You. We hear a lot these days about the sandwich
Speaker:generation, adult children caring for
Speaker:aging parents. But what if you are aging
Speaker:and you don't have children to come and. Check on you and
Speaker:care for you? My guest on Hay Boomer
Speaker:today is Dr. Sarah south geber,
Speaker:and she's an expert in aging, and in fact, she's written a
Speaker:book specifically for solo agers called
Speaker:essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers.
Speaker:In this episode, we ask some really important questions,
Speaker:things like who will be there to help you if you can't care
Speaker:for yourself? Who could speak on your
Speaker:behalf if you are unable to speak for yourself?
Speaker:And who is capable of making decisions for you that
Speaker:you may be unable to make for yourself at that point?
Speaker:These and many other important questions are
Speaker:discussed in this episode of hey,
Speaker:Boomer. My name is Wendy Green,
Speaker:and I will be your host.
Speaker:You.
Speaker:Hello, hey Boomer listeners.
Speaker:It's another Monday. It's another hey Boomer, and I'm so glad that
Speaker:all of you are here with us. I have some important questions
Speaker:for you. Do you have a will your power of
Speaker:attorneys defined? You've got your medical directive in order?
Speaker:Have you started withdrawing from Social Security or
Speaker:from your retirement savings account?
Speaker:Have you made plans for your long
Speaker:term care? How you'd want to be cared for, where you'd want to be cared
Speaker:for? And have you had this discussion with your children
Speaker:or your spouse or your partner or your family?
Speaker:What if you don't have children or a spouse or a
Speaker:partner to talk this over with? Who's going to care for
Speaker:you if and when you need it? These are
Speaker:really difficult conversations to have in
Speaker:the best of times and when we have that
Speaker:family support that we feel we can depend on.
Speaker:But if you're a solo ager, these questions can become
Speaker:even trickier. Hi, Anne. So I'm glad
Speaker:that you all are joining us today for this important conversation.
Speaker:And the truth is, these questions that we're going to
Speaker:discuss today, they do apply in some ways
Speaker:differently for solo agers, but they also apply to all of
Speaker:us and they are important questions for all of us to think about.
Speaker:Before we get started today, I did want to thank a
Speaker:couple of our sponsors for
Speaker:the Hay Boomer Forest bathing event that's taking place on May the fourth.
Speaker:I wanted to thank DJ. Benson and Associates.
Speaker:They are a safety and security consultancy
Speaker:specializing in threat assessment,
Speaker:management and mitigation,
Speaker:workplace violence prevention and intervention training,
Speaker:organizational and personal security assessments.
Speaker:And their motto is securing souls
Speaker:one client at a time.
Speaker:If you would like to get in touch with my friend
Speaker:Dave Benson from DJ. Benson and Associates,
Speaker:you can email him at dave@securingsoles.com.
Speaker:Our other sponsor for today is Shell Mendelssohn.
Speaker:And Shell says many people with ADHD struggle
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Speaker:And I can tell you that Shell is very passionate about the work that
Speaker:she does.
Speaker:Speaking about forest bathing.
Speaker:Doris, David, Scott, Beth,
Speaker:Gail, Kathy, Rob, Bunny and Lillian are all
Speaker:joining me on May 4 for forest bathing.
Speaker:And they're joining Angie Steagall, who is our forest bathing
Speaker:guide. That means there are just five spots
Speaker:left, and I posted the
Speaker:link to register for forest bathing in the chat
Speaker:on both Facebook and LinkedIn. So you can go
Speaker:right now and sign up while there's still a
Speaker:few spaces left. It's going to be a wonderful
Speaker:way to ease out of our COVID isolation, make some
Speaker:new friends, and relax into nature.
Speaker:I hope you'll join me. It's really going to be a special event,
Speaker:and I would love to get you all to join
Speaker:the email list so that you can get our Monday morning announcements
Speaker:and you can get access to the blog posts
Speaker:that I write or the guest blog posts that we have. There are
Speaker:two ways to get on the email list. You can drop me a quick email
Speaker:to my account at wendy at heyboomer biz.
Speaker:Or you can go to the Facebook page and subscribe
Speaker:to the blog post. It's that simple. And then you'll be
Speaker:in the know with everything that hey Boomer is doing.
Speaker:And with that, I'm going to bring on our guest
Speaker:today, sarah Zeff Gepper.
Speaker:Hi, Sarah. Hi, Wendy. So nice
Speaker:to have you. I really appreciate you joining me on the show today.
Speaker:Oh, I'm happy to be here. Now I just want to know more about forest
Speaker:bathing. I know, it's so cool.
Speaker:It's like this little meaningful three hour excursion
Speaker:into the woods. Mindfulness. Very cool.
