Ozarks Retirement Show

The moment you retire is supposed to feel like relief, but what happens when the market drops right after you walk away from your paycheck and you realize you’ve never lived through retirement before? We sit down with our client Paul Stowalter, who retired at 59 and a half, to share the honest version of that transition: the excitement, the stress, and the decisions that made the difference once real money and real life showed up. Paul talks about leaving a decades-long career in the food in...

One forgotten subscription here, a “free” upgrade there, a couple food deliveries every week, and a payment that feels manageable on paper can quietly turn into the reason you’re still working years longer than you planned. We lay out the real retirement math behind the everyday habits that pre-retirees often ignore, and we do it in plain language you can actually act on. We count down the biggest “money leaks” we see: status spending that tries to impress other people, lifestyle inflation t...

Your 401(k) feels familiar until the day you realize you might be one rollover away from changing your retirement forever. We walk through the real-world tradeoffs behind 401(k) vs IRA decisions, including why IRAs now hold trillions more than 401(k) plans and why most of that growth comes from rollovers, not direct IRA contributions. If you’re nearing retirement, changing jobs, considering an in-service withdrawal at 59½, or navigating a divorce settlement, this conversation is designed to h...

You can do everything “right” for decades, max out your 401(k), build a solid IRA, and still hit retirement with a knot in your stomach. The paycheck that’s always been there is about to disappear and suddenly your life savings feels less like freedom and more like a fragile pile you’re afraid to touch. That fear shows up everywhere, from 30-somethings to boomers, and it’s one of the biggest reasons people either overreact to market dips or underspend and leave joy on the table. We talk with...

The name you’ve trusted for years just changed and the reason isn’t marketing. It’s protection. After nearly two decades on the air, we’re retiring the Safe Money Radio name and stepping forward as The Ozarks Retirement Show so listeners can instantly tell who they’re hearing and where to find us online without confusing copycats. We take you back to 2009, when the country was still limping out of the 2008 financial crisis and Safe Money Radio was born as a brand-new idea. I share what it wa...