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Episode #516 - Important Retirement Numbers For 2024
Roger: "This is my way. Where is yours? Thus, I answered those who asked me for the way. For the way, that does not exist."
-Frederick Nietzsche.
Hey there, welcome to the Retirement Answer Man show.
Roger Whitney here. This is the show dedicated to helping you find your way and help you not just survive retirement but have the confidence because you're doing the work to lean in and really rock retirement, have that confidence to do that.
One thing I like about the Agile structure is that it helps you think in an organized way. Vision, feasibility, resilience, optimization, about creating a retirement plan. Even though it gives you that scaffolding, it helps you discover Your unique way of rocking your retirement, your unique way of having a resilient plan because it's structured as an agile project and not telling you exactly what to do. It's just helping you organize your thinking. And navigate it. You actually create your own unique way to build your plan to rock retirement.
I think that's really crucial because as someone who, I guess they call it expert in this and who has worked on it for decades, there is no way. Nobody has a way; you're going to have to figure out your own way. Which means you want to just have a way of thinking through that in an organized way. So, love that wisdom from Frederick Nietzsche.
All right, today we're going to answer some of your questions. We're going to talk about important numbers for 2024. We're going to talk about car loans. And in addition to that, in the bring it on segment, we're going to bring on Dr. Bobby Dubois to help you focus on increasing your energy. So that'll be exciting.
Before we get started, since it's the beginning of the month, I want to review the books that I read in November. This was really enjoyable. I get a lot of emails on these, a lot of great suggestions and feedback. If you are a reader, just so you know, if you use Goodreads, which is an online service where you track your books and look for reviews.
We actually have a Retirement Answer Man community where I'm starting to write little reviews on the books that I read and I'm keeping a running list there. And I'm also sharing the books that I'm reading right now. So, if you're in Goodreads, awesome. You can go to the communities button, I think it is, and look up Retirement Answer Man. We'll have a link to that in 6-Shot Saturday as well.
So, in November, I finished four books. The first book was Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Relatively short book, and it's his rules. It's like a self-help book. His rules for living a great life or being useful. Earlier this year, I read Total Recall, his autobiography, which I really enjoyed. He has an incredible life story, an American dream kind of story. It's a beautiful story.
Being Useful didn't really do it for me. If I hadn't read Total Recall, maybe I would have liked it, but it was very short. It was sort of self-help like. I think people had asked for something like that, but almost all the stories and the wisdom that he talked about there I got in his autobiography, which I enjoyed a lot.
So, it didn't really resonate that well with me. Although it's a bestseller, so if you hadn't read the autobiography, maybe it would be something, a good place to start to decide whether you want to read a bigger book like his Total Recall book.
All right, the second book that I read was called Only the Dead by Jack Carr.
Jack Carr is the author of the Terminalist series. There was a Netflix series on it about a Navy SEAL who got wronged by the government, killed his family, and he goes off and takes revenge. It's one of those macho spy type series where he goes off in battles for justice in the American way type of thing. It's just candy for me. I enjoy some of those books every now and then.
I liked the book, but what really got annoying with the book was all of the descriptions of the product. Before he went out, he put on his Patagonia model X number shirt and put on his Merrill XY model shoes and got into his vintage blah, blah car. I mean, it got a little much and I'm a sucker for those types of things. I'm trying to slow my consumerism and I'm like, oh, what kind of coat does this superhero wear? I should go buy that. I thought that all was a little bit much and it distracted, at least for me. From the story, which is all I really wanted.
The third book I read was I'm Proud of You by Tim Madigan. Tim Madigan is a reporter, was a reporter at I think the Fort Worth Star Telegram, who went out and interviewed Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, and ended up building a lifelong friendship with Fred Rogers. I need to read another book on Fred Rogers, because that's really what I was going for, and I got more of Tim's story and the relationship with Mr. Rogers, which was really wonderful. It just really wasn't what I was looking for.
Mr. Rogers, the more I learned about him, Fred Rogers was incredible. Definitely the kind of thing you want to try to emulate in a lot of ways, and this book definitely shows a lot of that. It was well written. It's a beautiful story. Just wasn't quite what I thought I wanted. Good book though.
The last book I read by David Brooks was called The Road to Character. And we've talked about David Brooks before. I read The Second Mountain that he wrote. I think he's a New York Times columnist. He is an amazing writer. I love the way David Brooks writes.
He's very thoughtful, very detailed and it just touches me the way he writes. This book is an amazing book It talks about different areas of character and the way he writes it is that he'll talk about a particular area of character, and then he'll use an example or two of someone that exemplifies their journey towards building that trait.
So, George Marshall, George Eliot, there was a figure in the civil rights movement that was critical, but not one that is well known. They had some self-destructive habits but were critical in preparing Martin Luther King's speech and coordinating that whole demonstration. Wonderful book. You get to these little vignettes or little biographies of some really cool people like George Marshall as an example is one. Oh, I need to read more about this person. I like these traits and I didn't know that.
I love the book. There's a lot of things I would probably point out if we had time to go deeper. But one of the things I loved was everybody should have a vocation. Something that they pursue a journey towards mastering.
Not that you have to become a master, but just something that you're pursuing because you enjoy it, it fits your skill sets, and you're working deeper and deeper to become adept at whatever it is. Painting, speaking, being a grandparent, whatever it is. If you do that well, then the notoriety or the financial part of it would just come as a side benefit of the thing.
I'll use myself as a very basic example. This podcast is my thing. This is what I'm supposed to be doing. I want to get better at it. Any notoriety that I have or financial gain I have are byproducts. They're not the point of it. So, I love that concept and I try to live that concept. So that is a wonderful book. I would definitely recommend that.
