's understanding your spending.

So we made the calculator the most important part of the calculator, which I did. I couldn't find anything else out there that existed that did this. Has said, Hey look, let's understand your spending. Get that as dialed in as we can. It's not gonna be perfect, but we'll get it close. And when we understand that number, then that number will help us understand whether or not we've saved enough to be able to retire with confidence.

And ultimately, the number one question people have is, am I gonna be okay? Are we gonna run out of money in retirement? There's no way to answer that question without understanding the spending piece. It really is the most important number. So we're just putting the focus and the emphasis on that most important number.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Jason, before we dive into it, and I love the rationale behind this end, why you're doing what you're doing. Can you talk to us about taxes? Because it, it tends to be overlooked. Again, to your point, I have a business, I'm getting income from the business. I probably have lifestyle [00:08:00] related expenses that are business qualified.

The business is paying for that. Sell the company. That's all gone now. And now taxes start to kick in, both from the liquidity event and then beyond that. So what's going on with taxes? What should our listeners know of how to reset their mindset?

Jason Parker: You know, I'm based in the United States, so I always have to preface that when we're doing podcast interviews, cuz I know we have people that listen all over the world. 

But in the United States we have a national debt Right now that's over 30 trillion.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah.

Jason Parker: 30 trillion. That's a huge number and it's growing and at the same time, thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, we have some of the lowest tax rates in the history of our country right now.

But those are set to expire by default in 2026. 

So, Right now we have some of the lowest tax rates. Our spending has been out of control for years. The probability, the possibility that taxes will be going up in the future is high. 

And the reason that's so important is that retirement accounts were born in the mid 1970s and in the mid [00:09:00] 1970s, the top tax rate was really high.

So it made sense to defer income into the future because the idea was when you get into retirement, you're gonna be in a lower tax. What we find is that's not necessarily the case for high income people. 

They're gonna many times be in the same tax bracket, maybe even in higher tax bracket when they're retired.

And now when you turn 72, you've got these mandatory required minimum distributions that force you to take money out of your retirement accounts. So taxes are huge. It's not a matter of how much money you have coming in, but how much money you get to keep after Uncle Sam takes the slice of the pie. 

And one of the things that a lot of the people that we serve through the software are interested in is how can I reduce that future tax liability? So one of the cool things, we've got the federal income tax module built into the calculator so that we can estimate how much money you're paying in taxes this year, how much money you're gonna pay in taxes over your lifetime.

And then you can start to tweak the numbers a little bit. [00:10:00] You can say things like what if I were to do Roth conversions? From the moment I retire until I have to start my social security, or I have to start drawing on these other accounts how would that benefit me? And then you can actually run the numbers and see over my lifetime, here's how much money I'll pay in taxes.

And taxes are, you're right, it's a big concern. If you have a retirement account with a million dollars, you have to figure maybe only 700,000 of that is actually yours after Uncle Sam takes their 30%. So it's a big deal.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And so Jason, for our listeners, and again, our communities are really one and the same, and as part of that it, it's a compliment. There's always two sides to a coin though. Type A, I can do this myself, I'll figure it out. And so for the listener out there who's saying, okay, yeah, Jason, that's nice.

But you know what? I can probably find some kind of Excel spreadsheet for a retirement calculator or online, all these different tools, and I'll just do that and I'm done. Why have to worry about anything else for that listener? Can you illuminate them of what they're not getting? What they're missing by not going [00:11:00] through this whole service that you put together with the calculator.

Jason Parker: I would tell you that the purpose of the calculator is to help those people that wanna do it on their own, that don't wanna necessarily hire an Advisor. But you know, the reality is the reason the people that I've found that are the wealthiest are the people that have advisors and the reason that they have advisors.

I mean, There's all kinds of studies that have been done on this, especially from the investment side of thing. But Morningstar's done a study, Vanguard's done a study, BlackRock's done a study, investment's, done a study. Canada's done a study in all of these. That what they say is that people that have advisors versus people that don't have advisors usually end up with about 3% more in net returns after working with an Advisor than not working with an Advisor.

So I think the smart money's gonna work with an Advisor, but the d I Y person, the person that doesn't wanna work with an Advisor, that's who we're creating these tools for. 

The retirement budget calculator specifically, is for the person that doesn't necessarily wanna work with an Advisor. Now, is that a mistake?

Probably because, you know, from my perspective as an [00:12:00] Advisor, somebody that owns an s e c registered investment advisory firm that walks life with people I'm doing this all day, every day with hundreds of people. So I'm getting to see the mistakes that people are making and helping the next generation of people avoid those same mistakes.

So I think it does make sense to have advisors. The more successful a business person becomes, I mean, if they're just a mom and pop single shop person, they've probably learned to do a lot of things on their. 

