Rock Your Retirement Show

Adults in their 30s - 50s have parents' age 65 and older and are either raising a young child or financially supporting a grown child. With an aging population and a generation of young adults struggling to achieve financial independence, this stress takes a toll not only on personal relationships but also affects the relationship with their spouse, children, and family. But living in a sandwich generation can also provide you with benefits.

If you're living in a multi-generational household, you must listen to this series. In today's episode, we'll talk about what exactly is the sandwich generation and what issues are you going to face if you're taking care of both your parents and your own children.

My guest today, Tae Kim, is a blogger. He writes about navigating the intersection between personal finance and being part of the sandwich generation. Tae and his wife live with their aging parents while raising their own children and building their careers.

Some baby boomers are moving to and retiring in Mexico.

They are doing this not just to save money, but to have a better retirement lifestyle. I talked with Travis Scott Luther who wrote a book called The Fun Side of the Wall: Baby Boomer Retirement in Mexico. Travis completed a thesis in 2010 about baby boomers retiring in Mexico. He received a lot of inquiries about the subject so he decided he would write a book.

Unexpected Findings

From 2007 through 2009 we were going through that global financial crisis. It was during that time Travis has found this small group of expats in Mexico. What he was most curious about is why anyone would want to leave the United States.  After all, the United States was the best country in the world with the best of everything.

His gut told him that perhaps people who might be struggling financially in the US would consider retiring in Mexico to stretch their budget. Maybe they could live more comfortably in Mexico. What he found, was quite to the contrary. The person most likely to move to Mexico was actually a high-income earner. Upper middle class if not upper class. Also highly educated. So what he found was that it wasn't people who were low income but rather people who thought more about their money and some who wanted to even retire early.

Baby Boomers who move to Mexico retiring on average 5 years earlier than their US counterparts

What about Medical Care when you are Retiring in Mexico?

One of the reasons Les and I did not move out of the country and live abroad is because Les was concerned about medical care. Since beginning this podcast, I have talked with many people who live in the US but who go to other countries, including Mexico, to have certain medical procedures done.

Travis talks with people who are living in the US and wanting information on retiring in Mexico.  He says that medical care is a very common question and concern people have.  What he discovered is that there are a number of routes to enroll in Mexico's public health system. You can do it through work or if you're not working, you can enroll through residency. Medical enrollment is actually very easy to acquire versus other countries. He says people who are living in Mexico reported that you might have to wait a bit longer to receive care for a non-emergency standard appointment. However, the standard of care you will receive is comparable to the United States.

The Language Barrier

Travis found that the baby boomers who moved down there had really dove into the culture and learning the language. In a lot of the communities that he visited there is no shortage of at least one expat happy to help you navigate the language barriers. There are also many English speaking Mexicans who have lived in these communities for generations. They are fluent in both English and Spanish. According to Travis it really isn't hard to get around. No one should be fearful of the language barrier and letting it get in the way of retiring in Mexico. Plus, we all have Google translate now at the tip of our fingers.

Retirement Lifestyle in Mexico

When Travis first went down to Mexico in 2007 for his research, he discovered that the folks who moved to Mexico usually had some kind of personal relationship with a friend or family member who already lived there. So people were much more likely to move if they have some social ties that already existed. In his more recent research, he found that people were more likely to move to Mexico on their own without knowing a single person. Travis attributes this to Social Media and the internet and our ability to keep in touch and form relationships online now.

The people that Travis spoke with told him what initially attracted them to the move was the cost savings. However,

Love is a complex word, which we will be talking about today, specifically finding love during your senior years. Our guest speaker Dr. Joan Bragar has helped successful women use online dating to find a loving life partner. She wrote the book on it called, “Never too Late for Love: The Successful Women's Guide to Online Dating in the Second Half of Life.”

She was certified as a relationship coach and she herself met her husband on Match.com and got married at age 62. So she knows what she's talking about!

Meeting Someone Online

Dr. Bragar got divorced at 58. She's the kind of person who actually likes to live in companionship and love. That is why she knew for a fact that she wanted to remarry. It was her son who was 32 and single at that time, who encouraged her to meet someone online. She'd never heard of it. Her son encouraged her to just try it and she at least thought she would test the waters and try it.

Not knowing the person you are dating is one difficulty you encounter when dating online. It is also more difficult to check them out through other people since you don't belong in the same social circle or community. So the four safety rules must be practiced. You don't give your phone number to anybody; you don't give your whole name out, meet someone in public, and only meet for coffee, not for dinner.

