The Retirement Trap — Should You Really Stop Working at 65？
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Summary
The modern idea of retirement was built on a bet that turned out to be wrong. Derek Coburn argues that by rethinking retirement, not necessarily eliminating it, but reimagining it, we can enjoy more of our lives now, while actually feeling more secure about the future.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the AOM Podcast, which since 2008 has featured
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The modern idea of retirement was built on a bet that turned out to be wrong.
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It assumed people would spend most of their lives working and only a relatively short period of time retired.
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Instead, many Americans now reach 65 healthy, active, and with an entire third of their life
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ahead of them. Yet we're still using a retirement model designed for a world in which old age was
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shorter and fewer people expected decades of life after leaving the workforce. My guest says that
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outdated assumption creates some unfortunate, unintended consequences. It causes people to
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stress excessively about money, postpone meaningful experiences with family and friends,
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and sometimes sacrifice the very things that make life worth living in the first place.
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He argues that by rethinking retirement, not necessarily eliminating it, but reimagining
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it, we can enjoy more of our lives now while actually feeling more secure about the future.
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His name is Derek Coburn, and he's a financial advisor and the author of Let's Retire Retirement.
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Today on the show, Derek explains why the traditional retirement model came about,
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why it may no longer make sense for many people, and how working even a few years past 65 can
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dramatically change the math of retirement planning. We also discuss the surprising
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psychological challenges many people face after they stop working, why purpose matters more
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than leisure, and how thinking differently about retirement can free you up to spend
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more time on what matters most right now, whether that's traveling, strengthening your
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marriage, or making the most of the limited summers you have left with your kids. After
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the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash retirement. All right, Derek
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Coburn. Welcome to the show. Hey, Brett. Thanks for having me. So you are a financial advisor
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and you got a book out called Let's Retire Retirement, which you're making the case we
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need to retire this idea of retirement that we have. Let's talk about retirement in general
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first. When people think of retirement, they think about stopping work around age 65 and then never
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working again. It's like a fixture in our culture. And it seems like it's always existed. You've seen
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your grandparents retire, you've seen your parents retire. But this idea of stopping work completely
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at age 65 to go on cruises and putz around the house, this is a relatively new idea. It's like
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maybe just a little over a century old. And what's interesting, you talk about this in the book,
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it was created in conditions that no longer exist today. So can you give us a short history lesson
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on the origins of our modern idea of retirement? Essentially back in 1889, Germany was putting
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together the first ever social insurance plan to take care of their older workers who were
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phasing out of their jobs. And the chancellor at the time, Otto van Bismarck, picked the age of
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70 as the age for them to start receiving benefits because, quote, that is the age at which people
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are expected to die, end quote. And literally picked the age because they didn't think they
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would have to pay anyone because they were going to pass away shortly thereafter. And then like
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27 years later, they lowered the age to 65 finally. But this was at a time when life
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expectancy, if you made it that far, would only get you into your late 70s. So back then,
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even if retirement did exist, it's like you would only have to come up with like a third of your
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income because you were getting some government subsidy to go along with everything else. And so
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now fast forward to today, if you make it to 65, your life expectancy is going to be in the mid
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to high 80s. If you make it to 75 or 80, it can be even longer than that. Yet we've never updated
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this age of 65 to keep up with how much longer we're living. Okay. So late 19th century, some
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old people couldn't support themselves anymore because most of the jobs back then were physical
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and they couldn't do them anymore because they're just old and beat down. In Germany, they set the
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retirement age at 65 because most people didn't live longer than that. So relatively few people
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would actually collect benefits for very long, which that made the system financially manageable.
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And then other countries like the US adopted similar systems for retirement. But today,
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people are living a lot longer. A lot of jobs are knowledge work jobs these days. They're
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office jobs. So we're not beating ourselves too much up anymore. And you can do that for a long
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time. But we still kept this idea that, okay, at age 65, that's when you should stop working
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completely. And so now people have to amass a ton of money, enough money to live on one decade,
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two decades, maybe three decades past 65. And so they go to the financial advisor,
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their financial advisor is going to give them a number. And this is the number they need to get to
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to retire and never work again. And it varies, but I think the general rule is to save and invest
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enough that you can safely withdraw about 4% of your portfolio each year in retirement.
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which means accumulating, you know, roughly it's like 25 times your annual retirement spending.
