Kerry Hannon on Retiring Without Regret

speaker-0 (00:04.11)
Hey folks, welcome back today. Today we have Carrie Hammond, who is an author and somebody that probably a few of you have seen before. Carrie, it always sounds better if it comes from the person I’m talking to. Why don’t you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about who you are?

speaker-1 (00:24.45)
Well, hi, I am delighted to be here with you, Neil. I am a retirement personal finance and workplace expert. I’ve spent my entire career really focused on these buckets. I’m a former columnist for the New York Times and for PBS and Money Magazine, USA Today, you name it, Forbes Magazine throughout the years.

Currently, I’m a senior columnist at Yahoo Finance, is the world’s largest personal finance platform. And I’ve written, I’m the author of 14 books. So a lot of them are about women and money, work and jobs, how to love your job, how to find a job after 50. I have one called Never Too Old to Get Rich, which is all about senior entrepreneurship and second acts as

small business operators, and it’s just been a joy. My most current book is called Retirement Bites, and it’s focused on retirement issues for the Gen X set. So that’s kind of where we’re headed there. These are the oldest Gen X are turned 61 this year. So retirement is really now clearly in their windshield and the youngest is in their

you know, mid 40s. And so this is a time in life to really take control of thinking about retirement, thinking about what you want to do. And that next chapter of life, which is what your show is focused on here. And really, you know, thinking about work purpose, all those good things, but also, how do you get your money in shape so that you can do the things that you want to do?

speaker-0 (02:12.238)
Well, this most recent book is focused on Gen Xers. Me, I’m the very last year of Baby Boomers. I’m from 1964, so I’m turned 62 this year. Is there a difference between the way Baby Boomers have handled things versus Gen Xers?

speaker-1 (02:29.612)
think that there is a difference, but I must say, you know, those little lines we draw in the sand if you’re Gen X, if you’re, you know, it’s a little fluid there, right? So it’s not like a hard, wow, if you’re born, you know, in 1964, you’re quite different than somebody born in 1960. Here’s the deal though, Neil, is that Gen Xers, this cohort, you know, is a…

is a group of individuals, some 65 million or more, who came behind that massive boomer generation and the big millennials behind them. And a lot of people forget, they’ll talk about boomers and they go right to millennials. They forget that this Gen X group even exists. And the fact is this generation had some serious headwinds in terms of when they entered the workplace.

all kinds of things from their culture to the financial, the economic situations when they started work. So it’s a really scrappy group that, you know, rode bikes without helmets, drank from the hose, you know, you know, kind of nobody knew where you were. know, it was really the do it yourself crew and, you know, latchkey kids, a lot of us. And so I think what we’re seeing here is when they started in the workplace in the U.S. in particular,

I’m talking about here is that the 401k was just coming along. so that traditional pensions were going away. And so you started working, if you were lucky enough to have an employer plan with a 401k, nobody knew what these were. There wasn’t a lot of money you could set aside in them, not a lot of investment opportunities. And so the financial literacy was quite low in terms of once it shifted to

the worker or the individual to be responsible for saving for retirement. Moving forward, were economic downturns during their working years, all kinds of sort of, you know, the tech boom and bust where a lot of people said, hey, you know, they got very leery of investing in stocks, that kind of thing. And also more mobility started in the workplace. So I think there were, and there’s other things, but what’s important to know about GenXers is right now they are at their peak earnings years.

speaker-1 (04:49.154)
So this is a time, and they often have a lot of equity in their homes. They’ve been able to do well with real estate if they got in, rode through sort of the economic downturns, but have come out on the other side. So I think it’s an important time that Gen Xers really can take control of their finances and pause in and be intentional. Boomers started this path of second acts and working longer in retirement and what was retirement for sure.

