Breaking Ageism: The Untapped Travel Market Explained

speaker-0 (00:07.138)
Hey folks, today we’re talking with Adrienne Berg. Adrienne has quite the life. Every time I talk with her, I learn something new. It’s really interesting. Adrienne, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and who you are and what your background is, keeping in mind that the focus on this is the retirement and the elderly and that side.

speaker-1 (00:33.1)
most exciting thing that I’m doing is what I’m doing right now. I’m the host of a podcast called The Ageless Traveler, which is a resource for people who are over the age of 60, but the truth is it could be 70, 80, 90, 100, who really do love to travel, who may be facing some barriers and they’re not usually physical. They’ve lost a companion or they don’t know where to go anymore, or you have something like we have right now, which is political turmoil and they’re concerned with safety. Plus they want to know the best

restaurant in Paris. So it’s all of that and I’m enjoying that we have a travel Tuesday newsletter and I’m knocking out ebooks that are very unusual for people over the age of 60 and I’ve been personally to 140 countries. But that’s now I’m also a lapsed lawyer.

I was a lawyer for 35 years in the field of elder law. So I really got to know what it meant to have a great retirement, a great older age and a not so great older age. And I infused those barriers that we come up with. I’m personally 77, I’ll be 78 pretty soon into how to turn them around into assets. Cause I always say aging is our superpower. That’s where I am. I’m very enthusiastic. I’m pretty much a cheerleader.

everything I do. And the reason that every time you speak to me, you hear something different is that I’ve been around for a long time. I started to work as a lawyer when I was only 23 years old. And now about five years ago, I began to work with the United Nations. So I am a representative to the UN and one of the podcasters for a different podcast called On the Ground. I travel a lot.

I have leadership in a lot of different missions that I’m working on, in the field of improving aging and getting a human rights treaty for the rights of older persons, which there is not. There are for women, there are for children, but none for the rights of older persons. So depends which part of the elephant you touch. They’re going to talk about different things here.

speaker-0 (02:37.55)
I, this is, this could go on for several hours. So I’m going to, I’ll probably end up having you come back at a later date. You just mentioned the UN. So let’s start off with the UN then. Geez, I could go into so many different places. You said you’re, there’s, you’re working with them with regards to a treaty with regards to aging and elderly rights.

speaker-1 (03:03.502)
Well, there’s a couple of things going on. Many years ago, there was what was called the Madrid Plan. And not to go back into ancient history, but it set out goals for older adults where different countries that are part of the UN would be stakeholders and agree to do certain things, including education, something very close to your heart, getting rid of the digital divide so that we do have the technology and the skills being able to work.

Of course, ageism and non-discrimination and many other things. And it’s been years and nothing major has happened. You can sit through UN meetings that have to do directly with something like healthcare and never once hear the word 60 plus or something that deals with our age group. So there are many, many NGOs, non-governmental organizations that have banded together under one roof, which happens to be in Canada, in Toronto.

which is the International Federation on Aging. And we’ve made a real, real effort to have a treaty. Now, in the UN, this is called a convention, but it’s not a party or an event. It’s a treaty on the human rights of older persons. And we just got it through the General Assembly. It took about 12 years with a working group on aging that I’ve been involved with as representative to the UN from the IFA. So that’s one of my works.

These NGOs, they’re really people who are changing the world. Sometimes they have no money at all. Sometimes they’re million dollar funded, but they’re all over the world and all over the place. And they need help. They need support. How do they become great advocates, whatever their cause is. And that’s my podcast, which is actually published by the GNEC. It’s called Global NGO Communications, Executive Committee of the UN.

affiliated with the UN. So I’m both a podcaster and an advocate. And I teach advocacy. I teach how to say something that’ll change the world. To make this a little lighter. For the first time in my life, Princess Cruises, remember, I love travel, has asked me to come on their cruise ship, which I’m doing next week, to teach the people on the cruise ship how to change the world.

speaker-1 (05:27.374)
So I’m actually going to be bringing this message, which is mostly closed to people who are very, very interested in organizations, world change, and they talk to each other in a silo. They never talk to the average retiree. They never talk to somebody who’s looking for a life purpose and can’t really key into it. So for the first time, we’re bridging this gap between this small group, although

There are 1700 NGOs that I know of, but it’s still small compared to the 78 million retirees we have here in the United States, or at least they’re baby boomers. And so I want to bring that message and the name of the speech is, anyone can change the world. And I believe that.

speaker-0 (06:14.7)
You were, when we had our introductory conversation, you were mentioning that you’re also working on, this sounds very strange, in 2026, witches and dealing with societies that still believe in witches.

speaker-1 (06:35.456)
Yes, this is not an unknown issue. This morning, Neil, I got an email from a fellow in Kenya who also works with the United Nations with 17 different links to 17 different videos of people being persecuted because they’re witches. Now these are always older women smothering of older men.

The persecution is very severe. There were three lynchings last month in Kenya. What’s this about? Well, there is a fundamental belief that one can be possessed or in witchcraft, but it’s kind of like Voodoo in New Orleans. It’s an old story. It’s used though in two ways. One, there really is in some villages not an understanding of Alzheimer’s and dementia.

