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Episode #490 - Listener Questions: How Does The 5-Year Rule Work for Roth Conversions?
Roger: "Don't look for someone in whom to believe. Believe in yourself. The only authentic authority is your own original nature."
-Vernon Howard.
INTRODUCTION
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. Excited to have you here today in June. Holy cow, June, I get older, and time gets faster. Lot of interesting science around that actually.
So today we're going to dive into your questions. We're going to have a chat with Veronica McCain, author of My Retirement, My Way. Great workbook. As well as Bobby Dubois is going to come on and talk about energy, and as always, we're going to answer your questions.
I love this idea of don't look for someone in whom to believe. And as you're venturing on a new path, you definitely want to have guides of people to help show you the ropes and help you identify your agency and build your skill sets. But that's to empower you, not to simply believe in them, whether that's me or someone else. I'm here to help empower you to believe in yourself and get those skills up to snuff so you can rock retirement, but it's not like I got it all figured out. Love that quote.
WHAT I’M READING
All right, beginning of the month, so we're going to talk about the books that I completed. In May. It was a pretty good month in May, still had a lot of books I thought I would finish, but I had not. So, I'm going to go through a few here.
One book that I did on audio is Total Recall, the Autobiography of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Long book, good book. I really enjoyed it. One thing about autobiographies is that we get to write our own story when we write one. It's all our version of things, and it's the truth as they know it. Or at least some people use them to frame history and there's always that risk. But I really enjoyed the book.
It really is an incredible story, Arnold's story. From growing up, very poor in Austria, to becoming a bodybuilder when it literally wasn't even a thing. Then his love of America from early on and then coming to America constantly being told, you can't do that. You have to change your name. Nobody's going to want a movie star named Schwarzenegger that has that accent and that weird looking body. There were so many things that Arnold was told that wasn't going to work, that he made work. He alchemized whatever the oddity was, his last name, his accent, his physique, alchemized that into actually one of the more attractive things about him as a say, action star, et cetera. I was journaling on this the other day, what does it really mean to believe in yourself?
Reading Arnold's story, it seemed that he always believed that he could make it so. There wasn't a lot of doubt that was presented, at least in the book of, well, maybe I could do this. I might not do this. He set a target and went all in on that target, believing that he was going to achieve it. That's one theme that came out of the book.
As an example, when he was getting into movies and acting, he refused to take non-lead roles. He's like, no, I can't. I have to be the lead. I'm not going to just dip my toe in by doing commercials or being cameos. He took lead roles and wouldn't accept movies that even at the beginning, which is amazing.
I was just reflecting on that in terms of my belief in myself and do I need more of that? Am I too much of that? All that type of stuff. The second theme that came out was that he's a businessman that happened to be an actor. Definitely a businessman, and he understood the value of promotion in order to make things successful, and that's something I struggle with a little bit is promotion on the cool things that we're creating.
Good book. I enjoyed it for the most part, and it got really into the political end of it in his marriage with Maria Shriver and yes, the instance that happened with the house, the nanny or whatever, and also his time in politics, which I thought was interesting.
Okay. The second book I read, which is marked up, I think I highlighted the entire book, it's called Limitless Mind by Joe Boaler, B O A L E R.
She is a professor at Stanford and a researcher on the ability of the mind to create new pathways, which is something that is somewhat new in the last couple decades. We thought the mind was fixed at a certain age and it actually isn't. Your mind can create new pathways and grow for as long as you're alive.
It just takes struggle and stress, and she talks about that, and she talks about learning and how we learn, and she specifically focuses on math and a lot of her studies in terms of, and this really helped me because I always struggled with math. I don't think of myself as a numbers person, which is sort of surprising. I can be good with numbers. I just don't learn it the way it was always taught, and she showed the results and demonstrated different ways to be able to learn math, some of it much more visually that really is impactful, and I think it's a very impactful book for you and I as we age to work on our mindset. So really enjoyed that book. I would recommend that one for sure.
The next book that I finished is called The Alter Ego Effect by Todd Herman. He is a performance coach, mainly with athletes, and it's about taking on these personas when we're performing a role.
He talked about Beyonce, she had a persona, a whole different named person, that when she was on stage, she became that person and that person, that role was separate from who she was and she eventually retired that, but it allowed her to be as energetic and as vibrant as she is on stage, even though a lot of her true self is much more modest, which I think is interesting. Good book, if you're into performance psychology.
The next book I finished was the 12 Week year by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington. I like to operate in 12-week years. We do that in our business. We have 12-week targets that we set individually and as teams, and it really jives well with agile project management or agile retirement management in setting these 12-month targets.
So rather than thinking in annual terms, you really break it down to where time is much more critical, and you can make quicker progress, so you get that fulfillment cycle. So good book. I do like this book a lot. I think it's the second or third time I've read it.
The last book I finished in May was Learn by Living: 11 Keys to A More Fulfilling Life by Eleanor Roosevelt.
I didn't know much about Eleanor Roosevelt other than this book, now I feel like I want to know more about her.
This book is a doozy. It's a little dated in its language, and then the cultural norms of the time because she grew up in, you know, the early 1900's. So, it's a little dated from that aspect of it. She talks about relationships and people in their life and people writing letters for advice even prior to being the first lady.
So, there's a lot of that. But she has this knack for these doozy statements that just bring the whole thing to life about really good, solid, meaty life lessons.
I highly recommend that you read it. It's You Learn by Living: 11 keys to a more fulfilling life.
So those are the books that I read in May. I won't get into the books I'm in the middle of right now. We'll talk about those, at least the ones I finished next month. With that said, let's move on and have a chat with Veronica McCain on how to navigate this transition into retirement.
PRACTICAL PLANNING SEGMENT WITH VERONICA MCCAIN
So, I'm excited to have a chat with Veronica McCain of Savvy Retirement Coach, I think savvyretirementcoach.com.
Veronica, how are you?
Veronica: I'm good, I'm good. How about yourself?
