Why Your Retirement Plan Is Missing Something Critical

speaker-0 (00:04.034)
Welcome everybody. Thanks for joining us again. Today we have Sarah Berry. I mispronounced her name in the warm up to all this. She’s a retirement coach. But it always sounds better coming from the person I’m talking to. So Sarah, thank you very much for joining us. Tell us a bit about who you are and what you do.

speaker-1 (00:26.476)
Yes, thank you, Neil. Thank you for inviting me onto your show.

It’s great to be here. It’s a little early in the morning for me and a little late in the evening for you. So hopefully we’re aligned there. So everyone, as Neil said, I’m a retirement coach. So I’m actually a certified professional retirement coach and life transition coach. I’m also an author. So I wrote a book, Nine Habits of Happy Retirees, which earlier this year won an independent press award and a Titan award.

which is great. very pleased about that because the focus of the book is on the non-financial aspects of retirement. And I think a lot of space is given to planning for the financial aspects of retirement, but not necessarily the non-financial aspects. So people who are transitioning into retirement. So getting back to a little bit more about me, I went through

quite a few sort of transitions in my life as well. So I’ve lived in five countries. I’ve been to 13 schools. I moved to Dubai 13 years ago, just before I was 40. I decided I needed to leave Australia. I didn’t know where I was going to go. A stopover in Abu Dhabi and a drive into the desert landed me in Dubai. So I sold everything, moved with that job, and that was a major transition for me.

But that decision changed everything for me. I think, you know, what that transition along with others that I’ve been through in my life has helped me understand is that, you know, transitions are really clean. You know, the hardest part is not really the practical part of making that initial change. It’s the identity question. So who you are when the ground shifts for you. So for me, you know, I was approaching 40 and thinking this doesn’t fit right. You know, this doesn’t feel right for me anymore.

speaker-1 (02:24.162)
being in Australia where I moved to when I was 10. And I knew I needed to leave, so I did. And then the work begins. So then the work began about trying to understand who I was in this next phase of my life. And I built a new life for myself in Dubai. And I feel that there’s so many parallels there between the transition into, we say retirement, we’ll get to that in a bit later, that the language is broken there. But it’s a huge transition.

And, you know, retirement was, you know, retirement planning really was developed for a decade. And we’re living in an era of longevity where we’ve got 20 or 30 years where we’ve got this next chapter of life. So I’ve moved ahead a little bit and sort of expanded on, on, on who I am and, and, and transitions more broadly, but yeah, there’s a little bit about me.

speaker-0 (03:19.086)
So when you made your transition, was it planned or did you just said, hell, if this isn’t right, I’m just going to jump? Because that goes to the entire concept of this transition.

speaker-1 (03:30.956)
Yeah, exactly. So I knew that I needed to leave Australia. So it had been in my mind for a very long time. And I just didn’t have the courage because I didn’t know what that next chapter looked like. And I think, you know, to your point, it is a bit like that. know, lots of people who are quite keen to leave their career, let’s say, and transition into the next chapter, whatever we want to call it.

are a bit paralyzed as I was and didn’t know how to actually make that first decision to make the move. And for me, I gave myself a deadline. I came back to Australia after this trip where I’d driven through the desert and I gave myself until the end of the year. So I actually was running my own business. I packed up my business. I sold everything. Everybody except my parents thought I was, you know, stark raving mad.

And, you know, I got a card from my mother actually said that that said, you know, the things in life that you regret the most of the things you don’t do. know, and, it’s, it’s so, true, you know, could have, would have, should have, you know, those, those sorts of expressions. So yeah, I, I, I planned it. knew I needed to do it for a long time, but just getting myself there, was, was, you know, I was holding myself back basically.

speaker-0 (04:56.142)
And what did you learn from that, you now apply into the retirement side of things?

speaker-1 (05:03.456)
Yeah, so I think for me it was, you know, trust in yourself and actually plan it out. So once I’d actually made the decision or said the words out loud that, you know, I need to leave Australia, it’s not serving me anymore. I actually started to plan it out. So what would that look like? What did I need to do to wind my business down? What would I need to do financially to leave Australia? What would I need to do to get to the UAE?

