The Financial Huddle | Real Money Conversations for Financial Literacy

Episode 6: Running on Empty? How to Avoid Outliving Your Money in Retirement

• Brian Minier, Ed Beemiller & Ryan Fleming | Keystone Financial Group • Episode 6

Share episode

This week on The Financial Huddle, we kick things off with football season energy, family updates, and even some half-marathon training mishaps—but the conversation quickly pivots to one of the biggest concerns we hear from clients: Will I run out of money in retirement?

It’s not just a casual worry. Studies show that the fear of outliving savings consistently ranks as the top financial concern among Americans—often above the fear of death itself. Whether you’re lower income, middle class, or high net worth, this question keeps people up at night. And the truth is, it’s not a simple yes or no.

In this episode, we break down:

  • Why running out of money is the #1 retirement fear – and why it matters even for wealthy families.
  • The stats you need to know from national retirement studies and surveys.
  • Key drivers of the fear: longer life expectancies, rising healthcare costs, long-term care risks, and uncertainty around Social Security.
  • Why college planning is a retirement issue—and how wealth transfers during your life can sabotage your retirement.
  • The importance of planning your lifestyle—knowing not just what you’ve saved, but what you want your retirement to look like.
  • Distribution planning essentials: how to draw income without draining accounts too quickly.
  • Social Security timing decisions—when to take it, what it means for your income gap, and how taxes impact everything.
  • Sequence of returns risk—why pulling money out during a market downturn can derail decades of work.
  • The Bucket Plan strategy—segmenting your money into “now, soon, and later” to build confidence and avoid panic withdrawals.
  • Why a one-size-fits-all plan doesn’t work—and how nuanced, personalized planning creates real peace of mind.

At the end of the day, it’s about more than numbers—it’s about confidence, security, and clarity. The best time to start planning was yesterday. The second-best time is today. Whether you’re 25 or 65, what you do now determines whether your retirement years are defined by stress and scarcity—or freedom and opportunity.

So grab your playbook, huddle up, and join us as we tackle the question on everyone’s mind: Will I run out of money? Spoiler—if you’ve got a smart plan, the answer doesn’t have to be yes.

Go Bucks, go Browns, and go into retirement with confidence.

Send us a text

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Disclosure: Information contained in this podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only, and should not be considered as financial advice. Financial Planning and Advisory Services are offered through Prosperity Capital Advisors (“PCA”), an SEC registered investment adviser. Registration as an investment adviser does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Keystone Financial Group and PCA are separate, non- affiliated entities. PCA does not provide tax or legal advice.

Announcer:

The Financial Huddle does not provide tax, legal, financial, or other professional advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with their own advisors in these areas. All right, everybody, huddle up. The play calls in. This is The Financial

Ed Beemiller:

Huddle. Ready, break. Welcome back, everybody. Welcome, our huddlers, to our next episode of our podcast, The Financial Huddle. Huddle Nation. Let's go, everybody. Right back at you. Let's

Brian Minier:

get after

Ed Beemiller:

it. Yes. But there's a certain smell in the air. It's that time of the year. Uh-oh. Favorite time, as you can see here, I'm boasting my hometown, Cleveland Brownies. Reppin'.

Brian Minier:

Smells like football.

Ed Beemiller:

It smells, that's right. Great time of year. in Central Ohio and we got the Buckeyes and, you know, I'm going to have to live through, I'm afraid, maybe the pain and misery of the Cleveland Browns again this year. Oh, this is the year. This is the year. It's always the year. It is always the year. Eight and eight. Don't forget about our

Brian Minier:

Baldwin-Wallace yellow jackets.

Ed Beemiller:

Oh, yeah. All right. Shout out to Westside BW. That's right. There you go, buddy. Your son's going to be senior this year, right? Senior this year. Both your boys. Tied in. Yeah, my boy, too. that's right that's right mine are well through that process but you know mine are at the point of I got I've been talking about it before I got one down one to go right daughter married

Ryan Fleming:

let's go congrats man

Ed Beemiller:

paid for now son coming up here in a week or two

Ryan Fleming:

oof

Ed Beemiller:

so let me tell you one thing through this process and all the planning you know although I wasn't exactly intimately involved with the planning my role was to you know take that plant pen and stroke that check

Ryan Fleming:

daddy warbucks

Ed Beemiller:

so you know it's gotten to a point where you know i'm pulling out my pockets and looking to see if i got anything in there you're light i'm pulling out mothballs and not quite sure what you're like if i got any money i gotta check my accounts make sure i got any money left

Ryan Fleming:

you guys remember back in the day wendy's where's the beef oh yeah

Ed Beemiller:

baby comes a

Ryan Fleming:

little

Ed Beemiller:

light yeah where's my money where's my money yeah so hopefully this is just a one-time event right it happens once

Ryan Fleming:

uh that would be,

Ed Beemiller:

that'd be excellent. That's the perfect story.

