Retirement And The Messy Middle (podcast)

00:36
with grace and confidence. First, I'm happy to have Eric Meermann back with me for the first time in season three. Eric is a senior vice president here at Palisades Hudson, responsible for firmwide professional staff development, as well as supervising the staff at the Stanford, Connecticut office where he's based, and serving our clients across the country. He's also among the authors of our book, “Looking Ahead: Life, Family, Wealth and Business After 55.” Eric, welcome back to the podcast.

Eric Meermann 01:05
Thanks, Amy. Glad to be here.

Amy Laburda
Next, I'm always happy to have Paul Jacobs return to “Something Personal.” Paul is Palisades Hudson's managing vice president, overseeing the entirety of our firm's client service operations from his home base in Atlanta. He also continues to work directly with our clients nationwide and is another of the authors of “Looking Ahead.” Nice to have you back, Paul.

Paul Jacobs
Thanks, Amy. Great to be here.

Amy Laburda
And I'm excited to welcome Andrea Maizes to the podcast. Andrea is a certified executive and retirement coach based in South Florida.

01:35
She works with clients who are contemplating or navigating significant transitions in their lives or careers, helping them to manage change both personally and professionally. Andrea is also the author of the newsletter “The Next Edit,” which is available on Substack. Andrea, welcome to “Something Personal.”

Andrea Maizes
Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.

Amy Laburda
So fresh off that introduction, Andrea, I thought we might start with letting you just describe what you do in your own words, a little bit. So what [does] an executive and retirement coach’s day-to-day look like?

Andrea Maizes
Well,

02:04
I prevent people from making terrible mistakes. That's how I look at it. No, seriously. I think that what I do as a retirement coach plays into what I do as an executive coach. Executives in general don't like to think about retiring. They think they're going to live forever and they're going to work forever. But everybody plans for retirement as it relates to their financial situation, but nobody really thinks, what am I going to actually do when I retire? Or how am I going to live my life?

02:33
So I work at the intersection of those two things: helping senior folks figure it out, you know, what are they going to do when they retire, so that they do retire, because many of them hang on way longer than they should because they don't know what they're going to do. So I take people through a process that helps them figure that out. It can be painful because they have to really face a lot of different things. So I'd say that's the best way to describe what I do. I help them transition from one thing to something else.

Amy Laburda 03:03
And how did you start doing this kind of work? Was it a sudden change for you or was it a more gradual evolution of what you do?

Andrea Maizes
Well, I was one of those executives, except I did it the hard way. I took a nosedive off the corporate ladder. Literally, I spent 30 years in HR. I was a CHRO at a very large company during COVID. So “chief HR officer,” trying to herd the cats, all 30,000 of them in seven countries, during COVID. It was not fun.

03:32
And in October of ’21, I decided, I think I'm tired. I think I'm done. I'm just done. I'm going to retire. I had never thought about that before, but you know, approaching my mid-sixties and it's time to think about it. And I'm like, all right, I'm done. That was it. We sold the company. I was able to take some money off the table, which was a nice thing. And I told my boss, I'm out. See ya. I hired my replacement and I left. And then I went home. And then I cleaned out a lot of closets.

04:02
And then I did a lot of doctor's appointments. And then one day I woke up and there was nothing on my calendar. And I absolutely freaked out. I mean, literally, freaked out. My husband will tell you I, like, went into the abyss. I didn't know what to do with myself, because I didn't realize how much of my identity was tied up in what I was doing. So I

04:27
liken it to when you're building a house, there's a structural beam. There's something in the middle of the house holding it up. For me, that was work. And when I pulled out that beam, everything fell in on itself. And I hadn't realized that work was my identity. It was my schedule. It was my social circle. It was everything. So everything disappeared all at once. And it was traumatizing. So I said to myself,

04:54
I can't be the only one going through this. There's like 11 million baby boomers retiring every day. So I started doing some research, and I found a retirement coach. She of course was 45 years old. So I thought, what does this chick know about retirement? But I called her and ended up working with her. And she helped me clarify, you know, what I could be doing with the skills I had and what new skills I wanted. So I worked with her for several months and realized that

05:22
there's this unique intersection, helping founders and executives plan for, intentionally plan for what happens to them when they retire. And that's sort of how I got into it. It's like, you know, trying to prevent others from making a terrible… you know, the mistake that I'd made.

Eric Meermann
A question on that. Is there a big overlap between your career in human resources and coaching? Did those skills translate?

Andrea Maizes
Very much so. A lot of my job towards the end of my career was coaching executives. You know,

05:52
on the ground in different offices, right? Executive teams. So there was a lot of overlap. The top… Obviously the subject matter is a little different, but where I have an advantage that some other coaches don't is there is a succession planning piece of this also for an executive or a founder. I do work with a lot of founders, so they can't just walk away. Neither can most CEOs or other senior executives. So there's the “planning for my replacement”

06:22
piece of it, which is an HR function, right? Who are going to hire? How are you going to onboard them? And then while you're doing that, how can you prepare for your next version of you? What you're going to do, your next chapter. So there… It definitely helped me, being an HR person, being able to bridge those two worlds.

Amy Laburda
I read in preparing for this episode that you also do executive bridge coaching. Does that — what you're talking about there with the succession planning?

Andrea Maizes
Yeah, exactly. It's bridging that gap. So I'm a leader or a founder, and I want to retire.

