140: The Human Side of Retirement with Dan Haylett (Part 2)

You've been taught the skill of saving, right? Our grandparents, our parents, maybe in schools through to our really early working career, we're told save, save, save, save for a rainy day, build your nest egg, build your pot. And then if you think about the emotional baggage that that creates over a period of 25, 30, 35, 40 years.

the sense of security that saving has given us, the sense of identity that it's given us, you know, all of that stuff that's then built in, we're then told to one day... 360 turn it, flick the switch, and now you've got to spend this thing. You've now got to intentionally deplete your money to enjoy life. But actually, your security and happiness has been from...

having this pot of money. Welcome to the human side of money. a show dedicated to equipping financial advisors with the skillset required to work with emotional human beings on the emotionally charged topic of money. You'll get practical tips and insights on applying behavioral finance into

your practice from conversations with fellow advisors, industry consultants, and experts in the fields of behavior, psychology, communication, and more. Each episode is designed to help you enhance client outcomes. forever change the trajectory of your advisory business. Now, here's your host, Brendan Fraser. Hey, everybody. Welcome to The Human Side of Money.

Where every minute of every episode and every conversation is designed to make both your clients and your practice infinitely better off, anything less is simply unacceptable. Today is part two of my two-part conversation with Dan Halet on the human side of retirement. And so if you haven't listened to part one yet, I would highly, highly encourage you to go back and start with that episode. This is episode 140. That's the episode.

Right before this, it's episode 139. Because in that conversation, we talked through why it was so important for Dan to not just optimize the financial planning aspect of retirement, but to humanize the emotional aspect of retirement.

to better prepare his clients to find meaning, purpose, joy, and identity in retirement. And so he'll go through in that part of the conversation, the seven human elements of retirement, why it was so important for him to bring that to life and the work that he does. And he gives us a high... level idea of how he brings it about and introduces it to his prospects and clients. But then at the end of the conversation, in the last episode, we started diving into Dan's retirement planning workbook.

exercise is a lengthy set. of things that he's built and tested and tried with his clients and prospects to help them navigate the human side of retirement, to help them become more emotionally prepared for retirement. And so we started diving into those things. So part two... of our conversation is spent continuing to unpack what's inside that workbook.

diving in and finding out what are these exercises, what are these assessments, the questions that you ask, why do you ask these, which ones do you find give the best answers and the best responses. We'll talk about how he goes about delivering it, how he prepares clients for it, how he... And then at the end, we're going to talk about a topic that I know is important and meaningful and comes up time and time again with almost everybody that's listening. And that is...

What are some ways and tactics that I can get my clients that are retired to actually spend more money? And he has what he calls a behaviorally driven approach to helping clients shift from saving to spending in retirement. He'll go over that and some of the ideas that he uses and implements with his clients to get them to actually spend more money.

But first, before we dive into part two of that conversation and let Dan take us through the rest of his workbook, I just want to mention this. If you're listening to this podcast, if you listen to part one or you're listening to part two because you like getting ideas on how to apply the human...

side day in and day out in your practice, your process and your conversations. If you're listening because you like getting a practical idea or practical ways to help better prepare clients for the emotional aspect of retirement.

You can listen to this podcast. It'll be packed with ideas on how to do that. But if you want more, if you don't want to wait for another podcast episode to be released, you can sign up for the monthly newsletter that I send out. It's called The Wired Advisor. It goes out once a month. And inside it, you're going to get practical ideas and insights on how to apply and master the human side of advice day in and day out.

If there's an email that you get that has a bigger impact on your clients or your practice than this, then quite frankly, we're doing something wrong. I know a lot of you that listen already sign up. You already get it. And thank you for doing that. Thank you for the feedback that we continue to get on that. It always means a lot. For those of you that haven't.

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Without further ado, enjoy part two of this conversation on the human side of retirement with Dan Halet.

If it starts at time and money, you're not addressing the issue. If it starts with purpose and identity and relationships and well-being and structure, then we can get to the crux really quickly and we can address it with... time and money and that's where we can come in with all of the planning software, all of the tools, all of the things that we know about this stuff to help them take away some of those concerns to go and make sure they can go and live the life they want.

Does that make sense? Yes. And the way I think through it is in order to know how to use your time and money to... live your best life or to fund the things that are truly most important to you in your life, you first have to know what those things are, right? You need to know like, what are the things that are going to give you happiness, meaning and fulfillment? What is your purpose?

What are your values? What's this vision of what you want your life to look like? And that's going to change and it's going to evolve over time. However... It's not going to change and evolve as much as we might think, number one. Number two, you can't know how to best use and allocate your time and your money until you first know those things, which is obviously why that's...

in this workbook here, why these exercises are here, is to create the space to illuminate what is it that's most important to me. What are the things that I'm really looking forward to? What am I anxious about? And then we can figure out, all right, how do we take your resources of time and money and deploy those to make that happen or to make you less anxious? I also was going to come back to it.

Well, we said at the very beginning of your response a second ago around you can't solve that problem of somebody saying I'm anxious about. Well, I'm excited about. being with my wife and I'm anxious about it. Back to the very beginning of the entire episode here, you can't solve that problem. I was curious to hear how you think through it, but I'm with you 100% where we eventually, essentially, it's I can't solve it, but I've...