Practices in Online Dating: Meeting the Right One in Your Senior Years

PRACTICE ONE: SET YOUR INTENTION

This practice is more of an internal practice. Set your intention and decide what you really want. This is something you need to do before you go online dating. Some people just want to meet casually and meet lots of different people. Others want to be in a committed relationship. It's important to know what you want first, and this takes a bit of work and reflection. There are questions in the book of Dr. Bragar that you can ask yourself to know what you really want at this time in your life. You don't have to tell the person on the first date what you want, but you need to be clear without telling everything.

Dr. Bragar also mentioned not to interview the person on a first date. You are just getting to know somebody and it is important to know if you enjoy talking with this person and if you're comfortable with them. However,  it's also important to get to know someone if you're going to choose to live your life with them.

Dr. Bragar was able to meet 40 men in 2 years before meeting the right one. Her husband showed up right before her 60th birthday. She made an intention that she would call him by her 59th birthday but that didn't happen. So she made another plan to call him before her 60th birthday. Joan had had a few dates with two other men that didn't feel right and had she not made the intention to call her current husband before her 60th birthday, it may have never happened. She most likely wouldn't have tried again and probably would have taken a little break from dating after the two men that didn't work out.

She checked on the profiles of some men and she tried meeting them because she learned that you couldn’t tell much about people from an online profile. You actually need to meet someone in person to get a really good reading on them. So, as she exchanged one short message with her husband, she agreed right away to meet when he asked her to meet at Starbucks. They both understood that unless they met someone in person, they didn't know anything.

PRACTICE TWO: LOVE MUST COME WITHIN YOU

If you want to have love in your life,

I wanted to let you know what the future is for the Rock Your Retirement Show.

If you have listened to the episode where I discussed my traumatic event, you’ll remember that I’m re-evaluating my life. This event was life-changing for me. If you haven’t listened to the episode, and you are interested, just go to Episode 209.

Since this traumatic event, I decided I wanted to scale back on some of my workload. I have already announced to my remaining financial planning clients that I’ll be retiring from financial planning on 12/31/2020. Although I partially retired from financial planning in 2015, I continued to work with my favorite clients.

With Covid-19 affecting so many of our lives, I’ve had additional time to reflect. In my time of reflection, I have discovered that I need to make some further changes. And those changes affect the show.

Since 2016 I have been paying to host the show. Although I’ve added some advertising it has never supported the show. In fact, my affiliate link provider has indicated to me that I’m not getting enough click-throughs, so they want to start charging me as well! So, if I continue to run ads it will actually cost me money!!

It has been a tough choice however, I have decided that after we run all the shows we’ve already recorded, I’m going to take a break and we will stop doing our weekly episodes. It costs me about $150 per month to keep the show going, and my revenues are nowhere near that amount.

The only way I can continue on a regular basis is to get some listener support. You can support the show at a $3 per month basis if you’d like. If a small percentage of my listeners did this, then I will get the $150 I need to continue weekly episodes beyond 07/06/2020 when our last weekly interview is scheduled to be released.

Don’t worry though, even if I don’t get the support I need to continue on a regular basis, I’ll still pop in sporadically to tell you how I am doing. So, stay subscribed so you get the notifications.

In case you’re interested in supporting the show, here’s where you can do it: http://RockYourRetirement.com/Support

Your friendship over the last few years, and support of the show and me personally, means the world to me.

This post of Retirement and Retirement Lifestyle first appeared on http://RockYourRetirement.com

Are you still working even though you are able to retire if you wanted?

I started the Rock Your Retirement show in 2016.  Since then it has been downloaded over 220,000 times. Potential sponsors have reached out to me.  And I've been asked many times why I started the show.

It started as a personal project but has grown to much more than that.  But since you asked, I'll try to explain it.

I believe in the FIRE movement.  In case you haven't heard of it, FIRE stands for Financially Independent, Retire Early.

I've had good examples of this. My dad was able to retire when he was fifty but kept working until he was fifty-five to provide more of a cushion. So I've seen people in my life retire early according to US standards.

And he was so glad that he retired when he did.  He and his wife were able to travel the world for many years.  They were spending our inheritance and we didn't mind.  Literally cruises around the world that lasted for months.  They were Rocking Their Retirement for sure.

He taught me to save 10% of my income no matter what.  Save it for retirement. So I did. And I became a financial planner and tried to teach others to do that also.  But honestly, most didn't.   I had more money saved and invested than most of my friends.  While my friends were buying new cars every few years and drinking $15 glasses of wine at expensive nightclubs I was being frugal.  Squirreling money away for a rainy day.