Roger: I'm great. I just randomly received your book in the mail. I don't know how that happens, but recently came out with a book called My Retirement My Way, which is one of my favorite kind of books, a workbook.
So, we're going to talk about that in just some of the frameworks, but I want to talk about you for a second.
So, who are you?
Veronica: I started a retirement coaching business, which is something that I started, once I retired. I decided that as I was going through retirement, there were a lot of things that I felt was missing as far as my planning for retirement.
So, I decided on that end that I would look into coaching others through the retirement process, a lot of my friends would ask me questions. I retired pretty early. I retired at 56. I worked for the federal government for 31 years. So being that I retired early, a lot of my friends were still working, they were always asking me questions about what you do and how you do this and how you do with that.
From there sprung up my retirement coaching business. So yeah, I'm a mom and wife, in addition to having my own business. I'm that also.
So yeah, that pretty much sums me up.
Roger: Did you know that you were going to do this when you retired?
Veronica: I knew I was going to go into some type of coaching, and I started off thinking about executive coaching.
I was a manager, so I was thinking of going in that way. I started doing a little bit of that informally and it was kind of giving me flashbacks of work experiences and things of that nature. That's really not something I really wanted to pursue more in retirement. I wanted kind of something a little different.
So, I knew that I liked coaching, I like inspiring people. Like I said, people would ask me so many questions and stuff about retirement itself. So, I said, oh, let me try this retirement coaching, and once I got in it, I loved doing the work.
I love working with people, I love inspiring them, getting them on the right track as far as their retirement's concerned.
Roger: Well, that's interesting because if you do executive coaching and I've had an executive coach, various ones for over a decade, you're almost looking backwards to share your wisdom rather than looking forwards even in your own life, right?
Veronica: Right. Yes, exactly. You are kind of relating to things that, situations that you encountered when you were working and trying to coach them through the same process of issues or concerns that they might have in their job as they're pursuing their careers.
So yeah, it's a kind of a different perspective. You're right, you're looking back versus like with your retirement coaching, it's more like looking forward into what's ahead and excitement of the future of what you might be doing in the future.
Roger: It sounds like you had some questions, or you found blind spots when you retired that you either didn't address early or you weren’t even aware of.
Did you pursue your coaching certifications as part of your own education? Was that the idea?
Veronica: Exactly! Yeah, it really was. Even though I had an idea of what I wanted to do with the coaching, I still struggled a little bit when I first retired as far as staying motivated and doing things, and also more of the day-to-day life of retirement.
I struggled with a little bit in the beginning of kind of getting my flow going throughout the days and knowing, hey, how after you get over that, Yay, I'm retired feeling. I like a little more structure to my life and kind of how I'm going to get that organized in retirement.
So, I did, and also a year after was the pandemic, so that kind of changed a lot too. I definitely pursued it as far as helping me kind of get myself together, get myself organized and what I wanted to do next, and also as a kind of a curiosity of is this something I would want to pursue while I retired.
Roger: The pandemic really threw a curve ball for retirement, I mean, to everybody, but for retirees especially. I know a lot of people retired and they had plans of various sorts and it all got put on hold. So, they were sort of stuck in limbo a lot longer than they thought. So, it sounds like that happened to you.
Veronica: Yeah, it did. I mean, up till then I was getting out a lot, traveling, doing a lot of different things. But then, yeah, you're right. The pandemic kind of put a different spin on your life and you start kind of thinking like, okay, well what's next? What am I going to do next, and how am I going to get that going and what direction do I want to go?
So, I think everybody did a lot of soul searching during the pandemic because they had nothing else to do.
Roger: That's right. That's right. Thank God for Zoom and online education. It sounds like you alchemized a bad situation by doing some online education for yourself and for others.
So now that you've been coaching, what are some common threads that you hear from people in terms of what they're excited about or what they're struggling with?
Veronica: I think most people are excited, of course, that they are finally retired, that they have the ability to have done that and that they have this freedom of doing whatever they want to do.
A lot of times what they struggle with is they'll start off doing a lot. Most people are very energetic. I'm doing this, I'm doing that, I'm doing that, and then they start kind of tapering off midway within probably about six or seven months. Okay, that was great, but what am I going to be doing for the years coming up?
A lot of times when I meet with clients, they're at that point. I was very excited. They're still excited, but they're feeling that kind of reality, right?
Roger: Yeah. It's like honeymoon to reality, right?
Veronica: That's it. The reality of it all, and a lot of times they have not even given a thought as to, okay, so what am I going to really be doing?
Or they might have some hobbies that they do, but it's just like not enough or not enough things going on in their life that they feel that it is going to make their life fulfilling throughout the rest of their retirement.
Roger: So that was going to be my question. I wanted to ask you about that before you move on. Have you observed that it's a lack of activities or hobbies or not enough of a meaning behind the activities or hobbies?
Veronica: I feel like that, the lack of meaning behind. I find that most of the clients have things they want to do, but a lot of that doesn't lead to a meaningful feeling with them and they're still feeling a little lost as to what they want to pursue to get that feeling of purpose.
I hate to use the word purpose all the time because I think it's kind of an overused word, but to get that feeling, that is a fulfillment kind of feeling. Sometimes they have too many hobbies, actually too many activities because they're just trying to fill their days and they're still having that feeling that it's not really giving them that fulfillment that they hope to feel when retirement.
I think it's one of those things that you kind of have to work through. I mean, everybody has to, that's what I tell them. It's just working through life experiences and stuff to get to that point where you find something that is fulfilling.
Roger: I thought of two things as you were saying that, Veronica. One is, you're right, it's something that you're not going to sit down and journal out or whiteboard and brainstorm and say, "Aha! I have found it!" no, it's going to be trial error, trial error, trial error, right?
The other one, and I think you rightfully said, purpose is way overused.
It's like too built up. Then we get into purpose comparison. Oh wait, they're trying to change the world. I just want to be a great grandfather, or a great neighbor.
Veronica: Exactly. Exactly. It's a word that carries a lot of weight sometimes to it. And when you start saying that word to people, they're like, that sounds very heavy.
