Eric Weigel and Fritz Gilbert: Uncovering Blind Spots in Retirement Planning

Our guests on the podcast today are Eric Weigel and Fritz Gilbert. Fritz is a repeat guest on The Long View. He writes the popular Retirement Manifesto blog, and he also wrote a book about retirement called Keys to a Successful Retirement: Staying Happy, Active, and Productive in Your Retired Years. Eric Weigel is the founder of a retirement coaching firm called Retire With Possibilities, and he is also the author of a book on retirement called Reimagining Retirement: 9 Keys to True Wealth. Together they collaborated on a recent survey of retirees and preretirees to gauge their attitudes about retirement and to help flag potential blind spots about retirement planning.

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Background

Eric Weigel Bio

Fritz Gilbert Bio

Retirement Manifesto Blog

Keys to a Successful Retirement: Staying Happy, Active, and Productive in Your Retired Years, by Fritz Gilbert

“Fritz Gilbert: Early Retirement Made Simple,” The Long View podcast, morningstar.com, Oct. 26, 2021.

Retire With Possibilities

Reimagining Retirement: 9 Keys to True Wealth, by Eric Weigel

Survey and Results

“Retirement Perspectives and Attitudes Survey,” by Fritz Gilbert and Eric Weigel, retirewithpossibilities.com, May 2023.

“Laura Carstensen: ‘I’m Suggesting We Change the Way We Work,’” The Long View podcast, Morningstar.com, Sept. 14, 2021.

“7 Secrets to a Great Retirement,” by Fritz Gilbert, theretirementmanifesto.com, Feb. 2, 2023.

80th Birthday—FranklinCovey video

“The End of History Illusion,” by Jordi Quoidbach, Daniel Gilbert, and Timothy Wilson, science.org, Jan. 4, 2013.

Blind Spots

“Shining the Light on Retirement Blind Spots,” by Fritz Gilbert, theretirementmanifesto.com, May 18, 2023.

“Introducing the 90/10 Rule of Retirement,” by Fritz Gilbert, theretirementmanifesto.com, Oct. 7, 2021.

Chip Conley

Holmes-Rahe Scale

“Longevity and the New Journey of Retirement,” EdwardJones study, agewave.com.

Other

“The Ten Commandments of Retirement,” by Fritz Gilbert, theretirementmanifesto.com, March 6, 2018.

Christine Benz: Hi, and welcome to The Long View. I’m Christine Benz, director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morningstar.

Jeff Ptak: And I’m Jeff Ptak, chief ratings officer for Morningstar Research Services.

Benz: Our guests on the podcast today are Eric Weigel and Fritz Gilbert. Fritz is a repeat guest on The Long View. He writes the popular Retirement Manifesto blog, and he also wrote a book about retirement called Keys to a Successful Retirement: Staying Happy, Active, and Productive in Your Retired Years. Eric Weigel is the founder of a retirement coaching firm called Retire With Possibilities, and he is also the author of a book on retirement called Reimagining Retirement: 9 Keys to True Wealth. Together they collaborated on a recent survey of retirees and preretirees to gauge their attitudes about retirement and to help flag potential blind spots about retirement planning.

Fritz and Eric, welcome to The Long View.

Fritz Gilbert: Hey, thanks, Christine and Jeff. Love being on the show again, and excited about today’s topic.

Eric Weigel: Thanks for the invitation to this wonderful show. Looking forward to our discussion.

Benz: We’re happy to have you here. We want to start with a little bit of stage-setting. You came together on a project, a survey, and we want to talk about what you were hoping to achieve when you set about doing this survey about retirement blind spots.

Weigel: I’ll take that one first, and then Fritz can elaborate. But I approached Fritz because Fritz has an incredibly loyal following, much larger than my list. We kind of went back and forth a little bit on this—but my interest was really to try to look at the differences between people that were retired and people that were still planning to retire in terms of how they viewed their life in retirement. I had looked at a couple of surveys from Edward Jones’ Age Wave, and that was a topic that was addressed slightly. And I thought that we could actually do a better job asking our followers to see and research that topic with the idea that at the end of the day, we would be able to write better blogs. Or in my case, I was very interested too in getting material for some speeches that I was preparing. So, I approached Fritz and he had done a wonderful review of my book, Reimagining Retirement, and Fritz and I agreed that it was a project worth doing. So, I’m glad it all worked out. We got a great response rate, but I’ll let Fritz take this on and give you his opinion.

Gilbert: The only thing I would add is, I’ve always been intrigued when I was preretirement and now that I’m in retirement, what is the difference? It’s kind of like being married. You can’t anticipate what it’s going to be like until you actually do it. And there hasn’t been, in my view, a really formal approach to this. And when Eric approached me with the idea, I just thought it hit this sweet spot perfectly of asking preretirees and retirees the same questions and comparing the results and let’s see what we get. And obviously, we found a trove of some really interesting information. So, to me, it was an innovative study, and I give Eric the credit for coming up with the concept. I’m really pleased with it.

Ptak: You surveyed people who receive your regular emails about their attitudes toward retirement. Before we get into the results, can you discuss the people who are on your mailing list and in turn responded to the survey? They’re certainly a bit older if they’re on a retirement-related mailing list, but what else do you know about them?

