The Retirement Wisdom Podcast

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It’s limited to 10 participants and starts in January.

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Paul Conti’s grandmother didn’t have much money. When she couldn’t afford to buy things for people, she bought yarn instead, and knitted blankets and socks for whoever needed them. Decades later, Paul is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and the author of What’s Going Right. And he’s come to believe his grandmother understood something his training missed.

For a long time, human motivation was explained by two drives: assertion (making our mark on the world) and pleasure. But that model can’t explain altruism. Paul argues there’s a third drive that should govern the other two: the generative drive, our built-in urge to make the world better. It can be as big as a trip around the globe or as small as a nicer garden. When it leads, assertion and pleasure stay in balance. When it doesn’t, you can look successful from the outside and feel miserable inside.

For people leaving demanding careers, that’s not an abstract idea. Many spent decades led by assertion. Retirement, Paul Conti says, is a branch point where life can get better or harder, and which way it goes depends a lot on whether we take charge of our mental health.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

Dr. Paul Conti joins us from Portland, Oregon.

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Dr. Paul Conti is a psychiatrist, author, and educator who combines neuroscience, trauma expertise, and practical psychology to help individuals and leaders better understand themselves and build healthier, more resilient lives. He’s the author of the new book What’s Going Right: A Powerful New Method for Optimizing Your Mental Health.

He is a graduate of Stanford University School of Medicine. He completed his training at Stanford and at Harvard, where he served as chief resident. He then worked in private practice while serving on the medical faculty at Harvard. He moved to Portland,

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For More on Dr. Paul Conti

What’s Going Right: A Powerful New Method for Optimizing Your Mental Health

Pacific Premier Group, PC

Website

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Other Retirement Podcast Conversations You’ll Also Love

Self-Compassion – Dr. Kristin Neff

Shift – Ethan Kross

The Good Life – Marc Schulz, PhD

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Wise Quotes

On Retirement & Mental Health

“The challenge is to take control of one’s mental health, but that’s also the opportunity. There are mental health challenges that come to us at every phase of life, and I think around retirement, it’s a particular branch point where things can go better or things can become more difficult, So, the idea of taking control at that stage of life, I think is so important because it sets the stage for the person to then be able to live a good, long, healthy life. Less stress, more enjoyment…and as we enter retirement, the idea is that we can construct a sense of self and a narrative of life that we feel good about. Not because we’re pretending or trying to make things feel good, because anyone who makes it to retirement in this day and age has a lot to feel good about, a lot to feel proud of. So we want to construct a narrative that says, “Okay, how is it that I got here? What is it that I have? What’s my state of health? What are my obligations, and what are my wishes?” And the idea is shine the light everywhere: on one’s mental health, one’s finances, and then the combination of the two. I think that’s how we see people living really good lives in retirement.”

On the Generative Drive

“Historically, people have  believed to have just two drives.  One was called aggression and we could call that assertion….We want to make ourselves felt in the world and see the impact of what we do. So there was that and pleasure seeking. Now, this got to be very misunderstood because if that were really true of humans, that we’re seeking pleasure and we want make our presence felt in the world, there’d be no altruism… There is so clearly another drive in us and a drive that governs all else. And that is the generative drive,  the drive within all of us to make the world a better place. They could be big, like, “I want to travel around the world,” or it could be, “I want the garden in the yard to look better,”  or “I want to do something nice for somebody next door.” It’s all generative. This is in us, and we see it is where our happiness comes from.”

 On Compassionate Curiosity

“The biggest problem in mental health is that we look away from our problems. And why do people do that? Why do people say, “I don’t want to  go there.”  They know that’s where, where they need to look, but they want to look away from it. And it’s because when we don’t understand, we’re afraid of what we’re going to find. Human beings want to understand…If you’re driving your car and there’s a strange sound coming from the engine, the thing we don’t want to do is, pretend it’s not there. That’s how we end up broken down on the side of the road. So the idea is I can look at whatever’s going on inside of me. I can bring compassionate curiosity to my own problems instead of bringing whatever inner critic we’ve internalized. We can bring a very harsh and fearful set of judgments when we’re looking at ourselves, and that’s not how we solve our problems. If there’s a mechanism of understanding, which is part of what I very much wanted to provide in the book, this is saying you can look at yourself, There’s nothing to be scared of here. They’re just things to go look at, and if you go look at them and you bring compassionate curiosity, they get better.”