Brian Minier:

That'd be excellent. Yeah. So, so what I hear you're saying bank accounts a little bit light, I'm a light, not necessarily in the wallet, but just energy. So signed up for the nationwide half marathon. And no, thank you. Yeah. And

Ed Beemiller:

so I say that many times. Well, that wasn't very smart.

Brian Minier:

Yeah. Well, that might've been Jamie and I doing this together and for those If you don't know, Jamie's my wife, and we train, and it is comical because we get out in the neighborhood, and she's at the point where she just dusts me. And it's even better when the neighbors see it, and they're driving by, and they're honking and giving the old trucker symbol, and when she is a good 100 to 200 yards ahead of me. And that's after she's come back and said hi, and then she's gone again. Yeah. The process has not been as well as I would have hoped.

Ed Beemiller:

Yeah, sounds like you didn't have a great plan leading up to the training. Well, I had a plan. It was the execution. It's falling through on that plan.

Brian Minier:

Wow, that makes sense. Yeah, we followed through. It's just, you know, we talked maybe a little bit about age and knees and, you know, as you get a little bit older, it's

Ed Beemiller:

not as smooth as I would have liked. The good thing about a plan, most plans, is you can actually pivot and change, you know, as needed. So it sounds like maybe You need to step it up a little bit, brother. Either step it up or step down the distance. Or that or just run slower. I mean, that's always something you can do.

Ryan Fleming:

How about just don't run at all?

Ed Beemiller:

Or don't run at all.

Ryan Fleming:

I can't think of anything much worse than taking on a half marathon. No way. But I give you credit, man. I did it last

Brian Minier:

year. I finished trying to do it again. We'll see what happens.

Ryan Fleming:

Yeah, him

Ed Beemiller:

and I will be on the sides clapping. You're going to clap for me? That's about it.

Brian Minier:

You're going

Ed Beemiller:

to clap for me? That's what you're going to get. I'll throw some water at you. I appreciate that. We'll see what happens.

Ryan Fleming:

Back when I was a younger whippersnapper, God made me anaerobic. Short, quick bursts. Done. I can't even imagine running a mile, to be honest with you right now. 90 feet, right? That's all I need, brother. 90 feet. What you're telling me is you're kind of like the group Jackson Brown, right? You're running on empty. You have no money. You have no energy left. That's a good song, by the way. That is. That's what I'm thinking about over here. Or cartilage. Yeah. You're running low on cartilage. Ha ha! Running on empty. Oh, man. All right. Well, let's give the listeners at least some financial literacy like we promised, right? We get this question asked all the time. You may be thinking about this, whether you're driving down the car or you're watching us here today. There's a lot of research out there, a lot of evidence, a lot of statistical data that consistently shows that the number one fear of pre-retirees, whether they're low-income, low-asset or Or wealthy. Pre

Ed Beemiller:

and retirees.

Ryan Fleming:

Absolutely. Is running out of money.

Ed Beemiller:

Yep. Will I run out of money?

Ryan Fleming:

I mean, that supersedes like even death in a lot of cases. And so, what we thought we'd do today is talk a little bit about that. And you know me, I like to bring a little statistical analysis. Stat man.

Ed Beemiller:

That comes from that baseball background.

Ryan Fleming:

Yeah. You know. Love the stats.

Ed Beemiller:

Love the stats.