Gilbert: Yeah, Jeff, they are a bit older. I don’t have the exact demographics. Obviously, for my blog, you get some stuff from Google Analytics, but I don’t spend much time. I just enjoy writing and interacting with the readers. But we’ve got very specific demographics on the responses. And we were really pleased. We had almost a 50-50 split between retired and preretirees, as we’ll call them. Fifty-four percent were retired and half of those had just retired in the past two years. Forty-five percent plan to retire and half of those are going to retire in the next two years. So, we got a big chunk of this population that’s in that really sweet spot of just before or just after retirement. In terms of ages, 36% were 51 to 60 and another 33% were 61 to 65. So, the majority were in that 51 to 65 age bracket. Majority male, I was kind of surprised by that, 70% male. But that might represent readers of blogs. I’ve never done a study on that, but that’s just the fact. Seventy percent male and 86% married, which was high. So, pretty interesting demographics. And I think anybody that falls in that age group, the results are going to be very applicable to your situation in life.

Weigel: I would add that my email list is—I also don’t know exactly the demographics, but it’s definitely people interested in retirement. Even though I’m a financial guy, I tend to write on a lot of nonfinancial topics. I’m a retirement coach that basically looks at money as sort of the fuel for the journey. So, I write on a lot of topics that normally would fall under personal development or positive psychology. So, my guess is that a lot of the people in my list know me as the finance guy but follow me because it’s the extra bit that I add in terms of personal growth and how to use money in your retirement journey.

But like Fritz mentioned, we were incredibly happy with the response rate to the survey. It was fun watching the responses come in. I was tracking them almost second by second. But I think we have a very good cross-section of what I would call do-it-yourselfer retirement people. I believe that we didn’t ask a question on education, but I believe these are primarily professional-oriented people. So, they did well in their careers, they’re taking control of their retirement, and as a consequence, they are the natural audience for the type of blogs that Fritz and I write about.

Benz: We wanted to get into the results. I noticed that about 90% of the respondents gave themselves an A or a B for their ability to manage their finances. And in general, I noticed that people seem to rate themselves pretty highly on a variety of metrics. It made me think of that frequently cited study of how people rate their driving skills where everybody thinks they’re above average. Do you think that’s a possibility here too that people are more confident in their abilities than perhaps they should be?

Weigel: That’s always the case, I think, especially if you do one-on-one surveys. If you put people in a room, they might look around a little bit and judge themselves almost. But I think when people are taking a survey on their own, my sense is that anybody that follows a retirement blog or is interested in actively managing their own retirement, they’re going to be well-educated, they’re going to be engaged in their own success. And I think we knew that going in that that was probably going to be the case given the email list that Fritz has, my list, and where we put the survey in addition to our two email lists. So, I think it’s definitely a possibility that people overestimate their ability. I think that’s very much the case for people planning their retirement. They overestimate their ability to have a great time in retirement, and then a lot of times what they end up finding is that after the honeymoon period is that it’s a little bit tougher than what they expected, and now they’re responsible for 100% of their time and what they do in retirement. So, I think it’s very much a case that people go in highly confident. I think there might be a little bit of a dip after that honeymoon period. And then they go back to a level where they feel very good about their life. And that’s definitely one of the things that we found in the survey—that the overall message is one of optimism, people really enjoying their retirement; but, like everybody else, experiencing a little bit of a dip once they actually find the real reality of what life in retirement is like.

Ptak: You asked survey respondents who were already retired to rate how well they had planned various aspects of their retirements. One of the key areas where people said their planning could have been better was in replacing their lost work connections. Can you talk about what you found and what the practical takeaways are from that?

Gilbert: Jeff, actually the lost connections, I was kind of surprised by that. That was actually the highest response rate for people that had already retired on the areas where they felt they hadn’t prepared sufficiently enough. Thirty-six percent of retirees cited it. And then, when you look at what do they miss from their work, 62% of retirees said that they missed the social aspect of their careers. And the interesting thing—this starts getting into the blind spots—if you compare that to the preretirees, again, 62% of the retirees missed their social aspects, only 29% of the preretirees expected this would be an area that they’d miss. So, it’s a big gap. And I think that’s one of these nonfinancial benefits of work that people a lot of times don’t really think about. They think about the paycheck. But there are all these other things that you get from work that unless you really spend time studying the subject or look at research results like this one, it’s not always intuitive. And definitely losing those connections is something you’ve got to realize is going to happen. And you’ve got to start making plans for what you’re going to do to replace those when you retire.

Benz: This is a topic that we’ve gone over with you, Fritz, in the past and with other guests such as Laura Carstensen at Stanford. How can people make sure that they have good social bonds later in life once they’re no longer working? Do you have any tips perhaps from your own experience?