Apple, W or Dubai to start finding a job. And I went through it very systematically and started planning it out. So I understood what I had to do to prepare before I left. What I would need to do is like an interim stage when I got there and a little bit about how I might feel about being there and the transition. And I, for me, I did a worst case scenario. Well, if I fail and I don’t like it, what will I do? Well, I’ll go somewhere else and get a job somewhere else.

You know, which is a similar sort of thinking that you can apply to, you know, deciding to leave your career that, okay, well, what happens if I don’t like it? Well, then you can do something else. You know, look, look at, setting up, you know, something like, you know, you’re doing, for example, something that you’re passionate about and setting up a podcast. Look at volunteering, look at going back and working part-time. You know, all of these things are available, to you as options. If you start thinking about it.

But I think for a lot of people, including myself, the initial barrier is allowing yourself to make that decision, taking the leap, but actually doing the planning. And I cover that in my book, Nine Habits of Happy Retirees. The first chapter is actually about making sure that you’ve done the planning for retirement, that you’re not just saying, yeah, okay, this is the first day of my retirement, I’m retired now. Then what?

speaker-0 (06:59.628)
Yeah, no, one of my, the hosts, that has a regular series on, TTN, she literally made the decision to retire when she realized the amount she was making in her job was this exact same amount she’d be making if she was, retired and out of her pension. So she just made the change without thinking about it. And she realized like two days afterwards, it’s like, okay, what do I do now? So.

speaker-1 (07:25.548)
Yeah, and that’s a great example of focusing on the financial aspect and not really considering, you know, the other part of it. And it’s interesting because I was this morning as I was preparing for this podcast, I go through all of my emails and I have Google alerts that I set up for everything to do with retirement. I’ve got a Google alert for retirement, one for retirement lifestyle planning, a few others. And I scan all of the alerts that come through every morning and

very, very rarely is there anything which is non-financial. every single article, news story that’s picked up by Google Alert is focused on the finances. What should I do if my pension doesn’t cover? What should I do about this? But none of them are really focused on the topic that we’re talking about, which there’s a huge human cost to if people are not prepared for this aspect of retirement.

speaker-0 (08:19.032)
So your book is called Nine Habits of Happy Retirees. What are those nine habits? Well, this is a conversation about, I’m going to use Eric Fowl’s retirement because I think that conversation’s coming.

speaker-1 (08:37.966)
Yeah, it is coming. I mean, as I mentioned, the first habit is really planning for it. So making sure that you’re, you know, you’re prepared for retirement. The second chapter focuses, I’m not going to remember all of them. second chapter focuses on the phases of retirement. So, you know, there’s different phases of retirement that you go through. You know, it could be acceptance, it could be disorientation. And it’s understanding that it’s quite normal to go through these emotional

stages of retirement, you know, it’s not always happy days for everybody. You know, you may feel loss. know, other habits and chapters focus on lifelong learning. So, you know, it’s an opportunity to look at, you know, areas of study that you haven’t had time for in your career. It could be, you know, social connection is very important. You know, the statistics that

You know, 85 % of people see a huge drop in their social connections when they retire, which makes logical sense because you’re no longer in a workspace with work colleagues, but it’s unexpected. I don’t think people actually are prepared for how that can feel from an isolation perspective or a loneliness perspective. is, you know, health and fitness obviously is very important, making sure

being mindful, travel and adventure. you know, it covers a broad range of topics. And I think, you know, the hope with it was that it would highlight to people that there’s so much that needs to be considered as part of it. And rather than it feel daunting, a lot of the reviews that I’ve received for it is that it’s quite a light read, it’s quite upbeat. It’s not sort of all doom and gloom and it’s more…

highlighting that, you know, it’s a huge opportunity for growth and for development and redefinition of identity and purpose and should be embraced rather than.

