Episode 70 – Finding Purpose in Later Life with Tony Watts OBE
A special guest interview with Tony Watts OBE, director at EngAgeNet and author of The Midlife Review Book. Tony is an advocate for the elderly from producing many publications to directly informing the government on their issues. In this episode the guys chat about what retirement can mean, finding purpose in later life and how employers can work with employees for a smooth transition. As ever we have a brilliant Bages Behavioural Bias and a terrific #tightasstommo money saving tip for you in this practically perfect podcast!
What is today’s podcast all about?
- A chat with Tony Watts OBE exploring how we can find purpose and wellbeing in our later years.
- Link to Tony’s book: The Midlife Review
Every episode , Behavioural Finance expert, Neil Bage, is going to be giving us his money behavioural tips. We are hardwired to make bad decisions about money because we have biases built into us from our experiences through life. We will keep hearing from Neil to help us recognise some of these behavioural biases and hopefully lead us to making better financial decisions.
– Link to Episode 36 – Understanding our attitude to risk
– Link to Episode 21 – Financial capability
– Link to BeIQ | Beam App
This episode – The endowment effect.
Chris and Producer Tommo share examples of the endowment effect they see through their work.
Featuring ‘winner winner, chicken dinner’, discounts
on fancy groceries and the less said about Producer Tommo’s dating tips the
In a bold move #tightasstommo shares a story about
spending money for your wellbeing.
Interview with Tony Watts, OBE
Tony is a director at EngAgeNet
Tony talks about the work he has been doing for elder people over the years, that has resulted in a certain award.
How a cat in Clifton led to editing a newspaper for older people in Bristol?!
- Editing lead to campaigning and trying to work out how to make later life better.
- This lead to talking directly to the government to feed ideas into how to make policy more effective.
How Tony’s OBE has enabled him with his work.
Tony defines what a better later life means.
There’s no one size fits all
Why it is no good waiting until the day you start picking up your state pension or your company pension before you start planning retirement or later life
How priorities in life start to change
How to think making the most of the last 20/30 years of your life. Working together with
- your finances
- your relationships
- your health
- your purpose in life.
The retirement clock of doom
The last thing you should think about doing when you retire is putting your feet up.
Tony Watts, OBE
Later Life Agenda – Gives you a digest of all the news affecting older people every day. It brings together news stories and features from all around the world about later life living. And that that’s the thing that gets Tony out of bed in the morning and also keeps him current.
Life is long, if you know how to use it.
Seneca
Say yes to everything and see what happens.
Having a young brain v having an old brain
Second Bite of the Cherry – Tim Drake
If you’re going to be equipped to deal with life – you have to be equipped to adapt.
Learning to play a new musical instrument
A deeper look at what Tony’s book, The Midlife Review, is all about
How intergenerational workforces was the inspiration behind the book
How do you keep retraining for the changes that are ahead?
- If you could afford to retire
- When could afford to retire
- When you could afford to start phasing your work commitments down
- And then put in a financial plan that fits around your life ambitions and your personal ambitions
- Alongside a health audit
A Clear Path to Achieve Identifiable Objectives – as you’re thinking about retirement and/or moving into your next phase of life, you still need a clear path to identifiable objectives
A regular review of your objectives and why they need to be mapped out –
- What’s your health objective?
- What’s your your financial objective?
- What’s your personal relationship objective?
Success in getting other companies to look at helping their older employees look at this?
Could the younger generation be moving job every couple of years, because there’s a disconnect between what owners are giving their employees and what the younger employees want?
Trying to find a job that will align with what you want out of life. It absolutely is a big change that employers could learn from.
The intergenerational workforce – looking at the motivations for each generation
What financial planning is all about – It’s not a one size fits all. Know thyself. Work out what works for you.
Conclusions from the guys
Retirement doesn’t mean ‘retirement’ anymore.
When working you have lots of social relationships through your work, social contact. When you retire, a lot of that will stop. So how are you going to replace it?
Just because you might switch off the income producing career doesn’t necessarily mean that career stops.
Click here for more information on the Initiative for Financial Wellbeing
Do you have any financial wellbeing questions you would like us to answer? Or do you have a #tightasstommo money saving tip you would like to share with our listeners?
If so, let us know by going to Twitter @Finwellbeing or email – [email protected]
If you would like to purchase a copy of The Financial Wellbeing Book please click on this link to visit Penny Brohn UK shop
Transcribe of the Podcast Script:
(scroll to the bottom to listen to the episode)
Hello, everybody and welcome to another one in our
long running series of financial wellbeing podcasts where three of us get
together and waffle on about how money can increase your wellbeing. My waffling
name is David Lloyd, I’m an actor, a broadcaster, and a writer, and I’m here to
act as mediator, while the two people around me talk with more knowledge and
purpose that I have about financial matters. And one of those is Chris Budd.
Chris, tell us about you.
Good morning. So I wrote the financial wellbeing
book, I’m chair of the initiative for financial well being but my day job I
help companies to succession, through something called an employee ownership
trust, having done the same thing myself with Ovation Finance. And it’s been
really quiet over the summer, because not many business owners have been
thinking about that. But it’s got really busy over the last few months. So
yeah, that’s actually taking up a lot of my time again, I’m pleased to say,
Great, another part of our terrific triumvirate is
Tom Morris, Tommo, tell us about you.
I’m just waiting to hear the baby crying stop.