But there wasn't a FIRE movement when I was younger. I was weird.  No one could understand why I didn't want to buy a new car.  When I found the FIRE movement I was shocked.  Many of these young people are saving 30, 40, or even 50 percent of their incomes.  I hadn't even thought about that.  But even if I had, I wonder if I would have retired.

I could have retired many years ago.  If you look at what the FIRE movement says, which is to save 25 times your living expenses, we are way beyond that.  But I'm still working.  And I don't know when I will stop working.

I've been self- employed since 1990 so I don't work for “the man”. Many people in the FIRE movement use the word retirement to mean that they stop working for someone else. I'm using the word retirement to mean stop working for pay.  Not to use the income you bring in for living expenses. And that's not what's happening.

Is it because I'm self-employed that I can't retire?  I asked some other people who can't seem to retire the same question.  Why do you continue to work?

Julia Menez of Geobreeze had this to say:

At first, my husband and I didn’t even realize there was an official name like “FIRE (financial independence retire early)” to describe the direction of our lifestyle. I spent my early twenties studying for actuarial exams and rarely made time to go out to parties or restaurants, so my salary largely ended up in savings. Even after I finished up exams, we lived a frugal lifestyle since I enjoy cooking at home and our main source of entertainment is traveling for next to nothing through travel hacking.

My husband and I are both fortunate enough to have high salaries; we live off of the lesser of our two incomes and invest the rest. As our net worth grew, we discussed the idea of early retirement, and how we might spend our time if we quit our day jobs. Neither of us even disliked our jobs — I had just landed my dream role at work and leaving the workforce after only a couple of years as a credentialed actuary felt like a waste of all of that exam effort. However, the idea of FIRE was fascinating, and we figured having a high savings rate couldn’t hurt.

We already lived off of one income; we could even live off of just our investment income if we moved to a lower-cost area. To test out the early retirement lifestyle, I transferred to a full-time work from home arrangement.

That first year of working from home in Boulder,

Aging takes place against a backdrop of grief. It’s the little losses and then the larger losses

Today my guest is Stephanie Raffelock. Stephanie wrote a cute inspirational book called, A Delightful Little Book on Aging. I read the book and I absolutely loved it! 

How Did the Book Come About?

The book sort of came about on accident for Stephanie. She was writing for a website and she got feedback from women all around the world. They had told her that they too were experiencing this kind of shift in their lives as they were entering into their 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Stephanie began to see that there are two ways to navigate the waters of aging. One way is to embrace the years, the strength, courage, and nobility that comes with growing older. The other way was to simply say aging sucks, I don’t like it and I’m going to fight it for as long as possible. 

She collected and compiled many of the essays and articles she had written to put into this book. It’s not a how-to book, it’s not a self-help book. It is a book of personal essays of personal experience of navigating the waters against a backdrop of grief, reclamation, vison, and laughter.   

The Monkey Bar Incident

Stephanie’s husband had clients in town, and they lived near a lake at the time. They decided to walk around the lake and all around the lake they have little exercise or play areas. So, one area might have swings and then you walk a little bit further and there might be a jungle jim. Then there is a spot that has monkey bars. 

Stephanie remembers the monkey bars from when she was little, and it was her favorite thing in school playground swinging from bar to bar. She didn’t know what got into her that evening, but she put her hand on the ladder and climbed up the first bar. She swung to reach the other bar and then she fell! Embarrassed as her husband and his clients ran over to see if she was ok. Stephanie's husband asked what were you doing? She knew what she was doing, she was trying to be young. There was this moment of realization that her muscle tone and connective tissue were not the same as when she was younger, and it was not going to be the same.

That athletic prowess of one in their 30’s, 40’s and even 50’s ceases to be. There are things that fall away from us. There are little losses. Aging takes place against a backdrop of grief. It’s the little losses and then the larger losses. 

Grief

It puts us in a unique kind of situation to live in these times. A time of coronavirus where we are all living against a backdrop of grief. As an older person, Stephanie knows what it is to feel vulnerable. Now the whole playing field has been leveled so society is feeling vulnerable. Stephanie knows how to navigate vulnerability. You embrace it. You realize you don’t have control over everything and you also realize that grief is a bridge. It’s not like an end result, it’s not a place to get stuck. It’s a bridge to something new. 

