The Retirement Wisdom Podcast Retirement Wisdom

You'll face a myriad of decisions in planning for retirement. Wade Pfau has written a comprehensive guide to help you prepare well, financially and otherwise. He joins us to discuss how to fortify your retirement planning and decision-making.



We discuss:



How he became interested in studying retirement and retirement planning

The key risks to manage in planning for retirement

Why the traditional concept of retirement is increasingly unaffordable - and what to do instead

His views on the 4% rule

The roles that annuities and reverse mortgages can play in retirement planning

The pros and cons of working longer

What to consider in deciding where to live in retirement

The non-financial aspects of transitioning to retirement - and special challenges for introverts

How to assess your preparedness for retirement



Wade joins us from Dallas.

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Bio 

Wade D. Pfau, PhD, is Professor of Retirement Income in the Ph.D. in Financial and Retirement Planning program, Co-Director of the New York Life Center for Retirement Income, and RICP® program director at The American College of Financial Services.



Pfau is a co-editor of the Journal of Personal Finance. He has spoken at national conferences of organizations for financial professionals such as the CFA Institute, FPA, NAPFA, AICPA-PFP, and AFS. He also publishes frequently in a wide variety of academic and practitioner research journals. He hosts the Retirement Researcher blog, and is a monthly columnist for Advisor Perspectives, a RetireMentor for MarketWatch, a contributor to Forbes, and an Expert Panelist for The Wall Street Journal. His research has been discussed in outlets that include print editions of The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Money Magazine.



Pfau was a selectee for the InvestmentNews “Power 20” in 2013 and “40 Under 40” in 2014, the Investment Advisor 35 list for 2015, the IA 25 list for 2014, and Financial Planning magazine’s Influencer Awards. He is a two-time winner of the Journal of Financial Planning Montgomery-Warschauer Award, a two-time winner of the Academic Thought Leadership Award from the Retirement Income Industry Association, and a best paper award winner in the retirement category from the Academy of Financial Services.



Pfau holds a doctorate in economics and a master’s degree from Princeton University, and bachelor of arts and bachelor of science degrees from the University of Iowa. He is also a Chartered Financial Analyst® (CFA®).



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For More on Wade Pfau

Retirement Planning Guidebook: Navigating the Important Decisions for Retirement Success

Retirement Researcher Website



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One Day University

At One Day University, you can watch hundreds of fascinating talks by the most popular professors from 150 top schools.



A special offer for listeners of The Retirement Wisdom Podcast: learn more and start your two-week free trial at www.onedayu.com/wisdom



Check out the video library to see what interests you.



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Wise Quotes

On Risks



"Risks fall into a few different categories. Longevity risk is worth mentioning first, and it's a good thing in a way. You don't know how long you're going to live, and you might live a very long time, which is wonderful, but just on the financial side, it's expensive to live a long time. You have to fund your retirement for more and more years. So longevity risks really is the overarching risk, and you've got the different types of market risk and market volatility, interest rates that are changing, and so forth, just market-related risks and inflation could be part of that as well.

Can learning from your parents' mistakes help you age gracefully? In his 50s Steven Petrow began a list of things he was observing that he vowed never to do when he became old. Now in his 60s, he has a different appreciation of his observations. Listen in to a fascinating conversation as Steven shares his humor and insights on making smarter choices to age gracefully.



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Bio

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.



Steven's new book is Stupid Things I Won’t Do When I Get Old. 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 Book: Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old: A Highly Judgmental, Unapologetically Honest Accounting of All the Things Our Elders Are Doing Wrong

Steven Petrow's Website



How To Age Gracefully  (The article mentioned by Jane Brody in The New York Times)



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One Day University

At One Day University, you can watch hundreds of fascinating talks by the most popular professors from 150 top schools.



A special offer for listeners of The Retirement Wisdom Podcast: learn more and start your two-week free trial at www.onedayu.com/wisdom



Check out the video library to see what interests you.