My dogs barking now. So let me just go . . .
This is this is not supposed to be highly
I mean, this is part of the charm, isn’t it?
You’re such a wordsmith, David. Never ceases to amaze
me – triumvirate. It’s such a wonderful word. I’m. Yes. Far too rubbish with
words to come up with, trio. Yes, I am a Chartered Financial Planner and
director at Ovation Finance, who kindly sponsor this podcast. I’m not sure if
you can pick up on my microphone. I have a relatively newborn child. So you may
hear in the background. I am a father of two now, which is all very exciting.
So if you do hear a few wails in the background, don’t don’t be too alarmed.
It’s just what newborns do. Right. But yeah, I’m, I’m very good. I’m very good.
still recording this during about what are we locked down mark two about to go
into tier three is we’re all based in Bristol. But all considering I feel very
blessed to be here today. And I’m really looking forward to this pod.
Excellent. So am I so Chris, we’re all looking
forward to it. What are we going to be talking about today?
We’re going to be hearing from a chap called Tony
Watts, OBE, and Tony has been for many years, activist if you like for older
the people, so you David.
I do indeed have some comments on that, but I’ll save
Good idea. Sorry, that was a bit rude. I didn’t mean
it though. We love you really.
Before we do that, let’s look at the first of all
regular features. Bages Behavioural Biases. Were an old friend of the podcast,
behavioural finance expert, Neil Bage, gives us his one minute introduction to
a different behavioural bias that affects how we make decisions about money.
What’s this bias about, Chris?
we’re hearing from Neil about the endowment effect.
The endowment effect. Have you ever gone to sell
something that you own only to have the person who is the potential buyer
offering you way less than you want, you go to other people, and even they
offer you less than you think the item is worth. If this sounds remotely like
something you’ve experienced, you’ve fallen for the endowment effect. In short,
the endowment effect is where we overvalue something we own, regardless of its
real market value, which of course is objective. And people will tend to
believe through this feeling of ownership that what we have, what they have,
what they own is better than anybody else’s, or my car, my house, are all
better than everybody else’s. And it’s this biassed view of the world that can
lead us to making decisions that may not end up being the best decisions that
we’ve ever made. So the next time you’re on eBay, trying to sell a pair of
headphones that you’ve never used. Remember that the attachment that you have
to them, everyone else will value at zero. In that situation, take a step back
and ask yourself, if I didn’t own this, what would I be willing to pay for it?
Even that one simple step can potentially knock you out of the grasp of the
endowment effect. And the sooner you recognise this, the sooner you will feel
So there’s a very important relevance here with with
what I was mentioning, if you’d like my day job, the fact that I help business
owners to exit and sell their businesses, because business owners will very
often overvalue their own business, they think it’s worth more than what
somebody else wants to pay for it. And so the question I always ask business
owner is how much do you need to sell your business for? And they always give me
an amount is worth this or that. But that’s not the question. The question is
what do you need. So the first step for anybody who’s thinking of selling their
business is to get financial planning. Find out how much you actually need for
the business. And then that will hopefully get rid of that counteracts the
endowment effect, and give you a much more realistic figure that you can then
work from good financial well being link there.
Yeah, I think that’s a terrific example, and
naturally come across this a fair amount as we’re in similar, well we’re in the
same field. Chris, we work work work at Ovation, or you certainly had more of
an involvement in that since you moved on to your employee ownership side of
things. So you definitely see a lot of that. I think another example of where I
see it, is inherited assets, it’s there is almost this extra connection with
something because somebody who they loved hold on to something. So it must be
really good to have it, even though it is really the wrong thing for them to
keep in their lives, whether it be a house they’ve inherited, which is miles
away, but for some reason they want to keep it, rent it or just leave it
dormant because it was their loved ones and everyone has investments, they
inherit an investment portfolio that is completely wrong for their needs, but
find it very difficult to make any changes to it. Because of this endowment
effect. It’s it’s very powerful.
The ability to be objective, of course, it’s
something that’s very difficult. We talk about, we’ve talked many times on
these podcasts about knowing ourselves, or being aware of who you really are.
And certainly, my experience of that, as a writer of 35 years now is that when
I first started writing, every word of every script, or whatever that I’d
written, as far as I was concerned was was the best thing that could ever have
been written by anybody. And sometimes that may have been true, but often it
wasn’t. And, and therefore the thing that I have learned over a long career is
the ability to step back and be objective and say, Yep, that’s good. I think
that’s gonna work. But actually, you know what, I don’t think that is as good
as it could be. And I could work on it. And that’s very difficult when you have
an emotional attachment to the work that you’re doing.
And I think it’s worth also just zooming out a little
bit here, to just remind us of why we get Neil to tell us about all of these
individual behavioural biases, because we are hardwired to make bad decisions
about money because we have all of these biases built into us from our
experiences through life. And so recognising some of these behavioural biases
will hopefully lead to us making better financial decisions. So that’s why we
keep hearing from Neil and we will get more from him very grateful to him. And
his company B IQ for what they’re doing that we should probably mention his
app. Because you can do this for free, you can use his app called Beam – B E A
M, it’s currently on iPhone only. But very soon, it will be on all formats. And
you can play some games. And those games will then reveal your own behavioural
biases. And so whether you have strong endowment effect or whether you are very
susceptible to anchoring or what have you, Ovation has been using it quite a
few years now. We’ve become trialling it it’s now available for everybody and
you can use it for free and it’s a fascinating, it’s good fun to do. But the
outcome is absolutely fascinating and will hopefully lead to you making better
Excellent. Thanks for that, Chris. Right. Let’s move
on then to the next in our regular features, which is Tight Ass Tommo. And
regular listeners, the podcast will know that this feature started or many,
many episodes ago where our producer Tommo took Chris and another colleague out
to lunch, persuaded them to have a particular chicken dinner. And it turned out
that this was one that he had a voucher for that he was able to get very, very
cheaply. Thus the legend Tight Ass Tommo was born.
