Designing Your Retirement Life w/ Scott Carson, AIF®, CEPA

Host Joe Allaria and special guest Scott Carson, Senior Wealth Advisor for CarsonAllaria Wealth Management, discuss the benefits of reframing your mind around retirement, building your lifestyle allocation, and designing your retirement life to maximize your satisfaction and fulfillment.

For more information and references on material discussed, see the links below:

1. Designing  Your Life Resources

2. "Where's the best place for me to retire" tool (provided by Marketwatch.com)

To submit a listener question, visit https://www.retirementpowerhourpodcast.com/contact/ and enter the details of your question.

Disclaimer: All material discussed on this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as individual tax, legal, or investment advice. Investing involves risk of loss and investors should be prepared to bear potential losses. Past performance may not be indicative of future results. Joe Allaria is an Investment Adviser Representative of CarsonAllaria Wealth Management, a Registered Investment Advisory firm. Information discussed on this podcast may be derived from third parties that are believed to be reliable, but CarsonAllaria Wealth Management does not control or guarantee the accuracy or timeliness of such information and disclaims all liability for damages resulting from such sources. Any references to third parties are provided as a convenience and do not constitute an endorsement.

Transcript

Speaker 0:03

Welcome to the Retirement Power Hour Podcast, where you'll hear direct financial insights from financial planner, writer, and consultant Joe Allaria, as he and his guests uncover key wealth management strategies to help listeners invest wiser and retire better. Now, here's your host, Joe Allaria.

Joe Allaria 0:24

Welcome to the Retirement Power Hour. My name is Joe Allaria. I am your host, and this is episode five, Designing Your Retirement Life, where today I'm going to be joined by Scott Carson. Scott is a senior wealth advisor here at Carson Aleria Wealth Management. And Scott is also a 30-plus year industry veteran in the financial planning and wealth management industry. We're going to be talking about something that gets very little attention in the financial world, and that is designing not your investment allocation, but your lifestyle allocation, talking about designing your retirement life. How will you fill your time after you retire? And oftentimes people end up spending a ton of time trying to plan their finances and plan their retirement and looking at their investments, and they spend a ton of time on that side of planning, and they spend hardly any time, if any at all, talking about what is their life actually going to look like when they're retired? What's going to happen when they get that 40 hours a week back? What are they going to do with that 40 hours? And it's so important to talk about this because designing your retirement life, in my opinion, is something that can lead to maximizing your fulfillment during your retirement years. And it really doesn't even have to be just during your retirement years. This can be at any point in your life. If you're listening and you have 25 years until you retire, you can still take this concept of designing your life and thinking about your lifestyle allocation. You can take this concept and apply it right now. And my belief is that it will lead to more fulfillment. Oftentimes we just get caught into the cycle of life and the routines, and we end up our life just becomes us going from one activity to the next with really no intentional design. And that's what we want to talk about, and we want to change and get you off that path if you're on that path and get you thinking about these concepts and how you can take control and start designing your life how you want, especially for retirement. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Before we get into the interview, just want to share that if you are listening, please share, share, share this with your relatives, your friends, your coworkers. If you do, we definitely would appreciate it and continue to tune in. We also are going to start accepting listener questions. So as you're listening to today's episode and future episodes, please send in your questions. You can send them to Joe at CarsonalArea.com and we will answer your questions right here on the podcast. We can keep them anonymous if you'd like, but feel free to throw in the details of your situation and whatever your question is, maybe you have multiple questions, and we'll touch on those at the beginning of every episode or at some point in the episode. So make sure you include those and send those over to us, and we will start doing that next episode. With that, we're going to jump into today's interview with Scott Carson. I hope you enjoy this topic. I love this topic. We're going to talk more about this, more about the psychological side of retirement, the emotional side of retirement, because that's what this is all about. Money is not everything. Money is not important really, other than the fact that it allows us to do the things that are really important to us and to accomplish things that really matter most. So I hope you enjoyed this interview. Here is my interview with Scott Carson, Senior Wealth Advisor here at Carsonal Allariaa Wealth Management on designing your retirement life. Scott, welcome back to the show.

Scott Crason 3:51

Glad to be here, Joe.

