Transcript 

Ben Smith:

Welcome, everyone, to the Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. My name is Ben Smith. I'm joined by my co-host, Curtis Worcester, the Kittery outlets to my Freeport outlets. How you doing today, Curtis?

Curtis Worcester:

Doing well, Ben. Doing well. Can I have Kittery? Because I think they still have a Nike store. I think Freeport lost their Nike store.

Ben Smith:

They do.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

Yep. Well, and we always talk about which outlet has which store, right? So it's always we've got to compare, and which one's more convenient for us and where we're passing through? Do we go on the way back from Boston or the way down? All that. So outlets are a big deal, right?

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

Shopping in Maine. So we wanted to make sure we give a little bit of a shout-out there. We are really excited about today's show. One of the things that we've been talking about with our clients in financial planning, especially from planning advisory work that we have, is there's lots of concern with our client base that they haven't saved enough for retirement, maybe because they're going to the outlets too much.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah.

Ben Smith:

Maybe. Right.

Curtis Worcester:

Well, at least they're going to the outlets, not the factory, like the true stores.

Ben Smith:

That's right. They're saving money, right? So it's a value thing. It's really tough enough to try and figure out what lifestyle you want and how much you can afford, but we also hear continuously about how expensive healthcare is in retirement and that we should budget for that as well. Many of us have sat in those 401(k) or 403(b) meetings where we hear about retirement costs and we hear a figure that we'll need hundreds of thousands or possibly close to a million dollars to cover our healthcare costs in retirement.

Ben Smith:

So that kind of has led us kind of ... You hear that people coming in, like, "Well, geez, I've saved X number of dollars, and I hear that I need all of that for retirement, which means that I can't spend any, because I need it for my healthcare." So that led us to the, "Is this actually true?" Right? What are retirees actually spending in healthcare? How has it changed over time? How are we spending our retirement funds on healthcare specifically? What about if healthcare costs are not as much as you think they are? So that's the premise of today's show.

Ben Smith:

So today's guest is a retirement insights leader for T. Rowe Price US Intermediaries. He has served in a variety of roles related to retirement thought leadership and product development, currently helping develop the firm's expertise of major topics that impact the retirement industry. He's a frequent speaker at client and industry events as a retirement subject matter expert and serves as one of the firm's spokespersons in national media organizations. He holds an MBA and MA in political science, or polisci, as we like to call it, and BS in electrical engineering. He is a certified financial planner professional and holds a Series 6, 7, and 66 as a registered representative, has taught personal finances as adjunct faculty member at John Hopkins University, and is also a high school and grassroots youth soccer referee. So at this time, I'd love to welcome back Stuart Ritter to the Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. Stuart, thanks for coming on. Really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you today.

Stuart Ritter:

Thanks for having me back. It's great to be here again.

Ben Smith:

I know. It's been a minute, and you were one of our kind of early on our show. We're kind of just getting going, and you just rocked it with us. So we said, "We've got to get him back on."

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Ben Smith:

We've got to show we can be an equal party to this show here. So Stuart, I know it's been quite a few episodes, and we've been gathering a lot of momentum on our side with more audience. So there's probably people that haven't listened to your show, Helping Visualize Success in Retirement, and we're going to urge people right now to go listen to that one for prerequisite learning. So go back and listen to that one. But we want to just do a little bit of intro to you, Stuart. Can you just give us a little bit of background about where you grew up and if you have any connections to Maine?

Stuart Ritter:

I grew up outside of Washington, DC. I'm one of those people that's never been more than an hour from where I was born. [inaudible 00:04:38]. Yeah. See? There you go.

Ben Smith:

Raising our hands. Yeah.

Stuart Ritter:

That's it. That's it. But I do have a connection to Maine that's brought me up there the last couple of summers. My wife's family grew up in Rhode Island, and they used to vacation in Bayside, so north of Camden, south of Belfast, and now she and her siblings all have kids. So a couple of years ago, we started bringing them up to Bayside to vacation there, and now members of her family live in Maine. So it's a bit of a family reunion. The first time I went up, I was just so amazed by it. It's wonderful up there. So over the trips to Maine we've had, I've had the chance to go to every single one of your national park sites, so Appalachian Trail, Katahdin Woods, Acadia, St. Croix Island. So I've had a chance to explore a bit of this state.

Curtis Worcester:

That's wonderful.

Ben Smith:

Man, you're checking all the boxes here, Stuart.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah. Wow. I don't know that I've been all of those.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. Again, the Katahdin one is a fairly recent one, too, so kudos to you there.

Stuart Ritter:

Yes.

Ben Smith:

That's really great.

Stuart Ritter:

Yeah. I have to admit, being an out of stater, I wasn't expecting what a logging road actually meant until I got onto it.

Ben Smith:

You think anywhere in the world with a cell phone, you're fine until you've been on a logging road with 40 metric tons of wood piling at you at 80 miles an hour on a very loosely packed dirt road. So that holds another level of excitement. So Stuart, I want to hear a little bit about your path towards working for T. Rowe Price. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I know you kind of have lots of different especially educational experience. It's interesting kind of your path towards T. Rowe. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Stuart Ritter:

Sure. The one common thread from when I was an engineer early on in my career all the way through being on your podcast today has been the interest in and to some degree the ability to explain complicated stuff to people, hopefully in a way that they can understand it and make better decisions. So I'll be the first to tell you I wasn't the best engineer on the team, but I was pretty good at explaining all that complicated engineering stuff to the non-engineers so that they can make good business decisions.

Stuart Ritter:

That's one of the things that I've loved about my time at T. Rowe Price, which is over two decades now. I've been with the company more than 20 years in a variety of roles, all of them generally related to understanding this complicated topic of personal finance and the different aspects of it, including, as we'll talk about today, healthcare costs and then coming up with ways that I hope help people explain it without necessarily using the terms standard deviation or price to earnings ratios so that people can really understand in a way that they can make better decisions for their personal situation.

Ben Smith:

I think what you just described about that role for you, Stuart, is, again, what I valued in terms of our role working with folks like yourself, is being able to get some really great insights, really kind of see where things are in the industry. I think our job, Curtis and I, myself, and our colleague Gabby, too, and all of our team is to then be able to then put that into practice with our clients. So I think all these things working in concert, it's really pretty cool to kind of see kind of a whole spectrum of ways that we're applying these to certain client situations. So that's one thing I love about my job. I want to hear a little bit more about what you love about your job, Stuart.

