EP 180: Designing Your Third Age – Retirement Planning with Dr. Gregg Lunceford - Money & You with Michelle Perkins

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It was never supposed to be a design where they
were supposed to live ten years longer than they did
and have all this financial safety net. Really, when retirement
systems were put in place, it was a negotiation between
management and labor management. And because it was assembly line,
it was really more physical work. Management wanted younger employees interesting,

(00:22):
and unions wanted older employees to be taken care of
and not to go on the poverty. And so this
is where you had this happy medium. And so when
people were retired, it was more like the company was
paying them to go away. And so what happened was
there was this negative connotation around retirement because it just

(00:42):
basically said you're old, yeah, and you don't have to
we're putting you out the pasture. And it's the word
retirement because the word tired is embedded in retirement.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Oh boy, yeah okay.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
And so a lot of people got this negativity around it,
felt this negativity around it.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Hey there, and welcome to money and you. I'm Michelle Perkins,
your host. My search for more fulfilling work led me
to career in business coaching, where I stumbled upon a
game changing discovery. Money issues often start with our mindset
and habits. You see, our relationship with money is the
key to overcoming those frustrating financial obstacles. As an entrepreneur,

(01:22):
coach and problem solver, I'm passionate about helping you create
a great relationship with money, because turns out that's the
foundation for a limit free life. Each week on Money
in You, I speak with amazing guests about all things money, mindset,
practical tips, and everything in between. We're here to give
you new insights, education and empowerment. So money can be

(01:44):
one of your favorite relationships. So join us from some
lively conversations and let's transform your financial life together. Hello, Hello,
and welcome to another great episode of the Money in
You Show. I'm so happy you're here. I have a
fantastic guess we're going to have such a great conversation
about retirement. What's different about retirement these days than what

(02:08):
your parents or grandparents may have experienced, and how you
can prepare, how you can make decisions, and how you
can think about it in a positive way. So I
have a guest in the studio today, which is thrilling
when that happens. And so I'm going to introduce you
to doctor Greg Lunceford, PhD. And he is going to
walk us through some really interesting scenarios and ideas and

(02:33):
thoughts around retirement. So alright, let's get to your information here. So,
doctor Greg Lunsford has thirty two years of experience in
financial services. He's a managing Director wealth advisor in Mesro
Wealth Management and Vice chair of the Mesro DEI Council.

(02:53):
He creates comprehensive financial planning strategies for individuals, families, organizations, athletes,
and business owners. He's the Investment a Committee Chair for
the American Heart Association, on the Board of Directors for
the Juvenile Protective Association, an advisory board member for the
Nathan Manilo Sculpture Park at Governors State University, and is

(03:14):
an advisory board member for the Quinland School of Business
at Loyola University. Greg is also a featured speaker on
WGN radio's Your Money Matters. He's earned a BA from
Loyola University and an MBA from Washington University. And there
is something wrong with my notes where I can't see
the end of this. Oh, here we go, and it

(03:36):
has a PhD, the most important part from Case Western
Reserve University, where he conducted research on retirement and he's
a certified financial planner professional and holds a certificate in
financial planning and something else that is not showing up
on my phone, which I'm going to ask you about
in justice seconds.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
So welcome, Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
You're so welcome.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
It's a pleasure to be with you.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
It's a pleasure to be with you. And it's so
great when somebody can actually be here in the studio
with us and we can actually look at each other
and talk without a screen. So thank you for that. Really, well,
I know that's a bigger effort on your part to
do that. So okay, Well, you have a lot to
help people with on the show, and this is all
about educating people so they you know, it can really

(04:20):
relate to money in a more productive and you know,
in a more positive way. So why didn't you introduce
a little of the research that you did.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Sure, okay, So thank you for having me as a guest, Michelle,
and I just love what you talk about. You know,
when I came in the financial services over thirty years ago,
we were taught that most money decisions were sort of
like economic decisions. You reacted certain ways simply because you
could afford to do it, or you couldn't afford to

(04:51):
do it. In the case of retirement, it was you
could retire and once you hit the number, you would
automatically exit out and it would be that simple. And
after the real estate crisis of two thousand and eight,
I started to notice that there was a pattern that
I was seeing in clients and prospects that we couldn't
solve for. And so I went to my firm at
the time and I said, there's something social emotionally going

(05:13):
on here, and they said okay, And I came back
and so they will.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Give you that look or they gave me that look.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
And the reason they were giving me the look, they
were like, well, we can build products around financial risk,
but we cannot build products around what someone is experiencing
socially emotionally. And my point was, I think there's more
to that, because I think if you understand some of
the things that you talk about on the show, and
how people relate to money and what their experiences are
and how they create those values and where they could

(05:42):
have dysfunction, you can actually be more impactful in your
client relationships. And no one really kind of took me seriously,
except a few people, and I said, well, you know,
if you give me a little time, can I just
go back and study it. And so they were thoughtful
enough to give me a few days here or there
so I could have the flexibility, lady, to go and study.
And that's what I did my PhD research around at

(06:05):
Case Western. In particular, I was focused on retirees.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
For what you learn that this.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Is an issue at many stages of life, as you
talk about and your prior shows a lot of our
money values come through experiences that we have in childhood.
And what I get is the person entering into retirement
that never understood, that never addressed that, and so now
retirement looks very scary to them.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yes, I love everything you just said, and I think
it's so it's so fascinating when you bring up that
social emotional aspect of it and even though we all
feel it all the time and actually we're not putting
that together like that's how we make our decisions, but
we're walking around all the time feeling certain things about money.
And that was the thing that was fascinating to me too,