The idea of allowing one’s self to feel deeply and to cry is something that is not on the surface. That’s something you do in private. Or as Stephanie's mother used to say “don’t air your dirty laundry”. I think it’s a real shame that we don’t have a container for grief in our culture where people can cry about what’s going on because in the tears is this great soul bath. It’s this great releasing of those things so that you don’t have to carry the weight of the burden of sorrow with you. The way to unburden your self is to let yourself cry and then you get to move on. 

Gratitude

I asked Stephanie how to start the process of gratitude and she knew exactly when she started. Stephanie had a friend in Arizona who was a woman from India. She had told her about her mother who never got out of bed without saying thank you before her feet even hit the floor. And something about that captured her. So Stephanie began to experiment with that.

 

Are you looking for creative things to do at home? We have compiled a list of some interesting ideas!

Whether you are hunkering down, sheltering in place, staycationing, or whatever you term our time as we are trying to be safe during COVID-19, there is something for everyone in this list.

I covered some of the positives of COVID-19 that people who have subscribed to the Rock Your Retirement Facebook group offered in a previous podcast episode. That list is still growing, which is attributed to the creativity of our listeners Thank you for all your contributions! It is great to think positively during all of this.

Zoos and Aquariums

Live streaming from Monterey Bay Aquarium

The Atlanta Zoo has a PandaCam.

Like Meerkats?  Check out the Chattanooga Zoo's webcams which also include snow-leopards, tamarins, and spotted genets.

Clearwater Marine Aquarium‘s Mission is to Rescue Rehab and Release.  Watch them live.

Like Eagles? Check out National Eagle Center Eagle Watch Cam or Duke Farms Eagle Nest Cam

Another great place to view animals is Explore.org (fair warning, you'll have trouble choosing which cam to follow)

These four UK Zoos (Paignton Zoo) (Edinburgh Zoo) (Dublin Zoo) and (Marwell Zoo) might have active animals when your local zoo cam doesn't.

The Georgia Aquarium even has a Beluga Whale Cam

The Houston Zoo has several cams, including leafeater ants.

How to save money during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

Today I am running an interview where I was the guest on the TalkOne Radio Show. The host of the show is Alan Flowers and there is also a co-host named Skip.

This is a live local radio show but my husband and editor, Les, always works his magic to make me sound as good as possible so he did some light editing.

I was invited to talk about how to save money in today's times of trouble. As we all know COVID-19 has disrupted our lives and caused turmoil in many ways including financially. I have mentioned many times that we try to steer clear of discussing money on this show. However, I thought during this time, it might be beneficial and informative for my audience.

Even if we are financially set because of a pension, social security, or investments, these are troubling times. Almost everyone I know has been impacted financially at least to some extent. The stock market has plunged and many people who may not currently be feeling the effects of the weakened economy will very likely see some negative consequences in the future.

At the time of this recording, the state where I live, South Carolina, has over 275,000 people who have lost their jobs. The estimated job loss for the entire United States is between 16 and 20 million right now.

I wanted to inform people on how to save because my intention isn't to scare people but to educate and prepare people.  

Some of the cost-saving tips we talked about on the show are:

* Cell Phone Bill – I have managed to save over $100 a month on my phone bill! Learn how to save big bucks on this expense

* Cable Bill- Consider giving up cable and using streaming services

* Go to the Library- Your local library isn't just books anymore. You can get audiobooks, videos, and many other things! (For FREE)

* Three (or more) isn't a crowd- Consider getting a roommate or moving in with family as a way to save money on living expenses

I hope you enjoy this episode on how to save money.

Do you have any ideas on how to save money? Feel free to comment below! Let's share our ideas!

Mentioned in this episode

www.TalkOneRadio.com

www.RockYourRetirement.com/224

www.MedicareQuick.com/class

Republic Wireless

Zoom

This post about retirement and retirement lifestyle first appeared on https://www.RockYourRetirement.com

Today we're talking once again with Fritz Gilbert. He came on our show last year after he retired. And we invited him back to tell us how it's been going two years into retirement. Fritz was on episode 198. So if you haven't heard it, go back and listen to it, it might be surprising to find out what's changed.

Creating a Retirement Jar

Fritz created a retirement jar before he retired so he and his wife could put whatever they want to do during retirement. That helped them think for a year before retirement about the softer side of what are they going to do in retirement. And just going through that mental exercise of thinking of activities, probably paid more benefits than anything else through the process.

Also, it made them aware, because you're constantly on the hunt for something to do in the area, so you can add it to the jar. Inevitably, they've done a lot of things that probably each of them put in the jar without actually pulling the paper out of the jar. When looking for things to do, it has led them to do some activities that they wouldn't have been aware of. There's some tremendous benefits as a result of doing it.

