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Retirement Tips You Can’t Afford To Miss!

we've all heard retirement is not an ending but I think we need to add to the sentence and say it's a gateway to your life's best Adventures wow so dramatic today but like any new chapter in life it's going to you know it this does come with challenges it comes with uncertainties but it also comes with a lot of opportunities you know make no mistake how you prepare today determines the quality of your tomorrow now if you're new here I'm Mark and this is my wife Jody we don't focus on the financial aspects of retirement but rather lifestyle Health relationships and much more so if you like this please hit the Subscribe button and the notification button so you're going to get notified when our new videos come out and gosh it would really be great if you could share this with someone that you care about who's on their retirement Journey too you know we really want you to feel empowered and equipped to face the challenges of retirement with excitement and Clarity and our goal today really is to ignite a proactive approach for you that's that's going to lead you into this next phase of your life you know this is probably actually documented it is one of the biggest changes you're ever going to face in your life and therefore it can be challenging but today we're going to help you find a quick path to success so who do we know that did really well in this uh first part of retirement you know we have we have friends that live in Bronxville New York he had a big corporate job um was you know kind of all over the map all over the world she had her own things that she was doing and I think they've gotten a very successful jump start into their retirement with a couple of key areas that they focused on ahead of time and then they followed through with their plan well one of the things that he's doing is um he is still engaged in some Consulting so he works maybe 10 15 hours a week and you know what's funny Mark we got a lot of push back on the challenge you guys are doing this you're not really retired you're doing that you say people are doing other work they're not really retired I would agree with you so let's just throw the word retirement out yeah that's the thing yeah so what we are is in the next 30 years of our life and charting a new course and for him and for us this is part of what we do we spend 20 hours a week working on this YouTube channel and doing some Consulting and one-on-one coaching but this couple he's doing a little bit of work and she's very active in some nonprofits there's one particular where she's involved with a uh a charity that not a charity U they invest in startup businesses for women she's on the board of this organization so startup businesses started up by women started up by women not just for not big powerful things just women who are U some of them are pretty big and powerful yeah but I mean it's it's really I I didn't mean it that way wow it sounded that way well I didn't I didn't want it to sound like she's on the board of a Fortune 100 company she's a regular person who's helping this organization find women that want to start a business well I I think there's a couple key things and those are the ones that we're going to kind of pull out today some things that when we think of them we know they've done well so so they were they are very successful and we want the same opportunity for you too so let's what what are we going to what's the first tip we call it a tip right well I think um the first thing when you're addressing retirement even before you retire and we've all either started this thought about it done it you have to plan financially so I would say that's number one even though we don't do financial planning right so you need to figure out what your nest egg looks like how much money you have um if you have a pension you know what what that what does that look like coming in what are your obligations you still have a mortgage and a car payment you need to figure all that out and honestly we're big advocates for financial planners because having that outside perspective to give you a voice that's not so tied up emotionally into let's say the stock market which right now poorly um if you're doing all the investment yourself and looking at all you're just going to stress out all the time so having a financial adviser is great and I think just planning financially just at the basic route you know knowing knowing your income whatever that is knowing what you've saved knowing your expenses understanding any diversity of Investments that you have to make sure you're spreading your risk for long-term growth and wrap that all up with engage with a of some kind or even new retirement low we'll put the link below new retirement is a platform that you can buy you can test it for free you can buy it for $120 a year it's phenomenal we use it we have a lot of our clients that use it and it gives you a snapshot of all your finances and there's all sorts of tools in there you can use to uh do what ifs scenario planning really so first thing is planning financially is really really important the second thing that's important and this client we talked about was having a gradual wind down from your career if you have one you know just cold turkey ending it sometimes that's really hard for people and if that's what's going to happen then you certainly want to phase out any work commitments you have you don't want to leave a mess behind right so yeah and I and I think a big part of that phasing out or gradual wind down is starting to set your boundaries right ensuring a balance between what's your work and your personal time so that it's really clear to not only you but to the people that you're still dealing with and and if you're in a case in a situation where you do want to work a little bit you know maybe you can go back to your company and say hey I want to give you 5 hours a week 10 hours a week just something if you work mornings for two hours 5 days a week it gives you reason to get up gives you a little bit of money coming in and it keeps your community alive a little bit longer so you definitely want to see if that's an opportunity with your company absolutely and you know don't be afraid to delegate responsibilities right passing on tasks as you're doing your gradual wind down to people who are either taking your jobs or you know dividing your labor up or whatever it might be I would say that's something good to do and then spend a little bit of time in this gradual wind down reconnecting with your hobbies rediscovering all the passions that you may have put on hold during your career you know what funny we have so many clients that say I don't have any hobbies well because you've been working for so long or you've been involved with other things and if you've never had a you can find one just start you know we're big journalers so writing down what you're thinking about if you spend every morning journaling for five minutes on hobbies and Google what are the most popular hobbies and just start thinking you know what I when I was a kid I used to do that I might be interested in that don't be afraid to explore that and reconnect and try it because it could be that all of a sudden now you're really into I don't know what's a new hobby painting painting or you could clutter your house clean your closet give away all your clothes so so gradual wind down would be the second thing that we really see as a great retirement tip as you get started right the third thing is and I love this one is really taking time to engage in self-reflection you know understanding your identity beyond your work identity and understanding that you're more than your title or your job or your you know even your community at work you're more than that I I want to stay with this for a minute because this is one of the big risks that we all face or the big changes that we all face when we retired because you and I both had identities at work I own my own company I was the CEO and when that ends it's it's really hard to reinvent yourself with a new identity you know my dad struggled with that so much and we did it first and maybe you are too I don't know but you can't just spend the next 30 Years saying I used to do this and I used to to do that really peel back who you are as a human being and that's really your identity and from there you can build something new and I think as you're doing that it's really important to evaluate all your past achievements right it's not like we're saying abandon that and move forward you know really recognize and take pride in your career Journey whatever it was and then move move forward to Envision all the future accompl accomplishments that you could have you know retirement is going to offer you new opportunities you know we get comments a lot that people say Mark stopped interrupting Jody and I just I always respond to that saying we both get so passionate of what we're talking about that I do and I'm really trying hard because I almost just interrupted you I know I'll try hard too CU a l no need to leave that comment I own I I own it and I interrupt jod a lot because I just get so excited about it but you know engaging in this self-reflection you want to you know if you're struggling get get a counselor get a therapist there's nothing wrong with having a therapist and you share your feelings and apprehensions about this phase of life you can't just go through it and not deal with it so it's really important to do that all right what's the fourth thing well for us this is so important establishing a new routine and the reason this is so important and really not to interrupt you just did interrupt I know because I know I'm going to get a comment about that comment about Jody interrupting um it's not just a routine routine it's a new routine oh didn't I say you did but I really think we need to it's not just H they're back on routines this is your new routine well you just keep going with that then and I think it's really important so we have a routine during our career we have a routine if you're a stay-at-home mom or dad you've got a routine but when the other partner comes home or your career ends that routine is shock so you've got to find something that a daily structure you've got to fit in um exercise you've got to fit in some some learning you don't just want to spend 38 hours watching TV every week which is the average number of hours that people over the age of 65 watch TV you don't want to do that enroll in some courses do some workshops online classes volunteer right right and even travel you know and when we say travel you know a lot of you will say well it'd be nice to travel but I can't afford to Trav travel locally go a couple town over overs and explore a coffee shop cou Town overs a couple Towns over what's a couple Town overs a couple towns over is that not a good sent a couple Towns over and you know um just en enjoy and explore like new shops or new restaurants or a new coffee shop or something something local all right the last tip we want to talk about as you're entering retirement is find your fun you know this phase and we struggle here sometimes we always say what are we going to do fun today well we don't have time you have to make room for fun hobby uh joining a club we're pretty good with that we join the YMCA we've got your woman's group I have a men's group we have people with shared interest pickle ball friends um friends we go out to dinner with but you know golf so we want to make sure that we have fun we want to make sure that you have fun and the other part of fun really experimenting try something new or just relaxing and rejuvenating reading a book we never do that yeah we do self-care we do all right so that's important have your fun absolutely and we wanted to make sure we put fun in there because it's not all planning it's not all schedules it's not all routines it's not all our way no this is your time to do it your way and find joy in Simple Pleasures put some structure in it but also have fun cuz this can be a challenging time and it's going to take some getting used to and you want to enter retirement you know this is the beginning of the greatest phase of your life you know try these five tips to begin your retirement with a little hard work but also some fun now if you like this video you're going to like this next one the top five struggles in retirement we talk about loss of community filling your extra time and creating a vision for this phase of life so we'll see you back again soon

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Retirement Financial Advice: Money Lessons You Need to Know in Retirement

once your earning years are over and you've built Your Nest Egg for retirement you need to be smart about so many decisions now we're not financial planners and we make that very clear with everyone but we are retired and we do spend time making sure we're doing the right thing financially with our own money because oh bad financial habits and lack of knowledge can actually ruin your we have we have a couple they're good friends and he felt like he knew what to do with the marketplace with his Investments and he clearly didn't because he had his money in stocks when it when they went down and he pulled it out and put it into cash when it went up so for eight years he was on the wrong side of every single one of the stock market moves and because of that he lost a significant amount of his retirement assets and that's really difficult and today we find that they're struggling many of their dreams have vanished and they both actually had to go back to work now there's nothing wrong with work but it's just not what they had planned so we can't emphasize enough right out of the shoot having a financial planner is so important because it gives you a plan it gives you a vision it gives you an idea but it also does this which I think is most important it takes the emotion out of the marketplace which can get the best of you think you know what's going to happen at a new presidential election and frankly you don't that's right so let the experts help you with that because we don't want to have what happened to them happen to you today we want to share some practical ideas that may maintain or even improve your financial situation and again the number one lesson today is don't manage your money without a financial planner and we don't mean a stock broker what we mean is someone who has a fiduciary responsibility to make recommendations that are are really good for you not good for them and they talk to you about the strategies and you might say well sure they do but they also talk to you about withdrawal strategies right how much should you be withdrawing each year in order to preserve your nest day how much do you need each month and then they pull it from the smartest place it needs to come from using tools like tax loss harvesting you can't just take money out of a stock because you want to because you're going to have capital gains right right and you know we're not a big fan of multiple planners but we'll leave that part up to you so the first one is make sure you get a financial planner somebody you're comfortable with the second is keep your emergency fund intact kind of no matter what you need to have emergency savings that doesn't disappear when you retire it's more important than ever to have accessible cash set aside for any type of emergency so two three four months of expenses in a cash account that way your financial planner can invest the rest of your money and always always be thinking about you're going to need more money in 60 days so what can they put you into short term so you want to have this cash account so you can cover any kind of emergency expenses or just if you want to leave stuff in the market a little bit longer you've got some cash or even if you have any big purchases that are coming down the pipe that's true making sure your financial planner knows that you're ready for that so the second thing is the emergency fund now here's another um here's another way that you can get into trouble or you're also a way to dig yourself out of trouble you want to take a look at all your luxuries and make sure that they haven't become a burden because frankly that happened to us we both had jobs we were both working gosh 15 years ago we bought our first boat and we bought four boats over the next 15 years but we could afford it because we both were working we both had money and it was our floating vacation home so to speak I I call the last one that we had a lifestyle about because we went away on that one a lot it was a little bit larger but once we were tired all of a sudden it was like well we don't really want to go out on it the weather isn't good you know we'd rather stay home we'd rather be with for the price of diesel or the price of gas you know the price of storage the price of hauling the price you know all of those things have to be factored in when you have a fixed income yeah and we didn't have the same earning capacity to kind of keep up with the luxury so we stopped using it and then it became a burden like why aren't we using it and it was a year ago now that we decided to sell it and it's sold within a month because we kept really good care of it but the thing is if you have luxuries it's really important to take a look at them and say that's something we're really getting a lot of satisfaction of because it's going to cost you money well there are also luxuries that you have and then there's luxuries you provide for others right so we have six children and we were providing cell phones homeowners insurance auto insurance airline tickets for them and their significant others are partners and you know that was all fine when we were dual income but as they aged and as we aged and as we came into a fixed income place we needed to start peeling some away and giving those responsibilities back to them and they can afford it they all have great jobs and if they're ever stopped but it was a luxury it was to be able to do that for him but but frankly it also gave us a lot of satisfaction a lot of fulfillment to be able to help them right so it was hard for us to Pivot to in our mind take these things away from the kids but they you know at some point they've got to be to stand on their own two feet so and we needed to reduce the support so we sold the boat we paid off two car loans we came to an agreement with the kids and slowly weaning them off of some of these things we've always paid for you know because they they can't afford it and you know they they they're fine with it right they even they say it's kind of silly that you're paying my cell phone bills so it's it's another cord to cut that um you know it's hard to do but we want to encourage you to do it yeah so that was the third one the fourth one is you know really trying to figure out how to live a little below your means you know and that's new for us for our entire career as our income went up our living style and our cost of living and everything we did went up with it you know hard work learning and growing you know we were climbing the corporate ladder Mark was building his business you know it was easy to have your lifestyle kind of follow you yeah and you know we both come from humble beginnings and we improved our lifestyle as we went up but then then it's sort of when when you retire you have to think okay well my income's not going to keep going up as a matter of fact it's going to go down so how do we want to live what are some things we can do to live within our means and even underneath our means so and there were a couple things we had to agree to right so you know I call it shopping for sport right so there's there's no more you're better at that than pickleball kind of just opening up and saying oh you know look what just came into my feed I'll take a look at those earrings or that bracelet or those dresses or those sunglasses I think about it I kind of have a little bit of a sunglass addiction so so you know there was you know we agreed that we would do no more shopping for sport yeah it was one of Instagram Amazon it's so easy to spend money today and you get hooked on this new game you don't even leave your house you don't even leave your house you know keeping up with the Joneses that's not necessary anymore right you know who are the Joneses anyway today it's other retirees we're not taking on any more debt we've paid down most of our debt you know again we have a financial planner and you know we have a more modest wardrobe I mean our fancy or fanciest clothes are for our YouTube channel right and we're eating out less we made the agreement that for health and economic reasons we would eat out less so leave living below your means is something you can control and it's something that you can put some time and intention into so another really important thing to get to know is everything about social security and we we don't know that much about it so our financial planner and our accountant has said you don't need to take it yet and that's kind of all we're thinking about at this point they'll let us know when it makes sense and when it makes sense it'll make sense but you have to really understand or have someone coaching you on what's important because everyone's financial situation is different yeah and I really believe the more you know about it the better off you'll be even if you do your own investigation you know Social Security was not meant to be your primary source of income as you age in America it was meant to be a supplemental income so you have to understand the amounts you can get at what future ages and can you still work and does your state tax it or not you know there's a lot of rules around Social Security and my recommendation would be just get to know your rules in your state around your age just for the knowledge I don't know but I think there's a certain amount of uh you can't earn a certain amount of money and still get Social Security I don't really know but you have to know that's I guess that's the point you really need to know everything about social security check with your account and your financial plan right here's a big one for us and it should be for you too I think you know money will never buy you happiness and we've heard that like our whole lives and so we actually did a little bit of research and you know what really defines happiness for us and we came across this quote and part of it is from Warren Buffett but it says you know we want to do what we want when we want with whom we want for as long as we want and that to us will Define our happiness you know now some of what you do will require money but it's not all about buying stuff and things you know most of what we do for happiness now is experiences I I would think that for us and tell me if you agree but the something we just spent money on is giving us more happiness now for a very low value than anything else I remember paying forever you know what it is your pickleball racket pickleball so we joined the YMCA uh for like eighty dollars a month for the family we bought a pickleball racket for 100 bucks and six balls for eighteen dollars and we're getting like five or six hours of use out of that each week yeah that's happiness that really is making us happy it's not a new car it's not a new set of golf clubs right it's not what we're used to thinking that was um would create happiness and we're also looking at vacations differently right now that we have the full seven days to ourselves many vacations to visit friends or family you know they become Tuesday Wednesday Thursday versus the high traffic weekend Friday Saturday Sunday so many vacations Beach days lunch dates you know we just renting a boat for a day we're doing that with company comes we're renting pontoon boats now for the day to take companies out it's three hundred dollars for a day which in one respect sounds like a lot but it's a lot cheaper than owning a boat right that's true so we still get out on the water now look you clearly need money in retirement we all can agree on that but how much do you need and how much is enough you've got to figure out how much you have how much you can pull out each month and how long it's going to last those are key questions you need to work through with your planner and your account yep and paying attention to some of these things that we just shared will help guide you and keep you out of trouble now we hope you enjoyed this video and if you did you're going to like this next one called the truth about early retirement what they don't tell you it's one of our most popular videos and you know we're not getting any younger so why steal these fabulous years from ourselves our family and our friends watch this one next

