Emma: [00:00:00] I have two years before I'm going to retire. My goal when I first started my business eight years ago was to pay off the mortgage by the time I'm 50 and retire at 50. Can you believe it now? To be fully transparent with you, I am 48 this year. I have two years left before I'm going to retire. When I said this to my husband, he laughed.
He's like, I cannot imagine you not working. And I thought, oh yeah, we'll see. We'll see. Business is hard, right? Owning your business is hard. I would never go back to my corporate role. Ever go back to my corporate role. But owning a business can be hard. It has its ups, it has, its down. There's so many things you need to focus on in terms of your mindset, in terms of the systems, the processes, the client journey, the clients, the rejection, the sales, all the things, man.
And I was like, maybe I'm just gonna be tired and maybe I'm just going to retire by the time I'm 50. Is that even a thing these [00:01:00] days? Today, I thought we'd jump into that and go, are you setting yourself up for retirement? Do you even wanna retire? When I think about my parents retiring and the next generation after them retiring, it looked so, so different kids are getting married, older kids are having babies, older kids are leaving home older.
You know, it's not like it was 10, 20, 30 years ago anymore. But what I will say is that I didn't think about this enough. I was always a really good student of my finances. I was always a really good student of my superannuation when I worked in corporate, and then I went into my own business. Funny story for you.
I rocked up to my accountant who had been our family accountant for years, and I said to him, I'm starting a business. I'll need to register for GST. He laughed at me and said, Emma, the chances of you making $75,000 in the next year are very low. [00:02:00] I fired him and we went on to need that within the first three months, so I was right.
I. Now I know, I know that 92% of women in Australia earn less than a hundred grand. That statement kind of makes sense to me. I'm not one of those women. I am not one of those women. I had a hefty salary that I needed to replace. I was the main breadwinner, so I knew I needed to be disciplined and I needed to put that money in the bank, revenue in the bank so I could have the profit and pay myself properly.
What I did do from day one in my business is pay myself superannuation. We forget to do that, especially if you're a sole trader. There are so many people that I speak to who are set up as a sole trader and then they take money out of their accounts willy-nilly. Please don't do that.
Please get yourself some good accounting software. Uh, my friend Lisa Turner from Accountant for You will help you with that. Uh, she's a zero goddess and she will help you set that thing up. And when you register for a company, [00:03:00] you need to pay superannuation. So that works out. Not only did we do that, I topped it up to the maximum that I could, and I've been doing that for the last five years as we know women, because they go off and have babies and they do all different things.
They have less super than their male counterparts, husbands, partners, whatever. And so we need to make sure that we are intentional with superannuation. Investing in shares or index funds, making sure that we've got a good financial advisor and making sure that we get stuff done. I've got a great financial advisor for you.
Her name is Sarah Pike. She owns Bond Financial Services. She will also help you with that, but I don't wanna talk about the finances. They're very important. They are so important to work out actually. How much money do we need when we retire? But I'm only 48. I don't wanna retire. I mean, I do wanna work less, but my idea for retirement, when I said to my husband, I wanna retire at [00:04:00] 50, he's like, what does that look like because you love to work?
I said, I love to work. I love what I do day in, day out. I love it. I support so many amazing women and some men in business, and I want to keep doing that. However, once I hit 50, our cash projections means that I can take a step back if I choose to. Now it's the, if I choose two part, that kind of gets in my way a little bit because I would love to work three days a week and do play around on those two days a week.
Why can't I do that now? We talk about retirement, like it's the end goal, but we watch people who retire, have heart attacks, get sick, lose their purpose. So why would you retire? Why wouldn't you just create a life that you love now? Retirement is not a thing I wanna do. I think I will work until I can't work anymore, and I think I'll just do it with it for a couple of days a week [00:05:00] and see how I go. It looks like for me, my ideal life, three days, working two days not being here.
Evie's 11, so she's going into high school next year. She needs me less, but I've gotta think of other ways to connect with her, to keep making sure that we keep the conversation open. Evie and I went for a walk after dinner the other night and I learned so much about her in that walk. I learned about friendship groups, what's going on, who's sassy, who's not, who the mean girls are, who the lovely girls are, who's the crocheting club?
