Retirement Beyond The Math

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Influential Advisor Podcast. Here's something most people don't talk about when it comes to retirement. The math might be the easy part. Studies show cognitive decline accelerates after people stop working, and nearly a third of retirees report a profound loss of identity within their first year. Jim and Sarah Charles know this firsthand. Jim retired after three decades in financial services, had the money, had the freedom, and was miserable within months. He spent 18 months rehanging doors and failing at cooking before he realized what was missing, purpose. That realization led him and Sarah to build Sanctuary Financial Planning, a flat fee wealth management firm built around a simple idea. Retirement planning should give equal weight to the numbers and the meaning. They've put everything they've learned into their new book, from work to what's next. Today they'll share why the question isn't, do I have enough to retire? It's do I have enough reason to get out of bed? And how to start answering that long before you decide to retire.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Hey, Gabe, good to be here. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:24

Happy to be here, Gabe.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

The first question I wanted to ask, Jim, you retired once, and then something unexpected happened. And Sarah, you watched this all unfold. So I did. Can you both tell us that story and how it led to build Sanctuary the way that you both did?

SPEAKER_00 1:40

From my seat, is I retired because I could. In other words, I was financially able. And after three plus decades in the financial services industry, I just wasn't having any fun anymore. And so I decided, and I mentioned to Sarah on a walk one day, I said, I'm done. And she was shocked. Oh my God, I thought you were going to be working a lot longer. And I said, I've loved most of what these last few decades have brought, but I'm just not having fun anymore. So I retired. And what I found was that having money wasn't just enough. What I found was very quickly was I didn't have purpose in retirement. We live in a 90-year-old home. And in the 18 months between my retirement and us starting Sanctuary, I probably re-hung every door in this house. I decided that I was going to start cooking because Sarah was going to work every day in an advisory firm that she worked at. Right. And which was a terrible mistake and a terrible failure. I'm not a good cook and I didn't like cooking.

SPEAKER_03 2:54

You did a lot of stuff that had been piling up over decades. I also think you retired because you hit a magic number, right? You were at a stage at an age, frankly, where retirement was expected. And so it made sense on paper. And if you think about the fact that you weren't having fun is compounding that for you, it was a no-brainer. But you're right. When we first started dating, you were like, I'm going to work until I'm in my 70s because you loved it. You were so engaged and so happy.

Building A Flat Fee Advisory Firm

SPEAKER_00 3:25

But what I found was that doing this without really a purpose was terrible boredom. And so I spent some time with myself. This was the part where I had to stop, do some reflection. What do I want this next 20, 25 years to be? What do I want it to look like? What am I going to do with my time? Uh, because I want to have purpose. I want it to have meaning. And I looked at a lot of different things. But I came back to this industry that I felt so prepared to still be in, still love so much. And so the decision was made to come back into the industry and come back, not just to come into the industry, but to come back with a mission and do it on our own terms. And that's why we started Sanctuary.

SPEAKER_03 4:19

Well, and just some additional backstory, Gabe. Jim had started out back in the 90s. He had started his own advisory practice. That was his passion. He got a master's in personal financial planning. And within a few years, family circumstances required him to make a choice. And so he shuttered the business and pursued a more stable career and institutional investments. But that dream didn't die. And it was just this perfect storm of Jim realizing that he was totally bored, which I could have told him would happen. I then shared an article around hourly financial planning and sort of this shift away from assets under management. And Jim just had this light bulb moment of, oh, I want to start my own advisory firm again. And I want to do it differently. I see an opportunity to change how financial advice is delivered and do it in a way that is different from the majority, that's more fair for the client that I can feel good about. He's on this whole journey planning out this firm. And I'm on the sidelines, like cheering him on. I'm like, yes, this is so great. And I was so jealous because that was the firm I wanted to be a part of. And here I am working at a traditional RIA where for a long time I was on a path to succeed my boss and really step into a leadership role. And then our parent company went through a merger. Things changed, things happen. So I was on my own journey cheering Jim on, thinking like, yes, this is so cool. You get to build a firm from scratch. And I was a sounding board and I was a thought partner, and we'd go for walks and talks. So when Jim was like, hey, I can't offer you a salary, can't offer you benefits, can't guarantee we'll be in business, but why don't we do this together? I was like, yes, like how amazing to take all of our combined wisdom and experience and to say, okay, we want to build our version of what we think the firm of the future is all about.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