And of course the expression Winner winner chicken
Fantastic. So before we come on to Tommo’s tip,
Chris, if you’ve got anything for us today,
Just a real quickie actually a little name check for
a local shop. And I’m sure David you use called Broccoli Stores on A370 just
outside Backwell, where my son works and because he works there, we get 20%
off. That’s my tip. Get your son to go and work at Broccoli Stores get 20% off
That’s great advice, Chris. So Tommo, come on. Give
us your big tip for the day. We’re itching to hear it.
Well. Hard one to follow that one. Just on Chris’s
topic. I do do have some clients who work at a private school. No, not the only
reason they work there but then get something like 50% discount on their
child’s tuition fees. So yeah, get that out there. I once dated lady who worked
for House of Fraser and got myself a 50% discount. So there you go.
You stopped going out with her shortly afterwards?
As soon as I got the discount, I mean, this was a
long time ago. This is this is school aged Tom who couldn’t afford a pair of
The legend of Tight Ass Tommo really is going to live
on, he actually went out with a girl just to get a discount at House of Fraser.
Quite, less said about that, the better. And so my tip is one that I’ve mentioned before. And it’s just to reiterate the importance of this. And it was an experience that I had very recently. So two good friends of mine, fellow financial planners, imagine how riveting the conversations are, Rohan Sivajoti and Rich Ellis. We like whiskey. And we thought you know what, we’ve not had a catch up in a while. Why don’t we jump on a Zoom call, grab a glass of whiskey at the end of the day and just have a chip like Yeah, sure. Why not? We turn up Rohan had this glass tea cup for his whiskey. And I said, What are you doing, man? You’re a respectable business owner. What on earth? Are you doing not drinking out of a proper whiskey glass? He said, why is this all I’ve got? Okay, okay. Well, a couple of days later, he gets a delivery. And he sends his picture and Rich had decided, I’m going to buy Rohan a really nice set of whiskey glasses. It arrived Rohan was over the moon. I’m sure it gave Rich a great boost of wellbeing knowing that he was helping someone. I mean, I’m kicking myself that I wasn’t quick enough on the draw, I mean, how tight does that make me look? But the point is Rich, I’m sure is getting a huge amount of well being on spending money on others, the person who receives the gift gets a real boost knowing somebody’s thinking of them. And the person paying for the gift has a boost to their own well being. So there’s my tip, spend money on others. Heck, it could be time as well.
That’s a great tip and and chatting as I am with two
good old friends here, I just like to point out that my car is a bit decrepit
now, won’t last much longer.
There’s limits to this, this story, I’m sure, this
Well, did you hear the George Clooney story? So
George Clooney was, he he got paid to do a film ridiculous amount of money like
$14 million, obviously, and he took it out in cash. And he then got a driver, I
think they took like a postal delivery van or something instead make it look
inconspicuous, and took bundles of cash, a million dollar bundles and went
round a load of his friends that had helped him along the way and gave them a
million dollars in cash each. And obviously he’s gonna get used wellbeing for
that they’re gonna get there is a little bit of me that thinks that’s a little
bit gauche. Just give him a check or give it to them in cash. But what a great
moment that must have been to walk in and say ‘There you go, mate’. Bam,
there’s a million dollars in cash. Thanks for all your help.
That is the stuff of dreams. And I can imagine that
obviously, it would be great for somebody to just walk in and give you that,
but I’m sure that gave him a huge amount, he comes across as being a pretty
decent guy anyway, and I’m sure that gave him a huge amount of pleasure to be
able to repay those people that he thought had supported him. And clearly he’s
working in an industry where you can get paid, you know, ludicrous amounts of
money, so why not give a little bit of it back? Well done George. Lets move on.
Thank you for that Tommo. Chris, what’s the interview about today? And who’s it
So today we are going to hear from Tony Watts OBE.
Tony is a director at a place called Engage Net, also a chair of the Southwest
Alliance on Ageing director of Retire Easy as a copywriter, he ran a newspaper,
what he called a newspaper called the Mature Times for many, many years. He’s
been active in elderly issues for a long, long, long, long time. He’s also
really nice guy and into his blues. So let’s have a listen to my chat with Tony
Tony, thanks for joining us in the podcast.
Do you want to start off by just, you and I have
known each other a little while now we. . .
You or me, yes. And occasionally we bump into each
other at blues gigs. So we might talk about the blues but we should probably
talk about money and happiness because it is the point of this. Tell us about
the work that you’ve been doing for elder people over the years, it has
resulted in a certain award.