06:52
Maybe in two years, maybe in five years. What do I have to do to prepare for that? Right. What has to happen for me to be able to walk out? And then what am I going to do when I walk out? So that I don't drive everyone who's still in the business crazy, because I have nothing to do. So it's the dual ends of that.

Amy Laburda
Yeah, we talked about this a little bit on a previous season episode with Larry Elkin, our founder, who I know you know, about sort of the

07:17
both logistical side, of making sure you have a long enough runway to plan for that, but also the emotional side with a founder that seems particular... I mean, not to say that CEOs who aren't founders don't have an emotional attachment, but I have to imagine that some of the coaching has to do with, you know, letting your baby go if you're a founder who's put all the blood, sweat and tears into it.

Andrea Maizes
100% of letting your baby go. But I also think that, you know, society has a very narrow view of retirement.

07:44
The way you look… If you look on TV, everyone is walking on the beach, they're gardening, they're taking care of their grandchildren. And apparently a lot of them are also taking… nevermind, I won't go there. [laughs] They're, you know… It's all the same view of retirement. And that's not what it is anymore. It doesn't have to be that. It could be whatever you want it to be. And what I have found is most senior people that retire, they end up maintaining some sort of work.

08:12
Maybe they don't work in what they used to do. Maybe they do coaching. Maybe they are investors. Maybe they, I don't know, open up a bakery. I've had, you know… It depends on what they want to do and how much they want to do it for. So you don't have to stop working. You just want to rethink how much of your time you want to spend working, and what do you want to fill the rest of your time with? And how do you want to create a life that's meaningful for you in your next chapter?

Amy Laburda
Yeah, I will

08:40
kick it to Paul and Eric if they have any more specific examples, but from the editorial manager side, I'll mention when we were putting together the most recent edition of our book, “Looking Ahead,” I had to really fight as far as getting a cover design. Those “gardening”s, those “walking on the beach.” When you work with a designer and they say, oh, it's a book about “over 55,” that's immediately where all of the samples go. And nothing against gardening.

09:05
Gardening is lovely, but it seems like the people that you work with, and I'm sure the people that my colleagues here work with, have other goals as well.

Andrea Maizes
They are not gardening. Most of them are not gardening. They're still maintaining some sort of work, doing something. Sometimes it's a passion project. Sometimes it's volunteerism. Sometimes it's actual work. They're doing angel funding for companies. They're doing all different types of things. They're just doing it maybe

09:33
20 hours a week or 10 hours a week. And they have the flexibility that they need to be able to build their life. I want to see my grandkids, I want to travel, I want to do other things. So they're putting together what's called a “portfolio life,” which is a really interesting term. It's piecing together things that make you happy into a life. And the life is full-time all day, but it's not one job all the time.

Paul jacobs
And I know when I retire,

10:03
gardening will not be part of it for me. So there's at least one of us. A question for you, Andrea. I know that, from my own experience working with clients and also just friends and family, retirement outcomes can… There's a spectrum of outcomes from just totally smooth transition and just one day you're working and the next you're not, and it's totally fine, and you're happy and you're content, to it's a disaster. You fall off the cliff. It can be depressing, you lose purpose.

10:32
And, you know, even if there wasn't, you know, attempts to kind of plan ahead, it's just, it's not a good thing at all. So I'm curious who, you know… Are there personality types that could benefit more from this kind of work? Or is this something you think every executive, you know, if someone has reached that level, you know, should be, you know, working with someone to really plan ahead and avoid falling off that cliff? You know, who… I don't know if it's everybody or just more of a subset, who benefits from this kind of work?

Andrea Maizes
Type A crazy people like me.

Paul Jacobs
There you go.

Andrea Maizes 11:02
People who, maybe like you. People who have really built their life around their work. I was one of those. I mean, I was all about my… If you asked me, well, who are you? I would tell you what I did for a living. You know, I mean, when people said, no, but who are you? What do you like to do? I'm like, “I like to work.” Right? So I really did love my job, love to work. And I think there are some people that build their life around work and there's others that don't. And the ones that don't are a lot more… It's easier for them.

11:31
So they already were playing golf or pickleball or mah-jongg or doing pottery, all of which I tried, by the way, all of which I almost killed myself and everyone else I was with. And trust me on the pottery thing: not for me. So, you know, I tried a lot of different things trying to fit into that mold, right? That “I'm going to play tennis, golf.” It just wasn't satisfying for me. So I think it depends on your nature to begin with and what you're doing before you retire.

12:01
So maybe you want to do more of those things, but I wasn't one of those people who had a lot of hobbies. I have two children. My kids left, and I was like, oh, they're gone. Where'd they go? You know, I'm exaggerating. But my point is the empty nest wasn't a crisis for me the way it is for some moms that stay at home, because I had my work. My crisis came later.

Paul Jacobs
A follow up question on that, having to do with timeline. When do you recommend starting to think about these things? You know, some people

12:30
decide when they step down, and they kind of have a plan and a schedule. Some people, the decision is made for them and it can be abrupt. So what do you say when someone asks, you know, when is the right time to start doing this work?

Andrea Maizes
When you think you have enough money saved, or you will, because that's a given. You can't retire if you can't support yourself in retirement. So I think I always say to people, make sure that your finances are in order and then you can start thinking about it. And then you can think…

12:58
You know, so sometimes that's two years, sometimes it's five years, sometimes it's longer depending upon what the financial situation is. So I mean, that's, like, table stakes. If you don't have enough money to do it, you can't do it. So that's sort of my bellwether. Can you live a life that you want to live financially before you start thinking about what you're going to do when you retire? Does that answer your question? I think it's different for everyone, but that's the key.