I'm here to help facilitate or prompt the conversation and just even prompting it and getting them to realize it and name it and talk about it is extremely valuable. Even if you can't say, hey, here's how we solve it, that's okay. And you said it sort of nonchalantly. You were like, you know, I think I just kind of accept it. I can't solve it. And I think that's right. I think that's the mindset to have, but I also was laughing because I think that's a really hard acceptance for a lot of us.

that are in like, we're financial advisors, financial planners. We're supposed to have the answers. We want to be able to help and do good. And so it was funny. I was laughing because you said it like, yeah, I think I've just sort of accepted that. Maybe I can't solve it. And I'm like, good, that's great. But I'm glad you've gotten there, but that's not a very easy place to get to. But I suppose, absolutely. And that comes back to...

the maths and human thing, right? I mean, we're problem solvers. That's what we do. We take things, we solve problems, we come up with answers. It's just a flip in the mindset, isn't it? That you can't carry that through into a complex problem. And that's kind of where I come from in this. You can't carry that mindset through into a complex problem. And I think you almost have to have a bit kind of split personality disorder to be, I think, a really good financial planner in that.

you know, you need to be able to switch on both complicated problem solver and complex guide, right? And that's... You know, that's what the guys at Shape and Wealth talk about mechanic and guide, right? Wearing these two hats. And I actually think... financial planning will evolve very rapidly into those two roles being very separate, right? You'll have technically gifted mechanics and you'll have, you know, people that are...

humanly gifted guides, if that makes sense. I think the more we can lean into those two roles and separate them, the better we will be at impacting the client more holistically. Based on what you said, you gave an example of one exercise you think maybe to some degree everybody should do or you'd like for them to do, or I guess the way you said it is it's led to some great conversations.

What's another example of an exercise? Maybe we'll call it what's your favorite or if the one you just gave us is your favorite where you have the four quadrants and they're breaking down what they're going to miss, what they're looking forward to, what they're anxious about. Yeah, yeah.

If you like that one, that one's your favorite. What's maybe the next one where you would say, and maybe not everybody has to do it, but you would say, this is one that I really enjoy doing. I love when people do it because it leads to some great conversations.

Yeah, I mean, I love them all, Brendan. I know, I know. I've talked about this before. I was like, it's just like asking, who's your favourite kid? Honestly, I can tell you that. I have definitely got a favourite at the moment. Definitely got a favorite. That's actually an easier question. So another one in the purpose. So there's an exercise there called what does work give you? It basically splits out lifestyle motivators and economic motivators. And what I get them to do...

is to score from zero to five, with zero being the least important and five being the most. So I get them to score every line. So you've got – like in lifestyle motivators, for instance, you've got kind of intellectual stimulation to stay healthy, social engagement, fear of boredom, making an impact, you know, that kind of thing. And economic motivators, you've got –

So this is about kind of the benefits that you will get from work, right? Money for extras, can't afford to quit, have more to leave, would like to pay down debt, you know, maintaining my lifestyle, these kind of things. So I get them to go, right, every one of those. lines needs a score from zero to five. And then I want you to total up lifestyle motivators and total up economic motivators. I've not had one client where the economic motivators are more than the lifestyle motivators.

Is that why you have them score it so they can see those two scores right next to each other? And it essentially, without you having to tell them, says, hey, this lifestyle is more important than... Yeah. And what I'm trying to say is that... You're not retiring. Work gives you more than money. So there's a real danger where people think that they just need to get out of work and they don't put the work in to go, well, actually.

I need to replace things that work has given me. And I quote the Harvard study more than I quote many things. But that Harvard 80-year study has said two things, right? The number one. Excuse me, the number one thing. For longevity, a long and happy life is the quality of your relationships, positive relationships. And the number one challenge that people face in retirement is replacing the connections that work has given them. And what I want them to do is to understand that you're not...

This is not just a money decision. You are retiring from something or leaving something behind that would have given you opportunities to make an impact. It would have given you a sense of relevance. It would have helped you grow and learn. It would have given you an identity.

you know, give you a social circle of people. And when you leave that behind, you're going to need to replace all of those because guess what? They are foundations to kind of human flourishing, not just in retirement, but in general. So that is one of the most, I think. you know, one of the more eye-opening things that I get from people. So I haven't had one where economic outweighs lifestyle. So they go, ah.

Man, I need to work on a little bit of this stuff, right? This isn't just a, God, I need to retire from work. No, no, no. You need to retire with something and to something. So let's build on what you're retiring with. Build those building blocks now. And then work on what you're retiring to. Because if you don't do that, I'm basically sending you into a 25-year weekend with no real plan.

That's kind of what you're going into. So we need to figure out what you're going to do and how you're going to do it and who you're going to do it with. The thing I really like about... I like the whole concept and the way that it's laid out to highlight. If nothing else, it makes you sit down, just like all these exercises. It forces you to sit down and actually create awareness and space to think about how important these things are. And it makes you go, okay.

