Financial Guru Chris Hogan Offers a New View of Retirement

    Chris Hogan has the kind of voice that could sell ice to the Eskimo. So when he talks about retirement as one of the most exciting times in your life, you have to believe him.

    HoganA popular and dynamic speaker on the topics of personal finance, retirement and leadership, Hogan helps people across the country develop successful strategies to manage their money in both their personal lives and businesses. His new book, “Retire Inspired: It’s Not an Age. It’s a Financial Number,” was released in January 2016. For more than a decade, Hogan has served at Ramsey Solutions as a trusted financial coach and “Ramsey Personality.”

    “I’ve been with Dave for almost 11 years; the first six years I was a financial coach. I sat knee cap to knee cap with people, and I heard the same things over and over about people’s worries about retirement,” Hogan said. “Then I met a 41-year-old man who was retired. You could see the shock on my face when he told me that. I asked him again what he did for a living and he said he was retired. And he had all his hair and all his teeth. … It was a paradigm shift.”

    That conversation was one of the inspirations for Hogan’s new book. Hogan realized that retirement is not about an age; it is about your lifestyle, your goals and your dreams.

    “I wanted retirement to go from this thing that was so far off to this real thing,” Hogan said. “It is about our dreams and we want to do. It went from this scary monster in the closet to this real thing that we can see. If you get the fear out in the open, talk it over, work a plan, you can make that fear diminish. You’re not alone; you can get an honest assessment and have those conversations.”

    Being an author is a new role for Hogan, who describes himself as a “coach at heart.”

    “I want to push people to be better, to steer them toward better. Having this book is another tool to help me do that,” Hogan said.

    As for leadership, Hogan has worked with and for the best. He has some advice for today’s leaders and how they could work.

    “Above all, when you’re in a leadership position, you have to understand that you have an opportunity to lead and guide people. That’s the No. 1 rule: People matter. Connect with your team, talk to them,” Hogan said. “Ask your team three questions on a regular basis. How are you? What are you working on? How can I help? A leader who can do those three things is connected.

    “The second thing a leader can do is to have the heart of a servant. Servant leadership is the thing that you’re going to have to do get the most out of people,” Hogan added. “It’s not about a ‘boss’ mentality or barking at people. It’s about helping them do their job better. You can help them be a better teammate. When you make you team better, you make yourself better.”