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Episode #479 - Widowed in Retirement: Creating a New You

Roger: "What matters now, as always, is not what we can't do, it's what we can and must do." -Eleanor Roosevelt.

INTRODUCTION

Well, hey there. 

Welcome to the Retirement Answer Man Show. My name is Roger Whitney. I'm your host. And this is the show dedicated to helping you not just survive retirement, but to have the confidence, because you're doing the work to lean in and rock retirement. I'm so glad you're here with me today for this series ongoing from two to one, navigating widowhood.

If you are married, one of you is going to go through this, or you're likely going to have to be of assistance to somebody that does go through this. This is a good topic to deal with. 

Today we're going to talk about triage. What are some basic things that you can do to start to navigate this and resources to assist you?

It's going to be a little bit of a different show. We're not going to have question and answers this week, or I think next week because we have so much going on now and these shows are getting longer, which is great. 

April is going to be focused on answering your questions on Rocking retirement, and then likely May is going to be on expat living. We're going to explore that over a month, how do you live the expat life. I've gotten a lot of emails on that, and I may reach out to get some help on that topic from people that are actually doing it. So that's the plan for today.

Before we get to Mark, a quick moment to celebrate. I didn't even realize this until the other day, but this month, March 2023 is the ninth anniversary of doing this podcast, of you and I having these conversations on how you actually rock retirement.

That's been a long time, nine years of weekly episodes, so I just want to celebrate that for a moment. It has changed my life. Hopefully it's improved your life and your journey in some way, and the reach that this podcast has had, to not just to learn about retirement, but learn from others that are doing it has been amazing.

I think we just crossed 8 million downloads as a podcast, which is a big number in my mind anyway. I'm so honored to be able to do this journey for you, so yay us. 

With that, let's move on and get to our conversation with Mark Trautman navigating widowhood.

PRACTICAL PLANNING SEGMENT: A CHAT WITH MARK TRAUTMAN

Welcome back, Mark Trautman. How are you doing, Mark? 

Mark: I'm doing great. How are you doing?

Roger: Good. This is our last conversation regarding this topic. What's been your impression so far? 

Mark: Well, I've definitely heard from friends and family and even new people that have listened to the podcast, and I think we have helped out a number of people think through this, whether it has happened to them or how to prepare for something like this.

So that's been beneficial and that's what I feel is good at this time. One of the things I like to do is try to give back, and I think that's something that we've been able to accomplish and hopefully we'll be able to help in the additional ways today. 

Roger: Although this is our last conversation for this series, I'm just going to tee up that later this year, Mark is going to rejoin me. 

By the way, this is how I do things. We've talked about it casually, but I'm just telling the world so it happens, and so we can edit this out if it doesn't.

We're going to do a month-long series. I don't know what we're going to call it yet, but it essentially is what do we want our children to know from a personal life growth perspective, but also from a financial perspective.

 I know this is a passion of yours, right? 

Mark: Yeah, absolutely.

Roger: We're going to do something in the club related to this, but I think a month-long theme, condensing all the lessons that we come up with and sharing it in a way that is consumable, but maybe not by you, but definitely by you, but maybe by your kids.

And who do kids usually least listen to? 

Mark: Their parents. 

Roger: Their parents. So perhaps if we can have a month-long theme, we can share it in a way where they'll hear it without the normal dynamics of parents and kids, right? You're up for that, aren't you?

Mark: Sure. Happy to do that.

Roger: I knew you would.

Mark: You put me on the spot so of course I have to say yes, right? 

Roger: Yes. Yeah. Did the same thing to my wife in front of a crowd. Will you marry me? She couldn't say no, I didn't do that. That'll be fun. That'll be impactful. For this journey though. We're going to have Chris from Wings for Widows later to talk about triage. We're going to do that right after this conversation.

So, from the non-financial perspective, Mark, is there anything that you have learned that has helped you either initially or in the couple years since she passed? 

Mark: Well, one of the first things that someone told me was, don't make any large decisions right away. I wasn't planning on doing anything like that, but I think that's really good advice.

Just kind of take your time, understand where you are, think about where you're going, but don't make any rash decisions. 

The other thing I think that this has brought upon me, especially since my wife passed away at a young age, is that our time is finite. So, I think now about all the things that I could do with my daughter. We have done a number of things and we are planning to do some big trips together and some really fun experiences.

I'm doing the same with a number of friends all around the world as a matter of fact. Like I said previously, it's a tough situation, but some good can come out of it and sometimes it's best to look at that side of it. 

So, one of the things I think we talk about are go-go years, no-go years and really think about taking advantage of the time we have left to really enjoy life.

So that's one of my big takeaways from this as well. 

Roger: Do you think that will fade as the time goes on?

Mark: I hope not because I've added to my fun bucket. So hopefully there will be no fading of the fun bucket, which will be no fading of the fun. So, I don't think so. I think some of the experiences might change, but I think one of the things I have kind of on my vision board is to have one major memorable event per month, and that's a stretch goal, but so far so good. 

I've been able to do that, and it doesn't have to be anything extravagant. There are definitely some extravagant things on the list right now, but it can be as simple as inviting friends. 