(06:51):
because I did have a finance and accounting background and
literally nobody had ever brought any of this up, and
so even the people in the industry are feeling the
same things, you know, and so the decision making is hard,
and retirement is one of the biggest decisions you'll make.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
It is one of the biggest decisions you'll make. And
one of the things that I was trying to figure
out is why so many people were having a hard
time making retirement decisions. So back it up is two
thousand and eight, like I was saying, is the real
estate crisis, and people were losing their jobs all over
the place. And I had a number of people come
into my office that were offering that were offered very

(07:27):
lucrative exit packages, and so once again we were taught
that retirement was the economic decision as a matter of fact.
And even some of the marketing that I saw competitors
in the industry put out there as well as could
have been my firm as well, they say what's your
retirement number, as if if you hit this number, that
was all you had to worry about, and that there
were no other problems in life. And so what I

(07:51):
was noticing was these folks were coming in my office
and they had very lucrative offers that would have set
them up for life, in many cases set their family
up for generations. Yet they because of this relationship they
had with money, even though we would go through all
these Monte Carlo analysis and I would show them this

(08:11):
and they would say, I'm still afraid I'm gonna run
out of money.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Well, and isn't part of that sort of an insecurity
about how they'll manage this money? I mean, I don't know, but.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
Well, it's somewhat. But then also they had the foresight
to seek out professional help as well. So but there's
still this uneasiness here. And so what I was noticing
was explaining that my firm was these sale cycles were
taking a long period of time, right, And usually sale
cycles take a long period of time when someone is
thinking about it and they're like, oh, I'll make the decision,

(08:43):
but they had they were at the point where they
had to make the decision. It's like, you got to
take this offer in thirty days or or you know,
we're going to move on to someone else. And usually
you'll see this, you know, a long sale cycle if
someone was selling a business or something like that, but
never when there was immediate liquidity writing in front of you, right,
And so what the feedback I got was, well, it's

(09:04):
probably us in another competitor. So if you discount the pricing,
they'll go with us. Because all of the things are equal,
we would discount. The sale cycle wouldn't change. It is
just long and long. And so what I started to
dig in and it starts to talk to people about
it and start to you know, read positive psychology and
things like that. Even though there wasn't a not there

(09:25):
wasn't a lot of academic literature at the time that
linked money this way to the retirement experience. When we
start talking about retirement. A lot of the research looked
at retirement through the lens of gerontology, so it was
what happens when you are retired, and it was really
looking at retired people get old. So it was a
lot of stuff about translitioning into old age. The new

(09:47):
thing that most people aren't aware of, and it's probably
more noticed in other parts of the world, is this
an acknowledgment that we no longer go from youth to
middle age to old age, but because we live longer,
there's this thing called the third age that you go
from youth, to middle age, the third age, then to
old age.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
I like that, And so there's just twenty straight age.

Speaker 1 (10:11):
It's a twenty to thirty year life bonus that it's
an undefined period that you never watched anybody else go through.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
That's fascinating.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
And what do I do with that? And then how
do I afford that? And so that is creating a
lot of people to have this negative thought about retirement,
so they stick their head in the sand and then
just hope for the best. And so do you really
want those years to be years where you're uncomfortable or
do you want to go into them bold and confidently?

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Boy, that is super interesting. I love anything that shifts
how you think about things. So, and it's true. I mean,
we all can see it, but we don't plan for it.
We don't even acknowledge that that's the case. You know,
we just think it's an extended old age period now,
But you're right, people are still the whole. I don't know,
what do you think about this retirement age of sixty five? Like,

(11:02):
to me, that is such an antiquated.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Well when you think about it, right, if you retire
in your sixties and I'm not even making this up.
If you just look at the actuarial tables, the irs
US users to calculate your require minimum distribution, right, they
assume you're going to live to nineties. So this isn't
even Greg's number. This is the IRS is AID nineties
the number. So if you're retiring your sixties, you're really

(11:25):
middle aged.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Good right something there?

Speaker 1 (11:29):
Six So sixty is the new forty. And so when
you were forty years old, when the life when you
were looking at your parents and grandparents and their life
expectancy was sixty years seventy, did you ever ask them
if they threw on the towel at forty. No, they
had endless hopes and possibilities for what was going to
happen in the next thirty years. That and that's how

(11:49):
we need to envision the next thirty years when we're sixty.
But because we've had so many dynamics, dynamic things happened
to us such as, you know, we're worried that our
kids may not live to have as many benefits as
we've had, and you know, we have older parents and
we're sandwiched in between, and you know, many of us

(12:10):
may be and split homes because of divorce and things
like that. It is overwhelming, yeah, and so I try
to bring some normalcy to it and say, hey, let's
step back, take a deep breath. It'll be fine. One
of the things you have to get past, though, is
the fear of addressing it.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah. I love this, and I love how this intersects
with people's career decisions, which is how I started my
business as a career transition coach, which I still do,
and so I'm always looking at that because my personal
belief is that work gives us a lot of gratification
and purpose and all kinds of things that help us
actually live longer.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Absolutely, and so that's why I think the third age
is so wonderful, because we were trained to believe that
it's a binary choice. When you hit your sixties, you
have to leave the workforce. And now you have this
third age where you can say no if you really
think about it and you're thoughtful and you do the
planning for it. And there's a lot of mindfulness and