Even if I'm sitting there going, oh, I can't stand my job. I need to retire. I need to get out of this. I need to do something else. I'm tired of it. I need to move on. You go through and you're like, well, I mean, I guess it does give me intellectual stimulation. Does give me some social engagement. I do get to compete. I do get to learn and make an impact. And you start, you start laying all those things out and then you go.

How am I going to do that if I retire? To me, it feels like a lot of buckets that I need to fill if I'm going to retire. All of a sudden, work doesn't feel so bad. It doesn't mean that you decide you're going to work forever. makes you go from the whole like, oh, I'm supposed to retire. I don't like my job. I don't like having to wake up every morning and go do this. It forces you to go. Maybe it's doing something a little bit more than just funding or just getting some money.

into my account. But the key, I think, to the way it's laid out is you don't just ask, hey, what does work give you? Or what are the benefits? What are some of the things you like about work? It lists out.

things to choose from so that they're not sitting there trying to think oh because if you ask me like hey what are some benefits of work i probably wouldn't say not that it's not true but one of the things that wouldn't probably wouldn't come to mind is work gives me a sense of relevance i just can't imagine that i would sit there and come up with that but

When I look through the list, I'm like, yeah, I'd probably give that a score. I'd probably give that a score of three, maybe four, but I haven't thought about it. So I like the list format for that reason. And then along those same lines, right below that one is another exercise I like that I...

personally like a lot. So I'm probably biased here, but just having them define good and bad retirement attributes, right? And saying like, Hey, what have you seen from other people that are the way that you want to retire?

What are those attributes like? What have you seen from other people that you're like, I want to make sure I avoid that and never become that person? And again, you're not just giving it to them with a blank slate and hoping that they can come up with it off the top of their head because we know human beings are really bad at just coming up with things off the top of their head.

But you give them a list of things to choose from, and it actually forces them to sit down and go, okay, what would this look like if I... If it's done really, really well. Yeah. I mean, this was baked in the stuff I'd learned about anti-goals. So, you know, this format that actually when you ask someone.

what do you want and what you don't want, people are more likely to list off a load of things that they don't want or don't like. People find it, human beings find it easier to talk about things they don't want and don't like than things that they do. And I think they're more emotionally driven.

Given by the things that they don't want. Exactly that. And when I look at people that have filled this out, there are more ticks on the bad retirement attributes than the good retirement attributes. Really? Yeah. And interestingly, what I see with that is, and again, I'm trying to bake this into positivity, but I go to them and go, well, how can we make sure that doesn't happen to you? Like, what can we do?

What will make you feel like you've identified, for instance, that one of the things that you've seen in one of your friends is a loss of identity. You kind of question that. I've had it before. They've ticked that and I'll go, what does that mean? And they'll be like, oh, I had this friend. He was really high flyer, retired, and then just kind of withered away. I mean, he just didn't really do much. He really lost his identity.

He always answered the question with what do you do with I used to be A. So he's always like living in the past. He hasn't really moved on. And then it's like, well. you know, do you think that's a bad thing for his retirement? And yeah, yeah, he doesn't really spend his money. He's got all this wealth and I'm worried about that. Well, how can we make sure that you can, you know, or how can you make sure?

that that doesn't happen to you? What are the kind of things and steps that you can start to take now about how you define who you are in retirement? And yeah, so it just opens up those conversations for people. And I think... Yeah, I mean, those two exercises, I mean, that's all sitting under the purpose thing. So those two exercises, and then underneath it is what I talked about, about miss and won't miss and anxious.

are, I think, the most... impactful two pages on in the work but for me when you know when it's that wake up moment oh i'm more you know i've got a lot of more lifestyle motivators than i thought um i've identified some of the things that i don't want to happen to me

identified some of the things that I really want to do in retirement. And I've started to figure out what I'm, you know, what I'm absolutely need to leave behind, what I'm going to miss a little bit. And also what I need to think about what I'm going to do and what I'm anxious about it all kind of nicely.

revolves into one nice conversation that you have around that with both partners. One more thing on this, more logistically speaking, when they, let's say somebody fills it out. Do you have them send it back to you so that you can store it and have access to it to be able to pull up? The responses or do you just kind of keep notes separately on what the conversation was about? No. So we originally decided to feel like or originally decided to do this as a physical workbook.

Felt like it would be lovely to print this out, send it to them in the post, have it. like drop on their doormat right we don't get that anymore so we wanted to create that that experience of physical post um that was great until you realize how bad people are at handwriting now because they don't write anymore so they would like they would Write this out and send it back to us. And I'll be like, I have no idea what you've written.

Well, what's even worse is I think my wife asked me at least once a week, can you tell what I wrote here? Can you read this? And I'm like, can I read it? It's your handwriting. You may not be able to read it, but you also run the risk that they may not even be able to read it. I've had one where there's like loads of crossing out and they've like doodled on some bits because they were obviously, I'm like, that's cool. That's great. But actually.