But if a business is gonna grow, you have to become an expert at delegating.

And business owners are unique breed because they are the lifeblood of the American economy. They're the ones that are innovating, they're creative, they're driven, they're leaders, they're delegators and they're also chaos creators. And so, their entire identity. Everything they think about from the moment they wake up till the moment they go to sleep at night is, and I know this because I am one of these people, right?

I've got three different businesses I'm running currently. And I love it. I am excited to get out of bed in the morning to figure out how to make people's lives better in the work that we're doing. [00:13:00]

And I know that's how business people think. And so now you get people to the end of their career.

Maybe they're ready to be done, maybe the stress is to the point where they think they wanna go do something different. But it's really hard for people that have found their identity and the work that they do to just have a hard stop. 

And then you see people's marriages blow up. They get involved in all kinds of different business ventures that they're not any good at.

They think they can delegate it out to people. And then those people, Mess up their financial lives. And so I would say that people that are business owners that transition into retirement is more difficult for them than it is for the guy that just shows up at the shipyard and clocks in from nine to five every day.

 I think that's easier to transition out of and I'm always encouraging people that are those hard chargers if it's possible to slow down and 

transition out of work rather than have a hard stop. I think that serves that community better. And for me personally, I have to tell you, Jeffrey, even though all of my career has been focused on retirement planning and investment [00:14:00] management and financial planning around retirement my mentor, the gentleman that taught me and brought me into this industry and this business, he worked until he was 77 years old and it was cancer that slowed him down.

His work changed. He spent a lot more time on the golf course, but he and I spoke on the phone every single day, and in my mind, I can see how my responsibilities will change over time, but for me to stop doing something that I love, part of my frustration with our society today, there's something called the fire movement, financially independent, retired early, and you hear these kids talking about, oh, I saved $3 million and I retired at 35 years old.

Or you hear doctors talking about wanting to retire early, and I think to myself, Work is a good thing. 

Work is about contribution. Work is about society thriving, about getting better. A life of nothing but leisure, playing pickleball and golf every day. That is not fulfilling. And so I love the financial independence, this idea that you can stop working anytime you want.

But I also personally love this idea that knowing that my [00:15:00] purpose is bigger than comfort in leisure and sitting around. I mean, you're in this position, like you and I were talking about beforehand you had this big liquidity event where you sold your business for a lot. You see this with professional football players that they win the Super Bowl and then they're like what's the purpose?

What's the meaning of this? Why am I doing this? People get to the very top of their career, people that win the lottery and they end up with a big chunk of money and, then they lose it all in a short period of time. Life is not about leisure. We are designed to contribute and I am a big fan of doing that for as long as I possibly can.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, Jason I'm with you and at Deep Wealth we have a saying that all the accolades, all the success, all the zeros in the. If you don't have fulfillment it means nothing. So success without fulfillment is failure. And to your point, we call it the post Exit life. And before anyone goes through our 90 day system, the Nine Step Roadmap by Deep Wealth, we talk about, to your point, the Post-It life.

And we ask them to ask one question before they [00:16:00] begin this whole journey. Am I gonna sell the company? And Jason, look no further than yours. I was going a thousand miles an hour, sold the company, didn't prepare for the post Exit life. And to your point, life after the Exit was really painful for me.

And I've had guests come on the show, similar situations and their words, my words, no one feels sorry for someone sitting at home in their pajamas, bored out of their mind that you won't come out to play because you know, you have your livelihood, you have your career, and you have all this time in your hands and all the zeros in.

Who cares. And it's not for the best way to live life. So I'm a thousand percent with you. And for our listeners, again, we're gonna have this in the show notes, we'll have Jason's books and a link to the website. Your service, it's a rounding error even for someone who has advisors.

To have your calculator which is like nothing compared to what you're gonna get from it. Just even for yourself just to take a, you know, a quick step back, okay, where am I? What does this mean? I'm gonna ask intelligent questions of my advisors and make sure that I [00:17:00] know that they know and all those other things.

So with the calculator, Jason, why don't you walk us through. I sign up, what am I doing? How much time am I spending? What does that look like for me to begin to get a sense of, okay, where am I financially and how does this look for retirement?

Jason Parker: That's a great question and I want to answer it, but I want to come back to this thing that we were just talking about, this purpose, because this is so important. The work that we do says we want people to achieve three things. 

Clarity, to know what's most important in their life. Confidence to know the numbers are gonna work, and then we want them to experience freedom.

Freedom from fear, and freedom from greed, because either one of those things will knock you off course. Right? 

So getting back to this purpose question every year for the. 10 plus years. I get together with a small group of men, somewhere, usually between six to 12 guys, and we go through a series of questions and every year we want to bring this focus back to what's the most important thing.

