Hello, and welcome to lesson two in module one, this is perhaps the most critical module in the whole course. Without an understanding and the ability to see the difference between strategies and tactics, you might very well find yourself years down the road in a bad place. That's because most of the messages we receive daily involve tactical decisions by this by that read this first, did you get your flu shot, this car has the best safety record and the list goes on and on. Before you make tactical decisions, especially about your future retirement, you need to have a fundamental understanding of the framework in which those tactical decisions need to work. If they're going to benefit you and not someone else. I apologize if this has a military overtones, but it can't be helped.

That's because in order to make informed tactical decisions about your financial future, there are some battles to be won. You don't want to discover at age 70 that you lost a key battle years ago. And there's simply no way to go back and fix it to teach it questions and their answers involve broad concepts, ideas and directions associated with your future retirement. What do you want it to look like? In all my years as a financial planner, very little time, if any was spent by mentors or product providers, differentiating between strategies and tactics, it was all about who had the best product compared to the competition for the millions of people now reaching retirement without enough money. I think this unresolved question is a major reason people are transitioning to retirement and wondering how they are going to survive.

I've talked about how we are surrounded by messages trying to sell us something. It might be about pet food, a local bank that has the best deal or whatever. All these messages encouraged us to make tactical decisions about something to spend our time and money on. How often do you see a TV commercial asking you to make a decision If you do it in the next 60 seconds, they'll send you two instead of one. For less than 50 bucks in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter. But we're talking here about decisions that will have a direct effect on how you live your life starting when you retire.

This lesson is about being able to make better tactical decisions about money as you journey through life. Life in the 21st century is a constant battle to filter all these messages with our brain more or less turning off when something flashing past us either resonates with us, or it doesn't. I argue strongly that you first have to make a strategic decision before you can hope to make a tactical decision that is in your best interest. And that presumes you know the difference. I'm not suggesting that the tactical decisions you've made were bad ones. Not at all.

It's just that without putting them in the right context, you simply don't know. And yes, sometimes there are deadlines which force you to make tactical decisions now. You don't always have enough information. If you discover later you've made a poor tactical choice. Life has a way of happening when we're making other plans. In successful retirement secrets, we talked about arriving at retirement and being able to enjoy the rest of your life.

I talked about that state of mind that comes from first understanding the strategic framework that is your life, and then making choices tactical choices that serve to push you toward a successful outcome that conforms to what you want to have happen. Getting married or not married is a strategic decision. choosing which person to marry is a tactical decision. Getting unmarried is a strategic decision. Whether to hire an attorney or not is a strategic decision. Which attorney you choose is a tactical decision.

Okay? marriage and divorce may not be the best examples in the world, but you hopefully are beginning to understand what I'm talking about. Let's try another example one closer to the problem at hand, which is why you're here Have you thought about how you want your life to play out? Are you an organized person? Or are you more comfortable just winging it, either one is fine, or any one of the millions of shades of grey that fall in between. But to the extent you want to better understand the process that leads you to a successful retirement.

At some point, you'll have to make some clear and convincing decisions. When you reach that magic date. In the future, you'll be older and wiser. And your ability to undo a mistake is limited or impossible. Again, it goes back to the roadmap we talked about earlier. Did you turn left or right along the way?

Was it with clear intent or do you just take a guess? Believe me, I hope this works out okay. is not a valid workable hypothesis for a successful retirement. Every tactical decision you make also carries with it the rejection of an alternative or an alternatives. When I bought my first car some 50 years ago, my choice of a used car included decision to not buy a new car because I couldn't afford it. When I chose to marry my beautiful wife 47 years ago, I chose not to marry someone else.

Getting married in the first place was a strategic decision, whom I married was a tactical decision. Unfortunately, few opportunities to make tactical decisions come with a big sign that says, Does this conform to my existing strategic goals? When it comes to planning for your eventual retirement, there are dozens of strategic choices to make before you allow yourself to make tactical decisions. For example, you may find yourself employed somewhere where there's an employer sponsored retirement plan called a 401k or something similar. Let's assume for now you know what a 401 K plan is. You're given the opportunity to sign up and have some of your earned income be diverted into the plan.

Saving money for the future is a strategic decision. You decide Yes, and you sign up. Now you have to decide which The several investment options is best for you. Those are tactical choices. Next is another tactical decision that involves how much you're going to have deducted from your paycheck. And if you make a guess you hope it's the right one.

Unless you've already gone through a process like the one you're in now, you really have no idea which one is best for you. By the time you get through all these modules, you'll have a much better idea which one is best. In a later lesson, we'll talk about finding someone you can trust to help you make these decisions. Again, the strategic decision was to participate. The tactical decisions followed from that and included how much you wanted to go into which bucket. This slide is sort of a homework assignment.

What are your goals, I strongly suggest you start creating a list of strategic goals for yourself. I want you to start mentally categorizing the difference between strategic decisions and tactical decisions. Once you get that done, you can create room on the list or in your head to identify Tactical steps you've already taken that fall into the strategies you've identified and see if they conform or don't conform. a truism I constantly rely on is that what is past his past, I can only evaluate the present and work to influence the future. There's no reason to freak out if you discover you turned left five years ago, when today's roadmap suggested, you should have turned right. What happened happened, you can only interpret the present and attempt to make new decisions that will increase your chances of success in the future.

Earlier this year 2017 Houston suffered a catastrophic flood from Hurricane Harvey. thousands of families now realize they didn't pay attention to the possibilities and didn't have flood insurance. None of them can go back in time and add that coverage. retroactively. FEMA is not coming to resolve your retirement needs. 20 years from now.

You can probably now make a list a mile long that reflects who you are today and who you want to be 20 years from now? At least I hope you can. A technique I've used with clients is to ask, if we're having this conversation five years from now, what has to happen for you to be happy with your financial life? You might ask yourself the same question. It causes people to project themselves into the future and attempt to reconcile what steps they need to take to create a positive outcome. I don't want you to become obsessed with this.

I just want you to know that being able to differentiate between strategic and tactical decisions is important. You'll be better able to filter all the messages that come flashing across your brain every day. And so at the risk of repeating myself, financial freedom is that state of mind that says you've done what you can to set the stage for a successful retirement for you and for those you love. In the next lesson in Module One, lesson three, we're going to talk about setting a target date for retirement and how that will help you make better tactical decisions.