Joe Allaria 3:53

And I always love having you on, Scott, because you have so many good stories and experiences to share. And today, the topic is designing your retirement life. And so we're actually not going to be going into the technical financial side of retirement today, but more of the psychological, the emotional part, because the transition from working to retirement, from your work life to your retirement life, is a big transition. And it actually becomes a pretty big hurdle for some people out there. And so I'm excited to talk about this because as I research for this episode, I discovered that there's actually a whole field of study on designing your life. And it could be applied to designing your retirement life. So I'm excited to get into this. And so I want to ask you first, though, Scott, for people listening out there, what does it mean to design your retirement life?

Scott Crason 4:47

Well, I can tell you what it means to me. And again, it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. In in my situation, it's all about what do you want your daily activities to look like? So I now spend six months out of the year in Florida. And I never thought I would do that 10 years ago. But there were a few life situations that came up that caused me to take a look at it. And after spending time there, it became something that Kendra and I said, you know what? We ought to give this a try. But I still work every day, still actively involved. So I think that's what happens in most people's situations is they don't really know or they don't really feel as though they can take that step. But some people, it might be a two-week vacation that they go on, it might be a four-day trip, and they just really like the surrounding area, they like the weather. And all of a sudden they say, you know what, let's let's give this a shot with a longer uh extended stay. And before you know it, uh, we fell in love with that aspect and being able to design our life, even though I'm still working, to be able to do it remotely six months out of the year.

Joe Allaria 5:59

Absolutely. For me, Scott, working around you and being around you more often, it it's clear to see the benefit of that decision. You know, it does take a lot of courage to make that decision, but you know, the benefits and the fruits that come from it could really be life-changing. And I think a lot of the folks that we meet with, they've they've done a great job planning financially, but they still struggle to answer the question, what am I going to do in retirement? They haven't taken that step to plan the non-financial part of their life as much as they've planned the financial part. And it becomes this really big mental hurdle to go into retirement, even if you have the finances, even if we have, quote, given someone permission to retire, it still becomes an incredibly big challenge because there's this gap in that non-financial planning part of their life.

Scott Crason 6:49

Well, most people spend 30 to 40 years actively involved in a career, but you become a creature of habit where you're up every day at the same time, you're spending 40 to 45 hours a week at your place of work, you're interacting with the same people, and you just don't tend to give it a lot of thought on what I am going to do when this stops. And then there happen to be a lot of people that they just don't have hobbies. So, you know, if you don't have a lot of things that you enjoy doing outside of work, it makes it real difficult to start thinking about how am I going to occupy my time for some 40 to 45 hours a week that I've been spending at my job for the past 30 to 40 years.

Joe Allaria 7:38

Yeah, sometimes there's just this energy required, this startup energy to do anything, even if it's something you want to do or an outcome you want, sometimes the startup energy that's required is just more than we want to put forth at the time. I I was just talking to a client recently, Scott, about getting ready. She's getting ready to retire. And we were talking about travel in somewhere that she wanted to go when she retired. It was the Grand Canyon. And I said, Well, have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? And she said, No. And I said, Well, why not do it now? You know, I said, Do you get vacation time? She said, Yeah. I said, Well, well, why wait? You know, why not do it now? And come to find out, it's just, well, it there's the planning and the flights and the hotels and and all that, that that startup energy, even though it was something she really wanted to do, sometimes it can be easier, it's more comfortable to just continue to do the things that you've been doing. So when it comes to retirement, Scott, it needs to be answered of can you retire? But do you think people genuinely don't know if they can retire safely, or do you think that it's more of a crutch to want to stay in their routine and not want to make the change?

Scott Crason 8:49

Uh I'll answer it this way There are people who are proactive and decide to go down the path of doing some comprehensive planning and determine if the retirement lifestyle that they've looked forward to is going to be feasible from a financial standpoint. And then you have those people that are reactive and therefore they just let things happen to them and the chips will fall where they may. So in our world, we work with primarily the proactive people. Uh they engage our advice and our expertise to help them develop a plan to prove in black and white, under very conservative assumptions, that the retirement lifestyle that they've thought about for all these years is achievable.

Joe Allaria 9:40

Yeah, well, I've heard it several times, Scott, and I'm sure you've heard it as well. But those that say, well, I don't want to have to pinch pennies in retirement. You know, I want to make sure that I have more than enough. I don't want to be worried about money in retirement, so I'm just maybe going to work a couple of more years. And that might be even after we show those individuals that, you know, we go, we do a detailed financial plan, we we take every consideration into account and we show them that, well, you really don't have to quote worry about money in retirement because we take very conservative assumptions in our in our retirement plans and we feel very confident in the in the outcomes that we're looking at. And we can tell when someone's plan is extremely strong and there's, you know, they have a very high probability of success. Yet some of those people still opt to work a little bit longer. So, Scott, have you seen that? Have you seen folks that decide to work a few more years, even maybe after you've gone through the financial planning process with them? You've showed them that they are on an incredibly strong track, and yet they decide to continue to work, maybe even at a job that they don't even enjoy.

