Shownotes
Welcome to Hey Boomer - a podcast for and about baby boomers. On this episode, Wendy Green speaks with retirement transition coach, Dr. Sara Zeff Geber. Sara specializes in working with people without adult children or close relatives, on how to plan for their future as they age. Dr. Geber has written a book called "Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers."
In this episode, they covered questions like, "Who will be there to help you if you are unable to help yourself? Who could speak on your behalf if you cannot speak for yourself? Who is capable of making decisions for you if you are unable to make them yourself?"
Sara discusses the importance of financial and legal planning, choosing a proxy, and building a support network of nieces, nephews and other loved ones.
Sarah also talks about the benefits of joining a community as a senior, including cohousing, home sharing, and tiny home communities. She warns against the perils of aging in place without proper social connections and support, and shares some encouragement for baby boomers who are childless by choice.
Wendy and Sara's conversation also touches on important topics such as end-of-life planning, estate planning, social security, and long-term care.
Don't miss this insightful discussion on planning for the future as a solo ager, and more. Tune in to Hey Boomer with Wendy Green and join the conversation.
Thank you to our sponsors:
DJ Benson & Associates LLC: dave@securingsouls.com
ADHD Career Coaching: https://passiontocareer.com
You can find more information about Solo Aging at https://sarazeffgeber.com
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Transcripts
You. We hear a lot these days about the sandwich
Speaker:generation, adult children caring for
Speaker:aging parents. But what if you are aging
Speaker:and you don't have children to come and. Check on you and
Speaker:care for you? My guest on Hay Boomer
Speaker:today is Dr. Sarah south geber,
Speaker:and she's an expert in aging, and in fact, she's written a
Speaker:book specifically for solo agers called
Speaker:essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers.
Speaker:In this episode, we ask some really important questions,
Speaker:things like who will be there to help you if you can't care
Speaker:for yourself? Who could speak on your
Speaker:behalf if you are unable to speak for yourself?
Speaker:And who is capable of making decisions for you that
Speaker:you may be unable to make for yourself at that point?
Speaker:These and many other important questions are
Speaker:discussed in this episode of hey,
Speaker:Boomer. My name is Wendy Green,
Speaker:and I will be your host.
Speaker:You.
Speaker:Hello, hey Boomer listeners.
Speaker:It's another Monday. It's another hey Boomer, and I'm so glad that
Speaker:all of you are here with us. I have some important questions
Speaker:for you. Do you have a will your power of
Speaker:attorneys defined? You've got your medical directive in order?
Speaker:Have you started withdrawing from Social Security or
Speaker:from your retirement savings account?
Speaker:Have you made plans for your long
Speaker:term care? How you'd want to be cared for, where you'd want to be cared
Speaker:for? And have you had this discussion with your children
Speaker:or your spouse or your partner or your family?
Speaker:What if you don't have children or a spouse or a
Speaker:partner to talk this over with? Who's going to care for
Speaker:you if and when you need it? These are
Speaker:really difficult conversations to have in
Speaker:the best of times and when we have that
Speaker:family support that we feel we can depend on.
Speaker:But if you're a solo ager, these questions can become
Speaker:even trickier. Hi, Anne. So I'm glad
Speaker:that you all are joining us today for this important conversation.
Speaker:And the truth is, these questions that we're going to
Speaker:discuss today, they do apply in some ways
Speaker:differently for solo agers, but they also apply to all of
Speaker:us and they are important questions for all of us to think about.
Speaker:Before we get started today, I did want to thank a
Speaker:couple of our sponsors for
Speaker:the Hay Boomer Forest bathing event that's taking place on May the fourth.
Speaker:I wanted to thank DJ. Benson and Associates.
Speaker:They are a safety and security consultancy
Speaker:specializing in threat assessment,
Speaker:management and mitigation,
Speaker:workplace violence prevention and intervention training,
Speaker:organizational and personal security assessments.
Speaker:And their motto is securing souls
Speaker:one client at a time.
Speaker:If you would like to get in touch with my friend
Speaker:Dave Benson from DJ. Benson and Associates,
Speaker:you can email him at dave@securingsoles.com.
Speaker:Our other sponsor for today is Shell Mendelssohn.
Speaker:And Shell says many people with ADHD struggle
Speaker:in their careers. But what if the problem wasn't you?
Speaker:What if you're just in the wrong job.
Speaker:She says. People with ADHD are some of the brightest,
Speaker:most creative people in the world, but they have to play
Speaker:by their own rules. So using a
Speaker:proven process of self reflection,
Speaker:shell can help you unlock your full
Speaker:potential and find a meaningful and satisfying
Speaker:career. And you can find out more about this@passiontocareer.com.
Speaker:And I can tell you that Shell is very passionate about the work that
Speaker:she does.
Speaker:Speaking about forest bathing.
Speaker:Doris, David, Scott, Beth,
Speaker:Gail, Kathy, Rob, Bunny and Lillian are all
Speaker:joining me on May 4 for forest bathing.