Stuart Ritter:

I have the opportunity to combine a couple passions of mine. So getting the engineering degree wasn't an accident. I really do like the technical side of things. So I'm perfectly happy sitting in front of an Excel spreadsheet, digging into the data, looking for ... I'm going to use big words now, correlations. How do two numbers change over of time or next to each other and looking at it from different perspectives. I'm very lucky that I've got some people at T. Rowe Price way smarter than me, which isn't that hard, but still, we've got a PhD researcher who has done a lot of analysis of healthcare costs and being able to work with him, having his help understanding what's going on, and I've done that, again, in a variety of aspects at T. Rowe. I've looked at education costs when sending kids to college, looking at how much to save for retirement, working with our investment professionals.

Stuart Ritter:

So got a lot of topnotch folks at T. Rowe Price, and I've got at least enough of a background that I can almost understand them when they're really getting into the math. But then I get to combine that with the other thing I like to do, which is this, which is presentations. I mean, it's one of the reasons I felt so grateful to have the opportunity to teach at John's Hopkins University. I got to stand up in front of a classroom of some fantastic students once a week for a couple of years and share what knowledge I have, but do so in a way that's hopefully understandable, engaging, so being able to spend some time really understand something. So it's not just, "Hey, I'm reading off of a script, and I don't really get what all this stuff is that I'm saying," so really understand the topic in depth, but then have the opportunity to have an interaction with someone like you, a professional who helps people every day make better decisions.

Stuart Ritter:

I mean, one of the ways I describe my job is there are clinical physicians that meet with patients every day, and then there are research physicians that work in a lab. I'm a research financial planner. I'm in the lab, working with other experts, trying to figure out better ways to help people achieve their goals. Then when we come up with that, we have the opportunity to work with someone like you, that clinical financial planner who is out there meeting patients every day, help you be more successful in helping them achieve their financial goals. So the opportunity that T. Rowe Price has put together to bring all of that in place, all the expertise, all of the ability to connect with someone like you is something I really value about my job. I'm, again, thrilled to have the ability to be on the podcast and put all the pieces together today.

Ben Smith:

Obviously, to put pieces together here, too, and one of the things that we do when we sit down with clients and especially when they're first talking about retirement, right, is they're looking at, "Hey, I've saved all this money, but I've never really planned all this out. I do have dreams. There's things that I want to do when I'm going to retire." As we're sitting down with them, and Stuart, one of the things we use is the workbook on visualized retirement so we can help them figure out what sort of things that they want to do that makes them really passionate about life, makes them really looking forward to the number of days that we all have in retirement.

Ben Smith:

So I think that's one thing that we want to help people, is to get excited for this. But I think the problem being here is this preconceived notion, or maybe it's not preconceived, or maybe it's the industry putting this notion in our heads of, "Hey, healthcare costs are going to be so much, you better not spend any of your retirement money, because you are going to need it for healthcare. Who's going to take care of you if you don't have the money to pay for all this healthcare need that you're going to have in retirement?"

Ben Smith:

So we have two conflicting forces happening here, and so that's where I think our two shows are ... I think is going to be really great kind of back to back here. So I want to ask you about that. So we're seeing this idea that people are walking in with us and they're saying, "I can't spend any of my money, because I'm going to need it for long-term care. I'm going to need it for premiums. I'm going to need it for all this, and I've been told this for 40 years of my career, that I need to save this for healthcare." What is your team seeing and hearing out there related to high healthcare costs?

Stuart Ritter:

Let me address that by explaining it in a way that has to do with weather forecasters. Now, I'm going on a bit of a limb here, because I don't live in Maine, and I'm going to use a snow analogy. So I'll just acknowledge right upfront that being in the state of Maryland, I realize I don't know what snow is. By the way, the only time I've visited Maine has been in the summer. So I'll throw that out there.

Ben Smith:

That's a pro move, though. [crosstalk 00:13:06].

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, that's a good move. That's a good move.

Ben Smith:

That's a good move.

Stuart Ritter:

I guess if I have a choice, that's the one to make.

Ben Smith:

Yes.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, yeah.

Ben Smith:

[crosstalk 00:13:13].

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Ritter:

But part of the reason so many people feel like they're going to have to pay a six-figure number for their healthcare costs has to do with the same thing that goes on with weather forecasters. If a forecaster gets on and says, "Hey, we might get a little snow this weekend. It might be an inch or two," they're done. People are, "Okay. I don't need to worry about that." But if somebody gets on and says, "Oh my gosh. It's going to be the storm of the century, and we're getting three and a half feet in 12 minutes, and all this stuff is going to happen," wow. Then people are going to be paying attention to that. They're going to get more air time. They're going to get more attention. People are going to spend more time listening to them.

Stuart Ritter:

So there's a bit of this phenomena going on when it comes to healthcare costs in retirement where I think there's some people who are just trying to make the number as big as they possibly can in order to get more attention. What's happened, as you pointed out, is suddenly people are feeling like the storms of the century happen to everybody all the time. That's not what's going on. I mentioned our PhD researcher. he actually dug into the data. He looked at the University of Michigan's Health and Retirement Survey. So they go out every couple of years, and they do a very detailed survey on different age groups and how people are spending money and what's going on, so this really, really deep dataset, and looked at what people are actually spending on retirement.

Stuart Ritter:

Now, I'm going to come back to that, but let me contrast it to what everybody's hearing, and I'll explain why you're hearing those big numbers. So you look at the headlines, and it's, "You'll need $315,000. You'll need $350,000. $400,000 is the check you have to write the day you retire in order to pay for healthcare costs." That's what people are thinking when they're walking into your office, and it's just not the case. People think it's this big, scary number. I'll give you three reasons if you let me go a little bit longer, three reasons-

Ben Smith:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Love it.

Stuart Ritter:

... why it's not a big, scary number. First of all, it's not a lump sum. You don't pay your healthcare costs all in one shot the day you retire. You don't pay really any retirement healthcare expense. Nobody shows up at your door the day of retirement and says, "Well, if you're paying $150 a month for your internet cable bill, well, we did some math. That works out to $86,000. Write us an $86,000 check today." Nobody does that.

Ben Smith:

Right.

