Transcript 

Ben Smith:

Welcome, everyone to The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. My name is Ben Smith. I'm joined as usual by my colleague, Curtis Worcester of the Portland Red Claws to my Portland Sea Dogs. How are you doing today, Curtis?

Curtis Worcester:

I'm doing well, Ben, how are you?

Ben Smith:

I'm great. We are talking, a nice little wrap up summary conversation today. I'm really excited about it. The topic of today's show is titled Living a TAPAS LIFE After Retirement. I think we talk a lot about retirement in this show, obviously. There's actually a few ways you can measure. Is we hear it in stages. Sometimes you hear it, maybe in days, it's 7,300 days, the average retirement, which could equate to 175,200 hours. Or if you want to get to the minute mark, you can go 10,512,000 minutes.

Ben Smith:

That's the amount of time you can expect to have in retirement, which is the average length is around 20 years, and that's according to the Center of Retirement Research at Boston College. I know we quote them a lot. But the question here is, we get to this point in retirement, but how are you going to spend all of that newfound free time? Because when you start measuring in 10,512,000 minutes, that sounds like a lot of free time. Without a sense of purpose, really, the risk of dissatisfaction increases, and what should be meaningful time can become an anxious or uninspiring one to some of us.

Ben Smith:

Actually, a UK survey looked at the average retiree in Britain, and they found that they grew bored after just one year. If you look at 1/3 of retirees eventually give up on retirement and return to the workforce, according to a 2016 Federal Reserve study. There's this, also, we get disenfranchised, disenchanted with retirement, we just say, well, what do I like to do? Where's my purpose? Go back to work.

Curtis Worcester:

Sure.

Ben Smith:

This notion of retirement as a time of leisure might be outdated. Most adults, really it'll show older adults, want a similar level of engagement and meaning as in their working years. This is that, really, as it should be. From traveling the world to helping people in need, there are a variety of activities that can give you meaning and joy in retirement. But sometimes we get stuck by being overwhelmed on what we can do, that we don't know what to do.

Ben Smith:

I think that is a big problem. I know that we've talked about that in this show a lot of different ways. Our next guest has had this struggle in work to build a great life after a several decade long career. He's written a book about that for the 55 to 70-ish age group that is at or near completion of their long career. He's titled the book, TAPAS LIFE: A Rich and Rewarding Life After Your Long Career. It's a step by step guide to assembling a great life once you're big J-O-B is -G-O-N-E.

Ben Smith:

At this point, I'd like to welcome Andy Robin to The Retirement Success in Maine Podcast. Andy, welcome to the show.

Andy Robin:

Why, thank you, Ben. Thank you, Curtis.

Ben Smith:

We are excited to have you, and say just, we've had the privilege of reading your book as well. As practitioners helping people in retirement, it's really exciting and fascinating to hear the retiree's perspective too, and be able to marry that in our conversation today. But one of the things that we always start our podcast with is to get a little bit of background on you. Love to get a little bit of a flavor of where you're from in your childhood experience. Would you mind just sharing that with us right now, Andy?

Andy Robin:

Happy to. I was born in Chicago, as you may detect from how I sound. My dad was an entrepreneur who, when I got to be his age, when he did it, I was blown away. He decided to move the family to Mexico City when I was seven years old.

Ben Smith:

That's amazing.

Andy Robin:

None of us spoke a word of Spanish and he had an opportunity and jumped to pursue it. I grew up down there until I came back to the US to college. Went to Berkeley for a year studying math, science, engineering and thought that teaching was terrible so I quit. Fun place socially, pretty place-

Ben Smith:

Expensive place.

Andy Robin:

... terrible instruction. Everybody told me, it gets better when you're a senior. I was like, well, what a stupid way to run a college. Eventually, went back to Mexico, worked for about five years, and then I finished my degree in Texas, got an MBA at a well known Eastern Business School, and then spent a few decades in the tech industry, mostly semiconductors.

Ben Smith:

Tell me about that. Obviously, first of all, living internationally and living abroad. Probably from your perspective, when you're moving at four years old, it just becomes a natural thing for you. But talk about your experience in your professional life in semiconductors, what did you do? What did you find was a passion of yours in your career?

Andy Robin:

Well, I was mostly doing marketing work, which is business to business marketing. Selling components to people building electronic systems. I did spend a couple of years in general management of about $125 million business, but I found I couldn't sleep at night. As a marketing VP, I could sleep fine, but as a GM, faced with laying off people during downturns, I hated that, I couldn't sleep. So, I went back to marketing.

Andy Robin:

My passion... I guess, really, I optimized my career for family, and not for work passion. Mostly what I was looking for from my career was something that kept me interested, and something that made a buck, and something that wasn't harming the world. I worked on communication, semiconductors, networking stuff, when that was new. It was the group I was in that caused networking to be built into all computers, which I thought was a good and useful thing to do. Except when you read about some of the horrors of the internet.