Scott Crason 10:49

We see it all the time. And I have a couple right now who, and I and I mean a couple of clients right now who are more than capable of retiring. But I think there's this overwhelming fear of change going from a daily routine of doing what they've done for a long, long period of time into something that is unknown to them, meaning, how will I occupy all this time? So I can't really get over that hurdle with them. They're gonna do what they're gonna do. And in this case, these people like what they do. So that in and of itself is a reason why they keep working. Now, we do run into the people that not necessarily dislike what they do, but they would probably prefer doing something else. But again, it's the only thing they've known for probably decades. So I I've told you and you've heard this countless times, and you probably get tired of hearing it, but I'm in my 33rd year of earning a PhD in psychology. So when you sit across the table from hundreds of people, as I have over my career, you start to become sort of a psychologist in understanding how people think. And it's not only about how they think about money, but how they think about their life. And you can just tell those people who are ready to go on to the next chapter and those people who aren't.

Joe Allaria 12:09

Oh, I agree a hundred percent. And I can tell you, Scott, over the years, I have become more and more fascinated with the psychology of what we do and the psychology that really goes behind the decisions that people make in retirement. And I've learned the last few years, if you want to do a good job in our role, and that is advising retirees, it's not just about the financial part. Because I I started, I had too many conversations where I would show people the financial output. We would go through, we'd do a detailed retirement plan, we would show them they're on a great track, they could, you know, they could spend more money, they could gift more, they could do things they had never done before that that they really cared about and that could lead to to more fulfillment, and then those things would never get done. And so I I kind of, you know, at the beginning, I just sort of said to myself, well, you know, that's their decision, it's their money, and it is. But over the years, I've started to to understand and to kind of realize I need to get better at the psychology of the psychology part of giving advice. Because when people come in and tell us, you know, that, hey, I don't want to have three million dollars when I'm projected to be a hundred years old if I live that long. I want to use my money, I want to gift my money, I want to travel more, fill in the blank. If they say that and then they're not doing that, then the reason really has nothing to do with money. The reason probably is some sort of there's some sort of psychological hurdle or mental hurdle that they're not overcoming. They may be already retired, you may have helped them, or we may have helped them get over that hurdle to go ahead and make the decision to retire. But then once they retire, they just sort of continue to live the status quo. And look, there's nothing wrong with that. But as I've shifted my focus and realized I need to get better at this, what I'm really talking about is I want to get better at helping people increase their retirement satisfaction. And sometimes it's through financial planning and strategies and saving taxes and doing all these different things. But, you know, other times it's just helping them on this, on the psychology side of things. But Scott, have you seen where people have retired? They've gotten over the first hurdle, but for one reason or another, once they retire, they've just lived the status quo and they really haven't explored what they could be doing to add more fulfillment to their life in retirement.

Scott Crason 14:34

Many times. And I have a story that sticks in my mind from 15 years ago. Uh, we had a long-term client, and um, he spent his career working with a local utility company, and his work hours were the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift. Granted, we all spend a considerable time away from our significant others just due to the fact that one or both spouses are working, but this was even to the extreme since he wasn't there during the day when she was working, and obviously she was there at night when he was working. So they spent a lot of time apart. But I'll never forget him sitting in the conference room, looking me in the eye, and says, You know what? Retirement sucks.

Joe Allaria 15:19

Wow.

Scott Crason 15:19

And I was kind of taken aback by that. And he said, I hate retirement. He goes, Anybody who said these are your golden years didn't know what they were talking about. So there was a prime example of somebody who wasn't prepared mentally and emotionally to take on retirement.

Joe Allaria 15:37

Right.

Scott Crason 15:37

Now, he worked a company job which he couldn't wait to retire because he was tired of the mundane activities that he did for years and years and years, and he was financially capable of retiring, but he just didn't know how to fill his time.

Joe Allaria 15:52

Yep.