Stuart Ritter:

Nobody does that with healthcare costs, either. You pay your Medicare premium monthly out of your Social Security check. You pay your ongoing variable out of pocket costs, well, when they occur, and they occur throughout your retirement. Now, what's going on is people are doing some math and figuring out, well, that ongoing set of payments that you're doing, if we pull up an Excel spreadsheet, we can figure out that that's what that means as a lump sum the day you retire. But that's not how you pay it. So the first reason those big, scary numbers you hear are not a big, scary number is, number one, you don't pay it as a lump sum. Number two, you is not we. Those numbers that are out there, they're for a couple. They're for two people. But most folks internalize it as, "That's just me." Right?

Ben Smith:

Right. Wow. Right. Huh.

Stuart Ritter:

The third reason it's not a big, scary number, and I would argue this is the biggest reason and we'll probably spend most of our time talking about this, is because those numbers you hear are not even remotely typical of what the average retiree experiences. The $400,000 number that I threw out, there's an organization that came up with that, and here's how they came up with that number. They looked at the range of medical expenses that all of retirees pay, and they lined them up from the smallest dollar amount to the largest dollar amount. Then they picked the number that was higher than what 90% percent of retirees pay. So 90% of retirees pay less than that number, but they picked that number.

Stuart Ritter:

They did the same thing with prescription drug costs. They lined up what retirees pay for prescription drug costs from the smallest amount to the largest amount, and they found the number that was higher than what 90% of retirees pay for prescription drug costs. Then they added those two numbers together, even though that's not the same person. So to come out with something that's higher than what nine out of ten retirees actually experience and end up having everyone think, "Oh my gosh. That has to be my experience. That's everybody's experience. We're definitely going to pay that. We have to pay it as a lump sum," well, that's why people have this impression that it's this big, scary number when it is not a big, scary number.

Curtis Worcester:

So I like that. So, again, you just covered why it's not a big, scary number. So maybe we can look at healthcare costs in age bands. So what is actually being spent on healthcare in early retirement versus later retirement, like late, 75 over?

Stuart Ritter:

So let me start with what retirees overall are paying.

Curtis Worcester:

Okay.

Ben Smith:

Yes.

Stuart Ritter:

Then let's break it up into age bands-

Curtis Worcester:

Perfect.

Stuart Ritter:

... because your listeners are going to be in different groups. We want to make sure we cover everybody. But let me do this. Let me use an analogy. So for those of you who are not seeing this visually, I am holding up a deck of cards, and we use a deck of cards to help everybody figure out or understand, I hope, what the range of actual costs is that retirees pay for healthcare. So imagine a deck of cards spread out by suit. So you've got spades, clubs, diamonds, and hearts spread out, and if I were to draw a line where half the cards are to the left of that line and half the cards are to the right of the line, I'd draw the line at the king of clubs. So I've got all the black cards to the left and all the red cards to the right.

Stuart Ritter:

Now, those of you who remember eighth grade statistics class, we call that the median. That's the midpoint, the 50th percentile. All right. So half the cards are to the left. Half the cards are to the right. So here's my question. If we were to line up total annual healthcare spending, so we look at all retirees and we look at the total amount that each retiree spends for their healthcare expenses in a single year, so that's premiums and out of pocket costs, and I line it up from the smallest amount to the largest amount and I drew a line at the 50th percentile, I drew a line at the dollar amount where half of retirees are paying less and half of retirees are paying more. What do you think that dollar amount is?

Curtis Worcester:

Boy, I don't even know.

Stuart Ritter:

The dollar amount is $3,400.

Curtis Worcester:

Okay.

Stuart Ritter:

Half of retirees are paying $3,400 or less for their entire annual cost of healthcare-

Curtis Worcester:

Wow.

Stuart Ritter:

... which means if I shuffle my deck of cards together and you were to pick out a random card, if you got any black card, any year, you're paying $3,400 or less. The reason I mention it is because it contrasts so strongly with the $400,000 that everybody thinks in their head they've got to pay for healthcare costs, $3,400 a year. Now, I realize people are not so much worried about paying the dollar amount in the middle, but remember, half of people are paying that amount or less. What happens if I get one of those red cards at the other end, if I pull the king or queen of hearts?

Stuart Ritter:

So illustrating the point, that's an expense that's higher than what 95% of all the other retirees are experiencing. If you have an expense, an annual expense that's higher than what nine out of ten or, sorry, 95% of all the other retirees are experiencing, you're paying $10,100 for that particular year. If you pull any other red card, you're paying somewhere between $3,400 and $10,100 for that year.

Stuart Ritter:

So I realize that's a lot of numbers, but the point is, A, it's not a six-figure amount, and B, it's a fairly modest amount for most folks. What we'll end up talking about is for the vast majority of retirees, healthcare, ongoing healthcare expenses are fairly modest, pretty manageable. Where you start seeing those big numbers, though, that you hear about, that's when someone has an expense that's higher than what 95% of everybody else is experiencing. Then Curtis, I'm going to come back to your original question now, which is what's going on at different ages?

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, sure.

Stuart Ritter:

Here's what happens. So we just talked about all retirees. Let's break it out in age bands. So that middle amount, that number where half of retirees are paying that dollar amount or less, I'm going to focus on a particular part of someone's life, mostly because that's the number I actually have. We haven't broken it out just for annual healthcare costs by ages. But what I want to zero in on is end of life, the last two years of somebody's life and what they're paying for healthcare costs then, because that tends to be the most expensive. It turns out-

Ben Smith:

Stuart, just interrupt for a second, again, what we're hearing, too, is that's where it feels like the largest amount of fear is as well because this idea of, "Hey, I'm going to have a lot of healthcare costs all at end of life, and by the way, say I've saved $300,000, and I'm going to need $300,000 for end of life. Well, now I've not left anything for my spouse. I love my spouse more than I love myself," right?

Stuart Ritter:

Right.

Ben Smith:

"I'm not going to see that happen," right? So there's a lot of these kind of chain of psychological events happening here of, "Because this, then this, then this." So I'm really interested to hear what you have to say around that, Stuart, because that's what we hear almost every client kind of saying to us.

