Episode Summary:

In this engaging episode of The Future-Ready Advisor, host Sam Sivarajan discusses the often misunderstood aspects of transitioning into retirement with expert Gillian Leithman. Gillian, an adjunct professor and co-creator of the Certified Professional Retirement Coach Designation, shares invaluable insights on how retirees can rewire their expectations and approaches to this significant life stage.

Key Quote: "Retirement is more than just financial planning; it's about what you plan to do with your life." — Gillian Leithman [6:52]

Topics discussed in this episode:

• Understanding Retirement Beyond Finances [5:30]
• The Concept of 'Rewiring Retirement' [6:52]
• Challenges of the Retirement Transition [12:48]
• Redefining Work and Retirement [15:08]
• The Psychological Impact of Retirement [19:50]
• Strategies for Maintaining Purpose and Identity [27:52]
• Enhancing Life Quality through Structured Engagement [33:38]

Episode Transcript:

The full episode transcript is available for those who want to dive deeper into the robust discussion on navigating retirement.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Rewire to Retire Website [45:00]
• Subscribe to the Podcast: Don’t miss an episode of The Future-Ready Advisor, subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.
• Follow Sam on Social Media: Join the discussions on LinkedIn to get more insights and updates.
• Check out the website: Visit www.samsivarajan.com for more resources and episodes.

Sam 1:24

Hi everyone. I'm Sam Sivarajan and welcome to today's episode of The Future Ready Advisor. Today I'm here with Gillian Leithman, who specializes in helping people in their transition from work to retirement. Gillian, welcome to the show.

Gillian 1:41

Thank you, Sam.

Sam 1:43

So let me quickly introduce you to the audience and then we can dive in. So Gillian is passionate about translating scientific research findings into practical, everyday skills and strategies that people can use to become more effective, successful and happy humans. She is an adjunct professor at the John Molson School of Business, where she teaches in the executive MBA and the Goodman Institute of Investment Management. Gillian is also the co-creator of the Certified Professional Retirement Coach Designation, which certifies people to become retirement coaches. She works closely with financial advisors to complement their expertise and interest in lead. She believes that while retirement is one of the most anticipated of life's transitions, it is also quite misunderstood. So with that, I think I'm looking forward to diving in to our discussion today. Gillian, could you start with perhaps sharing a little bit about your journey, how you started to put your focus on retirement, transitioning and about your practice in general?

Gillian 2:45

Sure. So it's not a really sexy story. It really dates back to around 18 years ago. Maybe a little bit more when I was a master's student doing a degree in management, and I had to write a research paper, and I happened to be watching. I think at the time it was W5. So just this episode kind of documentary on older workers and the the content and the the episode was about why older workers and this is going back this is going back a really like a long time ago, why older workers were what their value was, the value that they had to to provide to an organization that they're more loyal and they're actually more emotionally stable. And they have all this knowledge. Of course, not everybody, but you know, they've accumulated knowledge and experience over a lifetime of our career. And they have. And they also tend to be a lot more present. So if you think of younger workers, they tend to be they're not if you if they have, again, family, they're oftentimes that they're not you know, they're they're not in the office where where older workers happen to be more. They just show up more more often. They don't really, you know, miss all that much work. And I thought this was a fascinating area of research. I was really I thought this is super interesting, like the differences between older and younger workers. And I had to write a research paper. It literally it's not that they had to write a research paper, wrote a you know, started delving into the research and just became really fascinated about knowledge workers and creating knowledge sharing cultures and a lot of biases that we hold with regards to older people and older workers in particular. And it literally snowballed from there, you know, and I did a thesis on it and then went out into the world and developed a business really helping people think through how are you going to transition? So if you have been working for 30, 35 years or, you know, maybe a day, you know what I think about it, perhaps it's not even about how long you've been working, but maybe you strongly identify with what it is that you do. I was really curious as to why people choose to retire in this country, because we no longer have mandatory retirement. It was abolished in the eighties, which is a really long time ago. So I, I did a lot of research and a lot of practice. I've been in practice for 18 years going into organizations and helping people think about whether or not they want an exit. And if they do want to exit, let's talk about what these realities of retirement look like.

