Episode 13: What’s Your Retirement Going to Look Like?

Kyle Pearce: Welcome to the Canadian Wealth Secrets Podcast with Kyle Pearce, Matt Biggley, and Jon Orr.

Matt Biggley: Get ready to be taught as we share our successes and failures encountered during our real-life lessons learning how to build generational wealth from the ground up.

Kyle Pearce: Welcome Invested students. That's you.

Jon Orr: To another episode of The Canadian Wealth Secrets-

Matt Biggley: Podcast.

Kyle Pearce: Yes, my friends. And today we're going to be taking a little bit of a break about talking about specific strategies as we had mentioned those hurdles that we had in real estate. And now we're going to start thinking a little bit more long-term, almost really getting your head wrapped around, "Why are we even doing any of this work anyway?" And I know that we often have these conversations and I know Matt, you and I for many years you've defined it or not defined it, but read a book about our personal Belize. You constantly brought up this idea and it's taken us many years to continue to try to get a sense of why are we doing this in the first place? And it's all visualizing... Yeah, why do we want to have some sort of wealth building strategy going on? What is the goal?
What do we foresee for ourselves? And I'm going to be honest and say, guys, I don't know about you, but... I don't know exactly, but I do know that I want to feel that I'm not restrained or constrained. Because I don't know exactly what my future is going to look like or what I'd like it to look like. But what I know I don't want it to look like is a scenario where I feel I don't have enough funds to allow me to just do the things I'd like to do in life. And again, I'm struggling still to define what those things are. I want to flip it right to Matt right now because you are the one who brought me to this idea of a personal Belize. What book was it? And sorry to put you on the spot here, but that is where my head is gone. When we were chatting about hopping on and talking about retirement and planning and what that might look like.

Matt Biggley: This idea of a personal Belize is really kind of same concept as honing in on your why. Start with why, what's your purpose here? And it's something this guy Don Campbell, who's one of the OGs of real estate investing in Canada, started this organization called REIGN, the Real Estate Investing Network, and bought a number of his books and he really likens it to this idea of your personal Belize. So for him, Belize was this magical place where he would retire to, and all of the work that he was doing was to help him achieve his own personal Belize. And so I got on into sharing this idea when we first started investing because listen, what is the point of doing all this extra work of going above and beyond? Now listen, I think all three of us are people who really enjoy the work and really enjoy the learning.
So that's part of it. But there's a definite financial aspect to this as well. And we've all been fortunate in having these defined benefit pension plans and having a lot of certainty around retirement. And let's be honest, not a lot of people have that. So that's been a huge plus of teaching. And I think both of you have always kind of wanted to push that as part of our financial journey in life and to really understand what we can achieve, how we can maximize or not necessarily maximize, but enhance our life's financial trajectory. So that's really of interest to me. And I've spent a lot of time meditating and thinking about why am I doing this? Who am I doing it for? What's the purpose behind any of this to begin with?

Jon Orr: And I think that's so important to think about when we're starting to our retirement plan or thinking about retirement. I know that many people... Maybe I shouldn't say many people, but maybe myself. When I get into thinking about retirement, you don't think about it right away. I remember actually having a conversation with my dad who was close to retirement. He's a retired teacher, and I remember when I first started teaching, he's already started to try to talk to me about retirement planning and am I buying into my pension? Because I taught my first two years out of country. And then it was like, "Well, what are you going to do to get back your pension?"

Matt Biggley: Yeah. You're like inaudible two years.

Jon Orr: I don't know what I'm teaching on Monday, dad.

Matt Biggley: And I was like inaudible.

Jon Orr: I'm worried about that. That's far down the road. And he's like, "Well, you're eventually going to want to know." And I remember not really thinking about that when we first started and I don't know but you guys if that was the case, but I thought, "Ah, I'm going to be fine because I know that seeing from my dad that he always just focused on the pension being the be all end all that we would be fine." And I think I thought that as well too. But I think that can be fine for folk. And I think knowing your why Matt is so important. Because if I'm viewing like my dad by saying, "Hey, I'm just going to keep living the way I'm living, I'm going to keep doing the things I'm doing here and I want that to continue," this is supposed to continue that.
So it's almost like, "But if I don't view that lifestyle after I retire as anything different than what my day-to-day looks like now, then maybe I have to think about my why because I'm putting all this work in my day job to build that pension up and that kind of retirement planning up." But then if I'm going to be doing anything extra, if I'm going to be taking the steps that we've been talking about on this podcast by getting into real estate, getting into investing, you're right. Why do that if I don't need to?
Why would I want to take all this work in if I didn't necessarily enjoy it if I just thought, "Hey, I'm going to be fine in the future with this plan." So thinking about what we want our lifestyle to look like in the future and why am I putting all this work in to build this wealth, is so important because we could just sit back. We could just sit back and watch Netflix if that's what I really didn't want to do. Or if I'm going to head to my basketball game later and do a little bit of coaching on the side. If that's all I want to do, then you're right. Why would I want to put myself through all this rigor of learning something new if I didn't really need to? But if I do want to start changing my trajectory because I want my retirement to look different or if I want my life to look different, then I'm definitely need to start thinking about what that looks like.

