The Retirement Wisdom Podcast

Make 2025 your year!

Free 2-part Workshop to build 3 new habits

January 3 and 10th  – 12 Noon Eastern – 1 hour via Zoom

Sign Up here

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While we focus on the non-financial aspects of retirement here, your money clearly matters. With a new year around the corner we check back in with economist Larry Kotlikoff, author of Money Magic: An Economist’s Secrets to More Money,Less Risk and a Better Life, for his views on what may lie ahead, common mistakes to avoid with Social Security, how you can Maximize (Your) Social Security, why Roth IRA conversions make sense for many people and his retirement planning software MaxiFi.

Larry Kotlikoff joins us from Rhode Island.

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Bio

Laurence J. Kotlikoff is a William Fairfield Warren Professor at Boston University, a Professor of Economics at Boston University, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, President of Economic Security Planning, Inc., a company specializing in financial planning software, a Research Associate of the Gaidar Institute, and a Research Fellow of the Goodman Institute. Kotlikoff is also a New York Times Best Selling author. The Economist Magazine ranked Kotlikoff one of the world’s 25 most influential economists.

Professor Kotlikoff received his B.A. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973 and his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University in 1977. From 1977 through 1983, Kotlikoff served on the faculties of economics of the University of California, Los Angeles and Yale University. In 1981-82 Professor Kotlikoff was a Senior Economist with the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Professor Kotlikoff’s writings and research address personal finance, inequality, taxation, Social Security, climate change, investing, healthcare, deficits, and insurance.

Professor Kotlikoff is author or co-author of 20 books, hundreds of professional journal articles, and a multitude of op eds and blogs. His most recent books are Money Magic: An Economist’s Secrets to More Money,Less Risk and a Better Life, You’re Hired, Get What’s Yours – the Revised Secrets to Maxing Out Your Social Security (a NY Times Best Seller co-authored with Philip Moeller and Paul Solman), The Clash of Generations (co-authored with Scott Burns), The Economic Consequences of the Vickers Commission, Jimmy Stewart Is Dead, Spend ‘Til the End, (co-authored with Scott Burns), Generational Policy (MIT Press), The Healthcare Fix, and The Coming Generational Storm (co-authored with Scott Burns). Kotlikoff’s columns have appeared in The NY Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Hill, The Financial Times, The Times of London, Forbes, CBNC, Bloomberg, PBS NewsHour, The Dallas News, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the Seattle Times, Vox, Fortune, Seeking Alpha, Yahoo.com, VoxEU, Huffington Post, and other leading media.

Kotlikoff has served as a consultant to the Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Harvard Institute for International Development, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Swedish Ministry of Finance, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance, the Bank of Italy, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England, the Government of Russia, the Government of Ukraine, the Government of Bolivia, the Government of Bulgaria, the Treasury of New Zealand, the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Joint Committee on Taxation, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, The American Council of Life Insurance, Merrill Lynch, Fidelity Investments, AT&T, AON Corp., and other major U.S. corporations. Kotlikoff has provided expert testimony on numerous occasions to committees of Congress including the Senate Finance Committee, the Senate Budget Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Joint Economic Committee.  Kotlikoff’s company markets economics-based financial planning software, including maxifiplanner.com, maximizemysocialssecurity.com, and analyzemydivorcesettlement.com.

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For More on Laurence J. Kotlikoff

MaxiFi financial planning software

Maximize My Social Security,

Money Magic: An Economist’s Secrets to More Money,Less Risk, and a Better Life

Website: Kotlikoff.net

Follow on Twitter @Kotlikoff

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

The Retirement Savings Time Bomb – Ed Slott

An Economist’s Take on Retirement Planning – Larry Kotlikoff

The Key Decisions for Retirement Success – Wade Pfau

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About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast

There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time.

About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.5 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

Connect on LinkedIn

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Wise Quotes

On Social Security Mistakes

“Well, almost everybody’s taking Social Security as soon as they can, or as soon as soon as they retire. And so we’re talking about probably 90% of people taking it before 65 or at 65. And that’s for almost everybody way too early. So we have, and when we’re talking about the typical American household leaving $182,000 on the table by taking the wrong benefits at the wrong time. And so going too early, not knowing about all the benefits that they have available, not running optimization software. I have a software company that has a $49 tool, which is called Maximize My Social Security, which for 49 bucks, you can figure out what to do in terms of raising your lifetime benefits. And it can be, for some people, we’ve raised their benefits with our tool, just that alone by $600,000. If you talk about a high earning couple, both of whom want to take benefits, retire at 62 and take benefits at 62. Well, rather than 70, when their benefit would start 76% higher adjusted for inflation. This is like the dumbest thing in the world. If you’re cashflow constrained, you should borrow steal or beg from your brother to give you money to get by to let, and then pay them back when you get this much higher benefit because it’s fantastic return to patients. And a lot of people are doing this because they’re being focused. by the financial industry by Wall Street on life expectancy. Hey, your life expectancy is only this, you better take your money because if you don’t take it, you’re going to lose it. So if you don’t take your Social Security at 62 and you die at 63, where are you going to be? You’re going to be in heaven, right? And you’re not going to need any money. So the idea that you’re going to lose it, well, you’re not going to lose it, okay? What you’re really going to lose is the insurance protection. When you’re 98 and you’ve lived that long and you’ve had to pay for yourself that whole way, not having a 76% higher number every month coming in to your bank account. So Social Security is longevity insurance. And if social security, which is our largest insurance company in the world, would take off all these life expectancy calculators on its website and it’s like having a health. It’s like having a homeowners insurance company putting onto their website a calculator that says what your expected loss from a fire is. And they’ll show everybody that it’s not that big and not that many fires. So therefore don’t buy full coverage. Let your house burn down and because it’s not going to happen on that often. Yeah, but you only have one house, right? You only have one life. You’re not going to die on time. Nobody dies on time. You can’t count on dying on time. So you have and then you also have people with this psychology that if they think about living to 100, they’re going to die the next morning, if they’re going to jinx themselves. Well, OK, but they do think about their house burning down and they ensure against it, right? It doesn’t it doesn’t lead to their house burning down, but and that’s money well lost if your house doesn’t burn down, right having paid that premium.”

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The views and opinions expressed by guests on The Retirement Wisdom Podcast are solely those of the guests and do not reflect the opinion of the host or Retirement Wisdom, LLC. The Retirement Wisdom Podcast primarily covers the non-financial aspects of retirement. From time to time we may invite guests who discuss other aspects of retirement planning, solely for educational purposes. Listeners are advised to consult qualified financial and/or medical professionals on those matters.

Make the New Year Your Best Year

Free 2-part Workshop to build 3 new habits

January 3 and 10th  – 12 Noon Eastern – 1 hour via Zoom

Sign Up here

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As the year winds down, it’s time to reflect – and look ahead. Carol Orsborn, author of the new book Spiritual Aging: Weekly Reflections for Embracing Life, explains why it’s a wise move to continue that practice  with weekly reflections to tune into the spiritual side of aging.

Carol Orsborn joins us from Tennessee.

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Bio

Dr. Carol Orsborn is the best-selling author of over 35 books including her forthcoming Spiritual Aging: Weekly Reflections for Embracing Life. Her body of work includes The Making of an Old Soul: Aging as the Fulfillment of Life’s Promise.  Older, Wiser, Fiercer: The Wisdom Collection  and 2015 Gold Nautilus Book Award winner in the category of Consciously Aging: The Spirituality of Age: A Seeker’s Guide to Growing Older (with Robert L. Weber, Ph.D.) She has recently launched the Spiritual Aging Study and Support Group (SASS) at Spiritual Aging@ Substack.com.  She founded the Conscious Aging Book Club in conjunction with Parnassus Books and now housed at CarolOrsborn.com, and the Sage-ing Book Club run in conjunction with the leading organization in the field Sage-ing International

Carol is curator of Fierce with Age:  The Archives of Boomer Wisdom, Inspiration, and Spirituality, housed at CarolOrsborn.com and a leading voice of the conscious aging and spirituality and aging movements.  For the past decade, she has also blogged about the Boomer Generation for Huffington Post, BeliefNet.com and PBS’s Next Avenue, among others.

Dr. Orsborn received her Masters of Theological Studies and Doctorate in History and Critical Theory of Religion from Vanderbilt University with post-graduate work in Spiritual Counseling at the New Seminary in Manhattan. She is an internationally-recognized thought leader on the fulfillment of the human potential through all life stages.

For the past forty years, Dr. Orsborn has been a leading voice of her generation, appearing on Oprah, NBC Nightly News and on The Today Show among many others. Her blogs have appeared regularly in Huffington Post, Beliefnet, NPR’s Next Avenue and McKnights, among others.  She has been  a frequent speaker at conferences and events such as the American Society of Aging, Sage-ing International Conference, Boomerstock, the Positive Aging Conference, Omega Institute and the American Academy of Religion.

Dr. Orsborn established her reputation as a generational expert as co-founder of the first global initiative by a top ten PR company dedicated to helping brands such as Ford, AARP, Prudential and Humana communicate with Boomers. She has brought her talks and retreats on resilience, spirituality and aging to such venues as Omega Institute, American Society of Aging, Positive Aging Conference, Vanderbilt University Hospital and many other aging, healthcare, spiritual and religious groups.

Dr. Orsborn received her Doctorate in History and Critical Theory of Religion from Vanderbilt University, specializing in adult development and ritual studies, including intergenerational values formation and transmission. She has served on the faculties of Pepperdine, Loyola Marymount and Georgetown Universities.  Dr. Orsborn lives in Nashville, Tennessee and Toronto, Canada.

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For More on Carol Orsborn

Spiritual Aging: Weekly Reflections for Embracing Life

Website

Substack

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

The Vintage Years – Dr. Francine Toder

Slow Living – Stephanie O’Dea

From Role to Soul – Connie Zweig

Getting Good at Getting Older – Rabbi Laura Geller

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Thinking of retiring? Start here with our Best Books on Retirement summaries

_______________________

About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast

There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time.

About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.5 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

Connect on LinkedIn

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Wise Quotes

On Purpose

“…my doctorate is in History and Critical Theory of Religion. And I looked at the phenomenon of meaning and religion and spirituality through every academic lens that there is – sociological, anthropological, philosophical. And when I came to the end of all of the scientific explanations, there was something that I think William James called something more. What is the something more? There’s always something more that you can’t explain. And that is the world of spirit. Some people are more comfortable with the word spirit than spirituality. But I think we all know what it means to, to have your spirit intact, to feel like there’s something more, and that you’re here for a purpose…And if you’re aging, my favorite theory that I practice is that aging is not just a problem to be solved. Aging itself is a spiritual experience. So where is that something more?”