Paul Jacobs 13:24
Yeah, and now you're speaking our language, because this is a big part of what we do, is working with people, with… Retirement planning for us, a lot of the time, means crunching numbers and analyzing dollars and cents to try to confirm that there is a clear path to life expectancy and beyond. There's certainly plenty of work to be done that does not involve crunching numbers and dollars and cents.

13:49
But that's something that we are able to help a lot of our clients with, just getting that peace of mind, knowing that they're on the right track. Or if they're not on the right track, you know, sometimes we have hard conversations with clients. Do you get involved with the dollars and cents, or is that something that they're kind of already set up and then they bring you in afterwards?

Andrea Maizes
I like to work with people like you guys, because I don't want to talk about dollars and cents. I want you to send me people who know that their dollars and cents are in order, and they want to start having those conversations about OK, what am I going to do when I retire?

14:18
How am I going to fill my time in a meaningful way? So no, I don't deal with that at all, but I am very clear about that and say, you’ve got to make sure that this is in order before you start going here, because it's a little chicken and egg, right? How can they tell me what they want to do if they don't know how much money they're going to have? Well, I'm like, well, I can't help you if you don't have money, OK? So you need to have money to be able to retire. So get that in line, and then we can talk about how you might want to spend that money. The other thing that's interesting is, I find that

14:48
when people retire, maybe you guys find this too, when people retire, they're, like, all of a sudden, they become very cheap. They don't want to spend their money. And so they say they're going to do all these things. I'm going to travel. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. I'm like, no, you're not. No, you're not. You think you are, but you're not. So let's be realistic about what you're going to do. So we have some of those interesting conversations.

Eric Meermann
Yeah. One of the interesting things that comes up when I … is exactly what you mentioned, that once the paycheck stops coming in, it is a real

15:15
mindset change to accumulating, especially for high net worth individuals that maybe had CFO jobs or CEO jobs, where they're accumulating wealth for 30, 40 years and then suddenly the spigot turns off. And they have what they have, and they're good. And we can tell them, you're good, you've got more than enough. You can buy that new car, you can take that European vacation. But they're very, very reluctant to once they're not accumulating anymore, and they're in that spending phase. So that's an interesting overlap

15:45
that you mentioned.

Andrea Maizes
So what happened to me, I'll give you a story. What happened to me is: My husband is still working. And there's some real issues associated with couples retiring, also. So I do work with couples as well, and we can talk about that. But my husband is going to be working for another 10 years, easily. And I stopped working, and then I didn't have a paycheck coming in, hadn't started anything that was going to make me money at that point. I had to ask for money for the first time in my, I don't know…

16:12
I’d been working 40-some odd years. I had to ask for money. It was horrible. It was humiliating. I don't, you know, I think probably more, maybe more women than men experience that. But you know, I'm not going to dip into my 401(k) to pay my car payment, right? I didn't think about any of that stuff. And it was mortifying. I got used to it, by the way, you know, but still, you know, the first time it was like, I need money. And I was like,

16:40
“I’m going to vomit” as I was saying it, to be honest with you. Because I was so used to being independent. It was just another thing that I hadn't thought about, and it was a painful one.

Paul Jacobs
It's funny that you hear of these situations where, you know, different couples, you know… There are lots of different arrangements, but you may have a traditional breadwinner and a spouse that stays at home. And then the breadwinner retires, and then the spouse says wait a minute, I don't want you here.

17:05
Get back out there. So you must have to deal with couples sometimes, too, where it's not just one party that is making decisions. There are other parties, you know, it may be the spouse, it may … the children may want to have a say in some of these things. So, you know, how much of an issue can that be dealing with other family members and having to balance all these, kind of, conflicting opinions on what the right answer is?

Andrea Maizes
It's a huge issue. And it's a huge issue because there's so many variations. So there are two people that might retire together.

17:32
That's one circumstance, a situation [that] creates some issues. There's people that retire at different times. There's one that retires, one that never does. One that retires and goes back to work, because they don't want to be not working. And then my favorite is the one where the husband was working, breadwinner, wife was home doing baby, you know, kid-raising and whatever. Has their own life now. And suddenly the husband is following them around the house and they're like,

17:56
What are you doing? And he's like, well, do you want to have lunch today? And they're like, no, I don't want to have lunch. I have a life. I don't want… Go find something else to do. And it, you know, walking through those things, talking about them. Another big issue that I see a lot, Paul, is this expectation: Well, I'll take care of my grandkids. Your kids might have something to say about that. Right? So there's these conversations that have to happen as part of this planning process.

18:24
So first you have to identify what it is that's important to you. That might be nice for you, but what conversations do you have to have with the other people in your life to, you know, make sure the expectations or boundaries or whatever you want to call them are set, so that you don't give yourself, you know, more trouble than you started with.

Amy Laburda
Yeah, I feel like the

18:45
specific goals are a thing we've talked about on this podcast a lot with the money side as well. And it seems like that's another place where the family of it all could get sensitive, right? We certainly talked about family meetings more broadly. But have you ever, obviously not any specifics you don't feel like sharing, but have you ever run into those kinds of snags, where it just… Not just the emotional weight of asking for money,

19:09
but the disagreement on how to budget and how to deal with those different cash flows?

