Holding attention
beyond the hook.

In today's video, I want to walk you through five financial mistakes that might not hurt much in your 30s or even your 40s, but once you cross into your 50s, can start becoming genuinely expensive.

And the reason isn't necessarily that the mistakes themselves have changed.

It's that your timeline has.

At 35, you have decades to recover from a bad decision, increase your savings or wait through a difficult market. At 55, you may be only ten years away from needing that money.

That changes the cost of getting something wrong.

And make sure you stay with me for the last mistake, because it's one people often don't think about until retirement. It isn't about how much money you've accumulated. It's about how you actually take that money back out — and getting that wrong can create a completely different problem.

Now, none of this is meant to scare anyone.

If you recognise one or two of these in your own situation, that's actually useful, because finding the problem while you still have options is very different from finding it when you're about to retire.

So let's get into it.

The first mistake is not actually knowing your number.

And I don't mean a vague number like, "I'd like to have a million dollars."

I mean understanding what your lifestyle is realistically going to cost in retirement and working backwards from there to determine what you actually need.

In your 30s and 40s, not having an exact number is easier to get away with because you're still deep in accumulation mode. You're earning, saving and hopefully increasing those savings over time.

But once you're in your 50s, the question changes.

It's no longer just:

"How much have I saved?"

It's:

"Is what I've saved actually on track to fund the life I'm expecting?"

Because if the answer is no, you still have levers you can pull.

You may be able to increase contributions, take advantage of catch-up contributions if you're eligible, work a little longer, adjust your retirement date or rethink what your spending might look like.

Current U.S. rules allow additional catch-up contributions to many retirement plans beginning at age 50, subject to the particular plan and applicable limits.

But the later you discover the gap, the fewer options you have to close it gradually.

And that leads directly into the second mistake.

The second mistake cuts both ways.

Some people get closer to retirement, become nervous about a market downturn and move far more of their portfolio into cash or other conservative assets.

Others do the opposite.

They reach their 50s with essentially the same investment strategy they had decades earlier because they've never really revisited it.

Both can create problems.

If you become too conservative too early, remember that retirement itself could last decades. Your money may still need to grow long after your final day of work.

But being too aggressive creates a different risk.

A major market decline shortly before or after retirement can be much harder to recover from when you're also beginning to withdraw money.

So the question in your 50s isn't simply:

"Do I want growth or safety?"

It's how much of each makes sense given when you'll need the money, how long it needs to last and how much volatility you can realistically absorb.

That's why this is the stage where asset allocation — and potentially gradually adjusting that allocation as retirement gets closer — deserves much more attention.

But market risk is only one side of the equation.

There's another major expense that can completely change the retirement number you thought you needed.

Mistake three is underestimating healthcare costs.

And this becomes particularly important if you're planning to retire before you're eligible for Medicare at 65.

If you retire at 58 or 60, you have a gap that needs to be funded somehow. Health insurance during those years can become a meaningful part of your retirement budget.

And turning 65 doesn't mean healthcare suddenly becomes free.

There can still be Medicare premiums and other out-of-pocket costs. Higher-income beneficiaries can also face income-related adjustments to certain Medicare premiums.

Then there's long-term care.

Medicare generally doesn't pay for long-term custodial care, which means this is another potential cost that shouldn't simply be assumed away.

So healthcare isn't something I'd leave as one generic line in a retirement budget.

The closer you get to retirement, the more useful it becomes to separate those costs out and understand what you're actually planning for.

And even if you've accounted for all of that, there's another way people can weaken their retirement plan without necessarily realising it.

Mistake four isn't really an investment mistake.

It's a cash-flow mistake.

A lot of parents in their 50s want to help adult children — whether that's contributing towards a wedding, helping with a down payment, co-signing a loan or supporting a child who's moved back home.

And there's nothing inherently wrong with helping your children.

The issue is when that support starts coming at the expense of your own retirement during some of the final working years available to build it.

Because the timelines are completely different.

Your adult children may have decades of working life ahead of them.

You don't have decades to rebuild retirement savings at 58.

And you can't take out a loan for retirement.

So this isn't really about whether you should help your children.

It's about sequencing.

Help where you reasonably can, but understand what that help is costing your own financial plan before you commit to it.

And then we get to the final mistake.

This one happens after you've done the thing most people spend their entire working lives focusing on.

You've accumulated the money.

Now you have to figure out how to use it.

Most retirement conversations focus on accumulation.

How much are you saving?

How is it invested?

How large can you grow the account?

But eventually the direction of the money reverses.

Instead of putting money in, you have to start taking it out.

And that's a different problem.

If you have money spread across taxable accounts, traditional retirement accounts and Roth accounts, the order in which you access those assets can affect your tax situation over retirement.

You may also eventually have required minimum distributions to consider from certain retirement accounts. Under current federal law, the applicable starting age is generally 73 or 75 depending on date of birth, with different rules applying to certain accounts and situations.

So simply saying, "I have enough money saved" doesn't answer the entire retirement question.

You also need to think about:

Where is that money held?

When will you need it?

What happens from a tax perspective when you withdraw it?

And how does one year's decision affect the years that follow?

Because accumulating wealth and distributing wealth are two different problems.

You can spend decades getting the first one right and still leave yourself with unnecessary complications if you never plan for the second.

So if you're in your 50s and recognise one or two of these, the important thing isn't to panic.

It's to recognise what being in your 50s actually changes.

Time.

Know the retirement number you're aiming for.

Make sure your investment strategy still matches the timeline ahead of you.

Budget realistically for healthcare.

Be thoughtful about how financial support for other people affects your own plan.

And don't wait until the first day of retirement to start thinking about how you're actually going to withdraw the money you've spent decades accumulating.

Because that's really the thread connecting all five mistakes.

At 35, time can hide a lot of financial imperfections.

At 55, those same imperfections have less time to correct themselves.

The earlier you identify the gap, the more options you usually have for closing it.

As always, if any of this hit close to home, drop a comment below.

And until next time, remember: the best thing money can buy is financial freedom.