On Unretiring

“But why I ended up unretiring three times now is because after a long period of time of having freedom, having quality relationships with my friends, going slower, sitting by the river, reading the classics, whatever it is I wanted to do, I would hear a voice in my mind that I recognize as being called. And I was called to write three books. And so I came out of retirement for each of the three books. And I’m really proud of these three books, but the most recent time was the current book, Spiritual Aging: Weekly Reflections for Embracing Life.”

On Solitude and Freedom

“I was alone, but I wasn’t lonely. And what I was was practicing solitude, a contemplative lifestyle. And what we are in society is uneducated about the things that are unpopular or not talked about much in society, how they can be held differently. And there’s vast literature out there about the joys of solitude and the benefits of it. And some for short term and some as a lifestyle. And what we have to do is stop judging ourselves and judging others. And I go to Ram Dass who taught me, there is no right or wrong way to age. There’s only your way. So if I am finally giving myself permission to spend long periods of time alone, you know, not trying to be popular, not going to every party, and not worrying about fear of missing out. What a blessing to me. That’s freedom.”

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Make the New Year Your Best Year

Free 2-part Workshop to build 3 new habits

January 3 and 10th  – 12 Noon Eastern – 1 hour via Zoom

Sign Up here 

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It’s a great time of year to slow down. But what about next year? Is it time for slow living?

Stephanie O’Dea, author of Slow Living: Cultivating a Life of Purpose in a Hustle-Driven World, shares her personal experiences with slowing down, the benefits of living a different lifestyle and how to get started.

Stephanie O’Dea joins us from California.

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Bio

Stephanie O’Dea is a New York Times best selling author, host of the Slow Living Podcast, and a mom of three. She writes, coaches, teaches, and speaks about all things Slow Living.

In 2008, Stephanie made a New Year’s resolution to use her crockpot slow cooker every day for a year and write about it online. This simple idea resulted in 10 books, a spot on the New York Times best-sellers list, and a job that she loves — and one she can do at home, in her pajamas. Stephanie has appeared on Good Morning America, The Rachael Ray Show, featured in Real Simple Magazine, Woman’s World, and Oprah.com.

She is a contributing editor to Simply Gluten Free Magazine and is featured in the infomercial for the Ninja Cooking System. For a more comprehensive press listing, please visit her online home at stephanieodea.com.

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For More on Stephanie O’Dea

Slow Living: Cultivating a Life of Purpose in a Hustle-Driven World

Website

Podcast

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Podcast Conversations You May Like

Edit Your Life – Elisabeth Sharp McKetta

The Power of Saying No – Vanessa Patrick, PhD

We’re All Ageing. Are You Up for a Bolder Approach? – Carl Honoré

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Wise Quotes

On Habits

“And so if you have a long list of New Year’s resolutions or things that you want to change about yourself or habits you want to start or habits you want to stop, that’s okay. If for some reason, you have ‘fallen off the wagon’ on March 1st, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It just means that you’ve taken a little bit of a pause. And so I’m a huge fan of like 30 day challenges and things like that. But what I joke with my coaching clients is who cares if it took you 45 days to meet a 30 day goal in the great big, huge scheme of things and the trajectory of your life, it’s just a teeny, tiny blip. So I don’t want people to think that they’ve failed when they’ve really just stumbled in real life. There’s there’s ups and downs and all arounds and we’ve got hurricanes and natural disasters and the roof blows off and and and that’s real life.”

On Creating Your Mood

“…Mindset + Action + Consistency = Success. So when you’re in a good mood, that’s mindset, For me, I like… journaling, yoga, going on long walks, spending time in nature. That’s how I get myself in a good mood. And it is different for everybody. Although I will say that if you’re getting yourself in a good mood by a vice that might not be healthy for you in the long term, pay attention to that. Find your good mood in healthy ways. And then ask yourself these open-ended questions. And the answers that come back are the action steps to take. And then consistency is doing the things you told yourself you would do on a consistent basis. And it also means that sometimes you might not want to do those things, but you sort of convince yourself to do them anyways. Real life. Lots of variables that you can’t control. So humans like to feel as if they can control things. So in order to get that sort of feeling of control, many times the first step is s to sort of declutter things that aren’t working for you. And it could be physical items in your home if they’re creating kind of this brain noise every time you look at your desk, it makes you feel stressed out. Okay, that’s something to pay attention to. It could be too many obligations on your calendar. And that means that for a while you need to declutter and start saying no to things just so you have a little bit more space in your day-to-day. It could also be particular people and relationships that you need to declutter. And maybe not forever, but maybe you hit the pause button and no one needs to know either. And then later, when you start to feel calmer and more, quote unquote, in control, you can begin to add things back into your life.”

On Redefining Success

“It’s a great question because I think sometimes markers are of success. People are looking for external validation. And so, if you’re a doctor or a lawyer or something like that, you’ve quote unquote made it in life. and you’re successful. I would ask for you and your listeners to write out what their version of success looks like. For some people that’s living in a high-rise in Manhattan. For some it’s living on a farm with some sheep and goats and walking the property every morning and feeling the dew on their boots. The accolades have to come from within. I would like for you to climb into bed each night feeling content and feeling at peace and knowing I did my best. Maybe there’s no one to see it but if there’s food in the fridge and happy kids and happy relationship and I can crawl around on the floor with my grandchildren great that’s success.  You may never be internet famous. You may never have a Tesla. And that’s OK. You get to decide what success looks like for you.”

On Starting Now

“I know since you talk about the idea of retiring into something instead of leaving, it’s not this like clear, thick, dark line, like this was Former Me and this is Future Me. I would want you to start to envelop your new habits now while you’re still working. So, if you think, Oh, when I retire, I’m going to start doing yoga every single day, okay, great, but you can also start doing yoga now and see if you’re even interested in it. 10 minutes and 20 minutes completely counts when you’re trying on a new habit or hobby for size.”

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Thinking of retiring? Start here with our Best Books on Retirement summaries

_______________________

About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast

There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time.

About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.5 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

Connect on LinkedIn

 

 

 

 

It’s time to catch up on any of our best podcast conversations you may have missed this fall.

Listen to any of the full podcast conversations below:

Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You – Teresa Amabile

The Good Life – Marc Schulz

The Art of the Interesting – Lorraine Besser, PhD

Passion and Purpose – Jim Ansara

How to Retire – Christine Benz

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Other Best Of Episodes:

Best of 2024 – Part Two

Best of 2024 – Part One

Best of 2023 – Part Three

_______________________

About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast

There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time.

About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.5 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

 

 

 

 

Retiring? Don’t drift into the lazy river. Design Your New (active and interesting) Life. Learn More

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In days gone by, people used to think they were done – and headed off to retirement. Not any more. Now, the questions to ask yourself  are what’s my potential for the likely decades that lie ahead? And how can I live well – and wisely? Ben Lytle, former CEO of Anthem, and author of The Potentialist: The Pursuit of Wisdom, believes that wisdom and potential are our ideal adaptive responses for the interesting times we’re living in today. He also believes that wisdom and untapped potential reside in everyone, waiting to be released.

Ben Lytle joins us from Scottsdale, Arizona.

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Bio

Ben Lytle is a self-made serial entrepreneur and CEO known for being ahead of the curve. He is the author of “The Potentialist: Your Future in the New Reality of the Next Thirty Years,” a guidebook for success during the fast-changing, turbulent, and opportunity-rich times ahead. His new book in the series is The Potentialist: The Pursuit of Wisdom.

Ben is best known as the founding CEO of Anthem, Inc. (NYSE), one of the leading US health plans with a market capitalization placing it in the top tier of the Fortune 500; and Acordia, Inc. (NYSE), which became the world’s sixth-largest insurance broker. He cofounded three companies with his entrepreneurial son, Hugh, and invests in technologies that address New Reality challenges, such as increasing productivity to offset declining populations, caring for the elderly, and preserving human legacies.

Ben has extensive public policy experience at the state and federal levels and has held board leadership roles in a wide range of industries. His contributions have been recognized by numerous awards and in books and periodicals. He has been a speaker and university guest lecturer on health, healthcare policy, entrepreneurship, and human potential throughout his career.

Beyond his career, Ben’s passions include his family of three adult children and eight adult grandchildren, along with lifelong avocations for physical fitness, travel, reading, human potential, the future, and education.

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For More on Ben Lytle

The Potentialist: The Pursuit of Wisdom

Website – potentialistfuture.com

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Mentioned in This Podcast Episode

The Many Ways WSJ Readers Use AI in Their Everyday Lives

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You – Teresa Amabile

The Art of the Interesting – Lorraine Besser, PhD

Turning the Page in Retirement – Stephen Riggio

Your Next Act – Robert B. Tucker

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Wise Quotes

On Refining, Not Retiring

“…this started about 20 years ago. I had recently stepped down. I’ve never really retired. I have refined and I’ll explain that. But I had stepped down from Anthem and I was asked to write an article about what it was like to be running this gigantic enterprise and then suddenly go be doing startups and all other kinds of things, wilderness hiking and all kinds of things. And I wrote the title of the article, and ended up being in search of a phase name because I felt that at that time I didn’t have the word yet. But I said, you know, I don’t see anybody retired in the industrial age concept. The concept was you work, you retire and then you die about three or four years later, but you have a few years there. Well, it’s not that way anymore. First of all, we live a lot longer. And so we’re essentially increasingly changing careers or changing our direction in life in in midlife, almost midlife or at the two-thirds point. You’re not down within the 10 yard line. And so it’s really changed. And so it does need a new definition. And so it hit me a few years ago about when I was writing the first book, the word refinement and to me, Joe, refinement means this is the age of discovery.”

On Experimenting

“Earlier in life we expect we can just do it because we want to do it. Find out what lights you up. Find that creative core. And then you have to be patient when you have to experiment. I experimented with a whole bunch of things before I found what I was going to do in this next part of my life. And it’s okay, but I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that. You know what? Okay, I like this. Take risks. One of the most beautiful things about this stage in life is I hope all your listeners hear, I know I am, I don’t care what anybody thinks.”

On Wisdom

“Wisdom to me is a very clear process. First of all, you can just clear off the table what it is not. It is not age. We speak of people wise beyond their years. We say out of the mouths of babes. So even children can express wisdom and that’s science. It’s also not knowledge. Like age, knowledge helps because you do get some barnacles just by living. You learn a little bit. That doesn’t make you wise. And we all know some older people who are definitely not wise. But it’s not knowledge directly either. Some people who are very simple people have a way of seeing life as it really is and living life as it really is. And they may be very uneducated, but they’re wise. And I know some of them very well. And they’re actually fascinating people. It’s not IQ. It’s not traditional measures of success, money, fame, power, social status. We can find fools in all of those. But what it is, it is what I love. The classical definition for wisdom is so beautiful. It’s poetic. It’s the art of living well. Is that fabulous? It’s the art of living well.”