Stuart Ritter:

Understandably so, right? Big numbers. If I'm at the end of my life, well, then I'm done, and I don't want to leave somebody behind for decades without any money. So for the numbers I'm about to give you, I'm going to take Medicare premiums out of the conversation, because that's something people are just paying on a regular basis. Very often, what people are worried about is that out of pocket cost. So here you go. End of life variable cost, what people pay in the last two years of life out of their pocket. For folks in their sixties and seventies, that median number, the number where half of retirees are paying that amount or less for those last two years is $3,000. For people in their eighties, it's $4,000. For people in their nineties, it's $5,000.

Stuart Ritter:

So shuffle a deck of cards. Pull a random one out. Even if you're in your nineties, if you pull a black card, you're paying $5,000 or less total in the last two years of life for your out of pocket costs. So for the vast majority of retirees, it still ends up being a fairly modest dollar amount, even when they're in their nineties. Now, this presentation, this podcast is not about, "Okay, those big numbers aren't out there"-

Curtis Worcester:

Right. Yeah.

Stuart Ritter:

... because people wouldn't be worried about it if they didn't actually exist. They do, but let me share what has to happen for them to exist.

Curtis Worcester:

Please.

Stuart Ritter:

If we look at the 95th percentile, so somebody has an expense that's higher than what 95% of all the other retirees at their age are experiencing, that's where we see the big numbers. So for people in their sixties and seventies, they have that expense that's higher than 95% of all the other 60 and 70-year-olds out there. That number's about $45,000. For people in their eighties, it's about $78,000. For people in their nineties, it's $114,000.

Ben Smith:

Just to clarify that, so, again, you're talking the last two years end of life. That's the total amount for one person?

Stuart Ritter:

Right. For their variable costs.

Ben Smith:

Right, and just to kind of clarify that, so if you said, "Hey, that's really the 95th percentile cost for those age bands," statistically-

Stuart Ritter:

Yes.

Ben Smith:

Statistically, then if that person was a couple, more than likely, the other person in that couple would probably not be in that 95th percentile as well.

Stuart Ritter:

Agree. We haven't looked at that directly, but since we are talking about individuals, right. You're putting a deck of cards in front of somebody, and for both of them to experience that number, they both have to pull out a queen or king of hearts from the deck that was in front of them. Pull any other card, and they're paying a lower dollar amount.

Ben Smith:

Yeah. Gotcha. Well, so I think that really helps, right? Because to really understand this, kind where the significant sum of money on out pocket healthcare costs comes from, right, I think that's a really big, important piece, and that's a very big barrier, again, to that visualizing and being able to ... Again, it's kind of weird. As financial planners, we're trying to convince people to also spend money on retirement, right?

Stuart Ritter:

Right.

Ben Smith:

It's like permission here, that we're saying, "It's okay. Things are going to work out okay if you actually spend on some fun things, too." But I want to ask about ... One thing I hear from our clients, and Curtis has heard this from a client he's experienced, too, is chronic illnesses, right, is, "Hey, maybe I'm retiring because I do have a chronic illness," right? That's something where I'm thinking back to your deck of cards. I'm thinking, "Hey, my average cost or the median cost is that 3,400." Correct?

Stuart Ritter:

Yep.

Ben Smith:

Right? So if that's the case, I'm thinking about on the chronic illness, so did you have any studies that talked about chronic illnesses and increasing healthcare costs over time? Because it could see where I'm at the median, and in my percentile or what I'm pulling out of that deck, it continues to go more and more into the red side.

Stuart Ritter:

Yeah, and that's the advantage of working with somebody like you. So what we've done is we've looked at all retirees. So what I'm sharing is when you look at everybody collectively. The advantage of working with a professional like you is now someone can say, "Here's what's going on in my personal situation."

Ben Smith:

Right.

Stuart Ritter:

"So I do have a chronic condition. That's going to make it more likely that I'm going to need more healthcare costs. But at the same time, it means I might die sooner, so fewer years." There's a little bit of a trade-off. Now, you've mentioned it a couple of times, so let me bring up explicitly the topic that's I know in the back of people's minds, which is the idea of long-term care and that it's not really a medical cost. It's not because I'm paying something to a physician for medical care, but it's this long-term care, custodial care that I'm going to have to pay for. The big number I gave you, that $114,000, and when we look at the data, the big numbers are almost always driven by someone needing long-term care. So it's not so much prescription drugs or going to the doctor. It's somebody who unfortunately needs a high level of long-term custodial care. They're in that 95th percentile, and they need it for a fairly long period of time.

Stuart Ritter:

Now, what we also find, though, is even with long-term care, it happens to people in terms of those big expenses in their nineties, generally in their late nineties. So, again, the numbers are out there, but it's helpful sometimes for people to understand the dollar amounts. Is everybody paying $400,000, or is $3,400 part of it, when it happens, and most of it is in the late nineties, and the likelihood of it happening. So when we put all that together, to your point about, "Well, I don't want to spend anything, because I feel like I'm definitely going to experience this big number," not everybody will. It's driven by the long-term care costs. We can all think of somebody who is experiencing this. At the same time, there are 55 million people over age 65 in the United States. So the fact that we can think of one or two folks kind of is the exception that proves the rule. There are certainly some people out there who unfortunately are having that experience, but it doesn't mean everybody is definitely going to have that same experience.

Ben Smith:

I'll also add, Stuart, I think from an insurance perspective, I think there's a lot of pressure on people trying to sell long-term care insurance. For some cases, it does make a lot of sense, right? I think that's where people are coming to us and saying, "Hey, I'm really just trying to look at the cost-benefit here," right? "Here's this policy that I'm being offered. Here's the cost of it. Here's how it's going to go up over time. What's the analysis of that and what I'm going to be out of pocket?",vVersus in what you're saying, Stuart, is "Hey, my situation, my health history, my genetic history, and my family, here is the things I'm concerned about, and this is why maybe my parent did have one of those 95th percentile outcomes. We have a family history of certain things, and I'm concerned about this." All of those situations allow us to say, "Let's take these certain fears off the table wherever we can or minimize them wherever we can."

Ben Smith:

So I think that's really important to be able to say, "Here's the data. Here's kind of what are offered for maybe products to help protect people." Again, from our end, we don't want to sell these products, but we'll help do the analysis. We'll help you find it. But I think those people are coming to us and really asking for, "I want somebody I can trust that is a fiduciary, and they're going to give me some solid, sound advice of what I should do in my situation."

