Hey there, everybody.

Welcome back to lead the team.

What if everything you believed about retirement was wrong?

Or at least a lot of it?

Well, today's guest, my friend, Derek Coburn, wealth advisor, entrepreneur, co founder of cadre, an exclusive unnecking UN networking community for top business leaders, and now author of the bold new book, let's Retire Retirement.

In this book, he challenges the outdated notion that your best years come after your career ends.

Instead, he argues that meaning, purpose, and growth should not.

That's right.

Should not be delayed, and they should actually be designed into your life.

Right now we're going to unpack things like why traditional retirement is broken, why there are dangers in waiting to live fully, and even how to architect a life that blends success and significance into your life.

If you ever thought this thought, and I, by the way, have thought this for a long time myself, I'll do that when I retire.

Then this episode will make you rethink everything.

Derek.

Welcome to lead the team, my friend.

What's up, Ben?

So happy to be here.

So what made you want to retire?

The idea of retirement in the first place?

Yeah, you know, I think, Gosh, I don't know the.

The exact moment, if you will.

It was probably a combination of, you know, I've been a financial advisor since 1998, and, you know, just found myself having conversations with clients and coming up in an industry where we weren't really ever told we should ask clients if they wanted to retire.

We were told to ask them, what age do they want to retire?

And I'm sure anybody listening to this can agree that's the.

That's the same sort of conversation that they had.

It's like we're.

We're automatically opted into this thing whether we want to be or not, and we have to pick an age.

And I was just seeing, like, people around me, the people that I looked up to, like, they didn't really have plans to stop working if they enjoyed what they did or were doing it on their terms or had plans to do something else.

And there was a real disconnect between what I was seeing out in the real world and what we were, like, told we were supposed to be talking about with our clients and prospective clients.

Yeah.

What a disconnect.

I'm not going to name companies, but everyone's seen those commercials where they're like, follow the green path to retirement.

And they have, like, the people following the path that their financial advisor laid out for them when they get there and they retire.

And so when I read this book, you really?

You know, you could have laid out a bunch of stats in the front in your book.

You do have statistics.

But you chose to start this book out with an emotional story about your dad and how that inspired you.

Could you share snapshot of that story and your evolution and how having that personal experience helped guide you in this realization about retirement?

Sure.

So my father was a CPA.

And in 2013, I noticed some mistakes on my return that he was doing for me for the first time ever.

And that kind of tipped me off that something wasn't right.

And he ended up having, like, a pretty unique form of dementia that got really bad really fast.

And then he lived with it for eight or nine years.

And, you know, my father had talked about doing things in retirement, and at first I was really bummed and sad and disappointed for him that, gosh, he's not going to be able to do a lot of what he wanted to do after he passed in 2022.

I'm going through family photos and I'm realizing that that actually probably wasn't the story he was doing and had been doing a lot of traveling with my mom.

They went to Europe.

They were doing Alaskan cruises.

We were having, like, more conversations, my father and I, that were entrepreneurial in nature.

And I think that even though he, like most people, sort of thought they were going to retire, he was never going to.

And I don't think he held back a whole lot.

And so to kind of add to it, I was remembering back to my own childhood where my father had turned down a partnership offer with a big CPA firm in Baltimore, Maryland, where I grew up.

And he worked out of the.

Out of our house.

Like, he put a door on top of some stools for his desk.

And he was just always around for us.

So he was like the OG of working from home.

And that's a big part of what I.

What I do now.

And.

And I.

So I think that, like, he.

He ended up really influencing the book.

Even.

Even if I didn't know it for a lot of the time while I was writing it.

Well, there's not a single person that's gonna read that first chapter and just be drawn in, because I.

And this is.

It's kind of like experiencing on a Pixar movie, like, there's all the great content, but when an author is like, hey, I.

I realize one thing.

And I thought I understood something, and then I had this personal experience and it transformed my perspective.

And it feels like when you read the book, like, this mission has just become so personal to you to change this for so many other people.

And I just love that.

Was it as an author, is, is it hard to go there and, and kick your book off in such an emotional way?

You know, I don't think.

Yeah, they like, like expose yourself and to be so vulnerable.

Oh, you know, I, I don't mind doing that at all.