Speaker:And they're joining Angie Steagall, who is our forest bathing
Speaker:guide. That means there are just five spots
Speaker:left, and I posted the
Speaker:link to register for forest bathing in the chat
Speaker:on both Facebook and LinkedIn. So you can go
Speaker:right now and sign up while there's still a
Speaker:few spaces left. It's going to be a wonderful
Speaker:way to ease out of our COVID isolation, make some
Speaker:new friends, and relax into nature.
Speaker:I hope you'll join me. It's really going to be a special event,
Speaker:and I would love to get you all to join
Speaker:the email list so that you can get our Monday morning announcements
Speaker:and you can get access to the blog posts
Speaker:that I write or the guest blog posts that we have. There are
Speaker:two ways to get on the email list. You can drop me a quick email
Speaker:to my account at wendy at heyboomer biz.
Speaker:Or you can go to the Facebook page and subscribe
Speaker:to the blog post. It's that simple. And then you'll be
Speaker:in the know with everything that hey Boomer is doing.
Speaker:And with that, I'm going to bring on our guest
Speaker:today, sarah Zeff Gepper.
Speaker:Hi, Sarah. Hi, Wendy. So nice
Speaker:to have you. I really appreciate you joining me on the show today.
Speaker:Oh, I'm happy to be here. Now I just want to know more about forest
Speaker:bathing. I know, it's so cool.
Speaker:It's like this little meaningful three hour excursion
Speaker:into the woods. Mindfulness. Very cool.
Speaker:Yeah. Sounds very good. Yeah. So let me take
Speaker:a moment and tell people about you, Sarah.
Speaker:Dr. Sarah Zekebber. She is a 2018
Speaker:recipient of the Influencers in Aging designation by PBS
Speaker:Next Avenue. She's an author,
Speaker:a certified retirement coach, and a professional speaker on
Speaker:retirement and aging. Sarah has developed a
Speaker:niche specialty which we're going to talk about today about
Speaker:solo agers people who have no children or
Speaker:who are aging alone.
Speaker:Sarah is the author of The Essential Retirement
Speaker:Planning for Solo Agers a Retirement
Speaker:and Aging Roadmap for Single and Childless Adults.
Speaker:I read this book. I've marked it up. There's lots of worksheets in
Speaker:here. I am not a solo ager, but I
Speaker:found it incredibly useful.
Speaker:And with her speaking and writing, sarah has
Speaker:been raising awareness of solo agers for the past ten
Speaker:years. She believes that solo agers have a unique
Speaker:need in later life. That warrants greater foresight
Speaker:and a more robust approach to planning.
Speaker:And Sarah is married, but she still considers herself a solo ager
Speaker:because she doesn't have children. She has a puppy,
Speaker:and she and her husband live in Santa Rosa,
Speaker:California. Is there anything I left out,
Speaker:Sarah, that you'd like to add? That's pretty complete. Thank you.
Speaker:You are welcome. So before we jump right into
Speaker:all the things that we need to be thinking about, can you tell me kind
Speaker:of your career trajectory and how you got from
Speaker:where you started to your emphasis on solo aging?
Speaker:Sure. Let's get a little bit circuitous.
Speaker:I was for 25 years a management consultant,
Speaker:organizational consulting, team building, that kind of thing.
Speaker:Wonderful career. I enjoyed it a lot. It morphed
Speaker:into more executive and management coaching than anything
Speaker:else. And there was a time about,
Speaker:I don't know, twelve years ago, when I found myself
Speaker:coaching a lot of baby boomers, which I'm obviously a baby boomer
Speaker:too. And so I was coaching people who were my contemporaries,
Speaker:and they started wanting to talk more about their retirement
Speaker:plans than their strategic plans.
Speaker:So I found myself doing a lot of coaching
Speaker:with regard to what they were going to do next in
Speaker:their own life rather than in their company. And I thought, you know,
Speaker:I'm seeing a lot of this. I think there's something going
Speaker:on here. So the more I heard about,
Speaker:the more I got interested in actually doing retirement
Speaker:coaching, because that's clearly what many of these people wanted.
Speaker:Now, at the time it was, I must say, mostly men,
Speaker:because again, of the baby boom generation, it's mostly men
Speaker:that hold those top leadership positions. That's changing.
Speaker:But for our generation, it hadn't moved the needle very far.
Speaker:Typically, these men had not built any kind
Speaker:of a life for themselves outside of their work.
Speaker:So there was definitely a need for some coaching to
Speaker:get them from one place to the next because they didn't know what they wanted
Speaker:to do in their retirement. And when we started talking about how are you
Speaker:going to add meaning and purpose to your life after you leave here,
Speaker:they were clueless. So I looked into
Speaker:retirement coaching a little further and
Speaker:discovered that there was an organization who
Speaker:actually trained retirement coaches. And even
Speaker:though I have my doctorate in an organizational behavior, that didn't
Speaker:help me to understand anything about the retirement transition
Speaker:and kind of how people mature in their older
Speaker:years. So I went through the program
Speaker:and got a certificate in retirement coaching and kind
Speaker:of hung out my shingle. And I did retirement coaching for quite a long
Speaker:time. And then I had another Epiphany about three years
Speaker:into that. I was looking around my
Speaker:I don't know, the scenario around me, the people
Speaker:that I knew, the people I worked with, the people I hung out with as
Speaker:friends. And so many of them were spending a tremendous
Speaker:amount of time taking care of their aging parents.