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Wise Quotes



On Being a Perrenial



"There are many ideas that were good for a long time - and then they're not anymore. And then of course there are new ideas that come into vogue - and one of the new ideas that I talk about is this notion of being a perennial. So we're very divided by our generation. We have the Greatest Generation. We have the Boomers, Millennials, Gen X, Y, and Z. And in a way, those are divisions that keep us apart. And so I like this notion of being a perennial. Anybody can be a perennial, whether you're 25, 64 like we are, or 85. It's an attitude. And it's an attitude of being involved and curious and often having friends of different generations. So this is like a new behavior that we can start to adopt. That is very gratifying. I've had the experience several times, especially with multi-generational friends, but also I'm having younger folks really kind of keep me in the swim of what's happening in life. And I think that's important to all of us."



On Adapting



"The thing I saw most, especially I'll say with my Dad - and I think this is somewhat of a male condition. He was very independent, very stubborn. He always liked to do things his way, and he really did not want assistance in general. And he did not want his three kids to be providing any kind of help - I'll say it in air quotes. And we were very aware of the sort of family dynamic and the generational dynamic and did not want to be telling our father what to do. Both because we knew that that was futile and that that's really not how we were approaching these problems, especially when he was falling a lot. So we tried to give him tools and he rejected most of them. And then he continued to fall and he died. He died from a series of falls.

How can you get smarter about getting smarter? Our guest Elizabeth Ricker, author of Smarter Tomorrow, introduces us to neurohacks that can cognitive functioning. She explains her concept of scientific self-help and how to improve cognitive functioning through a variety of short exercises and experiments.



We discuss:



The story of her middle school math teacher

How neurohacking and scientific self-help work with how to improve cognitive functioning

What she learned from tracking her New Year’s Resolutions since 2011

What we need to know about cognitive functioning that may be different than we expect

The New IQ and the New EQ

Common Lifestyle Bottlenecks – and how they can be addressed and improve cognitive functioning

How Serious Brain Games can improve executive function

The MIND diet

How having an accountability partner can help

The key messages from her book Smarter Tomorrow



Elizabeth joins us from San Francisco.



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Bio

Elizabeth R. Ricker is the author of the new book, Smarter Tomorrow: How 15 Minutes of Neurohacking a Day Can Help You Work Better, Think Faster, and Get More Done



Her work has been featured globally, including in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, on SiriusXM radio, and on public broadcast TV in Europe.



She has given talks on cognitive enhancement and neurohacking across the US and overseas. She is a sought-after expert by Silicon Valley venture capital firms, technology startups, schools, and the Fortune 500. She runs the citizen neuroscience, DIY, and neurohacking organization, NeuroEducate, and her consulting and speaking work goes through Ricker Labs.



Ricker received her undergraduate degree in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from MIT and her graduate degree in Mind, Brain, and Education from Harvard. In college, she worked in the neuroscience lab of Nobel Prize winner Dr. Susumu Tonegawa. Ricker was also a nationally ranked athlete and class president-- the latter of which occasionally involved such serious duties as dressing up in a giant rodent costume to play Tim the Beaver, the MIT mascot.



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Wise Quotes

On Neurohacking



"I think before you dive into all the things that the media is going to tell you that are falling apart as you get older, I think it's really important to just start with the things that you are probably stronger at than you realize. This is a really important thing with neurohacking - to start with an understanding of where you're strong and then understand what your personal bottlenecks are so that you can personalize everything that you do."



On Scientific Self Help



"You can take a very scientific approach to your life and the things that seem kind of abstract and maybe not under your control, like life satisfaction or mental performance - these things seem uncontrollable. I think they seem like you're either born with them or fate seems to play a role and you just don't have control over them. And what I want to really introduce to people is that we actually have a lot of data, and we have this tool, which is self-experimentation, that can allow you to actually take control over it. And if it helps at all, when you look back at the number of Nobel prize winners who have won awards in medicine or physiology, a surprising percentage of them actually ran self-experiments in the exact area that they won the Nobel prize in. So you will actually be in pretty good company. This is not some [sci-fi] stuff. This is something that even very various data scientists have done themselves. So, [there's] no reason why you can't ask and approach things just like a Nobel prize winner."



On Neurohacking 



"...When you start your neurohacking,

Your "retirement" could be longer than your career. What if you reject the traditional version of retirement that your neighbors and your colleagues have in mind? What if instead, you design a new life around what matters most to you and yours? And what if you bring the same qualities that made you successful to your new post-career chapters?