That's what I read in November.
LISTENER QUESTIONS
With that, let's move on and answer some of your questions. All right, if you have a question for the show, you can go to askroger.me and type in your question or leave an audio question and we'll do our best to get it on the show.
We have a lot of things coming up this month and next month. We have our retirement plan live case study next month. We have a couple who's been married about a year and they're trying to figure out merging their finances. So, it's a great story. They're wonderful people.
In addition to that, I'm getting ready to talk to some of the past case studies that we have done to see how they're doing and to get a one or two- or three-year update on where their journey has taken them since sharing a little bit of their story with you. So that should be fun. We’re going to do that most of this year. Then I’m working on building the reps, but we're going to start doing some video answers to questions as well as education on our YouTube channel, youtube.com/retirementanswerman. Getting started on doing the reps on these types of things, it's just like you getting started on retirement planning. If you haven't thought about it, it's always a little bit intimidating. It's hard because you haven't done it and you're not used to thinking about it.
That's how I feel about these videos right now. I have to put in some reps, and I get in my head and sometimes that delays me. It's a weird thing. Once I get going, I'm great. Just like when you get going on retirement planning, but man, it's intimidating when it's something new and you haven't done in a while.
So, I get that, but that's a counter indicator. You have to lean into that, so I'm going to lean into that and get these videos out to you so we can have some fun that way.
BOOKS I HAVE RECOMMENDED IN THE PAST
So, our first question comes from David who is looking for resources.
He says,
Can you put your book lists on your website from previous years, and is there a new 2024 important number sheet that is on your site or that you can send to me?"
So, the book list, David, we'll have a list of those links in our 6-Shot Saturday email so you can go find those. This is one reason why I started using Goodreads. One is so I can keep a running list outside of my internal list I keep on my computer that's more public. So, you could also join the Goodreads Retirement Answer Man group and see that as we build it, but I won't have those old ones in there, so we'll have links to those episodes.
In terms of the 2024 important numbers, David, we will have a link to that in 6-Shot Saturday. If you're not signed up for our weekly email, it's better than the podcast, we give links to a lot of the things that we talk about in summaries of answers, you can sign up at rogerwhitney.com. But if you want the important planning numbers for 2024, you can go to doretirementright.com, put in your name and email. That'll sign you up for our weekly email, but also will send you the PDF of important numbers.
So, what is he referring to on this important number sheet? This is probably the most referred resource that I look at throughout the year, and it essentially has all the important numbers.
For 2024, the contribution limit for 401k or 403b is 23, 000. That's up 500 from last year. The defined contribution plan, the total amount that can go in for any one participant is 69, 000, that's up 3, 000.
These kinds of numbers, how much can you put into an IRA or Roth? Well, 7, 000 for 2024, that's up 500 from last year. I tend not to keep these numbers in my head, so I always have this list handy. What is the Roth eligibility, because you get phased out if you earn too much money in terms of contributing to a Roth that will have that range there.
It's 146, 000 as a single couple, you start to not have the ability to contribute to a Roth. It'll have all of these ranges in there. In addition, it's going to have the IRMA surcharges where you might hit that IRMA surcharge. It's very handy, it's a two-page document. That talks about Social Security. It talks about IRMA surcharges. It talks about long-term capital gains. It gives you the tax brackets for the entire year, so you get an idea of where the top of the 12 percent bracket is.
From a planning perspective, it's a really valuable document. So, you can get that in our 6-Shot Saturday email or at doretirementright.com.
A REFILLING TAX BUCKETS COMMENT
Our next question is a comment question from Greg related to our discussion last week on refilling cash buckets.
"I have a question regarding your episode, how do I refill my income bucket? Regarding the income floor question, isn't the whole purpose of picking five years, say rather than two or three years of cash for your income floor, so that you can weather the storms of a down market?
With five years of cash, you don't have to refill the bucket every year. Your answer mainly said that you almost always refill your bucket annually. You barely touched on the fact that some of your clients have delayed the refill of this bucket due to down markets.
I would have thought a key piece of your answer would be regarding the ability to delay refilling this bucket for a couple years while markets recover.
Thanks."
Well, that's a good point, Greg.
There's no magic to five years. That is our baseline, our default. It can be less. It can be, we've built income floors out six, seven, eight years. Why would it be less or more? Well, if we assume five years as the default, it might be two years because the client is so overfunded, meaning they have so much extra money than they need to really fund their life in retirement, that they can afford to do a more systematic withdrawal approach, and it fits who they are psychologically. They would be comfortable with that. Those are some reasons why you might have less than five years.
Now, why might you have more than five years? Well, it could be that, well, your plan is fairly constrained, meaning that you may have enough for your retirement goals, but you're going to have to be careful. Well, you may choose to build out a six or seven- or eight-year income floor.
Conversely, Let's say you're vastly overfunded. You have way more money than you're ever going to need, but psychologically you're not comfortable with a systematic withdrawal approach. I've done this actually with people with that mindset that are really overfunded where we do build out a nine-year income floor because that gives them permission.
Now, Greg, at the risk of making sure I don't have you say, hey what about my question. You're exactly right that the idea of using five years as a floor gives you the ability that after year one, if we go through a 2008 or horrible market, we don't have to go refill the income floor, because we still have four years to go of prefunded expenses.
In fact, if we have two bad years in a row, we could proactively choose not to rebuild that bucket because we still have three years of income floor, our income already prefunded through the income floor. It gives you a lot of flexibility to weather out bad markets, so you don't have to sell either emotionally or because of some systematic rebalancing into bad markets. Now, ultimately, if you keep continuing year by year, you may have to at some point do that.
