Take Back Retirement

"There is not good or bad with money" Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, sit down with financial therapist Wendy Wright to unpack the emotional complexities that often underlie our financial behaviors. Wendy believes that money issues aren ' t just math problems—they ' re emotional ones too! Rather than focusing on dollars and cents alone, Wendy helps her clients understand why they...

"December is probably too late to scramble around and logistically get stuff done." Our host Stephanie McCullough counts just nine work weeks left in the year, so she and co-host Kevin Gaines walk through a ten-item year-end checklist. Needless to say, these are best tackled months in advance rather than during the December scramble! They cover the year-end deadlines. Contributions to 401(k)s must...

"The biggest mistake parents can make is passing down money without communicating the family values that drive your thinking." Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, dig into Kiplinger's October cover story on "the great wealth transfer," the slow handoff of an estimated $124 trillion from Baby Boomers to their children and grandchildren. That number is a bit misleading considering more...

"The one thing you're guaranteed to run out of is time." Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, welcome back financial planner Dan Haylett, founder of Humans vs. Retirement and author of The Retirement You Didn't See Coming , to unpack his viral essay "The Permission Paradox." Digging through his own client conversations for patterns, Dan found the two words that came up most were "perm...

"Everything government touches is complicated." - Danielle Kunkle Roberts Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, bring on Danielle Kunkle Roberts of Boomer Benefits, and author of 10 Costly Medicare Mistakes You Can't Afford to Make . As the title of her book suggests, Medicare isn't free. Believing otherwise is mistake number one! Premiums, deductibles, and coverage gaps are real costs...

"Spreadsheets are great at math; they suck at flexibility." Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, take aim at the assumption that every retiree spends the same inflation-adjusted dollar amount, every year, until death. It's the number your 401(k) statement spits out, the number the 4% rule promises, and it's wrong in two directions at once! First, it ignores life's lumpiness such as th...

"You need to uncouple your self-worth from your income." Amy Bernstein does not like the word "retired". Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, aren't too fond of the word either. A former journalist and federal government communications veteran, she didn't quit anything cold. She shortened her commute first, then went part-time, then, when the pandemic made her last part-time job unten...

"As with all things with the IRS, document, document, document." Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, explain what actually happens when you move an investment or retirement account from one custodian to another. The mechanics may seem as simple as filling out a form and waiting a few days. But Kevin walks through the fine print that trips up even seasoned advisors. Taxable accounts c...

Today, Stephanie and Kevin cover a topic that can often get confusing for many people: the estate and gift tax system. This is different from the income tax system, and both are federal tax systems that everyone needs to be aware of when planning for retirement.   At the end of the day, the IRS is getting paid. The only two questions, then, are: Who pays? and When? Our hosts tackle these questions...

"Take charge. Your retirement is your time." Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, sit down with Dr. Andi Simon, corporate anthropologist and author of Rethink Retirement , whose research offers a bracing corrective to how most people think about life after work. Andi spent years embedding herself in senior living communities on the w est c oast, interviewing residents who had done eve...

"Don't sit around waiting to feel motivated. You take some little actions, and that often gives you the motivation and the momentum to move forward." Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, sit down to work through a HerMoney.com list of ten things to do when retirement is a decade away. The meta-lesson turns out to be bigger than any single item on it! The list, from Jean Chatzky's fina...

"It's all about these different pieces and how they can fit together. And it's not just how they fit together in good ways, but also how they fit together in bad ways."   Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, sit down to unpack a letter from a reader of The Retirement Strategy Report who signed off as "Get What's Mine Before It's Gone", ready to claim at 62 just to lock in something be...

"If you are feeling that you are not powerful, you are wrong. You are very powerful just in and of yourself. And in community, it's just multiplied." - Missy Sue Mastel Most people think impact investing is only for the ultra-wealthy. Missy Sue Mastel, a financial strategist with three decades in nonprofit capacity building, disagrees. Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, welcome Miss...

"Scammers rely on emotion. If they can catch you in that half second of panic, then they might be able to get you to do something." 41% of American adults have lost money to scams. And that's only those who reported it. Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, are back to talk all about money scams because the problem keeps growing, and because the scammers, as Kevin puts it, keep learnin...

"You need to come up with your  own number , not using someone else's, because your situation is going to be different from someone else... and it's going to change over time, and that's still okay."   A lot of folks believe that there is a magic number that they need to work towards in order to be able to retire .   There is a myth out there that there is some perfect number of dollars you need t...

"It's not about deprivation. It's about balance. It's about taking care of your today self and your future self."   Join our hosts, Stephanie McCullough of Sofia Financial and Kevin Gaines of American Financial Management Group, as they simplify the world of financial planning, starting with understanding cash flow. They tackle how to monitor the inflow and outflow of your money, without yet worry...

"A lot of women feel as though this is 'my role, this is my job, and if I have to ask for help, there's something wrong with me.' It doesn't mean failure. It just means that you're taking care of yourself as well as your loved ones." - Laura Lynn Morrissey Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, sit down with Laura Lynn Morrissey, founder of Silver Savvy. She brings a unique perspective,...

"There are ways to get some more net dollars to the charity, having a smaller financial impact on your own situation. It just takes a little bit of looking at [your financial situation]." Our hosts Stephanie McCullough of Sofia Financial and Kevin Gaines of American Financial Management Group tackle the ins-and-outs of charitable giving, and reveal how strategic planning can maximize impact while...

"My goal in life, my purpose in life, is to spark conversations. And in 2026, my goal is to spark 10,000 financial conversations." - Erika Wasserman Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, welcome back financial therapist Erika Wasserman to discuss her groundbreaking new book Conversations with Your Financial Therapist. Invited by Wiley Publishing to write about the emotional side of mon...

"In a life well lived, there's always going to be more things you may want to do than you can do with time, energy, money, and attention. " -Carl Richards Stephanie and Kevin welcome Carl Richards, creator of the iconic "Sketch Guy" column in The New York Times, for an inspiring conversation about his latest book, "Your Money: Reimagining Wealth in 101 Simple Sketches." Over 17 years in the making...

"This is a generation that is incredibly scrappy. This is a generation that gets it done. We actually know how to find the resources when we need to." – Kerry Hannon Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, welcome Kerry Hannon and Janna Herron, co-authors of "Retirement Bites: A Gen X Guide to Securing Your Financial Future," for a candid conversation about why this overlooked generation...

"Creating safe spaces for people to talk about money is one of the most powerful things we can do right now to make the world better for change." -Meg Wheeler Our hosts Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines sit down with Meg Wheeler, CPA and founder of the Equitable Money Project, who's on a mission to demolish the shame surrounding money conversations through accessible financial education. Her a...

"It is never too late to start something new and to put your energy into something that you've loved your whole life, but you've never had time to focus on." Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, explore the strategic path to entrepreneurship in midlife with the Corporate Escape Sherpa herself, Tabatha Jones! After 30 years in corporate tech leadership, Tabatha made her leap at age 50...

"You don't build courage by avoiding what you're afraid of. You build courage by moving through it." - Diane Gansauer Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, explore an extraordinary midlife reinvention with Diane Gansauer, who traded a high-profile government position for one of the few full-time funeral celebrant roles in the United States. Her transformation proves that stepping away...

"Comedy is power because when you make people laugh, you make people listen." -Lynn Harris Our hosts, Stephanie McCullough and Kevin Gaines, explore the unexpected world of midlife comedy careers with Lynn Harris! She's the founder of Gold Comedy, a comedy school and professional network specifically designed for women and non-binary creators seeking to build comedy careers or creative side hustle...