Ben Smith:

It's a tool like anything, right?

Andy Robin:

Yeah. I worked on some other general purpose chips that are used in everything electronic, you can name. If you like your electronics, I got to work with that stuff. But I optimized for family. I was always home for dinner. I didn't travel a lot, which is unusual for a marketing exec. I delegated that to my people working for me. I didn't work on weekends, I didn't take work home.

Andy Robin:

I sub optimized my career. Had a lot of opportunities I passed up because I thought family was actually important.

Curtis Worcester:

That's great.

Ben Smith:

Andy, I know one thing, just reading your book here, I thought it was a really interesting piece, which leads into the premise of TAPAS LIFE. Can you talk a little bit about that balance of family and career, but also, I know you said you stepped away from your career for a bit and assisted with taking care of kids. Can you talk a little bit about that experience, and that priority for you?

Andy Robin:

I did not just step away, I jumped out. Before we got married, my wife and I talked about what we wanted, and both agreed we wanted our career. That we're doing well, we both wanted to be at home caregivers. There aren't tons of guys who want to do that, but I'm one of them. I like little kids and find them interesting, or medium kids, and I find family good and important. So, we did that.

Andy Robin:

We were going to do it when they were around seven and nine, but she had been in sales and marketing and discovered a new career in interpersonal work, went back got a master's and PhD while the kids were growing up. Also, I had some options I was waiting to vest during the last year I was working. Then we swapped when the kids were 13 and 15.

Andy Robin:

One Friday afternoon, I had lunch with the execs who wished me well. Interestingly, most of them thought that I must have had some form of cancer, and most of my wife's friends thought that I must have had a nervous breakdown, finally. Nobody could believe this is what we were actually really doing because we really choose to do it and really had planned to do it. On Saturday morning, my wife left on a three week business trip to Australia. I was suddenly cast into the care and feeding of 13 and 15 year olds, which was adventure.

Ben Smith:

Well, because I think that says a lot here, Andy. Because I really think, looking at this from a balancing perspective of, this traditional mindset that maybe is the last couple of generations of, hey, we're supposed to get a career. We're supposed to just binge on that career, push forward regardless of whatever the roadblocks in our way. Get to that retirement age, be fatigued at the very end. We've given our all and you get a pat on the back and you just take a break.

Ben Smith:

What I like about what you did there is, hey looking introspectively at your life and saying, here's what's important to me, and again, having that conversation with your spouse and saying, hey, let's talk about this together, and what do we want to see, and what's important to us with our kids, and how do we involve in their lives?

Ben Smith:

I really love that. I wanted to make sure that was a part of this because I think that's a really great foundational piece here, as we get into the show a little bit more.

Andy Robin:

Thank you. It fits with what I told our teams always growing up, and that's the there are a lot of lives to be lived on this planet. You can just look around at what people have done and are doing, read about it, see interviews, hear people on podcasts, there's a lot of lives to live, and you're at choice, you could pick one, you just have to take the time to ideate and then choose to go get it.

Ben Smith:

I think, that whole premise, and we'll talk about that in a second, but we'll dig in that lots of different ways. I do want to ask one more foundational question because I think it's important, do you have any connections to the state of Maine?

Andy Robin:

I do not. I have really only been in the state of Maine once.

Ben Smith:

Okay.

Curtis Worcester:

Okay.

Andy Robin:

I was out in Bethel, NTL, National Training Labs where I took a two week interpersonal course, one year over a Fourth of July weekend on either side of Fourth of July weekend. I did some canoeing up on some lakes near there. I went to some rivers near there. I remember driving through the small towns and it's stuck with me that each small town had its stone monument listing the names of the war dead from the past. I was like well, we don't see that much in the big cities, but of course in the smaller towns, those losses were acutely felt by everyone. I found it was a pretty cool area.

Ben Smith:

Well, Bethel, Western Maine really has some... Again, when you think traditional Maine, that has some really great piece. Especially, as you said, Fourth of July weekend, lots of summertime activities. If you're big into fly fishing, really great in Bethel area. But of course you got skiing, which is you're in the mountain area there. You probably missed some really good skiing by about four or five months.

Ben Smith:

But I want to rotate the show, Andy, about living a TAPAS LIFE, in your book, TAPAS LIFE: A Rich and Rewarding Life After Your Long Career. For those listening today, we'll have a link to Andy's book. You can go to our show notes, and you can get that link to Amazon. But we're going to dig into this book. What I want to start with, is when you say TAPAS LIFE, because I know we've mentioned this a couple of times, especially in the title. Can you talk about what you mean by that, and how is this book different than other books about retirement?

