Transcript:

Intro (00:01):

Do you struggle with what it means to be successful in your retirement? Trust us, you're not alone. Welcome to the Retirement Success in Maine podcast. Here you'll go in depth with guidance point advisors, investment consultants, to hear stories about how retirees in Maine are navigating a successful retirement, get insight into the inevitable challenges of aging and define what a successful retirement looks like.

Ben Smith (00:26):

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Retirement Success in Maine podcast. My name's Ben Smith, and joining me as always is the trustee to my power of attorney, the guy who's got my back, even if I forget where I put my healthcare proxy, my co-host Curtis Wister. How are you doing today, Curtis?

Curtis Worcester (00:44):

I'm doing well, Ben. I'm doing well. That's quite a bit of responsibility. I didn't know I was signing up for that today, but we'll take it. So looking forward to this conversation.

Ben Smith (00:52):

Yeah, and I know obviously back in episode 23, speaking of trustees, power of attorneys, healthcare proxies, we explore the topic of solo aging, so older adults who don't have children or close family to rely on as they age. So we heard from a lot of our listeners who identify with that idea who are friends in that situation, but here we are almost a hundred episodes later and there's even more to talk about.

Curtis Worcester (01:19):

That's right, Ben, especially with the rise in child-free adults and growing awareness that traditional family support structures are certainly shifting. If you're aging without kids or if you're next of kin isn't a clear choice, it can be hard to know who to trust with the big responsibilities like your health, your money, and even your legacy.

Ben Smith (01:40):

Exactly. So today we're thrilled to have two guests joining us. One is a returning favorite of ours and the other is blazing new ground in this space. Together they're helping us explore new solutions for aging well without children. So our first guest is Dr. Sara Zeff Geber. She's a sought after professional speaker and the author of Essential Retirement Planning for solo ages. She's named one of PBS's Next Avenue's Influencers in Aging and is widely recognized as a pioneer in raising awareness around the challenges of aging without children for the past decade. She's focused her work on educating elder care professionals, senior living providers, attorneys and financial planners on the unique needs of solo ages.

Curtis Worcester (02:21):

That's right. And you mentioned Ben. We have actually two guests today. So joining Dr. Geber is Dr. Jay Zigmont, who is a certified financial planner and child-free wealth specialist. He's the founder and chief visionary of Child-Free Wealth, the author of the Child-Free Guide to Life and Money and Co-host of the Child-Free Life by Design podcast. So everybody hit pause and go find that podcast real quick and then come back. Jay is a nationally recognized expert on helping child-free and permanently childless individuals design meaningful lives and secure futures. And his insights have been featured in Forbes, cspan, the Street and the Wall Street Journal. His latest venture Child-Free Trust provides professional POA power of attorney executor and trustee services to those without a clear next of kin, again, the founder of Child-Free Wealth and now Child-Free Trust, a first of its kind national service helping child-free and permanently childless individuals handle estate planning, including professional medical and financial POA executor, trustee services. So in short, if you don't know who to put down as your decision maker, they have got your back.

Ben Smith (03:36):

So please welcome Dr. Sara Zeff Geber and Jay Zigmont to the Retirement Success and Maine Podcast. Welcome both.

Sara Zeff Geber, PhD (03:43):

Thank you. Thank you. Good to be back.

Ben Smith (03:45):

Awesome. Well, I know with our show we do a little bit of just get to know you and just warm up a little bit and especially we're recording in February. It's Maine, it's cold, so we have to warm up here. So Sara, I want to start with you. Welcome back and for our newer listeners, love just for you to give us a refresher on what Solo aging is and why it's such a growing concern in retirement planning.

Sara Zeff Geber, PhD (04:11):

Sure. Solo aging is, I define it as anyone who is getting older as we all are, but mostly my audience is people 60 plus who either do not have children or who can't depend on any family members for support as they age. It's a big umbrella. There's a lot of people under that umbrella, but there's a lot of important information for them in terms of successfully aging and having the support they need throughout the next few decades of their life.

Curtis Worcester (04:51):

Yeah, that's great. And Jay, we'd love to hear a little more about your background. I know I just read off of bio there, but how did you come to create Child Free Trust and what kind of gap were you trying to fill there?

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (05:03):

Yeah, so I'm a survey financial planner and I was helping child free people my specialty and definition by way chare in my case means you have no living biological or adopted children.

(05:13):

And the thing where again from clients was like, okay, who makes decisions for us when we can't? And we went out to every trust company we could think of, every lawyer we could think of and trying to figure out what is the answer. And what we found was in California or Arizona, you could appoint a professional fiduciary, but in Maine I got nothing. I don't have a solution for it. So when I had these clients over and over and over saying This is my existential crisis, the answer is, well, I guess we need to build a solution for it. And frankly, I don't know that I really wanted to go through all the work because that is a lot of work on the medical power of training in particular, and the financial, it all adds up into a lot of responsibility. But when you see there are 15 million child free people over the age of 55 that don't have an answer, it's something that needs to be fixed and that's what we're doing Child Free trust.