And one of the questions that we ask in order to create this [00:18:00] clarity there's two things that we do. The first exercise is we go through, Cameras on our phones and we realize all of the good things that have happened over the course of the past year. All of the people that we spent time with, all the beautiful places that we had the opportunity to experience.

And in that exercise of going through, in that sense of gratitude of how good life is, it's just a wonderful way to start the new year. But one of the questions we always ask is imagine you are laying on your deathbed. You're surrounded by the people you love and the people that love you, and what is the one thing that you would want to say to them in that last moment, 

in that last breath? And then it's interesting to go back and read some of what other people have said in those last moments, in those last breaths. But I'll never forget a friend of mine one time, he said and it was emotional for him. It was hard. He said, Jason, I think I would say I'm sorry.

And we've got to be [00:19:00] able to recognize that we wanna live a where, I'm sorry, is not what we have to say at the end.

And so, you know, just getting, clear on what the future looks like. Having clarity is all about having a plan. Having a plan is all about designing the future. And I'm one of these people, Jeffrey, I don't know about you, but some people spend a lot of their time in the past.

Some people spend a lot of their time in the present. I am more future oriented. I tend to spend 95% of my time thinking about dreaming about what the future could look like. We did. There's a new tool out called Working Genius. 

And in the Working Genius, I scored a w i So wonder and invention.

I spend all of my time thinking about the, in the future, probably to a fault, I probably should spend more time in the present and being a little bit more reflective of the past. But to get back to the calculator, retirement is really simple. This doesn't have to be complicated.

There's really only three numbers you have to underst. If you want to be able to retire and have confidence. Now the calculator's not gonna give you purpose, but it is gonna help you understand the confidence that the numbers are gonna work. So the three [00:20:00] numbers you have to know are, number one, how long are you gonna live?

Number two, how much money have you saved? 

Number three, how much money do you spend? When you have those three numbers and you enter that information into the calculator, it's gonna answer this question for you. It's gonna help you know whether or not you can have confidence heading into retirement. Now, everybody always gives me pushback on that first one.

None of us know how long we're gonna live, right? 

And that's true. You and I, we could get hit by the proverbial bus tomorrow and there's no guarantee of tomorrow. But we do have a lot of data. We can look at family history and say, geez, everybody in my family made it to age 86 or 90 or a hundred or, and then we can look at our own health and say, how are we doing?

You know, Are we on track to be as at least as healthy as our family? We can look at the social security mortality tables and a sense of what the average American lives to. And so, it doesn't have to be exact, but we can get in the ballpark in terms of life expectancy. And if you want to be really conservative, 

Because medicine, science and technology are getting better and better all the time.

You say I think I'm gonna live to 100 

and see your money lasts that long. And then [00:21:00] understanding your net worth. So adding up assets and liabilities. What do you have? And is it gonna be there to support you? And that's something that you enter into the calculator and then you've got your spending.

And that is the piece where we want people to be granular. We want people to understand what are they essential expenses. You know, If you have a mortgage or electric garbage, water, sewer. You're gonna buy food and groceries and gasoline and insurance. I mean, a lot of these expenses are not a mystery.

People make it sound like they can't figure out their spending. Like it's an unknown. It's not an unknown, but it does take a little bit of time. And I will tell you that if you really want to be detailed on your spending, you probably end up spending about two hours to enter the data into the calculator.

If you just want a fast number, you can. I've literally, on our YouTube channel, showed people how you can make a retirement plan in five minutes using the calculator. 

But to get the detailed spending piece, you're gonna wanna look back through the last three months, six months of your bank statements and just get a sense for where's your money going and what are you spending money on?

And then once you understand your essential expenses, those things that you can't [00:22:00] live without, then you can plug in the discretionary spending. 

And one of the things we know about spending is it's not smooth in retirement. There's studies that have been shown that show that there's something called the spending smile, where people usually wanna spend more the first couple of years of retirement. There's all the stuff they wanna do, and they have their health and they have their spouse and they want to travel and they wanna spend more. And then when they get down to about 80, 85, life starts to slow down. They have one card, they share a meal when they go out, getting through the airport and taking off all of your clothes, to get through security becomes more of a hassle.

And so people just don't tend to spend as much at one point and then towards the end of life spending starts to go up again because medical expenses for a lot of people start to increase. And so in the calculator, the cool thing is you can model this. You can say, okay, I wanna spend an extra $20,000 a year on travel the first 10 years of retirement, and then I wanna see that expense stop.

And you can start to play around with things like, how much inflation am I gonna have on these different expenses so I can see how my spending's gonna change over. [00:23:00] And it's really exciting and it creates a lot of freedom for people when they go through this exercise and they really spend the time because again, what we want them to have is clarity, confidence, and freedom.