Kyle Pearce: I love it. I love it. And again, I feel like if you're listening to this podcast right now, you're probably... Either you have a clear vision of exactly why you want to impact or influence your trajectory, your financial trajectory. Maybe you have like a why and you're super clear on it. And that's amazing if that's you and you're listening. If you're not clear, and again, I don't feel that I'm 100% clear, but what I will say is that you're listening because you probably know that what you don't want to do is become that person that is just watching Netflix. So if you think about it, we're not knocking it if maybe you're like that evening after work after the kids go to bed, you want to watch that show and maybe that's you and your partner maybe are watching TV and that's a way to spend time together and that's great.
But I'm guessing that you're listening because your vision of retirement isn't to do that 12 more times or a multiple of 12 times more than you're doing it now. You're probably like, "I'm going to want to do other things." And I know one thing for certain is that we love traveling. My wife and I love traveling and we want to be able to do more of that. We want to experience the world. I picture my retirement as being the opportunity to be a part of our family. So just like my parents are with our children, just like Shantel's parents are with our children, I want to be able to do that with my children. And if they have kids and choose to have kids, that would be fantastic. But also you only get one of these things. So I don't want to just know that I watched every episode of some series.
I want to say that I was able to go see the world. I was able to experience the world. And I also think too, that when you put yourself in a better financial position, I think about the work we do as educators and maybe some of you listening are educators, maybe some of you are doing other sorts of work. But I picture we enjoy helping and we coach, we do things to help students. And I picture if you have yourself set up in a position where... Let's say you don't have to have a formal day-to-day because you've "retired" and you also then free up sometimes so that you can do other things, whether it's clubs or community activities, things that will give back.
I truly think that once money is out of the way and you don't have to concern yourself with it, I feel like it opens your mind to just be able to get up and do good things because it makes you feel good at the end of the day. So those are my whys. Biggley, where's your heads at when it comes to your personal beliefs? Is it just to make sure you're good or do you have a vision in your mind of you and Leslie, what that might look like? Maybe she could design anyhow she wants without any budgets. I don't know. Where's your heads at?

Matt Biggley: One of the funny things about having a set retirement date, like something in teaching, I talked about this on previous episodes, mine was November, 2035 and knew what I was going to retire, how much you're going to get in retirement. That's both I think enthralling and also really scary because it also means for some people that's the end of their working life or their productive days. And I'm someone who really enjoys learning and working. And it's not that I'm so much a slave to my job, I think is just someone who is just so passionate about the process and always learning and always just seeking. And so I actually picture in retirement continuing to work and find some worth and value. And I think there'd almost be something really neat in your mindset knowing that you're doing this because you want to, not because you have to.
And this idea of continuing to earn some income, continuing to learn is really attractive to me. One of my big why's is leaving some generational wealth to my kids. I think we all go back to how we were raised and have talked about that on previous episodes, having some financial challenges as a kid. And that stuff really resonates with you as an adult. And I think one of the attractive parts about getting into teaching was this idea that you have this certainty from which to operate from. And that certainty has now allowed me to have a lot more freedom because, and that hierarchy of needs, I haven't been worried, not say I haven't been concerned at bad moments or times about finances, but you're not worried because you have that predictability. So it almost becomes almost kind of gamify it. So if we've got this base, what can we do over and above that base?
So for me it's about curiosity. It's about enhancing my... Kyle, you're a pretty frugal guy. Jon, you're a pretty frugal guy. I am maybe not so frugal. I like nice things. I'm not a big traveler, but I like to have a really nice home. I like to have a nice rod. I like to be able to do some things that maybe... More frugal lifestyle wouldn't necessarily wouldn't fit into the budget. So I think it's an interesting comparison and contrast here. And Jon, what are you see and what are you picturing when it comes to both your why and what retirement's going to look like for you?