And in fact, I mean, I expect that there's going to be a lot more where that came from if this book sort of takes off the way I think it will or hope it will.

And I don't mind sort of bearing, you know, like I, I revealed a lot of, you know, personal information about myself and my wife and like in later chapters as well.

You know, I would say this.

When I first started writing the book, it was 2017 and I was going to write this book as a way to, you know, get more clients.

It was going to be legion for more of the types of people that I wanted to work with who were people that had a couple million dollars of assets under management.

And, and in 2019 I was approached.

2018, I was approached by a private equity company to buy my practice and kind of came out of nowhere and I sold my practice, had an earn out period.

Covid happened.

My father's disease and passing happened.

And by the time I shook the cobwebs off, because I really set it aside for probably four or five years, I got really quiet, I got really still, I processed a lot of trauma, I got rid of a lot of habits and addictions and I just ended up.

It became very clear to me that this was going to be the thing that I needed to do next.

And, and what we have now is we have a book that I ended up being able to write to benefit a lot of other people besides just who would have been my ideal client at the time.

I was able to write a book that I think will hopefully benefit and help millions of people.

And I don't need to get anything out of it.

And so hopefully one of the many benefits of waiting and not kind of doing it when I was originally planning doing it is that it's going to have a broader impact.

Yeah.

I mean, how many people out there have cried reading a financial planning book?

I never have until I read yours.

Oh, thanks, man.

You're talking about being bullied as a kid and things you experienced in the classroom and just all the stuff you had to tackle.

And you, and you really bring in a lot of great case studies from people you've worked with.

But when you put the seal of approval on your, with your own life.

It, it really comes at you from, from a different place.

Thank you.

So, yeah, I just, like, I had to tackle that part of the book before we got into the other stuff.

Well, look, as, as too and as leaders, you know, if we, if we expect to have deeper, more meaningful relationships and conversations with the people around us, like, I think that we need to go first and I'm happy to, to go first in a lot of ways to, to inspire and encourage others to do the same.

Yeah, that's how you lead.

That is how you lead by example first.

Going back to the book, you're interesting.

This is interesting too because you, you started out advising people for the retirement date and now you've kind of transformed your perspective on it.

Why do you think, looking back over your career, why do people take so much focus, focus on waiting for retirement to really enjoy things?

Look, this is just the programming, right?

I don't think a lot of people are thinking about it consciously.

The concept of retirement is barely over 100 years old.

And when it was first created, it was created in 1889 by a German chancellor named Otto von Bismarck who was putting together the first ever government run social program.

And he picked the age of 70 is the retirement age because you guessed it, that was the age people died.

Right.

And so finally after 10 or 15 years.

Yeah, right.

It was lowered and then FDR putting together the Social Security act in 1935, thought 65 sounded like a good number because that's what they lowered it to after a few years.

And life expectancy at that time was in the low 70s.

You know, and so we, we were never meant in my belief to be put on this earth to do work we don't enjoy doing for 30 years to earn the right to do nothing at all after that for 30 years.

And, and you know, I just think again, it's just one of these things that people just subconsciously are just buying into this.

It's the money game.

It's the what's your number and are you on track and are you accomplishing it?

And society, among other things, you know, expects us to be our most productive in, in the office, in our business during the years where if you have kids, during the years where your kids need you the most.

Right.

And, and I think that there's like a better way and a different way for us to be thinking about this entire concept.

And so building on that, people are listening.

They have their financial planner path they've been following how Was the system set up not to be necessarily aligned with the ideas in your book?

Okay, so I'm going to share.

Can I share, like the.

The tale of two Tony story that I share in the book?

I love that story.

Cool, man.

So Tony is 45 years old.

He makes $150,000 a year, and he has $150,000 saved up for retirement.

So if you're listening and those numbers don't really relate, feel free to add a 0 or lower it or double it, whatever.

It's going to be very.

The math is going to be very similar.

If Tony wants to have a traditional retirement and stop working at the age of 65 and we use all of the common assumptions that the financial planning industry uses, he's going to have to save about $2,500 per month.

Okay.

And that is about 20% of what he's making.

If he's making 150 and he's got to save 30, like that's a non starter for most people.

That would mean that after taxes, you are spending just a little bit more than you're saving.