Ben Smith (06:02):

I love that. Perfect. And I know Sara, obviously we talked in 2021 last and we had a conversation, and again, for those that are listening right now, feel free to go back if you want to get some more foundational knowledge there. But I'd love to hear from both of your takes since Sara, I'll start with you on what's changed in the solo aging landscape since we first talked in 2021. Is it getting more attention? Are there new challenges emerging? What's going on there?

Sara Zeff Geber, PhD (06:30):

It's definitely getting more attention. I say last year, 2025, solar waging really caught fire. A lot of people out there talking about it now, there's a lot of concern among people whose profession is senior living or caregiving professionals and individuals are really acknowledging that this is an area of concern not just for individuals in themselves but for society because you have a lot of people without a safety net, and that's really the best way of looking at solo ages. They are people without that traditional safety net of family, predominantly adult children.

Ben Smith (07:20):

Got it. And

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (07:20):

Jay, how about yourself? So Sara is one of the OGs, the original have been doing this forever. She came on my podcast podcast and I asked her like, Hey, you've been doing this for a dozen years. Have you seen structural changes? There's a lot more like in the news talk about it, but have you've actually seen laws change, systems change support and there's not much change? And Sara, am I, correct me if I'm wrong, but I mean that's your kind of the big picture on that. I think, sorry, go ahead.

Sara Zeff Geber, PhD (07:48):

No, I was just saying I totally agree. I haven't seen much change in the solution. I see change in the attention that's being paid to this as a problem or an issue or however you want to look at it. But no, Jay, I totally agree with you. Structurally there's nothing.

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (08:05):

Yeah, I think on the child free side, good, bad or ugly, it's been a political topic. So there's been a bunch of discussions around, last political presidential election was around the childless cat ladies and there's a bunch of initiatives to try to encourage people to have kids, but the data says that doesn't work. So it's part of we get stuck in this political discussion that nobody wants to be in the middle of. And my answer is I don't get a vote when people having kids or not. I just support people who don't. And I think that's part one of the challenges of why the systems don't change is because it gets tied up in politics when it doesn't have to be. Right.

Curtis Worcester (08:40):

Yeah, no, that's great. I appreciate that insight from both of you. And I know we were just trying to build a little bit of a background there. We could probably keep going, but I really want to dive into the meat of our conversation today and really starting with the legal side here and something that Ben and I see so often is so many retirees just struggle with naming power of attorneys or executors of their states. So Jay, I'll start with you in Child Free Trust and how do you help solve that problem for people, especially those right without the obvious family choices for naming those roles?

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (09:17):

Yeah, the way I look at it is as a child free person, you must have your paperwork in place. And the reason is because if you don't, you can be in the court appointed Guardian and Conservatorships, which nobody wants. If they can't find a next of kin or someone make decisions for you, it's just a nightmare. So if you have somebody do it, look, you can go to free will.com and get your paperwork done. That's pretty easy. The harder question is what happens when you don't? And that's where Child Free Trust comes in. So we serve, we're a nationwide solution that serves as medical power attorney, financial power attorney executor and trustee for Child Free People. We have an annual subscription to membership that we goes with that we create all these estate documents and then we create what we call care documents. We have to know everything about you. My wife and I are clients of Child-Free Trust, and the way I say it is if my wife and I are a car crash, who makes our medical decisions, who makes our financial decisions, and who lets our dog out? Now my wife says that's not a priority. She's going to be worried about me in this case, but my wife's going to be more worried about the dog. I

Curtis Worcester (10:14):

Was just going to

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (10:14):

Say, sure, yeah, she keeps trying to say I'm wrong, but I'm like, no, I know. And you don't think about those things, what kids normally do for you, they check off those boxes and take care of the things like pick up your mail or whatever else. And we're not literally going to be the ones letting your dog out, but what we're going to do is we're going to file your care documents and call your pet sitter and say, Hey, let's make sure Colt gets let out. And it's about building a support structure around you so that you have legal protection, but you also have someone there on your side.

Ben Smith (10:49):

Got it. Well, this kind of leads to another question, and Sara, I know in that previous episode with us, we discussed how solar ages often didn't feel unsure about who to lean on later in life. I know one of things that you were talking about was an example was I think it is a friend of yours that again, relocated into your community and people were surrounding them, they were solo aging and they had to keep reinventing their social network, their friends would move on. They're trying to all count on each other, and that was a, you could tell just a very stressful piece of having to always just be on top of that social network that you're all looking out for each other. So I just want to hear from your perspective, how do services like Jay's here help create more peace of mind for this group?

Sara Zeff Geber, PhD (11:37):

Well, for sure. When I discovered what Child Free Trust was all about, the bills went off, it was like, oh my God, I finally have a solution for people that say to me regularly, I don't have anybody to name. I can't do an estate plan. So it's like you build this gap in what I'm talking about. So to me, it's just wonderful to have this solution. The problem, as you started to say earlier, Ben, I was talking about groups of people who have this mutual support social network problem with those is that usually those consists of people who are all around the same age, and that's problem because as they all get more and more frail, needy, lose capacity, lose ability to fulfill activities of daily living, all the things that much as we don't like to talk about it, we don't like to face it.