The other part of that, Greg, is it gives you the flexibility that say, after the first year of really bad markets, let's say you choose not to refill that floor, so you don't build out another year so you have five years again, you keep it at four, but what generally happens when we're going through a major storm, let's say financially, People will moderate their spending. I think we talked about that in the last one, so that four years with some moderated spending might actually still be five years. The key here is, it gives you flexibility, it gives you optionality, it gives you the agency to make proactive decisions. To weather storms. Whereas if you just had one year, even two years, you're going to have to make changes to your lifestyle a lot sooner, and you're going to be under a lot more financial and psychological stress because you're in the middle of a storm and don't have a lot of liquidity, and so there are multiple benefits to this that aren't really captured in a spreadsheet.
So hopefully, Greg, I gave that enough attention because that is the key, this optionality, that hey I can just let it burn down and I have a couple years to let it burn down to let cycles do their thing. I mean if you look at 2008 it was peak to trough was less than a year and a half it was October 07 to March of 09 and then we were off to the races.
It gives you that optionality so you can not feel that you are just being acted upon so hopefully that gave you some more color to that question and answer.
CAN YOU MAKE A FULL HSA CONTRIBUTION FOR 2024?
Our next question comes from David and relates to a health savings account.
"I plan on retiring in January of 2025. I can front load my 2024 HSA contributions over the first six months of 2024 to avoid the six-month penalty lookback. I'm hoping to contribute the max $8,750.
Does that work so I don't have to worry about that lookback period?
So, the central question here Dave has is, can he make a full contribution for 2024 into his health savings account?
Glad you're thinking ahead here David, so let's talk about what the contribution limit is for 2024. I just so happen to have my important number worksheet here. So, for a family high deductible plan, your contribution limit is 7, 750 for a family in 2024, and then if you and your spouse are each over age 55, you each get a 1, 000 catch up on top of that for a total of 9, 750 in 2024. So, depending on if you're both over 55 and not.
As far as the look back penalty, that depends on when you turn 65 and are getting onto Medicare, and it's not strictly about when you retire. So, to figure out your six months look back penalty, figure out what date you are starting Medicare. And will that date be before or after you're age 65.
You could delay Medicare. So, the look back does not look back before your 65th birthday. Those six months are really about people who are continuing to work and to be on non-Medicare. Usually that means their employer's plan past 65. Once you've determined if the six months looking back is relevant to you, then it's time to think about your contribution.
Avoiding the six months look back penalty can be accomplished by accelerating contributions. The amount eligible for this year's contributions is based on the number of funds that you are eligible for, not the amount you contributed during those last months. So, it's proportional.
As an example, if you're only eligible because you're switching to Medicare for six months, it doesn't matter if you front load, it in January. You're only eligible for the pro rata share of the time that you are on that high deductible plan. So, if you're turning 65 in January of 2025 and retiring and then going on Medicare, then you can contribute the full amount. If you're turning 65 and going on Medicare sometime in 2024, then you're going to have to do a pro rata portion of whatever the annual amount is in order to not have a penalty and have to undo that.
A QUESTION ON CAR LOANS
Our next question comes related to car loans.
"Hey Roger, I'm Dennis and recently semi-retired with a part time job. I'm married and my wife is also retired.
We are both in our early 60s and in the market for a newer vehicle and notice that the auto loan rates are a little high. Would it make sense for us to withdraw from our traditional IRA, let's say about 30,000, pay the taxes, and then pay ourselves back at 6 percent interest fee for the auto loan we are giving ourselves?
Hope that makes sense."
Dennis! Like Nietzsche said, there is no one right way. I mean, sure, you could run the math, and that's important to do to get some perspective, but there's a financial and a non-financial element here.
So, the financial aspects. What is your income tax rate with the 30,000 for this year that we're talking about?
Let's assume it's 2024. What would be the extra tax burden from cashing out an extra 30,000? Because if you need 30,000, you're likely going to have to take out more to cover the taxes. Or you're going to pay taxes from other accounts. With the timing of your question at the end of the year, would you have the ability to spread that 30,000 across 2023 and 2024 to lower the impact on one year's income tax return?
So as an example, let's say it's 30,000. Is that 30,000 going to move you up the tax bracket? The big bracket right now is from 12 percent to 22%. So, this is a good time to think about that because you can maybe take that money out in 2023 and you're still within the 12 percent tax bracket. Whereas if you took it out in 24, perhaps you have some other payouts or things that you're doing that could move you into the 22 percent bracket. It would be good to know that right now.
Also, it would be good to know, maybe you take a little bit out this year and a little bit out next year so you can stay within the tax bracket that you want to stay in. That's another consideration, especially here at the year end, and you say you're in your early 60s, but if you're 63 or older, you'll also want to take into consideration the IRMA assessment window. This is the surcharge on Medicare premiums. Because when you turn 65 and go on Medicare, they're going to look at your tax return two years prior, basically the year you're 63 to see if you've made too much money and have fallen into one of the IRMA tax brackets or cliffs where you're going to pay extra for Part B and Part D.
So, I just so happen to have my 2024 important number worksheet here. For 2024, here's an example. If you're married filing jointly, the first IRMA surcharge bracket starts at 206,001. If taking out an extra 30, 000 happens to pop you over to just even by one dollar, by the way, this is a cliff type of surcharge. If you take out that 30, 000 this year and next year, and you're over 63, and you just say you take out by taking out that 30,000. Now you have modified adjusted gross income of 206,002, well, you're looking at almost 1, 000 extra. down the road for Medicare.
