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June 24, 2025 64 mins

Leaving middle age and approaching retirement is often portrayed as a time to settle into comfortable patterns and perhaps explore grand adventures. The common view suggests that after you've spent a lifetime building satisfying relationships, now there's time to sit back and enjoy them, to lean into the habits you enjoy, to stop working so hard at everyday things. 

Unless everything in your world gets turned on its head and all the familiar, comfortable things start to disappear. What do you do if death or divorce, or both, kick your comfortable world into the gutter, if your golden years threaten to turn into lead? Is there an alchemy that can turn those lead years back into gold?   

Szifra Birke and Jay Livingston feel they have done just that. 

They've forged a rich 25-year marriage from the detritus of four divorces and a spouse's death. In their insightfully revealing and quirky book, In Tandem: Pedaling Through Mid-life on a Bicycle Built for Two, they share how they took the scattered pieces of their two very different lives and worked to create a joint, satisfying experience where, as two very different people, they each could thrive. These two are both intensely committed to growing ever more aware of their internal speedbumps and the opportunities to laugh themselves into tears. 

About Szifra Birke and Jay Livingston: 

Szifra Birke is an Executive Leadership Coach and the country's first Financial Behavior Specialist. For her groundbreaking work with financial professionals and their clients, Szifra has appeared in Business Week, in addition to industry publications such as Investment News. In her first career, she co-authored Together We Heal, a book about psychotherapy for adults with parental alcoholism. She coauthored with Jay Livingston, In Tandem: Pedaling Through Midlife on a Bicycle Built for Two. 

Jay Livingston is retired from an eclectic career as an executive coach, a prize-winning antique boat restorer, a renowned dog behaviorist, and Director of Development for a Harvard Hospital. He is the author of Simple Steps to Change Your Business, Your Life. His dozen other vocations and avocations are a case study in excellence run amok. He has appeared on NOVA and, in the 70s, an automotive garage he managed was recognized by Ralph Nader. 

Get in touch with Szifra Birke and Jay Livingston: 

Buy Szifra and Jay’s book:  https://revolutionizeretirement.com/tandem  

Visit their website:  https://birkeconsulting.com/  

 

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