Like you said, save the world or anything like that. I'm just trying to feel fulfilled or not feel so bored. It gives them that feeling like they've got to be something grandiose and that’s not necessarily the case at all.
Roger: It's almost like titles when we were working.
Oh, I'm an executive vice president. It's not hierarchical, however you say that word.
Veronica: Yeah. I mean, I was talking to a client the other day going through this, and she was talking about her health and all that, and I said, well, that to me seems something that you can start really working on to really feel fulfilled, getting yourself healthy.
That can be a big purpose of something that you want to fulfill. To become healthy again you can do all this traveling and all the other things that you want to do.
I think sometimes, like we were saying, that people think it's got to be this big, grandiose kind of thing when it can be something very small scale that is going to help you feel that fulfillment in your life.
Roger: From that perspective, Veronica, when we're talking about this with, we'll say retirement, your purpose in life will change. There are seasons, right? Maybe a purpose is, like you were saying, to finally focus on my health, and then you can move on to something else.
Veronica: Yeah, and I think it is just like life, you evolve through life. There are different phases in your life and you're going to be wanting to do different things as you retire as well. I don't think it's just one thing you find and you're like, okay, that's it and I'm going to charge through the rest of my retirement years doing this thing.
I think it does evolve as you grow and hopefully continue to grow in your retirement years, that you find other things or other interests and pursue that. I mean, the other day on The View, I watch The View a lot and they had Rita Miranda on and she's like 92 and she's starring in a movie.
I mean, you look at things in different ways as you age. Don't feel like you're stuck on one thing all the time. So yes, definitely.
Roger: So, so either with yourself or in your coaching, are there are some themes of how people get in their own way around that?
Veronica: A lot of times when I have to explain to people, when they come to me as a coach, as my job is not to tell you what to do, think they want me to say do this, do this, and do that.
My job is to help you discover what you want to do. That's why I did the workbook.
These are prompts to get you to think about things you want to do. Not somebody saying, oh, you should be doing this, and you should be doing that. I think that we're so used to that roadmap, and when you tell them, okay, now you have an open road.
I'll start asking questions. They're like, I don’t know. I don't know. I don't know. So, it's kind of a whole different mindset sometimes that people have to use to think about their life. Sometimes they'll say to me, you ask a lot of questions.
I was like, well, that's kind of to get you to think about some things that you probably never thought about in your life.
Roger: In my morning reading I read a quote related to this Veronica, and I'm not going to get it exactly right.
It was, we need to stop looking for someone to believe in and just believe in ourselves.
Veronica: Yes. Oh, that's so good. That is so true.
Roger: When you're doing something new though, like retirement, it's like if I were to go to climb Mount Everest, I can't really believe in myself, because I've never done it before. So having guides that will empower you rather than having somebody to just tell you what to do.
That's essentially the difference you're talking about, right?
Veronica: Yeah, exactly. Find it within yourself. Right, right, right. Believe it or not, that's a really hard challenge for people, for them to do that. They really struggle, and sometimes it's challenging for me as a coach when I have clients that really have no idea of what they want to do.
Like I said, I start asking questions and they're kind of, I don't know. I don't know.
So, I have to look at it in different ways like, well, let's go back to maybe your young years. What do you like to do? Because they're like, well, I don't have any hobbies now.
Roger: A lot of times it's just starting though. Right. Just go do something. Forward motion. So, you can start bouncing around.
Veronica: Right, and that in itself is a challenge because people get set in their ways and they don't want to get out and do anything.
But I think I mentioned in book two about having an accountability partner, having somebody that you get that saying, okay, you tell me on this and such a time you're going to go do this. You've done it because there's no motivation sometimes in retirement. So, it's easy to put stuff off.
Roger: It's good to have people that will call you on your stuff.
So, this actually pivots really well to your book, and that's how I found you. It just randomly came to me, and then I emailed you and we chatted. Your book is not telling anybody what to do. It's a workbook. I'm looking at it right now, I have my hand just asking you lots of questions and say, do this little exercise. So, what's the logic behind that in your mind?
Veronica: That was the struggle with me in trying to find my way is I had to start asking myself some of the questions that I have in the book. I think by doing it in a workbook format, it helps people to start thinking about what they want to do versus reading it in a book.
Usually you're reading, oh, this is what, you know, find your purpose, find your meaning. Do this, find seven activities, da da. But when you're actually writing it down, going through the workbook and actually doing the exercises and writing things down, that gets you prompted. I think we put something in writing to do the things that you want to do and get you up, like we said, and out there actually exploring things in your retirement.
Roger: You've compiled this from a lot of different resources. Always love the appendix and bibliography in the back. Did you go through this yourself?
Veronica: Yes, and I'm going through it again because I went through it when I was writing it and I said, now that it's complete I'm going through it again as a whole thing, as a workbook.
The one thing I do want to say is the workbook isn't really designed necessarily for you to go from start to finish with it. There's a lot in there, a lot of information. It covers a lot of different aspects of retirement. If there's certain areas where you feel comfortable in retirement, then you don't have to worry about it.
But if there's other areas that you're struggling with, then you can find those areas in the workbook and kind of work them through. I don't want people to think, oh, you get the workbook and start from the beginning and go through the end because it's just a lot of information and it's meant to be thought provoking and meant to be something you take your time with.
That's why I would say just kind of maybe look at the focal points that you want to focus on, or you're struggling with retirement and focus on both sections of the workbook and then if there's other things that you want to improve upon or whatever, then you can do it.
Roger: Yeah, I think that's key, and that's very different than the financial realm where a lot of the process is linear. It builds to get to a plan. When you're talking about the non-financial realm, and I know in the non-financial masterclass that we're creating, it's more of a menu, right?
You may be dialed in someplace else. It's like, where do I either need to do, have some intentionality or want to do some intentionality in a specific area, right?
Veronica: Exactly, that's what I find with my coaching. There are just certain areas sometimes people need help in, but like I said, the workbook is kind of comprehensive and it covers all the various areas that come up in your retirement, but yeah.