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So if you plan on spending something like $75,000 a year in retirement, you'll need to have almost
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2 million saved by age 65. And a lot of people struggle to reach those kinds of numbers.
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And you argue that there are several problems that arise out of this. And one is that just
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people have a lot of stress and anxiety about the retirement and they're trying to save enough to
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stop working at 65 and never work again. And so they just put their nose to the grindstone
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in their 30s, 40s, 50s. They don't spend money on having fun or time having fun. They just figure
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I've got to work, work, work, save, save, save. And I got to wait until retirement to finally
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enjoy my life. Yeah, it's going to allow me to finally live the life I want to live one day.
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So if I sacrifice and I put off things like my health, the relationship that I have with my
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spouse and my kids, my travel, me having a good time. If I just put my head down and don't focus
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on those things for 30 years, then maybe one day I'll be able to do all of those things.
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But the sad thing is by the time you get to 65, you might not have the vim and vigor to do those
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things you've always wanted to do because you're no longer 30 or 40 anymore. Now you're 65.
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Yeah. My dad came down with dementia at the age of 62. He had it for 10 years before he
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he passed away. Nothing is promised. And so a lot of people think like, well, what if I get
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injured? What if I get hurt? What if I lose my job? Well, if we're sitting here at 75 and those
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things happen, like all of the research, all the data shows us that the things that people regret
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are not, you know, I didn't work more. It was, I didn't spend more time with the people and things
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that were most important to me. How have you seen that play out in the clients you've served? Have
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you seen people who, you know, they got to 65, 70 and they retired and, you know, sure they
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got enough for retirement, but they look back in their life like, boy, I really regret not taking
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more advantage of the time I had when I was younger. Yeah. My book has been pretty triggering
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for some people in their sixties and seventies because they sort of wish somebody would have
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made them aware that they could have done things differently. And you have a lot of people that
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have put off and they have, it's essentially like the ultimate form of a rival fallacy. People felt
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like they were going to have this amazing life, being able to do all of these things. And when
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they get there, it's not what they thought it was going to be. Like I've had clients come into my
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office over the years and very few ever came in before the book with their hand raised, knowing
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that they didn't want to retire. So I would humor them and I would say, what do you want to do when
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you, you know, when you stop working? And the couple would say, we want to travel the world
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together. And I would say, great, me too. When was the last time the two of you went out on a date?
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And more than 50% of the time, they would just look at each other and not have a great answer.
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I have other clients who have said that when they retire, they want to play golf five days a week.
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And I ask them how often they're playing golf now. And the majority of them say that they're
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not playing golf. And it's like, look, if we're not working the muscles, if we're not developing
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the relationships to have the physical skills and the relationships to play golf 20 years from now,
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I think it's going to be hard for us to all of a sudden start to make it happen once we get there.
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All right. So this idea of a hard stop retirement at 65, it could cause a lot of stress and it can
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cause you to put off things for the future because you're just like, I got to work more and save more
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and not take the vacation now with my family because I got to save that for retirement.
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Another interesting point about the hard stop retirement that people don't think about, it's
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like, oh, it'd be so great to never have to work again, not wake up early, not have to go to
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meetings. But a lot of people, once they hit that and they're not working anymore, they have this
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period where they almost have like an existential crisis. They don't know, what do I do with myself
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now? That's another problem of this hard stop retirement. Yeah, there was some good research
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done in 2013 by Barbara Fredrickson, where she was looking at people who were prioritizing
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personal happiness and people that were prioritizing purpose. So personal happiness was
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more of a selfish, for purposes of this study, it was people that were saying, what can I do to
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make myself happy? That was their reason for waking up in the morning. And the other group
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of people were solving for, what can I do to make this world a better place? And when they looked
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at them, they hooked them up to brain monitors and heart monitors. And the people that were
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solving for happiness had the same response in their body that our body has when it's dealing
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with a chronic adversity. So something like losing a job, losing a loved one, their inflammation,
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was going higher. Their immunity was going down. They were more likely to get sick and pass away.
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Whereas the group that was prioritizing purpose, they felt like there was a bigger reason
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for them to wake up every morning. It had just the opposite effect. Their inflammation markers
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were much lower. Their immunity was better. They were less likely to get sick, to get a disease.