(12:41):

That's what happens as we get older. Unless you get taken out early by a massive heart attack or you get hit by a bus, these things are going to happen. And being prepared for them is so terribly important. And it's great to have a big social network. It's wonderful to have someone to rely on when you are recovering from a knee replacement or something and you have someone to come in and help you with various things, that's great, but it's when you cannot speak for yourself, when you cannot really advocate for what you want, something else has to kick in and that's where child-free trust is a lifesaver.

Curtis Worcester (13:27):

That's great. That's great. So I just want to keep going a little bit here, and this is a question or topic I want to get kind of both of your take on. I'll start with you Jay. So I think we all hear, I'm sure you two hear it all the time. Well, I have a few close friends, so I'll just name one of them for this stuff. Can you just walk through what are the risks in assuming a friend or even extended family member will take on some of these end of life decisions? I'm sure that's a loaded question, I'm sure, but can you just go through a little bit of that?

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (14:00):

Well, I mean, the reality is you're relying on one person

Curtis Worcester (14:02):

And

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (14:03):

That person may be on vacation and or not be able to handle it. So I'll give an example from my life. We recently had a family member pass, and I do this for a living, so I know this stuff inside and out, and it took me three full days to work through his stuff to figure out some of the executor's roles and what had to be done. That's me as a professional.

(14:26):

Now, if that was a lay person, that's a lot of work on a friend. Now I've got some good friends who would do that for me, but if I had a choice, I'd rather pay a professional to do it and then my friend could just be there with me. We're in the hospital, they can be there at my bedside. I have a client we're working with who's going through some cancer and all of his friends want to help, and I'm like, great, let's take care all of your medical things, the rides, everything else you need to do so they can come and play board games with you and not have to worry about how to actually provide you care, how to fight with the healthcare organization, how to pay the bills, and that's the best role for the friends or chosen family with a backup of a professional.

Curtis Worcester (15:11):

Yeah, I love that. I love that. And Sara, I'd love to hear your take here too.

Sara Zeff Geber, PhD (15:15):

Yeah, Jay and I are so aligned on this stuff. I had a good friend who was in that partnership with another woman. They were both single at the time, years go by, my friend moves a couple hundred miles away, she gets married and she's still in touch with this woman, but they kind of never thought about changing their estate plan, which had each other listed as their backup. Well, six, eight years later, this woman dies pretty suddenly, and my friend Mary was able to drive down and be at her bedside at the very end. But then she was it, she was the person, she had the advanced directive for healthcare, she had the POA for finances. She was, it took her a year and a half to get everything sorted out. I mean, she had to find a home for this woman's cat. She had to sell her car on and on. It went for months and months and months. And finally after a year and a half, she said, Sara, I think I'm finally done here.

Ben Smith (16:21):

Wow.

Sara Zeff Geber, PhD (16:22):

That happens over and over and over again.

Ben Smith (16:25):

Yeah. Gotcha. Well, and I can see where obviously we're talking about this need and why, obviously Jay in your firm making a child-free trust here, why there was such a business demand for it and why you had the idea to start this. So and just kind even from our experience as advisors as well, we do see that there's solutions, but then sometimes they even name an attorney to do this for them at the attorney hourly rate. So you go, they do it, but man, it's really expensive as soon as someone gets involved. And as you said Jay, even for someone that does this within your service in your circle in trying to get things going, if you're charging an hourly rate to do this, that can get really expensive. And then their estate is less assets because of the cost even just to process this and administer it. So I want to just hear Jay on your side, just walk us through what somebody gets with child-free trust. How does that $999 annual service work in practice from document creation to 24 7 emergency response?

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (17:32):

And by the way, we actually end up charging a hourly rate. But here's the difference. Usually trust companies won't do this service unless you have millions of dollars and they're charging a percent of your assets, right? So I think the hard part that I remind people is first of all, nobody wants to do the medical part, but even if you can get a trust company to do it, they want you to be multi-millionaire. Their minimums are 10 or $30,000 a year. What we do is we charge a thousand dollars a year for the membership that includes all of your estate documents. And one of the things we find is child free, people move all the time so you can update 'em any time because this is that problem of Sara just outlined, you created documents 5, 10, 15 years ago and it haven't been updated.

(18:13):

It becomes an issue. And then we create care documents, because I was using the example the other day. Somebody lives in Montana and I'm like, Hey, your vacationing in Maine, did you bring your dog with you? These are the things we need to know. And by the way, we need to know your medical history and your allergies, all of that. Because what happens is when we get the phone call three o'clock in the morning from the hospital, we have to activate based on your care plans. So our 24 7 responses, the hospital calls us, we verify who you are and then fax over a copy of your power of attorney and your medical history because hospitals still use fax machines for some reason. And then we start acting as both your medical power of attorney, financial power of attorney. When we do that, there is an hourly rate to 75 an hour, but that is so you have that professional and there's no asset minimums or anything like that. What we do also for our clients is we've made two promises. The first promise is we won't raise our price by more than the social security cost of living adjustment. So if you can afford it now, you'll be able to afford it in the future. And if you end up on Medicaid, we'll still make the decisions for you. We won't charge you because it's one of those worries like, oh yeah, I have money, you'll take care of me, but once I'm out, I'm gone. And unfortunately in the financial world, that is true.