From our seat, coming back into the industry was one thing, but but we really came back in with this mission. And that mission is, you know, everybody wants to help people in this industry. That's table stakes. That's where we all start. But we wanted to be a little different than other advisory firms because we'd both been in the business, we'd seen the business, we experienced the business. What do I mean by that? We chose to look at pricing and say, we want to do something different there. We felt that it was probably better for us to go into a pricing structure that's what we consider to be fair, transparent, and not tied to assets, but rather tied to effort because we just feel that we shouldn't be paid an increasing amount of money just because the markets are going up. So we chose a flat fee, comprehensive wealth management approach. And that's where we are today.

Why They Wrote The Book

SPEAKER_02 7:29

Great. Now, recently the two of you have co-authored a book, and I wanted to ask you about it. What was the purpose behind the book coming out now? Who is it intended to help? And how does it address what traditional retirement advice misses these days?

SPEAKER_03 7:47

We realized as we were gathering our thoughts and just trying to put things down on paper, we realized, wow, there's a lot of retirement books out there that dig into the numbers, get all into social security optimization, taxes. There's probably a decent number of books that touch on purpose and identity and what it looks like once you walk away from full-time work in corporate America. But there really are no books that I think give equal weight to the numbers and purpose and that are written by practicing financial advisors who are credentialed and licensed and who have that lived experience. To us, that was just such a unique combination that we felt like we are the only ones who can really write this book at this moment and capture everything we know personally and professionally. Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

It's a unique vantage point for sure.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

Absolutely. And so that was really the big motivation. And Jim, chime in here. So much of retirement advice is how much have you saved? Have you saved enough? Have you saved enough? We focus on this idea of financial independence, financial freedom. We don't really talk about, as Jim said, like the crushing boredom. What happens when you are no longer defined by your career? What happens when you're not working and your spouse still is? Jim and I retired at the same time, we might not be sitting here, right? Maybe we'd be like on a cruise around the world just hanging out. But me being in the middle of my professional career and Jim not working, that was a big mismatch that we had to navigate. So, Jim, what would you say in terms of where traditional advice gets it wrong?

SPEAKER_00 9:44

I would just say that if you think about where we land on this book and why we wrote it is because we think that people come to us, they've done their math work, they haven't done their meaning work. And I can say that with conviction because I'm guilty of that. I should have known better. I can claim that maybe I didn't do the work properly because I decided in a very short time frame during COVID that, oh, I'm done. And if you remember, during COVID, we called that the great resignation. There were so many people changing careers and moving from one company to another during that period of time.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

And I just I just chose to step out, say, I'm done. It wasn't because I disliked what I was doing, because it just didn't have the fun and the vim and the vigor that it had been providing to me for so many years. And interestingly enough, most of the people that come to us, we can look at their numbers and say, you're gonna be just fine. And it's amazing how experience will give you the opportunity to do that. But then you start digging into what are you gonna do in retirement? Well, I don't know, we're gonna go to Spain and maybe we're do something and we'd like to see Portugal or something. Yeah. Once you've hit that bucket list, what then? And so we dig into some of that stuff with people. And there's no right or wrong approach there.

SPEAKER_03 11:06

You didn't want to think about it because I'm pretty sure that when you decided to retire, I was like, okay, what's what are you gonna do? What's gonna give you purpose? And you didn't want to think about that. You wanted to decompress, right? You wanted the ability to just like sleep in and not worry about meetings and Zoom calls and budgets and comp structures, and you just wanted that total freedom. And then you have used this line, I know in other conversations. Purpose isn't something you just pick up off a shelf, right? There is a lot of time and work and reflection involved in that. So part of it, I think, is just having the space, whatever that looks like. Maybe it's three weeks, maybe it's three months, maybe it's a year and a half, to figure out what does that look like? Because there is that need to just exhale and catch your breath and recalibrate and reset. And then you need some time to figure it out. Maybe you'll figure it out on the first try, or maybe you won't. I think Jim was kind of lucky in that once he knew what he wanted to do, it was a no-brainer, even though people thought he was nuts. Our brother-in-law, the sister's husband, was like, You're starting a business at this age. And it's like, yes, why like why wouldn't I?