But for Gen Xers, it’s going to be a fact. With longevity, people are living longer lives. Planning for a longer working life is just going to be part of the ethos. But it’s finding out what that might work or what that might look like for you.

speaker-0 (05:35.352)
You know, one of things I’m noticing is that the entire concept of retirement is changing. That I was, I’ve had a few guests where I’ve talked about work sharing. So instead of getting to a certain age and then stopping, it phases out and you phase into retirement, sort of thing. from the financial side of things, I’m assuming that the concept of saving for a specific age,

changes and it’s more about a steady income stream being topped up by additional work.

speaker-1 (06:10.978)
I think that’s true. think phased retirement is something that a lot of us want and employers don’t want, but they’re starting to get hip to the fact that they got to do it because there’s just not as many younger workers by sheer demographics coming up as older workers. And as older workers want to stay on the job longer,

that age 65, which people often threw a dart that that was retirement age is really a made up number anyway. And in order to support three decades in retirement, for gosh sakes, you’re going to need to keep working. So, but phased retirement, it’s starting to get, it used to be just cherry picked. know, employers would just pick certain employees. They would let them do this. Now more formalized phased retirement programs are

are starting to come into the picture in a more realistic way, where someone might step back to working maybe three days a week, but they still have full health care benefits, full retirement benefits, to being contributions to retirement plans. So it’s a slow stepping away. The traditional model of people would go back and consult for their prior employer or start employing. That’s still alive and well for sure.

But I think having these ideas, job sharing, as you mentioned, is a wonderful concept that often parents, mothers have done this to sort of be able to manage having young children and stay involved in the workplace. That started a lot back for those individuals. And I do see that happening more for older workers and more experienced workers who just want a little more control over their time. Because what we really want is our autonomy at this stage in our life.

So if you can have that and control your hours you work and hopefully where you work, it can become much easier to stay on the job and keep earning for as long as you can.

speaker-0 (08:13.71)
You had mentioned that one of your previous books had also been with regards to second act businesses. Are you seeing an increase in that going on right now or is that still just a flash, I won’t say flash in the pan, but a fad so much?

speaker-1 (08:29.826)
I think it’s the real thing. mean, Neil, this is happening. momentum is there. And we’re not talking someone building the next super company. We’re talking micro businesses. This is often it’s so it’s easier than ever to start up a business from your home computer, from your office at home, from wherever you may be. And you can have coming out of the pandemic, not only did remote work

take off and the technology was there in order to work remotely, to build a business remotely, but also contract workers. The ability to, you can just hire somebody to helicopter in to do your books for you once a month or twice a month. You don’t have to have a big staff of people or bricks and mortar space to call your company. You can have your small business operating on pretty much

of a shoestring and a very flexible one at that because being able to bring in, I want so-and-so to come help me with my social media platform or to help me with marketing, to help me with sales. These are things that in the old days, you’d have to hire somebody do this work. Now you can say, you can do with as your business grows. So I think this is definitely happening and

It’s a lot of people, and you may be seeing this yourself and the individuals you’ve already talked to on your program here, they’re starting these side geeks even while they’re still fully employed in their current situation, but they’re testing things out on the side to say, hey, when I do step away, is this going to be viable for me? Is there an opportunity here? And so I love that scenario because that only sets someone up to succeed.

speaker-0 (10:16.994)
Yeah, but one of the things I’ve noticed though, and this is prior to my own situation, a lot of people were setting up side businesses, not so much about an eye for retirement, but they needed that extra income because things are now getting so expensive compared to the way it used to be. And our, this age, you’re also supporting maybe those younger adult kids that are in university or just come out of university.

and our parents. My dad is 94. He’ll turn 95 this year. And I’m keeping an eye on him and helping him with things he’s doing. So as a sandwich generation, you’re not just dealing with your own personal finances. You’re also having to support on either side of you.

speaker-1 (11:04.94)
That question, you you hit it right on the head. It is something that, you know, with the cost of living escalating and no sign of stepping back at the moment, health care has gotten much more expensive in the United States at any rate. And I think that people are struggling. And when you’re dealing with