Andrea Maizes
Well, I can tell you a story. I won't, obviously, use names, but. I was working with a founder whose son was also in the business. The founder: I'm never retiring. I don't want to retire. The son comes in and says — closes the door and says to me, “You’ve got to get him out of here.” I'm like, “What do you mean ‘I’ve got to get him out’?” “You got to get him out of here. What's it going to take to get him out of here?” Right?

19:36
So for the father, it was about, I don't know what I'm going to do. For the son, it was: Just pay him, make him go away, get him out of here. Because he's blocking not only how I see myself, taking over the business, and how I want to run things. So it wasn't a personal thing. It was more around running the corporation and taking it to the next step. And the son wanted to modernize things. The father's like, we don't need a system for that. There was just all this friction.

20:06
It happens all the time. And especially with founders, it's more about helping them see a life that's meaningful for them. Right? And they can't, sometimes, see it. So they don't want to give up what they have.

Amy Laburda
Yeah. When you work with clients, do you have a large proportion who come in like that, where they're like, I don't have any vision of what's coming next, at all? I'm completely blank. Or do you have some proportion who are like,

20:32
oh, I kind of have an idea, but I'm not exactly sure how to go about it or what the concrete steps are with that plan?

Andrea Maizes
I think there are two groups. One is the people who have thought about it a little bit, but don't know how to execute and move forward. And then I work with a lot of people who are about six months to a year into retirement, and they are absolutely miserable.

Amy Laburda
Yeah.

Andrea Maizes
Because they were burned out. And there's… The challenge is “burnout” and “ready to retire” look a lot alike.

21:00
And in the moment, they're hard to tell apart. And so, when you're 60 and you think you're ready to retire but you're really burned out, and you jump off that ladder… Sadly, ageism is not dead and it's very hard to go backwards. So really figuring out if you're burnt out or you're ready to check out, you know, are two different things for the people who are working. Are you really ready? That's the first thing we do. Are you really ready?

Amy Laburda
Yeah.

Andrea Maizes
The second thing is, OK, if you're really ready, what do you want it to look like?

21:29
The people who are already retired, there's a lot of them too. Those people are in much more desperate shape. They're despondent. They've tried so many things. They've tried tennis and pickleball and pot[tery], like me, but none of them fit. And they just don't know what to do next. So helping them get to the bottom of what it is they want to spend their time doing and how that might look is what the essence of the work is. Another thing that comes up all the time is: I need… I don't have a purpose. It's my least favorite word:

21:59
purpose. Like, what is a purpose? And a purpose is not a thing. People are looking for a thing. Like where's my purpose? I don't have a purpose. They have a purpose. I don't have a purpose. I'm like, it's not a thing. It's a culmination. It's a group of things that you do to make yourself happy. And so people have to, you know… Finding that once they're already in the abyss is a challenge. And sometimes only a therapist can help. And I am not that either.

Amy Laburda
Sure.

Paul Jacobs 22:29
I was about to say, you know, it seems like you wear a lot of hats. And you may not think of yourself as a therapist, but it sounds like you are, in… at least in some ways. You know, we had another episode we recently recorded where we interviewed Jonathan Stanley, and he spoke about how the people who look for… who are most focused on their own happiness tend to be, unfortunately, some of the most unhappy people. So I’ve got a two-part question for you, really. One, just,

22:55
how do you define success? I'm sure it's not a one-size-fits-all answer. But how do you define success? What is the sign that things are reaching a conclusion or a steady state? And two, I'm also just curious, the work that's involved, are we talking about long, continuous meetings in person? Remote, phone calls? Weekly, monthly? I'm just curious how you structure this, because it seems like something you could

23:22
go as far down in the rabbit hole as one wants to. But ultimately, you do want to end up reaching that goal of success, however you define it.

Andrea Maizes
Success is defined by the client. OK? So they come to me with a problem, a challenge or whatever. What is success? I always ask them, I start with: What does success look like for you? So sometimes they'll say things like success looks like working 20 hours a week doing something, you know, something. Success looks like being on a board.

23:52
Success looks like a combination of grandkids, travel and working part-time. And it depends what their success looks like. And so that's a challenging question to answer, because everybody's idea of success is different. What I do with my clients is I take them through a series of sessions, to start with six sessions, and we go through a series of exercises that build on each other. I think I mentioned to Amy, I'm hopeful in January I'll be publishing a book. And in my book

24:20
are these 30 exercises to help people build the retirement of their dreams, so to speak. So it takes them through a series of exercises that build on each other, that will answer some of those questions. Questions like: I don't know what to do. I don't know what I want to do. So that's a big one. So there's an exercise about looking backwards to look forwards. What are the things you've done in your life that have made you the happiest and feeling … that you felt the most content with? And they're sometimes not like,

24:49
you know, it's not like playing tennis. It's more like I've always helped people, no matter where I've been. At church, at this place, at that place, you know. OK, help people. How are we going to do that, or how are we going to build that in? Right? So we try to identify what you've done in your past that you want to bring forward into your future. That's one of… an example of the exercises. So some people go through two exercises, three exercises, and they're like, “Oh!” The light bulb goes on and they're good. And they go off about their merry way. Sometimes they'll check in again, because they'll have a … they'll derail.