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There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time.

About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how the Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one — on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host

Joe Casey is an executive coach who helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking.

Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University.

In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 2 million downloads. Business Insider recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

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The views and opinions expressed by guests on The Retirement Wisdom Podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the host or Retirement Wisdom, LLC. The Retirement Wisdom Podcast covers the non-financial aspects of retirement. From time to time we may invite guests who discuss other aspects of retirement planning, solely for educational purposes. Listeners are advised to consult qualified financial and/or medical professionals on those matters.

Is it time to work on how you’ll live your retirement?

Join our next small group coaching program starting in January.

Very early registration discount ends on November 15th.

Limited to 10 participants.

Learn more |  Sign up

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When was the last time you did something just for fun? Not to accomplish something or check something off your list. Just because you really enjoyed it. For many successful people, that’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer.

Over the years, we’ve learned how to work hard, achieve goals, and be useful to others. But somewhere along the way, we may have forgotten how to have fun. And when retirement arrives, having more time doesn’t necessarily mean having more fun.

My guest today is Monika Jansen, a fun coach, who helps people rediscover joy and make more room for enjoyable experiences in their everyday lives. Retirement gives us more freedom to choose how we spend our time. But rediscovering fun may require letting go of habits we’ve spent a lifetime developing. Retirement isn’t just an opportunity to do more things. It’s an opportunity to rewrite the rules that have governed how we invest our time.

We explore how we lose our sense of fun in our working years, why play and fun matter, and how to bring more joy into everyday life.

Monika Jansen joins us from Colorado.

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For More on Monika Jansen

The Fun Coach

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Other Retirement Podcast Connversations You’ll Also Love

The Power of Fun – Catherine Price

The Fun Habit – Mike Rucker, PhD

Don’t Wait Until Retirement to Find Your New Thing – Charles Chumley

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Wise Quotes

On Doing It Now

“But you always think, ‘I’ll have time for that, I’ll have time for that. Make time for it today.”

On Small Moments vs. Big Events

“The small moments in life are what make life. It’s not the three-week bucket list trip to Italy. That’s wonderful, but that’s three weeks in your life, whereas we’re living in the every day.”

On Saying No

“What I would say is, ‘Oh, thank you so much for thinking about me, but not right now.'”

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There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time.

About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how the Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one — on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host

Joe Casey is an executive coach who helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking.

Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University.

In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 2 million downloads. Business Insider recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

Could your retirement planning use more imagination?

Registration for our next Design Your New Life in Retirement small group program is now open.

Very Early Registration discount ends November 15th. Limited to 10 participants.

Learn more |  Sign up today

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The skills that helped you succeed professionally – critical thinking, analysis, judgment and efficiency – may not be the ones to help you create what comes next. Psychologist and researcher Cassandra Vieten, author of Imagine That: Transform How You Think, Feel, and Live with the Science of Imagination, joins us to explore imagination as a practical skill for navigating transitions.

Cassandra explains why imagination often becomes flattened as we grow older, how to reframe uncertainty to create possibility, and how intentionally imagining alternatives can help us escape habitual ways of thinking.

We discuss the stories we tell ourselves about retirement, Cassandra’s VISTA framework, a powerful future-self exercise, the relationship between mindfulness and imagination, and simple practices for bringing curiosity and possibility back into everyday life. I especially like the way she describes her book: A user’s guide to your imagination.

Cassandra Vieten joins us from San Diego.

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Cassandra Vieten, PhD is the author of the new book Imagine That: Transform How You Think, Feel, and Live with the Science of Imagination. She is the Clinical Professor and Director of the Center for Mindfulness at the Centers for Integrative Health in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. She is also Director of Research at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination and Clinical Psychology Director at the Psychedelics and Health Research Initiative at UCSD. She is Senior Advisor of the John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation where she served as Executive Director from 2019-2023, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, where she served as President from 2013-2019. Her research has focused on spirituality and health, transformative experiences and practices, the development of mindfulness-based interventions for emotional well-being, and development of media technologies to inspire awe.

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For More on Cassandra Vieten 

Imagine That: Transform How You Think, Feel, and Live with the Science of Imagination

Website

Take this quiz to learn more abour your own unique imagination profile

and help scientists learn more about how imagination works.