Jon Orr: I was just thinking about this as you said that you saw or see maybe it's now see yourself working past retirement and almost probably, I would've guessed to say, Matt, you don't see retirement probably as a definition has changed for you if you're going to say... Because maybe you always saw a retirement like that for you. Whereas my retirement picture plan always was, "I'm going to work till..." Mine was 20, 36, Matt, that's the year I'm just going to like, "I'm out guys. There's no more supply teaching for me. We're going to travel." And I think that was like what Kyle said, "I wanted to be able to travel, I wanted to be able to experience the world." And we used to always put off plans like that. It would be like, "When we retire, we will do this. When we retire, we're going to do that."
And I think that's the way I always envision it. But I think now I've changed that definition and I think it's more along the lines of what you're saying, Matt, about saying retirement is... You're not going to... I viewed it as like, "I was going to go and sit and read for all day." But it's like, "Really?" And when I think about it, I was like, "I just have time to just do what I want." But then I'm like, "Well, what do I want to do?" I think what we really want is just the freedom. What's the freedom to do what we want? And I think I've come to learn that I really like to work on projects or I like to work on... We've been building a business that's really got me going for the last couple of years on. The excitement of trying these different approaches, learning new strategies.
I can see that my retirement now is going to be continuing that. We talked all about investment and how sometimes we talk about it being passive, but it is a lot of active pieces and I see that as feeling a lot of my days on that kind of thing. So I'm thinking along the lines of that as our plan. But I think going back to the other piece to say, "Matt, if I continued my pension..." And thinking about having that pension, I often ask myself, when it comes to that time, since I want to explore, I want to do these things, will that be enough to go and have a vacation every year or multiple vacations every year? I continually ask myself that question. I know that there are going to be some things that I keep saying to myself like, "My house is going to be paid for."
"I won't have my mortgage anymore." If I took that mortgage payment, will that be enough to fuel my trips that I want to go on? I'm not sure. We should be planning these things. We should be thinking about how we want that retirement to look and will we have enough money based off our current situation to fuel that look. So we've been talking gentlemen, all three of us about what we want it to look like. Now let's talk about do we have enough to help that along and what can we do if it's not enough so that we can pad it to make it enough.

Kyle Pearce: I love it. I love it. And what I'm hearing from both of you, and I'm hearing it in my own thinking as well, specifically Matt, you're talking about this idea... What I'm hearing, now that you're out of education, formally out of education, you are in the real estate space... It's actually a really interesting profession to be in because it's very, I don't want to say easy because I think it's going to be hard for you to say no when you're at that time, but it's like you can never have a retirement date in that industry and you could essentially, even today, you can decide that I am going to say no to this listing or that client or whoever or maybe pass them on. The flexibility is endless there. I think the hard part that you have in that industry is actually finding a way to say no.
Whereas on the other hand, when you think in the education space, there was this cutoff date that you decide either, "Am I going to go and... Am I going to work into retirement?" It's almost like you've decided because when you say yes, you went past and now eventually you have to make a decision if you are going to add flexibility to your life and you're in a profession where you actually have that there. But I know you and I worry for you because I know that you are like me and you're a yes person. You love doing the work and as long as you love it, that's amazing. I think what I'm hearing from all three of us and maybe those people at home listening, maybe you are feeling this way too, it'd be amazing. In my mind I picture whether it's with a defined pension or whether it's with your own investments or a combination of the two, that there is enough money coming in each week, month, year, whatever, however you want to look at it.
So that Matt, you know, financially speaking, that your lifestyle monetarily won't be influenced or impacted negatively. I mean positively. Of course, more money impacts it positively. But when you say no to something that it's not actually going to affect your life, your happiness, your routines. And I think that's exactly what we want to dig into here today. Is looking at that and trying to get a handle on what that looks like and sounds like. And I think for both Jon and I, we love doing our make-math moments business. We love doing it. We were just in Arizona, we did a keynote speech. We love that work. We're so passionate about it. When we can get to a point in our lives where we can say yes to a keynote because we want to go say the speech, which we always do, but we also just want to go do it, and the whole money part doesn't even matter at all.
Right now, everything we do, that always comes into the conversation. We have to look at it and go, "Okay, if we say yes to that, we're saying no to something else." Should we go for this many days? Should we go for one day? Should we go and actually engage in that particular speaking engagement? So it'd be great if we were just like, "You know what? That seems like an amazing event to go speak at. Let's go do it. We want to go do it." And that's it. And that's all there is to it. And any monetary aspect of it is just a bonus. It's just a nice little way to add to your monthly budget. But that's what we want to dig into here. And I'm wondering, let's speak to some of our people who have a defined pension plan first. I know that's not as many people anymore.
Here in Ontario, educators in particular are actually very blessed to have a defined pension plan and one that's actually... I think one of the best in the world. A lot of people would classify it as. Jon, tell us a little more about that pension plan and then maybe we can use that as a starting or a leap point for some people who are like, "Hey, I've got to define pension plan." And then we can maybe shift our thinking a little bit to some of those pension plans that maybe aren't defined or where you're on your own. There's a lot of people in industry that are on their own to take care of themselves, and that's obviously a much bigger burden.