Andy Robin:

Okay, I'll take those one at a time. Tapas, your listeners may or may not be familiar, is a form of food from Spain, and tapas actually means covers. The notion is, instead of here in the US where we order a large porterhouse steak and some potatoes, and maybe a vege, then instead of that, you order small dishes. They come on a little dish about the size of a coffee saucer.

Andy Robin:

You start out with your friends or spouse or whoever, you order a few. You try them and the ones you like, you may order another order, and the ones you don't like, you may set aside on the far side of the table. If you're still hungry, you may order a few more plates. Until eventually the plates cover a lot of the table, and that's why they're called tapas.

Andy Robin:

But the idea is that you can sample and savor a variety, a diversity of different things, instead of having a main dish. TAPAS LIFE is about doing that with your remaining 25 or 35 years. It's, you've been very focused for all these decades, first in school, because your parents made you, and then maybe in college because you chose to, so you'd have more opportunity in life. Then in your career, because you maybe needed to pay bills and the boss told you what to do. So, your whole life, you've been on a path doing what you had to do. Certainly, you had choices within those areas, but probably broadly on that path. Now, you're at a stage of life where instead, you can say, wow, look at all there is available in the world, and you can actually pick some little plates, and you can assemble a meal out of a variety of things, both doing and being, how you show up as a human, which you may have not given much attention to until now, but you have an opportunity to make yourself a fuller, better human at this age, because you're not so damn preoccupied.

Andy Robin:

That was one question. The other question was?

Ben Smith:

How is the book different than other books about retirement?

Andy Robin:

How's it different? Yes, please. Thank you, Ben. There are a gajillion books about retirement that are all about finance, how to not run out of your money. That's good, but it's such an incomplete topic. Honestly, I'm a pretty good finance guy, and honestly, I cover what you need to know about finance in a little tiny sub chapter. Make a spreadsheet, figure out what's coming in, and what's going out and make sure that those work together properly. Pretty simple.

Andy Robin:

There's a lot more to it than that. What I've gone through is a step by step way to assemble a life that works, is rich and rewarding, and that helps you continue growing as a fulfilled person with meaning in your life.

Ben Smith:

I want to just comment there, Andy is, and I think what you're saying, especially as financial advisors, I think some financial advisors might take offense, what you just said is, well, it is more complex, it isn't. It's like, what you just said, and I know you go through the chapter and you talk about here's a few tips in terms of investing or balancing your budget to what you have saved and really living within your means. These are things that everybody knows, this isn't a secret sauce here. We all know that's ketchup and mayonnaise, we know that.

Ben Smith:

But the point that you're bringing up is, what is really difficult is to say, this is what I want to be doing with my life. This is who I am. This is what's important to me, and how do I match my money to it? I think you were hitting on a really key point in terms of this book where, because if people aren't giving us that feedback of who I want to be, what I want to do with my time, how much is that going to cost me, it's really difficult for any financial planner to really give them the path, if every path is possible.

Ben Smith:

I think that's really difficult for the profession that Curtis and I are in here. I just want to say, I think this is why I'm really excited for you to be on the show today, because I think from a foundational perspective, it's really important what you're doing here. I wanted to just comment there.

Andy Robin:

Thank you. I don't want to take anything away from financial advisors, I certainly have one. I'm no genius in investing. I do find it easy to make a spreadsheet with expenses and income.

Curtis Worcester:

There you go.

Andy Robin:

But I need a lot of other guidance. So, you guys are certainly valuable in many ways.

Curtis Worcester:

Well, thanks for that. I want to dive back in on the idea of living a TAPAS LIFE. I don't know that I want to call it a concern, but I could see where this could lead someone down a road to, it could almost get haphazard here, because I just want to try so much stuff, or there's so many things to try that it can become overwhelming, and then maybe you don't do any of them or you get stuck.

Curtis Worcester:

I think the question I want to ask here, Andy, is how can someone insert enough structure that allows for this mentality without having too much structure on their time? I know that's a loaded question, maybe, but can you give some insight there?

Andy Robin:

Well, actually, it's pretty good thing. It's pretty flexible that way. First of all, you do need some structure. After you complete or conclude your long career, it feels very liberating, and you may take six months or a year or a year and a half or whatever, to decompress, and maybe travel, maybe play a lot of golf or tennis or [inaudible 00:19:12] or whatever you like to do. You may visit relatives you haven't seen in forever, whatever.

Andy Robin:

You may do lots of that, and then at some point, you'll wake up one morning in bed, and you'll be like, wow, there's really nothing trying to get me out of bed today. That can be a feeling of being untethered or adrift, and it can get pretty rapidly depressing.

Andy Robin:

I've unfortunately seen good friends drop into that box, and it's not a good box to be in. It's dark in there. You need to put some structure in your life. Yeah, you don't want to wind up with more than you want, and you don't have to. You need some. Eat some breakfast, maybe do some exercise a couple of times a week or go for a walk a couple of times, or catch up on email or the news, do the laundry, feed the pets, put some things that are on your calendar regularly. Schedule lunch with friends a couple of times a week, so that you get yourself out of the house and catch up with others.