Speaker:We were all in our 60s, early sixty s
Speaker:at the time. And so those of them doesn't
Speaker:include me, but those of them that had living parents,
Speaker:they were getting old, they were getting into their late 80s, early 90s,
Speaker:mid 90s, getting to a point in their lives where they
Speaker:weren't quite managing as well as they had been ten
Speaker:years ago on their own. So in some cases,
Speaker:my friends and colleagues were flying back and forth to the East Coast.
Speaker:If parents were local, sometimes they were spending a
Speaker:tremendous amount of their weekends making sure that there was
Speaker:food in the house for the week, taking them to doctors appointments,
Speaker:taking time off work to do these things and in many cases,
Speaker:getting them moved into a safer environment.
Speaker:And so I've watched a lot of this going on with people in
Speaker:my life. And I sat down to have a glass of wine
Speaker:with a friend of mine who also doesn't have children. And I
Speaker:said, Sandy, who's going to do that for us?
Speaker:Big question. Big question. Yeah. And when we
Speaker:looked at each other and went, oh,
Speaker:I don't know, I got
Speaker:very curious. And I started doing some research to uncover what
Speaker:the incidence of I'd like to call it child
Speaker:free rather than childless. At least
Speaker:among the people I knew. Most of us were childless by choice.
Speaker:We had made a decision somewhere back in the 70s that
Speaker:we were going to pursue a career. We were going to go it on our
Speaker:own, we were going to make our own path.
Speaker:If you remember, baby boomers were the first ones to have the pill.
Speaker:They were the recipients of all of the noise
Speaker:that the era folks were making.
Speaker:I marched in some of those protests
Speaker:about unequal opportunities for women, and it changed.
Speaker:We made that change. So doors
Speaker:were opening not only to universities and colleges for
Speaker:women, but they were also opening to careers that women had never really
Speaker:been invited into before. So the
Speaker:world was our oyster, so to speak. We could control our reproductive
Speaker:processes however we wanted, and we could get out there and make
Speaker:a living for ourselves such that we didn't need to get married
Speaker:and we could buck the tide
Speaker:and not have children and just pursue a
Speaker:career that was meaningful and important to us.
Speaker:So that's what I and many of my colleagues did.
Speaker:But here we are in our sixty s and seventy s,
Speaker:looking ahead and going, this is the choice
Speaker:we made. And now we have to do some planning,
Speaker:some really serious planning about how we're going to be
Speaker:taken care of or how we will take care
Speaker:of ourselves, which we may or may not be able to do
Speaker:for the entire length of our life without
Speaker:the help of adult children. Right? So you must have done
Speaker:an incredible amount of research then to try
Speaker:to answer some of these tough questions.
Speaker:And I think even if we have children, it may be a situation
Speaker:where your children are not in a position to help and take care
Speaker:of. So let's start down the path
Speaker:about some of the things that you need to think about.
Speaker:Sure. Well, one of the ways that I
Speaker:approached this kind of answer to so what,
Speaker:what do we need to think about? Is to really look around me
Speaker:and observe what adult
Speaker:children were doing for their parents
Speaker:who were in their eighty s and ninety s. And so I
Speaker:came up with kind of several buckets of things.
Speaker:First of all, we certainly need to be very robust
Speaker:in our financial planning and our legal
Speaker:planning. So you mentioned early on
Speaker:something about have you done your advanced directive, have you
Speaker:written your will? All of those kinds of things.
Speaker:This is where people who have been negligent and
Speaker:not do that well. It kind of falls to their kids and their kids grumble
Speaker:and grouse. But usually when push comes to shove,
Speaker:adult children come in and do what's necessary when their parents
Speaker:run into a crisis. In our case,
Speaker:those of us who don't have kids, there is
Speaker:no safety net. So we really have to think long and
Speaker:hard about who we want to
Speaker:be our proxy, who we want making decisions for us if we
Speaker:are unable. At some point,
Speaker:things happen. People have strokes, people have heart
Speaker:attacks, people get into accidents, people fall, people break hips and
Speaker:all kinds of things and end up in rehabilitation
Speaker:units of nursing homes that they never,
Speaker:ever planned to be in. So the
Speaker:more we can get around our
Speaker:resistance to looking at that potential future and make
Speaker:some plans for it and understand what our options are
Speaker:going to be at that time, find people that will be proxies
Speaker:for us. That's the way that we need
Speaker:to plan as we get older. Yeah. And Sarah,
Speaker:you talk about that some in the book. These conversations are
Speaker:difficult at best. Right. So finding a proxy,
Speaker:somebody who is not a blood relative,
Speaker:just to build on this question. My other question is maybe they're our
Speaker:same age. They could be in trouble before
Speaker:us. Right. So maybe you need more than one. And how
Speaker:do you build that trust and build that conversation?
