Expert Shares: Shocking Math Of Working "Just One More Year"

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Whether you're 6 months, 6 years, or even a decade or more away from being able to retire, one of the most important decisions we all need to make as we get close to retirement is what if we wait just one more year? What if we wait one more year and save up a little bit more money? Those can be the four most dangerous words for a would-be retiree, or it could be really a really great financial decision. So, to find out we in this video, we're going to fill out this table.

[00:00:31]And find out what does it mean for our spending if we work just one more year?

[00:00:36]And importantly, I'm going to use a free tool that's available for you online so you can follow along. So, at the end of the video, I'll share with you how to access this software. If we haven't met yet, my name's Wells. I was a financial advisor for over 20 years before retiring in my 50s myself, and this is the number one retirement YouTube channel in the United States with over 50 million views last year alone. So, if you're interested in retiring, you're in the right place. And in today's video, we're going to fill out this table. What does it mean if we work just one more year? How much more money can we safely spend by working one more year? And you'll be able to tweak all of the assumptions yourself, so your situation is likely different, but you'll be able to to modify for your situation. So, so let's jump in. And before I do it, I just want to share this is the type of analysis that my clients used to pay me tens of thousands of dollars for, and you get to see it completely for free here on YouTube. I love the power of YouTube. Okay, let's jump in.

[00:01:43]So, we're going to start off with a married couple. I say that they have $800,000.

[00:01:49]They're 60 years old. They're going to start taking Social Security at 62, and they're thinking about retire. And so, what does it look like if they retire now? So, I'm going to use a tool that's going to do a Monte Carlo simulation, which will give us a likelihood of success for this couple. So, we're just going to fill this in. Instead of their name, I'm putting married 62 800,000.

[00:02:12]And importantly, I've got their Social Security at $4,000 a month coming in. Why is that?

[00:02:19]If we go to the Social Security website, ssa.gov, we'll see that the average monthly benefit for a retired worker is a little under $2,000. So, I've got them married, so both of them bringing in $2,000, so 4,000 a month. Again, you'll be able to tweak this yourself.

[00:02:37]I'll share with you how to access this software at the end.

[00:02:40]The next section is what their portfolio value is. I have their portfolio value at $800,000.

[00:02:48]So, this is investable money. And I'm leaving everything else as the default.

[00:02:53]For expenses, I'm saying, "What if they get to spend $5,750 a month?" Why that amount? Because the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that the average person spends a little over $5,000 a month in retirement. So, they're going to be able to spend a little bit more than that. And again, I'm leaving everything else as the default.

[00:03:15]Then I go into settings, and I just leave this alone. I don't change anything. You can see here, it's really the expected returns for stocks and bonds as as well as the volatility. I leave all of that the same.

[00:03:29]And when I do that, this is what I find.

[00:03:32]This is the results of this Monte Carlo simulation. Let me tell you what we're seeing here. So, they are This is just a statistical tool, and they're running a hypothetical 10,000 different situations, and really varying the stock market results and when they get results. So, the top of that pale blue line, those are the lucky people. They got good stock market returns early in retirement.

[00:03:58]Then that dark blue line, that's the median. Half of the people did better, half of the people did worse. And then the bottom of that pale blue area, those are the unlucky people, the 20% that did the worst. And you can see unfortunately their money did not last 30 years. Their money ran out at age 85. So, this is somewhere between an 80 and a 90% likelihood of success.

[00:04:24]I'm not saying that's the right likelihood of success for you. Some people want 95%, 97%, that increase in likelihood of success with years of your life. So, give some thought to that.

[00:04:38]Okay.

[00:04:39]So, we're able to fill out the first column here. So, at 62, they can spend $5,750 and have an 80 to 90% likelihood of everything working out just fine, not having to tweak anything.

[00:04:53]But what if they work just one more year? Let's look into this. So, this is the personal information here. So, instead of being 62, in this case they're 63 years old. Their portfolio has grown a little bit.

[00:05:07]I believe I changed it to 85. Yeah, I changed it to 850,000.

[00:05:11]And their Social Security is instead of 4,000, now it's 4,285.

[00:05:18]Why? Because we've got to go to the Social Security table.

[00:05:22]The earlier you take Social Security, the less percentage you're going to get.

[00:05:26]So, by taking it at 62, they got 70% of what would have been their full retirement age benefit. So, now they're waiting to 63, so they're going to get 75% of it. So, I just calculated it out.

[00:05:40]That's the increase. Again, their account continued to to grow. So, now we've got them at $900,000 in their portfolio balance, and you can see their expenses here of $6,250.

[00:05:53]I'm just making a guess that this is going to work.

[00:05:57]And you can see this chart looks a lot like the last one where the the unlucky people are running out of money at 85 years old. The median people end up 30 years later with $400,000, and the lucky people have about two $2 million. So, now we can fill out the second column.

[00:06:18]How much can we spend if we work just one more year? It looks like about an extra $500 a month.

[00:06:25]So, at 62 they can spend 5,750.

[00:06:30]And at if they wait just one more year, looks like they can spend 6,250.

[00:06:35]But now what happens if they wait till they're 65?

[00:06:39]That's an important question. So, let's jump into it. But first I want to share with you the importance of having a financial plan, of going through stuff like this.

[00:06:49]There's three ways I can help you if you do not have a written plan, if you want a financial plan, or even if you do have a financial plan, but you want extra assistance. There's three ways I can help you. One is do-it-yourself. The second way is do it with us all. And the third way is an advisor intro by us all.