Roger: Is there anything that you wanted to discuss that I didn't ask you about?
Veronica: No, I can't think of anything.
Roger: All right. Well, we will have a link to My Retirement, My Way, the workbook in our 6-Shot Saturday email. You can find Veronica at savvyretirementcoach.com. Thanks for hanging out with me today, Veronica.
Veronica: Thanks for having me, Roger!
LISTENER QUESTIONS
Roger: Now it's time to answer your questions. If you have a question for the show, you can go to rogerwhitney.com/askroger, or you just go to rogerwhitney.com. Finally, we have a question button there. You can leave an audio question. You can leave a written question, whatever floats your boat. We'll do our best to try to answer your questions on the show.
QUESTION ONE
So, our first question comes from Charlie related to Roth conversions.
"Hey, Roger. I've been retired for about two years and have been listening to your podcast for four years. Wish I'd started sooner. I can't believe how smart you are in a well-rounded way.
I've been doing Roth conversions for the last three years because I don't believe we will have this low of tax brackets after 2025 when the current brackets expire.
I'm having a hard time understanding the five-year rule on Roth conversions. I am currently 67, will be 68 soon, and if I do a conversion of say, $20,000 this year and I pay the tax on the conversion, am I able to withdraw those funds and any of the growth before the five years is up without penalty?
I've read that you need to keep track of each conversion and its date because of possible penalties. My Roth account has been open for 10 years. I understand this is important because of the five-year rule."
-Charlie
Well, shucks Charlie, thanks for letting me be part of your journey and your compliments.
I will tell you, I never feel that way and I have some researchers that help with questions, and I feel like I'm always correcting myself and figuring it out. I think that is part of being hopefully wise, is realizing how much you don't know. So, I appreciate that. Thank you, buddy.
So how do Roth conversions work with the five-year rule?
Note: Our original recording contained an error. Please watch this video for the correct answer.
QUESTION TWO
Our next question from Michael is actually a book suggestion.
"Hey Roger,
This is not a question, but rather my two cents for a book recommendation. I have read some of the ones you have recommended, such as The Boys in the Boat, and found them excellent. I am a 65-year-old retiree and I'm very intentional about my health as many other things I am most passionate about, physical, outdoor related activities.
As a result, I highly recommend reading Metabolical, the Lure and Lies of the Processed Food Nutrition and Modern Medicine by Robert Lustig, L U S T I G MD, professor at UCFSF. I enjoy your podcast.
Thanks."
Hey, thanks for the recommendation, Michael. Now I'm going to have to order another book and I will, and I'll check it out.
I'm reading Peter Atilla. I'm just starting it. It's a big book. It's a big book. I don't know if I'm going to read every exact word because I like the science, but I want to extract the wisdom from it and I will check this one out as well. I definitely think processed food is one of those things, so thanks so much, Michael, and keep on keeping on with that outdoor stuff.
QUESTION THREE
Our next question comes from Ben, related to funding and his no-go years, and Ben, thanks for all the details. I'm going to try to summarize some of this.
He says,
"I am five to seven years out from retirement and building concepts for my de accumulation phase. I have been contemplating my spending to balance saving for when I'm old and can't take care of myself, versus enjoying my funds when I am younger and able to go on adventures, et cetera.
I did a quick exercise that gave me some clarity on my spending plans. I wanted to pass this through someone who has a good perspective and has values aligned in a similar fashion."
Ben says,
"In my exercise, I visualized my life in various go-go slow-go and no-go phases. I did a heavy focus on the no-go years, and I had an epiphany.
If I can set up my longevity income sources, mostly social capital to cover my needs and most of my wants for that phase, I can effectively blow through my savings during the go-go and slow-go years.
There's a bit of hyperbole in my statement, but essentially, I can be much freer to spend more on my go-go years than my conservative time segmentation suggests. Have you worked through this in the Retirement Club?
I don't know if you have covered it in the podcast, but I haven't heard your comments if you have. By the way, the perspective would be analogous to my retirement savings plan where I max out my retirement accounts, save as little in my after-tax accounts and feel free to spend money. What are your thoughts on this idea?"
We probably have talked around it, but not specifically. So, we're all talking the same terms here, go-go, slow-go, no-go.
Go-go Years or when we're super active, we have lots of discretionary spending. Slow-go where it's the same, but maybe it's moderated a little bit. Then we think of these No-go phases where we're really on the park bench of life and we're in our eighties and nineties and life is just a lot more chill. Managing our spending, we tend to want to have a lot of go-go, which costs money, but we don't want to sacrifice being okay when we're older.
I like this approach, Ben, with a couple caveats. I like the idea of covering the majority of your quote unquote no-go spending with what's called social capital, which is Social Security pensions, annuity income and you can structure things to begin at certain dates. I think this is a reasonable strategy for anyone, especially psychologically and financially you could debate who it's most appropriate for.
So, I do like this process. I think this works, and the idea is, you know, if you blow through all the money in your go-go and slow-go years that you have these guaranteed payments that will start to kick in, that will cover in theory, your base needs and maybe some extras.
I like this strategy and it does a couple of things well. One is, it takes you away from execution risk and market risk in poor investments or overspending, et cetera, because you have these guaranteed payments. It also takes away the risks of having your money stolen or tricked away from you because you don't have as much money, you just have these guaranteed payments that you're receiving, and it's basically flipping the easy button for your older self who may not be as interested in managing things, may not be able to manage things as sharply and stay on top of things, and it frees all that mental space in your mind to focus on other things, maybe your energy and your mindset, et cetera.
So, I do like this structure. Where you have to be careful is you always want to slack in the system here because you're going to have some issues that you're going to deal with just simply doing this approach.
One is inflation. What your assumption is on inflation and how accurate inflation will eat away at these guaranteed payments. So, you're going to want to be thoughtful in how you estimate what those future payments are, and you're going to want to have some slack financially to help fill the gaps that can be invested to battle inflation along with these guaranteed payments. So that's one.
