The Black Oak Podcast
Check Out Our Latest Episode
Can You Retire Before 59½?
If you’re ready to leave your career but think your retirement accounts are keeping you trapped, you may have more op-tions than you realize. Ryan answers a listener question from a 56-year-old who wants to retire after 25 years with...
More Episodes
Ron's Story: He Planned to Retire at 67. Then He Lost His Job at 64.
Today, Ryan walks through a potential retirement story in chapters. As each new detail comes in, he’ll react to it the way a financial advisor would in a real-time meeting. Ron's 64, figured a lot of this out on his...
My Parents Are Gifting Us Money. What Should We Do With It?
Receiving a financial gift from your parents can create a great opportunity, but also plenty of questions about what to do next. Ryan walks through several ways families might use gifted money and explains why the intentions of the person...
Holding Serve: Tennis Lessons for Your Money
The 146th US Open tennis tournament gets underway at the end of August, so Ryan figured it was a good excuse to see what tennis can teach us about financial planning. Turns out, more than you'd think. Every great tennis...
Keep It or Toss It? A Financial Document Checklist
Somewhere in a drawer, a filing cabinet, or a shoebox in the closet, most of us are holding onto financial paperwork we don't actually need. And we’re probably missing a few things we do need. Ryan sorts out what stays,...
Why People Keep Working In Their Retirement Years
More people in their 60s and 70s are staying on the job than ever before, and it's not always about the money. Today, Ryan digs into the real reasons retirees keep showing up to work. Working longer isn't automatically the...
The Most Common Financial Pain Points
When it comes to financial planning, everybody has something that bothers them. Today, Ryan’s walking through some of the most common pain points we see and the real conversations that happen around them. Nobody walks into retire-ment without at least...
The DIY Retirement Plan — Where It Works and Where It Gets Expensive
There's an entire television network dedicated to doing things yourself — home renovation, landscaping, interior design, all of it. And the DIY mentality is genuinely admirable. But when it comes to retirement planning, Ryan says that the stakes of a...
The 5 D's of Retirement Planning
According to a recent Kiplinger article, there are five keys to a retirement plan that hold up over time. They all happen to start with the same letter, which either means it's a great framework or someone really wanted it...
The 4% Rule vs. the 8% Rule: What's the Right Withdrawal Rate for You?
Dave Ramsey has built one of the most recognized brands in personal finance. Millions of people have followed his ad-vice out of debt and into savings. But when it comes to how much you should pull from your retirement accounts...
The Problem With Financial Research Today
Financial information has never been more available — TV, podcasts, YouTube, Reddit, and now AI that will answer any question in about three seconds. And yet some of the worst financial decisions we see come from people who did a...
3.7 Million People Watched This Retirement Video — Here's What We Think
Over the past year, one retirement video on YouTube pulled in 3.7 million views. The title: "Sell These 5 Things Before You Retire." We thought it was worth a conversation, not to tear it apart, but to react honestly. Does...
What Does Smart Risk Actually Look Like At Your Age?
Risk is unavoidable. The only question is whether the risk you're taking actually makes sense for where you are in life. Today, Ryan looks at three stages of the financial journey, and at each one, we've got three types of...
How to Spend on Travel Without Derailing Your Retirement
Summer's here. And somewhere between the excitement of planning a big trip and the anxiety of what it costs, a lot of retirees end up doing something that surprises us… they feel guilty about it. They worked hard, saved, planned...