(13:10):
intentionality that has to go into this that you know,
we weren't taught to think about. We're just taught. Ay,
when I get thirty years in and I'm a certain age,
you're gonna ging me to watch and I have to go.
That's not necessarily true. You now have this thirty twenty
thirty year bonus where you're wiser than you've ever been.
You have, whether you think you have a lot or
you think you have a little, you have more financial
resources usually than you've ever been, than you've ever had before,

(13:34):
and you have in a lot of cases. Unfortunately it's
not this case for everyone. You have no obligations to
anyone other than yourself, so you have this newfound freedom
you've never had and you can carve out whatever you
want to do.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Yeah, I might question that one a little, only because
I have a twenty four and twenty seven year old
and most people that I know are still helping to
support their country, so that that is true, and they're
all like a little astonished at that too, Like there's
not only is sixty five ingrained in our brains, but
there's something about I mean, I was independent when I

(14:09):
was eighteen, but kids today can't. I mean, economically, it doesn't.
The math doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
It doesn't when you were looking at the rate of
compensation over the last three decades has been much less
than the cost the rate inflation as it costs for
an education, so many of them have student loans. The
cost of housing has gone up at a higher rate
of inflation than compensation. So buying your first home, I have.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Can't run an apartment at that age on a pace salary.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
So I was speaking with a client this morning and
we were having this conversation. He said, you know, I
have a friend I want to introduce you to and
we started talking about what that French children do for professions.
These are high, you know, six figure jobs, you know,
high in terms of you know which your starting salaries

(14:57):
out in your thirties. I mean, so they're making they're
making very good money, but they live in markets like
California or New York and so this said the conversation
is about they cannot afford a home on their own.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
Right, So it is a stressful period because not only
do you worry about what your future is, but you're
hoping that they have a better future than the generations
before them. And it is very stressful.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Yeah. It is interesting because even for me, I mean,
I'm conscious of the fact that money that I'm spending
on them could be spent could be invested from my
own retirement, and I'm making a conscious choice to like,
you know, just push that. But I guess what you're
saying is, you know, if we have a longer opportunity
to work, too, then the whole thing just gets extended.

(15:40):
We take care of kids a little longer, and we
work a little longer, and maybe it works out if.

Speaker 1 (15:44):
You care to. But the nice thing is you have
the option to do that. And you know, you do
career coaching. But a lot of people don't realize that
you don't have to. You don't have to end a
career if you're enjoying it now. There are a number
of cases where you know, people their work brings them frustration,
anxiety and for you know, depression, things like that, and
you should action exit. But I think it's not until

(16:07):
you get to the end of a career that you
recognize the non financial benefits of work. You know, when
we start our careers, we're looking at we need work
for economic value. I got to pay my bills, right,
And then you get towards the end of it and
you realize that you know, work provides you know, three
other things, well, for no other reason, work gives you

(16:28):
something to aspire to who doesn't like getting accolades for
accomplishing something right. And so you know, if you're at
work and you know people recognize you for being good
at what you do, or you know, you are with
a company that has a stamp of access on it
and so you're known in your community for being associated

(16:49):
with that brand or whatever, that provides you a lot
of psychological uh fulfillment, right, And so one of the
challenges going in the retirement is how do I.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
Replace that, which it's a lot like being a stay
at home mom because I left fifteen years in corporate
to you know, be home with my kids for a
little while. And that was one of the big things
I noticed, is like, nobody notices what you're doing. Nobody.
I mean, you know, kids aren't supposed to appreciate, but
it's just it's very you're isolated and you lose all
that And I never even thought about it that much

(17:20):
until I lost it, and then I'm like absolutely.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
So it's probably twenty years later when you get a
great Mother's Day gift that you get acknowledged, but in
the moment, you don't, right.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
Right.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
The second one is socialization, right, I mean, regardless of
what you think about certain people at work, even you
know a lot of people. And I'm very fortunate I
have colleagues that I enjoy working with. I'm sure you
do too, But even if that is not your reality,
the colleagues that you don't enjoy working with gives you
something to laugh about when you get home, like, can
you believe.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
What Bob did again to day? Right?

Speaker 1 (17:50):
And so's there's a socialization as well as psychological success
that comes from working in a third thing. In addition
to economic resources, work provides you structure in your day.
My gosh, yes, yes, And I think a lot of
people don't understand that. You know, replacing that structure can
be very difficult.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
Really hard. I remember my dad going through this when
he retired, and he didn't retire until it was in
his seventies, but yeah, just he would tell me all
the time, gosh, you know, I wake up and the
next thing you know, it's four o'clock. And I'm like, well, Dad,
that's because you don't have any routine anymore.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
Absolutely, And then sometimes what I learned in my studies
was a lot of people envy don't envy their friends
in retirement now they do really recognize that they have
a freedom of time that they wish they could have
sometimes so wish I could take a longer vacation. But
what they recognize is a lot of their friends are

(18:43):
doing things to fill their day, but don't make them
feel fulfilled during their day. And so when we start
talking about this retirement transition, it is very important from
a money matter standpoint, simply because you can burn up
a lot of money trying to find yourself and try
to find something fulfilling to do. So I think back

(19:05):
to when I was starting my studies. I was trying
to figure out because we're living longer. So we say, okay,
now I got a period of time where people are
going to have twenty thirty years with opportunities and have
financial resources, and will give me an example of where
that's ever existed. It took a while to say, professional athletes.
So you retired from the game in your late twenties