Gilbert: Sure. I’ve thought about this one a lot. I’ve written about it. I’ve been through it. I think the most important thing, number one, be aware of it, which hopefully people will be that are listening to this. And number two, do something about it. In retirement, you’re so responsible for things in your life. And guess what? You’re responsible to develop those relationships. So, what I encourage people to do is, as you’re approaching retirement, start being intentional at building relationships with people that will still be there after you leave your workplace. And get involved in social organizations, get involved in charities, start building that bridge. And maybe somebody you haven’t talked to in a while, pick up the phone, see if they want to go play a game of golf or have a lunch together. And what I’ve done in my retirement is I’ve built this network of people, and I’ll have lunch maybe once a month with this guy or that guy. I have different people that I intentionally approach and go out and do physical things with. We’ll go mountain biking together, social activities, we’re active in a charity. And I’ve actually had the opposite. I’ve got more friends now than I’ve ever had in my life. And I think especially recognizing that 70% of the respondents were male, and not being sexist, but the reality is, males tend to have a more difficult time establishing relationships than females for whatever reason it is. So, knowing that we had a slight overweight male response rate, I’m not surprised by the response, but it just highlights the importance of this, especially for people that don’t typically have a lot of friends, you’ve got to be intentional, and you’ve got to reach out and build those relationships. It’s really important.

Ptak: About a third said they could have done a better job of ensuring that their retirements incorporated a sense of meaning and purpose. Can you comment on that and share what the practical takeaways are for people who are embarking on retirement?

Weigel: I think purpose and meaning are fuzzy concepts for a lot of people, especially people that are busy in their careers, busy raising a family. In a sense, before you retire, I think work and family are the two—that’s what gives you meaning and purpose. So, when you become an empty nester, when you retire, I think you have to find something else. And it takes a little bit of time. I’ve been thinking about this for over 10 years, and I’m still not retired. And I think that I do go back and forth. But when I first started thinking about what I wanted my life to be like, it took me a while. And I think we all fall prey to what society expects of each one of us. And I think at the end of the day, the best way to ensure a good retirement is to do things your way, if you will.

I think one of the exercises that I use with a lot of my retirement clients is an idea that came from Stephen Covey. And what Stephen Covey recommended or what he liked to do was ask people to think about their 80th birthday party. And there’s a great video on YouTube about this, where he basically says, put yourself in the shoes of your 80-year-old, and what is your birthday party like? Who’s going to be there? What are people going to say? What kind of jokes are people going to make? What kind of food are they going to have? What’s the ambience going to be? And I usually start with my clients because they’ve never really thought about that. So, I think from that vision and also the practice of journaling, which I actually highly recommend to people, eventually you get the sense of what really provides meaning and purpose to your life. And it varies quite a bit. For some people, it’s taking care of the grandchildren. For other people, it’s working on a social cause or a charity that they deeply believe in. For others, it’s to continue working, maybe not in the same fashion or same way that they did before but using their skills and knowledge and wisdom to still keep a professional presence in the world, but maybe in a different way. So, I think these are fuzzy concepts, but they’re very, very important because at the end of the day, you need something that makes you happy for getting up in the morning every day, and it provides a little bit of a sense of direction. And I think that purpose and meaning are absolutely critical for guiding you or guiding people to the type of life that they’re looking for.

Benz: Eric, I am curious. When you talk to people who are, say, in the preretirement phase about that 80th birthday party, are people averse to even thinking of themselves as 80-year-olds? I know that there’s some research that shows that we tend to not want to think about our older years. Do you find that with clients?

Weigel: No, I actually haven’t. And I think the reason for that is because maybe it’s just the type of clients I have. But everybody thinks—especially the males—they all think they’re still 25. And I think women tend to be a little bit more realistic. But I think that people don’t—and actually, there’s a lot of research on this by researchers at Harvard. It’s called the end-of-history illusion, where if you ask somebody what their future is going to be like, they pretty much say that it’s going to be the same of what you’re living through today. When in reality, if you ask the same question to people and you ask them, how much has your life changed, let’s say, in the last 10 years, they all agree that there’s been a fair amount of change. But looking forward, people have this tendency not to think there’s going to be much of a change. So, I think they think of their 80th birthday party as pretty much with the same group of people that are surrounding them today and pretty much in the same setting. But what I find is that very few people have actually thought about it. Very few people think that far ahead, which is the purpose of the exercise, to really push your horizon out and start thinking about what type of journey is going to get you to that birthday party.

Ptak: In an effort to uncover blind spots in the retirement planning process, you asked both preretirees and retirees to comment on their major concerns for their retirements. You found there were some disconnects, which can be short-handed as blind spots. One that jumped out at me was that 57% of retirees said they were concerned about an unexpected health or family crisis, whereas just 43% of preretirees were. Is it possible that just reflects aging, that retirees are older and more likely to be experiencing their own health problems or health problems in their families and social circles?