I, you know, that is priceless. I don't need to retire for those conversations. I can have those conversations now. See my parents and my dad still works, and he's 75. Oh my goodness. I don't know what he'd do if he didn't work. He loves to work. He's 75 and he loves to work. My mom passed away when she was 60.
she was already retired and I honestly think she was a bit bored. I. [00:06:00] Right. My grandfather and my grandmother on both sides, both worked until they could claim a pension. Both were in the war, so they had war pensions, and then they lived. They went and traveled. They went and did all of the things, and they had a good life.
But that's not what life looks like anymore. You know, everyone talks about we need to build our nest egg. We need to have this many properties. We need to have this much stuff. And then what happens when you retire? You consolidate it all back. What happens if we just made life super simple? Now, when I talk about simplicity.
There are some things that I know about Mark and I. We are both introverts and so we like our own company. We love being at home and we don't like travel that much. Having said that, I am headed to New York and Canada at the end of June, start of July. So if you are listening and you are global and you are listening to me and you would like to meet me in one of those, uh, beautiful countries, please let me know.
New York and Canada. End of June, start of July now [00:07:00] we have done a little bit of travel. We traveled when Evie was five and now Evie's 11, and we've taken her to a few countries. We like that, but it's not in our retirement plan. We are not sitting here desperate to travel, which I know sounds weird and you'll probably listen to this if you travel thinking, who even is she?
I like a good book, a good cup of tea, and being at home, I'm just a homebody. Shove me in the garden. I'm a happy camper.
When you think about retirement, does it like give you shivers? I just think what would I do with five days a week? Would I just catch up with buddies? Would I do volunteering? Like, what does it look like? And I know for me, I'm going to need to keep busy. I know that my exercise is going to be important. I know that my health is going to be important.
I know giving back is going to be important. I have this, um, vision of Emma McQueen Academy. Ask me about that later. Uh, as a legacy item that I leave, I currently run thriving women and have one-on-one clients. I love my thriving women. [00:08:00] Could I. Just do thriving women, and that is my whole business. Look, probably, would I get bored?
Who knows? But if I had just that one offer, would I be happy? I think so. I think this, we strive and we strive and we strive and for the last eight years that has been me, I have strived and I'm also like, When is enough enough? Have we got enough that we can comfortably retire when we want to? And if we don't, what do we do now to change our future on that?
And for you, if you are listening, you may not even thought of retirement, you might be sitting here going, oh, Emma, I'm only 40. I'm only 37. I'm only this. You do what? We have to start thinking about this now. Women outlive men. That means we're going to need nest eggs. Somewhere or other. And so we need to make sure that we are taking steps now, intentional steps now to make sure that we've got our future sorted.
The future is in our hands, especially as business owners. We have the ability, the leavers [00:09:00] to pull how much revenue we bring in and how much, uh, how we can manage our expenses. We have those levers and if we pull them now, that means we've got a good 10, 15 years of really solid. Um, dollar making time.
What's your hope for the future? Are you thinking I'm nutty? I am nutty. Just quietly. Uh, but you know, like I, I think about these things and I often think, what would happen if I was to retire and would that make my world, that would not make my world. So you, you've heard it here first. Uh, my husband was right.
Please don't tell him that. Luckily he doesn't listen to this podcast, and I want you to think about, are you ready? If in 10 years time you were living the life that you loved, what does it look like? What does it look like to live the life you love? I'm not far off. Hey, I'm so excited about this. I'm not far off.
I'm a simple woman with simple needs. [00:10:00] I would love to hear from you. If this has stirred something in you and you need a good, uh, financial advisor, accountant, bookkeeper, all the things I've got them, please reach out to me. And if this has stirred something up and you, and you are going, whoa, you've planned it so far in advance.
DM me. I'm so happy to share what I know. I hope this has been super useful. two years before I retire. Whoop, whoop. Let's go.