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Why is Everyone So Tired in Retirement?

you know after slugging it out for over 30 years in Corporate America I was exhausted when retirement arrived I really needed a break and I needed a break too so we spent the first few months in retirement really doing nothing nothing meaningful right well hanging around kind of lazy mornings turning into lazy days into lazy weeks and maybe even lazy months but we knew something had to change or we were doomed we wanted our dreams of a fulfilling retirement to become a reality so we had to make some changes so today we're going to share with you some strategies that you can try so that you're full of energy every single day and take on anything that comes your way but before we go further we'd like to introduce ourselves my name is Mark Rollins and I'm Jody Rollins and we started retirement transform not only for us but for all of you and the other 10 000 people turning 65 every day now we don't focus on anything Financial none of the aspects financially or retirement but we focus on lifestyle Health relationships and more and listen if you're new here please hit the Subscribe button and also the notification button so you'll get notified when our videos come out so let's jump into all the things that tend to make you and me tired especially in retirement okay the first thing that gets you tired too much downtime and that might just be for instance watching too much TV and I don't know if you know this or not but the average number of hours people over the age of 65 watch TV each week is 38 hours a week that's like Couch Potato syndrome it is and you have to be careful with that because it does make you tired nothing wrong with watching a Netflix series or some TV but you can't do it six or eight hours a day yeah lack of movement will really keep your body and your mind tired you have to find ways to move your body even 20 minutes a day just getting out walk 10 minutes One Direction and 10 minutes back and you will feel very different what happens if you walk seven minutes one way and four minutes back and then you have to do 10 jumping jacks oh and then all right because you're going to be late yeah but there's a scientific study multiple scientific studies that say moving 20 minutes a day can extend your life by five years who wouldn't want that exactly exactly so the first one is too much downtime the second one is poor nutrition and we know you've heard this before but please just make believe you're hearing it for the first time poor food choices fast food sweets and too much eating out or even eating late is bad for you being mindful of what your comfort food is and how much you go to it is also something to be aware of yeah I think that you know for us we're getting a lot better with nutrition and really because we're starting to really pay attention to what our ordering tells us about sleep and how we feel but also just our body when we put certain foods in our body we really pay attention to how we feel and having wine or drinks and a late dinner at night we both know we're going to have an awful night's sleep but you didn't bite on comfort food comfort food I you know I need to stay away from comfort food fried chicken Oreo cookies chocolate chip cookies that's the stuff that my mother always made for me and it was Comfort I I need to stay away from that yeah and I know I know it's hard to in retirement to stay away from wine and drinks maybe that's me but um you just be mindful of it and to give your yourself and your body a break from it is really a good feeling yeah and all of what we just talked about leads into the third uh item to make you tired which is getting poor sleep and honestly we need to do an entire video on sleep because I just looked and we really haven't spent enough time on this and the importance of getting a good night's sleep most people need seven to eight hours of good sleep in order to feel good and have high energy absolutely and you know the eating late too much alcohol just doesn't help that you a good portion of our lives in Corporate America and you as an entrepreneur entertaining clients and living that way eating late entertaining clients some wine with dinner and we knew it wasn't sustainable so what makes us think in retirement that that would be sustainable well it's funny because our last five years of work really we were probably working harder than ever before we were entertaining harder than ever before that was our normal and when we got to retirement that normal didn't work for us it really didn't so you just have to be able and to think about making some life changes and it's not easy but it's doable so we have sleep as the third one good sleep quality sleep not just time in bed right the fourth one is really lack of routines during your career you had your routines wired I know you did you had a morning routine during your career and then you were off to work and your day was planned a lot of time your schedule was filled before you even got into the office but many people enter retirement and the last thing they want to do is have a routine I know and you know we hear that a lot but we also hear from our clients when they start with a routine even a basic routine going to bed at the same time getting up at the same time and it doesn't have to be 5 a.m like me I mean you don't get up at five minutes you've got your own routine I don't sleep I do but you have a routine once they start plugging in a routine getting up at the same time every day plugging in a little bit of uh walking for 20 minutes and exercise maybe on top of that doing some meditation with a app like headspace mindfulness that really starts to kick in their energy level and makes them feel better in their retirement phase and you know I really resisted this idea of setting a regular time to go to sleep and a time to wake up in retirement and I don't know if you remember I pushed back pretty hard on Mark started at like 10 o'clock we're gonna you know go to bed at 10 o'clock or you know he wants to be in bed at 10 o'clock which really many wanted to be asleep at 10 o'clock which meant bed 9 30.

Yeah but you also weren't going to let me go to bed alone that's just a me thing right so you so you dragged along with it I did you laid there with your eyes open for an hour in the beginning well I would read or something but but oddly enough our clock kept kind of going backwards the other thing I'd say about routines is I got a call this week from one of our 25 year olds we have two 25 year old twins Jordan that lives in New York City and she said you know something mom starting Monday getting back to my routine and I found that so interesting that the self-care part of routine and sleep and waking and all of that is being ingrained in the younger generation which is great it is great so another reason that you might be tired you could have some underlying health issues that you don't know about it's so important to go to your doctor at least once a year and have things checked out because as we age things in our body change and it could be that there's something going on that's keeping you awake at night that's making you feel tired during the day so going to see your doctors on a regular basis is so important yeah there I mean there could definitely be some issues going on that need to be addressed and you know we have friends that actually have said to us we never go to the doctor because we don't want to look for trouble and I'm just not sure that that's a great way to live through this phase of your life yeah and you know in retirement if you're not exercising and you're eating and drinking more than you used to you're going to gain weight a lot of people gain weight in retirement now all of a sudden you pick up an extra 10 15 20 pounds and it's slowly so you don't notice it but that leads to diabetes so you want to get your heart checked you want to get your body checked you want to go see your doctor I recently went to the doctor and found out that I had plaque buildup on some of my arteries that's it yeah it's a scare I suppose but it also has helped get me focused on doing the right thing eating better exercise and getting good sleep yep because that you're on could be out of balance again this goes back to checking with your doctor you know if you're not sleeping and you're gaining weight and you're having trouble going to the bathroom or you're going too much you know find out why it's just not something to sweep under the rug yeah you know if you're getting up four times a night to go to the bathroom it could be as simple as you shouldn't drink water two hours before you go to bed or it could be something else or it could be a medication that you shouldn't take in the afternoon you should take in the morning or yes the important thing we're trying to get across here is see your doctor check your meds you know I was pre-diabetic seven years ago and I changed that with diet and exercise so you can actually be proactive and make some changes as well don't have your doctor just say here's some meds talk to them more about what some of the things you can do to change your lifestyle to become healthier so we hit the doctor we hit the meds let's go to the seventh thing that we came up with you know dehydration dehydration for sure will make you tired that's a no-brainer it leads to all sorts of problems poor sleep heart rate issues blood pressure problems brain damage even death you had an episode a couple of summers ago with dehydration I did I was working in the yard I was working really hard I was sweaty and I wasn't drinking water did all that work it was a hot humid day showered we got dressed to go to dinner we walked down the street to have dinner you know I don't know 500 feet and right in the beginning of the dinner basically long story short I just went down and I fainted and I had to be taken to the hospital and that was preventable it's not hard to effects you need to drink one half your body weight in ounces of water that's a minimum I weigh 160 pounds that's 80 ounces of water a day that's seven to twelve glasses of water a day it's not that hard right right it really isn't it really is and it's so so important to do that so listen it's okay to have lazy days it's okay to splurge with food and wine you know it's okay to binge watch TV but not every day not for your optimal retirement it just isn't sustainable and there's nothing worse than feeling tired all day long and you know people that say that right they get up and they say oh tired midday they're like oh my God I'm so tired yeah don't you get tired of hearing people say how tired they are yeah and maybe some people just say it but you don't have to it doesn't have to be like that right you want to try a day or even a week implementing what we shared today and see if there's any changes that play take place see how you feel you actually might like it you might find a new normal and it becomes a habit now we hoped you like these strategies and changes that we talked about today check out our next video extend your life in retirement by avoiding these four bad habits these are definite changes you need to make so watch this video to go deeper on extending your life and being healthier

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Live your Best Life with the Best Retirement Advice You’ll Ever Get!!