Weigel: Yes, I think that’s exactly what it reflects. We know from our survey that the retired people that filled our survey are older, on average, than the people still planning their retirement. So, as you get older, obviously health becomes more of an issue. I think what I mentioned before, which is, if you’re healthy and you haven’t yet retired, you think that your life is pretty much going to be the same, but the reality is that as you get older, things will happen. At least I’ll speak from experience, my own personal experience. For the longest time—I do a lot of sports—I’ve never had any injuries. And in the last couple of weeks, I’ve had a really sore back and I don’t even know what that’s from. I can’t even remember what happened. I think that it was kind of a wake-up call that I really need to do, for example, in my case, more stretching. I need to take care of my health in ways that may not be the most pleasant for me. So, for example, I like cardio, I like strength training, I don’t like any sort of flexibility exercises. I think that the survey basically reflected the stage of life you’re in. My expectation is that as people that are yet to retire, go into retirement and they most likely will experience some sort of adverse health situation. They will actually start paying more attention to that. So, I think this is one part of the survey that we couldn’t really quite make an apples-to-apples comparison, but I think that’s exactly what it reflects.

Benz: It also appears that among your survey respondents, at least nonfinancial concerns, weigh more heavily on both groups, both the preretirees and retirees, than financial ones. Do you think that’s a function of the selection bias of your sample that people who are financially well are more likely to subscribe to a retirement newsletter? And could the fact that we’ve had a fairly decent market environment over the past decade be a contributor, too?

Gilbert: That’s an interesting section, Christine. I was surprised that as many of the preretirees were aware of the nonfinancial concerns as they were. I do think it’s a sample bias. Everybody on the survey either reads my blog or Eric’s or other retirement media. And I have a strong focus on the nonfinancial as well as Eric, as he mentioned earlier. So, I think these participants were more aware of the need to do the nonfinancial focus. Most people—maybe it’s a bias of mine, but my perception is most people as they’re planning for retirement tend to focus more on the financial, and it’s only after retirement that you really start realizing the importance of these nonfinancial issues. That’s what causes a rough journey for some people, that they haven’t taken that into consideration, suddenly they have to do. I think, yeah, it’s a little bit of a sample bias, and I do think probably the people that are doing the survey are probably more financially well off, as we mentioned. So, OK, I’ve got that part under control. What else do I have to work on? So, it’s a little bit of both.

Ptak: One interesting dimension is that preretirees are more concerned about financial matters, running out of money during retirement, for example, than is the case for retirees. Fritz, you note that mirrors your own experience with retirement. Can you talk about that?

Gilbert: This goes to what I was saying earlier, but I think it’s worth diving into a little bit. Almost everybody, when you ask them about retirement, if they’re in their early 50s, they go to the financials. Everybody. What I did is, I was getting ready to retire, I started interviewing people that were in their 80s. I just randomly would run into people, and I’m pretty direct. I just, “Hey, I write this blog, and I’d like to ask you one question.” I’d tell them in advance what it was. I asked maybe 10 people, what is the one thing—I’m six months away from retirement—what’s the one thing I should think about to ensure the greatest possible retirement? Not one of them mentioned money. So, the people that have lived it, they’ve made the transition, they’ve had a good retirement, it’s these nonfinancial areas—finding meaning and purpose, finding a sense of identity—all those things we’ve talked about. Those are the areas that after you retire, you realize, hey, my money is what my money is.

I wrote a post called “The 90/10 Rule of Retirement.” I made it up, but the concept is, 90% of your work as you’re preparing for retirement is focused on the financials. But once you get into retirement, your money is what it is. You get used to living on that. Yeah, you worry about inflation and whatnot, but the reality is, the financial situation is, at that point, it’s locked in. You’ve made the decision when to retire. Your financial situation is set, depending on market returns, and so on. But you spend a lot less time thinking about the financial, and that’s where the 90% comes in, the 90/10—in retirement it switches, and you spend the majority of your time trying to figure out these nonfinancial things, which is really where you find joy. That’s what my book is all about, Keys to a Successful Retirement. It’s figuring out these nonfinancial aspects. I went through it myself. I thought about the nonfinancial more than average because I’ve been writing every week for three years. I recognize their importance. I had a very smooth transition. In my research, I found that there’s a direct correlation between the amount of time that people spend, especially on these nonfinancial aspects, before they retire and a correlation to how smooth the transition goes. It’s directly related to how much time you spend planning on them.

Benz: Speaking of nonfinancial considerations, another of the disconnects that you identified related to boredom. It sounds like most of your survey respondents weren’t concerned about being bored in retirement, but a bigger share of preretirees than retirees were worried about that. What conclusions can we draw from that?

Weigel: I think sometimes people forget what they went through. At least that’s the conclusion that I’ve reached from many discussions with my clients. A lot of times, you enter retirement, you’re really happy about it, and then you enter this period where you start questioning some things. You might even get a little bit bored. But that doesn’t take forever. That might take one or two years until you figure it out, until you figure out what your life in retirement is like. So, I look at the answers to those questions as, maybe people that have been retired for a while have forgotten that they might have been a little bit bored because they’ve moved on, they’ve figured out retirement life already. I think in terms of people still planning their retirement, they understand that they’re going to replace 8 to 10 hours a day of their time with something else. They have a bucket list. They have an idea of what they want to do, but obviously, you can’t play, for example, golf 10 hours a day. Some people might want to do that, but that’s a little extreme. So, it’s hard to come up with, what am I going to do for eight to 10 hours a day that I previously spent at work? So, I think it’s a natural reaction to start getting a little bit concerned.