Scott Crason 15:52

So when I ask somebody, okay, let's assume today's your last day of work, right? Tomorrow you wake up, what are you gonna do? And I get a response like, Well, you know, I'll I'll maybe sleep a half extra half hour, and and quite honestly, as you age, we become creatures of habit of when we go to bed and when we wake up. So people still tend to wake up rather early. So I'll I'll wake up, I'll have my cup of coffee, I'll scan the news, I'll eat a little breakfast, I I'm gonna start going to the gym and I'll work out, come back, walk the dog. And then I say, okay, you've done all that. Now it's 10:30 in the morning. What are you gonna do for the rest of the day? And they look at me like, you know what, you're right. All those things I just described don't take up that much time. So I said, you know, before we pull the trigger and you tell your boss you're done, let's make sure we got a game plan on what you're gonna do every day so that you don't die from boredom.

Joe Allaria 16:51

Well, I I think too, Scott, some people get caught in the trap of thinking of retirement as some sort of endless vacation. You know, vacation's great, but you go for five days, six days, seven days, you go somewhere, eventually the vacation sort of wears off, right? You're not on vacation forever. And that's in retirement is very similar. You know, I get concerned if I when I ask people, what are you gonna do when you retire? And I get the answer of, well, I'm gonna travel, I'm going to play golf. You know, hey, I'm a golfer, I can golf, you know, as much as anybody, but even I would not want to play golf every day in retirement. And nor could your body hold up doing that, you know, for most people. So even if you were doing that, you still got, you know, again, half the day where you're not playing. So it's just not likely. Same with travel, you're not gonna be on an endless trip. So it just doesn't fill up the entire amount of time that your job did. You know, we're talking 40 hours a week, and and your hobbies don't always fill that up. So you you have to think that the your hobbies and the kind of the recreation is just one part of your life allocation, your your lifestyle portfolio. But I wonder, Scott, if some of that planning and maybe putting off retirement, do you think there's any procrastination could be a result of I just want to prolong getting older. I want to prolong talking about Medicare and talking about Social Security. I want to prolong some of these things because it brings me one step closer to the last phase or the the end of my life. Do you think that goes into it at all?

Scott Crason 18:18

It absolutely plays into it. And you we've all heard the stories of the man or woman who spent 30, 35, maybe 40 years in a career, retired with no hobbies, and they were dead one month later. And who knows what caused, but it happens. I I know of specific examples. So kind of what you're referring to is something that we read in a study a few years ago, and that is all about kind of the three phases of retirement: the go-go phase, the slow go phase, and the no-go phase. So a lot of times when people retire, they have pent-up energy, pent-up demand. They're they're fine financially, and they hit the ground running with activities. They do a lot of fishing, a lot of golfing, hunting, whatever their hobbies might be, right? Bowling, swimming, bike riding. And then they uh they kind of burn out in that go-go phase because they just don't want to do those things every day. So when we talk about the finances for people, we always stress the word diversification, right? You need to diversify your time and your activities when you're in retirement so that you can live a more balanced lifestyle. And they hit the go-go phase hard, and then everyone, just due to Mother Nature, transitions to a slow go phase, which says, you know what? We've been to Europe three times in the last eight years. We've seen everything, we don't have any plans of doing that anymore. And really, there are no other places we want to go to. So then they revert back to being kind of community-oriented, homebody type people. And then just through time, they transition into a no-go phase where they just don't want to do much of anything. And uh, for people out there who've seen their parents have longevity, they will be a testament to that and say, Yes, I witnessed exactly that with my mom and dad. So, yes, there is a fear of making the decision because they don't know how they're gonna handle those three phases.

Joe Allaria 20:18

Well, I want to introduce this concept of designing your life or designing your retirement life. And it's it's nothing that that you or I came up with, Scott. It's it's actually uh a book that was written by Dave Evans and Bill Burnett. These are two Stanford professors with engineering backgrounds, and these gentlemen created a platform, if you will, that is called Designing Your Life. And there are now multiple books, blogs, other resources, coaching that's available, workshops, and it just really blew my mind because as long as we've been working with retirees and having a lot of these life sort of conversations and and and really again at times acting as counselors, I just never was aware that that there was this much depth in this field of study. So it's very interesting. Anyone can go out, it's again at designingyour.life. So designing your dot life www. designing your dot life, you can check this out and you know we're gonna start to explore some of the frameworks that go into this designing your life or designing your retirement life discussion. And I guess the first one, Scott, is just that that idea of financial independence for us, which I've heard you talk about so much. So I'm gonna put you on the spot here a little bit, but if you could share, share your definition of what it means to be financially independent and sort of talk the transition from working to retirement.