Speaker:Yeah. Sounds very good. Yeah. So let me take
Speaker:a moment and tell people about you, Sarah.
Speaker:Dr. Sarah Zekebber. She is a 2018
Speaker:recipient of the Influencers in Aging designation by PBS
Speaker:Next Avenue. She's an author,
Speaker:a certified retirement coach, and a professional speaker on
Speaker:retirement and aging. Sarah has developed a
Speaker:niche specialty which we're going to talk about today about
Speaker:solo agers people who have no children or
Speaker:who are aging alone.
Speaker:Sarah is the author of The Essential Retirement
Speaker:Planning for Solo Agers a Retirement
Speaker:and Aging Roadmap for Single and Childless Adults.
Speaker:I read this book. I've marked it up. There's lots of worksheets in
Speaker:here. I am not a solo ager, but I
Speaker:found it incredibly useful.
Speaker:And with her speaking and writing, sarah has
Speaker:been raising awareness of solo agers for the past ten
Speaker:years. She believes that solo agers have a unique
Speaker:need in later life. That warrants greater foresight
Speaker:and a more robust approach to planning.
Speaker:And Sarah is married, but she still considers herself a solo ager
Speaker:because she doesn't have children. She has a puppy,
Speaker:and she and her husband live in Santa Rosa,
Speaker:California. Is there anything I left out,
Speaker:Sarah, that you'd like to add? That's pretty complete. Thank you.
Speaker:You are welcome. So before we jump right into
Speaker:all the things that we need to be thinking about, can you tell me kind
Speaker:of your career trajectory and how you got from
Speaker:where you started to your emphasis on solo aging?
Speaker:Sure. Let's get a little bit circuitous.
Speaker:I was for 25 years a management consultant,
Speaker:organizational consulting, team building, that kind of thing.
Speaker:Wonderful career. I enjoyed it a lot. It morphed
Speaker:into more executive and management coaching than anything
Speaker:else. And there was a time about,
Speaker:I don't know, twelve years ago, when I found myself
Speaker:coaching a lot of baby boomers, which I'm obviously a baby boomer
Speaker:too. And so I was coaching people who were my contemporaries,
Speaker:and they started wanting to talk more about their retirement
Speaker:plans than their strategic plans.
Speaker:So I found myself doing a lot of coaching
Speaker:with regard to what they were going to do next in
Speaker:their own life rather than in their company. And I thought, you know,
Speaker:I'm seeing a lot of this. I think there's something going
Speaker:on here. So the more I heard about,
Speaker:the more I got interested in actually doing retirement
Speaker:coaching, because that's clearly what many of these people wanted.
Speaker:Now, at the time it was, I must say, mostly men,
Speaker:because again, of the baby boom generation, it's mostly men
Speaker:that hold those top leadership positions. That's changing.
Speaker:But for our generation, it hadn't moved the needle very far.
Speaker:Typically, these men had not built any kind
Speaker:of a life for themselves outside of their work.
Speaker:So there was definitely a need for some coaching to
Speaker:get them from one place to the next because they didn't know what they wanted
Speaker:to do in their retirement. And when we started talking about how are you
Speaker:going to add meaning and purpose to your life after you leave here,
Speaker:they were clueless. So I looked into
Speaker:retirement coaching a little further and
Speaker:discovered that there was an organization who
Speaker:actually trained retirement coaches. And even
Speaker:though I have my doctorate in an organizational behavior, that didn't
Speaker:help me to understand anything about the retirement transition
Speaker:and kind of how people mature in their older
Speaker:years. So I went through the program
Speaker:and got a certificate in retirement coaching and kind
Speaker:of hung out my shingle. And I did retirement coaching for quite a long
Speaker:time. And then I had another Epiphany about three years
Speaker:into that. I was looking around my
Speaker:I don't know, the scenario around me, the people
Speaker:that I knew, the people I worked with, the people I hung out with as
Speaker:friends. And so many of them were spending a tremendous
Speaker:amount of time taking care of their aging parents.
Speaker:We were all in our 60s, early sixty s
Speaker:at the time. And so those of them doesn't
Speaker:include me, but those of them that had living parents,
Speaker:they were getting old, they were getting into their late 80s, early 90s,
Speaker:mid 90s, getting to a point in their lives where they
Speaker:weren't quite managing as well as they had been ten
Speaker:years ago on their own. So in some cases,
Speaker:my friends and colleagues were flying back and forth to the East Coast.
Speaker:If parents were local, sometimes they were spending a
Speaker:tremendous amount of their weekends making sure that there was
Speaker:food in the house for the week, taking them to doctors appointments,
Speaker:taking time off work to do these things and in many cases,
Speaker:getting them moved into a safer environment.