Jon Orr: Yeah, that's true. And like you said, we're blessed as educators to... When you sign up as educator here, especially a publicly-funded school system, you're going to have all automatically signed up to the pension plan where you make contributions right off your paycheck. You're not even building that into your budgeting. We talked about budgeting way back in one of the first couple episodes of how to set up and budget for your wealth building. The beautiful part about a pension plan is it comes right off the top. This is also true in a lot of maybe private companies and say they're matching systems.
When the states you have 401ks or you have retirement plans with, say, a private company here in Canada comes off the top, which is nice. If you're making a hundred thousand dollars, you're probably making about $12,000 contribution to your pension plan every year that you don't even see which builds over time. And so when you retire, you hit your 85 factor, you've got your years of experience plus your age hitting 85, this is the time that you get to walk away and you automatically start collecting about... What is it guys? 60 ish percent, 62% of your-

Kyle Pearce: I think it's 60% if you do that full... Hit all the check boxes for that particular pension plan, which is fantastic, right?

Jon Orr: Right. And every year I think you work after that I think you gain 2% on top of that. So it's nice to say, by the time I retire... So if I retire at 2036, which is my date of retirement, and that's because I lost a year or something because I didn't buy into it right away when I taught out of country. But in 2036, I can walk away with getting my 60% of my salary. And then that's for life, right? I'm going to have that forever. And that's what I was saying. I can plan to have that and not do anything after that. But let's think about how can we pad that. And I think that's an important part of what we're talking about here because I know that for me, moving past that is... I don't want my lifestyle to be what I'm doing now then if I want to travel, right? Because if you're going to travel and do all these other things, you guys think about your summers. As teachers, as educators, we are also blessed with summer vacation, right?

Kyle Pearce: You're making this job sound pretty good here, Jon.

Jon Orr: I know.

Kyle Pearce: Pretty good.

Jon Orr: Well, hey, this is why we called the golden handcuffs, right? Because it is-

Kyle Pearce: So true.

Jon Orr: ... a great job to have. You have that security, you have all these defined benefits. Summer vacation, if you're not an educator... Us educators probably spend the most money in the summer because you have your nine weeks off. And if you have young families, or even if you don't have young families, you're usually going to do something that's your vacation. And so you have all this time and you don't usually want to sit around and waste it because you're like, "I got to maximize my summer. This is my vacation time." And we spend so much money in the summer. At least I do in my family, by doing what we want to do, vacation by traveling. But then it's like when you go to retire, that's what I want to do. I want to do my summers all year. So it's like, "Okay, will I have enough from this pension?" And I think in the work that the calculations I'm doing is not enough.

Matt Biggley: And I think anecdotally when I think about... So if we take that 60-odd thousand dollars that a typical teacher will get, I feel like the teachers that I know who are retired, be it neighbors or friends in the community, they live what appears to be from the outside, a fairly frugal existence. And there's not lavish trips and lots of splashing out. So I guess if we know what to expect in retirement, 60-odd thousand, the wonder is will it be enough? And Kyle, you're such a great numbers cruncher. So how do we either make it enough or how do we figure out if it is enough?