Andy Robin:

Do something to put some structure on your calendar or you won't like the outcome. After that, when you say there's so much choice, and what happens there? Well, there is a lot of choice. In fact, it can be daunting. You can find yourself saying, well, there's so much to do, I don't know how to pick Sure. Or you can say, well, this looks kind of interesting, but I don't know if I'll be any good at that. Or, gosh, that looks too hard. Or gee, I don't know how to really even start on that.

Andy Robin:

Those are all the don'ts, that's all the stuff in the don't column. The stuff in the do column comes to us from Nike, just frickin do it.

Curtis Worcester:

There you go.

Andy Robin:

It's very easy. This is that stage of your life, where after decades of having to succeed at everything or suffer the penalty, you don't have to succeed, it really doesn't matter. It's my book chapter called Fail Freely. You can try stuff and see what happens. Just pick something, anything, and get started on it.

Ben Smith:

I feel like, Andy, that's something where we tell our clients a lot, because they go, "Hey, actually, I do want to go back to work, I do want to go part time and have a job one or two days a week. But what if I'm not any good at it? What if I get... " That's our point is, who cares? If you don't like it, you're not good at it, quit, do something else. Your point about fail freely is really important.

Ben Smith:

My dad said, when he first retired, he goes, "Well, maybe I get into golf. I've never done it before and I want to get into golf." I said, "Well, great. Well, you can get lessons, you can just figure out a way to just here's how I can get into it if I'm not any good. I've never played, I'm not going to be any good. Who cares? Nobody cares if you're not any good. Most golfers aren't very good, let's put that out there.

Andy Robin:

There's a lot of duffers and not a lot of golfers.

Ben Smith:

Yes. I think we hear that almost every conversation and Curtis and I, we just actually wrapped up with a client meeting, and they're in this, probably, one to two year out of retirement mode. They're still in the project mode, they're still in that I'm still busy doing all this stuff around our house that we didn't get to do for 40 years and our house is falling apart. But we can see it coming. We can see that train going to hit them when it's going to be, I did all those projects, and now what?

Andy Robin:

Absolutely.

Ben Smith:

I want to ask you that question, because I think that's really important here is the train's coming, and all of a sudden, I've run out of the projects. I'm on the seventh fairway for the 40 millionth time, whatever that is. How did you work through discovering your list of things that you wanted to try and not try?

Andy Robin:

All right. I lucked into some, and had some in my head. I did do what you just described, which is my chapter called Catch Up. We had to redo our trust documents because they were already almost 20 years old, and that was an important, first things first. I consolidated some financial accounts so that it was less complex, and then I caught up on projects around the house. We did several little remodel things now that the house wasn't a kid house, it was a grown up house.

Andy Robin:

Yeah, catching up. Then after that, I lucked into one. As I said, I was suddenly faced with care and feeding of the family. I can cook, or I could cook at that time, but the family was not very happy about it. I had to work hard on that. I got my report card after six months at dinner one night, our son said, "Well, this is really good." I was like, "Hey, don't sound so surprised."

Andy Robin:

I had to become a decent cook and I found that I really liked it. In the semiconductor marketing business, it was seven years from, wow, there's something out on the horizon that we need to work towards, to working to define and develop with engineering products to address that, to getting the stuff into the marketplace, to having customers use it in their systems, to finding out if it was a big financial success or not.

Andy Robin:

By contrast, I could bike to the grocery store, pick out some stuff that look good and fresh, bring it home, do the sous chefy, make the meal, serve it. Clean up the kitchen, and it all happened in a couple of hours, and it was very gratifying. It was like, wow, this was great. I expended more energy on cooking, and now I'm regarded pretty much as a pretty good cook. I love that. Lucked out. That was necessity is the mother of invention.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Andy Robin:

Along the way, I was like, well, geez, I'm doing this good cookery, and I like wine, I think I'll get deeper into wine. That eventually caused the building of what I call the shack out in back of the house, which is in fact, an eight by 10 wine cellar, with its own little air conditioner back there, and I became a wine collector, not to collect and trade and sell, but just to be able to drink nicely aged wines, which I've come to enjoy and appreciate.

Andy Robin:

Then I took a page from my youth, as you said, now I had some time. Kids were pretty busy with their life, or kids were finally gone, and I had some time. So, I did what you described, which was, well, maybe I'll keep my business brain alive, and I'll try to find some part time work. I got a half time gig and it was a try by. After a few months, I concluded that, that was too intrusive on my life. That went away.