Sam 5:30

And I think that's fascinating. And coming from the financial advice space, we focus a lot on the financial elements of retirement saving enough, etc. And look, we're nowhere near finished that topic. there is still a lot of people that are struggling and whether they've saved enough, especially in a rising rate and rising inflation environment. But at least we're having that conversation. The second part that you touched on and I want to dive into a bit more is this idea of the other retirement crisis. And, the way I positioned it is that, as you said, most of us spend 30 plus years working 40 plus hours. And that work is our purpose, is our social interaction, is our intellectual stimulation, all of those things. And suddenly we're expected in our society that, come the retirement date, that, the next day that the world has changed. So one of the things that you talked about, which I find fascinating, is the concept of rewiring retirement. Could you elaborate a bit on that concept and on shifting from that traditional notion that you and I've spoken of about retirement to perhaps this more dynamic and purpose driven approach that we're both hinting at?

Gillian 6:52

Sure. So, you know, the financial conversation I agree with you is obviously an incredibly important one. Right? By the almost like in order for me to determine how much money I need, I have to I should have an idea of what I want to do. Right. Like, it's it's how do we get to these numbers? And the numbers to me are like a quick and dirty way of, you know, arriving at, you know, this is what I should have. And I think we're a little we to our detriment. I think this is obviously essential. We it's essential that people financially plan and I wish more people did plan, but it kind of foreshadows this whole other conversation of, so what are you going to do and how are you going to spend your time? And do you even want to exit that? That's been a real interesting conversation I've had with people about exiting and why why a lot of people feel pressured, not necessarily that they want to go, but they feel as though they have to go and they've hit this metric of, you know, I'm 65 and it's time for me to leave. And we're not talking. We're not having those conversations which which I think would be beneficial to our clients and the end user about, you know, tell me a little bit about what your plans are like. What do you plan to do? So we've saved or we've been an advisor. I've been your advisor for 30, 35 years. We've met your goals. But why did you save all this money? Like, what is it that you want to do and how are you going to spend your time and how are you going to spend your talents? And how are you going to spend your days? You know, when we lived when retirement way back when

lasted like five years, that made sense for our conversation to be solely about finances, right? It was really at that point you're going to likely exit and well, a lot of people think they're going to travel. A lot of people don't travel as much as they think they will. But you're going to relax, right? You're going to your your vision for retirement is this is a lifestyle. This is a gift or a lifetime commitment to work. You've earned this. You you know, you get to now put your feet up and for five years and just, you know, lounge around. But when you look at our life spans today, which really you know, it's current lifespan in Canada, 83 for women, 87 I think for women closer to 87, 83 for men. And you're retiring at 65, maybe some people 60, maybe some people are approaching 70. But we're no longer looking at a life of leisure. You know what? If we're talking about like and life of leisure is not necessarily everything people think it's it's cracked up to be right. Like leisure is is so important to our lives because it helps us renew and rejuvenate and go back to work refreshed. But if all you do is leisure, you know, what we tend to see is we tend to see people get very anxious and people get very, very bored. And people ultimately get very depressed. So this conversation really needs to change. And, you know, one way to think about it, to make it a lot less scary for the end user or for, you know, advisors, is it just you need to expand, think about like an elastic, you just need to expand the conversation. It needs to include a few more elements than just the financial component