So when people fall into that, there are sincere people who believe they may be possessed. But that’s very minor. The real purpose here is to accuse somebody of that so that their land can be taken. It’s a land grab scheme. And it’s often done with the children, either as part of it or even leaving it. Now these are older adult children. And it’s part of the human rights issue.

It’s a human rights issue. Whether or not we are allowed to have care and care is available to us if we have dementia or Alzheimer’s, which it’s not in every part of the world. And the other is our own civil rights with regard to property ownership as we age. Now in the U.S. this is, you would think, not much of an issue here. We’re in Canada, you know, we’re over that. The kind of lawyer I was was an elder law and trust in a state’s lawyer.

And you would be surprised how much elder abuse there is with wealthy families, middle-class families, not about witchcraft, but to take over the land or property of an older person. You sometimes see it in Mrs. Astor, there was a several years ago. So even multimillionaires are persecuted by families for that. So imagine transferring that into a world where everybody’s in an isolated village.

speaker-1 (09:01.154)
where there is a belief in demonic, and where the older adult children and their children are poor and have absolutely sometimes nothing to eat. And they’re watching their older adult relatives sit on land and acreage and people are saying to them, you know, we could develop this for millions. We could make a hotel here. It would change everybody’s life. If only we could get rid of that one stumbling block.

So it really is not as simple as it seems. And there are solutions. People have been dealing with single types of solutions for decades. We’ve been looking at it holistically and I brought together a coalition that I think is going to make a difference. And it wasn’t us, but there was a foundation who did break this through in Nigeria and that has changed. So I know change can happen.

speaker-0 (09:58.636)
You said you were going to be traveling to Africa in the near future as well for this?

speaker-1 (10:04.142)
Well, there’s a couple of things. First of all, I want to take a group of my own people, my listeners from the ages traveling. Now remember, we are a fun group. I’m here to travel and have a good time of my life. Next week, when I do my speaking, I’ll be in the Azores for the first time in my life. So I can’t wait to get there. So we are going to take people to Africa, but that’ll be the fun part. We’re going to go to Kenya. We’re going to go not only to see the wildebeest,

great migration, we’re going to balloon over that migration so we can see it from the air. Fabulous. We’re to go to the beaches of Kenya, which people don’t even know exists. It’s the Indian Ocean. It’s the clearest waters in the world. So for me, Africa is a place to be a tourist. I had a fabulous time in Uganda, trekking with the gorillas and seeing the gorilla experience, a primate experience. Beautiful. So we’re going to do all that. But separate from that.

I will be going to the areas in the villages where people have been injured to see on the ground, which is the name of my UN podcast, what’s really happening. Now there are people all over the world that like to volunteer. They like to volunteer in places in other countries. I will take a few of them with me if they’re interested to see.

But volunteering is a great thing for retirees of any kind of volunteering. I I call this clean volunteering. You can go out and you can dig for fossils as a volunteer. You can clean up the bush in South Africa. You can help babies anywhere in the world. So volunteering is wonderful, but you can also come and really volunteer that has to do with changing a particular problem.

So we’re gonna do both. We’re gonna have a fabulous trip for those who wanna enjoy themselves. And for those who wanna make a serious difference, we’ll have a separate trip. Because if you go to the beaches of Kenya, you’re treated like a queen. Every hotel is five star. You’ve never seen anything like it. But in the hidden parts of those countries, you will see things you would like to change. So I see, like Joni Mitchell says, I see clouds from both sides.

speaker-0 (12:26.648)
Nice Canadian segue there.

speaker-1 (12:28.472)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (12:30.19)
You had said that you were in elder law. That was, if I remember correctly from our conversation, you were one of the first to be in that area. Tell me how that came about and the entire concept.

speaker-1 (12:47.086)
You know, I think it was either accident or just the confluence of day-to-day events. We would travel. We were folks who did trust and estates. You see, my mind is travel. I love to travel. And trust and estates was wills. Making a will, making a power of attorney, maybe a health care proxy, maybe. And all of a sudden, people would come and say, my mom has Parkinson’s and we can’t afford it and we have money.

Is there any way we could protect our money? Because otherwise we’ll have nothing for our will to leave to our kids. This is what was happening. And I happened to have been the chair of a general practice committee in New York state, New York state bar association. That was, but when maybe 1985, we were going to an ABA conference in California, American bar association in California and long story short,

speaker-0 (13:32.652)
When was this?

speaker-1 (13:46.958)
There were many, many of us, trust in the states lawyers from all over the country saying exactly the same thing. What is this thing? People coming to us saying that their parents are living and living so long and it’s so expensive and there’s no caregiving. And there’s this law called Medicaid, not Medicare. If you got on, you could get paid, you get money for caregiving. And we said, I don’t know what this is, but this is a new area of law and nobody’s doing it.