But Tony probably starts panicking and thinks that he's behind and he needs to work longer hours and miss the gym more and skip family dinners and not do vacations so that he can catch up.

And you know, and at what cost, you know, because what we're seeing with a lot of people now is that when they get there, when they get to 65, they're not happy sitting on their front porch drinking lemonade.

They want to go back to work, they want to contribute, they want to do something.

And unfortunately, if you have had enough money to retire by the age of 65 and you go back to work and start earning an income, it's technically money that you don't need.

So what I share in the book is a hypothetical where Tony's wife reminds him that he doesn't hate his job, that he likes his job, he likes his coworkers, and that even if he doesn't keep doing what he's doing now, he has a woodworking hobby that could turn into a business potentially.

So Tony, when he wanted to, wanted to stop working at 65, had to save $2,500 per month.

If Tony were to work until he's 75 and ask his financial advisor to change the number in the financial plan, the number, the amount that he has to save goes from 2,500 down to about $110 per month, it goes down by 96%.

You all heard that Correctly.

And even if he says I'll work until I'm 70 instead of 75, the number goes down to $600 a month.

It's about a 75% reduction.

And the reason for this extreme difference is in the first, I have him dying at 95 in both scenarios.

But in the first example, he needs to.

He has 10 less years of working, 10 less years of saving, 10 less years for his money to compound, and he needs the money to last for 30 years.

In the second example, he has 10 extra years of working, 10 extra years of letting that money grow, and then he only needs it to last for 20 years.

And so I'll land a plane here, and I'll just say that while I don't really think that there is, the financial services industry are really trying to manipulate people on purpose.

You know, it's really not in the best interest of financial advisors to be having this conversation with their clients.

Because if, if every financial advisor has this client with their version of Tony, then all of a sudden, you know, their clients are saving 90, 90, 90, 95% less on a monthly basis, which is going to directly impact the financial advisor's ability to run a business.

Yeah.

It's so important for people to realize how the system is set up.

So you're, you're consciously opting in or opting out or opting in differently.

Yeah.

Versus just like, you have to do it this way.

And I like that for so many reasons.

Although when you realize, wait a minute, I can do this differently, people say, well, what should I be doing with the, the money?

Like, if I'm not saving it?

And are people really ready to consider that for a minute, if you have more money, what are you going to do with it?

And if you can, and I like the fact in the back half of the book, you give us some ideas.

Yep.

Like, wait a minute, like for you, you are super into live music, as I am too.

Yep.

And you're like, man, you can go out and see some more shows or you have more time.

You need time and money to do that.

Yep.

Do the things you enjoy.

And I'm wondering, when you work with your financial planning clients, does this come up a lot?

Are they dreaming big enough?

Because this paradigm, if you're suddenly saving less, it sounds awesome.

Of course we should be considering this.

But then what next?

What's the what next conversation?

You know, for.

For me personally, I mean, my kids are really driving this for me and I would love to get to, and absolutely want to get to the part where we talk about how I think we're not having enough fun in our society and we could be, you know, just enjoying this whole thing a little bit more.

But I would also say too, that, you know, I don't think that, you know, people are.

Parents are spending nearly as much time with their kids as they should be.

I don't think that, that.

That couples are dating as much as they should be.

I don't think that people are taking care of themselves from a sleep standpoint, from a workout standpoint, the way that they should be.

And I think that me introducing this to a lot of people gives them the time and the money to be able to go back and invest in those things first and foremost.

And so right now my kids are 15 and 12, and I am spending like, a really significant amount of my time with him compared to a lot of other parents I know in.

In a similar situation.

And, and look, a big part of this is, you know, my youngest will be out of the house in five and a half years and.

And I will be ready to turn it up another notch or two in five and a half or six years.

You know, of course, I plan on working into my 70s or 80s as well, but even in the short term, you know, you know, as I'm getting speaking offers around this book, as I'm getting offers to take on more work, and some of it I'm considering because again, I feel like I'm called to be the person to deliver this message, to help as many people as possible.

But I want to balance that with the fact that my kids are going to be out of the house in five and a half years and I'm going to really miss this phase.

