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A podcast designed to help retirees and those nearing retirement navigate finances and life planning with expert insights from financial advisor Trevor Lawson. Tune in for practical strategies and inspiring ideas to ensure your retirement years are purposeful, fulfilling, and truly your best chapter yet.
*Securities and investment advisory services offered through Osaic Wealth, Inc. member FINRA/SIPC. Osaic Wealth is separately owned and other entities and/or marketing names, products or services referenced here are independent of Osaic Wealth. Branch phone: 919-546-0400.
Trevor Lawson: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Retirement With and On Purpose Podcast. I'm your host, Trevor Lawson, and this show is all about helping you not just reach retirement. But truly thrive in it. You've put in the work. Now let's make sure you can enjoy every moment to the fullest.
Today we're going to talk about a new retirement crisis, and that retirement crisis is mattering so inspired by a recent article. In the Wall Street Journal, which I'll quote throughout today's podcast, the retirement crisis that is surfacing now is this loss of purpose and losing one sense of making a difference.
So we'll talk about, again, using this, this article in the Wall Street Journal. [00:01:00] About how this this came to be, really define this, this crisis, and then talk about a couple of ways to perhaps address it or plan for it as you enter your retirement years. The article is titled The Retirement Crisis. No One warns You About Matter.
Many of us plan for our future wealth and health. Few prepare for an equally essential aspect of retirement, how to continue to feel seen and valued by Jennifer Wallace. So this, this article, or is excerpts from her upcoming book, which I'll, I'll share with you at the end of today's episode. But the moving boxes were barely unpacked when Nancy.
Schlossberg and her husband, Steve joined a small group of recent retirees for dinner in their new city of Sarasota, Florida. When a former medical school Dean asked Nancy, who had just stepped away from a 40 year career in higher education [00:02:00] about her retirement plans, she told him she hoped to consult with local nonprofits.
I'm excited to get involved and see how I can contribute. She said the former dean gave her a weary smile. He'd hoped to assist in teaching a biology course after retiring, he said, but every attempt had gone nowhere around the table. Heads nodded. Despite decades of ex expertise, each person there was stunned by how hard it was to find meaningful ways to contribute after winding down their careers.
So from the, the opening of this, this article, you can see and perhaps relate to the fact that a lot of people that, that have careers that meant something to them. And, and really got a lot of satisfaction out of their career. There continues to be this burning desire to, to make a difference and to, to, to give back to the world, but it's often times can be folks in retirement can feel like they've, they've been [00:03:00] left behind and no longer, you know, their services are no longer wanted or needed.
The world's kind of moved on. So let's continue here. What these retirees were describing wasn't just disappointment and a lack of opportunities. It was an erosion and something far more fundamental. Their sense of mattering the deep human need to feel valued and to have a chance to add value to the world.
We plan for our wealth span and health span, mapping out financial security and physical wellbeing. Yet very few of us prepare for an equally essential dimension of retirement. Our mattering span. I'll likely start using that verbiage in, in my upcoming meetings, mattering span, or how we will continue to feel seen, useful, and capable of making a difference in this next chapter of life.
As you can see this, this is starting to call attention to a huge gap in the re current retirement planning process. So many of us are. Planning to take [00:04:00] care of ourselves physically so we can, you know, remain active, spend time with the family. We are, are saving over the course of our career for retirement.
So financial security is always a big focus when it comes to retirement, but this mattering span is, is oftentimes not at all or given very little attention. So let's continue here. In recent years as rates of anxiety, burnout and disconnection have surged researchers across a variety of fields view mattering as a missing pillar of wellbeing At its core, mattering answers a fundamental question, does my life make a difference?
Evolution, shape this need for our earliest ancestors. Being valued by the group meant safety while being ignored meant danger. The ancient. Wiring persists today. When people feel they matter, they thrive. When they [00:05:00] don't, they suffer. Continuing to quote here to understand how to deal with the problem, it's useful to think of mattering as having four main components captured in the acronym said SAID, filling Significant seen and essential.