The other thing that I’ve found is that—Fritz mentioned this a little bit in terms of relationships, so the social side—but I think even in terms of hobbies, I think men tend to have given up on their hobbies over their careers for the most part, and they’re now starting to think again, what am I going to do with my time? I think it might come across as boredom, but it’s really when people start thinking, OK, I don’t want to be sitting on a couch watching some news show or watching a ticker go by all day long. I have to figure out what I want to do with my life and during the hours of my days. So, I think that it reflects, number one, the fact that a lot of people have forgotten that there might have been some challenges in their early transition into retirement and also the reality that for the most part, and I think our survey responders fit this category, that they’ve done very well in their careers and time has been precious, and now that you’re going to have a lot more time, you really need to come up with a plan for how you’re going to spend it.

Ptak: You flagged another big disconnect with respect to work. People who retired missed some key aspects of working, but the yet-to-retire cohort was less worried about those things. Eric, can you discuss what you call the “psychological income” that we get from our jobs and how people can replace it?

Weigel: Yes. I think most people approach their jobs, especially as they start thinking about retirement, they look at their jobs as, OK, how much more money am I going to put into my 401(k) or in my savings so I can retire? Because for the most part, people think of retirement as a financial event. The reality is that there are a lot of benefits, positives, of having a job that you enjoy. I think there’s a little bit of a disconnect between blue collar people and professionals. Professionals tend to enjoy what they do. They tend to derive a lot of stimulation from the work that they do. They don’t realize it, but the social aspect is very strong at work. So, for example, I’ve worked in situations where you go out to lunch with the same group of people every day. Once that stops, it becomes—and that stops whether you’re retired or you leave that work—it leaves a void. So, I think people underestimate the environmental benefits of a job, which are primarily—everybody thinks about the paycheck, but the reality is that beyond the paycheck, you also have the mental simulation, you have the social context in which you work.

And also, another aspect that’s really important is your sense of identity. I think sense of identity is an issue that I’ve seen a lot of people struggle with because they still, even once they retire, they still identify themselves in terms of their career. So, I think that’s an area that people really need to think ahead and realize that your sense of identity has to fit the stage of life you’re in. And people really don’t think about those benefits associated with work. I think for me, at least, that was the biggest surprise and biggest blind spot that we found in our survey, which was, prepare yourself ahead of time for the things that you’re no longer going to have beyond just the paycheck.

Benz: Eric, I wanted to follow up on that. You work with people on their own retirements and the preretirement phase, or perhaps during retirement. Are there ever situations where someone’s work does appear to be such a big part of their identity that the answer is don’t retire, continue doing something that continues to contribute to that identity? I could see a doctor, for example, maybe you should continue to pitch in at a medical clinic or something like that, so that that identity that’s so important to you can continue.

Weigel: Absolutely. I think retirement is probably, it’s not an appropriate word for the world we live in. I think retirement to me really means more the ability to do what you want to do with your time without necessarily having to think about money. So, if you love working, I think you should continue working. In fact, that’s the trend that we’re seeing more and more, people decide not to retire, or they decide to retire, they might get a little bit bored or anxious, and they go back to work within one or two years. They might want to do it on a part-time basis. They might want to do it in a slightly different context than the work that they were doing before. But at the end of the day, there’s nothing wrong with work. In fact, in my book, I talk about work as being one of the nine keys to true wealth, which is, if you enjoy your work, it doesn’t have to be for money. That doesn’t have to be for compensation. It really is about just showing a commitment to sharing your experiences, your skills, and keep doing that.

For the most part, the type of people that I see in my practice, love what they’re doing. And I actually encourage them, several years before retirement, to think about what other skills they could add to their human capital to allow them to continue along in their career, maybe not with their current employer, but in a similar context. So, I will say, for example, even in my case, I was for 25 years an investment manager, and I came to retirement coaching as my own journey. But what I also wanted to do is not throw away all my human capital that I had developed over 25 years. I wanted to, in a sense, enhance that human capital and be able to do work in a different context, no longer as a portfolio manager in a mutual fund, for example, but more one on one with individuals. So, I encourage people to think deeply, and that’s where purpose and meaning comes in.

What gives them satisfaction? In my case, I love work. I love what I do. And I think that I will probably work three to four hours a day for the rest of my life, but it won’t be 8 to 12 hours a day. So, I think, definitely, work is a big part of one’s identity and one’s enjoyment in life. And if that gives you a lot of joy, you should find ways in which to share that expertise and keep doing what you love.

Ptak: Fritz is the one retired person here. Can you discuss whether missing your sense of identity was an issue for you as you embarked on retirement and how you forged a different identity in retirement?

Gilbert: Yeah, Jeff, it’s interesting, the differences between Eric and I, because in my case, I full stopped. 100% walked away from my career and I’ve never looked back, and I’ve just totally forgotten that past identity and I identify myself differently than I did when I was working, and I don’t miss it. I’ve transitioned. And how do you do that? What’s that process? Number one, for me, it was a desire. I had enjoyed my work, but I’d done it for 33 years. I retired early at 55. So, I was intentionally trying to get out to live a nonworking life and enjoy all the other benefits. I love being outside, my wife and I run a charity, we’re very active people, and that’s what we wanted to do with our time. So, in Eric’s case, hey, I want to continue working. I like the sense of identity. I’m not doing it for money anymore. Well, now, I’m not doing it for money anymore, but the things I’m doing with my time provide a sense of purpose and meaning and sense of identity. So, the sense of identity that I’ve established has been driven most by the activities that I’ve decided to invest my time in that give me the biggest sense of purpose and achievement and reward.

