Ep. 16: "I'm not saving enough for retirement" and other thoughts that keep us up at night

We all have them - those sneaky, scary worries that we can kind of push aside in the middle of a busy day, but always manage to creep back in in the middle of the night. Whether it’s “I am not saving enough money” or “I’m stuck in this unhappy marriage” or “I should have left my job years ago, it’s too late now” or “It’s too late for me to have the life I want”, it’s hard to deny how real these thoughts seem. In this episode Coach Stephanie unpacks how to shift away from this unhelpful thought pattern and lean into a more productive way of thinking that will actually help you move away from midnight worries and move towards taking actual action to solve them. 

Hey there, welcome to another episode of the I'm the Problem podcast. My name is Stephanie Finigan. I am your coach and host for the next half hour or so as we go through this episode. I love, love, love the topic we're about to talk about because this is one that I have wrestled with and it's one that a number of my clients have wrestled with. This is a money specific episode but this could be applied to anything that you're doing in your life where you don't feel like you are at a point where you thought you would be by now.

We get sold on a lot of narratives around where we should be by a certain age and we should be following this path and we should be married by then and we should have a house and we should have saved X for retirement or we should be doing this or we should be putting our money here. All of these rules that whether or not they served people in the past may or may not serve you and your life at this point. But we tend to take them in because following those rules feels a lot less scary than having a blank slate and having to make it all up as we go. However, I love a blank slate. I love making shit up as I go. I love saying screw the narrative. Nobody actually knows for sure what's right or wrong for you or anybody else. So that's really the root of this episode and frankly the root of a lot of my coaching. But that being said, this specific episode is about not saving enough for retirement or this idea of, “Oh my God, I'm a certain age. I'm 40. I'm over 40. I haven't saved enough for retirement, we are not saving enough for retirement, I haven't saved enough…”, whatever the circumstances are for you. I like to think of this episode as “I'm not saving enough for retirement and other thoughts that keep us up at night”. And we're going to talk today about why those thoughts are a problem and we're going to talk about how to address them.

So there's no way you are going through life and going through the world if you're paying any bit of attention and not having some of these worries or some of these anxieties. Whether yours is the same as this example I'm giving, which is around retirement savings, oh, you know, my advisor said I should be at x and I'm only at y, or thought I would have saved x by now, or oh my god, I'm, you know, in my late 40s and I haven't saved nearly enough and I'm screwed, what am I going to do? And this line of thinking comes up in a number of areas.

So a few of the more typical examples are, I haven't saved enough for retirement, or I don't have enough in my emergency savings. I thought I would be in a different place by now, financially than I am. Things like financially don't look for me the way that I expected at this age. Or it might be something more personal. I thought I'd be married by now, or I'm not happy in my marriage and I didn't think we'd be in this situation as a couple by now. Or I'm not married and I wish that I was and I thought I'd be happily married by now and I'm not. Or I thought I'd have kids and I don't. Or I thought I would have three kids and I only have one. Or career, right? I'm not as far along as I thought I'd be at this point. That comes up a lot with people that I coach.

Whatever it is, it's the basic idea of this is a worry that I have that's keeping me up at night. This is a thought I have that's rooted in this idea of this is not where I thought I'd be. So in order to tackle this line of thinking, what we want to do is first and foremost, just acknowledge that this line of thinking is exactly that, a line of thinking. What we have here is a thought or a series of thoughts. And what we know is that thoughts are not facts.

If you've listened to any of my episodes, you've heard this a million times. Your thoughts are choices. So, this is good to know simply because what you need to know is wherever you thought you'd be by now, if you're not there, that's okay. You had a thought. Thoughts are written in pencil. Things happen. Circumstances change. You have other thoughts about things. Maybe you thought you wanted kids and then suddenly realized you didn't. Or maybe you thought you were happy in your marriage and suddenly aren't. Or maybe you thought you were going to have a great year financially and you'd play catch-up on your retirement and then you just didn't. Things went a little sideways.

So, from there, what you want to do is just take a look at where you planned to be versus where you are now. You know, I have people come to me that are like, everything's a mess, I don't even know where to begin, and I wanna get coaching, but I don't know which area to start with. I could, you know, and they name me 17 different things that are going on that they want help with. And that's normal, but what I would say is just choose one topic to go through this exercise. Choose, maybe it's the retirement savings piece for you, maybe it's something else, choose one topic and just look at where you planned to be, where you expected to be by now, and where you are. And just look at the facts of it. A lot of times we build up a lot of drama in our head, and again, I'm going to continue to use the retirement example. We build up a lot of drama in our heads by saying things that are vague.

