The Four Minute Retirement Plan: How to Stop Overthinking Your Financial Future | Michael Cannivet

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Welcome everyone to doing business with a service art podcast. I'm your host, Steve Ramono. I'm thrilled to have you join us today. The pot this podcast is dedicated to the idea of doing business and living life with a purpose, yes, serving others and yes, achieving success. We believe that when you approach our work and our lives with a service art, you can truly make a difference. And we create the show for you is wanting everyone to be motivated, inspired, educated about to make an impact in your world. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a community a community leader, or simply someone looking to build more purpose into your daily life or podcasts on your support and I'll be like in today. I want you to think about who you're gonna share today, or what impact you're gonna create. And today's episode is brought to you by our amazing sponsor Panthere and I'll pick yourself joining a weak community of a variety of business owners, a variety of variety of industries all working together to create a powerful referral marketplace. It's an incredible opportunity to expand your network and elevate your business in your life. Well I've I've got to say this, I've been talking to the guest before the show on my four in the fifth show. This guy has really got me pumped up about money. Money can be dry, vanilla, neutral. I don't care what word you use, but this guy gets you fired up about money. Michael, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Steve. Oh, you're very welcome. Let's talk about the four-minute retirement plan. I I'm so curious to learn about it. Tell us what it's about, what you're trying to do with it.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Sure. Uh so I just published my second book. It's called The Four Minute Retirement Plan. It just came out last month. And I wrote the book because I'm trying to solve America's number one financial riddle. Uh, retirement typically poses the number one financial concern for the average person. I think one of the reasons for that is it's a complex problem that is long duration, right? It's something that, you know, you can't really start planning for retirement at 62, think you're going to retire at 65 and win that race. It's a long race. It's a complicated race with a lot of variables. And I really wanted to dive into that and try to create some shortcuts that would help just average people. Um, and my inspiration for the four-minute aspect of it is uh Roger Bannister. If you don't know who he is, he's the first gentleman to ever run a four-minute mile. He did that in the 1950s when he conquered that uh feat. He was um, it had been about eight or nine years since the record had been set for a mile run. It was like four minutes and one second, and nobody could beat it for like almost a decade. So people started to bandy about theories that maybe it's impossible, maybe the human body was never designed to run that fast, all these gobbledygook theories. And Roger Bannister looked at the problem differently. He had a different story that he told himself about. He said to himself, okay, I'm a physician. I understand the human body is probably not gonna break down and die just because someone tries to run a four-minute mile. That seems like hogwash to me. So he created a simpler uh way of framing the race. And what he did is he said to himself, okay, a lap, uh, you got to run four laps to run a mile. And if I can do that in 59 seconds per lap, I'll achieve my goal. So he started to train by just running 59 second splits over and over again. And when he was doing this, he was a 25-year-old uh medical student at Oxford. He had already been in the Olympics prior to this. Uh, he got fourth place, which is kind of the worst, in my opinion. You're so close to a medal, but it's a nothing burger. Uh, but he didn't want to retire from running on that down note. He was inspired to do something better in and kind of re-emerge. And so that's why he kept running track. Uh, even though he had very little time to train compared to his competitors, he only had about a half hour a day. Uh, but he just kept practicing these 59-second laps over and over again. And when the big race day came, he had two pace runners that were on his team. And their jobs, their job was really to just kind of help him keep that 59-second pace. And he he was able to run the first four-minute mile uh by just chunking down the race into manageable pieces, telling himself a more positive story about what he was trying to do. And once he did conquer that, uh, you know, it wasn't before long, and another person was able to run the four-minute mile. And nowadays, you know, even great high school runners can run a four-minute mile. Uh, so what I took away from that story was that if we tell ourselves the right story and we have the right strategy, we can achieve anything. And when it comes to retirement planning, I think that's what people need. They need a healthier story to tell themselves about what they're trying to achieve and why. That's why in the book I encourage people to write a story behind their financial plan before they worry about any numbers, get the narrative right, just like Bannister did. Uh, figure out, you know, what are you trying to achieve with your money? Because money is not uh a desk, it's it's it's a vehicle, not a destination. I've known a lot of millionaires, and some of them are really happy, some of them aren't. And it's because money is not the key to happiness. Money is a vehicle, it's a resource to achieve the life that you want. Having more money is great because it gives you more choices, but you need to have a why behind what you're trying to do financially. That's what gives you the inspiration to keep persevering. So once you have a story about what you're trying to do and why, link link that to your goals. And then, you know, there's a series of steps I go through in the book to help you construct a four-minute retirement plan. In a retirement planning uh scenario, you're not trying to run around a track. What you're trying to do is you're trying to make a series of decisions. So I break down the race of the retirement race into four specific laps: saving, investing, lifestyle, and legacy. Because these are categories you can use to kind of just chunk down the complexity. Uh, and in what I do is in each chapter, there's 12 chapters uh that I call the retirement laps, where we go through these four areas and I present strategies that have been proven over time uh to help people achieve specific goals, whether it be saving your money, investing your money, uh, structuring the lifestyle of your dreams, or creating a rich legacy. And at the end of every chapter, I give four specific proven strategies and I challenge the reader to take 20 seconds or less to pick the strategy they feel best about and move on. I think a lot of times where we fumble with retirement planning is we we just don't know how to chunk it down, or we're suffering from paralysis by analysis. And so the key to getting over that is realizing there's no perfect solution to building a retirement plan or a portfolio or anything financial, but there's a lot of proven ways to do well. And if you cover those bases, uh you're gonna come out ahead. Uh, so that's that's the inspiration for the book, and that's what I'm trying to help people with.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

