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Welcome to How to Retire on Time, a show that answers your retirement questions. Say goodbye to the oversimplified advice you've heard hundreds of times. This show is about getting into the nitty-gritty so you can make better decisions as you prepare for retirement. Text your questions to 913-363-1234 and we'll feature them on the show. Don't forget to grab a copy of the book, How to Retire on Time, or check out our resources by going to www.retireontime.com.
Wealth is having enough. Well, enough of what? Enough love. Enough attention. Enough connection.
Mike:Welcome to the Retire On Time q and a podcast. I'm Mike Decker here, joined with a special edition with doctor Richard Hammer. This show is all about the nitty gritty, not that oversimplified advice you've heard hundreds of times. As always, you can text your questions, (913) 363-1234, and we'll feature them on the show. This show isn't really a question necessarily by you.
Mike:This is a question by me and the many situations that I've seen over and over and over again, and that's the problem that people today are retiring into basically a situation where they're set up for failure, whether it's boredness, loneliness, depression, and so on. So we've invited Doctor. Hamer to be on the show to talk a little bit more about that. So thanks for joining us.
Richard:Yeah. It's good to be here.
Mike:Now you are the author of the book Your Encore Years, which is a great it's a pretty dense read, but it's a good read. It's one of those you slowly digest. Oh, yes. That's what you're
Richard:to break it up with stories and to make it really personal for you. Some of them will be applicable, some of them won't, but you'll always be able to understand the theory or the principle behind it.
Mike:Why did you write the book?
Richard:You know, I've been in the industry since '83. And what I realized is that the industry basically has sold us a certain way of considering retirement that's become cultural. And while I'm not anti financial planning, I believe the sequence is off, and it's not balanced.
Mike:How so?
Richard:Well, we focus all our energy on the money. When you come in and talk to a financial planner, what's the primary topic? Do I have enough money?
Mike:I need money to to pay for things.
Richard:When can I retire? In other words, as soon as the stock market moves left or right, you've been conditioned to be aware of it.
Mike:And if
Richard:it goes down, you're aware of it. If it goes up, you're aware of it. And you get hit with a certain dopamine level or lack thereof depending on where the market goes. Is that really how you wanna spend your life being completely tied, codependent, if you will, upon the movement of something that should be secondary in your mindset. But you need the money to, I mean, to retire.
Mike:You can't just have nothing and, you know,
Richard:I blindly going into agree with that. So there's a balance in the process. So because we're so heavy just on money, what have we forgotten? Mhmm. Therefore, the title of the subtitle of the book is the psychology of retirement, if you will.
Richard:So if all you focus on is money, what have you left out? So one of the things that I found in the research completely caught me off guard, wasn't aware of it, was the fastest growing segment of divorce are retirees. So let's just say boomers for because that's kind of where we are now. Well, there is no retirement, a flat out separation of retirement until there's an invisible retirement. Invisible retirement is something we've known about for decades.
Richard:That's the relationship you have with your spouse where you're living in the same home, but you're just living two different lives. You might share the house, but that's about all you share. There's no emotional connection. There's no trust and respect. There's no oneness in that story.
Richard:So therefore, upon retirement, it only exacerbates it because now you're spending more time together instead of less.
Mike:Why do you think that is?
Richard:Well, let me tell you an anecdotal story first of all and see if I can get there. I had a friend, and I don't remember who it was, called up their aunt. His aunt was having a birthday, and it was at coinciding with the time that her son had just graduated from high school. He was the empty he was the youngest child. Mhmm.
Richard:Mom and dad now became empty nesters upon graduation. So it's breakfast. The phone call comes the day after in the evening. So we're the day after the graduation, but at breakfast. Mom is talking to son.
Richard:You know, they're just over pancakes or whatnot. Yeah. And the son looks at his mom with this curious look and says, so mom, are you and dad getting a divorce now? And caught mom off guard. There were no hints, no subtleties going on in the family, no arguments.
Richard:And so she was taken aback and kinda came back at her son. He goes, what are you talking about? He says, well, you know, I'm out of the house now, and you're empty nesters. And all of my friends' parents, when they're graduating, they're telling me their parents are now getting a divorce since I'm now out of the house, if you will. So is that what you and dad are going to do?
Richard:It wasn't even in gist. It literally was just matter of factly, all my friends are getting parents are getting divorced or you and dad getting a divorce. Well, what happens in that state? What are we teaching that child?
Mike:In in your book, you talk about my notes here. There's there's this this whole section about designing retirement as opposed to defaulting into it. Right. So when you talk about divorce, are you talking about that they're basically just they've already defaulted into this result, and it's just about timing before it just inevitably happens?
Richard:Yeah. So the invisible part of it is. They they're not even aware that they're in a divorce situation. K. Let's go back to when they first got married.
Richard:Why did those two people get married? What don't they know now that they're at retirement that they did know at this point in time, and what changed? Like they forgot something. Evidently, something's been lost. And so in the process of life, if you will so there's a quote in the book that I'm fond of by Richard Rohr.
Richard:He says there are two halves to life, first half and second half. You cannot live the second half of life with the tools of the first half. You need a new toolkit. My argument is in encore years, that new toolkit should have started taking place in your early twenties. Your post college university, you're starting your career, you're starting your family.
Richard:And then is when you started living that time. Okay. Go back to when you're a teenager. How many times did you say when I'm an adult, when I'm a dad, I'm never gonna do this?
Mike:Yeah. All the time.
Richard:Alright. Well, it never happened. Yeah. And so what happened with these this couple, and we'll just make them fictitious for now, is that they never practiced second half of life tools. In fairness to the boomers, emotional intelligence didn't exist in those days.
Richard:We didn't have that term. So we weren't talking about self awareness. We weren't talking about conflict resolution. We weren't talking about all the skills that have now become modern, very common within our culture. And so they were living their lives saying, I'm not gonna be what my dad was.
Richard:I'm not gonna be what my mom was. And yet they became the very thing they said they didn't want to become, and they did it completely unaware.
Mike:Why? Why do people do this?
Richard:Because it's familiar. That's all they know. There's two there's a number of things that we're hardwired to do. In the book, I really hit on two of them, but I wanna throw out a couple things. First of all, we're hardwired to connect.
Richard:Well, if you're not connecting with your spouse, what's going on? You're gonna find some way to connect because it's gonna hurt. And when you hurt, you're going to medicate. And when you medicate, that's just a maladaptive behavior.
Mike:You're talking about alcohol?
Richard:Nope. We're talking about the same thing as alcohol as far as the brain's concerned. Now I'm not saying it couldn't be alcohol, but everybody's familiar with what alcoholism does to anybody's life and family. What if you're you're engaged in an addiction, a drug that is just as potent as alcohol, but yet it's not an outside in drug? It's an inside out drug.