And a big part of the reason that frees me up and liberates me to spend as much time with them as I do is, is just knowing that I'm going to be saying yes to a lot more of this stuff once they're gone.

I really like that.

And I think one of the key messages for me is you got to have a reason to retire.

Retirement.

You got to have.

It could be your family, it could be fun.

And shockingly, a lot of people ain't having fun out there.

Y.

We're going, let's.

Let's dive into that.

But you got to have give yourself a reason.

And then when you have that reason, you know, Derek's playbook is this right.

Explains in detail how you implement it.

Because money can be freedom.

Money can be, you know, time is.

Is freedom.

And you give us the way to get there now, this thing about not having fun, you got a lot of leaders on here or maybe rolling their eyes.

They're like, really fun for me is, you know, watching.

I'm not saying me personally, people might be thinking, watching golf, watching, you know, stuff.

Why, what, what, what do people need to be doing?

Like, what's the problem with fun and what's next with this?

Yeah, again, man, I think it's just like this subconscious programming that tells us that we need to always be productive and have a reason for doing things.

And you know, when my kids wake up most mornings, they're like, who am I going to have fun with today?

And how much fun am I going to have and what am I going to do for fun?

And then at some point, like, it just, it just goes away and it stops.

And I've been informally polling people for the past five years and when I ask a lot of adults when the last time they had fun was, they, they pause.

They, they have to think really hard.

Usually I get a answer along the lines of, a month and a half ago we went out to dinner with this other couple and we had a bottle of wine and we talked about this or that and like, what are we doing?

Everybody like, like we need to be having a good time.

And like, you know, I mentioned how I think concerts and standup comedy are the best access to fun that we have as human beings.

And I think the reason I say that, the scientific backed reason I say that is there's this term called collective effervescence, which has been described as the way that we can experience peak joy as human beings.

And it combines two things.

It combines dropping into a flow state, sort of forgetting where you are, along with being there with a lot of other people who are feeling the same energy and the same emotion as you.

And that energy and emotion like piggybacks on each other.

And so, you know, like, if people tell me that they're not in the live music, I just have to assume they, they don't listen to good music.

Because listening to really good music and being there in person and singing along and feeling all of that, it's really, it's really incredible.

Look, some people might, might offer sports, and I think when sports, when your sports team is doing really well, like, that's certainly true.

I don't put sports in the same category because there's a 50 chance I'm going to be unhappy at the end of a sporting event.

Not with, I mean, we're Caps fans and the Caps are in the playoffs right now and have been a lot over the past 10, 15 years.

And I'm convinced I probably shaved a couple years off my life watching playoff hockey.

Just like, even the games they won, like the anxiety along the way to.

To get there.

So, look, I understand people are going to be triggered when they hear this and I'm not looking to make anybody feel bad.

I'm not looking to gloat.

My intentions are I just want everybody to enjoy this.

This life a little bit more than what we are settling for right now and get back to a place where we remember that.

That.

That we're supposed to be having more fun, I think, than what we're allowing ourselves to experience.

I love that.

And I'm a big music fan too.

In fact, I know you were at the Goose Christmas Goosema shows here in Charleston.

Yes, sir.

And we did not hook up with you with that, but we were there too.

Oh, man.

Bummer.

Yeah, it was.

It was a great.

It was.

That was my first time at a goose show other than Newport Folk Festival.

You're hooked, right?

It was great.

Are you hooked?

Are you going to go again?

Yeah, I hope so.

I don't know.

It hasn't been announced for next year yet, has it?

Where they're going to have it?

No, they'll announce it like in the next couple of weeks though.

But.

But even just seeing their one off shows, I mean, these kids are like 30 years old.

Three of them, I think, were classically trained at Berkeley.

So they're going to be around for, for a while.

Incredible musicians and every song's a ride.

They're really.

Yeah.

It takes on a journey and it's.

It's fantastic.

And Goose fans are.

I mean, you're half.

Half the fun is being with all the Goose hardcore people who were just jumping around.

It's like Disney World for adults, man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's so, so good.

But we, we've been to music festivals.

We really enjoy that environment.

And I'll.

And I'm glad you put the word collective effervescence.

Is that what it was?

Yep.

Yeah.

I'd never not heard that, but that makes a lot of sense.

Yep.