And we created the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys right there on the spot in California. And it became eventually as today, it’s a certification. And minute anybody of means considers the issues of their own even aging and the new healthcare proxies, new wills, new trusts that take care of your money while you’re alive.

not just when you pass away, that came out of this. And now it’s anybody who gets long-term care need, somebody is going to say to them, why don’t you see an underlaw attorney? As if, no problem, we were always there. We weren’t always there. It’s creation.

speaker-0 (15:06.862)
That’s the reason why I asked when this was because, like you said, we were always thinking law is law. So as long as there’s been laws, there’s been these areas of speciality like tax law, that sort of thing.

speaker-1 (15:21.518)
It’s very, very complex because Medicare and Medicaid are federal programs, but they’re administered by the state. And every single state has a different administration and a different way of doing things. And then within the state, it’s relegated to the counties. But none of this existed. This was all being played out as it was going along. So it’s pretty exciting to me. know, when I look back,

I kind of have a life of firsts. That was a first, you know, starting podcast, podcast. I’m a podcaster. That’s what I do. And when I go to conferences, everybody else is 20 years old. You know, so now I’m in a first of being older, the older creator. That’s a first.

speaker-0 (16:12.31)
Yeah, no, it’s so. Let’s talk about the podcast side of things. Has it always been on the traveling side or have you been doing other things?

speaker-1 (16:25.474)
Believe it or not, I started The Ageless Traveler when I was 75 years old. I started it. So believe me, it hasn’t been always been.

speaker-0 (16:34.158)
You were doing podcasts for the UN as well?

speaker-1 (16:37.772)
Well, yes, but that started before I did that before the ages travel. This is what happened. And this is is again, one of these confluence of events. I wrote a book and I wrote a book in 1980 and it was called Money Think, how people think about money. I was a trust and states lawyer and I was seeing the difference between rich people and basically middle class or lower middle class people.

What was the difference in their mind? They all started the same way. I wasn’t dealing with people who had inherited money as a lawyer. either made it or they didn’t make it. And I saw palpably the difference in their thinking. Now, yeah, I have to tell you something. I was very interested in money for a very specific reason. I grew up in a little part of Brooklyn where most people didn’t have a lot of money. It was like post-war Brooklyn.

My dad was a lawyer and accountant and he had money. He did very, very well. And we were the rich kids.

And then he died and he died extremely suddenly and he had not left any insurance. He had not left anything. He was going to buy a house. He hadn’t done that yet. And we went in a day because he died of a cerebral hemorrhage while shaving. From being the rich kids to not having a roof over our head. I had to go with my mother when she sold blood because there was nobody to take care of me. And I can remember being under a bridge.

in Brooklyn waiting online for her to sell blood with people who were homeless because they needed the money and we needed the money. I can remember going into a store and my mother crying and saying to the man, we can’t buy her the dress. It was on a layaway.

speaker-1 (18:32.734)
This was a very transformational thing for me. So I got very interested. How do people think about money? And I was 11 years old. And I wrote that book. And it was one of the very first books about personal finance ever written. I think a lot of people listening to you know Susie Orman. I coached her. She came after me. She’s a couple of decades younger. I was pioneering that.

So I ended up on the radio doing a money show, one of the first. And that was 1988. That was about eight years later. But by then I had written books. I had written a lot of books. could look them up. They’re on Amazon. Your wealth building years, money think, gifting to people you love. Got about 12 books out. I was on Oprah many times. Oprah in the real heyday of Oprah. He won’t ask me about Oprah. She’s one of the nicest people on Earth.

And she gave me earrings. So she knows like earrings and I learned radio In fact Neil I said to you that you had a great voice for radio. How would I know that? So many men Rush Limbaugh and Hannity today. I know all these guys And I love radio. So it was a natural for me when podcasting came around to start to podcast but for decades

I was on with money shows, financial shows. We were syndicated by Westwood One eventually. And so, and I ended up on CNN too, in the early 2000s.

speaker-0 (20:13.439)
I’m sorry, but I have to bring this up. You said before this recording started, you had an Emmy.

speaker-1 (20:21.826)
Yes.

speaker-0 (20:22.862)
What category? When did you get this?

speaker-1 (20:28.414)
I got a, well, this is, you’re to love the category. I was 40 years old and I was on the air at CNN FN, which became CNN business today. In fact, do know Maria Bartolomo? I was right before her. We know each other. If we see each other in the street, we know each other. But I was like the grand old lady or it was already 40 years old, which is old.

first being on air for the first time on television, not for radio, but television. And the show was, as I told you before, IRS Tax Beat. And it was a real straight up hosted show, just like my travel is now. Every single podcast is an interview with somebody interested. And the people I had an interview were all tax accountants working for the IRS.

including the guys who came to your house and took your stuff. you didn’t, yes. So anyway, it was four years, every week for four years. So I did an interview and they had a category which they were trying to be diverse for the first time diverse. So they had a category for first time hosts. And that was the Emmy. The Emmy was for a business show.

the original first time host and I won it. And it was a very, very exciting thing. But I won it for the show called the IRS Tax Beat, which is still a good show. Some of the laws are outdated by now. And I’ll tell you the most interesting one was you may not remember it, but some people will remember that you used to have to mail your tax return. You’d go in and you had a deadline midnight, April 15th, and you got a

speaker-0 (22:21.975)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (22:27.406)
put in the mail. Well, the IRS decided to go and do electronic filing, which now we all do. That was my show for six months, explaining to the public how to do electronic filing and turning it around so that people got used to it. It was hard for people. They didn’t even have a computer. How are they going to do an electronic filing? But we did that. So we, again, a first, a first.

speaker-0 (22:56.994)
So here’s the thing, you’ve done so many different things and you’re still doing different things. In your mind, have you ever retired?