On Living Well and Wisely

“Well, then that begs the question, how do you live well? You make wise decisions throughout your life, wiser than most other people, wiser than you would have ever made had you not pursued being wise. Okay, that’s good. Well, then how do you make wise decisions? It’s got two parts to it. One, if you develop the capacity for wisdom, that’s the preparation for wisdom. That’s where you can actually learn this stuff. So you develop this capacity for wisdom your entire life and you get wiser and wiser as you’re accumulating. And that’s where knowledge can play a part. But then in the moment of decision, you have to be free of those things that will cause you to act unwisely. And that formula right there is what causes even wise people like Gandhi to have made bad decisions at times, unwise decisions – not bad, unwise. Because our church here, they were incredibly wise people, but in the moment of decision, something got them and they got or distracted them and they didn’t act wisely. So what is the capacity for wisdom then that we’re developing? That’s perspective, learning to get above the day to day, the bird’s eye view, see the forest instead of the trees, look back in time to how I got here, look at today clearly, see reality clearly, and look forward. That’s perspective. That’s really important. I would say that’s the biggest missing element in most people when they act unwisely. The second is seeing reality. You think, Wow, I see reality. What are you talking about? Well, hang on a minute. Our good old ego, our not so good old ego, the negative part of the ego has around 20 plus distortions that it gives us to look at life through. So see the lens you’re looking at. Address those, either by your experiences or somebody helping you, or you can actually go out and read about them.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.5 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

It’s Thanksgiving here in the US. And there’s always a lot we can be grateful for – if we’re paying attention. This Best Of episode spins through a few of our guests who shared their experiences, insights and wisdom about gratitude. Often they found gratitude to be extremely valuable in times of adversity in their lives. I think they just might inspire you to keep gratitude going long after your tryptophan-induced nap on Thursday.

If any of the clips on gratitude intrigue you, click on the links below to listen to the full conversations.

Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving!

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Mentioned in This Episode

Get ready for that relative coming to your Thanksgiving table who sees the negative in everything:

Whatever It Is I’m Against It

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Links to the Full Conversations

Kristi Nelson – Wake Up Grateful

Brad Aronson – Changing the World One Small Act at a Time

Steven Petrow – The Joy You Make

Michael O’Brien – My Last Bad Day

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retirementwisdom.com

Check out our recommended Best Books on Retirement

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Join our Design Your New Life in Retirement Program – two new groups start in January.

Early registration discount ends November 30th | Only a few spots left.

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When you’re retiring, you think of what you’re leaving. Your work. Your paycheck. Your office. Your colleagues. But what’s next? There are many benefits to taking on something new. Something that’s challenging, and maybe even out of the box. Stephen Riggio shares his experience.

Stephen Riggio joins us from New York.

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Bio

Stephen Riggio is a visionary leader and former CEO of Barnes & Noble, where he played a crucial role in its transformation into the largest bookselling chain in the United States. His extensive career in the book industry, spanning over four decades, includes pioneering work in e-commerce and publishing. Beyond corporate endeavors, Riggio is deeply engaged in philanthropy, working with organizations like the National Book Foundation and the National Down Syndrome Society. In recent years, Riggio has turned his focus to translating and promoting classic Sicilian literature, especially the “Sicilian Avengers” series.

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For More on Stephen Riggio

Sicilian Avengers: Book One

Sicilian Avengers: Book Two

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You – Teresa Amabile

Passion and Purpose – Jim Ansara

The Art of the Interesting – Lorraine Besser, PhD

Unretired – Mark S. Walton

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Wise Quotes

On Turning the Page and Taking On Something New

“I think what you can let go of is, fortunately, you let go of the stress. And you get all of the adrenaline of something that is new. When I refer to stress, I don’t mean the type of stress that is debilitating. People would often ask me when I was in business, it’s an age-old question, Steve, what keeps you up at night? And I would say a good book because business was an all consuming thing, but there’s a point where you do have to let it go to take care of your personal life and your family, your wife and kids. But I think it is true that once you do turn that page, you can let go of that stress. And it’s a type of freedom that is very uplifting. And then if you happen to be fortunate enough to find something that you can latch onto and dig into, then that adrenaline is something that is different than you experienced in work.”

On Taking On Something New Together

“A tragic event was the cause of me learning and getting back into the language. All happy families who are alike, all grieving families, breathe in their own way. What I was looking for was a way for my wife, Laura and I to move forward. It was a year or two after that that I came up with the idea of both of us studying the Italian language together. It would be something to do together, to jump into, and we did it.”

On Opening New Doors

“It does open up a new door to your life. In some respects, when you have a career, you’re pointing in a direction. Usually people like to climb the career ladder. They want more responsibility and greater financial rewards. In this particular case, it was a door that I opened that I didn’t know where it would lead. So with the idea of something that is a little bit uncertain and unexpected there’s a serendipitous aspect of it that I think is very appealing. When I started taking lessons with my wife, we did it together, we didn’t know that we would discover my ancestry going back 400 years, that we would meet distant relatives, they’d become very close to us that I would discover things about my family I never knew, and then that I would translate a book. So it’s a door that was open and I don’t know where it would lead.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.5 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

 

Your retirement? You could wing it, but that’s not you.

Design Your Future.  Join our Design Your New Life in Retirement Program – two new groups start in January.

Learn more

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To retire or to work longer? There’s another option that may be just right for you – semi-retirement. We catch up with Liz Weston, who retired from NerdWallet earlier this year on how its working for her – and what you can learn from her experience.

Liz Weston joins us from California.

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Bio

Liz Weston is an award-winning personal finance columnist, speaker, commentator and author of several books about money. She earned the Certified Financial Planner® designation in 2016. Her question-and-answer column “Money Talk” appears in newspapers throughout the country, including the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune, Palm Beach Post and the  Oregonian.

Liz Weston’s  book “Your Credit Score” is a national best-seller now in its fifth edition. The New York Times called one of her other books, “The 10 Commandments of Money: Survive and Thrive in the New Economy,” a “wonderful basic personal finance book…supportive of people struggling to understand these topics and trying to make ends meet.”

You may have heard Liz Weston on public radio as she’s contributed to American Public Media’s “Marketplace Money,” and NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” and “All Things Considered.” She’s appeared on “Dr. Phil,” “Today Show” and NBC Nightly News, and was for several years a weekly commentator on CNBC’s “Power Lunch.”

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For More on Liz Weston

Ask Liz Weston

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You – Teresa Amabile

The Balancing Act in Retirement – Stew Friedman

The Portfolio Life – Christina Wallace

The Joy You Make – Steven Petrow

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On Deciding to Retire…and Joy

“I think what surprised me the most is how fun this is. That was what I was really worried about – what would retirement be like? So many people are rushing towards it, and they don’t really think about what life will be like afterwards. And I was thinking a lot about how I would spend my time, what I would do, what the challenges might be, and what’s caught me by surprise is just this feeling of joy. I feel like a kid on the first day of summer vacation, and I know this won’t last. Everything changes. This is kind of the honeymoon period, but yeah, it’s really fun.Well, I’m incredibly blessed and lucky that the financial stuff was in place. It was taken care of, and it allowed me to retire a little bit earlier than the norm. But again, the other thing that surprised me was how hard that decision was to make, because I really loved what I did…And then a friend and former colleague of mine died in a car accident. And he was only 61 and we’d spent a lot of time talking about what we were going to do in retirement. And it brought home the fact that we don’t have infinite time.”

On Semi-Retirement – and Off-Ramps

“I think it’s the best option, especially, if you like what you do, and you have skills that can continue on in retirement where you don’t need to work full-time. I had really wanted an off-ramp from my job at NerdWallet, and they didn’t support working part-time. So that was kind of a difficult thing to wrap my head around and realize, okay, I don’t have this option, so this was the next best. A lot of companies, though, do have some kind of off-ramp, and I think it helps people a lot because you keep your foot in the workplace, you can have continuing, you know, because social interaction is so important, you can have that part of your identity still remain intact so you have that sense of purpose. You’re making some money, which for a lot of people is really important to make their money last, but you’re starting the process of exiting. And just as a rant on the side, if somebody listening to this is part of a company and has decision-making power, please think about it. This because you’ve got a lot of talent sitting there that’s on its way out the door that might have a lot of institutional knowledge. You might be able to squeeze a few more years out of them if you give them that option where they can just slowly ratchet down their work commitment. If you can offer benefits even better that’s another big stumbling block for those who are looking at early retirement. But you know there’s a lot of us out there with a lot to give and we’d like to stay on a little bit longer. If you offer that option I think they will really take advantage of it. I think a lot of companies would find that out if they experimented with this option.”

On Purpose & Community

“And there was also a learning curve or training period that had to be gone through. So taking a look at that thinking about the options before you retire is really important – thinking about your sense of purpose, how you’ll get that. But you don’t develop relationships overnight. So it’s important if you don’t have a lot of friends or all your friends will still be working to start building those opportunities to meet more people, and it doesn’t have to be these, you know, incredibly intense friendships that you develop all over the place. So just you know doing things that you enjoy that other people enjoy can be a way to have those little interactions throughout the day that can make you feel more attuned and more connected to your community.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.5 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

Take Charge of Your Future. Imagine Possibilities with Design Thinking – and Test Them.

Join our Design Your New Life in Retirement Program – two new groups start in January.

Learn more

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Getting older brings questions. Debra Whitman, PhD, the Chief Public Policy Officer for AARP, had questions, too. Her research led her to write the new book “The Second Fifty: Answers to the 7 Big Questions of Midlife and Beyond.” You’ll benefit from her insights from interviews with experts and takeaways from cutting-edge research across a range of topics including brain health, an older workforce, caregiving and retirement.

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Bio

Debra Whitman is the author of The Second Fifty: Answers to the 7 Big Questions of Midlife and Beyond. She is an economist and expert on aging issues with an extensive background in policymaking and research. As EVP and Chief Public Policy Officer for AARP, Debra leads a team of 150 experts in all aspects of policy development, analysis, research, and global thought leadership to produce policy and research insights and solutions that help communities, lawmakers, and the private sector improve our lives as we age.

Debra serves as an AARP spokesperson on a diverse set of issues including long-term care and caregiving, financial security, health and longevity, and engaging a multi-generational workforce. She connects with a range of stakeholders such as the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Forbes and the Aspen Institute. Previously, as staff director for the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, Debra worked across the aisle to increase retirement security, lower health care costs, protect vulnerable seniors, make the pharmaceutical industry more transparent, and improve our long-term care system. Before that, she worked for the Congressional Research Service as a specialist in the economics of aging and  served as a Brookings LEGIS Fellow to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Debra is a public speaker, mom, and an advocate for those whose voices need to be heard.

