Can We Both Retire?

A fun retirement planning question kicks us off this week as we’re joined by both Sara and Ken from Washington. With both preparing to call it quits after working at the same company for more than 30 years, they wanted a quick retirement plan review to make sure they’re in good shape.

In hour two we have a financial icon in-studio as Charles Schwab pays us a visit. Yes, that Charles Schwab, the founder of The Charles Schwab Corporation.

In his recently released personal memoir, Invested: Changing Forever the Way Americans Invest, Schwab describes his passion to have Main Street participate in the growing economy as investors and owners, not only earners. Schwab opens up about the challenges he faced while starting his fledgling company in the 1970s. 

A year into his grand experiment in discounted stock trading, he carried a six-figure debt and a pocketful of personal loans. As it turned out, customers flocked to Schwab, leaving his small team scrambling with scarce resources and no road map to manage the company’s growth.

He recounts the company’s game-changing sale to Bank of America, and how, in the end, the merger almost doomed his organization. We learn about the clever and timely leveraged buyout he crafted to regain independence.

A remarkable story of a company succeeding by challenging norms and conventions through decades of change, Invested also offers unique insights and lifelong principles for readers, the values that Schwab has lived and worked by that have made him one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time. Today, his company is one of the leading financial services firms in the world. 

Have a money question? Email me here.

"Jill on Money" theme music is by Joel Goodman, www.joelgoodman.com.