Ben Smith:

But I kind of want to tell a little bit of a financial planning story, because you kind of raised a really big point. We had a gentleman that came to us, and he retired early, I think three-time cancer survivor and had heart issues. But he was looking at his wife and saying, "Geez, my wife is very healthy, not a lot of family history." So what we talked about was, actually, this leads to two financial plans, because he's saying, "Look, the chances that I'm going to be around for 30 years to make my money last this entire time I don't think is very probable. So here's the financial plan that I want to build that I can then structure in security for me and my health, but also for allowing us to do the fun things now while I'm healthy enough to do them together. My spouse, she's done a really great job saving, too, and we want to make sure she's protected and she has more longevity than probably myself. So we're going to plan this a little bit differently."

Ben Smith:

So we ended up kind of doing two financial plans while they're one unit, thinking of it so healthcare cost or health story was kind of a big piece of it. So I wanted to share that, because I thought that's really important of helping to figure out how do we apply these things in certain situations and how health can kind of drive some of that.

Stuart Ritter:

That's great. That's exactly the way it's supposed to work. Not everybody comes in and says, "Okay, we both need $400,000." It's starting with what the data actually shows and then personalizing it with a professional. It's the same reason you go to a physician. I'll come back to that analogy. It's, "Okay. Dr. Google says I should be doing this, but I want to check with the professional. Can you customize it to the rest of my situation and all these other factors?" That's a great example of having the opportunity to do that.

Curtis Worcester:

So Stuart, we've heard you mention that two of the top three retiree spending concerns are, one, healthcare premiums and, two, healthcare out of pocket costs. So I have a question for you, but I'm going to break it into those two categories. So can we start with healthcare premiums? So can we look at what is happening with healthcare premiums over a retiree's life, but also what is expected to happen going forward with healthcare premiums?

Stuart Ritter:

Sure. So first of all, let me put it in perspective for everybody, because sometimes this data point surprises folks. When you look at retiree healthcare spending, three out of every $4 is spent on premium.

Curtis Worcester:

Wow.

Stuart Ritter:

Most of the cost of healthcare in retirement is spent on essentially Medicare premiums.

Curtis Worcester:

Wow.

Stuart Ritter:

Three out of $4. So that's the big expense that people need to be thinking of to start with. We'll talk about the out of pocket cost in a minute. But what's nice about knowing that its premiums is that premiums are fairly knowable in advanced, budgetable. You work them into your spending plan, just like you'd work in your housing costs and food and everything else. Now, as we all know, costs for healthcare historically have risen faster than the rate of inflation, and the folks at Medicare, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, they've got a group that looks at the system and projects healthcare costs. They have said, "Yeah, the cost for healthcare is projected to rise faster than the rate of inflation." So if I keep everything the same, I should expect my spending on healthcare to go up more than the rate of inflation every year.

Stuart Ritter:

At the same time, there's something else people should realize, and that is that for most retirees, everything else doesn't stay the same. Most people have this idea that what I spend on everything else is going to be constant throughout retirement, and then healthcare costs are just going to pile on higher and higher, more and more as I get older. But that's not actually what happens when you look at retiree spending. What happens is spending on all the other categories besides healthcare actually goes down as people move through retirement.

Curtis Worcester:

Interesting.

Stuart Ritter:

It goes down by more than the increase in healthcare. So when you look at what people are spending on housing and food and transportation and entertainment and everything else, that curve comes down as people get older, even as the healthcare curve is going up. So for most people, even if they're spending more on healthcare, they're actually spending less on everything else. So it's not as if their total spending goes up. When you look at it on an inflation-adjusted basis, for most people, their spending actually comes down. Some of that just happens naturally. If I have a medical issue and suddenly I'm not getting around as well, well, I'm not traveling as much, I'm not going out to eat as often, and those other expenses just naturally come down.

Stuart Ritter:

So healthcare costs are projected to go up higher than the rate of inflation. At the same time, don't just look at that in the vacuum. Look at it in the larger context. Again, I know I've said it like four times already, but I'll say it again. Working with folks like you that help people do that, that help people build out that big picture gives folks the opportunity to look at that.

Stuart Ritter:

The second part, you asked about variable expenses. So since they're variable, they're harder to look at, but what we do see is as people get older, what goes on at the 95th percentile, if they have a variable expense that's higher than what most other folks at that age have, those numbers do get bigger and bigger and bigger compared to folks earlier on. Now, at the median, it's about the same It's, as I said, $3,000 for end of life for folks in their sixties and seventies and 5,000 if they're in their nineties. It's the unfortunate few people who have something big happen, an expense higher than 95% of everybody else, that's where you see the variable expense really ballooning.

Curtis Worcester:

Gotcha. Gotcha.

Ben Smith:

So Stuart, I want to ask, you've covered the variable expense piece, but I want to ask this in maybe a different way. We've covered this fear that we all have that, "Hey, we're going to get to end of life and that last two years, and we're just going to use all of our savings on that unpredictable variable expense, right? That end of life long-term care." So can you just tell us what you found about, again, that moment where maybe we're going to spend most of our money on out of pocket healthcare costs? Is that true that essentially long-term care ... I guess what I'm asking is for long-term care or the end of the last two years, what's the percentage of our overall healthcare costs that that kind of soaks up? Is it 50% of all the costs is in the last two years, or is it 20%? Is it 90? What do you find?

Stuart Ritter:

I'm going to answer a slightly different question, if that's okay.

Ben Smith:

Sure.

Stuart Ritter:

I realize what you're asking, and I'm doing a little ducking here, because I don't have that exact dollar amount. So what you're saying is if I end up spending ... I'll use a round number, $100,000. How does that play out? Is it like $1,000 every year until my last year of life-

Ben Smith:

Exactly.

Stuart Ritter:

... two years of life, and then there's this big spike? For folks who are at the median, just generally, that's not the case. I mean, they're certainly paying more at the end, but $3,000, $4,000, $5,000 compared to if we look at everybody at the median, all retirees for total healthcare spending, it's 3,400. So not that much. It's really the folks, again, at the 95th percentile. One are the ways to look at it, and I'll share with you, and it relates to one of the questions you asked earlier, which is how much of my net worth am I spending at the end of life?