speaker-1 (10:47.084)
neglected, maybe that’s too harsh a word. you know, so yeah, it focuses on a broad range of aspects for planning, you know, and planning in advance rather than thinking, I’m going to buy this book now, now that I’m retired, it would be good to start thinking about those things, you know, before you have so that you can plan for them and have some early conversations with your partner, with your family, with your friends.

speaker-0 (11:12.396)
Yeah, it’s interesting. You had mentioned you have come up with phases of retirement. One of the early interviews I had was with Dr. Riley Moines, who also wrote a book, what was it titled? Four phases of retirement. And it’s interesting how there’s common threads through a lot of people where they see, for example, different phases going through the retirement activities.

speaker-1 (11:29.613)
Mm.

speaker-0 (11:42.263)
Interesting.

speaker-1 (11:43.854)
Yeah, and I think it is. you know, working in this space, I seek out conversations and people who are also, you know, focusing in the same space. And there are lots of parallels. The language might be slightly different. The framing might be slightly different. But the key messages are the same, which is, you know, we’re living in a, you know, a longevity era.

And we’re still focusing on a very small timeframe for what’s now, know, potentially a third of, you know, some people’s lives. and, and I’m feeling very positive, I suppose that, that there are, you know, some individuals who are championing this, you know, this, this, this, this topic and the, and these conversations, because some of the statistics are, are quite

confronting around challenges that people have when they retire. So it is interesting that the themes are very common.

speaker-0 (12:44.91)
So that begs the question. I’m here in Canada. I’ve been talking a lot to people here in North America, but you’ve been living in other parts of the world. Is the view towards retirement similar? is it the same? Are there just overlaps? Tell me about that.

speaker-1 (13:05.198)
I think it depends on the country, so the part of the world. if you think North America, Canada and Australia are very similar. They’re part of the Commonwealth and culturally they’re very similar countries. So North America, the UK, Australia, New Zealand tend to be very, very similar. I think if you get into parts of Asia, South Asian countries, Southeast Asia, very different because culturally they’re very different.

And it’s interesting because here in the UAE, I ended up having a LinkedIn conversation with an Emirati lady who was challenging some of the points that I was making in an article in a very, very lovely way to say that this is such an important topic of conversation because in their culture, the expectation is that you look after your family. So then we sort of venture into that, you know, we’ve got people my age.

potentially people your age who were trying to transition into retirement themselves, but also looking after aging parents and children. you’ve got that. And she was saying that for the UAE, the focus is on work. It’s not on retirement. They don’t have topics of conversation about retirement. There’s great pride in your work and career, which is quite similar in Southeast Asia. So retirement is emerging.

more in our part of, you our countries than more broadly, I think, you know. So I don’t know if there’s an opportunity for us to educate a little bit there, but I think to answer your question in short, it depends where you are. North America, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, very, very similar. The rest of the world, you know, culturally is very different and in a very, different economic situation as well.

speaker-0 (14:59.85)
Yeah, that’s one of the reasons why one of the pillars of TTN is global retirement perspectives is I want to bring those different perspectives back here so we can have those discussions. You had mentioned you had hinted at a discussion about the actual term of retirement or the language, that sort of thing. Talk to me a bit about that.

speaker-1 (15:11.874)
Yeah, very interesting.

speaker-1 (15:24.406)
Yes, I mean, I’ve touched on it that retirement itself and the pension schemes were developed historically for 10 years of life. The life expectancy was a lot shorter. Pension schemes were developed. And so the language hasn’t really kept up. And also, the younger boomers went into retirement and

started to reimagine it themselves. They didn’t go in for a period of rest. They went in for travel adventure, for health and wellbeing, to develop small businesses. And it was a completely different experience of retirement to the generation before them. And from a…

financial perspective, obviously there’s a lot of commentary around that pensions are not even going to cover you for the entire time that you’re going to be alive. So the whole system’s broken. The challenge with that, with the language itself, is that there’s no other word really that fits at the moment. So there was an interesting research, piece of research that was done by MIT Agelab.

