November 1, 2025 • 44 mins
In this episode of Retirement Reality, meet Donovan, a 55-year-old retiree who turned an unexpected career exit into an opportunity for freedom, reflection, and new purpose. Donovan shares how one defining word, choice, shaped his journey before, during, and after retirement.
From years of disciplined saving and intentional living to facing an unplanned exit from corporate life, Donovan opens up about how preparation, mindset, and adaptability transformed what could have been a setback into a second act filled with meaning. He and James discuss the emotional and psychological sides of retirement: identity shifts, finding purpose, redefining relationships, and learning to spend after decades of saving.
This conversation dives into the real retirement journey: the freedom it brings, the fears it stirs, and the wisdom that comes from embracing both. Whether you're approaching retirement or simply rethinking your next chapter, Donovan’s story will challenge you to see this season as an opportunity — not an ending.
Key Themes:
The power of choice in financial and life planning
Transitioning from career identity to personal purpose
Managing the emotional and psychological side of retirement
Finding meaning, health, and community in life after work
Overcoming the fear of spending after years of saving
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Donovan is not a client of Root Financial Partners, LLC and received no compensation for participating in this video. His statements reflect his own opinions and experience and are not indicative of any specific client’s experience and are not a guarantee of results. No cash or non-cash compensation was provided, and no material conflicts are known.
Advisory services are offered through Root Financial Partners, LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. This content is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered personalized investment, tax, or legal advice. Viewing this content does not create an advisory relationship. We do not provide tax preparation or legal services. Always consult an investment, tax or legal professional regarding your specific situation.
The strategies, case studies, and examples discussed may not be suitable for everyone. They are hypothetical and for illustrative and educational purposes only. They do not reflect actual client results and are not guarantees of future performance. All investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principal.
Comments reflect the views of individual users and do not necessarily represent the views of Root Financial. They are not verified, may not be accurate, and should not be considered testimonials or endorsements
Participation in the Retirement Planning Academy or Early Retirement Academy does not create an advisory relationship with Root Financial. These programs are educational in nature and are not a substitute for personalized financial advice. Advisory services are offered only under a written agreement with Root Financial.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Do you struggle with that at all when the last
position was eliminated?
I know you're still working,you're still you still have a
position, but was there anystruggle with feeling like you
lost a piece of your identity?
SPEAKER_01 (00:09):
Absolutely.
I and and it's absolutelynatural to go through.
And even though I knew it wasgoing to happen, when it does
happen and you no longer getthose those calls or those
invitations, all of that goesaway.
If that was your sole identityand you had no other inputs and
way to feel good about yourself,I can imagine that somebody like
(00:29):
that would struggle.
SPEAKER_00 (00:30):
When Donovan came back from vacation and realized
that his role was eliminated, hewas financially ready, but the
real work was psychological.
Identity, purpose, and learninghow to spend after a lifetime of
saving were the real challengesthat Donovan faced.
In today's episode, we breakdown the four core buckets of
retirement and we learn how totest retirement before you dive
right in.
If you're on the edge ofretiring but fear what's next,
(00:51):
stay tuned.
This episode is for you.
Hi, Donovan.
Thank you for joining me on thisepisode of Retirement Reality.
I'm curious, if you could chooseone word to describe your
retirement so far, what wouldthat word be?
SPEAKER_01 (01:04):
Choice.
Choice would be the definingelement for my retirement
journey.
It was the ability to make thechoice at the time.
And the choices that I madeearlier on in my career and in
my life plan, my financial plan,helped me be able to make that
choice when the time came.
SPEAKER_00 (01:26):
I love that.
I'm going to come right back tothat.
Before I do, how long have youbeen retired at this point?
SPEAKER_01 (01:31):
I guess technically it would just be a little bit
over a year.
And I kind of call itsemi-retired because I'm not
fully removed from theprofessional life that I used to
have.
I still do a little bit ofconsulting, both individual
private coaching and thenbusiness consulting, and some
instructional work through oneof our post-secondary
(01:52):
institutions on management andleadership and business.
Yeah.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (01:57):
And that right there, retirement has different
meanings for different people.
And retirement is not trueretirement in the purest sense
of the word as we're talkingabout it.
But going back to choice, as youmentioned, can you tell me more
about that or maybe even justyour journey leading up to
retirement and how choice becamethe word that you would use to
define that journey?
SPEAKER_01 (02:14):
Well, it all everything comes down to the
choices that you make in life.
If you choose to have a certainjob versus another, and that was
one of the earliest choices thatI had to make.
Was I going to work at Xerox, abig corporate conglomerate, or
was I going to go with a smallerprivate company?
Throughout life, you have tomake choices.
(02:35):
One of the most significant,both from a financial
perspective and a lifeperspective, is who do you
choose to marry?
That can have a huge impact.
Then choices about yourfinances.
Do you choose to save your moneyor spend your money?
Do you choose to buy a biggerhouse or a vacation property?
Do you choose a vacationproperty or multiple vacations?
(02:58):
Do you choose multiple vacationsor a bigger car?
Or do you choose a bigger car orhome renovations?
It's all about choice.
Those choices have consequences.
So you have to understand theimplication of the choices that
you make.
And for myself, I made certaingood choices throughout my life
that helped me prepare.
(03:19):
And by no means was I, you know,winning the lottery or getting
an inheritance from anybody.
It was just choices tocontinually save a little bit at
a time, always with that goal ofbeing able to provide myself the
choice when I thought it mighthappen.
And sure enough, it did.
And I was able to make thechoice to retire or at least try
(03:41):
retirement for a bit.
SPEAKER_00 (03:43):
I love it.
And that choice piece, how doyou what would you, I guess I
should say, define as some ofthose key choices that you made
along the way that prepared youfor where you are right now?
SPEAKER_01 (03:56):
Well, I know that most of the viewers are
concerned around the financialside.
So the choice to start savingearly, absolutely fundamental.
And I was very much an earlysaver in my life.
But even once you start yourprofessional career, just saving
a little bit and having gonethrough university and getting a
(04:18):
finance degree, never using itactually in my professional
life, other than because of theroles that I had.
But I was aware of the timevalue of money and the
importance of compounding.
So by putting away a little bitat a time each and every month,
each and every year, andcontinually doing that,
especially early on, and leavingit there so that it could
(04:39):
compound has an astronomicaleffect that I don't think most
people fully comprehend andsometimes miss out on if they
don't start saving until they'rein their 30s or 40s or heaven
forbid your 50s.
That becomes very, verydifficult.
So from a financial perspective,that would have been one of the
biggest choices to make.
(05:00):
And along with that, it would beliving within your means, right?
In order to save a little, youhave to live within your means.
You can't spend every dime thatyou have or every dime that you
might have in the future onstuff today if you're thinking
about what you want your life tobe like tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00 (05:16):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yes, absolutely.
I'm going to come back to thatin a little bit because there's
a couple more questions I havewith that.
But you have been retired forone year now, is that correct?
Semi-retired for one year now.
I know you're still teaching.
Yeah, just a little bit over ayear.
Yeah.
Will you walk us through thattransition of a year ago?
Where were you?
What was your position?
And how does that differ fromwhat you're doing today?
SPEAKER_01 (05:36):
Yeah, so I'll actually go back even a little
bit before uh the the event,before my exit.
Um I had been thinking aboutwhat a retirement might be like
and just mentally trying tounderstand what any kind of a
transition would be.
Would it be full stop?
And I knew that at that point inmy life, I was 55 at the time,
(05:59):
that a full stop was probablynot going to be for me.
I've I've always had fairlyintense jobs that require more
than your standard work week uhand a lot of uh emotional and
physical investment in time.
So I knew I was probably goingto do something.
What was that going to be?
I didn't know.
So I started exploring somealternatives.
(06:22):
One of them happened to be uh aninstructor type role because we
were putting our uh leadershipand management teams through a
management course.
And I got exposed to one of theinstructors.
And during that course, I askedthem the question.
I said, this is a pretty cooljob.
I would I'd be interested indoing this.
(06:42):
How would I potentially even getconnected or linked in to this?
And she introduced me to therecruiting uh coordinator.
We had a couple of discussions,um, sounded interesting.
I wasn't ready yet because I hada full-time job.
Then I went on vacation toEurope with the family, came
(07:03):
back, and on that Monday, when Iwas coming back to work, I was
fully prepared to come in andstart talking about the next
quarter and our plans and whatwe're going to do and how I
might be able to leverage thisinstructional element to help
our business.
And it was at that point on theMonday morning I was exited.
So it was like, wow, okay.
Well, now I have a whole bunchof choices I can make.
(07:25):
Uh, do I choose to go pursueanother job?
Do I choose to sign on with thisinstitution and do some teaching
and coaching?
So I I had been thinking aboutit prior to that.
And this was an idealopportunity.
I was at a financial point in mylife where I could make that
choice.
(07:46):
And so I thought, well, whenwhen am I ever going to have
this opportunity again?
So I agreed to sign on with thewith the education institution
and start the instructiontraining and get certified to do
all the things I needed to dothere.
That took way longer than Ithought.
That was like a six, seven-monthjourney.
Academia is very different thanthe corporate world.
(08:08):
But uh through that time, itgave me the opportunity to just
reflect on what I wanted, whatwas important, and really kind
of experience that retirementphase while still having a toe
in for what might be a potentialfuture career, or as I call it,
an encore career.
And I made the decision to signon, and then I started doing a
(08:30):
little bit of consulting on theside, probably the total
equivalent of a day, a week, uh,you know, three, four, five days
a month kind of a thing.
So it really was almost allretirement versus, you know, any
kind of a regular part-time orconsulting type job.
And now uh I'm at that pointwhere I'm trying to, again, make
(08:54):
the decision or the choice, howmuch more do I want to do?
Because there's still there'sstill lots in the tank yet.
Uh and I believe I have thatopportunity to now to give back
to some of the future leaders.
So that's where my focus is ishow many people can I help
become that next generation ofleader and share some of my own
(09:15):
experiences.
So whether that's throughindividual consulting, through
the teaching aspect, orpotentially public speaking, I'm
going to be I'm going to beevaluating those different
choices that I can make.
SPEAKER_00 (09:26):
That theme is showing up again and again, that
that choice.
I had a similar experiencebefore starting Root Financial
of being exited from a priorcompany.
