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Finish Line Podcast Episode 10

Q&A: How Does a Finish Line Work If I’m Already Retired?

You may have reached retirement with enough savings to support yourself, yet still wonder whether a financial finish line makes sense when your income now comes from Social Security, retirement accounts, pensions, or investments.

How can you distinguish between what you could afford to spend and what you actually need, while still preparing wisely for uncertainty and remaining free to practice generosity throughout retirement?

Meet your guide

Cody Hobelmann, a financial planner and co-host of The Finish Line Podcast, joins his brother and co-host Kealan Hobelmann to explore how a financial finish line can continue after you stop working. They explain that retirement does not eliminate income. It simply changes where that income comes from, including Social Security, pensions, retirement accounts, investments, and other sources.

Rather than beginning with how much your savings allow you to spend, Cody and Kealan suggest first asking what lifestyle you actually need to support. The difference between that amount and what your retirement plan can sustainably provide may create margin for generosity. They also discuss healthcare uncertainty, financial security, required retirement distributions, and why maintaining some margin can allow you to give progressively without abandoning wise planning.

The conversation also contrasts giving throughout retirement with leaving everything to charity after death. You may come away seeing retirement not as the end of active stewardship, but as another season for thoughtfully balancing provision, trust, generosity, and participation in God’s work.

  • How a financial finish line can continue after retirement
  • Why retirement income should not automatically determine your lifestyle
  • How to distinguish sustainable spending from what you actually need
  • How to balance healthcare uncertainty with generous retirement giving
  • Why progressive giving can preserve both generosity and financial margin
  • Why giving during retirement offers something estate giving cannot

Inspired? Take your next step

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Play the Game of Life Simulator

Not ready for the assessment? Try a quick interactive simulator to see how you stack up in managing wealth.

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Inspired? Take your next step

Try the Game of Life Simulator

Step into a four-minute interactive experience and see what unfolds as you decide how to manage your resources.

Game of Life Simulator Mobile Screenshot
Game of Life Simulator Mobile Screenshot

Quotes to Remember

  • “For somebody in retirement, there are all these different sorts of income – retirement accounts, social security, pensions, etc – and somebody can ask themselves that same question, ‘How much do I need to live on realistically, so that I can be freed up to use any excess beyond that amount for greater things beyond myself?”
  • “The typical question people are asking after retirement is, ‘How much have I saved? And from that, how much can I spend every year or every month?’. And what you’re saying is that’s the wrong question altogether. We should be asking, ‘How much should I be spending?'”
  • “I don’t think for us, that every penny in excess of our living expenses should go towards additional security and moving us farther away from ever having to depend on God or others.”

Links from the Show

  • Doulos Partners – A missions mutual fund sending 100% of donated funds directly to ministries that are most effectively sharing the gospel around the world
  • Finish Line SPRINTs
  • Finish Line Pledge on Instagram

Bible References from the Show

Matthew 6:26-30 | Do Not Be Anxious

26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

Luke 12:16-21 | The Rich Fool

16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Use Our
Free Guide

Have you considered the ways you are uniquely called into generosity? We’re not all called into the same adventure.

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Use Our
Free Guide

Have you considered the ways you are uniquely called into generosity? We’re not all called into the same adventure.
Generosity Profile Image
Enter your information below and we’ll send you our free PDF guide to explore the specific adventure you were called into.
Generosity Profile Image