Ryan Fleming:

Love the stats, right? RBIs and war, war against replacement. Those crazy stats. Yeah. But in all seriousness, this is a concern that really provides a lot of worry to a lot of our clients. And it goes back to an episode we did about the fiduciary standard. We have a fundamental obligation by law to help ease this worry for our clients. And that's no easy task. But just to give people a little bit of an idea, studies, reputable organizations like Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, Gallup, they've all found variations in this idea of running out of money. Back in 2023, Allianz Life, which is a global company, they did a study that found that 61% of Americans' top retirement worry was outliving their savings. A year prior to that, in 2022, there was a survey done by Insured Retirement Institute. They reported that 7 in 10 retirees feared depleting assets more than they did dying. There's been a lot of research through Stanford Center on Longevity, and they've done a lot of things that show that this fear is often intensified by things like living longer. We all know that we're living longer, rising health care costs, and an insidious risk that faces so many people is just like long-term care and uncertainty about social security. So these things are real. The fear is widespread, and it tends to be a little bit more intense on the lower income, lower asset. But like I said, you could have very high income, high net worth, wealthy families that are fearing that too. Long-term care, I think, really hits those people as far as the fear of running out of money.

Ed Beemiller:

Even more so, kind of the middle income is really the group that, if they're not worried about it, I hate to say this, they should be.

Ryan Fleming:

100%. And I would bet a lot of money that everybody that's listening here today or watching us has thought about that in some capacity. If they're serious about their money It just has to be a topic. I know it has been for me. One thing the audience might find interesting is my entire career, this is my 18th year in this industry, I've focused a lot on, as you guys know, the financial aid and admission system, helping people, helping families navigate paying for college and not having it back up into retirement. I always say in my workshop presentations that I don't think you can plan for one without the I don't think they're mutually exclusive to each other. What you do today and how you plan to pay for your kid's college education or how you invest into that college education has a direct correlation on potentially your retirement as an adult or the kid's retirement, right? And so I always say that college planning is a retirement issue. And one of the things that we help our clients do all the time is avoid wealth transfers. We talk about this. And for our listeners out there, if you don't know this, a wealth transfer is money that you unknowingly or unnecessarily give away throughout the course of your lifetime. And if we do that too many times in our lifetime, fellas, we're going to have a lot less money in retirement, much less are we going to run out of money in retirement. So with that being said, I thought those stats were interesting. I think we probably struck a chord. But Brian, like we've said before, you deal with a lot of people that are staring retirement in the face right now. Do a lot of Social Security planning, taxes and retirement planning. And these people might be 62, 65 years old, and they're ready to take Social Security. They've got all these assets they've accumulated, and they're looking at you saying, am I going to make it? Or

Ed Beemiller:

do I

Ryan Fleming:

have enough? they need to be considering to make sure they don't run out of

Ed Beemiller:

money. Yeah. How do we address and ease those fears? Yeah. Which everyone has.

Brian Minier:

Yeah. And it's interesting. You guys said it earlier, regardless of if you have a little bit saved or if you have a lot, people that are good savers have a fear of, man, can I spend what I work so hard? Right. We've seen this quite a bit.

Ryan Fleming:

Yeah.

Brian Minier:

Working with the people that we do. And so people will ask, what can I do? Can I retire? Back to the question of, am I going to run out of money? Yeah. And so there's things that we talk about. First and foremost, you got to know what you're going to spend in retirement. What's your lifestyle, right? If you can't tell me what your lifestyle is, I can't answer that question for you.

Ryan Fleming:

Your desired

Brian Minier:

lifestyle. Right. Your desired lifestyle. Can you have a desired lifestyle or is your lifestyle just going to be, I got to keep the lights on? I

Ryan Fleming:

have found that most people, they don't know how to answer that question. They don't. A lot of people do not. They're quiet. They're like, I never thought about that.

Ed Beemiller:

Well, and a lot of times though, Because people are going back and looking at their parents or grandparents and thinking, okay, when I retire, I'm not going to spend nearly as much. And the reality

Ryan Fleming:

is- It's a misnomer.

Ed Beemiller:

We live a much more active lifestyle if life expectancies are going up. Health and technology, medical technology, people are living a healthier lifestyle, which leads directly into living a longer life. So guess what? You're not going to spend 50% to 60% of your pre-retirement income. You're going to need, in most cases, 80%

Ryan Fleming:

to 100%. And for our listeners out there, I think this is actually a really practical question to ask yourself. And we ask our clients this all the time. As you think about this, you need to be asking yourself, if you could live the same standard of living that you are today, adjusted for inflation, from now until your retirement age and from retirement to your life expectancy would you want that you know yes or no and that at least puts a barometer it puts a benchmark as to like where's the starting point yeah right