Andy Robin:

I tried getting a part time job as a high school teacher, and then found out that since it was unionized, I couldn't teach an AP level class until I started at the lowest lane freshman class. I sat in one of those and was like, I'd rather have bamboo under my fingernails, thank you. I expended a huge amount of energy on that, only to fail miserably. But it was okay.

Andy Robin:

But always, I had thought it would be neat to play piano and I had dabbled at it just by sitting at the piano and fiddling with it. But I started to take piano lessons. While it was hard. Everything on me was tight. My progress was immeasurably slow, and the teacher has something like 60 kid students and about 10 adult students. Then she makes us play a recital for each other five times a year at her house. The first few years of that, my hands were shaking like leaves, it was terrifying. Of course, I now see that, that was I've spent a life of competence, and now I'm incompetent, and I'm having to show off my competence for others.

Andy Robin:

That was pretty terrifying. But eventually it became something and now 17 years later, I'm pretty good at the piano, and it was well worth the time. Now, it's my flow activity. That's the activity where you sit there for hours, and it felt like 10 minutes.

Curtis Worcester:

I like.

Ben Smith:

I like that. That's really cool. Especially again, when we talk about time, and sometimes it's this enjoyment of time and how we spend our time, to the point of, hey there's something I can do for hours and it feels like it just with a snap of the fingers just went through you. That's the sort of thing that I think... That's when you know you're doing things that fulfill your life.

Ben Smith:

Curtis and I talked about this with career, is that the jobs in your life that are not a good fit for you because you look up at the clock, you get there at whatever time, 8:00 in the morning. You look up, it feels like it should be 5:00 and it's 9:15. That's how you know you're not in the right spot in your life is when time... Opposite is very true. I really like that.

Ben Smith:

I want to ask another question, though, Andy, is obviously you discovered things on your list, trying them, not trying them. Things that you enjoyed, what did you find about what others have done when you're researching this book and putting your step by step guide in place? How did you see that you compared and contrasted to others?

Andy Robin:

Well, we're all different people. Everybody's finding their own way. In fact, though, what are others doing sometimes informs people on what they might want to try. I've got a good friend who's trying this, maybe they'll invite me along and I'll see what it's like. Or maybe they can help me figure out how to get started on this, or maybe I saw something that seemed cool on a movie or something.

Andy Robin:

But, what I found, and I did interviews of a few dozen people, I found people were doing all kinds of stuff. I found social connection TAPAS. I absolutely loved a couple who had another friend, their closest friends' another couple, and they did a mystery weekend every month. The couple in charge figured out someplace within a three hour drive of where they all live, and figured out a place to stay and booked some hotel rooms or motel rooms or a campsite or whatever it was going to be, and they figured out what the weekend was going to be. On Saturday morning, they went and picked up the other couple, took them there, enjoyed the weekend, told them anything about what they would need in terms of how to dress and then enjoyed this weekend together. On Sunday afternoon, they went home.

Andy Robin:

I know one person who decided to build a harpsichord. I know some people who took up sailing, until they decided that wow, a boat is a hole in the water that eats money. All manner of things. I spoke with one fellow who had always wanted to be a pilot, and he started taking lessons and got a license and eventually bought a very used small craft with a friend of his, and now they fly it all the time. It's unlimited what people do.

Ben Smith:

I'll say just, Andy, real quick, what's pretty funny about that, is you described almost individual episodes that we've had with getting into flying or, again, we talk about boats a lot because, of course, in New England, and there's always a lake or an ocean around to put a boat on. All those things. You're spot on there, absolutely.

Andy Robin:

Of course, we shouldn't leave out, or rather, I don't want to leave out that you need to find a meaningful activity. Because after a while, you may, as I did in my four years of trying to figure it out. By the way, I wrote the book, so people wouldn't have to spend four years trying to figure it out, they'd have a step-by-step process that gets them there quicker. But after my four years, I finally had this great life, but it was missing something. I was just a consumer of resources here on the planet. It's like okay, well why?

Andy Robin:

At that point, what you find is you need to be doing something meaningful. Meaningful usually means doing something selflessly that benefits others.

Ben Smith:

I like that.

Andy Robin:

In my case, I discovered coaching. I do life coaching, mostly, occasionally, some executive coaching, and usually that turns into life coaching. I cap my practice at five clients, because it's not a career. I charge below the low end of what anybody else charges because I'm in it to be useful to someone, not to make money. I'm on the board of a nonprofit, which donates about $5 million a year to mostly hunger and homelessness clauses that are local to the community that I live in. You get to see the good you're actually doing and that feels good.

Andy Robin:

You have to assemble and it can take some time and energy, but there's ways to do it, and in my chapter called Add TAPAS and Stir, I talk about that. I also talk about how you can do an online inventory that will tell you what's important to you. Then you can use that as some sort of a sieve or screen or template to help you say, when I'm looking at this potential TAPAS to explore, is that going to give me what I like to get?