Today's guests, Milledge and Patti Hart are the authors of The Resolutionist: Welcome To The Anti-Retirement Movement. The Harts are living their new life on their own terms, based on twelve Resolutions they developed that define a pathway to make this phase of life the best of their life. And you can apply ideas from their framework to do the same - and measure your progress - as you define it - along the way.



Milledge and Patti Hart join us from California.



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Wise Quotes

On The Anti-Retirement Movement



"This generation of people actually really relates to the word anti. We were anti-war, we're anti-aging or anti-racism. Whatever the word is, it doesn't mean that you're against it. It really means that you're trying to redefine it. And I think that's really why we chose the word anti-retirement to say: How do we get society to shift its thinking about retirement and put it in a new place? If you think about the work we've done with the Stanford Longevity center, we have added 30 years to our lifespan in the last century and that's all in retirement. And so how do we take an anti-retirement approach and say: We're not going to approach this in the same way that historically the world has approached retirement? And if you're anti-something, you're definitely pro-something else."



On Prioritizing Yourself



"It's important to me because it's something I'd never done before because you're at such a different place in life, where you are more in control of things. Things aren't being set up for you and done for you. I'm making certain that I now [have] no guilt around moving myself up the priority list. It's important for a lot of reasons. I think at this stage of life mental health, self-confidence, and physical health [are] obvious things that matter when you get to this stage of life. But for me, it was the guilt. I had to really deal with the guilt of saying it's okay for me today to spend today on me."



On Metrics for Your New Life



"We all have lived with scorecards, probably since you were five years old, right? You brought home your first report card from school - and then you find yourself at whatever age you retire. And now there's no scorecard. There's no year-end bonus. There is no raise. There's no promotion. There's no whatever your scorecard was, whatever units it was in. And so it is important to your self-confidence that you actually see yourself making progress, that you see yourself as relevant, that you see yourself as important, and that you see yourself as still accomplishing. But for each person, it's very different. One of the things Milledge and I talk about in our book is really pushing people to try to measure the unmeasurable because the things we have been measuring - wealth and bonuses and money and units of whatever you [tracked ] - are gone. Now, what's your weight? And how many miles did you run today? Those are easy to measure, but we really pushed ourselves to say: How do we measure the unmeasurable? And we did that by saying, What is our desired state? What's the desired outcome? Is it a level of happiness, a level of connectedness, a level of relevancy? What's the end state that you're trying to accomplish? And what moves you towards that and start measuring deeper in the funnel?... We all need to have a measurement system in life, but it does need to be developed around what is important to you."

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Bios

Patti Hart

The pandemic has been a catalyst for reflection on what matters most and what constitutes a good life today. For many, it's sparked a realization that there's much more to life than the traditional model of work and careers. But what's next for you? For those contemplating retiring, perhaps earlier than expected, it's an opportunity to redesign their lives and pivot to a phase with greater meaning and purpose. How are you approaching your second half of life and retiring? Uncertainity leads many people to approach it with trepidation. Michael Clinton, the author of the new book ROAR into the second half of your life (before it's too late!), asserts that there's a better way. We discuss his four-part process to help you take charge of your next phase.



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Bio

Michael Clinton is the former President and Publishing Director of Hearst Magazines and is currently the special media advisor to the CEO of the Hearst Corporation. He is also a writer and photographer who has traveled to over 120 countries. He has appeared in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Town and Country, O, the Oprah Magazine, and other national media.



Clinton is the Founder of Circle of Generosity, a nonprofit that grants random acts of kindness to those in need and serves on multiple nonprofit boards. His newest book, ROAR into the second half of your life (before it's too late!) is a manifesto on how to get the most out of your life experience in work, lifestyle, and relationships.



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Wise Quotes

On the acronym ROAR



"First of all, the awareness of if you're 50 and you're healthy today, you have a really good shot at living to be 90 - or a hundred. And the construct that we were handed by our parents - and by both government policy and corporations - is a very outdated construct. The days they were developed in were the days when the life expectancy quite honestly was in the early 60s. And so you'd check out of a job and you wouldn't live much longer. Well, all that's changed. So ROAR and the acronym that it stands for is designed to help people have that aha moment about this. So they are: Re-imagine yourself and be one of those "Re-Imagineers" before others do it for you, whether it is being laid off or pushed out or any of the above.