Ed Beemiller:

and and even more so i'm having more conversations of hey i'm retiring i'm still in good health i don't know how long that's going to last i want to i want to bump up over a hundred percent because we want it yeah we want to go go go do

Brian Minier:

stuff Yeah. Go-go years versus the no-go

Ryan Fleming:

years. So let's say you get to the point where, okay, you're starting to distribute. Yeah. So first of all,

Brian Minier:

you have to understand what do you want? Because what do you have in retirement that you didn't have when you were working? You got time, right? You got neighbors that are also retired and they're like, you know what? We're going to go do this thing. Do you want to come? I didn't think about that, but if you're going, of course I... So you have to build that in. You have to build the, what is your dream? What is the kind of the wants that you have in retirement? Sure. So when you start to figure that out of, okay, here are the wants, here are the vacations, here's the deck that I need to build because now that I'm home and I look at it every day, I want to redo it. Once you get those things figured out, now you got to have a plan, how do you do that? So as you start to figure those things out, how do you put that plan together? You talked about social security. So let's say social security, you got to figure out when do you decide to file for that? Do you do it early? Do you do it for retirement age? Do you wait? Figuring that out and then what is your income And just me saying that, some people have probably got a little anxiety to go, how do I figure out that distribution

Ryan Fleming:

plan? Well, a lot of people don't even think Social Security is going to be there. Yeah. That's a whole other topic. That's right. We can do a couple episodes on that. We can do a

Brian Minier:

couple episodes, I think, especially for those in that demographic I'm not worried about. I think it'll be there. But there's still, for most people, an income gap. How do you fill that income gap even if you do file for your Social Security? How do you plan for taxes? What people don't realize is taxes is the number one expense you're going to have in retirement.

Ryan Fleming:

RMBs, the rising tax environment. Yes.

Brian Minier:

And so that is the number one expense that a lot of people don't realize. When you think about it, it's like, yeah, that's logical, but people don't realize.

Ed Beemiller:

Taking distributions from all those qualified pre-tax accounts that you built up over your lifetime.

Brian Minier:

Absolutely. And then Social Security is going to be taxed and all of those things. So then when you figure out what do I need to take after my Social Security, where do I take those from? Do I take it from this tax bucket and what kind of account do i need to take it from one of the things that we talk to our clients a lot about is this thing called sequence of returns risk what is sequence of returns risk that is taking money from an account that has lost value because of a bad market now some people don't think that's significant but let's say you had a million dollars and now the market dropped 15 or 20 percent well that million dollars that you had is now 850 or 800 That makes a big difference. And they need it to bridge their income gap. They need it to bridge the income to what you said earlier, to

Ed Beemiller:

not run out in those retirement years. So when you're looking at retirement planning, it's really two things. It's talking about income and distributions because it makes a great deal. A big factor is which account do I take the money out of?

Brian Minier:

Yeah. And what do you always say, Ed? What do you need in retirement?

Ed Beemiller:

One thing. You can't retire without it. Income.

Brian Minier:

Income. So it doesn't matter what your account grew to or what the rate of return is if you don't actually take distributions from that. Right. So there's this balancing act of I don't want to take from an account that has lost money, but yet I still need a segment of my money to grow over time. And we talk about this, creating what we call a bucket plan for our clients, especially as they're getting ready to grow into retirement. So you have a bucket that satisfies those now needs. You have a bucket that satisfies satisfies upcoming needs in the soon future. And then you have those later bucket assets where you can try to go after more growth. And what we have found by doing that, we can create distribution plans that really mitigate the running out of money in retirement.

Ryan Fleming:

That makes me think, you know, Ernst & Young just put a white paper out not that long ago. You guys are familiar with this. You know, we can get this out to some of our listeners if you haven't got your fingers on this. But, you know, they did tons of different iterations on how to increase the likelihood of people not running out of money. What's the best way to increase your outcomes in retirement with more confidence, certainty, and guarantees? And it was really striking to me. I mean, when they looked at all the different various tools that we could use for district They really kind of came down to the cocktail of, you know, if you have about 30% of your estate and cash value life insurance, 30% of your estate and a guaranteed lifetime income pension annuity to quell sequence of return risk, because you can never run out of money on that. And it's not subject, not correlated to the market. And then the other 30% can be more equity driven. That cocktail in that white paper seemed to provide the best confidence and certainty. team not running out of money, avoiding sequencer return risk. Maybe we didn't touch upon taxation. That could be something else we talk about. But fascinating white paper from one of the four largest accounting firms in the entire world. Coming out with that evidence has been really compelling.

