How Much Does It Take to Be Happy in Retirement?

Robert Brokamp (0:02)

How much money does it take to be happy in retirement? I'm Robert Brokamp, and I get to answer that question in part one of my conversation with Financial Advisor and author Wes Moss on the Saturday Personal Finance Edition of the Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing Podcast.

We all know that it takes a certain amount of money to be able to retire. But money alone won't make your retirement years golden. If there's one guy who knows an awful lot about the financial and non-financial ingredients to a happy retirement, it's Wes Moss. Wes is a Certified Financial Planner, the Chief Investment Strategist at Capital Investment Advisors in Atlanta, the host of the Retire Sooner Podcast, and the author of five books including his latest, The Retire Sooner Method, The Five Secrets Behind America's Happiest and Unhappiest Retirees. Wes, welcome back to the show.

Wes Moss (0:51)

I don't know if you remember this, but about a year ago, the last time I was here, I was testing out title ideas for this exact book, and you were the one that greenlit the Retire Sooner Method.

Robert Brokamp (1:07)

I look forward to the 5% of sales that I will get because I helped you with your title. Yes, I do remember that now that you are reminding me. Let me just say, I really enjoyed the book. I've been following your work for many years. In fact, you've been doing these surveys and studies for well over a decade, and your most recent book is based in large part on your most recent research.

Tell us about the latest survey and how you use it to identify what you call HROBS, The Happiest Retirees on the block.

Wes Moss (1:36)

I realized only in the last month or so, and I've never really put a label on. Someone asked about, what's your process about writing a book?

The reality is that most of these projects are outcroppings of me doing radio and podcasts. What I do many times a week, I do a show on good old-fashioned radio, if that still exists, in Atlanta, on WSB radio called Money Matters, and I have been for, I think, almost 18 years at this point.

Robert Brokamp (2:09)

Wow.

Wes Moss (2:10)

I start with economic data or market data or historical data, or demographic data as another example, or a study. Then I try to draw a picture of that, literally a visual. Then I usually have the narrative on podcasts and radio. That's really what has happened with these books, particularly with my first book about money and happiness and early retirement called You Can Retire Sooner Than You Think. I really wasn't aiming to write a book. I wanted to study the population and to find unhappy retirees and see what they do, and find happy retirees and see what they do. Then really that was for financial content because it was so important to me to emulate the population that we all want to be like. Of course, it's not just about money. We want a happy retirement and then all the pieces underneath that get us there. The process I go through is research first, then charts and analysis, and then narrative, which in this case has led to my most comprehensive, most up-to-date book that I've ever done. The survey slash research, I guess it's survey questions and then it's research to go out and get it to be mapped to the US census. We need people from every single state on a relative basis, an equal number of male, female, etc.

To be able to really have data that we can rely on and a certain size so that the sample set gives us a degree of accuracy that we're comfortable with and that I can feel good about first. And that took a really long time this time around. It's funny when your research firm is helping you after you figure out what you want to ask. They go out and it takes a long time for them to really collect the data to make sure it's mapped to the US census. The first 90% goes pretty quickly and then the last 10% takes a long time. And then you get back this file that has 54,000 cells of data in a Google Sheet or a Excel document and all you see is color coding and capital versus letters versus small cap letters that show the significance from this cell to that cell. So that is just hieroglyphics in the beginning. And thankfully, I have a team here of data wizards that can help assimilate and really explore that data, then get it into some level of visual to see the relationships, the ones that really stood out, to start to be able to understand what all the research really says and what it tells me, how does it inform and what can we learn from it? Once you get the initial graph, then I usually draw these out. I draw every day, whether it's a pie chart or a house or some icon or a retirement timeline, I draw constantly and I love to then recreate these charts. Some of the drawing in this book is for me doing it. Some of it is going to a illustration firm to make it even more professional than I can do. The charts here are redone by an illustration firm based on the exact Excel spreadsheet chart of the one I drew.