And in retrospect, one of thebest things that ever happened.
What you mentioned, that chanceto step back and reflect on what
choice do I want to make goingforward and what's going to be
best for uh the long term,invaluable in retrospect.
(09:47):
But no, for me at least, it wasa very scary time.
It was a different phase of mylife, but very scary time
because that wasn't the choice Ihad intentionally made at the
time it was made for me.
It wasn't the path I saw formyself.
It was completely different.
How did that feel?
So that Monday morning, you comeback, you're back from vacation,
you've got plans of what's goingto happen.
(10:08):
How how did you do during thatwhen you received that news?
SPEAKER_01 (10:13):
Well, and I've been through this before.
It's just the nature of thecareer that I've had.
Um, and it was actually one ofthe things we have a we had a
whiteboard in the office wherewe would write down quotes,
inspirational quotes, and somefunny, silly quotes.
And one of the things I wrote onthat board was uh change is
inevitable and it's constant.
Sometimes you choose the change,and sometimes change is chosen
(10:37):
for you or thrust upon you.
We all have then the choice ofhow we're going to deal with
that change.
So when I was exited on thatMonday morning, I have the
choice of how I'm going toreact.
Uh I chose to look at it as anopportunity because I had been
through this before.
So I knew that I was financiallyokay.
(10:58):
That was not going to be aproblem.
It's not like I got a great big,you know, golden handshake exit
package or anything like that.
That's absolutely not the case.
So everything was going to beincumbent on me, having managed
my finances in the past, to beable to support our future.
But because I had contacts inthe industry, because I had
(11:19):
previously done some thinkingabout this, I was mentally and
emotionally in a better placethan I would have been if I had
not given it any thoughtwhatsoever and was simply hit in
the face with the exit brick.
Um and that does happen topeople.
And I've been on both sides ofthat equation where I've had to
give other people the news.
And it's never easy.
(11:40):
And you always try to empathizewith the person and what they're
feeling.
Uh, in some of the biggerorganizations I was with, we had
transition coordinators and andwe had supports for them.
Uh within this smaller company Iwas previously at, there's
there's none of that.
So you're you're on your own.
But knowing that I had beenthrough this before and you come
out okay, you have thatexperience.
(12:01):
So for me, it was just a choiceof now what do I want to do?
Do I want all of this free timeon my own or do I want to
continue working?
And if I continue work, in whatcapacity and for what purpose?
And for me now, it's all aboutdoing the things that I enjoy
doing the most and focusing onthose and the impact I can have
(12:23):
on others to help make thembetter.
Because my my career runway isvery, very short at this
particular point in time.
But some of the people that Inow get the opportunity to work
with, they're just beginning.
They're in their early 20s,they're wide-eyed, they're
excited, they're in their 30s,they're just you know exploring
the middle management roles.
Or some of them are at thatpoint in their career where
they're making big investmentsin small businesses and they
(12:45):
want that experience about howdo you navigate this whole
startup world.
And I'm excited about being ableto help on that, on that end of
it, but not full time.
I'm probably gonna do that, youknow, a day or two, three days a
week kind of a thing.
It it depends on the engagement.
If it interests me and excitesme, then I'll choose to do it.
SPEAKER_00 (13:04):
Yeah.
So there was a level when this,when you were exited, it was not
you being caught flat-footed of,oh my goodness, what the heck is
next?
It sounds like there had beensome level of intention of what
do I want my future to looklike?
What is next for me, regardlessof that happening?
How much of life right now lookslike what you thought it might
(13:24):
look like a couple years ago,not necessarily the time frame,
but what you thought you'd bedoing after that position?
SPEAKER_01 (13:31):
Remarkably, it's it's quite similar to what I had
envisioned.
Um a little bit different, likelike the instructional piece is
taking longer to get going tothe degree that I thought it
would.
But that's simply my not knowinguh the world of academia and how
long it takes to go throughcertain certifications and
(13:51):
programs uh that they have.
Uh but the rest of life haspretty much laid out the way
that I had anticipated, in partbecause I had a lot of
opportunity to discuss it withfriends who've been through it
before.
And that's that's one of therecommendations I make to
anybody thinking about this isto speak with others who are
(14:12):
either at a similar position toyou or are slightly ahead of you
in that life uh plan, that lifepath, and see what they went
through.
Um, one of the questions I usedto ask a couple of my golf
buddies and a few others is whatwould you tell your five-year or
10-year younger self?
What advice would you give you?
(14:32):
And if there's anything, whatwould you change uh so that you
could tell your five-year,10-year younger self to go and
do this better?
And their insights were veryhelpful.
So that helped me mentallyprepare uh and get ready, just
in case, because you know, youyou never know what's gonna
happen in life.
So what were those insights,Donovan?
There were probably three realbig ones.
(14:54):
Uh, one that I remember verywell was around health.
Um, a number of people that Ispoke to mentioned that they
would have taken better care oftheir bodies because at 60, 65,
things just, you know, theystart, they start breaking down
a lot faster and it takes longerto recover uh than it ever did
before.
So that's one thing I've alwaysbeen healthy, I've always
(15:14):
exercised.
So I I thought I kind of hadthat one covered off, um, but
someone gave me some advice.
They said, you like to do theseSpartan races and things like
that.
Maybe you want to dial that backbecause the last thing you want
to do is have something reallyget hurt, and then you can't do
all the things that you love.
And I was like, huh.
You know what?
That's that's not a that's not abad piece of advice.
(15:36):
I don't need to, you know, do300 pounds on the squat rack.
You know what?
Dialing that back and taking iteasy and respecting the body is
important.
So so health was number one.
Uh the second one was around uhyour friendship circle, your
your relationships.
And and there's kind of fourbuckets that I always think of.
It's finances, health,relationships, and purpose.
(16:02):
So those four buckets werethings that I contemplated.
And the purpose one wassomething that was told to me by
uh it was a guy that I wasgolfing with at the time, just
happened to pair up.
He's 80 years old or 80, 84years old.
Still golfing, still walking,pulling his cart.
And so he's obviously in goodhealthy uh state.
But my question to him was, whatwould you tell yourself
(16:22):
differently?
And he goes, make sure thatyou're retiring to something,
that you have something in mindas to what you want to do,
whether it's a hobby orpart-time volunteering or
part-time work, whatever it is.
Have a purpose.
And for me, that's why I wasalways looking ahead as to,
okay, well, what would I do if?
And luckily, I had I had a fewoptions as to what to do if and
(16:44):
when something happened, becausewhen it did, then I was able to
make that choice a little biteasier.
SPEAKER_00 (16:49):
Yeah.
Um, when I speak with peoplelike you, Donovan, who strike me
as very driven, very intentionalwhat you're doing.
You start saving early,investing early, you do well in
your career, you have high-levelpositions.
Not always, but for a lot ofthose types of people, that work
becomes a big part of purpose ora big part of identity.
(17:10):
Absolutely.
You struggle with that at allwhen the last position was
eliminated.
I know you're still working,you're still have a position,
but was there any struggle withfeeling like you lost a piece of
your identity?
SPEAKER_01 (17:21):
Absolutely.
I and it's absolutely natural togo through.
And even though I knew it wasgoing to happen, when it does
happen and you no longer getthose calls or those
invitations, um, you know,throughout the last 20 years of
my working career, I've been ata position of leadership and
people look to you for eitherguidance, um, decision making,
(17:44):
uh, whether it's clients,internal people, partners.
And when you no longer areworking in that kind of a role,
all of that goes away.
So if that was your soleidentity and you had no other
inputs and way to feel goodabout yourself, I can imagine
that somebody like that wouldstruggle.
(18:05):
And I assume that that's why alot of people stick in their
jobs until they're 65, 70, andsometimes even beyond.
Entrepreneurs, you know, they'llsay because they don't know
anything else.
This is all that they've done intheir life, and their entire
identity is wrapped up in that.
Um I've been through a number ofdifferent organizations.
So for me, my identity was neverabout a particular job.
(18:29):
It was about the role that Iplayed in that job and the
influence I had on other people.
But when that goes away, uhyeah, you you at some point in
time you're going to, you'regonna miss it.
Your ego takes a hit.
And I had a friend who was thepresident of a uh of a fairly
large company.
And when he stepped away fromthat role, uh, it was something
(18:50):
that he struggled with.
It was something that hementioned that, you know, he's
not done.
He needs to do one more thing,what just one more thing.
And I suppose that that's anatural reaction.
It's then a question of how doyou how do you find that next
purpose that's going to give youthat both emotional and let's be
honest, a little bit of an egopat on the back for, hey, yeah,
(19:13):
you're still valuable.
SPEAKER_00 (19:14):
You're you still matter to people.
How have you filled that?
I know you're teaching now.
I know you're still doingthings, even looking at on
LinkedIn.
There's a lot that you're doing,just coaching the world, so to
speak, not even just one-on-one.
Yeah.
What have you done to fill thatpurpose piece?
SPEAKER_01 (19:31):
Well, it it does change.
So again, it's not nowspecifically, you know, 10
people in a company or 20 peoplein a company or 100 people in a
company.
It's the ability now to have avoice to a broader community of
people.
Um, if you were a financialplanner or are a financial
planner and you're working with100 clients or 200 clients,
that's your your focus.
(19:52):
But through the power of the weband YouTube, you can now have
influence and impact on maybe athousand people or 10,000 people
at a time.
So for me, uh finding that newvoice and being able to say,
okay, well, this is stillvaluable.
I can still have an opinion onthings, I can still provide
perspective and insights andguidance, but I'm going to do
(20:15):
that now in a different way.
So I may do it through a littlebit of instruction, through some
coaching and some businessconsulting.
Uh, maybe in the future I'll doit through some uh professional
public speaking.
We'll we'll see where thatleads.
Uh, but again, it's all aboutfinding finding that next
purpose in your life and notletting the previous job define
(20:36):
you because those those thosecan be taken away from you at
any point in time, whether it'syour choice, somebody else's
choice, a choice of health,economics, uh you really don't
have control over all of thosesituations.
SPEAKER_00 (20:50):
Yeah.
Yes, it's very much fleeting.
Um, so I I imagine, Donovan, inyour experience, you've had
different positions, you've gonethrough different transitions,
you've gone through scary thingsand come out the other side,
you've done hard things and comeout the other side.