It's very cool because I'm I'm looking at the four-minute retirement plan. I'm not doing my retirement plan in four minutes, it's the idea of the chunks, which is very, very cool. Uh, and finances can be very dry and very emotional. I talk about this all the time. What would you tell somebody that's emotional about their finances?

SPEAKER_00 8:05

Um, well, I would want to peel the onion on that a little bit. What type of emotions are we talking about? Because there's different emotions. Some of my clients I've worked with over the years suffer from a disease called BOMO, fear of missing out. They're too greedy at the wrong time. Some clients are too fearful all the time, and they just they're they're scared of the stock market, even though it's been the greatest asset class over the long term, you know, by a mile. Uh, and and so they're and that fear usually stretches back to some kind of painful event in the past. Maybe they they bought the market at the wrong time, um, sold at the wrong time, maybe um it's something else in their psychology. So I think that's the job of a financial advisor. We're part psychologists, and part of our job is to understand the psyche of each client and help them construct an objective plan to get them where they want to go, but also make it a comfortable journey. And so I think it, you know, it's it's it's really about connecting with each individual person because everyone's story is different. Uh and and so that's the that's the job of an advisor is to figure those things out.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

And across the board, the more money you have, the more important it is to have an advisor. Am I correct on that? I'm that's my always been my thought.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

I think you're right about that because more wealth creates more complexity. Um so generally speaking, the richer you are, the more likely you are to hire an advisor if you look at the broad population. Um, yeah, there's there's do-it-yourself strategies that work, and and I I provide a bunch of those ideas in the book. Um, you know, it and and but I think what people need is they need shortcut solutions they believe in and can stick to. If they're gonna do anything themselves, it has to be simple. Uh so something like the 4% rule for withdrawals in retirement is something that's been around a long time. It's not a perfect formula, but it's darn good. And if you follow that, you're probably gonna be just fine. Um, and then there's other strategies that might be better for other people. Um, so I think it's about customization uh and and then just figuring out what works for each person.

SPEAKER_02 10:07

So that brings to my mind, you're gonna laugh, Michael. Do not go to your best friend or your neighbor and go, hey, I got a million dollars. What do I do with it?