Speaker:Well, first of all, let me address a couple of things that you said.
Speaker:Just because we don't have adult children doesn't mean that we
Speaker:don't have blood relatives that might fill that gap.
Speaker:Okay, good point. Those of us that are close emotionally,
Speaker:hopefully and or physically to
Speaker:our brothers and sisters who do have children,
Speaker:those nieces and nephews to me are kind of the first line
Speaker:of defense. That's who you would go to first.
Speaker:But they need to know you. You need
Speaker:to have been close to them as they were growing
Speaker:up, ideally been in their life somehow,
Speaker:or at this point in your life, can find a way to help
Speaker:them because in a way, enlisting the aid of nieces
Speaker:and nephews. We need to kind of pay it forward.
Speaker:I'll give you a couple of examples out of my life. I have
Speaker:helped two of my nieces get through college.
Speaker:Their parents, my brother and his wife, did not do as
Speaker:well financially, and so I stepped in and helped
Speaker:at many junctures. Even though I didn't live very close, I tried to
Speaker:visit as often as I could. So my nieces will
Speaker:be involved, but the person I'm closest to
Speaker:and who I know will be the
Speaker:closest physically, geographically, to me, is actually a
Speaker:cousin who's 15 years younger than me.
Speaker:Okay, so those kinds of possibilities
Speaker:work. Now, there are even
Speaker:technical solo agers that I don't even think of as solo
Speaker:agers. One woman I know is the
Speaker:fifth of five sisters, and the sisters are all
Speaker:fairly close in age within a couple of years of each other.
Speaker:And when my friend got out of
Speaker:college, she went on to get further education. She became
Speaker:a scientist, she traveled all over the world, but she never got married
Speaker:and had kids. However, 20 years ago,
Speaker:when she came home to California to
Speaker:stop all the traveling and whatnot, she resumed her
Speaker:relationship with all of her she must have ten or twelve nieces and
Speaker:nephews from those other sisters. She's very close to them.
Speaker:So my guidance to her was just, Linda, talk to them,
Speaker:talk to them. And that's the key that most of us have to use,
Speaker:is we need to not only kind
Speaker:of pay it forward with those nieces and nephews and mentor where we can
Speaker:help them understand from a different perspective than their
Speaker:parents, maybe what they're going through. Because people
Speaker:go through things at every stage of life. And if you have nieces and
Speaker:nephews in their thirty s and forty s, they're still needing help.
Speaker:They're probably raising kids now or trying to build a career.
Speaker:So be in their life. Yeah. And I can tell you, as mom,
Speaker:they'd rather talk to their aunt than to their mom.
Speaker:They want my advice. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker:But these are difficult conversations. Sarah, do you have
Speaker:guidance or tools that you use to be able to start
Speaker:these conversations? You won't find a
Speaker:lot of that specific thing in my book. I do mention it,
Speaker:but there are some wonderful resources out there. Ellen Goodman,
Speaker:a journalist that has also written a lot
Speaker:of books, has headed up
Speaker:something that I think started about ten years ago called The Conversation Project.
Speaker:I've heard of that. Yes. So check that
Speaker:out. That's great guidance. There's an
Speaker:organization called Compassion and Choices.
Speaker:They have some good guidance. Remember,
Speaker:all of these things are leading up to the topic that nobody wants to
Speaker:discuss, which is death and one
Speaker:of my crusades is to get people to talk more
Speaker:about death. It's not like anybody's going to
Speaker:avoid it. We're all going to get there one of these days.
Speaker:And so how much better a
Speaker:life we could lead, how much more peaceful a life we
Speaker:could lead if we just understand that death is part of life and help people
Speaker:to talk about it. There's something that's been going
Speaker:around the world, actually for about the past twelve or 15 years
Speaker:called Death Cafe, where people get together and just
Speaker:talk about death, any aspect of death. But the
Speaker:more you can talk about it, the more you can incorporate
Speaker:it into your thinking about what this life is all about and
Speaker:what is some people are terming a good death.
Speaker:What is that? So talk to
Speaker:your proxies, your nieces, your nephews,
Speaker:your younger friends. By the way, I don't mean to say that you
Speaker:always have to choose a blood relative. Some people really have no blood relatives
Speaker:to choose from. And then my
Speaker:next suggestion is look to the organizations you belong to.
Speaker:And if you don't belong to any organizations, start thinking about joining
Speaker:some.
Speaker:Everything from book clubs to hiking
Speaker:clubs, running groups,
Speaker:organizations, service organizations, the people you volunteer
Speaker:with, the places of worship.