Sometimes things that are hardfor people, I could sit here and
say, Donovan, make thisdecision.
(21:12):
I can see it objectively becauseI'm not you.
I'm not emotionally invested.
You can do the same thing.
I'm sure there's plenty ofpeople you've worked with or
coached or seen where you'resaying, I've gone through this
transition, I've been through itbefore, I've done these things.
Are there people you can thinkof without naming names, but are
there people that you can thinkof that are stuck in this
hamster wheel of I can't stepaway from work because I'll lose
(21:34):
my purpose, or I can't step awaybecause I don't know how to make
the next choice.
Is there someone you can thinkof and you could what's holding
them back, if so?
SPEAKER_01 (21:43):
For each individual, I'm sure it's a little bit
personal, and and sometimespeople may not even know.
They just fear is one of thebiggest things.
Uh fear of the unknown is is oneof the biggest fears that people
can have, next to publicspeaking.
Um the fear of will I haveenough, enough money, um, enough
to do to fill my time.
(22:04):
And there are a few people thatI know that uh for them, um
that's probably a significantfear or or apprehension, uh
barrier, challenge, whatever youwant to call it.
Uh how they deal with it and howthey overcome it, sometimes you
just have to take the leap.
And and it's one of the thingsthat that that I've talked about
(22:26):
in the past when doing somecoaching is you sometimes you
just have to take a shot.
And for me, when when ithappened, when when the exit
happened with me, I had to dothat self-reflection and go,
okay, if I'm going to do this,let's give it a try.
Let let's let's try.
Let's give it a shot.
For those other people, theythey may need much more
(22:48):
reassurance or guidance throughthat.
And whether that's uh maybe aone-on-one conversations with
friends, or maybe it's a littlebit more reassurance from their
financial planner that, yeah,you're gonna be okay.
Um, I had to do that myself.
I had to go and make sure andrun the numbers 10 different
ways to make sure that we weregoing to be okay if we did it
this way.
It's like, okay, once once thatlittle check box is covered,
(23:12):
then then the other questionsstart to come into play.
Not that the finance piece evergoes away, but um the other ones
become what you then turn to ifthe finance piece is got a check
mark beside it.
SPEAKER_00 (23:25):
Yeah.
What do those financial concernsfeel like?
So you've checked the boxes, yourun the numbers.
You mentioned before, do youstarted early, you saved, I'm
sure you were well positionedfinancially to do so.
Do those financial fears eversubside, or is there always a
little bit of that that goesback?
SPEAKER_01 (23:42):
Yeah, I I hope they subside because I still have
them, um, even though I've runthe numbers, and my financial
planner has run the numbers, andI've used tools like Honest Math
to run the numbers.
I've got in my own spreadsheet,like it's it's huge, and I've
got multiple scenarios in there.
Spending this much more, thatmuch more over this period of
time.
And I still have a really hardtime.
(24:03):
One of the hardest things isstarting to pull money out when
all you've ever done your entirelife is put money in to save
money.
I've been saving money for thissince I was 12.
I've been calculating compoundinterest on GICs when I was 12.
How much am I going to havehere, here, and here, be able to
buy a house, then the housegoes.
And now I still have a troublebeing comfortable to be pulling
(24:27):
money out.
So I've I've had to kick myselfin the butt a little bit and
start withdrawing a little bit.
Even though I may notnecessarily need it, I'm trying
to condition myself to the factthat the number in the bank
account might start to go down alittle bit just to get used to
it.
And again, it's it's a very safeamount, but it's something.
(24:52):
And I I expect that as I getused to it, that number will
increase as maybe my desire toum, you know, coach and teach
you know becomes less in fiveyears or ten years or whatever
it is.
It'll have to be, yeah.
But then I'll at least becomfortable pulling more out
over time.
SPEAKER_00 (25:08):
Well, I like the way that you framed that.
Of you're you're approaching itlike it's a new skill that
you're learning because it is anew skill that you're learning,
and you're starting small andthen you're gonna ramp up from
there.
Any feedback that you wouldoffer to people who are in that
same struggle or that samemindset, or do you feel like
you're still figuring it outtoo, of just trying to learn it?
SPEAKER_01 (25:26):
I I I mean, I'm still trying to figure out what
the right number is.
And I'm very conservative bynature.
So as I've done the planning,I'm looking at these first
couple of years as a test,right?
Um, okay, well, if I do X andpull out Y, where do I end up at
the end of the year?
Am I, you know, a little bitequal or a little bit ahead of
(25:47):
where I thought I might be orwhere my financial planner
thought I might be?
And so far, so good.
So year one, check, we're safe,it's good.
You know, the markets havesuccess, you know, uh luckily
done quite well this year, so sothat helps.
Uh, year two, you know, will bedifferent than year one.
Uh, we have some, you know, somehome renovations and some plans
(26:08):
to to upgrade some things.
Uh, that's just life.
And now without a big paycheckcoming in on a regular basis,
you have to pull that fromretirement savings.
And it's like, oh my goodness,like I'm gonna pull$10,000 to go
fix the roof and the driveway.
That's what I had to do thisyear.
Uh wow, that hurts because Ican't just pay that off like I
normally would have.
(26:29):
Okay.
Well, we'll get used to that,but we won't do it all at once.
And then next year we'll do thenext thing and then the next
thing and the next thing.
So just little bit by littlebit.
SPEAKER_00 (26:41):
I would imagine that as you projected this out,
you're making projections basedon an assumed spending rate of
what are we going to bespending?
Do we have enough on ourportfolio to support that?
Relative to what you thoughtspending might look like, has it
been pretty close?
Have you spent more?
Has it been less?
SPEAKER_01 (27:00):
Yeah, for me, because I had been doing a
budget and revising that budgeton you know, fixed versus
variable costs, you know, wants,like a like a big vacation
versus needs, paying themortgage, paying, you know,
utilities and all that kind ofstuff, my budget was fairly
close.
So uh in retirement, I'm quiteclose to what I had estimated
(27:21):
from a budgeting perspective,with a little bit of wiggle
room.
And with that little bit ofwiggle room, I'm using that for
some of those special houseprojects.
I would expect that if things gothe way that I plan, I probably
won't be spending as much as Iwas when I was fully working,
because I, you know, we may notneed uh, you know, two vehicles.
(27:44):
If if there's two of us in thehousehold and we have two
vehicles and we really don'tdrive that many places anymore.
If I'm not driving to work allthe time, then maybe one of
those goes away.
So that expense might reduce.
We've already been on a numberof vacations in our lives.
So uh that vacation budget isn'tquite the same.
And our our daughter who's inuniversity, that cost will go
(28:05):
away in a few years.
So all of that will will adjustover time.
Um I'm hoping to have morewiggle room.
I I like, I'm just again, I'mconservative.
I like to have more wiggle roomthan than just being right tight
to the budget.
Spend within your means.
That was always the model.
Yeah.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (28:23):
Very good.
I'm gonna um pivot a little bitor switch gears a little bit.
Uh, a lot of people on thisshow, as we've asked, just
what's it been like?
You know, I was sharing with youbefore we started recording that
the journey to retirement sooften starts with understanding,
well, what's my number?
How much do I need to save?
Where do I need to save?
How much can I pull out?
And then people either get closeto achieving that or they
achieve that and realize, oh,there's a completely different
(28:45):
side of this, the psychologicalside, the emotional side.
And sometimes when people aren'tprepared for that, people have
shared challenges withdepression, people have shared
challenges with loneliness,people have shared challenges
with all kinds of things theyjust weren't prepared for.
Have you have there been anyunexpected challenges that you
faced either on the journey toretirement or even in
(29:08):
quote-unquote partialretirement?
SPEAKER_01 (29:10):
Unexpected or expected.
Yeah, I mean, the the expectedones were the difficulty around,
you know, going from a saver toa spender.
The expected difficulty wasaround that, you know, that lack
of purpose and structure andrigor in a particular day, and
the the little bit of an youknow pat on the back that comes
with um people saying, thank youfor your help on this or that or
(29:33):
whatever it is in the workworld.
So that gap was expected, yet atthe same time, you know, uh
dealing with it mentally andgoing, okay, you're you're not
the guy anymore.
No, nobody, nobody cares.
What do you think?
Your opinion doesn't matterbecause you're not part of the
company anymore.
You don't get the invites to youknow whatever social event or
(29:54):
sporting event.
I I don't get any hockey invitesanymore, I don't get any of the
golf invites that I used to.
So those are expected, yet theystill have they still have an
impact on you emotionally.
So those four buckets that Italked about, the financial
bucket, the health bucket, therelationship bucket, and the
purpose, there's differentexperiences that go with each of
(30:19):
those.
And if you want to add a fifthbucket to it, it's it's your own
personal emotional bucket.
How are you going to be able todeal with these things?
And that's that's often hard fora lot of people who haven't gone
through certain life-changingexperiences in the past or have
done that really deepself-analysis to go, who am I
(30:40):
and what am I, and why do I docertain things and why are they
important to me?
Um, when you're retired, if youhave a whole bunch of time, some
of those thoughts may startcreeping in, and maybe you don't
like what comes out of that inyour head.
So having that relationship uhbucket filled with family and
(31:01):
friends, and good friends thatyou can have some honest
conversations with, I thinkthat's critically important.
It doesn't have to be a hundredpeople, but you need to have one
or two people that you can gohave that, I don't want to call
it an intimate conversation.
Hopefully you have a lifepartner, a wife, a spouse that
you can share these things with.
But even beyond that, having agood friend who you can say,
(31:23):
hey, I'm struggling with thistoday, whether that's, you know,
the markets are down and I'mworried about my finances, or
hey, I'm struggling with myhealth at this particular point,
or I'm struggling with the eatloss of you know, attaboys and
eagle paths that I wouldnormally get.
Having those people in your lifewill help you get through that
transition better.
And then finding that steadystate, uh, it is going to
(31:47):
happen.
It's just a question of when,and it might be different for
each person.
Somebody might get there very,very quickly and be ready and
prepared and off they go.
And somebody else may find thetransition hard.
But having people to talk to, Ithink, is critical.
Your community, your, your, yourrelationships, your friend
circle, absolutely critical.
And one unsurprising thing isthat if you think that your work
(32:10):
friends were your friends,they're not.