Curtis Worcester:

I like that a lot. Andy, I want to rotate back to something that you teased a few minutes ago, and that's your chapter called Playing Catch Up. That's something we really focused on too, stuck out to us in your book. You talked about how you worked through it yourself, or how you went through it, whether it was home improvement projects, estate planning, financials, things like that. The question I want to ask you is, how do you get through the catch up phase, and then move on... How do you know when you're through the catch up phase and move into the fun part of living this TAPAS LIFE? Does that make sense?

Andy Robin:

Sure. I don't think they're necessarily sequential. I do think that my observation about, first things first, if you don't have a will, or a trust document, if you don't have beneficiaries assigned to all your IRA accounts and financial accounts, all that kind of stuff. If you haven't done that, for goodness sakes, do it. If you're the only person in your family who does finances, make sure there's someplace somebody, maybe it's one of your kids, maybe it's your spouse, maybe it's an attorney, make sure somebody knows what all your accounts are, what all the passwords are, how to figure out how to get at stuff in case you keel over dead, or get hit by a bus.

Andy Robin:

Those are first things first. After that, the catch up can mingle and intermingle. Let's start doing some exercise, and looking after your health or doing some travel. With starting to put on something you love and adding TAPAS. It depends on you. I know a guy who's a VC, a venture capitalist, and he's a project guy, he's got a list as long as your arm of projects. That is his fun, and it's his flow activity. He's just going to be doing that. But for others, do some. When you get tired of it, do something else, come back to it. The hammers of hell are not after you.

Curtis Worcester:

I like that a lot. I want to keep going on here with ideas and topics of your book. We really enjoyed a quote you included in your book, and bear with me while I read it so I don't butcher it. It was, not cohabitation, but consensus constitutes marriage. We hear a lot from our clients that sometimes, they're together because they're maybe afraid of being alone. Or, they're at a point where they're just okay tolerating each other. You also bring up the concept of re-contracting with your spouse. Really, what I want to ask you is, what does that mean, and then how have you put that into practice with your spouse?

Andy Robin:

Yes, of course. You had a relationship with your spouse that was probably single and childless when you got married. A lot of textbook romance kind of stuff.

Curtis Worcester:

Sure. Yeah.

Andy Robin:

That doesn't actually constitute marriage, those years. Then after that, you may have been raising a family, which having a career and that gets pretty complicated. If you both got careers, that gets really complicated. Then your relationship was probably just trying to keep your nose up above the water level for maybe two to three decades. Eventually, you find yourself first, kidless at home, maybe. Then eventually jobless at home, maybe. Now, as you say, you're sitting there looking at each other. It can be that you're looking at each other cheek by jowl as they say, or it can be that you decide to reinvent a life together, and it takes conversation, and it doesn't happen instantly.

Andy Robin:

I've got a list of questions that you could explore with your spouse, and I've got a list of places where you can find other questions to explore with your spouse. If you have been lucky enough to learn how to communicate with your spouse over the years, then you can have some of those conversations. If you can't learn to do that, you may want to get an advisor or a counselor who can help you do that. If you're not willing to do that, then you may be in the category of, well, we're here under the same roof, because we're afraid not to be. Or you may be in the category of we've got nothing, so let's get divorced.

Ben Smith:

That's something we've talked about on this show is this concept of gray divorce, because that's happening more and more is, I think people are looking at their lives and taking inventory, taking stock and saying, well, is this life that we're building together, or we continue to build together, is that something we want to go? That's where I think, this whole re contracting with your spouse probably should always be doing that, is we should always be look into some like, what's important to us together? What things do we want to do?

Ben Smith:

I really like that you were doing that. Obviously, it's even more important when that time gap is more of you together. But I could see even with the precious moments, sometimes you have together when you have your working careers and kids and all those other things competing with time. That's even more important. But I want to ask another question, Andy, is, Curtis, and I have this conversation in our team as well, about this pandemic has caused us to evaluate ourselves, our choices, how healthy we're being on a daily basis.

Ben Smith:

Simply really, when we focus on our health, we tend to get more things done. We're more energetic, we have a better self image. You talk about in this book about choosing health. I know, just from the people we work with, our friends and our family, it is not easy. When you have chosen to binge on a long career, raise a family. There's a lot of us that are just working so hard to even just make sure there's food on the table at the appropriate time, not necessarily how nutritious it is.

Ben Smith:

We've prioritized everything else, maybe our health last. You talk about in your book, changing your mindset to choose health. Can you talk about how can you do that?

Andy Robin:

Okay, I'll set that up. Imagine your life going from where you are to death. Now, imagine it can be two different lines. One is a straight line across the horizon, your quality of life stays pretty much the way it is now until you're almost dead, and then finally, everything gives out, you die in a brief period of time, hopefully. Maybe even that line goes up above the horizon a little bit, because maybe you're in lousy shape, and you get in better shape.