we've been researching and living retirement for about 5 years now and we learned a lot about what works and quite frankly what doesn't work and we you know coached a lot of people and we get a lot of comments on our YouTube channel so there's a lot of people who enter this phase really unprepared and then they just wander around and end up bored and even depressed you know without the right strategies you're missing out on the joys and opportunities that retirement can offer to you so today we're going to give you the top 20 pieces of advice from ourselves but also from so many of our clients who are having a really great time in retirement that they describe as super successful and make sure you stay till the end because we're also going to throw in our top five retirement tips can't wait to get to that yeah exactly listen if you're new here I'm jod and this is my husband Mark now we don't focus on the financial aspects of retirement but really what we do focus on is lifestyle Health relation relationships and so much more we hope you like our videos and if you do please share them with someone you care about and definitely like them as you're on your way down your retirement Journey so let's talk a little bit about our journey for the last 5 years because we don't want you all to think just because we have a YouTube channel that we have it all figured out we do in many regards but I I would say the the one thing that we're doing really well is working at it we do yeah I would say that we work at it every day almost to the point where sometimes you know how you work at something so long that sometimes you're like okay I'm going to take a pause on this every once in a while I'll have to call the pause yeah and and I don't want to give away our five tips but the one thing that you and I have going for us well there's really 10 things but I only want to focus on one now is our communication yeah you know we don't always agree nor do we always get along well we always communicate yeah you know we really do give each other respect the space to have an opinion um and you know we're human beings and living together can have its challenges absolutely but we I think the big thing for us is experimenting we don't always agree we don't always get along but we always reset and regroup and what's what else am I looking to say well sometimes I think we also just do what I said just take a pause right I mean sometimes you have to just kind of step away to go back at it with fresh eyes yeah so you know we keep we do keep track of what's working and what isn't working for us and you know what worked for us for all the years that we were married that we were working may not work for us now so we've had to adapt a few things for sure you know when we were working it was I'm not going to say it was easier but there was so much going on there really was no downtime right now we have downtime and we need to make sure we're we're doing it the right way y so you might be wondering why do you even need to think this Harden retirement well we have people say that to us all the time you know you guys make it sound like it's so much work in retirement that's when you're supposed to have no work right well what we found out is our retirement other people's retirements are successful and they're happy because they spend a little bit of time working on things right now by the way we've got a whole bunch of free downloads but we're going to put a link below to one it's a health and wellness checklist we want you to get that download and use that to kind of reset your health in retirement that's really really important so let's jump into some of the best retirement advice we've heard from RE reies thus far and again stay till the end where we'll do our top five retirement tips okay first thing stay active first thing always what staying active it is it's one of our first things we always say I can't emphasize this enough now we have a new puppy who is in the background is he eating something well just a dresser no he's eating a knob on a dresser maybe you should grab him but staying active it's her uh yeah it's a her so we'll bring her up um you get to see Ruby this but uh staying Physically Active it boosts your mood it boosts your health you know walking walking walking our dog is always helpful but we're both pretty big fans of some regular type of exercise Absolut and you need to do that yep yep and you know we read a great book called outlived by Dr Peter ATA and he talks a lot about exercising being the best medicine for longevity okay you can't lick the microphone all right second thing nutrition you've really got to understand what it is that you put into your mouth you know my mom said that when I was a kid but as we get older you know there are changing nutritional needs that we need to be aware of and you got to have a good balance of fruits vegetables lean proteins and whole grains absolutely and you know you have to also stay hydrated you know you have to limit your intake of sugary or processed foods and definitely make sure that you're Consulting a nutritionist I think or a dietitian even of sorts and make it fun in the kitchen you know explore some new recipes or Cuisines to keep your meals exciting and nutritious yeah you do good with that because you're really our cook I'm really appetizers Ambiance and clean up well we've moved from Strictly meat and potatoes and gravies I I call it comfort food to more of a Mediterranean diet so we don't do much beef we do a lot of chicken we do a lot of fish having fish tonight right um a lot of vegetables and we feel better because of that the exercise and nutrition really makes us feel great absolutely so the next thing is really to just you know our retirees tell us all the time you know continuous and constant learning keeps our brains active and really keeps us sharp and keeps us young yeah and you know retirement offers you the freedom to explore new hobbies or skills or go to the library when was the last time you're in a library you know it's amazing to walk I love walking through bookstores but walk through a library is even more fun because it just massive and there's so many different sections you can get lost in there forever right and you know I think that uh local community centers like uh got down here in Florida they've got all of these nature preserves they just kind of fun to go walks Serenity walks and different things another thing that's really important and the fourth tip today is socializing you really got to make sure you're getting out and making new connections there are a lot of people in the same boat that you're in right that want to meet new people down here in Florida we're just really getting so much better at putting ourselves out there Y where you can volunteer join a club um I and it's not that hard you know I think we make socialization as we age a lot harder than it really needs to be it's like almost like we build up these walls around how am I going to get invited or who am I going to know or what am I going to say and you know really it's just a matter of putting yourself out there and being you I mean you you are very interesting and what we always tell our kids is it's important to be both interesting when you're socializing and interested so you know have your battery of questions kind of lined up that you're going to you know say to people when you're in Social settings a lot a lot of it is easier than you think so that's all about meeting new people and networking so to speak uh the other thing the fifth tip is nurturing your current relationships we get that a lot from our retirees what's that that need to do this once they are retire I mean whether it's your children or your old colleagues at work or your relatives or high school friends or college friends these are people that at one point in your life were probably pretty close to you will reach out and find out what they're doing look for them on Facebook or whatever but don't be afraid they're probably wondering if they're retired as well gosh I I wonder where my high school friends are and when you call them I guarantee you they're going to be like oh my gosh I can't believe it just called and you have the most wonderful conversation so I also think that in the nurturing relationship bucket Mark I I also think it's a time where you can really sit back and address any unresolved conflicts that you might have whether that's with family or old friends or you know old neighbors or colleagues you know it's a good time to be able to address all of that for sure okay um staying financially Savvy lot of the lot of our clients and ourselves and people leave comments that you know how much money can I spend spend should I downsize or rent when should I take Social Security or my pension you know we have a great tool that we um came in contact with through new retirement and it's actually a um a portal where you can connect all your bank accounts and it actually pulls everything and it shows how much you're spending it shows you what might happen if you downst it's a really cool too it's it's like a scenario plan yeah so we'll put that down below but these are all questions that people have you need to get the answers so either a financial planner or um your accountant or using this tool but you know having a regular budget can be helpful because you kind of know how much you can spend right um I think the other thing that we see a lot of because we get it all the time too is being really careful about scams oh I know you know this thing where people call up and say that uh it's it's an email and or they'll say is this Mark Rollins and you say yes and then they have your yes there so there's a lot of those things that are happening good financial adviser and really understanding your finances is really important okay the next thing I would say and and I didn't do this as much during my career but I've really taken this on um and with some advice from our retirees is prioritizing your mental health your mental health and wellness is so important it's critical and almost as crucial as your physical health right uhoh Ruby's getting adventurous Ruby's getting out of hand um you know meditation I talk about meditation a lot lot I talk about journeying a lot and you know five five or six years ago I started meditating and if you asked me the day before I was meditating would I ever do it I would I would have said no yeah but it really is a lifesaver now it really helps me every morning to kind of get myself set for the day journaling gets my ideas and my feelings out on a piece of paper it really has helped me tremendously be more calm and in the moment for whatever comes our way absolutely and you know what I I remember you and I remember you the day before you started and and you really that's a true statement you never would have done it if if you didn't you know kind of feel like you had to do it at that point okay the next thing I would say is um you know our retirees these days are really embracing technology you know it offers a great tool to stay connected and informed and even entertained and then there's you know the platforms like Zoom or Skype that allow you to do virtual meetups with family family members we just yesterday gave our grandson Luca his fifth birthday present oh yeah via Zoom they're in California they're in California and we're here in Florida and we had the present all set it was all ready you know we had it all kind of concealed his eyes were covered and um that was really the only way we were able to celebrate so I think it was good that we were able to do that and they're able to do it you know back with us I mean I think Luka could zoom or Skype us probably without his parents well on the way to school a lot in the morning uh Jonathan will give Luca his phone and luuka and I will have a conversation on the way to school which is fun so there's um there's a lot you can do with technology and I I find that when people are struggling with technology they're struggling with life so really investing some time and learning how to use your phone right learning how to use your computer it really is important I think the next you know the next thing our retirees tell us is you know you know travel and explore you know traveling provides such EXP exposure to new cultures you know I know we've got a safari coming up at the end of next year we're both a little nervous about um but new cultures new foods new experiences and even some local trips some stations but going to the next town over I know I had a hard time saying that the other day but the next town over can be really fun and it keeps you busy so you can plan a trip you can research trips we we've we've now seen recently there's a lot of travel agents that specialize in trips for solo not solos solo retirees or solo people individual people so you go on a vacation with 10 people who are all there on their own right and you know the travel agent does a pretty good job we hear of making sure that you're all the same um you know you're you're going to the same place for the same reason and that you'll pretty much get along so that's great so more advice from our um retirees that we've been kind of investigating and calculating this is always a favorite re-evaluate your living situation and you know what I mean by that is you know consider your proximity to you know family to friends to Health Care Facilities to your doctors to your favorite recreational areas you know re-evaluate if where you are here today is where you really want to be or need to be as you move through your retirement yeah I think that's really important because there are so many options for you today to live and again it's not just about downsizing which I think we're going to talk about in a minute but it's really where do you live and how are you living we we always talk about wanting to end up as we get older being there one of our kids and we have six it's just hard but they haven't really we're not necessarily on the same page on this one what do you mean well I mean I think it would be great but I like who do you pick how do you pick what do you do I I'm not going to say it on here but I know who I'm going to pick okay I want to be taken care of okay I know who she is oops did I say that okay so the the next thing is downsizing or rightsizing your home so this has Financial connotations but it also has a tremendous amount of um psychological stumbling blocks that you need to get over in order to even think about downsizing and the first place to start instead of just saying I don't want to talk about it with your partner you have to talk about it I think that's really the first thing we have a lot of people who are frustrated with this topic because they're spouse or partner don't want to talk about it well well the retirees that we spoke to for this video said you know this is a scary and dangerous topic right downsizing you know decluttering is a little bit easier than downsizing downsizing means you're thinking of making a big move right and if you're both not on the same page it becomes divisive so you know the retirees uh that we talked to said this is good advice to start to bring up early in your retirement really planning the seeds you know where do you stand on on this you know is simplifying something that's going to lead to less stress or are you the house that everyone comes to and and we've done and that's fine too we've done uh several videos on this topic of downsizing there's another one that says if downsizing isn't right for you some things that you can do really the process here is to simplify your life you're now in a phase of your life where you've got more free time you can travel so will Trading houses up or down make your life simple right so right and it's you know it's a therapeutic process and speaking of a therapeutic process the next thing that everyone says helps them so much is beginning the process of decluttering right and that oh my gosh we we try to declutter all the time it gives you mental Clarity it makes your home safer and there's so many emotional but what's so funny I'm laughing because if we try to declutter all the time where's the Clutter coming from I don't well yeah the first thing is to stop buying stuff right yeah exactly because you know take the Amazon app off of your phone because you know when you declutter you know and then you declutter again and again you got to start saying to yourself where is it all coming from well I I mean you can start with a closet you can start with a dresser and you know there's a lot of gems inside your closet and your dresser that other people can use if you're not using I mean if you're not if you haven't worn a c outfit for 2 years get rid of it yeah you're never going to wear it again the other thing is when you when you take a look at an item in your closet if you wouldn't buy that new today get rid of it right you know so you know you don't need your suits anymore your work clothes if you've retired so decluttering can really be fun we did we've done a lot of videos on that too you know this next um item a lot of our retirees really felt uh strongly about and and that is to document your legacy you know sharing your life stories is such a gift to all the future Generations in your world you know writing or recording or even creating digital albums you know can be great methods of documenting your legacy and this is the one thread I think that I heard that just everyone spoke about with passion there's a good friend of mine um who is a a grandmother she's got three children and five grand grandchilden and she writes a letter I think she writes two letters a year to each grandchild every year she's been doing that since the kids were born and she's telling them stories she's sharing with them a little bit about her um her preferences or political background uh you know how she feels about certain current events that are going on right now it's really going to be an amazing gift to give to these kids to be able to have a letter from their grandma mother from 20 years ago about some current event that was happening and how it's making her feel so it really is a neat project that she's done yep well you just saw Ruby or maybe you did but adopting a pet you know it gives this is controversial with retirees actually okay you know because and I didn't mean to interrupt you I know I'm going to get hit with comments on stop interrupting it's typically me that interrupts you that's what the comments say but um you know adopting a pet or rescuing a pet or somehow putting that type of love and companionship into your life gives you so much the flip side and I guess where I'd say it becomes controversial is you have to be you know ready for it you have to have you know the financial wherewithal to handle it you have to have the bandwidth to handle the training the potty training the dog walking you have to have good physical activity and if you don't it's going to help you get there but you have to be ready for it and this one just kind of was like uh probably 7 25 a was interesting for us though we've had two dogs together before we had sugar um and we had little Max and we just got the dogs and we just brought them up the way we wanted to well because we were working we were still so now we have Ruby for three days and I said to jod why don't we do this differently why don't we find some YouTube channels and learn how to really train a dog well it's actually been really exciting for us because we're learning some things we never knew right and I think it's been really helpful for us and for little Ruby and for rucious yeah so having a Pet's great it well it's works for us and again it was kind of a controversial well there is a lot of love that comes back yep and there's just a lot of anxiety that comes with the love so all right the 15th tip you could join a club or start a club right so coffee uh with uh so for a man get one buddy have coffee once once a week bringing have him bring a guest and you bring a guest get up to like 10 people and have weekly coffee tell stories I I do that all the time and I love it so it's it's a really fun way to well let me say this it's important Jody and I have a business we're married we have kids we do a lot together but we do a fair amount apart too so I think that for everyone in retirement if you're solo you're solo but if you're a couple you got to have your own stuff yeah you got to have your own club you got to have your own group yep um you know the next thing is to seek out mentorship opportunities you know um again our retirees had a wealth of professional and life experiences and there's so much that they could share with younger Generations that they would engage in really meaningful guided conversations that helped build multigenerational connections for them and again they got pretty charged up about seek seeking out these opportunities you know Mark and I did that at the University of Hartford in one of the business classes where we kind of did a guest professorship for a day and then we actually took applications for um for students to mentor and it was a really fun year for us well the thing there's a couple things that happen first of all you're helping someone else but you feel fulfilled you know you feel like you have a sense of purpose uh by guiding others and the other thing is I'm going to go guide is get getting mentored by someone who's younger than you I mean I have two mentors we kind of Mentor each other one is my son and one is another young professional that I know but but I actually can learn a lot from them they have a different outlook on business they have a different outlook on life and it really has been helpful to me for sure so that that's been fun yeah it has sorry I had to step away um this was I thought an interesting one and this came from a a a pocket of our um friends and retirees that wanted to engage in artistic Pursuits um I would put myself in this area I haven't done it yet but exploring different art forums and painting and pottery you know our neighbor across the street Jen she does that every year whenever she gets down to Florida she joins last last year was Pottery this year it's painting drawing it's drawing drawing she joins um art classes and workshops and goes to the local community center and she loves it and that's something I think I would like to do cuz I don't do much for my artistic side but it gives you also um uh Arts a form of expression and emotional release and if you're into that at all it really is kind of fun to do that I mean this in a way what we're doing is Artistic Pursuits I mean we're shooting video and we're you know um you know building a little business but it it's uh it's fun I would I wouldn't say it's a hobby but we've had to learn so much so it's been kind of cool y on the other thing and we just did a Facebook live on this yesterday is um staying updated with current events you know we we did a a Facebook live yesterday in our in our community uh do you consume the news or is the news consuming you right so really finding a way to get good solid news we think is important I mean trying to find reputable news sources or magazines is really helpful versus getting caught up in what everyone calls the fake news if you will but you know uh get involved with Community discussions or forums talk to friends don't be so judgmental when someone has a certain opinion on a news article but really finding a balance there because it is important to stay up to date it is I believe it really is important to stay up to date but like you said it's also can be all consuming we do have some retirees that watch the news Chann channels and you can watch the news channels now 24 hours a day so uh we do have some folks that are doing that which isn't probably the healthiest the next one is well before you do that one of the what's that I interrupted you I get a good comment um we stepped away we have stepped away from watching the news in a in a big way so we'll watch the evening news for I don't know 35 minutes we watch some things on um well Evan your daughter told us to watch NPR well listen that's a podcast it's a podcast so we we we get some news that way but um staying informed about local events or Community changes we kind of stepped away from that we jumped back in you found out about this great concert taking place and then you signed up for it and it was full yeah I mean literally the day I saw it which means it probably was out there before yeah so I think the whole idea of current events is really important things happening in your community so I didn't mean to interrupt you but I didn't want to forget that okay I think the next thing that we heard a lot about from everybody was planning regular family events or Gatherings you know now you have the time to organize events and birthdays and anniversaries and really start to create traditional Traditions like annual family picnics or you know um different things you could do with grandchildren either in groups or select one at a time I mean that's really something fun that you can um really jump into I think yeah we have Thanksgiving um in Florida this Thanksgiving couple weeks couple weeks and we've got five of our six kids coming with their partners and um the grandkids are not going to make it but we can't wait for that and we make it special and we make it a lot of fun and they all have their favorite food here and little gifts and we take a lot of pictures so that we can have really good memories for um for the future um you know investing in self-care is really really important a lot of people don't take time to do that you what it shouldn't have been number 20 it shouldn't have been last no it shouldn't it really shouldn't because now is the time you can dedicate for relaxation and meditation and deep breathing and different things like that if you can afford to get a massage once in a while um you know do yoga on the beach you got to get your health checkups I I know I um I think we'll leave a link below we have a a free yeah Health checkup worksheet is really great so you can download that we'll put that in the comments below but you know you want to engage in activities that stimulate your mind puzzles games right you have to get adequate sleep and rest we have the aura ring so we track our sleep the first thing we talk about in the morning is well just how you do what are your numbers you guys have been patient our top five retirement tips number one you have to have a plan y you need a short long-term plan you need 5 10 15 20 years or more out you know my my plan is to be physically independent at the age of 90 you You' heard me say that before so that is what drives me to get up and exercise every single day and we start each day with a plan that's a good segue to the second big tip exercise exercise exercise exercise exercise it's the number one thing that we can do for ourselves to be healthy and if you're not exercising now keep it simple walk out the front door walk 10 minutes one way and come back and do that for 5 days and then go 15 minutes and then do 20 minutes for a week so you got to do that the third top tip is you've got to build a community of people you've whether it's your family you reach out to whether it's Friends new friends neighbors re-engaging with old work friends number three is you've got to build community and the fourth tip would be healthy habits really review your habits you know think about can you limit your alcohol can you stop any bad habits I mean you stopped cigar smoking you pretty much eliminated chocolate chip cookies pretty much eliminated what do you mean pretty much you bought them yesterday and I haven't had one yet and you're going to throw them out I'm having them and you know keeping ahead of better nutrition you know eliminating your bad foods and making sure you're eating what makes you feel good I was thinking about this this morning healthy habits or food alcohol whatever it is I drink very little now so if you can try going for two weeks let's just say two weeks no alcohol uh change your nutritions try to eat healthy try to get good sleep it's amazing how much sleep you can get when you don't have any alcohol yes try it for two weeks see how you feel just see if you feel any different because that's what's happened to me if I have a glass of wine I feel like crap the next day I've gotten so used to not having one glass yeah yeah but but anyway all right the the fifth thing is to give back you know volunteer start or get a dog Ruby really like that one volunteer or start a company you know during our career we got fulfillment out of our job but volunteering is a great way to replace that right um and if you're married in a relationship have fun have fun with each other look how much fun we're having and doing this right sorry about flexible with each other you know she's brand new we run into trouble here at times together as a couple but try to find ways to have fun yes some of this was ser ious and it can affect your quality of life and other things are just downright important but all of it is to make this next phase of Life exciting and fun so we hope you enjoyed this and if you did this next video top tips for living longer in retirement on that video we talk not only about living longer but almost as important as living healthier so watch this one next