And they asked close to a thousand adults to describe life after their career. And 47 of those words were 60 % of the responses, but none of them were around identity, structure, purpose. were all around travel, relaxing, family, freedom. All of those words were doing the heavy lifting, but anything to do with identity, structure, purpose wasn’t there. So even in our day-to-day language, the words that we…

I’m leaning into and sorry, one thing I mentioned was the word retirement did come up. You know, they were, they were just naturally using the word retirement. So, you know, the, the, the vocabulary is, is not there and we haven’t named what come next, what comes next. You know, there’s, there’s next chapter. there’s, know, rewiring. Yeah. Yes. Second phase or all of these things, but you know, I come from a marketing background and all of these things are just marketing.

speaker-1 (17:41.857)
rebranding of the same life stage. We’ve not actually done the work to restructure and redefine the phase of life itself. We’re just trying to apply a new label to it to say, no one’s happy with retirement. Let’s now call it rewiring. I’ve actually written an article about that, which I’m hoping will be published soon. So if it does, I’ll share it with you, Neil.

speaker-0 (18:06.978)
That would be ideal. That would be ideal. I’m wondering though, whether we’re being too restrictive in just looking at that second phase or that retirement as opposed to just re-imagining the life phases themselves. I’ve been, my career has always been about looking at the big picture holistically and how everything fits. And I had a conversation with Dr. Catherine Rickwood who is down in,

Ken Berra, if I remember correctly, she was saying that a reimagining of work away from this all encompassing life choice until you get to 65 and then it stops. As opposed to people may not want to just stop, they may want to phase themselves out or during their career they may not want to be working 40 hours, maybe 30 or 20 hours and then

balancing it but lasting longer. There’s different ways of approaching this.

speaker-1 (19:10.03)
Yeah, I mean, there definitely is. I think we’re already starting to see a bit of a change there with younger generations around how much of their time they’re prepared to work, let’s say. And there’s already more different structures of what work looks like than there was when I started working or when my parents started working.

you know, the, and I was reading an article the other day and it was around how frequent job changing is viewed these days. You know, when I was younger, if you were moving around from job to job, you’d go for an interview. Somebody will look at your resume and say, you’ve moved around a lot. And it would be a negative thing. although for me, that was a, you know, a career choice. I was learning in different places, but it wasn’t viewed that way. You know, people.

worked, joined a good company, stayed there for 40 years and we’re very, happy that they managed to work for the one company for 40 years for however many hours a week. And so there’s that shift from the amount of years, the tenure that you’ve got with where you’re working, but also the amount of time that you’re prepared to put in there. There’s people who’ve got a number of part-time jobs. There’s people who are more entrepreneurial. There’s a lot more entrepreneurs.

these days with younger generations who want to have that control over their working life. So I think it’s already starting to change. I maybe hoped it changed a little bit earlier so I could have benefited more from it, but I think you’re completely right. think how the next generations of viewing work is already changing and will continue to have to change with AI and technology and what the workforce looks like.

speaker-0 (21:01.996)
Yeah, that goes to the entire conversation about work-life balance and that sort of thing. But it doesn’t end at 65. That continues. It’s just an adjustment period. It was interesting. You talked about one of your chapters was about continuous learning. Earlier today, I interviewed Kate.