SPEAKER_02 12:24

But I love that you put it in those terms that it's the first time at retirement that maybe if you have thought you wanted to decompress, but then you get there and realize, just like you did, Jim, that this isn't giving me everything that I still want at this point in my life, that you can start over, you can do something new, you can find a new purpose in life and start moving in that direction.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

Absolutely. Absolutely. And we see it all over this country where people are are working. Warren Buffett just retired at what, 94?

SPEAKER_02 12:54

Right.

Purpose Identity And Cognitive Health

SPEAKER_00 12:55

Um, maybe that's an extreme example. Harlan Sanders, who started Kentucky Fried Chicken, I think he started at age 65. So age is a number. We don't have to be governed by just because we hit a certain number and say, okay, you're done. Get out. You're no longer valuable. And for us, we work in a field where we use our minds less than our backs, and that lasts longer because you're not wearing out your body. So we got a lot to give it. And you add that to the point that people are living longer these days, and then you have to look at your own health and you look at your family's health. And I come from a family of people that live into their 90s routinely, and I thought, well, geez, what am I gonna do for the next 30 years? This is gonna be a long road. And I can only do so much buying stuff or going somewhere before I'm saying to myself, okay, this six inches between my ears is starting to turn to mush. I need to keep it fresh, I need to keep it challenged, and that's what makes me happy.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

Statistics around short-term cognitive decline after people stop working are staggering. We've seen it just anecdotally with our friends, where it's once they retire, all of a sudden they can't remember the names of people they worked with for 30 years. I feel like that's the first thing to go. It's a muscle, right? And so if you're not using it and you're not engaging it.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

That makes it all the more important to make sure that you keep your purpose always front and center, no matter what stage of retirement that you're in. That's correct. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. I'd love it if you could tell us about somebody, a client that showed you why the way that we talk about retirement is broken these days.

SPEAKER_03 14:34

We have a a good friend, we'll call her Tracy, very successful attorney, retired not too long ago after a long, illustrious career. And I took her to lunch within the first few weeks of being retired, and I was like, so how's it going? And she said, I hate it, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:55

Is that the response you were expecting?

SPEAKER_03 14:57

No. Yeah. It's like, wait, you don't have to, you have no client emergencies, no paperwork, no weekends at the office. Like it's your time is yours. You have agency over everything. But much like Jim, she was absolutely not prepared for just for the shift. And I think that's another thing. Imagine if you were driving down the freeway at 100 miles an hour and then you slam on the brakes versus driving 100 miles an hour and then slowly taking your foot off the gas and sort of slowing down and coming to a gradual stop as opposed to mashing into something. So I think there's such a start for the achievers, the overachievers, the doers among us who go, go, go, and then all of a sudden you stop. You think it's gonna feel good. But I'm not sure it, I'm not sure it does. And again, Jim, you can probably speak to this because you were the classic overachiever, super successful, working hard. And it's like you think you're gonna like sleeping in and reading every page of the New York Times in the mornings, but it's not fulfilling the way you saw it.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Yeah, I think it was Mitch Anthony in his book, The New Retirement Mentality, said you need enough money to support yourself in retirement and enough reason to get out of get out of bed. And that's really important. That's really important. And look, I got it wrong. Other people get it wrong. So many people come to us and say, Do I have enough to retire? Please tell me I have enough to retire. And we do all the math, but that's just part of the equation. It really is just part of the equation. We're banging a drum here, but we mean to, by design, to bang that drum.