speaker-1 (23:08.462)
I retired three times and it lasted a day. But I really retired mentally, I’m retired. So I said, I’m not, this is it. I’m not doing anything where I must push out a product. think we need to get into what your show is about, which is what is retirement? What is it really? And I think it means something different to most people.

speaker-0 (23:09.934)
Okay.

speaker-1 (23:35.722)
In the U.S. it means you’re not working at your usual employment anymore. So that’s the moment that you retire. It’s a retirement moment. But in real life, retirement is a mental state. You know, so the mental state for me, and it means something different to each person. It meant not having a requirement over my head. And whether it’s work or…

or I eventually became an entrepreneur and I had my own business whether I I was responsible for employee no more responsible. I tried it and I hated it. I literally could not figure out what to do with my body. Where was I gonna be now? I woke up in the morning. What would I do? And I have many friends who never had that problem. One

Let me tell you, he’s a doctor and he was the CEO of one of the biggest banks in the world. That’s how much he worked. You know, he decided to read 100 books, the top 100 books he never had time to read. And there was no problem for him. Or I live near pickleball court. There are people out there for three hours a day. They have no problem figuring out what to do. I couldn’t do it. And so

I created different things each time where I did have to push out a product. So the first time, was in, I was 55 years old and I was able to retire from law and other things. And I took on that everybody should have a kick-ass old age. That was my idea. And I start because my father didn’t have a good old age. He had no old age. And most of the people in my family had died very early.

I was in good shape at 55 terrible shape at 45, but better. And so I started a consulting firm called Generation Bold. And I brought in different companies that dealt with aging and I would consult with them on the best way for them to market or position a product or a service. So that went on until I was about 65 and I

speaker-1 (25:56.782)
said, you know what, think I’m going to retire now. I’m 65. I should retire. So I retired again for two days and I couldn’t figure out what to do. So what happened then was podcasting. I thought, you know, you love being on the air as a radio personality, as a TV host. Why don’t you try something with this new thing called podcasting? And I took that name Generation Bold.

And I created a podcast called Generation Bold, the Fountain of Truth About Aging. And it’s still around. It’s a very, very good one, particularly because it deals with health, nutraceuticals. I got to interview doctors and neuroscientists and people from all over the world. And it was wonderful. And then COVID came. And I was actually asked to be the executive director of a new institute.

for the delay in prevention of age-related diseases, which I did for four years during COVID. And then I retired again for two days. And I decided, you know what I really love is travel. I’m gonna see what can I do with that? And at 75, I started the ageless travel and now I’ll be 78. So I’m two years old. We have knocked out weekly podcasts, weekly travel Tuesday newsletters, five eBooks.

I’ve been to 140 countries, but that’s starting when I was much younger. But I do about six to seven new countries a year. And now for the first time, we’re taking people on a trip. We’re not travel agents. This is just personal followers who really want to travel all their life and know that we can help them break down any barriers to travel. So it’s been a life of firsts.

speaker-0 (27:53.548)
Yeah. One of my first interviews was with a lady that had done something very similar to you in that she moved out to Panama around 55, if I remember correctly. And people were asking, how did you move it? That sort of stuff. So she started making tours for friends and family that wanted to come down. It wasn’t officially tours. She was just

Come down, I’ll show you how to go about doing it. And she grew that into a business similar to what you’re talking about with yours.

speaker-1 (28:27.566)
You know, this is a wonderful conversation. That would be the kind of person that would be on my show. I would love to interview somebody like that who could show others because we do, particularly in our newsletter, we write a lot about how to buy a home abroad. I’m looking into that now, actually buying a piece of property. For me it be grants, but it could be anywhere in the world.

We talk about the legal side of it. We talk about the health, the money, and somebody who really did it. That would be a real feather in our cap to have someone like that on. But that’s what we bring to the table.

speaker-0 (29:04.558)
Well, I also did an interview with… Okay, so I’ve set up a relationship with a company called Live and Invest Overseas, which is they basically help people move. And we had an entire show just talking about some of the things you need to be thinking about, good places, that sort of stuff. I’m in the process of getting them back on because what they do is every year they publish the top 10 places for…

retiring to, that sort of thing. So what I’ll do is I’ll introduce you to them as well.

speaker-1 (29:40.782)
For those of you who are really interested in this, we have a few podcasts. There’s a fellow named Matt Mahan, and he is probably the leader in helping US folks, not just buy abroad, because for me personally, I don’t have the time to make that my first home, and I don’t have the desire to make that my first home. But even as a second home, I wouldn’t be there much.