Schaeffer, who is with the University of Minnesota, and they had just started up a program in 2020 for adult learning. And by adult, I’m talking older adults, as opposed to those that are 30. Are you seeing a lot of people going back and doing that sort of thing, going back to school?

speaker-1 (21:51.19)
Yes, I mean, think, you know, in the UK, for example, there’s U3, U3 University, I can’t remember what it’s called actually now, it’s escaped me. But, you know, my mother, for example, did quite a lot of courses at that university. I think people are, think, you know, because there’s so much conversation around longevity, you know, it’s obviously a hot topic, let’s say, and, you know, you need to keep your mind active. you know, people are…

shifting from doing Sudoku, which was one way of keeping your mind active, to actually enrolling in courses. And I think the university programs like that do actually incentivize in the sense that a lot of them are free. And you can find a lot of courses, which are short courses, they’re online learning. There are some in-person courses, depending where you are. So you’ve got that social aspect of it as well.

But, you know, I mean, I’m in my early 50s and I’ve got a long laundry list of courses that I would like to do if I had time, you know, and other people do too. So I think the fact that the universities are offering these types of programs is incredible.

speaker-0 (23:03.906)
Yeah, and it’s not just courses, it’s also the support services that surround them. Because that’s another thing that I’m starting to hear more and more about is intergenerational relationships. universities are making use of that because you and I, we have life experiences that we can pass on to kids that are just entering these secondary, post-secondary schools. So.

speaker-1 (23:29.602)
Yeah, exactly. I think, you know, I touch on, touch in the book and in articles that I write as well around, you know, giving back professionally. So not just sort of volunteering outside of the area of your career, but, you know, mentoring and passing on, you know, knowledge that you have. And, you know, there’s also a stream of conversation around

know, organizations and businesses understanding the value in that and setting up programs for this intergenerational knowledge transfer where people who are transitioning out of their career can continue to add some value and hand down knowledge. So it’s an interesting area as well.

speaker-0 (24:20.014)
Talk to me about where you see the future of, and again, I’m just using air quotes for the term, retirement. Like you said, our parents, they’d go to work for one company for 30, 40 years. That was my dad. Me, I’ve been, every three years, I would move from company to company as I was moving up the ladder.

because I couldn’t stay with one company and have that career progression. And then 2004, I started working for myself and it was contract after contract after contract. That’s the work life. That has changed. We’re now entering the retirement years. I don’t see it being the same as with my dad’s generation. So how do you see retirement changing?

speaker-1 (25:13.228)
Yeah, I mean, think it will continue to evolve. It will continue to evolve. So, you know, if I look at my parents, my parents’ generation, you know, they’re still very active. My mom turns 80 this year. They’re off to Australia for a trip. You know, they’re always out and about doing things. And they did do throughout their retirement. My dad still volunteers at a sailing club.

for underprivileged children in the region. So, you know, that was sort of the start of it. And I think when I was observing my parents and, you know, their generation, I’ve already, it was very apparent that it was a different type of retirement than, you know, the generation before them. And I think, you know, for our generation, it will continue. We will make choices around

reducing work, going part time. There may be more people who are choosing to reduce their career, to transition out of their career earlier, to focus on areas of small business or consulting or entrepreneurial ventures or traveling earlier. Because I think there may be people who go back to career after taking a mini, again, retirement.

or, you know, many sabbaticals. So I think there will be a lot more flexibility or a lot more, what’s the word, it will look different. You know, everybody will feel that there are different options available to them. And I think, you know, there will be that flexibility to

make those choices to say, okay, I’m going to take a few years out. Now I’m going to focus on this. I’d like to come back and do consulting. So rather than it being the fear associated with, if I leave my job, I will never be able to get another job and work. People will have a broader view of how they can generate, you know, income to be able to support themselves in this stage of life. It may not be rest and retirement in the same way. I don’t think it will be. I think people, to your point, will continue

speaker-1 (27:25.974)
working and doing things, earning a little bit of extra money if they want to or need to, and keeping themselves active just in different ways.

speaker-0 (27:34.742)
and given themselves purpose.

speaker-1 (27:36.834)
giving themselves purpose, exactly.