SPEAKER_03 16:46

Purpose is just part of the equation. You know, we haven't even touched on things like social connections, right? The Harvard study on longevity, one of the most important factors in a healthy long life is social connection. You're saving in your 401k. Did anyone tell you to join a book club or take up a team sport? We don't spend enough time talking about physical health and well-being. What if you cross the finish line and your body just gives out because you know you haven't been taking care of it? So it's so many things. It's the financial elements, it's the idea of purpose and identity, it's social connection, physical health and well-being.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

The way that you paint that picture, I can see why this is so hard to envision because somebody that's working, that's getting close to retirement age, and all they're thinking about is, I can sleep in, I can do what I want, I can go out to lunch and not have to worry about it. But if so much of your life is wrapped up in, like you said, the social part of it that you're used to being at work with people all day and having conversations and then that's gone, that really probably is shocking for a lot of people to hit that without a plan that's going to help them to find a new life in it.

SPEAKER_03 17:54

Oh, totally. I we have a client, she's a good friend, and she retired earlier than expected, thanks to the benefit of having a financial plan, a framework that said she couldn't afford to retire. So she went through this journey of she did a little consulting, didn't like it, then spent the better part of a year traveling, having fun, checking off bucket list items. It was great. Then dabbled with some piano lessons and then ultimately started volunteering. And she takes a couple of weeks each summer and goes up to the Jersey Shore. And so she was trying to continue with her volunteering remotely. And she and I caught up and she was like, you know what, Sarah? It turns out what I really like about volunteering is going into the office and being around people. For her, it was absolutely that once a week, that social connection was just enough to recharge her battery. Took a journey and a lot of time to figure that out.

Social Connection And Real Client Stories

SPEAKER_00 18:54

And we hear that, we hear that from people that a year into retirement, we will sit down with them and talk to them about what do you miss about your working days? And inevitably, it's one word, the people. It's two words, it's relationships.

SPEAKER_02 19:10

So that makes me want to know, and I'd love to hear both of your thoughts on this. If you could sit down with somebody right now that's in their 50s and they're doing great in their career, what would you want them to understand? How should they be thinking ahead? And so they can avoid getting to that position where they feel like they've lost their purpose. How do they can they envision it in the future and keep it alive once their career they decide that it's time for that to end?

SPEAKER_00 19:36

I would say that I think one of the things that we would encourage people to do is to reframe retirement. So retirement is from my seed, it's a use of time problem, yes, but more importantly, it's a purpose problem. It's a meaning problem. We haven't given much thought to that. So as they approach and they're thinking about retirement, the encouragement would be think about what you want out of retirement, not just what you're moving out of, but what do you want to move into in an intentional way? That is so important because some companies do offer sabbaticals. If some companies would offer a sabbatical close to the time when someone wants to retire, maybe a couple of years prior. And we would encourage people to spend some time during that period, whether it's 30 days, two weeks, whatever that is sabbatical is, but somehow take some time and think about where am I headed? I think I've got the money. I'm gonna work on the planner and figure out whether I've got enough to retire on and whether it'll last me. But what do I really want out of this? And is it enough to think about ooh, I want to spend more time with my grandbabies? Yeah, but those grandbabies are gonna turn into teenagers at some point. Having had one myself, it's that type of thing. It's relationships are real important, but you're gonna have to figure out I'm gonna spend time with me. What do I want this to look like? It's just so important.

SPEAKER_02 21:03

That's such an interesting idea about taking a sabbatical before you retire. And so you can see what it's like, and then maybe at that point you would decide, I want to stay at work, I want to keep going with this because you don't like it. It's like practicing it in advance. So I think that's an interesting idea.

SPEAKER_03 21:19

I was just gonna say, I think there's lots of ways you can do a little bit of a dress rehearsal for the real thing, whether that's you know, so Jim and I love to go to the beach. And anytime we're down at the beach, it's would we want to live here? And if we think really hard about it, like probably not, because it's great for a week in the spring or the fall whenever we go. I can't imagine there being um in the winter when nobody's there and half the stores and restaurants are closed. Uh, we actually have clients who moved to the beach, and that was a real issue while they were still working. It's very much a busy community in the summer, and it's a very quiet community. Winter. And so you have to be prepared to adjust to that. Or you can practice with how you're going to spend money because that's going to be a shift when you're not getting a paycheck and you're collecting a paycheck from the assets that you've been accumulating. So there's different ways to just try things out. You don't have to commit to anything long before you get to the point where you decide that you're going to retire.