So we think like, “I haven't saved enough for retirement”. What you want to do instead is say, okay, what exactly are the facts here? You're saying, I should have saved more for retirement, I'm not saving enough for retirement. What exactly does that mean? How much have you saved? How much are you saving every month? What is the difference between that number and the number you want to be at? So maybe you had a plan to be at a certain number in your retirement account by the time you turn 40, and you're 40, and you've got a different number. So what's the delta? What's the difference? Just get the facts. The reality is the facts are what we're dealing with here. The drama that's caused by the vagueness in your head by saying things like I haven't done enough, I haven't... that is not helpful. What's helpful is understanding the facts. So just get them on paper, look at them without any thoughts around them, and then once you have the facts, you just ask yourself why is this a problem? Why is it a problem that you said you wanted to save X by the time you were 40 and you didn't? You said you wanted to pay off your student loans by the time you were 35 and you didn't? You said you wanted to be credit card debt free for the rest of your life and you have credit card debt. Why is it a problem? That is a really important question to answer because oftentimes there is no problem. Credit card debt is not a problem until you have a thought about it.

Oftentimes we have these thoughts about why something's a problem and those thoughts aren't true. Those thoughts aren't even our thoughts. They're often narratives that we've been told by somebody else. And again, you want to start to question where did that narrative come from? Whose voice is that? Is that someone I want to believe? Is that somebody whose example I want to follow? Maybe yes, maybe no, but just start to pull apart why it is that these things are a problem for you.

So here's an example. If somebody comes to me and says, I've got all this credit card debt, and it's just such a big problem. And I say, okay, why is it a problem? First of all, we say, what are the facts? What does all this credit card debt mean? And they give me a specific number, right? They say, like, I'm 40 grand in credit card debt. Okay, why is that a problem? And they say, well, it's a problem because it's affecting my credit score. And I'm like, okay, well, let's unpack that. What are the facts? What exactly is your credit score? How has it been affected by your credit card debt? You know, meaning your credit score's gone down by how much? What exactly are the elements that are creating the dip in your credit score?

And then I asked the question again, and it seems like I'm being an asshole but I'm really not. Why is the low credit score a problem? And they might say, well, because I'm trying to buy a new car. The payments are going to be insane because my credit score is low or I can't get approved for this loan or I can't get approved for this other thing because I have a low credit score. Okay, now we have a specific problem we're trying to solve for. So now we go after and solve that problem. It doesn't mean you don't pay off the credit card debt. It doesn't mean you say, no, nevermind, it's all just in my head, there's no problems. I'm not talking about living in like ridiculous land where there are no consequences to your actions. But what I'm talking about is making sure that you're defining why something is a problem for you so that you're really clear on what you're trying to solve. And then you just ask yourself, what's the rush? Why am I in such a hurry to solve this problem. Where is that urgency coming from?

If I haven't saved enough for retirement, we want to define what exactly that means and why that's a problem, and then we say, what's the rush? Somebody might say, well, I only have, you know, X number of years left in the workforce. And then we question that. Okay, is that true?

I know for me, myself, as a life coach, I don't have any visions of not working after age 62, 64, 66, whatever. I want to continue working. I want to continue to build opportunities for myself. I want to continue to do this kind of work and speaking and writing far beyond whatever typical retirement age is. So, for me, there is not a rush. There is no panic around my retirement savings for a lot of reasons, largely due to the mindset work I've done around this. But one of those things is I don't have an intention of retiring any time soon or any time in the typical timeframe. So I'm not freaked out about it. Now I could open a whole Pandora's box, of yeah, but what if this happens and that happens and this happens and that happens, and that's a different episode. But I've done the mindset work to let me know that whatever the financial issue is that comes up for me, I have always solved it in the past. I will always solve it in the future. I am not confident in myself in every area of my life, but when it comes to my money, I absolutely am. I do not worry about my money at all. And that was not the case for me before I started coaching, but that is something I have been able to work through fully and in my core, I just don't worry about it. It doesn't mean I don't pay attention, it doesn't mean I don't take action, but I don't worry about it because it's not useful. And I certainly don't worry about rushing towards meeting a financial goal, that's somewhat arbitrary.

Your situation might be very different. You might have a lot of other circumstances that are different than mine. You might have a lot more mindset work to do. Whatever it is for you and the situation that you're thinking about, I just want you to ask the question, what's the rush? And be honest, maybe there is a rush. Maybe there is a reason for a need for a sense of urgency. And that's okay. Urgency can actually be a hugely powerful, helpful tool if you're using it in the right way. But just be clear on why the fuck you're rushing around towards a goal.

And then next, ask yourself, where are you looking only at black and white responses? Where are you just thinking it's either this or that? Just even notice the thought, I'm not saving enough for retirement, or I haven't saved enough for retirement by now. Just notice, like, what's on the other side of that? The other side of that is this implication of, I will never get there. I'm behind and I'll never catch up. There's no way we're going to be able to fix this. We're in a hole so big we'll never get out of it, right? It's very extreme thinking. Black and white thinking is not that helpful, generally speaking. What are other possibilities? Your brain is gonna default to black and white thinking because it keeps you organized and it keeps you safe, but what are other possibilities? Is it possible, for example, that you haven't saved what you wanted to save by now, but that the next few years, you could put your foot on the gas and save a ton more? Is it possible that there's other options or other opportunities for you to pick up additional income that you could then put towards your retirement savings? Is it possible that there are other avenues than just saving for retirement that you could explore and that's a whole other episode?, But again, we have this very traditional thinking when it comes to money. Meanwhile, there are many, many, many ways to save for retirement. So, what are possibilities that you haven't even looked at?