(19:29):
or somewhere in your thirties, right, and you have twenty
to thirty years ahead of you, You have the financial
resources to do it, you have a network of friends.
But you see dysfunctional behavior occurrent, and today's retiree is
starting to look a lot like what we've seen interesting
and professional athletes, if you don't find a way to

(19:50):
replace your career identity with that new thing.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
That you aspire to.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
So we always need psychological success. And the more we
can identify what our retirement vision is and aspire to it,
the less we're going to spend burning up resources that
we've saved trying to figure it out.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
That's so very interesting.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
So a lot of people will go by that, you know,
the high sports car whatever, and they just can't find themselves.
We find that clients tend the stay into and within
their economic means when they've already established what that will
look like.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
Yeah, that's fascinating. I love this conversation. And it's all
still tricky to plan for, I think because you really
don't know what state you'll be in. I mean, for
I've talked to a lot of people who are making
more money in retirement. You know, they've gone either into
something entrepreneurial or they're consulting or there, and they're like,
I'm making more money now, working fewer hours and having

(20:50):
all the flexibility I want than I ever did in
my career. And then you know, but that's not for everybody,
but I do. I do see that as a nice
option that maybe our parents, her grandparents didn't have.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
So entrepreneurs are actually more successful after the age fifty
then earlier in life, and it's because of the wisdom
that comes along with it. And so I encourage people
to not necessarily take on the stress and entrepreneurship, but
if you can figure out what's a good side hustle,

(21:21):
which many people do, then I often have them come
back to me and say, Wow, this was better than
being at work and so earlier. One of my first
understandings of this is I noticed that the company that
I worked for, the people that were the happiest clients
were the people who came back and consulted for the company.
But they got to pick their terms. So they said,

(21:42):
you know, give me project work that last three months
because I don't want to be bothered in the summer.
Or give me project work that only goes three days
a week because I want to volunteer during the week.
That's kind of hard to do given where some of
our policy is in terms of employment law and things
like that. A lot of employers understand that this is
a good thing because you get people who in the

(22:07):
workforce who actually retire rescore very high on what it's
called generativity, and that is your desire to help younger
people along the way, so they get a lot of
good mentoring and coaching and able to keep people who
can hold institutional knowledge and pass it in a longer
period of time. However, employers are scared to make this

(22:29):
offer because if I ask you when you're going to retire,
I could get in trouble for agism. And employees are
afraid to make this offer. One many don't know that
you have never thought about making an offer, right, because
employment has always seemed like a unilateral contract. Right, the
employer has all the rights and you come in and
you follow the rules and you get a paycheck, versus
you raising your hand and say I want to do

(22:50):
something a little bit differently. So it's very hard to
get to this happy medium. But I've seen some people
make that negotiation and do very well.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
Yeah, yeah, that's so interesting. And what you bring up
is the point that you can initiate this. I mean
you might have to go to the previous employer and
talk about this, but yeah, interesting. So okay, so we
have this extra you know, set of years twenty thirty
years that we're now being gifted. So, so you know,

(23:22):
from a financial standpoint of course, we don't know what
our health is going to be. We don't know that
you know who may be taken care of so from
because you are a certified financial planner, So how you know,
how do we make these assumptions about what to expect?

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Well, I start with what you can't expect, okay, right,
because I think what people and when people get locked
in what they were, what they think they're supposed to do,
that's what causes a lot of fear. So a lot
of people look at themselves as maybe being financial failures
because I watch my grandfather do it, and he never

(24:01):
had any financial anxiety. I watched my grandmother do it.
She never had any financial anxiety. Well, your grandmother had
the benefit of a defined benefit plan which guaranteed them
a pension. They also lived in an economic time where
there was less inflation, name all of the above. And
so what I spent time doing is just going back

(24:21):
and explaining the history of retirement and how we got here,
and so retirement systems in the twentieth century. So we're
in early nineteen hundreds when we start going in the manufacturing.
This wasn't a lot of people go, well, my folks
had this great pension plan. I hope you understand, and
I want everybody to understand that that was kind of

(24:42):
an anomaly. It was never supposed to be a design
where they were supposed to live ten years longer than
they did and have all this financial safety net. Really,
when retirement systems were put in place, it was a
negotiation between management and labor management. Because it was assembly line,
it was really more physical work. Management wanted younger employees interesting,

(25:06):
and unions wanted older employees to be taken care of
and not to go on the poverty. And so this
is where you had this happy medium. And so when
people were retired, it was more like the company was
paying them to go away. And so what happened was
there was this negative connotation around retirement because it just
basically said you're old, yeah, and you don't have to

(25:29):
we're putting you out the pasture.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
And it's the word.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Retirement because the word tired is embedded in retirement.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
Oh boy.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah, And so a lot of people got this negativity
around it, felt this negativity around it. What it started
to become positive was around let's say about nineteen seventies
or whatever, when people started realizing that management had cut
this deal and gave them a lifetime benefit and guess what,
I'm living longer now, so I'm winning. And so started

(26:00):
to look at retirees and going, hey, John did it right,
or Sally did it right because she got her employer
to let her go at age fifty five or sixty
or whatever, and they got to pay her for the
rest of And so he was like, how do I
cut an eighty how do I cut a twenty year deal?