I mean, you might have one ortwo really good friends that
stick with you that you've metthrough work, but for the vast
majority of people, anyone whothey meet through work are their
work acquaintances and they'rework friends only as long as
you're working with them.
Your true friends will be thepeople that still call you three
(32:32):
months, six months, a yearlater, and want to connect with
you because of just who you are.
And I've been fortunate, some ofthe people that were on my sales
team before, I still I stillgolf with them occasionally.
I have coffee with some otherfolks, and I've had some other
friends reach out to me now thatI'm available for conversations
(32:54):
for for their own personalnetworking and advice.
And and that's that provides adifferent pat on the back.
But uh it all goes to yourcircle of friends and uh just
being able to talk throughthings when you need to.
SPEAKER_00 (33:09):
I think what you said is so important there, that
that aspect of who am I, what doI like, what do I actually want
to do, what do I actually wantto be?
There's this, it's not aretirement question, but it
tends to come up aroundretirement because for so much
of our lives, it's just this yougo to school, you go to
university, you get married, youbuy a home, you pay off your
home, you get promoted, you all,and then all of a sudden it's
(33:30):
whoa, I'm at what feels like theend of a conveyor belt of what
do I do next?
And there's no supposed to'sanymore.
There's no expectation of whatit should be in those difficult
questions are forced upon you.
And they hopefully start wellbefore retirement.
That hopefully should be alifelong pursuit of answering
those.
I know I personally love ajournal, and that's where I
(33:52):
process my thoughts there.
It sounds like you like to talkto friends, and that's where
that gets worked out.
Any other best practices thatyou would recommend to people
who are saying, yeah, thosethoughts are starting to creep
in.
How do I answer them?
SPEAKER_01 (34:07):
Number one, don't ignore them.
Um, if if you come from ageneration, you know, and this
was in part because I'm right onthe cusp as a Gen X, but I was
on the cusp of the baby boomgeneration.
You don't have feelings.
You press those down and you youmash them down into your stomach
until they develop into cancer,and then you die early and you
don't have to worry about themanymore.
Um, that's not a good strategy.
(34:28):
Um you need to recognize thatsome of these feelings that you
have, they're legitimate.
Um sometimes they're founded inreality, and sometimes they
they're just made up, they'reamplified in your head because
you have just too much time andspace to think about them.
So recognize, number one,recognize that they exist.
And then if they continue topersist in your head and you you
(34:50):
recognize that they're causingyou some anxiety or some issue,
then then start talking aboutthem.
And maybe again, you don't talkabout them in a ton of detail
because you're you're a privateperson and you don't want to,
but just recognizing them andeven watching videos like this
from other people.
So you you the great thing aboutYouTube and the internet and AI
(35:11):
is that you can get all kinds ofinformation.
Now you have to be careful aboutthat info because it's not it's
not tailored to you.
And all of these anonymouspersonalities on the on the web
don't know who you are.
And that's why I think thatreally good personal uh circle
of friends is so important.
But next to that, if you don'twant to share those things or
you want to do some preliminaryreading, there's tons of
(35:31):
resources that are online.
And and I was fortunate throughthrough my journey to discover a
couple of things aboutretirement that have helped me
just process mentally uh theexperience and and the emotions
that I'm going through.
Um, two of them that I canshare.
One is that most people inretirement will go through four
(35:53):
phases.
So this was uh a little bit ofan epiphany moment when I
discovered this.
But one is the first phase isthe honeymoon phase, the the
vacation phase.
You get to go and do all thethings, you get to sleep in, and
then you get to go on thevacations you always planned on.
And that's great until you'retired of that, and you know
what, I've done that enough.
Now what?
And then that second phase isaround the sense of loss and
(36:17):
this, the the loss of ofstructure, of purpose, of ego,
of reinforcement.
It's the loss of money as well,right?
Like you just you no longer havethat money coming in.
So that loss phase can be veryemotionally draining when you
when you reach that.
Then the third phase is theexperimentation phase.
You start toying with a wholebunch of things.
(36:38):
Well, you know what?
I'm gonna go be a scuba diverteacher, or I'm gonna, I don't
know, I'm gonna take up potteryor mountain biking or whatever
it might be.
So you experiment with a wholebunch of things that might
expose you to other people andcreate a new community or a new
set of relationships.
And you'll try a bunch of thingsand then you'll stop doing some
of them, and you'll reach thatfourth phase, which really is
(37:00):
your steady state, happy stage.
And knowing that those are thestages you're gonna go through.
It's not 12 stages of grief, butit might be these four stages of
retirement of your retirementjourney.
Once you get to that fourthstage, then you find a new
purpose, you find a new circleof friends, you find, you find
your steady state, and you willbe happier.
(37:20):
And that's actually borne out byanother study that I found when
I was doing a presentation.
It was around the happiness you.
You are most happy when you'rein your early teens, the 18 to
24 year old age, because you'reprobably still in school, you're
in the early stages of your job,you spend most of your time with
your friends, it's awesome.
Then you get into work and andthe happiness level actually
(37:44):
dips.
It's it's statistically proven.
They've done thousands andthousands of studies on this.
It doesn't dip a ton, but itdips.
It noticeably goes down fromyour 30s through to about late
40s, 50s.
And people go, well, why isthat?
And it's like, is that becauseyou you start having kids and
you start working?
Well, in part, it's just you gettugged in so many different
(38:05):
directions and you want so manythings.
Once you get into that laterstage of your career, the the
third act, the later stages like45, 50, you've either reached a
level of um career progressionand financial um stability, and
(38:26):
your relationships have, youknow, they've all formed.
You are who you are now at thatpoint.
And you're you're done with allthe other stuff.
You can start seeing the nextphase coming into play, and you
start getting happier.
And then once you're in that 50,55 plus range, the happiness
goes up again because you're nolonger chasing something more
(38:47):
all the time.
You know, a bigger house, abigger car, better vacations,
more vacations, um, a biggercareer advancement.
That stuff is is done, and nowyou've you've settled into
really knowing who you are andbeing happy with it.
And knowing that that's thestage that we're now heading
into for an early retiree or aor a regular retiree at that 60,
(39:12):
65 range, if you know thatthat's coming and you just need
to push through to get there,you know what?
It's a little bit of a weightoff your shoulders, or I hope it
should be.
SPEAKER_00 (39:24):
I think that's wonderful.
And I appreciate you sharingthat, Donovan, because there is
this sense of am I justwandering off into the darkness
never to be found again as I gothrough these?
But if you know that there isstudies, people have studied
that show and there is a processto this.
Now you're not guaranteed tocome out of phase two, as you
talked about.
You there is this sense ofyou've got to try things, you've
(39:45):
got to do new things, you've gotto put yourself out there.
But if you trust the process, soto speak, there is purpose,
there is joy, there is a reallyfulfilling retirement on the
other side.
Um, as we wrap, I'm gonna bringback to what you mentioned, the
first word you said, which waschoice.
For that person who's sittinghere watching this, saying,
Donovan, I'm I'm financiallyprepared.
I've run the numbers, I'veworked with my financial
(40:06):
planner, I've done this 10, 20,30 times, but I still can't
bring myself to make the choiceto retire because I feel like I
might be making a mistake.
I don't know who I'm gonna be.
I don't know what's on the otherside.
What feedback, what would yourecommend to that person looking
to retire early, but can't bringthemselves to make that choice
to do so?
SPEAKER_01 (40:25):
Test it, test it out.
Um, that was my original plan.
My original plan was to have ayou know, a full-time uh role
that I was doing previously, butstart testing out that that
speaking and teaching aspect,you know, on a really limited
basis, you know, like maybe oncea month kind of a thing.
(40:46):
If if I'd had that um as mytransition, I mean that would
have been my ideal.
For people who can make a choiceand they're they're in a career,
they enjoy the work that they dofor the most part.
I mean, no job is it, they callit a job and not vacation for a
reason.
But if you enjoy the work thatyou do for the most part, but
(41:06):
you have an opportunity to starthaving those conversations, if
you trust the people, the bossthat you have to work with, and
trust is a huge issue.
That's a whole otherconversation about trust at
work.
But if you think that you havethat ability to have a
conversation and start theplanning process and say, I'm
looking at a change in my role,my responsibilities.
(41:29):
Over the next year, here's whatI would like.
And you have to have some kindof an idea.
Then I would say you startexploring that.
And you might have the abilityto maybe dial back some of the
roles and responsibilities inyour current job.
Maybe you don't travel as much.
And in lieu of that travel, youvolunteer.
Because if that's what you thinkthat you might do in retirement,
(41:49):
now you're volunteering a littlebit more, but you need to make
space for the time to do that.
That's not always possible, butif you can start to have those
conversations and mentally thinkthrough what this might look
like for you as an individual,just the mental activity or
exercise of thinking it throughprepares you for that next
(42:13):
stage.
And you may not be able to thinkthrough every possibility, of
course.
Some of it's just gonna be adhoc, but at least doing it a
little bit and starting to plan,starting to have the
conversations.
Um, and again, uh testing out afew things.
I would I would say if you couldtest it out in some way, um,
maybe it's just dialing back thework hours and you're not gonna
(42:35):
work on the weekends anymore.
You're gonna do your stuff onthe weekends.
That would be super hard forsomebody who is used to putting
in 80 hours a week and they'reavailable and they're on call on
the weekends, taking likewhatever it is.
That might be enough just totest it out, to dial back just a
little bit.
Because going whole hog, I had afriend who had a health issue
(42:57):
and he he was forced through thehealth issue.
It was it was a major cancerscare.
Um, he had to go from full-on,you know, being a doctor 24-7,
that was his job, to nothing.
All he's focused on is hishealth at that particular point.
And and that can be reallyscary.
You lose all sense of identitywhen you go from being the
(43:17):
doctor to being the patient.
So not everyone's gonna gothrough that that kind of an
experience.
So if you can test it out aheadof time, that was his his
feedback.
He goes, I would have loved tobe able to step into uh the
retirement and start dialingback things on my terms as
opposed to somebody else'sterms.
So take control, take ownershipof it, and test it out ahead of
(43:38):
time if you can.
I like it.
SPEAKER_00 (43:41):
The choice is yours.
Test it again, assuming there'strust, assuming there's that
relationship there.
But Don, but this has been veryhelpful.