Speaker:And so I've watched a lot of this going on with people in
Speaker:my life. And I sat down to have a glass of wine
Speaker:with a friend of mine who also doesn't have children. And I
Speaker:said, Sandy, who's going to do that for us?
Speaker:Big question. Big question. Yeah. And when we
Speaker:looked at each other and went, oh,
Speaker:I don't know, I got
Speaker:very curious. And I started doing some research to uncover what
Speaker:the incidence of I'd like to call it child
Speaker:free rather than childless. At least
Speaker:among the people I knew. Most of us were childless by choice.
Speaker:We had made a decision somewhere back in the 70s that
Speaker:we were going to pursue a career. We were going to go it on our
Speaker:own, we were going to make our own path.
Speaker:If you remember, baby boomers were the first ones to have the pill.
Speaker:They were the recipients of all of the noise
Speaker:that the era folks were making.
Speaker:I marched in some of those protests
Speaker:about unequal opportunities for women, and it changed.
Speaker:We made that change. So doors
Speaker:were opening not only to universities and colleges for
Speaker:women, but they were also opening to careers that women had never really
Speaker:been invited into before. So the
Speaker:world was our oyster, so to speak. We could control our reproductive
Speaker:processes however we wanted, and we could get out there and make
Speaker:a living for ourselves such that we didn't need to get married
Speaker:and we could buck the tide
Speaker:and not have children and just pursue a
Speaker:career that was meaningful and important to us.
Speaker:So that's what I and many of my colleagues did.
Speaker:But here we are in our sixty s and seventy s,
Speaker:looking ahead and going, this is the choice
Speaker:we made. And now we have to do some planning,
Speaker:some really serious planning about how we're going to be
Speaker:taken care of or how we will take care
Speaker:of ourselves, which we may or may not be able to do
Speaker:for the entire length of our life without
Speaker:the help of adult children. Right? So you must have done
Speaker:an incredible amount of research then to try
Speaker:to answer some of these tough questions.
Speaker:And I think even if we have children, it may be a situation
Speaker:where your children are not in a position to help and take care
Speaker:of. So let's start down the path
Speaker:about some of the things that you need to think about.
Speaker:Sure. Well, one of the ways that I
Speaker:approached this kind of answer to so what,
Speaker:what do we need to think about? Is to really look around me
Speaker:and observe what adult
Speaker:children were doing for their parents
Speaker:who were in their eighty s and ninety s. And so I
Speaker:came up with kind of several buckets of things.
Speaker:First of all, we certainly need to be very robust
Speaker:in our financial planning and our legal
Speaker:planning. So you mentioned early on
Speaker:something about have you done your advanced directive, have you
Speaker:written your will? All of those kinds of things.
Speaker:This is where people who have been negligent and
Speaker:not do that well. It kind of falls to their kids and their kids grumble
Speaker:and grouse. But usually when push comes to shove,
Speaker:adult children come in and do what's necessary when their parents
Speaker:run into a crisis. In our case,
Speaker:those of us who don't have kids, there is
Speaker:no safety net. So we really have to think long and
Speaker:hard about who we want to
Speaker:be our proxy, who we want making decisions for us if we
Speaker:are unable. At some point,
Speaker:things happen. People have strokes, people have heart
Speaker:attacks, people get into accidents, people fall, people break hips and
Speaker:all kinds of things and end up in rehabilitation
Speaker:units of nursing homes that they never,
Speaker:ever planned to be in. So the
Speaker:more we can get around our
Speaker:resistance to looking at that potential future and make
Speaker:some plans for it and understand what our options are
Speaker:going to be at that time, find people that will be proxies
Speaker:for us. That's the way that we need
Speaker:to plan as we get older. Yeah. And Sarah,
Speaker:you talk about that some in the book. These conversations are
Speaker:difficult at best. Right. So finding a proxy,
Speaker:somebody who is not a blood relative,
Speaker:just to build on this question. My other question is maybe they're our
Speaker:same age. They could be in trouble before
Speaker:us. Right. So maybe you need more than one. And how
Speaker:do you build that trust and build that conversation?
Speaker:Well, first of all, let me address a couple of things that you said.
Speaker:Just because we don't have adult children doesn't mean that we
Speaker:don't have blood relatives that might fill that gap.
Speaker:Okay, good point. Those of us that are close emotionally,
Speaker:hopefully and or physically to
Speaker:our brothers and sisters who do have children,
Speaker:those nieces and nephews to me are kind of the first line
Speaker:of defense. That's who you would go to first.
Speaker:But they need to know you. You need
Speaker:to have been close to them as they were growing
Speaker:up, ideally been in their life somehow,
Speaker:or at this point in your life, can find a way to help
Speaker:them because in a way, enlisting the aid of nieces
Speaker:and nephews. We need to kind of pay it forward.