Richard:Like an endorphin? It could be. You're getting a hit like unto an endorphin, but it's a temporary one and it doesn't last long. So it's the same concept. So the brain doesn't know if you're shooting up with cocaine, taking a drink of alcohol, or highly critical, playing the role of a victim, very sarcastic, constantly judging other people, your family, nagging, ignoring, going into your man cave or your chick hut.
Richard:Your brain cannot process the difference between the drug because a drug is a drug is a drug.
Mike:Is it I guess my mind's going to two different places. One is, are they getting a divorce because they have more time and they're gonna be forced to spend it with each other, and they're just like, no, this won't work? Is it because when you're working, you know, you're separated for, what, eight, ten hours a day, and then you come home, and then so it's like little bits where it's frustrating, but they can deal with it, and then you retire, now it's not it's just not gonna work. Like, how does how does it kind of slowly transpire? And and it's all because, I mean, what, sixty years of behavior?
Mike:Abits. And it's almost like they don't realize it until that moment. They're set up to fail, and they have no idea.
Richard:When you're working, here's what you have when you're working. You've got your identity. You have your purpose. You have your connections. And you have a structure that you're living in.
Richard:Now you may not even like your work, but those are the four biggies, your identity, your purpose, your connections, and your your structure as long as it's principle based. But you did have that at work, And your maladaptive behaviors are coexisting with you. In my world, it's called comorbid behaviors. They're existing with you in your marriage, but you're away from each other sufficiently that you can tolerate the uncomfortableness. You can tolerate the gradual separation of your relationship.
Richard:That's moving into that invisible divorce.
Richard:Then you reach higher, and those four things are gone in overnight. They're just gone. And now all of a sudden, your first half of life skills, the maladaptive ones that you use just to survive, to get into your twenties, have been with you for so long, and they've been ingrained even deeper. The neural pathways are so deep that's what you know and that's what's familiar. Then, remember, your whole familiar behavior is just to stop the pain.
Richard:Now you're with the person that you have never connected with post twenties. Once you start raising your kids, you two start growing apart. Her identity is as a mother, and I'm stereotyping this to the boomer generation, her identity as a mother and maybe a part time worker, and then later on maybe she became she went into a career. That's irrelevant, but that's her identity. Her identity has never been connected as one with the husband.
Richard:His identity has always been tied to work, provider, discipliner. Now you put those two, they're so separate from each other, two different worlds. They've never connected during all those years, and all of a sudden they're retired. What's gonna happen? I write the story about the general in the book.
Mike:That's a great
Richard:story. So it's one of the Carolinas. I never remember which Carolina. Let's say North Carolina. Okay.
Richard:North Carolina, retired general, five children. Mhmm. They retire, and they're excited because she has barely seen him through his entire career. And she's been the one running the home, raising the children. She's got every single title known to man.
Richard:She is the C suite at the house. Well, he's the CEO at work running huge budgets, running soldiers every which way. And their goal was to sell all of their possessions, buy an RV, and travel The United States for a year or two before they decide where they want to settle down. So they're gonna visit historic sites. They're gonna visit the family and the grandchildren.
Mike:Which sounds great, and this is a normal thing people talk about.
Richard:Travel and see the grandkids. Right? Yeah. It's the default. So by the time they hit Texas, they each had a divorce attorney.
Richard:It didn't last long. She's been running the entire thing, and he never understood her lane. He's been running a whole different, in a whole different lane. And isn't that she understood or didn't understand, he's not in it. And now he's displaced.
Richard:He comes from his displacement. His identity is as a general. You do what I say, you don't ask questions. So he's a transactional type leader, not a transformational one. He comes into her space where she's been doing it.
Richard:She planned the entire itinerary while he was his last few months of retirement, walks into her space and they're driving along, and he's giving her suggestions and commandments and our commands, and he's solving all the problems, and she's saying, I've got this. We're good. And that doesn't go well to a general who doesn't understand who he is now in his new role. He's no longer a general. He's a father, a grandfather, but most of all, he's a husband, and he doesn't get that one.
Richard:And therefore, fireworks took off, and they each had divorce attorneys by the time they hit Texas. That's what I'm talking about. Are you even aware of where you two are coming from and where you're going at the time of retirement? So just one quick plug for financial planners who get this. When someone comes in to do financial planning, the last question you answer is, do I have enough money to retire?
Richard:That is the least of your concerns. The first concern is what does retirement look for you? What is your lifestyle? Who are you to? What is it you're going to be accomplishing?
Richard:Who are you becoming? There's your identity. If I know who, if I'm the planner and you're the one coming in, you give me a clear direction on who you're becoming, only then can I start the process to support what that life looks like for you? We do it completely reverse.
Mike:Yeah. It's usually income first and then figure out how to
Richard:Assets, income, then And
Mike:then live within those restrictions.
Richard:Correct.
Mike:And it should be the opposite. So on that note, I'm not a psychologist, I'm just a financial planner trying to help people develop a healthier relationship to their money. That's kind of our mission, if you I wanted to ask a bunch of questions. I have my own version of the book that's to be published soon. It's quite the compliment.
Mike:It's not as intense or in-depth as yours, but if you can shed some light, shed some commentary on this. I wanna, I guess, spend the rest of our time talking about solutions. How do you figure out how to design your life? Mean, you've spent sixty years developing habits, change is not gonna come easily. Right.
Mike:Healing is never an easy thing. I mean, I think of a physical therapist, that's what healing kind of is. It's a painful experience, but it's better on the other end. Correct. So the general idea that I have, and you taught me this, was all humans are hardwired to connect.
Mike:Connections in retirement are critical. Too many people retire and then end up watching their preferred news channel at home and get grumpier and grumpier as time goes on. It's almost like would that speed up their date of death? I mean, just to kind of Absolutely. It compromises
Richard:their mental capacity, then complement compromises their emotional, and
Mike:then compromises their physical. Completely correlated. We At least I selfishly want people to grow, I want people to be healthy, I want people to be happy. I can't control that, but if we can kind of transition to at least the framework that I've been proposing, and you tell me if this is right or wrong. I mean, this is if we have some conflict, that's okay of difference of opinion, but I have eight groups that I recommend, and some of them are a little dicey.
Mike:I'll admit, I know it's kind of like a two edged sword, and I'll I'll talk specifically about those. But the first one I've got here in having a purpose and building a connection, those are the two things that we're looking for when we're trying to figure out what does lifestyle look like? What are you gonna transition to, and then how do you afford that? How much does that cost?
Richard:Hold the thought for a second. If you started with purpose and connection, and I'm gonna start with identity. Okay. What's the difference? Your identity is what drives your purpose.
Richard:If you don't know who you are, you're an aimless person going about day to day. So let's go real quickly to the Again, I'm stereotyping, and this could be offensive to some, and I'm not meaning to be. I'm just trying to explain why you feel miserable. If you lived your whole life just taking care of others with no boundaries for yourself, and all of a sudden those children were gone, that's as dramatic a shock to the system as the general who retired. Because the mother has done everything for the children, and then they start doing it for the grandchildren.