I live in a resort area, so inviting friends to come and visit and have a great time and not think twice about doing things that may cost a little bit of money but will be one of those experiences that we'll all remember.

So hopefully they don't fade away and I keep to my one great thing a month. 

Roger: I like that. I like that. I was asked this question by someone that we're going to hear from next week on the show, and so I wanted to ask you. When your wife passed and you have family and loved ones, acquaintances interacting with you, were there things they could have navigated better in terms of what they said?

Mark: I would say that most people, because I was open about having the conversations, didn't really fear saying the wrong thing or kind of stumbling upon themselves. If they did, I just gave them the benefit of, this is a difficult topic to discuss.

I do think there are some people potentially that kind of shied away from getting involved in a conversation or even seeing me potentially, which is, I don't want to say hurtful, but disappointing I guess you would say. 

So that's one aspect I would tell people. Don't be afraid to interact with people who have lost a spouse or a loved one, just being there.

Actually, somebody posted in the club and asked me this question this week. And I said, just being there and able to listen. You don't have to say anything, but just be there and listen to them and let them know that you're there if they need you, and that can be really beneficial. 

Roger: The barrier is social awkwardness.

Mark: Right. Some people will just try to avoid it by avoiding you, and that's disappointing that that happens. I would just urge people not to do that. It's an uncomfortable place to be but realize that the other person is having a difficult time, and if they're willing, some people put up the walls, I didn't do that.

But if they're willing to be open and for you to be there, just be there with them. You don't have to say anything. You can just say, hey, let's go for a walk and go for a walk and don't even talk. Just enjoy the day.

Roger: I would imagine on the receiver end, like in this case you, that even though you're the one going through that, I imagine that you have to give some grace and it sounds like you did for people that just say the wrong thing because they're just stumbling. Even though it sounded hurtful, it wasn't meant that way. I imagine people stumble a lot.

Mark: Yeah. And it's not always stumbling either. It's sometimes it's just saying the general, oh, I'm sorry for your loss when you hear that many, many times and you just like, I would prefer just not to hear that.

One of the things that I think was in the book Option B by Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook. She said, if you're going to talk to somebody, don't say, how are you doing? Because people will say, well, how do you think I'm doing? This is not a great time. But if you say, how are you doing today? It is a much better way to phrase it because you can be having a good moment during this period of time, and there are plenty of days that are joyful and that's fine. But if you just have an open-ended question of, how are you doing, period. Then that can bring up a lot of, well, because that person doesn't want to say, oh, I'm doing great when they shouldn't theoretically be doing great in that moment.

But just saying how are you doing today is a much better way to kind of phrase it. 

Roger: Yeah. Close the aperture and get very specific because that's all what we have and the more specific to the moment the better. That makes total sense. 

Let's turn to the financial domain. We were joking, and I know we mentioned this last week, I believe, but from a triage standpoint, what's one of the first things you should do?

After the Death of Your Spouse by Mike Piper, CPA® is a great actionable book. I think you brought it up and I have it right here in my hand actually and it is. I'm going to have to meet Mike because he writes in a nice, tight, pithy way, here's the things you need to think about. Here's how to go do it.

So definitely a great guidebook from there. 

If we step back from the actual actions and talk about triage, and we're going to do this with Chris from Wings with Widows here in a moment, but how do you start to set up this project? You talked about long-term decisions and part of that first is pause and determine what can be long term and what can be short term, right?

What should be short term, what was your experience of, these are things I have to have some clarity on?

Mark: Me having a kind of a planner mindset, some of the things that I thought about were the nitty gritty of changing her IRAs to an inherited IRA and whether it should be merged into mine or not. I mentioned on the last podcast, I didn't do that because I'm under age 59 and a half, and all the reasons for that.

If there's any life insurance, which there was in her case, claiming on that life insurance and making sure it is paid out in accordance with the contract. Then a lot of it, honestly, because she had such a long illness, was dealing with medical bills and things that were just mounting, also doing probate, starting that process.

She didn't have to do it, but I did it just to kind of put a timeline around any medical claims that could come out of nowhere to kind of make sure that all those would be presented in a timely fashion. 

So those were some of the bigger things. We already have joint accounts. She didn't have any of her own accounts.

That would be something if that was the case, to clean up, I guess you would say, other than her retirement accounts. So those are some of the main things.

Roger: In your case, and this may not be a fair question for you, because in your case, you were the planner, and are the planner, and so all the ducks were in a row.

Like some of the things you were listening to, I'm like, well, that doesn't have to be short term, medical bills. They have to be paid.

Mark: A lot of it is putting it behind you, because that, it's just a tough thing to see continuing coming in the door. 

Certainly, things like a funeral, a celebration of life, which we did for her. My daughter was here, and she helped with that, and friends and family were very instrumental in helping with that. Let people help you. That would definitely be one thing to say is don't try to do everything on your own. If people are willing to help, let them help, and that's also their way of kind of grieving and having some closure as well is them being able to help you.

We created a large kind of family cemetery plot, which we didn't have, I mean, we had space in a cemetery, but a friend of mine helped me build it out and I spent weeks doing that and that was my way of just kind of processing things as well.