Speaker:Every place of worship I've ever seen, whether it's a synagogue,
Speaker:a mosque, a church, they all have
Speaker:groups that cater to people's special
Speaker:interests. They have new mothers groups, and they
Speaker:have singles groups, and they have bereavement
Speaker:groups. That their job is to help people through the stages
Speaker:of life. So if you
Speaker:belong to a religious organization, that's a great way
Speaker:to find people that share your interests
Speaker:that you might strike up new friendships with that are a little bit younger than
Speaker:you. A colleague of mine
Speaker:recently approached a woman that she's been
Speaker:somehow putting it off for years and years and years,
Speaker:talking to a friend that was 15 years younger than she,
Speaker:that they had been very close at one point. Then they worked together and
Speaker:they kind of lost touch. But she made a point of getting
Speaker:back together and finally got up the courage to say,
Speaker:can I put you on my advanced directive?
Speaker:I just really have nobody else in this area. And she
Speaker:was absolutely honored. Yeah, and most people
Speaker:will be they'll be honored that you would trust them like that.
Speaker:Yeah, that's a good point. It can be frightening, but you can be surprised
Speaker:at the response.
Speaker:I want to switch a little bit from talking about the death, although that
Speaker:is important, and we do need to be able to have those conversations to
Speaker:talking about the living. So one of the things that you spend a lot
Speaker:of time with in this book is where to live.
Speaker:So aging at home or retirement communities,
Speaker:active adult communities, villages, all these different options which
Speaker:we all have to consider. But what makes
Speaker:that a different consideration if you're a solo ager.
Speaker:It'S a matter of degree.
Speaker:I've had people say to me things like,
Speaker:well, I'm going into my 70s now. I live 10
Speaker:miles out in the woods. I've always liked it that way. I like
Speaker:my animals more than people.
Speaker:Why should I move into town?
Speaker:Why should I develop these friendships you're talking about? I don't
Speaker:even really like people.
Speaker:And they'll say, so what's a solution for me? And I have
Speaker:to look and I'm going to say, it's your choice.
Speaker:You can live however you want to live and know that
Speaker:you are actually, by default, making choices about what might
Speaker:happen in an emergency. So it
Speaker:is my belief that we are social creatures and I
Speaker:encourage living in community, whatever that
Speaker:means to you. And we can define community in so
Speaker:many different ways, but it doesn't necessarily
Speaker:mean moving into a senior living facility,
Speaker:continuing care. Senior living facilities
Speaker:are very expensive. They're kind of the creme
Speaker:de la creme. About 6% of the population can afford those
Speaker:elite living situations. But there's everything
Speaker:and anything beyond
Speaker:that. I'm a big fan of home
Speaker:sharing. I'm a big fan of cohousing.
Speaker:I'm a big fan of tiny home communities. I'm a really
Speaker:big fan. Now, you have to understand, I live in California where
Speaker:the weather is conducive to this, but all over the Southwest
Speaker:we have thousands of mobile home parks.
Speaker:And I'm a huge fan of mobile home parks for people that
Speaker:are downsizing and want to live in a
Speaker:one level unit where they have
Speaker:only to walk out their door to find somebody
Speaker:to talk to. Now, that's true, and that can be true in a condominium
Speaker:or an apartment building. Sometimes we
Speaker:have these sort of I call them default retirement
Speaker:communities of people that have just been living in the same complex for
Speaker:30, 40 years and they've gotten to know each other and they support one
Speaker:another, and that's good. But what I don't
Speaker:like to see, what I think is very dangerous is
Speaker:this whole concept of aging in place.
Speaker:If aging in place means to you that you're going to
Speaker:stay in your two or three story suburban home
Speaker:out on a cul de sac somewhere where there's no public transportation,
Speaker:you don't know your neighbors because they're at different stages of
Speaker:their life or whatever, and there you are.
Speaker:You've been in that house for 30, 40 years. Maybe if you
Speaker:have raised kids, maybe you've even raised kids in that house, and your
Speaker:kids maybe are saying, oh, don't sell the family home, mom. We love
Speaker:coming home for Thanksgiving. Well, you know,
Speaker:it's probably time to get rid of that family home. Are you
Speaker:going to be able to do those stairs safely
Speaker:when you're in your late seventy s? Eighty s. Ninety s.
Speaker:And yes, I included know people who
Speaker:have done that. However,
Speaker:most of the people that I see doing that successfully do
Speaker:have kids that come over and kind of fill
Speaker:in the blanks. They live close by so they help with transportation,
Speaker:they help with groceries, they help with
Speaker:the chores around the house. Because one
Speaker:of the biggest reasons that people do move into some kind of
Speaker:senior living environment is that they just don't
Speaker:have the energy and the strength to
Speaker:take care of that home anymore.
Speaker:Yeah. And the scary thing is you hear these stories about
Speaker:someone that has fallen in their home and they
Speaker:don't live with anybody and they're lying there for days
Speaker:before somebody happens to come in and check on them.