Speaker 2 (26:15):
Well, just to interrupt for a second, I mean maybe
because you've done more research on this, But were people
happy in their jobs then? Like my image of that
era is there were a few people who were, you know,
happy and fulfilled by their work, but most people were
doing work just you know, for the money and waiting

(26:37):
for the weekends. And I don't know, but that this
is in my head.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
I don't know there were people happy in their roles.
I think where people start to become unhappy is when
the environment came became more like we're pushing you out
because you're old. But if you go back and you
start looking at maybe nineteenth century retirement or sixteenth century retirement.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yeah. Yeah, So the first thought about it that the first.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Retirement plans were informal. It was basically, you had, you know,
a family that had a farm, and dad got old
and so he went to his sons and unfortunately it's
a shame, but women couldn't have property rights back then,
so he went to his sons instead of going to
his sons and his daughters, as we would like to
believe what happened to day and he would say, look,

(27:21):
you know what, I don't have the physical ability to
do the things I used to be around here do
around here. So as a trade off, I'm going to
deep my property to you and exchange you're going to
let me live here and you're going to take care
of me for the rest of my life. Those were
the first retirement plants.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
They were informal.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
However, what occurred then was because dad or your uncle
whoever was such, was very good at what they do.
There was a respect for the wisdom of elders in
the workplace. Yeah, okay, so you think about it. Benjamin
Franklin signed the Declaration and Independence when he was eighty seven.
There was upon a time was this great respect for

(27:58):
having older people in the world. What happened when we
got to the manufacturing era, we got into management science,
and so when management science came in the place, we
started timing how quickly people could do things, and so
wisdom had no value. There was just this playbook put
into the workplace and say either you can do A,
B and C or you can't, and therefore you're not valuable.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
Do you feel like that's sort of coming back with AI.
That kind of makes me.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
You know, I never thought about that, But that could
be scary. Yeah, yeah, maybe maybe not. The good news
is we're more of a service economy, so intellectual capital
means more. Yeah, so we'll have to wait and see. Okay,
So what I've said all of that to get to
the point where I think a lot of people are
entering into retirement now with expectations of people in the past,

(28:47):
which makes them feel like they maybe have underachieved in
a lot of cases. And the reality is none of
this is the same and what occurred in the past
was kind of a fluke for lack of a better word,
and we have to reset set a path for ourselves,
and that path will be unique to you and it
will be a great one if you address it.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Oh, I love that. That's such a positive way to
look at it, which I love. Yeah, And so I
mean one of my takeaways is that we have much
more control than we really realized, and we shouldn't be
kind of having voices in our head about you know,
the way the past was sort of you know, making
us feel like we're more limited than we are. Absolutely, yeah,

(29:30):
And so how do you address this with clients?

Speaker 1 (29:32):
First? You know, I'm amazed the number of people that
walk into my office. And so this is, you know,
you're in your fifties, you're fifty to sixty.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
Is that the typical age where you're seeing people come in.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
Research shows that that's when people start to think about retirement. Now,
we all should be planning for it as soon as
we enter into the workforce, but when it becomes a
reality and people start to address it is about age fifty.
And so it always amazes me because I think what happens,
and with some literature shows, is because you're not thinking.
You know, you're supposed to put something in your four

(30:04):
one K and everybody's not able to do that or whatever,
and so what happens is I get this fifty to
sixty year old group that normally comes in and they're going,
we're hoping this is all right. But they have never
said they have what they have. They've never sat down
and done a calculation, they've never done anything. They're just
like hoping it's not too late, right. And so when

(30:27):
I lead in my presentations to clients, I've learned that
I just tell them the punchline first, right, Why make
them sit through a forty minute presentation to get to
the end and they're sitting there pending the easels in
their sweating. So what I like to say is, as
soon as they walk in the door and look, we
looked at your situation, I think it's going to be fine.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
What if you don't think it's going to be fine,
then when you tell them.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
And that's a very good question, it's okay if it's
not going to be fine, because guess what, you're fifty
and now we have ten twenty years to plan for
this right to correct the course. I think where the
problem comes in is that people will hold onto this
fear anxiety because they won't come in for us a
devise to come up with a plan or strategy to

(31:09):
correct the course right right.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
And they don't come in. For what I mean, I
see people just being afraid, being ashamed, feeling like I
don't know what questions to ask, or if I do
ask questions, they're gonna look at me like I'm not smart?
I mean, is that are you finding other reasons for
them to not come in?

Speaker 1 (31:27):
So that is true, and so what I like to
tell people is to take you know, you're not abnormal.
And I think we confuse people who have a lot
of money as people who are financially savvy. There are
a lot of people that know how to make money
but really aren't very financially savvy. I may not even
be financially literacy.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
I'm really glad you brought that up, because they're not
necessarily even that smart. I mean, you know, I think
people think, oh, when you're you know, when you're really smart,
somehow that translates into being really great with money, which
there are people who who have a lot of money
and people who have no money. Who are you know,
I pay to use the word smart, but you know,

(32:07):
for lack of a better one, it doesn't those two
aren't correlated.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
Not at all. Not at all, and people think they are,
or they look at their neighbor across the street that
has a new car in the big house and all that,
and they're like, oh, they must be they must be
rolling in the dough. They must be really good at it.
Not necessarily the case, right, they have a lot of
they have a lot of resources, but that doesn't necessarily
know that they know mean that they know any more
about money than you do.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
Well, sometimes they don't even have the resources. I mean,
I live in Malibu. There's a lot of people with
a lot of nice cars who actually don't have any liquid.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
That's exact fund right. And so there was a study
a few years ago done by the Universe Chicago when
they came out with only about forty percent of Americans
are financially illiterate, and that was based on just five
basic questions such as do you know do you know
what compound interest is? Or you know, do you know
what you know how to calculate your mortgage payment or