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we've been researching and living retirement for about 5 years now and we learned a lot about what works and quite frankly what doesn't work and we you know coached a lot of people and we get a lot of comments on our YouTube channel so there's a lot of people who enter this phase really unprepared and then they just wander around and end up bored and even depressed you know without the right strategies you're missing out on the joys and opportunities that retirement can offer to you so today we're going to give you the top 20 pieces of advice from ourselves but also from so many of our clients who are having a really great time in retirement that they describe as super successful and make sure you stay till the end because we're also going to throw in our top five retirement tips can't wait to get to that yeah exactly listen if you're new here I'm jod and this is my husband Mark now we don't focus on the financial aspects of retirement but really what we do focus on is lifestyle Health relation relationships and so much more we hope you like our videos and if you do please share them with someone you care about and definitely like them as you're on your way down your retirement Journey so let's talk a little bit about our journey for the last 5 years because we don't want you all to think just because we have a YouTube channel that we have it all figured out we do in many regards but I I would say the the one thing that we're doing really well is working at it we do yeah I would say that we work at it every day almost to the point where sometimes you know how you work at something so long that sometimes you're like okay I'm going to take a pause on this every once in a while I'll have to call the pause yeah and and I don't want to give away our five tips but the one thing that you and I have going for us well there's really 10 things but I only want to focus on one now is our communication yeah you know we don't always agree nor do we always get along well we always communicate yeah you know we really do give each other respect the space to have an opinion um and you know we're human beings and living together can have its challenges absolutely but we I think the big thing for us is experimenting we don't always agree we don't always get along but we always reset and regroup and what's what else am I looking to say well sometimes I think we also just do what I said just take a pause right I mean sometimes you have to just kind of step away to go back at it with fresh eyes yeah so you know we keep we do keep track of what's working and what isn't working for us and you know what worked for us for all the years that we were married that we were working may not work for us now so we've had to adapt a few things for sure you know when we were working it was I'm not going to say it was easier but there was so much going on there really was no downtime right now we have downtime and we need to make sure we're we're doing it the right way y so you might be wondering why do you even need to think this Harden retirement well we have people say that to us all the time you know you guys make it sound like it's so much work in retirement that's when you're supposed to have no work right well what we found out is our retirement other people's retirements are successful and they're happy because they spend a little bit of time working on things right now by the way we've got a whole bunch of free downloads but we're going to put a link below to one it's a health and wellness checklist we want you to get that download and use that to kind of reset your health in retirement that's really really important so let's jump into some of the best retirement advice we've heard from RE reies thus far and again stay till the end where we'll do our top five retirement tips okay first thing stay active first thing always what staying active it is it's one of our first things we always say I can't emphasize this enough now we have a new puppy who is in the background is he eating something well just a dresser no he's eating a knob on a dresser maybe you should grab him but staying active it's her uh yeah it's a her so we'll bring her up um you get to see Ruby this but uh staying Physically Active it boosts your mood it boosts your health you know walking walking walking our dog is always helpful but we're both pretty big fans of some regular type of exercise Absolut and you need to do that yep yep and you know we read a great book called outlived by Dr Peter ATA and he talks a lot about exercising being the best medicine for longevity okay you can't lick the microphone all right second thing nutrition you've really got to understand what it is that you put into your mouth you know my mom said that when I was a kid but as we get older you know there are changing nutritional needs that we need to be aware of and you got to have a good balance of fruits vegetables lean proteins and whole grains absolutely and you know you have to also stay hydrated you know you have to limit your intake of sugary or processed foods and definitely make sure that you're Consulting a nutritionist I think or a dietitian even of sorts and make it fun in the kitchen you know explore some new recipes or Cuisines to keep your meals exciting and nutritious yeah you do good with that because you're really our cook I'm really appetizers Ambiance and clean up well we've moved from Strictly meat and potatoes and gravies I I call it comfort food to more of a Mediterranean diet so we don't do much beef we do a lot of chicken we do a lot of fish having fish tonight right um a lot of vegetables and we feel better because of that the exercise and nutrition really makes us feel great absolutely so the next thing is really to just you know our retirees tell us all the time you know continuous and constant learning keeps our brains active and really keeps us sharp and keeps us young yeah and you know retirement offers you the freedom to explore new hobbies or skills or go to the library when was the last time you're in a library you know it's amazing to walk I love walking through bookstores but walk through a library is even more fun because it just massive and there's so many different sections you can get lost in there forever right and you know I think that uh local community centers like uh got down here in Florida they've got all of these nature preserves they just kind of fun to go walks Serenity walks and different things another thing that's really important and the fourth tip today is socializing you really got to make sure you're getting out and making new connections there are a lot of people in the same boat that you're in right that want to meet new people down here in Florida we're just really getting so much better at putting ourselves out there Y where you can volunteer join a club um I and it's not that hard you know I think we make socialization as we age a lot harder than it really needs to be it's like almost like we build up these walls around how am I going to get invited or who am I going to know or what am I going to say and you know really it's just a matter of putting yourself out there and being you I mean you you are very interesting and what we always tell our kids is it's important to be both interesting when you're socializing and interested so you know have your battery of questions kind of lined up that you're going to you know say to people when you're in Social settings a lot a lot of it is easier than you think so that's all about meeting new people and networking so to speak uh the other thing the fifth tip is nurturing your current relationships we get that a lot from our retirees what's that that need to do this once they are retire I mean whether it's your children or your old colleagues at work or your relatives or high school friends or college friends these are people that at one point in your life were probably pretty close to you will reach out and find out what they're doing look for them on Facebook or whatever but don't be afraid they're probably wondering if they're retired as well gosh I I wonder where my high school friends are and when you call them I guarantee you they're going to be like oh my gosh I can't believe it just called and you have the most wonderful conversation so I also think that in the nurturing relationship bucket Mark I I also think it's a time where you can really sit back and address any unresolved conflicts that you might have whether that's with family or old friends or you know old neighbors or colleagues you know it's a good time to be able to address all of that for sure okay um staying financially Savvy lot of the lot of our clients and ourselves and people leave comments that you know how much money can I spend spend should I downsize or rent when should I take Social Security or my pension you know we have a great tool that we um came in contact with through new retirement and it's actually a um a portal where you can connect all your bank accounts and it actually pulls everything and it shows how much you're spending it shows you what might happen if you downst it's a really cool too it's it's like a scenario plan yeah so we'll put that down below but these are all questions that people have you need to get the answers so either a financial planner or um your accountant or using this tool but you know having a regular budget can be helpful because you kind of know how much you can spend right um I think the other thing that we see a lot of because we get it all the time too is being really careful about scams oh I know you know this thing where people call up and say that uh it's it's an email and or they'll say is this Mark Rollins and you say yes and then they have your yes there so there's a lot of those things that are happening good financial adviser and really understanding your finances is really important okay the next thing I would say and and I didn't do this as much during my career but I've really taken this on um and with some advice from our retirees is prioritizing your mental health your mental health and wellness is so important it's critical and almost as crucial as your physical health right uhoh Ruby's getting adventurous Ruby's getting out of hand um you know meditation I talk about meditation a lot lot I talk about journeying a lot and you know five five or six years ago I started meditating and if you asked me the day before I was meditating would I ever do it I would I would have said no yeah but it really is a lifesaver now it really helps me every morning to kind of get myself set for the day journaling gets my ideas and my feelings out on a piece of paper it really has helped me tremendously be more calm and in the moment for whatever comes our way absolutely and you know what I I remember you and I remember you the day before you started and and you really that's a true statement you never would have done it if if you didn't you know kind of feel like you had to do it at that point okay the next thing I would say is um you know our retirees these days are really embracing technology you know it offers a great tool to stay connected and informed and even entertained and then there's you know the platforms like Zoom or Skype that allow you to do virtual meetups with family family members we just yesterday gave our grandson Luca his fifth birthday present oh yeah via Zoom they're in California they're in California and we're here in Florida and we had the present all set it was all ready you know we had it all kind of concealed his eyes were covered and um that was really the only way we were able to celebrate so I think it was good that we were able to do that and they're able to do it you know back with us I mean I think Luka could zoom or Skype us probably without his parents well on the way to school a lot in the morning uh Jonathan will give Luca his phone and luuka and I will have a conversation on the way to school which is fun so there's um there's a lot you can do with technology and I I find that when people are struggling with technology they're struggling with life so really investing some time and learning how to use your phone right learning how to use your computer it really is important I think the next you know the next thing our retirees tell us is you know you know travel and explore you know traveling provides such EXP exposure to new cultures you know I know we've got a safari coming up at the end of next year we're both a little nervous about um but new cultures new foods new experiences and even some local trips some stations but going to the next town over I know I had a hard time saying that the other day but the next town over can be really fun and it keeps you busy so you can plan a trip you can research trips we we've we've now seen recently there's a lot of travel agents that specialize in trips for solo not solos solo retirees or solo people individual people so you go on a vacation with 10 people who are all there on their own right and you know the travel agent does a pretty good job we hear of making sure that you're all the same um you know you're you're going to the same place for the same reason and that you'll pretty much get along so that's great so more advice from our um retirees that we've been kind of investigating and calculating this is always a favorite re-evaluate your living situation and you know what I mean by that is you know consider your proximity to you know family to friends to Health Care Facilities to your doctors to your favorite recreational areas you know re-evaluate if where you are here today is where you really want to be or need to be as you move through your retirement yeah I think that's really important because there are so many options for you today to live and again it's not just about downsizing which I think we're going to talk about in a minute but it's really where do you live and how are you living we we always talk about wanting to end up as we get older being there one of our kids and we have six it's just hard but they haven't really we're not necessarily on the same page on this one what do you mean well I mean I think it would be great but I like who do you pick how do you pick what do you do I I'm not going to say it on here but I know who I'm going to pick okay I want to be taken care of okay I know who she is oops did I say that okay so the the next thing is downsizing or rightsizing your home so this has Financial connotations but it also has a tremendous amount of um psychological stumbling blocks that you need to get over in order to even think about downsizing and the first place to start instead of just saying I don't want to talk about it with your partner you have to talk about it I think that's really the