Preview of what we’ll cover today:

⭐ Leading Role: Consistent saving drives retirement success

💰 Supporting Role: Tax planning strengthens retirement outcomes

📝 Screenplay Strategy: Income planning maps retirement story

🎵 The Score (Advisor Guidance): Financial advisors guide planning journey

🏆 Best Picture: Written financial plan ties everything together

Subscribe On Your Favorite App:

YouTubeApple PodcastsSpotifyAmazon MusiciHeartRadioTuneIn

More About This Episode:

The Oscars celebrate the best performances in film, but what if we handed out awards for financial planning instead? Ryan takes inspiration from Hollywood’s biggest night and hands out a few “Academy Awards” of our own to the strategies and habits that make a retirement plan truly successful. You’ll hear how the best retirements, just like the best movies, don’t happen by accident.

Go Deeper Into The Episode:

0:00 – Intro

1:52 – Best Actor in a Leading Role: Consistent Saving and Investing

4:08 – Best Supporting Actress: Tax Planning

6:02 – Best Original Screenplay: Retirement Income Plan

11:05 – Best Original Score: Financial Advisor

13:52 – Best Picture: Written Financial Plan

Resources:

Retire Pilots – https://retirepilots.com

Get your FREE Retirement Toolkit – https://bit.ly/3ZmZsaX

Pilot Tax – https://pilot-tax.com/

The Pilot’s Advisor Podcast is also on video. Watch & Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3EIEBW2

Connect with Pilot-Tax: https://pilot-tax.com/

Episode Transcription:

(Note, this is an automated transcription. Please forgive any errors.)

Walter Storholt  00:00

Well, hey, the Oscars are here, and we’re feeling a little bit inspired. So today, what we’re going to do is hand out some awards of our own. But instead of awarding films, we’re going to award financial planning, strategies, ideas and habits. So who’s the Best Actor in a Leading Role in your financial plan? Well, that’s one of the awards that we’ll give away today. What’s the equivalent of the best supporting actress that will be given out at the Oscars? Well, tax planning is one of the nominees. Will it be the winner? We’ll find out. The Oscar goes to your retirement strategy on today’s episode, we’re gonna have a little fun, but I think you’ll learn a lot along the way. Stay tuned. We’ll get to it after this. Back for another episode of the pilots advisor, and we’re on the red carpet today. Ryan, okay, not, not really, as usual. It’s our black and white carpet for our video fans. But nonetheless, the Oscars are this weekend. Are you a big movie guy? I don’t know if you’re a big award season guy, but do you like you know the movies at least? Yeah.

Ryan Fleming  01:00

I mean, my wife loves watching movies, so I tend to watch movies and then fall asleep to them.

Walter Storholt  01:06

Yeah, Oscars and watching the award shows and things like that.

Ryan Fleming  01:10

No, because I think, I think in our family, we love watching movies, and we love watching shows and all that, but the whole Hollywood la actor thing, we’re just kind of turned off by at this point.

Walter Storholt  01:21

Yeah, I’ve never gotten the like, all the excitement over them patting themselves on the back in a way, like and watching it and obsessing over it.

Ryan Fleming  01:29

But I do love it when we don’t ask them their opinion and they want to tell us about their politics.

Walter Storholt  01:34

I know you enjoy that. I know. Yeah, that’s fantastic. Well, nonetheless, we’re going to just get into the spirit a little bit loosely. We’ll still focus mostly on the financial side of things, but we’ll talk a little bit about the Oscars, since they’re happening this coming weekend, and talk a little about who’s getting the awards in the financial planning realm. All right, so first of all, we’re gonna give out the best actor role, Best Actor in a Leading Role, and who’s gonna be getting that, that that Oscar, who the nominees are, and then who gets the win?

Ryan Fleming  02:03

Well, I don’t have any nominees, but you’re going straight to the winner. I’m going straight to the winner. And I wrote some of this, a little bit of stuff down. So the best, the Best Actor in a Leading Role, when we’re going to start looking at preparing or saving for retirement, is consistent saving and investing.

Walter Storholt  02:19

Yes, great performance this year.