For example, writing my blog. One of my identities now, I consider myself a writer. I’ve published a book. I write a blog. I’ve kind of become known in the space. I’m talking to you guys, right? I know this retirement space. I’m a writer. I can speak about the financial and the nonfinancial. That’s my identity. I’m a retirement guy that can talk about this stuff and write about it. At the same time, we’ll go out and do a Freedom For Fido build with my wife’s charity. We build dog fences for low-income families that have dogs on chains and whatnot. And I kind of joke with my wife, I’m the VP of Operations, right? Because I’m out there and I’m running the builds and I’m managing the warehouse. It’s a whole aspect of my life that’s entirely new. So, I think the best thing to do is, as you’re approaching retirement, think about what those activities are that you want to do postretirement that will bring you purpose. And it’s in doing the things that you feel the most fulfilled that you’ll find your new sense of identity. But it is a process. It doesn’t happen the day you retire. It takes some time.

Benz: One challenge that both the pre-retiree and retiree groups flagged was finding the right balance of structure in retirement. First, maybe can you talk about what that means? And second, what did you find in the survey?

Gilbert: I think structure is really important. And it’s another one of those psychological incomes that Eric writes about from work. You don’t realize when you’re working, really from the time you start school. So, let’s say, from the time you’re four or five-years-old, your day has been structured. So, for 60 years, your day has been dictated by others. What time you get up in the morning, your commute to work, your monthly management meetings. Your entire life is very, very structured by work. And the day you stop working, that structure that was provided by work is entirely gone. And a lot of preretirees may think, man, I’m just going to go hang out on the beach and I want to travel all the time, a totally unstructured life because I’ve been handcuffed all these years. What people find and what I found in my life is, if you transition from a highly structured life to a highly unstructured life, it’s very disruptive. Your body and your mind, your whole approach is driven by having some structure to your day. And what I encourage people to do, and it’s the same thing I did, is the joy of retirement is you can modify structure.

In work, you don’t have a choice. It’s structured. In retirement, if you find, hey, I like not being structured, great, live unstructured. If you’re a little bit disoriented, you’re not quite figuring out why, add some structure. Join a charity where every Tuesday you go help feed the homeless people or whatever. Now every Tuesday, from 10 to noon, I’m going to be working at the food kitchen. What I found was adding some structure in my mornings, which tend to be the most structured part of my day, but then leaving the afternoon open for just serendipity and doing what I want to do, works really well for me. So, I encourage people, add a little bit of structure, take a little bit of structure away, put some in the morning, put some in the afternoon, leave your weekends open, fill your weekends, modify all those different levers that you have until you find a balance between structure and unstructured that fits with your personality. It’s something you definitely have to address, and you’ll feel it if you don’t have it right.

Ptak: Eric, you have a term for the period after the initial few years of retirement, the honeymoon period, if you will. You call it the messy middle. What kinds of challenges do people face during those years and what advice do you have for them for pushing through it?

Weigel: Yes, the messy middle. I actually borrowed that term from Chip Conley from the Modern Elder Academy, but other people have used that term. It’s basically the middle area between an ending and a new beginning. If you think about retirement, it’s really an ending, an ending of your career, ending of how you spend your time. And people always make the assumption that the new beginning, your new life begins the minute you retire. The reality is that there’s that middle area, which I call the messy middle, which is actually the common trait of any sort of life transition you’re going through. Having kids, for example, going off to college has always appeared in the middle where you’re really excited, but maybe the reality is not quite what you expected, and you start questioning things a little bit.

Usually what surveys have shown, other surveys, for example, the Edward Jones survey with Age Wave has shown that when people retire, they typically experience elation. They’re very happy they retired, and that’s what I call the honeymoon period. And that may last three months, may last two years. It all depends on the individual and how well they’re prepared for retirement. The reality is that a lot of times after that honeymoon period, there’s a period where people start questioning—they’ve had their bucket list of things to do, they’ve taken their trip to Europe, they’ve played their endless rounds of golf, they’ve taken a course, maybe they’ve wanted to learn to salsa dance or something like that, they’ve done that. But they’re kind of running out of things to do on their bucket list, and now it becomes real, because a lot of times the items on the bucket list, you don’t think about how much effort it’s going to require; you only think about the positives. And that’s true of retirement in general. The retirement industry is focused on the positives for the most part, assuming you have enough financial resources. But the reality is the retirement is yet another phase of life. It’s actually a pretty big transition. It’s considered to be a very stressful event—10th most stressful event, according to the Holmes-Rahe scale, which is a study that looks at various stressful events that happen in people’s lives. And very few people actually think of that event of retiring as a stressful event. I think typically what happens is people start questioning, is this how I want to spend my time? Is this all there is? There might be some boredom, there might be some anxiety, there might be some relationship issues because a lot of times couples are not always in sync as they retire. So, that’s a tough time for people.

