The Changing Face of Aging & Finances – Episode 098

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors.

[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your host, bestselling author Kim D.H. Butler and No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Prosperity Podcast. This is No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel, along with bestselling financial author Kim Butler. Today, we’re going to be talking about someone else’s book, a book that independently on our own separate paths, both Kim and I have come across and have really been impressed and the name of the book is Disrupt Aging. And I think you have the author information, Kim, welcome. I do. And thank you. So yes, it’s Disrupt Aging, a bold new path to living your best life at every

[00:53] by Joanne Jenkins, who is the CEO of AARP right now. And I have to admit that when I saw the AARP thought, I immediately just dismissed the book. I just wasn’t going to read it. But somebody that I respect a lot had recommended it and it kept coming back into my head. And so I even got a sample on my Kindle and I was even beginning the book thinking I am not going to read this. And the first couple paragraphs of the book, I thought, this is totally typical. This is why I’m not going to read this. And then I got into it further and I loved it, bought the thing on the Kindle and had a ball just creating some good for our listeners. And Todd, I know you’ve done quite a bit of work around this area as well.

[01:40] So I’m excited to talk about it. Yep. You know, she she does a good job of combining stories along with just basically a way to shift the mindset. And I think in a lot of ways, the mindset has shifted on its own. I know just just thinking of what the age of old is, how, you know, somebody dying 20 years ago, even if they made it into their 60s or 70s, it was considered old. And now if someone you know, there was a funeral for someone who was 68 and everybody thought, wow, we lost them so young. And I mean, that has happened without, I think, anybody really consciously thinking about it. But now that we’re living in this world where our lifespans are longer, there has to be changes in the way that we view many things.

[02:35] And in this book goes into it and breaks it down into health, wealth and self. Yes, it does. And what I like about her thought process and like you said, the great stories of examples of this in the book is it’s shifting our mindset first and then equally importantly, it’s shifting our conversations. And so many times it’s so easy to just let words come tumbling out of our mouths and we don’t really realize the impact of them. And of course, our listeners will know that we’re very adamant about accuracy and language, especially when we talk, for example, about borrowing against your life insurance policy as opposed to borrowing from it, things like that. Well, around this book called Disrupt Aging, our series of examples

[03:26] where you can shift your mindset and consequently shift your thought, which then shifts your words, which then, of course, is going to shift your actions. And that’s what she’s trying to do with the entire AARP organization, with the Disrupt Book. And Todd, you were saying there’s some workshops and whatnot that they offer. Yeah, they do this whole concept of disrupt aging and, you know, make this part of your life as exciting and as contributing as the previous, if not more. And they do, they have a workshop that you can pay, I think it’s 20 bucks or something to go to. And you actually spend a weekend reformatting and thinking differently. I mean, just training your mind to think differently.

[04:14] And then when you’ve set some goals or things that you want to accomplish now, they have their resource guide kind of to help you find your way, whether it’s to go back to school and get a degree, whether it’s to become a mentor to somebody, you know, just ways that you can engage, you know, once you’ve made a decision to do it, there’s a lot of practical issues, which is the same thing that we deal with as prosperity economic advisors is once our clients have that mindset shift, they need to have those tools and resources to implement. And that’s where we come in on the financial side. They’re trying to do that more on, you know, like a directory, social directory type thing. Absolutely. So you picked up on her three areas, health, wealth, and self.

[05:01] And we’ll hone in today on our conversation on the wealth side, because she does have some interesting thoughts about money and how to work with it and think about it, especially when we are all well aware now that people are going to be living so much longer. If you’re a 20 or a 30 year old today, hitting 120 years old, which is where the life insurance companies have their policy illustrations, actually 121, that’s going to be normal, absolutely normal. And people are teasing, you know, age 50 is halfway. Nah, I think it’s about a third of the way. One of the things I found most interesting was the figures on social security. Okay. Actual, there was actual, you had some actual numbers in here.