The confidence comes from spending a little bit of time to enter the data to make sure the numbers are gonna work.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah, I love that. And you know, we're saying the same things just in different words, that Deep, Wealth, Jason, we say you have to stop believing. You have to start knowing. And that goes back to your clarity part. Well, I think I have enough for retirement. I think I'll be okay to a, you know what, actually I know I'm gonna be okay.

Or I know I have to make these changes so that I will be okay. And Jason, to your point here at Deep Wealth, it's both business but also health related. Because Benjamin Franklin's words, our first health is our Wealth. And for all the listeners out there, you've heard it from the doctors that we brought on and the health specialists, our lifespans, Are increasing, they're going longer.

So whereas the last generation, I'm gonna make up some of these numbers, maybe in your family it was 70 or 75 or 80, and what they're [00:24:00] saying today is the person is already living who will live to 150. So just think about that for a moment. That's just crazy where science is going. But Jason, back to what you're saying.

Knowing how much we have to have for how long we're going to live. Nothing worse than running out of cash towards the latter part of where we are in our journey. I mean, What a disaster that would be. But let me circle back and ask you one other thing, because for most business owners, they tend to overlook this.

You mentioned it, and it's so easy for the listener to gloss over when they're in business. They have a steady income stream coming in. Paying their taxes and afterwards they have all this money left over and then they spend that and they have a lifestyle that's likely maximized out to whatever they're receiving.

So if they earn more, they'll probably spend more. Can you share with us how once that stops, you're now living off of, hopefully not your principle, but the profits. And in the early days when you're just getting going, there's no guarantee that your profits are necessarily. [00:25:00] Going to equal what you were taking outta the business.

So off base on that, on base with that, what would you say?

Jason Parker: It's absolutely a hundred percent on base. You're right, retirement is all about cash flow. It's all about making sure you've got enough income coming in to cover your expenses and we. Up something in the calculator called the secure income.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Okay.

Jason Parker: And what we do I is we look at the year after retirement.

So we have something called the Future view that models out your finances all the way to H 100 or 40 years out. 

So for most people, they retire at 60, it takes 'em out to 100. But so we look at the year after retirement, we look at how much guaranteed income they're gonna have coming in. 

So guaranteed income is pension, social security annuity, and we also include rental income in that mix.

I found that people that have some rental properties going into retirement, oftentimes, I mean that's a business, so there is a little bit more involved in it than not, but it does produce inflation adjusted pretty consistent income for a lot of people. So rental income is something that we include in that calculation, but we add up all of [00:26:00] the guaranteed income from the moment of retirement till the after the second person's.

And then we add up all of the essential expenses over their life expectancy. Not all of their expenses, just essential. 

So guaranteed income compared to essential expenses. And then we create what we call the secure income score. And on the dashboard, in the calculator, what we wanna see is, do you have the benchmark that we've said is 80% are 80% of your essential expenses covered by guaranteed income.

Because if you had to a. You know, You say well, you know, the market's down where things aren't. This isn't a good year to travel. That's one thing. 

But to say, man, we can't buy prescription medication this month, or We can't keep the lights on in the house, that is not something most people are willing to do.

So if you don't have a secure income score of at least 80%, at least 80% of your central expenses covered by guaranteed income, then you need to consider a couple things. Number one, reduce your expenses,

Or, number two, increase your guaranteed income. How can you increase your guaranteed? And those are things [00:27:00] that people wanna be considering as they're making this transition.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And Jason, I'll share this story with you. The listeners and the Deep Wealth community have heard this before, but it bears repeating. Truth is stranger than fiction. Had an investment banker on the podcast and he was saying, Jeffrey is interesting. I went into one of those big box stores, I was doing a home renovation, and I saw a client of mine.

And went up to say hello, and when he turned around, I took a step back because he was wearing an apron. It was the color of the store and he worked in the store and I said to him, this is, I'm speaking as investment banker. Hey, what's going on? You know, You sold your business, what happened? And he said well, I want to thank you.

You know, You did a great job selling my business. And after the sale, I lived the life. I bought a vacation property, I traveled with the wife, I did all these things, I got some toys. But a short while back, I started going through my finances and I didn't really prepare. I didn't realize how much taxes were gonna cost.

I didn't realize how. Commissions and the expenses of the liquidity event was gonna be, and I didn't realize what my lifestyle [00:28:00] expenses were, and I realized at my current clip of spending, I would run outta money. And he wanted on to say that he wasn't at a point in his life where he wanted to start another business.

He didn't have it in him. He gave everything he had. To the business that he sold. So now he works at this big box store to get some additional income coming in so he can at least cover the expenses and live somewhat of a life that, that he wanted tragic story, hard goes out to that particular individual.