Curtis Worcester (19:27):

Yeah, exactly.

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (19:28):

Yeah, it is. You run out, you're done. We're like, no, no, no, no, no. You're one of us. We got you. Now mind you, you're going to be getting Medicare care and we're going a Medicaid care and we're going to use your social security check you. It's not going to be fancy care. We're not paying for your long-term care, but you have somebody to do it. And once you start realizing, oh, I have a professional in my back pocket, it's just kind of like a professional safety net for

Curtis Worcester (19:51):

You. No, that's awesome. That's really great. I want to jump back to you, Sara. I know we've talked in the past and you talk about the importance of intentional planning for solo ages, right? So I want to ask you, what should retirees be thinking about now? Again, whether they're 60 years old or 80 years old, what do we think about now to ensure that they age well, even with or without family? What are we doing?

Sara Zeff Geber, PhD (20:19):

Well, I still maintain that good planning involves kind of a three legged, the stool or solo ages of finance, legal and social. And honestly, in most cases, if people can get their financial and legal squared away with some of the tools that Jay's talking about, social becomes extremely important. You don't want to age in isolation. You don't want to be lonely later in life. And people sometimes don't give enough weight to the fact that almost everybody has to stop dry at some point. So how do you get to lunch to meet with your friends? How do you get a lot of places, especially if you're still living out in the suburbs of most areas, it doesn't have public transportation. So that all leads to my particular thinking that people who can't afford it ought to be thinking about a senior living community. And these things can be expensive.

(21:20):

They vary tremendously in cost depending on where in the country you are. But there are even some offerings now that are more geared to the middle market and middle income people who don't have millions and millions saved up for retirement, but can find a place in a community where they may end up kind of pitching in whatever they can do rather than hiring a lot of professional staff. So there's some creative things going on in the senior housing community. So essentially what it comes down to is where you're going to live is really the biggest question in how well you're going to develop and maintain that community around you, that social life, that social support system, if you will.

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (22:09):

I think it's a very good point. Can I add to that? Absolutely. So what we say to our child free clients is our goal is to have a plan in place for long-term care by your mid forties, which sounds way early, but that's when long-term care insurance is most affordable. Now, by the way, it's not affordable, it's never affordable, but this is when you can actually maybe afford it because long-term care is based on your health and the health of your parents. And your plan for long-term care needs to be both. How do you pay for it and who makes the decisions for you? And with our clients, we say you are not ready to retire until you have a long-term care plan in place. You must. It's the single largest expense you will have in retirement, and if you haven't planned around it, you've got a big hole in your plan.

Ben Smith (22:51):

Yep, yep. Good point. Jay, thanks for jumping in there. And I want to ask a different topic, but it was actually in the Portland Press Herald today front page news. It was a couple and they had a popup on their computer and it said, you've been hacked and you need to call this number. If you call this number, we're going to protect your money. They called, they had to take their money and give it to the Social Security Administration somehow, and they were told to go to the Bitcoin ATM to send the money to the Social Security Administration, which they did. So they did that and they got defrauded out of a lot of money. So I want to talk scams and elder fraud in the news all the time. So I want to just hear Jay on your side, protections that are built into professional fiduciary services that help prevent abuse or mismanagement of someone's estate. So obviously you have the wealth end, but you have the Childfree trust side. Talk about, obviously as you developed this, what was in top of mind for you in protecting people's money?

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (24:00):

So unfortunately, those scams are so popular. I mean, people miss how it's going just for reality check. There are call centers being hired outside the country overseas just to scam elderly full-time call centers. They hire to scam. And that's the danger. Now we all, as a financial planner, you get the training on how do you watch for those things and how do you stop it and how do you make sure they have a trusted individual on their accounts and all that. My thing is at some point you will be taken advantage of. If you look at the A RP stats, one out of 10 elders report elder abuse. And interestingly enough, the ones that reported it often are from family. It's one of the ones we watch out for is I had somebody say, Hey, I'm going to appoint my nephew to be my executor and in return he's going to make my decisions, but he also gets everything that's in the will. Well, you know what? He might say that to auntie and that she gets the cheap care. So he gets more in the will. I mean, I hate to say that happens, but it does.

(25:01):

So you have to build a network around it. So what we try to do is have the conversation with people. Say, alright, when's the time for you to have us step in voluntarily as your power of attorney and trustee to manage this stuff and to protect you because that scam you and I as a financial planner, our ears perk up like, okay, Bitcoin and the at m, but it's easy to fall for if you don't know and you don't have a professional to weigh in, that's where you can actually put a trusted individual on your accounts to say something weird is going on. Pause. I had somebody who, a friend of a friend and one of their clients and she had a new boyfriend and she's 80 something and the boyfriend was very young and the boyfriend wanted a whole bunch of money and she just started going to the bank and taking out tens of thousands of dollars at a time. And she had listed her daughter in this case as a trusted person on the account, gets a call from the bank bank's like, hold up, we're going to stop this. Now the interesting thing is now we're stuck in kind of a debate about it's her money, what does she do with it? And the bank talked to the daughter, talked to the person. It's like, look, the woman was like, I'm just going to keep giving to my, because that's what I want to do. It's not a scam. I just want to,

(26:14):

And it was like, oh, where's the borderline between? Are you being taken advantage of? Is this something you want to do? It's super, super gray and it's super case dependent in Tennessee, which is where I am, we're required to report it. We're mandatory reporters for any of these types of scams or suspected, but even then it's hard.