first thing we have a lot of people who are frustrated with this topic because they're spouse or partner don't want to talk about it well well the retirees that we spoke to for this video said you know this is a scary and dangerous topic right downsizing you know decluttering is a little bit easier than downsizing downsizing means you're thinking of making a big move right and if you're both not on the same page it becomes divisive so you know the retirees uh that we talked to said this is good advice to start to bring up early in your retirement really planning the seeds you know where do you stand on on this you know is simplifying something that's going to lead to less stress or are you the house that everyone comes to and and we've done and that's fine too we've done uh several videos on this topic of downsizing there's another one that says if downsizing isn't right for you some things that you can do really the process here is to simplify your life you're now in a phase of your life where you've got more free time you can travel so will Trading houses up or down make your life simple right so right and it's you know it's a therapeutic process and speaking of a therapeutic process the next thing that everyone says helps them so much is beginning the process of decluttering right and that oh my gosh we we try to declutter all the time it gives you mental Clarity it makes your home safer and there's so many emotional but what's so funny I'm laughing because if we try to declutter all the time where's the Clutter coming from I don't well yeah the first thing is to stop buying stuff right yeah exactly because you know take the Amazon app off of your phone because you know when you declutter you know and then you declutter again and again you got to start saying to yourself where is it all coming from well I I mean you can start with a closet you can start with a dresser and you know there's a lot of gems inside your closet and your dresser that other people can use if you're not using I mean if you're not if you haven't worn a c outfit for 2 years get rid of it yeah you're never going to wear it again the other thing is when you when you take a look at an item in your closet if you wouldn't buy that new today get rid of it right you know so you know you don't need your suits anymore your work clothes if you've retired so decluttering can really be fun we did we've done a lot of videos on that too you know this next um item a lot of our retirees really felt uh strongly about and and that is to document your legacy you know sharing your life stories is such a gift to all the future Generations in your world you know writing or recording or even creating digital albums you know can be great methods of documenting your legacy and this is the one thread I think that I heard that just everyone spoke about with passion there's a good friend of mine um who is a a grandmother she's got three children and five grand grandchilden and she writes a letter I think she writes two letters a year to each grandchild every year she's been doing that since the kids were born and she's telling them stories she's sharing with them a little bit about her um her preferences or political background uh you know how she feels about certain current events that are going on right now it's really going to be an amazing gift to give to these kids to be able to have a letter from their grandma mother from 20 years ago about some current event that was happening and how it's making her feel so it really is a neat project that she's done yep well you just saw Ruby or maybe you did but adopting a pet you know it gives this is controversial with retirees actually okay you know because and I didn't mean to interrupt you I know I'm going to get hit with comments on stop interrupting it's typically me that interrupts you that's what the comments say but um you know adopting a pet or rescuing a pet or somehow putting that type of love and companionship into your life gives you so much the flip side and I guess where I'd say it becomes controversial is you have to be you know ready for it you have to have you know the financial wherewithal to handle it you have to have the bandwidth to handle the training the potty training the dog walking you have to have good physical activity and if you don't it's going to help you get there but you have to be ready for it and this one just kind of was like uh probably 7 25 a was interesting for us though we've had two dogs together before we had sugar um and we had little Max and we just got the dogs and we just brought them up the way we wanted to well because we were working we were still so now we have Ruby for three days and I said to jod why don't we do this differently why don't we find some YouTube channels and learn how to really train a dog well it's actually been really exciting for us because we're learning some things we never knew right and I think it's been really helpful for us and for little Ruby and for rucious yeah so having a Pet's great it well it's works for us and again it was kind of a controversial well there is a lot of love that comes back yep and there's just a lot of anxiety that comes with the love so all right the 15th tip you could join a club or start a club right so coffee uh with uh so for a man get one buddy have coffee once once a week bringing have him bring a guest and you bring a guest get up to like 10 people and have weekly coffee tell stories I I do that all the time and I love it so it's it's a really fun way to well let me say this it's important Jody and I have a business we're married we have kids we do a lot together but we do a fair amount apart too so I think that for everyone in retirement if you're solo you're solo but if you're a couple you got to have your own stuff yeah you got to have your own club you got to have your own group yep um you know the next thing is to seek out mentorship opportunities you know um again our retirees had a wealth of professional and life experiences and there's so much that they could share with younger Generations that they would engage in really meaningful guided conversations that helped build multigenerational connections for them and again they got pretty charged up about seek seeking out these opportunities you know Mark and I did that at the University of Hartford in one of the business classes where we kind of did a guest professorship for a day and then we actually took applications for um for students to mentor and it was a really fun year for us well the thing there's a couple things that happen first of all you're helping someone else but you feel fulfilled you know you feel like you have a sense of purpose uh by guiding others and the other thing is I'm going to go guide is get getting mentored by someone who's younger than you I mean I have two mentors we kind of Mentor each other one is my son and one is another young professional that I know but but I actually can learn a lot from them they have a different outlook on business they have a different outlook on life and it really has been helpful to me for sure so that that's been fun yeah it has sorry I had to step away um this was I thought an interesting one and this came from a a a pocket of our um friends and retirees that wanted to engage in artistic Pursuits um I would put myself in this area I haven't done it yet but exploring different art forums and painting and pottery you know our neighbor across the street Jen she does that every year whenever she gets down to Florida she joins last last year was Pottery this year it's painting drawing it's drawing drawing she joins um art classes and workshops and goes to the local community center and she loves it and that's something I think I would like to do cuz I don't do much for my artistic side but it gives you also um uh Arts a form of expression and emotional release and if you're into that at all it really is kind of fun to do that I mean this in a way what we're doing is Artistic Pursuits I mean we're shooting video and we're you know um you know building a little business but it it's uh it's fun I would I wouldn't say it's a hobby but we've had to learn so much so it's been kind of cool y on the other thing and we just did a Facebook live on this yesterday is um staying updated with current events you know we we did a a Facebook live yesterday in our in our community uh do you consume the news or is the news consuming you right so really finding a way to get good solid news we think is important I mean trying to find reputable news sources or magazines is really helpful versus getting caught up in what everyone calls the fake news if you will but you know uh get involved with Community discussions or forums talk to friends don't be so judgmental when someone has a certain opinion on a news article but really finding a balance there because it is important to stay up to date it is I believe it really is important to stay up to date but like you said it's also can be all consuming we do have some retirees that watch the news Chann channels and you can watch the news channels now 24 hours a day so uh we do have some folks that are doing that which isn't probably the healthiest the next one is well before you do that one of the what's that I interrupted you I get a good comment um we stepped away we have stepped away from watching the news in a in a big way so we'll watch the evening news for I don't know 35 minutes we watch some things on um well Evan your daughter told us to watch NPR well listen that's a podcast it's a podcast so we we we get some news that way but um staying informed about local events or Community changes we kind of stepped away from that we jumped back in you found out about this great concert taking place and then you signed up for it and it was full yeah I mean literally the day I saw it which means it probably was out there before yeah so I think the whole idea of current events is really important things happening in your community so I didn't mean to interrupt you but I didn't want to forget that okay I think the next thing that we heard a lot about from everybody was planning regular family events or Gatherings you know now you have the time to organize events and birthdays and anniversaries and really start to create traditional Traditions like annual family picnics or you know um different things you could do with grandchildren either in groups or select one at a time I mean that's really something fun that you can um really jump into I think yeah we have Thanksgiving um in Florida this Thanksgiving couple weeks couple weeks and we've got five of our six kids coming with their partners and um the grandkids are not going to make it but we can't wait for that and we make it special and we make it a lot of fun and they all have their favorite food here and little gifts and we take a lot of pictures so that we can have really good memories for um for the future um you know investing in self-care is really really important a lot of people don't take time to do that you what it shouldn't have been number 20 it shouldn't have been last no it shouldn't it really shouldn't because now is the time you can dedicate for relaxation and meditation and deep breathing and different things like that if you can afford to get a massage once in a while um you know do yoga on the beach you got to get your health checkups I I know I um I think we'll leave a link below we have a a free yeah Health checkup worksheet is really great so you can download that we'll put that in the comments below but you know you want to engage in activities that stimulate your mind puzzles games right you have to get adequate sleep and rest we have the aura ring so we track our sleep the first thing we talk about in the morning is well just how you do what are your numbers you guys have been patient our top five retirement tips number one you have to have a plan y you need a short long-term plan you need 5 10 15 20 years or more out you know my my plan is to be physically independent at the age of 90 you You' heard me say that before so that is what drives me to get up and exercise every single day and we start each day with a plan that's a good segue to the second big tip exercise exercise exercise exercise exercise it's the number one thing that we can do for ourselves to be healthy and if you're not exercising now keep it simple walk out the front door walk 10 minutes one way and come back and do that for 5 days and then go 15 minutes and then do 20 minutes for a week so you got to do that the third top tip is you've got to build a community of people you've whether it's your family you reach out to whether it's Friends new friends neighbors re-engaging with old work friends number three is you've got to build community and the fourth tip would be healthy habits really review your habits you know think about can you limit your alcohol can you stop any bad habits I mean you stopped cigar smoking you pretty much eliminated chocolate chip cookies pretty much eliminated what do you mean pretty much you bought them yesterday and I haven't had one yet and you're going to throw them out I'm having them and you know keeping ahead of better nutrition you know eliminating your bad foods and making sure you're eating what makes you feel good I was thinking about this this morning healthy habits or food alcohol whatever it is I drink very little now so if you can try going for two weeks let's just say two weeks no alcohol uh change your nutritions try to eat healthy try to get good sleep it's amazing how much sleep you can get when you don't have any alcohol yes try it for two weeks see how you feel just see if you feel any different because that's what's happened to me if I have a glass of wine I feel like crap the next day I've gotten so used to not having one glass yeah yeah but but anyway all right the the fifth thing is to give back you know volunteer start or get a dog Ruby really like that one volunteer or start a company you know during our career we got fulfillment out of our job but volunteering is a great way to replace that right um and if you're married in a relationship have fun have fun with each other look how much fun we're having and doing this right sorry about flexible with each other you know she's brand new we run into trouble here at times together as a couple but try to find ways to have fun yes some of this was ser ious and it can affect your quality of life and other things are just downright important but all of it is to make this next phase of Life exciting and fun so we hope you enjoyed this and if you did this next video top tips for living longer in retirement on that video we talk not only about living longer but almost as important as living healthier so watch this one next