And I love comedy shows.

We like, we enjoy going to improv, which.

Which is a little bit different because you don't really know how it's going to end.

Yep.

And it can be a little edgy at times, but we found that to be a lot of fun.

And we've even launched a.

A friend that.

I have launched a music podcast called Americana Curious.

Featuring Americana musicians.

That's cool.

It allows us to get closer to the creative process and, you know, be with them in a different kind of way and be.

No, that's great, man.

Look, I don't have any, I don't have any scientific data to support this, but I have to think that given all of the work, the focus on work in our society, the work that we do, our work, the work on ourselves, you know, all of that, it's great, it's wonderful.

And, but I just have to imagine, man, that like, our, our bond, our, our minds, our bodies, our spirits, they, like, just.

If that's all we're doing, I feel like they have to maybe just be going on strike and holding back every once in a while.

Like, if you're never going to show us a good time, why are we going to fall in line and do what you want us to do in all these other areas?

So, so let's bring this back around to leadership here.

Cool.

Thinking about leading the team with fun.

Leading the team with retiring retirement.

Envisioning how this changes, changes things for people.

What do you feel like a leader's responsibility is working with their team on these two fronts?

All right, so I will say that I've got seven, eight employees with the wealth management practice, and then with Cadre, we have one.

I got to run that along with my wife.

And so, you know, and I've had more employees over, over the years.

Look, I think it just depends on what season a lot of us are in.

Like, I don't, like, like, there are certain businesses in certain industries.

I understand that.

Like the, you gotta, you gotta get while the getting's good and you have to capitalize on certain momentum.

But I also.

The sun shining.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, but, but also, I mean, I think that there's like a disproportionate amount of vacation hours that don't get used in our country every single year because people feel like they can't get away from their, from their, their, their job and, and they need to work more and yet have all these people that are not going to the gym not taking care of themselves.

And, and I think that, you know, I'm of the belief this, that my book was birthed as a result of this.

But I'm, I'm of the belief that we, we all need to, to like, take good care of our, of our minds, bodies and spirits and good things will come from that.

And I think that there are a lot of people I know that say, I don't have time to work out or I don't have time to eat, you know.

Well.

Or I don't have time to go to concerts and have a good time.

And, you know, I think that, like, what we are not properly accounting for is just how much better we get to show up even in more limited time when we are working, if we are doing these other things.

And so for, for me, you know, the.

I'll, I'll, I'll personalize it and I'll say I got really, really good at figuring out how to get great sleep over the past couple of years.

So do you, do you have like a sleep tracker at all?

Like an.

Or.

I have an Oura ring.

Do you use anything?

Interestingly, I have an Apple watch.

Okay.

Which is not.

It's.

It's okay.

But I know from following you about Oura ring and I've been looking at it.

Yep.

And it sounds like it integrates with the Apple health.

Yes.

App.

Yep.

And it would be better.

It would be more information.

Right.

Yeah, I think it's.

I think it's still.

Most of the people that, that are qualified to have an opinion on these sorts of things would say that aura is probably the best one for tracking sleep and readiness and other things.

What's happened for you since you went down the rabbit hole with Oura Rank?

Yeah.

So look, I've had an aura ring since 2017.

And in 2017, all the way up until 2020, you get a score, a sleep score every night on a scale from one.

And I was not cracking 70, hardly ever.

And through a series of experimentations and trying different things, I jumped from a 69 to like a 75 in 2021 up to like an 82 in 2022.

23.

And then I'm most 85 last year, most nights.

Now if I'm at my home and I have everything dialed in, I.

I get like a score in the high 80s, low 90s.

And.

Wow.

What's less important than the score is.

What's more important than the score is the correlation to how I feel.

I wake up in the morning, most mornings, and I feel amazing.

I try to eat about a gram of protein per pound of body weight every single day.

And that yields me energy levels like I had when I was 25 years old again.

And I've already told you about the time I spend with my boys, my kids.

You know, you need that energy.

Yeah.

You know, and so, like, I think that our society overemphasizes the, the long term benefits of all of these Things like, and you know, you.

And under underemphasizes the benefits, the short term benefits of a lot of these things.

So for example, you should sleep well because of how much better you're going to feel 20 years from now is great and is accurate.