Ben Smith (26:37):

And I'll respond to that. Jay is, and that was actually, if you read the article from today, that's actually what happened is they lied to the advisor saying that they is a real estate deal. So they were actually buying real estate with their life savings. And the advisor just said, okay, so we'll advise them on tax consequences and all that and just gave them the funds. So the person that fell for it is suing the advisor for not helping spot elder abuse here, and it got thrown out lower court, and that's going to the main Supreme Court with a jury trial to it. So to your point, chase, it's gray, but geez, how could the advisor have known when the person's lying about even what they're using the money for, it's like, well, but to your point, it's your money and if I gate keep your own money from you and you seem like you're capable and knowing what you're doing, that feels conflicted as well from an advice model. I don't want to be between you and your money and lock it up, but you have red flag laws and you got to make sure that you're kind of tracking that. So anyway, I thought that was an interesting topic to bring up in the grand scheme of what we're doing today. So thanks for weighing in.

Curtis Worcester (27:50):

So Jay, I want to stick with you here just for a second longer, and actually going back to your role at your firm and just a question, how are clients finding you? Are people proactively seeking this kind of help? I know the conversations we've had, and sometimes people don't proactively think about these things, but is that the case or are they coming to you after they realize maybe there's holes in their current plan or that friend they just love so much, they don't love so much anymore? How does that work and what are you seeing there?

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (28:23):

So Sara and I put out a report we call the Child Free Care Crisis, and we found less than 20% of child-free people have a will in place. Now, mind you, in the general population, it's only about 30%. So we're not far behind, but we are behind.

Ben Smith (28:37):

Yeah, that's low.

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (28:39):

And the number one reason was they don't have somebody to put down. So if you have kids, it's kind of like you get the will in place, you got to have a guardian and you got to get that in place for your kids. But we don't have that. But what I'm finding in that same report, we found 75% of child-free people have pets. I actually think, and we'll see the data as it grows, but I actually think we're going to find more people. We'll create their documents because part of our documents include a pet trust to cover their pets. They're not worried about themselves. We hear people all the time, I don't have a big enough estate to worry about estate planning. And I'm like, hold up. I don't really care as much about after you're dead. I care about when you're alive, long-term care, stroke something. And when I say to 'em, Hey, who's going to make sure to take care of your dog's cinnamon when you're in the hospital? They're like, oh, I got to get this paperwork done. I laugh, I laugh, but it's real. I know. And I'm like, do it for yourself. Okay, fine. I'm just going to give in.

(29:32):

And what we find is actually most people reach out to us when they've dealt with this for their family members. They're like, I just did this for my mom. Who in the world is going to do this for me?

(29:43):

And all of a sudden you have that existential crisis. There's actually Facebook groups, there's US versions, international versions all around how do you age without representation? There's a group, I don't love the term, but it's called Elder Orphans, and there's groups around how do we find the solutions to this because they haven't been able to find it to the point where some of those folks when we first launched in January, came to us and this is too good to be true. And I'm like, well, it is true. Proof is in the pudding, of course. But they're like, we've been searching for this for decade and certain example over 12 years, and all of a sudden it just drops in our lap and kind of a little healthy skepticism, but we're working with 'em to understand why it's a priority and they know it's such a priority, but they've just been stuck.

Ben Smith (30:32):

Wow. Well, and I know Jay, that's really great that again, you've found proof of concept, you found your business model that you're able to grow this, but again, that you're able to do well in your business but also serve a really big need for those that are out there. Again, I know this is a population that has support, and again, Sara's been advocating for this for a long time, but to kind of be able to match that with a service is I think a really magical combo. But I want to go back to you, Sara, and I know one of the core messages that you had from our previous conversation together was around purpose and legacy that a lot of as we age, that purpose and legacy is really important to all of us and to continue to explore that, can you spend a little moment about how can services like Child-Free Trust, support those non-financial goals for solo ages?

Sara Zeff Geber, PhD (31:24):

Well, I think once you have the financial and legal side kind of taken care of, and you can put that aside and say, I was forward thinking, I got that established, and now I can focus in on what do I want, what I'm going to want the last years decades of my life to say about me? What do I want to leave as a legacy if I don't have kids, I'm not leaving them a financial legacy. But I think people leave legacies in so many ways and it is tied in with what you see as kind of your purpose in life or the thing that's given your life, meaning becomes your legacy. I had a very good friend who was truly a mentor to me when I was younger. I was in my forties and into my fifties. She was about 12 years older than me, and unfortunately she got cancer and eventually died when she was in her mid sixties. But I looked at her and I think she left an amazing legacy to me of how to do the work that we were both doing at the time. I learned almost everything I know about the world of leadership consulting her. That's the legacy she left. For me personally, I'm hoping to leave a legacy that includes a lot of consciousness racing about solo aging. And I think we all really look into our souls and say, what am I all about? What do I stand for?