But the good news is that, according to our survey and other surveys that I’ve seen, is that eventually you get over this messy middle, which is typical of all major transitions, and you immerse to the new beginning. And that’s where clearly the benefits of being your own boss, the freedom to decide exactly how you’re going to spend your time, are really most apparent.

Benz: Fritz, you’ve shared a little bit about your retirement journey during the course of this conversation and in the previous podcast that we did with you. But can you talk about what your biggest blind spots were coming into retirement, the things that you failed to appreciate or maybe just underrated when you were planning your own retirement?

Gilbert: It’s funny because people say, what would I have done differently? I’m humble when I say this, but I’m really pleased with how well the transition went. And I think the amount of time I put into the planning side of it paid dividends in spades. But even with that, it’s such a big transition and it’s impossible to know what it’s going to be like that no matter how well prepared you’re going to be, or you are, there are going to be some things that catch you by surprise. And I would say probably my biggest one—you’re so excited about the independence and the ability to do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it. But I think probably the thing that people don’t think about, and I probably didn’t think about, is there’s a downside to that independence as well. And the downside is that you are now 100% responsible to determine how you’re going to use that time, and how you’re going to structure it, and what you’re going to do to give you the best life possible. And it’s something that you have to do yourself. Nobody is going to do it for you. And it’s 100% of your time.

I think probably the reality of that responsibility was the biggest blind spot for me. I’ve handled it well. And what I’ve found is focusing your mental energy on finding ways to help others for me, and for a lot of my readers that I’ve written to and talked with, that seems to be the greatest source of finding your way through the journey. It’s a time to be selfless in life and use the blessings that we have to be able to retire and use your newfound freedom to improve the life of other people. And I do that through my writing. I do that through the charity work that my wife and I do. And I find real joy in that. But it’s something that you have to find on your own. So, I think recognizing that the independence, appealing as it is as you’re thinking about retirement, is also a huge obligation.

Ptak: Maybe we’ll put this question to both of you. What are the conclusions from your survey were the most surprising for each of you? Maybe Eric, you want to go first and then Fritz, you can follow.

Gilbert: Sure.

Weigel: I think my biggest surprise is that people that are still planning retirement seem to know what they need to focus on. So, they know what to do to have a good life already. The hard part, obviously, is not just knowing, but actually doing. I think that’s where people get into that messy middle and they actually realize that now they control their time. It’s a different ballgame. They’re in charge. They have to figure out what to do. So, I think it really was about people for the most part know what they need to do to have a great life in retirement. That was a surprise to me because I thought that when you talk to people, 95% of people that are planning their retirement start with the financial side. So, despite the fact that there’s a great tendency to start with the financial side, through the survey we find out that people do understand that they have to worry about what to do with their time. They need to figure out what their purpose and mission is in life. So, it was a very positive message, in my opinion. I was pleasantly surprised that people understand what they need to do. So, I think that it’s really that until you get into retirement, as Fritz just mentioned, that doing part is still waiting to happen. You can think ahead, you can plan ahead, but until you get into your life in retirement, you’re not forced to do the type of things that you have to do to have a successful and happy life in retirement.

Gilbert: I’ll take a stab at it as well. I think, to me, the biggest surprise was the question that we asked was, for those that have retired, or will, for those that haven’t retired—was the transition to retirement smooth or will the retirement transition be smooth for you? And only 51% of the retirees agreed or strongly agreed with that statement, which means that half of them struggled with the transition. And remember, this was a subset. The sample methodology that we use, these are planners, these are financially secure people, these are intelligent people that are thinking about this, and still half of them struggled with the transition to retirement. That’s a huge number. The concerning part of that is when you look at the preretirees, 70% of those think it will be a smooth transition. But, in reality, only 50% are going to have a smooth transition based on the survey result. So, people think the transition is going to be a lot easier than it’s going to be.

And to me, the biggest takeaway from the survey was, recognize that this is a major life change, that it goes well beyond the financial aspect of it, and take time while you’re still working to learn from those that have gone before you, and spend time thinking about how you’re going to replace all those nonfinancial benefits you’re currently getting from work. Because figuring that piece of it out is really the key to having less of a messy middle, if you will, and a more enjoyable transition and ultimately, a longer and happier retirement.

Benz: As you reflect on the key components of a successful retirement and retirement plan, and you both have done this survey and you work in this space, what advice would you impart to people who are planning their own retirements?

Weigel: Well, I think, the one thing I will say is, it’s never too early to plan ahead. It’s never too early to visualize what your future self is going to look like or what you want it to look like in the future. So, really think ahead about what kind of life you want. Money is really the fuel for the journey. It’s really about all the relationships you’re going to have, the quality of your relationships, how you’re going to spend your time. How you’re going to manage your health. I think a lot of people think, for example, when you use the word invest, investing, they think of money. I think that you need to invest your time and lifestyle practices into becoming the type of person you want and controlling your future as much as possible. So, I always tell people there are really three things you have to do: You have to think ahead, think of what type of person you want to be, what kind of lifestyle you want. You have to plan. So, in other words, how am I going to make this happen?