Two is you're going to have some estimation errors because you're trying to predict what you're going to be spending and how you're going to be spending it, what, 20, 30 years in the future. So, you're making some pretty sizable assumptions, and the farther out those assumptions are going to be realized or potentially realized, the more likely the spread of error to what actually happens and what you're estimating happens is going to be.
So, when you're thinking of this approach, another potential risk, Ben, is you're basing all of these decisions, depending on where you're at early in retirement with who you are right now, your situation could change dramatically, perhaps many times. Someone could pass away. You could get divorced. You could have some major medical stuff happen a lot earlier that causes you to reassess all of the decisions that you've made. So, you'll have to think about the timing of when you secure and put into place these secure income sources and make sure you have some optionality to unwind them without too much headache, or you have enough financial cushion if you're not able to unwind them, so you can manage whatever life is going to throw your way.
This is going to be optimization or resilience phase because you're trying to match your withdraw strategy, I think, yeah, those pillars are appropriate here. So, you just want to be thoughtful about this and leave a lot of slack in the system and some acknowledgement of all the things that you actually don't know about this journey. But I definitely think you're going in the right direction in how thoughtful you're being about this.
QUESTION FOUR
Last, for today, I want to share a story from Christina on Legacy.
She says,
"Hey Roger,
I deeply appreciate you sharing your knowledge with us. Often you talk about legacies. This is typically financial, or it might have to do with creating memories now. You also talk about making sure you've left instructions about where your assets are, et cetera. However, there's one big thing I don't think I've heard you mention.
Please, please, please urge your listeners to clean out their house and possessions early, at least by age 80. Before physical and mental limitations make it too difficult. Do not leave an enormous house filled to the gills with everything you've saved over the years. Especially do not do this when you have several children who one, don't live in town.
Two, they can be very different people with different working methods. Three, maybe both."
I would add Christina, that everyone may have different views about all of these things and the importance of them.
"We are going through this now and I can say with confidence is the worst nightmare we've ever faced."
Well said Christina, and we haven't talked about this specifically. We have it in the hopper to do a whole month on decluttering and right sizing our possessions. Partly for what you're just talking about because it does, it just leaves a big mess for somebody else, which for people that are already grieving on some level and can bring up conflicts personality-wise, that really don't need to be brought up.
I think another thing for yourself in terms of decluttering, Christina is. You can build a cage for yourself, whether it's a big house or all your possessions that trap you and take away your ability to live a life that's truer to who you are today because you're trapped by all the stuff you have in the past.
So, thank you for sharing that, Christina. We just put a good solid point on that, and you may hear a theme about that in the future. With that, let's move on to our bring it on segment and bring on Bobby to talk about how to use this toolkit we've been developing to dial up that energy.
BRING IT ON WITH DR. BOBBY DUBOIS
All right. It's time to bring it on and work on the non-financial aspects of life so you can rock retirement. We're going to focus on energy today with Dr. Bobby Dubois. Bobby, how are you doing buddy?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: I am doing wonderful and feeling energetic.
Roger: Wait a second, you just told me you were tired before we started hitting recording.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, just chatting with you brings that energy level back up. See, social relationships are critically important. I'll have to add that to the discussion topics.
Roger: Oh, we will. We will. So, I like what you're doing today because you've been covering some things that we need to pay attention to, and today, I think you want to bring them all together, right?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Yeah. I mean, for the last six months it's been wonderful to build a toolkit that will hopefully help us live long and well. We had a dialogue about exercise, a dialogue about nutrition, one on sleep, one on mind body activities, and one on exposure to heat and cold. For each of those, we went through the science surrounding it.
I mean they all sound interesting, but there's actually real science and real clinical studies to show they work. Help people live longer, reduce their risk of memory loss, stroke, and the like.
What I thought might make sense is to turn things around and now think about a particular disease and how our toolkit used as a group of activities could help us reduce the risks. As a starting point, I thought about heart disease and where the tools might help us to avoid having heart attacks and heart disease and minimizing any bad outcomes that might relate to it.
Roger: So, before we talk about heart disease, I want to pause for a moment because I like this idea of a toolkit.
This could be a financial planning tool. It could be the tools that you've talked about in these domains. It could be tools in your toolbox, in your garage. They're only as useful as your ability to use them and actually using them, and that sounds like a subtle and obvious point, but all of these things that we've talked about over the last number of months are just like ideas and information and wisdom floating by in a stream. They're absolutely worthless if you don't do anything. I just like to hammer that point home because we're in the business of doing things. So, I think that's what we're going to talk about today, is how do we actually use these to help, in this case, battle heart disease.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, I think that's right, and what I hope over the last few months is we've motivated people that there are reasons, not just to keep them in the toolkit, but to actually open the top of the toolkit, pull 'em out and use them.
Roger: So why are we going to talk about heart disease first.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, it's the number one cause of death in the U.S. and globally as well, and this is in spite of the fact that we've really done extraordinarily well in medicine at addressing two of the biggest risk factors, which is high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol, but in spite of really wonderful medicines that can get these under control, it continues to be the number one cause of death.
Last year there were about almost 900,000 deaths due to heart disease and stroke, or one in three deaths in the U.S. so it's a huge issue in terms of living a longer life, but it's also critical in terms of living well.
Everybody's heard of people who've died of heart disease, but what is less discussed is how much it impairs your day-to-day existence.
If you try to walk around and do things, you may get chest pain, which is really uncomfortable and may stop you in your tracks. Your heart's not working well. If it's been damaged, you'll get short of breath. People often have dealt with folks with COPD, emphysema and the like, and they see them, and they see they're carrying the little oxygenator and they say, oh, that's really affected their life. But they don't necessarily know that about heart disease.
So, it isn't just, well, I'd rather not drop dead, but you also don't want to live in a state where you're really quite uncomfortable. So, we can do something about both of those, and that's what this is really all about.
Roger: So, what are some of the risk factors related to heart disease that we need to focus on improving?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, I guess we have got to talk about the ones we can't change. So, there are a series of risk factors.