(33:01):

How can I leave the world a better place to put it in terms that everybody's heard? Not too much different actually for solo ages than people who do have kids because a lot of times the kids are established, they're off on their own. And certainly you left a legacy of some kind of parentage that I think wants to go on and think about how they're leaving the world a better place.

Ben Smith (33:25):

Appreciate that answer, Sara. That's great. And I know Jay, you probably want to weigh in on Legacy as well. Just get your take on that as well.

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (33:32):

Yeah. By any chance, either of you NASCAR fans,

Ben Smith (33:35):

I'm not

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (33:36):

NASCAR aware. I'll say I don't know. So I am sure some of your audience, NASCAR is pretty popular inmates, so let's call that out of course. So I just put out a podcast my last year. I've been working with Drew LIC surfer, who's NASCAR crew chief, and it's got two Daytona rings for those that aren't NASCAR fans. Daytona is their Super Bowl,

(33:59):

And he's been a client of mine for three years. And one of the questions we ask is, what's the second line of your obituary? So the first line is Jay dies at this age. The second line is usually father three leaves behind Jack, Joe and John. So I asked Drew, I said, look, does your second line obituary say crew chief? I mean that's what his Wikipedia page says. And he goes, no. I was like, what do you mean? He says, it says a good man. And I'm like, what does that mean? What does it mean to leave an impact? And it is kind of this legacy around leadership and who you left behind and the stewardship. It's a really interesting story in nascar. We just put a podcast out of it because in NASCAR it's very much about the next generation. And the question I was asking true is how do you leave a legacy without lineage?

(34:44):

And that's the question for child-free people. And that's really where your money, your time, your effort needs to go. And the interesting thing was for him, it was not his job, it was something else. It's about the impact he's making. And that's where my goal when I'm working with clients is to say, all right, how do we make your time, your effort, everything else go there? And as child free trust, it's our job to actually make sure that legacy is out there. We have some folks, what's your legacy? And they're like, bury me, I'm gone. Don't say anything. I just disappeared into the wind. And then we had others. I had somebody else who's like, I want the biggest party, I want everybody there. But it's really about making sure your life has the impact you want and how do you leave that J shape or Sara shaped hole on the way out and whatever that means to you.

Curtis Worcester (35:32):

Yeah, that's great. I appreciate you adding that in there. Jay, I have a question for both you. I'll ask it of course at the same time. But Sara, I'll ask you first. So for a retiree in the state of Maine, which I know neither of you are in, but think about us for a minute. So retiree in the state of Maine who naturally may feel isolated or unsure where to start with this process, what first step would each of you recommend to begin planning that secure independent future? Again, I'll start with you Sara.

Sara Zeff Geber, PhD (36:05):

I could pretty much defer to Jay on this, but I think if you asked me that question and took away Jay's component to all of this, I would say begin your planning. Think about where you're going to live, think about with whom you're going to live and how you want to live the rest of your life, how you want to live the part of your life that may be very likely, be more sedentary, not involved as much travel, not involved as much interaction with others. Just start to think about that, start to think about it. Start to try to put your 60-year-old body into a 90-year-old body. And believe it or not, that is very hard, almost impossible for people to do, put themselves into their frailer older body. It's scary. But if you can do that, that's where you start the planning. Then you start to understand what you're going to need.

Curtis Worcester (37:08):

Yeah, it's fantastic. I appreciate that. And Jay, I'll give it to you there.

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (37:12):

Yeah, I think anytime somebody comes to me and says, where do you start? I think if you don't have kids, you have to get an estate plan in place, ask to get some paperwork in place, but where you live to Sara's point matters. So I shared before we started, my family's actually from the Ellsworth area, they're actually from Otis, which is a little bit further up there, grand Lake. And as you start getting further and further out in Maine, you get more and more rural. And I mean my great grandmother was the one room schoolhouse and also the mayor for a while. She was, I mean when she passed her list, the Grange Hall, that was what she did. But the problem is you get out in the area, it's gorgeous, but there's like three caregivers in the entire area. My job is to execute on your care plan. If you're a Bangor and you're like, Hey, I need an aging care manager, I need some care, it's going to be easier to find than if you're in the middle of nowhere Maine. And the problem is, middle of nowhere is gorgeous, I don't want to leave it.

Curtis Worcester (38:10):

But

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (38:11):

You know what? You don't have the community, you don't have the caregivers, others. So I actually think in particular around Maine, if you are in those kind of more rural areas, you got to start thinking about moving. And people talk about aging in place, but it's about aging in the right place and what does that mean? And unfortunately, you get into this point where you're out in some areas of Maine you might pass and nobody knows.

Curtis Worcester (38:36):

Seriously,

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (38:36):

That's the worry. Even if you have the money who's there in China, there's a big app right now that's going around. It's called Are You Dead? And all it does is it checks up on people to see every day they check in to make sure they're there. And that's their joke. But I'm like, alright, let's figure out how do we build a support network around you in these rural areas?