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we've been researching and living retirement for about 5 years now and we learned a lot about what works and quite frankly what doesn't work and we you know coached a lot of people and we get a lot of comments on our YouTube channel so there's a lot of people who enter this phase really unprepared and then they just wander around and end up bored and even depressed you know without the right strategies you're missing out on the joys and opportunities that retirement can offer to you so today we're going to give you the top 20 pieces of advice from ourselves but also from so many of our clients who are having a really great time in retirement that they describe as super successful and make sure you stay till the end because we're also going to throw in our top five retirement tips can't wait to get to that yeah exactly listen if you're new here I'm jod and this is my husband Mark now we don't focus on the financial aspects of retirement but really what we do focus on is lifestyle Health relation relationships and so much more we hope you like our videos and if you do please share them with someone you care about and definitely like them as you're on your way down your retirement Journey so let's talk a little bit about our journey for the last 5 years because we don't want you all to think just because we have a YouTube channel that we have it all figured out we do in many regards but I I would say the the one thing that we're doing really well is working at it we do yeah I would say that we work at it every day almost to the point where sometimes you know how you work at something so long that sometimes you're like okay I'm going to take a pause on this every once in a while I'll have to call the pause yeah and and I don't want to give away our five tips but the one thing that you and I have going for us well there's really 10 things but I only want to focus on one now is our communication yeah you know we don't always agree nor do we always get along well we always communicate yeah you know we really do give each other respect the space to have an opinion um and you know we're human beings and living together can have its challenges absolutely but we I think the big thing for us is experimenting we don't always agree we don't always get along but we always reset and regroup and what's what else am I looking to say well sometimes I think we also just do what I said just take a pause right I mean sometimes you have to just kind of step away to go back at it with fresh eyes yeah so you know we keep we do keep track of what's working and what isn't working for us and you know what worked for us for all the years that we were married that we were working may not work for us now so we've had to adapt a few things for sure you know when we were working it was I'm not going to say it was easier but there was so much going on there really was no downtime right now we have downtime and we need to make sure we're we're doing it the right way y so you might be wondering why do you even need to think this Harden retirement well we have people say that to us all the time you know you guys make it sound like it's so much work in retirement that's when you're supposed to have no work right well what we found out is our retirement other people's retirements are successful and they're happy because they spend a little bit of time working on things right now by the way we've got a whole bunch of free downloads but we're going to put a link below to one it's a health and wellness checklist we want you to get that download and use that to kind of reset your health in retirement that's really really important so let's jump into some of the best retirement advice we've heard from RE reies thus far and again stay till the end where we'll do our top five retirement tips okay first thing stay active first thing always what staying active it is it's one of our first things we always say I can't emphasize this enough now we have a new puppy who is in the background is he eating something well just a dresser no he's eating a knob on a dresser maybe you should grab him but staying active it's her uh yeah it's a her so we'll bring her up um you get to see Ruby this but uh staying Physically Active it boosts your mood it boosts your health you know walking walking walking our dog is always helpful but we're both pretty big fans of some regular type of exercise Absolut and you need to do that yep yep and you know we read a great book called outlived by Dr Peter ATA and he talks a lot about exercising being the best medicine for longevity okay you can't lick the microphone all right second thing nutrition you've really got to understand what it is that you put into your mouth you know my mom said that when I was a kid but as we get older you know there are changing nutritional needs that we need to be aware of and you got to have a good balance of fruits vegetables lean proteins and whole grains absolutely and you know you have to also stay hydrated you know you have to limit your intake of sugary or processed foods and definitely make sure that you're Consulting a nutritionist I think or a dietitian even of sorts and make it fun in the kitchen you know explore some new recipes or Cuisines to keep your meals exciting and nutritious yeah you do good with that because you're really our cook I'm really appetizers Ambiance and clean up well we've moved from Strictly meat and potatoes and gravies I I call it comfort food to more of a Mediterranean diet so we don't do much beef we do a lot of chicken we do a lot of fish having fish tonight right um a lot of vegetables and we feel better because of that the exercise and nutrition really makes us feel great absolutely so the next thing is really to just you know our retirees tell us all the time you know continuous and constant learning keeps our brains active and really keeps us sharp and keeps us young yeah and you know retirement offers you the freedom to explore new hobbies or skills or go to the library when was the last time you're in a library you know it's amazing to walk I love walking through bookstores but walk through a library is even more fun because it just massive and there's so many different sections you can get lost in there forever right and you know I think that uh local community centers like uh got down here in Florida they've got all of these nature preserves they just kind of fun to go walks Serenity walks and different things another thing that's really important and the fourth tip today is socializing you really got to make sure you're getting out and making new connections there are a lot of people in the same boat that you're in right that want to meet new people down here in Florida we're just really getting so much better at putting ourselves out there Y where you can volunteer join a club um I and it's not that hard you know I think we make socialization as we age a lot harder than it really needs to be it's like almost like we build up these walls around how am I going to get invited or who am I going to know or what am I going to say and you know really it's just a matter of putting yourself out there and being you I mean you you are very interesting and what we always tell our kids is it's important to be both interesting when you're socializing and interested so you know have your battery of questions kind of lined up that you're going to you know say to people when you're in Social settings a lot a lot of it is easier than you think so that's all about meeting new people and networking so to speak uh the other thing the fifth tip is nurturing your current relationships we get that a lot from our retirees what's that that need to do this once they are retire I mean whether it's your children or your old colleagues at work or your relatives or high school friends or college friends these are people that at one point in your life were probably pretty close to you will reach out and find out what they're doing look for them on Facebook or whatever but don't be afraid they're probably wondering if they're retired as well gosh I I wonder where my high school friends are and when you call them I guarantee you they're going to be like oh my gosh I can't believe it just called and you have the most wonderful conversation so I also think that in the nurturing relationship bucket Mark I I also think it's a time where you can really sit back and address any unresolved conflicts that you might have whether that's with family or old friends or you know old neighbors or colleagues you know it's a good time to be able to address all of that for sure okay um staying financially Savvy lot of the lot of our clients and ourselves and people leave comments that you know how much money can I spend spend should I downsize or rent when should I take Social Security or my pension you know we have a great tool that we um came in contact with through new retirement and it's actually a um a portal where you can connect all your bank accounts and it actually pulls everything and it shows how much you're spending it shows you what might happen if you downst it's a really cool too it's it's like a scenario plan yeah so we'll put that down below but these are all questions that people have you need to get the answers so either a financial planner or um your accountant or using this tool but you know having a regular budget can be helpful because you kind of know how much you can spend right um I think the other thing that we see a lot of because we get it all the time too is being really careful about scams oh I know you know this thing where people call up and say that uh it's it's an email and or they'll say is this Mark Rollins and you say yes and then they have your yes there so there's a lot of those things that are happening good financial adviser and really understanding your finances is really important okay the next thing I would say and and I didn't do this as much during my career but I've really taken this on um and with some advice from our retirees is prioritizing your mental health your mental health and wellness is so important it's critical and almost as crucial as your physical health right uhoh Ruby's getting adventurous Ruby's getting out of hand um you know meditation I talk about meditation a lot lot I talk about journeying a lot and you know five five or six years ago I started meditating and if you asked me the day before I was meditating would I ever do it I would I would have said no yeah but it really is a lifesaver now it really helps me every morning to kind of get myself set for the day journaling gets my ideas and my feelings out on a piece of paper it really has helped me tremendously be more calm and in the moment for whatever comes our way absolutely and you know what I I remember you and I remember you the day before you started and and you really that's a true statement you never would have done it if if you didn't you know kind of feel like you had to do it at that point okay the next thing I would say is um you know our retirees these days are really embracing technology you know it offers a great tool to stay connected and informed and even entertained and then there's you know the platforms like Zoom or Skype that allow you to do virtual meetups with family family members we just yesterday gave our grandson Luca his fifth birthday present oh yeah via Zoom they're in California they're in California and we're here in Florida and we had the present all set it was all ready you know we had it all kind of concealed his eyes were covered and um that was really the only way we were able to celebrate so I think it was good that we were able to do that and they're able to do it you know back with us I mean I think Luka could zoom or Skype us probably without his parents well on the way to school a lot in the morning uh Jonathan will give Luca his phone and luuka and I will have a conversation on the way to school which is fun so there's um there's a lot you can do with technology and I I find that when people are struggling with technology they're struggling with life so really investing some time and learning how to use your phone right learning how to use your computer it really is important I think the next you know the next thing our retirees tell us is you know you know travel and explore you know traveling provides such EXP exposure to new cultures you know I know we've got a safari coming up at the end of next year we're both a little nervous about um but new cultures new foods new experiences and even some local trips some stations but going to the next town over I know I had a hard time saying that the other day but the next town over can be really fun and it keeps you busy so you can plan a trip you can research trips we we've we've now seen recently there's a lot of travel agents that specialize in trips for solo not solos solo retirees or solo people individual people so you go on a vacation with 10 people who are all there on their own right and you know the travel agent does a pretty good job we hear of making sure that you're all the same um you know you're you're going to the same place for the same reason and that you'll pretty much get along so that's great so more advice from our um retirees that we've been kind of investigating and calculating this is always a favorite re-evaluate your living situation and you know what I mean by that is you know consider your proximity to you know family to friends to Health Care Facilities to your doctors to your favorite recreational areas you know re-evaluate if where you are here today is where you really want to be or need to be as you move through your retirement yeah I think that's really important because there are so many options for you today to live and again it's not just about downsizing which I think we're going to talk about in a minute but it's really where do you live and how are you living we we always talk about wanting to end up as we get older being there one of our kids and we have six it's just hard but they haven't really we're not necessarily on the same page on this one what do you mean well I mean I think it would be great but I like who do you pick how do you pick what do you do I I'm not going to say it on here but I know who I'm going to pick okay I want to be taken care of okay I know who she is oops did I say that okay so the the next thing is downsizing or rightsizing your home so this has Financial connotations but it also has a tremendous amount of um psychological stumbling blocks that you need to get over in order to even think about downsizing and the first place to start instead of just saying I don't want to talk about it with your partner you have to talk about it I think that's really the first thing we have a lot of people who are frustrated with this topic because they're spouse or partner don't want to talk about it well well the retirees that we spoke to for this video said you know this is a scary and dangerous topic right downsizing you know decluttering is a little bit easier than downsizing downsizing means you're thinking of making a big move right and if you're both not on the same page it becomes divisive so you know the retirees uh that we talked to said this is good advice to start to bring up early in your retirement really planning the seeds you know where do you stand on on this you know is simplifying something that's going to lead to less stress or are you the house that everyone comes to and and we've done and that's fine too we've done uh several videos on this topic of downsizing there's another one that says if downsizing isn't right for you some things that you can do really the process here is to simplify your life you're now in a phase of your life where you've got more free time you can travel so will Trading houses up or down make your life simple right so right and it's you know it's a therapeutic process and speaking of a therapeutic process the next thing that everyone says helps them so much is beginning the process of decluttering right and that oh my gosh we we try to declutter all the time it gives you mental Clarity it makes your home safer and there's so many emotional but what's so funny I'm laughing because if we try to declutter all the time where's the Clutter coming from I don't well yeah the first thing is to stop buying stuff right yeah exactly because you know take the Amazon app off of your phone because you know when you declutter you know and then you declutter again and again you got to start saying to yourself where is it all coming from well I I mean you can start with a closet you can start with a dresser and you know there's a lot of gems inside your closet and your dresser that other people can use if you're not using I mean if you're not if you haven't worn a c outfit for 2 years get rid of it yeah you're never going to wear it again the other thing is when you when you take a look at an item in your closet if you wouldn't buy that new today get rid of it right you know so you know you don't need your suits anymore your work clothes if you've retired so decluttering can really be fun we did we've done a lot of videos on that too you know this next um item a lot of our retirees really felt uh strongly about and and that is to document your legacy you know sharing your life stories is such a gift to all the future Generations in your world you know writing or recording or even creating digital albums you know can be great methods of documenting your legacy and this is the one thread I think that I heard that just everyone spoke about with passion there's a good friend of mine um who is a a grandmother she's got three children and five grand grandchilden and she writes a letter I think she writes two letters a year to each grandchild every year she's been doing that since the kids were born and she's telling them stories she's sharing with them a little bit about her um her preferences or political background uh you know how she feels about certain current events that are going on right now it's really going to be an amazing gift to give to these kids to be able to have a letter from their grandma mother from 20 years ago about some current event that was happening and how it's making her feel so it really is a neat project that she's done yep well you just saw Ruby or maybe you did but adopting a pet you know it gives this is controversial with retirees actually okay you know because and I didn't mean to interrupt you I know I'm going to get hit with comments on stop interrupting it's typically me that interrupts you that's what the comments say but um you know adopting a pet or rescuing a pet or somehow putting that type of love and companionship into your life gives you so much the flip side and I guess where I'd say it becomes controversial is you have to be you know ready for it you have to have you know the financial wherewithal to handle it you have to have the bandwidth to handle the training the potty training the dog walking you have to have good physical activity and if you don't it's going to help you get there but you have to be ready for it and this one just kind of was like uh probably 7 25 a was interesting for us though we've had two dogs together before we had sugar um and we had little Max and we just got the dogs and we just brought them up the way we wanted to well because we were working we were still so now we have Ruby for three days and I said to jod why don't we do this differently why don't we find some YouTube channels and learn how to really train a dog well it's actually been really exciting for us because we're learning some things we never knew right and I think it's been really helpful for us and for little Ruby and for rucious yeah so having a Pet's great it well it's works for us and again it was kind of a controversial well there is a lot of love that comes back yep and there's just a lot of anxiety that comes with the love so all right the 15th tip you could join a club or start a club right so coffee uh with uh so for a man get one buddy have coffee once once a week bringing have him bring a guest and you bring a guest get up to like 10 people and have weekly coffee tell stories I I do that all the time and I love it so it's it's a really fun way to well let me say this it's important Jody and I have a business we're married we have kids we do a lot together but we do a fair amount apart too so I think that for everyone in retirement if you're solo you're solo but if you're a couple you got to have your own stuff yeah you got to have your own club you got to have your own group yep um you know the next thing is to seek out mentorship opportunities you know um again our retirees had a wealth of professional and life experiences and there's so much that they could share with younger Generations that they would engage in really meaningful guided conversations that helped build multigenerational connections for them and again they got pretty charged up about seek seeking out these opportunities you know Mark and I did that at the University of Hartford in one of the business classes where we kind of did a guest professorship for a day and then we actually took applications for um for students to mentor and it was a really fun year for us well the thing there's a couple things that happen first of all you're helping someone else but you feel fulfilled you know you feel like you have a sense of purpose uh by guiding others and the other thing is I'm going to go guide is get getting mentored by someone who's younger than you I mean I have two mentors we kind of Mentor each other one is my son and one is another young professional that I know but but I actually can learn a lot from them they have a different outlook on business they have a different outlook on life and it really has been helpful to me for sure so that that's been fun yeah it has sorry I had to step away um this was I thought an interesting one and this came from a a a pocket of our um friends and retirees that wanted to engage in artistic Pursuits um I would put myself in this area I haven't done it yet but exploring different art forums and painting and pottery you know our neighbor across the street Jen she does that every year whenever she gets down to Florida she joins last last year was Pottery this year it's painting drawing it's drawing drawing she joins um art classes and workshops and goes to the local community center and she loves it and that's something I think I would like to do cuz I don't do much for my artistic side but it gives you also um uh Arts a form of expression and emotional release and if you're into that at all it really is kind of fun to do that I mean this in a way what we're doing is Artistic Pursuits I mean we're shooting video and we're you know um you know building a little business but it it's uh it's fun I would I wouldn't say it's a hobby but we've had to learn so much so it's been kind of cool y on the other thing and we just did a Facebook live on this yesterday is um staying updated with current events you know we we did a a Facebook live yesterday in our in our community uh do you consume the news or is the news consuming you right so really finding a way to get good solid news we think is important I mean trying to find reputable news sources or magazines is really helpful versus getting caught up in what everyone calls the fake news if you will but you know uh get involved with Community discussions or forums talk to friends don't be so judgmental when someone has a certain opinion on a news article but really finding a balance there because it is important to stay up to date it is I believe it really is important to stay up to date but like you said it's also can be all consuming we do have some retirees that watch the news Chann channels and you can watch the news channels now 24 hours a day so uh we do have some folks that are doing that which isn't probably the healthiest the next one is well before you do that one of the what's that I interrupted you I get a good comment um we stepped away we have stepped away from watching the news in a in a big way so we'll watch the evening news for I don't know 35 minutes we watch some things on um well Evan your daughter told us to watch NPR well listen that's a podcast it's a podcast so we we we get some news that way but um staying informed about local events or Community changes we kind of stepped away from that we jumped back in you found out about this great concert taking place and then you signed up for it and it was full yeah I mean literally the day I saw it which means it probably was out there before yeah so I think the whole idea of current events is really important things happening in your community so I didn't mean to interrupt you but I didn't want to forget that okay I think the next thing that we heard a lot about from everybody was planning regular family events or Gatherings you know now you have the time to organize events and birthdays and anniversaries and really start to create traditional Traditions like annual family picnics or you know um different things you could do with grandchildren either in groups or select one at a time I mean that's really something fun that you can um really jump into I think yeah we have Thanksgiving um in Florida this Thanksgiving couple weeks couple weeks and we've got five of our six kids coming with their partners and um the grandkids are not going to make it but we can't wait for that and we make it special and we make it a lot of fun and they all have their favorite food here and little gifts and we take a lot of pictures so that we can have really good memories for um for the future um you know investing in self-care is really really important a lot of people don't take time to do that you what it shouldn't have been number 20 it shouldn't have been last no it shouldn't it really shouldn't because now is the time you can dedicate for relaxation and meditation and deep breathing and different things like that if you can afford to get a massage once in a while um you know do yoga on the beach you got to get your health checkups I I know I um I think we'll leave a link below we have a a free yeah Health checkup worksheet is really great so you can download that we'll put that in the comments below but you know you want to engage in activities that stimulate your mind puzzles games right you have to get adequate sleep and rest we have the aura ring so we track our sleep the first thing we talk about in the morning is well just how you do what are your numbers you guys have been patient our top five retirement tips number one you have to have a plan y you need a short long-term plan you need 5 10 15 20 years or more out you know my my plan is to be physically independent at the age of 90 you You' heard me say that before so that is what drives me to get up and exercise every single day and we start each day with a plan that's a good segue to the second big tip exercise exercise exercise exercise exercise it's the number one thing that we can do for ourselves to be healthy and if you're not exercising now keep it simple walk out the front door walk 10 minutes one way and come back and do that for 5 days and then go 15 minutes and then do 20 minutes for a week so you got to do that the third top tip is you've got to build a community of people you've whether it's your family you reach out to whether it's Friends new friends neighbors re-engaging with old work friends number three is you've got to build community and the fourth tip would be healthy habits really review your habits you know think about can you limit your alcohol can you stop any bad habits I mean you stopped cigar smoking you pretty much eliminated chocolate chip cookies pretty much eliminated what do you mean pretty much you bought them yesterday and I haven't had one yet and you're going to throw them out I'm having them and you know keeping ahead of better nutrition you know eliminating your bad foods and making sure you're eating what makes you feel good I was thinking about this this morning healthy habits or food alcohol whatever it is I drink very little now so if you can try going for two weeks let's just say two weeks no alcohol uh change your nutritions try to eat healthy try to get good sleep it's amazing how much sleep you can get when you don't have any alcohol yes try it for two weeks see how you feel just see if you feel any different because that's what's happened to me if I have a glass of wine I feel like crap the next day I've gotten so used to not having one glass yeah yeah but but anyway all right the the fifth thing is to give back you know volunteer start or get a dog Ruby really like that one volunteer or start a company you know during our career we got fulfillment out of our job but volunteering is a great way to replace that right um and if you're married in a relationship have fun have fun with each other look how much fun we're having and doing this right sorry about flexible with each other you know she's brand new we run into trouble here at times together as a couple but try to find ways to have fun yes some of this was ser ious and it can affect your quality of life and other things are just downright important but all of it is to make this next phase of Life exciting and fun so we hope you enjoyed this and if you did this next video top tips for living longer in retirement on that video we talk not only about living longer but almost as important as living healthier so watch this one next