speaker-0 (27:39.04)
Yeah, talk to me about that because I was probably the very first point that you brought up when we started this conversation was having purpose to move forward. And that’s a common thread I’m hearing in everybody’s every conversation I have is it’s all wrapped around making sure you have purpose.

speaker-1 (28:00.79)
Yeah, exactly. think one of the things that people struggle with is that with a career or a traditional work week, there’s a lot of structure. And it comes into, I suppose, that structure versus what’s perceived as freedom. So you think that you don’t have as much free time when you’re working.

because you have all of these time constraints around you. However, that scaffolding is actually providing you structure, identity, purpose. So when that falls away, when you stop work, a lot of people then struggle to find their new purpose, their new identity. So conversations around, what do you do?

The framing even of how we interact, excuse me, the framing of even how we interact with people is, know, not who you, not, tell me a little bit about you. It’s not about who you are, it’s about what you do. So for a lot of people, their identity and their purpose is, well, you know, I’m an accountant, I work for this company, it’s all labels as to what they do.

And then when, if they haven’t done the planning for retirement, they have, a lot of people can have this sense of loss of identity, which then coupled with, don’t have a purpose because I don’t have that structure in the working week can be very difficult for a lot of people who have very closely linked their identity to who they are in their, I won’t say a nine to five, because I’m not sure who has a nine to five job anymore, but in their, you know, in their working week.

So I think, you know, it is very important to be aware that…

speaker-1 (29:58.338)
that this could be something that you’re going to face when you stop working. And I think everybody focuses on, but I’m going to have so much more time. Well, time isn’t always freedom. Time might just be more time sometimes.

speaker-0 (30:12.842)
Yeah, it’s interesting. My wife, who just literally just got home from a part-time job that she’s taken up. Now that the kids are older, they’re out of the house, to occupy herself, she’s taken up a part-time job. And it’s just to keep herself busy more than anything else. So it’s, I can see that entire concept of instead of full-time 40 hours from the time you’re, you know, graduate from high school to…

It’s a balance because you’re going to be living longer and your income capability is going to keep going.

speaker-1 (30:51.95)
Yeah, exactly. I think, know, that for so, you know, identity and, you know, the scaffolding of work and purpose, you know, can be a huge challenge for some people. But for, you know, to the point for your wife, for other people, you know, they have no issue keeping themselves busy because they’ve got, you know, passion projects they’ve they’ve already sort of focused on

how they want to spend their time, but they haven’t necessarily focused on who they want to spend their time with. I think that I’ve developed a short worksheet based course called What Comes Next? And it’s 15 worksheets that you go through. There’s a guide, it’s self-paced, and you go through and fill them out. And as I was developing them, I was testing a lot of them on myself as well.

some of my friends. And a lot of this has come from as well, the Retirement Coaches Association. So they focus on some of these aspects as well. But one of them was a friends list. And when I was filling it out, I was like, who am I going to be spending time with? And I think because I’ve lived in lots of different places, I’m in a different situation than other people who maybe have lived in the same sort of part of the world, and they’ve got their family and friends around them. So when I was going through and filling it out, I was like,

How do I only have three friends? I must have more than three friends, you know? And actually I had to really think about, okay, well, where is everybody that I know, you know, and categorizing how important it is for me to spend time with them, friends, family, you know, my sisters. And then the worksheet encourages you to have a conversation with that person, you know, to actually make sure that as you’re going into starting to plan retirement, that you also have set up

you know, your network of social connections to say, you know, my sisters are Emma and Susie, know, Emma, Susie, it would be great to be able to catch up with you on Zoom, you know, once a week so we can have a coffee and a chat. It would be great that we can get together, you know, once or twice a year if we can so that you’re actually planning out that social connection and also then looking at what you can do in your local area when you’ve got some, well, not some necessarily spare time if you’re very focused on what you’re doing.