Speaker:The repercussions of doing that, the downside
Speaker:of staying like that is they're pretty dire,
Speaker:I think. But again,
Speaker:it's a matter of figuring out what kind of community
Speaker:you would be happy in. And a community can be too,
Speaker:however, not your spouse.
Speaker:I'd like to also encourage people who are married to get
Speaker:out beyond your spouse and find relationships.
Speaker:Find friendships, join a book club, join a
Speaker:walking group, join a golf group, do something
Speaker:that gets you communicating
Speaker:and hanging out with people other than your spouse. That's why
Speaker:I include married people in my definition of solo
Speaker:ager. Which by the way, has expanded tremendously.
Speaker:I really used to think of solo agers as just people who
Speaker:didn't have kids, period. But I had so many people come up to
Speaker:me and say, well I'm a solo ager, I have kids but they live 6000
Speaker:miles away. Or I have kids but we're estranged. Or they kind of
Speaker:failed to launch or in any kinds of any
Speaker:kind of situation. Right. And you never know
Speaker:what can happen. Even if you're married, you could still end up
Speaker:being a solo agent. And the thing about it is,
Speaker:especially if you don't have kids unless you get hit by the same
Speaker:bus on the same day, you and your spouse
Speaker:both need to plan to be solo agers because one of you is going to
Speaker:be a true solo age or someday.
Speaker:So you list a bunch of categories.
Speaker:I think there are six that you say are super important
Speaker:to be thinking about as you're aging and in
Speaker:our seventy s. Eighty s. But what would you say are like the top two
Speaker:or three that we all need to focus on and
Speaker:really start spending time thinking about?
Speaker:Yeah, I liken it to that old
Speaker:three legged stool. It seems like everybody has a three legged stool for something.
Speaker:And my three legged stool is legal,
Speaker:financial and social.
Speaker:Okay? We all need to have our legal act together.
Speaker:You need to get that will done, get the
Speaker:advanced directives, choose your proxies,
Speaker:get those signed, talk to the people that you're
Speaker:naming as proxies, do all of that.
Speaker:Set up a trust if your attorney thinks
Speaker:you need to. The second is financial.
Speaker:Make sure that you can maintain the lifestyle
Speaker:that you are enjoying now until you're
Speaker:100 or however long you think you'll live. I know a
Speaker:lot of financial planners now are running their
Speaker:spreadsheets for people out to 103 because it's not unusual for
Speaker:people to live to 100 anymore. So take
Speaker:a look at how you're living right now and get
Speaker:the help of a financial planner. Even if you just pay for an hour or
Speaker:two of his or her time, say, am I going to be able to sustain
Speaker:this with the income I have? Whatever that income is
Speaker:from however long you're going to work, factor some
Speaker:of those things in, because even if you're still happily
Speaker:working now, the day may come and
Speaker:like many people, you're saying, I'm just going to work till I drop.
Speaker:Well, drop can be defined in a lot of different ways.
Speaker:Yeah, true. Everybody thinks that they're going to
Speaker:just have a fatal heart attack one day at their desk or out on
Speaker:the golf course. But that's not how most people spend their
Speaker:eighty s and ninety s.
Speaker:That's a scary question. Too, though, because if you don't
Speaker:have a big source of income and you're in your 70s,
Speaker:then you have some other really important decisions, like downsizing.
Speaker:Downsizing. Living here
Speaker:in the outskirts of the Bay Area of California,
Speaker:I often say to people not tongue
Speaker:in cheek, there is life outside of California,
Speaker:and life is a lot less expensive outside of
Speaker:California. Now, lots of younger people
Speaker:are very much discovering that we've had a huge exodus of
Speaker:people to Texas and Oklahoma and Arkansas
Speaker:and places that our generation would just never have
Speaker:considered. But young people are going, they're going for the jobs, they're going
Speaker:for the to be able to afford their lifestyle.
Speaker:So think about where you're living. I even encourage some people,
Speaker:especially people who
Speaker:are looking at really low income
Speaker:levels and saying, I just can't afford to get old. What am I going to
Speaker:do? And of course, if you've seen nomad land,
Speaker:you know what can happen. And you
Speaker:want to join the brigade of people who live out of their RVs
Speaker:and vans and whatnot. Think about living outside
Speaker:the confines of the US. There are lovely places
Speaker:to retire. There's a great organization called International
Speaker:Living, which their whole business. They have a magazine,
Speaker:they have a big online presence.
Speaker:They have people that live in all kinds of countries all over the world that
Speaker:write about and talk about what it's like to retire there and what it cost
Speaker:to retire there. So if that's something that really
Speaker:pushes a button for you, check out International.
Speaker:Living and they talk about the health. Care options
Speaker:out there, but they cover it all.
Speaker:They choose the ten best countries to retire to or
Speaker:ten best locations to retire to. Every year,
Speaker:I always write an article for my I write a regular
Speaker:column for Forbes.com, and I always
Speaker:cover that every year. What are the top ten this year?
Speaker:And you'd be surprised. And they cover everything
Speaker:from what's the health care like? How welcoming is it
Speaker:for expats?