SPEAKER_02 22:26

That must be such a shift because you've been in accumulation phase for so long and the paycheck's coming in, and then all of a sudden it stops. And so what does that feel like for people? And how do you help them to know that it's going to be okay?

SPEAKER_03 22:41

How does it feel, Jim?

SPEAKER_00 22:43

That's a great question, Gabe. And it's one where we actually we bring that up proactively with people before they even bring it up. And one of the ways we bring it up is we suggest to them, you've been in accumulation mode. Guess what? That's the easy part. It really is. That's the easy part. You've been doing this for 30 years or whatever it's been, 40 years maybe. And what'd you have to do to get to this point? You had to save, save, save, save. But that's kind of it. And live within your means. When you hit retirement, everything changes. Then you've got a lot of decisions to make. You got a lot of decisions to make. You now have buckets of money. When I say buckets, I'm talking about tax-deferred assets, taxable assets, maybe tax-free assets in a Roth bucket. Where do I pull those monies from? How do I live out of this? How much do I spend out of those? Do I take them prorata a little bit from each bucket? Do I take it from all one and empty it before I go into the next? Oh, I got a lot of money in tax-deferred assets. Should I consider Roth conversions? Some people don't even know what a Roth conversion is. So we have to kind of point it out to them. If that's an option, how much do you do? Do you do it all at once? Do you do it over the next five years? Do you do it over the next 10 years? When do I take Social Security? You've got a lot of decisions to make in retirement. Just at the point when, for a lot of people, this part of your body wants to slow down and stop making decisions. And so we really think you need a guide. Find a planner that you like and trust to help guide you through some of these decisions. It is a time of your life that can be filled with landmines if you're not careful.

Practice Retirement Before You Quit

SPEAKER_03 24:24

And it is a big psychological shift, right? To make the move from saving to spending. And it's not easy. So part of our role is just to acknowledge it. We get it. Jim lived through it. Jim's a saver by nature. I'm a spender. But when for the period of time that he wasn't working, even though I was still working and supporting us, he was not inclined to touch his assets. But that's what they're there for. So part of our role is to reframe the idea of not taking a distribution from your assets, but collecting a retirement paycheck. It's that same mindset. It's building a financial framework that has flexibility baked into it. It's not fixated on a single outcome where if anything shifts, you know, the plan blows up. It's meant to ebb and flow as things change to give people guardrails so they know do they have to adjust their spending up or down? That's a big thing that I think financial planning, not just retirement, but so much of financial planning focuses on this idea of probability of success, right? Let me take all your information, plug it into software, it'll run a thousand trials, spit out a number that we would call the probability of success. I don't know about you, Gabe, but if I hear probability of success, I'm also going to assume there's a probability of failure. And no one wants to think that they're going to fail this chapter of their life. So a big part of it is I think Jim already said this, it's reframing retirement. It's not something you're going to fail. It's so much more than math. And it's something you can start preparing for years and years in advance. I think sometimes people just say, I will think about it when I get there. Okay, great. If I were going to drive across country, I would want to have a destination of my GPS, but I kind of want to know where I'm going. And so I don't think you're ever too young to really think about what you want this transition and this next chapter to look like.

SPEAKER_02 26:32

Well, and I wanted to ask you both about how do you help people, especially if they're farther away from retirement age, how do you help them to envision that and to think about what that chapter could look like? And so they can begin to plan and make it meaningful in the way that they're saving and moving towards that direction.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