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Other Retirement Podcast Conversations You’ll Also Love

The Future You – Brian David Johnson

The Inspired Retirement – Nathalie Martin

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Wise Quotes

On Reframing Uncertainity

“The thinking mind really likes certainty and categories and competence…and the imagination actually loves uncertainty because uncertainty equals possibility.”

On Tapping into Your Imagination 

“Could you spend some time every day purposely giving that analytic mind a break…and let this other aspect of your mind run wild? It takes some practice. Silence your judging mind for a while. Don’t edit right away.”

On The Power of a Beginner’s Mind

“Instead of staying in your little tiny bubble of what you do know, you could be an adventurer. You could be an explorer and say, ‘I want to have a sense of curiosity about what I don’t know.’

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There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time.

About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how the Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one — on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host

Joe Casey is an executive coach who helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking.

Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University.

In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 2 million downloads. Business Insider recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

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Being financially prepared for retirement doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ready for retirement. Dr. Gregory Charlop argues that a complete retirement plan should address another set of assets: the health and lifestyle side of retirement planning, and your ability to remain engaged with life with vitality.

In this conversation, we explore the connection between longevity and retirement planning, including why work can disguise gaps in our social lives and sense of purpose, why strength becomes increasingly important with age, what to know about wearables and health metrics, the role of protein later in life, and why people need to become more proactive consumers of healthcare.

But the larger message is refreshingly simple: don’t pursue longevity merely to accumulate more years. Build the health and relationships that allow you to do meaningful things with them.

Dr. Gregory Charlop joins us from suburban Atlanta, Georgia.

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Dr. Gregory Charlop is a UCLA and Stanford-trained, triple-board-certified physician and a leading expert in longevity and performance. Dr. Greg is a sought-after international keynote conference speaker and the keynote speaker at the Barron’s 100 Hall of Fame. He is a featured guest at the Milken Institute and regularly appears on major media outlets, including FOX Business, ABC, NBC, CBS, and Forbes. Known for his common-sense approach to health, he authored four influential books on wellness, healthy homes, and burnout.

As the nation’s first Fractional Chief Wellness Officer (CWO) for family offices, Dr. Greg works closely with select ultra-high-net-worth individuals, providing personalized strategies to enhance nutrition, sleep, exercise, happiness, and peak performance. His signature Family Wellness Assessment service includes personal visits to client homes, vacation residences, or yachts, where he meticulously evaluates home safety, lifestyle habits, and family goals to create customized wellness roadmaps. Dr. Charlop collaborates with family offices on the health and lifestyle side of retirement planning.

Dr. Greg is a proponent of the Bitcoin Lifestyle. As a featured speaker at the Plan ₿ Forum and Max and Stacy Bitcoin Golf Invitational in El Salvador, he helps Bitcoin leaders with customized longevity, resilience, and lifestyle solutions.

After spending two decades navigating the high-pressure, life-and-death environment of the operating room and consulting executives in the boardroom, Dr. Greg launched Corsica Military Solutions™. Leveraging his expertise in stress management, resilience, and burnout prevention, he brings high-performance wellness strategies directly to military leaders, drone operators, and cyber warfare specialists.

With experience in the life-or-death worlds of medicine and national defense, Dr. Gregory Charlop is one of the nation’s leading experts on decision-making. His medical-grade decision framework supports the military, defense industry, and family offices. Dr. Greg also founded the Corsica Conference, a TED-style event for intellectually curious leaders committed to wellness and lifelong growth. His charitable projects include a program to encourage girls to play sports and the Women’s Sports Forum.

Outside work, he enjoys traveling, learning Spanish and French with his daughters, listening to audiobooks, exploring coffee shops, and spending time with his pup, Dash.

Dr. Gregory Charlop, MD, DipABLM, developed the field of Retirement Medicine™ for executives, dentists, athletes, and founders.

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For More on Dr. Gregory Charlop

Website

Buckhead Longevity

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Other Retirement Podcast Conversations You’ll Also Love

Take Charge of Your Health – Lucy McBride MD

Eat Your Ice Cream – Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD

How to Stay Sharp in Retirement – Dr. Majid Fotuhi

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Mentioned in this Podcast

Die With Zero by Bill Perkins

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Wise Quotes 

On Retirement Readiness

“People spend an enormous amount of time making sure they have enough money to retire. But do you have the health to do what you want to do? Do you have friends you want to spend time with? Do you know what you’re going to do?”