I couldn't agree with you more. there's this idea that, that people may have that I'm going to play golf five days a week, in retirement, or that I'm going to travel, endlessly in retirement. look, those are great ideas. And as you say, there are leisure. And I think people have earned that right to do it. But if you've been living out of a suitcase or hotel rooms for six months or after six months of playing golf and assuming that your body isn't injured from that, there is for most people a time where you say, okay, like golf or travel was a break from something. Okay, so what is this, a break from? So you will need a break from golf or a break from travel. Right. And I think your point about having this conversation early is interesting. And I want to spend a little bit of time on that. your point about financial advisors stretching the elastic? I like that analogy, helping clients explore. When do they do that? How did they do that? Because I don't know. There's a perfect answer, but to some extent, even at 65, that may be too late as your saving because they're so intricately connected. How much you choose to save and what you choose to do is directly connected to, when you're going to retire. If you're going to retire, what you intend to do in retirement. All of those things are connected. So it almost seems to me that you want to have these conversations relatively early on in the process and have that informed that relationship throughout the process.

for sure. I mean, if you can integrate it, that that's genius. You know, if you can and if you can, just because you feel as though it's just maybe retirement is so far off on the horizon, then I would definitely say it becomes a lot more imminent the closer people get to that date. Right. And so let's just say if you've done those calculations and you know the numbers, you're probably fine from a financial perspective. Like you've given your client the green light. You've said, you know, either you you you know, you're good to go, you can retire in five years or you know, why don't you know? But

let's talk a little bit about tell me like, you know, really interesting questions and answer to ask a client is like, so tell me, how many hours do you spend at work? How many hours a week do you spend at work now? And I mean, well, like so, you know, I love it. I love awesome that you live in Toronto and you just said like, you know, most people spend 48 hours a week at work now. They probably spend a lot more.

Mm hmm.

Right? Like if you really get down into the weeds and how many MBA words you spend at work, 50, 60, 70, depending upon how your clientele are. Right. And an interesting question to ask is, so, you know, tell me what you're going to do with all that free time you now in your hands, You know, like so. So as they get closer, what I would really like were I think advisors could provide a tremendous value is also to ask those questions around tell me why you plan on retiring or what are you retiring to? That's you know in this industry, that's the go to question. It's most people will say, what are you retiring from? That's not the right question. The question is what are you retiring to? What do you plan to do with your time? What do you plan to do with your talents? Right. And it's an important question because there's also today we began it sparks this discussion about work now. And fortunately, we live in a very age of society. And if people accept so oftentimes people will exit not once, not twice the three times that they'll literally exit the workforce, retire, and they'll go back in because they're like, oh, it's not necessarily what I thought it would be. It is retirement thing. The problem with that is you're unlikely to get the same position that you held prior to retirement. So what's going to change is your status is going to change and your salary is going to change drastically because unfortunately, we still live in this society that doesn't necessarily, you know, honor,

experience,

Mm hmm.

knowledge and experience. And many employers will be like, okay, you know what? I can replace you with somebody who is younger and way cheaper, right? And so from an employer perspective, we don't necessarily see the value of experience it's taking. It's taken a long time for employers to come, you know, to come to the table and recognize maybe I don't want to let this person go. And so the the added value, I think that an advisor, you know, could be added like insight questions that you can ask is also do you do you want to retire and is work perhaps part of your retirement plan? And let's talk about this independent of finances

Mm hmm.

because my concern is once people leave, it's really not so easy to go back. And I'm not suggesting for a moment that you can't get a job, but I am definitely suggesting that you might not get the same caliber of job that you held prior to retiring.

Now, you make an interesting point. there is a lot of merit in the fact that we're still stuck in this,

past view or vision of retirement. both from the employer and from the employee perspective. So to your point, there is a perception that the older worker for many employers, that the older worker that experience, isn't valued as much or that they're expensive and they can be replaced by, more junior employee. Now, whether they can or not, that's a different question. But there is a perception perhaps by both employer and employee that the working arrangement in the later years needs to look like what it was in the earlier years. I mean, it might very well be that a person that is considering retirement or the new form of retirement says, hey, I'm very happy working three days a week at the company, and I don't need to work five days a week, etc.. But the three days a week gives me, some purpose, gives me, cash flow, gives me something to do, my social network, etc.. and at the same point, the employer might be, Hey, this is great. I get the benefit of this knowledge transfer from this employee without having that payroll impact, etc.. But we're at the stage that we're not having that conversation either. The employee feels that that's a conversation that they can have with their employer or that the employer feels that they can approach their employee well ahead of time to kind of put this as potential option. And when we're dealing with the fact right now that we've got this skills gap and that we've got this labor shortages, etc., it sort of seems to me that we're missing a real viable option that is really near term here.