Scott Crason 21:50

Absolutely. I've I've had this phrase for 30 years, and financial independence is that point in time where retirement is absolutely affordable and work becomes optional for you. You're absolutely ready, capable of retiring, but if you can't pull the trigger, well, let's do it in phases. Let's see if we can't talk to your employer about you going to four days a week, something like that, or maybe three days a week ultimately. And given the situation we're in in America today, with the demand for people to work and specifically high-quality people, most employers I think are willing to be flexible as opposed to just seeing a valuable resource leave entirely.

Joe Allaria 22:38

Well, absolutely, especially with how hard it is to find employees nowadays as well. And as we start to reframe this, we start at a 30,000-foot view of you know reframing your retirement because I think one of the myths that we want to debunk on this show, on this episode, is the notion of retirement is not a significant amount of time, that I'm gonna work for most of my life and then I'm gonna retire and enjoy what years I have left. Well, you could have 25, it could be 30 years, it could be 35 years. So retirement, it's it's it's a mistake to think that I'm just gonna work, work, work, work, work, and then retire and enjoy whatever you know small amount of time I have left. Chances are you you could have a lot of time left. And I like the term second act when you talk about retirement. Second act. Some people take retirement and they retire from one job and they they go into another job because it's something that they're completely passionate about. You know, they may, they may take their second act and start a new business, believe it or not. They may, they may do some sort of phased retirement where they you know they don't absolutely despise their job and they just want some more freedom and they may go about it that way. So there's a lot of ways to do this. And you know, when we talk about these frameworks, there's there's four parts of your life portfolio that we're gonna talk about here from Anna Rappaport. She's a retirement speaker, retirement life coach, if you will. And one of the four is pursuits. And so I want to, you've talked about hobbies, you've talked about things you can go like travel, things you might might want to pursue. But this this idea of a bridge career or a phased-out retirement is a very interesting concept in this category. And I wonder if, Scott, if you could just share how has that gone for the clients that you've talked to? Has it increased their level of satisfaction?

Scott Crason 24:25

Uh, great question, and I've seen plenty. And the one that is most prevalent uh would be very close to home. I'll use my father-in-law as an example. Here's somebody who worked 30 years at a Fortune 500 company and retired from there at the age of 55. He kind of transitioned his way because in many big companies back in the day you could build up and store vacation days. So he also had an income tax preparation business that was started by his mom, and he began doing that when he was 15 years old. So by the time he retired, he had already been doing tax returns for 35 years. But the way he transitioned out is the last few years, he saved up all of his vacation time and he took it during tax season, the months of primarily February, March, and April. So he leaves at 55, then his tax practice continues to grow, it flourishes, and again, very near and dear to home because my wife, Kendra, started doing tax returns with her dad when she was 16. So he retired finally at the age of 86. So he spent 71 years doing tax returns.

Joe Allaria 25:39

Wow.

Scott Crason 25:39

He'll be 91 this year, and he's still sharp as attack. So I would describe that as an encore career that turned out to be very successful because, as people know, that's not a full-time job. Uh, it's it's more than full-time for the months of February, March, and half of April. But then he has the rest of the year literally off to do other things that he likes to enjoy. And it provided him the financial resources to maintain his standard of living. So that would be a great example of an encore. I I have another client, very vivid. He came to me five years before he was ready to retire. So his target retirement age was 60. He came in and I did simply planning for him for five years. He's very analytical and he wanted to make sure he crossed all of his T's, dotted all of his I's, and that he was able to retire financially when the age of 60 arrived. Now, in his situation, he had a defined benefit pension plan, right? He was gonna get a monthly guaranteed payment for the rest of his life. So time comes, he retires, and within two months, he calls me up and says, Scott, I'm bored to death. And what I learned in this particular case was he only retired because he thought it was kind of a novelty to say he was retired and that he could. But he's probably the reason I've taken so much time and effort to talk to people about the mental and the psychological and the social aspects of retirement because his started out as a failure, even though he was okay financially, he was not enjoying life. So, fast forward, he ends up landing a job at a local company working three days a week, and he can't wait to get up and go to work because he loves it so much. Now, last time I met with him, he said, you know what, I'm thinking about asking him to let me be full-time again. So there's somebody who has some hobbies, right? But but not enough to occupy his time. And he's landed in a situation where he's doing something that he feels like he's making a difference at the company in a supervisory role, helping and mentoring people, and he loves working again.