So I personally needed to make money in addition to give me and my family an opportunity to go to a place we really own. So that’s what Mack Mahan does. And we have a podcast on that. We also have a podcast very recent of a wonderful French woman who is starting a business. It’s kind of a startup, but she’s got six of them already. Only for women where they co-own eight to 10 only.

individual women, homes in Italy or France. They know each other, they meet each other, she puts them together. And when they’re not there, their room, there’s a communal, some of these are villas, they’re beautiful, can get rented out and they can make money that way. So this is happening. Like the company you’re talking about, there’s a nice, I write for them a lot, called International Living.

which does have the top places to move and the top places to go that particular year. and in UK, our podcast has heard a lot in the UK and they have their own, it’s called Under the Sun, where they help mostly British people relocate after retirement or buy their second home and that sort of thing. So it’s happening, but it’s not

that many out there. would think that the hundreds of these companies, really aren’t. There’s all exchange where you can exchange your home. And this is the kind of thing we talk about, because money is important. And it’s hard to travel the way I do on your own dime.

speaker-0 (31:50.35)
Well, one of the things that you’re talking with regards to traveling as opposed to just moving. One of the reasons why I wanted to talk about that, I have a pillar called global retirement perspectives. One of the seven pillars that we focus on. And what I learned about with regards to Panama is that you could live there on a thousand dollars a month.

speaker-1 (32:15.31)
Well, I was taken down to Panama. Remember, I was a consultant back in the day, right? That was my first retirement. So I was consultant to some countries. I know it sounds weird, but tourism ministries do hire people. First time I went to Africa, I was brought out by a tourism ministry to talk about how they should promote African tourism to Americans. I was brought out by Panama.

I spent about six weeks there going through the entire country. They had a new law and that law did permit U.S. citizens to buy in Panama. I went to all of the places. They were practically just building them.

Of course, for me as a travel lover, was great experience. My favorite was called canopy towers, which is, an old radar tower. They made it into a hotel and you could do bird watching. So I learned the bird watch in Panama, which has a huge percentage of the world’s birds. But I did, I was, I saw those places where people are now retiring being built. And it was fascinating to me. Yes.

you can live very, very cheaply in parts of Mexico. But believe it or not, if you come from Manhattan, where I do, I moved to California, Palm Springs. It’s cheaper. You can actually move to a lot of places in the world where you’re downsizing over the cost you. But there’s nothing like Costa Rica, Belize, Panama. I’ll be going to Ecuador in

speaker-0 (33:45.261)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (33:59.374)
for the first time, it’s a new country for me, in August. And I have many people that have retired in Ecuador on five or $600 a month. So that’s all possible.

speaker-0 (34:11.34)
Yeah. So I originally, I started this portion of the conversation asking when you retired. What you were describing to me back in the 90s, I remember reading that we all change careers four times. What I’m hearing is you never retired. What you did was you just changed careers on a regular basis.

speaker-1 (34:39.79)
I changed careers because I’ll tell you, when I was a little girl, I was very heavy. I was an obese child and my dad passed away from obesity really. So obesity was a huge thing in my life. And so was always, I had a lot of shame except for show and tell. I don’t know if you remember show and tell if you’ve had show and tell.

and you had to bring something in and stand in front of the class and explain it to them you were showing and you were telling. I love this. I waited all week for my two minutes. Now remember, here’s a kid who was so embarrassed that I wouldn’t look at people in the eye because they would say I was fat.

except if you put me in front of an audience. And I don’t think I’ve ever changed my career. I believe I’ve been doing my career show and tell. Whether I was a lawyer and I was in front of a courtroom, whether I was on the air, on radio or television, whether it’s podcasting, whether it’s this show, I’m still five years old. I’m excited. I’m showing and telling.

You got to hear this. You got to know this. Wait a minute. I got something else to tell you. Can’t wait to. Did you hear about that? That is who I have always been. And it’s when I’m in the zone. And what so so I think in my own introspection is in other ways, no. In other words, on a personal one to one level, I’m different because I still anybody who’s been body shamed, which is a big thing today, But in my day, they didn’t even have the word.

or the thought that insulting somebody because of their body type was a bad thing. It was just funny. Anybody knows that they carry that with them in different ways, no matter what. But can you imagine that that all turns off when you’re in front of a crowd? So I just think I’ve had the same career forever.

speaker-0 (36:37.166)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (36:44.131)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (36:54.05)
There was, I remember having this conversation with, who was it? Dr. Riley Moyan. And he was saying that often when people find that thing for themselves in retirement, it’s some small core portion of their personality that’s always been there. But once they find that one thing, that’s where retirement takes off for them because they found their purpose

speaker-1 (37:23.758)
you

speaker-0 (37:24.472)
focused on that one core portion of their personality.

speaker-1 (37:29.038)
Well, you know, the first time that I retired when I was 55, I and I couldn’t find where to go. I actually went to what’s called a self actualization class. It was a three day intense. It wasn’t S because S was old, but it was based on it called Landmark Education. And it’s still around today where they try to you. They ask you this question. What are you the possibility of in the world? You have to.

fill that blanket. And people say, we all say things like world peace, we’re the possibility of world peace. But then after three days, you get to that core that the doctor was mentioned, that one thing, and it informs your life. And in my case, it was what I told you, that everybody should have a great old age. It just comes to you after a lot of internal work. So if you take a look at it, Elder Law,

The ageless traveler. Armada was never stopped traveling. Generation Bold, the fountain of truth about aging. By consulting company for companies that are looking for older adults and my new enterprise, the human rights of older persons. It’s the core. They’re all the same thing. I care so deeply about children.