There were a number of people in the community that helped make that a really nice space.

Roger: That's a really good point. And it doesn't necessarily come to financial initially. Letting someone mow your yard seems odd, but for certain people, I would think of my father-in-law. His love language is fixing things. He can't emote it. He can't talk about it. He doesn't have those skills, but he can fix things. It used to annoy me that he would come over and fix things at my house.

Then I realized, no, this is the way that he can express his caring. Right. I would imagine the same thing. Some people, this is the only way they can express grieving is mowing their yard.

Mark: An example is a friend of mine is a +landscape designer and she was a good friend of Marge’s and one of the things that she did was landscape design this cemetery plot, and we have pretty sizable plot, it's 20x20 so it's 400 square feet. So, it's fairly sizable, she brought boulders in, she landscaped it, put walkways in, but that was her way of showing care and also going through the grieving process on her own too. 

So let people, like you said, do things that help them as well, not just you. 

Roger: On the financial end, from a triage standpoint, If you're the planner, you have a lot of this already thought out because you know where the numbers are, you're intimate with the cash flow, the investment accounts or what have you.

If you're the non-planner, one of the biggest things you need to do, or a couple things I can think of from a triage standpoint is know who is on your team to help you navigate 800 numbers and insurance companies. The navigation of that can be soul crushing even without grief. 

Number two is once you know who is on your team, have some clarity of how you're going to pay for life best case the next two years, but at least the next year or for as long as you can have visibility so you can have clarity of, okay, I know where I'm going to get money to pay rent and to start paying bills. 

Lacking that clarity, especially if you're the non-financial manager, can be very scary.

Mark: One of the things I did as the financial manager was set that up in an automated way so that if something happened to me, there really wouldn't be anything that was absolutely necessary to do for at least 12 months. So literally our financial life was on autopilot. Being retired, living off of our portfolio, the portfolio generated a check into the checking account.

All of our bills were paid automatically through the checking account. Basically, it was a self-perpetuating system. My purpose in doing that was so that if anything happened to me, she wouldn't have to really deal with anything for quite a period of time. Now I've told my daughter the same thing applies to her. Everything will continue. 

 It actually was beneficial for me because then I didn't have to worry about it either. I could be out there in the cemetery; I could be out there deciding on how to have this celebration of life and not worry about all these things happening because they were already happening in the background.

So frankly, it was a benefit to me as well, even though I was the financial control person, I guess you would say. 

Roger: So, there's two parts to that exercise, I think Mark.

One is setting it up in the way that you did, which is not what most people do, but if you do set something up so you know exactly in, say in a retirement situation where you're getting money to pay for bills.

The second part of that is communicating to the non-financial person so they understand it and also communicate it in a way that they can understand it if they're not a spreadsheet geek or into that, because they're going to be in a stressful situation, grief, so they're already going to be impaired somewhat.

 How can they make sure that they know that because it's one thing and having say the estate document. But if they're in a safe that's locked and they don't know the combination, you sort of are still in a difficult situation. So how did you communicate with her prior to the journey that ended up playing its course?

Mark: I have a binder, or we have a binder that is basically kind of like, I would call it a one-page financial plan or a financial plan summary, and it doesn't say, this comes from here, this goes to there, and so forth. But it does say in general terms, in plain English, how the system works. Literally there's a page for each of the next three years.

What all the plans were, whether it's Roth conversions, ACA credits, where money is coming from, where money is going to, our daughter's in college, how are those getting paid, all of those things. As they progressed throughout the year, I would just check them off. 

So, if someone came in mid-year, they would know, oh, those first five things are already checked off. They're already done. I just need to pay attention to these next four things that are left for the rest of the year. It's fairly easy to follow, and then in that I also have more detail behind it, which you can then page back to and see the detail for each one of those bullet items. But at least you can see kind of the general plan on one page, and then frankly, it's helpful for me too. I mean, there's a lot of moving parts, so it is nice to have that, and I look at that and I use it myself, so it's not just beneficial for the person left behind, but it's beneficial for the person kind of executing the plan as well. 

Roger: This is a great idea, and we have a retirement plan summary that we have everybody create at the end of building their entire retirement plan that does exactly the same thing.

Summarizes all the decisions and where the liquidity is going to come from over a period of time, so it can be clear to the non-manager spouse, and also just a dashboard for the manager spouse. Sort of like organizing your estate documents. It's intimidating to set up, which is why almost nobody does.

As much as you can from your wife's perspective. I know you just shared this with your daughter from her perspective, did it seem intimidating to set up? 

Mark: No, actually she appreciated it because she said, oh, okay, I just need to go to this one document, and we created it together. So, it wasn't something that I created and then said, here, read this.

It was something that we created together because I wanted her to have input. Well, how should this look? We also wrote it so that, well, what if we were both in a car accident together and someone else had to step in? We've done this also to some degree so that someone else could step in our shoes and see everything and not have to go wondering where everything is.

I think last time we mentioned, you don't even get statements in the mail anymore. So, it's not like you can wait for stuff to show up in the mail. You kind of need to know where stuff is. It really was built with that in mind. 