And re-imagining your favorite future, especially if you're going to have this long life arc, the O is own who you are. I like to call it a midlife awakening, not a midlife crisis because once you've lived 25 years, you know a lot about yourself. So use that awakening [to accept ]that you've made good decisions and bad decisions - just kind of own them and assess where you are right now.  But at the same time, own your numbers. Think about it - it's amazing to me, Joe, how many people I ask what's your blood pressure or your heart rate, and they're completely clueless. And that's not a good thing because as we live longer, we need to keep our health numbers and metrics in place with our financial numbers. We need to own our successes and our failures. So, own who you are, is a big part of this book, and what's next for you. A is Act now with this concept called life layering, which I hope we can get into and talk about. And then the final R is reassess your relationships, because when you're in midlife and you want to make a change in whatever part of your life you're talking about, you need the support of your family, your friends, your community, your colleagues. They're the ones who are going to help facilitate that. And so you gotta really have a clear, clear head as to who they are and who your posse will be to get you there. So it's this four-step process, which is in the book, which stands for ROAR."



On Being Person-Appropriate - Not Age-Appropriate



"We all are sort of wired to think about what a 50-plus life is supposed to be,

Achieving the financial security to retire is a big milestone. But you're not done. There's inner work to be done to move into this next phase of life. Retired psychotherapist and bestselling author Connie Zweig joins our retirement podcast to discuss her new book The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul - and her insights on how reflection and contemplation can be valuable practices in your transition.



We discuss:



How retirement can be a catalyst for an inner journey to reimagine life

What the words retire and yoga have in common

The obstacles often encountered on this inner journey - and what Shadow Work is

How an Identity Crisis following retirement is different from a Mid-life Crisis

Why letting go is important – and challenging

Her own journey in retiring as a therapist – and what it’s taught her

What she's learned from grandparenting

What an Elder is – and how one becomes one

How people can come to view retirement as a spiritual journey

The main message of her new book The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul



Connie joins us from California.



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Thank You



Thanks to our wise guests and loyal listeners The Retirement Wisdom Podcast is among the top 3% in popularity globally according to Listen Notes.



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Bio



Connie Zweig, Ph.D., is a retired therapist, co-author of Meeting the Shadow and Romancing the Shadow, author of Meeting the Shadow of Spirituality and a novel, A Moth to the Flame: The Life of Sufi Poet Rumi. Her new book, The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul, extends shadow-work into late life and teaches aging as a spiritual practice. Connie has been doing contemplative practices for 50 years. She is a wife and grandmother and was initiated as an Elder by Sage-ing International in 2017. After investing in all these roles, she is practicing the shift from role to soul.



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Wise Quotes

On Letting Go



"My framework in the book is that the shift from senior to Elder in late life is a rite of passage. And we don't have rites of passage for elders in our culture, right? It just doesn't exist. So there are three stages of every rite of passage - and the first stage is letting go. And that might mean letting go of outworn roles or attitudes, letting go of outworn beliefs, or self-images or relationships that don't work - or jobs, or finances, or goals of some kind. And so letting go at every stage of life is hard because as humans, we bond, and we get attached. And with our egos to try to control everything. But to become an Elder, we actually need to let go of the Ego's agenda and step into a different speed limit, a different pace of life, a different sense of flow. I call it from Obligation to Flow - and we need to let go of the past. A lot of people are clinging to the past, feel regret about the past, and need to give and receive forgiveness about the past. So there's a chapter about how to do the emotional work to help us let go of the past so that we can live fully in the present because many people don't know how to do that. They don't really know how to be here and enjoy it fully."



On Becoming an Elder



"I think this is very individual, but what I explore in the book is that everyone becomes a senior with a Medicare birthday, but becoming an elder is not an age. It's a stage. It requires intention and what I call inner work so that there's a certain level of self-knowledge and awareness and ways of relating and a desire to give to the common good. Some people are Activists Elders, and some are Creative Elders and some are Spiritual Elders. So we can transmit the knowledge of our lives in many different ways,