Okay, well, it’s all started by accident. I won’t
give you the long version, which begins with me accidentally running over a cat
in Clifton. But it led on for me to the person knocked on the door ended up
doing a big marketing campaign for the Isle of Wight. And that was aimed at
older people and the only publication that back in the mid 80s. And the only
publication I could find at that time to to address older people and connect
with them was a publication that was based in Bristol called Golden Age, and is
based in Victoria Street in Albert House, curiously, and I ended up in another
series of accidents being asked to edit it. The publishers asked had I ever
edited a newspaper before and I lied. I’ve got the gig basically. So I . . .
Always say yes, and work out the detail later. Yeah.
. . . the truth of it. So I ended up publishing what
was then the very first publication for older people. And it’s a newspaper,
monthly newspaper. And that went fairly well. And that sort of morphed over the
years into the first publication, I had a direct involvement financially in
setting up this publication called Mature Times. And that was back in the early
90s. And I’d been out doing a group of local papers by then for somebody and I
got together with a bunch of people over in Wales. And we set up what was then
a fairly adventurous programme of getting a paper together which went out
nationally and with regional versions, we looked at all the big issues around
retirement. And we were aiming really at the retired person, and we got about
400,000 circulation is a big beast in those days. So I was editing that and
really got very involved with the campaign side for later life and trying to
work out how you make later life better. And there’s obviously a very
interconnected area. And I think people look at how serious single issues and
think that’s the solution was not you need to look at finance, housing, health
care, or what you do with life. So we tried to focus on all those things that
make for a better retirement. And my involvement with that paper sort of ebbs
and flows over the years, and I sold my stake in 2010/11. And sort of got
pounced upon by people who are representing older people in the government. And
they say, well, you know, with your knowledge, would you actually act as a chair
for the Southwest forum on ageing, I’ve been doing that ever since. So that
acts as, I do that about one, sometimes two days a week, and for quite a few
years, we were talking directly to government. We were advising them on new
strategies or new bills that were coming forward, giving input from all these
feeder groups, a lot of people into how to make legislation and how to make
policy more effective. And it wasn’t just about spending more money, it was
actually starting from the premise of this fixed pot of money. How do you make
that work more effectively. And I got very involved because of my background in
doing the comms. So I ended up leading the comms and all that. And then we set
up something called the Age Action Alliance. And that brought together lots of
people from all around the country, working together on projects to try and,
again, make life better for older people. But the most important piece of work
probably was I acted as a conduit and deliver the information into the House of
Lords on a big report, which came out in 2012, which was called Ready For
Ageing, question mark. And the whole report was looking at the way society and
government in particular is gearing itself up to the challenges and the
opportunities of later life living. And I’ll emphasise that because not just
about challenges, people do worry about the downsides of an ageing society. But
there are some upsides as well to that. So I ended up saying, given the input,
I think that had an influence into the way housing and social care, the health
may have been more coordinated, especially health social care. So that ended up
unbeknownst to me, obviously, somebody noticed somewhere high up. And I was
nominated for an OBE back in 2014, which came as a bit of a surprise, but it’s
been a very helpful thing because it enables me to go out, with a few initials
after name, sometimes speak at conferences, write articles, and give me a bit
more clout when I’m trying to do what I’m trying to do.
It is a door opener. Yeah, it is a door opener that
people take slightly more seriously. Not everyone’s bad. I understand that and
it’s been cynically used the honour systems over the years since Lloyd George
was around so it’s not just theres minus sides as well. But I think it does
allow me to speak with slightly more authority on the key issues that matter to
Yeah, I think it’s fair to say just on that there’s
been a big move over the last I don’t know whatever decade couple of decades to
make the honour system, at least a large part of it to reward people that
deserve rewarding and there’s no doubt you will be one of them. I don’t think
we have any, any danger of that. So, there’s a few things in that that were
quite interesting. A lot that was interesting. But I just wanted to ask you to
define how you would explain what a better later life is.
So thats really quite a big one that everyone’s
coming from a different place and it’s got different ambitions and different
life situations, so there’s no one size fits all here. I think it’s about
looking at each individual and working out what works best for them what can work
best for them. But the key point in all this is there’s no good waiting until
the day you start picking up your state pension or your company pension before
we start planning retirement or later life if you have to really go start much
earlier than that. And that’s the the one of the things I talked about in the
book in a minute but it later life for many people starts I guess in their 50s,
often their careers either start to plateau out, or they start to really get to
the very top levels. And the priorities in life start to change as well. I
mean, you won’t necessarily just bring up young family or just trying to strive
to get onto the housing ladder, you’re, you’re looking hopefully at the bigger
picture. I’m not sure how you feel about the case, obviously, you’re a bit
younger than me, but you start looking at life slightly differently. But you do
need to think about how you make the most of the last 20/30 years of your life,
and it is I hate to use ‘the last bit’ it is I mean, I’m 67, I’m starting to really
focused now on how to make the most of my next 15 years, I guess, if I’m, if
I’m lucky. And it’s a matter of working, working together with your finances,
your relationships, and your health, and what you how you purpose your life.
And I think that’s something that’s really, really significant, and most people
drop out of work into some sort of chasm. You see this all the time. I would
say with men who’ve been in senior positions, they’ve had fairly high status,
they’ve, you know, had authority, they’ve had a purpose in getting up every
morning, and suddenly, you know, they’ve got nothing to really hang their life
on apart from, you know, the personal relationships. And I think there’s an
awful lot of work that can be done between employers and employees, but also,
obviously, individuals themselves looking at how they map out those last, those
last 15/20/30 years to work out what’s best for them and those around them.