Speaker:I'll give you a couple of examples out of my life. I have
Speaker:helped two of my nieces get through college.
Speaker:Their parents, my brother and his wife, did not do as
Speaker:well financially, and so I stepped in and helped
Speaker:at many junctures. Even though I didn't live very close, I tried to
Speaker:visit as often as I could. So my nieces will
Speaker:be involved, but the person I'm closest to
Speaker:and who I know will be the
Speaker:closest physically, geographically, to me, is actually a
Speaker:cousin who's 15 years younger than me.
Speaker:Okay, so those kinds of possibilities
Speaker:work. Now, there are even
Speaker:technical solo agers that I don't even think of as solo
Speaker:agers. One woman I know is the
Speaker:fifth of five sisters, and the sisters are all
Speaker:fairly close in age within a couple of years of each other.
Speaker:And when my friend got out of
Speaker:college, she went on to get further education. She became
Speaker:a scientist, she traveled all over the world, but she never got married
Speaker:and had kids. However, 20 years ago,
Speaker:when she came home to California to
Speaker:stop all the traveling and whatnot, she resumed her
Speaker:relationship with all of her she must have ten or twelve nieces and
Speaker:nephews from those other sisters. She's very close to them.
Speaker:So my guidance to her was just, Linda, talk to them,
Speaker:talk to them. And that's the key that most of us have to use,
Speaker:is we need to not only kind
Speaker:of pay it forward with those nieces and nephews and mentor where we can
Speaker:help them understand from a different perspective than their
Speaker:parents, maybe what they're going through. Because people
Speaker:go through things at every stage of life. And if you have nieces and
Speaker:nephews in their thirty s and forty s, they're still needing help.
Speaker:They're probably raising kids now or trying to build a career.
Speaker:So be in their life. Yeah. And I can tell you, as mom,
Speaker:they'd rather talk to their aunt than to their mom.
Speaker:They want my advice. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker:But these are difficult conversations. Sarah, do you have
Speaker:guidance or tools that you use to be able to start
Speaker:these conversations? You won't find a
Speaker:lot of that specific thing in my book. I do mention it,
Speaker:but there are some wonderful resources out there. Ellen Goodman,
Speaker:a journalist that has also written a lot
Speaker:of books, has headed up
Speaker:something that I think started about ten years ago called The Conversation Project.
Speaker:I've heard of that. Yes. So check that
Speaker:out. That's great guidance. There's an
Speaker:organization called Compassion and Choices.
Speaker:They have some good guidance. Remember,
Speaker:all of these things are leading up to the topic that nobody wants to
Speaker:discuss, which is death and one
Speaker:of my crusades is to get people to talk more
Speaker:about death. It's not like anybody's going to
Speaker:avoid it. We're all going to get there one of these days.
Speaker:And so how much better a
Speaker:life we could lead, how much more peaceful a life we
Speaker:could lead if we just understand that death is part of life and help people
Speaker:to talk about it. There's something that's been going
Speaker:around the world, actually for about the past twelve or 15 years
Speaker:called Death Cafe, where people get together and just
Speaker:talk about death, any aspect of death. But the
Speaker:more you can talk about it, the more you can incorporate
Speaker:it into your thinking about what this life is all about and
Speaker:what is some people are terming a good death.
Speaker:What is that? So talk to
Speaker:your proxies, your nieces, your nephews,
Speaker:your younger friends. By the way, I don't mean to say that you
Speaker:always have to choose a blood relative. Some people really have no blood relatives
Speaker:to choose from. And then my
Speaker:next suggestion is look to the organizations you belong to.
Speaker:And if you don't belong to any organizations, start thinking about joining
Speaker:some.
Speaker:Everything from book clubs to hiking
Speaker:clubs, running groups,
Speaker:organizations, service organizations, the people you volunteer
Speaker:with, the places of worship.
Speaker:Every place of worship I've ever seen, whether it's a synagogue,
Speaker:a mosque, a church, they all have
Speaker:groups that cater to people's special
Speaker:interests. They have new mothers groups, and they
Speaker:have singles groups, and they have bereavement
Speaker:groups. That their job is to help people through the stages
Speaker:of life. So if you
Speaker:belong to a religious organization, that's a great way
Speaker:to find people that share your interests
Speaker:that you might strike up new friendships with that are a little bit younger than
Speaker:you. A colleague of mine
Speaker:recently approached a woman that she's been
Speaker:somehow putting it off for years and years and years,
Speaker:talking to a friend that was 15 years younger than she,
Speaker:that they had been very close at one point. Then they worked together and
Speaker:they kind of lost touch. But she made a point of getting
Speaker:back together and finally got up the courage to say,
Speaker:can I put you on my advanced directive?
Speaker:I just really have nobody else in this area. And she
Speaker:was absolutely honored. Yeah, and most people
Speaker:will be they'll be honored that you would trust them like that.