SPEAKER_00 10:16

No, it one of the things that causes FOMO is trying to keep up with the Joneses. And one of the things that I think a lot of people don't realize is you tend to hear the success stories, but people have a tendency to shun regret. They don't go around bragging about their losses, they brag about you know their latest Bitcoin investment or whatever might have done well. And so that's what creates this feeling that you know we need to keep up or we're falling behind somehow. I think a lot of people don't have a good benchmark for their wealth. A benchmark's important because that's what Roger Bannister had, right? He had a specific target for each lap he needed to run. He had pace runners that helped him stay on track. And later, after he'd achieved the four-minute mile, he described the race and he thought he was running too slowly in the beginning. Uh, but the pace runners prevented him from out, you know, outrunning what he should have been. And that was important to preserve his stamina. So he had kind of some guardrails in place so that he was able to maintain the right pace for what he was trying to achieve. And that's what people need with their finances too. I don't think the best benchmark for your portfolio has to just be the SP 500. That's a very, very popular benchmark nowadays because it's exceeded most other things. The financial industry plasters it on CNBC all the time. I think a lot of people feel like if they don't own NVIDIA or the SP 500 or all the best stocks they're hearing about, they're somehow falling behind. And, you know, well, the key isn't really keeping up with some esoteric benchmark that standard and poor has created. The key is are you keeping up with the life that you want to live? Do you understand what your core values are? Do you have those linked to specific goals in the future that you're inspired by? And have you or someone that you're working with reverse engineered what are the numbers necessary to make this dream a reality? And then once you understand how much you need to save and what investment return you need to average to fund these future goals, I think that's the best benchmark. Uh, and you can, you know, reverse engineer what you should do with your portfolio from that. Uh, but that that's how I kind of think about it. Is it really is each person's goals that should be the the litmus test for what you're trying to do and um take it from there.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

So uh it's interesting, the banister story, you're the pacemaker. I'm your client, you're my pacemaker in a sense of you know, little here, less here, you know, and then being accountable every quarter, whatever you do, to go, hey, what are you feeling now? Because people's minds change when it comes to finances and their goals, right? So I think is it important to see your financial advisor on a regular basis, whatever that looks like.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Yes, because you're never going to be perfectly on track. But if you're generally on track, that's that's good enough to, I think, you know, sleep well at night. For instance, Bannister did not run perfect 59 seconds each lap, but he still ran the four-minute mile. If you're a little bit ahead or a little bit behind on your goals, that's okay. The key is to know where you stand so that you don't panic or get into some investment that you really shouldn't even be in. I have some clients that are so far ahead of the pace that they need to achieve their life goals that they have a very low risk portfolio and they're leaving returns on the table year to year, probably by not being more in equities or things of that nature. But it doesn't matter, Steve, because this these are people that want to sleep well at night and they want to fund the lifestyle of their dreams. And once they're doing that, that means they're on track. So I think you know, every client I've ever met, ultimately what they're fishing for is am I on track or how do I get on track? And the way that we figure that out is dissecting the story of their life and what they want it to be in the future, and then we can figure out what's the prudent way to invest. And it's not to just try to keep up with the Joneses or the S P 500, it's to do what's true to you. And uh, once you kind of cross that bridge, I think you can look at the whole thing differently in a much healthier way.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

I love this. I love what you're saying because this is a it's hard to be a servant's heart in finances when you're a financial advisor, say, hey, you need to buy NVIDIA, you lost out by it. I mean, uh advisors shouldn't be telling you what to do, they should be asking you, right? What's Steve your goals? That's what I've learned.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

I I think that's totally true. Uh, because you know, there's a lot of cookie-cutter solutions in the financial industry, but as I say in the book, people are not cookies, they're complicated. And you don't understand each person until you sit there and you listen and you ask the right questions. I've been doing this for 20 years, I'm still learning how to do this. But uh I recently hired a chief storytelling director, and that's an untraditional role in the financial world, but I think it's important because we want to do things differently and better. And I think there's a lot of room for the industry to improve how we serve each individual and and customizing for the race they want to run. So I, you know, whether you write a story or you make a documentary film about your life, or whatever way you can find what really is important to you. Um, I always am looking for core values. You know, some of my clients' financial security is a very important core value. I have one client in particular, for instance, that worked at Lehman Brothers in 2008. And when that ship went down, it scarred her for life. She's financial security is an important variable for her, more so than some of my other clients. So that's something that tells me I don't need to start off the conversation with her or building her portfolio thinking about how I'm going to maximize returns. What I need to do first and foremost is make sure that we know what her risk tolerance is and we do not exceed that. So that's the starting point for her race. And then what can we do to maximize returns within her risk threshold? I have other clients who are, you know, young and looking to maximize growth over the long term and don't worry about volatility as much. Um, their core values might be financial freedom and creativity and being able to, you know, explore out new things in their career and retire young so that they could move on to other things they're passionate about and not have to work for a paycheck and trade their time for money. And in that case, you know, an equity portfolio that has something like NVIDIA in it makes more sense. Um, but but you only get there if you if you don't treat people like cookies, they're they're complicated and you got to empathize and you gotta try to really uh understand what they're trying to achieve, not what you are peddling as an advisor.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