Speaker:Can you get a work visa if you want to work down there?
Speaker:What is the health care situation like?
Speaker:You name it, they have researched it.
Speaker:So that could be an interesting option. It's an option.
Speaker:And then finally the social. What a
Speaker:lot of people let slide as they get older is they they
Speaker:lose their their friendships. They lose their relationships with people.
Speaker:And and I think we after we're out of the workplace,
Speaker:we have to work a little harder, a little differently to
Speaker:make sure that we do continue to be social, that we
Speaker:have people in our lives, whether they come from our
Speaker:volunteer work or some civic organization or
Speaker:maybe from our place of worship,
Speaker:our neighborhood. It can be anywhere. But be careful
Speaker:of not cocooning too far. We've all
Speaker:had a taste of cocooning this last year in the pandemic.
Speaker:Fortunately most boomers now have
Speaker:had vaccine so at least that's pretty
Speaker:true in California and other states where friends of
Speaker:ours live. And we're getting out and resuming those
Speaker:relationships which I think is really important.
Speaker:Yeah, I think it's really important too. And I
Speaker:think we have had that cocooning thing but
Speaker:I think there are limitations.
Speaker:Like if you're not really mobile,
Speaker:if you don't drive after dark,
Speaker:just reaching out and making new friends.
Speaker:Those are all great reasons for getting out of that suburban
Speaker:home and into some
Speaker:kind of community where you'll be near people,
Speaker:some of whom do drive. I know a
Speaker:lot of the mobile home parks.
Speaker:They have community rooms and they use those community
Speaker:rooms for potlucks and they usually have a swimming pool and people gather around
Speaker:there. It's like a club.
Speaker:Anytime you have a club like atmosphere you're going
Speaker:to form relationships if you get out there and
Speaker:at least have the intent of doing so. So here's where it gets
Speaker:tricky though, right? So we have this mindset. We've been working,
Speaker:we've been living in this nice house. We have this nice yard and flowers and
Speaker:all this little stuff and then to think about
Speaker:giving all that up and it's
Speaker:my bias, I know that. But to think about moving
Speaker:into a mobile home park I'm like oh what a step down.
Speaker:That would feel bad. But maybe somehow
Speaker:coach me on how would I shift that mindset. You know
Speaker:what the biggest thing I tell people? And you know what?
Speaker:It might not be a mobile home park. It might be a really lovely condominium
Speaker:complex somewhere closer to a downtown center.
Speaker:I have a number of colleagues who have kind of decamped
Speaker:out of the suburbs into a more urban environment where there's
Speaker:transportation and again where there are people right next door.
Speaker:Go visit some of these places. Just go
Speaker:walk around. If it's
Speaker:somewhere that you have to get special permission to enter, especially now with
Speaker:COVID Get that permission. I tell people to
Speaker:do that. With regard to senior living communities too,
Speaker:go look at what an active adult community
Speaker:looks like. Active adult communities are the old
Speaker:del web of the kind
Speaker:of revamped for a more
Speaker:modern day. Some of the latest ones that I get a kick
Speaker:out of were built in Florida on Jimmy
Speaker:Buffett's model.
Speaker:It's for parrot heads. It's for people that are Jimmy Buffett fans
Speaker:called Latitude Margaritaville. Those are active
Speaker:adult communities. You have to be 55 to move in
Speaker:there, and boy, people can't move into them fast enough.
Speaker:That's great. So there are those kind of communities
Speaker:all over the country, predominantly in the Southwest,
Speaker:but you'll find those kinds of communities that look more
Speaker:like a condominium structure than a cluster of a
Speaker:couple of thousand homes around a lake or something. But they're
Speaker:just urban home. They'll have to pull you out of their feet first. I've had
Speaker:that enough times. And Daras
Speaker:mentions tiny homes. You also mentioned cohousing. What is
Speaker:that? Cohousing is a grassroots
Speaker:effort by usually one
Speaker:person or a small group of people who want
Speaker:to develop what usually looks like
Speaker:a condominium set up, where they and their friends
Speaker:and people that they that also are interested and
Speaker:that they invite in live together. It's not a commune.
Speaker:Everybody has their own unit, like their own condominium unit,
Speaker:but it's
Speaker:for people who want to build community. So they always eat
Speaker:at least two or three meals together every week.
Speaker:They have meetings about what
Speaker:they need to do in the community. They take care of the community.
Speaker:They usually have elaborate gardens,
Speaker:and it's driven by the residents,
Speaker:the people who live there, the homeowners. And it's a homeowner
Speaker:homeownership model, generally not a rental
Speaker:model, although I know some cohousing communities
Speaker:have a couple of units that are rented out.
Speaker:But it comes under the umbrella of
Speaker:intentional community. The old intentional communities
Speaker:used to be mostly religious or guided
Speaker:by some lifestyle choice. Now many
Speaker:of them are just simply cohousing. There are several architects in
Speaker:the country that do nothing but build cohousing developments.