Ryan Fleming  02:22

So here we go. Every great film has a strong, steady hero that carries the whole thing in your financial plan that’s consistent, saving and investing more often than not, where people end up financially isn’t the result of one big, you know, make or break moment. It’s not about this year or that year’s returns. It comes down to showing up. You know, I always talk about showing up on time, bringing something to the table reliably, automatically, every year, year after year, or in my case, what I like to say is, month after month. I don’t care how much put something away, you know, a little bit over time adds up. So think of this as the Tom Hanks of financial planning, decades of reliable performances and good movies, steady quality work that earned him back to back Best Actor Oscars. I didn’t know that, but there you go, Tom Hanks. Little shout out to you and I, and I do like Tom Hanks, so that’s good. I’m glad we picked

Walter Storholt  03:19

that one. Talk about reliable performance, right? If you’re watching a Tom Hanks movie, you pretty much know it’s a good one,

Ryan Fleming  03:25

and he’s a good guy, you know? I think there’s enough out there. And seeing some of the things he does for charity work and everything else, he’s a good guy, but that’s the energy you want from your savings strategy show up every month, unemotionally. Make it happen.

Walter Storholt  03:39

All right? Very consistent. I think you could throw like, a Tom Cruise in there, right? If you just want a different

Ryan Fleming  03:45

angle, you could have that. I was worried you’re going to do that. No, I disagree.

Walter Storholt  03:47

I don’t think we want Tom Cruise, not a Tom Cruise fan. Come on.

Ryan Fleming  03:51

I loved him in Top Gun, but once again, you know, the politics got into it. I’m like, okay, but dude, don’t care. Yeah? Well, religion, but his was religion, that was a big thing.

Walter Storholt  04:00

Yeah, he’s in the Scientology realm, right? That’s, I forgot about that. Well, from just an acting standpoint, consistently shows up. All right, let’s go to the Best Supporting Actress. Who’s that in the financial plan?

Ryan Fleming  04:13

Well, what we’ve come up with, we have no nominees once again. But we actually recently did a podcast about this, and I think it’s just so overlooked so many times, you know, until we roll around in March and April each year, and then people are just worried about one year versus the long term effect of it, and that is tax planning. Taxes will affect your retirement. So here we go. What I wrote down.

Walter Storholt  04:36

Congratulations, tax planning. Well

Ryan Fleming  04:40

done. And she’s hot too. Let me tell you, I don’t like IRS, but tax planning, she is hot.

Walter Storholt  04:45

I didn’t see that one coming.

Ryan Fleming  04:49

Find every great leading performance is a supporting role that makes the whole film work, and in the Academy Award history, nobody embodies that better than I like this one too. Meryl Streep. Year. Yeah, the most nominated actor ever, with 21 nominations, four of them for supporting roles in your financial life. The critical supporting role belongs to tax planning. It might be, it might surprise you at first, but smart decisions around Roth, conversions, withdrawal sequencing, tax efficient investing and investments and withdrawals can absolutely make or break your retirement and make or break your retirement film, it doesn’t always get top billing, but it deserves so much tax planning. Best Supporting Actress,

Walter Storholt  05:36

yeah, I like that one a lot. You’re not going to win Best Film just because of the Supporting Actress. You’re not going to have a great financial plan only because of tax planning, but both of those things are going to build that, that that best film, right? You need that element to it. So you can’t have a great financial plan without tax planning and that being part of the strategy. So it’s, it’s a great supporter. I think that’s a good win, a good selection by the Academy today. So well done. All right. Best Original Screenplay. This one has some cool parallels, actually, when you think about it, the best original screenplay, I like your taste,

Ryan Fleming  06:10

was a little bit tougher for me to to visualize. I read through it, and then we get

Walter Storholt  06:15

to look up what a screenplay was. First of all,

Ryan Fleming  06:19

dude, like an offensive playing football? Different screenplay, different All right, Best Original Screenplay, your retirement income plan. And sadly, some people probably don’t even know what that is. But anyway, before the film, there’s a screenplay. Someone sat down and thought through the story before a single scene was shot before they decided what actors were going to be in there. Your retirement income plan works the same way. Before you get there, you want to know where your income will come from, when to withdraw it, and from which accounts and how to adjust when life throws in a plot twist, because it will all right. So think about some of the biggest original screenplays in Oscar history, here’s what we’ve come up with. I love this movie, by the way, Pulp Fiction, yeah, I’m sorry that movie is awesome, and I great story. Oh, I actually go back and watch that one. I think it’s great, yeah, Good Will Hunting Chariots of Fire. Completely different stories and told in completely different ways, but each one’s stunning in its own right. Your retirement income plan is like that, unique to you, your circumstances and the story you’re trying to tell. Now, when I think about your retirement income plan, I get asked all the time, what’s that number that I have to save? And it is so personal and unique, because it all really depends on how large you live life, you know, and how much income you need each month in retirement, it’s so different for every single person. And I’m amazed with airline pilots that mostly make about the same, or you know exactly what they’re going to make, those that have been longtime wide body captains, and some are totally broke, and others have saved a ton, or some that live well within their means, and others that are just buying, you know, boats, cars, planes, what have you. So your retirement income plan has a lot. I actually love building those out, because you get to really start digging into what your your monthly bills are, what your budget looks like. I don’t think people really like to do that, but I do, because it’s just a math equation. You know, it’s just a math equation, and then you start looking at safe withdrawal rates and everything else. But I’ve completely sidetracked this Best Original Screenplay your retirement income plan, and that’s something we need to start building out as you get closer to that retirement date.