25:19
And others it takes longer. But one of the things, I don't know if any of you have read a book called “Life Is in the Transitions.” It is an incredible book. It changed everything for me, because it explained change to me, transition to me, at a time when I was really falling off the cliff. And a lot of people, myself included, spend a lot of time in what's in this book called “the messy middle,” where they try different shoes on for size. So I did that too. I tried HR consulting, and I was like,

25:46
“Oh, now I remember why I don't want to do HR anymore. Not doing that anymore.” I tried pottery. I found out I am not an artist. I'm not going to do that anymore. I tried paddle boarding. I'm like, I hate the water. This is probably not a good thing for me. You know, so, you try on a lot of things, but eventually you find things that fit. The shoes fit. And you build on them. Not to say they won't change over time, but that's really what we're after.

Eric Meermann
Is that a process that almost everybody has to go through, this “messy middle,” as you describe it?

Andrea Maizes 26:15
Yes. So there's… The godfather of change is William Bridges. And if you read anything by him… This second book, “Life is in the Transitions,” is based on his work. And essentially, every new beginning starts with an ending of something else. And so the process of change starts with an ending. Something is ending. So then it ends. You mourn the ending. You should have rituals to say goodbye to the ending. That's why they have retirement parties and things like that. Then it ends. And then there's this,

26:45
like, transition into what we call the messy middle. And it could be a year, it could be six months, it could be 10 years. It just depends on how fast you can move through it. But ultimately, people settle into a new normal, a new beginning, until that ends. And so with retirement, that could be, I get to the end of my messy middle, I'm really comfortable and happy, and suddenly I get ill. Or my spouse gets ill. Or we have to move. Right? So then the transition period starts again, and you're back to the

27:15
ending and into the messy middle. So if you think about change that way, we go through those transitions all the time. The thing that's interesting is that the transition is life. It's the steady state that's unusual, and it doesn't last for very long. We're usually always at some point in the transition cycle throughout our lives.

Amy Laburda
Yeah, it reminds me, earlier this season, I spoke to a college admissions professional about

27:42
parents and the kids going through the college admissions process. And it just immediately made me think of that, talking about sort of, you know, the excitement of what's next, but also sometimes the grief about the chapter that you're closing and leaving behind.

Andrea Maizes
Absolutely.

Amy Laburda
And it's sometimes hard, I think, you know, there's a societal push toward the excitement and away from the grief, which I imagine you must see all the time.

Andrea Maizes
So there's some… We tend to overindex, we overestimate our happiness,

28:11
right, on things. And we underestimate the things that are going to go wrong. We don't think about them, which is why a lot of people dive off, like I did, dive off the corporate ladder. I'm smart. I'll figure it out when I get there. No.

Amy Laburda
Yeah.

Andrea Maizes
Right? I underestimated… I didn't even think about all of the bad stuff, I thought about the good stuff, right? But the good stuff is never as good, and the bad stuff is worse.

Amy Laburda 28:37
[laughs] Dire, but fair enough.

Andrea Maizes
No. It's dire, but it's not. If you intentionally think about these things and plan for them, they're not dire. You know what's going to happen to you. As soon as I read that book, I was like, oh, thank God, I'm not crazy. But I am crazy, I'm not crazy about this. I'm going through a normal cycle. And that's really, for me, that's my mission. I don't want people to have to do what I did. I want people to think. I want your clients to think

29:05
about what's going to happen to them, not just can they pay the bills, right? What are they going to do with their time? And build an intentional retirement. Because it could look like anything you want it to look like.

Amy Laburda
I listened to you sit down with Richard Outram on his podcast recently. And the point “hope is not a plan” came up, which… I immediately thought of all my coworkers here at Palisades Hudson, because it feels like… I mean, you can correct me if I'm wrong, either Eric or Paul.

29:31
But “hope is not a plan” feels like a thing that applies to both the retirement planning that you do and financial planning more broadly, where just kind of crossing your fingers and moving forward doesn't lead to great outcomes, mostly.

Andrea Maizes
That applies to everything in life. I heard that from a CEO that I worked for years ago. Somebody said, “I hope this will happen.” And he turns around and he goes, “Hope is not a plan. Where's the plan?” That's a good point.

Amy Laburda
So we've talked on episodes in this podcast in the past,

30:00
probably enough that regular listeners are going to laugh for me to bring it up again, but one-size-fits-all is kind of a myth in financial planning. And I have to imagine for you as well. When you're sitting down with a client, what is sort of the first step to figure out… When you're doing, say, a diagnosis, to put it in medical terms, what is the first thing that you're sort of sitting down to be like, what do we need to home in on first?

Andrea Maizes
So I use something called an RQ assessment. So you've heard of IQ, EQ, AQ.

30:30
There's an RQ assessment that I use through, it's through the Retirement Coaches Association. That's usually a first step, because it's an eye-opener, because it talks… You answer a bunch of questions, and it comes back with this full report on where you might be emotionally, psychologically, socially and emotionally ready, and where you might not be. So what areas… We usually start with that, and then we focus in on those areas. At the same time, I always do the same exercise first: What does your perfect day look like?

31:00
Hour by hour. For me, it's getting up at exactly seven, watching the first 15 minutes of the “Today” show with my coffee in my hand, and then going to work out. And about 10 o'clock, I'm ready to work. Somebody wants an 8:30 meeting? My answer is no. You know, my point is really thinking about what brings you joy day to day. What do you want your day to look like, during the week, on the weekends? And it quickly becomes clear where the gaps are for people, right? Where do they

31:30
need to focus.

Amy Laburda
Sure. You don't have “2 to 4 p.m.: Follow my wife around the house asking…”

Andrea Maizes
Or 2 to 4 p.m., happy hour, every single day. That's a problem.