Stuart Ritter:

If I'm spending a whole bunch of whatever I have left, especially if I have a spouse or partner that I'm leaving behind, that's kind of scary. I mean, certainly it would be scary if I ended up spending a lot of it overall at the beginning of my retirement and then kept living. But let's look at those last two years of life, and all we're doing is we're taking those dollar amounts that I mentioned earlier, dividing them by people's net worth. At the median, again, last two years of life, shuffle a deck of cards. I get any black card, I'm paying 2 or maybe 3, 4% of my net worth in out of pocket costs for my end of life care. It's a very, very small percentage.

Stuart Ritter:

Now, when I look at somebody who's got an expense that's higher than 95% of everybody else, then if they're passing away in their sixties or seventies, they're using up 40% of the household assets. If they pass away in their eighties, they're using up 60% of their household assets. If they're passing away in their nineties, I'm going to throw out a number that won't make sense until I explain it. They're using 135% of their household assets. So how do you use 135% of your assets, right? So here's what's going on. In the analysis that we've been talking about this entire time, one of the things we did, knowing that a big driver is long-term care costs, is we took people who are on Medicaid out of the analysis, because if you're on Medicaid, you're not paying anything out of pocket for your own long-term care costs. It's paid for by the state, right? That's how Medicaid works.

Stuart Ritter:

So what we're talking about here, the people who are incurring an expense that's 135% of their household net worth, well, to be on Medicaid, you've got to have a really small household net worth. So these are the folks who are just above that cutoff who have very, very modest means, but still are unfortunate enough to incur one of those really high expenses.

Ben Smith:

Gotcha.

Stuart Ritter:

So the expense ends up being more than what their household net worth is. So a couple things take away from that. The more money you have, the lower percentage you're going to be using in those last two years of life. The other thing to point out is if you end up passing away earlier on in your retirement, you're leaving more of your assets behind. So as you get older, you're using up more of the assets, but a reminder that generally spouses and significant others tend to be about the same age range. So even if you're using up a bigger percentage, there's fewer years left for them to have to use whatever's left behind.

Ben Smith:

That's a good point. That's a good point.

Stuart Ritter:

So I realize very often I might be sounding ... I don't want to sound cavalier about this. At the same time, everybody has that $400,000 number stuck in their head. I'm hoping that our conversation is giving people a more complete picture and seeing what gets spent when, by whom, what those percentages are, and then they can just make a more informed decision when they're having a conversation with you about what makes them feel better about planning for healthcare costs in retirement.

Ben Smith:

Stuart, I think what you're articulating really well is, look, we're not trying to be flippant and just be dismissive, right? We're not trying to say, "Don't worry about it. You guys are being silly, because you have these numbers being thrown at you. It's developed a real phobia and fear of what can happen," and these things can happen.

Stuart Ritter:

Yes.

Ben Smith:

But I think it's looking at this and saying, "Statistically, what are likely outcomes? What are things that can happen, and maybe what are things that ... Hey, what do you want to take off the table or partially take off the table in terms of risks? If those are things that are really driving that, okay, then how do we design this so to take some or all that risk off the table?", so that the money that we have left over then that you are willing to go enjoy or do something together, it frees up that capital is to do the things that you want to do.

Ben Smith:

To your point, Stuart, of, "Hey, if you have a certain amount of money and you're waiting for the end of life cost to hit you, but you know that, 'Hey, maybe I have covered some of this,'" well, that's why legacy planning is also very important, too, is to say, "Hey, what do I want to see happen with this money? Where do I want it to go? How do I want to gift it when I'm passed, all of those things?" So yeah, I think this it's hard because I think this is a really sticking point for clients, the people that we talk to on a daily basis of, "I'm stuck because I have this notion in my head that I can't get past, and for good reason."

Stuart Ritter:

Right.

Ben Smith:

So you're doing an awesome job here.

Stuart Ritter:

Well, thanks. To build on the point you just made, if you're talking to a 65-year-old, for example, and they're worried about that $114,000 number I threw out that someone in their nineties would pay if they have an expense that's higher than 95% of everybody else, the other thing to bear in mind is the idea of longevity, that if I'm 65 years old, to encounter that $114,000 number, two things have to happen. First of all, I have to have an expense that's higher than what 95% of all the other 90-year-olds are experiencing, and then second, I have to live to my nineties in the first place.

Ben Smith:

Right.

Stuart Ritter:

For a male, there is a one in four chance that they'll make it to age 95. For a 65-year-old female, it's a one in three chance. Now, I'm going to round off a little bit, but let me come back to my deck of cards. It's as if you put two decks of cards in front of someone, one with blue backs and one with red backs, and the only way they'd experience that $114,000 is if they pulled the king of hearts with the red back. If they pulled any other card, they pay less than that dollar amount. So the dollar amount exists. It is out there. It just can be helpful for people sometimes to think about, "All right. What's the likelihood?"

Stuart Ritter:

If I'm still concerned about it, as you've pointed out, there are lots of solutions to talk about. You can buy a Medigap policy. You can buy other kinds of insurance for long-term care. What that does is it trades off increasing your ongoing premium expense, so what you have to pay essentially every month for premium, but it takes that big variable amount out of the picture. It shifts it to the insurance company. That's what we do with our homeowner's insurance and car insurance and all of that. To your point, then if I can go, "Whew. Okay, now I don't have to worry about that, because for me the insurance is what I prefer, and that took care of it," then not only have I freed up the dollars, but I've freed up my mental ability to enjoy it.

Ben Smith:

That's right.

Stuart Ritter:

Understanding the plan that you've put together that helps people do that, or, "Hey, you know what? The likelihood of this happening is really small, and even when it happens, I'm going to be late in life, anyway. I'm just going to recognize that the odds are low, and that's how I'm going to live my life," it's another way to address it. But this way, people have thought it through. They've worked with you and can come up with the solution that may makes sense for them.

Curtis Worcester:

So I have kind of a general healthcare cost question for you, Stuart. So how does gender, age, and income play a role in our healthcare costs, if any?

Stuart Ritter:

It definitely plays a role. Where and when it plays a role may surprise folks. So, again, looking at end of life care and costs associated with that, if you look at the median, if you remember I said that for the age bands, there's not much difference in what people pay in their sixties versus in their nineties, at the median, we see the same phenomena for genders, that men and women pay about the same, if they have a median expense. So if you look at everybody who's 60 and 70 years old who's female at the median and compare that to what the males are paying, very, very similar.

Curtis Worcester:

Okay.