But you should sleep well because of how amazing you're going to feel 20 hours from now.

I feel like should get a little bit more of the spotlight.

And it was the greatest change you made to improve your score.

I mean that's a huge leap and it took you a long time to get there.

Was that because you were just playing with it for years or was it like you just almost like you practice sleeping better so you were able to achieve a higher.

Yeah, like I just wasn't, I wasn't doing the right things.

I was like taking supplements and doing other things that I think can make you, that can take you from like very good to great.

But there was a few things that I just was overlooking.

And I'll tell you that I, I think that that the, the main things for most people that they're overlooking.

No, no, no calories within two to three hours of going to bed.

Okay.

So, so you want your body temperature going down when you go to sleep and if you eat around bedtime, your body temperature is going up.

So last night we did a Mother's Day dinner at the Palm and ate a little bit later than we normally eat.

And my sleep was trash last night compared to what it normally is.

Now I've got a cold plunge in my house to bail me out for those types of mornings.

But all of this is to say that I think that the version of me, the version of me that sleeps longer, that spends an hour in the gym, that spends 30 minutes cooking healthy food, that spends time with my kids, that version of me that is spending less time on the business, in my businesses because I'm doing these other things is so much more productive, is so much more clear, is so much more impactful, is so much more calm and is making more money than the version of me that is spending more time in the business but is anxious, tired, stressed out and just feeling really overwhelmed.

And so I think that that's where a lot of leaders could probably do a better job.

And they're focused on the short term impacts of I need you working on this more.

And they don't.

They're not properly accounting for how much better their employees are going to be when they show up if they're taking better care of themselves.

Yeah, it would be an interesting Conversation with your employees to think about an hour of work of your employees at work.

Yep.

And what is the quality versus quantity?

Yep.

And if they're in a better place physically, if their environment, if the support structure, if there's a plan.

And it's interesting because I think there's some, some people would say well, I don't want to get in my employee's business, their personal business.

And, but I don't think you really have to.

I think by leading, by example, you don't have to write a book about it, but you could write a book about it.

Hey, this is what I do, this is what works.

And this is why maybe I'm working fewer hours but, but the performance and the results are, are higher.

Are the best leaders still getting away with not getting involved in their employees personal business?

Because I feel what are we doing here?

I, I just feel like, I mean, I just feel like, I mean you know, the, the amount of opportunities that, that are going to be around the, the, the competition for high quality people to, to do certain jobs, like they're going to want more than just a paycheck.

They're going to want more than just being told what to do.

They're going to want people that are taking an interest in them and caring about them and wanting to know what's going on in their lives.

And so yeah, like again, I might be a little bit removed because I'm not managing as many people as I once was on a daily basis.

But, but you know, I mean if I were, I would be looking for ways to learn more about the entirety of my employees lives and, and, and what I can do to support them so that they can continue to do a great job of supporting me with our business.

I just had a flash.

The Derek Coburn Book Club at work.

And, and if, if there's a leader out there that's so bold to say, hey, I've got this book, let's retire retirement.

We'll buy one for every employee and we're going to have a weekly book conversation around this.

I mean, yeah.

Wow.

Would shake things up a lot and I think in a positive way they'd be thinking about work on your level.

They would consider that their boss is thinking about them as not just a cog in a wheel necessarily or a performance unit, but someone that's actually got a life and a longer term career plan.

Yep.

And it could be an engagement tool.

No doubt, ma' am.

I mean, look, I'll, I'll give you another maybe extreme example of this for me, which is, you know, I mentioned how my wife and I have been in couples therapy since we were engaged.

It's been over, you know, 18 years.

It's in there.

Yeah.

I shared that we've spent over $250,000 on couples therapy.

And.

And so if I would have invested that money, I'd have, you know, probably a couple million dollars right now.

And there might be some people that are playing the money game, which is the game most of us are playing.

How much money can I accumulate?

That think that that was a really bad mistake.

But for me, now, here I am at 48.

Maybe I'm behind some people that chose a different route, but now I am creating, and I'm showing up in the world as someone who has just an amazing relationship with my wife of, you know, almost 19 years now.

And.

And I think that this next phase for me, what I'm capable of doing, you know, I don't know that the game's over and I'm not doing it.