Paul Jacobs
That's encouraging, to hear that you're… one of the main questions is what does a day look like? That's a question that I ask a lot of clients when, you know… Usually I know that retirement, it's time to start thinking about and talking about retirement when they bring it up. You know, if they… If they don't bring it up, then

31:57
it's not on their mind and it's, you know, it may be years down the road. But you know, the second they start using the R word, I, you know, I hear that and I know that, all right, it's time to start having some different conversations. And that's one of my first questions is just, do you have any idea of, like, know, what a day looks like? And the day after that? And sometimes they're like, absolutely. You know, I can't wait. Sometimes they say, I have no idea. It's going to be terrible. You know, so you can kind of see what the answer is, how,

32:25
you know, how much work there is going to be for them to get ready for when the time comes. Is there, you know, a question number two or question number three? You think that also are, you know, super important to kind of gauge, you know, just where someone is at with all of this?

Andrea Maizes
I think that the second one after the perfect day is socially: What does your network look like? Because many people, myself included, when I left work, I left a lot of my friends. And my other friends, my “mom friends” or whatever you want to call them,

32:54
had moved on, right? They already had their activities and their social groups, etc. And I also moved away. So I'm not as close, physically, to them as I was. So social network is the second thing we work on, because that is also the thing. People get very lonely in retirement if they don't have these social networks built up. So I'd say that's number two. Of course, if you're married and you've got … The whole couple situation is probably number two,

33:23
if you've got that going on as well. Then social would be number three.

Amy Laburda
Do you feel that people tend to over-suggest volunteering as a panacea for retirement? I feel… Not to knock it. Paul and I have talked about philanthropy and both strongly believe in it for people who are moved by it. But I feel like as someone who encounters this kind of writing about retirement regularly, it feels like everyone is just like “that will fix everything.”

Andrea Maizes
OK, so for starters, there's a rule.

33:51
If you didn't do something before retirement, you're not going to do it when you retire. So my favorite is: I'm going to work out. I'm like, no, you're not. You didn't work out before, you're not going to work out now, right? You're not. I mean, you might eventually build that habit, but if it's not your habit before, it's not going to be your habit when you retire. So same with philanthropy, right? If you weren't volunteering before, it's not going to be so easy to go find those volunteer opportunities. The other thing I would tell you about volunteer opportunities is

34:20
those organizations, and I went down this road myself, they want your money and they want your hands. They don't want your head. They don't want your ideas. They don't want leaders. They want doers. OK? So if you want to go and do those things, literally pack bags, tutor children, OK. But if you want to be on the board, or you want to take a leadership role, or you want to have more of an impact at a higher level, you’ve got to be involved in those things before you retire, because they're not interested in you afterwards.

34:50
The same is true with board seats. I have a lot of CEOs: I'm going to be on boards. I'm like, no, you're not. Not unless you arrange for those things beforehand. Because once you… It's like when you drive your car, this is terrible, when you drive your car off the lot, it immediately loses its value. When the CEO leaves, they immediately lose their value. Not all of it, but there's a, you know, a depreciation. And when they go to get onto boards, or they go to do these other things, people are like, well, he's kind of old school.

35:18
Or he's not relevant anymore. Or he doesn't know the latest and greatest. So what I tell people is, if that's something you think you want to do, you’ve got to start building those blocks before you leave.

Amy Laburda
So we've just sort of touched on how there's no one-size-fits-all answers for anyone. But I'm going to turn around and ask you: You mentioned, already, a book, which I will link in our show notes, and your book, which by the time this airs should be out. So I'll link that as well.

35:45
But do you have any tools or resources that you find are really broadly applicable, that you're always pointing people towards?

Andrea Maizes
So the book, the book I told you about is one I point people towards often. The RQ assessment is another one that… It's not an expensive tool. I point people to it. You don't need a coach to do it. You can do it online. It's helpful to work with a coach when you do do it. Just so you interpret it correctly and know what to do with it. That's

36:10
part of the challenge. I do on my website have, like, a really extensive, 50 pages of tools. But things like, you know, senior living. What is the difference between senior living types of places? What should you ask or consider if you think you want to do that? So I have some tools and resources out there. There's not a lot out there. One thing I want to make sure to mention is, because I'm sure you guys will see this, is that a lot of people who are retired and unhappy don't talk about it.

36:39
They don't talk about it, because it's like a first-world problem. Who complains about not working? What an ingrate. You're so lucky you don't have to work, and you're complaining? So people tend to be quiet about it. And then they go searching online for resources, like I did, resources and coaches. Because anybody I tried to talk to looked at me like, you're not working? What's wrong with that? Like, what? You know, so there's not a lot out there, and you have to really dig in and try to find it yourself.

Amy Laburda 37:07
To that point, do you connect with people largely because they find you online? Is there a lot of sort of word of mouth referral, or as you said, is it a thing people don't want to talk about as much with their peers?

Andrea Maizes
I think they… Word of mouth, because people get — eventually people go digging. So for me, I found this woman that ended up being my coach. I found her digging online. I found a women's group for retired executive women.

Amy Laburda
OK.

Andrea Maizes
I don't know. I just happened on it. She happened to be on there. Right. So.