Do I put my time in that? No. I put my time in that one focused group. you look at it, that’s what it is. In fact, my books, my latest book, had not to go broke at 102, which is really an old book. It’s still about financial planning for older people.

speaker-0 (39:14.786)
Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s funny because I look at once people find something, they stay in that path that I’m not going to use the term rut, but that groove and they adjust as they go along. After a few years, what they were in becomes.

almost boring, so they make a slight adjustment.

speaker-1 (39:40.366)
Right. But it’s all the same trap. And then look, there’s still many people and there’s no judgment that can put together a certain kind of retirement that is the Dell. I call it the Dell web retirement with Dell web, who was the realtor developer genius who started the first over 55 community. His vision was leisure.

speaker-0 (39:42.252)
Yeah, but it’s all the same track.

speaker-1 (40:11.074)
that retirement would be leisure, period. It would not be giving back to the world. It would be taking. Because he was imbued with the philosophy of the World War II veteran who gave everything, sometimes their life, and deserved, he used the word deserved, and deserved leisure. And so there are still people, many, people, most retirees, that piece together a beautiful life of leisure.

if they have the means. It could be Pickleball and their book club, going on a vacation, I hope, and listening to the Asia’s Traveler, being grandparents, Cooking, learning a new language, learning a musical instrument. So that’s the beautiful retirement. Now it is a first world type of retirement. You need a certain level of income, but you don’t need to be a billionaire. So there’s nothing wrong with that.

I just couldn’t do it. I tried to do it. I just couldn’t do it.

speaker-0 (41:15.906)
When you said one thing, which is kind of, I have to keep in the back of my mind for my audience, is if you can afford it.

I had a podcast, a gentleman that ran a podcast out of the UK on several weeks ago. And one of the commenters was a blue collar worker. And he said, this is great advice, it’s hard to translate that back to us who were blue collar workers and don’t necessarily have that money for.

speaker-0 (41:55.726)
I would suggest that the advice is still effective for them in some manner that does not cost a whole lot of money.

speaker-1 (42:09.322)
sure. mean, I mentioned that I was on Oprah. And Oprah and Oprah, not just Oprah, Maury Povich, to those who remember that, and also Regis and Kathie Lee. And that was what they would bring me out for all the time was talking to the average person who’s watching their show on how to do good financial planning.

The fact is that according to the US statistics, you make $73,000 a year as a couple, you’re doing great. So this is not about being a multimillionaire. Now, if you’re making 50 or 30, and I know plenty of people who do, you can still do great. There are books about this by a woman named Amy Decision.

And it’s really about how to make the most out of every diamond dollar. Now that has some time consuming issues to it, but you can trade time for money and you can have a lot just as much as the guy next door without a lot of money. Now the easiest and cheapest thing you can do to have a great retirement is become a volunteer. If you’ve got time simply by volunteering and there’s a free

website called volunteermatch.com. Not match.com, then you meet other people. Volunteermatch.com. And you’ll see local places that you can volunteer. It’s so fulfilling and it doesn’t cost you anything. Then it’s more than that. There are places like Ameriprise Senior, which is the American federal program for volunteering.

There are many places that actually pay you for your transportation if you volunteer. Bouguer Encore is an example. The AARP has a volunteer group. Some places will pay just for your transportation. Other places will even pay you some money as a volunteer, a small stipend. So it’s possible to give of yourself and to get at the same time. Now,

speaker-1 (44:30.028)
I just want to mention travel for a minute because the one thing that people will say with me, I want them to try is they don’t have the money to travel. I’m concentrating on that. So I wrote a free book. You can get it for free. It’s called luxury travel for less. And it does not cost a penny. And it’s the only thing is I couldn’t get dot com. So it’s luxury travel for less dot info.

speaker-0 (44:39.15)
Right.

speaker-1 (44:56.812)
And it’s 33 pages, 75 websites. They give you all ways of traveling all over the world for less money, but not just junkie travel, luxury. Yeah. Cause I can’t sleep in a crappy bed anymore. used to be hostile, not. He’s going to hostile sleep on the floor. No, no. Those days have that ship has sailed.

speaker-0 (45:20.322)
That’s great for my 21 year old son. That’s not necessarily for me. Yeah.

speaker-1 (45:25.486)
So yes, so there are ways. Now, as I say, what are you trading? You’re trading some of your time. Because if I’m going to tell you to take a train instead of a plane, even that’s going to be more time and so on. But so what? So slow travel is still better even sometimes than fast, you know, fancy travel with million dollar guides. I don’t go to Michelin star restaurants. My friends do. To me, you know, and I don’t go first class on

when I apply. I had a very good friend, very good friend, Jeremy, she says, the most money you can make sitting down is going economy.

speaker-0 (46:11.842)
Only time I’ve ever taken a train was going from Boston to New York. That’s it.

speaker-1 (46:18.562)
Look, you could fly from, let’s take going out your territory all the way up through the Cascades through Seattle right before you get to Vancouver. It takes 36 hours from LA to get to the Cascade Mountains up in Washington State. It’s the most beautiful 36 hours of your life. So, I mean, I’m just giving one example and that’s not so inexpensive, by the way. I’m not giving you, but it’s much less expensive.

than getting in certain in many, many other ways. That’s just one. But there are many ways. There are actually hostels, by the way, in not being funny about it. Well, you get private rooms when you’re older and they are still $30 a night. It’d be $3 a night, but now they’re $30 a night. So yes, you can do that. One of my most adventurous trips in my whole life was to Jordan. And the Middle East is sketchy now. And this

Travel Tuesday, the newsletter, every week it’s free. I’m writing right now is about safety and travel. Right today, it’s going out tomorrow, including the Middle East specifically for obvious reasons we’re having an issue. Okay, but still one of the most adventurous things I’ve ever done in my life was to stay with the Bedouins in Jordan. It was exotic, the food was fabulous.