(32:58):
something like that, just very very simple stuff. And so
what I try to explain to people is this is
not on you. It doesn't mean that you're not smart.
This is more of as a society. We took things
like economics out of schools and so at a very
early age, you just weren't introduced to it. And if
you came from and this is the interesting thing to me,

(33:19):
is it doesn't really matter what your financial background was
growing up, right, there were numbers of there were a
number of reasons not to have this discussion. So if
you were from an affluent family, maybe you didn't talk
about money because you didn't want your kids going out
telling the world what you had, right, Or you didn't
want people knowing that you had it or knowing that

(33:40):
they had it because you didn't know who would target
you because you were a fluent same cases, if you
didn't come from economic resources, you may not have talked
about money around the dinner table because it was the
source of a fight. There was scarcity, right, And so
what I find is it really doesn't matter the socioeconomic

(34:03):
place that you're in or come from. Yeah, this is
just a global.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Problem, which is huge because a lot of people do
look back and think, you know, I mean, they project
whatever their earlier life was onto their future, and so
they they think if they grew up a certain way
or they were you know, there was whatever, and some
of it's ingrained early on. And so if your parents
were fighting about money, there's a decent likelihood if you

(34:27):
stay unconscious about it, then you'll also be fighting with
your partner at some point. But as soon as you
have the recognition of what you just said, you're like
released from all of this.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
That's exactly right. I'm normal. I didn't do anything wrong.
And then you find a trusted advisor to work with
and to coach you at as well as you know,
there's some things you do on your own to increase
your literacy. So I tell people They say, well, you know,
what can I do and read? And I said, you
know what, if don't be afraid to go and read

(35:02):
children's books on money, if that's your starting point far
it doesn't. It doesn't you know that. You tell people
start at the most primary level that makes sense to you,
and you work your way up. Listen to podcasts like yours,
you know, read, go to seminars and things like that,
but work at a pace where that you can understand
and you feel comfortable with. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
Yeah, yeah, And I think the you know, the acknowledgment
that we do have this financial literacy problem. I don't
know if there are other countries where it's it's taught
better than it is here, but here we certainly have
a problem. And I think more people are talking about
it all the time. And you know, I've had people
on the show who are bringing it into schools. It's

(35:45):
still biased information. I feel like it depends on who's
delivering it, like the message, even the unsaid message, you know,
the things that you just well.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
And that's what I like. Yes, I'm a wealth advisor,
but I also try to separate myself off as a scholar, right.
I never want to come in and have this conversation
under the guise if I'm trying to sell a product.
And so that's why I appreciate the opportunity to be
on shows like this where we don't mention any of
that other stuff, just talk about the psychology around money,
and we try to My personal goal is to try

(36:18):
to change retirement right that make it make people understand
what they really have, view it as glass have full
more so than glass half empty.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
Yeah. So I love that, And so you're you're creating
a you know, a positive look at retirement. Where my
own bias is that I don't. I don't know. I
guess I'm just not dying to retire, So I don't
look at it that way.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
I sort of so, why why do you have to leave?

Speaker 2 (36:45):
You don't know.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
We've been we've been conditioned to believe that if you're
enjoying what you do, just keep doing it.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yeah. Yeah, And I guess as you as I think
about this more, as you're talking, you do start to
doubt yourself because you feel like you yourself are sort
of eaching out and maybe you're not as you know,
interesting or current. I mean, people have suggested that I,
you know, help teenagers or people in the young twenties,
and I always think, well, I look at how my

(37:11):
own kids would prefer to learn from like TikTokers, you know.
And so that's the mindset too, though, when you start
feeling like, who's gonna be listening to me if I'm
seventy five and they can listen to a thirty five
year old, you know, But that's that's another problem. But
it's just interesting that that comes up and.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
Not not true. So I did a show for someone
else a couple of weeks ago, and so I was
explaining some of the things that you can do if
you want to call it retirement. You don't have to
call it retirement. That people just don't think about. So,
for instance, we talked about entrepreneurship. Actually people over fifty
make the best entrepreneurs right, so why not give it

(37:51):
a try? As long as you're not putting your personal
nest day, I get risk, you know, I why not
just have why not go have a fun? So I
always tell people, you know, if you can make sure
that you do things such as if there's any business
rest have a conversation with an attorney and assurance agent
and you know, make sure that you have the appropriate
coverages and things like that, go ahead and try it.
But this is not supposed to put your nest take

(38:13):
at rest. But if you find that you have a
side hustle that you find funds. So for instance, I
have a friend who likes to take take photos, loves
to just go around the world with a backpack to
star hotel, comes back and so one day we go, Jim,
you know, why don't you selly? So anytime he comes back,
now he has an art show and so that becomes

(38:35):
that became his side hustle. Yeah, and you know so
how you do that. People don't understand that they can
join the Peace Corps. There's no age limit, and the
still if you want to see the world on somebody
else's dime as well as get health insurance pay for
it is hard work. But if you're adventurous that will right.