I think that’s spot on. We see that a lot with
Ovation with with clients, elderly clients, elderly, like clients moving into
retirement. And we so often you ask somebody see, what’s your plan, and they
haven’t really thought about it?
I just tell one slightly depressing story. But there
was one chap who worked for the same company for 45 years. And he had no plans
about what he was going to do in retirement. He had a lovely, lovely defined
benefit pension scheme, and then spent most of his time looking after the
grandkids. And he died after six months of his retirement of a heart attack.
And well, this used to happen years ago, I remember
when back in the Golden Age years I mean, people used to sort of get their
clock in those days, I’m not sure when people get clocks these days, it’s bit of
a morbid reminder of time ticking, but . . .
I never thought of that that is quite insensitive.
Look at that on the on the shelf there, minutes of
his grandfather’s clock. But people used to basically come out of retirement
having worked really physically hard as well. And the last thing you should
think about doing necessarily when you retire is putting your feet up. And I
think also there’s the concept of a phased retirement now, which wasn’t there
before. And I think you can taper, taper the word work into the word of word of
retirement. As I say, I’m 67, I’ve got the luxury of not having to work every
day of the week. And I consciously put my most into every day that I might be
working on, in the gym, on with my grandchildren, I do my volunteer work, but
every day is purposed. And I think you do need to have that, you know, thing
functioning in your life when you get up to something every day. I mean, every
morning at about seven, eight o’clock, putting a daily newspaper together,
which I give a plug to it’s called Later Life Agenda. And it gives you a digest
of all the news affecting all the people every day.
I follow you on Twitter and see it on Twitter quite
It is really important because it basically brings
together all the news stories and features from all around the world as well,
around later life living. And that that’s the thing that gets me out of bed in
the morning and also keeps me current. And that’s the other thing about
retirement is that you see some people whose lives are so wrapped up in in
things that are personal to them, they lose their currency, they lose an
understanding of the wider world and that’s why I think still working as I do
is great because, you know, as long as I’m able to because I still stay current
in terms of understanding how the world is working, especially the world of
Yeah, there’s a comment you made earlier about making
the most of the hours and and I carry with me quite a lot the time a little
book by the philosopher Seneca called On The Shortness of Life. And then the
the line on the front of the page, which just does stay at my thoughts quite a
lot as I get older it is ‘life is long, if you know how to use it’. Yeah, which
is a great line and I find myself you know, I’m in a position now having sold
my business and I’m doing other things I get to choose most of the time, choose
what I do. And I’ve had a little principle for a little while of I’ll just say
yes to everything and see what happens. And that’s great. It’s actually not
about you know that a lot of the time advice is that you know, you’ve got to
say no to more things, I think say yes to more things. Yeah, it’s taken me in
some very interesting directions, I’m saying no to a few things because it’s
getting a bit silly. But it’s not a bad philosophy that says it.
I agree. And this is half full/half empty life
approach, I’d also bring in the concept which comes in to the book of mine
that’s having a young brain and an old brain, which is something that that I
hadn’t heard of before. But a guy called Tim Drake, who’s written a very good
book called Second Bite of the Cherry. I recommend that to anybody who’s
thinking about having an encore career or thinking about reinventing themselves
after they finish their job, which may not happen at time of their choosing.
That’s the other thing people sometimes find themselves out of the role they
had voluntarily. But those of us when we were younger, we, we adapt to change,
because we have to adapt to change, like life changing on a daily basis. And so
many people’s brains start to age 18. And we find it harder and harder to adapt
to new situations, and they won’t welcome change 10% of people carry on through
life having a young brain. So they actually welcome change, or seek to adapt.
And it works well for them. And if you look at where Darwin started, it wasn’t
about survival of the fittest, it was survival of those who could adapt to
their environment, and were living in a fast moving world. I mean, in my years,
I’ve seen so much change, and it’s nothing compared to what’s going to happen
next. And if you’re going to be equipped to deal with life, you have to be
equipped to adapt. I mean,
How do you do that, though Tony, how do you get a
young brain not an old brain?
I think you have to sort of do what you said. And
that is say yes to more things. And don’t shut the door. Because your
frightened of something happening that you might not, you know, be comfortable
for you move out of your comfort zone on a regular basis. Try things you
haven’t tried before. And I, I’m sat here next to your guitar, by the way. And
all through my life, I’ve always wanted to play music, and I guess I couldn’t,
not the opportunity as a child and funnel that into my children. I’ve got two
children who make a living out of music. And I was I was at a conference recently
talking. And it was in the evening. And this lady said to me, what you talk
today about adapting and staying young and keep you know et cetera, et cetera.
What are you doing? I said, Well, and it’s about what, what new, new thing have
you done lately? And I said, well I haven’t done anything new lately if I’m
really honest about it? Well, she said, I’m 60 something, about the same age as
me, I’ve just taken up the clarinet, why don’t you take up the clarinet. And I
said, Okay, then. So back into the last year, I started taking clarinet
lessons. And it’s, I’ve suddenly discovers whole new world. And it’s just
opened up my mind and my life. And I’m feeling much more fulfilled, it’s
rewiring my brain, I think as well which, and is that willingness to actually
try something new. Go out of your comfort zone, and be prepared to embarrass
yourself even but, but don’t shut them shut the barriers down because it’s not
something you’ve done before.