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So there is actually a real scientific reason and backing here that says, hey, maybe we should never
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want to arrive at a place where we're fully checked out in terms of the role that we're
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playing to make this world a better place. Okay. So the big argument in your book is that
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instead of thinking, all right, when I hit 65, I'm going to quit working completely.
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You're advocating that people might consider continuing to work past 65. And that could
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involve a different job or fewer hours. But you highlight that by working past 65,
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the retirement math becomes less anxiety inducing. So if you have a listeners right now in their
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thirties, forties, and fifties, and they're thinking, Oh my gosh, I don't have enough
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safe for retirement. How can working an additional five to 10 years, how can that change your
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retirement savings plan so that it might not be as stressful for you and you can enjoy the present
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more? So I tell this story in my book, it's called a tale of two Tonys about a guy named
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Tony, who's 45 years old, he makes $150,000 a year, and he has $150,000 saved for retirement.
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And he meets with his advisor, has a conversation like the one we've already talked about, and
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without giving it much thought, agrees to 65 as his retirement age. The advisor comes back and
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tells him that he'll have to save $2,400 a month every month adjusted for inflation for the next
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20 years in order to stop working. That's $30,000 a year. That's 20% of what he's making.
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So he immediately starts feeling the stress and the anxiety of already being behind, feeling
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And then I introduce an alternate reality similar to this movie, Sliding Doors, from
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a long time ago, where it was a movie with Gwyneth Paltrow, where her life could go in
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one of two directions based on whether she caught a train or not.
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So I have this alternate reality take place where after that initial meeting, he comes home and he's talking more about it with his wife.
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And his wife says, why do you want to retire at 65?
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And even if you're not doing this, I can't imagine you sitting around not doing anything at all.
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So he calls the advisor back up and he says, before we meet again, can you update my plan to show me retiring at 75 instead of 65?
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And the amount that he has to save goes down from $2,400 a month to $110 a month.
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And even if Tony were to say, I'll go tell him 70 instead of 65, it's a 75% reduction
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So by recognizing and planning that, hey, I'm willing to do this right now, what I'm
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doing or something else for a little bit longer, it opens up an incredible amount of, of financial
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flexibility in the short term and lets people lean into spending more of their time and money on the
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people and things that are most important to them right now. I think that when I saw that math,
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I was like, that's crazy. Hopefully people see that. It's like, it gives them some hope if they
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think they're behind on retirement. They're like, I'm never going to have a comfortable
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retirement. It's like, well, if you just work five or 10 more years past 65, you're probably
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going to be okay. So I think it can reduce that anxiety and that stress. But then the big point
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you're trying to make with this book is that by extending your working life a few years, you free
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up time you would have spent working extra hours and money you would have been siphoning off to
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your retirement account so you can use it to enjoy life when you're young and vibrant. That's the big
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case you're making. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, and you talk about you've got kids in their teens
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and you talk about this in the book, you were very conscious about this and deliberate that,
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okay, when my kids are teenagers, I want to be able to spend more time with them and do more
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with them when they're teenagers. What was it about the teen years that made you think,
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I really want to maximize this stage of life? Yeah, well, I mean, it's been more of an evolved
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way of thinking for me. So I would say that when I became really mindful about it was A,
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when my dad got dementia. And B, when my kids were 10 and seven, respectively, my wife and I
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had this nighttime routine where we would take turns tucking our kids into bed each night. And
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I found myself with my oldest son one night wishing it would hurry up. And God, I'm not
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saying this out loud, but I'm thinking to myself, like, hurry up and fall asleep so I can go
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and hang out with your mom or respond to this email or watch this show on Netflix.
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And then it occurred to me that he's probably not going to want to be doing this with me for
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very much longer. So I tried to like really force myself to be present. And that worked
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a little bit, but not the way that I wanted it to work. And then I had this crazy thought one day,
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which was, you know, if I woke up 30 years from now and a company invented a time machine
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that allowed me to go back in time to have one more nighttime routine with the 10 year old
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version of my son, how much money would I pay for that? And the number that came into my mind was
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$50,000 and, and it's all relative, right? It's going to be a different amount for different
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people. But the point I'm trying to make is that there are these like small moments that are not
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like, they don't, they don't seem like a big deal. Like we're taking them to an amusement park or on
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a great vacation, but just laying there with him and knowing this is a fleeting moment in time
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and that I'm going to really miss it. And I'd be willing to pay a lot of money to revisit it at
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some point in the future to allow myself to be really present for them when this happens. And
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And then another thing I'll add is, fast forward to when my oldest was about 13, there was
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a day, it was around four or five o'clock in the evening and I was getting ready to
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work out and he asked me if I would play Legos with him.