[00:07:09]So, let's talk about each of those.

[00:07:11]Do-it-yourself is software that you can use that is much more robust than what I'm using here. Again, I'm going to share with you how to get the software that I'm using right here completely for free. But you don't want to make the retired don't retire decision on software like this. You want to make that You want to have a lot of confidence. Yeah, that's what it's all about. You don't want to tell your boss you're going to retire unless you're really, really confident that you're going to be fine financially.

[00:07:39]So, do-it-yourself, the software I recommend is Bolden. Used to be called NewRetirement. I like Bolden because it's powerful, it's easy to use, it's super affordable, and now it comes with an AI assistant to help you do analysis like this. You can ask it complicated questions like, what if I wait one more year? What do my numbers look like that?

[00:08:00]What if I do a Roth conversion? How much money am I going to need to spend to do that? But how much money will I in taxes will I save over my lifetime? You can sign up for Bolden using this link here and get a two-week free trial and support the channel because I am an affiliate of Bolden. The second one is a done-with-you.

[00:08:19]And thousands of you have asked me, "Hey Assel, how how do I work with you?

[00:08:24]Is there a way for Do you offer a course, something like this?" And and to date, the answer's been no.

[00:08:31]But because of the requests, I am going to do at least one course.

[00:08:35]It's going to be a four-week retirement sprint where you're you'll have a chance to work with me in a group and you'll learn from me as well as from those other people in the community. And at the end of the four weeks, you'll leave with confidence and clarity on on your financial plan. Importantly, we'll talk about the the mental hurdles that maybe even if you have enough money, you're not choosing to retire yet. And we'll talk about that to make sure this is the right choice for you. So, if you're interested in the four-week retirement sprint, you can sign up for the waitlist here. Unfortunately, I am going to have to cap the number of students in the class. And because of the size of my YouTube audience, it's highly likely to sell out very very quickly. So, if you're interested, sign up for the waitlist. And the third way I can help you is many of you have reached out and said, "Hey Assel, will you be my financial advisor?" And unfortunately, the answer to that question is no because I'm supposed to be retired as well. I do these YouTube videos, but outside of that I get to live a normal retired life, get to go on hikes with with my wife and our Labrador and travel and as I record this I'm actually in Poland.

[00:09:49]So, but if you So, I can't be your financial advisor, but what I can do is I can introduce you to a financial advisor. And the service is likely going to be completely free for you. It'll be paid for it by by the advisors that I let into the program. So, if you're interested in an in an advisor intro by a fool, sign up for the wait list here.

[00:10:10]Okay, let's keep going.

[00:10:12]So, now what happens if we wait until we're 65 to retire?

[00:10:18]Here you can see I've got their money growing to a million dollars by then.

[00:10:24]And they're retiring They're So, this is an older couple 61 so that they're 65 at the time. And now their Social Security is $4,950.

[00:10:35]Why? Again, I go to this table. I I say I take that $4,000. I divide by 0.7 and I look at the table at 65. They're going to get 86.7% of that full retirement age benefit. And that gives me that roughly that $4,950 from Social Security. And then I'm saying, you know, I'm going to do a guesstimate. I've been doing this a long time so I have a pretty good sniff that.

[00:11:01]I'm saying they're going to be able to spend about $7,000 a month. Importantly, all of these spending numbers are after tax numbers. So, you're paying Uncle Sam and your state tax when they're due and this is money you can actually spend for all three of these cases.

[00:11:16]And so, here you can see it's $7,000 a month and it's similar. The unlucky people are running out of money at about 85. So, I'm trying to keep that about the same. The interestingly, the median person ends up with a little bit less instead of close to 400,000 in the last example. In this case, it's it's $2 million, but here's the important piece.

[00:11:39]Let's fill out this entire table and then most importantly, I'm going to share with you my thoughts and how you can use this software completely for free.

[00:11:48]So, filling out the table at 62, they can spend 5,750.

[00:11:53]At 63, they can spend 6,250.

[00:11:56]65, they can spend $7,000. I believe that's yeah, that's the number I put in there. $7,000. Now, importantly, none of this is financial advice for you. I don't know your situation. I don't know you This is what this software tool has done, but it's again, this is super high level. Let me share with you how you can get it. You can get that software by signing up for my newsletter link here and I will share you with you a link how to access the software completely for free. I did not develop it. It's available for free on the internet. But let's look at this.

[00:12:32]So, 62, we can spend 5,750.

[00:12:36]63, 6,250.

[00:12:39]Is it worth working that extra year?

[00:12:41]You know, the reality is I can't tell you that. Only Only you can tell yourself that. But working with somebody like me, you can make the best decision for you and your family. And if you go from 62 to 65, the software says you instead of spending 5,750, you can spend $1,250 more a month or if my math is right, about $40 more a day. So, is it worth it? For some people, they're like, "Heck yes, it's worth it. You know, that means I get to live to live in a nicer community." For other people, they look at it and say, "No, you know, I'm not going to give up three of the healthiest, most active years of my retirement in order to be able to spend a a bit more." So, these are critically important points. If you want a deeper dive on what I think about waiting to retire to 65, watch this video here. Why waiting to 65 might be a big mistake.

[00:13:38]Thanks for watching this one. I'll see you in that one. Bye, guys.