Speaker:Easy. To find more information online, go to cohousing.org
Speaker:or cohousing.com.
Speaker:You'll find just everything you ever want to know.
Speaker:You'll see a map of where they all are in the country. There's several hundred
Speaker:of them and what stage of development they're in.
Speaker:To me, it's a wonderful concept now, by the way.
Speaker:They are multigenerational, most of them. There are some that are being
Speaker:built to be elder cohousing, but the vast
Speaker:majority of cohousing communities are multigenerational.
Speaker:People raise kids there. Nice.
Speaker:So we are getting close to time, Sarah, and there's so much
Speaker:to still talk about. So could you give us like two or three
Speaker:what you would say are the most important things people should do
Speaker:today, right now, to start planning for Aging
Speaker:and Solo Aging. Well, I would think about that three legged
Speaker:stool. How far
Speaker:along are you in your planning? Have you done your
Speaker:legal planning, your estate planning?
Speaker:Set up a dance directive? Set up powers of attorney?
Speaker:Written a will? If you're thinking, oh, I don't want to do
Speaker:that. Those attorneys are so expensive.
Speaker:You can find legal advice in
Speaker:a less expensive way. One way of doing that is
Speaker:going through your county office
Speaker:on aging. They usually have attorneys, not on staff, but attorneys
Speaker:that they know work at a lesser rate for
Speaker:people that really can't afford their services any other way.
Speaker:So there's that, and there's seeing
Speaker:a financial planner, getting that person to run that spreadsheet for
Speaker:you to see how you're going to do financially for the rest of your life
Speaker:and then assessing your
Speaker:social situation.
Speaker:Do I have a handful, at least of friends, people I can
Speaker:call? You have two or three people you
Speaker:could call at 02:00 a.m. In the morning if you somehow needed them.
Speaker:Yeah. Hopefully my sister will answer
Speaker:the phone if I call her. I hope so.
Speaker:I know I wanted to share how people can get in
Speaker:touch with you. Sarah has a website.
Speaker:Sarahzepgeber.com and you also have
Speaker:other things that you are involved
Speaker:with. I've seen you post on some of them. So if people are
Speaker:interested in some of those, will they find the links on your website?
Speaker:Yes, you'll certainly find links for how to buy the book.
Speaker:You can also find me and a lot of contact information
Speaker:and a lot of videos
Speaker:of me speaking. I do a lot of speaking engagements. So if
Speaker:you have an organization that you think could you
Speaker:find this information useful, call on me to do that. Look me up on
Speaker:LinkedIn. That's a really good source of information on me and on what
Speaker:I do. So I think both the website and LinkedIn are
Speaker:the two best places. Okay. I highly recommend your
Speaker:book. It's one
Speaker:thing to get it, it's another thing to really do some of the
Speaker:things that Sarah recommends. And like you said, visit those
Speaker:places. That's my hardest one. I've got to do
Speaker:that. All right. So I wanted to
Speaker:also remind people that hey Boomer is
Speaker:supported by you and occasionally
Speaker:by sponsors, but mostly by you and your participation
Speaker:in events and also by your support
Speaker:by buying me a cup of coffee. So this is a
Speaker:website where you can go, you can contribute anywhere from ten dollars to seventy
Speaker:five dollars. And it just helps keep Hay Boomer going.
Speaker:So please go in and buymeacoffee.com
Speaker:at Hayboomer four one three.
Speaker:And now I would like to tell you all about our guests
Speaker:for next week. And I say guests because we're actually having two.
Speaker:It's Eva Houseman and Kim
Speaker:Athen, and they are a mother daughter duo
Speaker:who started something called the Mother's Day Movement.
Speaker:They read a book called Half the sky by
Speaker:Nicholas Christophe and Cheryl Wudon.
Speaker:You're shaking your head. You've read it? I haven't read it. I've heard about
Speaker:it, though. Good things about it. It is a powerful book about
Speaker:the oppression and exploitation of women around the world.
Speaker:Not comfortable to read at all,
Speaker:but opened your eyes, and as they read it,
Speaker:they thought we spend so much money,
Speaker:billions every year on cards and flowers and
Speaker:chocolates for our mothers. That what if
Speaker:we took some of that money to help these women?
Speaker:Not just around the world, but the charity they're working with?
Speaker:This year is in our country, in Navajo Nation. Who doesn't have
Speaker:any clean running water? So it's going to be a fascinating
Speaker:conversation. They are very passionate
Speaker:about what they're doing and how they're doing it.
Speaker:So join us for that. And I always
Speaker:like to end with a quote from C. S.
Speaker:Lewis where he says, you are never too old to
Speaker:set another goal or dream a new dream.
Speaker:Thank you, Sarah, for joining us today. This has really been informative
Speaker:and important conversation. Thank you so much for having me,
Speaker:Wendy. My pleasure. And thank you all for
Speaker:joining us. You are the reason that hey Boomer
Speaker:is here. I love you. I hope to see you all next