(38:55):
So the oldest person I can find a record was
eighty seven. Wow, that's a path that's available to you.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah. You know that brings up an interesting point too,
because I do think people don't necessarily know how to
separate that personal nest egg from you know, how do
you if you think you're going to retire and want
to go back to school or start a business or
do whatever, do you plan to pre a special savings

(39:22):
or something for those things, because otherwise you will be
dipping into.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
Yeah, I think you need to think about it. But
think of what we do every day is advisors. Is
risk management? A lot of people think is getting the
biggest return. No, I'm trying to get a nice return
for taking at least around of risk. The same thing
as you go into business. You're in business, you know,
you know I run a business. It's risk management, right,
and so people have to be comfortable thinking in those

(39:47):
terms and develop the confidence to feel good about it.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
So somebody is going along in their life and they
are fifty to fifty five and they come in and
talk to you about when should I. Maybe they do
like their work, so they're not dying to get out,
they're not dying to stay. They're sort of like just
trying to make the best financial decision as to when
to leave. How do you assess that?

Speaker 1 (40:11):
Well, you have to develop a vision, and then the
most important thing is if you have a partner, it
has to be a shared vision too.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
A lot of times people.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
Developed this vision and they have nothing to do with
other person's vision, and then you have a problem, right,
So it has to be a shared vision. It's so
the interesting thing I find about the retirement decision is,
and this is something that came out of my research
that I was You know, you may not find it fascinating.
So think back. You know, what is your earliest memory

(40:41):
of someone asking you what you want to be? When
you grew up? Oh, little little, So you're like four
or five years old when people start asking what you
want to be? And then you go to school, right,
and then all of a sudden you get like to
high school and there's a counselor that helps you think
about what you want to be, right, and then you
get to college and there's someone else. And then you
get to your career and then there's a mentor that
you're assigned to, a buddy or whatever in the work

(41:01):
environment who helps you make the decision to exit.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
Yeah, maybe your employer, that's about it.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
If it's a forced one. But there's never any planning,
really good point in terms of professional development after you
hit a certain age or stage. You share around their
forties to fifties, right, And so what I found was
the retirement decision creates a lot of anxiety because a
lot of people, for a lot of people, this is
the first independent career decision they've ever made.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
Wow, that's so interesting, that's so true.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
Think about it, like you know, if and so I
was interviewing a gentleman and he worked for the same
company for fifty years. In an interview, I said, you know,
why haven't you thought about retirement before? And he was like,
because no one's told me. And so he went and
explained to me throughout his career, every promotion, ever, gut,

(41:51):
every movie you ever made is because someone in the
corporation said, I think you would be great at this,
and so it's like, no one is coming told me
with the next thing to go to is they're telling
me I can retire from this, but they're not telling
me what to retire too. So he said, until you
know I can get some guidance and help and understanding
of what that next thing is, I'm just not going
to do anything. And so this to me. And then

(42:16):
I start to interview more people and asked a question.
You know, a lot of people were in careers that
it was never their intention to be in. They were, yeah,
you wake up one dancing when I'm an accountant. My
dad was an accountant. His dad was an accountan. So
I'm an accountant, you know. And so trying to find
vision around something, especially when your livelihood is tied to

(42:36):
is very hard. For a lot of people. It is
because they've never had to do it before, even.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
In my own business, because all entrepreneurs need a vision.
It's hard. It's hard to to get clear. You can
have a general, overall vague kind of vision, you know,
but when you really want to break it down so
that you could clearly see it in your mind's eye.
It's hard. It's hard to part of it's hard to

(43:02):
accept that you can want these things, right. So that's
a little bit of a right nuance there. But yeah,
so interesting. So how would you kind of describe your
role in this? So, I mean it almost sounds I mean,
I know you're a financial planner, but in a way
you see them sound like a coach too. I mean,

(43:22):
you know what I So.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
I go back to the conversation I was having with
my company in two thousand and eight and was not
getting a lot of receptivity. So I decided to do
this independently. And what I was trying to explain is
there's a psychology to this, and we all coach, right,
and that's that's just as important as us getting the
cash full calculat right correct. Right. I was out on

(43:46):
an island by myself at that point in time, and
then I think, like maybe like two three years ago now,
the CFP exam is eleven percent of psychology. Wow, that's
so we are evolving. Yeah, we are evolving, but it's
just gonna take a little bit of time. And I
think you probably ahead of the curve and your foresight
by having these topics out there, but we need to

(44:07):
get there.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting, and I feel like we are
getting there. A lot of times when I talk about it,
I almost feel like, oh, my gosh, I know you've
heard this before, like all these things from your childhood
that you are now reliving. But the reality is is
still news to a lot of people. I find it
is still news to a lot of people. And I
also think one of the things that we have to
be conscientious of is that even though we didn't have

(44:32):
these conversations growing up, there were non verbal cues given
to us for sure, okay and so, and these non
verbal cues won't be given to the next generation simply
because we do a lot of transactions electronically now. So
my parents may not have talked to me about advocating
for myself when it came to money, But if I

(44:53):
went to with my father to Sears to buy a television,
he would always go, Hey, you know, can you give
me a discount if I take the flo model as
to the one you're gonna give me in the box. Right.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
We don't see that anymore. We used to see our
parents sit at the table with the paycheck, I mean
with the check book and write our checks every day.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
My mom taught me how to write the checks, taught
me out of balance, the little registered thing. I remember
that vividly. It was an important discussion in her mind, right,
But now.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
We pay bills over an app now, so the non
verbal cue, we think that we lack financial literacy. Imagine
if you don't even get those non verbal cues growing
up anymore. So we really need to address this.