[05:48] I’ll let you dig those out. Something I want to share with everybody and I’ve got page numbers for people as opposed to Kindle marks this time, I think it’s a little easier, especially if you happen to get the real book, but there are some fun products coming out from the financial services industry on page 138, she talks about a couple different Bank of America apps that are quite amazing. One thing that we’re well aware is that we need to be saving more money and we’ve talked about that for years, you’ve got to save, got to save and saving money is really the ticket, you know, if you think about our prosperity ladder, it gets you a couple rungs up the ladder, if you think about financial freedom, it gets you

[06:29] that it’s financial resilience is a word that she uses, but one of the things that Bank of America has available is an app that digitally ages your photo and supposedly that is going to help and their statistics are showing that it is help you want to save more money because you can visualize yourself getting older and so you are then I guess caused or inspired to save more money, which I thought was really interesting. And then another thing that Bank of America is coming out with that I think is fabulous, if you have parents that you’re feeling the need to keep an eye on their finances, they have the ability and I’m guessing that more banks do this now as well, the ability to have a read only version of their bank

[07:23] statement, she tells a story where a lady that was having some mental challenges was giving $50 a month to charity and then all of a sudden it became $50 a day because she’d forgotten that she’d done it and they were able to catch that and get her some help. So some good things in the financial services that are coming around, she does mention annuities, which people know we’re not a big fan of because you’re giving over control and one of the seven principles of prosperity is to keep control. So that’s something that she’s talking about being a helpful thing. Now there’s nothing wrong with using a portion of your wealth for an immediate annuity. But in her language, I think she’s talking more about the typical deferred annuities and

[08:09] we just feel that there’s a better way to generate income than using an annuity. Did you find those social security numbers you were wanting? I did. There’s currently enough money in the Social Security Trust Fund to pay out full benefits until 2034. At that point, there will be enough to pay 79% of the commitments and then it’ll drop to 73% in 2089. And your response to that is? Well, I mean, we have a guaranteed problem that is going to have to be addressed probably by a lot of our listeners who are listening on this are going to be the most impacted. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I plan on being around at least till 2034. Absolutely. And I mean, it just shifts the fact that we need to take more

[08:59] personal responsibility and less counting on that social security. I love it. They, they talk about the four pillars now versus a three legged stool model that we used to have, which one now looking at retirement, you look at social security, pensions and savings, health insurance, and earnings from work. So I mean, the idea of retirement, which we’ve done entire podcasts on about how we don’t want to be discarded is not only relevant, but necessary. Well, it is interesting back to the social security facts. I struggle with this wording about this trust fund. I mean, I’m not thinking that there’s a whole lot of truth to that. I think it’s more that the workers today are passing through the money right on into

[09:53] the beneficiaries today, and that there is no supposed trust fund. Instead, it’s just earned money that somebody else earned and now you’re living on it as a retiree. And so when they say that there’s enough money left over till 2039 or whatever, it’s because of their analysis of the amount of people working the amount of income that gets put through the system not not to it and then accumulates magically and gets paid out later. I think that’s incorrect wording. Now, I don’t have the research to support that. But do you have any knowledge of that? I would I would agree that it is it’s based upon I mean, this is potentially conservative numbers. I mean, it could unfortunately, I think what we’re going to see is is

[10:45] that our government has always turned to debt, rather than a reduction in benefits. So I think the checks will keep coming. But the problem what you’re able to buy with those checks is going to decline. So I think that’s the sad part. That’s the part that I worry about is I really think that everybody’s going to keep getting their checks. But because of liquidating the money supply, it will buy less. So in a sense, they will be honoring their commitment and not honoring it at the same time. Yeah, yeah, often the case with governmental issues, which, of course, again, since this is a book called disrupt aging from the head of AARP, we can toss it as a, you know, governmental think tank stuff. But I think she’s got

[11:30] some good suggestions in it. One of the things that is a direct quote that I really liked is people think about independence in the wrong way. Independence is not needing any support. That’s how they think about it. Rather than having the support that you need. And I love that independence is having the support that you need. I mean, think about a business owner, we want to be independent business owners, but we can do a good job with that because we have the support system that we need inside our business so that we can do what we’re good at and other people can do what they’re good at. Your time in your financial independence realm should be no different. And I love the thought process there that