On Longevity and Living Well

“The point isn’t simply to live longer. It’s to be healthy enough, strong enough, and engaged enough to enjoy the years you have.”

On Procrastination

“The biggest tragedy is to have stuff you want to do, stuff that you could do, but you chose not to do it because you decided to do it later. And then that later didn’t come…If you over-save and then you die with money in the bank, what that means is you worked for free…Do the stuff you want to do now. Don’t push that off until later, because that later may not come.”

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There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time.

About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how the Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one — on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host

Joe Casey is an executive coach who helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking.

Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University.

In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 2 million downloads. Business Insider recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

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The views and opinions expressed by guests on The Retirement Wisdom Podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the host or Retirement Wisdom, LLC. The Retirement Wisdom Podcast covers the non-financial aspects of retirement. From time to time we may invite guests who discuss other aspects of retirement planning, solely for educational purposes. Listeners are advised to consult qualified financial and/or medical professionals on those matter

Retirement planning usually focuses on one big question: Do you have enough to retire? Daniel Goldie knows that’s not the whole story.

A former professional tennis player who transitioned into another successful career as a financial advisor in 1991, Goldie knows something about leaving one identity behind and building another. In his new book, The Retirement Answer: The Six Key Decisions Every Retiree Needs to Make, he draws on decades of client experience to examine the six key decisions that shape retirement.

In this conversation, Daniel and Joe discuss why it helps to retire to something rather than simply from work, why accomplished savers can struggle to give themselves permission to spend, and what couples should talk through before retirement arrives.

Daniel also raises a provocative question: as your remaining time becomes increasingly valuable, when does trading more of it for money stop making sense?

Daniel Goldie joins us from Palo Alto, California.

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Bio

Daniel Goldie is the author of the new book The Retirement Answer: Six Key Decisions Every Retiree Needs to Make.

Daniel is a Senior Wealth Advisor with Focus Partners Wealth, one of the largest fiduciary advisory firms in the United States. He holds a BA in economics from Stanford University and an MBA from U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. He is a CFA® charterholder and a Certified Financial Planner™ and has been frequently recognized by Barron’s as one of the nation’s top financial advisors.

Goldie co-authored The Prudent Investor’s Guide to Beating Wall Street at Its Own Game and The Investment Answer. He began his investment career in 1991 after retiring from the ATP Tour, where he was a Wimbledon quarterfinalist and won four professional titles. A former NCAA men’s singles champion for Stanford, he has been inducted into the Intercollegiate, Northern California, and Stanford Sports Halls of Fame.

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For More on Daniel Goldie

The Retirement Answer: Six Key Decisions Every Retiree Needs to Make

Website

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Other Podcast Conversations You’ll Also Love

Spend More, Worry Less: The Forever Paycheck – Jean Chatzky

What If Retirement Is the Wrong Goal? – John Coleman

Retiring: Creating a Life That Works for You – Teresa Amabile

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Wise Quotes

On Preparing for Both Sides of Retirement

“The financial ones are actually, believe it or not, easier. They’re quantifiable. Everyone thinks about retirement that way.

They don’t always think about the non-financial aspects.”

On Setting a Direction

“It’s important to retire to something rather than retiring from something. You’ve got to have an objective.”

On the Value of Your Time

“As you get older and your life expectancy is shortening, the value of your time is going up.”

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There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time.

About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how the Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one — on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host

Joe Casey is an executive coach who helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking.

Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University.

In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 2 million downloads. Business Insider recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

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The views and opinions expressed by guests on The Retirement Wisdom Podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the host or Retirement Wisdom, LLC. The Retirement Wisdom Podcast covers the non-financial aspects of retirement. From time to time we may invite guests who discuss other aspects of retirement planning, solely for educational purposes. Listeners are advised to consult qualified financial and/or medical professionals on those matters.

We’re looking for a few lifelong learners to join us in a new free monthly discussion group

Learn more and sign up here

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Clients tell me that no matter how much they were looking forward to retirement, there comes a moment when they feel that something’s missing. After a demanding corporate career, Charles Chumley discovered that the hardest thing about retirement wasn’t giving up a title. It was losing the built-in structure of having somewhere to be and someone needing him to be there.