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And I was like, gosh, buddy, I'm getting ready to work out.
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And while I was working out, I was thinking, you know, I want to organize my day and my
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life in a way that I never say no to my kid again.
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I'm done everything that needs to get done by three o'clock. And then I'm around if they want
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to hang out with me. And a lot of days they don't want to hang out with me. And if that happens and
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I can get back to the things that didn't have to get done, but are nice for me to do. But the more
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I'm around, the more that they're asking, the more that I'm saying yes, the more they come back and
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say, let's do it again. And so now I've got this great rhythm with both of my boys where we're
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working out together four days a week. We share a lot of music in common. We're playing golf and
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just really have carved out a lot of similar and shared hobbies and interests that we can
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take in together. Yeah. So you're prioritizing enjoying your kids while they're still around
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rather than prioritizing, okay, I've got to do everything I can now to build up my retirement
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account. Yeah. If my like macro idea is that by recognizing that I'll probably work longer in my
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seventies, freezing me up to spend a lot more of my time and money differently now, then I'm really,
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I've got that under the microscope with how I'm parenting right now. So I've got two and four
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years respectively before my boys go off for college. And it's almost like I'm saying no to
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a lot of speaking gigs right now. I'm saying no to coaching. It's something I thought about,
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but I'm not going to do because what I'm solving for on a daily basis is maxing out the time
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that I'm going to have with them. And it's almost like the version of me five years from now is
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writing a sponsorship check to free me to lean into this time with them because I know once
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they're gone. I'm going to be ready to ramp up my activity, ramp up the hours I'm working,
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ramp up the contribution that I'm making. Yeah. I'm this book. This is really useful
00:19:51.160
for me because I'm a neurotic saver. I just, I love to squirrel away money because it makes me
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feel safe. And so there's been times in my own working life from like, well, we can't take the
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time off to do the vacation because I got to get this thing done. So we can make the money and save
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it for retirement. After reading this book, I'm thinking, oh my gosh, my son, he's 15. I got maybe
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three summers left with him, maybe four. I want to be able to do stuff with him. I need to take my
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foot off the gas a little bit and realize it's going to be okay. I can work an additional five
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to 10 years in my seventies. And I've got a lot more time because I'm going to be by myself with
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my wife, but I can't get back that time with my son now. So take the vacation. Yeah. And I think
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all of these things, whether it's the dating example or the golf example, or the time with
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our kids, right? Like the 18 summers with Jim and Jamie Shields, that's in their book, family board
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meetings is the first time I heard of this. But like, there's a lot of people that need to hear
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that that need to be reminded that you only have this limited time with your kids. Like the main
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thing that I'm solving for my life right now, having a 16 and a 13 year old at my house is I'm
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trying to do as many things as possible to increase the likelihood that they're going to
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want to spend time with me when they're adults. So I'm very confident that because I'm making the
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most of my time with my kids now, then I'm going to have 20, 30, 40 additional summers with them
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as well. Because the more we're leaning into something now, these relationships are going
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to compound the same way that your money is going to compound in your portfolio.
00:21:18.620
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All right, so working five to 10 years after age 65,
00:26:29.020
it means you have to save less for retirement now,
00:26:36.600
doing stuff that you enjoy with the people you love now.
00:26:48.080
So stopping work at 65 wouldn't be desirable for them anyway.
00:26:56.600
They hate their job and they just, they can't wait until they're 65 so they can quit their
00:27:05.340
Yeah, I changed the language in my book after the first couple of passes.
00:27:08.840
I was using language like find a job you love and I changed it to find a job you don't hate because I don't think that everyone needs to find their purpose and have that be, you know, the time that they spend with work.
00:27:21.180
And so for me, I want people like if they don't like what they do, like, yeah, let's figure out a plan to not have to do that any longer than you have to.