Yeah, I'm glad you didn't say chocolate chip cookies. I'd be really hungry. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

I like chocolate chip cookies.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Yeah, me too, especially when they're soft. But we'll we're digressing a little bit. One thing we're hearing across the board in media retirement, saving, you're not saving, you've got college tuition you gotta pay, we're not making uh prices have gone up. Really, how important is retirement?

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Savings in light of uh inflation?

SPEAKER_02 17:01

Everything that's happening, they you know, people are like, I can't retire, I'll never be able to retire because of what's going on. What would you say to somebody that says that?

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Well, I I think one of the problems that people have with funding their future is that the farther out the future is, and retirement's the long-term goal usually for somebody, and psychological studies have shown that people don't associate well with their future selves. They almost think like you can almost think of your future self sometimes as another person, unrelated to you, which is of course silly, but but that's how we think. So we're very short-term focused as human beings, and especially in today's day and age, where there's like, you know, these fast TikTok videos and media that's constantly trying to, you know, push clickbait in front of us and and you know, feed that dopamine rush that we get when we we absorb these things. And so it's hard sometimes to take a step back, slow down, and really think about the big picture. But I think that's what that's part of what my job is. And that's one of the things that the book is designed for is to help you think of your life not just in the moment you're in right now. Think back to your childhood. Think back to the most happiest times of your life. What were you doing when you were really on track in your life, when you felt really like things were clicking? Because everybody has you know ups and downs. I like to say we have bulls and bull and bear markets in our lives. Everybody does. But if you think about the best times of your life, what were you doing? Who were you doing it with? Um, things like that help you understand what your core values are. And you can use those as breadcrumbs to build a compelling future. Because what I'd like to do is not just frame a future goal like retire at 65, which you know is a very common one, but it's pretty hollow and doesn't really motivate you if you, you know, that's done, there's nothing really to imagine there. That's not a story, that's just some number. And and so I like to frame goals more in in the in terms of how we think about our life. What what's the narrative around this, right? Do you want to retire or do you want to, you know, move to a new place, or do you want to build a new side hustle business that's a passion project? Do you want to um live closer to family? Do you want to travel more? Like, you know, thinking of things more in those ways is it's just more emotionally compelling. Um, and so I think that that's one way to motivate somebody who kind of just wants to bury their head in the sand and pretend that these these aren't problems that they need to solve. Everybody, nobody wants to end up at the end of their life running out of money. That's that's a sad end of your story. And and I like to think that retirement can be the best time of our life. Uh, it can be the time of maximum resources, maximum freedom over our time, where we can do whatever we want with whoever we want, if we plan it right. So it can be very motivational if you think of it that way. But if you think of retirement as just withdrawing, I say in the book, the the ironic thing about that word is if you look it up in dictionary.com, retire means to withdraw. Does that sound motivational, Steve? To withdraw from life? I don't think it does. And so we have to reframe how we think about it. Retirement is a dirty word. I don't even like it because it implies things that people aren't conditioned to be motivated by. But if we reframe it as financial independence or you know, some other lifestyle goal, legacy goal, etc., then then I think the whole game changes.