Kyle Pearce: There's some simple things you can do without doing a ton of work. And some of the things that we wrote down here, and we'll include them in the show notes for you to consider, is making a list of the things that you're not going to have to do anymore. I think that's a really important thing to be made aware of. Jon, you mentioned the mortgage. So right now, are you in a position and I'm asking the audience, not you specifically, Jon, are you in a position where the house you are living in, if you rent it and if you don't plan to purchase, if you're renting, then you're going to always have that rent? And unfortunately, the reality is that rent's going to continue to increase likely unless you never leave and you're living in a place like Ontario where they can only bump the rent by a very, very low amount.
But if you're in the US and you're in a state that is very landlord friendly, then that rent could be increased on you at any point. Certain states have those rules. If you're in a house and you own the house, how much time is left on that mortgage? Have you been paying it off for 10 years and now maybe you have 15 years left on that house and you're retiring in 15 years? "Hey, perfect timing, right? No more mortgage." Or, have you done some refinancing in order to fund post-secondary for kids or renovations or whatever it might be. So you've got to factor those things in. But there are some things that you're not going to have to pay anymore. And here in Canada, we have certain deductions that come off. So Canada Pension plan. So just like social security in the US, I think the maximum you can be charged for CPP is something like $3,800 or something a year.
So that is something that you'll no longer be paying once you actually retire. No more retirement fund contributions. So that I think it was 12,000 or so that teachers here in Ontario pay into that plan. So looking and seeing what is being deducted from my current paycheck in order to go into that fund. Something to note is that the employer, the school board that you work for here in Ontario is also contributing on your behalf. Which, again, is why the pension is so robust and great. But off your salary that 12,500 is no longer coming off. You're not going to have as much of a income or as high of an income. So therefore your income taxes will not be as high if the government doesn't raise income taxes, which I feel like arrows are pointing towards, how are we going to get out of this mess without raising income taxes?
So that's a discussion for another day. So keep that in mind. Unemployment insurance, maybe union dues, really going through and figuring out what will I no longer be paying is something that I think is really important. And then you can start thinking about what does that look like and sound like. My parents, for example, when they retired, they decided that they only needed one car and they didn't find it to be a restriction. They didn't mind it. Now for some people you're like, "I couldn't imagine not living without my own car so I could get up and go at any time." They had no problem cutting that out. So that's insurance that they're saving, that's the car payment, maybe. Do I have car payments? Am I leasing or have I purchased a car and am I willing to hang onto that car for the longer term?
So these are all things that are definitely worth thinking about just to get a sense of, "Okay, so what would my retire... If I know that defined pension amount every month, is that going to be enough based on the life I'm living now? And then am I going to be like Jon, where Jon in the summertime wants to go on the many trips and all of these things which cost more money? Is that going to be enough buffer for me to be able to continue doing those things or am I going to feel like I'm stuck in my home for 10 months of the year until I want to go on my summer vacations?"

Jon Orr: That just brought up something very interesting that we should probably chat about too, Kyle, and we chatted about this a while ago. Matt, you brought up the Die with Zero book, which when we talked about that, I went out and read that over one day. And the interesting idea that you think that I need this much money to spend per year, and I was thinking specifically about retirement when I was thinking about this book, but he says that there's certain lifetime ranges that makes sense for certain periods of your life. So for example, in retirement, you think you need to have blank amount of money to spend for the rest of your life. If you're going to get your $60,000 for the rest of your life, that's per year for the rest of your life. Now, the Die With Zero Book talks about trying to organize your life now so that you leave nothing at the end.
And that doesn't mean don't leave stuff for your family. That means you're setting it up now for your family and making sure that it's taken care of. It's just about organizing it so that it's all budgeted or taken care of. And what I remember thinking was the most interesting that triggered when Kyle was talking was that let's say you retire at 55, there's going to be a set time where you have the ability and the money to go go go. Which is like, "I have the ability. I feel good. I have a lot of mobility. I can walk around and do tours., I can travel. I don't have problems traveling." There's a set time where that makes sense for us. But then when we get older into our retirement, we're still pulling that same money every year from my pension. But there's going to be a time where it doesn't make sense to do this.
I might say, "In my first years of retirement, I'm going to want to travel to China, I'm going to want to travel to Taiwan and I'm going to want to travel to these." But maybe in the latter half of my retirement, I was like, "I won't want to do that. I don't have the energy to do that." The period of your life where all of a sudden there's grandkids and you're choosing to be around them as much as possible. Or, like what Kyle you're saying. You physically can't anymore because of say you're the limitations that all of a sudden your age has brought upon you. And there's things that we always assume that we're going to be, "Will I run out of money because of the way I want to live my money or live my life?" But there's a set time here where this money makes sense to spend now and then this money over here that, "Hey, I might not need as much as I think I need down there."