Roger: Yeah, and it's not like they have to figure out everything, but okay, I sort of get this, I missed a few things, but I get it.

In my experience, it does take a little bit of intentionality to set up, but once you have it set up, especially if you're using an agile process, you can update it once a year.

Mark: Yeah, that's pretty much what I do once a year.

Roger: Then iterating on it is a lot simpler than setting it up the first time. That's why we built a template because the blank page is the hardest thing to use, right?

What else do you want to share before we close this session out? 

Mark: Well, I would say that, so now I'm kind of building the plan for me going forward and one of the things I've been thinking about now is kind of legacy.

So how much will I leave for my daughter? How much should I leave to charity? How am I going to fund that? There are different ways of doing that. How should I update my estate plan? Our estate plan was written in such a way that I didn't really have to revise it or I don't have to revise it, but I may choose to revise it just to clean it up a little bit.

So those are some of the things. 

Then things like, where do I want to live down the road? Do I want to stay in the town I'm in? 

Roger: No. You want to go to Salida. You want to go to Salida.

Mark: Well, we'll see. Maybe, I don't know, riff raff is moving in there. Yeah, I mean those are some things to think about. So, kind of long-term planning and things in that nature.

Then certainly things that you're on your own for. So, I thought a lot, I bought a new iWatch for instance because now it has all the health bells and whistles. because when you're by yourself you start thinking about those things more than previously. So those are just some of the things. 

I have sat down and really give myself some blank space to envision, what do I want my life to look like going forward as a solo individual? That's a work in progress. 

Roger: So, honored that you're willing to share this journey publicly, and I am even more honored to be a small part of this journey as a friend and club member and all that other stuff. So, thank you, man.

Mark: Yeah, you were very helpful. The club in general has been very helpful and people throughout this community have been extremely helpful, so that's been a wonderful thing. 

Roger: So now let's move to our conversation with Chris, where they actually coach widows and widowers on the triage aspects of it and talk a little bit about some of his perspective on how to address this if it were to come up.

A CHAT WITH CHRIS BENTLEY FROM WINGS FOR WIDOWS 

So, to help us with some basic triage for someone that is recently widowed is, Chris, I don't even have your last name in front of you. I know it's Bendon. Did I say that right?

Chris: It's close. It's close. Bentley. Just remember fancy cars and you'll never forget.

Roger: Yeah, I just didn't have it in front of me.

You started Wings for Widows. So, tell me a little bit about you and why this nonprofit came into existence. 

Chris: I'm happy too and thanks for having me on the show. I really appreciate it, Roger. Wings for Widows was born out of really working with a client. I had a colleague back in 2017, same age, friends at Ameriprise Financial where we were both working and suddenly, he was gone.

He died of a heart attack at home after returning with a car full of groceries from Costco and his wife found him at the front door struggling, and by the time she got around inside the house to let him in, he had expired. So, I, by fortune or divine Intervention, inherited his family after his death.

We had a Sunset agreement and that was fortuitous for him, but I inherited his family as a result of that and began working with his widow Leanne. This occurred in February, so we worked all year and, and sometime in early December, late November, Leanne was in my office just reflecting on the year and talking about her grief and the fact that her grief was somewhat mitigated.

While she was still grieving and part of a grief share group and working through all of that, it was somewhat mitigated by the fact that she felt comfortable with her financial future. Her spouse was a financial advisor. So, I would hope that that would be true.

She shared with me that other, she called them her grief share buddies, other women in her grief share group were still struggling. Many of them, she had learned, had spouses who had died years ago, and here they were today still struggling with these financial questions. 

She asked me if I would come and talk to these folks, maybe I could help them.

I agreed. I said, “sure, anything I can do, I'd be happy to see what I could do for them. A few weeks later, we met over brunch and spent three or four hours together and a lot of tears and laughter and hearing each of their stories. Some of them had financial advisors, which I thought was interesting, and yet were still struggling.

This is two years after the loss of their spouse. I was very interested in, in sort of what I was hearing and seeing, and of course, promised this group of ladies that I would find them some respite, I'd find them a resource that could help them. 

Well, little did I know there were no resources after several weeks of plowing the internet and exploring organizations. There were no pro bono outfits out there that could help widows and widowers. I was shocked. Why hadn't this been done? I was at a point in my life where I was kind of looking for my calling, right? What's my purpose? Helping folks in the financial services industry was fine, but was there something else?

I was sort of exploring that, you know, the spiritual side of me over the last few years, and suddenly I was presented with this opportunity. 

Well, you can do something right? You can do more than what you're doing. This doesn't exist. How can you help widows and widowers who do not have a trusted place to go?

That was really the catalyst was Leanne and the loss of her spouse. I filed for 501c3 a couple of weeks later. By now, it was January of 2018 and I've never looked back.

Wings for Widows was born and it's a very different organization today than not so much from what I originally envisioned, how we were going about doing business, which was all one-on-one coaching in person.

Of course, COVID had a big impact on that, and so we're a little bit different today, but our mission has not changed. 

Roger: So, Wings for Widows is a nonprofit and you are now retired?

Chris: Correct. 

Roger: Except that you run a nonprofit.