SPEAKER_02 20:30

Yeah, I like that because numbers, people aren't good with numbers. That's your job, or a CPA's job, or a bookkeeper's job. I I like the story aspect. Say, hey, in my late 60s, I want to travel to Italy and be on three cruises a year. That's what and then you go, okay, to do that, you I love this. Audience, this guy's a game changer. I've talked to a lot of financial advisors. Mine does this all pretty much, but I'm gonna tell her about stories. And she does ask me like stories, so she's fantastic. But I love this because it's a unique way of approaching it, um, especially at a young age. I can't believe you're doing 20 years. You're looking for 25, so you didn't start at five. So young, you're so good.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

But to your point, Steve, so it one a statistic that backs up what you just said. Um, if people are given statistics alone, which a lot of financial plans are full of statistics, graphs, tables, numbers, people retain five to 10% of you know statistical information. The London School of Business found this out from a study. If you add a picture to the statistics, retention rises to 25%. But if you take those same statistics and you blend them into a story, retention surges to 65%. So that's what we need to do as an industry. We need to get these, we we need to stop focusing so much on numbers with esoteric benchmarks like this and P500. We need to focus on the narrative because that's the thing that will stick for somebody. That's the thing that will change their their life. And that's what our goal should be.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Yeah, and you're working for people and you're not working for cookies. I keep I'll never forget that because it's great. I mean Hear that all the time. Um, thank you. Uh, I want to get a little personal. I know you're a Chicago Bears fan. We talked about that. When did you become a Chicago Bears fan?

SPEAKER_00 22:11

1985, of course. I was only six years old at the time, but that's when the Bears won the Super Bowl. And still the most popular team in Chicago is the 1985 Bears. Not the current Bears of the Chicago Bulls or any other team. That team was iconic. And so that's when I became a fan. I've been uh they haven't done it quite as well ever since then, but I think we're about to turn the corner, hopefully.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Well, small world connection for us, Jim McMahon with the high school in my area. Actually, I played against this high school. I don't know if I played about Jimmy Jim McMahon. I've known for well not known, but known of him for a long time. So small world. So I got one more personal question. I love asking this. So we you're going out to dinner, you've got a table of four, you're in the one of the seats. Dead or alive, who would be in the three other seats? Why, and what food would you order?

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Oh, good question. Wow, okay. Uh well, John Lennon would be there because I love the Beatles, and I love John Lennon the most of the Beatles. Um, I would probably say Benjamin Franklin, because he was a Renaissance man in the foundation of the country. Um, would love to pick his brain on a few things. Maybe Albert Einstein. Maybe the most, yeah, and then who else? Uh, I would probably pick a sports hero. And uh that would be Kobe Bryant. It's a great choice.

SPEAKER_02 23:28

Great choice.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

And we probably eat um, hmm.

SPEAKER_02 23:36

High-end Mexican food or Chinese. There we go. Mexican, what one food Mexican you need to have? What's that? What's one p uh one Mexican food you need to have on that table? Tacos. Oh, okay. We need to get you San Diego, grapefish tacos.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

Yeah, that'd be that'd be quite a meal. Uh I'm gonna think about that. That's a happy thought.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

I always leave my guests hungry. I don't know why I think that's okay. Well, uh, Michael, I want to thank you so much. I can't wait to get the book. How can people get the book and how can they reach out to you?

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Sure. Uh the book's available on Amazon, biggest bookseller in the world, Target, Barnes and Noble, all the different retailers. Um, and uh, if you want to uh follow me, you could uh visit our website, www.silverlight.us. Uh, or you could follow me. I've written for Forbes since 2017. So if you find me on Forbes, you can subscribe there if you want to follow my articles and things of that nature.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

And and just he's so humble. Forbes is huge. Forbes, he writes for Forbes. This guy's the real deal, even at that young 25 age. He's the real deal. I'm math kidding. How well I'm not gonna ask you back, but reach out to him and you know, comment on the YouTube or the podcast. If he doesn't see it, I'll get that information to you or reach out to him with a question. We all need retirement. The beautiful thing about Michael, we all need it. I have it. If you're making a hundred, you know, four hundred dollars a month or forty thousand a month, you're building equity. Okay, you need to find a place to save and build retirement. So this is so important. I'm so glad he was on. Don't forget about my TV show. Together we serve on Roku, Apple TV, Samsung LG, all those screaming servers. See my big old head on a big 70-inch screen. You can see some more wonderful guests. It's a Friday at 2 p.m. uh Pacific at 5 p.m. Eastern. And as always, me and Michael want to thank you so much for watching or listening to this podcast. Uh, we'll see you on the next episode of Doing Business with a Service Right. See you all soon.

unknown 25:37

Bye.