The people were kind and wonderful. Petra, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is nearby. It was unbelievable. I saw where Lawrence of Arabia was filmed. Everything you could think of, and it cost me $20 a day. And that included the food.

speaker-0 (48:06.176)
So the work you were doing with the UN, and that was volunteer, I’m assuming. Yeah. Did they pay for you to do any of this traveling?

speaker-1 (48:16.814)
No, no, that is why at age 75, I started the ageless traveler on the idea that not to make money. never wanted to charge the listener, the consumer anything. In fact, lot of podcasts have what they call paid or premium stuff. know all about that, right? I didn’t want to do it. You can do it. Nothing wrong with doing it.

speaker-0 (48:40.568)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (48:46.86)
I didn’t want to do it. Okay. So I thought that I might get free trips that I would take, but from companies that wanted me to promote them like an ad, except a trip instead of an ad, but also to advise them. And I started something called Ageless Tourism for the industry because Lanner’s, which is like an HR research group.

that tourism was the fourth most ageist industry in the United States.

speaker-0 (49:20.216)
Yes, I can see that. I can see that.

speaker-1 (49:22.392)
High-year-old people, that’s number one. They don’t train you on what aging is. They do ADA, which is for people with disabilities. And the minute they comply with the ADA rule, they say, good, we’re done. We don’t need to do anything more for old people because they’re all disabled and we have a ramp. The fact is we’re not disabled. And even people who are disabled are not disabled because they could do a lot of stuff with their scooter and their mind and their arms and all this stuff.

They don’t get us at all. They don’t know where we have deficiencies. We can’t see, we can’t hear, but boy, we can move. They don’t just, they just don’t get us. And guess what? It took two years, by the way, almost three now. It worked. This thing that I’m doing with the tours on ships happened because of that. And anybody who’s a cruiser, and I love cruising.

knows that most of the information they’ll get from a speaker has to do with the ports. This is one of the first times that a cruise line has permitted or reached out, wanted life purpose discussions on their cruises. And that’s what this is, life purpose discussion. Why? Because who cruising? Older people that are looking for that retirees. And they finally figured it out.

And I wish everybody else would figure it out.

speaker-0 (50:54.51)
Well, one of the things I’m doing right, I started a couple of weeks ago is reaching out to vendors, manufacturers of products that are being made for the older set. Well, one of the things I’m finding is they’re being made by people in their 20s and 30s, the products. They seem to be thinking that their customers

speaker-1 (51:10.021)
Good luck!

speaker-0 (51:24.27)
are the children of the older people. I can understand that thinking because, for example, my dad’s 94 and turns 95 in October. And I went over and I had to help him because he was having trouble with his renewal of Microsoft 365.

speaker-0 (51:44.78)
I’m that sandwich generation, that age where my kids are, you know, they’re now in their twenties and my father is older and I have to keep an eye both directions.

The vendors seem to think I’m the customer. And what I’ve been telling them is I may pay for it, but I’m not going to pay for something that my father’s not going to use. It’s like when my kids were in elementary school and they were playing a sport. Yes, I’m the one paying for it. But if my kid hates the sport, I’m not going to continue sending them to that sport.

speaker-1 (52:09.838)
You’re right.

speaker-1 (52:25.166)
Well, you know, in terms of the marketing, again, most people in marketing are young, as number one. Number two, and smart, and smart, it’s not that they’re dumb or they don’t want to look at it, is that they do look at the numbers and analytically, there’s very little data about what people do over the age of 65. I’ll tell you about tourism. The United Nations. United Nations has UNESCO sites.

It’s really a big catalyst. A lot of older adults want to go to the UNESCO sites. So they redid their statistics to see who’s traveling. And do know that they stopped at age 55? They have categories for women. They have categories for family travel. And for age travel, they stop at age 55. That’s the mental set. So it’s not only the marketers that

It’s the data. And if you’re data driven and you know the world you’re in, technology is so data driven, you can’t get analytics on us. You try to see how many of us travel. We now know it’s 1.6 trillion trips by 2030. We figured it out only just, that’s like a less than a year ago. It is very, very difficult. There’s a data, you know,

agnostic here. So if somebody says to a marketer, how many people are listening to my podcast? And they want to know from Apple or Spotify, the numbers. And you say, you know what, here’s the numbers. But most people don’t listen to podcasts if they’re over the age of 70 or 80. They’re listening on my computer. have

speaker-0 (54:09.198)
you

speaker-1 (54:23.278)
the ability for you to listen to my podcast on my website. That’s a different statistic. They’re listening on their phone. That’s yet a third statistic. But if you’re a creator and in the marketing world, they’ll ask, how many people listen to your show on Instagram? The answer is probably nobody. I mean, we may have like five because it’s not our age group.

speaker-0 (54:45.933)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (54:51.694)
They’re not on Instagram. We have some, and I don’t want to under exaggerate, but you’ve got to, for a show like ours, let’s say, you have to take a cluster, and that’s work for a marketer. Whereas they can go to somebody who is 25 years old that’s showing lipstick to buy on Instagram, and oh, a million people looked at the lipstick.