Curtis Worcester:

Exactly.

Andy Robin:

That's a good thing. The other line that you could draw is an exponential decay curve. It starts going down below the horizon, gradually, and then in an accelerating path until you're dead. That's a choice. Here's what that choice is, if you choose health, it's that top line, and if you don't, it's the bottom line. Pretty much, inevitably.

Andy Robin:

Here's the reason to make a choice in favor of health. What you're doing is you are delaying the day when your most loved ones have to become your caregiver. Well, that's pretty blunt, I know, pretty hard to hear. But you can choose to, in essence, delay or accelerate the day that your most dearest loved ones become your caregiver. Or when you leave those around you as a dead person, it's a choice. It's not heard. Yes, you need to do a little exercise, but you don't have to become an Olympian. You have to walk a little bit most days or, if you start, you'll find you've got energy to do more, do a sport, if you like to, or maybe do some exercise a couple of times a week.

Andy Robin:

As far as eating, don't be eating fast foods, don't be eating huge meals before bedtime, and don't be eating all bad carbs and giving yourself diabetes. It's pretty straightforward. It's not a complicated thing. I find that since we've now been doing that for about 20 years, which my wife got us started on, thankfully, I actually prefer to eat at home, my healthy cooking, than to go to a restaurant.

Andy Robin:

When we do go to a restaurant, we often have an appetizer and then split an entree or split an appetizer and split an entree. Or we each order individually and eat half of it and take the rest home. Don't eat entire restaurant meals, it's crazy how much they serve you. It's not a complicated thing to get to health.

Ben Smith:

I agree, Andy. I think from that side, it's not complicated, but it is a mindset to choose it. It feels like you have to... Because when you're being very passive about our choices in life, it's easy to, okay, well, the thing that's in front of me right now, this very moment is that fast food restaurant and that burger, and it's like, okay, just do it and go and move on to the next thing.

Ben Smith:

It's hard because I think sometimes to be healthy, as you're saying, look, there's effort there. To prepare my own meal, I have to, thoughtfully think about my groceries before. So then when I'm ready to do that, and I now have to prep it and cook it. It takes a little bit of time, more than what maybe to go through the drive thru lane. But it's something where doing this and saying, I'm going to choose this and it's almost a choosing meal by meal mentality is what I've found, personally, is the more I do it, the more that habit grows, the easier it gets. It just feels like sometimes, if you're not doing it that way, it's really more difficult.

Andy Robin:

You don't have to make that meal. Just order something healthier at the restaurant or go to Safeway. Everybody's got a supermarket near them. They've got big salads with a chicken breast in there that are healthy.

Curtis Worcester:

That's right.

Andy Robin:

You don't have to drain the entire, one pint package of salad dressing that comes with it. You can sprinkle a little on there, and you don't have to eat the whole fistful of cheese that comes in a package with it. It's not hard. Do I ever go to In and Out Burger? Sure I do. But I do it once every couple of months, not five times a week.

Curtis Worcester:

Exactly. No, I like that a lot. I have a wrap up question for this episode, Andy. Normally, this is the part where I ask a retirement success question, but I feel like this whole conversation has been a step by step guide to a successful retirement. I'm not going to go there. But I do want to rotate and ask you, how do you think retirement is going to evolve over time or continue to evolve?

Andy Robin:

Well, the main thing is, is that people have to come to the realization that at 62, when they can collect Social Security or 65, or whenever they choose to, "retire", as one podcaster I spoke with said, retire comes from the Latin, which means take out of service. I don't like to think of myself as being taken out of service. We actually have to think of it differently. You have to come to grips with the fact that you're going to be around likely for another 25 or 30 years.

Andy Robin:

Instead of I'm thinking of retiring, I'm now assembling this gift of additional decades of life that's only made possible by current understanding of health and healthcare. You got to come to grips with that. There's not much in popular culture that helps you with that. Every ad you see for old people is either about some medication that you should ask your doctor about, which I strongly believe should be outlawed as it is in Europe. Your doctor shouldn't tell you what you need, you should not be telling your doctor what medication you want.

Andy Robin:

The other ads that you see for old people are buying a cruise ticket or taking some sunny vacation and drinking your [inaudible 00:46:42] That is not what these decades are actually going to consist of. They may have more of that than during one's long career, but you actually need to assemble and find a life. That's the reason I wrote my book, help others get there.

Ben Smith:

Well, Andy, I think you did a really great service in that book and we really can't thank you enough for coming on our show, sharing a little bit about the book here. Again, we could go on for probably another three more hours with you about analyzing more of it, but I guess what we'll do is leave our listeners wanting a little bit more so they can check out your book and again going to Amazon to do that.