Brian Minier:

Yeah, and I think for people, that's a good guideline. Maybe that doesn't work for everybody, but I think the point of it is the different types of accounts. And you talk about this a lot of not just the diversification in your market-based portfolios with the diversification and just the type of assets that you have. And that's important to understand what those things can do. So even if it doesn't come down to that specific recipe, it's understanding what those different strategies could do so that you can utilize and mitigate things like sequence of return risk. Right, exactly. How do you create income? And there's different ways you can do it for different types of people, but it is a different methodology than just take 4% of the assets that I have

Ed Beemiller:

It's a

Brian Minier:

different methodology, and that's what we tend to focus on with our clients versus, hey, the 4% rule.

Ed Beemiller:

Yeah, what you were talking about there is, I say it all the time, our job is to mitigate or eliminate, and Ryan, you say this all the time, unnecessary risk. And when I talk about risk, this is another concept that people don't understand. There's asset class, and there's true risk diversification. Asset class diversification is what 9 out of 10 people think about risk. It's, well, hey, I have all these mutual funds in my 401k or in this investment account. One's a balance, and I got a balance in international high growth, large cap. Well, what do all of those things have in common? Got some

Brian Minier:

market risk

Ed Beemiller:

associated. They all have market risk associated. So, you know, we're philosophically, we're big believers on, once again, going back to that bucket planning, having appropriate assets within those different buckets. that have different levels of risk.

Brian Minier:

That's right.

Ed Beemiller:

That's right. And one thing I'm hearing across this whole conversation is the term planning, right? And we talk about this a lot when we meet with clients. Clients will say, oh, I'm too old or I've waited too long. When's the best time to start planning?

Brian Minier:

Yesterday.

Ed Beemiller:

Correct, right? It's not... You're never too old because if you want to retire and you don't have a plan, it gets back to this question. Will I run out of money? Well, I don't know until we dig in and dive into what your financial picture is right now and what your objectives are.

Ryan Fleming:

And I wanted to say something on that is that there's a lot of gurus that are out there that their narrative is trying to fit a one-size-fits-all box. And the reality is, and the truth is, is that every financial plan, every income and distribution plan has some different type of nuance to it. And so you've got to recognize that as a consumer and make sure you're conjoining yourself with planners and advisors that understand the nuances of a good plan. Because that's going to help you mitigate those risks. It's not a one-size-fits-all narrative that we hear a lot out there in our culture. So, yeah, we've got to We got to make sure that as consumers that we understand not only the risks, but also the nuances to quell those risks. And that comes with like what Ed's saying is it comes with strategic planning and a partnership with somebody that understands things like tax code and social security trust fund and things like this. Yeah, the plan is

Brian Minier:

not just I am 60 years old, so I go into a moderate type or a balanced portfolio, take 4%. There is distribution planning when to take social security. Correct. How to take those distributions? What order do you take those distributions? And that's going to be different for everybody. And so that plan, as you said, is

Ed Beemiller:

really important. Yeah. And those, you know, if we can start with a plan and you're 20 years old, phenomenal. If you're 30 years old, hey, that's great too. 40, 50, 60. As Brian said, the best time to start a plan is yesterday. Don't think, oh, I've waited too long or I'm young enough. I don't really need to plan. You know, in fact, we can get started early. It just makes the planning that much easier, you know, in the long run. That's right. From that standpoint. That's right. So, well, we're going to wrap this one up, I believe, here, fellas. I think we've talked pretty much everything and said

Ryan Fleming:

what

Ed Beemiller:

we can say about that. At the end of the day, working with a financial professional, having a plan is extremely important to achieving long-term objectives and success and being able to address and answer that question. Will I run out of money?

Brian Minier:

It will make you sleep better. Yeah. Don't put it off, people.

Ed Beemiller:

Exactly. Peace of mind. So, hey, appreciate everybody coming out, listening in. And we will see you next time. And go Bucks and Brownies, right? And BW. Sorry. And BW. Have a good day, everybody.

Ryan Fleming:

See y'all.

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.

Not Your Average Financial Podcast™ Artwork

Not Your Average Financial Podcast™

Not Your Average Financial Podcast™