It's just important to know these things. That's why checklists and having a structure are very important. Obviously, what interest rate on the loan are you considering? How long do you plan to hold that loan? So those are some of the financial considerations that you want to think through, and that's why you want to build, I like to have a five-year cash flow estimate so I can have a clue of where the tax rates are to see if it makes sense in one year or another year.
Now, I do think speed is a force here, Dennis, in that sometimes when you need a car, you just need a car. There's nothing wrong with doing the car loan, even if you don't like to have car loans, so you can decide when you pay it off. Let's say we're at the beginning of 2024, you want a car, and you're going to be in a really low-income tax bracket in 2025, but you need the car now.
There's nothing wrong with getting a loan in 2024, getting your car, and then waiting for that next year, where you're in a really low tax bracket to then proactively take the money out of the IRA or 401k.
Then on the non-financial end of it, you know, some of us just don't want to have debt. We understand we're going to pay taxes, etc. That can trump any financial numbers. I just don't want to have debt, and so I'm just going to take it out of my IRA and pay it with cash X whatever trade in. Another thing is I have all this after-tax cash and I'm in a low-income tax bracket year. I just thought of this one. This was more financial, I guess. So, I'm still going to take it out of my IRA just so I don't drain down my after-tax assets. But it's a hassle to get a loan. You have to make the payments. You have the interest, obviously, so sometimes it doesn't matter what the numbers say. I just don't like to have debt and I'm just going to do it. That's okay too.
But these decisions become a lot easier by the way, Dennis, if you have a firm plan of record, which we've talked about because that plan of record can help you model, well, what if I do a loan? What if I take it out of my IRA and see if it has a huge material impact on the overall trajectory of the plan. Once you have that plan of record It's much easier to make these decisions because you have some scaffolding to test an alternate scenario So hopefully that gave you an idea of some of the considerations in this decision.
HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOUR RETIREMENT PLAN IS RESILIENT?
Our next question comes from David, and he has a question about resiliency.
"How can I know if my retirement plan is resilient when I can't know for certain what my spending and investment returns will be over the decades of retirement?"
Wonderful question, David.
The honest answer is you will never know for certain. You won't know for certain because you're right. Market returns, inflation, Life circumstance, you know, we think of life circumstance as a health event, a premature death, etc. Those things we cannot predict. Just like we can't predict your changes in priorities and goals and vision, which will change just as much or more than some of the things we actually worry about.
We cannot know for certain. That's why you need to be agile about it, so you can constantly reassess the resiliency of your plan. So, the general resiliency tests that I suggest people do is number one is, okay, now I have a feasible plan of record. What happens if I go through a really bad market cycle?
Let's call that October 07, March of 09, a 60/40 portfolio peak to bottom. That's the peak to bottom of 2008, by the way. A 60 percent stock, 40 percent bond portfolio would have gone down roughly 24%. One resiliency test is, well, let me just cut all of my assets by 24 percent and see how feasible my plan is.
How feasible is my base great life now that I've lost 24%? How feasible are these wants and wishes? That's a simple assessment that you can do.
Next one would be, assuming you're married, what happens if one of us passes early or prematurely? How is the survivor doing from a resiliency standpoint? Because you're going to lose social security, you might lose a pension or some other benefit. You're going to move to a single bracket rather than the joint bracket. All of these things can have an impact. Okay, what happens if they die today? What happens if they die five years from now? What happens if they die ten years from now? Those are very easily tested, and this is the beauty of software in retirement planning, are these resiliency tests.
The next one is typically what happens if we have a major long term care event sometime in the future? How does that impact our plan from a resilience standpoint? You're never actually going to know for certain, David, but these tests will tease out, Ooh, do I need life insurance? Where do I need to be flexible if I go through a bad market cycle? Do I need long term care insurance? Or should I offset some of that risk?
These tests, David, are not one and done. In our standard, we rerun these tests once a year, generally every January, and then we run them if we go through some extraordinary event.
As an example, if it's September and we have a major market crash, we're going to rerun them at the new numbers to retest the resiliency because we just went through a really nasty storm. We have to make sure the shutters are still okay. Other than that, we will retest these once per year, and while you're retesting these resiliency items, David, the other thing you're doing is you're updating all your numbers.
Maybe you earned money last year, you change your spending because your inflation impacted you so you change all your inflation assumptions in terms of your spending assumptions, you get rid of that wedding goal for next year because your daughter decided to elope and you don't need to account for 30, 000 or maybe you added in a boat that you wanted to buy that wasn't there last year. So, you refresh everything. and then reassess it and then look for risks and opportunities.
You can't be certain, David. I'm sorry. That's why there is no one way because everything's changing all the time. That's why retirement is so much more than a spreadsheet. It always will be.
A BOOK RECOMMENDATION
To finish up the Q&A segment today, we actually have a suggestion from Chris on a book to read.
Chris: Hi Roger, it's Chris.
In your last podcast, you mentioned the book Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. I read the book, and I believe that it offers an interesting perspective on life. The book isn't really about dying with zero. It's about maximizing life's enjoyment and making memories. We all have three resources.
Those three resources are time left to live, health, and money. Of these three resources, we all have varying degrees of time left to live, health, and money. The book describes a life altering philosophy on using our resources to live our lives, so we have a more exciting and fulfilling life with memorable experiences.
I hope you will read the book. I know you'll appreciate the intent of the book.
Thanks.
Roger: Well, thanks Chris, and I am actually getting ready to start it on audiobook probably today when I go on my ruck, so I’m going to read the book.
