[ReviewDisclaimer]
Let’s talk about a real estate agent stock market retirement – which happens to be our first wealth center of Agent Wealth Hustle . Typically what people mean when we say “stock market investing” is contributing funds to a tax advantaged retirement investment account in order to grow a nest egg to live off of and withdraw from a retirement.
Investing in the stock market is the traditional path to an American retirement. It is one of the most passive ways to achieve a real estate agent retirement by creating a later-in-life income stream to draw from.
How to achieve a real estate agent stock market retirement: work backwards
We’re going to demystify this. You ready? In order to save for a real estate agent stock market retirement you need two words: WORK BACKWARDS.
Establish your retirement income goal
Choose how much annual income you want to have in retirement. It may be easier to think about this as monthly income. You can sum the kinds of expenses you’ll expect and add a buffer and fun funds. Consider whether you’ll still have expenses like a mortgage or a car payment.
For the following examples, let’s say your retirement income goal is $75,000 a year or $6,250 a month. That is more than the median income and would be both comfortable and achievable.
Note: If you expect to have some pension or other income, subtract that from your goal income amount – but be sure that you’ll get those funds! I always assume I won’t receive Social Security. If I still do, that’s icing on the cake.
Determine how long until you want to retire
How many years do you have until you want to retire? While the average American retires between age 62 and 64, we’ll instead choose slightly earlier for our real estate agent stock market retirement – more time to enjoy it!
Let’s say your goal is to retire at age 60 and that you are age 27. That’s 33 years until retirement. Time is on your side to leverage compound interest! Planning for an early real estate agent stock market retirement also gives you a few year planning buffer should you miss some retirement contributions along the way.
How much have you saved?
Take a look at your retirement investment savings. How much have you saved thus far? Let’s say by age 30 you’ve saved $75,000 in your retirement investment account(s).
Note: financial advisers sometimes recommend how much you should save for retirement by each age. This method doesn’t give you much control of the resulting retirement income – which likely will be significantly less than your pre-retirement income.
How much do you need in your retirement nest egg?
Financial advisers used to recommend the 4% rule: whatever you have saved up by retirement, you can safely use 4% of that amount a year and it last you through retirement. Advisers are now starting to say that amount should be lower. To be conservative, we’ll use 3%.
In order to have $75,000 a year in retirement, we simply divide $75,000 / 3% = $2,500,000. You’d need a $2.5M nest egg when you start your real estate agent retirement.
Don’t let that number scare you. Most of that nest egg will be built by compounding returns over time! Let’s look at what we need to do this.
Use a simple investment calculator to determine how much to save monthly
For simplicity, let’s use 6% as our expected return over time.
Note: Yes, we know this isn’t how the stock market works. But, this is the only way to plan. 6% is a conservative estimate that helps account for variations and inflation. If you happen to earn more, your real estate agent retirement will be even better!
Using an investment calculator like this one:
- Enter the amount already saved: $75,000
- Enter current age (27) and planned real estate retirement age (60)
- Enter 6% as the expected annual return
- Now play around with monthly contribution until your estimated retirement savings equals the desired amount ($2.5M in this example)
- We get $1,600 a month as our result:
So as a rough estimate for this example, to have $75,000 a year in retirement income we’d need to keep contributing $1,600 a month until retirement. Click here to learn how to net more commission in order to make saving this much far easier.
Now go ahead and attempt this exercise with your own numbers!
What if that amount is going to be too difficult to save? What if you are behind the power curve? Keep reading for more ways to get there!
One more step for a successful traditional retirement…
In order for your real estate agent stock market retirement plan to succeed, you have to be sure your funds are being invested properly. Just because you are contributing money monthly doesn’t mean it is being invested smartly.
For simplicity, you can pay an adviser or use a Target Date Fund which will invest your contributions across the market and will auto-adjust risk and returns from high to low as you near your planned retirement.
Ways to boost your retirement income and retire early
Even if you believe you are behind on your retirement savings to achieve a traditional real estate agent stock market retirement, there are ways to both increase your earnings to help get there, and there are FIVE OTHER wealth centers to leverage! With some of these, you could achieve your financial goals early. Here’s how:
Increase (Double!) Your Take Home Commission
With a revolutionary brokerage, you can take home 80-100% commission on every transaction. The days of having to split most of your commission – especially if you generate your own leads – are ending. And if you ask me, those model will be replaced by a better one.
You could literally hang your license with eXp Realty today, and potentially boost your commission income. The choice is yours!
Revenue Share & Earning Over 100% Commission
Consider this: your real estate agent friend decides to join your brokerage for all the benefits you told them about. They hit their cap every year. You now make an extra $2,800 every year. That would pay your monthly brokerage fees for almost 3 years.
Now do this six times: let’s say in a year you talk to all your agent buds and six of them decide to switch to your company. As decent producers, you could earn an extra $16,800 every year. The cap you pay is $16,000. Say hello to making OVER 100% commission, baby!
Look. There are some pretty sweet revenue share models out there. The agents that embrace those models are winning. The rest? Well… just don’t complain when your entire brokerage switches over!
Real Estate Investing
We love the unfair advantages of real estate investing in general, as well as the unique advantages real estate agents have as investor agents – especially the ability to net 100% commission on personal transactions.
Perhaps the most important difference between real estate and stock market investing is that with real estate you can build a monthly cash flow. That means you can achieve your financial goals at some point in time BEFORE you’d be able to sell and withdraw stock market retirement investments – usually age 59 and a half at the earliest.
It’s up to you how you want to build an investment portfolio. I split my equity about 50/50; I like the control and return of real estate but also the passivity and longevity of stocks.
Team Building
If you really like a challenge, you could build your own real estate agent team. Here’s how that works:
- You, the team lead, start putting together a local agent team
- You market for and collect client leads for the team
- You give leads to the team, who then follow up and close transactions
- You and the team agents split commission on those transactions
This is a win-win: agents without their own leads can get some from you, and you can share commission with agents as the lead generator. You can both win big because it is a mutually beneficial relationship. Perhaps the best part is you can keep your license with your broker because that takes the liability and stress of owning a brokerage off of you.
Now keep in mind this is the most work of our options for a real estate agent retirement, but there are ways to simplify and automate team leadership.
This is exactly the team structure that I joined and I couldn’t be happier. When I have my own leads, I still keep 80-100% commission. When I don’t have enough leads I can pursue team ones and still earn commission! Gotta keep working toward that real estate agent retirement.
Learn More!
What did you think of our guide to a traditional real estate agent retirement? To learn more about the Six Wealth Centers of Real Estate Agents, read this. You can also learn about our favorite brokerage ever by chatting with us or going here:
You can also check out our comprehensive post on Stock Market Investing For Real Estate Agents