Now, let me pause for a moment. I don't think there's a disease in the history of the human condition that has been studied as much as heart disease and heart attacks and knowing what are the factors that cause them and treatments that might avoid them.
I mean, if we think of any other disease, I mean to a great extent, memory loss is a black box still for most of us. We know smoking causes emphysema and COPD, but that's about it. We don't really know all the factors that cause it, but for heart disease, we really do, and we've built equations, and we've got it down to a very quantitative issue.
Now, some of the factors that are quite relevant, I got 'em and you'll get 'em and unfortunately there's not much we can do about 'em. Being a man, we have a higher risk than a woman. The older we get, the higher the risk, and if we have a family history of heart disease, that's also something we can't control.
Now let me just, council folks, almost everybody's family has a history of somebody having a heart attack. That's not a family history. A family history is when it happens at a young age, before age 50, before age 55, and that is relatively uncommon. Having your grandfather. Diet 78 is not a family history of heart disease from a risk factor standpoint.
So those are the ones we can't really do much about, but there's a whole bunch that we can, and that will be, of course, the next part of our dialogue.
Roger: Now being that males are more at risk, what is the matter of degree, should a female not really think about this?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Oh no, it's the number one cause of death in women.
Roger: Okay. Okay.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: It's just that we, men, have a higher risk, but it still is the number one above breast cancer and all the other causes of death in women. So yes, women need to worry about this just as much as men and need to work at the ways of reducing those risks.
Roger: So those are the things that we can't control what is within our realm of control?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: That's really the 64 million trillion-dollar question, and the good news is there are a whole series of risk factors that are very important that we have some control over.
Now, some of those might require your doctor and medication, so high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol. Now the things in our toolkit that we're going to work our way through may well help blood pressure and cholesterol, but they may not be enough, in which case pills are incredibly effective at bringing down your cholesterol levels and getting your blood pressure under control.
Those two risk factors really should be fully under control. There's almost no reason why they can't be, and we really, really need to make sure that they are, and again, most people probably get cholesterol levels periodically and blood pressure every time they go to the doctor. You can buy your own little blood pressure automated measurement thing and then you can track it yourself as well. So, medications are great if you find that the tools that we're about to walk through aren't quite enough for you.
Roger: I want to understand this a little bit more. So, if we say aren't quite enough for you, and I imagine this is something that doctors deal with every day, even dentists of, do you floss, right? Most people don't floss.
Can you control high blood pressure and cholesterol through non-pharmaceutical tools only, or should you do them in tandem? How do we navigate that? Or from a habit standpoint and change of behavior standpoint versus the pharmaceutical?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, that is really a wonderful exploration.
There are some people who are kind of anti-western medicine and don't want to take drugs and feels that it impairs their kind of holistic sense of their body. For them, I would push really, really hard with the toolkit and see how far you can go, but don't quit there if it's not under control.
I would say for most people that have substantially elevated cholesterol and blood pressure; they may well need a combination of the two.
The caveat is that if one of your risk factors that we'll get to, of course, is that you're quite overweight, losing a substantial amount of weight can in fact greatly get rid of elevated cholesterol and high blood pressure. May also not be enough, but that's kind of a magic bullet that can help a lot of these.
Roger: Okay. Okay. But the key is that the goal is lower blood pressure or reasonable blood pressure and cholesterol. Medication is one of those important tools, and it's just a matter of how you mix these together. Okay.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Exactly.
Roger: Can I ask one other off question that, well, it's on a topic, but I'm just curious.
When we say high blood pressure or high cholesterol, and I get my labs from my doctor and I see certain things that are within range, they have a range of normal, are we to the point yet where I have my own cholesterol or blood pressure mean for my specific self? Or is it, are we not to that point yet from a medical standpoint?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, let me jump ahead to one of the things that folks can do and ought to do.
So, I said earlier that we know more about the risk of heart disease than any other condition in men or women or kids. So, on the web you can find a risk estimator, American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association. A lot of 'em have it, and maybe we can put a link to one of them in the 6-Shot Saturday.
Roger: I will do that. I'll copy it for Nichole.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: It's a little, almost like an application on your phone. It'll ask a series of questions. How old are you, male, female, smoker, because smoking, of course, is a very important risk factor, weight, blood pressure, and all these kinds of things.
You can then enter in your numbers. Now, you may have to look at your medical record online and look at your latest cholesterol level, or if you don't have one, then of course you may need to go to the doctor or get one. But for most people, you can actually plug those numbers in, and you'll know your 10 year risk.
Might be 4%, might be 8%, might be 15%. And what is also instructive is you can tweak those numbers. Well, what if I lost 15 pounds? What would that do to my risk? What if my blood pressure got further under control? So, it wasn't 145 systolic, it was 135 systolic. What will that do for me?
I mean, for fun you can say, well, what if I was a woman, but that's obviously not necessarily a modifiable risk factor, but you can go through all of this and really understand where you are today and where might you get to, if you work at this with your tools and with your doctor.
Roger: That's interesting because you can actually in theory, identify the levers and how important this could be to me, impact wise.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Totally. Well, that sounds like we should then dive into things we can do something about.
So, there are obvious ones. We know that smoking is an extraordinarily bad risk for heart disease. If you can reduce the amount you smoke, good. If you can stop smoking, better. If you can stop smoking for 5 or 10 years, actually the risk gets completely undone.
So, smoking's one of these things for heart disease that you've got real control over. If you can stop it and a certain number of years go by, you pretty much go back to normal from that risk factor standpoint. So that's very exciting.
Weight is a very tough one, but it's very, very important because being overweight is associated with diabetes. Diabetes is a bad risk factor for heart disease. It's associated with elevated cholesterol. It's associated with high blood pressure. So merely focusing on weight is another thing that's in your control and something that you could focus on. So, these are kind of general terms.
Then of course we'll walk into the very specific tools, but those tools then work to reduce your blood pressure, reduce your cholesterol, reduce your stress, reduce your risk of diabetes. So, the tools are in the service of doing something about the risk factors we've thus far talked about.