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For More on Debra Whitman

The Second Fifty: Answers to the 7 Big Questions of Midlife and Beyond

LinkedIn

@policydeb on X

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

The Measure of Our Age – MT Connolly

Breaking the Age Code – Dr. Becca Levy

Ageism Unmasked – Dr. Tracey Gendron

Lifestyle and Financial Decisions As We Age – Marjorie Fox, JD, CFP®

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Wise Quotes

On the Big Questions of Midlife & Beyond

“So I’ve been working on aging for the last 25 years at the Social Security Administration, running the Senate Aging Committee and then here at AARP, but I realized when I was about to turn 50, I didn’t have the information I wanted at my fingertips. I had books like What to Expect When You’re Expecting and Social Security for Dummies and lots of other great resources, but nothing that just comprehensively looked at all of the things that I was curious about. And so I wrote down a list of questions, everything from the most basic: How long will I live? Will I be healthy to more practical things like How long will I work or Will I have enough money? And then some tough questions like Will I lose my memory? and How will I die? And so those became the chapters of the book, but one of the things that happened as I was starting to put this together was my husband had a major heart attack at 48. And I’ll get a little bit emotional talking about it, but he was hiking by himself and had what they call the Widow Maker, which, being his wife, is not a great term when I heard it. And luckily Boulder Mountain Rescue raced up the mountain and carried him down before his heart stopped. And that experience, Joe, just helped me to think that even though I spent all my career planning for aging and a long life, we really don’t know how long we’re going to live. And so it also makes me really appreciate every day that I have – and I certainly appreciate him a lot more.”

On Zip Codes & Genetic Codes

“And so women, we live in the United States six years longer than men. I spent a month trying to figure out why. I know that people with a college degree live seven years longer in the United States and related to a college degree, people with the highest 1% of wealth, men live 15 years longer, and women live 10 years longer. That’s decades of extra time. And if we look across the country, we also have huge disparity. So your zip code is more important than your genetic code in how long you’re going to live. And so not where Boulder is, but Summit County, Colorado, where Breckenridge is, is the longest lived county in America. And people there live about 20 years longer than people in Ogallala, Lakota County in South Dakota. And so when you see these huge differences in how long people live, it’s not because we as humans are different, it’s because of the physical exposures we have, the access to good healthcare, the ability to take care of ourselves, all of these things play out. And it’s, to me, kind of not fair that everybody in America can’t hope for a good and long life.”

On Habits and Attitude

“So, the research shows, and that’s probably not surprising to you and your listeners, there’s five healthy habits that we can do that can give us as much as a decade more of health. The five healthy habits are eating a good diet, exercising, not smoking, not drinking, and then maintaining your weight. And even if you do one of those, you can live an additional two years. But I think what I was surprised about was how your mindsets and your behaviors also really impact how you how long you live and how healthy you are. So I know you had a Marc Schulz on recently talking about The Good Life, and their research has really shown how having really strong relationships matter in order to have better health later. And we know social isolation is is about the same as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It’s toxic. So having good relationships is really important, important. Having a sense of purpose and purpose can come from our work from caring for others from volunteering. It could be coming from your pets, but having some reason that helps you see value in your life. And then the last one, and this is Dr. Becca Levy’s research from Yale, is your mindset about aging. So if you have a positive view on what your future is going to be like, and I know you try and cultivate that through this podcast, you live seven and a half years longer. Your risk of heart attacks go down. Even your risk of dementia and cognitive decline go down. And so, to me, these lessons are I need to exercise but even more important maybe have a meal with friends. And even more important, I’ve always had a positive view on aging, but how do I really enhance that and have a sense of purpose? So those are those are the things I really took from the book.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.5 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

Is it time to work on what you’ll be retiring to?

Join our upcoming Designing Your New Life Group Program

Choose from two groups: Thursday (6pm ET) or Friday (12 pm ET) starting in January.

🔹 Limited Spots Available! Each group is capped at 10 participants.

Don’t miss your chance to join at a discounted rate.

Kick off 2025 with a supportive community of others designing their new life in retirement.

Learn more

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Happiness and meaning have long been considered the foundations of The Good Life. But there’s a key third element that’s  overlooked in what constitutes The Good Life: the interesting. Life is simply richer with experiences that captivate our minds, our thoughts and our emotions and have the power to shift our perspectives. Emerging research is highlighting the importance of  “psychological richness” as a key component of a well-lived life through experiences with novelty, complexity and challenge. Lorraine Besser, PhD joins us to discuss her research and her new book The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in Our Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It. In addition to the research base of the book, she shares practical ideas we can use to develop the skills to make our lives more interesting – without having to make sweeping changes.  

Lorraine Besser joins us from Vermont.

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Bio

Lorraine Besser is the author of the new book The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in Our Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It. She earned her PhD in philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has MA degrees from UNC and the Claremont Graduate School, and a BA from Tulane University. Before joining the philosophy department at Middlebury College, she held positions at the University of Waterloo and Stanford University. Professor Besser’s research focusses on the nature of happiness and well-being. She specializes in moral psychology, value theory, and the philosophy of David Hume. She lives in Vermont with her family and dogs.

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For More on Lorraine Besser

The Art of the Interesting: What We Miss in Our Pursuit of the Good Life and How to Cultivate It

Website

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

The Good Life – Marc Schulz, PhD

Not Too Late – Gwendolyn Bounds

Living Like You Mean It – Jodi Wellman

Why Settle for Happiness in Your Retirement? – Emily Esfahani Smith

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Wise Quotes 

On Psychological Richness

“So psychological richness, describes the set of experiences that tend to be novel, complex, and challenging, and they’re unified in that they have a particular impact on our mind. So when we engage in these kinds of experiences, we stimulate new thoughts, we have new emotions arising. And the cumulative effect of this kind of rich state of mind leads us to shift our perspective even just ever so slightly after a really psychologically rich experience. We find ourselves somehow changed. And this is the kind of richness that I think we can bring to our lives. And so psychological richness is this much needed third leg of the stool. It taps into a different part of our minds than meaning – it’s the part that is curious, that brings wonder to our experiences, that finds things interesting. And it allows us to really harness our mind’s ability to create that state inside of ourselves.”

On Not Pursuing the Interesting

“We think about what we want out of an experience. We think about what we’re going to get. And those expectations in that plan really dictate how that experience goes for us. Because we’ve set it up. There’s this goal that I need to get to, and I will focus on that and then judge that experience based on whether or not it meets my expectations. And that’s the kind of mindset that really focuses and structures us, but it eliminates the possibility for us to open our minds up and take in new different things. So one of the really helpful things we can do to pursue the interesting is to learn more about it and then understand that it is something that we need to learn how it feels on the inside arising – and pursue it by really identifying that feeling, and letting that feeling blossom. If we pursue it through plans and trying to get to an interesting experience, we set ourselves up. We don’t set ourselves up for success very well. So I think we can pursue it, but it’s got to be indirectly through learning what it is and allowing us to feel it in our minds and let it stimulate us.”

On Openness to Experience

“And openness to experiences is really important to psychological richness, because we got to take in the new experiences and embrace them. It’s going to be a little different for everyone depending on their level of openness to experience. And so I think that the way to think about your current state of openness to experiences and the way you are open to experiences or not, is both towards thinking about how you can develop more openness – even by little things like trying something different for dinner. Whatever it is that you find yourself kind of closed off to, start to chip away at that. The little things will really help. And the second thing is that just recognize that openness to experience is the way in which we can find these interesting experiences. And so even if your degree of openness looks very different than my degree of openness, all that means is that it’s going to take different things to find something novel. And we shouldn’t think about any of these personality traits as things that we’re destined for. And certainly here, regardless of where you stand on the spectrum of openness to experience, you can chip away at becoming more open and you can just learn to work with that to find what will make something novel for you, what counts as something complex for you.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.5 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

What’s Next?  Get in front of your life in retirement.

Early Bird registration is now open for our upcoming Designing Your New Life Group Program

Join a supportive, dynamic community to reimagine your path and create a meaningful retirement.

Choose from two groups: Thursday (6pm ET) or Friday (12 pm ET), both starting in January.

🔹 Limited Spots Available! Each group is capped at 10 participants.

Don’t miss your chance to join at a discounted rate—secure your place now and start 2025 with intention and connection.

Learn more

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How can redirect your skills and expertise in different ways following your career? AARP Purpose Prize winner Jennifer Jacobs, CEO and co-founder of not-for-profit Connect Our Kids,  shares her inspiring story of how she made a shift to improve lives. Her story highlights how encountering problems that your skills and experience can help to solve may lead you to a second act endeavor.

Jennifer Jacobs joins us from Virginia.

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Bio

2024 AARP Purpose winner Jennifer Jacobs, PhD is the CEO and co-founder of Connect Our Kids, a technology non-profit revolutionizing the way America finds families for children in foster care. Under her leadership, Connect Our Kids has developed innovative tools that help child welfare professionals use advanced family search and engagement technology to find and engage extended family members and other caring adults for children in need.

A graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Dr. Jacobs served as an officer in the United States Army, where she honed her leadership skills and deepened her commitment to service. The military’s core values of duty, integrity, and selfless service continue to influence her approach to transforming child welfare systems nationwide. Dr. Jacobs earned her PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the University of New Mexico, where her research focused on the intersection of technology and social services.

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For More on Jennifer Jacobs, PhD

Connect Our Kids

AARP Purpose Prize 

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Podcast Episodes You May Like 

The Best Day of My Life So Far – Benita Cooper

Changing the World One Small Act at a Time – Brad Aronson

Live Life in Crescendo – Cynthia Covey Haller

Passion & Purpose – Jim Ansara

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Wise Quotes

On Redirecting Skills & Expertise

“So, I’m a physicist and a nuclear engineer, which is a natural segue, of course, to the nonprofit world. I was working in counterterrorism, as I did for most of my adult life after leaving the Army. And at that time read an article in Time magazine about foster care. This was about 13 years ago. And in reading that article, I noticed a similarity in what it turned out foster care professionals need to do to find families for the kids in their care. And what I already knew intelligence analysts do to find and track terrorists. They’re both needing to find and visualize networks of people in order to influence and interact with that those networks. The difference is just that one is centering around a terrorist and one is centering around a child. And because they’re similar processes, I thought I would find that they were using similar tools. Instead, what I found out was that while the national security space has multi-million dollar software with data search and management capabilities, as I knew, the foster care space was doing practically the same work with Post-it Notes and Microsoft Excel. And that didn’t seem right to me. So I spent the next six years trying to understand why we fight terrorism with everything we have – and that’s a good thing – but we don’t fight for the futures of the nearly half million children in our foster care system.”