Appreciated, valued for your contributions, invested in, supported, and cared for, and depended on needed by others. These ingredients offer both the diagnosis why retirement can feel destabilizing and a solution for strengthening your mattering span at any age. So when you, when you think about the acronym and what, what, how to, how to define mattering our careers oftentimes give us that sense of, of mattering.
I mean, when we think about feeling significant, invested in, dependent on our career, does all of that for us. So when all of a sudden that's left behind, you can understand why, why [00:06:00] oftentimes people feel this overwhelming sense of, of de stability and want to figure out how to, how to reengage and matter.
So build your span. A 2024 study of 748 adults published in the Canadian Journal on Aging found that while most retirees plan carefully for their finances, fewer than half give real consideration to what their life's will be like once they stop working. Lifestyle planning, not financial preparation was the strongest predictor of retirement satisfaction.
Let me say that again. Lifestyle planning. In essence, what we're actually gonna be doing in our day-to-day and how we're gonna be spending our time. Not financial preparation was the strongest predictor of retirement satisfaction. The most significant challenges retirees reported were psychological and social, such as boredom, loss of structure, and diminished connection.
In other words, the researchers concluded retirees needed a deliberate [00:07:00] strategy for staying connected and engaged in the decades ahead. So just like many of us when it comes to work, if we've got a, you know, an ongoing project or you know, a, a responsibility at work that gives us a, something to hold us accountable and something to kind of work towards on our day-to-day retirement needs that as well, if we're gonna lead a meaningful existence.
So we've, we've really started to unpack. Why this sense of mattering is a problem and, and, and how to define this sense of mattering. Now let's talk about a couple of ways to combat it. The power of invitation, many life transitions, retirement, widowhood divorce, empty nesting, come with an unexpected loss of social anchors.
A retired teacher told me how much she missed the brief hallway chats and luncheons. With colleagues she'd once taken for granted without [00:08:00] them, she felt cut off from the daily connection her work had provided What changed? Everything she said was deciding to say yes to every invitation that came her way.
Like coffee with a neighbor and joining a book club each yes helped her rebuild the connection she craved. There's a potential goal for this year saying yes more often. One place to start. Is with a modest goal of saying yes to an invitation or extending one twice a week. And remember, an invitation isn't just about you.
When someone reaches out, they're taking a small risk and their bid for connection By saying, yes, you're signaling that you value them too. In this way, extending or accepting an invitation becomes a mutual exchange of mattering. So the power of invitation saying yes and extending that can give us a.
Small but immediate sense of mattering. To experience the benefits of mattering, we need to feel [00:09:00] valued, but we also need the opportunity to add value again. Research increasingly shows that having the sense of purpose plays a central role in retirement satisfaction and mental health, but purpose alone doesn't capture the whole picture.
What retirees often search for is the, is the experience of being dependent on. In my interviews, the people who regained that sense of being needed tended to follow a simple, repeatable pattern. They identified a genuine need and met it with three T's, Tom, town or treasure. So in closing here, all of us will face life transitions that can rattle our sense of mattering.
Way back can start small, inviting a lonely neighbor to coffee, checking on someone, going through a hard time, or lending a hand to a family stretched thin. What you might find is that the fastest way to feel like you matter is to show someone else that they do too. This was all taken from, and a Jennifer Wallace's new book, mattering The Secret to a Life of [00:10:00] Deep Connection and Purpose, which will be published on January 27th.
I would. Encourage those of you who are thinking about retirement to give just as much thought, if not more thought to your mattering span as you are likely given to your, your financial and your health span. So I would encourage you to pick up a copy of this book because this book is a, a great compliment to.
What I hope a lot of episodes in in my ongoing podcast can provide is a look into how to make our retirement years our best years, and ultimately create a lasting feeling of satisfaction when that time in life arrives. As always. Thank you for tuning in today and I'll look forward to being with you again soon.
Take care.
Thanks for tuning in to The Retirement with and On Purpose podcast. I hope you're [00:11:00] walking away with new ideas and a fresh perspective on how to make the most of your retirement journey. And remember, retirement isn't the end. It's your time to live with purpose. Until next time, I'm Trevor Lawson. Here's to a fulfilling and thriving retirement.