absolutely. So I I think it's an excellent point, Sam. And I think, you know, where also advisors could be a value is just having the conversation in my practice I will often see because I also do personal retirement coaching. I will often see people

when they come to me, they're looking for permission. That's what they're looking for. They're looking for permission to continue working. And they'll say to me, Really? You think, John? You think you think I could continue working? And I'm like, I absolutely think you could continue working. Does did anybody tell you that your performance has declined and they'll often say no? And I'll ask the question, do you feel like your performance has declined? And they'll say no. Do you like your job? I love my job. So tell me why you're retiring and just to spark that conversation and then to give them permission to to suggest, you know, you know, maybe you want to continue working, but in a different capacity. Maybe you want to work on special projects, maybe you want to work, you know, during the summer months and not the winter months. Maybe you want to work three days a week. And I think we need to empower people to go into their place of employment and have these conversations because it's really just limited to the content of our creativity. Like it's a question of how do we to to your point, how do we formulate this agreement between employee and employer? And can it look differently? And I think, you know, COVID Kovac did a number on us and in many different ways. But I think one thing that it did that was beneficial is it really showed the world that we actually can do this thing called remote work. So, you know, can you create a different agreement with your employer that suits you and that suits your employer? Possibly. It's it obviously depends on the nature of your job and things and things like that. But I think it's well worth having the converse session as opposed to just exiting, you know, and never exploring the possibility that, you know, hey, you know, this might work for both of us, that, you know, I want to work three days a week and it actually works for the employer. And I would really, you know, just having that conversation of, you know, do you see work at all? And as part of it's an oxymoron, right? Because we'll ask the question like maybe work is part of your retirement, maybe it's a working retirement and it could be completely independent of finances. But there are also benefits from a financial perspective there as well. Right.

Mm hmm.

And when you run the numbers, if there aren't, because unfortunately, our pension laws have not caught up necessarily necessarily do lifespan, think about what you could trade in exchange for time. So maybe it's private health insurance. You know, maybe it's like there are other things that you it's not at that stage of the game. It's not always about money. To your point, a lot of the time it's about I want somewhere to go. I want something to do. I, my friend, and especially for men, their social network tends to reside within the workplace. So my social connections are there, my intellectual stimulation is there. Right. So these you know, you referred to these elements before. And in my world I refer to this this is gold, This is gold. This is worth all these things. The social network, a reason to get up in the morning, friends, you know, intellectual stimulation, that's worth its weight in gold because it's you know, now we're getting into the realm of emotional well-being and social well-being. Right? So we've we've got your finances down, but we really want to be rewiring retirement, to look at it from a more holistic perspective and, you know, expanded to include these other elements of life.

Well, and I think it's absolutely critical that there's enough research, as you know, that shows that, depression and other factors in retirement are largely dependent upon the level of social relationships and other engagements that you have. And this hasn't changed from our times in school or from our times in the workforce. The only difference is that in many cases there isn't being active thinking about how to fill that gap. And so maybe one of the things I would love to explore with you is that we talked a little bit about the role of what an advisor could do by asking those questions about work and what role work plays on an ongoing basis. do you think the advisor can play a role or help the their clients start thinking about the role of social connections and networks and, hobbies? I mean, I know it sounds a little hokey, but hobbies or other things that are going to occupy their clients time in this post work world, what do you think those conversations look like or what do you recommend that they look like?