Richard:She doesn't know who she is.
Mike:Are these your 10 archetypes Yeah. You write about in the Okay. Because I know caregiver's one of them. That's right.
Richard:And it's an addictive behavior, and it's the most miserable place to be in because you don't believe you're worth having a boundary for it. You need to help somebody else. Well, you move from mother, motherhood to grandmotherhood, but grandmotherhood is you're not present all day. They're not living in the home as a general rule. So that becomes your drive to go see them, and this is why a lot of retirees move to their grandchildren.
Richard:Sometimes that works and sometimes it Happens all the time. Right. But her identity then is only when she's taking care of those grandkids, but she doesn't have an identity connected to her husband right now. And nothing about those two identities is individual. Who is she?
Richard:Because I've asked a lot of people this question for thirty, forty years. The answers are always very intriguing. Very few people have a true identity knowing who they are. I am So back in Well, right now, if you ask me who am I, one of the identities, I'm trying to be a golfer. I'm being a golfer.
Richard:I golf a lot. So my mindset but I remember when I first started running, if you asked me who I was, I'd say, I'm a runner. And I said, well, what does that mean? Well, that means I go to bed early. I get up early, I've done five miles before the neighborhood wakes up, I eat differently, I plan differently, I think differently.
Richard:That's my identity. Therefore, my purpose for the day is this and that. You have multiple identities. That's an identity. But if your identity has nothing to do with who you are and who you're becoming, you're gonna really struggle, and that's that caregiver.
Richard:So So I interrupted you, I apologize.
Mike:No, I appreciate that. So if the identity is the basis of all of this
Richard:That is. And then your purpose follows.
Mike:You can't and this is where my mind's going, is you can't connect to someone if you don't know what you are and how that connection is. I mean, you know, like, you plug something in, there's a connection between one outlet and the other.
Richard:You've heard the saying, you can only love someone to the level you love yourself.
Mike:I like that. That's nice.
Richard:Yeah. If you don't love yourself, if you don't think you're good enough.
Mike:So the first one I've got is really a romantic relationship. Right. When I say romantic relationship, I'm trying to talk about a partner, a companion, someone that's your ride or die, if that makes sense. And all of the things I write about, I'm not a neuroscientist, but one of the primary chemicals of happiness is oxytocin. So oxytocin, and dopamine.
Mike:Oxytocin's in this one.
Richard:Right.
Mike:But having a romantic relationship, this one to me is tricky. I've seen many people who just got divorced and are now trying to figure out their finances. Many of them are just burned. I'm never gonna date again. I'm never I'm just gonna be with my girlfriends.
Mike:I'm just gonna be with my guy friends. I'm just in this jaded bit, and I can't help but notice over the years that that cloud of loneliness and relationship regret. How important is it really to have a connection like this, a partnership
Richard:You with cease to exist without it.
Mike:How so? I mean, can't you just have good friends?
Richard:You are so hardwired to have people around you. Good friends is one thing, and that can sustain you a long way. But I went to the extreme where you have no one around you, the complete isolationist, so the Ted Kaczynski.
Mike:Yeah. That's not good.
Richard:That's not good. So that's that's why he was there. He was jaded, by the way. He got he had it was a romantic thing. He really liked this girl.
Richard:She turned him down, and that's when he that flipped the switch. But let's take it to a couple who's still living together.
Richard:When you say romantic, I immediately went to inside of a romance, there's some degree of physical connection. Alright. In order to have a true, authentic, uplifting, physical relationship with someone, you must first have an emotional one. Otherwise, it's a very base addictive type behavior that you're just using them as an object to get your hit. That's what we see in Hollywood.
Richard:That's why we have the addictions in that regard, where they're addicted to getting they're addicted because they hurt. Well, if you have a true emotional connection, I was giving a a talk once. I had about 500 people in the room, and I just looked at all the women. I said, look at if no. I said to the men.
Richard:I said, men, if you want the absolute beautiful key to your wife's bedroom, Connect with her on trust and respect. Connect with her emotionally. That is the gateway to your physical relationship. I probably saw seven women elbow their husbands in that audience, and everybody starts cracking up. And then I had people through the course of the week would come up and talk to me about that, and many of them were in their sixties and seventies saying, that was the most powerful thing I've ever heard.
Richard:So if we go romantic, I'm gonna take one step back and say, if you want to have the most enjoyable retirement you possibly can, learn to connect with your spouse now. And if you're
Mike:not married, learn how to connect in dating?
Richard:You can have very close friends.
Mike:Well, does Dating exists for the 60. It's a whole thing.
Richard:It's a thriving community. Yeah. Too often for the wrong reason. It's It becomes physical overnight. Emotion first.
Richard:Emotions first. Every time I coach a couple, I just happened last week. Every time I coach a couple before they get married, I explain to them that the emotional connection must precede the physical or the physical starts the dominating. Because once you go there, you can't go back. So once you get to the physical or sorry, to the emotional and let me just take you to the marriage real quick.
Richard:I have a thing called a DWOP, a date with a purpose. Well, let's go back to the very beginning when you were in your teens or twenties. Why did you date that person? What was the commonality? What were the reasons that the two of you wanted to get married?
Richard:Well, all of a sudden, you go to forty years later, you don't talk about that anymore. You don't talk that way anymore. You're no longer trying to be your best self. What if your identity is always becoming your best self? You're a lifelong learner.
Richard:You want to understand and have empathy for the other person.
Richard:Everything I just said, none of those words even existed back in the eighties when y'all got married. But now we're finding out that's causation, not just correlation, but your inability to know who you are is causation for the lack of the emotional intimacy that you're gonna share with your spouse. So the DWOP is simply going on a date with a purpose, and I have questions that you could ask. As simple as, okay, who is your best friend in junior high? Or who is your best friend in elementary?
Richard:Does your spouse know that? What is your greatest unfulfilled dream? Does your spouse know that? And each question is graded. But imagine, let's just say once a week, starting now, let's say you're five years from retirement.
Richard:The two of you go on a date, getting to know each other anew. Again. And maybe for the first time because you I've talked to so many couples. Just a quick story. This couple was coming in because the wife was really angry at the husband, and so she made him come to see me.
Richard:Right? So the two of them are sitting there.
Mike:That's never a good start.
Richard:That's never a good start. So they're sitting there talking, and the wife was really the one who was codependent. So her husband's behavior dictated her mood of the day, and she didn't see that. She was unaware of that. And her husband had shut up into a man cave all the time because he was constantly being nagged by her, so he wouldn't talk to her.
Richard:Well, I interviewed them each separately for and then they came in together. And they started bickering, and I stopped them. And you're you're familiar with rules of engagement, so I put it between them.
Mike:But People in this story who don't know what that is.
Richard:Rules of engagement are two principle based behaviors that if you were to follow in any conversation with your wife or a friend, you It's guidelines. Yeah.
Mike:It's guidelines.
