Transcript:
Easan Arulanantham:
You’ve seen like many different retirements. What are some habits, outside of the world of personal finance/money, that leads to a happy retirement? So like a fulfilling retirement?
Tom Vaughan:
Yeah, that’s kind of interesting question. Because, mostly we deal with the finance, right? I mean, that’s just what what we’re responsible for. We have a financial plan. We look at tax planning. We look at the asset management. We talk about those. But, I meet with clients every six months on average. And so I’ve had 10,000 meetings. I get to know people. I get to see what’s working and what’s not working. Just in their lives, like who’s happy? So it’s a great question. Not exactly my area of expertise, but I do have a lot of exposure to that. And I look at that for myself, and for any of my other clients. I would say there’s a couple things. Number one is, most of my happy clients are pretty active. They’ve got some kind of structure, something that gets them out there doing something. It could be a hobby: Flying model airplanes, or knitting, or quilting, or art. My grandmother started painting. This lady at church, who was an artist, and she started a class. And so a bunch of ladies would get together, so it’s very social, a lot of fun. She painted a couple 100 paintings, she got really good at it. When we had her memorial service in the gym, in the church, we had all of her paintings up on the wall. It was really amazing. And she got great joy out of the that. It she didn’t start painting till she was 73. And so, following your bliss so to speak, and finding something that you can kind of get up and do; that might be volunteer work. These are things that I’ve seen that are quite effective.
Some people continue to work, too. I mean, that’s another one. I’ve seen people are quite happy, doing a part time job, that they really like. So they like knitting, and they’re working at the yarn store. They love talking to people about it and such, too. Some of these guys that I’ve run into at Home Depot, they’re just pretty excited. This is like an area this is something they do all the time. They’re working in their yard on the sprinkler system or whatever and, and they they’ve got a knowledge base that they want to share. And they like interacting. They’re social. So keeping that social going in some form or fashion, I think is very effective. We have a lot of clients that have moved to retirement communities, where they have literally like 100 different organizations that you can join and clubs. Some of those are somewhat restrained now because of the virus. But, some of them are still happening in different ways. And so I think that’s important. There are people that are into woodworking or whatever it is, that they really like. So I do think it’s important. I would say that unhappy, if you go the other direction, are people that end up kind of sitting on the couch, and watch a lot of daytime TV or what have you, and don’t really have something to kind of get them out the door, and get them kind of involved in different areas. So, find your bliss. It’s like a chance: You don’t have to go to work. Assuming you did the financial part right, you don’t have to go to work. So you can you can do almost anything. Take up bike riding… it’s really cool. I’ve seen some great things that people have done.
Easan Arulanantham:
Yeah, you know, simple things you can do to stay active… Maybe that’s like getting a dog, or an older dog, that you can just go for a walk. There are small things like that, just moving, and being able to. It really helped my grandparents, was being able to move about and going around the neighborhood, just saying hi to people, was really good for them.
Tom Vaughan:
Yeah, I have a client, actually, it’s a good point. I have a client who wrote a book called Mutual Rescue. So she was the CEO of a basically the ASPCA version here in the valley, Humane Society. And, to let people know, that sometimes adopting an animal is an amazing thing. So, it started off as a video series, where they would go out and say, “Okay, help this person.” They had all these health issues and all these things. And they got a dog, and now they’re taking the dog for a walk. And now they got this dog to take care have, and their health is improved. And it became a book and it’s actually available on Amazon called Mutual Rescue. It’s really, really great book, I’ve read it. And the object is that you’re rescuing each other. You’re rescuing this animal, and then that animal is rescuing you. And yeah, I mean, I’ve seen that. I’ve seen where recent widow is now got a cat or that type of thing. And… there’s pros and cons to having animals. Believe me, I have three little dogs. But, overall the pros outweigh the cons. So that’s another one. I’ve seen a lot of people are quite happy with their animals. And so that’s, that’s a good area, too. Good point.