And the lesson here for us, to your point, Jason, had he gone through the retirement budget calculator in advance, likely wouldn't have sold the business or would have changed how he spent after the sale of the business to be in a different situation.

Jason Parker: What's amazing is it doesn't. Matter how much money you've saved because I've talked to the people that have once you get over maybe 15, 20 million, 

I think it does start to change because then there is a lot more tax planning going on, and you've got, the chances of running out of [00:29:00] money at that phase are gonna be a lot lower because a lot of those people that I've met personally, they tend to be pretty frugal.

They have no debt. They live very simply and they're. Portfolios generating so much, just even dividend and interest income that they can't spend it all over year. But for the average person, especially like the folks using the calculator have about 1.5 million is pretty typical for the people using the calculator.

So I'd say 1.5 to three and a half million dollars is pretty typical what I found is that no matter how much money people save, everyone seems to adjust their lifestyle to whatever the number it is that they 

have in the bank. And so I've met with people that have $300,000 saved for retirement and they live wonderfully, they 

seem to be able to go on a cruise every year.

They live just on pension and social security. They never dip into their retirement accounts. And life is very comfortable. And then I've met other people that have saved $3 million for retirement. And you know, it's interesting how your expectations, Everything change as your Wealth goes up. The cars that you drive, the vacations that you take, the house that you live [00:30:00] in, the property taxes that you pay, everything increases with Wealth.

And one of the keys, I think, for the younger generation people listening to this, is how can you continue to accumulate Wealth but not increase lifestyle as you go? And that is such. A challenge, but that is really one of the keys to being able to retire early, if that's something that you're interested in.

Again, I'm not a huge fan of this Retire early movement. I'm a huge fan of financial independence. I want people to have financial independence, but I don't think that there's a lot of purpose and value and fulfillment and just having, like you said, a lot of zeros in the bank and not having anything that's greater that you're striving towards to achieve and to work towards.

One of the things though that I am excited about, Jeffrey, is we have this time right now in our country where there's such a need for me. 

And I was the benefactor of a mentor. I had the good fortune when I was in my mid twenties. I met a gentleman who was in his mid sixties. 

In [00:31:00] that one relationship totally changed the course of my life.

Had I not met my friend Dean, I never would've had the opportunities that I have today. Because Dean believed in me. 

He invested in me, he spoke life into me. He spoke encouragement into me. He challenged me on some of my core beliefs, and I almost ended the relationship with him because I was so offended that some of the things that he said to me early.

But looking back, he passed away a couple years ago. Looking back, I wouldn't be in the position that I'm in today if it had not been for that relationship. And so when people do get out of the workforce and they do realize that they have enough to be able to go and just have that kind of impact on one person's life it changes not just

that person's life, but it changes society. Again I'm, a breathing, living example of somebody who, somebody believed in me, they've invested in me, they encouraged me, and now today, all of the things that we're doing wouldn't have been possible if it hadn't been for that one relationship. I am excited about setting people free financially so that they can go out and [00:32:00] mentor others.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Absolutely. And Jason, you're spot on because the takeaway for the listener is we're talking about financial independence, financial freedom. Not necessarily go back, retire, do nothing. It's how do you, and we talk all about this in the post Exit side of the Deep Wealth system. How do you create a life after the business where you are fulfilled?

You do have momentum. Yes, you have more white space, but at the same time, you're doing maybe different activities than you were in the business, but it's still fulfilling and it gives you a.

Jason Parker: Yeah, when I ask people, cuz I get to talk to a lot of people about retirement, what I say, what's the best part being retired, you know what the number one answer is? They say I don't have to wake up to the alarm clock anymore.

So the number one answer, I just think to myself, boy, what if we created an environment where we allowed people a little bit more flexibility in their work schedule so they could sleep a little bit more, but still contribute?

And it's funny to me that that's the number one thing that I hear the most frequently is just, I don't have to wake up to the alarm clock anymore.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Yeah. I, so [00:33:00] many of the people in our circles, I'm sure on, the flip side, their plays work and their work is play. And from that perspective, you're really the wealthiest person and the most fortunate person around where you just enjoy doing that and I couldn't agree more with you, Jason, that as business owners, founders, entrepreneurs, we really do make the world go round.

We find painful problems, solve them, change lives for the better, help enough people get what they want. And over time we get what we want,

Jason Parker: It has Zig Ziegler. Yes.

Jeffrey Feldberg: And as you're talking about how we spend our money, just going back to a classic book, a book that when I read the first time Forever changed me, the Richest Man in Babylon.