Richard:It's impossible to move to a contentious type behavior where you split apart. It's the formula for conflict resolution.
Mike:Bumpers on the bowling alley? Yep.
Richard:That's what they are. So anyway, the couple was in there, and they started bickering. Said, stop, you two. It's time for you two to get to know each other. And that got them both angry at me.
Richard:And he he he came out of his shell all of a sudden. He goes, doctor Hemmer, I've known her for forty years. You think I don't know her? And I said, with all due respect, sir, I probably know her better than you do right now, and I've spent fifteen minutes with her. And he stopped.
Richard:It's because I actually listened to her. You think you know her, but you two haven't talked to each other in twenty years. You have what is called an invisible divorce. If you want to be happy again, it's time for both of you to shed your perception that you think you're right and move into the idea of becoming a lifelong learner and connecting emotionally with each other. Your problem isn't all the things you claim.
Richard:It's the fact that neither of you have the skill set to talk to the other in a productive way. And you became the common enemy and the united. Oh, yeah. I I get people angry at me depending on the day. Yeah.
Richard:They'll switch.
Mike:But so romantic relationship, emotional connection or partnership specifically for that, and that's really focused on the oxytocin there. I I will say the research Journal of Marriage and Family shows that marital satisfaction often dips in the early years of retirement. So it's really important. You had said five, ten years before you retire is when you want to start working on this.
Richard:That's right.
Mike:Shore up your relationship.
Richard:Yeah. So you don't have a dip. Yeah. Actually, it should go the other way. Yeah.
Richard:Yeah. I mean, how many people will tell you, we're only married because we don't have to spend all the time with each other? What a sad state of affairs.
Mike:That's so
Richard:sad. So what if you can't wait to get home from work like you used to feel in your twenties? But you couldn't because you were working. Right? He became the workaholic.
Richard:He put in hours and hours at his work, and she's just going, Can you come home and help with the kids? Can you do this? And she puts in hours and hours with the children with no sleep. These are just everyday things that happen. But what we're missing in this is that we're not reaching over to the other side to understand their perspective and then connecting with them.
Richard:The greatest gift you could give your spouse right now would be fifteen minutes of undivided attention just finding out what makes them tick again. What a powerful thing, but we've not been taught how to do it. There's our challenge.
Mike:Thank you. The next one I I wanna highlight here is family relationships, And this is a tricky one. This is one of those two edged sword situations. So for those keeping track, this is oxytocin and serotonin, two feelings of happiness. We want you to feel happy, not to hack, you know, biohack yourself or whatever, but like a normal sense of just happiness sustained by these They say family bonds are belonging to identity.
Mike:There is a family identity tied to it.
Richard:There is, and a culture.
Mike:But there's there's a very interesting thing I've found or noticed, and that is those who get too attached or involved with their grandkids start to resent the relationship because they want the pendulum swung too much, they're too involved, and now the parents are too dependent on the grandparents, and the grandparents lose their freedom.
Richard:They became the they became the parents again.
Mike:So how do you balance the difference? Well, first off, are family relationships helpful? Are there times where you should put a boundary with family relationships? And if it's a healthy relationship, how do you kind of balance this? Because everyone says when they retire I shouldn't say everyone.
Mike:Like, 95% of people will say they wanna travel and spend more time with with the kids. Yeah.
Richard:Serotonin also is the balancing drug. You're happy because you're balanced. So in a relationship that's imbalanced, you're not very happy. So first of all, we've been spending a lot of effort on the couples. Right?
Richard:Well, if neither of you know the other and you have this invisible divorce going on, there's no way you're going to feel happy. So you will then find ways to medicate yourself, and the man will probably go into his man cave and she'll gossip with her friends or whatever it might be. But now let's take it to the children and the grandchildren. I would say in the last twenty years, thirty to 40% of my clients when I was coaching actively were grandparents, trying to figure out a way to first take care of their parents, but second of all, connect with their children. They always said that we love our grandchildren, but the reality is most grandchildren with leveraged grandparents don't enjoy visiting them because they're always saying, Well, you need to come more often, or, I'm not gonna be around that much longer.
Richard:You need to come and see me.
Mike:Yeah. Can you explain leveraged a little bit more?
Richard:When you guilt leverage your children or grandchildren to come and see you, you've got a serious problem. You are driving them away, and they're only coming to see you out of obligation. So it might be just an awareness for you right now that anytime you use some sort of a leveraging comment for more visits so you can get your oxytocin, you're not getting serotonin because you're not balanced. You guilt trip. You guilt trip them.
Richard:They don't wanna be there. They'll come because the family culture is to visit grandpa and grandma, Because you're not creating experiences with them. This is where money becomes critical. If money could support your wealth, and by the way, I define them differently. So money is just a commodity.
Richard:Right? It's to be controlled. Mhmm. It's an object. Wealth is having enough.
Richard:Well, enough of what? Well, let's use grandpa and grandma. Enough love, enough attention, enough connection. But what if you could take enough money? What if you could use your money to buy experiences with the children and the grandchildren that they never forget?
Mike:But couldn't they use money to leverage, saying, We're doing this nice trip?
Richard:Then leverage is have yes. This is the dark side.
Mike:Two edged sword.
Richard:Yeah. So just a quick trip, and it reminded me, my wife told me, it was yesterday she told me about this, we took five of our granddaughters. So I had five boys. So the good Lord has a sense of humor, and he gave me the first five grandchildren. We're all girls.
Richard:So we took five of them, four granddaughters and one grandson, and we took them to Washington. So we live in Texas, but we raised our children in Washington. So all their fathers were raised in Gake Harbor, Washington. Right? And we took them back there for almost ten days.
Richard:They have not stopped us two years ago. They've not stopped talking about that trip. We still have our little text thread that they're very fond of going in there, and they talk about things. So when I get to Washington, I'll take a picture on a ferry or of a mountains or where we stayed at my sister's in law's house. And that just sparks a bunch of comments by five grandchildren who didn't get enough of spending time with grandpa and grandma, learning about their parents, their fathers, and doing all the things at the island that we lived on, playing in the mud, going swimming, jumping off the dock.
Richard:That's an experience.
Mike:But how do you get them to want to spend time with you?
Richard:I mean, this is I asked my granddaughter this. Ellie Mae. I asked Ellie Mae this question. She's 15, 15. I've been teaching her how to drive, which is really fun.
Richard:That's an experience. Right? Yeah. That's an experience. Take your granddaughter excruciating the curse.
Mike:Is it
Richard:manual? No. No. It's it's Okay. I'm driving my car, so I said, I'll come over, and we'll just disappear.
Richard:And then I have her little sister who's always scolding me. She says, Baba, you can't take your driving. That's against the law. I said, well, thank you. I appreciate that.
Richard:And when you want to learn to drive, should I obey the law? Should I take you driving? Your call. But anyway, so what was the question? Because I got stuck on Ellie Mae.