speaker-0 (55:14.306)
But our age group is where all the money is.

speaker-1 (55:19.852)
Right. A million people looked at the lipstick, but four people bought it. In my group, like we have a newsletter, I told you. We have 3000 subscribers to the newsletter. And of those 3000 subscribers, they take three to six trips a year. Every one of

speaker-0 (55:23.32)
Exactly.

speaker-0 (55:42.542)
I would suggest that this age group, our age group, probably spends more simply because of the old adage, you can’t take it with you.

speaker-1 (55:55.234)
And they’re also spending for three generations. Remember, they’re buying for themselves. As you say, their wishes are being trickled down to the sandwich generation who are buying for them. And they are personally buying for their grandkids.

speaker-0 (56:12.472)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (56:13.582)
money on the grandkids because they don’t want anything anymore. That’s true. I don’t want to clutter. I enough clutter as you can all see from my background picture here. You’ve got enough clutter. You’re a collector. But for the grandkids, anything goes. yeah, we’re spending and we’re spending on travel more than any. And on travel, it’s single women or married women even traveling solo that are spending the most money per capita.

I know that because I did the report. Ageless Tourism Report is on agelesstourism.com for anybody in the industry. And we issue a badge saying that you’re age-friendly, but only if you are, but only if you really are.

speaker-0 (56:57.65)
Yeah, yeah, it has to be independent. Otherwise, how can anybody trust what you’re saying, as opposed to just selling a product?

speaker-1 (57:06.734)
Exactly. So I’m loving this because it does make change. It turns things around. Also, we are the volunteers of the world. We’re the ones who go on the trips where we go to a school and we bring things and we want to meet new people. We want to be re-energized through travel.

speaker-0 (57:29.858)
Well, we’re coming up on an hour. And I said this at the beginning. I think I could probably talk with you for hours, because it’s always interesting. If you were to turn around, and I ask this of all my guests, and provide a piece of information or guidance or advice for somebody that is retiring and they’re starting to think ahead about the next phase.

What would you give them? What would you tell them?

speaker-1 (58:01.614)
I would say two things. One, life is longer than you think. So start it now, whatever it may be, and don’t allow yourself to say, I’ll be too old when it’s done. We have many examples of people who want to go back to school and, they’ll graduate when they’re 83. And I always say, well, you’ll be 83 anyway. So you may as well have your PhD with it. Whatever it is, you’re not too old to start it. I love the phrase.

that you’re never told to be who you could have been. So if there’s something that you regret that you didn’t do, and it may in your mind take a while to make it happen, like a podcast that took three years, who would say at age 75, are you crazy? You’re starting something new. Don’t worry about it. Life is longer. The second part is you cannot listen to the naysayers.

everybody will tell you that can’t be done. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. It can’t be done. And that’s my second favorite line. Everybody who says it can’t be done, get out of the way of the people who are doing it. Absolutely. Nothing can be done by some people’s estimation. And particularly if you’re older. And they call it, there’s a word for it, call it self-imposed helplessness.

speaker-0 (59:30.179)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (59:31.116)
You’re told so many times, whatever it may be, can’t write a novel, your poetry is no good, you’ll never be able to travel, you’ll get sick, you can’t hike. I mean, it’s endless. It’s endless. Say thank you very much and walk away. But if it’s your own kids, they’re the worst.

speaker-0 (59:45.059)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (59:53.718)
Yeah, I almost, I get the feeling that people think that when you get to that retirement age, whatever that so-called thing is, your life ends, which is the only reason why we see financial planning, estate planning and old age homes. And I think we get rid of that entire concept and just realize it’s, we’re still living and we’re just continuing.

speaker-1 (01:00:11.5)
Right.

speaker-0 (01:00:23.552)
and you’re choosing what we want to be doing, whether it’s work, whether it’s volunteering, whether it’s travel, whether it’s whatever. And we go from there.

speaker-1 (01:00:32.408)
Well, you know, the only thing is it’s really is good to surround yourself with people who are we’ve talked about this before the positive deviants. Yeah. The people who are doing the things, the more you can surround yourself with those folks, even by the way, in assisted living, if you happen to be in assisted living, even by the way, in a nursing home.

Even people that have dementia issues, when they are around music, when they’re around other people with and without cognitive issues that are positive, they’re different people. Different people. And it doesn’t matter your status. I have a, she’s so beautiful, a woman. She loves cruising. And I occasionally see her in different cruises. She’s on a scooter.

Now she’s very dangerous. She scoots around these cruise, you know, halls, knock you over, but okay. She does more in a day than anybody else I know. And she’s totally unable to walk, even with a walker. So it doesn’t matter who you are. And if you have the capacity, watch out, but don’t let people say you can’t do it.

speaker-0 (01:01:45.326)
Adrian, it’s been a pleasure. Absolute pleasure. Thank you very much. For everybody that’s watching, don’t forget to like and subscribe. It helps YouTube and all the various different podcasts to keep bringing things back. And just as an aside to Adrian, I’m finding YouTube is where most of my viewership is coming from, simply because I think it’s a…

continuation of the old cable company mentality. And that’s a whole nother conversation. Anyway, thank you very much.

speaker-1 (01:02:25.496)
Thank you.