Maybe you have a kid who has, my co-author on Retirement Bites, Jana Herron, she has a 16-year-old son. So they haven’t even, she’s a younger Gen Xer. And so they still have that plus her, she have aging parents. And as you said, it’s this, you have competing priorities for how you spend your money. Saving for retirement is one piece of it. Supporting these individuals on either side of you is a priority as well as,

all kinds of other lifestyle issues that have come up. So the fact is we are seeing a lot of people starting businesses right now just for cashflow purposes, absolutely. But I do think it helps them set the stage for what can be a really cool next act in life where you really are doing something you care about, you’re passionate about, or you don’t have to be totally passionate, but you enjoy it or you feel.

but it is making a difference in the world in some way, whatever that product or service is, you feel good about it. So that is something that I think we’re seeing. Yes, I think it’s a cost saving, bolstering. It’s an income bolstering thing for people still on the job, but it’s also a way to sort of tee up for that next act.

speaker-0 (12:41.422)
One of the things I remember, the way I’ve learned things, and that was going back to the way you used to describe us out on the street, drinking from the hose, that sort of stuff. My dad was never really around and didn’t really talk with me about finance, about budgeting, that sort of stuff. So I ended up having to learn on my own. Have you seen a lot of the…

this generation as it’s moving through, they’ve had to learn lessons on their own and they’ve missed things and they’re not complete. Whereas what I’m doing with my sons is I’m teaching them, I’m telling them things. I’m a lot more communicative with them than my dad was with me. Is this something that you’ve been seeing?

speaker-1 (13:24.268)
Yeah, I think that’s classic. think that the generation ahead of us really, wasn’t, of course, in some families, money was a discussion. But for many of us, money was somewhat taboo. mean, it wasn’t polite to talk a lot about a lot of these things. It wasn’t accessible in the way that it needs to be. And when we talked about people,

you know, starting to have to take control of planning for their own retirement and saving for themselves. It really launched this this whole thing about, well, wait, I don’t even know what I’m doing. How do I go about this? What’s been helpful, Neil, is that I think financial literacy is improving for younger generations thanks to people like yourself acting and making it part of the fabric of a family and our culture. The schools are doing better at it. But I do think there’s a lot of education online.

for people who reach out, you have to look for the legitimate spots. You have to be careful. There’s a lot of influencers, as they call them out there, giving you all kinds of advice. But there are some really great ways to learn about basics of financial planning, financial budgeting, that doesn’t have to be a hard lift. And it just takes a little time. I will say for like a Gen X generation, the other thing that has happened to Gen Xers is

and why they can take control right now too, and all of us really can, is as you move along in your career and in your working life, you get a bit of lifestyle creep. You start earning more money and so you’re spending a little more than maybe you used to. You’ve lost track. You maybe did budgets when you were younger, but you kind of put that by the wayside. And it’s a perfect opportunity to say, I see the road ahead that I’m gonna wanna step away from full-time work.

at some stage I want to be able to maybe start my own business over here or do this kind of consulting work. What do I have, what do I need to have coming in in order to meet my core spending for each month? And go back to that budget and you may be certainly surprised to see your spending on things that you didn’t even realize you were spending on because, not saying not to treat yourself well, but maybe you’re eating out more than you ever did before. Or, know, it’s just.

speaker-1 (15:43.286)
It’s getting lean and mean again, and actually just taking a hard look at the numbers. think time after time, studies show that people who just take the time to do a budget and to run a retirement calculator, they’re out there, some really good ones out there, have a higher success rate of actually having financial security in their retirement years because they’ve taken an action. They’ve started to pay attention.

And often this encourages people to really ramp up savings, investing, be a little careful about how they’re spending so that they can get started. Debt is the biggest dream killer out there. a lot of people, Gen X has the highest amount of credit card debt out there and also student loan debt. So these are things you need to get control of before you can step into your next chapter.

speaker-0 (16:36.622)
How do you plan for retirement when the length of time in retirement has been getting longer? Where I’m coming from here is we started this conversation, 65, where you would have ended up living to maybe 75. Now we’re easily getting into the 90s. So the amount of funds that you need for that retirement

seems to change. The amount that you’re going to need is going to have to last longer. Or does it?