I having played guitar all my life, taking the guitar
to dinner parties and what have you lots and lots of times over the years,
people have said, God, I wish I could play the guitar. I wish I could play an
instrument. Of course, I’d say well, why don’t you then? Yeah, say, Well, why
don’t you? I don’t have the time. And all you need is 10 minutes a day. That’s
it. You just don’t watch the telly for 10 minutes. Watch 10 minutes less
television and use that 10 minutes, just practising your piece. And if you do
that everyday, you’d be amazed how quickly you progress at an instrument. And
nobody’s trying to say you’re not gonna be a concert pianist or anything. It’s
just fun. Music is fun. So yes, that’s great stuff.
Yeah, yeah, I’m not being immodest here, but it turns
out, I can actually play reasonably well. And I am working towards my ambition
of playing Chattanooga Choo Choo. I really want to play jazz in a band now.
That’s what I really, I think I’m a couple of years away from that. I’m aiming
Fantastic. So you’ve mentioned your book, tell us
what your books all about. Okay, well, this project started a while ago. I’m
sure you’ve heard of a company called Punter Southall by their CEO, a very,
very interesting man called Steve Butler. He got in contact as he was writing a
book around intergenerational workforces. I gave some input into that, and that
books come out and I would recommend that to anybody, any employer out there
who is struggling, with the fact that there mix employees is not quite as
cohesive as it might be. Because nowadays you have older people staying in work
longer, younger people churn through the system quicker, how’d you get a better
sort of more cohesive mix inside a business of the generations? How do you make
the most of those different talents? So that book came out end of the last year
that’s done very well. And, and thats called Manage The Gap. I, commend it
highly. But we’ve found that with several is one element in the book, which is
the midlife review, which we mentioned what he meant. He mentioned well, but
but it’s something I’ve felt very passionate about, and asked him to mention it
in the book. And he’s done that. But he said, well, let’s do something more
detailed around this. And the midlife review is something that a guy called
Steven McNair, started off at least 10, maybe 10 years ago now. And I got
involved with it. I work, working to government, basically. So we were asked
for input on this. And the idea is that all employees once they reach a certain
age and defined age was certainly 50/50 onwards, should we having a sensible
conversation with their employer to work out where they go from here? And were
they, okay, because what you have at the moment, you’ve got an ageing society,
a demographic within the workforce? How do you make the most of those times.
How do you keep retraining them for the changes that are ahead? How do you make
the most of their talents, when perhaps, they need to be skilling at any one
point, because all the skills that we used 20 years ago aren’t necessarily the ones
we use now and extrapolate onward. But also, more importantly, companies like
Aviva since got involved and a very big way. And they got involved when they
thought it’d be nice to do. Have these midlife review projects and watch your
employees, our old employees want from their later years. And they suddenly
looked at their, their business plan going forward and realised there was a big
chunk of them, their workers would be disappearing soon, many of them have got
comfortable DB pensions they could leave at time of their choosing. And if they
all left because they could leave, they will suddenly have this skills gap,
which will be quite frankly, sort of very serious for the business. So they’ve
implement, they’re starting to implement this on a regular basis, inviting
people in on a no commitment basis, you haven’t got to do it. But they look at
their work ambitions and their work restrictions and also their caring
responsibilities. Would they prefer to work flexibly would they prefer to
actually work two or three days a week or four days a week, because they have
caring responsibilities coming up. Would they like to change role into the
future. Because sometimes people get locked into a job. And they don’t want to
say anything, because they’ll appeared to be unambitious or not be part of the
team. But it’s not what they enjoy doing anymore, or they’re finding it too
onerous. The starting, starting point of all of this is the financial audit.
And you do this on a regular basis Chris with your guys. And you look at
individual and say, Well, here you are, you’re actually is when do you want to
retire, how much you want to retire on? And what would be comfortable? How do
you reach that point? And so doing a financial audit on each individual would
tell them if they could afford to retire, when they could afford to retire,
when they could afford to start phasing their work commitments down and put in
a financial plan that fitted around their life ambitions and their personal
ambitions. And alongside that, there’s a there’s a health audit as well. And
people should go to either health doctor and check out your health.
One of the five planks of financial well being is a
clear path to achieve identifiable objectives. Yeah, and you know what, I think
I’ve probably been a little bit guilty. And if any of our listeners have been
as well of thinking a clear path of identifiable objectives tends to be in the
wealth creation phase, and the early part of life. But what you’re basically
saying, is it mid/later life as you’re thinking about maybe within 10 years of
retirement and or moving into your next phase of life, you still need a clear
path to identifiable objectives, don’t you? That’s what your talking about.
Where the interesting thing where this has moved on
from is it was in the beginning, it seems like a one off hit, you know, you sat
down with your employer and did it and there was your mapped out next 10/15
years? No, this should be a regular review. But there’s just personal
circumstances, constantly changing. The company’s circumstances are constantly
changing. And it does need to have an honest conversation. And sometimes, maybe
you have a buffer between a broker who actually conducts these conversations.