Chris: So, right. I retired for one day, right. People want to treat me as though I've retired, but I tell them though, I still worked 10 hours a day as a CEO of a nonprofit.

Roger: What is the purpose of Wings for Widows? 

Chris: It is to come alongside widows and widowers in grief and help them navigate financial trauma. I guess it's probably the easiest way to say it, and it's different for everyone. There are no two situations that are the same, which makes it really exciting.

The diversity, from a coaching point of view, but the common denominator, of course, is great loss, struggle and having to address so many administrative issues, right? Legal, financial, and all the other practical matters of loss while they're trying to grieve. That's the real conundrum, right? Being able to do both.

What we try to do right is come alongside early, help them restore some confidence as they regain some control over their financial life, and then really sort of help them reach some level of financial stability and then kind of set them on their way. 

So, we really are the emergency room for financial trauma.

We're triage. This is not a long-term relationship. This is, get in there and do everything that we can. It's comprehensive, but it's all compressed. Our coaching, again, that's just one of our programs, but that's our core value.

Roger: Because there are plenty of resources for, say there are, but there are a lot of resources for grieving.

 It's how do I manage this project of one closing out someone's financial life and feeling secure about my financial life going forward. 

Chris: Exactly. It is an iterative, iterative process and, and we try to do both, right? 

What’s your current situation? It's really the very first question we addressed.

Where are you right now? What has changed, financially speaking, right. What has changed and almost everything has changed.

So, we work through that, and then how do we ensure that you are safe going forward, what are the things that you need to do to ensure your safety and your family's security going forward?

It really is a two-step process.

Roger: You're not doing this for them. It's coaching them through doing it for themselves. 

Chris: It's important to, to remember that we could do the work for them, but that would be undermining empowering our clients to do it themselves so that they build that confidence so that they know when we are done with our coaching engagement that they can go on and do it themselves.

It's not that they're not going to have questions along the way. They do and they will, but they're in a new place when they're done with us.

They're in this place of some peace, some calm, some understanding. Many occasions, unless they were doing the personal finance for the family before the loss, they are lost.

They're really in a bad place, and so it is great to see, and that's where the reward comes from with Wings for Widows. It's seeing where they are when we're done and we're just talking 4, 6, 8 weeks with somebody and the impact that we can have in such a short time. 

Again, the work's not over. There's far more for them to do, but at least they know what to do and how to go about getting that done.

Roger: Well, I think triage is a good word for stabilizing the patient so they can begin to heal. 

Chris: It's a great analogy. It really does work for us. Yes.

Roger: Then so there's shorter term engagements from a coaching standpoint. Is it generally the non-financial manager spouse that reaches out? 

Chris: About 10% of those who reach out actually have financial advisors, so we do sort of bifurcate our services. Some of our grants want us to work with folks who do not have financial advisors, and so that's why we treat them a little bit differently from a bookkeeping standpoint. But at the end of the day, they need exactly the same help.

They have exactly the same questions whether they have a financial advisor or not. But about 10% of those that we get do not have a trusted source. When you think about where somebody is supposed to go for help, it's an interesting question. You could read about it, right? You can Google lists all day long.

You've probably seen those lists, Roger. So, you can Google the list. A few lists tell you how to go about and do the things that the list tell you that you need to do.

Of course, not every list is complete and not every list is appropriate, right? We customize our services. These lists are not customized. They're general guidelines for folks who have lost somebody. It's a fine place to start, but it doesn't tell them what they need to do and the best way to go about getting those things done for their particular case. Again, as I said earlier, no two cases are the same.

But other than that, I was going to mention the books.

I think I've read them all and there's some very good books out there, but they're for practitioners. It looks like they were written for widowed people, they're complicated. There's a lot, these are 300 page books and I have yet to find a client who's read a book before they've come to us.

They're just not in the right headspace to go to their local library and pull a book off Amazon or wherever you get books these days and read them to work their way through all of the financial puzzles that they have to wrestle with. 

Roger: You hit on a good point when you're talking about Leanne's story and the group that you sat with is there are some people where financial literacy is high, and they're very project oriented in nature, so it gives them agency to take a hold of dealing with this situation. 

But there's also a lot of people that are not financially literate enough to manage this. It's not that they can't do it from a capability standpoint. They're not financially literate and they don't lend themselves to grieving by taking on the project.

They deal with it very differently and I would think that subset is even more, one at risk for financial abuse, but two more apt to not address it in an organized way, which could exacerbate perhaps not that great a financial situation.

Chris: Great points. I would address that in a couple of ways. 

First, and there's data out there to support this, some research, about 70% of US adults do not have a financial advisor. So where are they financially? They're all over the map. 

Some do it very well. They grew up in a household that taught them how to manage their finances, and they've got great savings. They've got IRAs, they've got Roth IRAs, they've got 401ks. They're in a different place than most of the clients that we work with. 

But overall, right, if you think about a million widows and widowers created every year in the US, that 700,000 do not have a trusted resource to go to. Even if they are financially savvy or they're managing their own finances, how much experience they have with death and losing a spouse?

I mean, it's rare to find a widow or widower that's been through it more than once, though they exist. 