Speaker 2 (45:32):
Yeah, and there are some basics that I mean, even
my son is a great investor, like he's way better
than me and understanding the all the stuff. But he
asked me one day, you know, can I open a
second checking account? Like it was that basically he had
a checking accout. I didn't know he could have multiple
checking accounts. So it's funny what questions come up you

(45:53):
know that I don't know. I find this topic fascinating.
I love this, so I hate that we're getting close
to our time here. But how you know, can you
tell people how to find you, why to find you?
What state they you know? What? What where are they?

(46:14):
What questions are they asking? Well, if you want to.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
Learn a little bit more about my findings, I have
a book called exit from work. That can be found
on Amazon. Okay, that's one way. Also, you can reach
me at my firm Measure dot com. That's another way
as well. As I have a number of publications out
there where from time to time I will do a
quick article things like that you can all you can

(46:37):
find those on the Measure website.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
Is okay? And do you help people around the country
or is it?

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Yes, I have clients across the country, so always happy
to come to a geographic region for a discussion.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
Absolutely. And so if somebody comes to you, you know,
maybe they're in their forties, fifties, sixties. I mean, do
you have people coming to later in life? Well, starting
in those conversations absolutely okay. So how do you begin?
Do you do you lay out all some kind of
I mean you get all the data, and do you
lay out a financial plan with them?

Speaker 1 (47:08):
Yeah, so we have a conversation, but you know, I
like to start the first conversation, which is what we
call discovery, and that is for me to discover. And
a lot of people will say I just want to
know how to put together a balance sheet for me. No,
I really want to know what you likes, your dislikes,
are with Your first experience with money is you know,
I need to understand how to coach you. Right, It's
just like playing a sport. Some people respond for the

(47:30):
to the coach. It's a yellowshcrammer. Some people respond to
the coach better that you know. Exercise empathy. You know,
you have to know where people's sensitivities are. The last
thing I want to do is feel like the person
that is crushing your dream right, simply because I can't
communicate in the most effective style. Right. So for instance,
like had a friend called me six months ago and

(47:51):
it's just like, you got to be my advisor. I can't,
And so I read with her advisor put through and
I said, you know what, this is a rock sided plan.
Everything you're eyeser has told you to do. You know,
I don't disagree with any of it. And she says, yes.
But the relationship when we get together, the way he
makes me feel so interesting, the way he makes me feel,

(48:11):
the way I feel like I'm being shamed every time
we talk.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
Oh my gosh. That comes up so often, and it's like,
why does the industry don't get it? Like this isn't
working for you?

Speaker 1 (48:22):
So my thing is I want to know you personally
as well, so I can help you, help you flourish.
And so and so one of my clients who's also
a friend, went through a divorce, and so she's like,
my husband handled everything, and you know, I need to
get financially literate. And we start. So we were finishing

(48:42):
after I think our first year together, and I said,
how do you feel? She says, I feel better? And
I said that's not good enough. I want you to
feel empowered. Yeah, right, that's great. Yeah. So basically we're
going to take basic steps depending on where you are.
Like I said, if it's as simplest you just need
to read children's books, we'll get you there, right, But
I want you to feel empowered. There's nothing better than

(49:04):
having financial self efficacy. A lot of people feel as
though I'm just going to give you the answer and
you should be happy with that. No, I want you
to feel empower And a lot of people feel like
if I empower you, then you won't need me anymore.
I don't think that's the case. I think if I
empower you appreciate me more.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
Right, I totally agree. And there's always I mean, life
is complicated these days, so there are always going to
be new things that come up, and you're always going
to need your financial team.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
Yes, right, so you know what people say, Hey, you
know what should I be doing? Listen to the podcast?
Thank you? Right, you know, just read that. I'm not
threatened by that in any way. At the end of
the day, what we're trying to do is bring up
literacy skills and make people feel empowered.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
Yeah. Yeah, and that's just the beginning. I mean, once
you get those literacy skills down, then you can get
interested in whatever whatever areas of finance. Maybe you want
to learn them mess maybe you want to buy real estate,
maybe right now, but you really, unless you have that
foundational understan standing of things, that's not going to go
well either from I to end on that, I don't
want I will not end on that anyway. Well, this

(50:09):
has been great, Thank you, And I think it's so
interesting that we really don't get help like you when
you explain that about everybody coaching us along until we
get to this point. And I just think that's brilliant
and it's so important for people to recognize that and
talk to somebody and get a little in that. So yeah, well,
thank you for being here, Thank you for coming into

(50:31):
the studio and having this great discussion. And again the
name of your book, Exit from Work. Thank You'll put
that in the show notes and yeah, that sounds great.
I'll be reading that as well. Yeah, these topics are interesting.
You know, we don't give them enough thought. I think
one real benefit of shows like this or everybody's podcasts

(50:53):
is that instead of just sort of glossing over these big,
you know, aspects of life, we're talking about them and
then people realize, oh, this is something that I need
to give us Rod too, that's right. So yeah, I
kind of love the podcast world for that. Okay, well again,
thank you, thank you for the work you do, thank
you for being here, and thank you audience for listening

(51:16):
to the show. We love it when you show up
for the money and new show. And we are here
every week. So you can subscribe on the Limit Free
Life YouTube channel. You can find us on all the
podcast platforms. So if you like the show, if you
know somebody who needs to hear this great information on retirement,
please share the show with them and if you will
rate and review the show, then we can have more

(51:37):
wonderful guests like doctor Greg Lunsford on the show with us,
so thank you so much. We'll see you next week.

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EP 180: Designing Your Third Age – Retirement Planning with Dr. Gregg Lunceford

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}EP 180: Designing Your Third Age – Retirement Planning with Dr. Gregg Lunceford