Richard:Oh,
Mike:I know what it was.
Richard:I gotta tell Ellie Mae's question.
Mike:It's it's a very tricky balance because you want them to want you, but you can't force them to want you. You can't guilt them to want you, and they won't know to want you unless they know enough about you. Therein lies this impossible
Richard:scenario. Conversation go when grandchildren come over, grandpa and grandma? Stereotypical. Okay?
Richard:They'll say, oh, it's so good to see you. And they'll either give them a candy or something else. And then grandpa and grandma because the kids are going, grandpa and grandma, how are you guys doing? And what do they say? They think the kids really wanna know.
Richard:No, they don't wanna know. That's an American way of saying hello. We really don't wanna know that grandma's arthritis is acting up, that grandpa's going in for another colonoscopy. They just don't care about all of your hurts and your aches and your pains. What they do care about is that you care.
Richard:So I was over this would be about three months ago. I was over at my eldest son's. He has five kids, four girls and a boy. And did I did I over count? See, Abigail, Ellie Mae.
Richard:No. Four kids. I gave him too many kids. He has four kids. Anyway, so I'm sitting on the sofa.
Richard:I have Ellie Mae in one arm and Hallie in the other hand, and I'm asking them about their courses at school. Tell me what's going on here. Tell me what's going on here. And Ellie Mae had a really cool course about making flower arrangements and whatnot. So we took off down a tangent, And then we ended up doing something, and then I came back and said, girls, I I have a question for you.
Richard:Ellie Mae bought my book, by the way. Mhmm. And so I said, I have a question. Could you give me some advice that I could share with people like me, a grandpa or a grandma, on what do grandchildren, when they get together with their grandparents, what do they want that experience to look like? And she goes, papa, I tell them to do what you just did.
Richard:I go, what's that? She goes, you know every class I have. You know what I'm doing well in. You know what I really enjoy. You come to my games.
Richard:You come to my my performances. You coached me. Those are experiences, but let me break it down to the most common denominator of all. Rule number one, we're all hardwired to connect. What does that grandchild want more than anything in the world to know that her grandparents know her?
Richard:Does she feel felt? Does she feel heard? Retirees, grandpas and grandmas, if you don't know everything that's going on with that child, then you're not connecting. I'll say it as bluntly as I can. They don't care about your hurts because it wears on them.
Richard:They don't relate to it. They don't understand it. They don't know what you're going through. So don't make it about you. Make it about them, and they'll want to know about their parents.
Richard:And eventually, they'll want to know about you. But don't expect it because the expectation that they're gonna want to talk to you, they're gonna want you to tell them about you, ain't gonna happen.
Mike:What would you say then about the comments about babysitting? How to hold a boundary or how to structure?
Richard:Balanced. Once a year, my wife will take care of the grandchildren. She's matter of fact, I'm in trouble right now coming here because I missed the calendar, and she's got three of our grandchildren. They arrived on Friday night. I spent all day Saturday with them and half day yesterday, and then I flew up here to be with you.
Richard:She's got three grandchildren while my son and his wife are in Puerto Rico right now. And she goes, so seriously, you're leaving me with the kids? I go, I am so sorry. I'll be back Tuesday night. And so I'm gonna get them Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then half a day Saturday.
Richard:That's balance. Thanks for being here. Yeah. It's not every day. Right?
Richard:You're not constantly the babysitter. I recognize that certain circumstances happen, but I've seen things where it's way overboard, way out of balance, to where the single mother actually uses the grandparents for the daycare. Well, I get why. I understand the family situations, but that's not ideal, and it's a very tough navigation.
Mike:Thank you. The next one here is really about social connection or friends and relationships. Again, the primary chemicals, we're looking for oxytocin and dopamine on this one. What we found, this is Harvard's study, Many adults are experiencing social shrinkage, and there was that eighty five year study, I think it's still going, about adults and happiness. The adult development found social connection is the strongest predictor of long term happiness and health, and perhaps that your spouse or family may not be able to provide you all of the connections
Richard:Well, especially if they're not living around you. Zoom can only do so much. Yeah. So this is where in the book we we really emphasize, one, hobbies. So your identity.
Richard:So I'm a golfer. Yeah. Well, I get huge benefits from that. I have a really cool social network. I have two golfer text threads that goes on constantly.
Richard:Then I have a pickleball group. I have a pickleball k. My wife's got a sounds
Mike:so cliche. I just gotta point that out.
Richard:It does. And you know what?
Mike:It works.
Richard:These it's it's very interesting.
Mike:I I But you don't have to golf or play pickleball in retirement.
Richard:Those are examples. But I will tell you, there are two of the three top sports for longevity. Cycling's the third.
Mike:Which is my preferred.
Richard:And that you can get a cycling club. But think about my wife's got two book clubs. Well, one just died because they're Died? It died because they were millennials. And they don't know how to have a conversation.
Richard:And they're Gen Xs and Gen Zers. And so what's interesting is the boomers, they'll read the book, first of all, and then they'll have a very healthy conversation, a very vibrant one. But the other group, they wouldn't read it very often, and then they wouldn't really have any comments to make because they're not as good at communicating. And just a a side note, we're losing connectivity in our society today. Mhmm.
Richard:And we're losing it the the younger they get, the harder it's becoming. We're roughly ten years behind socially, eighteen to forty year olds, than we were with the boomer generation, for example. I'm not putting causation anywhere. I'm just letting you know that's a fact, and we're not connecting. So let's go to the boomers or to the retirees.
Richard:What can you do to support your connections, your dopamine, your oxytocin? Well, are you volunteering in the community? Are you getting out and visiting people? If you start with just a service mindset, that's gonna add a whole new level. So take your oxytocin and your dopamine and twofold it, because you're doing something for someone else.
Richard:When I was a scout leader, we did service projects all the time. And the kids, when we'd first announced it, they go, oh, not again. And then on the way home, they go, oh, that was so good. All right, guys. Can you remember?
Richard:When you do something for someone else, this is pretty cool stuff. So one, hobbies, connections, clubs, volunteering, servicing, all those things are very powerful. Yeah.
Mike:And we'll talk about some of those specifically here. But friendship relationships, the social shrinkage, if I'm hearing you right, and this is something I've personally struggled with, not that, like, I'm hanging out dirty laundry, but I made friends very easy all through school. The second I stopped school and entered the workplace, I rarely made new friends. Yeah. And it was because when I was in class or these different social activities, I was connecting with people, we were having fun, we'd do projects together, those always come on purpose.
Mike:And at work, it's not like, hey, do you wanna come over to my house and work on that project that we don't have to work on? But wouldn't that be fun? Like, that's not a normal situation.
Richard:So for couples, first of all, and I know we're talking retirees, but church organizations, those kinds of things are powerful. By the way, there's a huge resurgence worldwide Mhmm. Bringing religion back into the fold. Why? Because religion adds that connectivity.