I didn't.

I have no thought ever that when I'm paying for couples therapy, that I'm doing it because it's going to ultimately make me more money.

But look, I think.

I think it might, like.

I see a lot of other people, I know that they might have a little bit more than me if we're keeping track on a scorecard, measuring wealth by dollars right now.

But they're getting ready to go through a divorce, you know, or they are getting ready to, you know, or they're having an affair, or they're getting ready to have kids out of the house, and they don't know how they're going to connect with their spouse once their kids are out of the house.

And so maybe, you know, maybe they're going to face a little bit of a setback.

I don't know.

But for me, you know, having.

Having those relationships in a great place for me is going to allow me to show up and be contributing a lot of value and a lot of my wisdom and gifts to.

To people to make their lives better.

And hopefully that comes back in.

In the form of, you know, some dollars in my bank account.

Yeah.

Well, you and Melanie make a great team, at least from the outside, it looks like you guys are a real power couple up in that with Cadre and everything that y' all have done with that and other things.

Yeah.

And it's important to think about that.

Like, you.

You're the leader out there.

You're investing in your team.

You got to invest in your Personal relationships, too.

It just makes sense.

Yep.

To do that.

And yeah, when you put that in the book on the, the amount of money spent on couples therapy, it might end up with some jaws dropping.

But then you explain it and you're like, oh, yeah, I guess all these other things, the consequences of potentially not doing that would be way more expensive and way more.

Yep.

So.

And again, just knowing that you're going to work longer, it just frees you up.

It doesn't matter.

You don't.

You might not need couples therapy.

You might not want to have more fun.

You might not want to go to the gym.

Like, but like, I, you know, I.

Through the example of Tony, which applies to you in some way, shape or form.

Look, I mean, even if you decide to work until you're 66 instead of 65, the amount of money that you need to save each month goes down by 20%.

I'm magically giving you some extra time and money that you didn't previously realize you had.

And you get to make some different choices with how you're living your life and how you're running your business.

Yeah.

So good.

So starting to wrap this up.

What are a couple actions that people can take?

Obviously, read the book because it is fun and you're going to fly through it, but what are some actions that people could take today, Especially those that have thinking about those that have, you know, hey, I've got my number of retirement.

I know what I'm trying to hit financially, but now I'm rethinking this.

And what are the, what are the possibilities?

Yeah, so a couple of things.

One is, you know, look, if you have an online calculator that you've used in the past and you know what you're doing there, like, just change the numbers.

I've got a calculator on my website site, Derek Coburn.com neverretire where you can enter in, you know, the amount you're making and the amount that you want to have when you quote, unquote, have a traditional retirement.

And then you can change the years.

You can play around with it to see the impact that it will have on you.

You can have a conversation with your financial advisor about doing the same thing.

Look, I do also think that there are some things that you need to rethink.

There's a lot of people walking around right now that I think know that they're not going to fully retire when they said they were going to.

And just hearing you and I talking about it makes them realize that they're not going to do it anymore.

Well, there's a couple of things from a tactical perspective that you need to rethink.

One example, 401k plans.

401k plans became all the rage and I would argue are still all the rage because of this idea that you get to save money on a pre tax basis now.

And the current tax bracket that you're in, have it grow.

And when you pull it out, this is what you hear a lot of people say.

When you pull it out, I won't be working, so I'm going to be in a lower tax bracket.

So it's a really great way for me to leverage, you know, the fact that I'll be paying less in taxes when I'm older.

Well guess what, if you decide that you're going to be working into your 70s, then all of a sudden a traditional Pre tax for 1k plan might not be all that it's cracked up to be.

Right?

Yes, yes.

And so, and again without I want to give any recommendations to anybody because you, everyone's personal situation is different but like the majority of people have 80, 90% of their retirement savings in accounts that are subject to income tax on the way out.

And now I think something like 90% of all qualified plans for 1k plans, IRAs, etc.

In the United States, you have the ability to make it a Roth contribution.

So with a Roth contribution you can put your money in on an after tax basis and then whatever it grows to you get it out completely tax free now.

Now if you assume a reasonable rate of return and a similar type investment profile, there's not going to be much of a difference between either one.