Matt Biggley: That book was such a seminal read for me, such a game-changing read. I love when you encounter some ideas you hadn't even considered before and they're fresh because there's so few fresh ideas in the world. So to me, a couple of things came away from that book. Is really think... And I'm obsessed with thinking about retirement. Actually, it's almost become a preoccupation of mine. There's a great series in the Globe Mail that I read daily about retirement projections. They take scenarios and try to help. In the next episode, I think we're going to do that and look at some retirement scenarios. And I'm just, for some reason it is an obsession of mine. So this guy with Zero helped me think about... It's not just your financial health, but it's actually your physical health and how that's going to change and evolve over time.
And this idea of let's plan it now, but let's actually not wait until we retire to do some of these things. And then secondarily, one of my big why's is leaving my kids with a headstart with some generational wealth to pass onto them that should help propel their financial futures forward and give them some financial security. Die With Zero really talks about how you pass that along when your kids actually need it, as opposed to waiting until you're old and maybe in ill health. And they've already gone through those life stages where your money passing that down to them could have been of most benefit to them. So those are some really cool takeaways for me from that book. And it just really got me thinking about. I think as teachers and other similar professions, we can log on and see our exact retirement date, but have we really, really pictured what it looks like.
Now, in my shift from teaching to real estate, I've got... Jon, what you talked about earlier. I've got complete freedom. I joked with Kyle last week that I am a much harder boss to myself than any boss I've ever encountered. When you're teaching, you're at school from a minimum of 8:00 till 2:30. Well, my workday now has literally no end. I am easily working six and oftentimes seven days a week for certainly 10, 12, 14 hours a day. Now, within that, I've got the freedom to choose when I work and where I go. And yet Kyle, I've got to maybe get a little better at deciding what to say no to. But for me, freedom has actually looked like a lot more work than it ever did as a teacher. And again, I'm harder on myself jokingly, but seriously having this freedom of real estate and not being tied to a particular school day.
So some interesting takeaways as I picture what that looks like. And I think this topic of we now kind of know what we can expect. We've got to figure out will it be enough to do the things you want to do? And I think from there we start to think about, "Well, how can I enhance it and how can I start now to help ensure that future, whatever it looks like for me, is going to be enough? What are some of the things that I can start to think about and implement now to be able to pay off not only now, but in that future life as well?"

Kyle Pearce: Yeah, you've highlighted something that I think a lot of people talk about, and there's that saying, it's like, "Oh, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life." Which is... It's true, but it's a lie because it's like it's still hard work, but you enjoy the work. And I think at the end of the day, it's like when you do something that you enjoy or that something beneficial happened on the other end, whether it's helping someone, whether it's accomplishing something, you've reached a goal, you feel good. And I think that's what keeps you going in a profession like yours, Matt, where you're like, "I want to serve my clients. I want to make sure that when they think of me, they're talking about you in a positive manner" and that "I can depend on you." These are all characteristics that are really important.
And the interesting part as well as that, I think when it comes to a defined pension plan that a place where you were living in that world and you were trying to supplement at the time you were looking at supplemental income, the defined part is very clear cut. But then as you go over the other part of the spectrum, you get to this place where it's like when it's not defined, it becomes foggier. And something that we were chatting about just briefly is, I know for example, my parents have defined pension plans through their former employers, and then they also have some additional nest egg there in it. I think it's interesting because when you know exactly what's coming into your account, you tend to live within and budget within that. But then over here is kind of more of a mystery. And I think that's really where we're going to try to head in this next episode. Is really talking about the mysterious portion.
So if you are blessed to have a defined pension, great. If you're listening to this podcast, if you're that person, you're probably trying to supplement that. We want to make that less of a mystery. And if you have no defined pension, then we want to help you so that you don't just feel like you're like, "I'm hoping and praying that everything works out okay." And I think what it means is... And this is going to be my takeaway and I'll hand it back to you guys to share your reflections from this episode. But I think what I'm realizing through this conversation is that the work that needs to happen now for all of us, including our listeners, is we need to really think about, what's our lives that we're leading now? How happy are we in the time we spend and how we spend our time and use our time?
And then try to extrapolate that to when you are in a position too. The word retirement is maybe not the right word because I think the three of us are never going to stop doing productive things. We're never going to stop learning and wanting to do things productively, but we'll just do it on our own time. What's that going to look like for you? So for you listeners, before next episode, so you've got one week before the next episode drops, I want your big takeaway to be that you want to think about what is it that you want that to look like and sound like, and not just aimless things like, "I could spend money on anything I want," because that's not realistic, right? Is it a Ferrari or is it that you want to go out to dinner two times a week? Try to define what does that look like?
And then of course, you don't want to have a plan in place that gets you to exactly that point because what if you're a little wrong, right? You want to make sure that you pad that a little bit so that just in case things don't go as planned. And we'll share some numbers in a spreadsheet here and give you some ideas of how you might be able to play with those numbers. But again, those numbers mean nothing until you get a better sense of, "What am I hoping to do?"
Do you want to leave a bit of a legacy behind or some generational wealth? How much is that? You can't just say, "I'd like to leave some money." Is it 20,000? Is it 200,000, 2 million? What's that number? And really trying to define, I think the clear we all get in what this view of the future will look like, the better prepared we can be in order to figure out what do we need to do now in order to at least put ourselves on that trajectory that we were talking about so that we can actually influence and impact our financial trajectory as we've discussed here today.