Ben Smith (38:58):

And Jim, I'm glad you brought that up again, I think Curtis and myself, we've gone through quite the journey just by having this show. And again, a hundred episodes since I think we talked to you Sara last. But those things that you brought up Sara from that long ago and you kind of reemphasize that just now of we're kind putting ourselves in what does it look like at 60, 70, 80 and 90? And I talk with my wife and I go, geez, this house that we have right now good for raising our kiddo, terrible for aging. We don't want to be going up and down two flights of stairs to do laundry and we don't want to be traversing laundry baskets up a flight of stairs and lifting this and bending and all that. That's not at all what we want to do. But to your point about where you want to be, where's my community?

(39:49):

Where's the family? Where's my friends? It's like, yes, I'd love to be somewhere else. It's warmer because it's minus two here today. That would be great. But the people you love are going to be the gravitational force around you all the time. And yes, you can go do things, but now you got to go reinvent that community as well. So again, I think both of your points are really well taken because it's something that's bled into our practice and as we've talked to our clients and we had one of our clients that are in Bangor and their only kiddo is in Portland, and they go the person that we need to be near, yes, we got to see the extended family and all of it, but we going to have to sell for Bangor because we don't want our kiddo if he's coming to take care of us driving two hours if something comes up, we got to make sure we're close. So all those, I think, I know this is a solo aging conversation, but it's happening all over and I think that's really important, all the awareness that you both are raising. So I appreciate you both doing that.

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (40:49):

And I think the solo ages and child-free folks, we test the system hard. We find those spots where it's broken. That doesn't mean it's better for parents. We just fall into the holes faster. And that's the problem is good point.

(41:06):

At some point you're going to be aging alone and well child for people often get the question, who's going to take care of when you're older is kind of thrown in our face. And I love to use the stats because the US census found that 2.5% of childless people get any financial support from their family. So that's like nothing. But they looked at adults over 55 and found 1.5% got any financial support from their family. So just assuming your kiddos are going to take care of you, unfortunately you brought up to say that's the case, you can't it. And what you can do is learn from us because we're stressing the system to say, here's where the problems are. And ideally that prevents you from falling into 'em.

Ben Smith (41:43):

I just want to make one more point there, Jay too. You raised this being not near a metropolitan area. And again, I stretched to say Bangor is a metropolitan area, it really isn't. Portland. Yes, Dale, Waterville, Lewiston, Bangor, not as much, but I think what you raise is the point is really important because the healthcare system nationally is changing, but even locally in our state of Maine is changing a lot. And a lot of those rural hospitals, rural care centers, primary care doctors, that you could just go into the center of town and you could see somebody that is disappearing. You now have to traverse. We get people in callus that are driving two hours to the nearest primary care physician to get a care or get a specialist for something. That's the sort of thing of you got to look around, get your head out of the sand sometimes and say, what is happening around me? Because yes, I love my home, I love this plot of land. I love looking at the sunset and the sun rise, but is this going to allow me to stay independent as long as possible or as independent as I can be as long as possible? And I think that's some serious, to your point, stress test that needs to continue to happen introspectively a lot.

Sara Zeff Geber, PhD (43:01):

Yeah. Yeah, that's a tough one. It is, I bet. Yeah, I bet it's really tough for the people that you work with

Ben Smith (43:09):

And they bring this up all the time to us. And again, that's something where they have to make their own value judgment of what the trade-offs are, but if they can future proof that a little bit and talk about that at 55 or 60, it's easier to make changes. It's harder to make changes when you're 87 in the middle of crisis and now you're faced with reality and you got to make very drastic changes. So I think that's part of the planning component of anything that we all talk about in our populations is the sooner you can plan, as Jay mentioned about long-term care, the better off you're going to be. When you are a moment away from needing to make a change, it's a lot more difficult. So I know that's a through thread and everything, we all probably all say, but it's really important to highlight. Yeah,

Curtis Worcester (43:56):

For sure. So we've reached, we're almost at the end of our conversation, so I have one final question for both of you. It's a question we love to ask all of our guests regardless of the topic, because again, the name of our show is Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. So we have to ask the retirement success question. Sara, I know you've heard pieces of this before, but for people who maybe haven't listened to all 120 something episodes, I'm going to ask you again as well. So I'll start with you, Sara, then I'll come to you. Jay, what is each of your retirement success? What does that mean to you? How do you define a successful retirement for you? Both when you get there,

Sara Zeff Geber, PhD (44:36):

A life that has meaning and purpose no matter what that is, and people vary all over the map with that. I know many of my friends who do have grandkids, that's their life, that's their meaning and purpose being these helpful adoring grandparents that practically share the parenting role in some cases. And it's living in a place where you have a support network, not only for care, but also for social purposes. My husband and I have fairly recently kind of put a stake in the ground for ourselves in a senior living community. We won't be moving in there for probably about another three years, but we've known for many years that successful retirement for us involves moving into a senior living community. And so we've definitely, we've totally wrapped our minds around that and are looking forward to it. We had an opportunity to not just put it a deposit in which you can do anywhere for usually just a thousand or two, but this particular community, which was at the top of our list all of a sudden decided they were going to do an expansion and develop a bunch more units. And we thought that's kind of like the sign that we needed. This is the place and let's go look at the floor plans and pick a unit.