Speaker:Yeah, that's a good point. It can be frightening, but you can be surprised
Speaker:at the response.
Speaker:I want to switch a little bit from talking about the death, although that
Speaker:is important, and we do need to be able to have those conversations to
Speaker:talking about the living. So one of the things that you spend a lot
Speaker:of time with in this book is where to live.
Speaker:So aging at home or retirement communities,
Speaker:active adult communities, villages, all these different options which
Speaker:we all have to consider. But what makes
Speaker:that a different consideration if you're a solo ager.
Speaker:It'S a matter of degree.
Speaker:I've had people say to me things like,
Speaker:well, I'm going into my 70s now. I live 10
Speaker:miles out in the woods. I've always liked it that way. I like
Speaker:my animals more than people.
Speaker:Why should I move into town?
Speaker:Why should I develop these friendships you're talking about? I don't
Speaker:even really like people.
Speaker:And they'll say, so what's a solution for me? And I have
Speaker:to look and I'm going to say, it's your choice.
Speaker:You can live however you want to live and know that
Speaker:you are actually, by default, making choices about what might
Speaker:happen in an emergency. So it
Speaker:is my belief that we are social creatures and I
Speaker:encourage living in community, whatever that
Speaker:means to you. And we can define community in so
Speaker:many different ways, but it doesn't necessarily
Speaker:mean moving into a senior living facility,
Speaker:continuing care. Senior living facilities
Speaker:are very expensive. They're kind of the creme
Speaker:de la creme. About 6% of the population can afford those
Speaker:elite living situations. But there's everything
Speaker:and anything beyond
Speaker:that. I'm a big fan of home
Speaker:sharing. I'm a big fan of cohousing.
Speaker:I'm a big fan of tiny home communities. I'm a really
Speaker:big fan. Now, you have to understand, I live in California where
Speaker:the weather is conducive to this, but all over the Southwest
Speaker:we have thousands of mobile home parks.
Speaker:And I'm a huge fan of mobile home parks for people that
Speaker:are downsizing and want to live in a
Speaker:one level unit where they have
Speaker:only to walk out their door to find somebody
Speaker:to talk to. Now, that's true, and that can be true in a condominium
Speaker:or an apartment building. Sometimes we
Speaker:have these sort of I call them default retirement
Speaker:communities of people that have just been living in the same complex for
Speaker:30, 40 years and they've gotten to know each other and they support one
Speaker:another, and that's good. But what I don't
Speaker:like to see, what I think is very dangerous is
Speaker:this whole concept of aging in place.
Speaker:If aging in place means to you that you're going to
Speaker:stay in your two or three story suburban home
Speaker:out on a cul de sac somewhere where there's no public transportation,
Speaker:you don't know your neighbors because they're at different stages of
Speaker:their life or whatever, and there you are.
Speaker:You've been in that house for 30, 40 years. Maybe if you
Speaker:have raised kids, maybe you've even raised kids in that house, and your
Speaker:kids maybe are saying, oh, don't sell the family home, mom. We love
Speaker:coming home for Thanksgiving. Well, you know,
Speaker:it's probably time to get rid of that family home. Are you
Speaker:going to be able to do those stairs safely
Speaker:when you're in your late seventy s? Eighty s. Ninety s.
Speaker:And yes, I included know people who
Speaker:have done that. However,
Speaker:most of the people that I see doing that successfully do
Speaker:have kids that come over and kind of fill
Speaker:in the blanks. They live close by so they help with transportation,
Speaker:they help with groceries, they help with
Speaker:the chores around the house. Because one
Speaker:of the biggest reasons that people do move into some kind of
Speaker:senior living environment is that they just don't
Speaker:have the energy and the strength to
Speaker:take care of that home anymore.
Speaker:Yeah. And the scary thing is you hear these stories about
Speaker:someone that has fallen in their home and they
Speaker:don't live with anybody and they're lying there for days
Speaker:before somebody happens to come in and check on them.
Speaker:The repercussions of doing that, the downside
Speaker:of staying like that is they're pretty dire,
Speaker:I think. But again,
Speaker:it's a matter of figuring out what kind of community
Speaker:you would be happy in. And a community can be too,
Speaker:however, not your spouse.
Speaker:I'd like to also encourage people who are married to get
Speaker:out beyond your spouse and find relationships.
Speaker:Find friendships, join a book club, join a
Speaker:walking group, join a golf group, do something
Speaker:that gets you communicating
Speaker:and hanging out with people other than your spouse. That's why
Speaker:I include married people in my definition of solo
Speaker:ager. Which by the way, has expanded tremendously.