Richard:It adds the purpose. It adds to the identity. Without it, and I I write about it in my book. I use multiple biblical examples. Believing in a higher power gives you an identity.
Mike:So Well, let's go to then to the I mean, I'll just I'll name off the subgroups. Sure. So as I said earlier, you're have a purpose, gotta build a connection. You've got romantic or partnership, you've got the familial relationships, and then you're social. You gotta build those connections.
Mike:You want people there, Kind of your this is your cycling group of people. But there's there's different categories here. So charitable activities, when you give, life is better. It just it is that
Richard:That's a service idea.
Mike:The next one is intellectual activities. Primary chemical here is dopamine, but it's this idea that you're challenging your ability to How critically does that really play a factor in here, whether it's individual pursuit Yeah. Or with people, but just exercising that brain muscle.
Richard:So my wife's book club is one. She will tell me about the book she's reading. And then when she comes home from book club, and it's a late night. She gets home about 09:30 at night, so I'm very interested in what happens and who said what. So I will ask, did they read the book?
Richard:I'm not even involved in it. It drives me nuts that someone would join a book club, never read the book in there, and just come and be a fly on the wall. That doesn't make any sense to me. But then she'll talk about what they said, what the ideas were, and she'll even talk about the book, if it was uplifting, it wasn't uplifting, if it was dark. So I'm learning there.
Richard:But Sherry, she gets an intellectual stimulation, one. Two, I've been very lucky in my life that I've been selective on my friends. I don't have a million friends. I have a fairly wide network of people that I do stuff with, but a friend to me is someone who's gonna make me better at the end of the day. So my best friend that I went to high school with, his name's John.
Richard:He's a chiropractor out of Los Angeles area. We don't talk all that much, but when we do, it's an idea. He will say, okay, I got this idea. We're going at it. And then I go back with my ideas and we're going at it.
Richard:Mhmm. You know, we're both grandparents. We're both, you know, very busy in what we're doing. I enjoy that. The intellectual stimulation oh, I got a story.
Richard:So I have this young man who used to come over to my house. Well, he still does because I would do workshops in my house for young people on marriage, family, you know, parenting, those kinds of things. And he became quite an advocate for this might this type of thing. And he had this idea, and he calls me up. He says, I'd like to take you and your wife to dinner.
Richard:So he has this idea. Alright. The whole idea behind it is that he his ideas stimulate my ideas, and my ideas are stimulating his ideas. I've just got a kindred spirit on someone who wants to grow in his mindset. I've known you how long?
Richard:Me? Yes. Seven. Seven,
Mike:eight years?
Richard:Seven. Yeah. K. Don't talk about people as a general rule. We talk about ideas.
Richard:That's true. I'm in Rickover. Small minds discuss people. Average minds discuss events. Great minds discuss ideas.
Richard:Are you actually growing in the conversations you have with the people that you know? His dad, his father-in-law, he came and this is why I'm telling you a story about him. He said, I have a challenge with this one, my father-in-law. He said he worked blue collar his whole life. And now that he's retired, when I ask him questions or throw ideas at him, he basically shuts me down and says, look it, I know everything I need to know.
Richard:I don't need to know anything anymore. I know what I got, and I'm happy with that. I'm good. No, you're not happy with it. You're familiar with it.
Richard:That's not safe space. That's familiar space. You have nothing new to contribute to your children, your in laws or your grandchildren. You are a lump on a log and you're a waste of humanity if you're not constantly growing and you're gonna suffer. You have a twenty five percent higher probability of dying early, getting dementia or Alzheimer's.
Richard:Your body's gonna break down because your mind is breaking down. You are hardwired to learn to grow and to change. You can't take that away. The couch potatoes become the world's best judges and referees because they know better than everyone else. Is this why, as I've noticed people, not my clients, but generally speaking, the older someone gets, the grumpier they are.
Richard:Because the correlation there or the causation there is they stop learning. They stop growing. They stop asking. They think they're there, and nobody is there. Look at when we were And this is to the boomers, to our defense.
Richard:We were taught in high school, once you hit 30, 35, your brain cells are done, you can't grow anymore. I get it. We were taught that we're basically toast when we're old, 30, 35. Yeah, old. And how many companies mandated retirement at a certain age?
Richard:And that age is still there. It permeates your industry that you have to retire at 65. My brother read my book. He called me on the phone, he goes, thank you so much. I go, well, coming from you, I'm a little nervous.
Richard:What does that mean? And he goes, you gave me permission not to have to retire. You gave me permission not to have all the money in the world. You gave me permission to have a complete different life than what I was conditioned to have. And that that my financial planner told me I had to do, my friends told me I had to do.
Richard:I felt like I had to retire because I'm getting at that age. Well, I'm telling you, you don't. And no research supports 65. That was a made up number. It was arbitrary, and the Social Security industry basically did an actuary study to figure out what it would be to make them money because you're supposed to be dead at 62 when social security started at 65 when it started back in the thirties.
Richard:Nothing changed. Why? Because we never did this the right way. We set retirement about money, and retirement's fictitious. It doesn't even exist in Scripture.
Mike:I think financial independence has become synonymous with retirement. That's never should be. That they are separate. Financial independence just means you don't have to work for the paycheck, But you might want to work, and this is an important distinction I've had to make a couple of times. Just because you don't need the money for your work doesn't mean you
Richard:should work for free. Correct.
Mike:If if you're working, you should be compensated for the work that you provide to someone else whether you need the money or not.
Richard:And that's a value. You're valuing self.
Mike:If you don't, then you start to resent, and then you don't wanna do it anymore, and then you end up where you didn't wanna be in the first place. There's that balance.
Richard:Yeah. And the other thing is, just because you're not working for the company you were before doesn't mean if you enjoyed it. I mean, I'm working with a guy right now who wants to become a consultant in the industry that he's ready to retire in.
Mike:Yeah, what a great thing.
Richard:I can't wait to do it. It's going to be so much fun. Because he won't need to make the paycheck, so there's not going to be any pressure, but he's going to really enjoy bringing all this stuff he's done for them in his world to them. Here's the other thing about grandparents that we've missed in our culture, and I feel badly about that. And this is the American culture.
Richard:Do you know how much grandpa and grandma know? Their kids aren't even asking them, and their grandchildren aren't even ask. Why? Because we are not teaching our children to be curious, to be inquisitive, to tap grandpa and grandma.
Mike:I got a story on that. So church I attend had all the youth one summer go and interview your grandparents. That was the dumbest thing we were gonna do. I mean, before the year before, we had this musical, like, was a part the pit orchestra. It was this magnificent thing.
Mike:The year before that like, we we always had these big summer events at church
Richard:Right.
Mike:For all the youth. Right? From 11 to to 18 or so. And this year, they said, you're gonna go interview your grandparents. Ask them a bunch of questions.
Mike:I thought, this is so dumb. Now, I had lived with my grandparents for some time as well. So I already knew who they were, or so I thought. When I went and asked them these questions, I had no idea. I knew nothing about them.