So I don't think it's hokey at all, you know, and I think I could I could I can understand perhaps from a from a advisors perspective, maybe they feel like, oh, God, this is too you know, this is too touchy feely. And but I would argue that, wow, wow, you're managing somebody's money. I really don't know what's more intimate in life than that,

Mm hmm.

you know, So that's a really intimate thing to do. So asking somebody you know about again, I would go back to that question. You tell me, like how many like how many hours a week do you spend at work? And wow, like, okay, 60 hours. Do you have any idea of how you're going to spend that time? You know, now that you've freed up all that, you know, all that all those all those many hours, have you thought about what you're going to do with with all that time on your hands? And so I don't think these questions need to be scary. I don't think they're scary at all. And I don't think they need to err on the side of like intimate. It's just your asking these questions that, believe it or not, they're they're light bulb moments because chances are there's a good there's a good possibility that this person especially, let's say, if they're two years out, away from retirement, possibly a year away from retirement, they haven't thought about it. It's like you're looking at the finish line. You can't wait to you know, you can't wait to escape. You're you make all these you know, you look for, you're like, I can't do the commute. I don't like my boss. And, you know, I can't tell my coworkers that. And if all that's true, then I would say to leave. Leave, because we do know that that kind of stress is going to negatively influence your well-being, both your physical health and your emotion, your well-being. But if it's things that are like a little bit annoying that you can live with, like, okay, you don't love the commute and but now you're, let's say, going down for three days a week, then why not rethink this idea again, this contract, the psychological contract that we have with our employers? And again, I don't think it needs to be so scary. And in my experience, when you start with that question of time, that's not so intimate, right? It's just your start asking a question to spark some reflection where people probably have not even thought of it because they're just like, Can't wait till I'm out or I can tell the stress or and it's only

afterwards where all is said and done, and you have your papers and you've left and you're like, Wow. I did not realize that work provided so many other benefits, other than a paycheck. And again, then it becomes a lot more difficult to if you want to go back into the workforce, it becomes a lot more difficult. And so what we know, what the research isn't incredibly clear on is unfortunately, it's not it's not it's not so popular in Canada. It's phased retirement.

Mm

It's

hmm.

you know, it's I'm going to I'm going to do this retirement thing in phases. So I'm going to go from five days a week to three days a week. So I think that the end user and that the employee, that's something that they could raise with their employer. Because to your point, we do have, you know, these huge, you know, skills gaps today in our market. And so planting that idea and that seed that, you know, I could stay on a little bit longer, you know, two years, three years a year, let's see how this goes. I would much rather people plan like that, then exits cold turkey because

exiting with no plan in place can be incredibly challenging mentally, Especially for those people for whom accomplishment is an important factor. And so in other words, if like you get a high and you get, really get excited about hitting a goal, what becomes very difficult in retirement is now, you know, you brought up school and you brought up career where in school. And when you're working for somebody, oftentimes you have these self-imposed goals on you, Right? You need to have this sales target and you have this assignment to achieve and the thing about retirement that people don't recognize is that goals are still very much important. It's not like, you know, you wake up at the age of 65 and all of a sudden, like you, you are a different human. Like, if accomplishment was always important to you, it's going to continue to be important to you, But it's not as easy to fulfill in retirement. It's it's because, unfortunately, we're lagging behind the cultural and social change of just longevity. You know, we're living so much longer and we haven't realized from social perspective,

not that we haven't realized we haven't created these structures that continue to support people in this next stage of life. And so they do exist. But the onus is on the individual to seek out these, you know, places where they can actually accomplish have like goals that they want to accomplish. And so it becomes a real personal, you know, endeavor where people need to figure out what are their goals, You know, But I promise you that people for whom goals were important prior to retirement, they're going to be important after retirement. They don't disappear.