Speaker:I really used to think of solo agers as just people who
Speaker:didn't have kids, period. But I had so many people come up to
Speaker:me and say, well I'm a solo ager, I have kids but they live 6000
Speaker:miles away. Or I have kids but we're estranged. Or they kind of
Speaker:failed to launch or in any kinds of any
Speaker:kind of situation. Right. And you never know
Speaker:what can happen. Even if you're married, you could still end up
Speaker:being a solo agent. And the thing about it is,
Speaker:especially if you don't have kids unless you get hit by the same
Speaker:bus on the same day, you and your spouse
Speaker:both need to plan to be solo agers because one of you is going to
Speaker:be a true solo age or someday.
Speaker:So you list a bunch of categories.
Speaker:I think there are six that you say are super important
Speaker:to be thinking about as you're aging and in
Speaker:our seventy s. Eighty s. But what would you say are like the top two
Speaker:or three that we all need to focus on and
Speaker:really start spending time thinking about?
Speaker:Yeah, I liken it to that old
Speaker:three legged stool. It seems like everybody has a three legged stool for something.
Speaker:And my three legged stool is legal,
Speaker:financial and social.
Speaker:Okay? We all need to have our legal act together.
Speaker:You need to get that will done, get the
Speaker:advanced directives, choose your proxies,
Speaker:get those signed, talk to the people that you're
Speaker:naming as proxies, do all of that.
Speaker:Set up a trust if your attorney thinks
Speaker:you need to. The second is financial.
Speaker:Make sure that you can maintain the lifestyle
Speaker:that you are enjoying now until you're
Speaker:100 or however long you think you'll live. I know a
Speaker:lot of financial planners now are running their
Speaker:spreadsheets for people out to 103 because it's not unusual for
Speaker:people to live to 100 anymore. So take
Speaker:a look at how you're living right now and get
Speaker:the help of a financial planner. Even if you just pay for an hour or
Speaker:two of his or her time, say, am I going to be able to sustain
Speaker:this with the income I have? Whatever that income is
Speaker:from however long you're going to work, factor some
Speaker:of those things in, because even if you're still happily
Speaker:working now, the day may come and
Speaker:like many people, you're saying, I'm just going to work till I drop.
Speaker:Well, drop can be defined in a lot of different ways.
Speaker:Yeah, true. Everybody thinks that they're going to
Speaker:just have a fatal heart attack one day at their desk or out on
Speaker:the golf course. But that's not how most people spend their
Speaker:eighty s and ninety s.
Speaker:That's a scary question. Too, though, because if you don't
Speaker:have a big source of income and you're in your 70s,
Speaker:then you have some other really important decisions, like downsizing.
Speaker:Downsizing. Living here
Speaker:in the outskirts of the Bay Area of California,
Speaker:I often say to people not tongue
Speaker:in cheek, there is life outside of California,
Speaker:and life is a lot less expensive outside of
Speaker:California. Now, lots of younger people
Speaker:are very much discovering that we've had a huge exodus of
Speaker:people to Texas and Oklahoma and Arkansas
Speaker:and places that our generation would just never have
Speaker:considered. But young people are going, they're going for the jobs, they're going
Speaker:for the to be able to afford their lifestyle.
Speaker:So think about where you're living. I even encourage some people,
Speaker:especially people who
Speaker:are looking at really low income
Speaker:levels and saying, I just can't afford to get old. What am I going to
Speaker:do? And of course, if you've seen nomad land,
Speaker:you know what can happen. And you
Speaker:want to join the brigade of people who live out of their RVs
Speaker:and vans and whatnot. Think about living outside
Speaker:the confines of the US. There are lovely places
Speaker:to retire. There's a great organization called International
Speaker:Living, which their whole business. They have a magazine,
Speaker:they have a big online presence.
Speaker:They have people that live in all kinds of countries all over the world that
Speaker:write about and talk about what it's like to retire there and what it cost
Speaker:to retire there. So if that's something that really
Speaker:pushes a button for you, check out International.
Speaker:Living and they talk about the health. Care options
Speaker:out there, but they cover it all.
Speaker:They choose the ten best countries to retire to or
Speaker:ten best locations to retire to. Every year,
Speaker:I always write an article for my I write a regular
Speaker:column for Forbes.com, and I always
Speaker:cover that every year. What are the top ten this year?
Speaker:And you'd be surprised. And they cover everything
Speaker:from what's the health care like? How welcoming is it
Speaker:for expats?
Speaker:Can you get a work visa if you want to work down there?
Speaker:What is the health care situation like?
Speaker:You name it, they have researched it.
Speaker:So that could be an interesting option. It's an option.
Speaker:And then finally the social. What a
Speaker:lot of people let slide as they get older is they they
Speaker:lose their their friendships. They lose their relationships with people.