Joe Allaria 27:50

Well, I have seen only incredible results with this sort of bridge job or bridge career. Any any client that I've seen that has made arrangements with their employer to do something like this, and honestly, most of them, if not all of them, have sort of fallen into these situations that it wasn't anything premeditated, it was just an opportunity that arose and and they found themselves in a very fortunate position. And I've only seen absolutely incredible results with my clients that have had these situations. They're happier, they're less stressed because they're not as focused about making withdrawals from their portfolio because they're still making some income, they're not as stressed at work because they're not working as much, they may, they may work two days, three days a week, but the benefits all around seem to be very, very positive. And so I do share this with people that are hoping to retire in the near future because I think they, on average, vastly underestimate the power, the financial benefits of semi-retirement income, but also the emotional, the psychological benefits as well. Plus, it never hurts to throw the offer out to the employer. The employer may be dreading the day that you're retiring because they'll have to replace you and bridge the gap to get someone else. They may welcome your offer with open arms, or you might come in and you can design it how you want. You might say, I'm going, I'm willing to do X, Y, and Z and uh work three days a week. And here's the here are the things I don't want to do. And so I'm not going to do those, but I'll do X, Y, and Z three days a week, and I'm willing to take a pay cut because I'm not working full-time, not doing all that I was doing before. And they may welcome that. And then now, again, you're happy, you're making money, you're able to have more freedom and kind of phase into retirement and you're filling a need that they have. I've I've just seen such incredible results from folks that have done that. But Scott, I wanted to ask you, because you have a little bit of experience doing this as well, you know, going from what you were doing in the past of being involved in every part of running our a financial firm and going from that to now. Doing what you like best, which is working directly with clients and giving advice to clients and not dealing with some of the more laborious administrative tasks that it takes to run a financial firm. If you wouldn't mind, I'd love to hear you share more about that and the exercise that you went through regarding your own journey.

Scott Crason 30:22

Sure. I think every now and then we have to do a self-assessment and find out truly and meaningfully are we really happy doing what we're doing? So in my case, I've always been a big picture, think outside the box, wake up every day and figure out how we can be a differentiator from our peers in our profession. And what do I really want to do with my life? So I tell people, I eat my own cooking. You know, uh, things that I've recommended to people. I sat down and did the same assessments, Kendra and I. And like I said, 10 years ago, I would have never thought it possible just because of my own type A personality of showing up and being in the office early and late every day. So I guess this most recent pandemic is something that has changed lives for a lot of us. We've realized that working remotely is uh not only a possibility, but it's incredibly feasible and you can be just as successful. We're fortunate in our business that we do not have to be in a specific location in front of specific customers or people every day in order to earn a living, i.e., like a dentist or a doctor or a neural surgeon. They have to be in their office to see patients. We do our job with technology. So right now, people would have no idea where we're sitting. Uh, we happen to be about 30 feet apart in Illinois, but I could be in Fort Myers, Florida, and nobody would know the difference. So I just stepped back and I developed my own personal bucket list and said, look, these are a lot of things I want to accomplish. And every day that I wait is a chance or time that I'm losing to do these things. So it took a lot of courage and uh a lot of thought-provoking questions and ideas, but our timing was right. And so far we've been able to pull it off. And I would say that I'm incredibly happy in my current lifestyle of having a good work-life balance.

Joe Allaria 32:25

And from a design standpoint, you were able to design your work life in this case to be exactly what you wanted it to be. And as a retiree, you have the ability to design your retirement life. But going to the next sort of category in your life portfolio, talking a little bit about places. And places also is going to determine a factor in your retirement life. And that could be your community or your where you're going to live, if you're going to be a snowbird or not, how much travel you're going to do. And so, Scott, if you would just share a little bit about that places category and some of the things that came to your mind as you were working through that for yourself. And I'm sure it's it's sort of obvious when we talk about uh about your story, but um, if you wouldn't mind, share a little bit about that.