I think a lot of people will geta lot out of that.
Uh appreciate you coming on.
And you do, it looks like a lotof stuff online.
If people want to see, can theyfollow you somewhere?
Is there something that they cando to hear more of what you're
up to?
SPEAKER_01 (44:00):
Yeah, I I'm gonna be sharing my thoughts on
leadership and management,sales, business just through
LinkedIn.
That that's kind of my chosenplatform.
Uh maybe one day I'll start aYouTube channel, uh, like some
other people that have beensuccessful doing that.
I don't know.
That might be one of the newchallenges and and choices that
I make.
But uh yeah, check me out onLinkedIn and uh connect with me
(44:21):
there or or connect to my pageuh called The Good Capitalist.
Uh that's where I'll be kind ofputting more of my thoughts,
ideas, and insights uh forpeople to learn from.
SPEAKER_00 (44:32):
Love it.
Donovan Volt, the GoodCapitalist, find him on
LinkedIn.
Donovan, thank you for joiningme for this episode of
Retirement Reality.
It's been my pleasure, thankyou.
Do you struggle with that at all when the last
position was eliminated?
I know you're still working,you're still you still have a
position, but was there anystruggle with feeling like you
lost a piece of your identity?
SPEAKER_01 (00:09):
Absolutely.
I and and it's absolutelynatural to go through.
And even though I knew it wasgoing to happen, when it does
happen and you no longer getthose those calls or those
invitations, all of that goesaway.
If that was your sole identityand you had no other inputs and
way to feel good about yourself,I can imagine that somebody like
(00:29):
that would struggle.
SPEAKER_00 (00:30):
When Donovan came back from vacation and realized
that his role was eliminated, hewas financially ready, but the
real work was psychological.
Identity, purpose, and learninghow to spend after a lifetime of
saving were the real challengesthat Donovan faced.
In today's episode, we breakdown the four core buckets of
retirement and we learn how totest retirement before you dive
right in.
If you're on the edge ofretiring but fear what's next,
(00:51):
stay tuned.
This episode is for you.
Hi, Donovan.
Thank you for joining me on thisepisode of Retirement Reality.
I'm curious, if you could chooseone word to describe your
retirement so far, what wouldthat word be?
SPEAKER_01 (01:04):
Choice.
Choice would be the definingelement for my retirement
journey.
It was the ability to make thechoice at the time.
And the choices that I madeearlier on in my career and in
my life plan, my financial plan,helped me be able to make that
choice when the time came.
SPEAKER_00 (01:26):
I love that.
I'm going to come right back tothat.
Before I do, how long have youbeen retired at this point?
SPEAKER_01 (01:31):
I guess technically it would just be a little bit
over a year.
And I kind of call itsemi-retired because I'm not
fully removed from theprofessional life that I used to
have.
I still do a little bit ofconsulting, both individual
private coaching and thenbusiness consulting, and some
instructional work through oneof our post-secondary
(01:52):
institutions on management andleadership and business.
Yeah.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (01:57):
And that right there, retirement has different
meanings for different people.
And retirement is not trueretirement in the purest sense
of the word as we're talkingabout it.
But going back to choice, as youmentioned, can you tell me more
about that or maybe even justyour journey leading up to
retirement and how choice becamethe word that you would use to
define that journey?
SPEAKER_01 (02:14):
Well, it all everything comes down to the
choices that you make in life.
If you choose to have a certainjob versus another, and that was
one of the earliest choices thatI had to make.
Was I going to work at Xerox, abig corporate conglomerate, or
was I going to go with a smallerprivate company?
Throughout life, you have tomake choices.
(02:35):
One of the most significant,both from a financial
perspective and a lifeperspective, is who do you
choose to marry?
That can have a huge impact.
Then choices about yourfinances.
Do you choose to save your moneyor spend your money?
Do you choose to buy a biggerhouse or a vacation property?
Do you choose a vacationproperty or multiple vacations?
(02:58):
Do you choose multiple vacationsor a bigger car?
Or do you choose a bigger car orhome renovations?
It's all about choice.
Those choices have consequences.
So you have to understand theimplication of the choices that
you make.
And for myself, I made certaingood choices throughout my life
that helped me prepare.
(03:19):
And by no means was I, you know,winning the lottery or getting
an inheritance from anybody.
It was just choices tocontinually save a little bit at
a time, always with that goal ofbeing able to provide myself the
choice when I thought it mighthappen.
And sure enough, it did.
And I was able to make thechoice to retire or at least try
(03:41):
retirement for a bit.
SPEAKER_00 (03:43):
I love it.
And that choice piece, how doyou what would you, I guess I
should say, define as some ofthose key choices that you made
along the way that prepared youfor where you are right now?
SPEAKER_01 (03:56):
Well, I know that most of the viewers are
concerned around the financialside.
So the choice to start savingearly, absolutely fundamental.
And I was very much an earlysaver in my life.
But even once you start yourprofessional career, just saving
a little bit and having gonethrough university and getting a
(04:18):
finance degree, never using itactually in my professional
life, other than because of theroles that I had.
But I was aware of the timevalue of money and the
importance of compounding.
So by putting away a little bitat a time each and every month,
each and every year, andcontinually doing that,
especially early on, and leavingit there so that it could
(04:39):
compound has an astronomicaleffect that I don't think most
people fully comprehend andsometimes miss out on if they
don't start saving until they'rein their 30s or 40s or heaven
forbid your 50s.
That becomes very, verydifficult.
So from a financial perspective,that would have been one of the
biggest choices to make.
(05:00):
And along with that, it would beliving within your means, right?
In order to save a little, youhave to live within your means.
You can't spend every dime thatyou have or every dime that you
might have in the future onstuff today if you're thinking
about what you want your life tobe like tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00 (05:16):
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yes, absolutely.
I'm going to come back to thatin a little bit because there's
a couple more questions I havewith that.
But you have been retired forone year now, is that correct?
Semi-retired for one year now.
I know you're still teaching.
Yeah, just a little bit over ayear.
Yeah.
Will you walk us through thattransition of a year ago?
Where were you?
What was your position?
And how does that differ fromwhat you're doing today?
SPEAKER_01 (05:36):
Yeah, so I'll actually go back even a little
bit before uh the the event,before my exit.
Um I had been thinking aboutwhat a retirement might be like
and just mentally trying tounderstand what any kind of a
transition would be.
Would it be full stop?
And I knew that at that point inmy life, I was 55 at the time,
(05:59):
that a full stop was probablynot going to be for me.
I've I've always had fairlyintense jobs that require more
than your standard work week uhand a lot of uh emotional and
physical investment in time.
So I knew I was probably goingto do something.
What was that going to be?
I didn't know.
So I started exploring somealternatives.
(06:22):
One of them happened to be uh aninstructor type role because we
were putting our uh leadershipand management teams through a
management course.
And I got exposed to one of theinstructors.
And during that course, I askedthem the question.
I said, this is a pretty cooljob.
I would I'd be interested indoing this.
(06:42):
How would I potentially even getconnected or linked in to this?
And she introduced me to therecruiting uh coordinator.
We had a couple of discussions,um, sounded interesting.
I wasn't ready yet because I hada full-time job.
Then I went on vacation toEurope with the family, came
(07:03):
back, and on that Monday, when Iwas coming back to work, I was
fully prepared to come in andstart talking about the next
quarter and our plans and whatwe're going to do and how I
might be able to leverage thisinstructional element to help
our business.
And it was at that point on theMonday morning I was exited.
So it was like, wow, okay.
Well, now I have a whole bunchof choices I can make.
(07:25):
Uh, do I choose to go pursueanother job?
Do I choose to sign on with thisinstitution and do some teaching
and coaching?
So I I had been thinking aboutit prior to that.
And this was an idealopportunity.
I was at a financial point in mylife where I could make that
choice.
(07:46):
And so I thought, well, whenwhen am I ever going to have
this opportunity again?
So I agreed to sign on with thewith the education institution
and start the instructiontraining and get certified to do
all the things I needed to dothere.
That took way longer than Ithought.
That was like a six, seven-monthjourney.
Academia is very different thanthe corporate world.
(08:08):
But uh through that time, itgave me the opportunity to just
reflect on what I wanted, whatwas important, and really kind
of experience that retirementphase while still having a toe
in for what might be a potentialfuture career, or as I call it,
an encore career.
And I made the decision to signon, and then I started doing a
(08:30):
little bit of consulting on theside, probably the total
equivalent of a day, a week, uh,you know, three, four, five days
a month kind of a thing.
So it really was almost allretirement versus, you know, any
kind of a regular part-time orconsulting type job.
And now uh I'm at that pointwhere I'm trying to, again, make
(08:54):
the decision or the choice, howmuch more do I want to do?
Because there's still there'sstill lots in the tank yet.
Uh and I believe I have thatopportunity to now to give back
to some of the future leaders.
So that's where my focus is ishow many people can I help
become that next generation ofleader and share some of my own
(09:15):
experiences.
So whether that's throughindividual consulting, through
the teaching aspect, orpotentially public speaking, I'm
going to be I'm going to beevaluating those different
choices that I can make.
SPEAKER_00 (09:26):
That theme is showing up again and again, that
that choice.
I had a similar experiencebefore starting Root Financial
of being exited from a priorcompany.
And in retrospect, one of thebest things that ever happened.
What you mentioned, that chanceto step back and reflect on what
choice do I want to make goingforward and what's going to be
best for uh the long term,invaluable in retrospect.
(09:47):
But no, for me at least, it wasa very scary time.
It was a different phase of mylife, but very scary time
because that wasn't the choice Ihad intentionally made at the
time it was made for me.
It wasn't the path I saw formyself.
It was completely different.
How did that feel?
So that Monday morning, you comeback, you're back from vacation,
you've got plans of what's goingto happen.
(10:08):
How how did you do during thatwhen you received that news?
SPEAKER_01 (10:13):
Well, and I've been through this before.
It's just the nature of thecareer that I've had.
Um, and it was actually one ofthe things we have a we had a
whiteboard in the office wherewe would write down quotes,
inspirational quotes, and somefunny, silly quotes.
And one of the things I wrote onthat board was uh change is
inevitable and it's constant.
Sometimes you choose the change,and sometimes change is chosen
(10:37):
for you or thrust upon you.