It's a fillable PDF. We send it out as that. They can send it back. And what that actually gives us the ability to do is use modern technology AI to help us now. So we can feed this into a note-taking system. We can feed it. into a chat GPT thing. And we can kind of say,

you know, pull out some of the key things, summarize this document for us, read this. And so I think having them fill that out PDF wise allows us to actually use it a lot better from, from that basis. And we then store it in a. shared drive which means that we can go back into it we can see that we can save it as a v1 version one we can resave it as a version two because we get them to do this an ongoing but we get them to revisit some of this stuff this is not as i said a one and done

thing right so would you sat would you have a version one what one document that you share is version one yeah and then when i do it the second time is it a a new document version two so that way i can go back and see what did i say in version one editing okay no we'll resave it with all your answers in it as a version two go back in

and change anything that you feel needs changing. Some things might stay the same, but if you've had some thoughts, and then we'll compare and identify. Some of the things, for instance, I mean, what I say to people about the PERMA model stuff. So I get people to score.

on the PERMA model. So you've got positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment. And one of the questions I ask is that if it's a kind of a six or below. How do we make it higher? And if it's a seven or higher, how do we keep it there?

record those answers and think about that and then go back to them because it's like actually what might happen is they might score a seven in relationships and then a year down the line it might be a five or a four and you'll be like well what's happened you know we need to unpack what's happened

for us to feel like that or for you to feel like that's moved. But I want to know what will keep them there from a financial point of view, from a time point of view, from a human point of view. What's going to keep you... or enhance those particular scores.

And it's the same with the contentment rating. So right at the back of the book, I've got a scale of one to 10 that basically says, and this was taken from the work I'd done with shaping. So Brian talks about funding contentment a lot. And I think. without the prompting to clients at all. Our clients talk about contentment a lot. They talk about wanting to be, feel content, be contented.

And so that thing there where I go, look, 10 represents the best possible life for you. One represents the worst possible life for you. Where do you feel like you sit now? And again, same question. If it's like a seven or eight, how do we keep it there? Can we notch it up? If it's a four or five, why? And what's getting in the way? And how can we improve that? And a lot of that contentment is a lot to do with money, actually.

that you see. So it enables us to have some really clear actions to help people progress through some of this work that they're doing. And if we can help them through the planning work that we do, then great. 80% of this workbook we can help them with as financial planners. I think we just need to figure out that it doesn't have to show on a cash flow chart for us to have an impact.

Do you put the contentment rating at the end on purpose because you want them to go through the exercises to fully feel and evaluate how they're doing so that they can have a more informed... score yeah yeah so um that was a bit trial and error to be honest with you that was i used to ask that question quite early and then and then they'd go through it and they'd be like oh i need to like i feel either less or more contented now i've been through it

Like, so it's at the end for that reason. It's like, you might've, if I'd have asked you that question, you might've put yourself as a four, but now you've gone through everything. You might feel less anxious. You've got some stuff off your chest. You feel, you know what I mean? If you've had a couple of conversations, so you're contentment level.

The idea, really, my hope is that contentment levels will go up. I mean, yeah, it might be a bit of a rollercoaster journey as they work through this, but this is meant to be a positive outcome for people as they work through this stuff.

Even if it doesn't even went down, that would still be helpful and insightful and informative, right? It's not a bad thing. I mean, I think about it as like, so that's why I asked because at first I was like, I feel like that should be at the beginning of this thing. Then I went, no. No, you need to make it. Nobody sits around and says,

how content am I with my life without reflection? It's kind of like whenever somebody just comes up and they, they ask like, Hey, how's your day? How was your day? How's it going? And like my natural default response, cause I'm not sitting around reflecting on it is that's good. I'm good.

So how content are you? I'd be like, yeah, I think I'm pretty content. It's too painful to think about all the things that I'm not content. It's too painful to think about the things that I'm anxious about. So I'm not dwelling on those things. And so I would probably be like, yeah, seven.

Seven or eight, right? But if I sat there and reflected on it and went through it, it would be a much different, most likely a different response. It's at least more informed. Yeah, yeah. I have thought about taking a leaf out of your book, Brendan. When you, I think in one of your emails that you created as a follow-up to the discovery meeting, there's a scoring kind of how, you know, how ready are you to proceed? And by the way, you can't choose a seven. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm definitely thinking about doing that. I'm going to black out the seven because that's the default option for people that don't actually want to answer it, right? Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah. And I'm the worst at it too. Anytime I do one of these things, I actually don't.

let myself pick a seven because i'm like no no no you're not really diving in deep enough if you're picking a seven it's gotta you gotta force yourself i'll try to go to seven and a half sometimes then i'll scold myself and be like you can't do that don't do that yeah okay

I want to go to one more thing. It's a little bit different than this, but before we pivot there, is there anything else you feel like needs to be mentioned, covered, or addressed as far as these exercises in the workbook goes?

No, I think we've done, I think for, I suppose just the point of view, just to let everybody know that's listening, how transformational putting this together. getting it out to clients has been. I'm as anxious and nervous as everybody. I put on this wonderful kind of facade that I'm really confident. Deep down, I don't, you know, but...