speaker-1 (33:18.846)
how you’re spending your time, but making sure that you have that social connection because you may be very, very busy with purpose and your new identity and working through your passion projects. But if you’re isolating yourself and focusing on those, then you may actually find that you’re lonely, which would be, yeah, another challenging area of retirement.

speaker-0 (33:42.934)
Yeah, no, I do this podcast a lot of that to learn, but it also gives me a chance to talk to new people and experience those relationships and creating those relationships. Do you see relations? Do relationships change? Like, obviously they do because it’s based on a certain situation and when the situation changes, but

Once you’re into the retirement side of things, is the approach to relationships change?

speaker-1 (34:13.698)
I think the approach to time changes. I think the approach to time changes and I think, yes, relationships do change because your relationship to time changes. You’ve got more time to prioritize in different areas. And I think relationship dynamics can change there because for some people the expectation is, my parents have retired now, they can look after my kids. Or…

so, well, you know, so, so I think people have to think about how they want to spend their time and they have to consider their boundaries. So I think, you know, if you’ve been living, with a husband, a wife, a partner, and they’ve been away in the office all day, or you’ve both been working, what have you, then that relationship dynamic changes because now

you’re not at the office going and leaving the house for 40 hours a week. So it’s important to understand that that relationship dynamic might change and to define how you both want to be spending your time separately, but also together. And I think it’s about understanding the relationships that are important to you, how you want to nurture them and what boundaries you want to have for those relationships now that your time

has changed.

speaker-0 (35:40.974)
By being involved with various different groups, you’ll have different types of relationships. Like you were just talking about having three friends. I think it…

speaker-1 (35:51.406)
I actually have three friends. I don’t want them to listen to this and think.

speaker-0 (35:55.212)
That’s more than me. Yeah, that’s more than me. But it comes down to, it depends on your definition of friends. Like I remember when I was in my 20s, I said, if you have one or two friends, you’re lucky for your, that last with you, whereas you’ll have a lot of acquaintances, sort of thing. So.

speaker-1 (36:16.184)
Yes, definitely.

speaker-0 (36:20.706)
What about the relationship with, like you mentioned, kids and the kids wanting to pawn off the grandkids on you? I would suggest that that’s where I think we’re going to see the greatest breakthroughs with regards to dealing with ageism, both older to younger and younger to older, is simply because when I was growing up, I never saw my grandparents because they weren’t around. They weren’t alive or they were in other countries and there was no way of traveling.

Now with two parents having to work, the kids end up staying a lot of the time working or staying with their grandparents.

speaker-1 (37:00.87)
Yeah, think, mean, and there’s two, there’s obviously, you know, two sides of a coin to that. There’s the huge, as you say, intergenerational experience, which is a huge benefit for younger people spending time with older people. So there’s a huge benefit there. There’s also the expectation side of that, which I think comes up a little bit in some of the groups that I’m in around

the older generation feeling that there’s an expectation that they are going to look after the children when really they also want to be living their retired life and spending their time, you know, how they want to, which I think comes back to again, having those conversations and understanding, you know, how you want to nurture to those relationships. But yeah, you know, to your point, I didn’t have a relationship really with our

grandparents, the grandfathers, neither of them were alive, grandmothers, yes we did, but then we moved to Australia, so again, not really. So I think, there’s this huge opportunity there for a different type of experience and respect between the generations as a new learned behaviour.

speaker-0 (38:22.094)
And as a result that will change our perspectives as well, and that will change the way society views things.

speaker-1 (38:27.65)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

speaker-0 (38:31.501)
Interesting. You were also talking with regards to health last health span aspects. Talk to me about what you’re seeing from there because I’ve been talking with doctors. One of our newest hosts is Dr. Linda Erkeley from the UCLA Longevity Center. But that’s really medical as opposed to things like exercise and that sort of stuff. Talk to me about what you’re seeing there.