I think part of it is just simply pointing it out to them, making them or asking them to think about it. Because you allude to it, Sarah's just talking about it there, this idea of this transition from saving to spending. Having lived it, it's hard. It's really hard. And as a saver, it's especially hard. Think about the idea, the analogy I would use is if water running over a rock can actually change the shape of that rock over a long period of time. Think of how hard it is for people that move from saving and accumulating into spending mode. Now it's, hey, you're supposed to spend now. That's hard. That's really hard. And it's a tough transition. I've read articles about it, but I suggest that living it is the hardest. I think I have a partial answer as to why, because I'm one of those people that not only saved a big chunk of what I earned over the years, but I kind of gained it. I wanted to see assets go up over time. And so I love the graphs of my own investments that showed that money, that pile of money going higher. Guess what? When you hit retirement, you ain't putting money in there in anything anymore. It's just sitting there. And even though the markets might be going up, the rate at which it grows, it's just not moving up as much. One of the biggest, hardest habits I've had is to try to break myself of making myself think, hey, I can't worry about whether it's going up anymore because I have enough. What you're hearing here is this it's the mental switch from transitioning from saving to spending. And we talk about it. And I think that's one of the major features that we want to think, want to encourage people to do is spend some time thinking about it. Spend some time thinking about what that future is going to look like, what you're going to do. Don't wait until you enter retirement. And of course, in my situation, again, I use COVID as my excuse. I could have been thinking about it long before I did, but I didn't because why? I'm one of those people that love my career. Some people hate their career. For those that really don't like their career, really don't enjoy what they're doing and can't wait to retirement, you better start thinking about it. But especially for people like myself who loved what they were doing, fully engaged, had a great time with it, uh, all the more important, think about what that next chapter is going to look like because it's going to surprise you and may not feel real comfortable at first. That transition is hard.

SPEAKER_03 29:23

Okay, but I especially love about working with people who are maybe a little further away from retirement. Maybe let's talk about people in their late 30s, early mid 40s. It's less about the vision of what's going to fill their time. It's to me, it's more about options. It's not about knowing what the future's going to look like, but it's planting some stakes in the ground and it's having a sense of am I on track? And what are the trade-offs? Because once you can sort of see it out on paper, it's I didn't realize that I could maybe stop this level of work at 55. And there's so much tactically you can do in your 40s to prepare yourself for a solid financial future in your 60s. Wow, if I could go back and tell 35-year-old, 40-year-old Sarah to do a couple of things, I would. So I think there's a lot you can do at any stage. And that is one of the things we share in the book are these stage-based playbooks. We don't think about this as age-based planning, like, oh, you're 35, you should do this, you're 45, you should do this. It's a very fluid process. We're all at different stages. But no matter what stage you're at, there's always a benefit to financial guidance and planning and taking control of your financial future.

SPEAKER_02 30:50

I'd love to ask you both, because I think you really would bring such a unique perspective on this. But you mentioned that, and I think that's a true in a lot of relationships, there's somebody that's more of the saver and somebody that's more of the spender. And Jim, you said how important it is to have a guide with deciding how you're going to spend money in retirement. How does that come into play with couples that may have differing views? And then you hit retirement and you're not in accumulation phase, or or like you described, Sarah, before, that one person retires and the other one's still at work. And so, how important can a guide be to help couples navigate that?

SPEAKER_03 31:29

I think as advisors and as guides, that has been woven into our process. We start all of our client relationships with a meeting we call Before the Numbers, where we dig into perspectives, preferences, and values. We examine money stories, we have clients' draft statements of financial purpose, because that is a way for them to start to either build alignment or see where they're misaligned. Because if you're misaligned, then you have to figure out what's the bridge.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

Jim, have you seen that? Where it can go from misalignment to better alignment through these meetings?