And that’s another possibility. But, But health is one of them. Because people
often disregard their health in their middle ears. It’s up, you know, you’re
working all the hours, you’re running around, looking after the kids. And so
you have this gap. I see this, I’m in the gym quite a lot now because I’ve got
time to do it and got younger people in there. And you’ve got people my age and
beyond. Very few people are in there and those middle years and they really
should be focusing on making sure you’ve got your body sorted out for the next 10/20/30
years as well. And its mental well being as well as mental health issue. Some
of you understand, I know that. But your objectives, I think, look at your
objectives again, what’s your health objective? What’s your, you know, your
financial objective? What’s your personal relationship objective? All these
things need to be mapped out, I think.
And actually, if you’ll forgive me for going slightly
on a tangent, this is the work that I do on employee ownership. One of the
things that we talk about there is owners or business owners, small business
owners should do with their key employees have a combined career and financial
plan. Yeah, you sit down together, and you say, right, what do you want your
future to look like? Let’s see how, what the business needs from you put the
two together, see what you could get paid, see what you could afford, and come
up with a combined career and financial plan. I’ve always thought of that as
like a, you know, an owner with his senior management team, that that kind of
thing. But the idea of doing that in a big corporate, I mean, that’s fantastic.
That’s wonderful that the likes of Aviva are doing this. Have you had success
in getting other companies to, to look at this?
It’s, it’s obviously this is very much pilot stage.
Business in the Community, the organisation that sort of piloted this and have
been promoting it, and they, they’ve got a lot of influence out there. What has
happened since then, is that the government itself, thinks this is a great
idea, because they want people to be working for longer and being economically
active for longer. And they also want people to be less dependent, in terms of
health. So they think this is a great idea, but they’re leaving it to the
system to work its way out. And other people are looking at it and Legal &
General for instance did a pilot on it and people like Mercer have been looking
at it as well. But it hasn’t really, really taken off. He I think it sounds
like you’re doing a large part of this work, you’re not doing it in quite the
Well, I’m now thinking that people who have business
in the community that could be part of our financial well being the initiative
of financial wellbeing, we can we can spread the word on this, I think this is
a lovely idea. And this is, you know, obviously, your book is part of this as
well, which is going to be out . .
Its called Midlife Review Wealth, Working Wellbeing.
Myself and Steve Butler, are co-authors. But what we do in there is map out why
employers should look at this quite seriously, why employee, you should look at
it quite seriously. And then look at the mechanisms for making it happen. And
we picked on the ways that, different ways people try to exit and the
conclusion we came to again is no one size fits all. If you’re a small company,
it’s not the same as Aviva looking at this issue, because you’ve got different
structures and different and different barriers sometimes to to making this
work. And but it I think there’s huge advantages to any employer to look more
holistically at their workforce and think well, okay, I’m, I’m chugging along
quite nicely in there. But where will I be in five years time? Where will my
workforce be? What, what will constitute, what ages will there be?
Yeah, it’s just good business planning Tony isn’t it,
sensible business planning.
It is, an essential business plan, I’m not sure where
it’s a part of every business plan, you look at your, your markets, you look at
your products or services, you aren’t necessarily looking at the workforce,
they’re gonna service that and how you need to train these people up to to
perform those new roles, and where they’re going to come from. As I mentioned
before, younger people aren’t necessarily going to be as easy to recruit as
perhaps you might think, because these guys don’t hang around these days, that
one two years is often the most, some people will stay in the job. They’re
looking for the next career move, and you need to either incentivize them as
you’re talking about, or be prepared to provide lots more incentives for older
people to stay in the workforce.
What you’ve just said there Tony totally fits right
into a bit of a bee in my bonnet, if I may, just for a second. The idea of, of
the younger generation moving job every couple of years, I’ve got a really
strong belief that the reason for that isn’t because they’re somehow flightier,
than our generation. I think it’s because there’s a disconnect between what
owners are giving their employees and what the younger employees want. Because
we’re Thatcher’s children, we grew up in Thatcher years, and we see success in
financial terms. And a lot of the bosses and owners and the senior management
of corporates, they are all also Thatcher’s children and see success in
financial terms. But millennials and the younger generation, they don’t tend to
they’re far more interested in purpose, all the climate change stuff going on,
they don’t even know if there’s gonna be a life on the planet in 30/40 years
time. So they’re much more interested in purpose. So I just think that they’re
moving around so often not because they want career moves necessarily, but
because they’re trying to find a job that will align with what they want out of
life. It absolutely is a big change that employers could learn from.
Well I think back to the book I mentioned earlier on
the intergenerational workforce, that explores that in detail, it looks at the
motivations for each generation, you can’t be too bored, obviously, Millennials
don’t think the same way as we do. They’re looking for work for somebody they
can really believe in was years ago, you’d happily work for a tobacco company
or an oil company was these guys will look askance at working for someone who’s
Corporate values may not align with their own. I think also looking at the
workplace, and one of the things I write about is property, business property.
And the places that people work are having to change because people don’t want
to work in the same sort of workplaces, they want to work in more collaborative
situations. They don’t want to sit at desks on their own, where there’s no
connection between them and the outside world. They want to work from home more
often, so they can have a better work/life balance. And employers need to
understand that’s what will drive that generation of people and keep/retain
them. Whereas it may be slightly different for people of you know, the people
in the 40s and 50s, and possibly 60s who will look at work in quite a different
sort of way, neither wrong or right, you simply need to look at it as
motivation. So employee benefits, employee motivation, needs to be geared
towards the individual, rather than having a one size fits all.