you make a great point, Gillian. there is almost this assumption that it's. It's like walking. We just assume that you'll learn it and you'll figure it out, and that there needs to be nothing that needs to be transition. But it's ironic, we teach our kids how to drive. when company hires a new employee, there is an onboarding process. There's a job shadowing process, etc.. But we don't have that, for this transition into this third act of life. And one of the things that an advisor can do, even if they're feeling a little, weird in terms of getting intimate, etc. and I agree with you, it isn't intimate, but perhaps challenge their client to say, how many people do you know that are two years or three years into their retirement? have you asked them what did they do with their time? Have you asked them how did they find the transition? What did they like? What they did not like? how were they managing and coping? again, to your point, these resources to some extent exist, but it's a question of self-serve and finding out. And an advisor can play the role by as little as what you're saying to make it feel okay for the client to have these kind of questions or not have the answers, but to think through it. an advisor is simply a has to ask these deep questions and then be quiet. Let the client answer. Don't let them off the hook, because in many cases this is the first time they may have thought of it and then dig deep or ask why is that important? Or why do you think that's the case? Instead of coming back with with an answer? Continuing with the conversation, it should feel like a workout, But if it is a workout both the advisor and the client are going to leave that meeting feeling like that, they really uncovered some important elements of that relationship going forward.

No doubt. And I think, you know, I think when you you know, when you ask a good question, right, when whoever you are, if you're at a dinner party, you're, you know, job interview advisor client relationship. When you ask a good question and you get somebody to think deeply and they say, I've never thought about that before, you're the person that looks like the hero. You look like the hero. You ask me a really great question. I never thought of it. You look like the hero. And it also makes people feel like you care about my life beyond just the money. And to me, that solidifies our relationship. Yo know, it solidifies a relationship with your client, and that's how you expand your business by, you know, creating these client centered relationships. This is not a transaction. This is you need to help somebody think through the transformation. Right? And so if all you're looking at is the dollars and cents, you're missing this huge opportunity where the way I see it is you can gain both. You gain the business, you gain referrals, you gain a client who is loyal, but you're also providing something, you know, that unfortunately very few people provide, which is an opportunity to reflect on this next stage. And it's not everything that we've been told it's going to be. Now, I want to say that with a quotation marks around that, because most people are doing this retirement thing and they're loving it and they're having a blast. But I would say about 40%. And that number is climbing are finding it very challenging. And they they it's very hard for somebody to put their hand up and say, you know, I am I'm really struggling. I'm really struggling with this retirement thing. It's very hard because there's a lot of shame associated with it struggling. How could you be struggling at the leisure? How could you be struggling with freedom? Right. And yet. Well, freedom for some of us is not liberty, but it becomes a liability. You know, and I had a client once and he put it so beautifully. He said to me, you know, Jill, when I was working, I would pray every day that when I was on my way to work, I would pray every day that I'd get the green lights.

Now that I'm retired, I pray that I get the red lights because I have nowhere to go and nothing to do.

And I've had people compare retirement to a trauma and to actually literally losing a limb, like losing a limb. That's how they felt about leaving work. And so if we can just help people spark some discussion and spark some conversation. Right. And just again, let's go back to that analogy of an elastic. We're not doing you know, we're just going to expand up a little bit. I'm not telling you to to rethink your role. I'm just I'm going to ask you to think about expanding that discussion to include some innocuous questions that are going to leave them thinking, you know, Santa Fe really good question. Like, wow,

Mm hmm.

I didn't realize I spend 80 hours a week at work. And you know what? I have no hobbies because I spend 80 hours a week at work, right? So like, what am I going to do with my time? Like, what does that going to look like? And if we can get people to start thinking about it before they leave, they're in a much better position to start creating what, like an infrastructure that they're going to transition to. And I'm not one for routine. Like I don't think your life needs to be scheduled from Monday to Sunday, but I do know it helps with the transition. And when you know that Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I'm going to work and on Tuesday I have a book club. And on, you know, Thursday night I have a whiskey tasting with the boys and and that is helpful when roles start to change.