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Yeah, it's a matter of encouraging them to communicate. And I think it's important. Sarah mentioned the before the numbers meeting. One of the reasons that we do that meeting is because what we find out from people is we find out their money story. What was money like growing up? What were the money influences? Who handled the money? How did they think about money? And how did you form your relationship with money from those relationships? And it's interesting because of those meetings, we've actually had couples sitting on a call look at each other and go, I never knew that about you. To me, it's a matter of communications. It sounds real simple. And if you were a psychologist or a psychiatrist sitting there, you might say, You're being at an 80,000-foot level. Okay, that's not what we do. But at the same time, we do want people to talk about it and be aware of it and be aware of those differences. And the fact that we can have those conversations with them, it actually informs us. It helps us when it comes to deciding what's the asset allocation look like or should it look like for this couple on this account versus this account versus this account. I think the key there to your question is really just putting it out there, having all of us discuss it and seeing what comes of it. Because many times we find people say to each other, I never knew that about you, or you've never mentioned that before. And I will be honest in this and saying that when Sarah first said, Hey, I want to make this a part of our process at the beginning, I'm the one that pushed back on. I said, Sarah, thank you. But I think guys, especially men, are going to push back and think this is woo-woo. And boy, was I wrong. Boy was I wrong. And it's been the most meaningful part, I think, of our process. And we've literally had men in tears on in these meetings. And it's been very eye-opening for me. It's been very helpful. So a cool part of our process and a fun part of our process. And we tell people when we go into these meetings, say, this is going to be the easy one. You don't have to bring your spreadsheets, you don't have to bring tax returns or anything. Just show up and let's talk.

Couples Money Stories And Alignment

SPEAKER_03 34:21

I actually think for some clients it's the hardest one. We have some clients who would rather get into the spreadsheets than Yeah, we have had a couple like that.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:29

So I wanted to ask you both, what does a successful retirement look like? And I think you bring such great perspective on this. Jim, since you've done it before, what should people be judging that on that they've gotten to a point of retirement that it was something that they envisioned and that they're living the life that they wanted to at that point in their lives?

Defining A Successful Whats Next

SPEAKER_00 34:51

I think it sounds probably trite to a certain degree, but to try to encourage people to think about retirement not as something to retire from or move away from, but to a next phase to step into intentionally. And you have to give a lot of thought to that as to what that really means. So, what is it that I'm going to step into? Why do I want to step into this? What is the meaning? Because we find for most people, going through their bucket list, once it's done, it's like, okay, what do we do now? And there has to be something more there than just buying the new car, buying a second house, going to Spain, going to Portugal, done. We did that all in five years. Now what do we do? I think it's important to think about you're moving from what you're doing now. What do you want to move into? Because we're all living longer and we're probably all healthier on average than our previous generation, and we're going to live longer, most likely. And so as a result, are you prepared? How can we help you get prepared? Let's actually think about it. Let's plan for it. You have the optionality, you got the assets, we've shown you that. Now let's get into some of this other stuff.

SPEAKER_03 36:04

I would add, I first of all, I we don't love the word retirement because it's got such a specific definition and image associated with it. It's one of the reasons why we chose to use the language what's next. But I think one of the challenges is that there's a very narrow view of what retirement used to be: working one job for 30 to 40 years, collecting a gold watch, clocking out, traveling, playing golf. It was homogenous. And I think retirement comes in all shapes and sizes. It's so custom and unique to the person. Some people don't ever want to work again. Other people can't imagine not working. Some people fill their time with hobbies, other people fill their time with service, other people travel, other people become caregivers for parents or for grandchildren. There's not one way to do it. And what it looks like for you today is probably going to change, right? You're going to go through multiple iterations of this. So just seeing it as something very fluid and something that is going to shift. And you don't have to have it figured out. You can make mistakes. Okay. It's not even making mistakes, it's not about achieving some kind of perfection or some kind of nirvana. It's just more about agency over your life, agency over your time, agency over your choices, and agency over your money.

Where To Find Them And The Book

SPEAKER_02 37:44

It's a great way to put it. For somebody who's thinking about what's next, what's the best way that they can get in touch with you or get a copy of your book?

SPEAKER_03 37:53

We would encourage folks to visit our website, www.sanctuaryfinancial planning.com. You can get a copy of our book from Work to What's Next on Amazon. And there are a lot of moving parts to this decision. Allow yourself to approach it with grace and intention and flexibility. And I think you'll be surprised at what's out there.

SPEAKER_02 38:21

Yeah. Sarah and Jim, thank you so much for being here today. It was wonderful speaking with you both.

SPEAKER_03 38:27

Thanks, Gabe. Thank you, Gabe. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 38:29

Appreciate it.