Speaker:And and I think we after we're out of the workplace,
Speaker:we have to work a little harder, a little differently to
Speaker:make sure that we do continue to be social, that we
Speaker:have people in our lives, whether they come from our
Speaker:volunteer work or some civic organization or
Speaker:maybe from our place of worship,
Speaker:our neighborhood. It can be anywhere. But be careful
Speaker:of not cocooning too far. We've all
Speaker:had a taste of cocooning this last year in the pandemic.
Speaker:Fortunately most boomers now have
Speaker:had vaccine so at least that's pretty
Speaker:true in California and other states where friends of
Speaker:ours live. And we're getting out and resuming those
Speaker:relationships which I think is really important.
Speaker:Yeah, I think it's really important too. And I
Speaker:think we have had that cocooning thing but
Speaker:I think there are limitations.
Speaker:Like if you're not really mobile,
Speaker:if you don't drive after dark,
Speaker:just reaching out and making new friends.
Speaker:Those are all great reasons for getting out of that suburban
Speaker:home and into some
Speaker:kind of community where you'll be near people,
Speaker:some of whom do drive. I know a
Speaker:lot of the mobile home parks.
Speaker:They have community rooms and they use those community
Speaker:rooms for potlucks and they usually have a swimming pool and people gather around
Speaker:there. It's like a club.
Speaker:Anytime you have a club like atmosphere you're going
Speaker:to form relationships if you get out there and
Speaker:at least have the intent of doing so. So here's where it gets
Speaker:tricky though, right? So we have this mindset. We've been working,
Speaker:we've been living in this nice house. We have this nice yard and flowers and
Speaker:all this little stuff and then to think about
Speaker:giving all that up and it's
Speaker:my bias, I know that. But to think about moving
Speaker:into a mobile home park I'm like oh what a step down.
Speaker:That would feel bad. But maybe somehow
Speaker:coach me on how would I shift that mindset. You know
Speaker:what the biggest thing I tell people? And you know what?
Speaker:It might not be a mobile home park. It might be a really lovely condominium
Speaker:complex somewhere closer to a downtown center.
Speaker:I have a number of colleagues who have kind of decamped
Speaker:out of the suburbs into a more urban environment where there's
Speaker:transportation and again where there are people right next door.
Speaker:Go visit some of these places. Just go
Speaker:walk around. If it's
Speaker:somewhere that you have to get special permission to enter, especially now with
Speaker:COVID Get that permission. I tell people to
Speaker:do that. With regard to senior living communities too,
Speaker:go look at what an active adult community
Speaker:looks like. Active adult communities are the old
Speaker:del web of the kind
Speaker:of revamped for a more
Speaker:modern day. Some of the latest ones that I get a kick
Speaker:out of were built in Florida on Jimmy
Speaker:Buffett's model.
Speaker:It's for parrot heads. It's for people that are Jimmy Buffett fans
Speaker:called Latitude Margaritaville. Those are active
Speaker:adult communities. You have to be 55 to move in
Speaker:there, and boy, people can't move into them fast enough.
Speaker:That's great. So there are those kind of communities
Speaker:all over the country, predominantly in the Southwest,
Speaker:but you'll find those kinds of communities that look more
Speaker:like a condominium structure than a cluster of a
Speaker:couple of thousand homes around a lake or something. But they're
Speaker:just urban home. They'll have to pull you out of their feet first. I've had
Speaker:that enough times. And Daras
Speaker:mentions tiny homes. You also mentioned cohousing. What is
Speaker:that? Cohousing is a grassroots
Speaker:effort by usually one
Speaker:person or a small group of people who want
Speaker:to develop what usually looks like
Speaker:a condominium set up, where they and their friends
Speaker:and people that they that also are interested and
Speaker:that they invite in live together. It's not a commune.
Speaker:Everybody has their own unit, like their own condominium unit,
Speaker:but it's
Speaker:for people who want to build community. So they always eat
Speaker:at least two or three meals together every week.
Speaker:They have meetings about what
Speaker:they need to do in the community. They take care of the community.
Speaker:They usually have elaborate gardens,
Speaker:and it's driven by the residents,
Speaker:the people who live there, the homeowners. And it's a homeowner
Speaker:homeownership model, generally not a rental
Speaker:model, although I know some cohousing communities
Speaker:have a couple of units that are rented out.
Speaker:But it comes under the umbrella of
Speaker:intentional community. The old intentional communities
Speaker:used to be mostly religious or guided
Speaker:by some lifestyle choice. Now many
Speaker:of them are just simply cohousing. There are several architects in
Speaker:the country that do nothing but build cohousing developments.
Speaker:Easy. To find more information online, go to cohousing.org
Speaker:or cohousing.com.
Speaker:You'll find just everything you ever want to know.