speaker-1 (17:09.262)
Who knows? No one has that crystal ball, right? So we’d like to say it’s better to be safe than sorry, is my opinion. mean, no one, there’s this huge fear of people outliving their money. And the truth of the matter is, health care costs, and I’m speaking specifically in the US, escalating so much, those end of life years, those last couple of years, can be extraordinarily expensive out of pocket with in assisted care.

all kinds of things like that, that people simply have trouble getting their head around what that might be. And so I think, you know, it is something that absolutely you need to plan to live for a long life if you can save as hard as you can while you’re earning. But don’t deny yourself living your life. I’m not saying, you know, because no one knows. So it’s like trying to find that fine balance of I want to live for today and enjoy my

life right now. But I also don’t want to be that person at the end of life going like borrowing from, you know, not even borrowing, asking your friends and relatives, family for money, or simply being out there. I mean, it’s not and it’s real because as you said, definitely longevity, life, lifespans are growing longer for the most part, not for everyone. Frankly, dice it up. It can even be a factor can be your

you know, your race, how much money you make, you know, all kinds of factors weigh into how long you live. And of course, then it’s your family history and all those kinds of things. So you need to take a good, hard look, say, hey, do people tend to live long in my family or not? How is my health? Am I taking care of like one of the biggest pieces of advice that I tell people, especially the Gen X crowd right now, but younger, if there’s one thing you can do to improve your

financial situation for later in life is to get physically fit today. You have to be financially fit, but by all means, number one, get physically fit. Pay attention to your health. know, keep an eye on, know, do you have an exercise regime? Doesn’t have to be bench pressing or running fast miles, but something that’s part of your every day or every week, eating with an eye on nutrition.

speaker-1 (19:29.858)
People say, what does that have to do with my financial life? has a lot. Anything you can do to stave off having these unexpected medical emergencies. You can’t predict exactly if that’s going to happen, but you can do some of these things that will give you a better shot at it.

speaker-0 (19:48.29)
Yeah. Your book is called Real, sorry, Retirement Bites. That seems very negative. Why is it called Retirement Bites?

speaker-1 (19:58.978)
Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, I first said the same thing as you just said. But what it is, is it’s riffing off that movie that came out when Gen Xers were coming along called Reality Bites. And Reality Bites was a super popular movie that was all about the angst that Gen X felt as they were approaching adulthood. Like, my gosh, now I have to adult. What does that mean? This huge, it’s a great movie, super successful. And so Retirement Bites is kind of

What you know sort of a little riff off of that saying all the angst that Gen X is feeling now about approaching retirement and and let’s talk about how to sort of let’s take take the you know pedal take the pedal off the metal heel here and say you know it doesn’t have to bite but it’s okay that you feel anxious but let’s use that energy of being anxious to make a difference and so you don’t have to worry about it.

speaker-0 (20:51.382)
It’s all about, I’ve always found that if you’re anxious or worried about something, the more information you have, the better.

speaker-1 (20:58.282)
Absolutely. Yeah, so true.

speaker-0 (21:00.63)
Yeah, no, and here’s the other thing about the Gen X’s versus the Baby Boomers. The Gen X’s grew up with the internet. Grew up with a source of information that wasn’t available. Me personally, when I was growing up, there was no internet. We had encyclopedias.

speaker-1 (21:22.318)
Yeah, dictionaries too, like real dictionaries, you know.

speaker-0 (21:26.766)
Exactly. And it just changed itself. OK. So one of the things I did earlier this week was I had an interview with Patrick Pennick. He’s the Secretary General of the European Seniors Union. They work on policies for the European Union. Reason being that I was looking for what’s going on outside of North America.

Do you see any policies or anything coming along? When I look at the US Senate’s special committee on aging, there seems to be a heavy focus on things like pensions, things like Medicare, Medicaid, that sort of thing. Do you see anything coming along that might impact from the financial side of things?

speaker-1 (22:15.81)
Well, you’re correct. mean, there’s a lot of discussion about policy surrounding in the US, particularly social security and Medicare. And these are huge programs that are part of the social safety net here. there have to be changes. And policymakers debate, debate, debate. And there’s lots of solutions out there.