It's interesting Chris on retirement books and that focus. I definitely have a good selection in my library. I tend to try to read books outside of my domain. I try to be varied in my reading and I often find that I can make connections much easier when I'm seeing how someone does something in a totally different domain than I'm in. So sometimes I don't read enough retirement books because I have that objective and so Die with Zero, I've known about it for a long time, and I've owned it and I know a lot of people that have read it.
I've never read it, so I'm going to take your suggestion, Chris, and I appreciate that. With that, let's move on and bring on Dr. Bobby DuBois to focus on you building your energy so you can show up for retirement.
BRING IT ON WITH DR. BOBBY DUBOIS
Now it's time to bring it on and focus on how we can show up with energy to be able to rock retirement and to help us in the energy domain is Dr. Bobby Dubois. Bobby, how are you doing?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Good. Feeling energetic and ready to explore exercise once again.
Roger: Yeah, no, we did a primer of this in episode 434, and so we're going to go a little bit deeper.
That's the plan here. Right, Bobby?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: We're going to go deeper, but like we know in the world of advertising, you need to sort of get the thing, the message in front of people multiple times. So, it's good for all of us to remind ourselves what do we mean by exercise, what are the components of exercise, as well as last time we didn't get to certain topics, which I think people will find fun, and there's been some new studies, so of course we want to share that.
Roger: Awesome. So, well, let's start. Everybody can listen to the primer on episode 434 when we initially talked about this, but let’s set the stage, as you always do. Why is exercise important?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Exercise is the single most effective lever for living long and well, and that's really the theme of all of these discussions. We want to reduce our risk of mortality, and then for the years we have, we want to be as able to do what we want to do as we could possibly do. Exercise reduces mortality, reduces risk of cancer, reduces cognitive decline, and then on an everyday basis, it's going to allow us to continue to be functional, and hopefully avoid a fall as we get older.
It turns out that there's a huge number of falls in the elderly. CDC estimates about 36 million a year, which leads to about 32,000 deaths, and there are falls where you break a hip, there's falls where you don't break a hip, but there's 300, 000 hip fractures a year.
Then the question is, of course, does exercise prevent that? Because obviously we're here to talk about exercise.
So, there was a meta-analysis which looked at an Over a hundred studies of whether exercise, a proper exercise program would reduce the risk of a fall. The answer was yes. So, there is a 25 percent reduction in fall risk, if you did a good program, and if you did a program that was even more elaborate, you know, that dropped to 40% lower risk. So, it's really, really effective and really, really important.
Roger: If I recall it, I don't know if you and I talked about this, Bobby, or whether it was something that I read is that the mortality rate, 12, 24, 48 months after somebody breaks a hip, if you're older is really high. I was shocked at that number.
I can't recall if I read that somewhere and unfortunately, I don't have it or whether we talked about that, but not having that hip fracture when you're 80. Is just as important because it can send you down a very big downward spiral afterwards.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Absolutely. We have a bit of a chicken and egg problem but yes, if you have a hip fracture, you're less mobile which is why they try to get you up and organize quickly and effectively.
But if you're stuck in bed, you'll get blood clots. You may get pneumonia and all sorts of bad things will happen. Also, the people who fall may have had deteriorating health in the first place, which caused them to fall. So, there is a little bit of a chicken and egg bottom line. Let's figure out how we can avoid falling.
Roger: A question about this exercise end of it is I think of this as, okay, I'm 56. Why do I need to worry about falling when I'm 75? My understanding is that actually this is the exact time to do it because it's not one of those things, it's like quitting smoking when you've gotten diagnosed with lung cancer.
Exercise takes a long time to compound efforts. The sooner I can be on an exercise program, the better because I'll have compounding effects by the time I get there.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: You have to separate the mortality benefits from the function benefits but absolutely right. I've always felt like you need to get ahead of things because we're going to lose muscle mass year after year after year after year. So, we really need to get ahead of things.
It isn't just about falls. It's about going on a trip and not being able to manage your luggage or play with your grandkids and do the things you want to do. It's a gradually falling capability that you want to, kind of as I like to say, overuse it or you're going to lose it.
Roger: So, when I think of exercise, my relationship with exercise over my life has been exploring my boundaries. How much can I lift? How far can I go? How fast can I go that distance? Is that the kind of program that we should be thinking about when it comes to this health span? Or should we redefine what exercise means in terms of what we're trying to accomplish?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, I think that's great. I think what you've identified is one aspect of exercise. So, when I say a program, I don't want to scare people like, oh my God, I got to commit to doing this. It's really a framework or a general set of guidelines.
Let's start with the easiest part which is kind of the aerobic stuff that we all kind of are aware of whether it's You know walking around the block with our dog or playing pickleball, whatever it might be. The CDC says basically 150 to 300 minutes a week would be considered a good amount and give you so much of the benefits or about 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic work. That could be you're riding a bike or you're jogging. Where it's not quite so easy to talk. You can get a couple of words out and then you want to pause in terms of your speaking, but that's just one piece of what a program needs to have, and that's the aerobic piece, but then there's the anaerobic piece, which is pushing yourself.
Now, how many pull ups can I do? You know, how fast could I run from here to the next lamppost? That's the anaerobic side. That's terribly important for a whole host of reasons. Then of course, there's the strength stuff and the balance stuff, and the flexibility, each and every one of those are important to incorporate.
Now, the aerobic part is the greatest amount of time, but they're all really, really important. You could have all the aerobics you're doing, but if you're not doing any strength or balance, you're still at risk of a fall. We made a chart that we used at the roundup a couple of weeks ago, and that's something maybe we can put in the 6-Shot Saturday that will kind of break it out by the type of exercise and how many minutes and how many times a week so people can kind of visualize where they are and what they might have.