00:27:29.820
And I'm sure if somebody hates what they do, not having to do that anymore for a period of time is going to be better when you compare it to what to what you're doing now. But I don't think that like not doing anything at all is going to provide lasting happiness for many people. And so I think that the goal should be find a job that you don't hate. Find a job where maybe you like the people, you like the work, you don't mind it. And it allows you to have the lifestyle to lean in more to these other things that we've been talking about.
00:27:57.900
All right. So if you don't like your job, try to find a job in which you wouldn't mind
00:28:01.640
continuing to work after 65. And it's probably a good idea to make that pivot long before you
00:28:06.860
reach 65, since it does get harder to get hired as you get older. But another thing you do is you
00:28:11.900
could pivot to something where you work fewer hours. In your later years, you don't necessarily
00:28:15.360
have to work as many hours, or you just want to have some income continuing to come in.
00:28:19.460
Something people might think about is starting something on the side before they get older.
00:28:24.140
So as they get older, they can maybe pivot into something they're more interested in,
00:28:27.660
that they would like to do more of? Yeah, look, I can share my own experience. My own personal
00:28:32.740
experience was around 2010, 2011, I had about 350 wealth management clients and I was qualifying
00:28:40.300
for these fancy trips that made me about 10 to 15 years younger than most of the other advisors who
00:28:46.060
were there. And I was asking them a lot of questions and, and almost to a person, they all
00:28:50.380
had like 2000 clients and they only enjoyed working with about 20% of them. And in our
00:28:56.880
industry, especially back then, you couldn't use social media. You couldn't use word of mouth
00:29:01.520
marketing very much. You couldn't get testimonials. So you just had to take whatever fell into your
00:29:06.720
lap. And I recognized that there were a lot of people that I was working with that I didn't love
00:29:11.460
working with for one reason or another. And so I shifted my practice. I went from 350 clients down
00:29:17.240
to about 75. And then my wife and I started an organization together called Cadre, which is still
00:29:23.540
around today, we have a community for CEOs and entrepreneurs and find ways to bring people
00:29:27.600
together. But what was fascinating about that is the ancillary benefit that really popped was by
00:29:33.600
me having two things going side by side at the same time. It allowed me to really have the courage
00:29:38.920
and the ability to stick to my guns in terms of who do I want to work with and who do I want to
00:29:43.380
support. And Adam Grant in his book Originals, I think, talked a little bit about looking at
00:29:49.480
entrepreneurs and people that were starting businesses and the success rate that they had
00:29:55.040
with their new business based on whether they had some steady stream of income coming in from
00:30:00.000
another source at the time. So essentially it was two groups of people starting businesses.
00:30:04.680
One group had a job and they were doing this new business kind of on the side to build it up. And
00:30:09.540
the second group just went all in on the new business. And the first group was far more likely
00:30:14.680
to succeed with their business because they had this income coming in that allowed them
00:30:19.640
to be a little bit more mindful and a little bit more deliberate with the way they were
00:30:23.700
And the takeaway is that entrepreneurs are often considered big risk takers, but really
00:30:31.020
And so I think that there's an opportunity for a lot of people that maybe you start some
00:30:35.700
kind of a side hustle while you add the thing that you have now and allow yourself to get
00:30:40.220
a few clients, to get a little bit of momentum.