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Preparing Emotionally for Retirement…Don’t let it take you by surprise!

preparing for retirement is a major life transition and tackling the emotional side of this can trigger a wide range of feelings from excitement and anticipation to anxiety and uncertainty and these wide ranges of emotions are impacted by how retirement lands with you for example was it your idea to retire or were you forced out are you retiring early or later in life is your spouse or partner retired already or still at home and you're entering their domain all of these issues really impact how you show up in retirement but really regardless of how you got here you're here and the question is are you emotionally prepared for this transition so as Jody said it's a major life transition this whole idea of retirement and it Alters your sense of self it Alters your purpose and it really changes your daily activities you were used to going to work every day and now things are different so why are so many people entering this phase of Life emotionally unprepared because well we're going to show you what you need to do to get prepared but we have a client um let's call him Billy Billy's a good name right a good alias he was an entrepreneur for 25 years during high school he went to work for a restaurant and after about five or seven years he bought it from the owner and he ran that thing for a very long time and he had a great identity and a great business but about 20 years ago he sold it right and then he and what was interesting is he sold it about 20 years ago so maybe sold it at around 50.

Yeah and entered politics and worked in the state legislator created a whole new identity for himself a whole new community a whole new set of Knowledge and Skills that really propelled him for another 20 years yeah it was great but then he retired three years ago he has his full pension he's financially secure but he got he started to get in a little bit of trouble first of all his only hobby was golf and he lives in the Northeast where golf is not 12 months a year maybe but then he lost his wife which was really sad and all of a sudden now all of his dreams of retirement have changed so he's a solo retiree and he's not really taken the best care of himself physically and he's really having a tough time building new community outside of his golf right and that's when he came to us and we found a real pivotable turning point for him where he could go through some great self-discovery and transition yet again in his life and he went through our seven day challenge I think we'll put the link below so that you can have that and if you haven't taken the seven day retirement challenge even if you're 30 years old you should take it because there's really good stuff in there it's easy and it's free so we got him to go through the seven day challenge and start talking to us about it then he took our full your retirement game plan course and he started getting his life back on track which was really encouraging and there was some work on his part to do it but now he has a whole new outlook on his health both his physical and mental he's building tremendous great new quality communities of people and he's actually volunteering for several organizations that gives him a lot of fulfillment community and and more but he was totally unprepared for this change and maybe you are too so let's get in how to better prepare men before we do anything let's just address money because it's always the first thing on everyone's mind we don't do anything with money but I know it can't spend it you spend it my day too much sometimes I know it can create unwanted Stress and Anxiety and you know the fact is that many people underestimate their expenses and the stress that money has on their emotions as they're entering retirement yeah and the other thing that people might do and you really can't tell because the stock market is just crazy but some people or many people overestimate their investment income returns so that can put you in some emotional state too so really being better prepared financially is critical and that's not what we do here but but check that box you know so that you can live this phase with a little less stress work with your accountant or your financial planner to get a budget in place and you also you want to be able to work with them so that you can make some smart financial decisions like a good withdrawal strategy integrating with Social Security 401K maybe downsizing is something you should consider doing maybe you need to do it to cut your costs a little bit that's another whole level of stress and there's we have um search our YouTube channel for downsizing it's actually our most popular video if you're thinking about it but this is going to give you a clear Financial picture and this is so critical to a successful retirement like Jody said that just take away a lot of the stress so check the box on your financial picture and move that aside right so let's talk about some other big impact to your emotional preparedness in retirement the number one thing that we come up with the number one thing that we research the number one thing that our clients talk to us about is this idea of loss of identity and people really struggle with this you know coupled with the loss of purpose this is a big impact on your emotional preparedness well it is if your identity has always been tied into your title which a lot of people do in their office and your expense account your status in the community your status in the company if you were the CEO or if you're a doctor or a fireman or a lawyer or an accountant that's your identity and when you step away from your job that goes away and you know this happened to us and more than likely it will happen to you too it leads down a long journey of rediscovery in retirement and we'll leave a link below for the video on this topic which I think it would be really helpful now money and lost identity can have major impacts on you emotionally as you enter retirement but you also need to think about losing your community and ending up feeling socially isolated social isolation leaves many people unprepared for retirement and it's a huge health risk that again if you search our YouTube channel for social isolation and there's some great videos we put together on that you know when you walk away from your career there's a good chance that many of your key relationships won't follow you you know there are younger people they're still working they're still engaged they still have the purpose and the identity and you know they may have been situational relationships based on your employee employment you know they were your work family maybe not necessarily your close personal friends however you may bring some along with you you may you may but this loss of community catches so many people unprepared and surprised and you're gonna need to put real effort into creating a new community it does not happen on its own so let's share some tips on how to be better prepared emotionally as you transition into retirement and if you're in retirement a year two or three or five these things are going to work for you as well so the first thing you want to do is visualize your retirement and when we say that you know what does it look like what does it feel like what is your um what else what is your daily daily routine you know what habits or activities do you want to do do you want to put in your schedule and you know the big question is who is in your life yeah and who's important and positive in your life how about this where are you going to live right you know what are your dreams for what we call the five pillars of retirement what are your dreams for your physical wellness your mental Wellness your relationships your spouse partner relationship is ours good today so far so good so good and then wisdom sharing that the thing is dream a little bit and have a vision for this so that you can put some activities in place to get you to that vision and really getting to this vision is just yourself those basic questions that we just went through the next thing you'll want to do is to make a plan you know keep it simple at first include your financial goals and your lifestyle goals and definitely your health and wellness goals yeah the Five Pillars the vision the idea is to get to the vision you want to put a plan in place so that you get some things done and your plan is not one and done think about it retirement can last 30 years or more you don't spend 10 minutes putting a plan together right for a 30-year time in your life don't skip this part or you really could find yourself wandering a bit like a ruddlest ship lost at sea how's that that was very interesting yeah ship lost at sea you don't want to be that so after you visualize and make a plan it's critically important to stay connected right stay connected to your your family to your friends and to those past work colleagues that will come with you you know um we talked about the colleagues that stay behind and lose interest in your relationship it's really behooven upon us to go back to those work friends and reconnect and we've done that and also we've put effort into finding new friends and new relationships you need to dedicate time to this you do and you have to be intentional about it you know I just saw a really interesting quote a couple weeks ago in the paper by Jane Fonda about being intentional about your friendships it was very interesting you know being emotionally prepared for retirement includes this big one as well you have to address your fears what fears are you having and how are you going to tackle them one at a time head on you might even want to talk to a therapist you know and you also need a good we talk about this all the time because we don't do financial planning you need a good financial planner or wealth manager and you want to develop clear strategies to address all of these fears the big the first thing is to figure out what the fears are and then deal with them one at a time right and the final thing you can do is to practice self-care taking good care of your physical and emotional health exercising regularly eating healthy finding stress reducing activities to take care of you is important to be emotionally prepared you know we all spend a good portion of Our Lives thinking about retirement probably from when we leave college or high school and enter our career all we do is we save money we yearn for the freedom we get excited about what could be in store for us but many people don't prepare as much as they should for this transition to make it smooth fun exciting and fulfilling spend the time getting yourself prepared now if you like this video and we hope that you did this next one what's your identity once you retire we're going to walk you through the three phases of identity when you retire letting go of the old identity the neutral zone and finally putting some effort into discovering what your new identity is going to be and then we're going to give you three steps you can Implement right away so watch this next video

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Single Retirement (7 Tips to Ward off Loneliness)