And then, you finally have to do. And that’s where I think the doing part, as I mentioned before, is until you’re actually in retirement, you don’t understand that part as well. But it’s really no different than any other stage in life that you have the best intentions, you have a plan or a vision, and then once you get in it, things happen, there are detours, people that expected to move to Florida, for example, maybe their housing prices have gone up way too much and now they have to rethink what they want to do or there are life events that happen. And that’s the whole beauty of this, that you can decide to do whatever you want to do; you have the freedom to do it, but it’s up to you. You’re the boss of your own future now. And I think that one of the great messages from a survey is that the happiest people that we interviewed are the people that are retired. And the other thing I would encourage people to do is to find role models out there of people that have had a happy and joyful retirement. In my case, and I mentioned this in the book, it’s my 94-year-old uncle who has had a wonderful time of retirement, the best time of his life. But that’s because he has taken control of that and decided what he wants to do, what makes him happy. So, find a role model or what I sometimes call a retirement superhero. And that’s a great way to actually look at what type of life you might want in your retirement.

Gilbert: And I’ll close it out here with the advice I would give is, learn from this survey, learn from those that have gone before you, and think beyond the financial. Clearly, if you’re two years out, you’re focused on the financial. You get one year out, and your numbers are what they are, and you’re waiting now to get to the number or whatever. But most people that are planners, at least, have some time between when they know they can retire—OK, I’m going to be able to retire in June of ‘24—nothing really changes between now and June of ‘24 from a macro level with your financials. You’ve been working at it, you know where it needs to be, you’ve run the calculators. So, instead of continuing to run calculators, take that year that you have left and shift and really spend time focusing on the nonfinancials.

And the way I encourage people to do that is two things. Number one, try to take a mini-retirement, an extended break. I did it over Thanksgiving with my wife, and we came up to our cabin. We had the cabin at the time. We moved to the mountains and left the city. So, we came up here for an extended break over Thanksgiving. I tried not to be on the emails. It’s a slow time at work anyway, so it was great. And it’s not like, oh, let’s go kayaking because it’s Tuesday, and what are we going to do? It wasn’t activity-driven. It was mentally driven. And it was, let’s think about what we want our life to be. To Eric’s point, what did we want our life to be? And we carved out some intentional quiet time as a couple to spend a week thinking about that. And it wasn’t just all that. We had fun while we were up here, but we thought about it. And I would try to set up a deliverable coming out of that.

So, let’s say, no later than three months before you retire, I wrote what I called—well, I have a post, “10 Commandments of Retirement,” and I would encourage everybody to write your 10 commandments of retirement. And mine were—you can look it up on my blog—but they were really, out of the 10, I would say eight of them were kind of mental attitude things: have an attitude of gratitude, be generous, give back. It was around the framework that I wanted my retirement to be. And I cut it out and I’ve got it posted in my office. And I look at it from time to time. It’s like, I’m living my 10 commandments. I’m five years in and those were pretty good foundational principles that I generated. And it becomes a really nice framework to make sure you’re staying where you thought you wanted to go as you get into retirement. So, spend time thinking about it and try to write something down; journal, as Eric said. Get your thoughts down on what you really want it to be and then be flexible to adapt because retirement is all about adaption. I talk about a hand of poker, and you’ve got all these cards on the table, and you can pick up any card you want, you can put down any card you want and experiment. Pick up a couple of cards, try them for a while, put them down and you’ll find a couple of cards that you really like, and you’ll keep those in your hands forever. So, the key is to find those cards.

Benz: Well, Fritz and Eric, you’ve given us so much good food for thought here. Thank you so much for being here today.

Gilbert: Thank you very much. It was a pleasure.

Weigel: Likewise. Thank you very much.

Ptak: Thanks again.

Benz: Thank you for joining us on The Long View. If you could, please take a moment to subscribe to and rate the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can follow us on Twitter @Christine_Benz.

Ptak: And @Syouth1, which is, S-Y-O-U-T-H and the number 1.

Benz: George Castady is our engineer for the podcast and Kari Greczek produces the show notes each week.

Finally, we’d love to get your feedback. If you have a comment or a guest idea, please email us at TheLongView@Morningstar.com. Until next time, thanks for joining us.

(Disclaimer: This recording is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. Opinions expressed are as of the date of recording. Such opinions are subject to change. The views and opinions of guests on this program are not necessarily those of Morningstar, Inc. and its affiliates. While this guest may license or offer products and services of Morningstar and its affiliates, unless otherwise stated, he/she is not affiliated with Morningstar and its affiliates. Morningstar does not guarantee the accuracy, or the completeness of the data presented herein. Jeff Ptak is an employee of Morningstar Research Services LLC. Morningstar Research Services is a subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc. and is registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Morningstar Research Services shall not be responsible for any trading decisions, damages or other losses resulting from or related to the information, data analysis, or opinions, or their use. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. All investments are subject to investment risk, including possible loss of principal. Individuals should seriously consider if an investment is suitable for them by referencing their own financial position, investment objectives and risk profile before making any investment decision.)