Walter Storholt  08:40

I think the building out is the key here, right? The screenplay is say, I’m envisioning exactly what the movie is going to look like. Well, beforehand, I’m planning it out carefully, and then you see that come to life later on. Same thing with that income plan, we want to be working on that before you get to retirement. We want the plan in place. We want to envision things Ryan like that are going to go wrong, right? Like, hey, there could be a market crash in year one. How are we going to handle that? Let’s stress test it. Let’s put it through the paces. Let’s make some assumptions that challenge our income plan and build around that. No wonder you you get really into that part of the planning. You’d be a great screenplay writer, I think, because that’s how you think, and you want to kind of plan way out in advance for things. Well, I

Ryan Fleming  09:20

definitely would not be a good writer, but I definitely can. I can envision this because I’ve done it so many times, and I can

Walter Storholt  09:25

see it. You go, you’re part of the writing team. Other people can do the actual writing, but you’ll do the idea generation well,

Ryan Fleming  09:31

and to give, to give context to it, and just big numbers, though, too. That I like to think about is, you know, do you have a pension? Do you have? What’s your Social Security going to look like? What? What income do you have that’s there no matter what? Yeah. And then, if we’re talking about a save withdrawal rate, just realize that a million dollars is only going to spit out about 40 or $50,000 a year when you take into into account taxes, inflation and everything else. So yeah, it’s you have to save a lot more money than most people realize.

Walter Storholt  09:59

Yeah. Attention aviators, when you’ve spent years in the cockpit managing the complexities of flight, isn’t it time you navigated your retirement with the same precision? Introducing retirepilots.com right at your touchdown zone on our homepage, there’s a beacon flashing. Get my free toolkit. Click that, and you’ll be cleared for a direct route to Ryan’s retirement toolkit, tailor made for pilots like you. Inside, you’ll find two of his important works, the pilot’s advisor and pilots retire early. Between these two books, you can decipher the nine critical decisions when retiring before 65 and discover the seven lessons to help pilots land safely in retirement. But that’s not all. This toolkit is packed with altitude, high value, including extras to get your retirement plans off the runway and light the afterburners on your 401 k vector on over to retirepilots.com to grab your toolkit, and let’s embark on this journey together. Now, the music industry gets its own night, right? The Grammys and lots of other different individual genre awards that they do, but music’s a big equation and a big piece of the awards night in the Oscars as well, because what’s a movie without music? So the Best Original Score is our next award to give out in the financial world.

Ryan Fleming  11:26

Well, Walter likes to throw stuff at me, and then I got to tap dance around it. So I’m going to throw this one back at Walter, because I can’t tell it this. Walter, go ahead and tell us what the Best Original Score is.

Walter Storholt  11:36

I’m going to put you in the spotlight for this one, Ryan, I’m going to say it’s your financial advisor is, is the Best Original Score? That’s the

Ryan Fleming  11:44

I don’t need an advisor. There were too many fees. Yeah, there

Walter Storholt  11:48

you go. Exactly. No, I think so the score, when I think about a score in a movie, right? It gives the movie movement and motion and emotion. It helps you understand, maybe how characters are feeling, sets the tone, carries you through highs and lows of the movie. I think about Jaws, right? Two notes defines a movie, defines a generation, right? So just the simplicity of music or the grandioseness of it, you think about Star Wars and its themes and how it’s carried on through all the years. So I just think it’s a great tone setter. It’s a great guide. You can kind of, sometimes, if the the movie chooses to, they can let you know something bad’s about to happen, just with the subtlety of the music leading up to it, right? Or they can let you know that, hey, the motions are turning just from a couple of simple notes. So I like that direction. I like that guidance. I like that setting of the tone and and maybe even guiding down the path throughout the movie as the score. So I kind of see that as the financial advisor doing all those same things, guiding us through the ups and downs of financial planning, of retirement, of the plan itself, and helping be our guide through it all.

Ryan Fleming  12:55

I didn’t really think about that until you started talking about that, like how much music defines certain movies, yeah, and you still, you talked about jaws, and you talked about Star Wars, and then it, you know, I started thinking about, like, you know, the sounds and the music that goes with that. But then what it really made me start thinking about was soundtracks, yeah, remember, like, soundtracks that while we were growing up, or at least me growing up, but, you know, Walter young, sure,

Walter Storholt  13:21

but like, beyond just the orchestral build ups, but like, just fun soundtracks that set the tone for certain movies.