On Deciding to Pivot

“The only remaining reason not to do it was really fear. And fear of the unknown, fear of doing something that was way outside my comfort level, fear that I might fail. Who wants to fail? And so I finally came to a decision point where I said, I could go forward with this, and that’s terrifying. And I’d really rather not. So if I don’t, let me turn and look down the path of not doing it, what does that look like? And that looks like I keep doing what I’m doing. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s certainly a valuable field to work in counterterrorism. But for me, knowing what’s on this other path, it’s become challenging at the end of that, at the end of both paths is one day, hopefully a long, long time from now, is me at the end of my life. And if I’m looking backwards on either path from that perspective, on the don’t change anything path, I have to look back and know that I had an idea once, and I knew that it could matter to thousands and thousands of people, children and their families. And I didn’t do it because I was afraid. And I felt like if I couldn’t live with that, but that would have been a great disappointment to me. Even if on the other path, worst case scenario, I look back and I say: Wow, that was a crazy time back then. I did that crazy thing and it didn’t work out. And, you know, it was a little embarrassing and I felt kind of silly, but I tried. Of those two, I decided I would rather take the one where I had tried. And of course it also has the upside possibility that I didn’t fail. And in fact, that’s become the case. We’ve had such a great team come around. We’ve had such an incredible opportunity to learn in this space. And we’ve served to date over 18,000 children and 11,000 families. We know that we have a lot more to do, but we hear stories every day about the impact that we’re making and that’s an incredible thing to have had the opportunity to be part of.”

On Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone

“Don’t be afraid to step outside your comfort zone. It is very scary, but…you don’t get the thrill of the roller coaster if you don’t go over the hill, and hit that scariness. Otherwise, you just stand on the ground watching, and nothing is changing. And so stepping outside that comfort zone, getting to know your neighbors and finding out what support and help they might need and being part of that village, both in person and virtually, can be life-changing. So don’t be afraid to do those things. It doesn’t have to be by yourself either. If you have community, a group that you’re part of, a religious group that you’re part of, a book club that you’re part of, it is a lot of times easier to do things like that in groups. And if you don’t have something like that, start one. And see what your community, what your village needs, because every village needs the guidance and the glue that people can offer who are willing to do so.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.5 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

Early bird registration is now open for our upcoming Designing Your New Life Group Program

Join a supportive, dynamic community to reimagine your path and create a meaningful retirement.

Choose from two groups: Thursday (6pm ET) or Friday (12 pm ET), both starting in January.

🔹 Limited Spots Available! Each group is capped at 10 participants, and only 4 spots remain in each.

Don’t miss your chance to join at a discounted rate—secure your place now and start 2025 with intention and connection.

Learn more

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How could your choices today impact your life tomorrow? 8 out of 10 people over 55 say that Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias are a big concern.  Our guest today wants you to know that  half of all dementia cases are preventable. Dr. Mitch Clionsky is a board certified neuropsychologist who has treated more than 20,000 patients with cognitive problems. He and his physician wife, Dr. Emily Clionsky, have written Dementia Prevention: Using Your Head to Save Your Brain (Johns Hopkins Press).  The book highlights the key research findings over the past 10 years and practical actions you can take today to start the process of protecting your brain as you age.

Mitchell Clionsky joins us from Massachusetts.

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Bio

Mitchell Clionsky, Ph.D., ABPP-CN is a board certified clinical neuropsychologist licensed in Massachusetts and Connecticut. He specializes in the assessment of memory disorders, other neurological diseases, mild traumatic brain injury, and ADHD. He has performed or supervised more than 25,000 such evaluations over the course of his career and still sees more than 500 patients per year. He is also an expert witness in legal cases involving head trauma, testamentary capacity, and disability. He and his wife, Emily Clionsky MD, have authored research published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at international conferences. They also present workshops on dementia prevention for professional organizations and business groups. They created the Memory Orientation Screening Test (MOST)™ a brief, accurate test for dementia that has been used by hundreds of health care professionals and previously licensed to Lincare and Quest Diagnostics. They also developed the Accident Concussion Scale (ACS). They live and work in Western Massachusetts.

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For More on Mitchell Clionsky Dementia Prevention: Using Your Head to Save Your Brain ( Johns Hopkins Press) Website

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Podcast Episodes You May Like Why We Remember – Charan Ranganath Upgrade Your Sleep – Dr. Raj Dasgupta How Not to Age – Dr. Michael Greger Better Sleep, Better You – Dr. Frank Lipman __________________

Wise Quotes

On Alzheimers

“I feel like I’m talking climate control; there’s floods coming, there’s storms coming, but we can do something now. I feel the same way about dementia. If you look at the statistics, we know that if it’s just Alzheimer’s disease, there’s about 6.5 million Americans today that have Alzheimer’s. If you start including the other forms of dementia and the precursors of mild cognitive impairment, you actually get up to about 10 million Americans. When you project out to the year 2050, that doubles. So now we’re getting to a point where literally one out of every three people either has dementia or is caring for someone with dementia. And that’s an unsustainable kind of burden economically as well as personally. But if we can cut the number of cases in the future in half, then we don’t end up with twice as many in 2050. We end up with the same number now, but we actually have more people being alive. So there’s a real economy that’s safe plus a true economy of dollars because it’s very expensive.”

 

On Dementia

“What’s the one thing I can do? And the answer is there isn’t one thing. There’s a whole group of things which interact together. So it’s much more complex than people would like to give a credit for. On the other hand, if you understand why it’s complex and how it’s complex, you don’t go looking for simple solutions. You look at the whole picture and a personalized approach that says, what can I do? How could I assess where I am? What can I change to improve my chances going forward? And that’s what makes this really interesting is the personalization of it, the fact that one size doesn’t fit all ..but getting back to your point, why is prevention important? Well, anything you could do to prevent a fire is better than putting out the fire. Anything that you could do to prevent a flood is better than cleaning up afterwards. Same thing with your health. All of the things that you can do earlier on to prevent a problem later are cheaper, easier, and more effective than what you’re gonna do later on to clean up the mess. That’s what we’re about.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.5 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

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The views and opinions expressed by guests on The Retirement Wisdom Podcast are solely those of the guests and do not reflect the opinion of the host or Retirement Wisdom, LLC. The Retirement Wisdom Podcast primarily covers the non-financial aspects of retirement. From time to time we may invite guests who discuss other aspects of retirement planning, solely for educational purposes. Listeners are advised to consult qualified financial and/or medical professionals on those matters.

 

Design Your Future. Embrace Your Freedom.

Early Bird discounted registration is now open for our next  Designing Your New Life Group Program – with a Thursday group and a Friday group beginning in January.

Each group is limited to 10 participants and only four spots are still open in each group.

Learn more

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Who wouldn’t sign up for more joy? Steven Petrow, author of The Joy You Make:Find the Silver Linings–Even on Your Darkest Days, rejoins us to share what he’s learned about joy – and how to cultivate more joy (and gratitude) in your life.

Steven Petrow joins us from North Carolina.

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Bio

Steven Petrow’s new book is The Joy You Make: Find the Silver Linings–Even on Your Darkest Days. He first joined us in 2021 to discuss his book Stupid Things I Won’t Do When I Get Old.

Steven Petrow is an award-winning journalist and book author who is best known for his Washington Post and New York Times essays on aging, health, and civility. He’s also an opinion columnist for USA Today,  where he writes about civil discourse and manners. Steven’s 2019 TED Talk, “3 Ways to Practice Civility” has been viewed nearly two million times and translated into 16 languages. He is the author of five other books, including Steven Petrow’s Complete Gay & Lesbian Manners. He’s a much sought-after public speaker, and you’re likely to hear him when you stream NPR or one of your favorite  —  or least favorite  —  TV networks. Steven also served as the host and executive producer of “The Civilist,” a podcast from Public Radio International and North Carolina Public Radio WUNC. He is the author of five other books, the most recent of which is Steven Petrow’s Complete Gay & Lesbian Manners. He’s a much sought-after public speaker, and you’re likely to hear him when you stream NPR or one of your favorite  —  or least favorite  —  TV networks. Steven also served as the host and executive producer of “The Civilist,” a podcast from Public Radio International and North Carolina Public Radio WUNC.

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For More on Steven Petrow

The Joy You Make: Find the Silver Linings–Even on Your Darkest Days

Website

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Mentioned in This Podcast Episode

Helen Dennis podcast conversation

Successful Aging – LA Daily News

Three Good Things –  Gratitude practice – Martin Seligman

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

Edit Your Life – Elisabeth Sharp McKetta

Are You Living Gratefully? – Kristi Nelson

My Last Bad Day – Michael O’Brien

Living Like You Mean It – Jodi Wellman

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Wise Quotes

On Joy

“And as I did research and talked to experts and scholars and regular people, I came to understand that joy manifests in many different ways and has broader ways to show up in our lives. And so that helped me to see that joy can be serene, joy can be loud, and can be beautiful. It can coexist with sorrow. But the intrinsic thing that I think defines joy is that it is about connection and gratitude. And so you can be happy. You can be happy by yourself in a way. You get a new car, I’m happy. You get a job promotion, I’m happy. It’s fleeting, but you get the dopamine hit at the time. Joy kind of requires this interaction with others to make that connection, to sustain a connection. And in that way, joy is a state of being rather than a reaction to something else. I say happiness is about you, – and joy is about you and me. So that’s a real important part of it. And then the other is that it just shows up in different ways in our lives, other than in the big ways that we think.”

On Learning to Cultivate More Joy

“Lady Gaga said, you’re born this way or not. But fortunately, neurologists and other scientists have been showing that many of these emotions can be learned. We’re not stuck in our default settings for our lives. In a sense practice makes perfect. And so this book is my personal search for joy out of some very dark times. And the 28 steps, the 28 chapters are steps or stops on my journey. Not all of them are going to resonate with every reader, but I hope that many of them do because these are other avenues to find joy.”

On Memory & Joy

“Most days most of us can find or experience joy. And there are lots of ways that I talk about that, but memory is one of them. And so for someone who is having a bad day, sometimes the world looks bleak. Let’s face it, we all have different kinds of challenges. Going back in memory to a time that is happy, that is joyful and that is meaningful, is another way to experience joy. And you don’t have to have it in the present tense, you can pull it forward.”

On Gratitude & Joy

“Gratitude and joy are like these two cousins that cannot live without each other. It does go back to connection. And I remember when one of my scholars said, Go try doing a gratitude journal. I was like, Eyeore doesn’t do that. Eyeore is not going to find something to be grateful for every day, much less three things. But I went ahead…And if you do that for 21 days, all the studies say, you will be experiencing more joy…It’s good to know that’s not a big investment of time or money or anything. And they recommend you do it before going to sleep. If you go to sleep more in this frame of mind than sort of rehashing the challenges of the day.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host

Joe Casey is the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. He’s an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.5 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference.