An unlikely new pursuit helped him find his footing: building elaborate sandcastles.

In this conversation, Charles shares what mornings on the beach taught him about identity, failure, creativity, and impermanence.  He also explains why clarity about your next chapter is more likely to come from doing than through endless thinking, and why people approaching retirement should begin testing new interests before they leave full-time work.

We also discuss his book Every Grain Is Real: What the Sand Teaches, how the question “What do you do?” changes after you retire, and why he believes you should start trying something new before you’re ready.

Charles Chumley joins us from Greece.

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Bio

Charles E. Chumley spent three decades in corporate America before retiring to find out what the sand had to say. Since then he has been kneeling on two beaches, Playa del Carmen, Mexico and Gulf Shores, Alabama, building sandcastles before anyone else arrives and paying closer attention than he planned to. The result is Every Grain Is Real: What the Sand Teaches, a memoir in forty-four chapters that is funny in the right places, honest throughout, and ends on a beach at dawn with everything the tide could not take.

Chuck is also the creator of the Paintbrush series, children’s books following Paintbrush the cat through pickleball courts, Kung-Fu masters, wise grandmothers, and America’s 250th birthday. The series has nothing to do with sandcastles and everything to do with the same belief that got Chuck to the beach every morning: that showing up and trying something new is always worth it.

He lives in Roswell, Georgia with his wife Pam, who is quieter and funnier than he is. All author royalties from Every Grain Is Real are donated to Family Promise, which helps families experiencing homelessness.

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For More on Charles Chumley

Every Grain Is Real: What the Sand Teaches

Website

Free Resources – Three short guides on lessons learned you can use

Sandcastles

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Other Retirement Podcast Conversations You’ll Love

The Art of the Interesting – Lorraine Besser, PhD

Two Grannies on the Road – Beth Sobiloff & Marcia Rothwell

Purpose Driven Retirement – Jet Vertz

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Wise Quotes

On Creating

“What I had to learn…is that I need to make something. I don’t have to manage it or evaluate things, but actually make something, and that could just be making a difference somewhere.”

On “So, What Do You Do?”

“I think ultimately people are not asking, ‘What’s your employment status?’ when they say, ‘What do you do?’ They’re really asking, ‘What’s something interesting about you?’”

On Experimenting Your Way Forward

“Learning what that thing will be for you arrives more from doing something rather than just…sitting…thinking about what you’ll do with your life…Don’t wait for the transition to find a thing. Start it before you leave so that you can have some test runs or test drives going in parallel to the existing life.”

For decades, the message is clear: save, invest, and build your retirement nest egg. Then retirement arrives, and suddenly you are expected to reverse course. For many people, watching the balance decline feels wrong, dangerous, or even irresponsible.

Jean Chatzky believes the solution is both financial and behavioral. In this conversation, she discusses her new book The Forever Paycheck: The New Retirement Strategy to Spend More, Worry Less, and Never Run Out of Money. Jean explains how structuring part of your retirement assets as a dependable monthly paycheck may make it easier to spend, reduce anxiety, and enjoy the life you worked to fund. She shares research suggesting that retirees with pension-like income spend more than those with a similar amount, and tells the moving story of watching her own mother resist touching principal for two decades.

Jean Chatzky also offers a balanced, consumer-minded look at annuities: where guarantees may help, why putting all of your assets into one is unwise, how much might be appropriate, and which questions to ask.

The conversation closes where good retirement planning should perhaps begin: with the life the money is meant to support. Jean discusses envisioning retirement, road-testing new pursuits, considering phased retirement, and solving the surprisingly concrete challenge of what to do with your hard earned freedom.

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Jean Chatzky is the author of The Forever Paycheck: The New Retirement Strategy to Spend More, Worry Less, and Never Run Out of Money. She is a regular contributor to The Oprah Winfrey Show, the financial editor for NBC’s Today show, a contributing editor for Money and Time, and a columnist for The New York Daily News. She hosts a daily national radio program on Oprah and Friends, XM, and is the author of four books, including the bestseller Pay It Down!