Ryan Fleming  13:28

I was thinking, like, the whole Dirty Dancing soundtrack, I think, was played for a decade, right, you know, and then there’s, there’s been a few other movies as they’ve come out over time, where that whole soundtrack, like so many of those songs, became hits or top 10s and and really became a, you know, generation, generational icon for, for that, you know, the 80s or the 90s, or whatever it was. So, yeah, I don’t know, Walter, I think you did such a good job on that, while we roll right into the closing.

Walter Storholt  13:55

Okay, the closing is the best picture. And you saw this one coming, I’m sure, from a mile away. But this is the winner. Is your overall written financial plan. That’s the best picture. You got to save the best for last in the award ceremony. And I think a clear financial plan is your best picture, because that’s where we bring it all together, right? So the best picture’s got to have a good score. It’s got to have good supporting actresses and actors. It’s got to have, you know, one of the top acting performances at the top of it. It’s got to have the good screenplay, all the awards we didn’t cover today, right? It’s got to have all those elements working for it, from a storytelling standpoint, to maybe some action or just, you know, all those different moving parts. And that’s what a written financial plan has to have as well. So this is, this is your godfather. This is your Forrest Gump. This is the Lord of the Rings, the movie that’s taking home all the awards, right? It ties it all together. It’s also something that stands the test of time. You look at some of the Best Picture winners over the years, they’re movies you’re still watching 50 years later and still getting into. And I think that’s your financial plan, right? We need that to stand the test of time and work well for 2030 30 years and beyond.

Ryan Fleming  15:01

You pulled it off. Walter, I didn’t know how you did. It was fun. This is fun. And I like talking about all these old movies that really touched us and everything, but you did. You did a fantastic job of closing it out, bringing it all together. Amazing.

Walter Storholt  15:16

I appreciate it. We need to get, like, a little a little Oscar or something like that. You know, one of the little statues that you can have in your in your office now, now that you’ve won some awards for Best Original Score, you need a little Oscar in the background with your football helmets.

Ryan Fleming  15:29

Well, we have to think about making this indicative of certain clients, clients that win an award, versus clients that don’t win or I like that we could provide a different context, yes, the different ways they saved or planned or made, you know, did conversions or tax strategies? Yeah, yeah.

Walter Storholt  15:47

I like that. You could turn this into a whole client event, I’m sure. Oh, yeah, pilots like competition, right? So I think you’ll, you could. You could even make it a competition for who can win the award among your clients. I think that’d

Ryan Fleming  15:59

be great. Sounds like a disaster.

Walter Storholt  16:03

Could be fun. Maybe not. Well, very good. Lots of fun on today’s show. Some unique comparisons, for sure.

Ryan Fleming  16:10

I’m sorry you brought that up, but I have to say this, I always joke around that, you know, I’m type A, I am one of the, you know, I’m an airline pilot as well, so I like to give tough love, yeah. And it just made me think that I had to get this out there, even if it’s a real but in retirement, not everybody gets a trophy. Yeah, it’s just the way it is. That is true. Don’t do the work. You’re not going to get the trophy.

Walter Storholt  16:32

That is true. There are no participation trophies in retirement planning. I think that’s a really good mentality.

Ryan Fleming  16:37

Yeah, everybody gets to participate in retirement, but some of them have a bit better than others. And yeah, there’s not trophies handed out to everyone.

Walter Storholt  16:45

Yeah, maybe Social Security is the participation trophy, but if you want better than that, you’ve got to be your own participant in it all. So absolutely interesting thought. Well, if you’ve got any questions about financial planning, I know today was just kind of fun and a little bit different of an episode, but in all seriousness, if you’ve got questions about financial planning your retirement, a one on one visit is always the best thing to do to better your financial situation moving forward, you can do that by ordering the retirement toolkit that Ryan has put together specifically for pilots, packed with his books, resources and more information to help you prepare for retirement, and it comes with a free portfolio analysis where you get to meet one on one with Ryan to discuss your situation and get that review of your current plan. And start talking about, where might some gaps be, where can there be some improvement? Make sure that that’s part of the discussion. You can get that toolkit by clicking the link in the description of today’s show, or by going to retire pilots.com as well. Ryan, thanks for the help. We’ll talk to

Ryan Fleming  17:41

you soon. Thanks as always. Walter, take care.

Speaker 1  17:48

Information is for illustrative purposes only and does not constitute tax investment or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified investment legal or tax professional before taking any action.