there's 10 000 people turn in 65 every day and one half of this population is reaching this age on their own so you're not alone in this phase you need to know that you aren't alone but retiring solo does increase your risk of actually being lonely which can have detrimental impact on your health today we're going to talk about retiring alone or the new buzzword of solo retirement so if you're watching this and you say well that doesn't apply to me and you're a woman stay tuned the reason i say that is unfortunately seven out of ten or seventy percent of baby boomer aged women actually outlive their husbands what are you gonna do with that why are you laughing what are you gonna do without me i don't know what i'll do with that party anyway there's 10 000 people turning 65 every day and one half of this population is reaching this age on their own so you're not alone in this phase you need to know that you aren't alone but retiring solo does increase your risk of actually being lonely which can have detrimental impact on your health so this idea of emotional loneliness you know that people over 65 who suffer from that they have an 18 increase in their mortality rates which is scary so today we'll give you seven strategies to help ward off loneliness and overcome isolation to live a more fulfilling life as a solo retiree so here's the first strategy and this is really important overcoming your financial insecurities now if you are a single woman now or a single person and you're retiring and you don't really have a handle on your finances that's a problem and you're going to be stuck and stifled and not be able to move forward so you need to hire a financial planner and understand your finances and frankly if you're a couple watching this and one of the two of you really gets finances well and the other one doesn't that's not a good place to be no if you're listening to this both of you should pay attention and share the financial information as well as the financial burdens now because ultimately if you listen to that first statistic if you're a woman 70 of us will end up as a solo retiree outliving our partner that's just the medical history that's just the facts you know there are friends down the street who purchased the house from this elderly couple and unfortunately her husband passed away and she decided she wanted to downsize she went to sell the house they got all the way down the road to the closing right and realized he had never changed the title of the house so it took another three months to close and it's just because she had no idea they weren't really sharing the information so it is really important yep so get your finances in order we're not financial planners but definitely find one that was strategy number one strategy number two create a small support group of peers like mark said you're not alone there are many other people in the same place and you want to be able to share your struggles and successes with them yeah because it's it's tough to be alone and it's tough to really be alone but if you can be alone with another person who's alone then you're not alone anymore right that makes sense right kind of yeah good theory i mean you could do weekly coffee you know pick up a class or do some exercise or even just take a long walk it's important to make sure that you connect and have a group of peers yeah relationships are key and having a support group really helps so strategy three is along the lines of that but we're really suggesting that every day you talk to someone on the phone and person whatever it might be make sure you have a conversation with another human being every single day and it might make sense to make a list of people that you can call absolutely makes sense you know friends and family and neighbors you know and never feel like you're imposing and like mark said don't let a day go by that you're not involved in a conversation now it's always better in person because it feels better but if you can't be in person bad weather you know covet kept us all locked up a little bit at least call but be there and frankly what's helpful is not only for you to reach out to get some communication help but be the one supporting other people that's a great way to start having some conversations in a peer group that you're leading it so connect with someone every day strategy number four have a daily plan and a schedule something that adds structure to your life so that you're not always wondering what am i going to do today what's the morning going to be like how am i going to make it through the afternoon really set the tone from the day in the morning now good habits and routines are important and i know a lot of people that like to get up they've worked their whole life and they're retired now and they want to get up and just have a cup of coffee and watch tv watch a little more tv have some more coffee but before you know it it's 11 o'clock and you haven't talked to anybody and you really haven't done much so setting some schedule and some time some self-care time with friends and frankly limit tv i mean i you know watching tv every morning from 7 a.m till noon it's not healthy no but you could even schedule some time to learn to pick up a class to go to the library to read to children to find things in your community that you could do to be helpful and that makes you not alone and isolated so here's the fifth strategy and you've heard this from us so many times and it just makes so much sense this one does come up in a lot of our videos because it helps in so many areas of your life the fifth strategy is exercise every single day move your body move it get up and move it do you know that if you walk 20 minutes a day every day for 20 minutes you can add five years to your life so what about walking with a friend and 20 minutes that's easy walk for 30 minutes with someone and have a chat and catch up so you're now you're exercising and you're communicating with someone you know as we all age movement does become harder but you need to be as active as you can and just know that you can do 20 minutes a day so we hope you do that take it seriously so now let's talk about strategy number six volunteering you know there's so many benefits with volunteering and it's become such a huge part of our retirement transformation program and you know we do bring it up a lot volunteering sharing your wisdom creating your community you know providing yourself with fulfillment sharing and searching your passions we bring that up a lot but it does help with this loneliness and the potential for isolation you know you instantly can find a community of people when you start to volunteer and it could be as basic as working at the local food bank or the library or something but you're going to find dozens of other people in the same position you are in looking for communities so it's really important to give this a shot absolutely strategy number seven would be to try new things learn technology mark and i did a talk one day and there was a bunch of people in the room and one lady raised her hand talking because we were bringing up this strategy about learning technology her name was ava she raised her hand and she talked about the world that technology opened to her allowing her to connect with her family over in italy and how they structured it how she learned face time how she learned zoom how she learned to be able to work all of the technology in her house to really ward off that loneliness and you know how she did it remember her story she got one of her grandchildren to sit with her and work on the iphone with her to learn how to do face time she couldn't believe in her mind that it could happen and then in the end how easy it was for her right so but it really made her feel connected and less lonely and i think utilizing technology in that way is really smart and learn from a younger person it's nice in a community to have people your own age and people younger so and while you're learning technology look for online courses that are out there look for some online learning that can engage you i did that when i went to the university of pennsylvania and i took an entire online online course and i got to zoom in with other kids college kids college kids and i was the old lady but that was great and i made a lot of great contacts doing that no a big thing to remember is you're not alone you can ward off this loneliness but you need to be proactive work on the seven strategies we just mentioned above and listen if you enjoy this please share with your friends and also please subscribe by clicking the subscribe button below don't forget to join our free facebook community the link is down below and it's very interactive where jody and i go live each week you get to ask questions and we can communicate with each other and thanks for listening and we look forward to seeing you again

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CalPERS Quick Tip | Choosing a Retirement Date

Members often ask, “When’s the best time
to retire?” While there’s no one-size-fits-all answer
to that question, there are a few things you should consider when choosing a retirement
date. Choosing a retirement date is an important
decision, and can depend upon a variety of factors. One approach is to determine how much money
you’ll need in retirement, and work backward from there – taking into account the three
factors that impact your pension: your service credit, benefit factor, and final compensation. Now, Service Credit is your total time spent
on the job with CalPERS-covered employers.

Of course, the longer you work, the more service
credit you’ll earn. But because of the way it’s calculated,
10 months of full-time employment during a fiscal year amounts to one full year of service
credit earned. So, if you work full-time, starting in July,
you’ll earn one year of service credit by the following April, and won’t earn any
more in May or June. Something to consider if you’re aiming at
a bump in service credit prior to retirement. Depending on your employer, you may have the
option to convert your unused sick leave to service credit when you retire. (In fact, 2,000 hours of sick leave equals
one year of service credit). Vacation and other leave types, however, can’t
be converted; so, you might decide to use those hours while you’re still employed,
earning more service credit as you delay retirement. We recommend contacting your employer’s
personnel office for specifics on how your unused leave time is handled.

Now let’s consider your benefit factor,
which is the percentage of pay you’re entitled to for each year of service credit you’ve
earned. It’s based on the retirement formula contracted
by your employer, and your age at retirement. Once you’re eligible to retire, your benefit
factor increases with each quarter year of age – that is, four times per year based
on your birthday. For example, if you were born on February
first, then your benefit factor would increase on that day, then again on May first, again
on August first, and then again on November first. So, retiring on or after your next birthday
quarter could mean a greater benefit factor, resulting in a higher pension amount in retirement. The third factor impacting your pension is
final compensation, which is an average of your highest monthly pay rate. Your final compensation period may cover your
last 12 or 36-months of employment, depending on your start date and your employer’s contract
provisions. To maximize your final compensation amount,
consider planning your retirement date around a promotion or any other event resulting in
a pay raise.

Check out the retirement estimate calculator
in “My CalPERS” to explore how changes to your service credit, benefit factor, and
final compensation amounts might affect your pension. Which should help in choosing a retirement
date that works best for you. To learn more about planning for retirement,
visit calpers.ca.gov/education..

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Retirement Financial Advice: Money Lessons You Need to Know in Retirement

once your earning years are over and you've built Your Nest Egg for retirement you need to be smart about so many decisions now we're not financial planners and we make that very clear with everyone but we are retired and we do spend time making sure we're doing the right thing financially with our own money because oh bad financial habits and lack of knowledge can actually ruin your we have we have a couple they're good friends and he felt like he knew what to do with the marketplace with his Investments and he clearly didn't because he had his money in stocks when it when they went down and he pulled it out and put it into cash when it went up so for eight years he was on the wrong side of every single one of the stock market moves and because of that he lost a significant amount of his retirement assets and that's really difficult and today we find that they're struggling many of their dreams have vanished and they both actually had to go back to work now there's nothing wrong with work but it's just not what they had planned so we can't emphasize enough right out of the shoot having a financial planner is so important because it gives you a plan it gives you a vision it gives you an idea but it also does this which I think is most important it takes the emotion out of the marketplace which can get the best of you think you know what's going to happen at a new presidential election and frankly you don't that's right so let the experts help you with that because we don't want to have what happened to them happen to you today we want to share some practical ideas that may maintain or even improve your financial situation and again the number one lesson today is don't manage your money without a financial planner and we don't mean a stock broker what we mean is someone who has a fiduciary responsibility to make recommendations that are are really good for you not good for them and they talk to you about the strategies and you might say well sure they do but they also talk to you about withdrawal strategies right how much should you be withdrawing each year in order to preserve your nest day how much do you need each month and then they pull it from the smartest place it needs to come from using tools like tax loss harvesting you can't just take money out of a stock because you want to because you're going to have capital gains right right and you know we're not a big fan of multiple planners but we'll leave that part up to you so the first one is make sure you get a financial planner somebody you're comfortable with the second is keep your emergency fund intact kind of no matter what you need to have emergency savings that doesn't disappear when you retire it's more important than ever to have accessible cash set aside for any type of emergency so two three four months of expenses in a cash account that way your financial planner can invest the rest of your money and always always be thinking about you're going to need more money in 60 days so what can they put you into short term so you want to have this cash account so you can cover any kind of emergency expenses or just if you want to leave stuff in the market a little bit longer you've got some cash or even if you have any big purchases that are coming down the pipe that's true making sure your financial planner knows that you're ready for that so the second thing is the emergency fund now here's another um here's another way that you can get into trouble or you're also a way to dig yourself out of trouble you want to take a look at all your luxuries and make sure that they haven't become a burden because frankly that happened to us we both had jobs we were both working gosh 15 years ago we bought our first boat and we bought four boats over the next 15 years but we could afford it because we both were working we both had money and it was our floating vacation home so to speak I I call the last one that we had a lifestyle about because we went away on that one a lot it was a little bit larger but once we were tired all of a sudden it was like well we don't really want to go out on it the weather isn't good you know we'd rather stay home we'd rather be with for the price of diesel or the price of gas you know the price of storage the price of hauling the price you know all of those things have to be factored in when you have a fixed income yeah and we didn't have the same earning capacity to kind of keep up with the luxury so we stopped using it and then it became a burden like why aren't we using it and it was a year ago now that we decided to sell it and it's sold within a month because we kept really good care of it but the thing is if you have luxuries it's really important to take a look at them and say that's something we're really getting a lot of satisfaction of because it's going to cost you money well there are also luxuries that you have and then there's luxuries you provide for others right so we have six children and we were providing cell phones homeowners insurance auto insurance airline tickets for them and their significant others are partners and you know that was all fine when we were dual income but as they aged and as we aged and as we came into a fixed income place we needed to start peeling some away and giving those responsibilities back to them and they can afford it they all have great jobs and if they're ever stopped but it was a luxury it was to be able to do that for him but but frankly it also gave us a lot of satisfaction a lot of fulfillment to be able to help them right so it was hard for us to Pivot to in our mind take these things away from the kids but they you know at some point they've got to be to stand on their own two feet so and we needed to reduce the support so we sold the boat we paid off two car loans we came to an agreement with the kids and slowly weaning them off of some of these things we've always paid for you know because they they can't afford it and you know they they they're fine with it right they even they say it's kind of silly that you're paying my cell phone bills so it's it's another cord to cut that um you know it's hard to do but we want to encourage you to do it yeah so that was the third one the fourth one is you know really trying to figure out how to live a little below your means you know and that's new for us for our entire career as our income went up our living style and our cost of living and everything we did went up with it you know hard work learning and growing you know we were climbing the corporate ladder Mark was building his business you know it was easy to have your lifestyle kind of follow you yeah and you know we both come from humble beginnings and we improved our lifestyle as we went up but then then it's sort of when when you retire you have to think okay well my income's not going to keep going up as a matter of fact it's going to go down so how do we want to live what are some things we can do to live within our means and even underneath our means so and there were a couple things we had to agree to right so you know I call it shopping for sport right so there's there's no more you're better at that than pickleball kind of just opening up and saying oh you know look what just came into my feed I'll take a look at those earrings or that bracelet or those dresses or those sunglasses I think about it I kind of have a little bit of a sunglass addiction so so you know there was you know we agreed that we would do no more shopping for sport yeah it was one of Instagram Amazon it's so easy to spend money today and you get hooked on this new game you don't even leave your house you don't even leave your house you know keeping up with the Joneses that's not necessary anymore right you know who are the Joneses anyway today it's other retirees we're not taking on any more debt we've paid down most of our debt you know again we have a financial planner and you know we have a more modest wardrobe I mean our fancy or fanciest clothes are for our YouTube channel right and we're eating out less we made the agreement that for health and economic reasons we would eat out less so leave living below your means is something you can control and it's something that you can put some time and intention into so another really important thing to get to know is everything about social security and we we don't know that much about it so our financial planner and our accountant has said you don't need to take it yet and that's kind of all we're thinking about at this point they'll let us know when it makes sense and when it makes sense it'll make sense but you have to really understand or have someone coaching you on what's important because everyone's financial situation is different yeah and I really believe the more you know about it the better off you'll be even if you do your own investigation you know Social Security was not meant to be your primary source of income as you age in America it was meant to be a supplemental income so you have to understand the amounts you can get at what future ages and can you still work and does your state tax it or not you know there's a lot of rules around Social Security and my recommendation would be just get to know your rules in your state around your age just for the knowledge I don't know but I think there's a certain amount of uh you can't earn a certain amount of money and still get Social Security I don't really know but you have to know that's I guess that's the point you really need to know everything about social security check with your account and your financial plan right here's a big one for us and it should be for you too I think you know money will never buy you happiness and we've heard that like our whole lives and so we actually did a little bit of research and you know what really defines happiness for us and we came across this quote and part of it is from Warren Buffett but it says you know we want to do what we want when we want with whom we want for as long as we want and that to us will Define our happiness you know now some of what you do will require money but it's not all about buying stuff and things you know most of what we do for happiness now is experiences I I would think that for us and tell me if you agree but the something we just spent money on is giving us more happiness now for a very low value than anything else I remember paying forever you know what it is your pickleball racket pickleball so we joined the YMCA uh for like eighty dollars a month for the family we bought a pickleball racket for 100 bucks and six balls for eighteen dollars and we're getting like five or six hours of use out of that each week yeah that's happiness that really is making us happy it's not a new car it's not a new set of golf clubs right it's not what we're used to thinking that was um would create happiness and we're also looking at vacations differently right now that we have the full seven days to ourselves many vacations to visit friends or family you know they become Tuesday Wednesday Thursday versus the high traffic weekend Friday Saturday Sunday so many vacations Beach days lunch dates you know we just renting a boat for a day we're doing that with company comes we're renting pontoon boats now for the day to take companies out it's three hundred dollars for a day which in one respect sounds like a lot but it's a lot cheaper than owning a boat right that's true so we still get out on the water now look you clearly need money in retirement we all can agree on that but how much do you need and how much is enough you've got to figure out how much you have how much you can pull out each month and how long it's going to last those are key questions you need to work through with your planner and your account yep and paying attention to some of these things that we just shared will help guide you and keep you out of trouble now we hope you enjoyed this video and if you did you're going to like this next one called the truth about early retirement what they don't tell you it's one of our most popular videos and you know we're not getting any younger so why steal these fabulous years from ourselves our family and our friends watch this one next

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