So What's Your Retirement Plan? The Question Gramma Asked Me

One phone call did what 15 years of hustle never did.

I had just finished telling my grandmother about my year. It was a big one, around half a million dollars. She said, "That all sounds great Ekai, I'm proud of you." Then she asked the question I still hear: "So what's your retirement plan?"

I was floored. She had a point.

This is the story of how a guy who was proud of never owing anyone a dime got humbled by a woman who only wanted to know I would be okay. It is also why this section of the blog exists. I am not a financial professional, and nothing here is advice. What I can do is tell you what I got right, what I ignored for years, and why I think every online owner needs a plan that outlives the next launch.

How does a 19 year old end up at $10k a month?

By working, and by not knowing any better than to start.

I started in business at 19. By 21 I was making $10k a month. I have now been in business for myself for about 15 years, and I do not take any of that for granted. I would love to tell you I handled that money like a genius at 21. I did not. I learned financial literacy on my own, and I learned it the hard way, through failures in my early 20s.

I am not going to dress those failures up with a tidy story. What matters is what they taught me. They taught me that income and wealth are different animals, and that the person who confuses the two usually finds out at the worst possible time.

What rules did those failures give me?

Three, and I have kept all three: I never took out a loan for my business, I never used a credit card for business needs, and I have always stayed liquid.

I want to be careful here. I am not telling you debt is evil for everyone, and I am not telling you my rules are yours. They are mine, built from my own losses. What I can say is what they bought me. No lender ever had a claim on my business. No card balance ever followed me around. And when something broke, I had cash instead of a phone call to make.

For a long time I thought that was the whole game. Make good money, owe nobody, keep cash close. It is a strong start. It is just not a finish.

Did I ever save for retirement before that call?

Barely. I dabbled.

Between 2015 and 2017 I put some money away. I did not have a plan behind it, just the instinct that setting some aside was smart. Then I relocated, and that money helped. It was the first time money I had set aside showed up for me when I needed it.

That should have been a bigger lesson than I took from it. Instead I went back to the work, back to the next offer, the next campaign, the next good month. I did not think about retirement again for years.

What did Gramma actually ask me?

Gramma is my grandmother, Chris. One year I called her to tell her how things were going. I told her about my success, and that year it was around half a million dollars. She listened, and she said, "That all sounds great Ekai, I'm proud of you."

That felt good. I will not pretend it did not.

Then she asked, "So what's your retirement plan?"

She did not ask about my revenue. She did not ask about my funnel, my ad spend or my team. She asked about the one thing all of that work was supposed to be building toward, and I had nothing clean to say. I had my rules. I had a few years of dabbling from 2015 to 2017. I had a bank account. I did not have a plan.

I was floored. She had a point.

Why did one question hit so hard?

Because she measured in decades and I had been measuring in months.

Online business trains you to think in launches, quarters and good weeks. That rhythm is addictive, and it makes a certain kind of money. But it also makes it easy to mistake a hot streak for security. A great year is a great year. It is not a plan.

I was not alone in the gap, either. In the Federal Reserve's survey covering 2023, 34 percent of non-retired adults said their retirement savings plan was on track.¹ That is roughly one in three. I am sharing that not to scare you, but to say that if Gramma's question makes you squirm, you are in very large company.

Income is a flow, a plan is a destination

Income tells you what is coming in. A plan tells you what it is for. I had built a machine that produced a lot of the first and had never sat down to define the second. The question forced me to.

Pride was in the way

I was proud of the rules I had followed. Proud of being liquid, proud of never borrowing. That pride was earned, but it was also a trap. It made me feel finished when I was only part way there. It took someone who loves me and has no reason to flatter me to point at the gap.

What did I do after the call?

I reached out to my friend Lauren.

Lauren works at Northwestern Mutual, and most of my family now works with her. I am telling you that because it is part of my story, not because I am sending you to her or to any company. This is not an endorsement and it is not a pitch. I do not know your situation, and you should talk to a licensed professional you trust, preferably after talking to more than one.

What I want you to take from this is the move, not the name. I took the question seriously enough to talk to a real person whose job is long-term planning, instead of waving it away because business was good. That is the whole lesson. The conversation matters more than any single account, product or tactic.

Why must online owners plan for the future, not just fast money?

Because nobody is going to do it for you.

When you work for an employer, a retirement plan may simply show up. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that in March 2023, 70 percent of private industry workers had access to retirement benefits, and 53 percent participated.² When you work for yourself, that default disappears. You pick the account, you fund it and you keep funding it, or it does not happen.

The good news is that you have options. The IRS lists retirement plan types designed for self-employed people, including the SEP IRA, the SIMPLE IRA and the one-participant 401(k).³ You do not need to master them today. You do need to know they exist, and that the clock is running whether you look at it or not.

Fast money is a season

Online income can come in waves. A launch, a campaign or a good quarter can feel like it will last forever. Some of it does, and some of it does not. A plan is what keeps one good year from having to carry the whole rest of your life.

Slow money is a habit

What I am learning to respect is the boring side: a small amount, done on purpose, over a long time. It is not exciting. It will never make a good screenshot. But it is the part that is still there when the excitement is gone.

What can you do this week?

You do not need to solve it in a week. You need to start the conversation with yourself.

I did not need a perfect answer when I started. I needed to stop treating the question as optional.

In this section I will keep going with the foundations: accounts built for one-person businesses, liquidity, insurance, mindset and what retirement can actually look like. Start with the Investing and Retirement hub, and bring your own questions.

My grandmother was proud of me, and she still asked. That is how I know she loves me. If you have someone like that in your life, listen to them.

Educational content, not financial, tax, legal or investment advice. Talk to a licensed professional about your situation.

Keep building.Ekai