Roger: The puzzle, I think Chris, and tell me if I'm wrong, is of those a hundred thousand widows and widowers, the vast majority don't have, say, financial advisors or financial planners. 

The vast majority of them don't have the assets to interest most financial advisors or financial planners.

So, they're left adrift. 

Chris: Exactly my second point, age and assets matter. They're in very different places, both financially and in their headspace, we have found based on age and assets, right? 

They may not have a clue, but if they have the assets, they're going to be okay. And it's a pleasure working with those folks because it feels more like financial planning, right? Typical financial planning client. 

But you're right, so many in this country do not have the assets and so it becomes problematic right out of the gate. It was already living paycheck to paycheck, and then when that paycheck is gone, it's a crisis. It's a crisis. It's a very different type of individual that you're working with and struggling with to get her through this process or him through this process. 

But the other thing that we've found with age, Is it the younger people, even with children, extremely aggressive. They want to get this done. They want to get answers. They want to figure this out. They want to get life back to normal, mainly because they have children they have to care for. They want answers, and they want this done in a week, not six weeks or eight weeks.

So that's interesting because we have their full attention. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, someone who's retired in their seventies or eighties, very timid, very tentative, old school. Maybe a little bit weary of who to trust, and with that end of the spectrum, it's a different conversation.

Fewer come to us probably because they're not sure if they can trust anybody, let alone someone who wants to know all about their financial assets and their financial life so that we can help them. 

Our biggest volume of clients are middle aged. The average age of a widowed person in the US today is around 58, 59 years old, and that's the age group of our biggest clients.

Age does matter. Assets matter. At the end of the day, unless you've been through this before, you're going to have the same questions. It's just that we customize our coaching. It's a little different coaching experience based on age and based on assets. 

Roger: We talk about clients in coaching. What did the services cost?

Chris: Well, that's the good news. They cost nothing. Everything's pro bono. We don't offer any services that cost our clients a dime, and that's a hurdle for some.

Well, it's too good to be true, right? There's no value if it's free. Some of those myths come into play, but we're a 501c3, we raise our funds in other ways.

Again, I would say that at least half of our clients are in financial crisis. They can't afford to pay for a financial advisor or an estate planning attorney and they all usually need an estate planning attorney at some point.

We're certainly not going to charge them, right? We'd rather that they spend the few dollars they might have on professionals to save their money and use it for that.

Our services are absolutely free. Our classes are free education wise and coaching's free.

Roger: Who are the coaches? 

Chris: We are so proud to be partnering with the Foundation for Financial Planning, which is a 501c3 as well. Think of it as an offshoot of the CFP® board Certified Financial Planning Association.

They're closely affiliated. They're not exactly affiliated, but the foundation for financial planning, their sole purpose is to provide financial planning to those who do not have access to financial planning. 

So, they were a perfect partner for us and for other 501c3 organizations that provide financial planning for whatever reason, to those without access.

But they were perfect partners for us because they provide a portal for CFP® 's to find volunteer gigs. We are one of today's 17 listed, and so we see one or two a week who are renewing licenses saying, hey, I'm at a place in my practice, I've been doing this for a number of years. I'd like to give something back to the community. 

Well, the CFP® board would love to see that they value the volunteer work that we can do for those who do not have access to, do not have the budget for a financial planner, and no services. So, they're shuttled in the direction of the foundation for financial planning. 

They can look at the menu of nonprofits that are out there, and those who resonate with us trickle our way, and then we have the opportunity to talk to them and tell them about our organization and our mission. If they're excited about what we're doing then we put them through a training program orientation, and that's a couple of days of training, and then we provide them, we equip them with all the tools they need.

They do not use their fancy software. It's not required for what we do, and we drive a very consistent experience, both for our coaches and for our clients because we provide all of those tools.

That's where they come from. We're very excited that they're all certified financial planners, all experienced, many of them widows or widowers that see this as a great opportunity to work. 

They've been down that road and now they get a chance to work with someone that's on that path and so it, it's a win-win. It's a win for us. It's a win for the CFP® board and for those organizations. It's of course a win for our clients. 

Roger: What's one last thing that you would say to someone who is widowed or is maybe facing it or trying to plan for this, what's one thing they need to know? 

Chris: Wow, that's two really big questions. Those are great questions. We refer to them now as widowed persons because of the gender thing, right? Widows, widowers. It's just easier to say widowed persons. We do serve both, not all organizations do, but we do.

So pre-planning, that's the whole topic. We could spend a whole podcast on it. Maybe we should someday. But I think the biggest thing to remember after a loss is that they'll hear in grief counseling, and they hear with us is that you're not alone. 

There's a huge community out there that wants to help, and most are willing to help without a price tag.

It's getting to know where those resources are, and sometimes that's tough to navigate. We're expanding our resources page to try to make all those resources more accessible and just make folks more aware about them. But there's a huge community out there that wants to serve widowed persons in need.

I call it the widow crisis because so many things happen to widowed people at a time of loss that it's so confusing and confounding and really paralyzing. You don't know where to start.

So rather than try to navigate the internet or read a 300-page book, reach out to an organization you can trust, and we're one of them and there are others, but you're not alone and you can't do it alone and you shouldn't do it alone.