[12:12] she’s working with and the extra income that can be earned. She’s got some great stories about senior citizens using Airbnb as a way to supplement their income. You know, of course, there’s TaskRabbit and a variety of mechanical Turk, other apps out there, where if you have the ability to do some things, you can get a little bit of work done and get paid a little bit for it. I think that’s really fun. Of course, we have the movie In Turn Out. I don’t know if you’ve seen that, but it’s a 70 year old man that goes to work at a 20 somethings. It’s a clothing business, but highly, highly tech and online oriented. So I think that’s kind of fun. Here’s a question for our listeners. What do you think the value of a

[13:01] sabbatical is? So she talks about gap years. So like your high school senior or your college senior might have a gap year where they take a year off and travel or volunteer or do whatever before they go on to the next quote normal phase of life. Well, people are doing that when they retire. They’re retiring and they’re working or sorry, they’re playing basically for six months. And then oftentimes, as we know, they’re going back to their same companies, but under a different realm, either as a consultant or as a part timer or whatever. And my question is, why do we have to wait six months to go back to our companies and continue to provide value? But then my second question is, what do people think of the

[13:45] value of a sabbatical? And I’ve had a couple mentors and coaches recommend to me to take a sabbatical. And that’s a tough thing for me to get my arms around. I enjoy working too much, but I love taking free time. We’re going to be on vacation. We have summer time that we take. We have spring break when the kids are home that we take Christmas time that we take. But I think a sabbatical more typically is at least six months, if not more like a year. I’d be curious if any of the listeners had comments or thoughts about that. I think it’s Intel that still requires their employees every seven years to take a like six or seven or eight week sabbatical. Do you know? I have heard of the concept. I don’t know

[14:27] what the Intel numbers are, but I just think it is so nice and to be able to, you know, we go back to this conversation of savings. You know, if you were experiencing a taste of, I don’t know, I guess retirement. I don’t like the word period. But if you’re experiencing some of the fruits of your labor on an annual, semi-annual or whatever basis, doesn’t that make it much more relevant for that money that’s sitting aside? Absolutely. And it’s so much more enjoyable saving when what we’re saving for is not some thing 30, 40, 50, 60 years down the road called retirement, but it’s just for our use later. And it’s why we use the term constantly in emergency slash opportunity fund, because everybody can get

[15:18] way more excited about saving for opportunities than saving for emergencies. There’s another quote in here and it’s actually by Buckminster Fuller that I want to share, and I love it. It says, you never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. And that’s what we’re working on with this idea of financial independence as opposed to retirement or financial resilience, in her words, as opposed to retirement. Of course, there’s lots of other fun things out there like rewire instead of retire and other terms. But it’s so important that we shift the conversation, shift our actions, and really get clear on continuing to work as long as we

[16:09] possibly can, which means that we want to make sure we find work that we love to do. And that’s a challenge without a doubt, but so important to have happen. Kim, if you would just one more time, it’s Disrupt Aging. And the author is? Joanne Jenkins, and the subtitle, A Bold New Path to Living Your Best Life at Every Age. Super. We also invite you to get a copy of Kim Butler’s book at Partners, the number four, Prosperity.com backslash ebook. Did I do that correctly? That is correct. Well, that’s the Financial Planning Has Failed book and addresses a lot of these things that we’ve been talking about today. And we’d love if you are sharing that book. We’d love it if you would share the website, partners number four,

[16:57] Prosperity.com slash ebook, and a great way to get people introduced to our kind of thinking, have them opt in and grab that book. And then of course, there’s almost an entire lesson plan of emails that come along with it, which of course you can opt out at any time with some really solid information about how we’re helping people get excited about saving, wanting to save more because they’re confident in where their dollars are being stored. And that’s a really important point. As we look to build our wealth, we need to be confident where we’re putting it. Super. Well, once again, this is No BS Money Guy Todd Strobel for the Prosperity podcast. Thanks again, Kim Butler, and we’ll see y’all soon.

[17:41] Thank you for listening to the Prosperity podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partnersforprosperity.com If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.