A Balance Sheet for Railroad Retirement

Transcript:

Learn how to track your progress to a great railroad retirement. Welcome everyone to another edition of the Highball Advisors Railroad Retirement Whiteboard. My name is John McNamara of Highball Advisors. And today we're going to talk about a tracking tool, a simple methodology to see if you're, I hate to use word, on track towards railroad retirement. So I'm sure a lot of you heard the term balance sheet. A lot of it is used for companies when they talk about it. But individuals have their own personal balance sheets. So, what is the balance sheet? The objective is to give you a and provide you with a clear view of your financial situation, to really understand that, "Hey, this is where I am." And the way we do that is by listing our assets and our liabilities, what we own, who we owe it to, that type of stuff.

So if we just take our assets here on this side, the first part of the balance sheet. You have cash, investments, 401Ks, is taxable accounts, that type of thing, property, provision for taxes, the credits, and stuff like that. But as railroaders, we also have something else that's important that you want to put on your balance sheet, is your railroad tier two. Put a value on that, because that's an asset. I say it all the time. I preach it, is that's an asset. And if you're lucky enough to have a pension, that's also an asset. So, those things can all go on your balance sheet, and that's the positive side. You want that to be the big numbers.

And then over on the liability side, debts, basically, credit cards, possibly student loans, mortgages, car loans ... Don't get me started on car loans ... and other notes that you might have to pay out. So, those are all subtracting away. So when we look at our balance sheet, what's the number we're trying to get to? So we take our assets. We minus our liabilities. We get to our net worth. And this gives us where we stand right now. It's that clear financial picture of, okay, this is what I've accumulated right now.

And the reason we want to do the balance sheet, two great reasons is we can create goals off the balance sheets, things we want to achieve in life, especially towards retirement. I'd like to do X in retirement, or I'd like to provide for Y in retirement. And that's those goals we've hit, but we have to understand the numbers first. We're not magicians here, so we got to understand what the numbers are. And then secondly, we can track our progress. How was I five years ago? How was I four years ago? If we can understand where you've been, you understand where you're going. So that's very, very important. So, those two great things go on the balance sheet.

So take a little time. This doesn't take that much time. So if you can set down 15 minutes, a half hour, just high-level stuff say, "Okay, this is what I've got. This is my balance sheet," it's a great place to start financial planning as you get ready for railroad retirement. So I hope everyone's found this useful, share it with other railroaders. I'd like to see them maybe start building little balance sheets. It's really great.

Click on the notification bell on my channel, so you can get any new videos that I put out. Please subscribe to the YouTube channel. It's been going great. We get a lot of likes and a lot of subscribers, so I do appreciate that. Also, if you want to talk about putting together a balance sheet, preparing for railroad retirement, reach out, schedule a free boarding for railroad retirement assessment, great stuff to get you to understand what your balance sheet looks like for railroad retirement. So until next time, everyone, please stay safe, stay on track, and take care. So long, everybody, bye.

Get Free Railroad Retirement Assessment

Disclaimer: This article is provided for general information and illustration purposes only. Nothing contained in the material constitutes tax advice, a recommendation for purchase or sale of any security, or investment advisory services. Highball Advisors encourages you to consult a financial planner, accountant, and/or legal counsel for advice specific to your situation. Reproduction of this material is prohibited without written permission from Highball Advisors, and all rights are reserved.from Highball Advisors, and all rights are reserved.