(46:04):

So that's my idea of success personally. And as you can see, I definitely have that meaning and purpose in my life. I intend to keep it as long as

Curtis Worcester (46:14):

Possible. Absolutely do. Jay, how about you?

Jay Zigmont, PhD, CFP® (46:16):

Yeah. What you find with child free people, and I fall into this, is we are not really looking at retirement in the same way as many other folks. We embrace something called File Financial, depends live early, where it's kind of like dialing back on work and doing the right work at the right time at the right place. It's kind of just Sara's a point about purpose. And to me, at some point I want to dial back, but I'm going to be working the rest of my life. These are the topics I love talking about. I'm going to be coaching folks, I'm going to doing things, but I don't want to be doing it from a boat traveling the world and on my time scale. I'm not getting up at 6:00 AM to do work. And I think what's happening is you're seeing in society, a lot of folks kind of rethinking the classic, Hey, I'm retired, I'm sitting in front of the tv. That's not what people are doing. And it's how do you keep yourself active? So Sara, I don't know if you consider yourself retired or not, but you're doing a heck of a lot of speaking and work now in retirement.

Sara Zeff Geber, PhD (47:12):

I look at retirement very differently. People used to look, and probably many still do, and you're alluding to it yourself, Jay, is that it's a cessation of work. And to me, retirement is just kind of an easing off and a next chapter. I'm not retiring from work, I'm not retiring from life. I'm moving into the next stages. When I first started doing this, oh, I don't know, 12 or 14 years ago, I became friendly with a lot of people who are in the field of aging caregiving, and we were trying to think of ways that we could get rid of the word retirement and people came up with things like retirement reward, men renew, and course none of it flew retirement's in everybody's vocabulary and you just have to kind of start to envision it differently. So I don't see it as a cessation of work.

Ben Smith (48:13):

I'll echo that, Sara, because I think when we first started this show, I mean was I think what our concept of retirement really was, but we've heard everybody's answers for quite a while and you hear them just what you said, it's almost like it's a version 2.0 or 3.0 or 4.0 of yourself, right? It is a reinvention stage, but those pieces don't go away. You're just applying them differently. And I like that as a semblance of this is just a 30 degree slant of myself and I get to explore different things. It'll combine them in different ways. All that really kind of a neat, but again, we did the same exercise here. We said we got to keep the name what people know, so we kind of kept with the branding on retirement success and it's like really it's success, but hard to get people to find the keywords in Apple podcast when they just say success.

(49:02):

But I want to thank you both for coming on our show. This is a lot of fun for us to obviously learn about Jay, your model, Sara, about the soul aging piece. Combine those two together and boy, you guys are kind of speaking a lot of notes that I think just resonate across lots of different populations. So I really appreciate you both coming on and at some point love to have you back again. I know Sara, we're not going to wait a hundred episodes. Maybe we'll wait, maybe a little bit less, but this is just great to check in on what's happening in this space too. And Jay, I really applaud everything you guys are doing. This is, it's amazing. So thank you for coming on and we'll catch you next time.

Sara Zeff Geber, PhD (49:42):

Thank you. Been fun.

Curtis Worcester (49:43):

Well, Ben, that was definitely one of those conversations that really speaks to an underserved population and one that is certainly only going to grow. It certainly has grown, I think from our conversation even last time with Sara. So that was really a good conversation.

Ben Smith (49:59):

And absolutely whether you're child fee by choice or circumstance, these conversations matter. Planning's possible. That's obviously what we do, and this is a lot of our show is thinking ahead a little bit. And by doing that, then you're of course attaining some peace of mind, which is I think another outcome of this. Obviously there's a few things we mentioned in today's show. We mentioned a lot about Sara, Dr. Sara Geber and her presence, and she does a lot of talking. So if you want to dive deeper there, again, we will obviously put our previous episode in the show notes, but even her current presence you can kind of check out. But also Dr. J Zig montt and childfree trust.com, as Sara was kind of saying offline, a lot of great resources that they have there. So even if you're not looking at that service from maybe something you want to do, but there are a lot of good educational components to check out as well. So we'll all have all that in our show notes. So if you go to blog dot guidance point llc.com/ 1 1 9 for episode 119, you can find all that there. So make sure to check that out.

Curtis Worcester (51:15):

Yeah, absolutely. And again, just a really big thank you to Dr. Sara Zeff Geber, and also Dr. Jay Zigmont for coming on the show today. Again, it was such a great conversation, and thank you to everybody on the other side of this and listening and tuning in and really appreciate it. So we'll catch you next time.

Outro (51:35):

Ladies and gentlemen, you've just listened to an information filled episode of the Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. While this show is about finding more ways to improve your retirement happiness guidance point, advisor's mission is to help our clients create a fulfilling retirement. We do financial planning so that people can enjoy retirement and align their monetary resources to their goals. If you are wondering about your own personal success, we invite you to reach out to us to schedule a 45 minute listening session. Our advisors will have a conversation with you about your goals, your frustrations, and your problems. Make sure you check out guidance point advisors on our blog, Facebook and LinkedIn, and you can always check out more episodes of this podcast on iTunes and Spotify, and of course, keep on finding your retirement success.