Jon Orr: Yeah, I think that's the big takeaway away for me as well, Kyle, is to define what you want that to look like when you get that financial freedom. Will we have enough? And I think that's the question that most of us are going to be asking. And I'm excited to dive into that next episode to go through the scenarios. Because, like you, I'm a numbers guy. I'd love to see that if I do this, how does that translate into that number that I'm expecting? Matt, you brought up the Global Mail and that article that you shared with us this morning about saying, "If you wanted to retire at 55, you should have blank amount of money." Or, "If you wanted to retire at 55 and you want to pull $75,000 a year, you need to have 1.5 million at that time."
What happens if I don't have that money? If I want to do all these other things, how can I shift that? And if I buy a property or if what I have these other investments that we've been talking about here on the podcast, how does that change those numbers and what does that mean about my lifestyle and how I can say, "Take my trips" and do these other things that I want to do and make sure that I want to live the lifestyle that I want? So excited to dive into those numbers on the next episode.

Matt Biggley: Awesome guys. Thanks for sharing both of your big takeaways here. I think for me, the big takeaway is around this idea of your own personal beliefs. Really thinking about, and then even documenting, like "Put this in a Google Doc, write it down for yourself." What does it look like? And know that this is going to evolve and change over time. But I think having a starting place, something that you can reflect on is incredibly powerful. It removes some of the fear. It also gives you some hope and some motivation. And when you perhaps realize that you're either on track or not on track to achieve your personal beliefs, this might spur you to action because all investing and real estate investing is the same way. It is time in the market.
So there's steps that you take now so that you can enjoy that appreciation, that compounding effect on your investments. So I think it's really about documenting it, articulating it, having some conversations with your spouse or your partner about it. And this is something that is, I think, a beautiful unwrapping of what you're picturing because so many of us, as teachers, know when we're going to retire. But maybe haven't thought about what that retirement's going to look like.

Kyle Pearce: I love it. I love it. That's a great way to frame this entire episode. And I'm wondering, you're listening right now. How are you going to reflect on this episode? How are you going to put yourself in a position where you're going to be ready for that next episode where we're going to dig into some scenarios? So do some thinking. And one great way that you can reflect is by writing it down and what better place to write it down than in the review section on Apple Podcasts or in a comment on one of the social media posts at Canadian Wealth Secrets. So head on over. Leave us that five star rating and review only if you think we deserve it. If you think we deserve one star, those are fine too, but make sure that you do take that time. It means the world to us as we try to help more of you out there so that you can change your financial futures.

Jon Orr: Awesome there, Kyle. Also, all links and resources... Hey, including transcripts from this episode are found over at investedteacher.com/episode13. Again, that is investedteacher.com/episode...

Matt Biggley: Fantastic. We've got all kinds of great resources for you at investedteacher.com. We want you to check out our investing blueprint that's investedteacher.com/blueprint. And if you're interested in delving deeper into what a partnership or in real estate terms of joint venture partnership looks like, reach out to us at investedteacher.com/jv.

Kyle Pearce: Well, my friends...

Matt Biggley: Class.

Kyle Pearce: Dismissed.

Jon Orr: Just as a heads-up, the content you heard here today is for informational purposes only. You should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.