Stuart Ritter:

Where we do see the difference with genders is where we saw it for the ages as well. It's at the 95th percentile and especially for people in their nineties. So if you look at a 90-year-old, a male in their nineties who's paying an expense higher than 95% of everybody else and you look at a female in their nineties paying an expense higher than 95% of the other females, then you do see a fairly big difference between what the males are paying and what females are paying, over $10,000 in terms of a difference. So gender plays a role, just as age plays a role. Where it tends to play a big role is for folks in their nineties and for folks who have an expense that's higher than 95% of the other expenses. Even in their nineties, if they're having an expense that's at the median level, there's not much difference.

Curtis Worcester:

Hmm. Interesting.

Ben Smith:

I want to ask a question, Stuart, because obviously you guys and your team have created all this research, and you've been able to analyze this in lots of different ways. But from a resource perspective, now that you've kind of taken the data, can you just share with our audience, have you developed resources to help folks learn more about planning for healthcare costs? What have you developed from kind of a product side that people can kind of learn on their own?

Stuart Ritter:

Well, what we have for people to start with at least is a bunch of research papers that folks can read if you really want to get into the details of all this. Then we have them, and we've looked at different aspects of this. So what does it look like for overall planning? What does it look like for variable out of cost planning? So we have a number of papers that people can read if they want to do that. We've got a summary of a presentation we put together that kind of uses that playing card analogy and gives people some of the key points that they can do that. Then we encourage people to do what you've been talking about during this entire podcast, which is thinking about the different solutions that would make sense for them and thinking about three different things in particular.

Stuart Ritter:

First of all, how are they going to fund healthcare? Second of all, how should they be investing? Third, what role insurance should play. The funding piece is not just, "How much money have I saved?", but it's also thinking about the accounts that you've saved it in. Is it all in a pre-tax account, or do you have some money saved in a Roth account? If you have a health savings account available and you've made the decision to cover your current healthcare expenses and insurance needs through a high deductible health plan, that's a formal term for the kind you need, to then also have a health savings account, for folks who are familiar with that, a Roth and a health savings account, those give you the opportunity if you make a qualified withdrawal to not have to pay taxes on the money you've withdrawn.

Stuart Ritter:

So where you've saved your money in addition to how much has an influence on what resources you have available, especially later in life. If you have a big expense, do I have to make a withdrawal that piles on top of all my other income that year and suddenly more Social Security is taxed and my Medicare premium goes up and maybe I'm in a higher tax bracket, or do I have money in other accounts? Have I made that decision today in order to give me flexibility later on? Again, talking with somebody like you who knows what all these words, Roth and HSA, mean is helpful.

Stuart Ritter:

Then am I investing the money properly? If I might need extra money later on, am I invested in a way that gives me potential growth? Do I have enough money in stocks for the long-term that then allows me the potential growth I need to keep up with whatever those costs might end up being? Then we've talked about the insurance. So we at T. Rowe Price help people. We offer Roth options within IRAs. Folks can choose an HSA if their employer offers it. Of course, we have a variety of investments to help people match what they need to do for their personal situation with the investment solutions that make sense for them.

Ben Smith:

Stuart, and thanks for all that, because I do want to ... We'll put links to these resources in the papers as well that obviously we're referencing throughout this show so in our blog and in our podcast so people can find that when they want to read a little bit more after our show. So we'll make sure to share that.

Stuart Ritter:

Great.

Curtis Worcester:

I'm going to ask you to kind of peek into a crystal ball, Stuart. So looking forward on just kind of want to hear your thoughts on the future of healthcare costs, but specifically out of pocket costs for retirees.

Stuart Ritter:

The correct answer is I have no idea. I'm fortunate enough to work with other people who look at that. That's not my area of expertise. I would also say that probably not anybody has a completely working crystal ball.

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Stuart Ritter:

So if you don't know what the future holds, which we really don't, then what that implies is to be flexible, to make the best decisions you can today in terms of how much you're saving and where you're saving that money and how you're investing it to put yourself in the best position no matter what future comes out later on. So we don't know what it's going to be. At the same time, given what we know so far, all the information we've shared during this podcast, hopefully it puts people in a better position where they feel like, "Okay, I think I have a better handle on it than, 'Gee. I've got to write a check for $400,000 the day I retire.' Yeah, I can anticipate increases. Let's bake that into my plan for retirement, how much I'm saving, how much I'm going to spend, and then be flexible when whatever future we encounter actually shows up."

Curtis Worcester:

I like that. I like that. So we've kind of reached the end of our conversation, Stuart. As you may remember, our final question is usually kind of a fun, not related, kind of related question for you. So I want to ask you what Guinness World Record do you think that you could break?

Stuart Ritter:

You gave me that one ahead of time, so I had quite a bit of time to think about it, and I still haven't come up with a good answer.

Curtis Worcester:

Okay.

Stuart Ritter:

So if there's a record for procrastinating on answering that question, that's the one I'm going to hold.

Curtis Worcester:

There it is. I like that. I like that.

Stuart Ritter:

I'm going to hold that one.

Ben Smith:

That was very well stealthily punted there.

Curtis Worcester:

That was well played, very well played.

Stuart Ritter:

Yeah. Did we mention that my master's degree is in political science?

Ben Smith:

Yeah. There you go. Put that training into good work. Well, Stuart, I really want to thank you for coming on, because this is something we're reading your research, as we always do, and looking at healthcare costs and going, "Ooh, this is something that we haven't, A, heard, because we're hearing all the typical cost part, but we also need to have a conversation about it. But then how do we put this into practice?" So I thought that was really excellent, you kind of breaking all that down for us, that sharing with our audience here. This is something where I think in lots of areas of our practice, we can use. So thank you, thank you, thank you for coming on our show today and sharing all your wonderful knowledge, because it's going to be a very valuable resource for all of us, and hopefully the audience is listening today.

Stuart Ritter:

Well, you're welcome, and I hope it's helped make people feel confident no matter what may be in the cards for them.

Ben Smith:

Ah, I like it. All right. Well, Stuart, thank you so much. Looking forward to the next paper that comes out, and we'll keep an eye out for that. We'll catch you next time.

Stuart Ritter:

Sounds good. Thanks for having me on again.

Ben Smith:

Take care. So really great to have Stuart Ritter from T. Rowe Price on the show today. I think when you and I got the email from T. Rowe Price announcing some of Stuart's latest research, we were like, "Ooh. Ooh."