speaker-1 (39:00.15)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in the book, I sort of just touch on some healthy habits. think, you know, part of health and fitness is that it needs to be a habit before you get to retirement, obviously, which is what I’m sure all the medical people that you’re speaking to as well, you know, the mindset that, great, when I retire, I’m going to have all this time and I’m going to start going to the gym. Well, that’s probably not the right

the right mindset for a long life anyway. But I think we’re healthier generations anyway, know, largely healthier generations. Most people have some awareness that they should be trying to exercise. you know, in the book, I focus on making sure that you’re introducing it gradually if you haven’t exercised, for example, and, you know,

not focusing, I’m not focusing on, you know, heavy lifting at the gym and all of that. But yeah, I’m not sure that I’ve really seen too much in that space because I’m focusing on more the identity and purpose.

speaker-0 (40:13.262)
I’m starting to see stories about older adults doing things that I never thought they would do. Like on the weekend, I saw a story about a grandmother, I think she was in her late 60s, early 70s, that was an active gymnast. I’m going, she was literally on even bars. And I was going, my God, I think she was like 68, 69, that sort of thing. And she was…

working with doing stuff with her granddaughter. I’ve, you know, I used to do a lot of long distance running until my hip gave out, but I was seeing people in their eighties doing marathons and 10 K runs, that sort of thing. It’s, I think the concept of limitation for older adults is going away.

speaker-1 (41:02.466)
Yes.

speaker-1 (41:06.606)
Yes, I would agree with that. I mean, I don’t think those stories are the norm. They’re still the exception, very much so. But it’s very lovely to see them, to see that people are, as you say, not being limited by age and by traditional societal expectations around that.

speaker-0 (41:29.78)
the Gen X migrates into this older this next phase if that’s what you want to call it they are bringing the habits that they grew up with which is a lot more healthy in lifestyle.

speaker-1 (41:42.626)
Yes, very, very true.

speaker-0 (41:47.298)
Well, I think we’re getting close to the end of the interview. Sarah, I always ask this one last question of anybody that I’m talking with. If you were to give one piece of advice to the listeners, whoever they are, depends. There’s a wide diverse listener listening. What would it be?

speaker-1 (42:10.008)
think it’s to start thinking about this next stage early. And I think, you know, the I’m hoping that most people who are listening, planning financially for their retirement. So alongside the financial planning, start thinking about how you will spend your time, who you will spend your time with. And

start early, think is my advice. Sorry, that’s not very articulate. can do that.

speaker-0 (42:41.23)
No, but if you were to say early, like I’m 61 and I just evolved into retirement, it wasn’t something that I planned to just happen, so to speak. And I don’t even think now I’m retired. I’m in my own mind. Do you see people starting to think about that in their 40s, early 50s? When do you see them starting to think that?

speaker-1 (43:09.038)
I think so. mean, I think it’s sort of anywhere from 10 to 20 years before they plan to transition into this. So for me, my move to Dubai at 40 was the first stage of me starting to consider how I wanted to a life as I was getting older. So I think 10 to 20 years, because people are retiring in their early 50s. Some people are retiring in their 40s. So those people have got a very long time.

in this next chapter. I think, yeah, you know, plan early, plan alongside the financial aspects and, you know, spend 10 years thinking about it, spend 20 years starting to formulate ideas of where you want to live. Do you want to move to another country? Do you want to live between two countries? You know, do you want to write books? Do you want to set up a podcast? You know, have…

have those blue sky thinking moments so that you have the time to start planning for those and start putting some of those into action if you want to. But yes, my advice is plan early.

speaker-0 (44:21.902)
Good. Well said. Sarah, thank you very much. For everybody that’s listening, you’ll notice it’s starting to get a little dark for me here. I will put links to Sarah and her books and all the places she’d like you to go to in the description of this video. So feel free to reach out to her when you see them. Sarah, thank you very much.

speaker-1 (44:48.002)
Thanks very much, Neil.