Don’t Get Over-Committed in Retirement

Fritz was thinking about joining rotary but ended up not doing that. Part of the balance in retirement is not getting over-committed. He's starting to feel a little bit of commitment pressure and was doing a little bit too much.

Fritz was starting to get a little bit of stress about keeping up on his blog and emails. So what happened, he has been intentional now on being very selective about what he gets engaged in and being more willing to say no.

We've got to be careful with our time and make sure we really get the most out of these precious few years that we have when we're financially independent, and young, and physically able to do the things we want to do.

Les and I did kind of the same thing when we moved to this 55 and older community where we live, which has over 100 clubs, over 100 groups. We decided that we weren't going to join every club that we were going to hold off on joining until after we've been here a year.

Struggles in Retirement

The most important thing you can do to minimize your chance of going through depression, loss of identity, it's almost a grieving process for some people. And based on the research, the most important thing you can do is spend as much time as possible before you retire, thinking about what you want your retirement lifestyle to be. As strange as that sounds, that's proven time and time again as being the most important thing.

When you have had no time to plan for retirement, you didn't really see it coming and suddenly, you're retired. Those are typically the cases where people can really go through a tough time.

Retirement is a Rare Opportunity

Retirement is such a rare opportunity to do something for the first time in your life. Since you were, you know, in kindergarten, probably you've always had people telling you what to do. You've always had to do what you've had to do for the paycheck. Now, that's all behind us and what a golden opportunity to do something for non-financial reasons, just because it's something that you're passionate about, and yeah, it's kind of hard.

To figure those things out, passion is one of those kinds of nebulous words of purpose. But the people that are really successful like Fritz’s wife with Freedom for Fido, those are the stories that we should strive to replicate because that really is living a ...

Chad “Coach” Carson is my coach when it comes to real estate investing, but we invited him to come on the show because he believes in stoicism and doesn’t believe that we should be overly optimistic when it comes to dealing with COVID -19. It is okay to be an optimist, but in these times we also have to be realistic or risk extreme disappointment and, in the worst case, we could become depressed.

Chad talks about his podcast episode entitled “The Danger of Wishful Thinking In These Trying Times: The Stockdale Paradox”. His podcast is “The Real Estate and Financial Independence Podcast”. Having lived in Equador, Chad also talks about how Equador is dealing with COVID-19 in comparison to what is happening here in the U.S. Hear the story of James Stockdale who was a prisoner of war in Viet Nam and how he successfully dealt with unimaginable hardship.  Chad relates James Stockdale’s experience to our current experiences with COVID-19.

Essence of Stoicism

Viruses are going to do what viruses want to do. I don't think that this COVID-19 is going to go away anytime soon. We don't really have control over getting sick, right? I mean, of course, we can stay home. But now that other people are going out, it's riskier. Now. When we you know, there's going to be a lot more people out and about,

Sometimes things will go back to normal like even with even during the recovery phase, there's going to be repercussions of this both health-wise and the way we live our lives and there's going to be economic repercussions.

This is this is a deep and wide impact that we haven't seen in a long time. And that that's not being Doomsday. That's not saying we'll never get out of this. But it's more that that realistic optimism to say, you know, this is a big challenge. Let's just recognize it for what it is, both health-wise and financial wise. And then by doing that, we could then have some reflection on ourselves. How are we going to respond to this? What are we going to do, what choices we can't really control, the decisions that all the leaders make? We can't control the situation that there is a virus.

We can't control anything really, but how we think about it and how we respond to it. And that's that's the essence of stoicism is that that one core kernel of this you are in control of your response?

What Can We Do In This Situation?

Everybody has their own approach. But for Chad, whenever there's a crisis, whenever things are challenging, he tries to go back to his kind of personal care, his personal fundamentals is what he calls it. What are the things that make him feel good? What are the things that make him become the best person he could be? The practical stuff like, Alright, need to go to bed on time, eat good food.

It's hard to have a bad day when you do whatever those things are for you. And yes, it might not be pretty out in the world, and things are going badly. But you do have control of that little first 10-15 minutes of your day and the last 10-15 minutes of your day or longer. Try to be even more disciplined about the things that you can control, and hopefully that'll put you in a better frame of mind to deal with whatever you have to deal with after that.

Stoicism

Doing something that's not reactive, and not having to deal with other people's situations, problems, challenges, this is just kind of heard somebody described as that you're warming up your patience. You're just like easing into the day a bit, whatever that means for you. And it's just going to make everything else flow a bit eas...