No one has taken any firm action as of yet. So I think there’s concern about the future financial security of social security in particular in this country. Although I personally am not that worried that it’s going to go away because I think that something will happen. But the deadline for the trust funds being depleted is rapidly approaching. There are going to have to be some changes made. Now, years ago,

I, and I’m saying this seriously, it’s amazing. It’s been a while, but I testified in front of the Senate Aging Committee here in Washington, D.C. about older workers and the whole need to keep people on the job longer and to have, you know, runways and on-ramps and off-ramps that helped older workers stay part of the workforce and earning longer because this is something that, and I’m not saying that

When I look at work, I’m not looking at it as a four-letter word, as something that’s a negative, but something that’s a positive for people, and looking at ways that companies can be encouraged to keep workers on the job longer. And so this has been in the sort of mindset of this country for a long time, this need, but it’s just actions being taken in pockets, you know? So.

I think that it’s not going to be until companies really realize that they don’t have the employee base to support what they need to get done. And I’ll say in my own case, I was hired for a full-time job when I was entering my sixth decade. Now, I never would have expected that.

speaker-1 (24:33.994)
And I wasn’t looking for a full-time job. I was running my own company, which in fact was a full-time times 10 job. But as anyone who’s run their own business knows, but the fact is I was hired because I could do the job they needed done immediately. I had all the experience. I needed no training. I had all the contacts. I could step right in and do it. That’s what an older worker, and I work hard. I have a great ethic, work ethic.

and loyalty, all these things that experienced workers have right in their back pocket. And more employers are getting to realize that, yeah, okay, let’s skip the ages in business. Let’s look for somebody who can do our job and somebody who’s curious, who wants to continue to learn. That’s an important factor. Someone who wants to stay on the job longer is not going to be able to do that just because they wish it. They have to keep their skills up to speed. Everything’s changing.

too rapidly, too quickly, particularly technology. If you’re not on top of what’s happening in your industry, in your particular field, at the company you work at, you’re really setting yourself up for failure.

speaker-0 (25:44.91)
Yeah. My dad, same company for, God, how long was it? 35 years. He was in the college system, worked his way up to a VP of strategy for the local college system here. Me, I’ve gone from contract to contract to contract to contract simply because that’s been the nature of the way work has been. That’s the fact that

I’m now having difficulty because I was coming out of technology was a lot of it had to do with ageism. You just mentioned that ageism seems to be employers are starting to say to hell with ageism. We need somebody.

speaker-1 (26:28.982)
I it’s true. I mean, I see that happening. the other thing, the things that I mentioned to an individual when I’m giving advice to workers is, yeah, like I just said, you need to make the employer feel comfortable with this concept that they want you. They want you. And they either want to keep you or they want to hire you. Retain you or you. And the ways to do that is staying up to date with your skills.

speaker-0 (26:30.272)
It’s good.

speaker-1 (26:58.306)
you know, raising your hand to do new work, to learn new things, you know, saying, want to be in that workplace training program that the 30 year old has just been offered. I’d like to be part of that, you know, asking to do projects that you see that interest you around the company. But it’s also a little judging a book by its cover. And I encourage people to, and I talk about my fitness plan I mentioned being.

financially fit, you know, to get lean and mean, but you need to be physically fit also in this sense, because when you’re physically fit, not only are you going to stave off those healthcare bills when you’re older, but right now, you bring to you this sense of when you’re physically fit, you have energy, you have this can do spirit, you have this positive energy. You know, people will come up to me when I’m speaking and say, should I get Botox or should I dye my hair or what have you? I’m like,

Fantastic, if you wanna do that, go for it. But I think the simple, if it’s gonna make you feel better about yourself, but the important thing, if you can get physically fit, it is this magic ingredient. They don’t know what they’re looking at, but they want you on their team. They want you to be part of their company, their team, all of these things, because you bring this positive energy that they need. It’s like juice. So it’s a subtle thing in a way.