37:36
So word of mouth is one way. And then people write about this stuff, things like Substack, which is how I got… I mean, I don't know if you guys are on Substack, but it's blowing up. And it's mostly writers, and it's people out there sharing things. So somebody reads your Substack and they go, oh, I got to talk to you. Right? But it's haphazard. People find each other different ways. And again, it's… people are embarrassed that they are blessed, but not.

Amy Laburda 38:05
Yeah, we're just getting our feet wet at Palisades Hudson with the Substack pool. We started that up this year.

Andrea Maizes
It's the best.

Amy Laburda
Yeah. And as I mentioned, yours is called “The Next Edit.” I was just curious, how did you land on the name for your Substack newsletter?

Andrea Maizes
OK, you're going to laugh. Me and my best friend Claude, we came… I talked to ChatGPT and Claude. And then I played them off against each other and I said, I like this, I don't like that. You know, the modern way of doing things.

38:34
And I just liked the way it sounded. You know, it's an edit. Life is an edit. Every phase of your life is an edit. It doesn't have to be a redo. It could be just a tweak.

Eric Meermann
Yeah, I think that's a great way to put it, with the transition and change theme that you were hitting on before. I think that's a nice, nice way to tie it all in.

Paul Jacobs
And speaking of the modern way of doing things, I was thinking about trends, you know, retirement and, you know… Retirement 50 years ago looks different than it

39:00
does today, and it's going to look different again in the future. I don't, it's hard to really… It's not something I've put a lot of thought into. I don't know what it might look like in the future. Maybe we're just watching screens. But do you have thoughts on trends, and what this might evolve and continue to look like in the future?

Andrea Maizes
So I just finished a five-part series on “The Next Edit.” Sorry, I don't mean to be, to say that, but on how AI is going to impact retirement.

39:30
And some very interesting, I think, trends. Trends in social, right? People are talking to their… people are falling in love with their AIs, but let's not go with that. People are talking to their AI. AI is remembering things for people who have memory issues. They're helping them take medication. There's all kinds of things. My by far favorite, but weird, is you can upload your voice and you can answer questions. I don't know if you guys have heard of Storyworthy.

39:58
It's an AI tool out there, where you send to your parents — I am lucky, I have 92- and 91-year-old parents — and I sent them all these questions and they answered them in their own voice, and now they're up there and my kids can access it. You can train AI to answer questions, so when you're gone, your kids can ask you a question and you can answer in your voice. It's kind of weird, but they won't think it's weird. There are so many ways that AI is going to impact

40:27
aging in general and retirement in particular. Those are just two examples, the social one and the longevity one, or the legacy one, if you will. But there's a lot of others. Check it out. I wrote five posts on it.

Paul Jacobs
Yeah, it makes me think: You said earlier how you have to have the right habits in place. You know, we may have some sad listeners hearing that if you didn't work out when you were working, you're not going to do it in retirement. And well, you know, there's hope. There's always hope.

40:55
But AI may be the same thing, like for people that are nearing the end of their work careers and thinking, I don't need to learn this. I'll be gone by the time it's really widespread. No, like you're saying, it could be very useful in that next chapter.

Andrea Maizes
Yeah, it is extremely useful. But I think older people are scared of technology, which is partially what makes them irrelevant.

41:21
Again, 91- and 92-year-old parents. My dad can do anything technical. I mean, it's unbelievable. The guy had the first cell phone. It was like a brick, OK? But now he does his router. He's like, you know, people call him for tech support. He's in assisted living, and he's the tech support for all the people there. They can't figure out how to, you know, where should I put, you know. So if you stay relevant, you will be relevant.

41:47
And I think it's important not to be scared of it. And that's another message for listeners. It's coming, whether you like it or not. Embrace it and see where it takes you.

Amy Laburda
Yeah. I mean, I think of even just 10, 15 years ago, the rise of social media, which we probably don't have enough time left in the podcast to get all into the intricacies. But how much that can make a difference, as far as the social networks you were talking about earlier.

42:12
You know, the ability to connect to people, even if you can't physically see them, opens a lot of doors, I think, for people who might find getting around harder as they get further and further into their aging. I've seen that with people in my own life versus people who are sort of either scared of or intimidated by [it], you sort of lose… That door closes a little bit for them.

Andrea Maizes
So some of my closest, some of the people I'm closest to now that I met during COVID were all on Zoom. They don't live in my part of the country. I…

42:41
You know, never, some of them I've never met in person, but we talk every week. You know, we have scheduled Zoom calls, so we trade ideas. So I think it's about finding community any way you can. And technology makes that easier as you get older, especially if you live alone or you want to age in place, right? You have these options that you didn't have before.

Amy Laburda
Yeah. Circling back to a thing you said at the beginning of the episode, the intimidation of the blank schedule.

43:10
It just made me think, and I was wondering, is it really a temperament difference? Or how important do you find it is for your clients to have some sort of regimented rhythm, things that happen over and over in their lives, without work to sort of impose that on them?

Andrea Maizes
I would say it is hugely important to have a structure. Doesn't have to be the same thing every single day, but to have a structure. So that's the perfect day I was talking about, right? Every day I wake up, I do the same thing.

43:38
Right? What happens after 10 o'clock? I mean, it could be a client, could be something else, could meet a friend for lunch. Things change. But I have a basic structure, whatever that is for the week. And then I have a different one on the weekends. And it gives me, you know, it provides meaning. Right? I know I have to be someplace. Somebody is expecting me. Or I have, you know, things that I know I do. You mentioned if you're not going to work out, you're not going to work out. Habits are very, you know, habits are a big part of

44:08
life, right? Building a habit takes a long time, but once you build it, it sticks. And it gives, it makes your life feel like it has stickiness. It's got a routine, which is necessary. It doesn't have to be the same every time, but every day. But having that basic [structure] really helps people feel grounded and connected. And that's really a big piece of what is missing when you stop work. Work dictated everything about my life. When I got up, when I ate my meals, when I went to sleep.