A study by Stanford and Encore.org found that the majority of older adults want to give back in some way. Jim Ansara, an AARP 2024 Purpose Prize winner, is making a big difference in his retirement with his organization Build Health International. How might you redirect your skills and experience to make a difference?

Jim Ansara joins us from Beverly , Massachusetts.

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Bio

Jim Ansara is a retired general contractor who founded Shawmut Design and Construction in Boston in the early 1980’s and led it to become one of the top 25 construction companies in the US. While at Shawmut he led several volunteer teams of employees to build low-tech, clean water systems in Nicaragua with the organization, El Porvenir.

After retiring as Chairman of the Board, Jim redirected his energy to the developing world. In 2009 a trip to Haiti with Dr. Paul Farmer led to an invitation to build a small community hospital with Partners in Health (PIH) in Haiti’s Central Plateau. The process took a major turn when a massive earthquake struck the country on January 10, 2010. For three-and-a-half years after the earthquake, through the outbreak of cholera and political unrest, through hurricanes and unbearable heat, Jim, his partner Dr. David Walton of PIH, and hundreds of Haitian and Dominican workers persevered to build Haiti’s new 340-bed National Teaching Hospital in Mirebalais, Haiti. Since its completion, the mission to build and equip global health care infrastructure has continued via a new non-profit, Build Health International, based in Beverly, MA. The BHI team has undertaken projects in low-resource settings across 22 countries with PIH, the Kellogg Foundation, Cure International, Direct Relief International and numerous other NGOS.

For Jim’s philanthropy he has received Honorary Doctorates in Humane Letters from Amherst College and Salem State University, as well as distinction from Partners in Health, Health Equity International, The American Red Cross Northeast MA Chapter, the Political Asylum and Immigration Representation Project, Summer Search Boston, and more. He serves on the board of Health Equity International, and in years past on the boards of Salem State University, the Boston Children’s Museum, Youth Build, and City Year.

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For More on Jim Ansara

Build Health International (BHI)

Health Equity Humanitarian Delivers Hospitals for the Poor

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

Changing the World One Small Act at a Time – Brad Aronson

Live Life in Crescendo – Cynthia Covey Haller

The Best Day of My Life So Far – Benita Cooper

Why People Make a Career Change with Purpose Top of Mind – Chris Farrell

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Wise Quotes

On Learning and New Challenges in Retirement

“I’m passionate about tackling challenges and solving problems. And one of the things that really excites me in life is learning, not necessarily learning in traditional methods, but learning by sort of immersion, where I’m trying to keep my nose and mouth just above the flood tide. And I need a level of sort of challenge and the accompanying freneticism in my life to really be happy. I’d like it to be different. I’d like to be a more relaxed and easy-going person, but at 67, that’s not going to change probably. So it’s really a combination of those two things. And I found, and this is an area, Build Health International, where I could really exercise both of those things. It’s informative about who I am and who I’m not.”

On the Transition to Retirement

“I’d like to say that I got to where I am by lots of self reflection and and and that kind of thing, but it’s not true. I really fell into it. But I kept sort of trying to figure out what was next for me. And I was also clear on what I didn’t want to do. I knew some people who had sold companies and made some money, and many of them manage their money and got into business, either as consultants or advisors. One guy even started a hedge fund – that didn’t work out well. Lots of things like that. And I was clear that I didn’t love business. What I was able to eventually figure out is what I loved about being in business was the challenges, the problem solving, and the community I got from it. I wasn’t a particularly naturally social person. I got a lot of my community from work. Just learning was piece of it. And that’s what I loved about being in business. I didn’t love making money. I enjoyed the benefits of it, but it wasn’t my purpose. And I also knew that I was the beneficiary of lots and lots of hard work, plus great timing and things broke my way. I wasn’t a brilliant entrepreneurial entrepreneur. And I think that’s one of the things that confuses a lot of people who, like me, got really lucky once. Now, I also had to go through a transition, which was interesting, which luckily I was warned about. When you’re a CEO of a larger company, lots of things get done for you, and you’re used to being taken incredibly seriously, even if people think they’re really stupid ideas, and people say, Yes, I’ll get on that. And quickly that vanishes. And luckily I’d been warned about that. But that’s also very difficult for some people. I’m not saying everybody starts with that. But if you do, it can be a hard transition and I was able to come to terms with that fairly quickly and realize that I wasn’t special.”

On an Advisor Who Tells You the Truth 

“CEOs and executives, I think, live in sort of a feedback bubble where you don’t have a lot of people telling you the truth and their unvarnished opinions. You don’t have somebody saying That’s the stupidest damn idea I’ve ever heard. How can you think that? You just don’t have that. And it’s probably even less today as people are more politically correct and more cautious about what they say. And you really really need that. And I had one advisor who I had a love -hate relationship with but always respected ,Tom Feely, who was my CPA for many years and who also served as a strategic advisor. It’s an odd combination. And I would meet with him a couple times a month in person. I’d talk to him on the phone sometimes every day and he would not only push me but he would tell me when I was full of it or off base in no uncertain terms. And that was so valuable and it’s so hard to find those people in your life. So if in a transition like this if you can find people who will tell you that unvarnished truth you know whether you want to hear it or not that’s super valuable.”

On Forging Your Path

“Not everyone’s going to want to do what I’m doing, and I understand that. Everybody’s going to be different, and everybody’s going to want to plug in to whatever they’re doing at different levels and different ways. I think a lot of people are going to be more balanced about their approach than I am, which is probably good. But, I think it’s not just what you’re passionate about. I think that’s a piece of it. But it’s also what you can be effective at. Because if you’re not effective, it’s just not going to work. And I see a lot of entrepreneurs going on to second careers, where they’re not effective and not necessarily qualified, and they struggle.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host

Joe Casey is the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. He’s an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.4 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference.

What’s the future of aging – and how could it impact your healthspan and longevity? Lauren Dunning of the Milken Institute shares her insights on this topic and key trends in innovative housing options and technology for older adults.

Lauren Dunning joins us from Santa Monica, California.

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Bio

Lauren Dunning is a director on the Future of Aging team at the Milken Institute, where she develops initiatives and strategic partnerships that advance healthy longevity and financial security across the life course. In her role, Dunning oversees the Future of Aging Advisory Board, a group of global leaders across sectors that provides advisement, expertise, and collaboration to maximize the impact of the Institute’s work on aging.

Before joining the Milken Institute, Dunning served in key policy leadership roles over ten years at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, most recently as the director of Government Affairs.

She has written and presented on a variety of issues spanning health and aging, and is an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. Dunning holds a JD from Georgetown University Law Center, a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a bachelor’s degree from George Washington University. She works at the Milken Institute’s Santa Monica office.

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For More on Lauren Dunning

Website

Milken Insitute

Report: Innovative Financing and Care Models to Scale Affordable Housing Solutions for Middle-Income Older Adults

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

The Age Tech Revolution – Keren Etkin

Thriving in Place – Lisa Cini

Where to Retire – Silvia Ascarelli

The Mutual Benefits of Intergenerational Volunteering – Atalaya Sergi

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Wise Quotes

On Healthspan

“We have four major practice areas where we work to promote healthspan, advance integrated care solutions, improve dementia care and accelerate financial longevity preparedness. Now, those four practice areas are kind of a shorthand for where are there opportunities, but how do we overcome challenges associated with them? So just looking at, for example, healthspan. So healthspan is the number of years an individual lives in good health. And normally we compare this to life span and we’ve seen incredible gains in life span over the past hundred years. And that’s an amazing opportunity. More time to enjoy time with our families to contribute, to build, to be part of our society and communities. Those are incredible opportunities. But in order to realize them fully, we have to think about healthspan. We need to get our healthspans to match our lifespans. But healthspans globally, they’ve lagged, with sources putting that gap up to 10 years. That’s a big gap that people might spend living in poorer health than they might want. And we’re not quite going in the right direction with that, the health span lifespan gap is actually widening. So we need to reverse this trend…But the thing about healthspan is there’s so many levers that people have available to them to work on their healthspan, and to work on their years lived in good health. As a society, we have so many ways to promote health span. And then as individuals, we can look at our chronic disease risk, social engagement and purpose and promoting well being.”

On Intergenerational Volunteering

“Intergenerational connections are good for us. There’s important benefits for participants on both sides of the age spectrum, but also for society. And maybe that gets us to another misconception, which is that intergenerational connections or relationships are about just one age group giving to another age group, right? So it’s this picture that somebody is giving their time and it’s intrinsically tied to volunteerism. There can be intergenerational programs and initiatives that are focused on building intergenerational connection through volunteerism for one another or two together, but that’s just one part of it and that really it’s so much more than that and they can be in mutual relationships that are providing benefits to both sides. And now when you’re looking at different age groups, you get different benefits, but think about older adults, right? Studies on intergenerational engagement, they found that just so many benefits, including less depression and anxiety, reduced cognitive decline, improved physical functioning for children, their social, emotional, and educational improvements.

On the Future of Aging

“And that’s a global effort to give everyone the opportunity to add life to years wherever they live. And one of the four spaces that they’re focused on is age friendly environments, so removing physical and social barriers to full participation in society by older adults supported by policy systems, services, technologies that enable people to live in the communities that they want to. And so some of that is about how do we make the physical spaces suitable for people of all ages. It’s not just older adults, it’s people with access and functional needs, young children and families. There’s a lot of needs for accessible spaces, for social space that’s often called third spaces where people can go and casually have space to meet in terms of cities themselves. It’s thinking about planning for healthcare. Planning for for meeting those long -term care needs, planning for transportation and creating transportation accessibility.  Those universal design factors that make it so that people can age in their communities.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host

Joe Casey is the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. He’s an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.4 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference.

 

 

 

 

 

There’s a lot more to retirement than financial planning. If you’re planning for retirement and thinking about how to retire, you’ll need to consider both sides of the equation. The new  book by Christine Benz, How to Retire: 20 Lessons for a Happy, Successful, and Wealthy Retirement, leverages insights from 20 experts on the financial and non-financial aspects of retirement planning.

Christine Benz joins us fro the Chicago area.

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Bio

Christine Benz is the author of How to Retire: 20 Lessons for a Happy, Successful, and Wealthy Retirement. She is Morningstar’s Director of Personal Finance, a position she has held since early 2008. In that capacity, she writes and edits a monthly newsletter, Practical Finance, which advises do-it-yourself investors on every aspect of the financial-planning process. She also writes a weekly column, “Improving Your Finances,” on Morningstar.com, and was the creator of Morningstar’s “The Short Answer” column, which is geared toward investors just starting out. She is widely quoted in the media, including the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and MarketWatch, and has been a frequent guest on CNBC, PBS’ Nightly Business Report, and Fox Business News.