We all have then the choice ofhow we're going to deal with
that change.
So when I was exited on thatMonday morning, I have the
choice of how I'm going toreact.
Uh I chose to look at it as anopportunity because I had been
through this before.
So I knew that I was financiallyokay.
(10:58):
That was not going to be aproblem.
It's not like I got a great big,you know, golden handshake exit
package or anything like that.
That's absolutely not the case.
So everything was going to beincumbent on me, having managed
my finances in the past, to beable to support our future.
But because I had contacts inthe industry, because I had
(11:19):
previously done some thinkingabout this, I was mentally and
emotionally in a better placethan I would have been if I had
not given it any thoughtwhatsoever and was simply hit in
the face with the exit brick.
Um and that does happen topeople.
And I've been on both sides ofthat equation where I've had to
give other people the news.
And it's never easy.
(11:40):
And you always try to empathizewith the person and what they're
feeling.
Uh, in some of the biggerorganizations I was with, we had
transition coordinators and andwe had supports for them.
Uh within this smaller company Iwas previously at, there's
there's none of that.
So you're you're on your own.
But knowing that I had beenthrough this before and you come
out okay, you have thatexperience.
(12:01):
So for me, it was just a choiceof now what do I want to do?
Do I want all of this free timeon my own or do I want to
continue working?
And if I continue work, in whatcapacity and for what purpose?
And for me now, it's all aboutdoing the things that I enjoy
doing the most and focusing onthose and the impact I can have
(12:23):
on others to help make thembetter.
Because my my career runway isvery, very short at this
particular point in time.
But some of the people that Inow get the opportunity to work
with, they're just beginning.
They're in their early 20s,they're wide-eyed, they're
excited, they're in their 30s,they're just you know exploring
the middle management roles.
Or some of them are at thatpoint in their career where
they're making big investmentsin small businesses and they
(12:45):
want that experience about howdo you navigate this whole
startup world.
And I'm excited about being ableto help on that, on that end of
it, but not full time.
I'm probably gonna do that, youknow, a day or two, three days a
week kind of a thing.
It it depends on the engagement.
If it interests me and excitesme, then I'll choose to do it.
SPEAKER_00 (13:04):
Yeah.
So there was a level when this,when you were exited, it was not
you being caught flat-footed of,oh my goodness, what the heck is
next?
It sounds like there had beensome level of intention of what
do I want my future to looklike?
What is next for me, regardlessof that happening?
How much of life right now lookslike what you thought it might
(13:24):
look like a couple years ago,not necessarily the time frame,
but what you thought you'd bedoing after that position?
SPEAKER_01 (13:31):
Remarkably, it's it's quite similar to what I had
envisioned.
Um a little bit different, likelike the instructional piece is
taking longer to get going tothe degree that I thought it
would.
But that's simply my not knowinguh the world of academia and how
long it takes to go throughcertain certifications and
(13:51):
programs uh that they have.
Uh but the rest of life haspretty much laid out the way
that I had anticipated, in partbecause I had a lot of
opportunity to discuss it withfriends who've been through it
before.
And that's that's one of therecommendations I make to
anybody thinking about this isto speak with others who are
(14:12):
either at a similar position toyou or are slightly ahead of you
in that life uh plan, that lifepath, and see what they went
through.
Um, one of the questions I usedto ask a couple of my golf
buddies and a few others is whatwould you tell your five-year or
10-year younger self?
What advice would you give you?
(14:32):
And if there's anything, whatwould you change uh so that you
could tell your five-year,10-year younger self to go and
do this better?
And their insights were veryhelpful.
So that helped me mentallyprepare uh and get ready, just
in case, because you know, youyou never know what's gonna
happen in life.
So what were those insights,Donovan?
There were probably three realbig ones.
(14:54):
Uh, one that I remember verywell was around health.
Um, a number of people that Ispoke to mentioned that they
would have taken better care oftheir bodies because at 60, 65,
things just, you know, theystart, they start breaking down
a lot faster and it takes longerto recover uh than it ever did
before.
So that's one thing I've alwaysbeen healthy, I've always
(15:14):
exercised.
So I I thought I kind of hadthat one covered off, um, but
someone gave me some advice.
They said, you like to do theseSpartan races and things like
that.
Maybe you want to dial that backbecause the last thing you want
to do is have something reallyget hurt, and then you can't do
all the things that you love.
And I was like, huh.
You know what?
That's that's not a that's not abad piece of advice.
(15:36):
I don't need to, you know, do300 pounds on the squat rack.
You know what?
Dialing that back and taking iteasy and respecting the body is
important.
So so health was number one.
Uh the second one was around uhyour friendship circle, your
your relationships.
And and there's kind of fourbuckets that I always think of.
It's finances, health,relationships, and purpose.
(16:02):
So those four buckets werethings that I contemplated.
And the purpose one wassomething that was told to me by
uh it was a guy that I wasgolfing with at the time, just
happened to pair up.
He's 80 years old or 80, 84years old.
Still golfing, still walking,pulling his cart.
And so he's obviously in goodhealthy uh state.
But my question to him was, whatwould you tell yourself
(16:22):
differently?
And he goes, make sure thatyou're retiring to something,
that you have something in mindas to what you want to do,
whether it's a hobby orpart-time volunteering or
part-time work, whatever it is.
Have a purpose.
And for me, that's why I wasalways looking ahead as to,
okay, well, what would I do if?
And luckily, I had I had a fewoptions as to what to do if and
(16:44):
when something happened, becausewhen it did, then I was able to
make that choice a little biteasier.
SPEAKER_00 (16:49):
Yeah.
Um, when I speak with peoplelike you, Donovan, who strike me
as very driven, very intentionalwhat you're doing.
You start saving early,investing early, you do well in
your career, you have high-levelpositions.
Not always, but for a lot ofthose types of people, that work
becomes a big part of purpose ora big part of identity.
(17:10):
Absolutely.
You struggle with that at allwhen the last position was
eliminated.
I know you're still working,you're still have a position,
but was there any struggle withfeeling like you lost a piece of
your identity?
SPEAKER_01 (17:21):
Absolutely.
I and it's absolutely natural togo through.
And even though I knew it wasgoing to happen, when it does
happen and you no longer getthose calls or those
invitations, um, you know,throughout the last 20 years of
my working career, I've been ata position of leadership and
people look to you for eitherguidance, um, decision making,
(17:44):
uh, whether it's clients,internal people, partners.
And when you no longer areworking in that kind of a role,
all of that goes away.
So if that was your soleidentity and you had no other
inputs and way to feel goodabout yourself, I can imagine
that somebody like that wouldstruggle.
(18:05):
And I assume that that's why alot of people stick in their
jobs until they're 65, 70, andsometimes even beyond.
Entrepreneurs, you know, they'llsay because they don't know
anything else.
This is all that they've done intheir life, and their entire
identity is wrapped up in that.
Um I've been through a number ofdifferent organizations.
So for me, my identity was neverabout a particular job.
(18:29):
It was about the role that Iplayed in that job and the
influence I had on other people.
But when that goes away, uhyeah, you you at some point in
time you're going to, you'regonna miss it.
Your ego takes a hit.
And I had a friend who was thepresident of a uh of a fairly
large company.
And when he stepped away fromthat role, uh, it was something
(18:50):
that he struggled with.
It was something that hementioned that, you know, he's
not done.
He needs to do one more thing,what just one more thing.
And I suppose that that's anatural reaction.
It's then a question of how doyou how do you find that next
purpose that's going to give youthat both emotional and let's be
honest, a little bit of an egopat on the back for, hey, yeah,
(19:13):
you're still valuable.
SPEAKER_00 (19:14):
You're you still matter to people.
How have you filled that?
I know you're teaching now.
I know you're still doingthings, even looking at on
LinkedIn.
There's a lot that you're doing,just coaching the world, so to
speak, not even just one-on-one.
Yeah.
What have you done to fill thatpurpose piece?
SPEAKER_01 (19:31):
Well, it it does change.
So again, it's not nowspecifically, you know, 10
people in a company or 20 peoplein a company or 100 people in a
company.
It's the ability now to have avoice to a broader community of
people.
Um, if you were a financialplanner or are a financial
planner and you're working with100 clients or 200 clients,
that's your your focus.
(19:52):
But through the power of the weband YouTube, you can now have
influence and impact on maybe athousand people or 10,000 people
at a time.
So for me, uh finding that newvoice and being able to say,
okay, well, this is stillvaluable.
I can still have an opinion onthings, I can still provide
perspective and insights andguidance, but I'm going to do
(20:15):
that now in a different way.
So I may do it through a littlebit of instruction, through some
coaching and some businessconsulting.
Uh, maybe in the future I'll doit through some uh professional
public speaking.
We'll we'll see where thatleads.
Uh, but again, it's all aboutfinding finding that next
purpose in your life and notletting the previous job define
(20:36):
you because those those thosecan be taken away from you at
any point in time, whether it'syour choice, somebody else's
choice, a choice of health,economics, uh you really don't
have control over all of thosesituations.
SPEAKER_00 (20:50):
Yeah.
Yes, it's very much fleeting.
Um, so I I imagine, Donovan, inyour experience, you've had
different positions, you've gonethrough different transitions,
you've gone through scary thingsand come out the other side,
you've done hard things and comeout the other side.
Sometimes things that are hardfor people, I could sit here and
say, Donovan, make thisdecision.
(21:12):
I can see it objectively becauseI'm not you.
I'm not emotionally invested.
You can do the same thing.
I'm sure there's plenty ofpeople you've worked with or
coached or seen where you'resaying, I've gone through this
transition, I've been through itbefore, I've done these things.
Are there people you can thinkof without naming names, but are
there people that you can thinkof that are stuck in this
hamster wheel of I can't stepaway from work because I'll lose
(21:34):
my purpose, or I can't step awaybecause I don't know how to make
the next choice.
Is there someone you can thinkof and you could what's holding
them back, if so?
SPEAKER_01 (21:43):
For each individual, I'm sure it's a little bit
personal, and and sometimespeople may not even know.
They just fear is one of thebiggest things.
Uh fear of the unknown is is oneof the biggest fears that people
can have, next to publicspeaking.
Um the fear of will I haveenough, enough money, um, enough
to do to fill my time.