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For More on Jean Chatzky

The Forever Paycheck: The New Retirement Strategy to Spend More, Worry Less, and Never Run Out of Money

Website

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Other Retirement Podcast Conversations You’ll Love 

The Retirement Savings Time Bomb – Ed Slott

Mattering…in Retirement – Jennifer Breheny Wallace

Shifting From Saving to Spending in Retirement – Richard Sheffield

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Wise Quotes 

On Shifting to Spending 

“Flipping the switch to spending is highly uncomfortable…If you’ve been saving for a life that you have wanted to live, not allowing yourself to live it, it feels like we need a different solution…My hope is that this strategy will enable people to stop worrying as much, to start spending more of what they’ve worked so hard to save.”

On Annuitizing 

“I’m going to take about a third of my money, what I need to cover my fixed expenses, but also the things that I really don’t want to do without.”

On a Forever Paycheck

“People who had paychecks spent double in many cases because they knew that those paychecks were going to continue to come.”

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There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time.

About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how the Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one — on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host

Joe Casey is an executive coach who helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking.

Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University.

In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 2 million downloads. Business Insider recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

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The views and opinions expressed by guests on The Retirement Wisdom Podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the host or Retirement Wisdom, LLC. The Retirement Wisdom Podcast covers the non-financial aspects of retirement. From time to time we may invite guests who discuss other aspects of retirement planning, solely for educational purposes. Listeners are advised to consult qualified financial and/or medical professionals on those matters.

Is optimism something you’re born with, or something you can learn? John Trauth, author of Maintaining Optimism While Aging, believes that the way we process events plays an important role in how we navigate aging, setbacks, and major life transitions.

In this conversation, John shares lessons from Positive Psychology, his own experiences with adversity, and a useful framework for examining negative events using 3 questions from Martin Seligiman’s work on Learned Optimism: Is this permanent? Is it pervasive? And how much of it is personal?

Leaving work to retire comes with losses; the structure that organizes your day, the community that surrounds you, and a sense of purpose that has grown over decades.

John explains why anticipating those losses, and deliberately planning to replace them, can make the transition to retirement more successful. He also makes an interesting case for planning ahead for some of the realities of aging: not as an exercise in pessimism, but as a way to reduce uncertainty and free yourself to concentrate on living now.

John Trauth joins us from Sausalito, California.

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John Trauth, MBA is a management consultant based in San Francisco and the author of Maintaining Optimism While Aging.  He was born in New York, graduated from Colgate University with majors in Economics and Psychology, and proceeded to earn his MBA from the Amos Tuck School at Dartmouth, majoring in marketing, finance and corporate social responsibility.  He has worked for large management consulting firms in both Boston and San Francisco.  For the last 10 years, he has run his own consulting practice specializing in strategic planning.

He and his wife Astrid lived in France in the mid-1990’s, is fluent in French, and now resides in Sausalito, California. He is co-author, with Alan Bernstein, of “Your Retirement, Your Way,”  which achieved the #1 position in Amazon’s “retirement book” category , and later was rated by Consumer Reports as one of the 15 best books on retirement.  John and Alan gave keynotes and seminars around the country, counseling people on planning strategically for their retirement.

In writing Maintaining Optimism While Aging, John collaborated again with Alan who provided his perspectives, guidance, and experience as a renowned New York City psychotherapist working with people in major life transitions.

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For More on John Trauth

Maintaining Optimism While Aging

Website

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Other Retirement Podcast Episodes You’ll Also Love

Breaking the Age Code – Dr. Becca Levy

Thinking Better to Live Better – Dr. Woo-kyoung Ahn

Change Your Questions, Change Your Life…in Retirement – Marilee Adams, PhD

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Wise Quotes

On Optimism

“Some people grow up in bad circumstances but still are optimistic. So, it’s really not baked into your personality as much as it is baked into your thought process. And if you can change your thought process, you can basically change whether or not you’re optimistic, pessimistic or in the middle.”

On Metacognition

“If you can really think about thinking, really embrace metacognition and understand why you think the way you do, then you can change how you think. But if you don’t know the why, you can’t change the how.”

On Optimism & Adversity

“When you’re hit with some of these things, there’s a natural tendency to feel a sense of helplessness. That’s very normal. You need to go through that. It’s like when someone close to you dies. You’ve got to grieve. You got to go through that. It doesn’t mean it has to last forever. You’re going to get through it, but you need, mentally to process that, and to be able to then pick yourself up and move forward.”

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There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time.

About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how the Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one — on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host

Joe Casey is an executive coach who helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking.

Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University.

In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 2 million downloads. Business Insider recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

_________________________

The views and opinions expressed by guests on The Retirement Wisdom Podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the host or Retirement Wisdom, LLC. The Retirement Wisdom Podcast covers the non-financial aspects of retirement. From time to time we may invite guests who discuss other aspects of retirement planning, solely for educational purposes. Listeners are advised to consult qualified financial and/or medical professionals on those matters.

Who are you when your role at work changes? Psychologist and author Marisa Franco, PhD rejoins us to discuss her new book Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Attachment. We explore self-worth, identity, relationships, and the challenge of becoming someone new. She explains why our sense of worth often becomes attached to achievement and professional identity, and why major transitions such as retirement can shake that foundation. Marisa Franco offers a different approach: develop a sense of worth that isn’t dependent on remaining who you’ve always been.

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An enlightening psychologist, New York Times bestselling author, and TED speaker, Dr. Marisa G. Franco is known for digesting and communicating science in ways that resonate deeply enough with people to change their lives.

Dr. Franco works as a professor at The University of Maryland and authored the New York Times bestseller Platonic: How The Science of Attachment Can Help You Make – and Keep – Friends and her new book Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Attachment. She writes about relationships for Psychology Today and has been a featured connection expert for major publications like The New York Times, The Telegraph, and Vice.

Dr. Franco speaks on how to build relationships with yourself and others at corporations, government agencies, non-profits, and universities across the country, including Harper Collins Publishers, Cisco, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and The Department of State.

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For More on Marisa G. Franco, PhD

Worth: The New Science of Self-Esteem and Attachment

Website

Her first visit with us on her book Platonic about making friends as an adult

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Open to another take on worth?

(Highly recommend)

Taylor Mali – What Teachers Make (3 minute video)

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Other Retirement Podcast Conversations You’ll Love

Self-Compassion – Dr. Kristin Neff

Shift – Ethan Kross

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Wise Quotes

 On Contingent Worth

“We’re very much taught to have a contingent sense of self-worth: I am worthy if… I’m worthy if I have this job. I’m worthy if I’m in this relationship. I’m worthy if I have this financial stability perhaps. And so that contingent self-worth means that when we don’t have those things, we no longer feel worthy. What I am proposing is a non-contingent sense of self-worth—a sense of self-worth that is there no matter who you are, no matter what happens to you.”

On Identity & Reinvention

“What I counterintuitively suggest is to allow yourself to not know yourself. You can allow your sense of self to be fluid in each moment, and you don’t have to be who you’ve always been, but you can still have high regard for yourself. Whoever I am in each moment is okay.”

On Possibility Within Loss

“If you were to see this loss as an offering in some way, what would make this an offering? Is this giving you more time to spend with your friends? Is it taking you out of a workplace that maybe wasn’t working for you? Is it allowing you more time to engage in an interest or passion that you’ve always wanted to engage in?”

_______________________

There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time.

About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how the Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one — on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host

Joe Casey is an executive coach who helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking.

Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University.

In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 2 million downloads. Business Insider recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

_________________________

The views and opinions expressed by guests on The Retirement Wisdom Podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the host or Retirement Wisdom, LLC. The Retirement Wisdom Podcast covers the non-financial aspects of retirement. From time to time we may invite guests who discuss other aspects of retirement planning, solely for educational purposes. Listeners are advised to consult qualified financial and/or medical professionals on those matters.

What does it really mean to take charge of your health? Lucy McBride MD, believes it involves much more than tracking your numbers. Good health is also about understanding the less measurable parts: what’s happening in your life, your relationships, stress, habits, emotional patterns, and your history.

Dr. Lucy McBride, a primary care physician and author of Beyond the Prescription: A Doctor’s Guide to Taking Charge of Your Health, joins us to discuss how to become a more informed, proactive annd empowered partner in your own healthcare.

We discuss the difference between control and agency, why your bio contains important health data, the “patient personality” each of us brings into the doctor’s office, when health tracking helps (and when it doesn’t) and why the transition to retirement can make structure, movement, social connection, and daily routines even more important.

Lucy McBride, MD joins us from Washington DC.