At least surround yourself with family and friends that you trust, and hopefully reach out to organizations like Wings for Widows that will come alongside you and help you along with those decisions and some advice and encouragement and treat the crisis as experts in triage. So that's what we do.

Roger: We'll have links to wingsforwidows.org in our 6-Shot Saturday. Chris, I'm proud of you, man. Thank you. 

Chris: It's been my pleasure, Roger. I appreciate it. I hope to talk to you some more in the future.

BRING IT ON WITH LORI MAGE

Now it's time to bring it on because you are the hero that you've been waiting for. 

Today we're going to talk about relationships, and we have a new person that's going to come and hang out with us. Lori Mage, how are you doing, Lori? 

Lori: Awesome. Super excited to be here. 

Roger: So Lori and I met via Heroic Coaching, which you know, I'm a big fan of the Heroic Training Platform.

Lori has a master's in what? 

Lori: Organizational leadership. 

Roger: Organizational Leadership, and she is a life in leadership coach for how many years? 

Lori: Oh my gosh. If you count when I first got started, 2006, 2007? But doing it independently, not in corporate for the last three years. 

Roger: The best thing about Lori, in my opinion, well there's a lot of great things, is that she is a practitioner of everything that she teaches and does, whether she's working with groups or not.

Learn more about her lorimage.com and we'll have a link in our 6-Shot Saturday email.

We're going to talk about relationships today. I remember when I approached you, Lori, talking about relationships. You didn't share it at the time, but you had a reaction. What was that? 

Lori: Hell no. 

My initial reaction was, no, I'm terrible at relationships. 

Roger: Well, so let's explore that. That's a little scary now that you're here talking about it. Why do you feel that way? 

Lori: Because it wasn't until the last couple of years that I really have learned how to participate in relationships that are mutually beneficial and feel authentic and like I'm seen in the relationship. 

So up until three years ago, actually, when I made the transition from corporate to work independently, I had to start making my own friends. I couldn't just show up at the job and randomly bump into people. So, relationships were just kind of handed to me, and some were good and some were great and some were really crappy.

I've really had to work hard and have had to suffer to some degree because I've lost some friendships in the last couple of years and that's why it scared me.

Roger: Well, that makes you perfect to talk about relationships because we all go through that of one, just having the relationships of convenience and that could be work relationships.

It could also be family relationships that are just sort of there. So, this makes it perfect because you were horrible at it and you work to get a lot better at it. So yeah, own it. You've done a lot of work on this. I know you have. So, what are we going to talk about today in relationships? 

Lori: Well, the thing that has really helped me was starting to build a relationship with myself.

That sounds crazy, but that's where it all began, because I feel like for the first half of my life, majority of all of my life, I have been showing up to relationships to basically people please to make them feel good so that I'm liked. It was very inauthentic from my end, although like they would like me because I was kind and all of that, but I had to figure out who I was and build a really strong relationship with myself before I could engage others authentically.

Roger: I had a similar thing, a journey that I was on, last 10 years especially, I won't describe the specific situation I was in, but I came to the realization that, not that I love myself because I love myself, right? We all love ourselves. But I came to the realization, it just popped into my head. It's like I said, I really like who I am. I like myself, right?

I think we all struggle with that. What is it that you did to start to like yourself and feel more authentic? 

Lori: Yeah. The first thing was, this sounds silly, but I started to play with the virtue pride.

I started to realize all of a sudden it hit me upside the head that for most of my life, all of my life, up until that moment, I really thought pride was a vice. 

I didn't know it at the time, but I grew up as an athlete. I was playing sports in college and I wanted to win, but then when I would win, I would feel bad about myself almost like if you win, then you're somehow arrogant, or you're egotistic, or you're selfish, or whatever. 

I grew up really believing that pride was a bad thing, not realizing that pride is actually a value to be obtained. So, the way I started to like myself was to start to celebrate when I would do things that I was really proud of myself for, and it was really silly.

It comes from Heroic, just the phrase, the mantra all the time of that's like me, that's like me, that's like me.

To go back to my leadership background as well, there's a great book, The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner, and one of the things they talk about in there is this really super simple acronym, DWISYD, which is to do what you say you'll do.

I had to start building personal credibility with myself and everybody on the outside would look in and say she's trustworthy. But I didn't believe that about myself, because I didn't slow down enough to really celebrate the cool things I was doing because I was so scared people would think that I was arrogant, or I was selfish or I was too prideful. 

So that was a micro like practical way that I started to build a good, healthy relationship with myself was to allow myself to celebrate when I did cool stuff. 

Roger: Interesting. So, one tool, if you want to start building better relationships and even newer relationships, and I'm asking this as a question, is the first relationship you have to work on is the one with yourself, would you say?

Lori: That's been my experience. In the Heroic Coach program, we talk about heroic love. You're familiar with this. I'll just say it for the audience so they're aware of it. But we have Love 0.0, which is love for self. We have Love 1.0, which is what most people think about, which is their family, their immediate partners, things like that.