(22:04):
And there are a few people thatI know that uh for them, um
that's probably a significantfear or or apprehension, uh
barrier, challenge, whatever youwant to call it.
Uh how they deal with it and howthey overcome it, sometimes you
just have to take the leap.
And and it's one of the thingsthat that that I've talked about
(22:26):
in the past when doing somecoaching is you sometimes you
just have to take a shot.
And for me, when when ithappened, when when the exit
happened with me, I had to dothat self-reflection and go,
okay, if I'm going to do this,let's give it a try.
Let let's let's try.
Let's give it a shot.
For those other people, theythey may need much more
(22:48):
reassurance or guidance throughthat.
And whether that's uh maybe aone-on-one conversations with
friends, or maybe it's a littlebit more reassurance from their
financial planner that, yeah,you're gonna be okay.
Um, I had to do that myself.
I had to go and make sure andrun the numbers 10 different
ways to make sure that we weregoing to be okay if we did it
this way.
It's like, okay, once once thatlittle check box is covered,
(23:12):
then then the other questionsstart to come into play.
Not that the finance piece evergoes away, but um the other ones
become what you then turn to ifthe finance piece is got a check
mark beside it.
SPEAKER_00 (23:25):
Yeah.
What do those financial concernsfeel like?
So you've checked the boxes, yourun the numbers.
You mentioned before, do youstarted early, you saved, I'm
sure you were well positionedfinancially to do so.
Do those financial fears eversubside, or is there always a
little bit of that that goesback?
SPEAKER_01 (23:42):
Yeah, I I hope they subside because I still have
them, um, even though I've runthe numbers, and my financial
planner has run the numbers, andI've used tools like Honest Math
to run the numbers.
I've got in my own spreadsheet,like it's it's huge, and I've
got multiple scenarios in there.
Spending this much more, thatmuch more over this period of
time.
And I still have a really hardtime.
(24:03):
One of the hardest things isstarting to pull money out when
all you've ever done your entirelife is put money in to save
money.
I've been saving money for thissince I was 12.
I've been calculating compoundinterest on GICs when I was 12.
How much am I going to havehere, here, and here, be able to
buy a house, then the housegoes.
And now I still have a troublebeing comfortable to be pulling
(24:27):
money out.
So I've I've had to kick myselfin the butt a little bit and
start withdrawing a little bit.
Even though I may notnecessarily need it, I'm trying
to condition myself to the factthat the number in the bank
account might start to go down alittle bit just to get used to
it.
And again, it's it's a very safeamount, but it's something.
(24:52):
And I I expect that as I getused to it, that number will
increase as maybe my desire toum, you know, coach and teach
you know becomes less in fiveyears or ten years or whatever
it is.
It'll have to be, yeah.
But then I'll at least becomfortable pulling more out
over time.
SPEAKER_00 (25:08):
Well, I like the way that you framed that.
Of you're you're approaching itlike it's a new skill that
you're learning because it is anew skill that you're learning,
and you're starting small andthen you're gonna ramp up from
there.
Any feedback that you wouldoffer to people who are in that
same struggle or that samemindset, or do you feel like
you're still figuring it outtoo, of just trying to learn it?
SPEAKER_01 (25:26):
I I I mean, I'm still trying to figure out what
the right number is.
And I'm very conservative bynature.
So as I've done the planning,I'm looking at these first
couple of years as a test,right?
Um, okay, well, if I do X andpull out Y, where do I end up at
the end of the year?
Am I, you know, a little bitequal or a little bit ahead of
(25:47):
where I thought I might be orwhere my financial planner
thought I might be?
And so far, so good.
So year one, check, we're safe,it's good.
You know, the markets havesuccess, you know, uh luckily
done quite well this year, so sothat helps.
Uh, year two, you know, will bedifferent than year one.
Uh, we have some, you know, somehome renovations and some plans
(26:08):
to to upgrade some things.
Uh, that's just life.
And now without a big paycheckcoming in on a regular basis,
you have to pull that fromretirement savings.
And it's like, oh my goodness,like I'm gonna pull$10,000 to go
fix the roof and the driveway.
That's what I had to do thisyear.
Uh wow, that hurts because Ican't just pay that off like I
normally would have.
(26:29):
Okay.
Well, we'll get used to that,but we won't do it all at once.
And then next year we'll do thenext thing and then the next
thing and the next thing.
So just little bit by littlebit.
SPEAKER_00 (26:41):
I would imagine that as you projected this out,
you're making projections basedon an assumed spending rate of
what are we going to bespending?
Do we have enough on ourportfolio to support that?
Relative to what you thoughtspending might look like, has it
been pretty close?
Have you spent more?
Has it been less?
SPEAKER_01 (27:00):
Yeah, for me, because I had been doing a
budget and revising that budgeton you know, fixed versus
variable costs, you know, wants,like a like a big vacation
versus needs, paying themortgage, paying, you know,
utilities and all that kind ofstuff, my budget was fairly
close.
So uh in retirement, I'm quiteclose to what I had estimated
(27:21):
from a budgeting perspective,with a little bit of wiggle
room.
And with that little bit ofwiggle room, I'm using that for
some of those special houseprojects.
I would expect that if things gothe way that I plan, I probably
won't be spending as much as Iwas when I was fully working,
because I, you know, we may notneed uh, you know, two vehicles.
(27:44):
If if there's two of us in thehousehold and we have two
vehicles and we really don'tdrive that many places anymore.
If I'm not driving to work allthe time, then maybe one of
those goes away.
So that expense might reduce.
We've already been on a numberof vacations in our lives.
So uh that vacation budget isn'tquite the same.
And our our daughter who's inuniversity, that cost will go
(28:05):
away in a few years.
So all of that will will adjustover time.
Um I'm hoping to have morewiggle room.
I I like, I'm just again, I'mconservative.
I like to have more wiggle roomthan than just being right tight
to the budget.
Spend within your means.
That was always the model.
Yeah.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (28:23):
Very good.
I'm gonna um pivot a little bitor switch gears a little bit.
Uh, a lot of people on thisshow, as we've asked, just
what's it been like?
You know, I was sharing with youbefore we started recording that
the journey to retirement sooften starts with understanding,
well, what's my number?
How much do I need to save?
Where do I need to save?
How much can I pull out?
And then people either get closeto achieving that or they
achieve that and realize, oh,there's a completely different
(28:45):
side of this, the psychologicalside, the emotional side.
And sometimes when people aren'tprepared for that, people have
shared challenges withdepression, people have shared
challenges with loneliness,people have shared challenges
with all kinds of things theyjust weren't prepared for.
Have you have there been anyunexpected challenges that you
faced either on the journey toretirement or even in
(29:08):
quote-unquote partialretirement?
SPEAKER_01 (29:10):
Unexpected or expected.
Yeah, I mean, the the expectedones were the difficulty around,
you know, going from a saver toa spender.
The expected difficulty wasaround that, you know, that lack
of purpose and structure andrigor in a particular day, and
the the little bit of an youknow pat on the back that comes
with um people saying, thank youfor your help on this or that or
(29:33):
whatever it is in the workworld.
So that gap was expected, yet atthe same time, you know, uh
dealing with it mentally andgoing, okay, you're you're not
the guy anymore.
No, nobody, nobody cares.
What do you think?
Your opinion doesn't matterbecause you're not part of the
company anymore.
You don't get the invites to youknow whatever social event or
(29:54):
sporting event.
I I don't get any hockey invitesanymore, I don't get any of the
golf invites that I used to.
So those are expected, yet theystill have they still have an
impact on you emotionally.
So those four buckets that Italked about, the financial
bucket, the health bucket, therelationship bucket, and the
purpose, there's differentexperiences that go with each of
(30:19):
those.
And if you want to add a fifthbucket to it, it's it's your own
personal emotional bucket.
How are you going to be able todeal with these things?
And that's that's often hard fora lot of people who haven't gone
through certain life-changingexperiences in the past or have
done that really deepself-analysis to go, who am I
(30:40):
and what am I, and why do I docertain things and why are they
important to me?
Um, when you're retired, if youhave a whole bunch of time, some
of those thoughts may startcreeping in, and maybe you don't
like what comes out of that inyour head.
So having that relationship uhbucket filled with family and
(31:01):
friends, and good friends thatyou can have some honest
conversations with, I thinkthat's critically important.
It doesn't have to be a hundredpeople, but you need to have one
or two people that you can gohave that, I don't want to call
it an intimate conversation.
Hopefully you have a lifepartner, a wife, a spouse that
you can share these things with.
But even beyond that, having agood friend who you can say,
(31:23):
hey, I'm struggling with thistoday, whether that's, you know,
the markets are down and I'mworried about my finances, or
hey, I'm struggling with myhealth at this particular point,
or I'm struggling with the eatloss of you know, attaboys and
eagle paths that I wouldnormally get.
Having those people in your lifewill help you get through that
transition better.
And then finding that steadystate, uh, it is going to
(31:47):
happen.
It's just a question of when,and it might be different for
each person.
Somebody might get there very,very quickly and be ready and
prepared and off they go.
And somebody else may find thetransition hard.
But having people to talk to, Ithink, is critical.
Your community, your, your, yourrelationships, your friend
circle, absolutely critical.
And one unsurprising thing isthat if you think that your work
(32:10):
friends were your friends,they're not.
I mean, you might have one ortwo really good friends that
stick with you that you've metthrough work, but for the vast
majority of people, anyone whothey meet through work are their
work acquaintances and they'rework friends only as long as
you're working with them.
Your true friends will be thepeople that still call you three
(32:32):
months, six months, a yearlater, and want to connect with
you because of just who you are.
And I've been fortunate, some ofthe people that were on my sales
team before, I still I stillgolf with them occasionally.
I have coffee with some otherfolks, and I've had some other
friends reach out to me now thatI'm available for conversations
(32:54):
for for their own personalnetworking and advice.
And and that's that provides adifferent pat on the back.
But uh it all goes to yourcircle of friends and uh just
being able to talk throughthings when you need to.
SPEAKER_00 (33:09):
I think what you said is so important there, that
that aspect of who am I, what doI like, what do I actually want
to do, what do I actually wantto be?
There's this, it's not aretirement question, but it
tends to come up aroundretirement because for so much
of our lives, it's just this yougo to school, you go to
university, you get married, youbuy a home, you pay off your
home, you get promoted, you all,and then all of a sudden it's
(33:30):
whoa, I'm at what feels like theend of a conveyor belt of what
do I do next?