Richard:Just like that couple in my office. Yeah. We stopped being inquisitive. I don't know where that happened or when it happened. I mean, stories of my grandma growing up in
Mike:the Midwest, I'm from Seattle, we've all lived in Seattle, and where she would just wander off around, you know, barefoot just in the town, and the old there was like two neighbors down who was a woodworker or whatever. She'd walk over and just say, you know, what you doing? And he'd be like, what are you doing here? And then he would show her, and it was a safe place, stories about how to get food in the depression.
Richard:Oh, yeah.
Mike:Because they they had to sell it, but no one would buy it, they'd try and throw it away. They tried to throw it away, but they could clean it up enough, they could still eat things like like, these were stories I was hearing going, what in the world? How did you two meet the struggle of college back in Champaign Urbana, Illinois, where they met and they had to go to college one year and then work the second year because they couldn't get into debt, they wouldn't do it? So they they had yeah. Prolonged I mean, these stories I'm going, oh, you lived a life.
Mike:You had struggles, and these were your strategies on how you moved past it. No idea. I mean, all these different how my grandpa moved I believe he moved from Lithuania. It was him or I mean, his father's, their first generation from Lithuania to Chicago. He became a cop, and just the cultural differences in all of I mean, I would have never known.
Mike:It's it's just these these things
Richard:incredible history is is thriving. It's growing across the world. Well, people who get involved in it become very passionate. That's just knowing who where you came from. Identity.
Richard:Yeah. That's part of your identity.
Mike:So I'm gonna touch real quick on physical, then I'm gonna kinda go back to what we're talking about here. But just to stay in order, physical activities, this one's really important. We start losing muscle mass midlife. Yeah. If you don't focus on strength training in retirement and make it a part of your routine, my goodness, you're asking for it.
Mike:I mean, it's it's it's bad. I know a lot
Richard:of people is when I talk to retirees or people getting ready to retire, they hear this a lot. They they hear exercise a lot. But I'd like just to break it down as simple as we can right now. K. If nothing else, walk every day.
Richard:Just walk. Put yourself in motion. Next level up, do some sort of resistance training. It might be bands. I I have gadgets around my office constantly.
Mike:Bands are tough, okay? That can be a grueling workout too.
Richard:No offense, but there is so much you can be doing that you can utilize, that you could even do in the privacy of your own home. You don't need a membership. But that's also another way, is to join a club, a membership club. If you're not moving, you're atrophying. Because at our age, at my age, I can't recover like I used to recover.
Richard:I recognize that. So to me, staying even is a win. If I can stay even, then I'm doing the things I need to do to maintain my mind is healthy. By the way, I did an experiment in college. This one semester, I took eighteen credit hours, but I was working out every day.
Richard:I was playing basketball three days a week, lifting weights, running. I was doing all these things, and it was just a crazy semester. I thought, okay, I'm gonna do an experiment. I'm not working out and playing ball next semester, so I have more time to study. Halfway through the semester, I was toast.
Richard:couldn't stay awake in class. I wasn't getting as good as grades. I wasn't able to focus on my studies. And I bagged that plan, and I went back to playing ball and exercising again. Your mind is directly connected to your physical body, and your physical body is connected to your mind.
Mike:Yeah. And we won't talk too much more about it, but if I to put a plug in, the books Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men and Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women is one of the most it is one of the best scientifically cited fitness books where it explains the why, all of these pop cultural fitness hacks, why they're crap, and depending on different stages of life, how can you just sustain health and wellness from a physical standpoint. Really cool stuff. Number seven real quick, and we're gonna touch on religion, but spiritual activities. Now this is serotonin, which you said was a balancing endorphin.
Mike:A study, again, Medical School found that people who engage in daily mindfulness or faith based practices lower stress, have higher life satisfaction, and improve immune responses. Correct. Which is a healthcare thing. I don't really know why that's the case, and maybe you can comment on that, but why is, whether you're religious or not, this mindfulness, this meditation, what does it really do to someone? And why or how would you structure it in a designing of a retirement?
Richard:Yeah. Let's start with the spiritual side of it, nonreligious, nonorganized religion, just for a second. K. The reason mindfulness is so power is because you're balancing. That's why it's serotonin.
Richard:What are you balancing? Your upstairs and downstairs brains. What's that mean? Your cognitive, your logical, reasonable, rational self, and your subconscious, your emotional, your power, your imagination.
Richard:When you balance those two, you become one. That's why serotonin is there. And when, I just I teach this regularly with clients or even with friends and family. Fun story. My my kids used to call me and have me put their their kids to bed when I was living in Washington using mindfulness when they were really active at night.
Richard:Well, here's what it does. When you're using mindfulness, you're narrowly focused on specific things. So you it's called bypassing the critical faculty. You're able to get past the filter of the cognitive into the subconscious where all your power is. And when you start processing that way, you start creating neural pathways.
Richard:And then you bring this balance so the downstairs brain subconscious is aligning with the conscious. Your logical part will never do something wrong. It just doesn't. It's not wired that way. All your emotions are down here.
Richard:But what if the two are aligning with each other? And so when you do that, you allow all of that to rest and to rejuvenate and to heal. That's why it feels so good because you're balancing in that space. Even the hardest core people who won't let you in, if they practice that mindfulness, Because what they're afraid of is their emotion. Right?
Richard:We've judged women since the fall of Adam. I was just reading. I was researching that again. We've judged them because they're saying they're weak because they're emotional. Well, let me speak to you retirees or engineers out there.
Richard:You are the most emotional product on the planet humanity. Why? You're so dang afraid of your emotions that you suppress them and don't realize you're being controlled by them. You think because you're calm during a discussion that you're emotionless. No.
Richard:You're just calm during the discussion on the outside, but inside you're churning a million miles an hour. And then you're judging inappropriately someone who actually has an emotion, who can cry. What you do there is you balance it. Engineers love this when they do it, and they stop being afraid because emotions, that intuition is a combination of fact and experience along with how you feel in it. So the brightest people, the most productive people are ones who can balance that emotion with the cognitive and the reason and the ration and the science.
Richard:But use science the way it's supposed to be, not made up stuff that we are so politically engaged today. Pop culture clickbait ideas. And the stuff when it's I'm not gonna go there.
Mike:Yeah. Maybe another time. Yeah.
Richard:But the idea is mindfulness is so powerful. Next step, religion. Yeah. In religion, they teach you to pray. Right?
Richard:They teach you to pray to God. Mhmm. But too many religions well, I don't know of one that does it this way, but they teach you to pray their way, and it becomes rote to where I mean, have you ever had your prayers? You just feel like they hit the ceiling and they bounce off and they don't go anywhere. Well, why?
Richard:Well, that's because we're doing it the same way, and we're not actually getting down where it should be. We're not balancing that. And I actually teach addicts, I do a lot of addiction recovery, how to pray in such a way they get past the roof to where they feel that they're connecting God. Well, here's what religion also does for you, is that when you can connect with God that way, your identity becomes enhanced. Your purpose becomes enhanced and your ability to connect becomes enhanced.