Curtis Worcester:

The light bulbs clicked right there.

Ben Smith:

Light bulbs. Got a spicy topic for a podcast here, because I think this myth bunking that sometimes we get into with our show of, "Hey, people think this from a financial perspective. Is it true?", being able to go, "Maybe it isn't," I think that that was a really valuable conversation to have and especially for us as practitioners as we sit down with folks and have conversations about what they need to save if they're pre-retirement or, "Hey, I've saved this much. How do I protect it?" or "How do I know that I can spend some of this without kind of robbing maybe my care later?", all of those are really genuine, everyday questions that we're getting from the people that we work with. So I think it was, again, a good foundational conversation to have.

Curtis Worcester:

Oh, yeah.

Ben Smith:

So want to just kind of maybe just highlight a couple things that we kind of took away from our conversation with Stuart today. So Curtis, maybe just lead off with something that you found that you liked from that conversation.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah. I think the entire conversation was so great, as you touched on, Ben. But a piece that really stuck out to me was his analogy with the deck of cards and really kind of honing in on these healthcare costs in retirement. He talked about that median point, the 50th percentile at ... I think it was somewhere in the $3,400 range a year, and the fact that 50% of the people are going to be paying less than that. Even as you age, right, he talked about it, and I don't have the numbers directly in front of me, but it grew incrementally as we age. He was kind of going by decade there.

Curtis Worcester:

Again, you have that 95th percentile and more where you have those high costs. But I think it was really well presented by Stuart of how realistic is it that you're going to ... Again, it happens, and we understand that those high costs are out there, but there's a vast majority of people who won't be in that 95th percentile of healthcare costs. It's just really important for people to know that. I think it kind of slows down some of that panic and that mindset of ... He talked about day one of retirement, you don't write a $400,000 check day one, even if you're in that 95th percentile. So I think it was just really helpful to hear him kind of work through it and be realistic about it. I think it was just a really good segment of the conversation.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, and I'll kind of make a couple points there. One is I think if you ask retirees about maybe some of Stuart's research there, what people are typically spending in retirement, when you're in retirement for some time, I don't think that's a shocking thing of like, "Yeah. Yeah, I'm really not spending that much in retirement. I've got Medicare. I've got Medicare supplemental." Those are normal costs, and it's a few grand. That's pretty normal on an annual basis. So I think if you're pre-retirement, right, because I've never been on Medicare before, and I don't know what the supplemental will be. By the way, that's driven also by income, is kind of a measure of what that is as well-

Curtis Worcester:

Right.

Ben Smith:

... which pre-tax retirement income if you're spending from IRAs might be influential there. I think if you're a pre-retiree, I think that's more shocking. It's like, "I thought that was going to be higher." But the retirees today, I think they're very concerned about that end of life care. So I thought there was kind of two good lessons there. I brought this up to my parents, who are in retirement right now, and we talked about this. They're like, "Yeah. That's kind of what we're spending. Yeah, that's pretty normal." So I think from that end, I think that was really good to break out.

Ben Smith:

Also, his point about the deck of cards, and I don't think he said this on our show, but he said this in his research, was the chronic illness. So say I had really bad ... Right? In the 95th percentile year, and it was a really large out of pocket cost. Typically, that's not followed up by subsequent 95th percentile pulse. It's not like I have a really large amount and then I have another really large amount and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, right? Typically, it settles back down and goes to the medium. The example in their paper and the research was, "Oh, you have a hip replacement, and all of a sudden I have surgery and I have all this. I have some more out of pocket costs." Well, then as you recovered, as you've done your rehab, you kind of get back to normal a little bit, that then kind of settles back down the healthcare costs. So I think that was an interesting ... The deck of cards is a really good visualization, I thought.

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, and you just made me think of another one, Ben, that I want to make sure to bring up. He talked about as we age, if that healthcare cost does increase, oftentimes your other costs in retirement are decreasing at the same time to offset it. I thought that was really important for him to bring up, because if you kind of hone in on healthcare costs, yes, it is increasing, but your overall spending may even be decreasing, right? He mentioned the decrease in spending may offset and then some the increase in healthcare costs.

Ben Smith:

I know from a financial planning, and that's one of the biggest outputs that people are looking for from us is, "How much can I spend?"

Curtis Worcester:

Right.

Ben Smith:

"What's affordable from my savings, but also what's really catastrophic spending? What does it mean to" ... So I think that's where people assume, "I'm going to still spend the same amount all throughout retirement, and healthcare costs are increasing on top of it"-

Curtis Worcester:

Right.

Ben Smith:

... "which is going to get me into this catastrophic spending phase." So, again, he kind of debunked that. One thing that I liked was the whole ... Again, we, we asked the question about kind of the last two years of life and how that kind of really impacts us, again, that unpredictable variable expense and how it can impact us. I like how Stuart framed it, because he framed it as a percentage of net worth. I think people are thinking, "95% of my net worth is gone after a two-year end of life healthcare cost expense," and it really wasn't that level, right? As he was saying, kind of the more you've kind of prefunded your retirement and saved, even if it is a larger amount, you're kind of closer towards end of life, anyway, which is why that maybe is less impactful there. Again, there's ways to kind of, if you have that risk or that concern about making sure you're saving for legacy goals or you want to make sure your spouse continues the money, I think there's vehicles for that. I think Stuart did a good job touching on that as well.

Ben Smith:

So I think really good show today, one that I hope probably is worth a re-listen not only for us, but as you go through it. This could be something where I think there's ... Sometimes numbers just don't stick the first time, right?

Curtis Worcester:

Right.

Ben Smith:

So just kind of take a re-listen to it, and I think it would be helpful to help frame a little bit of these conversations that if you have with us or your financial planner out there, hopefully it's helpful for you, kind of going forward. So you can find more about our show. Again, we're going to share some more of Stuart and his team's, T. Rowe Price's research on our blog. You can go to blog.guidancepointllc.com/52, and that's episode 52. So we're in our fifties, continuing to plug away. We've got some really good guests coming up, by the way. I think to kind of preview, we've got the Maine Council agent coming on, and that's, I think, going to be one of our upcoming shows. We have some more fantastic guests. So, again, we continue to get some good momentum here. Appreciate everybody tuning into our show. We really can't thank you enough for your support. If there's any comment you want to leave us, feel free to reach out, and we'll catch you next time.