but it’s something that’s fully in your control that can really push back against ageism. And I also think remote work, which Zoom had always been there, but just genie out of the bottle after the pandemic has been great for older workers because if you can work remotely and you don’t have to be standing next to somebody decades younger than you in the workplace, there’s not that subtle message of ageism. And also if you have a health issue or

that you need some sort of accommodation, or it’s harder to commute to work or something. If you can work out of a home office, you solve all those problems right away. So I think there’s a lot of positive things that came out of that particular trend coming out of the Panadeca, along with what we talked about, the contract work, more opportunities there for people. But I do think these things, when you’re working remotely, and that is what I do primarily with my job,

speaker-1 (29:19.438)
as well. I I do go into an office maybe once every couple of months to the New York office, but I’m mostly out of my home office or wherever I may be. And that’s just grand at this stage of my life. I’m perfectly happy with that situation. If I was younger, I’d want to be in an office because it is so great to have those human ties, those human contacts. You make your network, your friends for life. mean, the people I worked with in my 20s and 30s, they’re

many of them are very close friends today still. And so there’s that beauty of that experience when you’re younger. But as you’re a more experienced worker, maybe you want more control of your time.

speaker-0 (29:57.87)
Yeah, I saw this scene yesterday from a movie where they’re like all larger businesses, you go through growth and then you have to release people, growth and then release people. And it’s like they were cherry picking the older workers to release. I’m wondering whether that mindset’s going to change because older workers have that experience that you don’t want to lose that, what’s the term?

Institutional knowledge. don’t want, me personally, over the years I’ve learned I’m not going to get training paid for. So I have to figure out how to teach myself various different things. Whereas younger kids haven’t learned that yet. So they’re going to need to, they expect somebody to pay for their learning and that sort of thing. I’m wondering whether that’s going to change that approach for not just expansion, but contraction.

of companies.

speaker-1 (30:58.936)
Well, you know, I don’t want to be like, you know, the dreamy eyed girl, but I do think I’m seeing movement in this direction, that there be more intentional about holding on to their more experienced workers longer while allowing that that institutional knowledge, as you mentioned, to transfer. Like, for example, some of the phased retirement programs that have been following, there’s one at

pharmaceutical company here called Abbott. part of that deal is that you can sign up for this program if you’re over 55 or what have you, but you work fewer days or hours and you get full benefits, but you also have to agree to work with a younger colleague to mentor them and to teach them.

the facets of your job over a period of time. It can make people a little uncomfortable, that concept, somebody who’s an older worker that doesn’t wanna be replaced, but I think it’s a fair trade-off if done properly and with respect.

speaker-0 (32:08.962)
Well, we’re getting close to the end of the interview and I’m sensitive about your time because I know you have a deadline that you have to deal with. I always ask everybody, last question is, if you were to give one piece of advice, what would it be? And it doesn’t matter who you think the audience is that needs to hear this. What would that one piece of advice be?

speaker-1 (32:16.206)
No, I didn’t.

speaker-1 (32:33.742)
There’s so many. I guess the one I really like, and it sounds so simplistic, but you’ve got to believe in yourself. if you don’t believe in your capabilities and your ability to shine and to succeed, whether it’s managing your finances or being fantastic at your job or to get hired, if you don’t believe in that deep, like true believe in your own capabilities,

Nobody else is gonna do that for you. And that’s where it takes that inner soul searching, taking the time to really map out what it matters to you, what matters to you right now? What are your priorities? If you were to write a mission statement, what would that be? So these are the aspects of really self-evaluation that we need to do all by ourselves before we step out into the world.

to sort of conquer our what’s next. And so it really comes down to, yeah, you know, I believe in myself, have some moxie.

speaker-0 (33:37.996)
Yeah, there’s a reason why you have all this knowledge. Yeah. Well, Kerry, I really want to thank you for taking the time. I know it’s a busy schedule for you. For everybody, check out the description of this video. I will have links to Kerry’s book, to her various different sites, and go take a look and see what she’s been doing. Kerry, thank you very much.

speaker-1 (34:07.448)
Thank you so much.