Hey, it's Louis.

If "retirement planning" makes you feel like you ate a two-week-old fish taco, you're in the right place. Let's dig in.

👀 IN TODAY'S STASH

🌳 THE SHADE

401k? What 401k?

Yeah, I've done that too, grab some shade for a minute.

There's a nasty little flavor of dread that hits when you're past 45 and you finally do the math.

Most of us are good at hiding from that math. Today, we're going to knuckle up and do it anyway.

We're done beating ourselves up about it.

Instead, we are going to step into the sunlight and figure out where we stand.

🌰 THE NUT

Well, what the hell do I do now?

That's the damn good question one asks when they realize time is going by faster than they can save money.

I'm 50 this year and the way the years are cruising by, my 70s are gonna hit me faster than a cheetah who's been freebasing Red Bull and caffeine pills.

My early 30s were fine. Time seemed to flow as it always had, one regular year after another. Then, in my mid-30s, time started to accelerate.

I'm not talking easing back up to 35 after a school zone. I'm talking "Mr. Sulu, give me warp factor five."

By my mid-40s, time was Spaceball 1 and I had just reached ludicrous speed.

But let's back up a few years and see if we can figure out how I got old with not much in the way of retirement savings.

Ah yes, my twenties. I remember them… eh… most of them… well, some of them anyway, like they were yesterday. And it feels just like that. Yesterday.

I remember thinking "Retirement is so far down the road, why bother planning for it now?"

Besides, I had way more important stuff going on.

That cute girl from Admin was throwing a party and I needed to get ready for it.

I needed to finish rebuilding my car and then there was hanging out with my friends after work.

I think by now you get the picture and have an idea why some years of my twenties are, let's say, vague.

I had priorities back then, but none of them were saving money for retirement.

Then 30 came around and I got wrapped up in life. Getting married, buying a house, getting divorced, changing jobs.

Through it all, I had no guidance. I was flying by the seat of my pants and living paycheck to paycheck.

I once heard that if you put $100 per check into an employer matching 401K when you were twenty, by the time you are 45, you'd be a millionaire.

Well, I'm past 45 and I didn't do that already. So now what?

What do resourceful men like us do when we find ourselves here?

This is the question we face, isn't it... what do we do now?

Now is the time we scratch. Now is the time we scrounge.

Now is the time we find and grow our nuts.

🐿️ THE STEP

Open up every retirement account you've got. The old 401k from that job you left in 2012. The Roth you opened on a drunken New Year's resolution and forgot about. Pull up the balance on each one. Add them up and write the total down on a Post-it.

That's the step this week. No picking funds or financial analytics or pleasure reading the 40-page Vanguard PDF. Just find out what your actual number is.

Most of us are hiding from a number we've been too afraid to look at. We’re in a gray area, something like "I think I've got somewhere close to X," and that grayness is part of what keeps us stuck. It's hard to plan when you can't see where you are or where you're going.

Will the number be smaller than you hoped?

Most likely… I know mine was. But there is some comfort that comes along with knowing the real number instead of the imaginary one. The panic drops a notch.

The Poltergeist in the closet is always bigger and angrier than the actual t-shirts hanging in there.

Count your acorns. One acorn; AH AH AH, two acorns; AH AH AH. Whatever way you want to do it, just count them. Figuring out what to do with them will come along the way.

Until the next Stash, protect your nuts brother.

If this was forwarded to you, click here to subscribe.

We love feedback, even if it's a kick in the acorns. 
Two clicks to tell us how we did.

If you just found The Stash, check out previous issues here.