I think that kind of just get it out there, get your thoughts down, get some exercises and some questions down on paper. It is true. It's been the absolute... making of the work that we do as a business and really does follow through on. taking on the ideal clients that we want. Referrals have gone up. This is stuff that people just aren't necessarily doing. If you work with business owners, there's a load of questions you're going to know there. If you work with widowed...

widowed women. There's a load of questions. You can bespoke this down. It doesn't have to be war and peace. I do battle with myself that this is too long on some occasions, but just get yourself in that mindset that this can actually be an amazing transformational exercise for people to go through.

Yeah, I love that. That's a great point. Okay, pivoting a little bit, not too far, but just a little bit away from the workbook concept. And this is probably could be an entire conversation on its own.

Hopefully will be at some point, but I do at least want to ask this question or talk about it at a high level for now, just in case for some reason, before we have a chance to have you back on the podcast world shuts down, or maybe you decide to, maybe somebody comes in and they, and they buy the IP to the.

workbook and then you're off on the beach somewhere and you're like, Hey, Brendan, I'm too good for a podcast with you now. And to avoid the possibility of us not being able to talk about in the future, we can keep it simple for now, but how do you get clients? when they're going to retire, who've been saving their whole lives to spend more money? I thought you might go there. Yeah. And you're like, okay, how much time do you have? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's like half five. It's dinner time for me over here, Brendan. So, okay. So, yeah, I do think for people... For advisors and planners that work in the space of dealing with retirees, this is our greatest work. Outside of this kind of what we've just talked about. Getting people to spend their money is some of the greatest work that we do because everything I come across, both research and real life.

is saying to me that clients chronically underspend because they're so fearful of markets and longevity and all of the stuff that that sits there and all of the data under spin right yeah chronically i thought i heard over Sorry, I might have said that. Sorry, yeah. No, chronically underspend. You know, and again, there's research in the UK from the Institute of Fiscal Studies, the IFS, that basically says on average, people are only spending... about...

30 to 40% of their starting net wealth over a 30-year retirement period, excluding property. So, you know, that's, I mean, they're leaving 60 to 70% of their starting net worth on the table.

they're not leaving money on the table. What they're leaving is experiences and memories, right? That's what they're leaving on the table. So.

The work that I try and do, and a lot of my sketches are around the subject of spending money, but this is about trying to reframe the conversation. It's also trying to step out of financial planning software because I think financial... software it does quite often discourage or give people the wrong impression and i'll give you an example if i think about how cash flow in the uk is done um

You know, you've got these bars that go through up to age 100. Most people plan to age 100 because we just don't know how long people are going to live. Right. If they run out of liquid money, those bars turn red. Now, I've... I've had it before where you've got between the ages of 93 and 100, they've still got some property money. They've got what they call state pension over here, social security. They've still got some income coming in. But there's a big gap of red for like seven years.

ears at the end of their life and then they go oh i can't i i shouldn't spend here then because i need that all to be colored in things right and i'm like well right right no how do i make sure there is no red ever exactly and And the language is just wrong, right? That creates wrong behaviors. And so I try and step out of cash flow. This is about...

what I call the skill of spending money. So I talk to clients a lot about you have, you've been taught the skill of saving, right? Our grandparents, our parents. Maybe in schools through to our really early working career, we're told save, save, save, save for a rainy day, build your nest egg, build your pot. Everybody teaches us how to save money. Exactly. There's a plethora.

Yeah. Plethora, plethora, whichever. Well, you said it was niche. Is it plethora, plethora? Do you have any advice? Plethora is fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Advice. Yep. content and anything you want on how to save money. And you basically can't find anything on how to spend. I mean, you can.

But no one really teaches us how to speak. No, no, no. And it's a skill, right? And I think, again, you think about how over in the UK, there's auto-enrollment in pensions. I think you've got something similar where the default option 10 years ago was you had to tell them that... you wanted to enroll into a workplace pension. Now you're enrolled. You have to tell them that you don't. And that's done a great job, right? It's kind of saving rates in pensions have gone up because...

People, you know, it's nudge theory and all of that stuff. Yeah. So, but we're conditioned to save. We're conditioned to do this. We're told to save. And then if you think about the emotional baggage that that creates over a period of... 25, 30, 35, 40 years, the sense of security that saving has given us, the sense of identity that it's given us, all of that stuff that's then built in, we're then told.

to one day 360 turn it flick the switch and now now you've got to spend this thing you've now got to intentionally deplete your money to enjoy life but actually your security and happiness has been from having this pot of money so you've you know and and so i what i try and say to people is i get it right this is like i'm not going to pretend This is going to be really hard. This is going to be a hard transition. And then I get people go, oh, damn, by the way, don't worry, we can spend money.

Don't worry, that won't be a problem. That won't be a problem. I'm like, no, no, no, no. What you can do is spend income that's being replaced by next month paycheck. That's what you can do. When the paycheck stops... and you're spending 10 grand a month and it's going down, how do you feel?

It's an eye-opening kind of couple of questions you ask around that. Because at no point in our lives, really, in general, have we had to deplete capital without more money coming in. Now, we might be spending more than we're bringing in, but at least... we're bringing in something. So you offset that sense of fear and trepidation. So to me, this is about reframing that conversation to go, right, it's a skill.