Then we have Love 2.0, which is love for strangers. We have Love 3.0, which encourages other people, it's heroic. Then we have Love 8.0, which is all about your work and your service and your contribution to the world. To love your work and to love what you do, who you do it for, and who you do it with.

For me, I was really good at some of those other ones, I was really good at the stranger one of micro moments of positivity. 

But what I wasn't good at was Love 0.0 of building the relationship with myself to fill my own cup in order to truly be of service to others, to truly love others in an authentic way. It was disingenuous to some degree. 

Roger: Well, you can end up sacrificing your own life for everybody else if you don't take care of that first person first, right?

I think we all can relate to that. 

The first step for you was to start to, one, have pride in yourself and not diminish the good things that you do.

The second thing was to build trust in that I'm going to do what I say I'm going to do. That way it's not like I'm not going to have a drink tonight, and then you have a drink and then you beat yourself up for having a drink and you say, I never do what I say I'm going to do that kind of trust, right?

Lori: Exactly Roger. 

And what makes that powerful in relationships with others then is that I'm not coming to the relationship, needing to have them tell me how great I am or tell me.

I could then show up to the relationship not needing anything, and to truly be soulmates is one of the things we talk about in the heroic group is to truly be there to help you actualize your potential and to build a mutually beneficial relationship together. But I couldn't do that without first developing my own self-trust and liking myself, like you said earlier, is to really genuinely like myself with or without the good or bad opinions of others.

Roger: One of the premises around liking yourself is that you are a good person. 

Some of us feel that we're not good people because we've proven it to ourselves over and over by whatever actions, and that's the hammer that has beaten us down so much. I saw an acronym today related to this that structured it as we are good people, and we screw up.

When we screw up, we can't tell lies to ourselves about screwing up, right?

LIE is an acronym. It stands for limited, I made a mistake and it's limited to that mistake. It's isolated, and it is external. I am a good person, and I made a mistake. It is not who I am. I think flipping that, because I know a lot of people, I know I did for years, they're like, I'm horrible. 

No, I do bad things, I do horrible things periodically, but that's not who I am. It's just an error. 

Lori: That's so awesome. I love it. It reminds me of another one I use for myself that has been helpful in my most intimate relationship at home with Jen and that is, missed takes, right? 

So, I make mistakes.

I'm human, I make mistakes. But one of the rules that has really helped us flourish in our relationship is to break that word apart so it's, missed take. 

It somehow helps me not take it so personally in the moment that I've made a mistake, I can just tell her, oh, that was a missed take. The way we can look at it is that a movie screen, a movie theater, you think about the best movie you've ever seen in your whole.

I don't know. What's your favorite movie, Roger?

Roger: The Greatest Showman. 

Lori: Oh, that's so good. It's over two hours, isn't it? That one? 

Roger: No, when it's that good, who knows how long it is, right? 

Lori: Exactly. But still, you wouldn't expect that that movie was made in one cut that they all showed up with the cameras, and it was just two hours straight.

And then when they got done, it was it. 

There was just one take, and it was perfect. 

A show like that is going to have millions of missed takes, and they're going to have to do the same scene again and again and again to capture the shot. So we have brought that into our relationship as this is not the version of me that I'm proud of showing up.

This is not the best take we could have. Can I have a redo? 

Now sometimes she's cool with a redo, right? Sometimes she's like, hey, let's clear the set. We'll come back tomorrow, another redo on that one. 

But missed takes has really, really helped me practice that self-compassion of, we were talking about the lie that it's limited, it doesn't make me a bad person, it's just a missed take, and that one's helpful too. 

Roger: Awesome. Well, we're going to go set a smart sprint on how to build a bit of relationship. Lori, we're going to have you back again to talk about more tools. Thanks for hanging out. 

Lori: Oh, so fun. Thanks Roger. 

TODAY’S SMART SPRINT SEGMENT

On your marks, get set,

and we're off to take a little baby step that you and I can take in the next seven days to not just rock retirement, but rock life. 

All right. In the next seven days, something that we can do, and it can be with your spouse, or it can be with anybody, is when you mess up, say, that was a missed take. 

Can I redo that and just fix the record here?

Amend the record. 

Be aware of that, and just ask for grace when you do something that you didn't quite mean to come out the way it did or whatever, what have you. Just be aware of that, and if you have that, just ask for a little bit of grace and say it was a missed take.

CONCLUSION

You're at the end of the show, and I always like to remind myself and to remind you what the whole point of this show is, our pledge to you, and that one is it's we want to focus on you and your journey in transitioning into and rocking retirement. 

That's what we want to focus on. 

We want to make sure that you have hope. That means you have an inspiring goal. You have agencies and you have pathways. 

We want to do this in an authentic way with no pretense. We want to be humble and respectful, and we always want to be curious so you and I can approach all of these topics with fresh eyes and hold our beliefs up for examination to either solidify them or amend them.

We want to be free from products, gimmicks talking about big finance. 

We don't work for a big investment firm. It's always about you taking action. 

I am all in on you, rock and retirement. So, let's go do this. 

END

The opinions voice in this podcast are for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance references historical and does not guarantee future results. All indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested in directly. Make sure you consult your legal, tax or financial advisor before making any decisions.