Yeah, well there’s a perfect summary of what
financial wellbeing and what financial planning is all about. It’s not a one
size fits all. Know thyself. Work out what works for you. Tony thank you for
that. Thank you for joining us on the Podcast. We will put lots of information
about your book and other resources in the shownotes. Thanks very much for you
time, really appreciate it.
Nice to chat with you, we must meet up sometime.
Well fascinating interview that was. I found Tony a
really interesting character and I have to say Chris I’m just going to give you
a little plug I thought that was a really good interview as well I thought knew
your team some really interesting stuff out the way. Now I can obviously
identify I think with a lot of what Tony says I’m just a couple of years
younger than him. You know, and I’m at a similar stage in my life when I’m
talking about, as he identified the challenges and opportunities of later life living
and the one thing that he said that really resonated to me. You know it’s time
now to think about how you make the most of the last 15/20 years of your life,
and putting it bluntly, you know, that’s probably where I’m at now in my life.
I still think of myself as being, like everybody has a locked in age, mines 28,
I still think I am. But I’m not, I’m 65 and statistically, I actually look this
up the other day, I typed in my age my demographics and all of that to find out
when I was likely to die, and it’s probably 83. I’ve got 18 years to go. So,
life for me now is less about an endless series of possibilities and ambitions
and goals that I want to achieve. It’s how can I make the most of my life.
While I’ve still got my health, where I’ve got, you know, relatively good
amount of money, in which to enjoy myself and a partner who I’m very happy
with. How can I get through the rest of my life. Hopefully avoiding getting ill
and, and enjoying myself as much as I could. I love the story about, about the
fact that, you know, people used to get a retired clock. And he always found
that a morbid reminder of time ticking away, and that’s certainly something
that I’ve never been interested in. He talked as well about the, the last thing
to think about on retirement is putting your feet up. And certainly that’s
always been my attitude to life anyway, you know, although I am now on the
cusp, I’m still very much working, writing for doctors, writing another novel.
But I’m doing it less now because I have to I’m doing it now because I want to.
And in between those times when I’m sitting down working, I’m looking at how I
can actually get out there and enjoy myself. So, I’m doing more gardening I
got. I run 4k three times a week. So, as he says we should be looking, people
of our age to welcome change, and seek to adapt and that’s always been my
philosophy in life anyway. And it was great to hear somebody else voicing that
I think his take on retirement, retirement doesn’t
mean retirement anymore. It’s, you don’t just stop work. There’s an Aegon
survey that I’ve heard recently where something like 85% of people continue to
do some form of work in retirement. Well, then they’re not retired are they,
you know because they’re still working. They’re just doing a different type of
work, maybe something they want to do or maybe it’s charity or voluntary. So,
taking time with your financial planner to say, not just my retirement age is a
certain age but what are you actually going to do? What will life look like? I
heard a really good tip on this recently. And I’m really annoyed I can’t
remember the financial planner who said it, so my apologies if he’s listening,
but it was what he says to his clients is, at the moment you have lots of social
relationships through your work, social contact, when you retire, a lot of that
will stop. So how are you going to replace it? I think that’s a really good tip
Are you sure it wasn’t me?
Sorry, Tom Morris, the other day said . . .
This is exactly the conversation that, that I have
with, with people if I think about that transition. I just will mention those
that I find, from my experience, those that are at your stage of life David
that it’s so tangible for them I feel as though they are so focused on wanting
to get this right, which does make the coaching conversations that much richer
and we can get a lot deeper because of that, from my personal experience. But
yeah, there are, there is a key thing here. That purpose we talked about in the
last episode that thing that gets us up out of bed is often linked to our, the
thing that pays you know pays the bills or careers, you know if you if you’ve
got a career for the purpose, then great. But just because you might switch off
the income producing career doesn’t necessarily mean that career stops. A
career could mean an all manner of things. I think the traditional mindset of
what work is, is changing, and how we fill our time. And then the social interactions
is just so important, how we are getting those. And I would argue that people
are feeling that importance right now. During 2020, where a lot of those
interactions are being turned off for them.
There’s a story, and I may well have told this on a
previous podcast, in which case, I apologize, I think it’s is right for this
moment. I remember when I was a young man. I was hitchhiking from up north
where my parents lived down to London and I got given a lift though a guy, his
name was Bill. And he was 80. And he was from the West Midlands and we were
driving down and he was a really interesting engaging guy. And he worked for,
at the age of 80, as a volunteer for Age Concern. I remember him saying to me
he said, the thing is he said, I love to work with the old people, because I
like to look after the old people, this is an 80 year old man telling me this
story. And I remember he said when I retired one of the last things I wanted to
do was sit on a wall in me slippers, watching the world go by, I wanted to get
out there and make a difference. And that’s always stuck with me. And that’s
always been my ambition for my retirement, which is, as Chris says, is only
going to be semi-retirement anyway. The last thing I want to do is sit on a
wall and watch the world go by. And I thought Tony summed that up very well, he
said there are so many people often, men but for women as well, whose whole
life is channelled into their work. And then all of a sudden they find that’s
not there anymore. They’re spending time at home with a partner that they
perhaps don’t know very well because they have always been out of work and may
not actually like that much either. And therefore, I think it’s pretty
important to have good sense of purpose in you into that later part of your
life. Okay, so that’s a very interesting chat we’ve had there. Thanks as ever
to Chris, and to Tom for their contributions, and I hope you’ll join us again
next time we do another one of our financial wellbeing podcasts.