I totally agree with that. your point about routine is great. people mistake routine and structure. And it's taken me a long time to learn it. I enjoy my holidays, but I also find that, towards the end, I'm missing the structure that I have from my work day, etc.. the challenge is, as long as we equate retirement with freedom and retirement, with lack of structure, we're doing ourselves a disservice because that structure, to the same extent that you talked about goals, those are a critical component for most of our lives. That structure may be different in your transformation in retirement, but absence of structure isn't the structure either. Right. I mean, and we need to just figure out what we're going to replace. One that vacuum that we've just now created, whether it's 40, 60, 70, 80 hours a week, what are we going to replace that with? And without having some real deep conversations and thought about it before we get in there, we're going to find many people are going to find themselves, adrift and afloat because, you're not suddenly going to pick up hobbies or suddenly pick up a network of friends that you hadn't talked to on the day after your retirement party.

to your point and then that's well said is that this stuff requires you to be intentional. So if you don't have a social network outside of work, then you need to be intentional about creating one when you leave. And something that people don't think about is, you know, when was the last time you made a friend more? As we get older, we don't necessarily have those opportunities in which we meet new people and make new friends, right? And so if you're somebody again who spent 80 hours a week at the you know, at work and you know, you don't have any hobbies, then where are you going to where are you going to make those connections? Because that that's the unfortunate part about this. Like people say, oh, I'll keep in touch with my colleagues and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but chances are you won't. We don't usually work where our lives just take different turns and we don't necessarily keep in touch with, you know, our former colleagues. But Sam, you sparked a light bulb moment for me because the Absolutely. Like if you're one of those people, that's also a really good question to ask. So if you're one of those people for whom you know, at the end of a vacation, you're jonesing to get back to the office, then that's also an indication that, you know, you want to rethink this retirement thing because that I would say that's data for you. You know, if at the end of a vacation, you're like, okay, I need to get back to that routine or to your point to structure that is data like consider that is data and then ask that question like, So what are you going to be doing when you're now like your whole life is leisure and on vacation, right? Like if you have nothing to get back to, that's where again, we see a lot of anxiety start and a lot of depression. And and not only that, you know, today with the advances in medicine and technology, we know that, you know, when the brain is idle. So the number one thing, the number one activity that increases in retirement for retirees is an obscene amount of TV watching just skyrockets.

And we know that, you know, when you're engaged and when you're not engaged in intellectually stimulating activities or meaningful conversation or hobbies or those activities in which you lose all sense of time, we call them flow, right? Those activities, like if you're a runner, you'll experience it sometimes as the runner's high, or if you love to cook and you get lost in the process of like, you know, chopping vegetables and you have a mini vacation from your life, if you don't have these activities like the purpose and the flow and the the intellectual stimulation that your brain goes idle and that becomes problematic in terms of, you know, in terms of Alzheimer's and dementia. So, you know, again, one of those benefits that work provides, which we can't simulate in retirement, you don't necessarily it doesn't necessarily have to be a work it could be volunteer work. Right. But it could be a class, it could be learning a new language, learning a new instrument. But doing things that keep your brain active is essential. And again, it's not as easy as people think. It's, you know, how many times that I've heard people say, Oh, Jill, I'm going to garden. And I'm like, okay, well, in our climate, you're not gardening 12 months a year. That's that's the first thing. And I'll ask that question, you know, so, you know, have you ever garden before? And they'll tell me, no. And then I'll have people come back to me and say, I hate it, you know, like so flirted with this idea of retirement and flirt with the hobbies and and try and make some time to see what other things you're interested in, you know, that will give you some data as to what you might want to do in this in this next stage of development. So it's not just about leisure and purpose, but would also concerns me is keeping your brain active. And again, it's easier to do when you're for most of best of your knowledge work. It's easier to do right when you're actively engaged in your career. But now the onus is on you. So what are you doing to create that curiosity, to maintain that intellectual stimulation? What are you doing? Because crosswords, my friend and Sudoku are not sufficient, right? I often hear that, but I do the crossword puzzle every day. Well, you know what? Not sufficient.

I love this point. both about experimenting and experiencing different things, testing things out, collecting the data points that's all such great advice. Gillian We're coming to the end of our podcast, so I have a few final rapidfire questions for you. So number one, professionally, what is the most important lesson you've learned over the years?

