It's Okay To Miss Out: Shootin' It Straight with Stan®

I'm going to cover a topic that is timely, especially in these markets where things are up and down and all over the place. The topic of today is "it's okay to miss out." Obviously, I'm talking about market gains or the next Bitcoin or the next Tesla or the next Apple. With 10,000 baby boomers hitting retirement, age 65 every single day, you're transitioning into chapter two of your life.

Normalizing FOMO

Now the problem with “it's okay to miss out” is you've been trained since you've started to invest and put money in the 401k and buy stocks here and there in your TD Ameritrade or Fidelity or Schwab account, whatever, you're trying to pick that winner to get some return. Some of you have been fortunate to do that, and some of you have not. You're like a contrarian, anything you buy, someone should short. Can I get an annuity amen on that? But it's okay to miss out and you're going to have to train yourself going forward into chapter two of your life, which is the retirement lifestyle, living your life, living the life that you have earned, that you have worked, and scrimped and saved to get to. You're going to have to learn it's okay to miss out.

It's okay to go to that cocktail party where someone says that they bought Bitcoin at 100 or they bought Apple at 20 or they bought Microsoft at 40 or Amazon at 50. First, I'm not sure you can believe those people because a lot of people try to brag. A lot of people, nitpick and cherry pick and all that stuff and tell you that the winners and never tell you about the losers, but you're going to have to be okay with that. See, when you go into chapter two of your life, it's all about lifestyle. It's all about contractual guarantees whether you want to protect the principle, never lose a penny, or if you want a lifetime income stream that you can never outlive as long as you're breathing, whether it's for you or set up for you and your spouse, joint life, whatever. That's the reality of chapter two. It's one or two of those things or both.

Hey, let's put some money in principle protection products, we're never going to lose a penny, not pay any fees, and get a guaranteed interest rate or we need to buy a pension in combination with social security and in combination with the other forced pension, which is a requirement of distributions that we're going to have to take out in addition to dividends and whatever other income's coming in. That's the reality. Are you okay with that? Are you okay with missing out on the next big thing? Do you have FOMO, fear of missing out? Can you go through life understanding that there's going to be some tech thing coming up and you're going to miss it? Why are you going to miss it? Because you're going to be focusing solely on lifestyle and travel and your kids and your grandkids and your health.

Lifespan vs Healthspan

I heard a great one from a good friend and he was on a podcast recently, Moshe Milevsky, a very smart person. And he said the phrase, "Lifespan versus health span." There's a difference. Lifespan is how long we're going to live. Healthspan is how long you're going to live well. I have clients every single month that will call me and hypothetically say, "Stan, if I could give a million dollars to feel good for a week, I'd do it." Or, "If I could give $10 million to be healthy again, I'd do it. If I could give $5 million to go back and live my life and do the things on my checklist that I wanted to do while I could, while I was healthy, instead of waiting, I would do that." It all comes down to, are you okay missing out?

Are you okay missing out on that next big thing, that next big move or that next big investment, that next big real estate boom, that next big crypto boom? There are so many things that are happening in this country and this country's all about innovation, always has been and always will be, which means that there will always be ground floor investment opportunities that you can get rich on. You know what? That's great, have at it. That's what I say.

Live for the Now

I'm 58. I want to live my life now. I want to check the boxes now. I want to do the things that I've always wanted to do now. Kids are out of the house, God bless them, love them, but they're out of the house. It's me and the wife of 34 years, God bless her. But it's about us. It's about living our lives. It's about eating out when we want to or traveling when we want to. It's not about me finding the next Apple. I have no problem with missing out. I was speaking to a guy the other day and he was talking about a business opportunity, and he was saying, "Stan, I know you're a serial entrepreneur. Are you interested in maybe putting some money?" I'm like, "Absolutely not. I don't want to track that. I don't want to do that anymore." That's not what I want to do in chapter two of my life. I'm not retiring. I'm Stan the annuity man®. I'm going to be here in perpetuity, doing these videos and trying to help you overcome these mental hurdles, that get in the way of living your life.

I call them the scars of the middle class or scars of the lower middle class. I tell the story all the time about going to McDonald's one time and trying to order the large fry and my father looked at me like I had killed somebody. "Large fry? We can't afford a large fry. What are you talking about, large fry?" That's a scar. That's a scar on the middle class. If I don't sell another annuity, I'm not kidding you. I'm good. I'm fine. I do this because A, I like doing it B., I love telling the truth, and C., I like kind of annoying the industry sometimes because I think they should be going in my path, my direction of contractual guarantees.

My wife and I were talking about something, and she goes, "Oh, that's a lot of money." I went, "At what point in time will you not say that? At what point in time will you say, 'We can afford that.' Or, 'I'm going to go ahead and buy that because we're not going to be here forever,'" but it's hard for her. She grew up in rural Nebraska in a trailer, her father was a hard-working mechanic and her mom was a nurse. They were struggling just like my parents were elementary school teachers after they retired from coaching. There wasn't a lot of money. We were always pinching and scrimping, and I get that and that's the scars of the middle class. My wife tells a good story about when she used to go to the store with her grandmother who had some money because they were ranchers, but she felt like she couldn't buy just one thing because her mom was talking about how times were tough and that stuck in her head. I think it sticks in her head to this day.

We All Have Stories

What I'm asking you is I want you to think about you growing up. We all have stories; it all wasn't perfect. It was good and bad. We all have those stories, and our parents did the best they could, and I did the best I could as a parent. Can you think of some things that that fear of missing out on still plagues you to this day, especially with your investments and your money and your retirement decisions? Because if you can bring that up, you need to work through that. I'm not a psychologist. But the point is this. Live your life. Forget missing out, forget all of that stuff. It's about you. You need to be selfish with your time, selfish with your life, and selfish with your family.

This one hit me recently. My wife is an administrator of a private school at this time and it's a private school, one of her teacher's husbands was going to the store to pick something up, and a person crosses the road, hits him head-on, and dies. There's no justification for that. Life isn't fair. We could be gone tomorrow. This isn't some religious thing. I'm just telling you and I'm begging you to live your life. Put the contractual guarantees in place with a portion of your portfolio so that you don't have to worry about anything. If you have some money in investments that can go up and down, you're going to be a better investor because you've put in place the guarantees that are needed.

I recently did a video called You've Won the Game So Why Are You Still Playing? This kind of dovetails into that. A lot of you have won the game, and get on the phone with me and I'll explain it to you mathematically if you've won the game, but why are you worried about missing out on something? Why is that? Let's know what Moshe Milevsky says about lifespan versus health span. I think going into chapter two of my life, and I hope you're doing this as well. One of my major focuses is health because as we know when you pass 50, things change. You're not as vibrant. Who cares about the next winner if you've already won and who cares about missing out?

Never forget to live in reality, not the dream, with annuities and contractual guarantees! You can use our calculators, get all six of my books for free, and most importantly book a call with me so we can discuss what works best for your specific situation.