Since joining Morningstar in 1993, Christine has been a central part of Morningstar’s effort to deliver quality financial investment information to Morningstar’s 6 million-plus clients. As an analyst and editor, she has served as Morningstar’s director of mutual fund analysis. Prior to assuming that position, she was editor of Morningstar Mutual Funds and Morningstar FundInvestor. Christine co-authored the company’s first book, “The Morningstar® Guide to Mutual Funds: 5-Star Strategies for Success,” a national bestseller published by John Wiley & Sons in 2003, and was the lead author of the book’s second edition. Christine’s book, “Morningstar’s 30-Minute Money Solutions,” provides readers with the necessary guidance in tackling money challenges and building a comprehensive financial plan in easy-to-manage increments.

Christine holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and Russian/East European studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband, Greg. She is an avid cook, a political junkie, and a long-suffering Chicago Cubs fan.

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For More on Christine Benz

How to Retire: 20 Lessons for a Happy, Successful, and Wealthy Retirement

Morningstar

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

The Good Life – Marc Schulz, PhD

The Power of Reinvention – Joanne Lipman

The Retirement Savings Time Bomb – Ed Slott

Happier Hour – Cassie Holmes, PhD

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Mentioned in This Podcast Episode

The Key Decisions for Retirement Success – Wade Pfau

What Are The Keys To A Successful Retirement? Fritz Gilbert

Taking Stock – Dr. Jordan Grumet

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Wise Quotes

On Purpose in Retirement

“Definitely get your in retirement bucket list for keeping yourself entertained and happy. But ideally you would also have some things that are giving you a sense of purpose, some things that you’re relaxing from. And I think most of us, even while we’re working, have reference points for this, that the vacation that you had after that time when you were really, really busy is just all the sweeter because you feel like you really earned it. And I think the same holds true in retirement, that if you can bring that balance, that sense of your accomplishing things, and it doesn’t really matter what it is…It’s very individual specific, but just something that is purpose that is not pure relaxation, I think you’ll enjoy your relaxation that much more. ”

On Sabbaticals and Phased Retirement

“Laura Carstensen in the book, she’s a researcher at Stanford. I love that conversation that she and I had, but I also love her body of research because it’s about real human beings. But her point is that working is good for us actually – working in some fashion. She says that the way we work in this country is all wrong, that you have people who come to retirement, they’re just so burned out, they’re dragging. And her point is that, ideally, we would find a way to take breaks, even prior to retirement, where we’re giving ourselves a little bit of breathing room, and we’re giving ourselves a chance to maybe experiment with different activities. So I think that one key way to confront longevity is to continue to consider phasing into retirement. Working longer in some fashion is just so beneficial for your plan financially. It’s hard to untangle the connection between health and working longer, but it does appear that healthier people work longer, for sure, and healthier people live longer. So it’s all intertwined.”

On Creating a New Structure  in Retirement

“I would just use kind of a calendar experiment. Every Sunday I look in on my calendar for the week ahead and see what I have coming up. And, you have some things where you’re like, Yes, that looks like a good day. I’ve got a meeting with this person I really enjoy meeting with, and maybe some other activities that I really enjoy. Or maybe it’s just like a totally open day, where you say, Okay, that’s just sort of a chance for me to do whatever it is you do. And then you have other things on your calendar where you’re like, Oh, God! And maybe you have three or four days of that stuff where you just kind of filled with dread. So start either making a physical list or a mental list where you’re taking note of how you feel about those different work experiences. What you want to try to do is cast off those ones that are giving you that sense of dread. And find a way to bring forward and accentuate the things that you really enjoy… So I would say it begins well before you even start seriously thinking about retirement, just think about the substance of your work, [and} what you like [and] what you don’t like.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host

Joe Casey is the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. He’s an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.4 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference.

 

 

A lot changes when you retire. That can be daunting, but it also presents valuable opportunities. It gives you a window to recreate a new approach to life now that you’ll have the time and freedom to pursue what you’d like to do. Teresa Amabile, co-author of the new book Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You, joins us to discuss the key lessons from over 200 interviews with 120 people and their experiences in retiring.

Teresa Amabile joins us from Massachusetts.

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Bio

Teresa Amabile is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration, Emerita and a Director of Research at Harvard Business School. Originally educated as a chemist, Teresa received her doctorate in psychology from Stanford University. She studies how everyday life inside organizations can influence people and their performance. Teresa’s research encompasses creativity, productivity, innovation, and inner work life – the confluence of emotions, perceptions, and motivation that people experience as they react to events at work.

Teresa’s work has earned several awards: the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Management’s OB Division (2018); the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (2017); the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Israel Organizational Behavior Conference (2018); the Center for Creative Leadership Best Paper Award (in Leadership Quarterly) (2005); and the Torrance Award from the National Association for Gifted Children (1998). In 2020, she was named one of the top 50 scholars, by citation count, in business/management (PLOS Biology). She has presented her theories, research results, and practical implications to various groups in business, government, and education, including Apple, IDEO, Procter & Gamble, Roche Pharma, Genentech, TEDx Atlanta, the Society for Human Resource Management, Pfizer, and the World Economic Forum. In addition to participating in various executive programs at Harvard Business School, she created the MBA course Managing for Creativity, and has taught several courses to first-year MBA students. Teresa was the host/instructor of Against All Odds: Inside Statistics, a 26-part instructional series originally produced for broadcast on PBS. She was a director of Seaman Corporation for 25 years, and has served on the boards of other organizations.

Teresa’s discoveries appear in her book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. The book, based on research into nearly 12,000 daily diary entries from over 200 professionals inside organizations, illuminates how everyday events at work can impact employee engagement and creative productivity. Published in August 2011 by Harvard Business Review Press, the book is co-authored with Teresa’s husband and collaborator, Steven Kramer, Ph.D. Her other books include Creativity in Context and Growing Up Creative. Teresa has published over 100 scholarly articles and chapters, in outlets including top journals in psychology (such as Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and American Psychologist) and in management (Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal). She is also the author of The Work Preference Inventory and KEYS to Creativity and Innovation. Teresa has used insights from her research in working with various groups in business, government, and education, including Procter & Gamble, Novartis International AG, Motorola, IDEO, and the Creative Education Foundation.

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For More on Teresa Amabile

Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You 

by Teresa M. Amabile , Lotte Bailyn, Marcy Crary , Douglas T. Hall  and Kathy E. Kram

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

Edit Your Life – Elisabeth Sharp McKetta

The Balancing Act in Retirement – Stew Friedman

Retirement Rookies – Stephen & Karen Kreider Yoder

Independence Day – Steve Lopez

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Wise Quotes

On the Developmental Tasks in Retirement

“We found four jobs, essentially, four tasks that people have to do when they retire. Now, this work can be fun and exciting, at least parts of it, but it does take time and effort. The first task is deciding when and how to retire. This is a big deal for most jobs and most professions in the U.S. because we do not have a mandatory retirement age, as many industrialized countries do. So the decision is a thing that we have to deal with. The second task is detaching from work, tangibly ending, finishing up your work, doing the HR paperwork, but psychologically as well. And that part is a lot more difficult for many people, because they have to deal with a trio of losses, or at least big changes. One is identity. Another one is relationships that you’ve had for maybe decades at work. And the third is life structure loss. So your life has been really structured by that thing that’s occupied 40 or maybe 50 or more waking hours of your life for decades. So there’s that life structure loss. And that can all make detaching from work that second task kind of challenging. We saw many ways that people could deal with that successfully, but it is work. And the third task is exploring and experimenting to build a provisional retirement life, once you are in retirement. This can involve exploring and experimenting with new activities, relationships, groups, new organizations to join, places to be. That exploration actually can start before you retire. Some people  started dipping their toe into some things.But it usually happens in a big way after people retire in those first months and and really first year sometimes. And the fourth task is consolidating a quasi-stable retirement life. So figuring out from that provisional retirement life what seemed to be working well for you and and keeping those elements in your life, investing in them more if you feel like it and settling into something that feels more or less like a settled rhythm and routine for your life.”

On Life Structure

“Let me just explain this concept of life structure. Your life structure basically just includes everything in your life at a given point in time. Activities and relationships, groups and organizations you belong to, places where you spend your time. In our data, we saw a constant interplay, a kind of dance throughout the retirement transition between people’s life structure and what we psychologists call their self. The self includes everything central about a person. There are multiple identities. A person can be an engineer and a leader and a grandparent. So multiple identities, their values and priorities, their needs, their personalities, even their health.”

On The 4 As

“The four A’s…are alignment, awareness. agency and adaptability. So alignment is developing the realization that you should try to work toward good alignment between yourself and your life structure. And that just means looking at your life structure realistically and honestly and looking at yourself as you are now and seeing Does that life structure align well with who I am? And for that you need the second A, which is awareness. So you need to develop a good awareness of what the dynamics in your life structure really are and how they’re affecting you. You also need to develop good self -awareness. That’s often tougher for many of us. And it sometimes takes talking with a trusted other person, a mentor, a therapist or a counselor, sometimes a coach. I know you coach people, a trusted friend or a family member to help you reflect on who you are now. What’s really important to you? What are your needs? What are your most important values? So that A of awareness is absolutely necessary for you to develop that alignment that you need. And also to develop alignment, you need to exercise agency and that is to have the courage to proactively make changes in your life structure if you see that there are elements that aren’t working so well for you or maybe the agency to try to make some changes in yourself. And finally, because, as you said, life happens. We can’t exercise agency over everything in our lives. In fact, the truth is we can exercise agency over very few things in our lives. So we need to develop adaptability when things happen that we cannot control, we can’t change, this is our life and we need to figure out how to adapt, how to adjust.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. He’s an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.4 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference.

It’s time to look back at our best podcast conversations from earlier this year.

We’ve covered smart moves you can make to optimize your physical and cognitive health and longevity; how a Life Calculator can give you a wake up call and stop you from procrastinating, and why more people are rejecting the idea of a traditional retirement – and choosing their own adventure. We also explored why our retirement system in the US needs an overhaul; how you can make today your last bad day; how social connections affect your health – and what you can do about it.

Listen in for insights to help you retire smarter.

Want to listen it any of of the full conversations?

How Not to Age –Dr. Michael Greger 

Live Like You Mean It – Jodi Wellman

Why We Remember – Charan Ranganath

Unretired – Mark Walton

My Last Bad Day – Michael O’Brien

The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy – Teresa Ghilarducci

The Laws of Connection – David Robson

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Other Best Of Episodes You May Like

Best of 2024-Part One

Best of The Retirement Wisdom Podcast 2023 – Part Two

The Very Best of 2022

The Best of 2021 – Retirement Wisdom

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. He’s an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.4 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference.

What constitutes a good life? Marc Schulz, co-author of The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness, highlights useful insights from the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has been running for over eight decades. You’ll hear advice you can use in building your good life.