Ben Smith:

I want to thank you so much for coming on. Really appreciate it and perhaps in the future we can maybe check in and see how things are progressing in the next stage of retirement for you.

Andy Robin:

That would be great, Ben and Curtis. FYI, listeners, you can also go to tapaslife.com where you can just learn more about the book and see what others have said about it and so on.

Curtis Worcester:

Perfect.

Ben Smith:

Awesome. We will include that in the show notes. Andy, thank you so much. We will talk to you soon. Take care.

Andy Robin:

Thank you.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, bye-bye. Living a TAPAS LIFE after retirement. That was the topic of today, talking to Andy Robin. Again, looking at reviewing his book. We were able to get an advanced reading of it, which is pretty cool, TAPAS LIFE: A Rich and Rewarding Life After Your Long Career. As we said in the episode, we will give a few links on our show notes so if anybody wants to check it out, you can absolutely do that and go to tapaslife.com as well.

Ben Smith:

But I want to just, again, wrap up the show by just taking that yellow highlighter to a few things that we learned from today. Curtis, maybe you want to just bat lead off on something that you took away from our conversation with Andy?

Curtis Worcester:

Yeah, sure. I thought it was really cool. It was in the segment of the conversation about the catch up phase or the catch up chapter, if you will, and how Andy did a good job explaining, first off, what that was. But then the piece that stuck out to me was how it doesn't necessarily have to be sequential from you retire, you hit the catch up part of your life. What did he call it, first things first? You're doing your state and your beneficiaries all that. You get it in order, but that catch up chapter can commingle with the fun chapter and that really stuck out to me because I think I was picturing it as okay, I retire, I take the first year or two years, however long it is. I do all this stuff, the housekeeping stuff if you will, and then I move on.

Curtis Worcester:

But that's really not how it works. Retirement evolves and your life evolves and you may be tying up some of that catch up stuff, as you're living the fun, TAPAS LIFE segment of your retirement as well. I thought that was really cool that he pointed that out.

Ben Smith:

Yeah, and I'll add too, in terms of, typically, when we are getting some clients that are coming on board, it's usually they're in prepping retirement. This whole catch up phase is where we get more active, because you're saying, "I don't know where to go." We're asking the questions on estate planning. As you guys know, we've, of course had a few estate planners on with the shows. That catch up phase, I think it's this get organized phase, is how we call it. It's getting all those things aligned up.

Ben Smith:

Again, as you said, Curtis, is, we're then making sure it's staying current and active because things change in our lives and maybe what we did at 60 or 65 might not be what we want at 85. Just, as we evolve and as we change is keeping those things up to date.

Ben Smith:

I think you're right on there is, I think that's something where it becomes maybe it's a larger priority or higher priority. It might fall down the scale, come back up. But that was a key thing, I think that Andy was capturing there.

Ben Smith:

I'll also say from the TAPAS LIFE part about figuring out what to do, and I could be a pilot, I could be this. Again, we've done that from our show is, here's ways that you can try things and here's ways that you can get involved with volunteering or things that provide purpose and meaning, but also just allow you to grow and create. He used the term assembling.

Ben Smith:

I think that's an interesting way to think about it, of course, very engineering. He's going to assemble it. I think that was an interesting way to think about assembling your time and assembling the retirement. As we said 175,200 hours, 10,512,000 minutes. Lots of things you could do with that time, in being able to structure and organize it.

Ben Smith:

I know, Curtis, you asked a question about organizing. When you do look through the book, that he has some really good worksheets for you to figure out how you can structure the things you like, but also the things you don't like. Also, I'd say, he didn't mention it in our show today, but he does it in the book is when we talk about making that next re-contract with your spouse, is going through this together and maybe you're refinding interests of I never knew that you always wanted to do that. I would love to be a part of that with you. I think that would be a fun thing to explore together, more ways that you can connect and reconnect with your spouse by doing these exercises. I think that would be a valuable takeaway too if anyone's inclined to check that out.

Ben Smith:

Again, we will give you a little bit more on our blog page. You can check it out at blog.guidancepointllc.com/51, for Episode 51. You can find some more links there to purchase the book, if you're interested, or to go to the website and you can check out a little bit more there, read a little bit more about Andy. But really, excited to hear a little bit more of the first person piece today. That's not something we get a whole lot, Andy, did a really great job being succinct and really showing through a lot of the meaning and the things that he's learned thus far in retirement. Really cool to get that perspective from Andy today.

Ben Smith:

We really appreciate you tuning in. Again, if you're liking the show so far, love to hear a comment. Whether it be on just an email, you can drop to either Curtis or I or Abby, or just leave a comment anywhere on our web presence or on the Apple iTunes or Apple Podcasts, things like that. Happy to hear how you guys are thinking this is going and we have some really great shows coming up. We're excited to do more. We will catch you next time.