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Bio

Dr. Lucy McBride is a board-certified internist who has practiced primary care medicine in Washington, DC, for over two decades. She is a native Washingtonian who attended the National Cathedral School before earning her undergraduate degree from Princeton University. She graduated with honors from Harvard Medical School and earned a Master’s Degree in Pharmacology as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Cambridge, U.K. She completed her internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Dr. McBride has become a nationally recognized voice in healthcare transformation and patient empowerment. She believes that health is not a checklist or an outcome, but rather a lifelong process that requires awareness, acceptance, and agency over what you can change.

She is the author of Beyond the Prescription: A Doctor’s Guide to Taking Charge of Your Health (Simon & Schuster, August 2026), which offers a five-step framework for patients to reclaim agency over their health. The book has been praised for bridging the gap between conventional medicine and holistic wellness, refusing false binaries and empowering patients to make informed

She writes the widely-read medical newsletter Are You Okay?, which reaches over 39,000 subscribers weekly with evidence-based guidance on navigating mental and physical health in tandem. She also hosts the top-rated podcast Beyond the Prescription. Dr. McBride’s work has been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and USA Today. She is a frequent media commentator, appearing on NPR, CNN, MSNBC, Morning Joe, and PBS NewsHour, where she provides evidence-based medical advice and advocates for a more comprehensive approach to healthcare.

Her mission extends beyond individual patient care to transforming the healthcare system itself. She believes that empowering individual patients creates systemic change—and that primary care relationships, enhanced by technology but centered on human connection, are the foundation of sustainable healthcare transformation.

Dr. McBride lives in Washington, DC with her husband and three children.

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For More on Lucy McBride 

Beyond the Prescription: A Doctor’s Guide to Taking Charge of Your Health

Beyond the Prescription Podcast

You can learn more about Dr. McBride here.

You can subscribe to her free newsletter here.

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Other Retirement Podcasts You’ll Love 

Eat Your Ice Cream – Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD

What Matters Most – Diane Button

Inside The Healthcare Heist – Jordan Grumet, MD

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Wise Quotes

On Agency

“People often don’t realize how much agency they have over their health…When we stop fighting unwinnable battles, we then open up brain space, time, energy to then fight the battles we want to be fighting. That’s the birthplace of agency.”

On Your Story & Your Health

“We love collecting data. Cholesterol levels, blood pressure, body mass index, right? All the things we can measure in a test tube. But it turns out the most important data is actually something only you have access to. It’s your biography. Your biographic data matters, I would argue, even more than your biometric data, and your biographic data informs your biometric data.”

On Self-Compassion

“When I was able to connect the dots between her story, which is very relevant, those biographic pieces of data from when she was a kid, and her blood sugar readings, her blood sugar readings that go up when she’s stress eating and she’s not taking care of herself, that’s me handing power to the patient. That’s me saying, “Look, you have more agency than you think.” It’s not that understanding the relationship between childhood traumas and your diabetes, the knowledge alone isn’t enough, but it’s to say that there’s no GLP-1, there’s no shot, there’s no medication that’s going to practice self-compassion for you and for you to make peace with your body and to, and to feed your body the way it wants to be fed.”

On Taking Charge

“The idea of being the CEO of Your Health is being someone who can understand at its core where you have agency and where you do not, and knowing the difference. It sounds a lot like the Serenity Prayer, right? It’s basically the wisdom to understand where you can execute in your life, habit changes, relationship changes, whether the relationships to food or alcohol or other people or your retirement, and where you have to cede control, like you’re aging, you have a genetic predisposition to a disease you don’t like, you have medical conditions that  you’d rather not have. Because it turns out that the best CEOs in the world are people who don’t try to control everything. They also don’t outsource everything to somebody else. They know the difference between where they have control and where they don’t, and then they ask for help. My book is essentially a guide to making sense of your health in a more nuanced way because you do have more control than you think.”

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There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time.

About Retirement Wisdom

I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident.

Schedule a call today to discuss how the Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one — on your own terms.

About Your Podcast Host

Joe Casey is an executive coach who helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking.

Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University.

In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 2 million downloads. Business Insider recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy.

_________________________

The views and opinions expressed by guests on The Retirement Wisdom Podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the host or Retirement Wisdom, LLC. The Retirement Wisdom Podcast covers the non-financial aspects of retirement. From time to time we may invite guests who discuss other aspects of retirement planning, solely for educational purposes. Listeners are advised to consult qualified financial and/or medical professionals on those matters.