Scott Crason 33:13

And and I'll answer that, but I want to backtrack just a little bit, Joe. And um, I think this could be of great value to the listeners. So, as you know, I participated in what's called the strategic coach program a few years ago. And it was an opportunity to go four times a year to Chicago and be in a meeting from people all over the world who were successful entrepreneurs, business owners. And I learned probably the most valuable lesson of my professional career in that strategic coach program, which is what caused me to do what I did. And real quickly, uh, we were we were given an exercise to sit down and itemize all the things that we did in our work life. And once you developed the list, you would go to each item and you would put a letter next to that. And the letter was either a U, E, C, or it was an I. So the U stood for your unique ability. So what things do I do in my professional life that are unique to me and I'm good and successful at? So I itemized those things. And then E stood for excellent. What things do I do that I'm excellent at, but could probably be done by somebody else if delegated? And then you put a C. What things am I competent at, but without a doubt, could be done better by other people in the organization. And then lastly, an I. What things am I truly incompetent at, but I do anyway, and I probably cause more problems than I do good, right? So that's a no-brainer. So immediately, and then you'll recall this, I basically delegated everything but my unique abilities. And I've always thought that to be either sitting in front of a client, talking to a client on the phone, talking to a prospect, doing strategic planning. Um, all the other facets of running the business could be done better by other people. So again, that was a huge shift. But once I did it and I saw the results, that things were running much better as uh with me not being involved in those activities. So that was a huge step that helped me get the courage to say, you know what, I can probably design now even a better work-life balance that included being remote part of the year. So now to your question. Many years ago, I was visiting a client in Scottsdale, Arizona, and obviously they have beautiful weather the majority of the year. Actually, the sun shines there well more than 300 days a year. In contrast, you and I are sitting here in Edwardsville this morning. It's a very dreary day out, it's raining, it's in the 40s. And quite honestly, this goes along with our discussion about people who retire and those people that want to do outdoor activities, and today they're probably limited or restricted to being indoors. So it adds to kind of their frustration, and quite honestly, some people, it can even cause an episode of depression when these days like this go on for a week or so. I realized that everybody I saw, whether it was in the grocery store, the gas station, the golf course, people were very happy. And again, I think the actual statistic is the sun shines in Arizona about 340 days a year. So that's only 25 days that it does. People are just naturally more happy being in that type of geographical environment. So I think finding the location that fits your lifestyle is what's very important. And then once you're there, that's when you'll figure out how to become part of a community and what what your home life will look like and then where you might travel from those destinations. Quite honestly, since I've spent the last two winters, we'll call it in Florida, I feel like I'm on vacation almost every day due to the climate and the development where we live. I've almost lost a little bit of the appetite for traveling elsewhere.

Joe Allaria 37:10

Absolutely. Yeah. Why travel somewhere else when you're happy being where you are at? So I can tell you the desire to travel here in the Midwest in the winter is fairly high. But you know, when you're talking about retiring, you might not pick up and completely move somewhere, although I have several clients that either have or have a goal to do that the next couple of years. But you may not do that. It may just be, like you said, something where you just have a desire to travel. And so you kind of have your home base where you're from, and then you go ahead and you travel. And that's what I'm doing now. Um, and the reason for that is probably the third category we're going to talk about today, which is people. And people is probably the biggest or could be the biggest factor in someone's decision when they're talking about designing their retirement life, what they want it to look like. People is such a big factor. And as I joke with some clients, you know, I would love to move to Colorado or Montana or somewhere in the mountains, but the people reason is why I don't. But no, as a parent with two young children, I have a five-year-old and a three-year-old now, and I think about them wanting to grow up, wanting to be around their cousins and their grandparents. So these are things that definitely have an impact. And maybe you have kids that are grown up out of the house, maybe they've moved away to a different city uh because of a job, because of college or whatever. These are all things you have to keep, obviously, to keep in mind and design your life around the people and the community that you want to be a part of. But the last category I wanted to touch on, Scott, just in the sake of time, is health. And if we don't have our health, then none of us are here. And when you talk about designing your retirement life, it's not just about making sure you have access to good health care, which that that's a big part of it. Maybe having access to familiar providers, but also just having access to workout facilities or a climate that is going to encourage you to get out and stay active. You know, for example, hiking can be done year-round in some areas, but in here in the St. Louis area, I don't even think about going outside for about a four-month period. So something to keep in mind when you are talking about designing your retirement life.

