Cam Marston • Drawing on a conversation with Scot Hunsaker (Ardent Group) on What's Working with Cam Marston
Ask most people what it takes to retire, and they'll talk about a number: how much they've saved, whether their portfolio can support their lifestyle, when Social Security kicks in. That's the conversation financial advisors are trained to have — and it's an important one. But it's only half the readiness question, and it's usually not the half that determines whether retirement actually goes well.
Scot Hunsaker sold his swimming pool company at 49 and now advises other business owners on their own transitions through the Ardent Group. In Season 6, Episode 14 of What's Working with Cam Marston ("Scot Hunsaker Returns to the Show with a Message: Don't Wait Too Long...," Apr. 3, 2023), he identified the two reasons people tend to keep working long after they could afford to stop:
The first is a financial planning problem, and it has a financial planning answer. The second is not — and it's the one that gets skipped over.
"So often during our journey as business leaders, we're taking care of others. We're taking care of our employees, we're taking care of our families, we're taking care of our customers. I would encourage all of us to take a moment and take care of ourselves."
Hunsaker's advice is blunt: don't wait too late to retire. Do it while you're healthy enough to do the things you've been planning to do. He tells the story of meeting a woman sailing a 38-foot trawler with her husband, living out a trip they'd dreamed about for years — except her husband had since developed Alzheimer's and could no longer be an active participant in the life they'd built toward.
"If this is important to you, make sure you save some time for yourself while you're still healthy, mobile, agile, and have the ability to enjoy some of these things — not just experience some of these things."
That's the distinction that a purely financial retirement plan misses. A number in an account doesn't guarantee the health, the relationships, or the sense of purpose to actually use it.
None of this means the financial side doesn't matter — it clearly does. Financial mistakes compound the problem: not saving enough, carrying high-interest debt into retirement, or having no financial plan at all leaves people financially unprepared on top of everything else. But a solid number in the bank solves exactly one part of a five-part problem.
Real retirement readiness means having answers in all of these areas before the last day of work arrives, not after:
Hunsaker's own path — selling everything and living on a boat — isn't the plan for everyone. But he did the thing he now counsels his own clients to do: he prepared for both the financial and the non-financial sides of the transition before he needed to.
If you're a financial advisor, this is the conversation your clients aren't having with anyone else — and it's the one that determines whether the number you helped them reach actually translates into a retirement they're happy in. If you're leading a workforce through a wave of retiring employees, this is the gap that turns a "successful" retirement into someone who's miserable six months in.
The financial side gets planned. The rest of it usually doesn't — until someone makes them think about it.