It takes intention. It will take some practice. Don't feel like you're going to solve it. tomorrow, a bit like you had to up your levels of contributions into your pensions when you earned more money and felt more comfortable, more secure to do so over time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, we need to kind of build in this skill.

I would say any type of behavior change. You can try to start big, but we know that usually you try to start small, get some small wins, small wins, create big momentum. It's okay not to... to nail it right out of the gate, but let's at least start moving in that direction. Let's start creating some habits that

move us in the direction to get to the bigger goal that we want to get to. Exactly. And that's why one of the things I say to people when I start working with them, let's say, for instance, they got a little cash windfall.

through their work, whether they got like a redundancy package or they got a bonus as they were leaving or whatever this looks like, what a lot of them will turn around to me and say, Don't worry, Dan, I'm going to defer taking money from my investment pot and I'm going to just take money from the cash. And I'm like, no, because what you're now doing is deferring.

something that you know is going to be hard. What you'll now do, I want to start as soon as possible. Like if you need five grand a month to live on, then why don't we start drawing? three and a half now from the portfolio and then take some money from cash. Let's build the habit of understanding that you're taking money out of the investment pot, that by the way, you've worked so hard to get to...

for this day that you've just now got, right? You're in the place that you've, this is the reason why you've saved that money to have this time now. So let's start that habit. Get used to the fact that you're getting a monthly income from your pensions or your investments or whatever that is. And that can really help people to do that.

What I'd also like to do is say, by the way, you need to pick something really big and spend money on something big that will cost a lot of money within the first three months. First three months of retirement? Yep. Pick something. You said what you'd really like to do. Like to do. Yeah. Whether it's a big retirement party, whether it's a really big holiday to celebrate, like obviously within...

you know, within the sphere of being able to do it. But I want you to spend money on something quite quickly.

Again, build the habit. It's okay. It's okay to take 10, 15, 20 grand out and go on a cruise, you know, because that's what we're trying to do. If you delay that, the more you delay it, the less... uh the the less chance it is of kind of actually being able to do it eventually exactly exactly now but what about you're sitting there and you're like all right now in the first three months i want you to spend on something

Big. You choose what it is. Pick what you want it to be. And they're probably like, okay, I kind of like that. And then they see those red bars at the end of the chart, at the end of the graph. I have to imagine that there's still some level of our conversation around, Dan, I... I just, I can't. Look at these red bars. I need to address these red bars. Why would I spend this money with these red bars? How do you think about that or handle that? Yeah, so, I mean, I think I try and use...

cash flow for slightly different. So I try and stay out of cash flow for that conversation. So what I try and bring in- So intentionally not even showing it when you're having that conversation. So it's not in there. No, no, no. But what I will say, what I try and do-

is the software over here, very similar to what you've got in the States, but I think yours is a bit more sophisticated, like Income Lab, right? That you've got out there. Yeah, well, Income Lab is probably the most user... friendly best user experience we've got some ones that are anyways they're all they all do the same thing they just display the results in a slightly different yeah for the most part but i like showing

And this is how I reframe it, right? So I think showing someone a success rate of a plan is wrong. And I think a plan with 100% success rate is a plan that's 100% going to fail. What's the point of having this plan that means you're never going to run out of money? So what I try and bring into this is I create what I call the 80% plan.

So this is an 80% chance that you're still going to underspend and a 20% chance that we're going to have to make future adjustments. That's the language I use with people. Not an 80% chance of success and a 20% chance of failure. This isn't binary. This is, you've got 30 years to work this thing out and to navigate and to make adjustments. I will always try and create this 80% plan. Most clients that I work with have a plan that exceeds 80%, right? They've got an amount of money.

And they're going to underspend. So I will bring the plan down and go, well, actually, if you said to me, Dan, can you tell me how much I can spend going forward? I would give them the 80% plan and go. Here's a plan. Here's the money you can spend. There's still an 80% chance that you're going to underspend according to the thousand scenarios that we've run, both historically and Monte Carlo. And if you fall down one of those 20% scenarios, then we'll just make some adjustments.

And then you come up with these kind of guardrails that you put in to be able to show them that there's some wiggle room within that. So that starts to help frame the conversation. People feel much more open. to spending a bit more money knowing that there's still a high chance that they're going to underspend. When I started taking out the word success and failure, it transformed those conversations.

And then the other bit on top of that is talking about what I call retirement memory planning. So this isn't about turning kind of investments into income. This is turning money into memories. And I think just starting to reframe that, show them a few of my sketches that I've got around, you know, look, this is not about...

leaving money on the table. You're going to leave memories and experiences on the table if you don't spend your money now during what is those go-go years or exploring years that you've got.

again, bringing evidence back into the planning process around retirement, our health will deteriorate over time, right? I mean, you know, everyone is, you know, the health span hasn't moved on as much as... Lifespan. We will go through three phases of our life in retirement. They will all have different needs. You know, we will go into, we will explore, we will go into a more nesting phase and we'll go into a more reflecting phase as we get older.

naturally declines in retirement. Again, there's loads of research out there that says spending declines in retirement. This is about taking advantage of that window of opportunity that people have got, because if they don't take advantage of that, they end up like my father-in-law, who's 83 and is now accumulating money and has been for the last five years. pensions coming in and he spends a quarter of what comes in because like he just doesn't doesn't spend it right it's just not there