00:30:42.120
them. And maybe you keep both going at the same time, but maybe it provides an on-ramp for you
00:30:46.920
to leave the job that you don't love right now and start leaning into something that you enjoy
00:30:50.480
much more. What about someone who's got a job that involves a physical capacity that degrades with
00:30:56.220
age and necessitates an early retirement? I'm thinking maybe you're in a physically
00:31:01.080
demanding job, like you're an HVAC installer, or even surgeons. It requires a lot of fine
00:31:07.320
you know motor skills or whatever and maybe as you get into your 70s and 80s like that sort of
00:31:13.440
degrades how what do you i mean what do they do they've trained their whole life to do this thing
00:31:18.500
and they can no longer do it what about them yeah you know i think that there's other opportunities
00:31:23.900
like in their fields you know i think you see a lot of doctors a lot of surgeons who who take
00:31:29.840
jobs as professors at universities or they sit on boards and contribute their knowledge that way
00:31:36.020
you've got auto mechanics that end up in more of a managerial type role. So hopefully there's going
00:31:42.740
to be some opportunities for them to pivot doing something else. Yeah. Maybe you got to think like
00:31:46.520
an athlete, right? Like a football player, you know, they have to retire in their thirties and
00:31:51.000
then they end up doing something that's related to the field. Like they become a coach or something
00:31:54.620
like that, or an agent, you know, my dad, he was a federal game warden for the fish and wildlife
00:32:00.360
service for his entire career. They had mandatory retirement. I think it was like a 55 sometime in
00:32:05.740
the 50s is a demanding physically demanding job but he kept working even though he didn't have to
00:32:10.460
he had a pretty good pension with his job but he got a contract job with the epa checking oil rig
00:32:17.640
compliance regulation stuff oh cool he's been doing that he just turned 79 he's still doing that
00:32:24.160
and i don't think he like loves it but he doesn't hate it it's just something to do and he really
00:32:30.040
enjoys working and i think it's an example of doing something related to what you're doing but
00:32:35.260
in a different capacity. No, that's a great example. All right. So if we're shifting from
00:32:38.940
a hard stop retirement to a continuous income or phased model where maybe we make less and less as
00:32:45.380
we get closer to 75, how should our investment strategy change? Like what does a portfolio look
00:32:51.200
like when you aren't planning to completely drain it starting at age 65? Well, one of the nice
00:32:56.520
advantages of working longer is that you can allow your money to potentially have more exposure to
00:33:02.760
risk for a longer period of time. So somebody that is planning to retire at 65 is going to
00:33:07.960
want to shift, in my opinion, more of their money to some conservative investments that's not going
00:33:12.760
to be subject to a potential stock market decline of 20%. And if you're still working, and thereby
00:33:18.960
you're using your income primarily to live on and not drawing down from your investments,
00:33:24.060
you can leave your money invested a little bit more aggressively for a little bit longer. That
00:33:28.940
would be one thing. I think another thing is just the idea of getting more and more people
00:33:34.020
comfortable spending their money earlier. You mentioned you're a great saver. And I will tell
00:33:39.140
you that most of my clients now are in their 60s and 70s, and they all have probably eight figures
00:33:45.540
plus of net worth. And the recurring theme in all of these conversations with my clients is just
00:33:51.880
begging them to spend more of their money. Because the problem is, if you've been a great saver your
00:33:57.020
entire life and you've played that game really well, it's incredibly difficult to just flip the
00:34:02.480
switch and all of a sudden lean into spending your money more. And if I have different groups
00:34:08.100
of clients, let's say in one bucket I have clients that have enough money, they're probably never
00:34:13.420
going to run out of it, and they're still earning an income, even if it's like $50,000 a year or
00:34:18.640
$100,000 a year, those clients spend their money in much more of a carefree way than the ones who
00:34:26.360
are completely out. The ones who are no longer doing anything at all have a really difficult
00:34:31.040
time transitioning from this. My portfolio has gone up only for the past 40 years and now I'm
00:34:37.840
taking money out of it. And psychologically, it's been interesting to see how many people
00:34:42.660
have such a difficult time overcoming this. Yeah, I can see that happening. Because you
00:34:47.280
spend your entire adult life saving and now it's like, okay, now you got to spend it. You're like,
00:34:51.420
wait a minute, that's not right. So that can be tough. But like by having that job in your
00:34:57.200
seventies, you know, 70, 70, 75. Yeah. Like you said, it released some of that psychological
00:35:02.780
pressure to not spend. She's like, well, you know, I still have money coming in.
00:35:07.200
My retirement's going to be okay. I can spend and I'll be okay. Yeah. Okay. So the argument
00:35:12.320
you're making is that people could stress out less and enjoy their lives and their younger
00:35:16.200
years more if they plan to work past 65. And this is something that's very doable now because,
00:35:20.360
most jobs aren't physically demanding and people are living a lot longer. I mean, even if you stop
00:35:25.420
working at 75, you could still have 20 years, two decades of not working at all. I think there are
00:35:30.600
some people out there who truly don't want to work any longer than they have to. And there's
00:35:33.700
some careers where it makes a lot of sense to maximize your earnings in your younger years,
00:35:38.640
where maybe it's a physical job and you don't see yourself pivoting to something else later.
00:35:43.280
Or maybe you want to devote yourself to volunteer work after 65. But for a lot of people,
00:35:47.660
this is a path that could allow them to make more of their lives now. And as part of that,
00:35:52.500
you're a huge advocate for continuing to invest in yourself as you age. What does that look like?