That's a great question. I'm always amazed. I'm really always amazed that when you get a group of people in a room, the magic that happens when one person's hand goes up and says, you know, I'm really struggling with this thing. And what what amazes me is that other hands start to go up and the magic that takes place in that room is just for so many is so many people think that they're the only one that is experiencing this. You know, I must be the only person on the planet that is not loving retirement. And you know why? What is wrong with me that I don't like all this freedom? So to me, professionally, that always amazes me that you get this group. And it it really amazes me when it's a group of men. And I'm always amazed at how willing they are to share when you provide a forum for them to do so because unfortunately it's a stigma still. Right. And it's a bias that, you know, a man can't, you know, put his hand up and say,

Mm

like, I'm struggling

hmm.

with this role changed. Right? I'm struggling. Like I'm really struggling because there's a there's there shouldn't be, but there's a lot of shame to it. It's it doesn't make sense. People are like, I should be having fun and loving it, but I'm not loving it. So to me, that is always amazing to watch because you literally see people breathe a sigh of relief. It's like they're they're shoulders, you know, go down and they stand up a little bit taller because they feel like, wow, you know, I'm not alone in this in this

And that's a very important insight, this feeling that we're not alone. Right. And a lot of what you're encouraging people to realize is that they're not alone. These are common questions and issues that we deal with. Number two, what is one practical tip you would offer listeners that are keen on applying some of the insights that you offered today,

So really just, you know, I really want you to think through integrate knowing that those questions like, wow, like it's, you know, just an easy question. Tell me how much time you spend at work and oh, Devaney Lopez, how do you plan to replace them or other interests or, you know, tell me a little bit about how you want to spend your time. So I think that's one question that's worth its weight in gold. And again, why I like that question is because if you're somebody who's hesitant to have these conversations, I think it's a really neutral

Mm hmm.

conversation to have. It's not intimate, it's not too personal. So I would say that for advisors for the end user and for the client, I would say to two things we suggest. So if you're somebody that you're like, some people, believe it or not, get very overwhelmed by the question, Do you have any interests? Do you have any hobbies? It could be incredibly overwhelming for those of us that don't, and they don't even know where to start. They're like, Jill, I don't I don't even know where to start. Like, I spent I think, like if you have if maybe your clientele are entrepreneurs who really struggle with this because they built a business and and, you know, the business is their baby and hobbies. They'll look at you like you're from another planet, hobbies, like I was building my business. But are you talking about hobbies? What I like to do is get a university catalog or like just go online and look at a university catalog and see, see what courses or what disciplines might be of interest. What that does is it gives you an opportunity to look at just different subjects, you know, and maybe you didn't even know that there was, you know, this thing called behavioral finance, which seems super cool and you want to know more about it,

Mm

right?

hmm.

So looking through university catalog gives you the opportunity to spark some ideas about things that might be of interest. So this in very many respects is a trial and error exercise because if you have not tried anything new or tried to develop any new interests, it can feel foreign and it could feel very overwhelming. So just get some ideas by looking at courses and a lot of communities, a lot of community

establishments have courses for people like in the third age. So and don't discard, don't, don't discard your campus because there a lot of times campuses do have lifelong learning institutes. So just look, take a look at what you know, what's available and that might spark some interest. And the other thing, which I think is gold is look at pictures from your childhood, because that might stimulate you might be like, wow, I, I totally forgot. Like, I used to love swimming or I loved ballet and I loved soccer and okay, maybe you can't play soccer anymore. Maybe you can. But let's say you kids all right. But are there other things that you can do around that event? Right. So what old picture childhood pictures do? Is it sparks this? Sometimes we forget those very

Mm hmm.

things that we used to love because we got busy with careers and children and paying the mortgage and pets right?

Well, that's awesome. That's great advice. This has been very interesting. If listeners want to learn more about you or find out about your work, where do they go?

Rewire to retire and T at two is tio so rewired to retire dot com and you can find out more about my work there.

This is great Gillian a real pleasure chatting with you and talking about, this very interesting and timely topic. So thank you for joining us today. The Future Ready Advisor.

Thank you, Sam.