Roger: So, what he's referring to is our annual conference for the Rock Retirement Club. We had, well, Bobby had a breakout session on exercise. I was speaking at the same time, which evidently was a mistake because I walked into Bobby's room to try to find my bag or a pen or something, and it was like standing room only. The interest in figuring out how to age in a healthy way with exercise was huge in the 200 plus people that were at the club or at the roundup.
I imagine with the CDC guidelines, Bobby, I think that's like 20 minutes a day. I think when I did the math on some of the minutes per week, that's starting from scratch. That's like the absolute bare minimum just to get somebody moving, I would think. What kind of things should we be doing in each one of these domains?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, for you and I who do exercise as a regular part of our lives, the 150 minutes doesn't seem like a big deal, but for half of Americans, they don't get anywhere near this.
So, this is a good target. In all of these things, more is better. There really isn't an upper bound on, will I get more benefit if I did six hours a week? Yes. How about eight hours a week? Yes. There's almost no limit. Yes, of course, there's orthopedic injuries and those kinds of things, but in terms of the broad benefits, there's really no upper bound.
So doing anything is great, and the more we can do is even better.
Roger: Okay. So, what should a program look like? Do we have aerobic, anaerobic, which anaerobic is just pushing yourself, I imagine running fast, doing things hard, and then strength, training, balance, and flexibility. I guess, how do we put up that all together?
Where should we start?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, the chart I think will help people, at least I'm very visual, so that will help people. The anaerobic is not a large time commitment. It's a huge pain commitment because it's no fun. But it's, you know, five minutes once a week, and that's really good if you can keep that up, you know, strength trainings, probably 20 minutes, twice a week, ideally, if you can do 40 minutes, that's even better balance may just be a couple of minutes, and it may be just something while you're having. your coffee instead of sitting down, you stand on one leg or while you're brushing your teeth. So, the balance, a lot of that can just be done while you're doing other things. Then flexibility is stretching, and again, it doesn't have to be more than five or 10 minutes, ideally every day. But if you do it three times a week, that's better than not.
Roger: We'll share that chart because it gives good guidelines around each one of these.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Yeah, I think so.
Roger: I'm sure we'll go deeper in the different conversations that we have.
For Nichole on her birthday, so Nichole turned, I won't say what she turned, but it starts with a four and we sent her as a team, a Fitbit, like she, that's what she wanted. She wanted a Fitbit and now she's tracking all that stuff and she's tracking her sleep and we've talked about that before. But the other thing that it tracks is her steps. You had the proverbial 10,000 steps a day. I don't even know where that came from and whether it's a good goal.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Well, I didn't know where it came from, and I didn't know if it was the right goal, so I had the same concerns you did.
So, of course, I went to the literature to figure this one out. The origin, people will be highly disappointed. It has nothing to do with science.
So, there was a pedometer that was the pre-Fitbit way of doing things and this version of it was developed in Japan and they were trying to market it and they were trying to figure out, Oh, what are we going to call this thing?
What's our logo going to look like? The Japanese character for 10,000. Looks an awful lot like a kind of hieroglyphic of a person and therefore that's what they use, and since it stood for 10,000, that was the number that they said you should do. So obviously it doesn't have a lot of science connected to it, but there has been science now attached to how many steps you should take a day.
I'll throw out a couple of things. Some people know about blue zones. Maybe we'll do a whole month, a little podcast on blue zones, which are these regions around the world where people seem to live a whole lot longer, like Okinawa and other places. The Amish are one of the cultures that people look to where people live a long time, you know, or at least a lot of people live to be a hundred, which is really special.
The Amish walk about 15,000 steps a day. So more than the 10,000 and certainly more than the 5,000. There was a huge study, the women's health study. that had 18,000 women, and these were women that were in their 70s, so it wasn't like young people. And they wore accelerometers, and the average was about 5,000 steps a day.
But for each quartile, the 25th percentile, 50th, 75th, 100th, the more steps the better, and your risk of mortality went down 20, 30, 50 percent as you did more steps. And then if you broaden that to another 15 studies that looked at it, they found that sort of a thousand, each thousand step more, you got another 15 percent reduction in all-cause mortality.
These are all observational studies that have their own problems. But one of the things we look for is what's called the dose response. So, if you see that if you do 5,000 You do well, but 7,000 you do better and 10,000 you do even better. That says something about the steps and probably it's beneficial and there isn't an upper bound.
So even after 12,000 steps, you do better if you do more. So, the more, the merrier. But don't set an arbitrary number that makes you feel like you're a failure.
Roger: It's really just about movement. Here we are. We're chatting as we're recording this at 3:30 in the afternoon.
You know what my step count is? 1,541 steps.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Not good.
Roger: It's because I work out of the house, I walk upstairs, I always get my flights. But when we walk Sherlock, who's over there laying on the couch, I'm guessing I average around six a day. So, it takes some intentionality, obviously, that I have not been applying to move.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Sadly, that's a reflection of our Western life. In a lot of other cultures, you basically walked all the time, and I'm not just saying you're a farmer tilling a field, but in towns in Sardinia and Sardinia happens to be one of the blue zones, Sardinia is really hilly and people are just walking up and down the hills and you know, if you want coffee, you just go to the cafe and then you grab some and you go for another walk and, you know, you're just walking all the time.
Then our new society says, oh, well, you know, I think I'm going to sit in a chair most of the day, and after I get up and maybe walk over to the kitchen, I'm going to go to sleep and lie flat for another seven or eight hours.
Yeah, it's really about, can you convert your sitting life as much as possible to one that moves?