And. I'll never forget the analogy that was given in the book. And again, it's an older book language maybe outta south for today. But the strategies and the principles aren't. And in the book it said, look to your capital as children. And if you're spending your money and it gives the example on jewelry or clothes, it's like eating your children.[00:34:00]

So maybe not necessarily, the most visually friendly analogy there, but it gets to the point. And so when you're figuring out my financial independence and freedom, it's okay. How do I get my capital to work for? And generate income that I can live off of without really going into the principle and not the other way around that I'm working for my money.

Thoughts about that?

Jason Parker: Yeah, I'm biased here. I'm biased because I'm a believer in the markets. I'm a believer in investing. I'm not a believer in gambling. So I'm not a crypto guy. I'm not a buy gold guy. 

I'm a believer that businesses are gonna continue to produce goods and services that make people's lives better. I don't think we're gonna go backwards.

You know, I'm not gonna grow carrots and you're gonna flake off a couple of pieces of gold and bring it to me and we're gonna have this bartering exchange. I don't see that happening. There's no evidence to show that we're gonna start going backwards as humanity. I think artificial intelligence is a great example.

We're just continuing. Move forward and life is, there's a quote that I like. It says, [00:35:00] despite our greatest efforts, things will continue to get better. And 

it's so true. Unfortunately, we live in a world where everyone's addicted to the bad news and the flashing red lights on the television and the media and the screens.

But when you understand that the markets work, that you've got the smartest people in the world running businesses, those businesses are producing goods and services that are gonna make people's lives. People are gonna continue to consume goods and services. 

The population's continuing to grow. We reward people through capitalism by making things that make people's lives better.

You wanna participate in that and the best way to do that is through low cost index funds. You wanna be broadly diversified across asset classes and sectors diversified across the entire globe. Understand, part of the deal when you're an investor is you have to become an optimist. You have to believe that the future's gonna be better than the present, 

and you also have to accept that there's gonna be volatility.

And that there are about 75% of the [00:36:00] time the market goes up. 25% of the time the market goes down. 

And that's just part of the game. That's part of the deal. But if you are gonna be one of these people, it's jumping in, jumping out, always trying to find the next thing. Speculating, gambling, going to the roulette table that is gonna destroy you.

Fear is gonna destroy your plan. So part of what you need to have is discipline. 

I've got a couple of favorite quotes about discipline. 

Abraham Lincoln said that discipline is understanding the difference between what you want now versus what you want most. I just talked to somebody the other day and they said, Jason I, think maybe we should put everything into cash right now until this craziness resides in the world and the market starts to go up again.

And I said do you realize that the first quarter of this year the market's up over 7%? 

Depending on which index you're looking at, some of 'em up double digits. And so they're like, no. And I said, and the reason is because all of the media that they're consuming is focused on. The worst of the worst.

When my sister was in college, they said she was taking communications and she [00:37:00] wanted to become a news broadcaster, and the saying was, what bleeds leads? 

So if you don't protect your mind, you mentioned one of your, favorite books, the Richest Man of Babylon. One of mine is James Allen book as a Man Think Of and that book was written in 1910, but the idea is so simple.

We can see it in the natural world. So obviously, which is, if I. A tomato seed in my garden. I grow tomatoes. If I plant corn, I grow corn. If I plant dandelions in weeds, I grow weeds. Our mind is fertile soil. What we plant grows, you can't consume a bunch of garbage and expect to have something good come out the other side.

And that is one of the biggest challenges that I have for the people that we serve is getting them to understand that they need to protect their mind, they need to renew their mind. And that is a core component to living a healthy life 

and, you know, just living a fulfilled life. And you can't do that by, you know, it's like saying I want a healthy, nutritious meal, and then going digging around through the garbage can, like George Costanza on Seinfeld to [00:38:00] find the donut that was left at the top of the thing.

You know, you might find some garbage worth eating, but it's probably not gonna fulfill you. It's probably not gonna be good. And so, but the world we live in today, like no other time in history, Even if you're not looking for this stuff, 

the way the algorithms work is you watch one video and then the next video is gonna be more of the same.

I did this the other day. I was on YouTube and I watched something that talked about war, and now all of a sudden everything on YouTube that I is being fed into my feed is all about war. A military strength, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, my goodness, if you would think the world is about to end tomorrow if this is the only thing that you're doing.

So taking a media break can be really healthy. And one of the things we do in the retirement budget calculator, we have something called the goals tab, 

 The goals tab is not about financial goals, it's about lifestyle. 

It's about what's important to you. And so we broke this down into daily, weekly, monthly, annual, And lifetime goals.

And so maybe your goal is to do 10 pushups a day, 

[00:39:00] So you do your 10 pushups, you go into the calculator, you click that on the calendar, and it turns green. And what you're trying to do is not break the chain. So every day that you are able to do something consistently you're just trying to create this rhythm in your life.