44:36
Right? When I got to watch TV. When I got to go to my kid's soccer game. Like, everything about my life was dictated by work. And when you pull it out, you feel it. You just flounder. Most people do.

Amy Laburda
Yeah. It just made me think of… Obviously not the same in a lot of really important ways, but a lot of us faced during lockdown, I think, for COVID. Where, you know, even those of us who are lucky enough to keep our jobs, you're no longer getting dressed. You're no longer going to the office. You know, you're just in your,

45:05
in your place. And suddenly a lot of that external structure just evaporated for you.

Andrea Maizes
Yeah. And I think we're seeing a lot of that. We're seeing a lot of that in different places. Right? So we have a whole generation — I talk about this a lot with executives, CEOs. We have a whole generation of young people that don't know how to have a conversation. They don't know how to look you in the eye. They don't know how to shake your hand when they walk in a room. Because they… My younger son started his job from his bed. Right? I mean, so

45:34
getting kids back into, young people back into the office to start building some of these skill sets. They also… Work is not the same for them as it is for my generation, and probably your generation. It wasn't the same. It's not the same glue. So when they retire, it'll be a whole different experience.

Amy Laburda
So returning listeners to the podcast will know that I usually like to wrap up an episode by giving the guests the final word. So since my colleagues knew this was coming, I'll start with them.

46:04
Eric, I'll ask you first: Did you have any last questions for Andrea or any sort of final thoughts about retirement that you wanted to leave our listeners with today?

Eric Meermann
Well, I really found our conversation fascinating, in that we always look at the financial aspect of it, right? And Paul and I have worked for a long time helping shepherd clients through this transition. But it's always been from such a financial point of view that we do sometimes get involved with the playing therapist and the emotional side.

46:34
But I've often found that what you said was true, is that people keep it quiet. And I think it's great what you're doing in shining a light on difficulties that people have in this transition.

46:44
I mean, I'm coming away from this a little worried myself, after hearing [laughs].

Andrea Maizes
Well, you know how to find me.

Eric Meermann
I might be calling you in a decade or so.

Andrea Maizes
See? I bet it's going to be sooner than a decade. So you're doing it already.

Eric Meermann
Yeah. I've got a lot to learn on this topic, because all I think about is the portfolio. So thank you for teaching us about this.

Andrea Maizes
My pleasure.

Amy Laburda 47:09
And Paul, I'll kick it to you. Same question: Do you have any final thoughts or anything to ask Andrea before we wrap up today?

Paul Jacobs
I think this is something that, there's more and more growing awareness about the importance of this kind of work and preparation. I've had clients tell me that they have engaged a retirement coach, and I say that is great. I mean, I think it's kind of like a heads I win, tails I break even proposition, I think. Best case:

47:36
You are going to make the transition so much better for yourself. Worst case, maybe it was going to be OK in the first place. But I've seen firsthand people who… Retirement can be abrupt, it can be a shock, and it can be just a very negative experience, and it can take years to kind of dig out of that hole. And so I think this is a profession that is growing and should continue to grow. It's a first-world problem in some cases, but I think it's going to

48:06
just continue to be more and more of a widespread issue for many people in this country and the world. And so, yeah, I'm a fan. I need to work out more, I'm learning. But I am really glad that I was part of this conversation. So thank you.

Andrea Maizes
Thank you.

Amy Laburda
Yeah, mean, first-world problems are still problems, which is embarrassing for people, but it's true. It doesn't make them go away.

48:32
Andrea, I'll let you wrap us up here today. Do you have any final thoughts to leave our listeners with at the end of this conversation?

Andrea Maizes
I most definitely do. You guys on this call are on the front line of this fight. Help your clients. Ask them questions. Suss out the ones that are not happy, right, and help them. Because you're the front line, because you're the one they talk to about retirement, and you know if they're not happy or it's not going well.

48:58
So ask them questions, push them in a different direction, and think about how you can provide some of this guidance for them. Even if it's only pushing them towards a coach or pointing them towards a book or a website. You guys, you're the front line. So think about how maybe you can add this to your toolkit for them.

Amy Laburda 49:23
Excellent. Well, thank you so much to all three of you for sitting down with me today. I found this a really fascinating conversation, even though I'm a ways away from needing it myself. And I hope our listeners found it helpful to know that there's help out there to seek, to know what some of those resources are, and maybe look into your Substack, which we will definitely link in the show notes. So thank you so much. It was great talking to you about this important topic.

Andrea Maizes
Thank you. Really enjoyed it.

Amy Laburda 49:50
“Something Personal” is a production of Palisades Hudson Financial Group, a financial planning and investment firm headquartered in South Florida. Our other offices are in Atlanta; Austin; the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area; and the New York City metro area. “Something Personal” is hosted by me: Amy Laburda.

50:09
Our producers are Ali Elkin and Joseph Ranghelli. Joseph Ranghelli is also our director, editor and mixer. If you enjoyed this podcast, please take a moment to rate and review us wherever you're listening. It's a simple way to help new listeners find the show, and we really do appreciate it. Thank you.