He doesn't have all the same options and the ability to spend it in all the same ways that he might have or would possibly have when he was 40, 50, even 60. There are certain things you just can't do anymore. when you're 83 so your options to spend are a lot less there's um the study done over here a few years ago and it it surveyed people between the edges of 50 and 90 and it asked them the question

does health get in the way of you doing things? And it had four options. It had often, sometimes, never, and so it's sometimes, sometimes, often, often, and never. And the cohort, when the ages of 50 to 60, 80% of the time it didn't. And then it flipped on its head when people got to 70. Wow. So highlighting that window, really saying like, hey, yeah. So that 20-year window says that between the ages of 50 and 60,

And 50 and 70, you've got the opportunity where health is more likely to not get in the way. But as soon as you get to 70, and then the impact from 70 to 80 is monumental. It just significantly creeps up. It's not that you're disabled or you can't. It's just that your health is getting in the way, right? You can't do the things that you're doing when you're younger. So that's...

I bring those conversations and I bring that evidence into the planning work that I do. And that's the key thing. I don't just create the straight line cash flow. I build that evidence into cash flow to show them a realistic picture of what... retirement looks like over a 30-year period. I just had this thought as you were describing that. We should go to these financial planning software companies.

The ones that have that create the visuals for cash flow and have them overlay that 50 to 70 window and be like, here's where you have the best opportunity to do the things that you want to do to spend the money.

And a way to do things and create memories and experiences so that they can at least see like, it's not just about cashflow, but it's also about, you know, the window that you have and you can overlay it where they're like, okay, I probably need, I could probably spend more in this window because that's when I. We create them over here. So we use a cash flow system called Voyant, which I think is in the States now.

But they have the ability to create a timeline. So I create the timeline and it's green, amber, red for a reason. I color them green, amber, red. And I put the window in there. I put the go-go exploring years, the go-slow. nesting years and the no-go reflecting years. And they're underneath the plan, underneath the cash flow. And I shut them down. So that first window shuts at 72.

The second window shuts at 82. And again, I look at the research out there. It says in your early to mid 70s, that's when things start slowing down. In your early to mid 80s, that's when you... So, and we plan to those windows for people. We go, actually, this... This is your window of opportunity. How can we enhance the spending here and make sure that you're good over here? The other thing, last thing on this, because it's not a novel concept.

It's out there, but I've seen it recently. Sahil Bloom just wrote a book, The Five Types of Wealth. There's just an article in our industry. Financial advisor wrote it. Well, I'm the dynamic between health, time and money. And it's like when you're young, very right out of the gate, you're getting your first job. You've got all the health in the world.

but you don't have the money that you need and your time may be a little bit limited, but it's not that limited because you don't have very many responsibilities, but you need the money, right? Then you move out, you grow up a little bit and you're in that phase of life where you've got kids and they're in school and your career is taking off. And it's like,

Okay, the money is not as much of a problem anymore. You're still in good health, hopefully, but now you don't really have the same amount of time capacity that you need to do the things that you want to do. You fast forward to 70 and 80, and it's like you probably have all the money that you need. You've got all the time that you need, but then you don't have your health. And there's something about that.

50 to 70 window that's like the sweet spot where you probably hopefully maybe you never know but you have you're most likely to have the money the health and the time to do the things that you want to do to create memories and experiences and i think just

Frank, like thinking of it that way makes you, it creates this intentionality to go, I need to make the most of this because this is like the sweet spot of these three resources. Yeah. I've sketched on that. That's kind of, I've read that stuff. I should have known you've sketched on it. Yeah, but that's. It's absolutely true. I think that between the ages of 50 and 70 is when time and money are in the best chance of being, time, money and health are in the best chance of being in balance.

Right. That's when it's there. And then off the back of that, I show people what I call my, and this isn't a sketch available. I draw this on the thing, but it's kind of what I call the zone of fun framework. So I draw two lines, right? I draw a line of the, and this isn't exact science, right? But I draw a line, the probability of being healthy. and the probability of dying. So the probability of being healthy goes down and the probability of dying goes up.

And there's this natural inflection point where they will cross over. So there'll be an inflection point where the probability of dying is more than the probability of being healthy. So when I talk about this positive probability... zone right everyone loves to talk about probabilities well let's talk about the right probability between the ages of 55 and 75 that's when you've got the most probability of being more healthy than dying and that's that zone of fun now

when you flip those two around and it becomes negative probability, when you've got more chance of dying than being healthy, well, that's wasted, right? So use that time, use that opportunity there to... create the memories, create the experiences. You know, Bill Perkins, I know you've read the book, which is a wonderful, I think, book around Die With Zero. He talks about memory dividends. Like create those memories and those dividends that you...

recall going forward, create that stuff. That's when the opportunity is there. There's so much noise out there at the moment, fear of markets, obviously with everything that's going on, fear of longevity. you know, fear of being dependent on people and not having your dignity, you know, all of this stuff. And it just, you know, human beings, we're wired to... survive first. So if all of this noise is coming in, our historic...

brains will take over and just lock everything down. Like the easiest option is to just not spend because I just don't know. And we have the power. to unlock that. We absolutely have the power to unlock that for them. Yeah. All right. We could keep going down that path. Maybe we'll come back and revisit it.