Roger: I think of that in terms of escalators, right? You think of airports and escalators where you have the stairs right next to it. It takes some intentionality because a lot of things are designed to make us not move, not have to go do things.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: There's a hilarious viral photo of a health club in Los Angeles, I think it was Los Angeles, where the health club is on the second floor and there's stairs and an escalator to get up to the health club and everybody's on the escalator to go up to the health club to work out.
Roger: They're driving around trying to get the closest parking spot.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: All true. All completely true. So where should we go next? Well, what we've talked about so far is falls under the rubric of aerobics. So, we need to make the scientific argument that the other types of exercise, you know, the rapid movement, anaerobic, people talk about plyometrics where you're sort of jump that that makes a benefit too.
So, one of the nice things about the world of Fitbits and whoops, is these large databases that kind of track people and they have one in the UK called the Bio Bank.
We have a set of surveys in the U.S. called NHANES, but so many people now have Fitbits, or they give them Fitbits. So not only can you ask, are you smoking and how many hours of sleep do you get? But now they can see how many steps they're doing. And in this one study, they looked at the kind of what they called vigorous intermittent physical activity.
So, like a really quick walk or a sort of bouncing up the stairs to go to another floor, and what they found is that the people who had these bursts of activity, as little as three or four minutes a day, had a, in this study, looked at cancer risk and it dropped by 20 to 30%. So, it isn't just aerobics.
You want to do something that is taxing for a short period of time, and it doesn't have to be flat out on the track. It can just be, I'm going to sort of skip up the stairway instead of just plotting my way up.
Roger: Probably a way to say that is where it's a little harder to talk, a little harder to hold a conversation compared to walking, right?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Or skipping rope. I hate skipping rope because I have no coordination, but that would be a perfect kind of burst of doing something. Doing three or four minutes of skipping rope is not easy. Certainly, isn't for me.
Roger: Rowing for me is that, where it's about two to two and a half minutes to do 500 meters. Two minutes if you're doing it rigorously, if I can pronounce the word.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Then the other study I'd mentioned, because, okay, so now we've talked about aerobic, now we've talked about these bursts, but they then looked at, what about the combination of doing your basic aerobic and the vigorous stuff and strength training and did that matter? Did you get more benefit by doing all of it?
The bottom line was absolutely that you really want to do all of it, not just some of it.
Roger: This is an observational question. When we think of all of these domains of. Aerobic strength, anaerobic balance, flexibility is, and I have my own opinion on this, it seems to me that when, if I were to go to a gym, very few people are being very intentional. Like they're there on a mission to do their work out. I see a lot of, let me check my phone. Let me chat for a while.
A lot of this is we want to be intentional. This is. Something we need to work at, and it can be social, but it's easy to think we're working really hard when half the time we're spending doing other things or not quite working as hard as we could.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Yeah, we talked about this at the first podcast on exercise where people get into this. Oh, well, I'll just exercise two and a half hours a week and that's all I need to do.
What we need to do really is the sort of Stephen Covey, start with the end in mind. Imagine you're walking on a sort of uneven road and like I do more often than I'd like to admit, I trip on the sidewalk crack, you know, which might only be a quarter of an inch different from the one I'm on, and then you sort of stumble, and you generally catch yourself. That's rapid body movement. That's like, I'm going to practice jumping. Or if you have a box, you can jump on top of it.
You need to do that, or you could next time, instead of catching yourself, you'll end up on the ground. You're walking somewhere, and your wife isn't paying any attention and she's half in the middle of the street. There's a car coming. You need to chase her and yank her back. That's this sort of anaerobic quick movement.
This isn't just a check the box. Each one of these things will help you protect your functionality in ways that are completely different. The balance is a completely different set of problems you're trying to avoid than, you know, rushing in and getting your grandchild who's running across a parking lot.
So yes, we don't want to be on autopilot, and we do want to think about all these because they each have their own benefits.
Roger: I like that idea of connecting these kinds of movements to real life, why do I need to improve these. So, I can jump out of the way or catch myself or balance when I'm on one foot. Okay.
So, two more areas. One is on fuel. I do not like to work out after I've eaten something or I've drank something, I tend to like to work out on a more of an empty stomach, and then I did the Spartan Beast this last weekend, which took me much longer than most people, about five hours. I was actually happy with my fueling, but I was really cognizant of not drinking sugary stuff or too much sugary stuff.
So, what should we do about fueling ourselves? When is it really something we need to pay attention to and when is it not as urgent an issue?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: I think it's something to think about, but not obsess about. The most important thing is water. Obviously, if you're exercising for 20 minutes, it really doesn't matter.
But if you're going to be out there for an hour, and you're playing pickleball in the sun, yeah, you want to be able to have some sips of water, or you might end up being dehydrated by the time you're done. If you're going to go for a jog, or you're going to play that pickleball thing, do you need to eat anything?
I think the studies are pretty good, despite the Gatorade commercials and all the other commercials you'll see, that if you're exercising for less than 60 minutes, and this type of exercise, I mean, significant exercise, not just to walk around the block. You don't need anything. Your body will ramp up and bring you plenty of sugar in your blood to do what you need to do.
Now, if you're working out for more than an hour, then having something can be helpful in the tank before you start and, you know, during it. Now, Pickleball is an intermittent activity. So, it's a little hard to say just because you're doing an hour and a half of Pickleball, whether you need to eat beforehand, but if you're doing anything else where you kind of at it nonstop, then you begin to think about it.