But if you are somebody that has all of your money subject to income tax on the way out, you might want to consider diversifying how your money's ultimately going to be taxed the same way that you would diversify how your money is invested across like stocks, bonds, cash, that sort of thing.

Yeah, such a good tip.

And I'm considering that right now.

But you do a really good job of walking us through that in the book.

One of the things that that came up for me too is people say, well Ben, I want to retire because I hate my job.

I'm making a lot of money, but I hate my job.

And what do you say to somebody who's man, I gotta, I gotta retire as soon as I can because I can't keep going with this.

Yeah.

So look, if somebody hates their job, I'm sure that part of what they hear me Talking about they think I'm crazy.

They're like, you want me to do this longer?

I, I can't, I can't stand it.

Like, no, I don't want you to do it any longer than, than you need to.

I think that you can start looking for outs.

I think that, for example, another calcul, part of the calculator that I have on my website allows you to enter in income from another job that you start after you retire from your primary one.

So I'm going to give a very high level example and the math is not going to be exact, but just I think it'll kind of help people understand where I'm coming from.

So if somebody's 45 years old right now and they feel like they're going to have to work at a job that they hate until they're 65, until they retire and well, they could essentially work in that job until they are 55 and then switch to a job that would pay them half as much as their current job is paying them.

And if they enjoy that work or at a minimum don't hate it as much, then maybe they're likely to do it until they're 75 and then it would all come out in the wash about the same.

And so I think that looking for other things to do, you know, I think by the year 2026, something like 45% of the workers in our country are going to be freelancers.

I think that there's gonna be a lot of opportunities for people to start jobs and consulting gigs.

And like, you have their abilities, their talents, their wisdom shared with companies, shared with clients on their terms, doing things the way they wanna do them, how they wanna do them.

And yeah, like I, I, I, there's a lot of flexibility.

And to your point, I cover a lot of different options, if you will, from, from pivoting to a new career to staying in the one that you're in now and slowing down a little bit to taking a sabbatical, taking time away, taking many retirements, I think there's a lot of options to consider.

And I will say that I changed a lot of the language in my book.

I got away from talking about finding something that you love doing and focused more on just find something that you don't hate doing.

Because maybe your passion doesn't have to be tied to your job.

Maybe your passion is, doesn't have to be reduced to one thing.

Maybe your passion is you like organizing all of the amazing trips that you take with your family, your friends, every single year, or you like planning, you know, the local, you know, neighborhood gatherings, or you like volunteering at a school and finding something that you.

That's not soul sucking that, that you don't mind doing that is providing you with an income to do these other things that you want to do.

I think, I think is also a pretty, a pretty good way to approach things.

Yeah, you can follow your passion, but you, but your passion doesn't have to be at work.

Yes, there's a lot of possibilities in there, and I think the language you're introducing is going to help people talk about it with them on their own in inner conversation, but also with their family and friends and just start to shake things up a little bit.

And there's a really, there are a lot more options than people realize.

And you did a good job talking about it.

So, Derek, thank you for coming on lead the team.

What's your parting thought for our listeners today?

Thanks for, thanks for having me.

Thanks for all your great questions.

Yeah, my parting thought is that, you know, I just, I desperately feel like we, I desperately want people to get back and remember that there's a lot more to this life than just working.

There's a lot more to this life than playing the money game and seeing how much money you can make and how much you can save by a certain age.

And we're seeing so many more people now.

They're getting to 65, they're getting to 70.

And there's a bitterness, there's a resentment, there's a lot of regret.

It's not what they were told it was going to be.

They were promised freedom.

They were promised, you know, this liberation.

They were promised the opportunity to go back and experience all the things that they put off in order to get there.

And it's why so many people, I think, are returning to work.

And I think that I'm sort of in the regret minimization game right now.

Like, I really, really want people to soak up all the time that they possibly can with their kids, their spouses, their friends, their experiences.

I want them to be healthier so that they can continue to do these things for as long as possible.

And, and yeah, I think that I, I would love for people to read my book and, and, and be open to maybe changing the way that they're thinking about this, this outdated concept of retirement.

Go check it out, y' all.

It's a good one.

Thanks, Derek.

Thanks, Ben.

Super function.