Scott Crason 39:24

Well, uh absolutely, Joe. And what's really hard for people to understand is how I can walk out my front door on January 3rd in shorts and a t-shirt, right? And be very comfortable. And we live in a uh development that is very active. So in the mornings, and I'm talking about uh as soon as the sun comes up, there are people walking, running, biking, playing tennis, playing pickleball, swimming laps, fishing. So it's a very active lifestyle. And like you said, not possible where we live in the Midwest or any of the northern states. There are some hardcore people that would get out and do some activities, but not to the extent that I see there. So it goes a long way to, I think, longevity. So to talk about the health and money aspect, I just had a meeting two days ago with a client. He's 72 years old. And at the end of the meeting, he was showing me and having me listen to his knees on how they creaked because of the two new knees that he has. And he said, you know, the next thing I have to have my hip replaced. And then he said, I can't wait to get back on the golf course. And I reminded him, I said, you know, we'll call him Bill. I said, Bill, none of this money that we're talking about has any meaning unless you can unless you can enjoy it. So I tell people, yes, the financial aspect of retirement is incredibly important, but the health aspect is maybe even more important. So health, health, fitness, etc. goes a long way in designing that retirement lifestyle.

Joe Allaria 41:02

So, Scott, in closing, I just want to encourage all the listeners out there to check out designing your life. It's actually designingyour.life. That's the website, designingyour.life. And go and use this framework, pursuits, places, people, and health, and start building out what you want your retirement to look like. Start doing it. And one of the founders of this idea, this concept, designing your life, Dave Evans, was was going to go on a television show, a new show, to talk about this. And the producer said, Dave, you're gonna have to explain this in 30 seconds or less. And he was ready to talk for seven to ten minutes. I mean, this guy is a Stanford professor, comes with an engineering background. He's like, that this is that's impossible. I there's no way I can talk about this or explain this, this methodology in 30 seconds or less. And they said, Well, then you're not gonna be on the air then. So he he thought really hard about it and he boiled it down to 10 words. And the 10 words, Scott, are get curious, talk to people, try stuff, and share your story. Get curious, talk to people, try stuff and share your story. So that's it. And that's again, that's what I would encourage you listeners out there to go. Go and do that because this framework is going to help you, I think, lead to a more fulfilling retirement. And another resource that I wanted to share, Scott, is if if someone has an exact, a perfectly clean slate in terms of where they're going to live in retirement, there's a tool on marketwatch.com that you can go and enter the things that are most important to you. It could be climate, could be access to different activities, could be population size, all sorts of different things. And it gives you five must-haves and five nice to haves. So you go and fill that out, and then it will literally give you the top ten counties in the United States that best fit your criteria. Or if you have a specific state that you'd like to live in, you can select that state and it will give you the top 10 counties in that state that best match the criteria that you put into the tool. So it's just a really neat tool. So again, I'll I'll put both resources in the show notes. Designing your dot life is the website, and this tool on marketwatch.com for helping you determine the best place for you to live. So, Scott, I'd like to kick it over to you for your final thoughts. What would you like listeners to leave with from today's show?

Scott Crason 43:34

Well, first off, I love the 10 words because it's incredibly simple. And I think we live in a world where people tend to overanalyze and over-complicate decision making, right? So too often people don't understand this, but when you don't make a decision, you've actually made a decision. You've decided not to decide. So use those 10 words, apply them to your life, think outside the box, and I'll I'll end with this. And you've heard me say this a few times, Joe, but I've witnessed people over the past 30 plus years spend more time, dedicate more resources to planning a seven-day or a 14-day vacation than they will planning the potential 25 to 30 years of their retirement. So think about that. It's a little bit ironic that we as human beings think in that way, but it's true. So keep it simple, think outside the box, try stuff, talk to people, share your stories.

Joe Allaria 44:38

Well, Scott, thank you so much for joining me today and talking about this topic, one that, again, I'm so excited to continue to talk about and have more conversations with clients. But but I always appreciate your perspective and your input. You've got so many good stories, and and especially for today, I think uh you provide a lot of valuable insight to those that are thinking about designing their retirement. So thank you for your time. And if you're still listening, thanks for for listening to today's podcast. Don't forget to go back and check out our previous episodes. You can do that on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and you can also check us out on YouTube as well. With that, join us next time on the Retirement Power Hour Podcast, where we help listeners invest wiser and retire better. Take care.

Speaker 45:25

Thank you for listening to the Retirement Power Hour Podcast. All material discussed on this podcast is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as individual tech, legal, or investment advice. Investing involves risk of loss, and investors should be prepared to bear potential losses. Past performance may not be indicative of future results. Joe Allaria is an investment advisor representative of Carson Allaria Wealth Management, a registered investment advisory firm. Information discussed on this podcast may be derived from third parties that are believed to be reliable, but Carson Allaria Wealth Management does not control or guarantee the accuracy or timeliness of such information, and disclaims all liability for damages resulting from such sources. Any references to third parties are provided as a convenience and do not constitute an endorsement.