Marc Schulz joins us from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

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Bio

Marc Schulz is the associate director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development and the Sue Kardas PhD 1971 Chair in Psychology at Bryn Mawr College.

He also directs the Data Science Program and previously chaired the psychology department and Clinical Developmental Psychology PhD program at Bryn Mawr.

Dr. Schulz received his BA from Amherst College and his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a practicing therapist with postdoctoral training in health and clinical psychology at Harvard Medical School.

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For More on Marc Schulz

The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

Retire Happy – Dr. Catherine Sanderson

Happier Hour – Cassie Holmes, PhD

Edit Your Life – Elisabeth Sharp McKetta

The Mindful Body – Ellen Langer

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Wise Quotes

On Relationships and Well-Being

“One is a finding that should be familiar to many of your listeners. We really want to take care of our body like we’re going to be in it for a long time. Let’s shoot for 100 years. And what does that mean? That means that we want to move our body. Exercise is good for us. We want to avoid smoking. We want to moderate our drinking of alcohol. And we also want to, particularly as we age, to go to doctors and make sure that we’re getting treatments that are important to maintain our health, because many of us develop different kinds of challenges as we get older, physical and medical challenges that are important to take care of. The study also has made important contributions to recognizing that stuff happens to all of us, that very few lives happen without adversity, and how we meet adversity, and particularly the feelings and emotions that adversity tends to engender, are really important for our health and our well -being. But the big finding, and this is the finding that we talk about most in our book, The Good Life, is that it’s very clear across this 86 years of research, and hundreds of papers, that the most important predictor of health and happiness throughout the lifespan is the quality of our relationships with others. How connected we are, how much we can rely on other support, and how much we’re able to do that are really key predictors of how happy we’ll be and how healthy we will be. And it’s all kinds of relationships. It’s not just the person who you may have been lucky enough to spend a good portion of your time with. So it’s not just our marital partners or our intimate partners, it’s friends, neighbors, people we work with, people in our communities, it’s all types of relationships that matter.”

On Social Fitness

“So we talk about this idea of social fitness as being really important. Obviously, it’s a metaphor like physical fitness and some of the lessons about physical fitness apply here. We want to, first of all, assess where we are, and to be thoughtful about where we are. And this comes from our research when we interviewed people, for example, in their 80s and we asked if they had regrets. Most of the regrets that people had had to do with losses in relationships. People that they had been friendly with, that they lost touch with, people who maybe they hadn’t been as kind to as they wish they had. And this could be the person that they were married to. It could be children. It could be people they worked with. But people talked about remorse and regret around not building and sustaining relationships over life. So we know that if we don’t attend to them, just like our muscles, our fitness in the social domain tends to atrophy. So we need to kind of lean in, be proactive about our engagement with others, and it helps to step back and assess where we are. So what’s going well in my social connection sphere? Who am I spending time with? Are those the people I want to spend time with? Who am I not spending time with that I have a strong connection or I’d like to develop more of a connection with? So that assessment is a critical part of physical fitness and it should be part of social fitness. And then it’s really about leaning into this and walking the walk. So what do I mean by that? We want to spend the time that we think is important on relationships. That means making time to talk to people regularly, to go on walks with people that we care about, to go to social engagements in which we might meet new people or sustain relationships that are important to us.”

On Paying Attention

“Attention is just so important. You learn stuff when you write books, and one of the things we learned early on when we were writing the book is the language we use around attention. We pay attention, and that suggests how much of an important resource attention is. It’s something we control or we try to control, and we can give it to people. We can lavish people with it if we prioritize them in our lives. What’s particularly important is we’re in an era where there are lots of attempts to grab our attention. So phones and technology are particularly good at grabbing our attention away from other people, and we need to proactively, intentionally focus our attention on the people that are important to us. That’s the way that we build relationships, and it’s a way we convey to others that they’re important to us. So paying attention on purpose, listening with curiosity, those are the things that are really important. For many of us in this busy world filled with technology, having the experience of being particularly in person, having someone pay attention to us is an incredible feeling. It’s sometimes something we sadly forget because we don’t have the experience enough. So really critical for people to do that. It’s something that we hope we might get from parents or grandparents. It’s a gift that people can give to others, including parents and grandparents. But it’s true in all relationships. It means really listening and being curious.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. He’s an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.4 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference.

 

What’s that sound? Our guest today explains that it’s the retirement savings bomb ticking louder. Listen in and get smarter about RMDs, Roth IRAs – and the tax bomb that’s ticking louder for you.

Ed Slott joins us from New York.

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Bio

Ed Slott is the author of The Retirement Savings Time Bomb Ticks Louder: How to Avoid Unnecessary Tax Landmines, Defuse the Latest Threats to Your Retirement Savings and Ignite Your Financial Freedom.

Ed is a nationally recognized IRA distribution expert, professional speaker, television personality, and best-selling author. He is known for his unparalleled ability to turn advanced tax strategies into understandable, actionable and entertaining advice. He has been named “The Best Source for IRA Advice” by The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today wrote, “It would be tough to find anyone who knows more about IRAs than CPA Slott.”

As president and founder of Ed Slott and Company, LLC, the nation’s leading source of accurate, timely IRA expertise and analysis to financial advisors, institutions, consumers and media, he provides:

1. Advanced training to financial professionals to become knowledgeable recognized leaders in the retirement marketplace; and

2. Answers to retirement savers’ most important questions, continually providing practical, easy-to- understand information

on IRA, retirement, tax and financial planning topics.

Mr. Slott is a Professor of Practice at The American College of Financial Services and regularly presents on IRA and estate planning strategies at both consumer events and conferences for financial advisors, insurance professionals, CPAs and attorneys, including virtual events drawing thousands of attendees nationwide. He has provided topical keynote presentations for leading financial membership organizations, including the Financial Planning Association, National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, Estate Planning Councils and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, as well as leading corporate financial firms coast-to-coast.

Mr. Slott is an accomplished author of many financial and retirement-focused books, including most recently Ed Slott’s Retirement Decisions Guide: 2021 Edition (IRAHelp, 2021) and Fund Your Future: A Tax-Smart Savings Plan in Your 20s and 30s (IRAHelp, 2021) with The New Retirement Savings Time Bomb (Penguin Random House, 2021). He also hosts the popular website irahelp.com as a resource for financial professionals and consumers, where The Slott Report blog is followed by tens of thousands of readers.

As the go-to resource for media on timely insight on breaking news as it relates to retirement and tax planning laws and strategies, Mr. Slott is often quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today, Kiplinger, Investor’s Business Daily and numerous additional national magazines and financial publications. He provides a monthly Q&A column to AARP and is also a contributing columnist and media resource to Financial Planning, Financial Advisor and Investment News magazines. He has appeared on many national television and radio programs, including NBC, ABC, CBS, CNBC, CNN, FOX , FOXBUSINESS, NPR, Bloomberg and Morningstar.

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For More on Ed Slott

Website 

The Retirement Savings Time Bomb Ticks Louder

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

An Economist’s Take on Retirement Planning – Larry Kotlikoff

The Balancing Act in Retirement – Stew Friedman

Retire Happy – Dr. Catherine Sanderson

Independence Day – Steve Lopez

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Wise Quotes

On The Retirement Savings Tax Bomb

“I think it’s reaching a point where in my latest book, I call it The Retirement Savings Time Bomb Ticks Louder, in big letters, because I’m worried this ticking tax time bomb, if you can say that three times fast. The ticking tax time bomb you asked me about is simply the tax bill growing inside your IRA. It’s like the movie Aliens where it’s growing and growing inside, but you don’t see it because you see your IRA balance going up and up – and you say, Well, that’s good. But a lot of that is owed right back to the government. I always say your IRA is an IOU to the IRS. It’s a debt growing. That’s what it is, like a mortgage on your home. You have a mortgage on your retirement savings. The reason, and that’s the tax building up. And I call it a ticking tax time bomb because we don’t know when it’s going to go off, depending on when Congress gets its act together.”

On Your Joint Partner

“Even if rates stay the same, Joe, your balance is going up, and at some point, you’re going to get hit hard in retirement – at the worst possible time. People think their retirement savings is theirs. But if you look at the word theirs, it spells the IRS. Look at the word theirs, T -H -E -I -R -S. People think just because you get a statement on your monthly or quarterly, whenever you look at it online, that you think that’s your money because your name is on there. Well, there’s a hidden partner on there. It’s like a joint account. Can you imagine if somebody told you your IRA was a joint account with Uncle Sam? Now, most people understand the concept of a joint account. You see it with husband and wife, spouses, and that generally means 50 -50. The difference with this joint account with Uncle Sam, you don’t know what his share will be based on what future tax rates might be, which I worry about being higher. So the big mistake is to be lulled into this false sense of security that you think all of that money will be spendable in retirement. It won’t.”

On Roth IRAs

“The key item is, I always like to say, move your money from accounts that are forever taxed, tax deferred, to never taxed. Tax-free. That’s the promised land. That’s where you want to be. The Holy Grail, where you never have to worry about the uncertainty of what future higher taxes can do to your standard of living in retirement. So the big message is, if you’ve been saving the wrong way – but that’s how we were taught, saving in IRAs, putting money in 401(k)s – you’re just building a bit of a tax bill for IRS and yourself. Instead of that, start going the other way. Now, this is counterintuitive because I’ve been saving, I’ve been accumulating my whole life. Why should I go the other way? I want to keep building. I’m still working. I’m getting closer to retirement. I want to put the pedal to the metal. Don’t do that. Don’t add any more money. Focus on getting that money out. One alternative, one suggestion, a strong suggestion: convert to Roth IRAs. What does that mean? Take some of that money down now, even before retirement, especially if you’re in your sixties, that’s a sweet spot before you’re forced to take it out at 73 and move it to a Roth. And then it grows tax free for the rest of your life. Now that sounds simple. So the question is why wouldn’t everybody do that? And you know the answer, right, Joe? The answer is you have to pay tax. There’s a toll and nobody wants to pay the tax upfront. And that’s short-sighted. But I’m telling you now is the time to pay taxes while rates are at historic lows. The key to saving money in taxes, and you can save a fortune, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions, depending on how much you have saved, just with good tax planning.”

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About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call to discuss how The Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one – on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host 

Joe Casey is the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. He’s an executive coach who also helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a twenty-six-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Today, in addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, which thanks to his guests and loyal listeners, ranks in the top 1 % globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.4 million downloads. Business Insider has recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference.

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The views and opinions expressed by guests on The Retirement Wisdom Podcast are solely those of the guests and do not reflect the opinion of the host or Retirement Wisdom, LLC. The Retirement Wisdom Podcast primarily covers the non-financial aspects of retirement. From time to time we may invite guests who discuss other aspects of retirement planning, solely for educational purposes. Listeners are advised to consult qualified financial and/or medical professionals on those matters.