Speaker:You'll see a map of where they all are in the country. There's several hundred
Speaker:of them and what stage of development they're in.
Speaker:To me, it's a wonderful concept now, by the way.
Speaker:They are multigenerational, most of them. There are some that are being
Speaker:built to be elder cohousing, but the vast
Speaker:majority of cohousing communities are multigenerational.
Speaker:People raise kids there. Nice.
Speaker:So we are getting close to time, Sarah, and there's so much
Speaker:to still talk about. So could you give us like two or three
Speaker:what you would say are the most important things people should do
Speaker:today, right now, to start planning for Aging
Speaker:and Solo Aging. Well, I would think about that three legged
Speaker:stool. How far
Speaker:along are you in your planning? Have you done your
Speaker:legal planning, your estate planning?
Speaker:Set up a dance directive? Set up powers of attorney?
Speaker:Written a will? If you're thinking, oh, I don't want to do
Speaker:that. Those attorneys are so expensive.
Speaker:You can find legal advice in
Speaker:a less expensive way. One way of doing that is
Speaker:going through your county office
Speaker:on aging. They usually have attorneys, not on staff, but attorneys
Speaker:that they know work at a lesser rate for
Speaker:people that really can't afford their services any other way.
Speaker:So there's that, and there's seeing
Speaker:a financial planner, getting that person to run that spreadsheet for
Speaker:you to see how you're going to do financially for the rest of your life
Speaker:and then assessing your
Speaker:social situation.
Speaker:Do I have a handful, at least of friends, people I can
Speaker:call? You have two or three people you
Speaker:could call at 02:00 a.m. In the morning if you somehow needed them.
Speaker:Yeah. Hopefully my sister will answer
Speaker:the phone if I call her. I hope so.
Speaker:I know I wanted to share how people can get in
Speaker:touch with you. Sarah has a website.
Speaker:Sarahzepgeber.com and you also have
Speaker:other things that you are involved
Speaker:with. I've seen you post on some of them. So if people are
Speaker:interested in some of those, will they find the links on your website?
Speaker:Yes, you'll certainly find links for how to buy the book.
Speaker:You can also find me and a lot of contact information
Speaker:and a lot of videos
Speaker:of me speaking. I do a lot of speaking engagements. So if
Speaker:you have an organization that you think could you
Speaker:find this information useful, call on me to do that. Look me up on
Speaker:LinkedIn. That's a really good source of information on me and on what
Speaker:I do. So I think both the website and LinkedIn are
Speaker:the two best places. Okay. I highly recommend your
Speaker:book. It's one
Speaker:thing to get it, it's another thing to really do some of the
Speaker:things that Sarah recommends. And like you said, visit those
Speaker:places. That's my hardest one. I've got to do
Speaker:that. All right. So I wanted to
Speaker:also remind people that hey Boomer is
Speaker:supported by you and occasionally
Speaker:by sponsors, but mostly by you and your participation
Speaker:in events and also by your support
Speaker:by buying me a cup of coffee. So this is a
Speaker:website where you can go, you can contribute anywhere from ten dollars to seventy
Speaker:five dollars. And it just helps keep Hay Boomer going.
Speaker:So please go in and buymeacoffee.com
Speaker:at Hayboomer four one three.
Speaker:And now I would like to tell you all about our guests
Speaker:for next week. And I say guests because we're actually having two.
Speaker:It's Eva Houseman and Kim
Speaker:Athen, and they are a mother daughter duo
Speaker:who started something called the Mother's Day Movement.
Speaker:They read a book called Half the sky by
Speaker:Nicholas Christophe and Cheryl Wudon.
Speaker:You're shaking your head. You've read it? I haven't read it. I've heard about
Speaker:it, though. Good things about it. It is a powerful book about
Speaker:the oppression and exploitation of women around the world.
Speaker:Not comfortable to read at all,
Speaker:but opened your eyes, and as they read it,
Speaker:they thought we spend so much money,
Speaker:billions every year on cards and flowers and
Speaker:chocolates for our mothers. That what if
Speaker:we took some of that money to help these women?
Speaker:Not just around the world, but the charity they're working with?
Speaker:This year is in our country, in Navajo Nation. Who doesn't have
Speaker:any clean running water? So it's going to be a fascinating
Speaker:conversation. They are very passionate
Speaker:about what they're doing and how they're doing it.
Speaker:So join us for that. And I always
Speaker:like to end with a quote from C. S.
Speaker:Lewis where he says, you are never too old to
Speaker:set another goal or dream a new dream.
Speaker:Thank you, Sarah, for joining us today. This has really been informative
Speaker:and important conversation. Thank you so much for having me,
Speaker:Wendy. My pleasure. And thank you all for
Speaker:joining us. You are the reason that hey Boomer
Speaker:is here. I love you. I hope to see you all next