And there's no supposed to'sanymore.
There's no expectation of whatit should be in those difficult
questions are forced upon you.
And they hopefully start wellbefore retirement.
That hopefully should be alifelong pursuit of answering
those.
I know I personally love ajournal, and that's where I
(33:52):
process my thoughts there.
It sounds like you like to talkto friends, and that's where
that gets worked out.
Any other best practices thatyou would recommend to people
who are saying, yeah, thosethoughts are starting to creep
in.
How do I answer them?
SPEAKER_01 (34:07):
Number one, don't ignore them.
Um, if if you come from ageneration, you know, and this
was in part because I'm right onthe cusp as a Gen X, but I was
on the cusp of the baby boomgeneration.
You don't have feelings.
You press those down and you youmash them down into your stomach
until they develop into cancer,and then you die early and you
don't have to worry about themanymore.
Um, that's not a good strategy.
(34:28):
Um you need to recognize thatsome of these feelings that you
have, they're legitimate.
Um sometimes they're founded inreality, and sometimes they
they're just made up, they'reamplified in your head because
you have just too much time andspace to think about them.
So recognize, number one,recognize that they exist.
And then if they continue topersist in your head and you you
(34:50):
recognize that they're causingyou some anxiety or some issue,
then then start talking aboutthem.
And maybe again, you don't talkabout them in a ton of detail
because you're you're a privateperson and you don't want to,
but just recognizing them andeven watching videos like this
from other people.
So you you the great thing aboutYouTube and the internet and AI
(35:11):
is that you can get all kinds ofinformation.
Now you have to be careful aboutthat info because it's not it's
not tailored to you.
And all of these anonymouspersonalities on the on the web
don't know who you are.
And that's why I think thatreally good personal uh circle
of friends is so important.
But next to that, if you don'twant to share those things or
you want to do some preliminaryreading, there's tons of
(35:31):
resources that are online.
And and I was fortunate throughthrough my journey to discover a
couple of things aboutretirement that have helped me
just process mentally uh theexperience and and the emotions
that I'm going through.
Um, two of them that I canshare.
One is that most people inretirement will go through four
(35:53):
phases.
So this was uh a little bit ofan epiphany moment when I
discovered this.
But one is the first phase isthe honeymoon phase, the the
vacation phase.
You get to go and do all thethings, you get to sleep in, and
then you get to go on thevacations you always planned on.
And that's great until you'retired of that, and you know
what, I've done that enough.
Now what?
And then that second phase isaround the sense of loss and
(36:17):
this, the the loss of ofstructure, of purpose, of ego,
of reinforcement.
It's the loss of money as well,right?
Like you just you no longer havethat money coming in.
So that loss phase can be veryemotionally draining when you
when you reach that.
Then the third phase is theexperimentation phase.
You start toying with a wholebunch of things.
(36:38):
Well, you know what?
I'm gonna go be a scuba diverteacher, or I'm gonna, I don't
know, I'm gonna take up potteryor mountain biking or whatever
it might be.
So you experiment with a wholebunch of things that might
expose you to other people andcreate a new community or a new
set of relationships.
And you'll try a bunch of thingsand then you'll stop doing some
of them, and you'll reach thatfourth phase, which really is
(37:00):
your steady state, happy stage.
And knowing that those are thestages you're gonna go through.
It's not 12 stages of grief, butit might be these four stages of
retirement of your retirementjourney.
Once you get to that fourthstage, then you find a new
purpose, you find a new circleof friends, you find, you find
your steady state, and you willbe happier.
(37:20):
And that's actually borne out byanother study that I found when
I was doing a presentation.
It was around the happiness you.
You are most happy when you'rein your early teens, the 18 to
24 year old age, because you'reprobably still in school, you're
in the early stages of your job,you spend most of your time with
your friends, it's awesome.
Then you get into work and andthe happiness level actually
(37:44):
dips.
It's it's statistically proven.
They've done thousands andthousands of studies on this.
It doesn't dip a ton, but itdips.
It noticeably goes down fromyour 30s through to about late
40s, 50s.
And people go, well, why isthat?
And it's like, is that becauseyou you start having kids and
you start working?
Well, in part, it's just you gettugged in so many different
(38:05):
directions and you want so manythings.
Once you get into that laterstage of your career, the the
third act, the later stages like45, 50, you've either reached a
level of um career progressionand financial um stability, and
(38:26):
your relationships have, youknow, they've all formed.
You are who you are now at thatpoint.
And you're you're done with allthe other stuff.
You can start seeing the nextphase coming into play, and you
start getting happier.
And then once you're in that 50,55 plus range, the happiness
goes up again because you're nolonger chasing something more
(38:47):
all the time.
You know, a bigger house, abigger car, better vacations,
more vacations, um, a biggercareer advancement.
That stuff is is done, and nowyou've you've settled into
really knowing who you are andbeing happy with it.
And knowing that that's thestage that we're now heading
into for an early retiree or aor a regular retiree at that 60,
(39:12):
65 range, if you know thatthat's coming and you just need
to push through to get there,you know what?
It's a little bit of a weightoff your shoulders, or I hope it
should be.
SPEAKER_00 (39:24):
I think that's wonderful.
And I appreciate you sharingthat, Donovan, because there is
this sense of am I justwandering off into the darkness
never to be found again as I gothrough these?
But if you know that there isstudies, people have studied
that show and there is a processto this.
Now you're not guaranteed tocome out of phase two, as you
talked about.
You there is this sense ofyou've got to try things, you've
(39:45):
got to do new things, you've gotto put yourself out there.
But if you trust the process, soto speak, there is purpose,
there is joy, there is a reallyfulfilling retirement on the
other side.
Um, as we wrap, I'm gonna bringback to what you mentioned, the
first word you said, which waschoice.
For that person who's sittinghere watching this, saying,
Donovan, I'm I'm financiallyprepared.
I've run the numbers, I'veworked with my financial
(40:06):
planner, I've done this 10, 20,30 times, but I still can't
bring myself to make the choiceto retire because I feel like I
might be making a mistake.
I don't know who I'm gonna be.
I don't know what's on the otherside.
What feedback, what would yourecommend to that person looking
to retire early, but can't bringthemselves to make that choice
to do so?
SPEAKER_01 (40:25):
Test it, test it out.
Um, that was my original plan.
My original plan was to have ayou know, a full-time uh role
that I was doing previously, butstart testing out that that
speaking and teaching aspect,you know, on a really limited
basis, you know, like maybe oncea month kind of a thing.
(40:46):
If if I'd had that um as mytransition, I mean that would
have been my ideal.
For people who can make a choiceand they're they're in a career,
they enjoy the work that they dofor the most part.
I mean, no job is it, they callit a job and not vacation for a
reason.
But if you enjoy the work thatyou do for the most part, but
(41:06):
you have an opportunity to starthaving those conversations, if
you trust the people, the bossthat you have to work with, and
trust is a huge issue.
That's a whole otherconversation about trust at
work.
But if you think that you havethat ability to have a
conversation and start theplanning process and say, I'm
looking at a change in my role,my responsibilities.
(41:29):
Over the next year, here's whatI would like.
And you have to have some kindof an idea.
Then I would say you startexploring that.
And you might have the abilityto maybe dial back some of the
roles and responsibilities inyour current job.
Maybe you don't travel as much.
And in lieu of that travel, youvolunteer.
Because if that's what you thinkthat you might do in retirement,
(41:49):
now you're volunteering a littlebit more, but you need to make
space for the time to do that.
That's not always possible, butif you can start to have those
conversations and mentally thinkthrough what this might look
like for you as an individual,just the mental activity or
exercise of thinking it throughprepares you for that next
(42:13):
stage.
And you may not be able to thinkthrough every possibility, of
course.
Some of it's just gonna be adhoc, but at least doing it a
little bit and starting to plan,starting to have the
conversations.
Um, and again, uh testing out afew things.
I would I would say if you couldtest it out in some way, um,
maybe it's just dialing back thework hours and you're not gonna
(42:35):
work on the weekends anymore.
You're gonna do your stuff onthe weekends.
That would be super hard forsomebody who is used to putting
in 80 hours a week and they'reavailable and they're on call on
the weekends, taking likewhatever it is.
That might be enough just totest it out, to dial back just a
little bit.
Because going whole hog, I had afriend who had a health issue
(42:57):
and he he was forced through thehealth issue.
It was it was a major cancerscare.
Um, he had to go from full-on,you know, being a doctor 24-7,
that was his job, to nothing.
All he's focused on is hishealth at that particular point.
And and that can be reallyscary.
You lose all sense of identitywhen you go from being the
(43:17):
doctor to being the patient.
So not everyone's gonna gothrough that that kind of an
experience.
So if you can test it out aheadof time, that was his his
feedback.
He goes, I would have loved tobe able to step into uh the
retirement and start dialingback things on my terms as
opposed to somebody else'sterms.
So take control, take ownershipof it, and test it out ahead of
(43:38):
time if you can.
I like it.
SPEAKER_00 (43:41):
The choice is yours.
Test it again, assuming there'strust, assuming there's that
relationship there.
But Don, but this has been veryhelpful.
I think a lot of people will geta lot out of that.
Uh appreciate you coming on.
And you do, it looks like a lotof stuff online.
If people want to see, can theyfollow you somewhere?
Is there something that they cando to hear more of what you're
up to?
SPEAKER_01 (44:00):
Yeah, I I'm gonna be sharing my thoughts on
leadership and management,sales, business just through
LinkedIn.
That that's kind of my chosenplatform.
Uh maybe one day I'll start aYouTube channel, uh, like some
other people that have beensuccessful doing that.
I don't know.
That might be one of the newchallenges and and choices that
I make.
But uh yeah, check me out onLinkedIn and uh connect with me
(44:21):
there or or connect to my pageuh called The Good Capitalist.
Uh that's where I'll be kind ofputting more of my thoughts,
ideas, and insights uh forpeople to learn from.
SPEAKER_00 (44:32):
Love it.
Donovan Volt, the GoodCapitalist, find him on
LinkedIn.
Donovan, thank you for joiningme for this episode of
Retirement Reality.
It's been my pleasure, thankyou.
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