Roger: When I think about these things, Bobby, I think of compound interest.
Compound interest. If you ever looked at a curve from an investment world, you see very, very marginal to no gain initially. But as you compound the impacts of these little changes, say it's a pound or two here and weight or lower in your cholesterol, you start to get an upward angle that starts to arc like a ship taking off.
Because I can think of the secondary impacts of as you start to lose weight and I've gone from about 218lbs to 199lbs now, it's much easier to move. I'm putting less stress on my joints which begets more activity. So, it actually compounds in a lot of really amazing ways. But when I went from say, 218 to 214 and plateaued.
Didn't see very many gains at all, and I would plateau for a while, but I was getting a little bit more active, feeling a little bit more energetic. I love that idea of compound interest, but in non-financial ways.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, I think that's right, and I think as you work on things like weight and exercise, you'll find that multiple risk factors may simultaneously start to improve, and I don't think it'll be a surprise for the audience that when we get to the end, we're going to do the assess your baseline, figure out what you can do, and then reassess and hopefully people will be motivated by seeing positive change.
Roger: You're making scientists out of all of us.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: That is the goal, or at least one of them.
Roger: All right, so let's open the toolbox on how to reduce the risk of heart disease.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Okay, so let's go through each one of them. So, exercise is probably the most powerful modifiable risk factor we have. Being sedentary is a big problem.
Now there's a million guidelines on how much you should exercise and is walking good enough, or does it have to be brisk walking? I mean, we can spend an awful lot of time talking about that. I mean, in the club, I think we've got an upcoming discussion and we'll do just that.
But if you look at the CDC and the American Heart Association, they recommend about two and a half hours per week of moderate exercise, which they would refer to as brisk walking or bike riding, or pickleball.
Now, if you're doing vigorous exercise now, it doesn't mean you're running a 5K race. It means that you're jogging as opposed to walking. Then maybe you only need half of that.
Now, why do we do it? Well, because there's some obvious things. One is you'll feel better, and I think you've already just mentioned that that's the case. Exercise by itself can lower your blood pressure, help you with weight loss and your risk of diabetes.
If you want the data that supports this, comparing people who are able to do the 150 minutes or two and a half hours a week versus those that aren't, they had a 25% reduction in the risk of cardiac death.
That's a huge number. That's kind of the lower end if you can get to double that amount of exercise, it further lowers your risk. In future times, we'll talk more about exercise beyond just heart disease. It's having your better balance and being able to do what you want to as you get older, and also improving your mood and reducing anxiety in a variety of other things.
Roger: So, the next one that we talk about that we can control is nutrition, right?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Absolutely. So, when we open up our toolbox and we've picked out the exercise one, the next one that's there is nutrition.
Now, nutrition, somewhat of a grab bag of lots of things. Obviously, being careful what you eat can help us to lower our weight, and as we talked about earlier, being overweight is a risk factor for heart disease. Lowering weight can help our blood pressure and help our cholesterol levels. So, weight loss is really important if we're not at a good weight.
In prior episodes, we talked about the concept of an N of one trial, where in essence, you are your test subject, and we talked about this in the setting of nutrition because some people for their blood pressure are very sensitive to salt intake. That's part of nutrition.
But some people aren't, and it would be very helpful for you to test whether you are salt sensitive, because if you enjoy foods that have salt in them, no reason to deprive yourself if eating salt or not eating salt doesn't affect your blood pressure, and that's a simple thing. You can just test. Check your blood pressure, have a low salt diet for a couple of weeks, check it again, see where you're at.
Similarly, fat intake, some people are insensitive to the fat they eat. It doesn't affect their cholesterol level because the body makes its own cholesterol.
So that's something again, you can test. So, nutrition is, as I said, a grab bag. Part of it is getting your weight under control and part is helping those two important risk factors of blood pressure and cholesterol.
Roger: We'll have links to the specific episodes where we talk about each one of these tools in our 6-Shot Saturday email.
That way if you want to explore how to exploit or use one of these tools, you can go a little bit deeper in one of those episodes.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: I think that would be wonderful for folks.
Roger: Now the next one is sleep. This is a big one for me. I've been focusing on it. Sleep is an important tool, which seems odd. I know we sort of outlined why, but why is this one that we should focus on?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, going back to the data in the very large British study that compared people that got less than seven hours of sleep versus those that got more and the ones that had less than seven hours had a significantly greater risk of a heart attack, 20% or more. And that doesn't even get into the quality of the sleep. It's just the quantity of sleep.
This is probably mediated through cortisol that gets elevated if you don't sleep well. Cortisol then causes an increase in blood pressure, and we're back into that spiral of blood pressure causes heart disease.
The good news about sleep is that there's a dozen things you can either add to your regimen or get rid of that might help you improve your sleep quantity and quality.
Everything from getting exercise, which is again, we're back to that story, not eating before bed, reducing alcohol, having the cold room at night, and a variety of other things. But again, this was something we talked about at some length and again, if folks can get a link and look at the 12 things, half a dozen things to avoid and half a dozen things to do, you can really work on your sleep and try to get above seven and where that will be most helpful to reducing your risk of heart disease.
Roger: I actually have been doing a, an experiment on this, Bobby, that has helped sleep as well as weight loss in that I don't eat or drink after 7:00 PM. I've noticed it really got me off of a plateau from a weight standpoint.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Fantastic.
Roger: Then from a sleep standpoint, I sleep a lot better if I don't have anything after seven.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: That's beautiful. That's a great testimonial that trying these types of simple tools can really make a difference.
Roger: Now, this next one, mind body work that's very vague to me. Let's make sure we define what that is.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: So, this was two episodes ago that we talked through the benefits of yoga, meditation, chi gong, and activities like that. Something as simple as walking very mindfully in nature. We talked about during that episode that there was another large British study that looked at folks who had either elevated stress levels or not and followed those people for about 18 years, and the risk of heart disease was double in folks who had high baseline stress.