00:35:58.660
Yeah. So the last chapter of my book is called just that, investing in you. And I think that
00:36:03.720
sometimes when we're too focused on hitting our number, we do it at the expense of going to the
00:36:09.260
gym. We do it at the expense of the quality of our sleep, hanging out with friends, having a good
00:36:13.940
time. And I think that our society really over-indexes for the long-term benefits of
00:36:20.300
doing these things that are healthy for us and good for us and undersells the short-term benefits.
00:36:25.160
So like, yes, you should get a good night's sleep tonight because you might feel better 20 years
00:36:29.920
from now. But in my experience, you should really get a good night's sleep tonight because of how
00:36:33.740
you're going to feel 20 hours from now. And I think that the idea that I'm trying to promote
00:36:38.680
here is that I think that if you're currently working, let's say, nine hours a day and you
00:36:44.440
feel like you don't have time to go to the gym, you don't have time to see your best friend,
00:36:48.580
you don't have time to take your wife out on a date, that by actually making time to do those
00:36:53.140
things, you're going to be filling up your cup. You're going to be giving yourself more energy.
00:36:58.240
You're going to be giving yourself more clarity. And even though you might be now working eight
00:37:02.620
hours a day instead of nine hours a day, in my experience, you can be a lot more productive with
00:37:07.720
those hours because you're better rested, you don't have the brain fog, and you're showing up
00:37:12.800
with more vigor than you were before. For someone listening right now who's exhausted by the grind,
00:37:18.300
but feels trapped by this traditional retirement timeline, what is the very first step they can
00:37:23.280
take today to start applying your framework? So look, I think I'm selling. I'm not really
00:37:28.060
selling anything, but I think I'm selling a lot of the same things that other people are selling.
00:37:31.660
Like lean into these relationships that are important to you, take better care of yourself,
00:37:35.540
have more fun, but I'm hopefully solving the elephant in the room for a lot of these people,
00:37:41.260
which is like, how can I afford to do this? So I have a calculator on my website, which you can
00:37:46.700
link up, hopefully, DerekCoburn.com forward slash never retire, where people can enter in like their
00:37:51.900
income and the assets that they have, and they can experiment with, well, what happens if I work two
00:37:57.240
more years or what happens if I work four more years and be able to really embody the financial
00:38:02.800
impact, the flexibility that will come from agreeing to say, I'm going to do this for
00:38:07.120
a little bit longer. Like I gave the tale to Tony's example before, but even like working
00:38:12.500
just one extra year, somebody were to say, I'll go till 66 instead of 65, typically correlates
00:38:18.720
with about a 15 to 20% reduction in the amount of money that they have to save on an annual basis.
00:38:24.160
So, so really think about, you know, how committed are you to your plan? How much of your plan right
00:38:29.860
now is on autopilot. Did you pick 65 because that's really the age that you know you want
00:38:34.540
to stop working? Or did you pick 65 because that's typically what everyone else says to do?
00:38:40.620
Well, Derek, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book
00:38:43.460
and your work? Yeah, I've loved our chat here, Brett. My website, DerekCobron.com,
00:38:48.360
I've been writing a lot more, just kind of piggyback on a lot of the ideas in my book
00:38:52.480
around what I'm doing from a parenting and how I'm spending time with my wife, how I'm spending
00:38:56.640
time with my friends and just really trying to tie all this together and keep building on what
00:39:01.400
was in the book. So I encourage people to go there, sign up for my email newsletter. I hang
00:39:05.260
out on Instagram a little bit too. So, but yeah, it'd be great to keep in touch with some of your
00:39:09.040
folks. All right. Well, Derek Coburn, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much,
00:39:12.340
Brett. My guest today was Derek Coburn. He's the author of the book, Let's Retire Retirement. It's
00:39:17.360
available on amazon.com. You can learn more information about his work at his website,
00:39:20.820
derrickcoburn.com. Also check out our show notes at awim.is slash retirement, where you find links
00:39:25.200
to resources. We delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the A1
00:39:37.120
podcast. If you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute
00:39:39.980
to give us a review on a podcast or Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already,
00:39:44.160
thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who would think
00:39:47.620
was something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time,
00:39:51.020
is Brett McKay. Remind you to not listen to anyone podcast, but put what you've heard into action.