At a later date. But for now, we're going to move into the rapid fire three pack of questions if you're ready. Yes. Go for it. Before I ask you what book you would gift, since I'm going to gift everyone your book once it's available, what's the name of it? Do you know the title yet? I've got a working title. It's called Tuesdays are Worst. Okay, wait, hang on. What does that mean? The worst day in retirement is the day that you wake up. It's probably 182 days in.

This is what I say is the most dangerous day in retirement. For those that are counting, 182 days is six months. It's probably a Tuesday and you're in your dressing gown. You're talking to the fridge. The dog's sick of you. You don't know what you're doing. It's 9.42 and you think, is this it? Now, that's the most dangerous day in retirement. That's the worst day. And that's kind of the framework for me is going,

If you haven't, think about what we've just talked about. If you haven't done that work, you're probably going to wake up on that Tuesday and go, is that it? Is this what this is about? Well, that's what Andy did. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I've kind of grounded all that into, and I've got this, my... what i've called the retirement reinvention curve which is the emotional journey of retirement that's based a lot on the hubler ross change curve of grief but that talks about the emotional journey

And that's what people go through, right? They'll go through retirement shock. They get to retirement elation, which is that honeymoon phase. Yeah. Like, this is wonderful. And then they feel a bit uneasy, and then they get into frustration mode. And that's day 180. Six months in, I'm uneasy and I'm frustrated and I don't know what's going on. And the book unpacks all of that. Tuesdays are the worst. Coming your way whenever it's out, straight from...

Straight from me. All right. But other than that, what book would you give to everybody? So there's a really cool book. It's called Who Moved My Cheese? Have you heard of that book? No, but one of my favorite client, first client and best client told me to read this book. It'll take you an hour. It's tiny. He said the same thing. He told me to read it.

He passed away, I guess, like five years ago now. And to this day, I'm like, I need to read it just for the simple fact that I need to do it for him. I'm embarrassed to admit that I still haven't, but I've heard it mentioned multiple times. Yeah. It's a brilliant book. How to Deal with Change.

get what you really want, framed in the most amazing way that hits you between the eyes. Yeah. It's to do with mice and mazes and cheese. And it's brilliant. I'm actually pulling it up right now. It's time. It's time. Don't delay any longer, Brendan. Who's the best listener in your life and what does that person do so well that makes him such a great listener? So, Brendan, I've listened to numerous episodes, right? And I thought...

You know, there's the standard answer, isn't there? It's like my wife, she's a wonderful listener. She really helps and she does. You've listened to enough to know that I've been tempted to ban that response, but I also think spouses are great. Here's one for you. And this is, this is going to be a bit controversial. Because I think I might have people jump all over me when I say this. Currently, the best listener in my life is ChatGPT. That's not a good answer for a rapid fire three pack.

We might have to unpack that. You just opened the door. Might have to unpack that. But very quickly, because no judgment, positive solutions gives me what I want really quickly. digging into kind of how that's helping mental health at the moment. Some of the stats coming out of how AI is like, anyway, that's, but yeah, to me, like my wife's wonderful, but. ChatGPT listens to me at the moment. It's a great thing. Megan Lurch, you mentioned earlier.

Megan Lertz and I actually had a conversation, about an hour-long conversation on this exact topic yesterday. So I'm forcing myself not to comment anymore on it because otherwise we'll be here for way too long. All right. You get to hang a poster. In the office of every advisor around the world, everybody who's listening, normally I ask, as you probably know, what would it say? I'm hoping that it's not going to be what does it say. It's going to be what.

Which one of your sketches are you displaying? So what will they see? Yeah, I mean, so I think the number one sketch that I would show someone is the one that... Basically, it goes up and it's got a big block of red and it kind of says... What were you waiting for? Or, you know, lost memories and experiences. It's all about spending that money. So I think that's, to me, that's the one that if we reframe that and we go, this is not about leaving money on the table. It's about the other.

stuff that you'll look back and regret um we need to minimize those regrets and i think that can just that can hit people in the face um if it had to say something it would be stop optimizing retirement and start humanizing it that's that's what i would say

Well done. Very well done, Dan. For anybody that's been listening and has decided that they officially want to join the Dan Halet fan club and they want to connect and find you and learn from you, where should they go? What should they do? Yeah, so I've come off Twitter stroke X because I hate it. So I'm only on LinkedIn. So please connect with me over there. Humans versus retirement. So humansvsretirement.com. I do a weekly newsletter that I call The Retirement Fix. And yeah, subscribe to that.

That's got all my thoughts in. Connect with me up. Have a look at all that stuff. Listen to the podcast. And if you want to reach out for conversations, I'm always here. And be on the lookout for Tuesdays are the worst. Tuesdays are the worst. Dan, thank you so much. It's been great and appreciate it. And here's to humanizing retirement. Thanks, Brendan. Thanks for having me on.

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