Okay. So, is there any evidence to support this? All the typical Gatorade type tests are just, you know, they're done in eight people on bicycles and they're not really particularly good studies and they're only showing the results they want to show you. But there was a pretty rigorous study done recently where people did 75 minutes over an hour of high intensity running.
I mean, this isn't just gentle running. They were running hard. And they gave him a chance to rest in the middle, and then when they were done with 75 minutes, they said, okay, now the exercise really begins after you've done this. Now I want you to run into, you can't run any longer. So that was just the preamble.
Now you get to do the real thing, and people were able to run for another like six minutes or something, and then they were just. they were spent. They then tested whether people who had some carbohydrates before the 75 minutes began and somewhere in the middle, whether they did better.
The answer was they did a lot better instead of being at it for six minutes, they could go for 11 minutes instead of going for Like a mile, they could go for a mile and a half, so it made a big difference, but these are people who had really intense exercise and we're trying to push it even longer. For the average person, it is probably not a huge deal if you're exercising for only an hour, an hour and a half. But do drink fluids, 16 ounces, 20 ounces an hour. Depends on how hot it is.
By the time this podcast comes out, you might've already listened to the caffeine one and caffeine really does help. a lot of people for performance, so you might try having some caffeine before you work out.
Roger: Okay, so I want to end this with how do we build a sustainable program for exercise? I guess we should always do the disclaimer of if you're going to start an exercise program or anything health related, probably a good idea to talk to your doctor because we all have very specific conditions, they need to be aware of.
So, you know, we're talking in very general terms. But how do we build something that's not just simply a program like a diet, but becomes part of our daily life?
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Yes. I am reminded that, you know, an exercise program you don't do is not worth very much. So, every journey begins with a first step, figuratively and literally in this case.
Make it easy first. Okay, if you've been in mostly a couch potato, do five or ten minutes. Do it a couple times a week, then grow it into something more. If you're already doing more, do a little bit more. If you're not doing strength training, add strength training. If you're doing strength training, but you're not doing plyometrics, these jump kinds of things, add some plyometrics.
Make it easy and incremental.
Now, everybody's different. I tend to prefer exercising by myself. It's just how I'm built mentally. But having a workout buddy or an accountability partner can be really helpful. Having a trainer that you're paying forces you to do it, and you don't need a fancy, fancy, really expensive trainer.
If you're a member of the Y, they're Personal trainings are not that expensive. Do that once a week if you can afford it. I think that'll get you going.
We could have a whole discussion on listening to music and whether that's a good idea or a bad idea, and depending upon whether you want to be meditative, going in without music is a good idea. If you're trying to distract yourself from the fact you hate this, then if it helps you do it, then listen to music. But that's a whole topic in and of itself, whether to go in or to go out as you do it.
The one last thing I would mention is stretching is really good for general flexibility. Stretching to prevent injury doesn't work.
So, people are like, oh, I'm going for a run. I'm going to stretch out my legs and my Achilles. The studies that have been done make it more likely you're going to hurt yourself. That's stretching beforehand. Some people argue well, get warmed up first. So go run for five or 10 minutes, then stretch and then continue on.
None of this stuff seems to make a huge difference in terms of injury. Stretching at the end of the day, a stretching program is wonderful, but doing it right before exercise isn't the panacea people hope it would be.
Roger: Interesting. I've definitely heard that stretching cold muscles is not good, but I'm not good yet because you can pull a muscle, but the idea from a flexibility standpoint, then, because you said that I'm like, really? Oh, okay.
But from a flexibility standpoint, because we lose flexibility as we get older, I guess this is just like exercise. It has to be something integral that's done consistently in order to get the compounding of it to keep the muscles elongated over a long period of time, so you don't lose flexibility. It's still important, but just not right before you go exercise.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Oh yeah. It's I'm not minimizing the importance of stretching because mobility, if your shoulders are tight. It's hard to swim. It's hard to do a lot of things. So yeah, stretching is great. It just isn't something you necessarily want to do right before exercise in the hopes that it'll prevent an injury.
Roger: Makes sense. Makes sense. As always, Dr. Dubois, this is helpful. I love the idea of just starting. Don't make it over complicated.
Dr. Bobby Dubois: Yes, exactly.
Roger: Makes me think of tiny habits. With that, let's go set a smart sprint.
TODAY’S SMART SPRINT SEGMENT
On your marks, get set,
and we're off to take a little baby step you can take in the next seven days to not just rock retirement, but rock life. Oh, rock life.
So, in the next seven days, what I want you to do is to assess what your process and strategy is for retirement, and I want you to trust yourself a little bit.
Listening to shows like this and whatever else you listen to or consume Is important it helps build that knowledge base, but ultimately, you're going to have to create your way of rocking retirement and your plan to fund that.
Yes, you want to be very diligent. You want to do the best that you can do it but don't think that that somebody has a magic answer, not me, not some of the other "retirement influencers" out there. Nobody actually has the plan. You have to find what works for you, and it's okay if you take somebody else's strategy and adjust it to fit you.
It won't invalidate that strategy most likely, as long as you're being very thoughtful and very organized in your decision making, and I would say very agile too, allow yourself to make little baby steps. I think ultimately though, you can do this, whether you're working with somebody, be proactive, but trust yourself a little bit.
CONCLUSION
All righty, I am off to go do a, I don't know, maybe three-mile ruck as I prepare for my adventure in Costa Rica with Michael Easter and Bobby DuBois, who you heard today. We're going to go on a rucking adventure with Michael Easter. with undisclosed challenges that are around the theme of The Comfort Crisis.
Great book, by the way. I'm excited to go do that. So, I'm going to go, Ruck, you go do something fun too okay.
The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. I'll perf Foreman's reference is 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.