So whether it's daily, weekly, monthly, the lifetime goals are those big things that you would feel fulfilled if you had accomplished these things in your life. Like one of mine is to hike theo de Santiago, 

and. Yeah. And so you start to create you and your spouse and the people that are important to you.

You put these things down. You say, this is what a good life looks like. How can I be moving in that direction? And I can't even remember what your question was. Now I got off on a tangent. I'm sorry. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: It's all good. But you know, Going back to what you said, and then we're gonna go into wrap up mode. Jason, your inner thoughts really produce your outer world and the ancients have known for some time. What science is now confirming some people call it the quantum field, which is showing that, hey, what we think about we actually manifest in our daily life.

So absolutely garbage in garbage, outdoor, as we say, Deep Wealth, gold in platinum out. Your quality of [00:40:00] thoughts determine your quality of life and just round things out. And for our listeners, you've heard me say it in another episode, we'll put it in the show notes. It's stolen focus. Wonderful book talks.

Exactly. Jason, what you're talking about, all these AI algorithms from the social media platforms, you know who they are. They'll remain nameless. We all know who they are, who the longer they have us on their site, the more money they make in advertising. And we're simply a means to an end. And hopefully this is another podcast, Jason, perhaps down the road.

Hopefully AI will level the playing field with that as it starts getting out there with the right kind of information because we ask it a. We get the same answer as opposed to being you're conservative, so I'm gonna give you a very right wing conservative, or no, you're liberal. I'm gonna give you a very left wing kind of viewpoint.

So hopefully that will all go away, but I too go off on a tangent. So Jason, let's do this. Let's go into wrap up mode here. It's one of my favorite questions. I really have the privilege and the honor for every guest to ask, and let me set this up. It's a fun. So think of the movie Back to the Future, [00:41:00] and in the movie you have that magical DeLorean car that will take you to any point in time in your life.

So it's tomorrow morning. And Jason, here's the fun part. You look outside your window. DeLorean car is curbside, the door is open. It's waiting for you to hop on in. So you hop in. You're now gonna go to any point earlier in your life. You can go to Jason as a young child, a teenager, whatever point in time that would.

What are you telling your younger self in terms of life lessons, life wisdom, Hey, Jason, do this, but don't do that. What would that sound like?

Jason Parker: One of the things that I've, it took me a while to recognize this, but just the, in the incredible importance of relationships, everybody that you need to know, 

right now it's just a matter of creating the connections and, for a lot of my early life, I felt like everything was out of reach. And I mentioned my friend Dean, my mentor Dean that I had. The reason that I met Dean was because I called my dad. 

You know, I was in my early twenties. I said, [00:42:00] dad, the work that I'm doing, I've gotta do something different. I've gotta find something different. My dad introduced me to his friend Mike, who lived in Florida.

Mike introduced me to this guy Todd that lived in Seattle. Todd introduced me to my friend Dean and Dean was this person that really changed my life. I was looking for somebody that could help me get to this next phase of life, right? 

But the key there is I called my dad, and as I thought more about that, is I thought about the relationships that I have.

 Most of the connections that I have, it goes back to the 80 20 rule that 80% of the relationships you have are a result of 20% of the people that you know. My dad is a major connector for me. 

I met Dean because I called my dad and he connected me to the right people to get me to that relationship. My dad didn't know Dean, but he connected me to other people. My wife is a huge connector for me. 

So a lot of the relationships that we have in our life today as a result of my.

So once you recognize who those connectors are, it's very important that you protect those. The reason the retirement budget calculator exists to build software, people think I can't build software.

I don't know the right people. In my [00:43:00] mid twenties, I took a martial art called Aikido, and then I started training kids in that after about nine years of training, one of the kids, dads was a computer programmer, 

so when I came up, I had my spreadsheet that I had built and I thought, boy, I'd really like to build some software.

I thought of this guy and I called him. I reached out to him. We had lunch and it was that relationship that got the ball rolling with the retirement budget calculator, and then when he couldn't take it any further, 

another gentleman that I had met that I had coached basketball, my son's basketball team with, he was my assistant coach, he had been a designer and done a lot of work with some big companies like Microsoft.

He is the one. That said, Jason, we can take this thing to the next level. 

And again, it's just all these relationships, understanding this interconnectedness that we have with one another and that everybody that we need to know is within this fear of influence. We just have to start asking people.

I, there's a book that came out recently called Who Not How. 

So stop asking the question, how do we do this? Who do we need to know that can help us get to the next [00:44:00] level? And Jeffrey, that's why I'm excited to have this conversation with you today because this new relationship has been established. And it's exciting for me to think of the layers of possibility that exist now between the two of us in the book Napoleon Hill Think And Grow Rich.

He said that when two people come together, the third mind is created. The mastermind. 