Finally, I want you to ask, how much of the fear you have is fear about not having saved for retirement or not being where you want to be in whatever goal it is you're going after? How much of that is actual fear versus other emotions like shame or embarrassment or disappointment? So, when I coach on money, I'm often coaching around a lot of shame. There's often a lot of, I should know this by now. I should have figured this out by now. Why don't I know this by now? I can't believe I did this. I can't believe I spent all that money on X and it didn't pan out. I can't believe I made this financial mistake. I should have known better. There's so much shame and embarrassment and heaviness that comes around our financial lives. It doesn't need to be there. And so much of the like, oh my God, I haven't saved enough for retirement. Sometimes we're worrying about the numbers there. And sometimes what we're saying is, I should have done better. And there's shame or embarrassment under that. That's a great place to get some coaching. Because that shit you need to clean up. If you feel shame around your money, no matter how much money you save, you're going to continue to feel shame. If you feel embarrassed around money choices that you made or decisions, I don't even like to call them mistakes because they're not, they're just choices that went in a certain direction. If you feel any of that, you've got to clean that up because you will continue to feel that as you move forward, no matter what happens with your money. You've got to figure out how to untangle this panicky feeling you have around money or panicky feeling you have around retirement or whatever the negativity is for you around your money, it's really important to clean that up particularly when we're talking about retirement or something that's in the future and is somewhat vague like that. You want to be really clear about what your feelings are about where you are right now and why it is that you're beating yourself up or feeling what you're feeling for not being at a certain level or at a place where you want it to be at. Get coaching. Clean that shit up. Otherwise, it will not go away.

The first way to do that though is just get clear. Name the emotion. Yeah, you might be afraid, but what else are you feeling? And what are the thoughts that are causing that feeling? So if you feel embarrassed about decisions you made, the thoughts might be like, I should have known better. If you feel ashamed it might be I thought I was gonna break my family's pattern of being always in debt. Whatever it is just start to notice the emotions, notice the thought causing them, get clear on what that is and then from there start to get some coaching. Lots of resources over on makeyourpivot.co around this and lots of ways to get coaching free and paid. So do your research, find a coach, find an avenue, clean up that thinking.

Finally, just remember that it's way better to come from a place of curiosity than from a place of urgency or panic or worry or scarcity when it comes to thinking thoughts like, I haven't saved enough for retirement, this is not where I thought I'd be by now. Whatever the thoughts are that are kind of keeping you up at night, coming from a place of curiosity versus a place of fear or panic or desperation or urgency is going to be much more helpful for you. So get curious, start asking the questions like what's true? Is that a fact or is that a thought? Where did I hear that from? Whose voice is that? Is that my story or somebody else's? Do I want to listen to them? Am I doing black and white thinking? Are there other possibilities? How much of this is fear? How much of it's a different emotion? Where is that emotion coming from? Just starting to ask a lot of questions.

What you're doing when you're coming from a place of curiosity is that you're actually kind of shining a light like on the monster that's under the bed, right? It's not that scary when you start to look at it and just question it because suddenly it's not this vague, nebulous thing that's in the dark while you're trying to go to sleep at night haunting you. Instead, you're shining a light on it. There is always a way to solve your problem. Just keep that in mind as we wrap up. Just know whatever it is you're worrying about, somebody else out there has worried about it and they have solved it. You can seek out that example, seek out evidence of that, come get coaching, clean up your thinking. There's always a million ways to solve a problem. So don't get stuck in the panic and the spinning and the I should've and I shouldn't be here and I should be somewhere else. And instead, just notice that and get curious about it, start to question it, and then when you get to a point where you don't know what to do next, come and get some coaching. There's no reason in the world to be spending any time worrying about things like this, because that is not useful. It's much more useful to look at the facts and then figure out from a much calmer place what choices you want to make from there.

All right guys, I would love to talk to you more about whatever the thoughts are that are keeping you up at night, whether it's retirement, money, I talked a lot about it on this episode, I love coaching on money, but no matter what it is for you, marriage, kids, career, relationships, anything you want to talk about, anything that's nagging at you at night that you just can't quite get your arms around, particularly if you're having that thought, this is not where I thought I'd be by now. Let's talk. You can get a 60 minute free consult over at makeyourpivot.co. No commitment. I do about 60 minutes of coaching on that call, and then we can talk through if it feels like a fit for you, we can talk about customizing a package for you. So I would love to see you guys over there. There's also other free resources and free ways to get coaching. Go over to makeyourpivot.co and let's connect. Go over to makeyourpivot.co and let's connect. All right, I hope you guys liked this episode and I will talk to you next week.