Richard:Second, you have people around you, like minded people. Your connections enhance. Your purpose becomes enhanced. And then you're doing service with others. Most religions are service based religions.
Richard:There's so much there. And by the way, that religion will bring in some degree of principle based container for you, your structure. So there's huge benefits to that religious component, starting with mindfulness. I found many people are religious, and when they retire, they're gonna get more involved with their church, Mosque or or Doesn't matter what. Temple or religion can do so much good.
Richard:And I don't wanna hear the argument that they've done bad because that is not accurate. So we'll we'll leave it there. I by the way, I just had a huge argument with my AI guy. I nicknamed my AI after my father-in-law because he's so brilliant. I call him Frank.
Richard:I just had an argument with AI. And what we found is that science, the way it's constructed, really is a faith based religion. It's just that they don't admit they're faith based and that they don't know an answer, so they make up answers and they plug in the gaps with what they Right. But religionists will admit I'm faith based. I can't prove to you there's a God.
Richard:I can't prove to you certain things, nor do I want to, nor do I need to. I live by faith. Faith is not an ignorant blind thing. It's an intellectual movement on your side that puts you into action, but we're diverting a little bit. Yeah.
Mike:Next time. When your grandkids aren't at home The waiting for last one here, which this is another two edged sword, is mentorship activities. And at least the research that I came across is you have all of this knowledge, and to be able to do an activity with someone else who wants that knowledge is incredibly satisfying. But the key boundaries here is they have to want your knowledge. So for example, mean, I think of a grandparent, for example, that what if they were of similar mindset or similar profession, they had something that I was already actively trying to learn and grow, and I could use them as a resource.
Mike:That could be a cool experience, but you have to they have to initiate. Like, you can't force and put your your wisdom and knowledge on someone else. They have to want it. But it's not just families you're sharing with your kids or grandkids your wisdom. They have to want it.
Mike:Maybe it's consulting, that you're sharing your wisdom to a younger generation and getting compensated for it. Maybe it's writing a book and you're sharing your knowledge whether it gets published or not. Maybe it's tutoring at a local school or a church, but you've spent a lifetime learning something. And to be able to share that genealogy, writing down your genealogy History. Yeah.
Mike:But to be able to take all that you've done and to have an opportunity to share it can be a very meaningful part of a retirement as long as you're not imposing it on someone. It has to be received.
Richard:Yeah. You've emphasized that a number of times and for good reason. So let's go back to you just visiting with your grandchildren. The reason they don't ask you questions about you is, one, they haven't been commissioned to. But two, is because you you volunteer all the information already.
Richard:There's a supply and demand issue going on with your grandchildren. If you have a lot of supply of your ideas and your thoughts and your complaints, there is no demand for them at all.
Richard:But what if everything you all the time you spend with your children is to learn about them or the grandchildren, and you ask them lots of questions? So pretty soon, you'll find so with my grand my granddaughters, I know that my one my eldest granddaughter was going through a tough time. And when I went over to visit him, she gave me a big hug, and she sits down. She cuddles up with me, and I said, tell me what's going on. So she was telling me.
Richard:All I said was, would you like to find a way to calm your nerves right now and to process through that a little bit better? She goes, oh, Baba, can you teach that to me? I've got this gorgeous 17 year old granddaughter of mine who's gonna be a physician's assistant
Richard:Who is applying to some big schools, and she's the leader of her dance squad ever, and I just teach her mindfulness.
Richard:And she goes and I finished it. It was about ten minutes. We were just in the there's a lot of stuff going on in the room, and she goes, papa, don't stop. That feels so good.
Richard:Dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and the biggest dang smile you've ever seen on a grandfather's face.
Mike:So it's okay to offer it, but you have to be okay if they say no
Richard:right with her was such that I spend all of my effort knowing about her, Abigail. Mhmm. I don't tell her what I'm doing. She doesn't know all the stuff that I've done. She's never asked because I'm always asking her.
Richard:But when I volunteered a way to solve a problem she had, she wanted it. And if she said, not right now, Baba. Not a good time. I'd have been fine with that. So there's our start.
Richard:Where else where else could we do it? You've got these people who've spent, whether it was a blue collar work or white collar work. There are so many ways that you can reach out to the community to offer that
Richard:That people are constantly looking for help. One thing that came to my mind is you could be an adjunct professor at a local community college.
Mike:Oh, how fun would that be?
Richard:They don't pay much, but who cares? I've done that at two or three different colleges, and it was a riot to do that because those kids want to just they want to absorb it. When you walk in with that little seasoned aura and energy about you, and you say, well, here's the textbook, and that's fine, but the person who wrote the textbook never worked in the real world. I'll never forget my first class like that. I had so much fun doing that and teaching them, well, this is kind of the real world stuff.
Richard:Great way to get all three of those again. There are definitely ways you can reach out to the community. But always remember that it starts with who you are, what's your identity, and it starts back to family. I can't emphasize enough. Practice this with family.
Richard:It's gonna
Mike:be easier than when you move out. And just to kind of summarize everything here is, hopefully, to all those that are listening to this conversation, you realize how much work needs to be done before you start putting together the financial plan. That doesn't mean you can't play around with the plan, play around with the idea, kind of see where you are. But it's, at least I feel, it's very difficult to put together a financial plan or retirement plan when you really don't know what you want your retirement to look like. How often are you gonna be traveling to see family?
Mike:What new hobbies are you gonna do? I've had people that start new businesses in retirement. Okay. What's the start up capital to get your business going? What's the probability it will be successful?
Mike:And how do we plan for that? We we need to know these things. And too often people say, well, is what I'm making. If I can just have this income, I'll figure out the rest later. And that's backwards.
Richard:Right.
Mike:So hopefully, these eight things in the earlier conversation can help people just start thinking and processing through. What if I were to retire tomorrow? What would that look like? Because the book Retire on Time, it's a bit tongue in cheek. It doesn't mean as soon as possible.
Mike:It's on time for you.
Richard:On the right time.
Mike:Your timeline. Anything to add before we adjourn?
Richard:Just the idea that money is rarely a math problem. Money is a psychological issue. It's an emotional regulation issue.
Richard:Your happiness in retirement is going to be directly correlated to your ability to emotionally regulate, to have an identity, have a purpose, properly connect, and then have a structured, which we didn't cover much, but a principle based structure in which to operate. How powerful would that be if you started that now? Now what about those listening that are already there? How powerful would it be if you started now? Today.
Mike:So really appreciate you being here and
Richard:and sharing some wisdom. It's a pleasure. Thanks.
Mike:That's all the time we've got for today's show. If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to subscribe to the show, the podcast on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. Also, to retireontime.com for more resources, workshop workshops, and much more. That's www.retireontime.com. We'll see you in the next show.