One of the reasons I get together with a group of guys every January is because I believe in this power of community, and this is not, this isn't, like you said, this is ancient wisdom. In the Bible it says, when two or more are gathered in my name, I am there with them.

So, yeah. And then when you understand the sense of community, the sense of connectedness, interconnectedness. Then you start to take care of each other differently because you recognize that we are not a bunch of solo silos running through this world alone, but everything that we do is impacting one another.

 And then it just, yeah, you can't lose in this world that I live in now, because [00:45:00] my belief is that you just go out and help people and I would probably just really help the younger Jason have a little bit more confidence, speak a little bit more life into him.

Encourage him to reach out to the people that are close to him and ask the questions and just, there's a real sense of loan. Loneliness In the world that we live in today, we're more connected than ever. But people don't have real relationships. So just to connect with a friend, go for a hike, go for a walk, play a game of pickleball.

Do something that gets you engaged with other people. Join a small group, something that gets you where you can actually communicate with other people. And then all of a sudden this richness of life starts to come about. And that's why I tell my kids in the 

schools when I get to go and talk.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Nice. You know what words to the wise, some terrific wisdom out there. And let me ask you this, and for listeners, we'll have all this in the show notes. It doesn't get any easier. It'll be a point and click. So Jason will have your book, we'll have the website, but if someone has a question, they wanna reach out, they wanna speak to you.

Where's the best place online someone can find you.

Jason Parker: I'm really [00:46:00] trying not to talk to people one on one except for you, Jeffrey, but I would encourage em to join the retirement budget calculator. 

One of the things we did in the calculator, we've built a community portal 

so that like-minded people can share ideas with one another. I like to hang out in that, inside that community portal and the calculator.

So, If people have questions, we call ourselves the RBC Nerds retirement Budget calculator nerds. And so that's a place where we can answer questions and just walk life together and, yeah, dream about this better, life that we're hoping to help people achieve.

Jeffrey Feldberg: Terrific. There you have it, folks. All in the show notes. Jason, this is a wrap. Thank you so much for your insights, your wisdom. Really appreciate that. And as we like to say, Deep Wealth, please continue to thrive and prosper while you say healthy and safe. Thank you so much.

Jason Parker: Thank you, Jeffrey. 

Sharon S.: The Deep Wealth Experience was definitely a game-changer for me. 

Lyn M.: This course is one of the best investments you will ever make because you will get an ROI of a hundred times that. Anybody who doesn't go through it [00:47:00] will lose millions. 

Kam H.: If you don't have time for this program, you'll never have time for a successful liquidity 

Sharon S.: It was the best value of any business course I've ever taken. The money was very well spent.

Lyn M.: Compared to when we first began, today I feel better prepared, but in some respects, may be less prepared, not because of the course, but because the course brought to light so many things that I thought we were on top of that we need to fix. 

Kam H.: I 100% believe there's never a great time for a business owner to allocate extra hours into his or her week or day. So it's an investment that will yield results today. I thought I will reap the benefit of this program in three to five years down the road. But as soon as I stepped forward into the program, my mind changed immediately. 

Sharon S.: There was so much value in the experience that the time I invested paid back so much for the energy that [00:48:00] was expended. 

Lyn M.: The Deep Wealth Experience compared to other programs is the top. What we learned is very practical. Sometimes you learn stuff that it's great to learn, but you never use it. The stuff we learned from Deep Wealth Experience, I believe it's going to benefit us a boatload.

Kam H.: I've done an executive MBA. I've worked for billion-dollar companies before. I've worked for smaller companies before I started my business. I've been running my business successfully now for getting close to a decade. We're on a growth trajectory. Reflecting back on the Deep Wealth, I knew less than 10% what I know now, maybe close to 1% even. 

Sharon S.: Hands down the best program in which I've ever participated. And we've done a lot of different things over the years. We've been in other mastermind groups, gone to many seminars, workshops, conferences, retreats, read books. This was so different. I haven't had an experience that's anything close to this in all the years that we've been at this.

It's five-star, A-plus.

Kam H.: I would highly [00:49:00] recommend it to any super busy business owner out there.

Deep Wealth is an accurate name for it. This program leads to deeper wealth and happier wealth, not just deeper wealth. I don't think there's a dollar value that could be associated with such an experience and knowledge that could be applied today and forever. 

Jeffrey Feldberg: Are you leaving millions on the table? 

Please visit www.deepwealth.com/success to learn more.

 If you're not on my email list, you'll want to be. Sign up at www.deepwealth.com/podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode, if it added value, if you walked away with some new insights and strategies, please leave a review on your favorite podcast channel. Reviews help us reach new listeners, grow the show. And continue to create content that you'll enjoy and as we wrap up this episode as always please stay healthy and safe.