So, the reason to do the mind body work is it helps us with the hormones that get released in the brain and the body that affect heart disease. Again, through things like blood pressure and things that are a little less clear, which is inflammation and other things, which also impact the likelihood of having a heart attack.
So again, it could be just breath work. It could be formal meditation practice. It could be as simple as just pausing for a minute or two during the day, taking a few deep breaths, emphasizing the exhale. If you are testing your blood pressure, you can watch your blood pressure actually drop a whole lot by doing some of these.
So, it's a wonderful part of folks day to day. It not only will help you from a heart to disease standpoint, but it'll help you from being more relaxed, being more mindful of folks in your life and reduce your anxiety and improve your wellbeing.
Roger: One thing that made me, what came to mind that I've been thinking about related to this Bobby, is because I do this as a practice and that is I reboot my computer and clean all of its cash and its temporary memory periodically, and it makes the computer much more efficient and livelier.
That's essentially what breathing work or even a two-minute meditation does, right? It's like rebooting the computer a little bit.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: It's a wonderful analogy. I had a meditation coach who would say the following, which is subtle is significant. What we don't realize is we may be running around in circles during the day, and if we actually pause, what we would realize is that there's a very subtle feeling in our body, which is causing us to run away from that subtle feeling.
By pausing, you actually realize, oh, I'm really scared about seeing my doctor and getting the follow-up blood tests, or I'm really worried about my daughter because this and such is happening with her. When you're running around keeping busy, you may not realize that's what's driving your anxiety.
By pausing, you actually can figure out what is that subtle, underlying thing, which turns out to be quite significant. So very helpful in so many ways.
Roger: Then the last tool that we're going to ask people to experiment with is the one I think we talked about in our last segment on energy, which is literally the physical. Hot via sauna and cold plunge.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Yes, and I've gotten various folks who've told me, yeah, I'll try the sauna thing, but ain't doing the cold plunge. Well, you have to do what works for you as we talked about last month in the study in Finland, several studies in Finland, massively reduce the risk of heart disease if you do it a couple times a week, 15 to 20 minutes at a time.
Again, it's one of those things people can try and see if it helps them, and hopefully they'll get some benefit from it.
Roger: We've reviewed the toolbox. We know that the target is to use our agency to manage the risk of heart disease. What are the pathways that we apply that agency in terms of doing something?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, all of these podcast segments end the same way, which is we can do something. What we need to do is measure our baseline, try a couple of these interventions, these tools, and then test again.
So, what are you going to do at baseline? Well, again, you can go to the risk calculator, and it will ask you about your weight, your blood pressure, your cholesterol level, your sleep, et cetera.
Determine your 10-year risk and then try a few of the things. It may be meditation, it may be losing some weight, and maybe trying to get your blood pressure under control. If you can't do it without medicines, it may be talking to your doctors. Similarly with the cholesterol, try to get better sleep, try the sauna.
So try a few of these over the course of a month and then remeasure and see if you're making progress. If you're making progress and you're seeing your risk calculator, get better. Wonderful. If you feel like you got the sleep problem under control, but the blood pressure isn't getting where you want it to be, see your doctor, you can get that under control.
You can play with what if in the calculator. Now they would like you even to have a blood pressure systolic below 120 if it's possible, and you could plug that number in and say, oh my God, it would make a huge difference. I'm going to talk to my doctor and let's see if we can get it moving in that direction.
So, it's the same game with a slightly different focus here. It's on can I avoid the problems related to heart disease?
Roger: Perfect. So that's going to be the smart sprint is to test and start to use these tools. Bobby, as always, it's awesome to have you be a guide here. Now what's going to be up for the next month?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, I think we're going to look at the tools, but we're going to look at it from a different vantage point. Not from the vantage point of a disease, but the vantage point of our energy. Our feeling of wellbeing, a reduction in anxiety and positive outlook. All of these tools, if we juggle them again, can help us.
So, I want to kind of bring them together, not to just avoid heart disease, but to help us feel better on a day-to-day basis. That's something that will be highly measurable for each person.
TODAY’S SMART SPRINT SEGMENT
On your marks, get set
and we're off to set a little baby step you can take in the next seven days to not just rock retirement, but rock life, right?
In the next seven days, I want you to start by pulling a weed. Pull one weed a day, make this a target. One thing a day, it could be a paperclip, and we've talked about this before, but I'm just riffing on Christina's comment in terms of decluttering and stuff.
Think of your house and your possessions, like your yard. Have you ever had a yard where just weeds were everywhere? It's overwhelming. That can be your closet, that could be your house. It can just be over. Where do I start to declutter? I don't know. Why not set a target to pull one thing a day? This is what I've been doing.
I'm trying to not add weeds, but just give one thing away a day, throw one thing away a day and just pull one little weed. It could be one paperclip from your junk drawer. It could be a shirt that you haven't worn in years. Just start the slow process. And what that will do is you'll likely do more than one because you've started leaning forward on this.
=Second, you'll start to be more aware of your possessions and think about them. Now, one of the biggest obstacles to this is science shows us, or studies show this anyway, that we tend to overvalue things that we possess. So be aware of that. But go pick some weeds.
CONCLUSION
So last week we had our company retreat. We brought the core employees in and we went for about a day and a half talking about recasting the mission of what we're all here for, and brainstorming strategies and tactics, and then setting initial targets to start walking that journey. It's all focused on empowering you to rock retirement regardless of where you're at and being a safe place to help you do that.
You've heard me talk about the pledge of the show, that relates to it. We'll be sharing a little bit more about this mission as we unwind it. But there's a lot of value in setting intentions of what you want to create, for us our creative expression in helping you rock retirement, but it could be you in your life, whether it's physical or financial or else.
What I find interesting about it is here would be my recommendation anyway, as you're thinking about what you want to create in life and just how you operate in terms of focusing on that, I would suggest spending as little time on how you see other people doing it that you don't agree with, or what that you think is wrong, because it's much easier to focus on how other people are doing it and criticize it rather than just creating what you think should happen.
It all comes down to the creation of it, and we're going to do our best to empower you.
The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance references are 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.